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Speech Transcript

0:00
It is Ben Baker and your brand marketing. If you really want to learn how to level up your life, you should be listening to time to shine today podcast with my good friend, Scott Ferguson. Time to shine today podcast crowded Scott Ferguson, we’re Episode 153 with two of my most favorite people, Ben Baker, and Claire Chandler, and they have taken their combined half century of experience and formed the leaders made here and that exactly what they do is companies and people will bring them on board to help level up their leadership within their respective companies. And this is just a fun interview. I generally don’t do more than one to one but it was really fun to have both people collaborating and just, you know, kind of afford as I’m going to do an individual interview with both Ben and Claire as well, so they can share their stories. So without further ado, here are my really good friends Claire Chandler and Ben Baker from leaders made here. Let’s level up.

1:07
Time to shine today varsity squad, it is Scott Ferguson. And I got a little bit of north of the border in Jersey in the house today. Look at the smiles everyone’s feeling fantastic. I’ve been waiting on this podcast we got we hooked up on my really good friend Alex and philippos pod match. And I’m so glad that they reached out because I would have found them anyways, just because the dig and we find for outstanding podcast interviews. But we have Ben Baker and Claire Chandler. And they have leaders made here and it’s I’m going to dig into it. I’ve dug into it myself, I want to dig into it. Because at first I was confused about what they were doing. But then I was seeing women, they’re leveling all these people up. And that’s what we are all about here at time to shine today. They are co authors of a book leading beyond a crisis a conversation about what’s next. What’s a drop in a couple weeks, and I will have a giveaway which I’ll talk about at the end of the podcast. So stay tuned, don’t leave, don’t change that dial as we’d say in the 70s 80s product we are but are they’re combined 50 years at the half century of leadership development, communication and training as brought them together to create the leaders made here community. Those inside the community work together to elevate each other to learn from inspire and motivate each other become better leaders and help develop the next generation of leaders who can engage, retain and grow their teams. So Claire, Ben, thank you so so much for coming on the time to shine today squad. I’m gonna have you introduce yourself to our squad but first, each of you I need to know your favorite color. And why.

2:39
Claire, you’re up first ladies, I knew I knew you were gonna punch that over to me.

2:44
So thank you for having us, Scott. It’s great to be here. I would say it’s somewhere in the blue green category. not coincidental. I’m wearing that color on my shirt. And why is that? Probably because it reminds me of the best ocean colors to me. I’m a beach girl. So I love I love being near the closer that turquoise right?

3:05
Yeah, right,

3:06
right. How about you, Ben? Well, since we’re all wearing blue, yeah, she’ll

3:13
plan this

3:15
for him this morning. We’ll look it up. We got the sea of blue happening amongst them. Right, right. Yeah, I’ve always been partial to blue. Blue has always been a great color for me. For me, it’s the sky. You know, it’s the unlimited potential of the sky. And you know, that’s what I truly love is that you know, Vancouver you know it. You’ll Can you rough people who know Seattle, you know, we get done in weather. Seattle, we get that dark gray, Grizzly winters every single year. But when the Scott when the skies clear, and the blue sky comes up, a sun comes up. It’s their most glorious place in the world. So we crave that blue skies. I wear blue, you know, praying for that blue sky to come. It’s got to be easy to be a weatherman. It’s true. You know, it’s gonna rain. Yeah, you know. You know, it’s gonna Florida it’s gonna be you know, if the 80s catch a fish at Pike Place. Pike Street, High Street in Seattle. I did have to do that. And that was a bucket list thing that I kind of crossed off. That was such a fun day. Isn’t it though? Is the question. Did you wait? I did. I did. I did. So let’s get to the origins because you guys came together. And I’m thinking in a collaboration. How long ago? Did you put this 50 years of collaboration together to form leaders made here? Surprisingly enough, it was just pre COVID. We had a mutual friend of ours. I don’t and I don’t remember if it was late 2019 or early 2020. We had a mutual friend that said, You two need to know each other. You absolutely need to know each other and go. Since that Josh is a good friend. I said sure. Yo here, let’s grab a zoom call. Let’s have a call. conversations. Josh. Josh. Josh. What’s Josh his last name is a tad Dumas. It’s actually Jason Jason DeMarco. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay, name. We knew it was a chain. It was Jamie. Jamie right.

5:15
Next to him, he said he’s a great advocate for, for recognition. And so he and I had connected and I know he had been a connection of Ben already for quite some time. So yeah, it just is just as Ben said, he said, You too need to, you know, get on a get on a chat, we have a lot in common. So

5:36
collaborated and just pre COVID, you guys kind of started to put this together. And what a great time to really do a lot of people like Oh, man, this is, you know, I can’t believe this is happening. But right now the seeds that we’re planning right now, it’s going to reap so much. And for you guys to come together and doing what you’re doing with the leaders made here and squad, get out there and go to leaders made here calm and check out and get on their waiting list in, in their newsletter and stuff. So, but let’s go into a little bit of the origins, we’ll start with you clarify a little bit of your background origins that kind of wants you to take a leadership position that

6:14
yes, so I am a corporate survivor, I spent close to 20 years in corporate America after, by the way swearing that I would never work in corporate. So, you know, you quickly learned never to say never. And I you know, I grew through my corporate career started out in communications roles, that a little bit of customer relations, kind of snuck in, as I say, through the side door of human resources to to head up a training group that evolved into you know, everything around talent management, succession planning, recruiting, staffing, etc. And then, you know, ultimately got an opportunity to take on more line roles as a VP of HR for a large division of the international environmental services company. And so it was a great, great experience, but it really cemented for me that, you know, the internal monologue in my head, it was always kind of, you know, running this sort of Dilbert comic line through all the corporate speak and all the corporate lingo. It’s like, yeah, okay, how, how much longer Am I going to try to convince myself that I fit into a corporate box. And so it’s 2011. And I decided to step beyond that just take my shot, and, and go out into business for myself. Two years later, after kind of dabbling in a bunch of different things that I enjoyed doing, I formed my business, which is called talent boost. And my my niche focus is on helping CEOs and founders scale their businesses with fewer growing pains and performance bottlenecks.

7:58
Wow. Wow. Okay, excellent. How about you, Ben?

8:03
Well, first of all, we need to admit that Claire started when she was 10. I don’t say that. Ben, and I get along so well, exactly. I want to say eight, but nobody believes me. So. Yeah. Yeah. Michelle project, about 25 years ago, that I when I first got married, my wife and I saw a divorce waiting to happen. I was in the high tech sales world, managing 100 million dollar clients with offices throughout North America. And I was literally on a plane 200 days a year, I was probably gone to 50. You know, to a point where you get on and you’re the You’re the last person on the plane. And every single stewardess knows you by name, and they’re giving you giving you shit, as you get to your seat like Baker, you’re late again. You know, as I as I crawl into the business class seat, you know, I was I was always the last person on the plane, because, you know, I was always stretching it. No, these are the pre 911 days where you can show up at the airport 20 minutes before your plane and, and you know, when you’re when you’re just carrying your Rolly there. You go riding through the airport, nine times out of 10 you’re going to make the flight. But I realized that, you know, I just I couldn’t do it anymore. I just it was a fun life. When I was young. It was a fun life. You know, had a lot of good times did the corporate thing, realize what it took to be strategic and an account that size? and said I can’t do this anymore. And you know, as soon as I left as soon as I left the phone call start coming back and come work for us come work for us and the rest. It was all the competitors going well, we got a job for you. And I’m going okay, what’s? Well no, we need you on the road about 150 days of the year. We need you on the road about 180 days a year and why I don’t want to do this anymore. So I got lucky enough and a buddy of mine was an industrial psychologist and what he did is he read Through the What do you want to be when you grew up test? So over three days or a week, I took a battery of tests, we sat down, we did all the things and what it came up with is two things. One, you’re great communicator. Two, you work really well with large corporations, you should not work within large corporations. Wow. Yeah. And you’ll Mike consulting, philosophy was born. And over the years, you know, it’s it’s got into brand management, it’s been effective communication, its internal communication, how to build effective leadership teams. And now the big thing that we do is we have a program, it’s a, it’s a four week online program, called developing the leader view. And what we do is we take teams of leaders, and I’m talking everywhere from the frontline managers all the way up to district managers. And we teach them how to lead and not be managers how to manage process that lead people, okay, and we do this as a team because it builds camaraderie, it builds a common language, it builds a common philosophy. So therefore, they can work together and it breaks down the silos. So you guys get asked to come aboard in speak to these teams? Oh, yeah. Okay. Let me ask you something, because I just had a situation not too long ago, I wanted to see how you maybe might defuse this when a CEO or that the head is asking for you to come in and level them up. There’s always that person that’s below the head, that is pissed. That is ego stricken. And you’re in the corporate world, Claire. So you know, that happens a lot. How do you guys handle that individual to get them on board with your guys’s protocol, for lack of a better term, your guys’s way of doing things to really help them buy in? Because if he doesn’t buy in a lot of the soldier on the door, what is your guys’s secret sauce? But

11:52
I can I can certainly speak to that, you know, I have definitely, you know, having been in the corporate world. And to your point and to Ben’s story, concluding that I was better working with corporate and not within corporate. You know, everybody at the top is ego driven, everybody at the top, tend to have that mentality of well, I got to are where I am with, you know, very little development intervention. You know, and I’m, and I’m doing fine. And I’m at a point where I don’t need, you know, a lot of coaching and feedback. So you have to overcome that. Typically, what I do when working with companies is start from the top down for that very reason. You know, whether it’s the CEO, the executive team around him or her, or that next layer down, that probably needs that intervention, that coaching that development, that self awareness, you have to frame it in a way where they collaborate with you to bring in the solution. And that sounds very simplistic, but it is absolutely fundamental. Because you’re right, what what they will end up doing is torpedoing and throwing grenades into the middle of anything that you try to do. And you know, they’re they’re buying in their involvement, they’re enthusiastic endorsement level and participation in the process is critical. And you don’t want just people who are going to Yes, you to death in front of you. And then, you know, throw throw daggers from behind your backs. Yeah, absolutely. Right. So it’s, it’s really important to find those people, you want the people that are going to be advocates for what you’re trying to do. But you also want to root out those critics as potential, you know, flies in the ointment as early as possible, because their perspective did not come about overnight. They feel very justified in how they feel, whether it’s, you know, positive or negative towards how the culture got to where they are, right. And they always have very strong opinions about you know, what really it’s going to take to, to get things, fixed results, right. So it’s extremely important to find those people to work with those people one on one, not to cater to them and not to, you know, sort of just do the splitter, which reel or kiss the wraps or any of that. But to in the ego a little bit. You ask you Yeah, you’ve got to recognize the ego, you’ve got to acknowledge the ego without labeling it an ego. Right. And, but they do need to feel involved so that they are a critical stakeholder. I love that.

14:33
Yeah, I love that. I concur with that a lot. You got to build champions. And the thing is, you are going to have people in the in the organization that have chips on their shoulder, a mile wide. Sure. And the question is why? Right? That until you can understand what their agenda is, what the chip on their shoulder is, what what their personal goals are, what are the things that you know, that are keeping them from achieving this goal. access that they want to achieve. You can’t yell, you can’t get past them, you can’t go over them, you can’t go around them, you can’t go through them, you got to find a way to bring them on board. And you know, a lot of it comes down to actual conversations. Sure, we’ve been listening not only with your eyes or ears, but your eyes and micro expressions and stuff like that, which you guys with the combined experience have got to be very much pros at, you know what, I want something in a podcast interview with you, Ben about during this covid time, and we could go on and on, but kind of in a nutshell, can you give me like maybe what you’re thinking about with during this time of COVID that people should be re onboarding? One of my favorite subjects? We can’t be too long, because we got no, no, we’re gonna do this quite quite simply, here it is, in a nutshell. Every single employee needs to be on boarded. And the reason for it is there have been little changes in every organization. You know, and it may it may be we just went slightly left or slightly right, or we have a new policy, we have a new procedure, we have a new way of doing things, we’ve moved equipment around the office, around the office around the floor a little bit, there’s little changes that have happened, and they’ve happened for a reason. And until we can get people to understand what has changed, and why and how it makes their life better. They’re not going to they’re not going to be you know, fundamentally okay with it, it’s good to create that rip that we were just talking about. Sure. And if we can get people on board sitting there and say, Look, we’ve had these changes happen. And this is why we’ve had to make the changes. And this is what we’ve done. And you know, and we’ve talked about this, people are a lot better off to come on board and the re to move forward and be champions of the brand. I love it. If we don’t re onboard people, we’re just gonna fly back to the way things are and then, you know, companies are going to be in serious trouble. They’re gonna be flying blind. I think right now is the time really to double down in a sense, lack of better term, maybe I don’t really like to gamble too much. I’m, we’re very strategic. But I think you’re right, because I did watch that podcast interviews and like, man, he’s got a point about you shouldn’t be stopping, you should be really growing through this. And if you’re going to fail, fail forward and learn from I love that. So, you know, I got a couple questions. I want to get into it, both of you. And I might just flip them up between the two of you. But we’ll start with Ben. But you guys see Marty McFly, right? And if I say that, you know who that is? Right? Yes. And you and I are going to get in our DeLorean and we’re going to go back to the 2023 year old Ben, what kind of knowledge nuggets we call them here time to shine, are you dropping on that 20, early 20s ben to help him level up, maybe shorten his learning curve a little bit. And really, I think the number one thing you’re going to learn is Be patient. Okay. And think, play the long game. I think there’s too many people out there looking for the Quick Fit. But you know what I was 2324 years old, I was looking for the 30 under 30. I was looking for the million dollars by by iOS x age, you know, the car that you know, the great apartment that this that their thing and realize that none of that’s important, right? None of that is important. What you need to do is look at the laundry and Kimmy look yourself in the mirror every single day. And be proud of what you’ve done. Love that. And I think that would probably be the one thing I would talk to people and sit there and say, Stop chasing somebody else’s highlight reel, and live your own life. Love that. Love it. See stop chasing others highlights. How about you, Claire?

18:40
Yeah, you know, I would say and I’m gonna go, by the way, Oh, stop it. You know, I’m older than you guys say. But But I but I appreciate that. I’ll give a nod to my hairstylist for the cover. And I you know, I am I am as conservative as you are in terms of being a gambler. I’m I’m much more of a strategic kind of a planner. And I was certainly like that in my in my early 20s. And one of the things that I would I would tell my 2324 year old self is take more risks. You know, there was a time when I could have taken an international assignment I had just joined a, you know, this, this global company. And there were opportunities to, you know, take an international assignment for a couple of years. And my very wise grandmother said to me, You need to travel you need to take these risks now because as you get older, it’s much harder to do your roots or deeper responsibilities. I loved my career. I loved my grandmother and I thought it was great advice, but I didn’t take it and and looking back I should have I you know, and I don’t feel like my my career took a hit by not doing it. But I think some of the lessons that I’ve learned in my 30s and 40s I probably could have learned a little bit earlier and and leveraged a little bit harder.

19:57
Yeah, but I love that and thanks for the transport As to be honest about that, Claire. So I want to know how you guys want your dashes remembered that little line in between your incarnation date and your expiration day. We’ll start with Claire on this one. How do you want your desk be remembered in kind of a concise, like not drawn out? How do you want to? Yeah. In one word, its impact. And when I say impact, I mean, not just professionally on the leaders that I that I help in the businesses that they build, but also in my personal life, I always think of I don’t have children of my own. But I have two nephews who are the light of my life. And I always think about how are they going to remember me? So impact is huge for me, about you, Ben? Well, I concur that it’s just like, I just asked a question on LinkedIn. It says, on your deathbed, how do you want people to remember you, sir? And for me, it’s all about what’s the legacy that I left? And the legacy that I left leave is, how can I, you know, how did people see that I’ve helped change their life? Yes. You know, did I make impact on others? It’s not the fact that I was rich or famous, or anything, if how many people’s lives that I touch? Yeah, how many people’s lives Did I make better? Right, cuz I was there. That’s beautiful. You said that, Ben, because you know, my mentor always said, the more people you mentor or help, the more immortal you become, you know, you can be a famous person and great, that’s, that’s what people look to. But you know, because in that scripted life, if you will, you know what people love to but if you help people, and you really genuinely care, they’re going to help somebody, they’re going to pass that knowledge on that you pass to them, and you just become a mortal in people’s minds. They might forget about the origin. But I know that a lot of stuff I think about Marcus really is brought up, or Seneca brought up, you know, so there’s stuff that I regurgitate. So but yeah, Marcus, he stole all the original ideas. He did. He did, he did. So let’s talk a little bit about your community that you’re building here. Like, what is I under? We kind of got to the origins of it. But like when we get into when they join the community, what are people going to expect to get? Hopefully, you know, it’s going to be a place where people are going to learn how to lead better. And I’m not talking about, you know, fluffing up their own ego, I’m not talking about, you know, making their way up to the C suite. It’s about teaching people how to bring people along with you. It’s it’s creating those long coattails and making room for everybody. You know, my philosophy and I think Claire shares this is that a great leader wakes up every day, and says, How do you make the lives of the people around the better just, and that’s what we’re hoping that the community does is that those who are just learning how to lead gain the experience from people who have led in the in the past and in the community will teach each other is to be able to pose a question on a Monday morning, and give people the week to chunk through it and give people the opportunity to form conversations amongst themselves, share ideas and get better as a community. And for us, just to be there to facilitate that. Love, and it’s all about getting people to learn from each other.

23:26
Love and we were very deliberate about building a community not a program for for those very reasons that Ben just touched upon, right, because it you know, to, to, to steal the phrase, it takes a village. If you really want to build better leaders, who then in turn build better teams, better individuals, better companies, you know, you you can’t expect that they’re just going to turn to Ben and Claire and get all the answers. Sure. It’s really a culmination of, you know, just look at us combining our 50 years of experience, yes, but it’s been it’s been 45 of my five but actually I’m, you know, pulling all that together. Well, there you go. If you started at six, so, you know, pulling together the collective experiences, challenges and lessons learned from a community you know, it is only as rich as its membership, it’s not going to be you know, life impacting because Ben and Claire are facilitating it, it is going to be impactful because of the people who come in with their own lenses, their own frames of reference, and apply what we challenge them to, you know, to grow in the direction of,

24:39
I love that you guys it’s you know, we’re gonna everything’s gonna be in the show notes and squat if you want to be put in touch with it get with me as well and I’ll direct you to an if tomorrow liters made here and if we need a personal introduction between a they’re better Claire, I’m sure that we can possibly work something out. But as we wind things down, guys, I got the leveling up. lightning round. Five or six questions we could talk 1520 minutes on each one of these, but you’ve got five seconds no explanation. Oh,

25:07
okay. buzzer Hold on.

25:10
And I will rotate back and forth through the questions. Okay, but just quickly, please, because we’re kind of running a little short on time. But let’s just quickly answer these. We’re ready to level up. Ready, Lee? All right, Claire, what’s the best leveling up advice you’ve ever received?

25:25
that I’ve ever received,

25:28
stay focused on where you want to get to the long term which makes us short term day to day decisions a hell of a lot easier. Love it, then.

25:36
You know, it’s having your mind on the long term goals. If you if you if you look long term, if you figure out where you want to be. It makes it a lot easier to make the decisions today. Beautiful, sir, one of your personal habits that contributes to your success Ben. My personal habit is is reading and writing every single day. Love it, Claire,

25:57
I am newly discovering that there’s a huge difference between using your brain and using your consciousness. So I spend a little bit of time every morning really getting in sync with you know, kind of mind body spirit and where I want to go with my beautiful day rather than just automatically hitting the hitting the Computer

26:18
Club it. So I’m in the doldrums. I’m like, just feeling kind of low. And, you know, we always say all leaders are readers. What book are you saying Fergie? read this book quickly, please,

26:31
sir. All right, I’m gonna do a shameless plug. So I wrote a book a couple years ago called the Whirlpool effect. You can literally read it in the bathroom. It’s about a 20 minute read. So take a little bit more time but it will shift your mindset Whirlpool effect got it.

26:46
Done. Okay, if she’s doing a shameless plug, so my, the book I wrote a couple years ago, it’s called powerful personal brands. Love I’m a big believer of until you know yourself, you can’t lead others. I will put both of those in the show notes folks as well. So what is your most commonly used emoji when you text Claire?

27:06
It’s the hardest emoji emoji for people love it, Ben.

27:11
Oh, god, there’s a couple of them. Probably the cyber face. The sideway face laughing Wow. Okay. Very cool. So not not mentally or wisdom Lee, physically if you can be one age for the rest of your life, what would it be been? Physically? Physically? Probably about 33 beautiful age right there. Claire. Do we don’t have to say we can skip it for her. What I seen and it was a while ago guys, I swear to you. Okay, what is your favorite charity and organization you like to give your time and or money to Claire?

27:49
There’s a few but american cancer. Society is a big one.

27:53
God’s Ben.

27:55
We have a big festival every year called the season salmon Festival, where we get about 85,000 people show up for Canada Day every year in my own backyard. I’ve been donating time and effort to that for years. Love it. And last question. It’s a little bit harder. But what is the best decade of music 6070s 80s or 90s? Ben? I’m an 80s. Boy. Yeah, I like it. How about you clear cookies all the way? Too easy. Yeah, big a big hair. Don’t care gonna flip up the color. Even had yummy. Yeah, it was very transition. He had rap. He had the British Invasion with Duran Duran, the cure from Ireland. So yeah, that’s my favorite too, as well. I mean, I’m 48. So I kind of like grew up in the 80s. And I and I absolutely love it. So I know that we can find you at leaders made here calm is there and also folks that I brought up earlier, their book that you guys co authored leading beyond a crisis, a conversation about what’s next. The first person that makes a comment on either the LinkedIn post or the Facebook post is going to get a free copy that both of the authors will sign we’ll figure out a way to mail it around and get it signed up out to you but I’m just going to be on my dime. So make sure that when you hear this go Leave a comment and either the Facebook group time to shine today or the LinkedIn posts that you’re going to see coming out there and folks you’ve been just witness to basically I have notes just coming out everywhere if you watch on YouTube, I just showed it to the screen. But you have to fan is basically a free masterclass from two fantastic communicators. They believe in leadership collaborate to find great solutions, you know, find out what’s keeping people from achieving their success and they developed this great community, not so much a business platform but a community for people to bounce ideas off of and level up. You know, they believe in what I kind of wrote down was birds of a feather they kind of flock together if you get more people together. You can do nothing but level up. You know, Ben said remind us to be patient play the long game and stop chasing the highlights. Real Man that’s totally stood out to me. And then Claire with her resume, she said, you know, make more, take more calculated risk. Don’t regret anything you didn’t do but make sure that especially if you’re younger and moving up and leveling up, take those risks, go have fun, enjoy that experience. They both want to make impact on others and via awesome legacy and paying it floored about Tell you what, folks, these guys are both living legacies, they are crushing it in life and they’re helping others along the way. And, you know, he said, creating long coattails to build leaders to learn from each other that really stood out to me, Ben, Claire, thank you so much. You guys are leveling up your health leveling up your wealth. You guys are paying it forward. We’re I’m humbled to have you on here. Thank you so so much for coming on, guys. Hey, thanks for having us. It was a real pleasure. Thanks. We’ll talk soon. All right, take care. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode of time to shine today podcast, probably brought to you by Southern Nugent real estate real estate excellence, who can be reached at 561-249-7266 and online at www dot Sutter in nugent.com. If you’re a business owner or professional who would like to be interviewed on time to shine today, please visit time to shine today.com slash gust. If you liked this episode, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts. There’s a link in the show notes to our website. Also there you will see a recommended resources. We hope that you will support our show by supporting them. If you like what you’ve been listening to, it’d be great if you could just give us a five star rating until your friends have subscribed while you’re at it. I’m your host Scott Ferguson. And until next time, let’s level up. It’s our time to shine.

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