IAM2662 – CEO Helps Companies Build Strong Teams and Grow Great Leaders

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Murray Seward Teaser 00:00
What we've done is we've taken those products and tried to figure out how to market and sell them a little bit more effectively, how to reach the community more, so how to find those people that are needing those products and services, and then really selling on a consultative basis, not a hard sell by any means.

Finding those people that have the pains, that they really want to try and fix things, and maybe they've tried things in the past, and we try to provide a more customized approach to how to solve those problems. So that's kind of what we're all about.

Intro 00:31
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 00:58
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Murray Seward of Outback Team Building and Training. Murray, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Murray Seward 01:08
Gresh, great to be here. Looking forward to it.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 01:10
Yeah, definitely looking forward to it as well. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Murray so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

And Murray is the CEO of Outback Team Building and Training. His team helps companies all over North America build strong teams, develop team member soft skills and grow leaders.

Murray's a proponent of CEOs working towards building a self-managing company to provide an extraordinary work-life balance and to be able to live stories worth telling. Murray, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Murray Seward 01:38
Absolutely. Let's get going.

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Gresham Harkless Jr. 01:40
And let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Murray Seward 01:46
Yeah. So I was always the kid, and I'll be perfectly humble and honest here. I was always the kid who was a terrible employee. You know, anytime, if it was just a one, you know, I could figure that out.

But if you put me into it, I was also always the kid always wanted to organize things. So I was the kid who organized ski trips and dances and all those sort of fun things. So, back in the mid nineties, I got an opportunity to sell ski trips for a living with this company called Canadian Outback and got going with that.

And over time we ended up changing that company from ski trips and wrapping trips to get into more corporate team building activities.
And my boss at the time decided he wanted to step away from the business.

And he thought maybe that I could lead the business and through the school of art knocks and lots of great mentoring from, from Jamie Corbett. We ended up growing the business. I grew the business and found some phenomenal leaders and learned the important lesson of empowering leadership and hiring great leaders and hiring great team members.

And then wonderful things can happen with your business because it's so much less reliant on you. So that was sort of my journey to get me from the start to where I am today.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 02:51
Yeah. And that's what I loved about, you know, when I was reading your, your bio is just the idea of building a self-managing company. Cause I think so many times when you're trying to build an organization, it can sometimes start, you know, with you doing a lot or especially if you're a startup founder, but it starts to evolve behind that.

And that's sometimes one of the biggest and hardest things that leaders and CEOs and, and, and, C-suite and our people really struggle with is growing beyond themselves and being able to have that great team so you can be successful.

Murray Seward 03:17
Yeah, a lot of that comes down to being humble, right? And being able to accept the fact that others may be better than you and likely are better than you at certain components of things. So figuring out what your own unique abilities are and continue to do those things.

But those things that aren't your unique ability, those things you don't like to do, therefore you put them off or don't do them very well.

Find others who do like to do those things. And as I learned many, many years ago, it's incredible what those people, when they're engaged, will do and how they will help you build things to be far better and far more palatable as far as work-life balance on you as well.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 03:51
Absolutely. Yeah. We all have kind of have our zones of genius. And if we as leaders, but also as people that are on our teams as well, too, are able to kind of work in those zones of geniuses, I guess you can call them.

And that's when, you know, really great things start to happen.

Murray Seward 04:04
Yeah, absolutely. So very, very true.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 04:05
Nice. And so I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you're doing with Outback team building and training.

Could you break down, you know, some of the things that you're doing and how you're serving the clients you're working with?

Murray Seward 04:14
Yeah, so, you know, product lines are really, really quite simple. I mean, really, it's everything from fun team-building activities to soft skill training, where people maybe have a leadership team or their own team within their group that wants to learn how to communicate with each other better, those types of things. up to leadership mindset training for C-level, C-suite groups, that type of thing.
But really what we've done is we've taken those products and tried to figure out how to market and sell them a little bit more effectively, how to reach the community more, so how to find those people that are needing those products and services, and then really selling on a consultative basis, not a hard sell by any means, finding those people that have the pains, that they really want to try and fix things.

And maybe they've tried things in the past and we try to provide a more customized approach to how to, how to solve those problems. So that, that's kind of what we're, what we're all about.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 05:07
That makes perfect sense. And that's definitely, you know, straightforward. Well, let me ask you this, cause I know you touched on a little bit of those pains. Do you find that there's a, as common pains that, you know, sometimes you, you know, you need help, but you're not really sure when you need help, but those pains kind of showcase that.

Are there some of those that you find come up with your clients?

Murray Seward 05:24
Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And everything from, you know, more minor pains to major pains, but literally, it typically is that team leader, whether they're a manager or coordinator, whatever they might be that team leader who decides that things aren't working exactly how they want them to work, or that they're trying to get things to work differently, and they have a change management issue they need to do.

And then that's when they're trying to figure, okay, are there other things that I can do to help facilitate this change to make people or help them think differently, that type of thing.

So that's when they'll start searching the internet, trying to find ways to do this. And often they'll come across our team and we can chat with them about that.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 06:00
Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And I know those pains, you try to always be on the offensive so that you don't feel those pains. But a lot of times that just kind of happens with time and with evolution, as you said, pivoting and changing things.

Sometimes that just happens as a course of business.

Murray Seward 06:15
Yeah, and it depends, too, on the hired leadership, you know, whether it's, as I call them, a new school company organization or an old school organization. Old school organizations, you know, frankly, don't really care all that much about those types of things. And it's just business as usual where new school, you know, they want their people to be engaged. They want their people to grow.

And so they're looking for often external resources. Some companies do all this internally and have internal teams that work on all this. And that's great, too. But it's those companies that typically are reaching out to us.

They're trying to figure out how they can invest in their people to help things work better.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 06:48
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think as, you know, especially millennials and younger generations probably have different values and different things they're looking for in companies. It probably is on the C-suite to also look into how they can do things on a better level to connect with, you know, those types of potential employees.

Murray Seward 07:06
Yeah, no, it makes total sense. I'm a firm believer whether millennial or not or whatever, you know, the bottom line is people want to know what are they responsible for delivering in their role? What skills or do they need to do that? What attitudes they need to do that or mental outlook do they need to do that?

And can they get assistance with growing those things if they don't quite have what they need to do that? And if, and so if they're provided, you know, the learning opportunities, leadership growth opportunities, whatever it might be in order to meet the responsibilities in their role, then it works out great.

And maybe that person isn't capable of fulfilling those responsibilities in the role, then you need to move on to a different role, that type of thing. But the companies that believe that people can grow and will help them grow, those companies will typically, in my mind, always do better.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 07:50
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Putting the people first is always of tremendous importance. And I wanted to ask you, you might have already touched on this, for what I call your secret sauce. And it could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Murray Seward 08:03
Yeah, I think it really ties into that last answer I just gave, which is talking about people knowing what their responsibilities are for delivering in their role. And if you can get that clarified, and we use what we call a performance management system to do that, where everything is documented with the team member on a half-yearly basis.

So this six months, this is what we're hoping that you can deliver for us. And also in that agreement, a really nice piece of secret sauce is this is how we want you to deliver it.

So this is kind of what your actions are that we want you to do and that you agree need to do. And then this is sort of how you're going to do those things that ties in with core values. So when you come across a problem, you're going to react instead of this way, that type of thing.

And getting that alignment off the bat, right off the bat before the period starts, instead of waiting till the end of the period for that end-of-year review, where you have that surprise meeting where the employee thought they were doing great.

But the leader didn't think they were doing great, you can avoid that using this performance management system. So that's one of the great secret sauces that we've used. We're still trying to get better at it, we're still trying to perfect it, but it's made a big, big difference.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 09:09
Yeah, it definitely sounds like it comes down definitely to, you know, a lot of communication and especially in the, in the forefront, because a lot of times, like you said, when you get to that last or end of the year review, you think you're doing a great job and then, you know, you're told you're not doing a great job, but you don't really know. Cause there's been a lack of communication sometimes.

Murray Seward 09:25
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As part of it, we do monthly catch-ups. So every month that document comes out, talk about these, you know, three to seven things that we wanted you to work on this month and get that, how are they going?

I can't get to that anymore because this new thing has happened, so let's remove that from the performance agreement. It's all out in the open, open, honest communication. Everything is there. There's no surprises.

It doesn't mean that everything always gets delivered, but at least it's this open communication channel that there's no surprise at the end.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 09:53
Exactly, exactly. So nobody definitely, you know, likes that as much. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Murray Seward 10:05
Yeah. For me, for me, the big one has been Bernt Harnisch and his Rockefeller Habits book and Scaling Up book. That was a huge, huge pivot for us. Prior to finding him and finding that methodology, I was doing things very randomly in the business and our leaders were doing things quite randomly in the business.

And once we've adopted that methodology, the scaling up methodology, you're taking care of, you know, some key components of your business in a very organized way.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 10:34
Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And funny enough, I think I was at a yard sale about a month or two ago and I was looking at a bunch of books and I said, Hey, I'm going to grab this book because you can't go wrong with getting something to say about Rockefeller habits. And it was actually that book that you're speaking about.

So that's funny. And I definitely haven't gone all the way through it, but now I definitely will.

Murray Seward 10:51
Yeah, no, it just adds a very structured methodology to how you run the business. And, you know, starting from an annual planning session down to quarterlies, down to monthlies, You know, performance agreements that we talked about, operating and different recruiting systems.

And it just sort of gives you a formula. Does it guarantee success?
Absolutely not. But at least it's going to give you a fighting chance of being success as you scale up and grow your business.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 11:14
Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of times it's all about kind of stacking the deck so you can't guarantee success, but you try to do as much as possible to make sure you're as close to success as possible. So it's definitely a great example of a hack.

And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Murray Seward 11:34
Yeah, I think, I remember one of my very first pieces of advice in business was make sure that you have, you know, a lawyer and an accountant. And I thought, why do I need that? I'll just look at my bank balance, see how it's doing. A piece of advice for that is not only, you know, have an accountant, but have KPIs in your business that you can measure regularly.

And KPI meaning key performance indicator. you can see bad things that are happening before you go broke or before you go out of business. And that's something I didn't have any concept of many, many years ago. Again, I ran my business, my bank balance was more than zero.

I thought I was doing great, ignored the fact that I would all kinds of other people, money and all this sort of thing. So I have KPIs, you know, there's all kinds of tools out of the cloud, Google sheets, all the rest of it, where you can track all this stuff. But keep an eye on things. It's like playing golf.

If you don't actually use a scorecard, you might think you played great, But the reality is you shot 115 again, right? Or even more so, right? You break down that scorecard, you know, how did I, how did I drive? You know, so how those measurables, you can figure out where you need to recruit your game, in real time, ideally.

So that, that's a, that's a hack. I think that's a great thing.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 12:44
Yeah, absolutely. I would definitely say that. Yeah. Cause a lot of times it's kind of like what we go back to when we were talking about what these, you know, your clients work with.

So a lot of times we, don't pay attention to those KPIs and then we have that pain. But if you're paying attention to those KPIs and all of the time, a lot of times you can, you know, be on, you know, be ahead of those pains before they actually happen.

Murray Seward 13:05
Yeah. It's like the engine light in a car, right? I mean, it's there for a reason. A lot of people will ignore the engine light and then they wonder why their car caught on fire.

Engine light is that warning light. It's looking at all these measurables and it doesn't mean the car is going to die, but it's like, okay, there's something here I got to look at.

So that's why I'm suggesting is build in that engine light. into your business that's constantly monitoring different systems. But that, again, comes back to that self-managing company, where if you're busy in the day-to-day, in the trees, doing everything, you don't have time or energy to do that sort of stuff. Unfortunately, when you're in startup mode, often you do have to do both, and that's the working big hours.

You've got to do the job, and then in the evenings, you've got to assess the company and how it's doing. But that's a check engine.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 13:46
Exactly, exactly. That makes perfect sense. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show.

So Murray, what does being a CEO means to you?

Murray Seward 13:58
To me, it means empowering, in my case, the younger generation. of what the reality and phenomenal things of a great work life can be and how they can empower you. So as a CEO, I get the chance to do that. I get the chance to meet lots of people that are typically in their 20s and early 30s.

This may be their first job, their first company. They may have been in other companies, but I like to paint a picture for them of what work can be, what a great work environment can be. and how to assess what those are and whether they are a great fit for you. And if, for example, our business isn't a great fit for you, how to find companies that are a great fit for you.

So that's the… The beauty for me of getting to be a CEO is to do just that, to help these people get off on a great foot in their career. Whether they stay with us or move on to others, it's how to get on a great start in their career.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 14:54
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate your time and all the awesome things you're doing. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then, of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

Murray Seward 15:05
Yeah, I guess, I mean, the only other thing I would say is that I never went to school for business. I learned business through books and I highly recommend to people, there's just so much, you know, nowadays it's not just books, there's podcasts, there's everything you could ever want to know from the most brilliant minds in business.

It doesn't matter who it is, you know, starting Bill Gates, whoever you may hear about or like to read about, all the information is there. So absorb that information as much as you can.

My other piece about that is don't get overloaded. Absorb and then implement. So that's a little nugget I like to give people for that. As far as how to get a
hold of me and our company, we're outbackteambuilding.com.

You can reach me any time. My email is simply murray, M-U-R-R-A-Y at alpacateambuilding.com. More than happy to answer any questions.
I love talking with other entrepreneurs, especially when it comes to the self-managing team concept and this work-life balance concept.

I've got a few nuggets I can share and some tips that you may want to try to implement if you're really feeling stressed out about that balance. Get in touch with me and I can certainly give you a few pieces of advice.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 16:12
Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that, Murray. And what we'll do is we'll have those links and that information in the show notes as well. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Murray Seward 16:19
Thanks, Gresh. Thank you.

Outro 16:20
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at imceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community.

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Thank you for listening.

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