Episode 33 – HR Like a Boss: Transforming Leadership and Empowering People with John Bernatovicz

Todd Bertsch: 0:10

Welcome back to the Bolt Podcast. I’m Todd Bertsch and I’m thrilled to be your guide on this inspiring journey of personal growth and leadership. Together with my guests, we’ll dive into transformational stories, uncovering how small, intentional changes can create massive positive results in your life From overcoming challenges and setting impactful goals to building lasting habits and living with confidence, health and positivity. We’ll explore it all and if you’re ready to embrace a growth mindset and unlock the best version of yourself, then let’s spark that transformation today. Johnny B in the house.

John Bernatovicz: 0:50

I love it. Thanks, todd, for having me man so cool.

Todd Bertsch: 0:52

All right, here we go. Today’s guest is John Bernanovich. John is a family first business leader, balancing roles as a husband, father, brother, coach and competitive amateur golfer. In addition to being an entrepreneur, podcast host, keynote speaker, author and HR expert, john is on a mission to make an impact by empowering leaders to transform how people feel at work. With a rich entrepreneurial history spanning 25 years, John has been at the helm of six business ventures, currently serving as the president of Willery, a boutique staffing and consulting firm focused on HR and payroll. John’s passion lies in elevating purpose-driven organizations to their full potential. Listeners, get ready for an exciting episode, John. Welcome to the Bold Podcast, my friend.

John Bernatovicz: 1:44

Todd, you’re my buddy, I love you. I’m not afraid to say that in front of the world, and you make me sound way better than I am. I think that some of that’s got to be fabricated, but it is all true.

Todd Bertsch: 1:54

Maybe I pulled it from AI.

John Bernatovicz: 1:55

No, it’s not AI. I hate that stuff. I love it in some regards, but when it comes to authentic and content and all that stuff, we got to find a way to bring ourselves out and be vulnerable and that’s been a big transformation for me the last few years, for sure.

Todd Bertsch: 2:09

Yeah, it’s a tool.

John Bernatovicz: 2:10

Yeah, no doubt it’s a tool. For sure it’s a tool.

Todd Bertsch: 2:13

So we got to be authentic. I actually just saw a LinkedIn post that somebody had written about using that tool in a smart way. It was pretty insightful. But, dude, I am so excited for this conversation. I’ve been waiting for weeks. You’re a busy guy, you’re doing I mean, listen to the intro, you are busy keynotes speaking. You got your business, multiple business ventures. You got a family that you care about. It’s a lot.

John Bernatovicz: 2:41

You got a lot on your plate so that you care about, it’s a lot, you get a lot on your plate. So I I I that word. Busy is a four letter word.

Todd Bertsch: 2:48

Do you know that? Yeah, and, and.

John Bernatovicz: 2:50

I’m super curious of what people think when you hear the word busy Cause. I think the response is it’s a overwhelmed, it’s too much, I can’t handle it. And when I think about it, I mean in all sincerity, as we’re recording this, I just dropped three presentations in the last 24 hours. It was in Broadview Heights and Worcester and then in Pittsburgh, all within the last 24 hours, which is crazy.

Todd Bertsch: 3:14

Yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 3:15

And I feel blessed more than busy. That’s the simple way I look at it, I feel blessed. I’m doing my best to take care of myself first, so that I can end up sharing the story that people seem to have interest in, which is incredible and it’s a blessing for me to be invited to speak at these events.

John Bernatovicz: 3:32

It seems like the more that I speak, the more I get other opportunities, which is very unique. It’s crazy. Plus, obviously, family I got two kids that I love a lot that are going through changes in life, 17 and 15 years old, which is surreal. I have my two businesses that I own. Keynote speaking, I’m working on four book projects right now, which is hard to believe. A couple of them are simpler. Two of them are really complex. The two that are simple are just contributions I’m making to a book, which is kind of cool, but that’s what happens when you put yourself out there people recognize it.

John Bernatovicz: 4:09

And then the one thing I will say if anyone’s listening out there about building a personal brand or trying to create some marketing efforts or all the work that I know you’ve done throughout your career, Todd, I will say that writing a book is probably the most time-consuming exercise that I’ve ever done when it comes to actual personal branding and what turns out to be marketing, but has yielded the greatest results. Maybe not necessarily financially, because the royalties I get paid are not that great, but it’s just the exposure and the fact that people think I’m a lot smarter than I really am because I could actually write a book that people paid money for.

Todd Bertsch: 4:41

Right and I’ve heard that on many shows. So that is, people paid money for Right, and I’ve heard that on many shows. So that is to me, that is a consistent pattern that I’ve seen. It’s all about building your brand, getting the word out. You know it’s an important message, right, that you have with the book, and it’s not about the money. Most traditional right, traditional publishing is not going to be this huge revenue, but it’s about getting yourself out there and then that leads to other things. You’re seen as the expert, right, so you’re going to get maybe a TED talk or definitely some keynote speeches invited to the dance if you will, and I’ve also heard that it is an incredible amount of work two to three year process Everybody that I’ve spoke to.

Todd Bertsch: 5:22

We have a lot of authors on the show and I listen to a lot of podcasts that have authors and I’m inspired, you know, aspiring author as well, and so just hearing about your journey and others, I know it’s going to be. It’s going to be a ton of work, but I’m I’m ready to do it. You know. I’m ready to invest that time and just be smart about it. Like you said, you know, you just take the time and do it right. You know it’s going to be a lot of work, but you were very intentional about taking your weekends or when you had those pockets Right, and I’m sure we’re going to talk a little bit about just all the stuff that you do. We won’t use the word busy, and you’re right. I hate that word as well, and someone just asked me last night at an event how are you doing? And the first thing, like I think, my natural response was yeah, I’m staying busy and I even caught myself. I’m like that is so uninteresting.

Todd Bertsch: 6:11

And yeah, I’m busy because I love what I do, but I’m aligned right, Like I am making sure that I spend the time with all the people that are most important to me, like you, my family, all the relationships that I’ve created. But that takes effort, right and intentionality.

John Bernatovicz: 6:29

I think there’s a different way to frame that. When you say we talked about, when you say the word busy, it feels like it’s filled up with things in your life that maybe you don’t want to be doing Right, but in many cases, just like you described, those are all wonderful things.

Todd Bertsch: 6:39

Yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 6:40

It’s. My schedule is full with things that I want to be doing. That’s what I would define it as and that, to me, is a blessing where a lot of people are doing things in their life that they really don’t want to be doing. They’re working a job they don’t want to be doing. They’re in a relationship they don’t want to be in. There’s a bunch of things that will create that. How are you doing response to be a negative, which it’s okay, like it’s? That’s one of my actually, quite frankly, the thing that I think got most people’s attention in the presentations I did in the last couple days. We broke down the question how are you?

John Bernatovicz: 7:11

I think it’s the most dangerous question in all of our united states, in our society, because it’s proven that people disingenuously ask how are you not really wanting to know because they don’t have time for it. Most people answer with a good or a fine, or the one we joked about the most is I’m living the dream and I always, anytime somebody gives me that response, I stop and I’m like please tell me what that means. I just am so curious what living the dream means to you and it’s different, and I think there’s a curiosity, a vulnerability and authenticity that comes with being present enough to ask the question with genuine interest of how you’re really doing, and I think sometimes we can fill the words just to be it. It’s kind of passing through the night kind of discussion hey, todd, how you doing?

Todd Bertsch: 7:56

Good, go on yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 7:58

I checked in with you. It was less than a second.

Todd Bertsch: 8:01

Yeah, no, that’s interesting because among many things that I took out of your book, which I’m sure we’re going to get to here soon, the one thing that stood out that you say you say the most important words in your book HR Like a Boss is how are you feeling? But I think if you change that last word from doing to feeling, you get a different response. Right, it has a little bit more intentionality, especially in relationship to your employees right, or any a colleague right In the workplace saying and asking how are you feeling? That’s a little bit different than how you’re doing right, and I love that and I’ve heard that before. We do that a lot here.

Todd Bertsch: 8:40

I just did it with an employee who just lost her pet family member. You know what I mean and she’s struggling and it’s beautiful. I saw my team come together. I had nothing to do with it, and one employee reached out to the whole team and said hey, I’d love to get her a bouquet of flowers. I was just like, touch me to have your employees want to do that and I know when she gets that it’s going to bring her to tears because she’s just a very emotional person. Um, and it’s not expecting that, but that’s just how are you doing? We know she’s struggling, you know, Um, but we’re all stepping up to the to the plate to help her out so she can have that time, you know, with her, with her partner, and to do what she needs to do to get through these next couple of days. So, anyhow, to do what she needs to do to get through these next couple of days.

John Bernatovicz: 9:23

So, anyhow, sorry, that’s awesome, went on a tangent.

Todd Bertsch: 9:24

But how are you feeling? How are you feeling, john?

John Bernatovicz: 9:27

I feel blessed, honestly. I feel blessed, a little tired driving all that time in the last couple of days and standing on your feet. I think collectively it was about seven and a half hours of actually presenting.

Todd Bertsch: 9:37

Don’t think about it. Yeah, I never thought about that being on your feet. That’s a real thing You’ve got to have good shoes.

John Bernatovicz: 9:42

You’ve got to have good shoes. Got the dunks, if you can see them.

John Bernatovicz: 9:45

Thanks to my son Will. One thing I was blessed by it’s interesting at the very end of my session yesterday, which we talked about humanizing work, communicating with impact and building better relationships, and I was doing it with accountants. It was a SEC Pro event that one of our friends, matt soulful, invited me to speak to both here in Cleveland and also at in Pittsburgh. There was two gentlemen that were in the session yesterday that compelled me to. One of them came up to me immediately after I was done. The other one talked with me at the happy hour event and I cannot tell you the. It gives me goosebumps even just thinking about the. One. Gentleman came up to me and said we talked a little bit about filler words and communication and being commanding and direct but kind, and he said I was paying attention to you and for two hours you never use a filler word in your conversation, because I’ve been working at that very diligently.

John Bernatovicz: 10:38

If I’m going to be a paid keynote speaker, I have to ensure that my ums, my so, my buts and whatever. Now I’d have to ensure that my ums, my so, my buts and whatever. Now I might have just tricked you. Now you’re going to pay attention to this while you’re doing this podcast, because if you want to be a keynote speaker, you can’t say those words.

John Bernatovicz: 10:54

And I’ve seen keynote speakers that say I’m like, wait a second, this doesn’t add up. Or you’re listening on the radio and you hear a radio talk show host drop an um or a so or some sort of filler word. You hear a radio talk show host drop an um or a so or some sort of filler word. And what I was telling him about what I’ve been able to train myself to do, is that sometimes when you’re standing up there talking for an hour, you all of a sudden lose your train of thought. It’s natural. You’ve scripted it all out, you see the slide behind you. You all of a sudden get on a tangent and what I used to do was fill that with an um or an uh. Now it’s with taking a step, slight step back and silence, pause to create my thoughts, because what ends up happening is you capture people’s attention more. That way is what I’ve noticed. If all of a sudden I’m a keynote speaker and I stop, what is he going to say next instead of um, right, it’s hugely impactful. So had that conversation with that one gentleman and then another gentleman, which was fascinating.

John Bernatovicz: 11:46

I did this slight rant about birthdays In the spirit of all the people in your network, about 85% of people won’t reach out to you on your birthday. And then the vast majority that do will reach out to you via social media, just by clicking that one button happy birthday, todd on Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever the case is. And then we go down the level to where you actually get a text from them. It’s 10, 20, 15, 30 people, depending. And then how many people will call you and how many people actually on your birthday will see you actually come and see you bring your present. And as you go down that line, it’s just statistically lower and lower and lower. Well, one gentleman in there was giving an example. He said I get 150 messages on LinkedIn, I’ll get 30 texts, I’ll get this, that, and the other and the gentleman sitting at the table next to him said at my last birthday I got three. I got three calls plus text.

John Bernatovicz: 12:39

How did you get so many calls? So, after we talked about it, we had this really unique connection about some things going on in his life and how he built relationships with people. And this is a CFO of a well-run company that’s sitting there just dying to tell me how he’s feeling. Because, for some reason, I exposed myself, my vulnerability. We talked about communicating with impact and building relationships, and I talked to him for 45 minutes after the event and the one thing I did I asked him for a cell phone number and his birthday, because I’m going to call him on his birthday on July 26. Because it seemed to mean something to him that well, what did I do? That people aren’t texting me or calling me to the level that that person was, it was profound to me, and those are the experience.

John Bernatovicz: 13:26

That’s why I do what I do. I tell people all the time. I have one goal for all people that attend my sessions I want the time to go by fast. That means we’re having a good time, and then my goal is I want to make an impact. I want to try to find one person in that room.

John Bernatovicz: 13:39

Every time that I speak that something I said, whether it be the words that I use, or it sparks something in their mind, it ignited something for them to do something with it, and whether that’s texting somebody on their birthday instead of doing nothing, or it’s not having filler words, or it’s driving, transforming how people feel at work, it’s really my inspiration in doing what I’m doing just to change how people feel in their lives, because a lot of people are struggling, a lot of people are not engaged at work and we need to change it. That’s all there is that we need to change it.

Todd Bertsch: 14:12

Oh, dude man, there was a ton to unpack here and this is going to be a long episode, and I’m cool with that because there’s a lot I want to talk about.

John Bernatovicz: 14:19

Let’s go.

Todd Bertsch: 14:20

I mean, you have so there’s so many things and I just want to unpack that and let’s go down some rabbit holes. I love the birthday topic and I have a different approach to it. I want to share it because I think it’s unique and different. I’m not a big fan of the whole birthday thing and here’s why I feel like it’s and I turned off that feature in LinkedIn. I still have it on Facebook and I don’t like it and I think I might turn it off on Facebook too, because it is not authentic to me.

Todd Bertsch: 14:50

What I would prefer to do and I’ve seen guys, people in general, right, that will take like one day a month. This is a routine, a habit they’ve created one day a month or maybe it’s weekly, and they will just write thank you notes or text people in their network. But it’s not about anything specific, it’s just hey, thank you man, thank you for just doing what you do. Like I met so far for some attacks a few weeks ago I was just thinking about I was in the gym. It’s like, man, I’m so grateful for you. I just wanted to say thank you, everything you’ve done for me and you as well. You’ve been a tremendous mentor to me and you’ll get a text from me as well at some point.

Todd Bertsch: 15:32

So it’s just those. You know, those are the ones that have. I’d rather do less and receive less and just be more authentic in general. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, john, I’m just. It’s just a different. I’ve been very intentional about thinking about the whole having it on social and you get a hundred and it’s like I can’t reply. I just like each message and they’re all the same, they’re all the same.

John Bernatovicz: 15:53

They’re all the default to happy birthday comment time.

Todd Bertsch: 15:54

I appreciate it, you know, and every now and then someone might, you know, go astray and say something personal you know like, or if it’s a milestone 50 or something like that, but in general it’s, you know it’s just generally disingenuous, which is a lot of what social media is.

John Bernatovicz: 16:12

Yeah right, so here’s, I’ll give you the.

Todd Bertsch: 16:13

But I love that you, you know you, you’re making an effort breaking down the well.

John Bernatovicz: 16:16

I would sit here and say nothing is the worst. Right, social media is the next worst. Then we get into the more personal texting phone call and we joked about the pop-in. The pop-in is like if I popped into your house on your birthday you’d be like I really like you, john, but how’d you find my address?

Todd Bertsch: 16:33

And like why are you here right now?

John Bernatovicz: 16:34

And I don’t like the cake you brought me. That’s a little weird nowadays. You kind of joked about it, but at least seeing someone making the effort and what you talked about. I know two incredibly successful, well-known people that followed that same strategy that you did Arnold Palmer. Arnold Palmer was known when he was alive for taking time out of a day and he would mass write notes to players on tour people that impacted, that made an impact on him and you get a congratulatory note from one of the greatest iconic golfers ever. It’s that’s not something you throw away.

Todd Bertsch: 17:12

Right, you frame it and we’re talking about a handwritten.

John Bernatovicz: 17:15

Handwritten note. Mike Krzyzewski does the same thing.

Todd Bertsch: 17:18

That’s taken it to a whole different level, right.

John Bernatovicz: 17:20

Yes.

Todd Bertsch: 17:20

Even that alone is just a whole different thing we could talk about.

John Bernatovicz: 17:23

Coach Krzyzewski talks about it. He wrote it in a book or it was on a podcast or something, where he takes to your point one day every month and he writes out for two hours. He intentionally writes out handwritten notes and he keeps track of during that month. Who do I want to write a note to?

Todd Bertsch: 17:38

And then he just batches all of it out and then sends them out.

John Bernatovicz: 17:45

I’m sure that he has support from his admin that addresses them and everything else, but it’s a handwritten note from Coach K. That takes time. Talk about the impact that can have for the person that gets it. But that’s what he realizes. He realizes that’s a human interaction touch. That’s different than think about it a handwritten note versus a happy birthday comment on Facebook Right Timely with March Madness. For sure, yeah, exactly, hopefully your bracket isn’t already busted?

Todd Bertsch: 18:12

Oh my gosh. Yeah, we could talk about that for a long time, but yeah, it’s just being intentional, right, and just creating relationships, but putting the work in. That’s what I think it’s all about is just putting the work in, letting people know that you care about them. And the one thing that I love and we’re going to talk about that in a minute about you, john is when I think about servant leadership and I’m sure you read Bob Berg’s the Go-Giver you embody that to me and you are the and I know you’re a very humble person, but sorry you are I mean you are a true inspiration in all sense of the word, from just the way that you handle yourself, from a business leader to a family leader and what you’re doing. I’m not even trying to do what you’re doing. I mean you have big, bold goals and you set out on a mission to change the workplace, specifically in the HR industry.

Todd Bertsch: 19:10

That’s a bold move, man, but I love people that aren’t afraid to create a BHAG and just go after it and, yeah, if you achieve it, great. Either way, you’re going to do the work, you’re going to go out there. But it’s all true, it’s all authentic, it’s all real, but you take the time. You’re going to go out there, but it’s all true, it’s all authentic, it’s all real, but you take the time Like you’ve been a tremendous mentor for me, like I said, and I appreciate all of that. You’re a very passionate person doing the things that you love.

Todd Bertsch: 19:35

You know, I wanted to say the four letter word, but you’ll take that time out, right, and I say, hey, man, can you review this for me? Or you’re sending me conferences that might align with where I want to take my keynote speaking, and so I just want to say I appreciate you, I feel blessed to have you in my life and many others. I think the gratitude piece you’re full of gratitude which, when you have that quality, that trait, I don’t care about anything else Like that is the one thing that you just know. That is a good human being right.

Todd Bertsch: 20:10

So I don’t know where I was going with it other than I guess.

John Bernatovicz: 20:12

I just wanted to say thank you.

Todd Bertsch: 20:14

But servant leadership. So how do you feel about servant leadership and how you bring that in to a workplace? Is this something that you talk about at all in your book or in your keynote speeches or corporate trainings?

John Bernatovicz: 20:29

I just did it honestly. Last week we had a training with a client and we went through all the different types of leadership styles that are in there transformational, transactional, laissez-faire, authentic leadership, servant leadership. We broke that down. It was interesting in that group. It was a varied group of people and different sets of experiences, different sets of responsibilities, some with high stress responsibilities, others with more I’ll call it office administrative stress and they talked about having a few different types of leadership styles that they felt were important for them to have and that was part of the exercise for them just to recognize and identify it.

John Bernatovicz: 21:09

I truly appreciate you, todd, as well. I mean, it’s one of those things I go through this journey in life trying to find people who care, and very rarely do you find ones that truly, truly care. I know the work you’re doing is trying to inspire people to make their mark and do their thing, and it’s just rare that someone will be that open and honest and show you in ways in a continuous way, and what I realized is that early on in my professional career, because I was trained in sales, I was good at trying to get what I wanted. I was good at trying to close the deal. I was good at trying to. You know, the company I worked for was exceptional at teaching you the ABC and I was always doing that and I was successful at it. Then, at some point I realized is this is this what life is all about? Just making sales and making money? And I went through a very unique time watching both of my parents pass away in a compressed period of time, and before that I had read Go-Giver and I had read books on leadership, but just feeling differently as a human being, having lost those two people my two greatest mentors in my life and just asking myself the question how do I want to leave a mark on this earth? What do I want to do when it comes to when it’s time for God to take me, for people to say and it just changed. I changed a thousand percent. I changed in the sense that it is not about me and it’s not about what I want, it’s not about making a sale, it’s about the person that I’m interacting with and how do I do my best to ensure that I make them feel heard and loved and cared for and appreciated.

John Bernatovicz: 22:50

Now, there is a wide range of response to that. Sure, there are ones. We’ll continue the love session there’s. When I connect with Todd Birch, I feel great. You reach out to me on the weekend, you text me and I’m like rock on, you need help, let’s go, let’s figure it out. And then we come here and we get pictures taken and it’s like authentic, it feels real. And then there’s others that are just like I thought I was doing my part and it’s nothing, like it’s a complete goose egg. And there’s even more that are like mad or angry at me because I’m building a brand and I’m creating this thing and I’m trying to transform work and they don’t really like how I’m doing. Like I have some haters out there, which is kind of interesting.

Todd Bertsch: 23:31

Yeah, that is interesting. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

John Bernatovicz: 23:32

What I noticed is, as I was writing my book and building everyone was like cheering you on Go John, go John, go John. And then I wrote the book and then it had success. It became SHRM’s number one new release ever on Amazon, the first ever which they’ve written a hundred books and a lot more famous, popular, well-written people than me writing those books, which is crazy. And all of a sudden I had a few people that are like nah, they can push you off the top of that mountain.

John Bernatovicz: 23:58

I don’t like the story you’re sharing and I don’t mean to get biblical or faith-based.

Todd Bertsch: 24:04

No, let’s do it. What I’m going to go here is that Jesus?

John Bernatovicz: 24:07

is one of my mentors. It’s a person I look up to and how he lived his life and trying to find my faith and find my connection. And I am a sinner, I am not perfect. I try my best and I try to have fun. Those are the two things that I do Try my best every day and have fun, because tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Todd Bertsch: 24:27

Yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 24:27

And I want to be around people that fill up my cup. Cheers to that.

Todd Bertsch: 24:33

Cheers to that. Fill up my cup. Fill up my cup, man. We call this the gratitude cup.

John Bernatovicz: 24:37

And while I do it, I got to be filling theirs up. The only way that I can get my cup filled up is if I’m just doing it, because what I’ve noticed, just like we talked about in presentations, when I give time, when I go and do keynotes and I share my story, like one of the main strategies that I developed I have a performance coach around speaking and there’s some things that you do to create your niche, your shtick, your thing Light up shoelaces I’ve got this backpack that I bring. That’s light up HR like a boss. It gets people’s attention and I try to do a standing ovation in every keynote that I have, not for me but for the crowd, to make them feel like what does that feel like to get a stand? Like what does it feel like to be LeBron James and get a standing ovation for just doing my job or doing my work? And I noticed the more that I give, I get it back tenfold.

John Bernatovicz: 25:28

That conversation I had with that CFO last night he doesn’t know it, but it changed my life, the impact and the things that he said, talked about his parents and other things that were going on in his life, and it changed my life and it made me better and try my best, have fun, and when I align with someone you know and when you don’t, you know, and I spend more time with the ones that I align with and the ones that I don’t, I give them grace. I love them. I think they’re a gift. Thank you very much for being how you’re being, but that’s not how I’m trying to roll. I want to find people that are going to fill up my cup.

Todd Bertsch: 26:01

Man, I love it. I love it so much impact. They’re just pouring in to others to fill their cup, which inevitably fills your cup. That’s a beautiful thing, beautiful thing and it takes time, man, but I’m just like you. Our time is limited and I want to spend it with people that feed me, that I align with, that have the same core values, that have a high energy and a high EQ and a high level of positivity. You know, I want to feel that synergy every conversation. I don’t have time to waste.

John Bernatovicz: 26:38

You don’t.

Todd Bertsch: 26:38

And I’ll give people grace and, like you know, say hey, nice to know you, I know you know, if you need something, I’ll be here, but I’m not going to spend my time and working, cultivating, growing that I just don’t see it, but because we can only do it with so many people.

John Bernatovicz: 26:53

So I got to ask you because we’re both men.

Todd Bertsch: 26:55

Yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 26:56

Middle aged.

Todd Bertsch: 26:57

Yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 26:57

And this is one of the things in my journey that I’ve recognized the reason why I wrote HR Like a Boss and went on this transformational journey of trying to change how people feel at work and drive amazingly awesome HR because I saw a gap. I just consistently saw non-HR people complaining about them to the point where the office makes Toby the villain and he’s in the resources. That’s the character that many people think of HR.

John Bernatovicz: 27:23

Or when they walk into a room, they’re scared you know what list? Because who’s getting fired? And is it me? What did I do wrong? Why Sally from HR in the room? And then I met with, and I know, thousands of HR professionals and they’re caring, kind, loving people, but there’s a huge gap between what they’re doing and what the marketplace perceives of them and what they need. And the thing I was going to ask you same thing started to happen to me in the last two or three years.

John Bernatovicz: 27:51

I became very intentional about driving time with my close friends, the men in my life, and what I noticed is that they do a terrible job of creating the I don’t know what the right word is. They’re not the ones making the appointment, I’m the one originally originating. Let’s get together and over time, and over time, and over time. And then once recently I had a buddy of mine say if you didn’t do what you did, we wouldn’t get together. And every time that we’re together, we have a great time.

John Bernatovicz: 28:16

And what I realized was I have a choice. I can either be bitter about it and be mad that my friends don’t make those appointments, or I can realize that most men struggle with that. Creating a rapport. You’re not like that. You’re not like most guys and I’m not either. But I’m not going to fault a dear, dear friend of mine because I’m the reason why we have to get together all the time, because when we do, they always say thank you so much for doing that. I lost track of time at this, that and the other, and I give them grace. I don’t know if you feel that yourself, but, like guys, have a hard time creating that real connection.

Todd Bertsch: 28:50

Yeah, I do. Actually, I just encountered it last week, ironically. So there’s a couple of I would call my kind of old school crew you know that I grew up with and I sent a text out haven’t seen these guys in months. And I’m just like I sent a text that, hey, I sent a text out, haven’t seen these guys in months. And I’m just like I sent a text that, hey, can we get together for breakfast, you know? And uh, so I had, I had to be the champion of that. And we went Wally waffle had a great time hour, hour and a half catching up family, kids and so on and so forth. And they’re like thanks for setting this up. It was easy. You know, you can do it through text, and we had a great breakfast and we got together.

Todd Bertsch: 29:22

So somebody has got to be the lead man. You just have people that are proactive I think that’s the word you’re looking for and some people are just kind of naturally I don’t want to say born leaders in that sense but’s a friend, right and you say, man, I’d love let’s get together sometime. And I said, okay, stop right there. It will not happen unless we set a date right now. Maybe we move it. Something comes up, we change it, but let’s get, get your phone out, let’s get something scheduled right now, today, and make it happen.

John Bernatovicz: 30:02

I hate that empty promise.

Todd Bertsch: 30:03

That’s a great strategy that is the way to do it, man. It took me a while to learn that, but it works. If you’re just blowing smoke, then fine, but if you really want to meet with that person, get it in the books.

John Bernatovicz: 30:16

How are you doing? Pass through that, let’s get together sometime. Pass through that. The people that are really like what you’re trying to get at is when you say how are you feeling? You’re ready and prepared for you to tell me Right, and if it’s bad, I’m ready to get down in the grit with you and get through it, and if it’s, let’s get together. Like is it disingenuous. Are you really saying that? Because I have many friends that will have said that Right, and I’ve learned to just not say that anymore, unless I want to get to. If I say, todd, let’s get together, then I’m willing to commit on the spot to let’s do that. I don’t know what it is with men. Maybe I’m off base. Maybe the women are out there. They’re listening like, oh my gosh, you’re so right. Or maybe I’m totally off base, but I don’t have any champion anymore. I’ve given up the. I feel bad because no one else does it.

John Bernatovicz: 31:03

That was a I was taking it personally versus what I realized is, if I keep doing this for the rest of my life, at some point someone’s going to say something or be like if, without John, we wouldn’t be having all these great times, I don’t mind, let’s do it.

Todd Bertsch: 31:19

I don’t mind either.

John Bernatovicz: 31:19

Somebody’s got to be that champion, somebody’s got to do it Right, so yeah, just take the time, reach out, say hello, set up something.

John Bernatovicz: 31:25

Just like you said, it’s work, it makes effort. You got to make an effort. It’s a small amount of time, just a small amount of time, and I think that I think what we talked about earlier. If you’re out there listening to this right now and wondering, well, how do I do it? I heard the founder of Because I Said I Would I forget his first and last name, but he talked about the importance of reducing stress through calendaring, basically building out your calendar from beginning to end of every single day. Everything you do should be calendared, and he talked about the idea he actually joked about he calendars calendaring, right?

John Bernatovicz: 32:01

Yeah, joked about he calendars, calendaring right, yeah, but if in that, if it’s every other week, you want to be intentional about text, half hour of text, and you just roll through, just like Coach K did, yeah, it’s amazing the impact you can have because we all just get busy, yeah, and distracted, yeah, and all of a sudden I don’t reach out or hear from Todd for four months and I missed on something major going on in your life or missed out on the chance for us to have fellowship. I think you got to be real intentional about it. Like you said as well, there’s a limited number of people you can do that to. You can’t do it to you can’t intentionally be that way to a thousand people. It’s got to be a small group and there’s got to be some level of reciprocation. That comes back.

Todd Bertsch: 32:42

Yeah, absolutely. And I noticed you had mentioned in your book about blocking time and I don’t want to go down that road because we’ve talked about it in most of the shows, most of the episodes we have, because I’m really interested in how people like you, who do a lot of different things right and have a family, how you do all that and stay aligned. But I think it does come back to your calendar and blocking. Everybody has a little different.

Todd Bertsch: 33:07

I’ve heard little nuggets, you know, use color coding or icons or something to help and squint to see. Like whatever your personal or your family time, like what does that look like? Is it enough, right, based on your season of life? But yeah, I totally agree, I do that every Sunday. I plan out my week, everything my workouts, my family time, my wife makes fun of me, oh, it’s time to spend time with your daughter. I’m like, yeah, I scheduled in because I don’t want to miss it Now she’s 13. She may or may not want to take me up on it, but I’m going to try and maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll say, yeah, let’s play badminton, dad, or whatever. You know what I mean. But at least I was intentional about blocking that off, so there’s nothing wrong with that.

John Bernatovicz: 33:51

I think it’s smart. We have to right I think the beauty of it to me, if that’s part of the process, if you think about it, the calendaring is part of the process to be intentional with your time. If you’re out there listening wondering, well, how do I do that, that’s one of the steps. But before you do that, in my opinion there’s a couple of things as far as that I’ve done differently over these last few years that have allowed me to have the opportunity to do keynote speaking and be on cool podcasts with friends like you is that I started. I had this mindset of I have to become selfish. Before I become selfless, I have to start taking care of me and my well-being.

John Bernatovicz: 34:29

I read Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and get it, understand it and his reasons of why are really really impactful. Then one of my friends started writing a book which she published not too long ago, called Moms Eat. First I was like Kathy, oh my gosh, I’m totally into that idea and the concept of it. I started taking care of myself, working out diet, meditation, journaling, journaling.

John Bernatovicz: 34:51

I learned a lot from writing because I didn’t realize how many bad ideas I actually had until I wrote them down and read them back. And then, in that, in that same time of being self-ish to get selfless, I became clear on what my purpose was make an impact. Simple as that, right, and if I’m able to do something that does that, I will do it and I’ll get energy from it. If, all of a sudden, I have to do something that doesn’t feel like that, I’ll do it because I probably have to, right, but it doesn’t fill my cup up. That’s where my energy comes from, because I’m doing things I love to do with people that I like to do it with.

Todd Bertsch: 35:29

Oh man, I love that. That’s a great quote. Be selfish before you can be selfless and you know it’s interesting the best investment you can make is in yourself, and before you can really pour into others, you have to be good, right. You have to be sound Mind, body, spirit, soul, right. So health, fitness, meditation, writing, journal of gratitude Like I love it, and I’m the same way but you have to be able to spend the time.

Todd Bertsch: 35:58

I’m interested to read your friend’s book. Because I’m interested to read your friend’s book? Because I feel like and I have a huge circle of women, especially leaders, and a lot of them single parents, and I know personally being married twice and not excluding guys, but generally speaking, parents will put their children first for everything in the sacrifice of not taking care of themselves, right, and I’m hoping that book is about changing that paradigm and saying look, I can’t really take care of my kids or my team or be a leader if I’m not giving myself a little bit of time. That’s something that I really focus on in my keynotes and my speaking is look, it only takes five minutes. I don’t care how busy you are, how your life is right, you can take five minutes in the morning to just pray or have a gratitude practice or a meditation practice or just walk in your in your neighborhood before everybody else gets going. Right, so you can figure that out. Um, so just start with a small shift, right, and then just let that compound over time.

John Bernatovicz: 37:11

So incremental change is crazy and you, you have to do it, you have to do it. It’s the classic when you see someone or you’re getting on an airplane and all of a sudden they, they pop the oxygen mask down to demonstrate if the pressure gets de-cabinized or the cabin gets depressurized, whatever the word is got to put the oxygen mask on us first, before we take care of others.

Todd Bertsch: 37:34

Right right.

John Bernatovicz: 37:34

And we just feel like it’s a badge of honor to not do that, especially with our children. Right, and I can attest that I’m able to be more present with my kids because I’m taking care of myself and I recognize that I wasn’t as present, I was more on my phone. I wasn’t doing that job as well as I could have because I thought I had to just keep working, and working, and working, and working, and working, and doing, and doing, and doing and not taking care of me.

Todd Bertsch: 37:57

Right, yeah, and it’s always where you’re at in your season in life too, right? You know pre-kids, or when kids are younger, or when they get to a certain age, or in your career, right? So it all does shift and you have to reevaluate, but in the end, you have to give time to yourself. So I love it, man, and we got to get talking about this doggone book. If you don’t have a copy of HR, like a Boss, you need to pick this up. And let me tell you the first thing Don’t let the two letters HR fool you or scare you off, because to me, yes, there’s a focus on HR, but this is a leadership book. This is a book about business and how to be the best person you can be for yourself and your company. This is a great book. By the way, I just left you an Amazon review yesterday.

John Bernatovicz: 38:48

My man.

Todd Bertsch: 38:49

Highly recommend it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, john, for a number of reasons. One, it’s just a damn good book. I learned a lot. And interesting enough, man, I thought you were speaking to me Literally. I’m like ding ding, I have six pages of notes and there’s some things in here that really really spoke to me. It’s an easy read and I don’t mean that to discredit. Like you know, it’s not written well, it just was pleasant to get through, which I really, and I like an old like I like to read the book, not listen to it. Nothing against my people that are audio book people, but I still like an old school book and it was fun. So I grew up in the 70s, 80s, so I really appreciated all the 80s references. It was just a great book, man.

John Bernatovicz: 39:37

Thank you so much, so well done.

Todd Bertsch: 39:39

I know it took a lot of time and, as you say, it was a lot of work.

John Bernatovicz: 39:44

Yeah it was a lot of sweat and tears and a lot of pouring your heart out and a lot of work. It was an investment of time. Investment of time of it that I was overwhelmed by, quite frankly, was Sherm’s interest in publishing and Sherm is the largest HR association in the world and they have a publishing arm and I’ll never forget when they were willing to partner with me on it. I thought to myself what in the world’s going on? This is not happening to me. And then we wrote it and we shared it and then they published it and it had incredible success. I came to find out more recently that vast majority of number one new releases on Amazon sell for $1.99 or 99 cents. They have a strategy for two, three days low price get the number one new release. Our book was $29.99 from the day one that it came out, which was hard to believe that maybe with the timing of it, we were lucky that there wasn’t another HR book release at that lower price point. But it’s changed my life. It quite frankly has, and I think in a lot of really good ways, and I mentioned it earlier of the impact that it has. But I appreciate the fact that you enjoyed it.

John Bernatovicz: 40:59

I tried to write it as genuinely as possible. When I read it back I realized the parts where I was more genuine with my words and I was more telling stories that related to the topic. That’s why I intertwined people that I knew really well and their stories. I felt like that was really important for me as a writer to integrate that and that was a strategy that we set out and I had many friends help and support me with the book and it wasn’t just me, it was a collective effort of a lot of people. And Bridget Klein I’ll give her the biggest praise because she designed the cover. She designed the cover originally and then Sherm sent us six, eight, 10 other options and it was clear that her cover was better than those options they probably paid too much money for with a graphic designer and in the long run it just gave me a chance to tell my story and I’m just blessed that at least one person bought it and liked it, and more than just you, todd.

Todd Bertsch: 41:54

So you’re number two. Yeah, that’s awesome, man, and it’s a great testament. You had a message to tell and you put the work in and you put it out there and, like I said, it’s wonderful. And I just want to dig in man, I love the stories. I love how personal. I learned a lot about you. We’re friends and I’ve known you for several years, but I learned a lot and I love when people intertwine their own personal stories into it. That’s what really. That’s what I mean. People love stories, right, but to bring your own in and to be vulnerable and really put yourself out there and you did, I mean, you really do get deep. It’s not just about all the wins, right? You?

Todd Bertsch: 42:37

talk about a lot of the challenges and obstacles that you face in your life and in your career, and I appreciate that. But one I want to talk about here to kick things off, is this story about you do this presentation to a SHRM group titled I Hate HR, and it’s interesting because before I read the book I actually had the same idea. But so here’s the interesting thing and I’ll just quickly share my story. So I don’t necessarily consider myself an HR person and here I am really trying to get embedded into SHRM, into the HR field, via you, but I am. I mean, I’m a business owner of 16 years and one or 15 employees. I’m responsible for human beings, right, and when I first started my business, from day one, I had a business plan check. I always follow the rules, the guidelines. Employee handbook check Probably found something on Google tweaked it made it, my own check, and I thought it was good.

Todd Bertsch: 43:45

And then I started adding more employees and more employees and growing. And, man, I hated HR. I really did. And it wasn’t until I saw the impact that that statement had on my business. The light bulb went off and here’s what it was. I started creating a spreadsheet of all the transition within my business and I started seeing a trend. You know, with a small business like that, you have two or three people transitioning in or out for whatever reason every year. It was killing us and I always I’m a man of patterns and trends and I saw a pattern and I said this is not good, I am failing here and I need to commit to this. So I committed about eight months to that pillar of my business really understanding HR and I committed financially to an HRIS system, bamboo HR. I’m not affiliated with that, I don’t get anything out of it, but it’s a great product for a small business and that changed the game.

Todd Bertsch: 44:49

I can’t even tell you, and I failed so many times. I failed so many people in the way that I handle things and I had some things to work on myself too. This was before I really engrossed myself in personal growth and positive intelligence. So I did have some issues, I was broken a bit and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. You know, I was thinking about this morning, about talking about this, and I didn’t have much, if any, managerial experience before starting my business and I didn’t really have a leader, a mentor that was a leader that I could really learn from. So I was just kind of going about it on my own Good, bad and different. That’s just how my experience was and that was a mistake. But, all that to say, I hated HR and now I love HR because I really understand.

Todd Bertsch: 45:43

And what I loved about what you’re trying to do with this mission in this book, it’s not just it’s about managing humans and making them the best people they could possibly be, but understanding that without the people man, you don’t have a freaking business. So you got to focus on the people. Hr is responsible for that. So, yes, damn right, they should have a stake at the table. Right, they should be at the head of that table. So I’m with you with everything you were saying in here. They should not. They’re not just about the employee handbook and oh, somebody’s getting fired or you know, it’s all the negative and I and I’ve seen that, I’ve seen that and you’re right Television and social and all that. I credit them to really showing the negative and bad side of HR.

Todd Bertsch: 46:28

But there are some really wonderful people like yourself and others that are trying to change the game and right now work is tough. Having a business, managing employees is incredibly tough. We have seen more change than we have ever seen and this will continue right. This will continue to evolve. So, my friend, I know it was a huge setup, but I wanted to share that because I was really reflecting on my experience, as I’m calling myself an HR professional, which is kind of crazy enough and when I made that shift it changed the game for me and my business. So proof in the pudding that really embracing HR and how it can impact your business can be good. So, thinking different, I appreciate that story.

John Bernatovicz: 47:17

I got to ask you something Did you sleep a little easier? Did your business seem a little bit easier Pre-hating HR to post those eight months that you immersed yourself into it, bought a new technology and then all of a sudden after that, did that part of the business seem a little bit easier, seem a little bit more transformative, that you could make more of a difference? Yeah, I mean. So. That’s basically the premise from my standpoint yeah, absolutely.

John Bernatovicz: 47:41

Here’s an executive, here’s a business owner. You’re the perfect prototype for me to talk about Hated human resources because of what you perceived it to be and some of the administrative things. And then over time, that hate got it felt like stronger and stronger. The more issues you had, the turnover you had, the harder it was. And all of a sudden you realize, well, wait a second, there’s a formula for doing this, there’s a system, there’s a process, there’s a way to do it that’s better. And if you start doing it like a boss, it’s easier for you. You sleep, you put your head on the pillow better at night. Your employees probably have a better experience. Your business, I hope, performs at a higher level. Turnover costs money. Disengaged employees don’t produce at the level that those that are, and so all of a sudden, you don’t scale or grow or have profitability. And then where I really try to take the book to a whole nother level is that I believe that work has become like a lot of people’s church. It brings a lot of meaning to them. They spend so much time doing it. Todd, we spend so much time working and a lot of people’s church. It brings a lot of meaning to them. They spend so much time doing it, Todd, we spend so much time working and a lot of people want to do good. They want to be a part of something that feels good in their life, and an organization, a company is a perfect platform for that, and I’ve seen significant myths in corporate America of being intentional about their purpose and the idea of doing HLA like a boss.

John Bernatovicz: 49:04

Take care of ourselves first. Make sure that we lean in and support our employees so they’re productive, they’re engaged, they’re happy, they’re satisfied. There’s a lot to do that. Then we got to make sure we drive business results for our company. We just can’t do these things and it costs more money than the business can afford. It doesn’t work that way. We have to have a profitable, successful, productive company. We do those two things company with money, people that are happy. Hey, we’re going to do an event where we’re going to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. You get a wide variety of people from your company. They go there, they have an experience together and guess what? 15, 20, 30 years from then they retire. Guess, 20, 30 years from then they retire. Guess what they talk about? Remember that time we went to West Akron and built that house for that veteran through Habitat for Humanity and we went out and had beers afterward and we were all sweaty and gross. That was awesome. That’s to me what doing HR like a boss is all about.

Todd Bertsch: 49:57

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that was I mean that took a lot of guts to present to a Sherm group.

John Bernatovicz: 50:07

I’ll never forget it.

Todd Bertsch: 50:08

But I mean that changed the game for you right.

John Bernatovicz: 50:10

That was a pivotal moment for you. I did, and the response was incredible. The response was I could have spent the entire hour just letting them vent.

John Bernatovicz: 50:19

They were ready and the list is in the book of all the things that they said about why do people hate you? And it was therapeutic. There was someone crying. I’ll never forget it first happened. Someone raised their hand. I called on them and as soon as they said it, people just started shouting out things Right, you’re a suit, or I’m going to get fired, or I’m a party planner or I’m Good. It’s the simplest way I would say it. And I just kind of let it happen Because I, frankly, was nervous as hell walking into a room of 150 people.

John Bernatovicz: 50:57

The second slide after H like a boss, is I hate HR. I thought they were all going to leave as I write about in the book or boo me off the stage, and it turned out it was quite the opposite. It was very inspirational, which showed me because I’d worked with some clients at that time and had been trying to run my business where we put our people first, where we have intention with our values, where we make all that, and what I realized was it just was easier for me as a business owner. It was just easier and the people were happier and they turned over less and they were more productive in their job. All that stuff is what we want.

John Bernatovicz: 51:31

And then on top of that, todd, you had people that are in the profession, that are sitting there telling you I need a therapy session because this job is really hard. That’s why HR associations to me are so important, because I’ve heard a lot of people tell me HR pros. I can’t share the story of what Todd’s doing at work because it’s not something I can tell my husband or other colleagues. But I can go tell Sally, my dear friend, who works at a totally different company, who doesn’t know Todd, and I can share that intimate discussion. There’s a lot of therapy that goes into that. Why I believe in SHRM so much in the community that they’ve created, because it is a very difficult job. But with difficulty comes challenge, with challenge comes opportunity and you can make a real difference if you do it well a real difference.

Todd Bertsch: 52:13

Absolutely, absolutely, um, you know, if we were, and I’m curious, maybe, maybe you’ll do this after, but uh, as I’m going through the book, there was one word that continually came up and I’m like, and it’s it’s one of my favorite words and I’m like, I feel like this is probably the most commonly used word in the book aside from HR or HR like a boss. Obviously, it’s mindsets. You’re big on mindsets and I love that because I am, too. Being a mindset coach, a mental health coach. It’s all about and that’s what my talks are about shifting from a fixed mindset to an open mindset, which is a lot of. Really, what you’re talking about in the book, right, is having people just embrace, and I, it’s about curiosity, just being curious enough to be open enough to have the conversation to say, hmm, maybe it is okay to have some change. Why not? What if? Right, asking that question what if? But? And there’s several mindsets and I want to be respectful for time, but you know this is a great segue, what we were just talking about. You talk a lot about people before profit mindset and I want to share a quick story.

Todd Bertsch: 53:23

I was at an event last night. There was a gal by the name of Valerie Mayen. She’s the owner of Yellow Cake Shop Clothing up in Cleveland. She was actually on Project Runway, very vibrant woman, incredible talk, but it was interesting and I took this note and it ties in, so bear with me. So we’re talking about people before profit and she mentioned so. She’s in the fashion industry, creates clothing, fashion designer. She says most of the fashion brands are owned by men okay, and most of women’s clothing do not have pockets, which, as a man, even if I buy my wife clothing, I’m not thinking about that right Interesting. The reason why is because it adds eight to 10 seams. Well, what happens when you add seams?

John Bernatovicz: 54:15

Cost money.

Todd Bertsch: 54:15

It’s more labor and more cost. So what she’s trying to do, or what she is doing, is changing that paradigm and saying screw that, I’m putting the people, my women, first, right, and I’m going to add pockets, I’m going to give them pockets. It’s a simple example, but I mean that ties right into it, right? So and I think Simon Sinek talks about a little bit in the infinite game, right, it’s about putting people first. That’s the long game, that’s the infinite game. So I’m going to give it to you, man, but talk a little bit about this mindset, the simplest way for me to talk about people versus over profit is.

John Bernatovicz: 54:57

Just look at a profit and loss statement.

John Bernatovicz: 54:59

Where is profit at? It’s the bottom line. There’s so many things that have to happen within a business revenue generation, managed costs of goods sold, and we get some form of gross profit. And then we have all these indirect expenses, which are a predominance of employees, and benefits and everything else, and then we might be fortunate enough to have some money left over in the end.

John Bernatovicz: 55:18

My general thought process on this is I try to make it as simple as possible. Every single employee inside of your business must understand how to read your own financial statement. And the issue is I’ve run into a lot of business owners that are like there’s no way I’m showing my employees that and I talk about why. Well, I make too much money or I don’t want them to be worried. And I was in the same boat in many cases in the course of my career and I realized that my business was a great platform for my team to learn how to become better business people, Simple as that. And then, as a result of that, guess what happens? They manage their cost way better because they know where it sits on the P&L, and then my hope is they become better investors. Because five, six, 10, eight years ago Robinhood and Schwab and E-Trade it became super easy for us to buy any stock we want. We could buy fractional shares of Berkshire Hathaway if we wanted for 10 bucks, and we’re doing that blindly, without understanding the financial statements of the companies that we’re investing in. It’s not being prudent with our time and our money and this is probably one of the biggest I get from HR professionals. I, like people I didn’t do well in my accounting class To me, a profit and loss statement.

John Bernatovicz: 56:31

You don’t need to have an accounting degree to understand the key components of it, and I think it is a business’s responsibility for every employee to understand the P&L of their business and that to me it’s a simple way of saying okay, profit is part of that, but we’re educating, we’re informing, we’re giving our employees something. Maybe they haven’t gotten somewhere else and they can recognize things that are triggers for that Revenue is down. So guess what ends up happening when you’re transparent about that. They know why and when they’re going to get a bonus, they know why and when you would or would not give them a raise and God forbid your business starts to struggle. Guess what If you have to lay them off or have to have a difficult conversation? They know, Instead of them being surprised out of the blue I didn’t know we were struggling that bad.

John Bernatovicz: 57:19

To me, that’s putting people well before profit by simply educating and informing them and bringing them into the fold. This is a really important thing. They do Forty hours a week. They go to this company. Shouldn’t they know how well it’s doing or how poorly it’s doing? That, to me, is putting people before profit. Yeah, absolutely.

Todd Bertsch: 57:37

Yeah, I love that, john, and you also talk a lot about oh yeah, thank you. Yeah, you also talk a lot about the entrepreneurial mindset and really we talk a lot about that in our business and just saying, put your business hat on, you know, put your think about it from the client’s end. You know a CEO or a C-suite person and I love that. I love that. I never thought about that. We don’t do that share the P&L, but we share a lot more of the numbers than most business owners would and to that. So I think I was heading down the path that you are. More information is better, right, that communication, so they understand, and it’s just about being transparent. That’s how I’ve always run the business. It’s just being transparent.

Todd Bertsch: 58:22

But putting people first is not easy. You know, it’s funny. Even the most simplest decisions, the communication of it, if led with empathy, takes more time than just firing it off. Right, because you’re thinking about how it impacts everybody, because everybody’s different, that everybody is struggling with something, because really everybody is right. So if you make that assumption, I know it goes against you’re not. You know assumptions make us all look like an ass, but in this case I think it works If you assume that everybody is struggling with something, then you’re going to lead with empathy, right, and you’re going to just sit back, listen and give them space, safe space just to talk, right. That’s all most people want, is just space. But if you give them opportunities to really be a part of something special, that’s what they’re looking for and I think that’s what you’re talking about here.

John Bernatovicz: 59:23

It’s amazing. I was taught or learned or heard, or whatever the framework is on the definition of empathy is obviously walking some form of a mile in the shoes of someone else. It’s definitely different than some form of compassion or certainly sympathy, but the simple strategy that I just talked about this in my keynote presentation yesterday was just first off, when somebody tells you something that’s important, you tell them. Thank you as genuinely as possible as you can, gratitude, and not not being contrite with it or not being phony. Then the second thing is that I feel like when people tell you something deep is they don’t want you to fix it, they just want to know that you heard them.

John Bernatovicz: 1:00:05

I appreciate you telling me that that just happened to you. I’m not even sure what to say. Like that, that’s gotta be, that’s gotta be something for you right now. And then the last thing they talk about is this idea of can I just? Can I just? I just want you to know that I’m here, like I know you’re in this. I use this whole this. Brene Brown has this video image of empathy and they talk about the person walking down the ladder and just standing next to you, not even putting your arm around you, not telling you, oh, you’re going to be fine, or here’s how you fix it. People don’t want that.

Todd Bertsch: 1:00:40

Yeah.

John Bernatovicz: 1:00:45

Maybe eventually, if you hear them and they come back and say I really appreciated how you did that. Do you have a recommendation on how I can get out of this situation? Then I will go there. But my first is thank you. That is something for sure. It’s got to be a lot. I don’t even know what to say and I’m here, simple as that, and I think here’s what I’ll share.

John Bernatovicz: 1:01:01

As far as the mindset of entrepreneurial, the entrepreneurial spirit, is, that’s what I noticed drastically differently when I worked in corporate America versus when I own my own company. I’m assuming you had the same feeling. The moment that I had that responsibility. It was like, oh my gosh, before I was just responsible for sales and selling deals, now I’m responsible for everything in this business. Talk about ownership. And then, in order for me to do that, to work 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week, you got to love it. If you don’t love it, then you got a problem. And I’m not suggesting that I want everyone to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week, because I don’t even want to do that anymore, but I want you to love what you do, and that has a lot to do with the company, its purpose, its values, the people you hang around with, the job that you do those are all important things and then, if you take in order for you to then take ownership of it, I think you have to have that admiration and spirit for it. I assume 16 years ago you had something going on in your mind, a spark that said I need to create this marketing ad agency and I’m going to name it Evolve, and then that’s going to turn into something and all of a sudden, boom, your trajectory of your career changed by that.

John Bernatovicz: 1:02:13

I don’t know if employees feel like sometimes they have that sense of ownership. They’re so structured. I think even in corporate, bigger companies they can find that to some extent and control it. The level of autonomy and ownership that you can give someone in their job is one of the most important things you can do as a business owner, leader, manager, whatever. Give them autonomy, because one of the things I hear people complain the most about is a micromanaging manager.

John Bernatovicz: 1:02:38

Amen, brother, get away from me. I had a couple of those. Get away from me. I ran the other way from them, right, and I think a lot of things I learned in my life are things I didn’t like. Well, yeah, and there’s a lot of things I learned in my life were things I didn’t like. Well, yeah, and there’s a lot to that, and I’ll end with the mindset part. I think if you look at your job or anything you do with love and ownership, it changes how you see it, and if you find you can’t love it or you can’t take ownership, then you probably need to change it. May not be the right thing for you to do, because think about it for a second we’re going to spend 90,000 hours of our lives working. That’s a third of our life working and if we’re miserable or unhappy or don’t like the people around or whatever, try to fix it, try to manage it, try to frame it a little different way and if that doesn’t work, then change it, because it’s not worth it. Life is way too short.

Todd Bertsch: 1:03:32

Right or leave move on Leave Don’t be quiet, quitting or disengaged. I hate hearing those Do something about it.

John Bernatovicz: 1:03:39

Yeah, quit.

Todd Bertsch: 1:03:39

Raise your hand. What do you have to lose?

John Bernatovicz: 1:03:42

Go tell your boss, who’s a. You know what I’m leaving, because you treated me poorly and I don’t like how you made me feel. And here’s my two-week notice and here’s 14 examples of it that I can give you Right.

Todd Bertsch: 1:03:53

And if that’s my fault, then shame on me. And we always say you know, oh, I’m worried if so-and-so is going to leave. I tell my leadership team we’ve done. We live by these core values that are on our wall, right? We’ve done everything that we can do. We put our people first, we lead with empathy. That’s all we can do so we feel good, we can sleep at night. If that’s not enough, it’s not enough. Maybe it’s time Things happen.

John Bernatovicz: 1:04:22

And I try my best in my business to create. If there’s an issue in our company, I want it to not be the company’s issue. I want it to be that someone’s not willing to work hard enough or it just isn’t the right cultural fit for them, or the schedule’s off or something, Because I learned as people turned over that there’s a reason why they do it and over time that’s the beauty of a business you can iterate those things and make them better. Learn from why Sally quit 10 years ago and make sure that we don’t do that again. And I always encourage my leadership team are we doing everything we can as a firm and you as a leader, to set your employee up for success? And if they’re not successful, then let’s examine why that’s happening. Right, let’s get some fact-based data. More often than not, it has to do with something going on with them, whatever it is.

John Bernatovicz: 1:05:03

Let’s dig into what it is and put yourself out of the fact that, oh, that employee can sit there. Oh, the reason why I’m quitting Todd is because of Evolve, because Evolve’s culture’s off, or you have no process or no structure around your process, or I don’t even know how we’re doing. I don’t even know what my job is Right. Those are all easy things to fix, in my opinion. Don’t give them a chance to blame the organization for it and if they do, listen to them and modify it and adjust it.

Todd Bertsch: 1:05:34

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I can recall back real easily, unfortunately, is onboarding, and I feel like that is a big miss and it was for me. I failed miserably in that no runway. You know, just bring people in and feed them to the sharks and hope you survive. I hope you’re successful, but I’m not setting you up. I have no, no process. No, we’re no time. We’re so small. We’re filling, we’re bringing you in because there’s a void and there’s no redundancy. I need you to start now getting stuff done.

Todd Bertsch: 1:06:07

It’s tough, but I realized that that was a big mistake and you know that wasn’t providing a successful fostering success for that person. So you know we were seeing the turnover, but so much here, man, and a lot of it, I think, goes back to you say you talk about this, a lot in the book is having the own it mindset, and you kept saying ownership and I’m thinking that’s where you’re going with it. It’s just owning it. You don’t have to be an owner, you don’t have to be a C-suite. Yeah, and what I always say is you know leadership you know, having, you know, being a leader in a company.

Todd Bertsch: 1:06:41

Everybody can be a leader and if you’re a parent, you’re a leader One of the most important, most difficult leadership roles you ever have. So we all have the ability to be leaders and just own it, be proactive and just go get it, go after it. That’s why I love the message in your book. So much to talk about here, john man. I don’t even know where to go and I want to be respectful of your time, but let’s just end with the future of work.

Todd Bertsch: 1:07:11

So you are in the conversation with lots of HR professionals who, whether they’re at the table or not, should be, you know, and should have a really good pulse on what’s happening and, as we all know, it’s changed dramatically since COVID and continues to change disengagement, quiet, quitting, finding the right talents. Where do you see things going, man? Everything that you’ve learned. You’ve interviewed 150 plus people. I’m sure it’s even higher now because you have, you know, the podcast before the book and now the book and keynote. You’re meeting all these people having all these conversations with leaders in the industry. Where are things headed?

John Bernatovicz: 1:07:55

They’re always evolving.

Todd Bertsch: 1:07:58

Perfect segue.

John Bernatovicz: 1:07:59

Yes, always evolving If you need any help with your marketing strategy or ad or new website, call Todd, he’s your guy. There you go, ba-boom, we got that plug. Here’s what I will say. I’m going to synthesize this down to thousands of hours of study and conversation and a theme and I always have this quote in my keynotes because it, I think, is the best Maya Angelou’s quote it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what you do.

John Bernatovicz: 1:08:29

What people remember is how you make them feel and, to me, with the evolution of technology artificial intelligence, changes in the government, all the things that are happening around us we as employers are responsible for how we’re making our people feel. We have to create safety for them, both physical safety and, nowadays, emotional safety, because mental illness is growing drastically, obesity is increasing, we’re not taking care of ourselves as much and they spend so much time at work. As I mentioned to you, it can become like church to them if you do it the right way, and it’s such an incredible platform. Work is because of the amount of time and the impact and the reason why people work. The reason why people go to work is because of the amount of time and the impact and the reason why people work. The reason why people go to work is to provide for themselves and their family. What’s more important than that in life? To provide for your family. And if we’re making them feel like you know what, because we’re a bad boss, we have inaccurate processes, or they’re just not working properly, or we just don’t care, or we’re too busy to focus on it To me, I’m hoping that the world changes. My transformation that I hope happens is that we care more about how people feel. That’s it. And there’s strategies, there’s process. We talked about handwritten notes and being intentional, about onboarding and there’s all these things. We can do that. Quite frankly, todd, they don’t cost that much money.

John Bernatovicz: 1:09:55

Recognition programs Just recognizing someone for living by our core values. We do that every week at our firm. It costs us literally nothing, and we get three to ten nominations every week. We have five core values. We ask them to put them in through a form and you know what happens every quarter, we recognize someone that won the Willery way. Last, three out of four winners literally cried when they got the award on camera. It makes a difference of how you’re making people feel, and that I don’t want to say it’s simple, because if it was simple. Everybody would do it. It’s pretty simple. It takes time. Create the core values, make sure your team knows what they are and just live by them, recognize them when they do it and hold them accountable when they don’t.

John Bernatovicz: 1:10:42

To me, people want that and they want that form of structure and, for whatever reason, I just do not understand, and I think the last thing I’ll end with, todd, is using you as an example.

John Bernatovicz: 1:10:54

No managerial experience, starting a business. All of a sudden you hire one person, two person, three person. The next thing in your mind is like oh my God, I hate people, I hate HR, I hate the HR part of my CEO job and I think that we do not equip people well enough with the tremendous opportunity of being an effective leader. And when I ask people at keynotes or I have intimate concurrent sessions it’s rare that I’ll get someone tell me they’ve had more than two exceptional bosses, when in their life they’ve had eight, 10, 12 bosses. The vast majority of managers are ineffective. And when I look at owners of businesses and HR professionals, if they ask me, where’s the number one place to go, go to your leadership team. That’s where all of your success or failure is gonna come from, and they’re the ones that are gonna make your people feel good or bad at work, and I’ll end with that.

Todd Bertsch: 1:11:46

I love it, man. We just came full circle, john. We talked about the most important words from your book. How Are you Feeling To? The most important thing is how you make people feel. I love it, man. You know the one word we didn’t talk about, but we’ll just end I love you, brother.

John Bernatovicz: 1:12:05

I love you too, todd, it’s okay, it is. I love you, we do.

Todd Bertsch: 1:12:09

We call our team family. A lot of people don’t like that. You know what we spend so much time. If you don’t love your people, if you don’t feel like they’re family, probably shouldn’t be here. Probably shouldn’t be here, yeah. So thank you for your time.

John Bernatovicz: 1:12:20

Thank you for what you’re doing. I’m so proud of you. You gave me all this praise of what I’ve been able to do, and it’s all God’s glory, quite frankly, and it’s the fact that we get this chance. If I hadn’t done all that, we wouldn’t know each other. I’m better for knowing you. You fill up my cup with this beautiful water and this Evolve cup.

Todd Bertsch: 1:12:39

Oh yeah, let’s go.

John Bernatovicz: 1:12:40

Todd’s my guy. If you need his help. You know how to find him and go check out HR Like a Boss. Hopefully we’ll see you sometime soon at a keynote or maybe I’ll run into you at a restaurant and you’ll see the Willery gear and we’ll talk about HR and business and see how you’re doing.

Todd Bertsch: 1:12:55

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bolt Podcast. You’re on an inspiring journey of growth, transformation and joy, and I’m honored to be a part of it. If you found this episode valuable, please like share it with your friends and consider leaving a review. It means the world to us for show notes, resources and to subscribe to the weekly motivational monday newsletter. Please visit toddbertsch.com and don’t forget to follow us on social media at the bolt with todd b for more inspiration. Remember real change doesn’t happen overnight. Folks start small, stay consistent and watch as your growth unfolds. See you next time.