Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Upper Arrow Success: Sydne Jacques' Framework for Employee Retention and Culture Change

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Upper Arrow Success: Sydne Jacques' Framework for Employee Retention and Culture Change · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Sydney Jakes. She is the CEO, leadership
0:21
keynote speaker and strategic consultant at Next Level
0:25
Leadership based in Orem, UT. She focuses on helping
0:29
organizations improve workplace culture, reduce turnover, and
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enhance leadership effectiveness through proven frameworks like
0:38
the Upper Arrow Growth Model and the Retention Revolution.
0:43
Sydney's background in engineering stretches back over
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36 years, including her time as CEO of an award-winning
0:51
engineering firm. She has also developed
0:54
leadership tools that make complex challenges easier to
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approach. With her combination of
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technical expertise and people centric insights, Sydney has
1:03
guided hundreds of teams to foster engagement and drive real
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results. Her organization's mission is
1:10
simple, Partner with leaders to transform workplace culture so
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employees stay and thrive. She's written a book called
1:19
Build What Matters that talks about how building people is our
1:22
life's work. Whether leading a workshop or
1:25
delivering A keynote, Sydney's approach is practical,
1:28
empowering, and always rooted in experience.
1:32
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2:16
All right, back to our guest today, CEO, Sidney Speaks.
2:20
Sidney Jakes, thanks for making the time to Share your story
2:23
today. Thank you, Anthony.
2:25
I'm so excited to be here today. So, Sidney, you grew up on a
2:29
farm in Montana and in your words, you had incredible
2:34
parents and influences. How did that early life shape
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your approach to leadership and personal development?
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I think it's one of those things I did not.
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Obviously, I think a lot of things, we don't realize them at
2:47
the time. But as I look back on my career
2:51
and the things that I've felt passionate and moved to do and
2:57
including writing my recent book, so much of it comes back
3:01
to my roots on the farm. And you know, I, I just had
3:04
parents that were loving and caring.
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There was 5 kids in my family, but my parents, they never
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missed one of my basketball games or my sister's concert at
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my brother's football games. And one of the things that's
3:18
interesting is that in addition to being there to cheer us on,
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they kind of became the the team parent that everybody looked
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forward to seeing them because they were just so positive and
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caring. And, and then growing up on a
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farm, he learned how to work. But my dad always taught us like
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one of the number one mottos was we work hard, but we play hard.
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And so Saturdays were full of chores, but then there was
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always some sort of a reward at the end of the day, a softball
3:45
game or a trip to Dairy Queen or something.
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And and as I look back in what I learned about leadership, I
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think so much of it stems from my early lessons on the farm
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with my mom and dad. Work hard, play hard.
3:58
How does that show up in today's life?
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I often have people say I just can't believe how much you play,
4:07
and I do. I work hard.
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But every quarter my husband and I make sure we take at least one
4:13
week off, if not more. And so I just, I think it's
4:17
important, I think one of one of the lessons my parents taught
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that I, I try to teach others that I work with is it's
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important to have something to look forward to.
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For me, that's travel. I love vacations.
4:30
I love seeing new parts of the world and spending time with my
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family. Every morning when I get up, I
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know that there's something out there on the horizon that's on
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my calendar that I'm looking forward to.
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And that helps me. I love my work but I also have
4:44
love having things to look forward to also.
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What's an upcoming trip that you're really looking forward
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to? Some place you haven't been yet?
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My husband, I actually got invited by some friends to go to
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Rhodes, Greece. They own a home there.
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She was originally from there. They're an older couple in their
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80s, and they've been wanting us to come for a few years and we
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finally got it on the calendar to go in October.
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So we're excited. Nice.
5:09
So Sydney, you started out as a civil engineer and you pretty
5:14
quickly realized you were not built to sit in a cubicle and do
5:18
design work. But you stuck with it for
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several more years. Why?
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The biggest reason was because as a civil engineer, in order to
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earn your professional license, you have to have four years
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experience working under another professional engineer and then
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take a big nasty test. And I just felt like no matter
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what I ended up doing, because I didn't know what I would end up
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doing in life, that whatever I did, it would be better if I had
5:46
my professional engineering license as a, as a credibility
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and a, and a fall back really. So I just, I had to, I had to
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just keep working until I got to that point before I I could
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really start looking at other options.
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So that's interesting. Usually when somebody realizes,
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wow, this is not for me, this is not what I'm wired for, they
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look for something else pretty quickly.
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But you stuck it out for another four years.
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Yeah, it was. I mean, at the time, you know,
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I'm in my 20s. I don't really know what I'm
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doing. So I I just, I felt like it was
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an important step in my journey. School, school was hard for me.
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So after getting through that much school, I'm like, I'm not
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quitting until I have that PE license and then I'll see what
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the next step is from there. Sydney I often ask my guests
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what book that they would recommend to listeners, and one
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of the most popular answers I get is Stephen Covey's 7 Habits
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of Highly Successful People. You actually had the chance to
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learn directly from him. How did that opportunity come
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about? So I will say this is one of the
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greatest blessings of my life. Honestly.
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When I was working as an engineer, the organization I was
6:57
working for, they decided they needed some help with training
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and personal development and leadership training.
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And so being in Utah, they had the opportunity to contract with
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the Covey Leadership Center. And I think because of my
7:16
outgoing personality, especially compared to the other engineers,
7:20
they asked me if I would like the opportunity to go get
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trained through the Stephen Covey staff.
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And, and some of those meetings were with Stephen Covey to
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become certified in seven Habits of highly affected people and
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Principal Centered leadership. And so I, I jumped at that
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opportunity, obviously. And it really was life changing
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for me in two ways. One, because of the content and
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internalizing the content, Stephen Covey's principle of
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begin with the end in mind. That was the first time that I
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really started writing a vision of if I got out of this cubicle,
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what would I want my life to be like?
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And I remember, and I still have it, I wrote down this vision of
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working from home, making six figures from home and taking my
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kids to school every day and not to a babysitter.
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And, and I really created that vision because of that.
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But then the other thing that happened was it got me out of my
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cubicle and in front of people doing the training.
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And I realized that that was my happy place.
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I loved, loved speaking in front of people.
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And it was that that Covey leadership training that really
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gave me those opportunities and, and opened those doors and gave
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me that that hope that, oh, maybe there is something outside
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of this cubicle that I could do. So I'm kind of getting the sense
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of how the stars are starting to align for you, right?
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You're you, you stuck it out. You got your license.
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Now you're realizing that you enjoyed leadership and training,
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and that you have and a more engaging personality than
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perhaps most engineers do. And so this all lines up to take
9:05
it from there. Well, I created that vision and
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every morning when I was running, I would repeat that
9:13
vision in my head of I'm going to start my own business.
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And I had a very, very detailed of all the things that I would
9:22
do. And so when I had my third baby,
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it was just a, a time of reflection.
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And actually I read a article by Michael Jordan that talked about
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fear in one of my Covey leadership magazines.
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And Michael Jordan said, think about fear.
9:40
You can't taste it, you can't touch it, you can't smell it, it
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can't hurt you. So why do we make so many
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decisions in our life based on what we fear?
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And that day, something just clicked for me.
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And I remember coming home and talking to my husband and
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saying, you know, the worst thing that could happen if I
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quit my job and started my business and it didn't work.
10:00
The worst thing that could happen is I might have to go get
10:02
another job as an engineer. And honestly, that didn't scare
10:06
me because I was an engineer that had a personality, had
10:08
communication skills. I'm like, I know somebody would
10:11
hire me. And so that was the day that I
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just decided it was time to go out on my own.
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And see if I can make it work. So what had been holding you
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back up to that point? If you were to think back to
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what the fear was, was it simply a fear of failure, or was it
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something else? It was a fear of failure.
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And you know, I had, I had a great job with good pay and good
10:34
benefits. And to walk away from all that,
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yeah, it was scary. So you started your own civil
10:42
engineering firm then? So my my first company, my
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tagline is the people side of engineering.
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And so instead of doing the actual engineering work, it's
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kind of a weird niche, but we did it's called partnering in
10:59
public involvement. And so it wasn't the actual
11:03
engineering design, but it was working with teams and bringing
11:07
teams together and then working with the public.
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So like Department of Transportation would hire US,
11:13
cities would hire us to go out and be the liaison between the
11:17
project and the public. So we would do websites, emails,
11:21
people would call us all the time to complain about the
11:23
projects. So that was that was the kind of
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work that we did. So I built a team of had around
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15 people when I sold that business.
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And was that those people that were working with you, were they
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also engineers or more like communication specialists?
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Yeah, more communication and project managers.
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OK. And so when did you sell that
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company? Five years ago.
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OK, why exit? I really wanted to focus on the
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speaking and training and getting my book written.
11:55
And so I had a it's interesting story.
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I actually had a engineering firm that wanted to buy us and
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we went through months of valuation and all of that.
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And then one of my employees, my most senior employees came to me
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and he said I don't want to work for anybody else.
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What if I match the offer and I buy you out and keep the company
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just as it is because I love what you've built and I love the
12:21
way it operates. And so that's what we did.
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And it's been awesome because it's still called Jakes and
12:26
Associates and they still are doing great business.
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But I've been able to hand that off to him.
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And then I just a lot more opportunities and freedom to do
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the speaking and the training. OK.
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So then I want to hear more about what you built Jakes and
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associates into. So I understand kind of what the
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idea was and sort of this go between, you know, doing a lot
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of communications. But how did you get?
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Let's go back to the beginning. How did you get your first
12:52
client? Well, I while I again, while I
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was working as an engineer, I had a chance to be a guest
13:02
speaker at some conferences and one of them was the Utah Water
13:07
Users Conference. And so I had just kind of
13:11
collected some fans there, quite honestly, whenever I would speak
13:15
there at the same group of engineers and consultants would
13:18
show up to hear me speak. And so when I went out on my
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own, they were the first people that I contacted.
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And I just said no, I decided I'm going on my own.
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And these are the the services that I'm offering.
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And it did take a while to figure out, you know, exactly my
13:35
services and who would pay for them and how to make that work.
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But it was, it was exciting times.
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It was it was hard. It was really hard.
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But I think are there. Other groups out there that do
13:46
the same kind of thing or were you sort of like inventing this
13:50
whole business? Well, it's interesting because I
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think as an entrepreneur, you're always looking for
13:57
opportunities. And so I saw, I saw a group in
14:01
Arizona when I was doing a presentation there that was
14:04
doing this kind of public involvement work.
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So I came back to Utah and started talking to people about
14:09
it. And I, I really am considered a,
14:13
a pioneer in, in public involvement in Utah because I, I
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helped develop a lot of the processes and was early on it.
14:22
And now they're, I think there's like 27 different companies in
14:25
Utah, but. You were the first.
14:30
Yeah, OK. You're the trailblazer.
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Yeah. OK.
14:37
So that business is going well. It's going really well.
14:39
You built a great reputation. You're able to exit to your
14:44
partner and you want or somebody that worked with you and you
14:47
wanted to exit because you saw more opportunities and perhaps
14:52
even more fulfilment in doing the kind of work that you're
14:55
doing now as you're making this leap again, right?
14:59
Initially you went from this like secure job with great
15:02
benefits. You make a leap, start your own
15:04
business, not knowing what's going to happen.
15:06
It goes well, but now you got a great company, things are steady
15:09
and now you're going to make another leap into something.
15:11
Did you have like a a stable of clients lined up as you were
15:15
making that transition? Partially because I, I really
15:21
kind of took the company and, and split the services that we
15:24
offered into. So the, I was already doing a
15:27
lot of facilitation and leadership training and a little
15:31
bit of speaking. And so basically when we split
15:34
the company, he took the public involvement on all the employees
15:37
and I kept the, the training that I had already created and I
15:41
was doing. So it wasn't starting from
15:43
scratch, but it definitely took some time again to build up the
15:49
clientele and the income to get to where I wanted to be.
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And and how did you do that would have been sort of the
15:54
biggest growth levers for you? Common denominator speaking at
16:00
conferences seems to seems to always be always be a good way.
16:05
And then going to people that I had relationships with.
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It's interesting as I look back on my business, even from the
16:12
very beginning, it really has grown pretty organically.
16:17
And so, you know, just focusing on people that already trusted
16:22
me that I had good relationships with and, and sharing that this
16:26
is what I'm doing now. And these are the, the services
16:28
that we offer. And that's where some of my
16:32
first consulting and training contracts came from were
16:36
existing people are people that heard me speak and then we're
16:40
interested after that. So talk more specifically about
16:45
what it is that you do for your clients.
16:48
All right, so there's there's basically three different things
16:51
that we offer. So the first one is keynote
16:53
speaking and that can be like at an association conference.
16:57
So every year I have the chance to present it the world of
17:01
concrete. My husband always laughs.
17:03
He thinks that's funny, but association conferences, the
17:07
higher speakers, I love to do that.
17:10
And then leadership training where we come in and we do
17:15
leadership training and it can be a full day or preferably like
17:20
one of my clients, we come in every other month and and do the
17:23
training. So we're continually building on
17:26
the concepts as I've done a lot of research on turnover and how
17:31
do we better retain employees. One of the common factors that
17:36
shows up in every industry is that there's really a lack of
17:40
good training for leaders. And so often times people get
17:44
promoted to be a supervisor because they were good at their
17:47
work, but now, now they're expected to be a supervisor, but
17:51
we don't invest in in training them, helping them learn how to
17:55
be a good leader, how to be a good supervisor.
17:57
And so, so that's another service that we offer is, is the
18:01
leadership training. And one of the interesting
18:05
products that we've created that has been a really successful
18:10
clients too, is that we do a micro learning where every
18:14
Monday we drop a 3 minute video on a leadership concept.
18:19
So it might be on how to better communicate or build trust or
18:23
have more clarity and roles and responsibilities.
18:26
And so every Monday there's a 3 minute video that gets dropped
18:30
to can either go to all the employees or just everyone in a
18:33
leadership position. And then a lot of our clients
18:36
are using that in their weekly team meeting.
18:39
They actually show that 3 minute video and everyone ends with a
18:42
challenge of this week. I challenge you to.
18:46
And, and so that's, that's kind of a, a unique model that we,
18:51
that we use that's been really successful because people are
18:54
busy. But if you give them, you know,
18:56
just three minutes of content to focus on, that's been
19:00
successful. And then the third thing is
19:03
organizational consulting, where we'll work with an organization
19:06
on a year long contract to help them improve their culture,
19:11
reduce turnover, create better leaders.
19:15
Basically, our goal is to create cultures where people want to
19:18
stay. What's the single biggest
19:23
mistake that you see people make as first time leaders?
19:32
I think, I think they don't realize how hard it is.
19:39
Honestly, I think they just, they, I think typically we look
19:43
at leaders and think, oh, they get paid more money than I do.
19:46
It can't be that hard. But there's something that
19:48
happens, especially if now all of a sudden you're leading the
19:51
same people that you used to be a peer with, that's challenging
19:56
because you have to have hard conversations and, and you, you
19:59
have to communicate differently and more frequently.
20:02
And, and so I, I think really that's one of the, the hardest
20:07
things is just realizing that, that it, that it's probably
20:11
harder than it looks. And like I say, if your company
20:15
doesn't give you training, it's really hard to just figure it
20:19
out on your own. So as you're coaching a first
20:23
time leader, what's a Golden Nugget piece of advice that you
20:27
love to give them on how to handle the people side of what
20:32
they're doing now? Again, it comes back to models I
20:36
love to work in, in models that are sticky.
20:39
So I'll share one with you really quickly.
20:41
It's called the hip model and it is a way to have a conversation.
20:48
It you asked three questions. The first thing and, and I'll
20:52
just say going into it, this can be something where you're,
20:54
you're handling a difficult conversation or we also
20:58
encourage people to use this to appreciate and recognize people
21:02
because that is one thing we are not good at.
21:05
Never had anybody say I just get too much recognition.
21:09
I can't stand it. Like it doesn't happen.
21:12
So anyway, this the hip model you, you answered three
21:15
questions. The first one is what is
21:17
happening or what happened. The second one is what's the
21:21
impact of that and the third one is what is our plan moving
21:26
forward? Would you like a quick example?
21:30
I would love one, OK. So one of one of our engineering
21:34
firms, they have a, they have a rule basically that any work
21:40
that goes out to the client has to be approved by the principal
21:43
because they do very technical work.
21:45
So one of the principles of the company has to approve that.
21:47
So they had one engineer that just really had a hard time
21:51
meeting his deadlines and over and over.
21:53
And so they had set a deadline for a Thursday at 4:00.
21:57
He was going to have his work turned in.
21:58
So the principal could review it on Friday because it had to be
22:01
to the client on Monday. So Thursday at 4:00 comes and
22:05
goes, Friday it's Friday at 4:30, the principal gets the
22:12
work that he needs to review before Monday.
22:15
So he comes in on Saturday, he gets it done.
22:18
And when he sat down to have a hip conversation with that
22:21
engineer, he said it went like this.
22:24
He said, I said this is what's happening consistently.
22:26
You keep meeting missing the deadlines and for instance, this
22:31
week this is what happened. The impact was I have 7 year old
22:35
twins and I had plans with them on Saturday and I had to cancel
22:40
my plans with my kids so that I could come in and review this.
22:44
So we didn't let the client down and our plan moving forward is
22:48
this has to change. We can't continue to work like
22:51
this. And he said, you know, something
22:53
just changed it helping him see it in that framework.
22:57
And so being engineers, they have a whole spreadsheet that
23:00
they, it's the first question is always, have you had the hip
23:03
conversation? And so it's really, really
23:06
powerful. But like I say, on the
23:08
recognition side, I had a president in one of my
23:10
construction companies call me the other day and he said, I
23:13
just have to tell you about this hip conversation I had.
23:16
He said, I went out to one of our big projects unannounced and
23:19
so I called the crew together and I said, OK, this is what's
23:22
happening. You guys didn't know I was
23:24
coming, but this work site is so clean and so organized.
23:29
I am so impressed. And the impact is I'm happy the
23:33
client is happy. We have safer work site when
23:36
we're clean and organized. And the plan is we're here for 2
23:40
1/2 years, so let's continue to make this happen for 2 1/2
23:44
years. But he said just using your
23:46
framework just gave me the right formula and the the right words
23:50
to instantly call them together and recognize them for the good
23:53
work that they had done. With that that vision of moving
23:56
forward, we want to continue to do the same thing.
24:00
I love those examples. Thank you for sharing those.
24:04
The intro we talked about the upper arrow growth model and
24:09
retention revolution frameworks. Has anything we've talked about
24:14
so far fall into one of those two things?
24:17
And if not, can you kind of breakdown what each of those
24:20
are? Yeah, for sure.
24:22
So the upper arrow, it's really fun because I it stems from when
24:27
I started my own business and I really didn't know what I was
24:31
doing. And so I started studying other
24:33
businesses to see what they did to become successful.
24:37
And I realized that every successful business had two
24:40
things. They had quality products and
24:42
services and they had satisfied customers.
24:46
So being an engineer, I was trying to figure out what's the
24:48
relationship with that. And I thought, well, if you
24:51
imagine a graph like this, maybe on the on the axis is 0, If
24:57
there is zero quality, they'll be 0 customer satisfaction.
25:00
And I just thought if you improve your quality, they'll
25:02
just be more and more satisfied. But what I realized is there
25:06
comes this point of diminishing returns where you can continue
25:09
to increase the quality, but the customers aren't going to
25:11
notice. So then, and I actually learned
25:14
this principle by studying the airlines because I realized that
25:18
every airline tries to get you there safely and on time.
25:21
That's the lower arrow. But then like, if they all do
25:26
that, what differentiates them? So I started looking at what I
25:29
call the upper arrow, and it was things like, do I have to pay to
25:33
check my bags? What kind of snacks are they
25:36
going to give me on the airplane?
25:37
Do I get free Wi-Fi? Do I get a screen to watch my
25:40
movies? What's their frequent flyer
25:42
program like? And those are all the upper
25:45
arrows. Those are the things they do
25:47
that differentiate them and set them apart.
25:50
And so as I was building my business and I was kind of
25:53
discovering this, I was thinking, well, what's my upper
25:55
arrow going to be? And I remembered back to a time
25:59
when I was getting trained to be a facilitator and I was in a
26:04
workshop in Minneapolis. And on Monday we got these fresh
26:08
baked chocolate chip cookies at 3:00.
26:11
They were so good. And Tuesday, Wednesday,
26:14
Thursday, right at 3:00, the same delicious chocolate chip
26:17
cookies. And on Friday, I've literally
26:20
got a Ziploc bag in my purse, thinking when that guy comes
26:22
with the cookies, I might eat these for dinner tonight because
26:25
I don't know if I'll have time for dinner before I get on the
26:27
plane. And Friday came, it was 3:00 and
26:31
then it was 3:15 and 3:30 and 3:45.
26:34
And I'm thinking, did he get in an accident?
26:36
Did he get his job? What happened to him?
26:39
And at 4:00, they took our picture and sent us on the way.
26:42
And so I realized that every meeting is better if you have
26:46
chocolate chip cookies. And so as I was looking at
26:50
building my business, I thought, how many engineers do you know
26:53
that would make chocolate chip cookies for your meetings and
26:55
your clients? And I didn't know anybody that
26:57
would do that. So I decided that would be my
26:59
upper arrow, that I would start baking chocolate chip cookies
27:02
and pretty soon people would say, hey, have you met with a
27:04
cookie lady yet? You know?
27:07
And so even to this day, I can't show up anywhere without
27:10
chocolate chip cookies. It's become my trademark are.
27:15
You still baking them yourself? Usually.
27:18
Last week I spoke in Montana to a group of 1500 people.
27:21
I did not bake those myself, but we still had them.
27:25
We still had individually wrapped chocolate chip cookies,
27:27
So. Well, there's worse things to be
27:30
known than as the Cookie Lady, right?
27:32
That's true. That's true.
27:34
So the upper arrow basically refers to what is.
27:38
How are you going to take your service to the next level,
27:40
right? How are you going to
27:40
differentiate yourself? Exactly, Yeah.
27:43
Can you give any? So that's your example.
27:45
Can you give an example of how you coached a client into
27:48
finding their own upper arrow? Yeah, I've actually done a lot
27:52
of research and I've found that there's there's three things
27:56
typically that clients will say this is an upper arrow.
28:00
And one is, are you using technology to to to give them
28:06
the best, the best service that they can.
28:09
So like in engineering and construction, the people that
28:12
are that are hiring you to design or to build something,
28:16
they don't know what the technologies are that are
28:18
available. They want to trust that you're
28:20
using them. The second thing is
28:22
communication. They tell me that everybody
28:26
better provide a quality product or they wouldn't hire them.
28:30
They're like quality does not differentiate.
28:32
But the way that you communicate with me and you let me know
28:35
ahead of time if there's going to be a problem.
28:38
And, and I see this over and over.
28:39
It's not only in engineering, but I have a good friend that
28:42
owns a software company and she's like, if we're can see
28:46
that we're going to miss a deadline, we can't wait until we
28:49
get there. We got to be talking ahead of
28:50
time. We got to be over communicating.
28:53
And that's an upper arrow as clients want communication.
28:57
They want to know where things are at.
28:58
They want to know if there's a problem on the horizon.
29:01
But I really think the most important of all is trust.
29:04
People want to work with someone that they can trust.
29:07
And so one of the courses that I have is it's literally a 2 day
29:11
course on how to build trust both internally with your team
29:16
and externally with your clients.
29:20
So that one's interesting for me because when I hear you say that
29:23
how to build trust is an upper arrow like or building trust is
29:27
an upper arrow, to me trust should be table stakes like
29:30
that. That should be a requirement to
29:33
to get into the conversation. Am I thinking about this wrong?
29:37
It should be. But it's not in reality.
29:41
Some sometimes I say what's common sense isn't common
29:44
practice. No.
29:47
And and I think, I think that's where trust is.
29:49
I think that I think we all think that we are trusted in the
29:53
way we do things. But the reality is people want
29:57
to do work with people that they trust.
30:00
So what's a good trust building exercise for?
30:04
Folks, well, there's the trust fall, one of the, one of the
30:11
exercises that we work with teams on, one of the, we call
30:15
them the pillars of trust. One of the pillars of trust is
30:18
connection. And so just helping people learn
30:21
how to better connect again, both internally on your team and
30:26
with your external clients. But one of the tools that we use
30:31
is it's simple tool, but so powerful and it's called
30:36
connection questions. And so I have a list of over 100
30:40
connection questions. If you'd like to offer them to
30:42
your audience, I'd be happy to share.
30:44
But what we encourage people to teams to do is to start every
30:48
team meeting with a simple connection question.
30:51
And it can be something. And one of my favourites is if
30:54
money were no object and you could travel anywhere in the
30:56
world, where would you go? But what happens is when every
31:00
person starts the meeting by every person answering a
31:03
question, not only do you get to know each other better, and as
31:08
you go on week by week, you're going to have different
31:10
questions and learn different things.
31:12
But the other thing that happens is you're starting the meeting
31:14
with every single person participating and opening their
31:18
mouth. And you're sending the message
31:20
that what you have to say. I value that.
31:23
It's important to me to hear from you and many organizations
31:27
when we come in and start working with them, A meeting is
31:30
led by a leader who who pretty much is 90% of the conversation
31:36
in that meeting. And they tell you this is what
31:38
we're doing this week and this is how it goes.
31:40
And there's not, there's not the interaction, there's not the
31:43
connection. And so that's one, that's one of
31:46
the, the greatest tools that we've used both again, for
31:50
internal teams or if you're working on a project team and
31:54
working with people from different organizations, it's,
31:57
it's a great way to just really break down barriers and create
32:00
more connection. And the reality is that the more
32:03
connected we are, the more we trust.
32:06
I can definitely see how those questions get people to know
32:08
each other better and the more we know each other, you know,
32:12
the, I think the better things generally are.
32:15
And then what struck me as you continue to describe that, you
32:18
know, when you in a traditional meeting setting, when you've got
32:20
somebody who's doing the bulk of the talking, other people,
32:24
whether they realize it or not, they're almost being trained to
32:26
be silent, right? And so when you start out that
32:29
meeting and you're giving everybody a chance to sort of
32:32
break that seal on their mouth, break that, you know, proverbial
32:35
ice it, it, it, it opens up the, the entire meeting to to more
32:40
dialogue. Yeah, I, I was speaking at a
32:43
conference in Idaho, I think it was last year.
32:45
And I and I had a gentleman come up and he's like, I know you're
32:48
not going to Remember Me, but two years ago I was in one of
32:51
your workshops and you told us we should do connection
32:53
questions. And I rolled my eyes, but the
32:55
president of the company was there and he said, we're going
32:57
to do this in every weekly meeting.
33:00
And he said one of the things that we learned is that
33:03
especially for construction people who are not used to
33:05
talking a lot, He said, if we put that question on the agenda,
33:10
then people would come in and they would be looking at the
33:13
agenda, like, what's the question this week?
33:15
And it got to where people really looked forward to it.
33:17
But it also gave them a chance to prepare and, you know, not
33:21
feel like they were ever caught off guard.
33:22
But he's like, people would start saying, well, this would
33:25
be a good connection question. Let's use this one next time.
33:28
And he said I, I was a amazed, I couldn't believe how much that
33:32
changed the culture of our team. Wow, is this something that
33:35
works well for remote teams as as well?
33:38
It does, absolutely, yeah. Let's hear about the Retention
33:43
Revolution framework. What's that?
33:45
OK, so the retention revolution about 3 years ago, I really dove
33:49
deep into the topic of retention.
33:52
I did a lot of research and so there the retention revolution
33:56
framework is, it's a, it's a, it's a 10/10 step map of how to
34:03
create cultures where people want to stay.
34:05
So it includes things like the upper arrow, identifying what
34:09
your customers how how do we serve our customers with upper
34:12
arrows, but then taking that upper arrow and internally
34:16
saying what are upper arrows that we're providing to our
34:19
employees. This was a real experience that
34:23
happened to me as I was orienting some new employees and
34:26
I always get out my flip chart. My team used to tease me.
34:29
I couldn't, I couldn't think without a flip chart and markers
34:32
in my hand. But I had my flip chart out and
34:35
I was doing the upper arrow teaching my employees that we're
34:38
always looking for ways that we can exceed our customers
34:42
expectations. And, and that I expected them to
34:44
not only take cookies to all their meetings, but to be
34:47
looking for ways and additional upper arrows.
34:50
And as I sat there and I was drawing the upper arrow and then
34:54
I saw all of my employees, I was like, wait a minute.
34:57
I don't just want customers that are extremely satisfied and
35:01
loyal. I want every one of these
35:03
employees to be extremely satisfied and loyal.
35:06
And so I started to just really ponder on this idea that that
35:10
upper arrow applies internally. We need to be looking at ways
35:16
that we can exceed our employee expectations so that we do
35:21
create places where they want to stay.
35:23
And so that's that's the basis of the retention revolution is
35:27
taking those and saying, you know, how are we communicating
35:30
with our employees? What ways are we like one, one
35:34
of the frameworks that we talked about is financially, you know,
35:37
we have to give them pay and benefits.
35:40
That's the lower arrow where they're not going to stay
35:42
around, but upper arrow. What can we do different that
35:47
makes them think I'm never going to leave?
35:49
And some of the companies that we work with, they have a bonus
35:54
system, but it's it's where the bonus is money to go towards a
35:59
vacation. They can't use the money to pay
36:01
their utilities or pay off a bill.
36:04
It has to be a vacation. And they get reimbursed for
36:08
their, you know, they turn in their receipts and they get
36:11
reimbursed. Well, guess what happens?
36:13
The spouse is like, you're not leaving this company.
36:15
I like these. You're leaving vacations, you
36:17
know, and the kids start to look forward to, you know, the
36:21
vacation. And so just ways that we can
36:24
creatively figure out what are, what are things as employers
36:28
that we can do to retain our people because those kind of
36:31
things make a difference. So whether it's that specific
36:34
story or a different example, I would be curious to hear about
36:40
an idea that you helped to introduce to a company that made
36:44
a big difference in sort of turning around the culture.
36:48
OK, Well, just sticking with the, the Upper Arrow, one of the
36:53
construction companies that I was working with as we were
36:55
talking about one of the, again, one of the, the Upper Arrow
36:59
frameworks that I have them dig into is fulfillment.
37:03
And we know more and more employees are saying they want
37:06
to be fulfilled by their work. They want, they they want to,
37:11
they want work to be fulfilling. And as I was working with this
37:15
company, they're an excavation company and you know, the, the
37:20
president of the company, he's, he's so awesome.
37:22
He's always open to, to being creative.
37:26
But he said, you know, it's really not that fulfilling to go
37:29
dig a hole, bury a, bury a pipe and leave.
37:33
And, and so he started to realize that his employees that
37:37
were doing that work, they never truly saw the end product.
37:42
And so one of the things that they started doing was they
37:45
started saying, OK, when we finish a product or when we
37:48
finish a project, whether it's a, it might be a water treatment
37:52
plant, it might be building a hospital.
37:54
And they did the work a long time ago and the groundwork to
37:57
bring the employees back and say, look what you were a part
38:00
of this, this building wouldn't be here.
38:03
These children wouldn't be treated had you not done the
38:06
literal dirt work to create the foundation to make that happen.
38:11
And so it's been, it's been a, it's been a huge change for them
38:15
and, and employees are more fulfilled and, and they love
38:18
that opportunity to celebrate and come back.
38:21
How great of him to kind of recognize that, right?
38:25
That, yeah, I mean, these guys are doing their job.
38:28
They they go on to the next job, but they don't get to see the
38:31
finished product. They're there doing the stuff
38:33
that gets buried in the ground and is so necessary, but people,
38:37
you know, never really see or pay attention to.
38:39
That's that's a really cool. Story.
38:41
Yeah. How about kind of at the other
38:43
end of the spectrum where you've got things that are are toxic or
38:47
broken? What are some common warning
38:49
signs that leaders often miss? Well, the first one that comes
38:59
to mind is Turnover. I, I think, I think sometimes we
39:03
want to think that if people are leaving that it's their fault.
39:08
But you see it a lot with the generations that, you know, if,
39:11
if people aren't staying, then it's, it's the generations fault
39:16
'cause they're just job hoppers and they're not loyal.
39:19
But again, I turn that around. And this part of the retention
39:22
revolution is I think it's our our role to create a picture of
39:27
the future that they need to be able to see.
39:31
Number one, we need to express more often that we want them to
39:34
stay at. But number 2, they need to be
39:38
able to see that there is a future there for them.
39:42
And one quick little story. I was speaking at a conference
39:45
in Chicago and I that went to the dinner the night before just
39:49
to meet people. And it's kind of funny.
39:51
I was in Chicago, but the first person I met was from Utah and I
39:55
just said to her, hi, I'm Sydney with next level leadership.
39:59
Who are you? And and she said, I'm Becky.
40:02
I work at Big D construction and I'm a lifer.
40:06
And I was like, what? And she said, oh, I'll, I'll
40:09
never work anywhere else. I'm a lifer.
40:11
And I said that. Was part of her introduction.
40:13
Part of her introduction and I said how old are you?
40:17
And she said, I'm 27 and I said, how do you know that you'll be a
40:22
lifer? And she's like, I love the
40:24
company. I love they live their values.
40:26
I love the leadership and I know that they will always be a
40:29
future for me. Well, funny thing, because she's
40:32
from Utah. We were both involved in women
40:34
in construction. We end up becoming friends.
40:36
And that was 10 years ago. And she has recently just
40:40
received a big promotion in HR and she's a lifer.
40:44
She's not. And, and I, I credit that
40:46
company with creating that vision from when she first
40:50
started that there is a path for you.
40:52
We don't want you to say, oh, I can't grow.
40:55
I'm going to go look somewhere else.
40:56
I think too often we don't we, we don't understand the
41:00
investment in the payoff to helping people see that there is
41:03
a a future path within our own company.
41:08
Let's talk about your book Build What Matters.
41:12
Can you elaborate on the core message of building people is
41:17
our life's work? Yeah, it is.
41:22
At the end of the day, there's nothing else that matters more.
41:25
And so I think being, especially having the chance to work on so
41:30
many different construction projects and, and seeing it's,
41:35
it's this one of the reasons that I, that I love the industry
41:38
so much is that you see, you know, a piece of ground become
41:42
something that that is important, that's value that
41:46
gets used for decades to come. But at the same time, I look at
41:51
the literally thousands of people that it takes to build a
41:55
project and, and said, my message is at the same time,
41:59
we're building our projects and whether it's in construction or
42:02
software or medicine, whatever it is, we need to be focusing on
42:07
intentionally building the people.
42:09
And it comes back to, you know, I already talked about
42:12
connection. Connection is a huge part of
42:14
that being intentional about creating connections.
42:18
And, and part of it is being intentional about who we are and
42:23
how we want to show up and how can, how can we show up and be
42:26
our best. And, and I think that's the
42:30
first step. I think we can't really build
42:31
other people until we, we focus on ourselves and, and figure
42:36
out, you know, how, how we can be our best self, Then we can
42:39
show up to serve others. And so it's, I think it's a
42:43
progression from individually figuring out how to be your best
42:47
self to connecting with others and then putting together that
42:50
team and that culture so that all of them are, are based on
42:55
connection. They're based on valuing
42:58
relationships and, and truly creating, I think legacies
43:03
because at the, at the end of our lives, none of us are going
43:06
to say, wow, I was really good at my job.
43:09
It's going to be all about, you know, the the relationships that
43:13
we built and and the people that we were able to impact.
43:18
When you talk about this message, do you ever run into
43:20
resistance or skeptics? Some.
43:29
Because I would imagine there's some people that are hearing
43:31
this and they're like, well, Sydney, that sounds all nice and
43:34
good pie in the sky, but I got a hard business to run here and I
43:37
got to make the bottom line work.
43:39
I, I don't have time for any of that crazy stuff.
43:43
Make make a business case for what you're talking about.
43:48
Well, the business case, I think there's two parts of it.
43:51
One of it, one, it does come back to what we were just
43:54
talking about as far as turnover.
43:57
Turnover is expensive. You know, the statistics of what
44:01
it costs to replace an employee is it's phenomenal.
44:05
They say it's a, you know, 1.5 times their salary by the time
44:11
that you find someone to replace them and retrain them.
44:15
And so the business case that I see is do you want to continue
44:20
to pay that money to continue to train new employees or take good
44:24
care of the ones that you already have?
44:26
And I think that sometimes we, we feel like we have so much to
44:30
do and we're so busy, we don't have time to stop and, and do
44:34
the things like the training and, and it, it's, it, it pays
44:40
off financially. But the other part of it is, I
44:43
think is that idea of legacy, especially when you're a
44:46
business owner. I know, you know, being on
44:50
business #2 it is, it is stressful.
44:52
You lay in bed at night and you think of all the things that has
44:55
to be done and payroll and getting enough work to feed all
44:59
those mouths and, and all those things.
45:01
And it's stressful. And yet again, I, I think we
45:04
have to, we have to have the insight and the intention to
45:08
say, but when this is all over, what are people going to
45:11
remember? They're not going to remember
45:12
their paychecks. They're going to remember the
45:14
way that I treated them. They're going to remember, you
45:18
know, I still have kids in the, the families of my, my former
45:22
employees. They call me Auntie Sid because
45:25
we just created a, a really fun relationship and, and I'll
45:29
forever be their auntie, even though we're not related
45:32
because, you know, we just created connections of, of
45:35
loving and caring and, and, and that's what that's really what
45:41
matters. I love that you're an engineer,
45:45
so I'm sure that the book is broken down into 4 core
45:48
principles or 6 or so. I don't know how many, but maybe
45:52
can you pull out one or two of your favorite?
45:55
Give people a sneak peek of what they'll find in the book.
45:59
It's actually a lot of the things that we've already talked
46:01
about. One, one that I will share that
46:05
is really powerful that I get a a lot of good comments on is
46:09
talking about starting with the individual piece is the idea of
46:13
creating a a personal brand. And I, I first had this thought
46:18
I was meeting with one of my clients who was a public works
46:21
director for a big city that we are working with.
46:24
And he was telling me about two different companies that were
46:27
doing construction projects in this city.
46:30
And he and he described the project managers that he was
46:33
working with. And he described the first one
46:35
as being a pit bull. And he's like, this guy is like
46:38
this invisible force at my ankle that just never goes away.
46:41
He always needs something. Everything is urgent.
46:43
He's like when I look at my phone and it's him, I don't even
46:46
want to answer it. He said, but I have this other
46:49
project manager and he's a problem solver.
46:52
He's like he over communicates. He always tells me what's
46:55
happening. And he said I wish I could have
46:58
every project with a guy like him.
47:00
And as I was driving home that day, I just couldn't stop
47:03
thinking Pitbull problem solver, Pitbull problem solver.
47:08
And I had this realization that we all have what I think now is
47:12
come to be called a personal brand, but it's a way that we
47:14
show up. And I thought if he had lunch
47:17
with somebody else tomorrow and he's like, hey, I had lunch with
47:20
Sydney Jakes yesterday. Have you ever worked with her?
47:22
She's kind of. And I exactly what would he say
47:28
about me? I don't think he'd call me a
47:30
Pitbull, but probably not a problem solver.
47:33
And so science teaches us that there's power in three.
47:36
They call it the trifecta. So I thought I'm going to come
47:39
up with a personal brand that is 3 words or phrases I would want
47:43
somebody to use to describe me. And so my personal brand is
47:48
Happy High Energy and Show Up to Serve.
47:52
And I kind of tease that when you think of an engineer, that's
47:55
not usually what you know. But I decided that would be my
48:01
personal brand. So every morning while I'm
48:03
brushing my teeth, including this morning, I'm thinking to
48:06
myself, happy High Energy, show up to serve.
48:08
And I was thinking of you, Anthony, and thinking when I
48:11
show up to serve, I want to do that with be Happy and High
48:14
energy. Now, I do have to add, I had one
48:17
coach that taught me once, you should always do squats in the
48:19
morning while you're brushing your teeth because it gets the
48:21
blood flowing, gets your body going.
48:23
So there's a lot happening in my bathroom in the morning.
48:29
That's funny. That's one of that's one of the
48:31
principles of the book. I think it's important to really
48:33
be intentional about how we show up and and how we serve the
48:37
world. And so do you have a process you
48:39
take people through to sort of figure out what their three
48:42
words or phrases are? Basically it's it's spending
48:47
some time brainstorming to figure that out.
48:49
It's a very personal process. But then what I encourage people
48:53
to do, because everybody doesn't like doing it while they brush
48:56
their teeth, what I've started having people do is to actually
49:00
put an appointment in their phone for whatever time they're
49:03
getting ready in the morning. Mine would be 7:00 in the
49:06
morning. My phone goes off and it says I
49:09
am happy, high energy and show up to serve.
49:13
And then I put a repeat. So every single day I get that
49:16
message at 7:00 in the morning. And again, I, I was speaking at
49:21
a conference in Arizona in April and I had a woman come up to me
49:28
and she said, five years ago, I heard you speak at a conference
49:31
and I just have to show you. And she pulled out her phone and
49:34
she's like every morning I still get these 3 words that tell me
49:37
to show up and be genuine, kind and caring and.
49:41
And she's like so that's how I start every day.
49:44
How? Rewarding is that for you.
49:46
But when you're at when, how rewarding is that for you,
49:49
Sydney? When you're at one of these
49:50
events, somebody you don't know heard you speak, they were part
49:53
of a workshop, but and, and they're like, hey, you did this
49:55
thing and it's still working for me.
49:58
How does that make you feel inside?
50:01
It's why I keep doing what I do. I, I feel like I'm getting old,
50:07
but I just, I don't want to stop doing what I do because I just
50:10
think if there's even a handful of those people that I'm able to
50:13
touch and it changes their day and it makes their life better,
50:17
then I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing.
50:20
You know, it's I want to go back to the question I asked just a
50:24
few minutes ago about, you know, skeptics of sort of this, you
50:27
know, pie in the sky approach. And, you know, our purpose is to
50:30
to build people. And I love the point that you
50:34
made, you know, one about leaving a legacy behind and, and
50:38
two, like, hey, for those people that are just, you know, numbers
50:41
driven, bottom line focus like, hey, this reduces turnover and
50:45
turnover is darn expensive. Is there a mechanism in in what
50:49
you're doing or do some of your clients take it on themselves to
50:52
actually try to measure the impact in some financial sense?
50:58
Or is that a little too, I don't know, foggy to try to put a
51:03
number to? Yeah.
51:05
Now that's a really good question.
51:06
And and there, there are, there are parts of it that are hard to
51:10
measure. This year, one of my clients
51:13
we're we're our program is called winning at work, winning
51:16
at home. And it's been really fun because
51:19
each quarter we've had a different emphasis.
51:21
First quarter we talked about how do we create better physical
51:25
health and we did a Wellness challenge that's been going on.
51:29
And then second quarter we talked about financial health,
51:31
third quarter was emotional and fourth quarter is life
51:36
fulfillment and stress management.
51:39
And so we've been dropping the three minute videos every week
51:43
on those categories for them. And we had a meeting the other
51:47
day and they're like, this has been great.
51:49
And we feel a change in the morale, but it, we can't really
51:54
measure in numbers what this is done.
51:58
And so it, it's hard. And at the same time, they'll
52:00
tell you that it has been worth it.
52:04
But I think that what we can measure is what we keep coming
52:10
back to is the, the retention because it, it's something that
52:15
we, we, we can measure the numbers, we can measure the
52:18
money that goes with it. And especially when we get
52:23
people into leadership positions, it's really hard to
52:27
to replace those. And a lot of the organizations
52:30
that I work with, their goal is to promote within.
52:34
And the only way that, that we can prepare people as leaders to
52:38
promote within is if we're doing these kind of things, if we're
52:41
building trust, building connection, providing leadership
52:44
training so that these people can, can be promoted and, and
52:50
stay within their company. And, and that's where we have
52:53
the cultures that people don't want to leave.
52:55
They want to be promoted, they want to stay there.
52:59
What percentage of your business is currently in the construction
53:01
industry? What percentage of it?
53:06
Currently between engineering and construction together about
53:09
90%. Is that intentional?
53:12
Do you feel most comfortable in that realm, or do you feel like
53:16
you want to spread your wings? That has a great question,
53:19
Anthony. I would, I would say I am
53:22
comfortable there because that's what I've been doing for 30
53:25
years. But part of the reason that I
53:26
wrote the book is because I want to be able to take my message to
53:31
other industries. I mentioned that I did a keynote
53:34
in Montana last week and it was actually a kickoff for 1500
53:39
school district employees. So I had teachers, bus drivers,
53:43
lunch ladies, principals, counselors, and it was so fun
53:48
because I did interviews ahead of time and a lot of people had
53:53
already read my book. And so like I was interviewing
53:56
this one principal and he's like, I love your upper arrow so
53:59
much. He's like that lower arrow for
54:01
teachers. He's like, we have curriculum
54:03
assessments, we had testing. He's like, there is 1000 things
54:07
we have to do, but the upper arrow is how do we show up?
54:10
Do we show up with passion? Do we, you know, show up with
54:13
personality? And he's like, I think sometimes
54:16
we get so beat down we forget that.
54:19
And he said, my, my daughter's first grade teacher loved
54:22
Penguins. And so she taught math with
54:24
Penguins, she taught science with Penguins, she taught
54:26
English with Penguins. And he's like, at the end of the
54:29
year, their test scores were higher than anybody else.
54:32
And they all loved Penguins. And I was honestly thinking to
54:35
myself, I wish that would have been my teacher because I love
54:38
Penguins too. And so it was just, it was
54:41
really fun to talk to these people who had read my book and
54:44
had already said, oh, that applies to us exactly.
54:48
And so that, that's my goal is that I, I want to, I want to
54:53
branch out to other industries and, and take my same principles
54:57
to other industries to help them.
54:59
Any industries in particular that you have your eye on?
55:06
I would love to work with like franchises.
55:10
I, I think my, I think my models really the, the upper arrow,
55:14
especially and, and the retention revolution.
55:17
I think both of them any business, it's a franchise,
55:21
whether it's a, a fast food or place where they cut people's
55:24
hair. I think my I've just always
55:27
thought my model would just fit them perfectly.
55:31
And so for the franchise or as well as the franchisees?
55:35
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sydney, what's a serious
55:39
challenge that you've overcome in your life?
55:42
How did you get through that and what did you learn?
55:48
So when I started my business, I was pretty optimistic and
55:52
probably overly, overly optimistic, let's say.
55:56
So at the time when I started my business, my husband had a good
56:01
job and then he, he lost his job and my business was not
56:08
producing much. And so this is we had, we just
56:16
had our 4th baby now. And so there is this program, a
56:21
government program called WIC, where as a mother low income,
56:26
you can go and you can get basically baby food and juice
56:30
and formula for your baby. But in order to get that, you
56:33
have to kind of go through a lesson every week before you get
56:35
your vouchers. So I was sitting in a WIC
56:38
meeting and no judgment to anybody that was there or that
56:43
uses the programs, I was using them.
56:46
But this one particular day as I was sitting in the meeting, I
56:50
don't know if you've ever had one of those experiences where
56:53
you just kind of have this feeling that comes from head to
56:55
toe. And my feeling was you are
57:01
capable of more than this and you got to figure out how to
57:07
live your best. And it really was a time that
57:12
it, it just again, I went home and had a conversation with my
57:16
husband and said we just, we got to figure out how to make this
57:19
business work. And it was, it was hard.
57:23
It was, it was a really, really hard time.
57:25
And it didn't all change overnight, but I think a lot of
57:30
it again, came back to how we started this conversation.
57:33
It was almost like I could hear my dad's voice saying, Sid, you
57:37
can do this. Do you?
57:38
This world is waiting for you to do big things.
57:41
And so at the time when my kids were all getting free lunches
57:46
and I was getting free government food, it was hard to
57:49
see that. It was hard to see that that
57:51
that future was out there. But because others believed in
57:56
me, especially my dad, you know, I, I look, I look back 25 years
58:02
later and it's, it's, it's, it's been an incredible journey.
58:06
So I, I feel strongly. There's a lot of times when
58:10
people see, see the work that I do.
58:12
I get to travel almost every week.
58:14
I, I get to work with international clients and I
58:18
think they think you just land there.
58:21
So I like to go back to remind people that it wasn't easy.
58:26
And I believe that everybody has that potential inside of them to
58:30
do, to do whatever they want to do.
58:35
My life isn't everybody's life. It's just, it's different.
58:39
So what is it, you know, that you want to accomplish?
58:41
And, and maybe your circle of influences is your family, or
58:45
maybe it's, you know, your neighborhood, whatever it is, I,
58:48
I really believe that we're, we're on this earth to serve
58:51
others and, and that we can all have the opportunity to do that.
58:57
Trying to find something to say that would make that like put an
59:00
exclamation point on that. But I think he said it all very
59:02
beautifully and, and so I'm just going to leave that story there.
59:05
I appreciate you opening up about that.
59:09
We had a chance to talk about Stephen Covey and learning from
59:12
him. We've talked about your book.
59:15
Any other books that you've found helpful, or podcasts or
59:19
courses that you might recommend to our listeners?
59:24
There's a book called The Trusted Leader, and like I said,
59:28
we do a lot of work around trust, and so that's one of my
59:32
favorites. A lot of entrepreneurs are
59:35
probably familiar with the Traction book.
59:37
That's also also one of my favorites as far as podcasts
59:43
right now, Ed Mylett is one of my as one of my favorites.
59:47
He's just just so positive. I love his personal growth and
59:53
his commitment to to improvement.
59:56
He's he's awesome. We talked about the brushing
1:00:00
your teeth and saying the three words and doing the squats.
1:00:03
Any other habits that you have to kind of kick off your day or
1:00:06
keep you on track as you go? Exercise is really important to
1:00:11
me. I I can't always.
1:00:15
I prefer to start my day with it, but just because of the way
1:00:19
my schedule is. It doesn't always happen at the
1:00:21
beginning of the day. But I in I'm a Sunday planner,
1:00:25
so every Sunday I get out my planner and I still use a paper
1:00:28
planner. People laugh at me sometimes,
1:00:31
but I like she's. Holding it up for those
1:00:34
listening to the audio version and I can confirm it is in fact
1:00:37
an old school. So every Sunday I pull up my
1:00:40
paper planner and I plan out my week and so I have all of my
1:00:43
meetings and I always plan in what time am I going to be able
1:00:48
to exercise And I was planning connections connects to my 4
1:00:52
adult kids. I try to try to figure out how
1:00:55
to best connect with them and and I have an adorable grandbaby
1:00:59
that I have to have time with him every week or else life just
1:01:03
is not fulfilled. What's your grandbaby's name?
1:01:08
His name is Finn. Finn, that's awesome.
1:01:12
What's your superpower, Sydney? I think my superpower is
1:01:20
connecting with people and staying connected with people.
1:01:25
My husband teases me that I just collect friends and never let
1:01:29
any go. But my Christmas list just grows
1:01:32
and grows every year. I still do a hard copy Christmas
1:01:36
card. So if you want to be on my list,
1:01:38
Anthony, I'd be glad to send you one.
1:01:41
But I just, I love, I love to maintain relationships and I do
1:01:45
think it's a superpower that I'm able to to still have so many
1:01:48
friends from different decades of my life.
1:01:52
Can you give me some pointers on that?
1:01:53
You know, I'm very fortunate to have this podcast where I've
1:01:58
gotten to meet so many incredible people.
1:02:01
We're approaching 300 episodes now.
1:02:03
And congratulations. Thank you.
1:02:05
I appreciate that. And so many of these folks I
1:02:09
would love to stay in touch with.
1:02:10
And everybody gets busy. And how, how can you stay in
1:02:14
touch? Like, you know, your husband's
1:02:16
kind of laughing at you for collecting all these friends
1:02:18
over the years. Like how do you do it?
1:02:21
Truly, one of my biggest tips is whenever someone comes to my
1:02:26
mind, I immediately send them a text and just say, hey, I was
1:02:30
just thinking about you. How is your world?
1:02:33
Part of my morning journaling is I, I, for me, it's prayer for
1:02:39
some people's meditation. But when I pray in the morning,
1:02:41
I, I kind of asked for one person that I should try to
1:02:45
connect with that day. And, and almost always a name
1:02:48
will come to me. Sometimes it's a family, a
1:02:50
friend, a business person. And then I write it down and
1:02:54
like last night at at 10:30, I'm texting a friend from way back
1:03:00
saying, just thinking about you, how are you doing?
1:03:03
And he's younger. He's like my kids age.
1:03:05
And he's like, actually, I've had a hard day.
1:03:07
Do you mind if I call you right now?
1:03:10
And I'm like, no, that would be great.
1:03:12
But I had written it down in the morning and I knew I couldn't go
1:03:14
to bed until I checked in with him.
1:03:16
And so that's my best tip is, I guess it's kind of two-part 1
1:03:21
when you think of somebody check in with them.
1:03:23
But I love the process of in the morning.
1:03:25
Just saying, who should I connect with today?
1:03:28
See now as an engineer, I was expecting that there's some sort
1:03:31
of a spreadsheet involved and like follow up dates and like a
1:03:36
whole system there. I do have a mentoring
1:03:39
spreadsheet for all the women that I mentor but.
1:03:43
So say more about that. Yeah, we haven't talked about
1:03:45
the mentoring that you do. Yeah, So it's I was the only
1:03:51
female in my graduating class in 1989.
1:03:54
And so I just have become a magnet for women, especially
1:03:59
female engineers, that it's just, it's just been a cool
1:04:05
thing. But I really do keep a
1:04:07
spreadsheet of, you know, making sure that I, that I check in
1:04:12
with them or like, if they're expecting a baby, I want to make
1:04:14
sure I keep track of that and know that and write down what
1:04:20
goals they're working on. And, you know, through the Women
1:04:23
in transportation, I've, I've set up a formal mentoring
1:04:26
program. But most of what I do, it's,
1:04:28
it's, it's informal and it's just, it's, it's a way to give
1:04:32
back. It's a way to to help others.
1:04:37
Sydney, I've just got one more question for you, but before I
1:04:39
ask it, I want to do 2 things. First of all, everyone listening
1:04:42
today, go ahead and hit the follow or subscribe button on
1:04:45
your favorite podcast app. But if you have an extra second,
1:04:47
leave us a comment or review. It helps more people find the
1:04:50
show, which is the kindest thing that you could do for us.
1:04:53
I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch
1:04:55
with you or to follow your story.
1:04:57
Sydney. What would that be?
1:04:59
But Sydney is SYDNE and if you know Simon Sinek's work, I just
1:05:05
say I'm still trying to find my why because everybody thinks
1:05:08
there should be AY at the end of my name.
1:05:11
So SYDN espeaks.com is my website.
1:05:16
It's got a lot of good information on there, my contact
1:05:20
information, some videos you can watch and some things about my
1:05:24
book. Great.
1:05:25
And we'll put that link in the show notes for folks.
1:05:27
So last. Question for you, Sydney.
1:05:30
I'm going to stay in your collection of friends now.
1:05:32
I'm going to get on your Christmas card list and you and
1:05:34
I reconnect a year from now and you're excited you're
1:05:37
celebrating something big. What are you celebrating one
1:05:40
year from today? One year from today?
1:05:44
I'm. Going to be celebrating the fact
1:05:47
that I've grown my next level leadership programs to over
1:05:52
$1,000,000 in revenue. That's my goal, All right.
1:05:57
I can't wait to celebrate that with you.
1:05:59
Thank you, Sydney Jakes, appreciate you sharing your time
1:06:03
with us today. I want to be the first to thank
1:06:05
you opening up and sharing that story.
1:06:07
Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
1:06:09
I really appreciate it. It's been fun to get to know.
1:06:11
You and I'm excited to put you on my Christmas card list,
1:06:14
Anthony. I'm looking forward to that,
1:06:16
folks. That's a wrap on another
1:06:17
episode. Of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:06:19
Thanks for learning with us today.