Disruptive Executive Mindset

with Kelly Resendez

Mark S A Smith:            Today’s guest on the Selling Disruption Show is Kelly Resendez. She is the EVP at Paramount Partners Group, which is a mortgage company located in Roseville, California. She runs 110 employees, and disrupts the world of mortgages. She has written two books, Foundation to Sustainable Success, and Big Voices, which she’s going to share some insights on today. Welcome, Kelly.

Kelly Resendez:            Hi there, Mark. I’m excited to be here with you and the audience.

Mark S A Smith:            I am so glad that you’re here on the show. You are an interesting person in that you run 110-employee mortgage company in a very disruptable and disrupting marketplace. How did that come about? It’s really strange for a woman to be running a company that size, even in today’s enlightened world.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah. Having 20 years mortgage experience, I was a top producer formerly, and came to the parent company of my organization Loanpal, and through that just realized that I did have the leadership skills to be able to create a new culture. And so, I was fortunate enough that the parent company allowed me to really just create a new reality in mortgage for us, which was based off of the cultural principles that I knew grew my own success.

Mark S A Smith:            Excellent. What has been the result of that?

Kelly Resendez:            The result number one, was that I feel fantastic on a daily basis. I was running a smaller team before, but I always had a bigger vision of impacting just a larger group of people, including my entire industry. When you’re an originator, and just kind of running a smaller team, everything’s focused on serving the customer, and I never had this space to be able to do that. In making this shift into executive leadership, and really just the ownership of that, it’s given me the ability to impact millions of people that are out there in mortgage, real estate, and just in the women’s empowerment space, as well.

Mark S A Smith:            You are really delivering disruption in two different fronts. Number one is the world of finance and mortgages, and of course that’s always undergoing through lots of changes and lots of disruption and we can talk about that. But you’re also undergoing a lot of changes in the fact that you bring women into positions of power within organizations. In fact, you actually have an active group that does that.

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely.

Mark S A Smith:            Let’s talk about that piece. Half of our listenership are female. Half of my life is female. I want to see more than there is of the women power in business, because I think it brings an extraordinary competitiveness and disruptive advantage.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            How can we bring, as baby boomer, old white guy baby boomers, how can we bring more of that women power into play?

Kelly Resendez:            It’s gonna require quite a lot of disruption, to be honest with you.

Mark S A Smith:            Oh, yeah.

Kelly Resendez:            When you look at the ugly truth of where we are today, although women are in the workforce in higher numbers, we are still taking on the majority of parenting responsibilities and that. And women also haven’t learned how to stay in our natural energy. So, I’m extremely feminine. I lead my company from a very feminine aspect. And it’s not that there’s not masculine traits that I have, as well. But it allows me to just stay in a peak state, where, when I first got into business, I thought that I needed to act like other men that were out there and really just put my driver cap on consistently, and hard-charging, and dominant, and some of these things that just exhausted me, to be honest.

So, it’s a combination of things. I think what we’ve got to do is just redefine the roles for both men and women in the workplace, in order to be able to foster more women in leadership. Because the truth is, a lot of women just aren’t signing up for it. They’re qualified. They are absolutely intelligent enough. And maybe they even have the desire, but they believe that the consequence of making that decision is going to completely take them out of balance, and they’re not going to be able to be a good parent, or a good child to maybe, aging parents, or friends, or a good spouse, etc. So, we have to really redefine what it looks like for women to be in that.

Mark S A Smith:            I hear two things that I really want to tease out and want to listen to them more. Number one is, what I heard from you is two things. One is, you identify that you were not in your authentic power, and you’ve chosen to be in authentic power. And I think that’s absolutely critical for women to bring their power to the positions that they have. Authenticity’s critical. The second thing is that all your mentors were men, probably.

Kelly Resendez:            Yes.

Mark S A Smith:            And they were doing the very best they could to mentor you come from a male viewpoint of authenticity. And that’s a very different thing than a female viewpoint of authenticity.

Kelly Resendez:            It is. And we need more role models. We frankly, don’t have them, as women. And some of the role models that are out there, as much as I respect them and admire what their achievements are, they are not the types of people that we can see along the sidelines any soccer game with us. So, it’s just that everyday mom that’s out there that’s able to balance everything. And for myself, be able to maintain my self-care and really, still be able to be a good person, even though I am professionally very successful. So you nailed it with the authenticity piece. Women just, we’ve got to give ourselves permission to be authentic. When we are in scarcity, we believe there’s going to be lost. So we believe, “If I give up that drive, there will be loss.” And we have to really embrace the fact that when we are absolutely in our most highest and authentic self, which I refer to as our big voice, we’re unstoppable, and we will create massive and lasting change amongst organizations throughout the world.

Mark S A Smith:            Right on. But it has to be from your authentic voice.

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely.

Mark S A Smith:            The moment we pop out of authenticity, our clients notice, our employees notice, everybody notices. And there’s just something not quite right, and we just don’t want to play anymore. And so, we go someplace else.

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely. And what’s interesting about that is that it does impact our employees, it impacts our culture, it impacts our customers. But the worst consequence of this is, I believe the fatigue that we experience on a personal level, and that belief that we are not enough. Because we are never going to feel fulfilled when we are not really just in our authentic self.

Mark S A Smith:            That’s right. The thing to keep in mind is, there’s always a better musician, there’s always a bigger boat, there’s always a better executive. Be the best at where you are right now, because you can make a big difference.

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely.

Mark S A Smith:            So, that authenticity is such a critical thing, and we are enough for right now, and getting bigger and better all the time. Really, really good. What advice do you have to our male listeners that are running companies and want to bring more female power to do the disruption, to do the integration, to do the emotional engagement that’s so critical to today’s success?

Kelly Resendez:            You have to start with a vision of wanting that for your organization, and figuring out really, what the why involved in that is. How is it going to benefit your organization? And for most of us, as business owners, at the end of the day we’ve got to run profitable organizations. And there are so many aspects of really making this shift that are gonna help us. I believe women will be more productive if they’re really just fostered, and given opportunity to be able to thrive in that environment. So, it starts with just having that vision, and then intention. You have to put massive intention around it and bring in people that have done it before, whether it’s trainers, or consultants, or people that are actually already at mastery level, to be able to create a leadership route for women and give them that belief.

For a lot of people, they just want hope, and knowing that maybe they want to have kids in the next few years, or whatever it is. But they want to know that there’s not gonna be a cost to that, that the company that they’re working for also sees relationships and family as a major priority. And giving them that permission is going to be critical. And Mark, the truth is, with the Me Too Movement, men are scared to have deep, meaningful relationships with coworkers, in fear that it may come back on them. And so, we’ve got to rewrite these rules. What is acceptable? Because we are gonna miss out on powerful mentoring opportunities if we’re afraid to be in proximity to the opposite sex.

So, we’ve got to just make it an intention that whether or not business as a whole does it, that as an organization, it’s got to be a critical, critical component of what your go-forward plan is, recognizing that more women are in the workforce, we are here to stay, and we need to be nurtured a little bit more so that we aren’t burning ourselves out. And we see that in mental health issues, and sick days, and other things that we could potentially avoid by having a better plan in place.

Mark S A Smith:            I think that’s a really important point, is that we have to adjust the culture to incorporate feminine energy into it. And I think that from my experience in the 28 years that I’ve been working with corporations, a critical component of that is, stop paying for hours, start paying for outcome. Because moms can accomplish a hell of a lot in a very short period of time, versus having to check the clock and put in eight hours. They can get more done in two hours than most people can get done in eight. So part of it is changing how we measure people’s output, which allows a lot more time for a balanced life, which actually contributes to success for everybody.

Kelly Resendez:            Completely agree. When we look at any major study that’s been done on productivity, we know that the longer somebody works, the less productive they become.

Mark S A Smith:            Absolutely true, because we can only make so many decisions in a day. And after a while, you start making bad decisions instead of good decisions. And so we have to guard our cognitive capacity. That’s it.

Kelly Resendez:            True.

Mark S A Smith:            And when you run out of cognitive capacity, go home. More hours is going to make it worse, not better.

Kelly Resendez:            Completely agree.

Mark S A Smith:            Moms tend to have extended cognitive capacity. I’ve certainly noticed that in my life.

Kelly Resendez:            Well, being a working mom, I would tell you that there are days that I just fake it. That’s just the honest truth, because we have a lot on our plates and we are capable of balancing multiple things. But when you think about neuroscience, it’s not good for any of us to be multitasking.

Mark S A Smith:            Right on.

Kelly Resendez:            I always say a major goal for anyone that’s in business is, just be present. Be wherever you are. When you’re having to think about, “Oh, my gosh, do I have to pick up the kids from soccer? Do I have to do this?” we are gonna lose productivity the more we do that. I really recommend that people take some time on that Sunday, get their planning done, make sure that their schedule’s in alignment with where their priorities are so that they really win their week. And you brought something up earlier about being enough, and it is probably the greatest illness that we suffer from in this country is that belief that we are not enough. And the only way that we ever believe that we are is when we feel powerful, and we feel like we are a unique masterpiece that’s different than everyone else, and we are winning every single week.

Mark S A Smith:            Right on. Well, there’s a reason why that feeling of not enoughness is so pervasive. And it comes from two different things. One is, when you have people in that state, you get to underpay them. And they are okay with it.

Kelly Resendez:            Yes.

Mark S A Smith:            And the second reason is that without that feeling of not enoughness, you’re not going to be Manipulated by advertising. Advertising is all about tapping into, “You are not enough until you buy this.” And so, there’s been a cultural aspect to developing this. And it takes a lot of hard work to break forth. As an executive, you must feel like you are enough, or you will not succeed. You’re going to be chasing the next thing, and it’s going to fail.

Kelly Resendez:            And there are so many companies out there that demonstrate that, that really are in a place of contribution. And they don’t want to affect the American public. And when you think about how we distract ourselves, I mean, you nailed it right on, Mark, is that there’s a lot of money to be made when we sabotage ourselves.

Mark S A Smith:            Right on.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah, there’s a lot of people to manipulate when they’re exhausted. And so, I remind people constantly, nobody wants you winning and feeling successful. Because last night, I took a great walk. Nobody made any money when I took a walk. They didn’t. It was free. I’m out in nature, I’m recharging, doing some meditation techniques, other things like that. And we’ve got to be aware of this. And that awareness starts with very responsible companies. That’s where we’ve got to make this shift, because the people are exhausted. They’ve been programmed to believe that this is just how life is.

Mark S A Smith:            Right.

Kelly Resendez:            And until we take that responsibility as business leaders and say, “I can do it a different way and be successful,” I don’t believe that a lot’s going to change.

Mark S A Smith:            Right on. When you push yourself, that’s what causes Starbucks to make five bucks a cup of coffee, and that’s what allows the local bar to charge you $15 for a martini, and then you can buy your $10 cigar, and then your $50 hit of cannabis. It’s all designed to run you through this loop of staying in fatigue. And we’ve gotta break out of that if we want to be at our optimum capacity.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            And that’s hard work, because it’s not socially acceptable. It’s very hard to not do the caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and in ever-increasing situations, cannabis, type of lifestyle.

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely. And one of the things that I try to help people with is just, when you think about awareness in all of these triggers that we have in our life, nobody’s taught us the strategies to overcome it. I’m just one millimeter away from wanting to go get chips, salsa, and a beer too, but I know how to stay disciplined and be able to get through whatever triggers create that need and desire. Right now, in my industry, real estate and mortgage, summer is really difficult, because most of our employees have freedom. They don’t clock in, they don’t clock out, and they are quasi-independent contractors. And summer, to all of us, is like, we want to be outside. And then we get on social media, and everyone’s on vacation and whatnot.

And we’ve got to understand that that’s triggering a need for more freedom. And how do we overcome that? And so, I use a trigger management strategy that I coach to in both my platforms, so that somebody can just kind of walk through that four-step process and just see it, separate from it, and be able to take a different course of action. Because that person that we become five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, is going to either suffer tremendously because of the choices that we make today, or is going to be celebrating, and basically just excited and ecstatic that we made the choices that we did today. And for most people, they just don’t live that way. It’s that day-to-day grind, “It’s okay, tomorrow’s gonna come. I’ll make the changes then.” And whether you’re an executive, or just somebody that’s at an employee level, we all face the same core challenges. It’s just how we make those choices on a day-to-day basis which is gonna separate us.

Mark S A Smith:            What you just talked about was really critical to anybody that wants to ascend in an organization. Anybody who’s aspiring to leadership, anybody who wants to run a company, anybody who wants to run a company sustainably, successfully, scalably, has to do what you’ve just discussed.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            And it’s truly about managing your state for optimum output. Would you be willing to share your four-step process, or do we have to buy the book?

Kelly Resendez:            No, I absolutely, if there’s one thing, I’m in a place of contribution.

Mark S A Smith:            We count on that on the Selling Disruption Show.

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely. So, my four-step process, number one, it’s become aware that you’re not your thoughts and emotions. So, that level of consciousness and awareness is gonna help you realize that, “I am emotionally triggered right now.” And so, you feel whatever it is that you’re feeling, and name it. You go through that retain of just saying, “I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m sad, I’m resentful, I’m in fear, I’m in scarcity,” whatever that emotion that’s been triggered. And then step number two is to identify what preference that trigger is basically, in conflict to. Because we all have a long list of preferences that we would love to be met. I wish people stayed on task all day, and didn’t surf the web, and were more productive. Or I wish that there was no traffic, or there weren’t lines at the airport, or Starbucks, wherever it is that you are. So really just notate what that preference is that it’s in conflict with.

Step number three is really just to identify the hallucination. If your preference is not met, what’s going to happen? And I always joke, I’ve got a 13-year-old teenage boy who I adore, but he triggers me often. He’s my greatest vehicle for growth. And I always say, my hallucination is that he is never going to move out. And when he’s 40, he’s going to be asking for me to get him a glass of milk. Because he triggered me when he didn’t get his homework done, or pick up his shoes, or whatever it is. And so, you want to pull that hallucination as far as possible. Like really, if my preferences aren’t met, what is really, that worst-case scenario?

And then step four is just making that decision. “Can I grow through this? Can I become more accepting? Can I become more patient? Is this something that I can work through? Or do I need to just avoid it?” And there are those times where we just have to make that decision, and simply say, “I will not tolerate this trigger in my life anymore.” And that may be letting a leader go that’s on your team, or choosing never to drive in traffic. I’ve coached people in my past that have just decided never to fly again, because it triggered so much fear. And it’s just hey, whatever you have to be able to deal with. And we have this human capacity for emotion. And whether or not it’s resilience, or whatever it is that you’ve got to work through, there’s just that capacity that we have in this moment that we’ve got to ask ourselves so that we can quit living every day upset about the same things over and over again.

You nailed it, that as a leader, we are truly just the people that everyone else depends on to set the tempo for how we handle disruptive markets. Because if I’m complaining that the major big box banks are just absolutely setting interest rates below levels that we can compete with, if I’m right there in the trenches with my team, they’re gonna be complaining about it. And it’s giving them that permission. So I’ve got to be able to just see and set that tempo for the rest of my team, so that they realize that’s just not our opportunity right now. Let’s move on and go find our business.

Mark S A Smith:            That’s really great. I like that whole scenario. The whole package is worth going back and listening to, if I’m a listener. Let’s just do a quick recap. So, number one is just recognize where you are. Recognize what you’re feeling. It’s okay to feel your feels.

Kelly Resendez:            And name them.

Mark S A Smith:            It is okay. Number two is, “What would I rather do?”

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah, what is the preference.

Mark S A Smith:            Yeah, “What’s my preferred state?” And number three is, “So what’s the hallucination that’s keeping me from my preferred state? What am I imagining that’s holding me trapped in this anger frustration stuff that’s driving me nuts right now?” And then, number four is, “Okay, what do I need to do to eliminate that?”

Kelly Resendez:            Absolutely. Or, grow through it. And trust me, Mark, I wish I could eliminate my son leaving his shoes out and not doing his homework on a daily basis, but I think you’re spot on. It’s eliminating that emotional trigger. I’m no longer emotional about the same things that I was. And you started part of the conversation in why are women a lot of times not in the level of leadership positions. We can be honest, we are more emotional creatures than men.

Mark S A Smith:            Woo-hoo!

Kelly Resendez:            And so, we have to work harder in an effort to just be that even keel person that our team needs us to be. Because if we are constantly fluctuating, we are gonna be creating chaos within our organization. But I’ve seen it happen so many times, and we can absolutely create that world for ourselves.

Mark S A Smith:            Well, my company has been run for the past 15 years by my wife, Molly. And so, she’s the bad cop. So I get to be the good cop. Her emotional response is what allows us to resolve things substantially faster. And it’s always been a really great mix, because she’s way more emotionally sensitive than I have been allowed to be through my programming.

Kelly Resendez:            And we need that balance.

Mark S A Smith:            Right on, absolutely.

Kelly Resendez:            We need that.

Mark S A Smith:            Yeah. And anybody that doesn’t have it has massive blind spots in their organization.

Kelly Resendez:            They have blind spots, and they probably haven’t opened the door for people to express who they are, authentically.

Mark S A Smith:            Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So, how can we move to a culture of authentic male-female communication, without worrying about the Me Too thing?

Kelly Resendez:            I don’t believe that we are in a place yet where we can remove the worry, because there are legal and compliance risks that all of us have to address. We’ve got to go back through our policies, we’ve got to go back through our procedures. And it usually takes a lot of pain for an organization to really do this, and be managing to it on a quarterly basis, and auditing some of the things that need to be audited. And so, when you start with that, and just excepting, “This is really where we are,” there are vultures that are waiting, and really trying to pull women into this, that may not actually be victims of this movement. And I mean, the attorneys are lined up right now. And there are absolutely people that have been victimized, and I wish that that hadn’t happened to them. But we’ve got to be truthful about where we are.

It’s a high sensitive subject today, so get your legal and compliance aspect out of the way now. Make sure that your rules, roles, responsibilities, other things are all in check. And then really again, just make it an intention that you’re going to bring in, if it’s not something that you are skilled in or have that desire to learn how to be skilled in, you bring in a consultant. Have them really help you, and assess your leadership. I’m in a very male-dominated industry, from a owner and executive level. And we’ve got to make that commitment, that we are going to put the most qualified people that want to be in those positions, in those seats. It’s not, “We’re gonna put women in those seats because we need to.”

Mark S A Smith:            Right.

Kelly Resendez:            We are just as qualified. We bring different gifts to the table. And we need to give them opportunities. But we also need to show women how it’s possible to be a leader within your organization, and be a good mom, and a good partner, and manage their self-care and stay in shape. Because so many companies believe that it’s the quantity of hours that you work as a leader. And people brag about it. I hear other executives, “Oh, my gosh, I worked 80 hours last week,” and I’m like, “That’s terrible.”

Mark S A Smith:            You are an awful leader.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah, that’s just terrible.

Mark S A Smith:            It’s broke. You’re totally broken.

Kelly Resendez:            But we have to realize, if somebody’s driven by significance, they will always fall that way. And that’s where most people are, until they’re at a level of awareness where they realize, “I can be driven by contribution, or growth, or love,” or whatever that other thing is that drives you and not just, “I’m attention seeking, and need to feed my ego.” And quite honestly, work makes it really easy. Being a parent, it’s like, “Am I a good parent? I don’t know. Ask me when my kids are 30,” right? It’s the daily grind of knowing. We are questioning ourselves all the time at work. If there is measured output, or dollars or cents involved, or accolades, or competitive stats, it’s so easy to feel good about what we’re doing. And it feeds that desire to be significant. So, we’ve got to fight against that. We really do.

Mark S A Smith:            That’s really a great point. The idea of significance is based on the number of hours you worked is a faulty concept. It’s one that is 100 years old, and needs to be eliminated. Instead, we need to focus on the quality of your output, and the quality of the innovation that you can bring to market. And so, setting those different intentions can create the opportunity for people to operate most efficiently, most effectively, and better yet, in an authentic manner.

Kelly Resendez:            Definitely. And just to kind of finish upon the point about what can a leader do to facilitate number one, more women in leadership, but then also this relationship between men and women in the workplace, is, just get really clear about what is acceptable and what’s not acceptable. Because, we can’t have it both ways. I can’t go into my break room and drop a funny joke about something that’s probably deemed inappropriate, and then turn around and say the same thing that something else said to me because I didn’t feel like it was there. I mean, you just can’t have it both ways. We’ve got to establish that. And I just think that sometimes we take it too far. We are humans. We like to have fun. I like to be silly, and say things sometimes that may be in that gray zone, too. So, I think we’ve just got to redefine the roles that we have with one another.

And I have had to make rules in my life, to be honest with you, in terms of, I won’t go alone with a man to grab a drink after work. And it’s because I’ve been in that position to many times, not where I felt like I was gonna be part of the Me Too Movement, but just that it kind of crossed a boundary that I didn’t want to have be crossed. So, we’ve got to just figure out what, how can we make these female-male dynamics more similar to the male-male and female-female? Why does it have to always be something that is questioned?

Mark S A Smith:            I think a lot of it has to be worked out culturally, both within an organization, as well as our own cultural situation.

Kelly Resendez:            Yes.

Mark S A Smith:            Guy locker room talk is pretty crude.

Kelly Resendez:            It is.

Mark S A Smith:            So is gal locker room talk. My wife was raised in a Catholic school, and she says the girls were worse than the guys.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            But somehow, when we start to cross over, things start to fall apart. And so, one of the guest on the show recommended the Grandma Principle, which is, if you wouldn’t say to your grandma, you don’t say it to a coworker.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah. That’s a great point.

Mark S A Smith:            So, it can be very simple to help establish this. And if we want to be blue, we go hang out with our blue buddies. Great. Fine. But that’s just not a work environment-type of situation. And then I think the other aspect to this is that we just have to respect that we have a different view of the world, and we have to find this common ground. It’s like a Venn diagram. We are never to be completely overlapped. It’s not desired. But we have to figure out that common space where both can work, and play, and create together effectively and better than if we work, and play, and create alone.

Kelly Resendez:            And that collaboration, I mean, when you imagine that collaboration when men are able to be masculine in their energy, and women are able to be authentic and feminine, just that combination is amazing. And yet-

Mark S A Smith:            Highly disruptive.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah, highly disruptive. Because if I’m in the food industry, and I’m a leader there, there’s gonna be that point where I’m, “Yeah, but there’s small kids that are gonna get addicted to sugar at age two, and then they’re gonna have obesity issues for the rest of their life. And every time they look in the mirror, they’re gonna say something terrible to themselves.” Where, somebody else that’s really focused on the bottom line, “Yeah, can I sell a lot of sugar snacks? Absolutely.” So, we do need that blend, to make a big difference within the world. And I just think that until we separate what’s best for humans from what’s best for my bottom line, it really is going to be blurred.

Mark S A Smith:            And that may take a little while longer. It may take millennials being empowered to get through that. Because I believe that the millennials truly prefer to do what’s good-

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            … versus good for the bottom line. And that cultural change is going to take time. Baby boomers have got about 10 years left in power. Millennials are starting to take [inaudible 00:29:59] power. And of course, the Gen X in the middle, they get screwed out of everything.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            But there’s a lot of interesting changes coming alone culturally, and we have to embrace those. And the sooner that we can make those shifts, I think the better off that we are. I want to make one more comment about authenticity. The thing about authenticity is, you need to be authentically good. And just because you’re a pig, and you want to be authentic and be a pig, doesn’t mean that you’re right for the organization.

Kelly Resendez:            Yes. Yes. And I mean, and that’s part of our hardest job on a leadership aspect, is how do we really truly know when somebody’s a good hire? And, how do we invest more time in really just understanding whether or not they are gonna be a cultural fit, if they have value alignment, if they’ve got good work ethic? Because most of us, especially in California, you get somebody into your organization, it’s really hard to get them out.

Mark S A Smith:            It’s really hard to extract them, that’s absolutely right. We actually do have some podcasts on this particular topic, one of which is creating the culture.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            Culture has to be well-defined. And if a person decides that they’re not part of the culture, then you don’t hire them. And especially, with millennials. Millennials buy into the culture, not [inaudible 00:31:14].

Kelly Resendez:            Yes.

Mark S A Smith:            And so, that’s one thing, is a well-established cultural document manifesto. And the second thing is, you have to use assessment tools. You have to run people through a battery of tests, because we are not good enough to be industrial psychologists. But we can get industrial psychologists’ quality insights, from assessment tools that cost $100 or less. And so, we’ve got to do the due diligence. And if we have anybody coming into an executive position, you have to run a background check. You have to run essentially, a security clearance on that executive before you hire them, because of the issues. And all of this will cost you a few thousand dollars, which is a fraction of the cost of disentangling them from your organization.

Kelly Resendez:            That’s a great point, Mark. When you think about it, we’re in a society that wants everything right now. And a lot of times, as leaders, we get enchanted with a candidate, and we rush them through and make decisions that we end up regretting down the line. And it’s so much better to just have patience. And there’s a word that I use a lot, which is unfolding, that’s very uncomfortable for Type A people like myself. It’s been a skill that I’ve had to learn, allow it to unfold, if it’s meant to be, it will present itself in that way.

But, whether it’s Predictive Index, or DiSC, or whatever it is that somebody chooses to use, it really tells us what’s needed in the market that we are in. Mortgage, for example, you could have gotten away with for many years, just being a high influencer, or even being dominant. And maybe you didn’t have a lot of the detail that was needed, because back in the day, loans weren’t as hard to do. And today, it is having a combination of multiple attributes that’s really creating massive success for people that are in mortgage. And if somebody’s just great at networking, but they’re not good at closing or putting the details together, I’m gonna waste a lot of time on that person. Or, I’ve got to have a robust training program that offsets that.

Mark S A Smith:            Or a team.

Kelly Resendez:            Or a team that’s able to do that. We just have to be really clear, and always be thinking about, “What are markets gonna do?” And I’m big into building a sustainable foundation that a company can thrive on. We get into these hot markets, like we did in mortgage and real estate, and we’ve got all these CEOs walking around thinking that they’re the best thing. And it’s, “Yeah, you’re the best thing because rates are low. Wait till we are all focused on just purchase, and that’s really where we are gonna see who’s going to survive.” And we’ve got to just take that realistic look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “If our largest basically, wind in our business went away, what would happen?” and be prepared for that.

Mark S A Smith:            Right. And that’s part of the scalable aspect of every business that’s going to survive disruption and be disrupting. Good stuff.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah, and the best advice anyone ever gave me was, they asked me, “How’s your business?” And I’m, “It’s great.” And they’re, “Can you show me, if you were challenged tomorrow that you needed to double it, could you show me exactly what you did to do it?” And I looked at them, and I was, “I have no idea. It’s been a blur of three or four years.” And so now, really just getting isolated down to, “What are the top three things that I do, to generate recruits, or productivity per head, or operations efficiencies?” And being able to just say, “Hey, this is how I’d be able to do that today. I know exactly how to do it.”

Mark S A Smith:            Yeah, I can tell you exactly how to double your business. Double the number of qualified conversations.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah.

Mark S A Smith:            It’s just that simple.

Kelly Resendez:            It’s that simple. It’s that simple.

Mark S A Smith:            And you just have to make sure that you trigger those qualified conversations. Business is actually not rocket science, it’s just doing the things that you gotta do, right. Doing the things you know you gotta do.

Kelly Resendez:            And whether or not you feel like it.

Mark S A Smith:            Right.

Kelly Resendez:            Being a mindset coach, as well, it is one of the greatest, greatest decisions that I’ve made in my life, was to basically, make a decision that motivation was meaningless in my journey going forward. Because so many things were dependent on whether or not I felt like it or not. And now it’s, “I have no idea if I’m motivated or not, I just do.”

Mark S A Smith:            Right on. One of my early coaches says, “Mark, mood backwards is doom.” Good stuff. How does our listener get a hold of you, get a hold of your book, Foundation to Sustainable Success? And also, before we end the show, let’s talk a little about Big Voices.

Kelly Resendez:            Yeah. Big Voices was really my passion project, to be honest with you. I feel like it wrote itself. So, I published the book in March 2018. It did take a couple years to get it. It intertwines my journey with some major strategies that I learned about writing a new story for myself. I endured a major disruptive period in my life, through losing my mom, and the mortgage industry collapsing, and rebuilding, and losing a house in a fire, and just so many other aspects of things that I went through.

Mark S A Smith:            Sounds like normal life, to me.

Kelly Resendez:            It’s just normal, yeah. And being able to also, leave my thriving career to take this basically, dive into leadership, and really being responsible for the health of my organization. And so, Big Voices just kind of combines the strategies, it combines core similarities that women have with self-suffering. So, self sabotage mechanisms. I’m a recovering perfectionist. And it is one of those innings that I’ve got to keep in front of me every single day, or I will relapse. And, I just want to help other women. That’s the truth. Just take what I’ve learned through my journey, and be able to share it with them. So, my website is bigvoicesrise.com. The book is also available on Amazon.

And then, for anybody that’s in sales, real estate, mortgage, etc., my Foundation to Sustainable Success really just kind of goes over any industry, but it is mortgage-specific right now. And that website is ftssforsuccess.com. So, just Foundation to Sustainable Success, ftssforsuccess.com. You know, I always have tools on there. This sabotage strategy that we talked about today is on both websites, where you kind of just look at the regular triggers and self-sabotaging behavior that you encounter on a daily basis, and you document it. And you plan for it a little bit more.

So, it’s kind of, “Hey, if somebody keeps attacking my business, or this keeps happening, I better have a plan of attack to be able to deal with it.” So, it really just walks somebody that’s out there through that process, so that you are less likely to sabotage yourself, and you’re less likely to allow triggers to derail you, and really just change your state.

Mark S A Smith:            Really good stuff, Kelly. This has been a terrific conversation. All that information will be up on the show page. Thanks for joining the Selling Disruption Show and sharing your insights with my listeners.

Kelly Resendez:            Awesome. Thank you, Mark, so much, for having me, and also just bringing this great information out to leaders out there that desperately need it.

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