Synopsis

In this interview with Brian Roberts, founder and CEO of Croix Connect, we explore two things that often hold small businesses back from growing and what business owners can do to overcome them.  Brian shares his substantial experience as a business advisor, coach, and Vistage CEO Peer Advisory Group Chair to offer insights on how essential it is for business owners to embrace trust and delegation.  

Insights

"Energy drain. Energy gain. Do what gives you energy, delegate the rest."

"Only do what only you can do."

"If you want to grow your business, you've got to learn to trust and you've got to learn to delegate."

“Trust is the foundation of everything, and not in just business, but in life in general”

“One thing we talk about a lot is being authentic, you know, just being open because people can see through you anyway. So why not just be open and lay it out there? They realize you're human, as a leader, you're not infallible.”

“Everybody is not going to do everything exactly the way you would do that, and that's not a bad thing, because you haven’t cornered the market on all the best ways to do everything in an entire company, right?"

About Our Guest

Brian Roberts has almost 40 years of experience leading Operations, Information Technology, Engineering, and Project Management teams. He was a data communications systems officer in the United States Air Force, and during his 15 years of military service, his assignments included the White House Communications Agency and the Pentagon.

Brian is a Group Chair for Vistage Worldwide, the world’s largest chief executive leadership organization. Brian heads up three groups of 12-15 leaders who meet monthly to grow together, learn best practices, become better leaders, solve important business issues together, and improve their companies.

Prior to starting Croix Connect in 2001, he was COO, Zenetex Consulting, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Operations at Network Access Solutions, Managing Director, Mid-Atlantic Region at USWeb Consulting, and Vice President at MFS Communications. At MFS Communications in the early 1990s, Brian and his team installed and maintained the world’s first multi-ISP interconnection point, MAE East. Brian is also part owner of Weyh Roberts & Associates, a printing and promotional items company.

For almost three years, Brian hosted Washington DC’s top rated weekly business radio show, Taking Care of Business with Brian Roberts, focusing on all aspects of business. Guests included local business and government leaders as well as national leaders like Carly Fiorina and Sandy Weill.

Transcript

Seth Sinclair: Alright this is Seth Sinclair here with Modern da Vinci.  I want to welcome you to our latest interview, this one focusing on a few key things small business owners need to do to thrive. And here at Modern da Vinci we seek to help small businesses achieve alignment of purpose with their leadership, team, products, and marketing, so this discussion today is right of the heart of that. We have a very distinguished guest on today to help us explore this topic. Let me introduce Brian Roberts, who is the founder and CEO of Croix Connect. In addition to 15 years of service in the United States Air Force, Brian went on to a very successful career as an executive in the communications industry. But Brian’s current professional pursuit and the reason he's the perfect guy to have on today to help us with this topic is because of the business he's built his current work as a business adviser and coach. And this includes serving clients through what he will tell us about - CEO Peer Advisory Groups, coaching them on leadership and business concepts and also through teambuilding. So, Brian, it's awesome to have you on today. Thank you.  Can you just start us off by telling us a little bit more about the work you're doing these days?

Brian Roberts: Sure, sure. So, as you said, my company is Croix Connect, and so, what I do is work with executives of small and medium sized businesses and possibly their executive teams too. I usually focus on just the top executives in each company. And I provide a service I like to call Executive Whisperer or a CEO Whisperer, and really I look at providing a combination of consulting, coaching, and connecting. I've got a lot contacts in the area so I hook them up depending on what their needs are. That's part of my business, but a big part of it is really working with Executive Peer Groups through the Vistage program, Vistage Worldwide, it's been around since the fifties. And it's a program where you get twelve to fifteen CEOs together in a room, spend a whole-day session on each other’s real world business problems, and no competitors in the room so you can totally open the kimono, and we even share financials and just about anything you can imagine. I've got three groups right now; two in the DC area and one in Baltimore, and I just love it. The companies range from, I'd say, five million to almost a hundred million in revenue, and probably more importantly the complexity really is in number of people, the number of moving parts. So, it's really anywhere from twenty people to a hundred and seventy people as my largest, with most of them being in the fifty to a hundred range. And they, you know, they're all various disciplines. I've got accounting firms, engineering firms, financial services, technology firms, government contractors, manufactures, and insurance so, a little bit of everything.  And, you know, it's funny, because there’s like 20% that they all do differently, but 80% of the challenges and issues still come back to people, you know, hiring the right folks, managing those folks, being a leader, all those kinds of things, 'cause there’s always a people play in this, so it's very interesting. That being said, it's nice to get a diversity of experience in that room, because sometimes maybe the nontechnical person might ask a silly question to the technical person, and they say, “Well, I never thought about that,” because you get a tunnel vision of your own business. So, yeah, and I just love it. I've been doing this for about seven years now, the Executive Peer Group thing, and it's just so powerful. I feel like I'm getting a PhD in business by working with all these incredible people every month, and seeing all kinds of business challenges and opportunities every month. It's great.

Seth Sinclair: Yeah, that's awesome, Brian. I appreciate you sharing that. And for anybody who’s listening here I actually at one point was a member of a Vistage Group, it was a smaller group, but it was tremendously impactful, and it really is amazing the way that all in these meetings you both coaching, advice, and consultation on your own business, but the ability to see into other businesses, and not only learn from them, but also be an accountability partner for them as well. So it's a great experience for me, I encourage anybody to check this out. And, Brian, just one follow up question I can't help but ask. Business owners have a lot of choices in terms of getting coaching. Why do you think the Vistage Peer Group is the biggest kind of “bang for the buck” for them?

Brian Roberts: Yeah, the way I look at it - anybody can find a business coach or trusted adviser, 'cause there are many, many, many of them out there. But think of the combination of that plus the Executive Peer Group experience that makes it so powerful. As you get into a Vistage group or any Executive Peer Group and you start seeing the same people month after month, you really get to know each other, you really get tight bonds. You know that everyone's there just for totally unbiased and agenda-free advise. You have no dog in the hunt if you will, they just want to make sure you're being the best leader you can and you’re making the best decisions you can possibly make, and they know that you're going to provide them and be tough on them as well every month, and, you know, call, you know, call BS and each other too, and they say, hey man, you know, “A month ago you told me this, but this month you’re kind of go down this path. What is it?” You know. So, that whole history is really powerful too, and Vistage members stay on average six or seven years. I felt, as I said, I've got a group that's seven years old, and four of the original eight members are still in the group. I've got another four that’s been in the group for over 5 years now. It's just, yeah, you get in there, you get tight, and you realize that these people have each other’s back and how powerful is that?

Seth Sinclair: That's great. Yeah, sometimes being a business owner really is a lonely venture.

Brian Roberts: Yeah, very much so. I would say, and that's one of the biggest reasons. This is one place where we can actually come and talk about anything that's going on your business. You know, when you're out and networking, you know, you're putting on your best face, you might say, “Yeah, well, it's a little tough, we’re hanging in there,” but in reality, you know, all heck is breaking loose back at the office, and when it comes to Vistage Executive Peer Group, you take off CEO mask and take off you armor, and you’re just you, you as the human being. And you say, “Man, if I don't get this straightened out, we're going bankrupt in six months.” You would never say that to anybody else, you know, but.  In the Vistage Group you would say something like that because you're not afraid, you know it's not going to leave that room, and you know that these people are going to figure out a way to make sure that does not happen.

Seth Sinclair: Absolutely, you know, anybody who's in the small business field or even, like you said, some of those businesses you work with, actually are in moving into that medium range, but, you know, looking for ways to make breakthroughs, certainly Vistage is a very powerful option, and one of the reasons we're doing this interview here is just try to give them insight to, how do you really make it to next level? And, you know, on that point, just kind of transitioning into our topic today, we know there’s a lot of factors that can keep a business, small business, emerging business stuck in gear. Some of those things are related to infrastructure and process, but a lot of them reside in the business owners themselves. So, today talking about, what are some of those personal factors, mindset, and kind of limiting beliefs that keep business owners from getting to that next level? And so, I'm just curious to know, what are these top things that you often see, where people get stuck?

Brian Roberts: I think a lot of it is trust. Trust is a big one, and also people have a hard time delegating for all kinds of reasons, so those are the two of the biggest ones. You mentioned process and having access to capital is another so there’s a lot of those kinds of things too. There is never one silver bullet for all that stuff, right?  But, from a leader’s prospective, I think, it's really the changes and dynamics as you're growing and adding people, and adding complexity to your business. Trust and delegation are two of the big things that I see.

Seth Sinclair: Ok, so, let's jump in on trust. Trust is a big word, it's a powerful word. What does trust really mean in the world of the small business owner?

Brian Roberts: Yeah, I'll tell you, trust is the foundation of everything, and not in just business, but in life in general. When there is trust, people open up to each other, and you really can become a team. But only if you're really trusting, you know, your teammates on either side or below you, if you look at yourself as the leader being the coach, you've got to trust your team to, you know, do what they need to do. I know you're familiar with Pat Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And he too shows that pictorially, if you've ever the pyramid, absence of trust is a huge problem. That's the foundation of the pyramid in that picture. There's other issues like fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results. These are all the components of the pyramid, the various dysfunctions of a team. But, boy if you don't have the trust, you can't accomplish any of the other items that I mentioned, you know. So, first and foremost when I work with executive teams, I say "okay first, let's work on this trust issue," and you could end up stuck there for the whole day talking about it, and you know what, even if you throw it all on the table, the eight hundred-pound gorilla of trust being the issue, it can take a while to work on. I did work with one team where we were hoping to have just a two day session, and the whole first day was just on trust. And we realized that we've got to come back in three or six months for just working on trust for next three to six months before we can move into the other areas and truly become a team. So, it takes a lot of work, got to have it.

Seth Sinclair: Yeah, it's no small feat. You know, you mentioned that book. I love that book. Great frame of reference for, you know, building teams, what is it look like to get a group of people working toward a shared goal. I know that he talks about trust. At least one aspect of it is that the business leader or leader of any kind really - one way to create trust is to actually be willing to be vulnerable and honest. Is that something that comes up? I know a lot of small business owners, just like the example you gave earlier, may not want to really share all their inner working fears. Is vulnerability a big part of that with the clients you work with?

Brian Roberts: I think it has huge, Seth. You may remember from being at Vistage, one thing we talk about a lot is being authentic, you know, just being open because people can see through you anyway. So why not just be open and lay it out there. You know, I mean, they realize you're human, as a leader, you're not infallible. And if they know that you're willing to admit when maybe you don't have the answer, or you don't, you're really not sure of something, and lay it out there for team to kind of work up on that together. So, no I think that being an authentic leader is absolutely huge. I totally agree with that and I push people on that topic all the time.

Seth Sinclair: So, when you're working with a business owner who maybe understands that this idea of being authentic is important, but they're kind of, that might feel hard to do, how do you, how does the business owner learn to change their mindset on trust?

Brian Roberts: Yeah, it's tough, you're right, it's not easy. This is something that's really hard, especially for maybe some of our introverted leaders out there who aren’t really good at sharing, period, right?  But it really starts at the top, so you have to start trusting. I think one way to do that is if you do a good job with hiring, that can really help. I like to recommend that people have a very rigorous hiring process, and one thing I really like to tell them to include in that is to incorporate your core values into the interview questions and really probe deeply in that. I believe that if the leader hires people with their same core values, the company’s core values, and usually in a small company the core values are the same as the core values of the individual leader.  I think especially you have to make sure that your executive team is right on par with you. You know, if you start realizing that they are a lot like you form a core value’s prospective, than you're going to trust them, you know, because a lot of times one of the core values is in integrity. In fact sometimes the core value is actually called trust. And so if you're hiring towards those core values, it's going to make it much easier for the leader to kind of loosen up a little bit and get that trust. Obviously the trust is earned too, right? So, I'd say, it can take some time, and, I mean, you just can't put this switch on this kind of stuff, right? It's over time. But again, if you start off on the right foot by hiring, asking those questions for the core values to be in line with your company, with yourself, you're going to feel more comfortable with them, and, you know, the they’ll be a reflection of you and your principles. So they’ll live and breathe what you live and breathe. And also if get your executive team lined up, and the management team lined up all of its core values, and you'll really need to be hiring for core values to the entire company, but it's got to start at your executive team. So, actually, I should say, starts at the leader, who then in turn has to start with the executive team. And we’ve all seen where you’ve had an executive team when you maybe hired them, you were either fooled or possibly you were so taken by their knowledge, you know, of finance or marketing or sales, or whatever, and you bring them in then you realize, oh, this person is actually poison, they are cancer in the company. And you just, you know, now you have to find a way to get them out of there, because they’re just going to destroy your company.

Seth Sinclair: That's a, you know, that's another book written by the same author of Five Dysfunctions, called The Advantage. He talks about values and how, he actually gives the example of once a company can truly articulate their real values, not just their aspirational values, but the ones that really represent – what does it mean to express our business purpose, and how do we do that? He gives the example of a company going through that exercise, and then one of the executives getting up and saying, “Hey! No hard feelings, but I don't belong, I don't belong here, I don't... This is not aligned with the way that I do business, so, no hard feelings, but we'd better move on.” So, it's an example how the actual impact of these things can affect a business and create better trust.

Brian Roberts: Yeah, it's funny you used that example, because, you know, when I started Croix Connect back in ‘01, that was part of it for me as well, you know, at the time I was working with somebody and I wouldn't say they weren’t ethical or anything, but they just didn't do things the way I would do them, and I just always felt uncomfortable, and unfortunately I didn't have the guts that this person did, and I had to wait for 9/11 to happen for me really take action, you know, just sucking it up and going through it and I knew it wasn’t a good place for me, but I wasn't incented to act. And after 9/11 happened, I kind of looked inward and I said, “What am I doing?”' I knew too, that I was going to start my own business, but that was like the turning point. I actually looked in the mirror and said, “Man, this is just not me. I need to go create my own future, my own vision.” And that's how I started the company.

Seth Sinclair: So, yeah, so there's the lesson you've learned from them, too, which is when your instincts tell you that something's not aligned with your values, that there's probably something to it, something probably needs to happen or change.

Brian Roberts: Yeah, trust your gut, that's for sure.

Seth Sinclair: Ok, so, we got trust and we talked about some strategies to try to build trust and the idea that it takes time, patience. You also mentioned the idea of having to delegate, and how people get stuck on that. Why is it hard for business owners to delegate?

Brian Roberts: Yeah, of course, you know that goes back to trust a little bit, right. But it may not be that you don't trust them as an individual, but trusting that they’ll do things exactly the way you would do them. But guess what, as long as they do it well and do it on time, let them do it their way, as long as, you know, it’s not going against your core values or your processes or anything. Unless, of course, their idea of their process is actually better than what you have in place and then you just change it and it becomes a new corporate process. I think you have to realize is that everybody is not going to do everything exactly the way you would do that, and that's not a bad thing, because you haven’t cornered the market on all the best ways to do everything in an entire company, right?  I remember one person told me once, “Hey man, you can't clone yourself.” You know, you can't have a bunch of you running around, that's just not going to happen, not from the standpoint of your knowledge base or whatever. People do approach problems in a different way, and that's a beautiful thing, right? There is more than one way to do things right. And even if you could clone yourself, man, how boring would that be, huh? You'll have a bunch of you around, you know, yourself around.  No you Seth, but you as a leader... sorry, didn’t mean anything there…

Seth Sinclair: Oh, it would be horrible, I agree.

Brian Roberts: And I also think, you know, when you start a company, you do a million things, right, and you aren’t used to having somebody else do it. So, over time you're giving up each hat, you know, you’re wearing multiple hats and every now and then as you get bigger, you hire more people, to give up more of your hats. In part, it's just hard, but you got to push through it, and that's kind of thing, I think, you know, coaching in Executive Peer Groups, where we help you push through all this stuff, you know, “Hey man, get over yourself,” right, and do that.

Seth Sinclair: Yeah, I am listening to you, and the word 'control' comes up for me. You know, like, as a business owner, it feels good to have control, but as the business scales, it just becomes impossible. Control is a limiting mindset, that you'd bring into this, you know, business environment, and it's not going to scale up if you insist on having complete control of everything.

Brian Roberts: Right, absolutely right. Believe me, I work with a lot of control freaks, and I've been accused of being one myself.

Seth Sinclair: Well, you know, I think, we've talked about this a little bit earlier, but the idea that most business owners, or many, there's a reason why they are where they are. There’s some work ethic or skill they have, and they have leveraged that to get to where they are today, and I think what we see is, this has served you well to this point. Now you have hit a ceiling of where that approach can take you if you want to break through that and get to the next level, a different approach is required, and that's one that involves trust and a willingness to delegate.

Brian Roberts: Now, that's huge. Basically I would say that, you know, you're never going to scale your company doing everything yourself. So, you're going to have to figure out, to give it up, and do what you do best. I've had another one of my Vistage Chair Peers, he likes to say, “Only do what only you can do.” Meaning primarily as a CEO, you have certain powers, you know, you should be elevating yourself to eventually be doing the vision, the strategy, the leadership, culture building, talking to all your important costumers and partners, and keeping all these relationships alive, you know, trying to elevate yourself. And that's true, that maybe your better at technology or operations and sometimes maybe your company will grow better without you. One thing that came to mind here was, I remember back in the 90s, you may remember the company UUNET, and that was one of the biggest, you know, Internet providers in the world, until MFS bought them and then WorldCom bought them, and I was aware of them because I was with MFS when we bought UUNET, and the one thing I had to say that was so impressive to me, that the founder of UUNET, Rick Adams, was an incredible technologist, and he really grew the company, like, crazy fast, right. But he was smart enough to know, and I love using this example, he was smart enough to know that, “Man, I’ve kind of maxed out on what I can do and how I can grow this, and I need to bring in somebody else to really take this over and maybe move myself into CTO role, 'cause I'm really more a technologist.' And he brought in John Sidgmore, who just crushed it. So, you can only go so far with the company on your back and if you want to go, you’re going have to delegate and it's very possible to be delegating the CEO position, you know, if that's just not who you are.  I like to first have everyone focus on becoming that incredible leader, but I have seen on occasions like this example here, where a person really just doesn't have it, and the fact that he can admit it, it's like incredible, talk about being authentic, you know, because get your ego out of the way, ego is going to crush your company, right?

Seth Sinclair: Yeah. That’s great example, yeah.

Brian Roberts: It really is, you know. Let's face it too, man. If you don't delegate, you can't even enjoy an evening or a weekend, let alone a vacation; you're going to burn out. You’ve got to figure out some way where you're not, when you step out of the company, it doesn't crater. If you want to take a week off or something, the company's going to still focus and function, I should say. And it’s not going to unless you are delegating properly, so I push everyone to do that. Now you’re getting me all excited here. There's one simple thing I love to do, this is like the most simple document I’ve ever put together, I has just a couple words on it, and it's a sign that I tell people to put underneath the glass on their desk, or up against the wall right where there computer is, or where they work the most, and it simply says, "Whose job am I doing right now?" and I like to add another one in there, "and why?"

So if you're sitting there and you're doing some work and you realize, "Why am I doing this? I shouldn't be doing this. I hired somebody to do it, and now I still find myself doing it." So you have to ask yourself, is it because you're a control freak? Or because you think you can do it better, even though you shouldn't be spending time on it? Do you not have the right team in place? Then you should take a look at that. You know, those kinds of things, I think that simple "Whose job am I doing right now?" and also understanding that you can't be doing everything, right? You can't.  You just can’t

Seth Sinclair: And at the heart of that what you just described is that leader, that business owner's willingness to be at least a little self reflective, and like you said, drop your ego for a minute and say, "am I doing what's best for the business? Am I doing what's best even for themselves?" but to look at that sort of in a detached way and to be able to say, "why am I doing what I'm doing here? How is this serving the bigger picture?" So you made an amazing case for delegation, and I think you just gave us a specific tip which was to have this sort of reminder in front of you. Is there anything else you'd really say to a business owner who is saying "I know delegating is a good idea, but I just, I can't seem to get over the hump"?

Brian Roberts: That's pretty much it. I do like to tell a story like I mentioned earlier, a story or two of somebody who did and somebody who didn't do it and they just crash and burn. At the end of the day that’s it.  And sometimes by not delegating, what crashes and burns is your personal life. All of a sudden you got divorced, you’re not seeing your kids, or whatever. It's like, "why did you start this company in the first place? So you can just be a control freak and lose all of your personal life? I mean, really?"  You just can't do it. If you really want to grow the company, you're going to have to do that. If you want to have a lifestyle business, then get into a lifestyle situation where you're actually enjoying your free time too, then don't worry about growing it, and that's fine too. You know, there's a lot of people in lifestyle businesses and they're killing it and they're loving life, they do what they need to do 'cause they don't have a growth mindset, they just do what they want to do, and that's fine too. But if you want to grow your company, you got to learn to trust and you got to learn to delegate.

Seth Sinclair: Okay, yeah, that's good stuff Brian. So the tip there is you’ve got to kind of monitor some of these signs like your anxiety level, the pressure level, and that work-life balance, so when they start to slide it's a red flag popping up that tells you you're out of balance with this; and if you're not willing to trust and delegate, well, the future may hold some really rough bumps in the road.

Brian Roberts: That's true, I mean you did make me think of one more little thing that I offer my leaders I'm working with, and that’s kind of play the energy drain and energy gain game, and I just ask them to write down what are the things that you do during the day that really fire you up, get you all excited that you just love doing it? I say, "Okay, what drains your energy?' a so couple of things here; one is I want to make sure that what really excites them is also what they should be doing as leaders; but more importantly, anything that's draining your energy during the day, if at all possible, all the things that's listed on that side of the paper, the energy drain, you should find somebody else to do those for you. Because if it's taking away your energy from the things you do well and just from being a leader, because it's exhausting being a leader of the company. So If you've got things that drain you, and I understand sometimes you got to do it because, let’s say you don't have the cash flow at the moment to hire somebody to do some of those things that are an energy drainer for you, but sooner or later you need to get those off your table so you're really a high functioning, high performing leader, and doing the things that you do best and that you should be doing and let other people do the stuff that you don't like to do, because guess what? Let's say you're not good in finance, you don't like finance, it drives you crazy, well guess what, there's plenty of financial people out there who just love doing that stuff! Why are you spending time doing it anyway?

Seth Sinclair: That's great; I love that because it's simple. I mean it's something anybody can do in a few minutes' time, to sit down and reflect on those questions and just write some notes, but the impact is very powerful. So Brian, as we wrap up here, I was excited to ask you about one more thing. You got this really awesome idea for a blog, you've got it running. You got your first posts up. Can you tell us a little about what you're doing there?

Brian Roberts: Yeah, it's pretty exciting and I’m having some fun with it, so thanks for asking. I've been thinking I need to be doing something, publishing something, getting my name out there, just like how I push my people to do. But I just told myself, "You know, there's a million business blogs, and leadership blogs and all that out there, lot of content. So I just couldn't get excited about anything, and then actually my brother, about two years ago wrote a story about this company at the end of the year, just to kind of do a recap for everybody in the company. And I thought it was kind of creative, he used titles of REO Speedwagon, the band back in the 70s and 80s, all their songs and he just weaved the whole story just using the titles of their songs. I said that's kind of cool, and I’m a huge music buff, I enjoy all kinds of music, I’m just a crazy music fan, and obviously classic rock is one of my favorites and so I started thinking about it, I read my brother's little story over the next few months I found myself thinking about song titles and lyrics of songs, I said, "gosh I can write a business story out of almost all of these." So long story short, I started a blog, called Classic Rock Leadership, and that's what I do, I’ll take a title and/or lyrics of the song and weave a real world business story and lesson, sometimes mentioning an old client or experiences of my own, and I’m just having a blast with it. It's amazing what you can do with this. I already did one on Hotel California, which was about incumbency not being a strategy, basically I said within the story that unlike Hotel California, your customers can check out and leave. I did one about Dream On from Aerosmith, and that one was one of my CEOs always want to move back out to California and he just kept putting it out there into the universe, if you will, and lo and behold, about three years after he started talking about it, a company came up that he acquired that just happened to be in San Diego, actually almost fell on his lap. He wasn't going after it; it just really, truly fell on his lap. He bought it and now it's got three locations, one of them being in San Diego, he said, "You know what, why don't I put myself out in San Diego, because it's broken up evenly as far as how many people he had. He's living in Coronado Island in San Diego now. It's just amazing how many great stories are out there, I thought it may be a nice catchy thing and who knows where it'll go, but right now I’m having fun with it and it makes people remember Brian Roberts as the Classic Rock Leadership guy, that's okay.

Seth Sinclair: I love the idea, it's a perfect combination of a personal passion with your business pursuit, and again, that's something we always encourage our business clients to try to find where they can, like you said. Its' good to walk the walk and to put something out there that's got your personality stamp right on it. What we'll do for everybody who's listened here today, we'll have a profile page that you guys can see with this interview, we'll have a link to Croix Connect's website, we'll put a link to the blog on there Brian, and people can find you.

Brian Roberts: Thank you.

Seth Sinclair: Yeah, my pleasure. This has been great, thank you. I think these are two, two of many essential topics that are out there for business owners but hopefully for the folks that listened, this gave them a little insight, maybe a little inspiration, or a little bit of reflection on something that might have them just a little stuck, and maybe spending some time working on trust or delegation can make that breakthrough. So Brian thanks again, and I look forward to keeping in touch and hopefully working with you in the future.

 

Brian Roberts: Absolutely, thanks for having me Seth, I appreciate it.