Tiffany Sergi: Landscaping CEO’s Secret to Growth: Fixing the Leader Bottleneck

 

Rob – Intrigue Media (00:32)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the I am landscape growth podcast. Today I have an amazing human and entrepreneur in the green industry, Tiffany, Sergi. Thank you so much for doing this and being a part of this.

Tiffany Sergi (00:45)
Thank you for having me.

Rob – Intrigue Media (00:46)
We had the opportunity to meet at NALP Leaders Forum, was in a pretty nice destination at the time. And I kind of got the vibe pretty quick that you’re like, know, no BS, super positive, looking to put a dent in the universe. So having you on the show is just an honor. So thank you for doing it.

Tiffany Sergi (01:02)
I appreciate it, thank you.

Rob – Intrigue Media (01:04)
For the context of the audience, you could give us like a minute and a half summary, Cole’s Notes edition of how you ended up becoming the CEO of ⁓ Landscapes by D &J.

Tiffany Sergi (01:14)
So my husband started Landscapes by D &J about 15 years ago as a hobby. He actually had a full-time job working fire protection at the time, and I guess he needed something extra to do. So he was like, hey, let’s open up a landscape business. So he started doing that fast forward a couple of years, and the business grew to where it needed full-time attention.

Backstory a little bit. Meanwhile, I was still helping him do the invoicing, helping him with the scheduling. So when the point to the business came to where it needed full-time attention, we made a choice. I was in nursing school at the time. And I was like, well, I kind of found a passion for running the business and doing what I was doing. So I quit nursing school and I’ve been running it since then.

Rob – Intrigue Media (01:58)
Amazing. And so that’s the better part of 10 years plus.

Amazing. working in the business for maybe four years and then taking over, you know, being at the helm. I know you’ve had opportunities to be in, you know, whether it’s peer groups or part of national associations, you know, a bunch of other landscapers, you know, ones that are ahead, maybe ones that you’re helping get to where you are now. What would you say then as the core question for?

the podcast is what is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry?

Tiffany Sergi (02:27)
I would definitely say leaders themselves being bottlenecks for sure.

Rob – Intrigue Media (02:32)
So I

kind of mentioned this before we were kind of prepping for this thing. And I was like, that is the right answer seemingly. And so like, you know, I’ve been doing this for quite some time, almost a hundred episodes and the correlation to how successful people are and the way they answer that question is just really, really high. And so, ⁓ but what’s interesting in everybody’s answer that has a similar context around like it’s the leader, it’s your mindset, you know, whatever. There’s always a different

perspective or take on it. And so when I asked that question and you answer that way, you know, what’s going through your mind, either like that you saw it, I guess in your, in yourself, like how did you have to then grow to get to the business where it is today?

Tiffany Sergi (03:10)
I’m gonna be super honest. So it actually was a reflection of how David my husband was running the company then the culture wasn’t great so I wanted to change it and I started to self-reflect and sort of look in the mirror of how can I change it so Well, how can I change my behavior and the company to kind of reflect the kind of culture that I want moving forward? So I started doing that

I started implementing core values and following them myself even though everyone else wasn’t at the time That’s what I was doing and then setting examples based off of that Hey guys, these are the core values and you know when you first implement core values people like what is this mushy gushy stuff? Like why is she talking about this, you know?

Rob – Intrigue Media (03:56)
Right.

Tiffany Sergi (03:59)
And then now, I mean, my core values are set up everywhere. When you get hired, you know what they are. ⁓ When you get fired, it’s on your termination letter. What core value did you not exemplify? For me, it’s being a leader and setting those examples.

Rob – Intrigue Media (04:14)
And so, okay, there’s a couple of components that I want to understand better before we get into like the nuance of it. What was it that inspired you to step into leadership like that? Like what kind of gave you the, what was the trigger?

Tiffany Sergi (04:28)
Honestly, I don’t know, that’s really hard question.

I think it was seeing the changes within the employees, like seeing how their behavior has started to change and their lifestyle started to change. For example, I’m going to take one of my employees who is still employed with me now. He wanted more, like he wanted to move up the ladder and wanted more opportunities. And at that point we were very stagnant, you know, there wasn’t any managers at that point. So me creating some sort of

and saying here, here’s how we can change the structure of the business and this is what I need for each individual in order to grow to the next step. Gave people fuel to wanna do better. And here he is now, he’s one of my production managers, he’s been with me, he’s bought his own car, his own Harley, his own house. So for me, I think it’s the helping of others and seeing them grow.

Rob – Intrigue Media (05:25)
Yeah, so mean,

like, that’s kind of beautiful in itself, right? Like, we always talk about the idea that leadership is like, the first step of leadership is to do what you say you’re do when you say you’re gonna do it. Because if you can’t lead yourself, how can you lead others? But then the second step is to serve. How can I help improve the lives of the people around me? And so was that always something that was ingrained in you from like little, little, little? was there something that, you know, over the course of your career kind of hit you over the head and was just like, I gotta, I’m gonna…

make other people’s lives better. And that’s what a good leader is going to be from my point of view.

Tiffany Sergi (05:50)
I don’t know, I was an only child, so I think I strived to want to always be like someone’s helper or be that person for someone. And I still have that savior complex to this day. I want to save everybody. I want to do anything and everything for everybody. And I want to say that could be my strength, but I know it can also be my flaw as well.

Rob – Intrigue Media (06:12)
⁓ Okay, so you’ve always had this idea of helping others and then you see a culture that is or a business that’s like stagnant so there’s no room for it to grow and you see people that want more and so you’re just like I’m gonna step into this thing I’m gonna help these people take to the next level and the first thing I’m going to do is get core values going and and you kind of alluded to it when you mentioned it was just like a lot of folks in my experience anyway do a core values exercise because they think they’re supposed to and then there’s

Tiffany Sergi (06:26)
Yes.

Rob – Intrigue Media (06:38)
maybe some letters written on a wall, maybe on a poster, you know, whatever, and but it really doesn’t get much legs. So when you decided on core values, A, why, and then B, what did you do in order to make sure they were like authentic?

Tiffany Sergi (06:51)
Um, I created my core values based off of what I was expecting, um, and what I felt, what I was expecting from my crew and what they should be expecting from me and what my customers were expecting. So my core values is an acronym, FEAT, not like the feet on your legs, um, F E A T T and it’s fun slash family because I am, I mean, I’m super fun, obviously, right. Um, and also I’m super family.

Rob – Intrigue Media (07:15)
No doubt there whatsoever.

Tiffany Sergi (07:19)
oriented everybody who works for me the minute that you walk in you’re part of our D &J family that’s what our welcome email says. Excellence, I require everybody to provide excellence quality of work. Accountability, only a stuff like that’s just what it is it’s okay to make mistakes. Transparency.

There’s no hidden secrets here. You say what you have to say. Everyone, have tribal conversations, no secrets, and then teamwork. We work together as a team.

And what I did to really enforce it is everybody wants money, right? Everybody wants, what is it? WIFM, what’s in it for me, right? So what’s in it for them? So I decided that every week there was gonna be a weekly core value winner. So every week I would hand out $20 to an employee who would exemplify one of my core values. And then obviously people were like.

Rob – Intrigue Media (08:09)
I love that.

Tiffany Sergi (08:11)
Yeah, you know, I’m gonna go help someone unload a truck just to get 20 bucks.

Rob – Intrigue Media (08:15)
Well, you’re you’re reinforcing the behavior that you want to see and you’re doing it on a weekly basis. That’s just awesome. It’s uncanny how similar your core values are to ours and how one of your weekly routines is almost the same. Like. I guess I guess there is a reason we should be working together, but yeah, we are just we have an acronym at C flat. We have fun as part of is the F in there. We have teamwork as one of the T’s.

Tiffany Sergi (08:30)
really? I love that!

Rob – Intrigue Media (08:39)
We use trust, but it’s practice open-honest communication. So transparency is kind of like that. Anyway, very cool. So you decided to instill core values. You use an acronym so people could remember it, because if it’s memorable, it’s portable, meaning people can grab it and take it with them. Then you reinforce it with a weekly winner for $20 for exemplifying a core value. Where the heck did all that come from?

Tiffany Sergi (08:43)
Yeah.

Rob – Intrigue Media (09:00)
It’s rare to hear if somebody just takes over business, implements core values like this. Like, is there an inspiration? Have you seen it somewhere else? Did you study? Or you’re just like, no, this is just how you do it.

Tiffany Sergi (09:09)
So core values, I went to like NAOP and you hear people talking about their core values all the time. So that’s when I knew that I really needed to solidify what my core values were. The whole weekly core value winner, that was all just me. Like, what can I do? I haven’t heard that anywhere. What can I do to get people incentivized and get the ball rolling?

Rob – Intrigue Media (09:28)
Yeah, I love it.

And I think it’s a huge testament to because like the folks, especially at the leaders forum for NALP and a lot of any like either elevate event and you do hear about core values a lot in an authentic fashion. it’s almost anybody who has core values that are authentic in a group like that is rare. Whereas in most places, it’s kind of like the opposite. So you’ve been running the business. What’s the size of the business ish right now? Revenue size and core focus of the company?

Tiffany Sergi (09:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

We’re about 4 million. We are 50-50 commercial residential base I’m super excited about that because we were actually 70-30 a couple years ago My goal is to flip that 70 % commercial 30 % residential. So I’m getting there thanks to intriguing media

Rob – Intrigue Media (10:08)
nice little shout out. Never hurts. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So when you look at what it’s taken you to take to grow this to 4 million plus, and I know you’re on the way to much more, what would you say for yourself has been some of the stuff between your ears that you’ve had to like learn about, overcome, grow into so that you can like kind of elevate yourself as a leader to help the company keep growing?

Tiffany Sergi (10:30)
I mean, I think there’s a whole bunch of stuff. Top of mind, I want to say, I’m sure some people are probably sick of this because I’m a woman in the industry, but a lot of it is like imposter syndrome. Like me feeling like, because I’m not a service matter expert in the landscaping field, because I wasn’t mowing grass at 17, but I love leading people. I know how to run operations. I know how to pivot. I know how to work, but it still brings me down when I go to

to

board meetings and I have to bring a service matter ⁓ expert with me because I can’t answer the questions, you know. So that is one of my biggest struggles. Another one for me is really analyzing my financial situations. I’ve gotten stronger at it. I’ve been working closely with a fractional CFO. Thank goodness for her. She’s been showing me like what my revenue per truck is, my revenue per crew, what it should be.

So that has been something that’s been a hurdle as well.

Rob – Intrigue Media (11:30)
Okay, I

heard something though in both examples. So one you said, you know, I’m not a subject matter expert. I don’t have decades of experience in landscaping. So when I go to a board meeting, I bring a subject matter expert with me. Then you’re like, you know, financials aren’t my cup of tea. That’s not necessarily my strength lies. So I have this fractional CFO and God bless her. It sounds like one of your leadership styles is to

bring in a strength to support something that you’re not good at. And as a leader, you know, you don’t need to be good at everything. You’re supposed to put all the pieces together so it can all work better than if it weren’t together.

Tiffany Sergi (12:00)
You’re right. Yeah.

Rob – Intrigue Media (12:03)
So I mean, I think

that’s pretty amazing. And I think a lot of times, like even for myself, I’ve got this like ego slash pride thing in my way of like, I can figure it out. So I’m just gonna go figure it out. And that’s proven to be stupid in a lot of cases. I mean, helpful in some, but I think, know, acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses and then bringing strong support. That’s like, you know, the idea of like being the dumbest person in the room is kind of the goal of a leader.

Tiffany Sergi (12:10)
Yeah.

Right, right. I mean, I totally get it. And like me too, like my ego is like, I want to know everything. I am, I’m so hungry for more knowledge. I’m always learning new things and I want to, but at the same time, I know where my weak points are. And I know when I do need to bring people in because I don’t want to make mistakes. That’s another thing. I’m afraid of making mistakes.

Rob – Intrigue Media (12:49)
Well,

I just think it’s like as much as it’s a it’s like a humbling thing to say I’m not good at things. I think it’s a superpower to not have, you know, that get in your way of bringing in strong people where I see that getting a lot of people like myself included. So then you you look at this imposter syndrome of like, I don’t know the space. I bring a subject matter expert in ⁓ imposter syndrome at many levels.

spoken about by many people and even on this podcast there’s been other people that brought it up. So knowing that’s true in the way that you’re thinking about yourself sometimes, what are you doing to get through it?

Tiffany Sergi (13:20)
Mm-hmm.

I hold on to my vision, my mission, knowing I always reflect on that. I think about the successes that I have brought up thus far, the team that I’ve created, a lot of reflection. That’s what I do to get out of it.

Rob – Intrigue Media (13:37)
And so are you doing

that like are you journaling? Or are you just thinking about, hey, you know what? I know it’s tough right now, but if you look at where we were 12 or 24 months ago, there’s something to keep my chin up with. So let’s keep moving.

Tiffany Sergi (13:47)
So it’s more of a meditation style. I know when I get in my head space, I know that I need to take a minute and I need to reflect. And I will just close out the world and just go back and start thinking, listen, you got this. You got to create that dopamine in your brain and give it that positive energy that it needs and shift that framework. So then I’ll go back. I’ll start scrolling through the business social media. I’ll go through my Google reviews and be like,

Rob – Intrigue Media (13:50)
Okay cool

Tiffany Sergi (14:16)
want like I helped do this like I created this team like get your shit together like come on girl

Rob – Intrigue Media (14:23)
Because it is together. It’s just a matter of the perception,

which is our reality. I just think that’s super cool. And a lot of people deal with it. So now, so now as you’re looking forward over the next, you know, 1236 months as a leader to get yourself to that level that you want to go, what do you see as the biggest hurdle that you have to overcome or opportunity to become better?

Tiffany Sergi (14:28)
Yeah.

I think it’s still, like we talked about in beginning, think it’s still me being a bottleneck of some sort. I have a hard time of letting go of things. I have a hard time of delegating. And I’m always like, I’ll just do it. I can do it quicker. That is my biggest hurdle.

Rob – Intrigue Media (15:00)
So you know that about yourself and you know that about growth. And this is like the most common thing that pops up of, I mean, not saying that you’re saying this thing, but like the idea of like, if I can’t do it right, if you can’t do it I’ll do it myself. And I can do it faster if I just do it right now. So you know all that is tripping you up. So then like, as you think about it right now, what are you gonna try to?

stop or start doing to change it.

Tiffany Sergi (15:26)
So because I am aware of it, I already know that during the winter months, I know who I already set in place that is going to take on some stuff off my plate, that I need to sit with them, train them to what I need them to do.

Create a plan with them, okay, in the next six months, this is where I need you to be, kind of like a roadmap. In the next 12 to 36 months, this is where I expect I wanna be doing and where I want you to be doing.

Rob – Intrigue Media (15:53)
Yeah, okay. So

you’re starting to put this into play.

Tiffany Sergi (15:55)
For sure, absolutely. Exactly, yeah.

Rob – Intrigue Media (15:57)
So now it’s just a matter of time to execute the So you

yeah, I mean, you seem like a really conscious human, like you’re self-aware. And even though you know you’re tripping on yourself, you know that you need to stop. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. So.

Tiffany Sergi (16:10)
And it’s just finding

the time, you know, we all, it’s…

the 100 days of hell during landscape season and we all say when the winter comes, when the winter comes, it will be great. And then, you know, we have snow seasons and everything always, you know, falls apart. But it’s really dedicating the time that no matter what, like I know from past experiences, like I don’t care what it takes. Like I know that I need by December 31st X, Y and Z needs to get done. By the next quarter, X, Y and Z needs to be completed and this is what needs to be done. So.

Rob – Intrigue Media (16:40)
So

then, so lot of folks, all shapes and sizes of businesses will have a hard time, know, that classic case of working on the business instead of in the business. It seems like you’ve set up some pretty concrete, however you want to call it, like ⁓ goal posts or lanes where you have to go do the work on the business. What do you tell, what do you say to people right now listening to you saying, there’s no way have time to do that?

Tiffany Sergi (17:03)
call the S.

only because I have been working in the business. I mean, I still am working in the business. but I said to you before the podcast, I hired new managers. It’s a major investment. Yes. My GNA is a little bit heavier, but you know what? It’s going to allow me to have more space for me to be able to work on the business. So you got to find where, where your weak points are.

Know where you put, like for me, I was doing work ticket management. Why am I doing that? Set up the right people in the right seats, get them doing it so I can start focusing on bigger and better things.

Rob – Intrigue Media (17:47)
So you so

first of all, totally agree. But you did mention this idea of like maybe your profitability is going to take a bit of a hit. So can you help walk people through the decision making process and how you look at balancing profits with building capacity and resource?

Tiffany Sergi (17:55)
it is.

Yep, so I…

Think about all the time that I can spend on working with my marketing, working on bigger client acquisitions, putting my face out there. I’m the CEO. I should be going to these bigger board meetings and shaking hands and kissing babies and going to these networking so I can get my higher revenue number to be able to cover all this extra expenses. And not only that, I can sit there and I can look at

everything from the bottom line down better. I can see where we can be cutting. Instead of me looking at work tickets all day, I can be like, you know what, we’re spending too much money here. What can I do? Let me look at my budgets.

It’s an investment for sure, putting in extra administrative salaries. And it was extremely scary to know, especially going into the winter season where I’m not getting that income. But I know that giving me that more time, I’m going to capture that revenue. I know that I’m going to be able to go out there and get more. I know that I’m going be able to save the company money just by looking at what I already have.

Rob – Intrigue Media (19:11)
I love it. I don’t you’ve had a chance, there’s a really cool book called The Goal by Eli Golrath, and it talks about the theory of constraints. Anyway, the whole idea is that the throughput of a system is constrained by the bottleneck. And so in order to increase the throughput of a system, you have to increase the capacity of the bottleneck and then break the bottleneck. And once you break that bottleneck, usually another bottleneck will appear. And it’s fascinating because as you talk about the idea that the leader

or in this case in you or others, entrepreneurs are the bottleneck, then we have to bring more capacity to the leader so they can go work on higher leverage activities. I’ve never thought about it like this though, until you just kind of broke it down because, you know, we always do a one, two, three exercise with our folks. So like one work is like someone could probably start today and do it. Two is like there’s a training ramp up period. And three is like it’s a creative high leverage skill.

And so when we go through and we’re trying to like split roles out or try to figure out how to bring support, we go through like somebody’s roles, responsibilities and look at all the tasks and then one, two, three, all of them. And so it’s like really fascinating the way you described it, because like, if I were to look at say your work and do the same thing where it’s like threes are the only thing that Tiffany ever goes after. One’s are off the plate immediately. And then two, we’re training and developing people so they can take it off your plate. I think that’s just a neat framework for people to consider.

if for themselves because it seems like you’re already doing that.

Tiffany Sergi (20:34)
I love that.

It’s almost like the accountability chart that I work with, you know? If you looked at my accountability chart, it was like 20 different things. And I’m like, what? Why am I activating gas cards? why?

Rob – Intrigue Media (20:48)
I mean, why not, right? Someone’s gotta do

it.

So wait, so tell me about your functional accountability chart. What’s this FAC tool you refer to?

Tiffany Sergi (20:55)
So a couple of years ago I started looking into EOS. I am not completely on it, but I started rolling into it. You’re on EOS too, aren’t you? Yeah. So the accountability chart, what positions should be doing what? Well.

Rob – Intrigue Media (21:04)
Yeah, we use like a hybrid.

Tiffany Sergi (21:10)
I actually spoke with Ashley Paladino from Sun Valley and that’s amazing. I love her. And that’s who told me, that’s, that was what like mind blowing from the conversation that I had with her. She was like, that’s what I want you to do. I want you to go and do an accountability chart. She was like, I just want you to do it based off of.

Rob – Intrigue Media (21:14)
Amazing human.

Is it, did you have this conversation

down south last year or this year? Or was it before?

Tiffany Sergi (21:31)
No, it was like maybe a couple months ago. And she’s like, I want you to take the accountability chart and just put positions, no names. don’t care who you have and just put what needs to get done. And I did it. And I was like, okay, I did it. And I hired operations manager. I had a new account manager. I switched out wrong people that were in the wrong seats, put them in the right seats. And here I am.

Rob – Intrigue Media (21:33)
Months ago, okay.

So that sounds like a so first of all, very cool exercise. And then we’ll break down in more detail in a quick second so other people can do it. And then second of all, holy crap, that’s a lot of change.

Tiffany Sergi (22:06)
a lot of change in a short period of time and that’s what and I think that’s why I’ve been so like so high strong and crazy because I’ve been putting like my blood sweat and tears to make sure that their onboarding has been 110 percent because I want them to succeed in this position because I don’t want to fail again you know I want this to work out so much selfishly for me you know so I can be free of activating gas cards and work to get

management.

Rob – Intrigue Media (22:35)
Right. Well, I think

it’s beautiful though, too, to be able to just like be honestly selfish. Like I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. And a lot of people are maybe apprehensive to the idea of communicating outwardly that I selfishly am looking for something in my business that I run and own and have all the risk of running. Like I think that’s a beautiful thing to just be straight with yourself and with people. And the functional accountability chart or the accountability chart. Sorry, I keep saying functional accountability, but I think you’re saying similar.

Tiffany Sergi (22:48)
Right.

Rob – Intrigue Media (23:00)
Can you just describe it though in a bit more detail? if somebody hasn’t heard of it or hasn’t done the exercise, what it is that they’re supposed to do.

Tiffany Sergi (23:06)
Sure, so I’m sure everybody does it a little bit different. So what I did was I took the daily tasks and the, I guess the KPIs that I was looking for for each.

Position so let’s just say I’m gonna start with production management. It was work ticket approval scorecard review activating gas cards truck and trailer inspections So I would put all of those any of their tasks. I would put that under a box label production manager And I would do that for each position that was in the company

⁓ But what was brought to light for me was there was a lot of things that my production managers couldn’t handle and my director of administration couldn’t handle and it was just kind of laying in my bucket and I was like this is not it shouldn’t be in my bucket and that’s when I decided that I needed to hire the director of operations. ⁓ So you kind of just take all of the tasks that each person should be doing what you’re looking for them to do put them in different buckets and

Rob – Intrigue Media (24:02)
Okay, cool.

Tiffany Sergi (24:10)
And then like I said, whatever’s left over, you kind of have to see where can it fit? Because it shouldn’t fall.

Rob – Intrigue Media (24:15)
Yeah, and it’s not

people that’s in the boxes, it’s role titles and descriptions.

Tiffany Sergi (24:19)
Exactly, exactly. And it can’t be people-based. And that was one of the hardest things that I had to do was make a shift for one of my longest employees because it’s just not the right position. ⁓

Rob – Intrigue Media (24:34)
Yeah.

Well, and then at the end of the day, if you end up putting somebody in position that they’re not qualified to do, it’s going be really stressful. They’re going to probably hate their day to day and no one’s going to win from that. Clients are going to suffer. Business is going to suffer. They’re going to suffer. So then in that transition, did you have to let anybody go or was it just bringing on new people?

Tiffany Sergi (24:41)
Yes, exactly. Yep.

⁓ I fired… three people?

Rob – Intrigue Media (24:55)
So I’ve gotten the sense from getting to know you that you’ve got a pretty straightforward approach, but you always bring a lot of like love into the way you communicate. So when you let somebody go, can you walk people through a little bit about like how you think about it and what you do to roll it out?

Tiffany Sergi (25:08)
depends on the situation.

Honestly, I can, for instance, one of the production managers who was excuses was not meeting the deliverables. I have sat with them numerous amounts of times and said, if you do not do A, B, and C, you’re at risk of losing your job. So when he walked into my office, he should have already known that he was going to. So I sat with him. I provided documentation. I went to a job site. You told me that the

was done and it was not done and we’ve talked about this and he started coming up with excuses and typically I’m very sympathetic and I’ll go to an example for another one. He just kept on having excuses and excuses and I said you know what Pedro I’m not going to I’m not gonna listen to it I appreciate your time I appreciate everything that you’ve done we’re done here today is your last day blah blah blah all of that and that was probably one of the

coldest terminations that I’ve done. ⁓

Rob – Intrigue Media (26:09)
And you were just up to here and

you have a core value of accountability. None of that was happening. Yeah.

Tiffany Sergi (26:14)
Yeah.

Exactly

and then the transparency part of it too was you’re telling me that this was done you not being truthful about it So that played into effect Another one was I had a production manager who I actually worked he worked for us way back in the day I guess you could say that we were friendly we had a friendship and that one was heartbreaking because he came to me he I gave him a chance again he had kids and

He put everything devoted everything just wasn’t the right fit and that one was really hard and that was when I lost it as a leader and I told him straight up I said I’m trying to be really professional and you know my eyes are tearing up and I’m like I just have to rip the band-aid off and just tell you because if not I’m gonna start bawling I said, I’m so sorry Jamal. This isn’t working out for me. So I guess it all depends on the situation. but typically yes, I am a very

emotion-filled person when it comes to that.

Rob – Intrigue Media (27:13)
Yeah, well, just think there’s

a lot of power in bringing love and grace into a work environment because we’re at the end of the aisle people. And so did that person end up getting a decent spot and ending up on their feet and they’re good to go?

Tiffany Sergi (27:26)
all good now so I’m I know it all works out but as a leader it never makes it easy I mean I’m home and no matter who it is and what the situation was like even when it was with the employee who wasn’t doing accountability and transparency like I went home and I was like like heartbroken that I had to that’s like the worst part of being a leader is the termination and knowing that like you just could have messed somebody’s life up just now you know

Rob – Intrigue Media (27:52)
Well, yeah, and

it’s really interesting you bring that up because as we’re going through this, was two things I wanted to share. One was around this idea that it’s like keeping somebody for the sake of like not messing up their lives because there’s this almost arrogant thought that if they’re not working with us, they’re in trouble. But that’s, you know, I’ve had that thought. But I’m doing it at the detriment of 30 or 40 other people.

Tiffany Sergi (28:18)
Exactly.

Rob – Intrigue Media (28:18)
And so it’s like,

are they that much more important than everybody else that we have to cocoon them from reality? And that one I struggled with a while until it finally hit me and I was like, okay, no, we got to just move through this thing as quickly as possible. And then providing clarity. think what you did when you were saying, here’s what needs to look like, this is what winning looks like. If we can’t win together, we should just break up. ⁓ And then the other thing was, so I said to me, yeah, I bring it up. Just like frustrating person a couple of times over the course of a year. And they’re like, so, so like,

Tiffany Sergi (28:38)
Exactly.

Rob – Intrigue Media (28:47)
When you pay somebody, say 80 grand a year, to make your life frustrating, how does that feel for you?

What am I doing?

Tiffany Sergi (28:54)
was true. I love that perspective.

Rob – Intrigue Media (28:56)
Hey, I kind of hit you with the head. was like, all right, I won’t bring it up again until it dealt with. So that one really stuck with me for a long time.

Tiffany Sergi (29:02)
I like that.

Rob – Intrigue Media (29:03)
Yeah. Okay, so we’ve got wear the bottleneck. We got to figure out how to work on work off. got you know, three, two, one exercises. We know we got to delegate in order to keep moving up towards bringing value to the company. If there’s something that you’ve learned as a leader growing through, you know, the last decade at the helm that you’d want to share with, you know, somebody else who’s sitting at maybe a million, maybe two, and they’re looking to grow, they want to get to five and beyond. What’s like the biggest lesson you had?

when you were starting to level up.

Tiffany Sergi (29:30)
I would say look in the mirror and not through the window.

look at how you are perceived, how you’re projecting. Don’t automatically set blame if you’re continuously saying, why do you keep doing this? Look and see how are you telling them you’re asking them to do it a certain way. Maybe they’re not getting it. Everybody has a different perception of how they understand things. Some people need exact details. Some people just need to be more firm.

need to just say hey do the spring cleanup and they know exactly what to do so I think it’s really just look at the mirror and not through the window.

Rob – Intrigue Media (30:08)
Love that. It’s

really almost full circle. Cause like at the beginning you said the idea that like the team, the way the culture is like a, it’s like a reflection of the way that you showed up. And so I just wrote down like culture is a reflection of leadership. I just think that’s amazing. So if you were to recommend a resource for folks, a book, an author, a speaker, something that you have been inspired by, what would be something that you’d

Tiffany Sergi (30:19)
Right. Yep.

So many.

One that really has like starting with like traction. Like I loved traction. How to be a great boss by, is it Gina Wick, right? Is how to be a, yeah.

Rob – Intrigue Media (30:46)
Geno Wickman. I’m not sure if he

wrote how to be a great boss, but he definitely wrote traction.

Tiffany Sergi (30:50)
How to be a great boss is amazing. Leaders eat last. So good. Yup. Okay. ⁓

Rob – Intrigue Media (30:54)
Simon. Yeah, Gino Wickman was also part of it. was a co-writer. Yeah.

So leaders eat last, how to be a great boss and traction. And then I guess what you’re saying without saying it is that read as many books as you can because there’s a lot of people that have made a lot of mistakes and written about some really smart things. You don’t have to do it on your own.

Tiffany Sergi (31:04)
Yeah.

Yes, I think that’s where I’ve gotten so much of my knowledge and I take little tidbits of every single thing that I read. I mean, I read a book a month, probably more than that, depending on what the size of the book is. That’s what I love doing it. And then also podcasts. I’m just like I said, I am so hungry for so much information and I want to be better. So I’m always trying to take what other people are doing and saying and try to mold it into like what my vision is. So.

Rob – Intrigue Media (31:41)
Love it. It’s pretty clear that our path to growth as a company is going to be directly related to our path to growth as a leader. And so I just appreciate you highlighting that like crazy and just for being an amazing human. And hopefully we can get you on the show again and we’ll see each other in real life at some point soon.

Tiffany Sergi (32:01)
Yes, I agree. You want an N.A.O.P.?

Rob – Intrigue Media (32:04)
I’m going to elevate. We’re going in November to Phoenix. You’re going to be there? Oh snap, well I got something for you that I can’t say on the show. So anyway, everybody, thank you for listening. We have a private invitation for the event that we’re going on November. if you do know me, make sure you reach out because I can get you an invite. Anyway, Tiffany, thank you so much for doing this. Really appreciate you.

Tiffany Sergi (32:06)
That’s all me.

course.

Thank

you for having me. I appreciate it.

Rob – Intrigue Media (32:23)
right, cheers everybody.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth Podcast.