How to Master Leadership Evolution Strategies for Growth With Thaddeus Tondu

In this episode, I sit down with Thaddeus Tondu, co-founder of On Purpose Media, to unpack the complex journey of leadership evolution. Thaddeus shares candid insights from his own experiences of managing a digital marketing agency, including his shift from managing teams for others to leading his own business. We dive into the critical importance of emotional intelligence and adapting leadership styles to different team members' needs.

Thaddeus discusses the challenges of handling underperforming employees and why leaders must rethink the “fire fast” mentality. He walks us through the process of performance improvement plans, emphasizing that real leadership involves providing all the tools necessary for team success. Additionally, Thaddeus stresses the need for leaders to build a winning culture, one that not only attracts top talent but empowers them to thrive.

From navigating the early days of COVID-19 after launching his business to managing the weight of responsibility for his team, Thaddeus offers valuable lessons on resilience and intentionality. Whether you're leading a small team or scaling a large business, this episode offers actionable leadership evolution strategies to help you grow as a leader.

Connect with Thaddeus Tondu:

If you’re interested in connecting with Thaddeus Tondu to learn more about leadership evolution strategies and scaling your business, reach out to him on Facebook or email him at Thaddeus@onpurposemedia.ca. His insights can help you navigate the challenges of leadership and build a winning culture.

Books Mentioned:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz 

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leadership Evolution Strategies
• 2:30 Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
• 6:45 Handling Underperforming Employees
• 10:15 Building a Winning Team Culture
• 15:00 Overcoming Early Business Challenges
• 22:01 Scaling with Leadership Evolution
• 26:31 Final Thoughts on Leadership and Resilience

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

Today, I'm thrilled to have Thaddeus Tondu on the podcast. Thad is the co-founder of On Purpose Media, a digital marketing agency for home service professionals. He's a dad, he's a husband and he's a dog lover. Thad, I'm so glad you're here, man. Thanks for being on the show.

Thaddeus Tondu: 0:17

No worries, thanks for having me on William, Looking forward to it.

Intro\Outro: 0:21

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 0:37

I'd love for you to share some of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Thaddeus Tondu: 0:46

In leadership or an agency. Leadership was one of those things that I think some people naturally have the leadership tendencies to them and they need to work on honing those skills and some people need to have the skills but they don't have the leadership tendencies and a variety of in-betweens in that and I recognize from an earlier age I mean I was 19, 20 years old selling Kako knives and was promoted into a sales manager position when I was 20 years old and so you had to work on leadership skills right from the very beginning. And so I look at it, you know I've got 20 years of experience in managing people and leadership and teams and in different aspects of things, and that's that's kind of really where it started. When I transitioned into running a branch office in Cutco and leading a team there, I actually, after I was in university, I went and got a job and worked for people, and not necessarily in a leadership role, but watched other leaders and learn from other leaders, and I think that's kind of shaped me to who I am now.

Thaddeus Tondu: 1:48

Enter in 2014, 2015, I ended up selling print magazines in ad space inside print magazines and was the division manager for Western Canada and promoted somebody to take over the one of the provinces in the Western Canada. So I was then the prairies and so running a team of sales professionals from a leadership realm also challenged and learned a lot of things. And now entering and running a marketing business for the last five years and really stepping into a leadership role every experience that I've had has really shaped me to where I am now as a leader.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:23

So, as you look at your roles over those years and I love talking to somebody who's got a good bit of track, like you do like let's talk about some things that have shifted in you as you've developed as a leader you know way back in the early days, you know when you're looking at these leaders and evaluating and saying, man, do I want to be more like that or is that something I want to avoid?

Thaddeus Tondu: 2:50

What are some things that you have developed in you as a result of your experiences with that? One of them is emotional intelligence. I think that is probably one of the biggest ones. I would probably look in my last two to three years as a leader, especially running my own business and whereas leadership before wasn't my own business, it was leadership for another business A little bit different when you are in, leadership for yourself and for your own business now becomes something even drastically different. I would probably say my last two years have been my biggest growth and change as a leader. There's been a couple of things that have eye-opened for me. One was the Gallup-Clifton Strengths Assessment where I went through and it identifies your 32 markers.

Thaddeus Tondu: 3:30

I'm a bulldozer, I want to steamroll over people and like I. But but see, the reason that I'm a bulldozer and I steamroll over people is because I hold them in such a higher regard than they actually hold themselves. I see the potential in where they hide, where where they're, they're at, but they don't see that in themselves. And so I come in and like, well, why aren't you just doing your job? You can do it so good. And then I steamroll over them where not everybody's like that and and that was a big change of the big tendency for me to be able to say, okay, well, how can I adapt that to different people? And some people will resonate with that steamroller mentality, like one of our project managers. She's like me uh, she's a bulldozer, she's a firecrcracker and she just wants to like why aren't you doing it? But not everybody relates to that. Now you have to sometimes take the soft approach with the people who have sensitive feelings and no disrespect to have people that having sensitive feelings. You are who you are, but now you have to take a different approach.

Thaddeus Tondu: 4:20

In fact, one member of our team is like it's almost like my, my arch nemesis and one of my team members and he's one of the only people when I have a conversation that I tend to lose my cool at. And him and I have had conversations about this, I told him this too I'm like you know, for whatever reason, you were one of the people inside this business that I just I can't. I have a tough time being the leader that I need to be with you and I just and we get, I get angry and we yell and we have these, these, this heated conversation back and forth, but it's only him and it's weird that way. But but again, but I, but I recognize that Right, and so we've had these conversations around it and say hey, you know, by the way, I struggle with this with you. Yeah, just let you know.

Thaddeus Tondu: 5:00

You know, team member called Bob. Just let you know, you know, team member, we call him Bob. Just let you know, bob, I struggled with this with you, I'm working on it, and now we have a conversation. He's like he laughs and we laugh and we joke about it after. But we recognize it.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:15

I love that. I love it. It illustrates a principle like I talk about the last 10% of honesty. Right, the first 90% of honesty is really easy to give. We give that with most people, but the last 10% we hold back because we're sometimes concerned about damaging or breaking a relationship, or if we're working for somebody else, we're afraid to get fired, you know, or if it's a team member, we're afraid they're going to leave if we share the last 10%, and so we hold it back. And the problem is the last 10% is where the magic is. That's where transformation lives, and what I love there is that you gave the last 10%. Hey, you know what I'm like this with you and it's really just you and you raised the level of awareness there and that helped you to lead him better and for him to work better with you. I just I love that. I wanted to call that out because that is something that a lot of people shy away from. They don't share that last 10%. Have you always been that straightforward?

Thaddeus Tondu: 6:11

Yes, Good, that's great. Direct but kind. Somebody that I was chatting with a mentor that I look up to and he's like you never change. He's like you're kind but you're direct. Yes, you can be direct and kind. Now you can, you, just you cut straight to the chase.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:29

I believe clarity is kindness and I believe a lack of clarity is one of the most unkind things you can do as a leader. I love that. I think that's so good as you've as you've been in an agency world now and as you are building a team, I mean, as you found success, you had to hire people to help you with fulfillment. Now you're leading a team. Sometimes those team members they're fantastic and they're the easiest ones to lead. Often Sometimes not so much and they start underperforming. What does it look like for you as a leader? How do you lead and manage team members who are in that underperforming space?

Thaddeus Tondu: 7:07

A great question and I think that's a topic that I think a lot of people have troubles with. Most people, the default is to fire the person and get rid of them and terminate them and replace it. Well, if you don't ever address the root maybe the root's your organizational SOPs, maybe the root is leadership. Maybe they're having a tough time in their life and they just need a little bit of reassurance and a little bit of guidance and jumping right to the firing, I think, is an incorrect way to do it. Um, I know the adages fire fast, higher slow or higher slow, fire fast, depending which way you want to read it. Um, I kind of I kind of like the higher slow and fire slow, to be honest. Um, in a sense. Um, now, obviously, obviously there's scorecards, kpis and there's benchmarks. Now, if somebody is underperforming, you have to sit down. You actually have to have a conversation with them and say, hey, why, let's figure out why, People have heard of Boda, performance Improvement Plans or PIPS.

Thaddeus Tondu: 7:58

Now, I've always been the viewpoint that if I have a team member who is underperforming and I just go straight to firing, I've actually failed that person. I haven't done a good enough job as a leader to be able to give them all the tools necessary to succeed. So now, with this performance improvement plan, we can sit down and we have an open, honest conversation. And in the way we phrase our performance improvement plans is saying hey, we're going to sit down, we're going to talk about things that we see on our end and our side from a performance aspect. Your turn, what do you see on your end from a performance aspect? What are you missing from us? Is there something going on in your life? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Thaddeus Tondu: 8:33

Now we have a conversation and we have a dialogue to figure out exactly why. And then, once we have the exact why, we go okay, well, what's our improvement plan here? Now we've identified the performance issue and we've identified the why. Now we put together the plan to say, okay, here's what we're going to do to be able to get you to getting better. And then we meet with that person up to six times, up to six times.

Thaddeus Tondu: 8:56

If they haven't done, if they haven't improved after six times, they're not going to ever improve, right. And so usually we see like one, two, three times in which they've improved and now we're at a level saying, okay, we've actually helped them succeed. We feel good about being a leader because we've actually got them to the point of success and we've worked with them. We've given them training, we've given them SOPs, we've given them the benefit of the doubt, we've given them all the tools necessary. After that, if we've given everything that we can, after that, if we've given everything that we can, and they still choose not to succeed and still not perform, it's not on me anymore. Yeah, that's on them.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:32

Yeah, that's so true In your experience. How often is it that somebody you go through the six times and they're just not, they're just not there, they're just not going to be there, versus somebody who really responds to that level of coaching?

Thaddeus Tondu: 9:48

I mean, I could probably do an assessment on that on terms of how many performance improvement plans we've had and how many people have fired themselves from our business. But, looking at it, I mean by and large, I think people want to succeed, and especially if you have an organization where you, as a leader, have created a winning culture and that's a completely different topic that we can go down to some other point in time but you think about creating the winning culture. Now, if they want to be part of it, they want to succeed, they want to do better. They eat, live, sleep, breathe your core values and they just want to succeed. Well, they're going to do it. Yeah, those who don't that culture don't want to succeed, don't? Those who don't have that culture don't want to succeed. Don't want to eat, sleep, live, breathe. Maybe they're just not the right strategic fit for you and your business. Okay, well then you have that conversation with them.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:30

You used a phrase there that I don't think I've heard very often, and that is for team members to fire themselves, and by that you mean they don't respond in the process.

Thaddeus Tondu: 10:41

Correct, and so I've reframed how I've thought about terminating team members and I used to think, well, I'm the big bad bully, I'm firing them, I'm doing them an injustice. All these things about the self-blame game that we, as leaders, play is like, maybe I failed that person? Well, no, the reframe is I've given them all the tools necessary to be able to succeed. They've chosen not to. Yeah, hmm, because we have. Especially when you think, like, if you have similar team members in similar departments web design, seo, whatever your agency, whatever your business is if you give all the tools to three different people, well, two of them are succeeding and one of them is failing. But, yeah, you've worked with that one person to be able to succeed and they're still failing. Well, now they've actually fired themselves.

Dr. William Attaway: 11:24

Yeah.

Thaddeus Tondu: 11:25

Because they haven't done everything necessary. After you've given them all the tools to be able to succeed and they actually fire themselves from the business and it's just a reframe. That's helped me when I go through that process, because that's one of the most challenging, most difficult things to terminate somebody from a business.

Dr. William Attaway: 11:42

It's so true I love the framing that you put there that they choose whether they're going to respond or not. It is a choice on their part, and I think that's something that's often maybe not missed but not thought of in quite that way. The fact is, the team member gets to choose whether they're going to respond or not, and I love that. I think that's so good because it doesn't remove agency from them. They have the ability to choose this. They can choose to improve, they can choose to step into what's being presented to them or not, and it's not you being the big bad guy, right, you're giving them every resource they need. I love that framing.

Thaddeus Tondu: 12:22

Well, and here's the other reality is that people think, well, I'm going to have a hundred percent success rate in hiring team members. Success rate in hiring team members reach out, because I'd love to pick your brain, me too. Right? Great recording, great recording. Great recruiting organizations, great organizations that have the ability to attract top level talent still only get it right 70% of the time. 70, 70 of the time they hire 10 people. Well, seven people are great. That means three weren't. Yeah, can't predict that. No, no one thing, actually. Just uh on that, like when you one one tip that somebody gave me I was having this conversation with with one of my neighbors yesterday uh, they're looking at taking over a business and he's becoming a first business owner, and he was very time. Well, yeah, there's one person on this team that he's probably going to have to have to remove because they're going to fire themselves because of the way that he's going to make changes in the business.

Thaddeus Tondu: 13:17

The easiest way to frame this conversation isn't go in and having a five to 10 minute conversation about how the day is, what they're excited about, and yada, yada, yada. It's going straight to the chase. And I got this from a mentor and changed how I do it, and it just makes it so much better when you go in and you say, hey, mr Jones or Bob, or whoever you want to call. Hey Bob, at the end of this conversation, just to be clear, you're no longer going to work with ABC company, so let's talk a little bit about how we got here and so now, like the wind is out of their sails, they're not going to get this false hope. But now you've shifted this conversation and say, okay, well, they know that at the end of this it's done. Now they've already prepared themselves to be able to not have this happy-go-lucky conversation, but the conversation of all, right, it's over. We can have this conversation now and you just have a raw, real conversation with them.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:09

I love that that level of clarity is not common, but I believe that is honoring not just to you and the team and the business, but it's honoring to the individual Because, like you say, you're not giving them false hope, you're not kind of pumping them up. Maybe if I, then I can, maybe if, then I will, we're going to be clear from the get-go. I think that's very, very good. So when you're hiring, when you're looking for new team members, I'm guessing there's a filter that you use or a rubric of some kind to help you identify who are the A players here, who are the ones that I think would really be a good fit for the team. Would you share some of what that rubric looks like?

Thaddeus Tondu: 14:46

Sure, we have an automated hiring funnel for all of our positions and it starts right then and there they come in. There's actually a video it's like, I think, just under three minutes. I just recorded it to be updated to our current core values Two and a half minutes, I think where they watch the video and we tell them to click play before you submit the application. At the end of the video we put a secret passphrase that they have to enter in. It's the very last question in their questionnaire, and so they have to enter. And so we. Because, again, I want attention to detail, I want people that can pay attention to the small things and not just speed apply and spam, click and drop resumes. I don't want to review 150 resumes on every CNA for a position when, by and large, 140 of them don't ever fit what we're looking for. So that's step number one. 140 of them don't ever fit what we're looking for, so that's step number one. Step number two is we do an application page. In that application page they do a one-minute video of explaining who they are. Just a quick intro of them.

Thaddeus Tondu: 15:38

Reason being I mean, look, agency owners and individuals hire talent from all over the world. We're no different. Our talent is all over the world, and really there's two reasons why I do that. Number one is that we have a camera-on policy inside of our business. We're remote, but we have a virtual office.

Thaddeus Tondu: 15:53

When we have meetings, your cameras have to be on. So when I have a one-on-one conversation, your camera has to be on. I don't want to sit there and talk to a bobblehead, I'm sorry, and so it's being comfortable with being on camera. But but the other part is also I want to make sure that they're not heavily accented Either. I want to be able to have a conversation with them, especially for team members that are near shore or offshore. So that's step number two. And then step number three is they actually get redirected to a questionnaire page and on that questionnaire we ask skills-based questions from it. And then the very last one is that secret passphrase too. So they have to remember from the very first video and like we're very direct in this, and, by the way, you're going to need this word at the end of the questionnaire.

Thaddeus Tondu: 16:33

The passphrase is unicorn, so make sure you take, take note, it's unicorn. And then that's where they enter that in. And so now we've hit a couple of different things and they're putting in work to be able to apply into the position and so that's like step number one inside of it, because they're they're actually willing to do the work. If they're not willing to do the work to for for a position, they're probably not going to do the work when they're in the business itself. The other part is we, we, we go through, so we, then we. It's all automated in terms of dragging them. We review their, their resume and their application and then we drag them over.

Thaddeus Tondu: 17:06

We request an interview, and usually it's a two to three part interview, so we do the one part with me. I'm not necessarily asking a ton of skills question, I'm vetting them for a person and I'm asking questions related to our core values. So, for one of our core values is is a be resourceful. So one of the questions I asked is when was the last time you solved a personal problem for yourself via YouTube and what was the problem? So nice, right? And I also ask, hey, what motivates you? Because I want to find out their purpose, cause one of our core values is be purpose-driven, and so I asked him what motivates them. If they say money, well guess what? It's a misnomer, because 99% of people aren't motivated by money. I also ask a follow-up question later if money were unlimited, what would you want to do? And I want to see if that matches what their motivations are.

Thaddeus Tondu: 17:50

So now they have a bigger purpose and, like there's some other questions that are in there that kind of play off the core values. By the way, one of my favorite questions that I ever ask people I probably shouldn't tell people this, but most people won't ever ask the question it's more of a statement, but describe yourself in the third person, because now it's quick wittedness and can they? Can they have unconventional thinking? Because that's one of our core values. And so I'm assessing against our core values in our first interview and then if they pass that metric and they pass that gauge, then we send them down a colby a assessment. They have to batch certain things on the colby a. I'm not caring about personalities, I'm caring about how they do work at this point. And then they have the second interview with, uh, one of our team leads or director of operations that does the skills based, and then from that it's a. It's a two part. People are saying okay, well, we're both saying, yeah, this person, this person, right, makes sense, and away we go.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:36

I love the intentionality of that process that's so well thought. I'm guessing you didn't wake up one day and think of that whole process that this has been a process.

Thaddeus Tondu: 18:48

I've taken parts from different people, uh, all throughout, and so like there's there's some great people that I've I've heard from and I and I take what I like and I leave the rest aside I call that eat the fish and leave the bones.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:30

You know there's always fish and there's always bones. Take what's useful. I think that's fantastic. You, anytime you are working with other people, there are wonderful, fantastic mountaintop moments and there are difficult moments and difficult conversations, even in the workplace. Imagine, on your team. That's no different when you have a difficult conversation we've talked about. You know, when you're at the end of the road with somebody, like how to have that conversation, but say it's not that point, it's just a challenging conversation you need to have with somebody that you work with. Can you share any thoughts on how you navigate difficult or challenging conversations?

Thaddeus Tondu: 21:11

Yeah, 100%, and there's so many different ones, like it's a team member, it's executive C-suite, it's business owner to business owner or business partner. Rather, the biggest advice that I ever heard was was from John Maxwell Just rip the bandaid off. Just rip it off If you know that something is bothering you. Don't just sit there and let it fester and stew, because if you let it fester and stew it's just going to become a bigger problem. And then try to rip that bandaid off.

Thaddeus Tondu: 21:36

One of the things that I like to do is when I, when I identify that and I see that it's, it's just popping in and say, hey, by the way, this is going to be a little bit of a different. Again, it's that false hope. Right, don't go in thinking everything is all hunky dory. Go and say, hey, by the way, this is going to be a little bit. And so now again, it's that directness and let's talk about those, because it disarms and it also doesn't give false hope in the conversation. Now you can have an honest conversation.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:12

The other part within those is try to have facts, not feelings. Facts, scorecards and KPIs are like literally the easiest thing to be able to have and have those conversations. I mean, I guess it's not literally the easiest thing, because then most businesses would have them, but the reality is a lot of businesses don't. Putting in scorecards and KPIs, and your key performance indicator for your team is going to be key, because now you can go in and you can have a fact-based conversation.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:44

Now, sometimes feelings do creep in, and sometimes there are feelings in terms of how one person interacts with another person on their team and they hurt their feelings by way of what they said. And now you've got to have a conversation where you explain hey, not everybody reacts like how you react. There's different personalities, and I use me as an example in this, by the way, with the previous example of that team member that I've talked about. That is like my, my arch nemesis when it comes to having tough conversations with and I use that as as like a, as an example um, that I'm also not perfect and I also work on these things too, so we need to work on them together. Um, and that's sometimes blending the two uh together into one solid advice.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:25

You know your business and your team need you to lead at a higher level today than they did two, three, four years ago, and two, three, four, five years from now. They're going to need you to lead at a higher level still. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with new leadership skills that your team and your business are going to need you to have in the days and years ahead?

Thaddeus Tondu: 23:52

no great question. Um, law of the lid, I think is the biggest one. Uh, and again, another. John maxwell is. I mean I heard dan martell talking about that yesterday in one of his uh, one of his stories. Um, and like I mean, right there, I mean there's two great, great people that have the opportunity to impact leadership skills.

Thaddeus Tondu: 24:08

So it's not just staying complacent with where you're at. I mean there's different seasons. I mean you and I've talked about seasons in life and business and you know, when we were in Cancun on the, on the, the catamaran, we talked about that. We talked about that before we were talking about me coming on the podcast. And I think every business has a season, every life has a season and it's constantly learning and constantly adapting, constantly seeking that the second you put a lid on what you're learning inside of business is the second that you stop growing and your team is going to stop responding to where you're at because you're going to hit a ceiling and they're going to hit a ceiling. So you just have to constantly iterate and adapt. I going to hit a ceiling, they're going to hit a ceiling, so you just have to constantly iterate and adapt. I know that you, you're an avid reader, um an avid fan of reading. Well, sometimes you can read the same thing three, four, five, six, seven times.

Thaddeus Tondu: 24:52

It's like in one ear out the other yeah and then you read it for the eighth time like just what I needed but you read the same thing four years ago.

Thaddeus Tondu: 25:05

You just didn't internalize it because you weren't ready to hear it. Yes, yes, I mentioned earlier to you I'm re-listening One of the first times I've actually ever re-listened to a book. But the hard thing about hard things yeah, no-transcript, but depending on the size of your business, if your business is at the point where you're not able to be the 10 hour per week armchair business owner but you want the 10 hour per week armchair business owner and you're doing that well, you're actually going to cause more harm in your business than you are going to cause good, because the team sees that if you're active participant in the business, it's only when the systems have been developed and you've been able to fully remove and you have that layer of individuals in your team that move that business forward for you. So you actually have to be in there working harder than every other person in the team. This goes, by the way, for anybody that is in a leadership role, that it isn't your business. You've got to work harder than every single person in your team because they see that, and so you have to have the law on the lid. You have to work harder than everybody else.

Thaddeus Tondu: 26:32

The other third one is is the culture with inside the business. You are the steward of the culture with inside the business. You drive that culture. It's your business. It's your culture. You have to live, eat, sleep, breathe your core values and make sure that you can live, eat, sleep, breathe them, personally and professionally.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:48

Brilliant. You know, I think some people can look at you and look at your social media presence, your presence online, and say, oh, wow, and that is so successful. He has never had the challenges that I deal with. His journey has just been up and to the right. He's never dealt with what I have to deal with as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as an agency owner. If they were sitting across from you and they shared that, what would you say?

Thaddeus Tondu: 27:16

I would laugh at them. Straight up, look, running a business is probably the most challenging thing that I've done, next to raising kids. Like raising kids, I mean, we have a one and a half and a three-year-old.

Thaddeus Tondu: 27:32

It's wild man. We're in the thick of it, like we're starting to come out on the other end with a three-year-old, but the two-year-old is about to reenter into the thick of it. So, look, I started my business. I quit my job in February 2020. Ooh, ooh, yeah, yeah, before we even go through with the thing, right. So I, I quit my job to go into this business and this agency. So we we formed the basis of it, bought the domain, built the business plan, did the website uh, fall of 2019, worked on everything and finally I was like February 2020. I'm like you know what I'm in. Let's do this. I quit my job, took the package, walked out and, within the first week of full-time into this agency, I had five clients. Four weeks later, covid hit. We lost four of those five clients. Lockdowns in Canada. Man, it was a wild time, like four of our five clients were shut down. They couldn't do anything, wow. So here I am sitting there, having just got my job.

Thaddeus Tondu: 28:31

My relationship was with my significant other was kind of rocky. I mean, we were working on patching it up and we've gotten to the point where we were a lot stronger at that point, but it wasn't the strongest at the time. We were on the up from our relationship. Know, at the time, uh, we were again. We were on the we're on the up from our relationship. Um, covet hit, lockdowns were happening, couldn't see anybody, couldn't leave my house, couldn't do all this, all these things. I just started a business. So if you think that I've had success in m and you're wrong, like that's a wild time to be alive, you know, and it took a little while to climb onto that hole to be able to learn that I mean and and just work through all of the challenges for it. Um, like there's trouble in, like you know, I was telling our team this a little bit earlier is that what we see on social media isn't reality, and I want to try my best to unpack some of that.

Thaddeus Tondu: 29:18

I think I had a post, uh last week or whatever, where it was like five tries to record like two reels, uh, more than I messed up on, because it just I was trying to switch to a teleprompter and every time I switched to a teleprompter my video stopped, but I was like five seconds in. I'm like, oh, I didn't tell him problems not working and so, like there was just it didn't be like 10 minutes, literally to record two 60 second reels, like it was just it, just wild. And so I don't see the internal conversations, they don't see what's happening there. They don't see what's happening on the business side of things, the stuff that keeps a business owner awake at night like there's times where I haven't slept because of the stress of the business. You know, the reality is is there's 16, 15 other people inside of this business that rely on me, that their lives depend on me, their family depends on me. I pay for them to live their lives. That's a lot of weight and I think a lot of people miss that.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:13

That's so true. As you continue to learn, and you've referenced a number of books already. I'm just curious is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that, for the folks listening, if they haven't read this, you would say, man, you got to put this on your to read list?

Thaddeus Tondu: 30:29

Yeah, it's funny, um, tj Murphy asked me that, asked that same question, and I'm like it's not really just one book in particular. I think it depends on on when you're reading it and what you can extrapolate from it. I mean, there's different seasons of what you can learn. I mean, if I had to pigeonhole down to one book, that has kind of changed how I've looked at things. It's been one exercise inside Buy Back your Time by Dan Martell, and that would probably have been the biggest catalyst to say, okay, I actually and like the e-myth by Michael Gerber was also pretty good too because of like working on the tools. But the Buy Back your Time kind of took that principle and and I and I think had a better um way to be able to structure around what you need to do in your day, and the exercise is simple and like look, I still struggle with this. In fact, I literally just got told by my team stay out of it today because I waited into it um kind of in our, in our chats, um, but the that okay.

Thaddeus Tondu: 31:24

Well, you sit there and you take one to two weeks of your time and you categorize and you log every single thing that you do. Every time you switch a task. So, if you're checking emails, you write it down. If you go and respond to a chat, you write it down. If you're focusing on a task for 30 minutes, you write it down. If you did a sales call, you write it down.

Thaddeus Tondu: 31:46

You catalog everything for a two-week time period, every single thing, no matter what it is big or small, anytime you switch a task. And then what you do is you actually go write down dollar signs beside it the one dollar, two dollar, three dollar, four dollar which ones drive the most revenue into your business, which ones don't drive the the most revenue to the business. Obviously the four dollar sign is the biggest revenue. The one dollar sign is lowest revenue. Okay, and then you go one step further and you highlight green, you highlight red. Highlight green for gives you energy, highlight red for takes energy. That's good, okay. So then what you do from there is you say, okay, well, here's what my reds, here's where things take energy from me, here's where I can find somebody to buy back my time, can find somebody to buy back my time, and I can either hire an assistant or somebody else on my team who should actually already be doing it. And I'm going to give it to them, especially if they're like the one, $2 tasks right, one or two tasks, because you want to be focusing on the make the big money makers inside of your business. So if you can offload your one to $2 tasks now, you can actually then focus on your three and your $4 tasks. You can also then focus on your green tasks that give you energy and it's actually not going to suck the life out of you.

Thaddeus Tondu: 32:51

I think that was probably one of the biggest exercises that I've done. That kind of changed the trajectory for me in the business because I was wading into too much. No, my speed to reply to my team is high. I see it and I want to respond back.

Thaddeus Tondu: 33:05

I'm one of those weird people that can actually flip between tasks and not lose focus where most people they can't like they got to do one task and they got to focus on it and if you switch to something else then you go back, you lose your focus. I can switch to respond to Matt a chat and then go back into actually and maybe maybe I'm overstating it and go back into my task and be able to get it done. I know there's times I got to block out everything and I put all my distractions on. But if I knew that now I can speak to lead to my team but then it actually hurts because it doesn't actually allow the development for my team. But that was a big eye opener in that exercise. So I'd probably say buy back your time from Dan Martell, so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:41

Now, this has just been fascinating and I'm so grateful to you for sharing so generously and so openly from your journey so far. If people want to stay in touch with you and I know they will and continue to learn from you and just spammers on there but Facebook, I think it's facebookcom forward slash Thaddeus Tondu.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:00

Is the the URL? Let's just make sure that. Yeah, facebookcom forward slash Thaddeus Tondu is probably your best way. Look, if anybody ever has any questions, then you shoot me a. Shoot me a message on there.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:26

You can hit me on email as well. Thaddeus at onpurposemediaca. We will have those links in the show notes as well. Awesome, thank you so much for today and for sharing so generously. No worries, thank you for having me on. Thanks for joining me for this episode today.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:37

As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:10

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about and if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader. I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro\Outro: 35:54

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.