E198 Jason E. Brooks

This week's guest is Jason E. Brooks. Author of the book, Every Leader Needs Followers, 10 Keys to Transform Restaurant Managers to Hospitality Leaders. Jason is a speaker, coach, author, and founder of Hospivation LLC.

Jason creates content that helps impact hospitality leaders on their journeys to help others around them fulfill their calling. Jason got his start in the industry in his teenage years when he landed his first job washing dishes. He quickly moved up to prep cook, to pantry, to saute and grill cook, manager to VP operations, to many more roles over the course of his very successful career. Jason is a professional speaker and coach speaking on leadership mindset and techniques in the hospitality industry.

Make sure you check out his website, JasonE Brooks.com, where you can buy the book directly from Jason. He'll even sign it and ship it to you himself. As always, make sure you check the show notes for all the links. We had a really great interview with Jason, and you'll enjoy it too.

Enjoy the show. It's the industry podcast. We are back. My name is Kip.

This is Dan. Hey, that's me, man. That is you. Yes, not too much another exciting work week as always.

Well, it's good, which is great. So pretty happy about that. Everything's going through. It's business at the bars, as usual.

It's like, ask. Yeah, it's about the same. We're getting into the months. April and May are never great for the bar business in Ontario.

So things are heating up a little bit more now again. So, yeah. How do you weather out here? So we have two season here in Canada, snow and patio time.

Yeah. So it kind of works out quite nice. Well, we're optimistic. Yeah, yeah.

Doing some cocktail creation later tonight after the show for Babylon Sisters. So look out for a new cocktail list coming soon. Sugarrun already dropped their new list. So you can check that out right now.

These are the bars I only hit in Waterloo area at Sugarrun bar on Instagram, at Babylon Sisters bar on Instagram for to check out everything that's happening at those two places. Also, if you would like to be a guest on the show, it's info at the industrypodcast.club, or you can DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram, where you will find amazing artwork by Zac Hanna at Zac Hanna.co Z-A-K-H-A-W-N-A-H. He's doing some amazing stuff on his website these days. So definitely check him out for all your graphic arts needs.

Do you check any of them out? I have, actually. So he's been posted for nearly 70 regularly last couple months. Yeah, we have back in action.

Yeah, so that's pretty cool. So and as always, there's links to everything we talk about in the show notes. So make sure you check that all out. And anything that comes up during the show will be in the show notes as well.

In case I hadn't mentioned this before, he also helped out with some of the art direction at Babylon Sisters. So come check that out as well. That's why you can help us on the show if you like what we're doing here is follow, subscribe, rate review. That helps tremendously.

So yeah, do that. It's easy. Like you're listening right now, just punch, subscribe, or follow. Mm hmm.

Yeah. I guess that's all we got to say. Huh? Yeah, I think so.

OK, let's get to our guests. And we are joined right now by Jason Ebrokes from Charlotte, North Carolina, author of the book Every Leader Needs Followers. How are you doing? Oh, man, it's bandtablus.

I'm glad I got four seasons, but one of these seasons should just be called damn humid. Because down in the South, it is thick like pollution. Oh, man, that damn humidity is no joke. Trust me, you don't want any of it.

Did you grow up in Charlotte? You know what? I've been in North Carolina like nearly 40 years. Started out in Fayetteville, North Carolina, move up to like Raleigh, then out towards Charlotte.

But I've been in the state for a long damn time. And I was actually born in St. Cory Virgin Islands. Oh, OK.

I don't know why we moved. I do because my parents joined the military. But still, but yes, I've been here for quite some time. Yeah, let's see them are there.

OK, so let's talk a little bit about it. I want to get into the book. Obviously, we want to talk about the book. It's super fascinating to me.

Obviously, directly applies to what I do for a living. So let's talk first about how, what were your first jobs as you were growing up and how did you get into the point where you now a public speaker and author about the sort of service industry? You know, like most people at this age, getting close to 50s, most of us came in this industry through that side door hanging out dishes. That is typically the average.

You know, if you're this old, you started out watching dishes somewhere. Mine was a mom and pop seafood restaurant in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And I was 15 years old, snuck my way in at that point, getting paid under the table to watch dishes. My mother didn't even know that I started a job.

I just went there and got a job. And after three weeks got paid cash, she went to work, came home, and there were a lot more damn groceries in the kitchen than there was whenever she first went to work. And she said, Jason, where did all this food come from? And I'm like, Mom, I promise I didn't do nothing wrong.

Got a job. But I'm what somebody called a restaurant life or man. I've had many roles. I mean, from dish, I then moved up to prep and then pantry and then to salt tea and then to char grill.

But I've been a GM, a kitchen manager, bar manager, franchise business consultant, franchise operations coach, VP of operations. I've had a lot of roles. And it's part of the reason why that I wrote this book, whenever we're in this industry and we get into managing for the first time. At first, we think we're the shit.

We're just, we know what the hell we're doing when we get to that level. But when we work under some owners or under some GMs, we're like, oh, man, that old man or that old lady, they're trying to change me into them. That's not what I want. I'm out of here.

And then you leave. But I found that the reason why I felt that way is because they were really just trying to show me systems. And systems don't really change you. You can be who the hell you are and not have to change, but just do systems.

And so I wanted to write a book, something quick read, easy read. It's not some memoir about Jason Brooks. It's check out the title, check out the key slash chapter. Is it something that you would like to actually dive into?

You don't have to read it from front to back. And it's written in short segments because hospitality operators, bar operators, bar owners, restaurant managers don't have much damn time anyway. They want to get in, read it, get what the hell they need, and jump back in that fire. So that's part of the reason why I wrote this book, because I wanted to let people know, you can be who the hell you are, and you can learn systems to make you better at what you do without changing who you are.

Interesting. So you do support having systems in place to follow. It's just allowing your own creativity to also come into the role as well at the same time. So you're not sort of robot-like following systems.

Is that sort of the philosophy? That is most definitely it. Let's think about if anyone could think about a brand that has some of the best service, some of the most consistent service. And most people would probably say, checkfully.

Oh, checkfully, they have the best service. Well, we think that because it is consistent. Let's think about what they do. They hire people, take them to the back office, dunk them in holy water, hold down their head under their snowboard bubbles.

And then when they come up, then they start saying, please, and thank you. No, that's not what happens, OK? What happens is that no matter where you get hired at a check filet, chances are the first 30 days, you get the same damn training. They say the exact same words for the exact same position, whether you get hired in Ontario, in Chicago, in LA, in Miami, in Charlotte, it doesn't matter if the chances are.

It's a pretty good role of other dice that they will say and use the exact same training system. But you can still add in all the whipped cream, cherries, sprinkles, chocolate, all the stuff that makes you you. You can still add that on top. And I think that that's where we can sometimes get training wrong, is that a system isn't bad.

It's just making sure that the core things, the core terms, that the foundation is the same. And you can still add in all your extra sprinkles on afterwards that made you who you are or great at what you do as a tree. Yeah, that really speaks to me because that's kind of my philosophy for my spots as well. Because we have a bunch of sort of more chain type restaurants and bars in our city as well.

And it's very much by the book. This is what you say when you go to a table. This is how you greet people. This is how the exact order of how you relate to the customer.

These are the exact lists of side duties, must be done in this order. And it does become almost like robot. Like, now I think I do think it's very important to have sort of rules or guidelines in place for how you want your staff to greet customers, whatever, how they want to do the side duties. But it doesn't have to be so strict that they can't use their own, like you said, sprinkles.

This is obviously experience that you glean while you were coming up in the industry doing all these different jobs. So at some point, you're just like, OK, I've done all this. I've seen what works. I've seen what doesn't work.

And now maybe I can use this knowledge to put into a book that would, as you describe it, sort of show managers how to become leaders. Yes. Now, going back to the different ways, I like to say that I've seen the Mona Lisa painted 20 different ways. Some of it is pieces of art.

Some of it is just a piece of shit. And I just got to be honest. It's I've worked for 20 different brands. I work for six of the top 100 restaurant brands and being able to see a CEO, COO, VP of ops, tell us and break down what perfection is, what is the best way to do something and what is not.

We all get to see what's that Mona Lisa painted? What's your twist on it? Because there's always some kind of same framework when it comes down to hospitality. But they always add in their own little piece.

But yes, it's learning the things that I've seen from impactful leaders and things that I've seen from non directional leaders to help create this. Now, it is changing the restaurant managers to hospitality leaders. But what it's really doing is truly is truly defining the difference between managing leading and coaching. And I say that because managing, we have a business first.

Your bars is a business first. It just so happens that it's people serving drinks to people. But it's a business first because you don't do this to break even. You don't do this to have the sales, pay the bills, pay the payroll, and then have nothing left over.

So it is a business first. So that's why managing is still important. And we use a manager mindset more than any other mindset throughout our day. And that's good.

But there's times that we need to use that leadership one. So you have the management mindset, the leadership mindset, then there's the coach mindset. The leadership mindset, though, is whenever you're looking at your competition, you're looking at the industry at trends, at challenges, what's coming down the road, how to how to take a problem that that no one can figure out. And you paint that picture for your people that they're like, ah, that's the answer.

Why didn't I think of that? And then they're like, I'm following Kip this way. And that's that leadership mindset. And then the coach mindset is something that we tend to skip out on in our business.

The coach mindset isn't just something that's applied to the top 2% of executives. The coach mindset is a vehicle for development for our team, meaning getting to know the individual person on our team, but the strengths are what the challenges are, where they want to get to, not creating space to data dump on them more, creating space to find out more about them. They talk more than we talk and we take notes and we help them with their challenges. So that when they're in the building by themselves, they tend to make the right choices versus call us at all times of night with every damn question, every damn thing.

That's where we tend to leave that mindset. We're good at managing. We can be good at leading. But for some reason, that coaching mindset in our industry, we tend to leave behind.

And that's one of the things that can actually gain us back time and sanity. That's interesting to me because I deal with this situation all the time with my staff calling me or messaging me about stuff that I feel like they can just be dealing with themselves. So maybe that's a lack of coaching on my end. I also think some of it is maybe a little generational where back in, like, back in the day, probably year around my age, like when we were growing up in the industry, like the last fucking thing you wanted to do was call the boss.

Like, I would do anything to solve the problem at hand before I, but that was last resort. Now it's like, we're out of paper towels, the mess is a boss. Like, you know, and so. That's what is true.

Yeah. So part of that, I do think is generational. So how can we coach this next generation to sort of take more responsibility? Because a lot of them are just kind of like, fuck it.

If I don't do, like, it's not my job, right? I go back to, to basics when it comes down to how to best coach any generation. For me, I always think through who are my direct reports as the general manager, who's my bar manager, service manager, kitchen manager, AKM, so on. And so the key managers that are directly under me and I schedule a one-on-one with each one of them, every week, it sounds crazy.

I know, but a one-on-one every single week for 30 minutes. That 30 minute one-on-one is 30%. I only get 10 minutes to talk and they get 20. The first 10 minutes, they talk to me about anything.

I don't care if it's the latest Disney movie, if it's about their kid's soccer tournament, it doesn't matter. The first 10 minutes, they talk about whatever. Second 10 minutes, it's for me to answer any question that they brought to me during the last one-on-one. The last 10 minutes is for them to talk about challenges that they have at work or any successes that they have within the building.

I find that when I tend to do that, whether they are 45 years old or they're 25. And the first few weeks, it gets to be kind of wonky. They don't know really what to talk about. It seems kind of strange, but I find that by about week four to six, they start to really dig into what their challenges are at work and get into questions that they really start to bring to the table because now they are reserving my time with them.

For all the crazy questions that they would usually call me for at 2am because they know every single week we're going to have this meeting. So versus, well, let me go and reach out now because I know he's busy and sometimes I just can't get him. So let me just reach out to him. But if I stick to it, never cancel it, never change, which is hard.

It's tough. But when I do that, I find that I start getting less calls because they already know I'm going to have my time with him on this day at this time. So I'm just going to handle this. And if I screw this up, I'll bring it to him then.

So you would assume that you would say that a big part of your philosophy for all three levels of this coaching, leading, managing consistency is very important. Oh, yes. And that's the whole crux of the business, right? Our whole business is based on consistency.

And I tried that is one thing I tried to drill into the people who work with me all the time is this whole business is about consistency because that's what the guests, these they guess comes back. The guests come back because they want the same thing. So conversely, your employees want to keep working there because they know what to expect as well, right? You know, it's kind of like that C word, that consistency word is kind of like a C word.

That C word, not the four-letter word. Okay. So it's kind of like despicable me. You know, management gets a bad rap managers get a bad rap because they tend to be inconsistent.

To me, bad managers are like Evan. Evan off of despicable me, I think it's either one, two or three, one of those ones that Evan was the one with the overalls one day he got shot in the arm with his dank syringe and now he's evil Kevin. He's like half good. He's half evil.

So some managers are like Kevin. Some weeks they come in high fives. Yeah, good job. Great job.

You're on fire. Good job team. And then everyone's like, yeah, Kevin's cool. He's all right.

And in some weeks, it's evil Kevin. And then everyone in the restaurant, no one's changed. But Evan, he's changed. It's not evil.

It's the manager or leader or coach. More so the manager needs to find a way to be more consistent in what they do, how they do because it affects their team, the brand and the customer and the more consistent that they can be the better that the whole unit can run. Yeah, that's really ring true to me in my first business. When I was having my first shot at doing this, I know what the fuck I was doing.

And I was definitely, everyone thinks they do. Everyone thinks they know how to run their own business until they actually have to do it, right? And we all bitch about how people we work for are running their businesses. But as I always say now, yeah, you try it.

But like my first go at it, I was that was my problem. I'd come in one day and I would be like super happy in a good mood, whatever. And that's that would translate to the staff and I come in and be in a shitty mood like the next week. And that would also translate to the staff and not even realizing I was doing it.

And now I have learned, you just got to I don't care what happened in your day. I don't care what the stress of running the businesses, you got to come in with that energy that's at least like around a four to a six and doesn't go from 10 to zero. Yes, I mean, yes, you you are human. We aren't all terminator.

Okay, we think we are. But we all stay between that six and eight. If we can stay just between a six and a eight, yes, there's sometimes we're not that great. Yes, there's sometimes we are really good.

But if we can consistently hang out within that zone, we can actually do some really good things. And then have the time that we're not consistent. It's because of our biggest enemy, our biggest enemy, to be honest, it's not profits. It's not sales.

It's not labor. Those are enemies, but not biggest. It's time. Time causes us to be more inconsistent.

Time causes us to be shorter with things. Time causes us to look at profits different. It causes us to look at labor different. If we look at every one of our challenges within this industry, it almost all leads back to time and it's figuring out how do we more so create our time, work our time, build our time better than what we do so we can be more consistent.

Because when we find that we have less time, we get frazzled. We get stressed. Things go haywire. And you know what's a great way to spend your time to tell?

Drinking the very consistent products by allure distilling at alluredistilling.co. That's where you're going to find the great expectations on Terrio Terroir-Jin. They have an aperitivo Royale. They have the Royal Rum Spice Black, which is what we're drinking right now.

Yeah, cheers. It's delicious, wouldn't you say? It is delicious. It's quite a bit of a time.

Yeah, so the Royal Rum Spice Black, it's a dark smooth run with insubinilla and warming spices aged in New Oak, charred and number three Kelvin Cooperidge Barrels for at least a year. And it is, you can tell, it is very delicious, very sweet rum, excellent for sipping. You don't need to mix this with anything. And it's coming to the LCDO and this summer, it's available now for wholesale to restaurants and bars.

You're going to want to hit up alluredistillingcompany.com for that or you can follow them at alluredistillingco on Instagram. Yes, and I will say they are a grain to grass distillery that sources a lot of the grains from local farms in the Wellington and Waterloo region areas, which is super handy and super cool. And if you want to cite, they have a lot of products available to buy directly if you live in Ontario. Yeah, and that's support local, right?

Like you can buy this, you can buy gin from big distilleries that are now owned by corporate overlords that you and you will never, you'll never have a chance to visit their distilling operation. You can go right to the alluredistilling operation right now. And allure, they also have the great expectations, gins that's a sorry, the great expectations of gin. It's their flagship product.

It's available in the LCDO right now. We drink it all the time. Some could say we drink it too much, but there's never too much of a good thing. Not sure.

Not too much. Never too much of a good thing. And it is a balanced herbal gin that again, it's available now for wholesale. Two restaurants are bar and bars, but you can also get it right at the LCBO, Notes of Juniper, Sumac, Sweetgale and Burdock.

And they're all distilled separately. So it really creates a balanced herbal gin. And it's a great product. And like I said, these are products that you can get at the LCBO or directly your restaurant or bar and you should be supporting places in the local region.

But right now, we are actually definitely behind the products at Alerted Stilling and we drink them on every week. We drink them every week because we want to, not because we, not because they pay us. That's correct. Yeah.

So once again, a couple weeks ago, we had Phil Morgan and he talked with the local whiskey industry there in New York State. And did that really inspire me to start drinking a lot more whiskey, but try more local products. Yeah, you were already inspired to drink a lot. I don't think you even felt about that.

But maybe they'll have you drink local. I did actually, I did switch a lot more local stuff just to try to support the local industry. And you, our loyal listeners, should be doing the same thing. That's alluredistillingcoatallorddistilling.com or also at alluredistillingco on Instagram.

Check those out to drink these products. They're delicious. They have great packaging. We like everything about and we are doing allure distilling gin and tonic specials every Friday night at Babylon's Sisters.

So come check us out there. If you want to try the product by the glass before you commit to the bottle, trust me, you're going to buy the bottle. I'll put the links in the show notes as well if you want to check them out directly. So make sure you check them out.

Right. Okay. Back to our guest, Jason Brooks back with us burgeoning author. So this is your first book.

First book. Hopefully, not my last note. I actually plan on updating this book, revising it every two years because you know, we, we are very nimble in our industry. You know, things, things pop up tech pops up.

What's your tech stack? You know, tech pops up. And so I definitely am going to make sure that I'm staying on top of what are the top 10 keys or people in our industry and how can we have our own personal systems to just do them better. Oh, so that's cool.

So you're gonna update that the 10 keys with every new edition of the book. That's smart. Because most people just like add appendices or, you know, whatever to a book they've written because it's a pain in the ass, to be honest. So I admire your commitment there.

Speaking of writing a book being a pain in the ass. It's a fucking pain in the ass. So I wasn't inspired you to do this. And then also, how did you pull it off?

Because I myself have started probably three times to do this and just like gave up. So I'm curious. Why the hell do you think it took six years, man? It's true though.

It is it is a pain in the ass. Even when I look first, most people may not know this, but you know, back when I was young, a wee lad, I would stutter still whenever whenever I get excited. It's it still tends to happen. But one thing that I realized is that I know how to I knew how to write down what I wanted to say.

So I could actually write my ass off even at a young age. So that I've always been into writing my thoughts getting into the industry, though, you know, the last thing that we're doing, except for writing in the manager log is writing stuff. Unless it's a produce order, a truck order, you know, the manager logs, the red book, we didn't really write much. So and it was me going through what I was going through trying to find myself, you know, being on my sabbatical, all that good stuff.

But like, okay, how do I how do I do this? And how do I not make it about me? If you notice each one of those keys, there's three sections, there's the main course, which is the main gut. There's the takeaway, which is a five to seven chapter of that key.

And then there's the angle. The angle is what I'm getting in here. The angle is actually quotes from people that I've had the pleasure of working with. And that's what really drew me to, okay, how do I make more than just about me?

How do I take different angles of this topic from people I've had the honor of working beside and give them their work to? Because even when we think about what we do as restaurant bar managers, hotel managers, we speak for our team, we take their ideas, we take it to a conference call, we take it to a readout, we take it to wherever, and we are also speaking for our team. And that's why I wanted to have that part in the book for each key. There's an angle of voices that help to shake me and the way that I think to have them have their own voice inside there too.

What was your process? Did you try and write a little bit every day and then edit it later? Or did you try and just set a certain amount of time outside a week? Or was it just like whenever you had a second, you force yourself to do it?

I first started out doing well, like we all do with new shit. When you first excited about it. You're like, yeah, I'm going to do this. You put it on your schedule and you just get it done.

And then shit happens just like at work. You walk in, you are going to have the best damn shift. And then shit happens. 17 minutes into your shift.

Shit happens. So in life, shit happened. And I put it on the back burner. And then it was five years in.

And then of course, someone my wife says, honey, are you going to finish that damn book? And then oh, yeah, that one. Yes. Yes.

I will. So I did what most of us have to do to get it done. I said, I want it done by this date here. And then I tracked it back of if I were to do that, to have it ready to be sent to someone to edit my book.

What does that look like if this is the date? I set the date, I backtrack of what needs to be done by when and then just started getting into it. Because that's what we do. We are so last minute in what the hell we do sometimes.

We almost love it. We almost thrive on it. Like, you're a deadline guy. Yes.

I kind of have the deadline sitting right here. And then I know I'm going to get it done. Right. So now did you find a specific environment for writing it every time like that?

Or did you kind of like very like, hey, sometimes going to write something on the tablet, sometimes going to sit in front of the computer. Sometimes just going to actually write something down when I'm sitting outside. Sometimes I'm going to take up a seat at a coffee shop for four hours. Yeah.

I did all of that. You actually nailed every single thing. Yes. Now I'm sure that when I do version two or third version or fifth version, I'm going to probably be a bit more systematic at doing it.

But yes, getting it done the first time it was whenever I could make it happen, I'm going to make it happen. Even typing in notes in my phone right before bed, whether it was two paragraphs, then I even came up with, okay, it needs to be, I need to write at least 500 words per day and write five days per week, 500 words per day, five days per week. And then I heard a good tactic at doing it is called five, four, three, two, one go. And it's actually whenever you just sit down and front your laptop, you count back from five, four down to one, and you say go and you just start typing.

And that's just something that no matter what, it doesn't matter what's going on, you're just setting yourself into that zone and getting it done. How tough is that when you're not in the right mood though, like say like just had a shitty day, you drive it home, something. So you just have to be on creative. Yeah.

That's going to be tough. Talk to the people in the NBA and NHL. It's about the same thing. But what if you don't want to shoot a three-pointer?

Damn it, you keep shooting until one goes in the damn basket. I mean, if I look, Lamar Odom was probably coming off a bender. He still managed to show up. Although Kobe might have killed him if he didn't.

No, he wouldn't. Black Marvel would have killed him. What is going on? I have a couple.

Sorry. That's a bit of talk back down. What you said, be inconsistent. Just keep on doing it, right?

So you actually just get the habit of it. It makes sense. Perfect. I'm sorry about talking so much about process.

I do find what because I'm just super fascinated about it. But I also want people to actually read your fucking book rather than people getting all the whole information from our show. People should buy the book and read it. But I think that we've gotten across like sort of like what the book encapsulates.

And so I have two more questions for you. One is, were you inspired by any other books, service industry related books? Well, first, one of the people that really inspired me was Jim Sullivan. Multi-unit leadership.

Jim Sullivan, actually, I went to one of his talks. It was a franchise when I was a franchise business consultant. He actually hired Jim Sullivan to come in and speak with his area managers about leadership. It was the year that Denver Broncos beat up on the Panthers in the playoffs.

So we were joking about it. But he really did inspire me to look into writing a book. Second, Simon Sinek, start with why. That's one of the one of my main thought process in how I do what I do, whether I'm on stage, doing a keynote, whether I'm doing a workshop.

I've actually just started my online course soon here. Your listeners will be able to go to Thinkific and sign up for my delegate by creating mini GM's course, which is amazing. It helps to like we've been talking about buyback time because that's one of our biggest stressors. How do we get back time to focus on the things that we really need to focus on, whether as an owner or as a GM or as any leader?

How do we buy back time? So I am creating this course. But start with why. Why is one of my approaches at how I come across to be able to get the person that I'm speaking to or the crowd that I'm speaking to to understand and tee in more.

If you start with what, who, and when, it can get distant. But when you start with the why, you're kind of brought in from the beginning. And then one last book. So we talked about multi-unit leadership with Jim Sullivan.

We talked about start with why with Simon Sinek. One last book, 48 Laws of Power. Now 48 Laws of Power with Robert Greene, some may say, oh, that's too deep, man. That's some vicious stuff.

But 48 Laws of Power really does break down a lot of the challenges in every industry that we all go through within our mind of us being human beings. And that book really opened opened up my mind to processes outside of the norm. Now, I don't suggest you use all 48. That's some crazy stuff.

But those three books there, those three books really helped you inspire me into just keep writing and getting it done and get my thoughts on paper and make this happen. We have a lot of industry professionals to listen to this show. It's kind of directed to write a damage. I'm sure it's like writing your wheelhouse for your book.

So give them the elevator page on why they should read every leader needs follow. Every leader needs followers is the 10 keys to help transform restaurant managers into hospitality leaders. It helps you to never bleed alone again. One of the things that we went through during COVID was almost like PTSD central.

If you think about what happened during COVID, it was an industry that had a family working in a building and you knew you had their back, they had your back, you can always count on going to this four walls within this community in order to get shit done. And one day in 2020, shit hit the fan. And at that point, managers and owners had to make changes to their whole business structure. They didn't know if the thing that they put their life blood in was going to be there the next day or not.

They had to make hard decisions. And that affected multiple teams, multiple leaders and multiple managers during this time frame. Some of these soft skills were lost on how we can create a environment for leadership. Every leader needs followers helps to build back that environment, that skill set, that systematic approach that once made you successful in the past and be able to read it in a quick read format and apply it now.

That's why you need to get every leader needs. Amazing. Yeah, you sold me one last question for you, Jason. What did you personally learn during the process of writing this book?

And that's an open-ended question. It could be anything from like how to write a book to like what you researching the book, anything. Open-ended question. What did you learn by writing the book?

Don't trust authors. Because, because, hold on, wait, wait, wait. You can explain it. Because there is still a lot of shit I have to work on.

It doesn't matter that we can study and find out and relate to and know how to put in great words all the challenges that people go through. But when you start going back to it, you start really seeing the side of you that still needs to be developed. And that's what I enjoy. That's what I learned about writing it is I got to talk and still see multiple things I still need to work on within me, even within this book.

But it's good that I get to go back and revisit that and revisit that and know that I'm still a work in progress myself. So don't believe that all these authors, all these speakers, all these workshop people that are doing their thing making their online courses. Yes, it's great content. We are wordsmiths.

We know how to get inside your head. But we still have to work on things too. And that's what I learned with writing this book. That's a great fucking answer and a great way to leave this.

Jason, tell our listeners A, where they can find your book to purchase it, but also be waiting in touch with you for speaking engagements or whatever else you're interested in doing because you got a lot to tell people and a lot of it's important. So Jason E Brooks dot com. That's Jason E Brooks dot com. That's the website.

You can find out all about my speaking, all about my workshops, about the online course. And you can also buy the book on my website at Jason E Brooks dot com forward slash every leader. You can buy my book on Amazon on in paperback for hardcover and in digital. You can even buy it on iTunes.

But the thing is when you buy it on Amazon, Amazon is not going to sign the book for you. And if they do, it's a forgery. But when you buy it from my website, I will actually sign your book and send the book to you. So I'm doing stages.

You can go to my speaker page on my website and see it's me on stage in 2024. And it shows a list of places that I'm all on stage throughout the country throughout the rest of this year, more being added almost every single week. But yeah, that's it. Well, that's great.

And all of our listeners should do exactly that. Go to the website. Don't give Amazon your money, give it right to Jason. He deserves it.

Writing books fucking hard and he wrote a cool one. So thanks so much for giving us your time tonight, Jason. We really appreciate it. I do you're a cool dude, man?

And I appreciate the fact that you've put the effort into giving back to the industry that you've been a part of your whole life by like offering a manual or tomb or however you want to describe it to people who are in the industry and want to turn just management into leadership. It's a great project. And like, even if you never sold one fucking book, the fact that you did it is very important. So we appreciate you, man.

And thanks for coming on. Yep, Dan. Thank you. And to you listeners, thank you for tuning into the industry.

Thank you. Thanks, man.