Welcome back! In the last installment, we shared some of the insights Keith Echols, Executive Vice President of w3r Consulting, had for budding Black entrepreneurs.
Here’s the second half of the interview with William Brown III, highlighting the power of failing forward, how to retain top people, and the importance of mentorship (finding and being one).
William Brown III
Gotcha. I’m curious about the fail-forward mentality. A lot of times within work culture, that is not even prescribed and promoted. How do you get to a point where your employees understand that failing is part of the process and are not bound by failure and not scared for their livelihood and losing their job? So how do you create a culture like that?
Keith Echols
Yeah, that’s difficult. I recognize the uniqueness. What we do is not unique, but I think how we approach the business is what makes us unique. And I think that’s been a part of what has helped us sustain the run we’ve had in the years that we’ve been in business. And why we’ve been able to attract and retain people on our staff. I have people on my staff who have been with us for 25 years, almost 27 years. Almost since we actually started the business.
Then you ask yourself, well, why stay? Right? So, compensation is certainly a key part of it. Contribution too. When people know they’re actually able to make a difference, that resonates. And again, people feeling like they can trust the people that are there and that there’s some level of integrity, I think those become core tenants for the culture.
I think for new people we bring into the organization, we have to, in some cases, deprogram people, help them unlearn, and then help them relearn. Most companies, you know, are very specific on what it is that you’re to do and they become very punitive when you don’t meet objectives, meet goals, and do what’s been prescribed.
And again, we’re in the people business. We’re not making widgets – which actually has to be 100% precise, 100% of the time – and that gives us a little bit more ability to adapt our tools or techniques. For new folks coming in, there’s a lot of training and immersing them into the culture and making sure they assimilate into our mindset and our way of doing business. Slowly, we start to see them push away from some of the prior experiences that they may have had in the marketplace.
Those things really become the reason why people say I’m allowed to be human. I’m working in a humanistic environment. I’m doing humanistic work. I will have issues and I’m allowed to at least grow. Now, there is a level of tolerance. Repeatedly falling down on the same issue? Everything has its own parameters and its own boundaries, right? We’re not looking for repeat offenders with the same problem, right? That would cause disruption.
But I would also flip the opposite side and say, there are people who are very successful, but don’t fit the culture. So, you can do everything that you need to do in our business environment, be a high-performing and high-producing person, but because you clash with the culture, you become almost cancerous to the culture. Those now have to be removed.
And I actually had that experience. I had one top performer in the company who had the best year of all his colleagues and at the end of the year, I had to release him. Because his technique and his methods were toxic for the overall organization. They were counter the direction we were basically going and what we’re looking to try to build. Doing that sends the right message to the rest of the organization as well.
William Brown III
It’s so hard because when you have your top performers who are bringing a lot of results but they’re not falling in line with the culture, it could influence the people who are not performing. If that is what is being allowed, then I need to just do that. It’s a bad apple spoiling the whole thing.
Keith Echols
Exactly. You know, they’re looking around the organization and saying, “What should I do? Who should I model?” And if you allow that toxic person to stay, people will then begin to pattern their tactics because they want to be high producers as well. But at what cost to the company brand, corporate direction, and the vision?
William Brown III
Yeah, definitely, definitely. You talked about this a little bit earlier, but what are other key factors that contributed to the 30-plus-year success for your company? Obviously shared vision coupled with compensation and contribution.
Keith Echols
Hmm. Compensation is obviously going to get the conversation started. What’s going to keep people is a sense of contribution and being able to make a difference. I think fundamentally and idealistically, people want to make a difference in what they do. When you start to talk about how much time you spend in any work environment, that’s eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. That’s a lot of time spent. That’s under half of your waking hours on any given day.
So, you want to know, “What am I doing here at this company?” And then there’s also the bigger picture: “What am I doing here?” So being able to infuse this element so people can make a difference becomes important.
Another piece ties back to the vision is, what’s our commitment back to our community? We make sure those are values we live out loud. When people see that, those things resonate. We’re going to do what we need to do in order to handle the business, but now we’re going to make sure that the kids are receiving books and tutoring time. We’re going to make sure the homeless get food, shelter, and clothing that they need. People start to look at you and say, “Wow, they actually care.”
People want to be part of an organization where they can go work, make a contribution, feel good about the contribution that they made and the business environment, and then feel good about the impact they made also on the community and the culture. Those are some of the core pieces, I think go a long way to attract and then retain good people.
And then you start talking about operating with some level of transparency, integrity, and honestly all our tools that track data and metrics for our entire organization. It’s an open system, and that’s intentional. I want you to actually be able to go in and look at every deal construct, dissect it, take it apart, see exactly what the rate structure was, and what the margins were. That’s so you can see what they did, and you can try to figure out now what you need to do in order to pattern yourself and your tactics after that as well. We don’t take a cloak and dagger approach. We want everyone to use all that data now as a learning tool. A lot of corporations don’t operate like that.
William Brown III
To piggyback on what you were saying about the community aspect, there’s been a lot of economists in the past who have talked about only increasing share value and profits. Why do you think the corporations don’t feel the need to do both or don’t see that they can do both to be successful?
Keith Echols
Corporations that don’t share in that collective understanding have to ask themselves why? Why are you doing what you do? Okay, well, to make a whole bunch of money. A whole bunch of money to do what? So, what’s the end game? What’s the objective? So, it’s a whole bunch of money to put in your pocket?
Take a look at Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. They made a lot of money, and now they’re at a point where they can take portions of the money they have yielded and become impactful for ultimately not just their local community, but the world.
I can’t answer why people don’t do that. I can only speak to why it’s important for us to do, right? Because it makes no sense to amass a whole lot and put it in a bank, put it in all these investment vehicles that in turn yield and produce a higher return on your investment but for whom or for what, right? For your family? So, you get people that are millionaires, billionaires, and have no one to share any of that with.
It gets down to how are you wired, right? Why do you do what you do? And that brings it back full circle with the Myers-Briggs personality test. It lets you know how you’re wired to engage with business, how you are wired to operate as a person, and what your strengths and your weaknesses are.
Think about that. If you’re a corporation and you’re producing something and you made a ton of money off of it, what are you doing, if anything, for the people who bought your product? Can you do something more for the people buying your product or your service? Are you doing anything to really further or grow future consumers? Even if it’s for a selfish perspective, you are still investing back into our society and world, right?
There’s this model that allows you to continue to grow and grow and grow, but you’ve got to pour it back out in order to get it. That’s the whole nature of an investment. It’s got to leave your hands for it to yield a return. You can’t yield a return if you’re going to choke the dollar in your hand.
William Brown III
Yeah. It’s just quite interesting that a lot of corporations don’t look at it that way. There can still be a path where helping the local community or helping a specific customer segment can help your bottom line. And I think a lot of people are conservative with the money they have, but that’s not how things work. You would think entrepreneurs and business leaders would know that, but a lot of times they’re just so focused on the shareholder value.
Keith Echols
Shareholder value is important, right? These are folks who have taken their dollar, let it loose from their hands and placed it into yours, so that they can in turn yield a larger increase, right? But if you only focus on shareholder value… We’re a privately held company, so it’s hard for me to speak to what it means to deal with those kinds of pressures. If the only focus is beating your numbers on Wall Street, there’s potential to lose sight and focus on what you initially set out to do.
Before those companies went public, if you were to ask them what they were going to do in terms of how they wanted to impact and change the world, it wasn’t about yielding a three X return for shareholders. That wasn’t part of it. That became something that was added onto them.
Why are we here? Why did we create this? Why did we have this innovation? Why did I, as an entrepreneur, see the need for this? Why am I so passionate about it? Why am I so focused on it? It’s got to go back to the why.
William Brown III
Any lasting insights or advice that you would offer to an early entrepreneur? Any sort of blueprint they need to consider before they even pursue the venture?
Keith Echols
Two things. Go back to your core. What is the gap and solution you are going to bring to the marketplace? It doesn’t do you any good to have all this matriculation and all these skills, if you don’t have that core piece. You individually end up becoming the difference maker.
And the second aspect is you’ve got to go all in. You’ve got to go all in. You’ve got to play it smart, but you can’t play it safe. High risk, high reward, and there’s no better investment than you will ever make than in yourself.
The hard work most people have is finding out what goes back to number one. What is that one area? What is that one gap? What is that one element that I need to focus on? What I feel like I can give my life to really make an impact, not just for myself, but for everybody else that I touch.
Notice, none of this says, make a whole bunch of money. Making the money and all the other things becomes the byproduct of doing those two things. Go all in and honing what’s the one area of focus. Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of other things. But those are two primary pieces, I think.
William Brown III
What are some formalized processes of training that an entrepreneur can go and seek to get knowledge?
Keith Echols
I think industry certifications are absolutely stellar. They become this neutral third party that says this person is certified, is astute, is well learned, has endured the training, and has made the sacrifice. Any kind of industry certification or certificate programs that are commensurate with what it is that you are pursuing are incredibly important to building credibility and bringing value.
There are a number of entities and organizations that a lot of emerging entrepreneurs can start with. It could be small business incubators. It could be think tanks where people can then be further equipped with some of the other fundamentals that they might need.
How do you mind your business, right? How do you continue to grow it and make it better, right? And most people need assistance around financial planning and managing the books. You start co-mingling your personal funds with business funds, that is the absolute kiss of death. There’s no traceability, there’s no tracking, and the tax man will be sitting there waiting to throw the first shovel of dirt in your grave. So, you have to be astute with the money.
And for a lot of folks coming through the door, it can be overwhelming, almost discouraging. And this is me now looking back over 30 years now offering all these different perspectives and insights. All those things are good pieces, but they have to be proportionate to where you are. Sometimes people can over-plan, over-think, and over-analyze. All those things do is impede their ability to make any movement. It’s like analysis paralysis. Now I’m afraid to make any move because basically, I did too much thinking, I did too much planning, and I just talked myself out of it.
There has to be this element of exuberance that far surpasses all the odds, all the naysayers. If I listened to every naysayer, um, heck, if I’d even listened to my own dad, I wouldn’t even be where I’m at right now. And those things become important.
And it’s not that my dad wasn’t for me doing it. He was basically more for making sure that I set up a system and process that was going to breed an element of security for me and my family. That’s maybe a third element I would probably say is surround yourself with people who reflect where you want to go.
How do they think? How do they act? How do they move? And then you can really begin to see some of the other characteristics that are important both for business and for you as a person.
William Brown III
That’s something we’re talking about in our course. There’s a level also of mentorship when you’re thinking about building a business. How has mentorship helped you?
Keith Echols
When we started, we were desperately looking for people, but we didn’t find many people of ebony hue that were male and could really offer some insight and direction. Actually, there were two gentlemen.
One we knew was my partner’s best friend’s father from when he was a young man. This gentleman would go on and really start his own optical business. He has multiple locations where he sells eyeglasses and then he has a healthcare vision plan that he makes available to many corporations. He gave us a lot of insight, direction, and mentorship.
The other gentleman, a former NBA player, just gave help. And that help came in terms of actual office space, rent free, where we can come and go, continuing to hone our craft. You need these kinds of supporters to really make sure that you are able to succeed.
Because we didn’t really have as many mentors as we thought we should have, mentoring is now one of our core components. We have over 300 diverse owned corporations that we have spent some time with, mentoring and pouring into them.
We’ve actually taken one former employee who had her own business aspiration and poured into her. She stopped being an employee and started her own business. We recognize that’s not like most corporations, but it’s the right thing to do.
So, mentorship is definitely important, but it’s got to be the right kind of people.
William Brown III
Well, that’s been this has been super helpful.
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