1177: Empower Your Team and Scale Your Business with Less Stress with Eightx Fractional CFO Leandro D’Elia

Robert Plank 0:04 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Leandro D'Elia is here from eight x.co that's eight spelled out. So that's e, i, g, h, t, x.co and they are all about scaling your company with more cash and less stress. They help founders, boards and CEOs get a grip on their businesses and get the resources they need to grow. But many times when we're talking about resources, we talk about like money, intellectual property, and many times, our people are our greatest resource, especially our team, how we interact and deal with our team, how we lead them, how we communicate with them. And so Leandro is going to tell us about how we can better express our leadership and plan and motivate ourselves and our team, so that way our people work together and figure out all these many problems that are involved when running a business and facing challenges and getting to that next level. And so Leandro is our man to get us on the right track. So Leandro, glad to be speaking to you today.

Leandro D'Elia 1:01 Thank you for having here. I'm glad

Robert Plank 1:04 Wonderful to have you. And so we introduced you a little bit, right? We hyped you up. Talked about some of your bio, but in your own words, what are you currently up to? What are your challenges? What's on your mind?

Leandro D'Elia 1:16 Usually the big challenge that I find when when helping owners and and small companies getting to the next level is how they grow. And when we say grow, usually we tend to think about money and more revenue, more expenses, more about numbers. And usually we don't seem stop to think about how many people do we want to have, which kind of people do we want to have to help us get to the next level? Usually the there's a quote, I think Steve Jobs said it, that if you surround yourself with the most intelligent people, they will get you to the next level. I don't remember the quote exactly, but I think that the main thing is surround yourself with intelligent people, and you will get better so that the main challenge is today is helping them find the correct type of people they need for their business and also be responsible for the development of that people. Because as leadership, as sorry, as leaders, many times, we don't understand the responsibility that we have towards the people that we manage and we make decisions for them we get into their lives. So I think it's important to understand the impact that our decisions have on their lives, both personally and professionally.

Robert Plank 2:47 I like that, and there's a lot of subtext built into what you said, right? When you want to surround yourself with a team of people that is smarter than you, it probably, I imagine it requires setting your ego aside, right? And saying, Hey, I don't have all the answers, and I find being one of the dumbest people in this group, because they will all lift me up. And there's also that when you're talking about responsibility, there's this idea of, I want them to solve their own problems and to have their own freedom and agency and not micromanage, which is a scary thing, right to set your team loose on solving problems, because there's the fear that they might mess up or they might lead your organization in the wrong direction. And so what are your thoughts on that? How do we empower our team, but also avoid the mistakes or avoid catastrophic failure?

Leandro D'Elia 3:41 Good question. I think that part of the surrounding yourself, often by engaging people, means that it's not about it also is changing how we manage people. I think that the old school was all about market management, and I don't think it's feeling the dumbest people in in the in the room, but on the contrary, try to find who's best at what they do. And of course, it's the most difficult part of that is setting your ego aside. But I think that's also part of growing. And when you find great leaders, or at least in my personal experience, the greatest leaders that I had were the ones that set their ego aside, and it was really easy for them, because by doing that, they were able to nurture themselves from all the people around them and make better decisions. Because eventually, if you have the correct set of information, and you don't get overwhelmed with information, you can make great decisions. And ultimately, you are intelligent, and you're the one that that's going to. The cause, and that's what you're intelligent for, and then losing them or giving them independency. I think it's about that developing them in a way that they can be responsible, they can hold accountability for their decisions, and they can also put the company t shirt, we could say here Argentina, in a sense, that they will want the best for the company. So they will make decisions as if they if, as if it was their own company. And I think that's part of training them. That's part of having intelligent people that with the correct training, with the correct mentorship feedback, will help you have more time. Because if I can, I don't need to micromanage you, and I can train you so that you can make decisions on your own, I will have more time to do something else.

Robert Plank 6:00 I like that a lot. And, and there's so you're saying that by by kind of assigning more of the thinking and the responsibility and the work to others, it frees up your own mental space, and that it perhaps requires some introspection on your own part, right, and some self awareness so that way you can think in this different way. And he also mentioned these kind of keywords here, such as well, you still have to train them, and they still need to be mentored, and there still needs to be feedback. It's not like you're just having total anarchy, but you're perhaps not being so much in control. And I had a friend not not that long ago, give me this analogy that in America, only a few years ago did we start implementing roundabouts, traffic circles, right? And up until maybe 15 years ago, it was all intersections. It was all traffic lights. And then they started having these, you know, the where you kind of go in the circle, and then you can go straight or go to the side, yeah, and it happens, yeah, and there's there. They were new here, but now they're kind of more and more where the drivers kind of manage themselves, right? You don't necessarily need to stop and wait for the higher authority to tell you where to go. It all works itself out. And so, but it's, it's easier said than done, right? It's easy enough for us to apply an LMG or throw in the keywords, and so that's why you're here to kind of share some stories, right? Share what you've done. So as far as what you've done, what you've seen, what you've built, can you tell us about maybe some adventures in in doing this? And kind of, yeah, handing off the responsibility to others.

Leandro D'Elia 7:34 My My personal experience is I was building a team back when, when I was creating an FBI department. And the most difficult thing, or the greatest thing, that I learned there, first is how to say no to something or to someone, and secondly, is knowing that when I delegate something the other person, it's not going to do it the same way I do it, and I have to make pieces with that. And that's something difficult to understand for many people, is that you need to understand that the other person, it's not going to do it the same way you do it, so part of your responsibility is to teach them how to do it same way as we have kids. You train them, you teach them how to how life is, how difficult the challenge is, and eventually, you set them free to make their own decisions and the when I was creating this team, the most important quote that I gave the two people that I was managing back then was, understand the consequences of your actions, both downstream and upstream, and that means know how to ask questions if I'm receiving a report or something and I need to read that report and tell it to someone else. I need to know who's giving me that report. That person needs to understand what I'm going to do with the report, how I'm going to read that report, so that understanding the upstream, I can tell that person why, how, and that person, because that's the one doing the task, can give me more value by understanding, what am I going to do with that? And on the opposite downstream, if I can ask whoever I'm giving that report, what are you going to do with this? How are you going to use it? Who's your audience? Most importantly, then I will have more information to add more value to the task. And that was the challenging part, back when I was starting managing people. How. To tell them, because I need to train myself also on what am I asking? What do I need that for? Why am I asking you this and so? Because whenever I found myself giving them more information, the feedback was way more constructive, and they were telling me, You know what? You don't need this because you're telling me what you're going to do, who you're going to tell it, and how you're going to use it. What you need is this other thing. And they were right, and I think that's the lesson that I learned back then, understanding the consequences of of my actions downstream and upstream.

Robert Plank 10:45 I like it the larger context and this whole idea of the leadership working both upstream and downstream, it's really cool to think about, right? Because you think about there's, as you mentioned earlier, there's like the old school way of having, like, an employee and an employee, and we've all been frustrated dealing with someone when, if they like it, hit a one little problem, they say, Hey, I'm stuck. And let me go back to my boss and ask another question, and then I go and I get stuck again. And versus, when there's someone who's great to work with on a team of any kind, they're the ones that they go when they look for solutions, or even if they're really stuck, they say, Hey, here's my problem and here's like, two options for me. So kind of make it easier for everyone. And that way we're not we're not saying, Hey, I'm completely helpless. And so as far as the like that, dealing with people right, there's always conflicts of some kind. And so when you were adopting this kind of new way of thinking and working, this new mindset. Do you have anything to share with us, as far as, like, the butting of heads, as far as the conflicts, maybe when you were trying to get this in place?

Leandro D'Elia 11:54 Yeah, I think that they, all of us, probably learn more about all the bad things that we've experienced and the good things and we all had bad bosses, which probably what we do is try not to repeat what they did with us. And like you said, yes, now it's about collaboration instead of employer employee. I still think that some things still need to come from, from up down, like the culture, the some of the things needs to come from the leadership team. Because if you want me to do something and I see that you're not doing it, probably I'm not going to do it. So I think now it's about with this new generation. It's about leading with the example. And back then, I had some bosses that tell me to do one thing, and they did the opposite. So that was really, really frustrating. And I think that the the best thing that I that I enjoy working in companies, is building up teams and creating a good culture with the people that I work with. Whenever I didn't have that, I resigned, when I think about in the past, every time I started in a new job, I was all about the culture inside my team and creating a good environment. When that didn't happen anymore, I was out immediately. My mind was out of that place. And yes, I had some jobs where my boss wasn't creating the best culture I try to approach in some cases without any success. And eventually, what I find is that, like many like we can find in in some books, is that you don't resign jobs, you you resign people, you you resign you don't resign your job. You you're leaving the people that are leaving you, actually. And I think that when we understand that, and probably I find that's the most difficult part of HR nowadays, is how we motivate people and how we keep them motivated, because now we know it's not all about the money. Yeah, in the short term, if I give you x money, you will be happy, but eventually, if you're not enjoying what you're doing, you're going to leave me or leave the company. And that's one of the things I find doing in the past, like whenever I didn't have a good boss, I left the company. So that was my not mistake, but that was my lesson learned when it comes to something bad, and probably that's why I spend the. Too much time investing in people, having time for them, listening to them. I have a I had a great leader in one of my first companies that once told me, We need to understand that 50% of our job is being responsible for the people that we manage, not only doing the excels or whatever we do on our daily work life, but also understanding that we need to set aside time to talk to them, to understand them, to know what makes them happy, what makes them sad, because it's our responsibility. We have their professional lives in our hands, whether we fire them or we promote them. In some cases, I've seen that promoting some someone was platform because either they were not ready, they didn't like that, they didn't want that. So I think we need to invest time listening, active, listening our people, and what drives their what makes them want to wake up every day and go to work happy, because at the end of the day, That's what happening to me that probably that's what's happening to you, if I don't wake up and say, Okay, now I have to go to work and with a smile, what's the point? And I think that's the the the new paradigm about leadership and how we manage people and and I think lots of young people nowadays taught us that we cannot do the same thing our old bosses did with us. We need to change the way we we manage people. We need to change the way we lead them

Robert Plank 16:57 100% and I completely agree and that this idea that, like, 50% of your of your thought process needs to be on your team, like, I think that's huge, right? And that's surprising. I can only imagine how many people think maybe it should only be, like, 15% or 5% you're saying, like, way more communicating needs to be done with your people to find out, as you said, what makes them happy, what makes them sad? And then on the on the flip side of that, as far as, like, you working in a team, it seems like you described like, three modes, right? There's, there's the mode of like, it's great, and this is a fun place to work, and I'm excited to go there and work on some stuff. And then there's the other extreme of like, this job isn't worth it. Money works short term, but it's not sustainable. I'll quit eventually. And then there might be the middle ground where someone says, you know, it's not a great place to work, but it's not bad. Well, then it seems like there's a decision to be made right as far as like, well, will the culture improve? Will my boss start listening, or will it just be more of the same? And then does that mean it's time to move on? And what's also great is you set up this kind of parallel here between your leadership at the workplace and also your leadership as far as parenting, right? Because there's a lot of what you're saying here is like, well, you know, I think about the Horrible Bosses that I had, I don't want to pass that on. But then you think about, like, the some of the bad things that parents did. I don't want it's not all bad. But like, you know, a parents all have done things when we say, you know, if I'm losing my patience or trying to communicate with my kid, I'm like, I'm not going to do what they did, because maybe they just were having a bad day. But they just, they did this one thing, and decades later, I still think about it. I don't want to do the same thing to them. Also realizing that I'm not perfect, we still make mistakes, and the best we can do is kind of be more thoughtful and have a better strategy going forward. And so this is a great conversation. We're having a lot of interesting, fun things to think about, as far as like the big picture and the concepts, but also we can all kind of act differently from now on right, communicate better and have our own kind of agency, both upstream and downstream, and think about, why is this task important, and how am I going to do it? Because there might be a better way of accomplishing it, or some things might not be necessary. And I want to make sure that we cover the bases and talk about what excites you. So in our conversation here about leadership and planning and HR etc. Is there a missing, hidden question in our conversation? Is there something that you wish I would ask you that I just don't know to ask you?

Leandro D'Elia 19:30 No, I think you covered basically all of all of the things that that I wanted to discuss, and I think it was good to put out there. I think also that what you said about parenting, becoming a father changed a lot the way I see life. And I think, like you said, Yes, we try to avoid making mistakes that we we did in the past. But I think that the, probably the thing that. That I didn't say. I don't know if there's a question to that, but I think that what I found is that most of the problems that I had in the past, and I will have in the future, 95% of the time, were about bad communication, whether it was a miscommunication, whether it was an interpretation. I didn't understand what you wanted to say, or I understand it in a different way, and I think maybe spend an extra five minutes confirming that the other person really got the message that you wanted them to get. And also, when it comes to people, try to avoid making assumptions, because no one knows the story behind the person. No one knows what they're dealing with. And I think there's no need to make assumptions when we can actually ask we have a person on the other side of the table. That person can talk usually, and it's easy. It's more easy than what we think to ask them, then it's up to them to make the decision about telling the truth or speaking up what they really feel or what they really think, but don't assume that they are going to lie to you or that They are going to tell you a different story, ask them, talk to them every time that I failed or that I did something wrong in both my life and my professional life, it was all about not having an extra five minutes of Q and A's,

Robert Plank 22:06 that's very helpful, that's very useful, that communicates slightly more and prevention is better than a cure. It's like when you keep your car in tip top shape, you change the spark plugs, you fill the tires, you take it for granted, because you're just performing the these little maintenance tasks, and it's working, but it's like, Hey, if you neglect that car and it breaks down, then you have to do a lot more work to get it to where to back into tip top shape. And you know, you're reminding me that, like a few years ago, I had a friend who I saw him communicate with his employees, and he would like say something, and he would say, Hey, can you just repeat back what I told you to do as you understood it? Yeah, and it's so simple, but so few people do it. And I found myself, I do that quite a bit now, just intuitively. And it took, took some practice, but when someone tells you something, it's easy to like, well, do I say nothing? Do I say okay, do I try to make like, a funny joke? It's like, hey, just like, repeat back a condensed version of what you heard, just to make sure. And it just that, like you said, that little 5% extra effort just to make sure everyone's on the same page that way. Hopefully there's no lying or misunderstanding or assuming. Because why would we assume we can't read minds, we can't see the future? Why not just communicate what a concept. Keep it simple.

Leandro D'Elia 23:21 We're going to make a decision on someone that we have in front of us, so if we have many variables that we don't know about that person, instead of assuming that that person is going to do X or Y, ask them. And that's why I probably sorry that interrupts you, but that's okay. Usually what I say is, if your model have 50% chances of going right or going wrong, don't celebrate when it goes when you're succeeding, because it was 50% chances that it went that it goes wrong. But on the contrary, when it goes wrong, don't be sad because it went wrong, because 50% of your model was based on assumptions when probably you could, you could have found the answers to those assumptions. So whenever something is going great and you that's the structure of that is mostly assumptions. Don't celebrate, think about why it's going great. And try to, probably, in a company, you would say, try to write SOPs, or try to do this or that. But I think it's, yeah, it's like, like, you said, spend that. It's for 5% and putting a name to the assumptions that you're making and actually having the answer. Then if the answer is right or wrong, or if they lie to you, you could say it wasn't an assumption. I asked you.

Robert Plank 24:58 Very logical. You're five. Focusing on what you can control, right? If someone like lies or doesn't do it correctly, like that's out of your control, but what you can do is do your best and set yourself up for success and learn from your mistakes and verify and communicate and set up those SOPs and all those things that we hear about. But we do need the reminders, because it's a lot to remember, and sometimes we get a little bit too comfortable and we let some of these habits fall by the wayside. And so I really appreciate you being here to help us understand and learn and relearn. And so how does this relate to you and your company? I know that you have this very excellent fractional CFO service to run your business with more cash and less stress. But what are some next steps here? Someone says, Man Leandro has a lot of good things to say, and I want to find out more about his company and keep in contact. What are some next steps? What's the call to action?

Leandro D'Elia 25:53 Definitely, if you have a company that you're struggling with, the numbers you don't understand them. You want to know more about how's your company doing. You want to like our slogan is, run your company with less stress and more cash. Give us a call, because we can definitely help you, not only showing you a P and L or a balance sheet, but explaining you how that works, how the three financial statements relate to each other, P and L, balance sheet and cash flow. Why it's really important to have a budget, to have a planning session where we try to understand what we want to do and where we want to go, and how are we going to go there to get there? Sorry, and that's how we specialize translating your vision into action points, like, I want to have a Ferrari, okay, how are we going to get you buy a Ferrari? We need money. We need this. Do we have the correct set of pieces to get you to get the money to buy the Ferrari and maybe in most, in some cases, not most cases, but in some cases, we find, or I find myself telling to my clients, you know what? Right now, you're selling $10 you want to sell a million dollars in one year. Probably it's not going to happen. Let's create a plan so that we can get there in X amount of time. But yeah, it's, it's trying to help them put in in their vision, bringing that down to earth and helping them achieve that goal that they have.

Robert Plank 27:40 I like it that we need to have these different levels, right? The different scopes, you need to know, like, Okay, here's my big goal, but also the practicality of it. And you kind of, you can't have one and not the other, right? You can't just say, Well, hey, here's my balance sheet. I'm not sure where I'm headed, but you also, on the flip side, you can't say, hey, we want to get this number of customers, grow the company this, I guess it'll work itself out, right? You need to have the different the elements for success here and Leandro, the Elia at 8x dot COVID, e, i, g, h, t, x.co, they are the people, the team, that will help you get that into reality, to make some progress. And so is that a logical place to go, eight x.co or is there some other place that's better?

Leandro D'Elia 28:25 No, whether you can go to our website or find us on LinkedIn, you can find myself on LinkedIn and you can message me there that it has my email, my phone number. But yeah, both, both platforms are correct, either the website or LinkedIn.

Robert Plank 28:43 Okay, so that website, just to recap, because, as we said, it's it's good to verify. We take 5% of the time just to make sure everyone knows where to go. That's eight x.co and then on LinkedIn, first name Leandro, last name, D, E, L, I, A, and it's always good. Just when you listen to a podcast in general, and who knows how you even found this podcast, you hear Leandro. He had some good things to say, if his message resonated with you, if you say, hey, you know, I want to find out more about him, it's always a logical thing, like these are real people on podcasts. Go and find them on social media, click the Connect button. Follow him. That way, you can get his latest insights and updates as far as thoughts on leadership, thoughts on finances, what he's doing as company. It's always good to have a thinker, an innovator, a builder, a doer, an entrepreneur, on your side, and not just looking at the doom and gloom news. You look at some positivity, right? You look at some business advice that you can apply order to build the organization of your dreams and be a good leader. Make everyone happy, make some money, change some lives, change the world. That's what we want. So Mr. Leandro day Elia, before I let you go, one thing I like to do before wrapping up a podcast like this is to try to put my guests on the spot a little bit and ask them a. A fun quote or lesson that has helped them, that can help us. So Does anything come to mind, as far as just in any sense, right? Life, business, whatever, what's a quote or lesson that has helped you, that can help us?

Leandro D'Elia 30:13 I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I and I heard the quote Tom Hanks was on that table, and he said something that resonated a lot, and that was This too shall pass. And I think that when, when you start reading the subtitles about that is that we're all dispensable. We come to this life to enjoy it and have the best time that we can the way we want. So don't feel sad and or don't spend too much time for something that went wrong or didn't go the way you wanted. Don't spend too much too much time celebrating because you want to work up because you need to wake up the other day, and life goes on. So I think that the quote that I that I would leave, is, leave. I don't like the word. The quote, live your life as if it wasn't a tomorrow. What I would say is try to be live your life the way you want, and try to be happy, because at the end, that's what we take with ourselves. Anecdotes, stories, great friends, great companions. So I want to wake up and try to be happy and try to give my best and try to help other people.

Robert Plank 31:53 Very wise advice, life goes on. Don't sweat the small stuff. Focus on the now, and don't stay in one place too long. Don't be in the past, in the future. Just get to the next opportunity. And this is Leandro Elia from eight x.co wonderful. Speaking with you and learning from you, friend.

Leandro D'Elia 32:12 It was a pleasure, Robert. Thank you for having me.

Robert Plank 32:17 This is Robert plank from dfy podcast.com. Forward Slash Free. Me and my team are super excited to jump into your podcast, whether it already exists, whether it's brand new, whether it's just in the idea stage, set up a call and contact us today. Claim your free gift at DFI podcast.com/free, and we will see you there. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai