Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 39. From Medieval History to the C-Suite with Debbie Plager

Transcript

39. From Medieval History to the C-Suite with Debbie Plager · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful, the show where I sit down with
• 0:07
  your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated or
• 0:11
  because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Analysts
• 0:15
  AI, and we are always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact of the
• 0:19
  day, Chicago-based one for our guest. Of course, Chicago was started the deep dish pizza
• 0:24
  at Pizzeria Uno, but they also invented the brownie in 1893 and the Twinkie in
• 0:28
  1930. Super fun fact, and I'm a little hungry now. But that's neither here nor
• 0:32
  there. Today I'm joined by my friend Debbie Plager. She's the founder and CEO of
• 0:36
  The Plager Group. They're a coaching and organizational strategy firm that helps leaders and teams
• 0:40
  thrive through transformation. I mean, she's been chief talent officer. She's helped her company win
• 0:45
  the best employer award, creating a whole bunch of winners along the way. Debbie, I'm
• 0:49
  pumped to chat. We know you're successful today, but the question we have for you,
• 0:53
  do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or more on the scrappy
• 0:57
  side?
• 1:02
  I mean, Chicagoans like we are scrappy. That's just I think that's just the motto
• 1:06
  and that's just who I am. So scrappy all the way.
• 1:10
  Okay, we will see if the data agrees with you. I love it. Where did
• 1:11
  you grow up? Were you originally from Chicago?
• 1:13
  dear. Okay. Yeah, I mean, so I was Chicago, Chicago native, moved up to a
• 1:18
  northern burb, went to school in this grand state of Illinois. you know, where we
• 1:23
  used to say downstate, where it was a straight shot, 'cause Illinois, you know, flat
• 1:28
  as a pancake. And there was a shirt that when you went to U of
• 1:33
  I, University of Illinois, and you're like, Gotta love the drive and you'd see a
• 1:38
  cow, a corn stalk, a silo. Yes. So
• 1:43
  Okay, fantastic. very Midwestern. I can already feel the Midwest warmth. any entrepreneurs in the
• 1:47
  family growing up?
• 1:51
  No, well, we do have some boot luggers in my family tree. Does that count?
• 1:51
  Okay, great. I have some farmers in my family tree, so that I think definitely
• 1:52
  would be some business people. have some bootleggers and then actually I am the daughter
• 1:53
  of two mathematicians, so math teachers. So I was actually the first person to like
• 1:54
  go the corporate world. My parents didn't know what to do with me.
• 1:55
  We'll count it. We'll count it. Yeah.
• 2:15
  And then definitely the first person to just do my own thing, which is why
• 2:18
  I was like, I have no clue and definitely scratch.
• 2:22
  Okay. All right. So this is s so the quick and we'll y we'll have
• 2:25
  you give the elevator pitch 'cause it'll be much better than me doing it, but
• 2:28
  you're talent focused, you're people focused, yet you come from two mathematicians. So give us
• 2:31
  the quick, you know, fifteen second version of what you did today and then let's
• 2:34
  let's see how you got there.
• 2:38
  Yeah. I mean, isn't it a funny story? You're gonna laugh at the story even
• 2:42
  more. But yeah, so why the Playground group, why am I out of my own
• 2:46
  is I love working with people, in particular working with teams. I think teams is
• 2:51
  really where work happens. right, 'cause P T people are just I don't the the
• 2:55
  world is too complex. The the I think the pace of change is too complex
• 3:00
  and people can't really handle things out on their own anymore, right? So we need
• 3:04
  to do work together. And so if we think about the how we do our
• 3:08
  work, like how can I help teams be more impactful, more successful, how can I
• 3:13
  help work suck last? You know, that's a big thing. and so I love being
• 3:17
  able to work with different companies, different sectors, different size businesses, businesses that are new,
• 3:22
  businesses that have been around for a while. I love working with leadership teams because
• 3:26
  I'm a big believer that if I can help a senior team even be 5%,
• 3:31
  10% more effective, what that's gonna translate for the organization. I still love working with
• 3:35
  individuals, don't get me wrong, one-on-one coaching is one of my favorite things to do,
• 3:39
  but I really love working with teams and helping unlock just even how they make
• 3:44
  decisions, how they navigate conflict, how they can get out of their own way. So
• 3:48
  that's really what I love to do. and help just them gain clarity around. some
• 3:53
  of their business challenges as well as how they work together in service of their
• 3:57
  business challenges.
• 4:02
  Gotcha. Okay. All right. So people helping people, you facilitate that. And again, the the
• 4:05
  intro of the bio is thriving in transformation, right? Which I think is really important.
• 4:09
  Obviously, you know, a time like COVID, something like that, thriving through that, pretty impactful.
• 4:13
  How the heck do you get into this? Are you like a are you the
• 4:17
  middleman in your friend group growing up or something?
• 4:21
  Isn't that funny? I mean, so when I was little, I just I thought I
• 4:22
  was gonna teach. I really like mountain gorillas. I was a big fan of Diane
• 4:24
  Fossey, you know, minus the way that she ended, you know, was not a pretty
• 4:26
  picture. and I thought that's what you did, right? Because when you grow up with
• 4:28
  teachers, you just think you're gonna teach. And then I ended up getting a scholarship
• 4:30
  to go overseas. And in the middle of that was temping for Anderson Consulting, which
• 4:32
  is now Accenture. And I was like,
• 4:34
  Yeah, sure.
• 4:50
  I learned about this thing called change management. I was like, what is this? And
• 4:54
  my eyes just lit up and just the pace that everybody was working in. I
• 4:58
  was an admin assistant, right? Just temping, trying to make money between undergrad and grad
• 5:02
  school. And I, Jack, like I lit up. I'd never seen business. I didn't understand
• 5:06
  it. I didn't know what process was. I didn't know what change management was. All
• 5:10
  I knew was I liked it. and I just stayed in touch with folks. And
• 5:15
  then after grad school, I started doing some things and then just slowly sort of
• 5:19
  found my way into change management, into leadership, into learning. I mean, I got a
• 5:23
  grad degree. This is the funny story. I got a grad degree in medieval history.
• 5:27
  I was very fortunate to get a rotary scholarship. Met my husband, who also had
• 5:31
  a rotary scholarship from Maine, which we talked about before we started at the show.
• 5:36
  Okay. Nice. Yep.
• 5:46
  also a meet of medieval history. So, like we we took two of us out
• 5:50
  of the medieval history pool when we both left and went into corporate the corporate
• 5:55
  world. But I always say, you know what? I entered the consulting world, I understood
• 6:00
  feudal society is still here. I entered as a serf, I left as a yeoman.
• 6:05
  It's it served me well. and that's how I ended up sort of doing change
• 6:10
  management. And then I learned, yeah, it's just sort of like this random happenstance of
• 6:14
  just being exposed to things and really like I loved the people side, the the
• 6:19
  strategy side, the wicked problem solving, the pace and the complexity. And I said, okay,
• 6:24
  this is what I'm meant to do, but how the heck do I do it?
• 6:29
  And so that's what started me on my journey.
• 6:34
  there's so much beauty in that because one, it's coming into consulting the most corporate
• 6:35
  of all the corporate corporate corporateness and being like, Hey, I'm medieval history. I know
• 6:36
  nothing about this world. Let's talk. Let's see what's going on here. So coming in
• 6:38
  with a fresh perspective, I think, is awesome. And I you might be the only
• 6:39
  two people that made it from medieval history to corporate. Like I I
• 6:41
  Right. But you know what? People remember me. They're like, yeah, you're the medieval historian.
• 6:45
  And here's what I tell people. I was like, I use my degree every day.
• 6:50
  And they're like, what do you mean? I said, look, I was trained in how
• 6:54
  do you synthesize data?
• 6:59
  Yeah. Right.
• 7:12
  When you don't have all the pieces, because we we don't have all the records
• 7:16
  back from, you know, 15th century English history, which was the period I was studying.
• 7:20
  So I had to learn how to take pieces together, understand context. Historians, by the
• 7:24
  way, if you have any friends who studied history, wrote a lot more than your
• 7:28
  English majors did. So you had to learn how to write, you had to learn
• 7:32
  how to put together compelling arguments, and you had to learn how to analyze, you
• 7:37
  had to learn how to do macro level thinking and micro. I would say that
• 7:41
  that made a pretty compelling argument on why we were good consultants, why we were
• 7:45
  good analysts, why we were good, whatever. So anyway, where I'm not here to sell
• 7:49
  people on the beauty and power of humanities and liberal arts and medieval history. But
• 7:53
  folks out there, if you have a chance to hire a historian or a history
• 7:57
  major, you get thumbs up from me.
• 8:02
  There you go. I I mean I I now I'll come at it from a
• 8:04
  data perspective too. Like in a world where you didn't have all of the data
• 8:07
  collected, you have to make assumptions and you have to prove those assumptions, right? So
• 8:10
  that's a very interesting like consulting way to think about it of hey, like we
• 8:12
  don't have all the data of what's going on with the people at a company,
• 8:15
  'cause you can't have all that data. Let's put the pieces together and make inform
• 8:18
  the story.
• 8:21
  Yes. Yes, exactly.
• 8:27
  Very cool. Okay. All right. I like it. were you entrepreneurial as a kid? Like
• 8:31
  were you selling candy? Do you have a lemonade stand or anything?
• 8:36
  You know, I I did my lemonade stand thing. I think I was more of,
• 8:36
  you know, I tried to do that, not very successfully. and I was the kid,
• 8:36
  like I was I don't know at your school, did you have the gifted programs?
• 8:37
  'Cause I wasn't allowed in the gifted programs because they didn't call me creative. And
• 8:37
  that stuck with me for a long time. I was considered smart but not creative.
• 8:38
  Okay. Mm, yep.
• 8:57
  And I really Wait, and I really had this like chip on my shoulder. So
• 9:00
  my friends were that were in the gifted program, they got to sell really cool
• 9:03
  lollipops. So I'd always support them. So I don't know. I was like the enabler
• 9:06
  of like the lemonade people and whatever.
• 9:09
  Yeah. That's that's even better. That's again, that's like kind of consulting of hey, I
• 9:13
  a bunch of friends who are trying to sell. Let me support them and let
• 9:17
  me enable them. Like I this is all tying together. I don't know.
• 9:22
  All right. Okay. Cause I knew you were gonna ask me that. I I have
• 9:25
  a sep second a separate question for you. What do you say about like I'm
• 9:29
  the parent of someone who doesn't want to sell Lemon A, but for the longest
• 9:32
  time you wanted to have a taco salad sand? And I was like, Honey, that's
• 9:36
  a little hard to like do out there. We have a great corner. We get
• 9:39
  a lot of foot traffic. I'm like, that's kind of hard.
• 9:43
  is if it's hungry foot traffic, then you might have something there.
• 9:46
  I don't know. Okay. All right. So I shouldn't discourage him.
• 9:50
  I you never know. There's a lot more moving parts to that than water and
• 9:53
  some lemonade mix, but
• 9:56
  That's what I was thinking, right? I'm like start small, kinda gauge your market first
• 9:57
  and then move up. But Okay. Well, I mean at the time he wanted to
• 9:58
  do it, I think he was nine. So he's fifteen now. He's outgrown it. But
• 9:59
  I mean I was like, Woo.
• 10:01
  Right. How old are we talking? How old is it? Okay. Okay. I mean, hey,
• 10:04
  it's it's the same principles. It's still revenue versus cost of goods sold. what was
• 10:07
  your first like official job growing up? Maybe a WTO like restaurant, wager, anything like
• 10:10
  that?
• 10:14
  Okay, fair. no, it was much worse. I filed doctors like file like patient files
• 10:21
  in a doctor's office and I got like so many paper cuts and things. It
• 10:28
  was like it was drudgery.
• 10:35
  And that's not one I've talked to a few people that have done similar things.
• 10:38
  You're not necessarily learning a whole lot. Like there's not a whole lot of tan
• 10:41
  it's kinda just move and paper.
• 10:45
  Yes, it is literally one of I mean, right? You're just like it is one
• 10:48
  of the most boring things that it's like it's not even meditative.
• 10:52
  Right. man, okay. All right. So you get out of that, you go to college,
• 10:56
  you're like, medieval history's my thing. Where'd you go abroad when you when you had
• 11:00
  this awakening in in the temp job?
• 11:04
  so I went to Reading for my graduate degree. Yeah. So back to England. So
• 11:07
  I did part of my undergraduate degree I studied abroad and then I went back
• 11:10
  to England for my grad degree. Yeah.
• 11:14
  Okay. Okay. Did you ever did you have the thought of staying over there?
• 11:19
  We so my n husband who I met during grad school, we had tried we
• 11:21
  had thought about like how can we finagle this? Yeah, it was really hard. I
• 11:24
  mean it's even harder now, but it was really hard to like do the whole
• 11:26
  Visa thing. but you know what? I okay, so talking about Scrappy, I was like,
• 11:29
  maybe I can open a bagel store. Because they didn't have good bagels. And I
• 11:31
  had like a whole idea, I had a menu.
• 11:34
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:45
  I was like, here's who I'm gonna ask for capital. I never I hadn't remembered
• 11:48
  that in years. So clearly.
• 11:51
  There you go. Okay, it's funny, every time I do this show, not every time,
• 11:53
  but most times I do this show and I ask them just like general quest
• 11:55
  people think of things that they haven't thought of in years or decades or however
• 11:57
  long it is. I love it. how about the grades in school?
• 11:59
  Years. I was a nerd. They were good.
• 12:07
  Okay. Hey, I'm the same. I was if I got anything less than a hundred
• 12:10
  on a test, I came back home and I was like, here's what I did
• 12:13
  wrong.
• 12:16
  no, I I mean yeah. I don't know. I I I liked being in class
• 12:18
  with my friend Rachel because I I wanted to beat her 'cause she was like
• 12:20
  but I sometim yeah. I didn't have a lot with her. I I needed to
• 12:22
  have more, I'd probably do better. But yeah, I did well enough.
• 12:25
  Yeah, nice. Okay, okay, good. It's fun to have a rival in class though, even
• 12:31
  if it's a friendly rival, especially if it's friendly.
• 12:38
  It was total friendly, yes. She just studied and was very focused and had great
• 12:43
  study routines. And I did not.
• 12:48
  That's good though. It's
• 12:48
  So she she forced me to kind of like, all right, let's get some rigor
• 12:50
  in. Yeah. Yeah.
• 12:52
  Yeah. Okay. All right. Take me to the start of the business. So obviously you
• 12:53
  you do a stint in corporate, as we say, and then and you're chief talent
• 12:54
  officer, you're at big companies. the best employer award. I know that's especially in your
• 12:56
  field, that's a pretty big thing. Tell us a little bit about how that came
• 12:57
  down.
• 12:59
  Is that what we call my twenty five year career a stint? That you know
• 13:04
  what, it it was truly a lovely thing because it came about there was another
• 13:10
  team, the sales development team, who did a lot of sales training. They were constantly
• 13:16
  kind of they were great at self-promotion and they would constantly like go out for
• 13:22
  sales training awards. and they were doing it for their stuff and they saw the
• 13:28
  award category for best company. And they read it and they said, We really should
• 13:34
  do this for us. And they contacted me and they said, We should do this.
• 13:40
  And I was like, You're absolutely right. And this was in the height of COVID.
• 13:46
  And I said, Of everything, like we, I was really proud. So I was working
• 13:52
  at Hub International at the time, which is insurance brokerage. It's not like the most
• 13:58
  sexy thing, but it is, you know, it's like insurance is what you need. Yeah,
• 14:04
  right. I mean, it's it's what you need, whether you like it or not.
• 14:10
  I hey, I worked at the Hartford. I get it.
• 14:15
  and at the time like we were there and and really supporting small and mid-sized
• 14:20
  market companies, which was backbone of America. So, right, essential business. and I talked with
• 14:25
  my boss who is the the CHRO and I was like, I think we need
• 14:30
  to go for this. And we talked about the story of everything we were doing
• 14:35
  to support and protect and really engage hub employees. And I was really proud of
• 14:40
  what we had done. so like for example, and this is this is the funniest
• 14:45
  thing, and my my boss is like, this is so cheesy. I'm like, that's the
• 14:50
  point. It's so cheesy. so anyway, so we put together this whole proposal and we
• 14:55
  did this video and we sent it in. And we not only won our category,
• 15:00
  but we got a gold award, which they don't give out a ton of gold
• 15:05
  awards. And they gave they gave us the gold award and they gave the the
• 15:10
  rationale and they said part of it is like what you did for summer camp.
• 15:15
  So you might say, What the heck is summer camp? Everything's closed. And I said,
• 15:20
  That's the point. So I went to my boss who pitched it to the EAMT.
• 15:25
  I said, Amber, it's my boss at the time. I think we need to do
• 15:30
  this thing with like online camp. we should do these sessions where some of them
• 15:35
  are developmental, like arts and let's have arts and crafts sessions, let's have sports sessions,
• 15:40
  let's have campfire sessions, let's have sessions where, you know, if you have stuff. for
• 15:45
  your kids who are stuck at home. Let's do things where, you know, we can
• 16:51
  have skill-based sessions. We can have people talking about their favorite pet projects. So we
• 16:56
  had people coming out of the woodwork volunteering to put on these sessions. And so
• 17:01
  we had 60 sessions over a two and a half month period. We had some
• 17:06
  of our executive team members. We had every single function you can think of. I
• 17:11
  did, I did. a campfire for foodie session. I had my own Julia Childs moment
• 17:16
  where the the paper towel was too close to the grill and it went caught
• 17:21
  on fire. And so my husband gently like came around the back and moved it
• 17:26
  off. And my friend like came over and she was filming it. the only money
• 17:31
  we spent on this whole thing was one to pay a friend of mine who
• 17:36
  was a professional chef who gave us a a major discount to run three sessions
• 17:41
  for cooking with your kids. Like really simple sessions and then money for a trivia
• 17:46
  contest where we gave the winner and the runner-up winner money to give to their
• 17:51
  charity. It's the only money we spent. And those were the examples of types of
• 17:56
  things that we gave for our company. And they, the Stevie Awards is one of
• 18:01
  the best things you can do. And so we were so proud of the way
• 18:06
  in which we took care of our employees, the things that we did for our
• 18:11
  frontline. so when I look back on my career, I'm so proud of how how
• 18:16
  leaders, how employees stood up like for each other, how they showed up for each
• 18:21
  other was really our culture and action. yeah. So I'm really proud of that.
• 18:27
  As you should be. That's an enormous amount of organization. And the the the cool
• 18:30
  part is like I this is like, you know, ruthless capitalist in me saying like,
• 18:34
  Okay, cool, we're gonna do all this like nice fun stuff. How much is it
• 18:37
  gonna cost me? Nothing. Nothing. That's amazing.
• 18:41
  Nothing. And like everybody was stuck at home. You know, like we we had people
• 18:45
  reading books. Like I we had story hour. Right? So like one t session I
• 18:50
  read books. I had my young one like on my lap. We were reading stories.
• 18:55
  You know, it was things like that where look, and my boss again said, This
• 19:00
  is the kitchiest thing ever. I go, I know, isn't it?
• 19:05
  That's the point. It's great. So so from that, do you now do people see
• 19:09
  that and like hear that story and and and know you because of things like
• 19:13
  that and say, I want to do that at my company? How the heck do
• 19:17
  we even start that process?
• 19:22
  That's a good question. Do people well, I will tell you that summer camp still
• 19:23
  goes on and I was like, ooh, you know, I like it does, but I'm
• 19:24
  also like, you know what, it kind of has served its purpose. I think you
• 19:25
  can kind of like or like shorten it, or like it doesn't have to be
• 19:26
  so extensive, you know. like maybe it's you know, it could be shorter and and
• 19:27
  whatnot.
• 19:29
  Nice. Okay. Okay.
• 19:48
  do. I we we talk about it. I I know that I know the talent
• 19:51
  team will talk about it at different conferences. And so I do know that people
• 19:55
  are absolutely reaching out and talking about it. And we're like, hey, like, let's share
• 19:59
  it. It's the easiest thing. And it's honestly like you could do it with a
• 20:02
  very limited budget. And I think it's great. Will it just it matched our culture.
• 20:06
  So I'm always a believer like you can't just always take something and just plop
• 20:10
  it in. It's what's your culture? How does it fit? What are you trying to
• 20:13
  do? But if you have the right cultural elements, you can absolutely take it and
• 20:17
  run with it.
• 20:21
  Okay, so I want to dive into that a little bit. So to like the
• 20:22
  core of this is exactly where I was going, is there has to be the
• 20:24
  culture for that first. Building a culture obviously is not an overnight thing. There's a
• 20:26
  whole lot of people and and and a whole lot of things involved. Most of
• 20:28
  your clients are mid market, upper market, almost corporate level, right?
• 20:30
  Mm-hmm. You know what? They're all over the place. I have some very small and
• 20:39
  I have I think mostly in mid. Like that's where I've chosen to play.
• 20:48
  Okay, maybe let's take let's take the easier example maybe at a small company, or
• 20:51
  maybe it's not easy, I don't know, but at a smaller company, if somebody knocks
• 20:54
  on your door and says, Hey, you we we wanna do a summer camp, we
• 20:58
  wanna do this, we wanna do that, or whatever, we don't think our culture matches
• 21:01
  it, how do you actually like how do you build a culture, I guess broadly,
• 21:04
  in small business?
• 21:08
  Yeah. Well, I think is the thing is you have to understand like first of
• 21:10
  all, like diagnose what you are. And it's so funny because people go, Well, culture's
• 21:13
  the squishy thing. And it's like, yeah, it is. But I also say, look, so
• 21:16
  Jack, if you were to say, and I don't know how big your company is,
• 21:19
  right? So if you were to s three people, okay. but if you hired a
• 21:22
  fourth and the fourth person were to on Friday night go have drinks.
• 21:25
  Three people.
• 21:38
  With one of their best friends that they haven't seen for a long time, and
• 21:42
  said, and that person said, How's work? And they said, All right, well, this is
• 21:47
  like how it is to work there, like this is how work happens, this is
• 21:51
  what it's like, this is how work gets done. That's the culture. Culture is how
• 21:56
  work gets done here, fill in the blank. That's the easiest definition of culture. So
• 22:01
  what is it that you tolerate? What is it that you do? It's not what
• 22:05
  you say, it's what you do. so there are exercises that I go through with
• 22:10
  with leadership teams, with organizations where you can really clarify what it is. And then
• 22:15
  you can say, if you want to change it, you say, okay, from two. And
• 22:19
  some of it is, what is it we want to keep? So the from and
• 22:24
  the two are the same. And some parts of it are we've got to change
• 22:28
  it. So we're going from, you know, top down to more collaborative, or hey, we
• 22:33
  want to stay entrepreneurial. So we're from entrepreneurial to entrepreneurial. from cautious to more ambitious,
• 22:38
  right? Like so we get to articulate what it is. And then we need to
• 22:42
  say, well, how is this gonna really show up? Is this gonna show up in
• 22:47
  decision making? What
• 22:52
  Mm.
• 22:52
  Like let's make it really real and tangible so it's not the squishy thing. How's
• 22:56
  it going to show up in our work decisions? How is it going to show
• 23:00
  up in our decision decision making? How's it gonna show up in our business process?
• 23:05
  How's it gonna show up in our rewards? how's it gonna show up in our
• 23:09
  hiring? Right. So I have ways in which and like to help them really internalize
• 23:13
  it. And then you can say, okay. So if you wanted to do a summer
• 23:18
  camp that reinforced those things, now it's just another part of that. because you don't
• 23:22
  want to create this thing that's just sitting out there and you're like, well, that
• 23:26
  just feels really weird. And it just feels like this like dangling thing that's just
• 23:31
  like this is like nothing else, and it feels like we've just gone on a
• 23:35
  trip. Right? Cause no one wants that.
• 23:40
  Do you correlate this to brand? Because brand is often something that pay I'm building
• 23:42
  my brand, but brand is something that other people don't build for you, but th
• 23:45
  your brand is what's defined as how other people view you. And this is essentially
• 23:48
  what you're saying.
• 23:51
  I think so. Yeah, I I think a lot of it. I think a lot
• 23:55
  of it is of organizational brand in some ways is I think organizational culture. Yeah.
• 23:59
  Okay. Okay. And you start off by saying you to know kind of who you
• 24:00
  are as a business, right? my question for you, do you know who you are
• 24:02
  as a person more than you know who you are as a business? And are
• 24:03
  are those two the same?
• 24:05
  Yeah. yes, but that's because I've done a lot of work on myself in the
• 24:07
  type room. yes. and I think I'm still trying to figure out because I'm so
• 24:09
  new, like right, I'm three and a half years in on who I am as
• 24:11
  a business and I'm scaling, right? So like I kind of like was starting to
• 24:13
  figure out who I was as a solo business player, and now I'm scaling and
• 24:15
  I was like, goodness, I gotta figure out what I stand for.
• 24:17
  Okay. Yeah.
• 24:43
  as a small business owner versus a solo business owner. but the good news is
• 24:44
  it's still based on me. And I'm very clear who I am. So like that's
• 24:45
  not changing.
• 24:47
  Yeah. Okay. Okay, so that's the core. And I think that's important for a lot
• 24:50
  of small businesses too. intentionally using the term small business, not solopreneur. And so I
• 24:54
  we we talked a little bit, there's a rebrand coming, and feel free to divulge
• 24:57
  whatever details you want, but it's the core of it is still you. It's just
• 25:01
  a it's just a new I guess why why rebrand?
• 25:05
  Yes, I could. Yes. Yes. Right. Well, okay. So I had to think about it.
• 25:12
  so the the rationale is and I called it like the Plager Group two dot
• 25:19
  was coming and I made the decision. Well, let me back it up. You know
• 25:26
  when you meet people, because I think this is a funny and important story. You
• 25:33
  know when you meet people and they ask you a question at the right time
• 25:40
  and it kind of sits in your stomach and you go,
• 25:48
  Hundred percent. Yes. Somebody just accidentally hits it and it sticks with you for years.
• 25:50
  Yep.
• 25:53
  Okay, so I had one of those last year with someone who's now a mentor
• 25:57
  of mine. And the question she asked was, how do you go to market? And
• 26:02
  I had answered that question for her. And the last thing I had said was,
• 26:07
  and I have a network of amazing coaches. And she said to me, Then why
• 26:12
  aren't you going to market with your network of amazing coaches? Because there's a million
• 26:16
  solo coaches out there and consultants. Like I coach and I consult, right? And I
• 26:21
  said, Hmm, that's a really good question. And I just left with this. both lump
• 26:26
  in my stomach and exciting butterflies, right? Of absolutely right. I should be going to
• 26:31
  market with my network. That is part of, I have an amazing value prop. I
• 26:35
  know how to do this. And it will get me out. So that was all
• 26:40
  right, so that's the backdrop. And so I love working with teams. But my capacity
• 26:45
  had been taken up by a lot of one-on-one coaching. So, how do I extricate
• 26:50
  myself and bring in coaches who love one-on-one coaching and save my capacity for team
• 26:54
  coaching and more of the consulting and doing the strategy consulting and the org stuff
• 26:59
  that I like to do? So this means less me one-on-one. It means me bringing
• 27:04
  in more coaches. It seemed like a good pivot point for me to consider, do
• 27:09
  I want to rebrand? The other thing is I was never attached to the Plager
• 27:13
  group. All things being equal, we we had that domain for 10 years. we had
• 27:18
  a couple of domains for 10 years. because I always knew I wanted to, you
• 27:23
  know, coach on the side, consult on the side. and I and so people, you
• 27:28
  know, sort of in my support circle.
• 27:33
  Okay.
• 27:48
  Would say, well, things to think about, right? Are you gonna sell your business? I'm
• 27:50
  like, Am I gonna sell my business? I have no idea. That's not a question
• 27:53
  for me that's worth considering. That's not that's not a helpful question. Then someone said
• 27:56
  to me, Do you do you want to give the impression or that you are
• 27:59
  available for coaching? And I said, No. Because I'm not. And then she said, then
• 28:02
  you don't want your name in the business. And you want to. And I said,
• 28:05
  that is a very good reason to remove my name from the business. And I
• 28:08
  said, okay. I am still right. I'm still front and center. I'm the founder. The
• 28:11
  value proposition is based on me. Right.
• 28:14
  Okay. That's a really good point.
• 28:38
  Everything else is very much the same, but it just makes it clearer that you're
• 28:42
  gonna get this amazing set of coaches. You may get me very rarely though. I'm
• 28:47
  gonna save myself for very specific situations. It's gonna be at the C-suite level, it's
• 28:52
  gonna be very specific things where I'm gonna put myself in the mix. and it
• 28:56
  allows me to spend my time where I want and need to spend my time.
• 29:01
  And so I thought, okay. So that's why the rebrand and I thought it's at
• 29:06
  the right time in the journey of the firm.
• 29:11
  Very nice. Very nice. It's a it's a perfectly logical way to do it. I
• 29:15
  like it. the so you still obviously like coaching, but the it's just it's
• 29:20
  Yes, I I love it. I love it. It's just a matter of what's my
• 29:23
  pie. What do I want my pie like? Yeah.
• 29:27
  How do you view your pie internally? So what I mean is when you have
• 29:31
  coaches that are gonna be working under you, you're presumably gonna have to coach those
• 29:36
  coaches, which is effectively individual coaching, just internal. Do you view that the same? Are
• 29:41
  you worried about that? Is that kind of your outlet for still getting the one-on-one?
• 29:46
  actually not gonna coach them. These are these are very like sophisticated, great professional coaches.
• 29:46
  These are affiliates. I'm an affili I was an affiliate with four different firms. It's
• 29:46
  very much a model in the executive coaching boutique sort of space. We sort of
• 29:46
  are in different firms and I told people I said look you know I'm expecting
• 29:46
  you still to be with different places. here's what I'm about here's the sort of
• 29:46
  profile of coach that I'm looking for.
• 29:47
  You're not gonna c okay.
• 29:16
  Here's what's important to me. I'm looking for people that have worked in corporate world
• 29:21
  for, you know, 10 plus more like 15 years who have led, who have the
• 29:26
  battle scars, who have understood what it's like, and then went into coach, right? And
• 29:31
  then went deep into coaching, who understand brain science, who are both pragmatic and thoughtful
• 29:36
  and caring. A lot of them I know from my Northwestern experience where I teach
• 29:41
  and I'm on the faculty, like of the of the coaching program and the broader
• 29:46
  masters in org change and learning. some are from my network when I was a
• 29:52
  grad student in that program, some are my from my network at fielding where I
• 29:57
  went and got my coaching. So I don't need to, I don't need to coach
• 30:02
  them. They all have tremendous years of experience. It's more of I'm there. If they
• 30:07
  need support or if they're like, this is wiggy, or hey, I'm having trouble like
• 30:12
  getting a hold of my client, that's where they're gonna need me, but otherwise They
• 30:17
  are good to go.
• 30:23
  Okay. So you're you're building the system and the structure for these people to thrive
• 30:25
  in. Okay. where do you get your coaching? Presumably you have a coach or a
• 30:27
  mentor or something like that. Where do you get them?
• 30:29
  Absolutely. Yes. I do. Yeah. And I well, I do. Yes. So I have my
• 30:34
  mentors, my mentor coaches. I also have just like my support circle. and then I
• 30:39
  also, you know, it's interesting. So I I've chosen to have accreditation with the the
• 30:44
  ICF, which is the largest coaching sort of federated body, and it requires a certain
• 30:49
  amount of continuing ed. And so I like that because it's like okay, where do
• 30:55
  I want to continue to sharpen my own saw and to continue to develop? And
• 31:00
  so that's also where I get to say, okay, when am I focused on this
• 31:05
  year? You know, am I doing something in neuroscience? Am I doing something in team
• 31:10
  coaching? Am I doing something in ethics? Am I doing something in somatics? Right. So
• 31:16
  I think that's important just as a profession to say how am I just continuing
• 31:21
  to learn and grow. And then I'm also thinking about with this group and when
• 31:26
  I when I approach people and I said hey you know I'm building this comp,
• 31:31
  you know, I'm growing the business and I'm building this bench and I'm being very
• 31:36
  intentional. And I said I also was thinking about periodically bringing people together for community.
• 31:42
  And they were all like, that would be great. So you know, and I I
• 31:47
  I want to let them co-create what it is they want, you know, how often
• 31:52
  they want to get together, how much of it's social and how much of it
• 31:57
  is learning. And then I will support whatever it is that they want to come
• 32:03
  up with. and I'm excited about that because it is a lonely, it it it
• 32:08
  can be a lonely gig. And we are a safe space for our clients and
• 32:13
  then where do we really support each other. So I'm really glad to be a
• 32:18
  convener of space for fellow coaches.
• 32:24
  Just supporting people with lemonade stands.
• 32:27
  That's right. Right. I don't need to be the lemonade stand person. I'd just be
• 32:29
  like, All right, you got your you do you have your sugar? Do you have
• 32:31
  your lemons? Do you have that? Okay.
• 32:33
  Yeah. I love it. This is cool. And I I I I don't like this
• 32:36
  saying of like eating your own dog food, but like you're a coach who has
• 32:39
  coaching who does coaching and coaches themselves and there's a lot of drinking your own
• 32:42
  champagne is so much more fun. Sophisticated even. I think mine's a scrappy version.
• 32:46
  Can I offer drinking your own champagne? Thank you. All right. Well there we go.
• 32:51
  I have some some sophistication, even from the Midwest.
• 32:57
  Drinking your own champagne. I am absolutely using that from now on. All right, let
• 32:57
  me hit you with some lightning round, scrappy verse, sophisticated questions. All right. take me
• 32:58
  inside the office. How many monitors are on the desk right now? Two? Are they
• 32:59
  the same make and model? This is why we ask. do you have a docking
• 33:00
  station or a bunch of wires going going to the computer?
• 33:01
  Okay. okay. Yes. two. No. Bunch of wires. Well e yeah, bunch of wi well
• 33:12
  I guess I guess there is a kind No, there's a docking station. I take
• 33:24
  it back.
• 33:36
  All right. Okay. A very wishy washy answer. We'll keep moving though. any ridiculous office
• 33:37
  lighting that you do for conference calls where like there's a there's a lamp on
• 33:38
  a bar stool or something like that.
• 33:40
  Ha ha ha Occasionally yes, but I think what you will find funny is so
• 33:45
  I have my laptop, which is my second monitor, and it is on top of
• 33:50
  a former sort of file basket turned upside down so that it could be there.
• 33:56
  So that's why I was like, is there a documentation or not? forgot there's a
• 34:01
  documentation underneath it, which is why I was not.
• 34:07
  There we go. welcome to the show. This is great. Okay. what is the most
• 34:08
  unique thing in your office? It looks like you got a bunch of stuff on
• 34:09
  kinda like the bookshelf. Anything unique going on?
• 34:11
  Ha ha ha. Ooh. Well, I mean, okay, this might be one of well, this,
• 34:14
  I don't know, this is the most unique thing. This is one of my favorite
• 34:17
  things. This is all right. So when I was in Reading, my master's in medieval
• 34:20
  history, and one of my dearest friends, Manisha Dadlani, who has like she's she's born
• 34:23
  in India but raised in Ghana. And so she gave me some Ghanaian art, one
• 34:26
  of which is this. And so
• 34:29
  Okay. Nice, very unique.
• 34:47
  I would say that. And so I look at it every day. And so people
• 34:49
  can kind of see it a little bit here. I try to not block the
• 34:52
  view so people can see the head.
• 34:55
  Yeah, there's always there's always a story. Like and we were talking before this, like
• 34:56
  my background, people always get, you know, some some way to be like, what's that?
• 34:58
  What's that? Like it's worth having some unique things in the background, I think. Thank
• 34:59
  you. Thank you. All right. Scrappy days of business. You're just starting the player group.
• 35:01
  are you are you doing anything like ramen noodle dinners? Like are you cutting back?
• 35:02
  Like what's what's the vibe like when you're starting off?
• 35:04
  I mean, I love your pineapple, I love your Yukon and your bats. Yeah. Well,
• 35:11
  okay, so you have to remember like one at this point in my life, I
• 35:18
  probably started way older than a lot of folks. I'm married, I have two kids,
• 35:25
  my husband has like right his full time job. So from that perspective, not so
• 35:32
  scrappy, but I will say like dinner's out, way down. like entertainment budget, way down.
• 35:39
  Vacations, way down. but we made a deal, like everything else in the budget is
• 35:46
  gonna go. The last thing that's ever gonna go, because otherwise divorce will happen, is
• 35:53
  our cleaner.
• 36:01
  Nice. Saving the marriage. I love it. Okay. Very nice. may all right, so staying
• 36:01
  staying in the beginning days of the player group. scrappy marketing, shoestring budget, whatever you
• 36:02
  got going on. using your existing network like any any sort of hustle stories, any
• 36:03
  scrappy marketing moves to get some first clients.
• 36:04
  That's what saves the marriage, people. Keep the cleaner. Well, to this day I still
• 36:09
  only use LinkedIn. I'm not on any other network. and that is by design. and
• 36:15
  I don't know that I'm good at it. I'm on it a a lot. I
• 36:20
  now have a virtual assistant that helps me be on it, at least consistently. So
• 36:26
  that's helpful.
• 36:32
  Okay, sure. I would call that niching.
• 36:52
  And I will say also I was very fortunate that my f my last employer
• 36:53
  was has been a good client for me. So that has been helpful. and then
• 36:54
  being in Chicago, I'm a former, you know, employee of a company where there was
• 36:56
  a very strong HR network and there were like several now CHROs that came out
• 36:57
  of this company. So I did a lot of networking there.
• 36:59
  Nice. Okay.
• 37:21
  So that was helpful. And then it was I tried a lot of things, most
• 37:22
  of which did not work. Yeah, like I tried try putting together I tried products
• 37:24
  of like, okay, I tried group coaching and I tried to just, you know, put
• 37:26
  it out and put it into my network. Nope. I tried all these different things
• 37:27
  that I was like, but this, I know there's this need because I knew it
• 37:29
  from the internal side. Nope.
• 37:31
  Classic. Yep.
• 37:50
  Until I was finally like, okay, stop creating things and just go talk to people
• 37:54
  and what's their pain points and just meet them where they're at. And and then
• 37:59
  I flipped it to like, okay, just be open. What do they need and just
• 38:03
  do what they need? And then it just, you know, started. and then I also
• 38:08
  I think one of the best things I did was I joined sort of a
• 38:13
  boot camp for entrepreneurs. And it was so helpful because it just really gave me
• 38:17
  the the tools and the space and just forced me to clarify what was my
• 38:22
  ideal client, what was my ideal product that was based on the ideal client. That's
• 38:27
  how I got really clear on team coaching and what was my offering and thinking
• 38:31
  about my price point and how did I switch to value based pricing. Lots of
• 38:36
  things. so that was helpful.
• 38:41
  Okay, so I'm glad you brought up the ICT, the ICP, the IDL client. how
• 38:46
  much has that changed from day one to today?
• 38:51
  Honestly, not much. I think that's why I say like I really love middle market.
• 38:51
  And it's so funny because I thought right right, I grew up the first, you
• 38:51
  know, good half, good two thirds of my career is Fortune two fifty, Fortune one
• 38:51
  hundred. I was like, I'm gonna be that and then I was like, nope. And
• 38:51
  then I ended up
• 38:52
  Okay.
• 39:09
  really middle market. And then like I said, Hub served middle market. And I love
• 39:13
  middle market. And I really love, you know, really like 100 million to 700 million.
• 39:18
  Because once you're above 700 million and you're approaching a billion, the bigger firms start
• 39:22
  crouching down. I do not want to compete with them. I don't want to deal
• 39:27
  with them. I want people that are companies and teams that are a certain size
• 39:32
  and are getting to a certain complexity because they still are able to move fast.
• 39:36
  And they and they're starting to have heads of HR that are it's funny here's
• 39:41
  sophisticated enough they get it they're at the table and they also go I don't
• 39:45
  have capacity but I get it and I can bring Debbie in and I know
• 39:50
  she'll make a difference. So that's my sweet spot. So
• 39:55
  That's pretty good. having a clearly defined ICP is a very sophisticated move. I like
• 39:57
  it. take me inside. Right. Getting them, getting them to buy is a whole different
• 40:00
  story.
• 40:03
  How do I find them is the hard part. So Jack, can I use your
• 40:05
  data? Can you help me like find them better? Like how do I get in
• 40:08
  front of them better?
• 40:11
  Yeah. I'll throw a dashboard together. We'll make it work. take me inside the inbox.
• 40:19
  How many emails unread is too many.
• 40:27
  I always read them all. I don't get a ton. I mean, for me, because
• 40:30
  I'm so used to now I just have too many sitting in my inbox. I
• 40:34
  mean, I'm used to my corporate days where I would get anywhere from 100 to
• 40:37
  250 a day and I'd be like, ugh. So now, you know, my email traffic
• 40:41
  compared to that is nothing. I just don't like having all these emails sitting in
• 40:44
  my inbox. That drives me batting.
• 40:48
  Okay. All right. What's the first time of day in your morning routine or whatever
• 40:52
  it is that you allow yourself to look at your email?
• 40:56
  So I'm getting better at that because I have a new habit that I I
• 40:56
  have a habit that I have been doing in the mornings where I'm screen free,
• 40:56
  other than I use my phone to do my meditation and my yoga and I
• 40:57
  read a book and do things. I really try not to do it until I
• 40:57
  have done all that. So I'm probably not looking at it until seven thirty.
• 40:58
  Okay. Okay. And and when are you getting up? That's a couple is that an
• 41:10
  hour or so after?
• 41:23
  I get up at six, five fifty seven.
• 41:26
  Okay. An hour and a half to start the day. That's pretty good. That's pretty
• 41:29
  good. Usually when I ask that question, they're like, Well, it's supposed to be that,
• 41:33
  but it's really five minutes after I wake up.
• 41:37
  I try. There are some mornings Yeah. Some mornings it's like it's fifteen minutes, but
• 41:44
  then I'll go back to nothing. but it's it's the habit has definitely helped.
• 41:52
  Okay, okay. do you ask for referrals bluntly?
• 41:58
  No, I'm terrible at that, even though I know I should.
• 41:59
  Yeah. I am the same. I don't know if that's more sophisticated or more scrappy,
• 42:02
  to be honest. asking bluntly or n I I really don't know, but I think
• 42:06
  I think it's scrappy.
• 42:10
  And I think we should. And and the best producers, which are the it's the
• 42:13
  name of salespeople in well, you know this, like, right? In brokerage. They're like, if
• 42:16
  you like the work, if you if you'd recommend the work that we would do
• 42:20
  together, can you give me the names of like who are three people that you
• 42:23
  think I should talk to? It's not hard. I have someone I've been working with
• 42:26
  for five years.
• 42:30
  Right. And it's still terrifying to ask, though. When you have to drink your own
• 42:31
  champagne and eat what you kill, whatever phrase we're gonna use in there, it's so
• 42:32
  terrifying to do something that could be slightly off-putting to somebody. I I I'm in
• 42:33
  I'm a hundred percent in the same boat. all right, last couple ones here. if
• 42:34
  somebody's trying to schedule a meeting with you, are you saying, Hey, you know, I'm
• 42:35
  free later this week, or are you sending a calendar link?
• 42:37
  I know. always say do you have I said, Tell me what times work best
• 42:52
  for you or if it's easier, here's my calendarly link. Whatever works best.
• 43:08
  Very nice. Very polite. Okay. Fair. Do you recommend books or do you recommend podcasts?
• 43:09
  Both.
• 43:11
  Sorry, I'm at rest. That's what we do. We're polite. Yes. I'm a reader and
• 43:14
  I like to know like what do people like? But I I always give people
• 43:18
  I like giving people a playlist that has both.
• 43:22
  Okay. Wow. All right. That's pretty good. how often are you working from your couch?
• 43:37
  more often now because my husband gave me for was it like one Mother's Day
• 43:40
  or my birthday. They're around the same, so I never remembered which. it was a
• 43:44
  lap desk, like it was a like a beanbag thing on one side and then
• 43:48
  a hardcover. So now I can do it and it doesn't hurt my back. And
• 43:52
  when I'm sick of working in my office and I actually want to be around
• 43:56
  people.
• 44:00
  Okay. All right. That's pretty good. all right, last one. You have you're going through
• 44:05
  your day, thirty minute meeting cancels at four PM. What you doing with that thirty
• 44:11
  minutes?
• 44:17
  It depends. It totally depends. because I have my list of to dos. So can
• 44:23
  I hit off something in my to do? Is usually that it's usually that. I'm
• 44:29
  gonna look at something in my to do list. Yeah.
• 44:36
  All right. that's pretty good. That's pretty sophisticated. I I gotta say, so this is
• 44:36
  final verdict time. There's a there's a healthy amount of scrappiness, but there's some sophistication
• 44:37
  in here too. We might have to go like a two thirds scrappy, one third
• 44:37
  sophisticated, I think. I love it though. Debbie Plager, thank you so much for coming
• 44:38
  on. what do you want the folks out there to know? Anything you want to
• 44:38
  promote?
• 44:39
  is that? Okay. Where did I land? Am I scrapping? Alright, I'll take it. I'll
• 44:45
  take it. yes. first of all, if you have any questions or any needs about
• 44:51
  like, hey, I'm someone that wants to develop myself, or I have a team member
• 44:57
  that is looking to get to the next level or is maybe getting in their
• 45:03
  own way, or I am leading a team that we need to get product out
• 45:10
  the door, we need to get our revenue up, come find me. You can find
• 45:16
  me at theplagergroup dot com. I'm online, LinkedIn, you can find me at Debbie at
• 45:22
  the plague group dot com. and I would love to talk, see how we can
• 45:28
  help.
• 45:35
  Awesome. Everybody, give her a shout. It'll be a fun conversation. It'll be a nice
• 45:36
  Midwest friendly conversation. I guarantee it. Awesome. Again, thank you so much for coming on,
• 45:38
  Deb Debbie. And everybody, stay data driven.
• 45:38
  That's right.