 Hi, good afternoon everybody. This is Tom Stewart spark business moves. I'm with Liz Trotter. Hey, Liz And we've got Alonzo Adams with us today. Hey Alonzo. Hey Tom. How are you? Hey, I'm doing wonderful. Thank you for joining us We started the discussion last Tuesday on racism in America and we talked a lot about Some history and the wise in the house in terms of how we got to where we are Didn't dig very deep on action items and things that we can be doing as as business owners to Make a positive difference. So That's our intent and that's our our goal and that's our purpose for being here today that We'll go back and we'll we'll touch up on some of the discussion from last Tuesday but we want to take it a step further and Talk about things that we can be doing as business owners to to make positive change um before I get too deep though, I want to See if I can share our schedule for the balance of the week because You know during this time of unprecedented events sometimes, you know, you kind of get get uh, I know that we're going to get really uh Deep into this and we're going to be up against the hour before we know it. I just don't want to miss this um Korean enough was with us yesterday and if you missed that I would strongly encourage you to go back and look at yesterday's facebook live She's a young lady has a uh, really rocking business and Washington dc and there's a lot to be learned if you're interested in diversifying your business and getting into uh, commercial cleaning. She's doing it in a in a rather significant way as we just Also, one more thing about crana because it wasn't just about diversifying. It was also about making things happen like like She was a very strong presence for You know, I don't know how to do this stuff and don't care doing it anyway making it happen And making it happen in a really big way. I've already quoted her twice today So, I mean it was a great it was a great facebook live She gave a number of examples where she had the courage to get out there Not even really, you know, knowing for sure what it was she was doing but she had the courage to to take the risk and take the chance the courage to to fail and You know, how do you get really big accounts? Well, you start off by bidding on really big accounts and losing the bid process and that's how you eventually win them and I think she's waiting on a 34 million dollar contract right now. Is that right Tom? Was it 34 million 34? 34 million about 8 million square feet of space Yeah So that's that's something right there y'all you want to listen to that gal talk Yep, go back and go back and catch that Alonzo's with us today We're going to be jumping into the action items that we can be doing to uh, how make a difference with racism and social issues that we are dealing with and tomorrow Is chris will it let's share a little bit about chris? so chris owns alpine maids in Denver colorado and He has making so chris is all about making big changes because he gets a hair in his bonnet I'm sure that's not a correct I'll be in his bonnet I'll be in his bonnet And he begins making big changes Uh, I was working with him as a 101 coaching client about A year and a half ago. I started working with him I may be a little longer and he decided that Like we were talking about how he really needed to optimize his schedule and One week later he had I don't remember how many clients Maybe he had just changed them all and completely optimized that schedule based on drive times Move people over to the days that he wanted them to And you guys know what a big with a big chore that is because most of the time when I try to talk to people about this They're like, yeah, but these ladies only want to be clean on friday or monday or my people won't go there You don't understand. They only want this employee. You know, all of the I don't understand Chris had that done in one week right now. He's switching from teams to solos and bam he's just making it happen so You guys probably noticed the steam. I love a lot. So he makes things happen Just talking about that with karina and now here I am saying again with chris. I really love that Just making it happen mentality. Um, but chris has done a lot of um investigating With people on a lot of different types of research to find out What's going to be better for different types of companies based on a lot of different Criteria and he's going to share a lot of that with us tomorrow. Are you are you teams? Are you solos? Are you big teams small teams? Why what you're thinking and and how does that work and and so what You might be able to get some insight into what you should be doing. Oh, hey karina Karina's with us today. Thank you for joining us rosemary's here dan it Ernie's here. Hey Ernie Bridget We're gonna have a big crowd today Well, we have people telling us yesterday there. We're gonna be here. So we kind of knew we were gonna have a good group Bill gulderman is a friend of the residential cleaning industry. He's a friend of ours. He uh owns a company They Do assessments and testing One of their big assessments is the orion, which is uh an assessment that helps Determine candidates for hire if they've got Characteristics that are going to be be positive for your business if there's any thing in this assessment that The assessment will help you determine if they have any propensity for theft drug use Being lax on following safety procedures Uh, how they respond to uh following direction authority things like that and It's normalized and statistically validated. So I mean it actually has some some real efficacy and it's it's cool and He um lives I guess you work with him on the uh disc assessments, correct? Yeah, he he's pretty amazing. Uh You know, I I don't know I you're gonna have to be on the on the facebook live to be able to Get the full impact of bill He's a giver Bill is one of those people that whatever you need. He's gonna give you more than you even asked for Hey, he's just that that's who he is at heart He he works with his with his son in the name of the company is the steering group You'll learn more about that next week And friday is on the spot our rapid fire q&a session where Liz myself and our super secret special guest who you will have to Be here on friday to find out who it is. You just get one minute to answer your your your best and toughest questions I do have a hint as to who our surprise best will be on friday And I want to tell you all that she is a star in our industry very good And if anybody wants to guess go ahead and If you you guess you Get a vip suite to you get to ask the first question for uh, yeah All right, let's get to it Alonzo, you know When this whole kovie thing started and we would just like from one day to the next it seemed like weeks worth of stuff happened and You know, I mean kovid's still out there. My goodness. There's a lot of places. I'm down here in south carolina Each day the numbers get bigger That's not that's not going away. That's just getting worse. However, that's not the only only thing to redeem with There's a lot of other things going on. It just seems like there's so much going on with uh racism and social issues Now that's all evolving and and You know, what are what are we missing the last week? Well, it's been a lot going on. We had, um, junior teams that just passed and What was quite interesting about that is that a lot of people didn't even know know what it was you know, it's like, what is it and um, companies brought attention to it and Some big companies did a very good job of actually recognizing that day As well as giving their employees a chance to actually Take time to learn more about black history and learn things about their black co-workers And get more of a feeling of what they go through and some of their their Experiences so I thought that was great. I saw um One of my banks do that. I got the emails. Well, they they shut down early for they could give people enough time to actually go and Conversate and have some type of dialogue in regards to things that's taking place and things that's happening I think the biggest thing is what we see that's going on right now is that It's about listening taking time to listen and understand and have dialogue and to and to be comfortable with it and to be okay to have those conversations with your friends, um You know your co-workers just just to let our guards down and have have open dialogue I have a interesting story and my interesting story is that Most of my employees are from latin america so when um when it came came to work for me, you know You're paying them they do the job They do the work you take them through the training and you really think you understand them And this is the problems that have occurred and got to this point You don't know everything about where they come from. You don't know everything about the culture You don't know everything about their beliefs and their upbringings to really know them And to establish a deeper relationship with them It required some time and it required me to really listen and hear them out And be be genuinely interested in what they have to say And then of course it's it's different it's different from my beliefs is different From from my culture and some and some of my values So but when you take time to listen and embrace What they're saying to you and and be committed to really fully giving them your undivided attention Man, it's got to make a difference And and the way your employees Respond to you and the way that they actually bond bond together with you and and and commit to to the company and Totally give the best effort Possible is because they see someone that truly was genuine someone that took the time to listen to understand and not just say Oh, well, I've been to Mexico before I've been to brazil before that's not what it's about And it's not about, you know, I have a mexican friend And that's where some of these problems came about where someone said, oh, I got a black friend I got a couple of black friends But have you really spoken to them? Do you really understand their story? Do you really understand their journey? Do you understand their community? Do you understand what they go home to and their experiences? Because what my staff goes home to I don't go home to So what they experience I don't experience But once I hear and they share that with me It opens up my mind. I get a complete different understanding and I have a different compassion A totally different compassion. So I think that these companies that actually did that I think it was huge. They didn't have to do it But we'll make the moves that they can fully engage with some of the staff that they have that has been going through These are the struggle and because you think about it Friends that I have with that work they went back to work from seeing These incidents that have happened and occurred They went back to work emotionally disturbed. They went back with with a certain anger They went back feeling as though, you know, they they needed they needed to express They needed to understand that they needed some way to really Express their feelings about what they were going through And if you're just saying hey come on get back to work get to work, you know You really know from a point and you're missing an opportunity And that's the opportunity you can really connect An opportunity to show that you care? I guess. I mean a big part of it is is just Establishing and behaving in a way that that shows that you care Absolutely You know, it's you know, it's one thing is like we said before to have the values on the walls And it's another thing to live those values So if you really say that, you know, you care Show that you care, you know, show it through actions not just words And just to say that, you know, you gave someone a day off. Is that is that is that care? It's care when you're looking at What the what the problem was because if someone had a problem at home or an issue And they came to me and they were expressing that they have some some deep family problems I I'm going to give them the time and if it requires to say and hey, you know what I understand what I understand what you're dealing with and here's the day off That's what I would do Because that's my moment Because we don't always again like I said get those moments, but when you do get the moments, what did you do? Did you show up? Well, and that might not be the right answer for everybody, you know If you have a small company and you only have two employees And you really can't afford to let somebody have that day off There's still ways that you can make people believe that you care. I mean a lot of times just a conversation Yeah, just an open conversation just asking the question. How are you doing? That is so impactful for so many people not so how are you doing? Yeah, okay Uh-huh. Good luck Not that But how are you doing? Yes, you need to talk. Can we talk? You know that can go such a long way and and such a Make such a bigger impact. So it doesn't have you don't have to be rich You don't have to have money to be able to do these things It's not just big companies Which is why we want to bring it here today a lot of times what we see When when companies are trying to build their culture and they're thinking it's it's going to be so expensive I'm going to have to buy these things or spend this money and it doesn't have to be about that I wanted to point that out It really doesn't and you know, I saw some business owners that were on facebook And they were showing they were actually sharing their experiences with actually doing a deep dive into black history and some of them were sharing things that Again, it's not taught in school We had no clue that these things even occurred or how they happened and they started to Put the puzzle together and then they start to say oh Okay, that's why this is happening. That's why this occurred This is why they're doing what they're doing. This is what they're saying and And they had no clue that these events happened. I saw someone post Something that happened in Tulsa where they totally destroyed the plan, you know, and there was things about what happened with black wall street No, there's never been any discussion And again, you know, I went to school I'm 50 years old But when I went to school We're not teaching any of that and plus we didn't have a black history month So they just started a black history month and even the black history months that they're having They they again, they're starting it at a certain point now. They're just not going to go all the way back But that information is very relevant to when you start to put the pieces together For the dynamics of the black community and the black family Because a lot of times people say well, why why is the father missing from the black families? There's reasons behind this and if you don't do your proper research and know your history Then you're going to be a little bit clueless about some of these events that have taken place Some of these things you look at and you say why has there been an issue between, you know Minorities and police Well, it goes way back. It goes back to back to the reason why we even created the police And this is where people don't know this information So I think it's important in your history and just to do some education on on other cultures I think that just makes you a better person. I just think the most interesting people I know in life They're they're culturally diverse And and they want to know about other cultures And they have a lot to offer in the chair And it something that you're you're talking about but I want to like just pinpoint more more closely Is that curiosity factor? So the reason why it's important to find out why a lot of times people are resisting that I don't want to hear why you're just trying to convince me or you know, whatever The the curiosity factor is huge when you feel curious you win Because your mind opens up to the answers But if you don't ask the questions and you don't feel curious You don't hear the answer you hear it from a skewed view so you don't actually get there So I love what you're saying about finding out why but listen Be be open to the answer of why because that's that's where the goal is for you Not for them for you. I love you feel better and you might not like the answer Yeah, a lot of times you won't But you know the one thing is this is why I think it's so important because you know, we brought up in the discussion before About you know seeing roots and and watching that unfolding in front of your eyes So I'm somewhere like about seven or eight years old and I'm watching roots and wow that's that's just like something that's just Um is is very profound for seven or eight year old to see at that age But you know what it did for me and that's why I said it's not just for to say There's white people need to see this. No black people need to see this as well Because we don't want to make any excuses About anything, you know things that have occurred to elevate us. So what that did for me I saw that but I said, you know what I'm going to know what those people went through I'm going to know the price that they paid for the freedom that I have You know and and I won't even go back to where the civil rights era People that had the had the had the fire hose turned on them. They were bit by dogs that were beat down You know what that's not going to be in vain for me I'm going to remember what they went through to motivate me to do what I'm supposed to do because they did it for a reason So if my ancestors were kept from reading I'm going to read if they weren't allowed to have books and they would be beaten if they had books I'm going to have I'm going to have a million books So this is why it's important for black people to know their history their history And if you know your history, you know where you came from This is why it's so So I don't want to be one side where we're looking. Oh white people No white and black That will make us better and so that's why it doesn't need to be taken out of school. It needs to be there So we've had a week to think about what we you know think about where we wanted to go next with this discussion and You know, I think that we have a real opportunity here to look at our roles as as as you know business leaders, you know, we're running businesses so That's a that's a that's a special position that has a lot of responsibility a lot of authority a lot of opportunity that Is unique and you know, we We can take an hour and talk about all the aspects of that but specifically as it pertains to you know, the matter at hand What what can we as as business owners do? uniquely that would You know make a meaningful difference well like a lot of us already saying is For me the very first thing is to open up communication and and and the other piece of opening up communication is making all of the words that come out be right because as soon as As soon as anybody is made wrong communication shuts down so all of the all of the views being right Or at least not wrong You know because they are they are somebody's views whether we agree don't agree. You don't like it Making them wrong is I think a lot of times where the problem is no you're wrong. That's not right That just shuts everything back down again. So opening up communication in a in a way where all of the words can be said without Anybody being bad or wrong is huge So I guess there's techniques I mean we've got some some material we're going to be sharing with you in a minute that could be hopeful in that regard basically setting the expectations at the beginning of the discussion and um Just establishing that you know, we're all trying to to do something good here and like last last week God you first thing you start off with liz was was asking for grace that Yeah, it's it's it's easy to stop at a hole on some of these discussions and it's not you know any you know mad intent. It's just Part of the exercise to get to where it is that we want to go Um, and I want to say all the stuff I want to be able to say it and have people Okay, that was not right liz. That was bad. That was but still okay She asked her grace. So I'm gonna like I'm suspend judgment. Maybe like I give her a couple more minutes, right? So that that's that was my whole thing there and I'm asking again today I appreciate it again today I uh, I have a friend we um Worked together many years ago back when I had a had a real job Um as a young man right out of high school. He was drafted went to vietnam came back uh Got a degree and in business and work in hr. He uh does a lot of work in diversity training and One day one day. I'll see if I can get him on us as a guest. He's got a uh lifetime worth of experiences That would be helpful in this discussion as well but His name is skit McCall and he shared this document with me and he does training for for uh diversity training businesses and Most of the discussions is that they do he starts off with this document and everybody in the room Signs off on it, which is basically just establishing the ground roles that we're going to be having a discussion and uh, none of us need to apologize for who we are. We're you know, A function of our environment and how we've grown up and this is where we are at the moment and You know, we can be ignorant. We can you know, have misunderstandings and we're asking You know permission to to to be who we are with our with our flaws and everything else and um When you're when you're talking about setting the the the stage is this What you were thinking was or something along one of these lines Yeah, absolutely tom. Um, I actually am Arranging for a morning meeting that is not mandatory in my company, but it's open to everybody And we will have this first and I I'm surprised at how many people really want to come So I just saw this for the first time today and was like wow This is like light bulb moment to me to me uh for me and I just tossed it out and My people are like, yeah, I want to do that. I want to be part of that which I think goes against what a lot of people Think is the truth. I think a lot more people really want to be part of They want to be part of it. They just don't know how they don't know how to be part and they're afraid Not afraid They're afraid of themselves Most of the people that I deal with are afraid that they're gonna say the wrong thing or they're gonna They're gonna make people not like them or they're gonna say something that's gonna be held against them forever No, so they're they're more afraid of themselves And you're the you know It's that's kind of like a double whammy you absolutely don't want to be the one to to misstep I I do it so much my people are kind of used to it True fact You know what I like about this document. What is great is Anyone that's coming into our company And in ourselves as well We're all we're all seeking we're all working to be the best Us, you know the best possible version of us and if we if we set that tone And then we get this commitment through disagreement You were at that moment you're creating an environment Of bettering becoming a better person becoming a better A better employee because sometimes we're always just thinking about a better employee You have to have a better person to be a better employee And I think that's where companies really miss the mark And that's why emotional intelligence come in into play because you have big companies looking for IQ But they weren't looking for emotional intelligence And this is right here this this document. I think Anybody that's watching this right now. They should want to use this And Every everybody in the discussion signs it and they keep it. It's theirs. That's kind of their affirmation to their commitment to the process so Yeah, I asked I reached out to skip after our discussion last Tuesday and said I needed his help I needed his top three ideas for For business owners in terms of things that they can do to make a difference and He came back and said he couldn't do it in three, but he could do it in seven so We got some some some bonus ideas here Before you move on Tom, I wanted to speak to what Alonzo has been saying a lot of about too So we have this thing that we use here in our company and also in our coaching um, it's called the be better to get better um diagram and so instead of trying to make other people better and It's right here. I don't know if you guys can see it. It might be too big there. Can you see it? Yep, kick it still Try and Again talk and be still so basically what it tells you is If you want to make things better don't push Don't try to make better. You can't make things better. You can't make people be better, but you can be better and if you be better They get better That's how you make things better is being better and that it's really easy. It's these five things You know, be open-minded be curious be accepting reassuring. We added one. It used to only be five okay And then we added self-reflective um, empathetic and self-reflective but if you see these things communications are so much easier and and you can You can make bigger inroads by being better instead of trying to make other people better So I just wanted to speak to that real quick Tom We're going to have some pretty awesome stuff to put in our resource page aren't we? That's why I think that's so important to start in the home and with parenting You know that environment in a home is is critical and the upbringing is It means so much If you actually raising your kids with the right mindset and the mindset is to be the best you to be the best person And that's and that's just not happening in some of these things create these Bad responses and bad comments and bad behaviors and actions. You know it just starts at home No, I like that you spoke to that the right thinking is not about anything having to do with color That it's about Right Because the color is something that gets mixed in there. It was already a problem before the color You know so when you look at people when they have these issues they had issues before the color thing The color thing just made it worse I really um tom recommended a book last week a white fragility. I don't know if any of you guys read it. I read it and Actually, I've read it a couple times now And when I say read I mean listen to because I read my books on audible But you know that that was a really good book to read It really It really really helpful if you haven't read it you guys I highly recommend reading that book was Gave me a lot of opportunity for self-reflection a lot of opportunity Something we don't do all right Yeah Not as often as we could that's for darn sure All right, sorry tom. I interrupted you. I'm letting you get back to work. No, it's this is all great. And this is uh positive and moving in a good direction these are skips Seven ideas that that we could be doing as uh as business leaders um The first one You know, I look at that. I kind of slap myself in the forehead. You know, we do a lot of work in our Coaching lives. I mean you spend a lot of time You know helping people understand what their core values are and their culture and How often does uh diversity come into that thought process? Um Not often not often enough no so, um For starters, that's that's something and I guess really it's an opportunity for us lizz and some of the That the coaching and training we do to to expand a little bit A library you don't add a little bit more. What do you what do you really mean by that? Liz you want to help us with this? um Sure. I I I'm I didn't write this so i'm not exactly sure about what what is meant here, but how i'm reading this is to To communicate this information that we value except respect Diversity and all people so that it's spoken and it's clearly communicated so that later you can bring it up um My thing is if you don't define something up front then when it happens, it's really hard to come in and say hey You shouldn't have done that Then then you're in a bad and in a bad place But if you define it up front it makes it really easy to say hey remember when we talked about better Let's do some more of that That's why I take it when you when you explain core values lizz. I mean you put it in the context of Whenever there are I mean so many different dimensions of it, but when As a company you're trying to make a decision and trying to figure out the right thing to do It's the core values that kind of give you the you know you go back to that So how does you know make and we're solving this problem? We're making this decision How do our how does that fit with our core values and what do our core values tell us to do and If our core values don't speak to things like dignity and respect and making sure that You know, everybody's being treated fairly and equal Regardless You know, we're we're missing an opportunity We're core values arguably aren't as Comprehensive as they they they need to be You know what I had struck me was the people of diversity because Let's take it for example UPS has a very solid culture They went over to germany And what they did is they took their values and their culture And they tried to make it work With the people in germany and we failed on all levels Because they had their own culture. They had their own values, but it didn't work for the people of germany I can't wait to do a little research on that and hear more about that That's super interesting And that's why I was looking at the people of diversity because you know, I think when we do shape it How how are we actually shaping it? Are we recognizing the diversity? When we actually uh created the values the culture So operate on that. I mean, this is um, this is a really complex topic and we've all gone through the exercise or most of us I suspect have gone through the exercise of Defining their core values. I mean We this has product core value cards that are a tool to help Help help identify core values. Um, so whose values are those? I mean is that you know, we're doing that in a way to to be inclusive of of every You know stakeholder of the organization. I mean isn't When I read this that's that's Kind of what crosses that's the way I interpret this You know, you know the one the one thing to when I think about that One of our values is respect So people of Latin America They have their own way of looking at respect you know, so We have to have a probably a 20 minute discussion about what they Looked at as respect and it was more or less as about You need to show me respect Because I should be respected. It was nothing about anything of earned respect. It's just you just give me that respect Regardless of what I do how I behave you got to give me the respect and we had to spend 20 minutes on really just going through What was meant by respect in our culture? Because they had a totally different meaning about respect that was going to They actually liked that one. That was like one of the top top two They liked that and they felt as though when they were getting disciplined or there was a consequence Oh, you're not showing me respect Why wow, okay That's good. I like that I mean, I think that goes to you got to be better. You got to get curious You got to find out why because you found out that we had different definitions of respect right and so We got to get on board with with with Both people we we both sides have to understand as business owners It can't just be laying down the law right has to be laying down the law But with understanding Exactly and like let's think about something that happens then in the hip hop community with black people So you get the money you get the power you get the respect So there again the word respect So you can see how it can get twisted money power respect And so that again can be interpreted in different ways So I guess it again is defining so how you defined it so it has to be clearly defined because you can actually have your Your your your list of values and create your culture and if you're not properly defining those and thinking about the diversity of people Respect it means something different to that group of people because again Get the money and the power you can expect me Yeah, that's how I read it too. I I read it with the um Emphasis being undefined right where I know that somebody else might read it and the emphasis is on Include another person might read it with all people Right. So how I read this was about defining the culture making sure that everybody understands exactly what the culture is What it is that I'm talking about what these words mean That yeah, that might be one word But let me talk to you about for three minutes about what what this word means in our company Yes, because you're right. I think respect is an excellent example of a word that can be Interpreting completely differently by and not just cultures You know by just two different people like two different families one family can think of respect one way in another family a different way, so I think defining the culture is huge communication is another one or integrity If you go down to number six on the idea list encourage and provide employees the opportunity To get out of their comfort zones and get to know people of different diversity characteristic Of a different diversity I do too. I love that too And I like I like two things about it. Well, I like a lot of things about it But I really like that it says to encourage them and provide the opportunity So don't just encourage it but also provide the opportunity be be part of it Which is you know why I'm having Opportunity an open meeting for everybody to be able to come together and talk about this We haven't we haven't an instance that happened And I'll share that here and I wasn't going to but I will now last week We had a team in a home and there was the confederate flag and a couple of other things in the home And sparked a big conversation. We shouldn't claim for these people They're racist. I'm not you know, I'm not comfortable being here and So that that sparked a big conversation in our company and we're going to talk more about that on At our morning meeting Because it's not it's not Just a matter of making a decision that yeah, we don't we don't approve of this So we're going to go against it because you know, there's so many things we've had In this past year, we had somebody that did not feel comfortable being in a home where they had animals mounted on a wall No, they were big game hunters We had another employee that did not feel comfortable because she smelled alcohol on the breath and they were cleaning house And there was alcohol a lot of alcohol in the house and there was alcohol in the breath of someone that was pregnant Um, so another one where they didn't want to clean because the guy was yelling at the child and cussing Calling the name the child names and cussing at the child Um, so there's so many of these things and you know, how do you decide as a business owner? We have to meet a lot of different things. Where do we make the where do we? You know, where do we hold the line and what things are the ones that we're going to stand for? No, we're not we're we're going to stand for this thing. We're not going to tolerate this. What are those things? It's a heavy conversation It's not easy No What you know, what comes important is when those when those situations or issues present ourselves and we as leaders They're looking at what decision we're going to make but if we we get ahead of them to find it Then that's an easy to make Yeah Defining those core values in the beginning defining the culture in the beginning That's why I like that is number one. Yes. I love that is the number one thing on this list Having the discussion before it happened yes In power employees to draft a statement of what actions and behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable within the organization I think that's particularly powerful. I mean A lot of times people don't even think and do things and say things that that aren't appropriate This is an opportunity to give everybody a chance to think and to ask the questions and to raise their awareness of You know the issues and and how their behavior affects other people Oh Yeah, because we saw some of these things have occurred by emails You know, what should you say in the email that's getting sent to co-workers? And there has been in corporate america so many stories where an email got out From even a top executive And they said something in an email that was very inappropriate and very disturbing And your scrambling tried to figure out how how to actually put that fire out Number three. I think it's particularly powerful and Honestly, that's low-hanging fruit for for us running businesses develop and implement a process For responding to actions and behaviors that follow the category of racism you know we Should have you know a number of policies in place that you know protect people's, you know civil rights and keep You know or you know our employees safe. This is certainly an important aspect of that I'm not sure if this is on the radar screen at the same level as harassment and you know sexual harassment and You know some of the other EEOC issues, but It definitely needs to be I know we have it as part of our policies Um, but it's sort of skimmed over Um, it it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, and you can't you know, you can't do any of this thing You can't bully anybody can harass anybody you can't have any overt Signs of racism, you know blah blah blah, but it's like that blah blah blah That's not helpful Encourage and empower people to speak up and speak out when they experience or observe institutional racism This is this is an interesting one, you know defining institutional race is um I talked to skip a bit a bit about this and it's like Individual racism is usually a lot easier to pick out see and identify institutional racism is a little more Hard to see sometimes, but you know if you've got practices within your Organization, I mean I don't know I can use help with this. This is this is a this is a A complicated issue and I didn't You know It says good, but Exactly, how do how do I how do you do that within your business? How do you? Tell your your your employees if you will to to keep an eye out for institutional racism some examples of that I guess if you were actually say for instance if you work for a company And that company happens to deal with a company That has those type of issues Do you just ignore it? Do you just look the other way or do you bring it to the attention? Of someone in power or someone in a leadership position because that's what we're seeing that What was that company that just had an issue it was um Crossfit so you saw companies like Reebok and other companies We don't want to do business with you So that has to take someone in that company to bring that to the attention um Of the board take it to Whoever that's in charge to make a decision to say who do you want to align with? Who do you want to partner with do you actually want to be affiliated with these type of companies? And I guess five kind of ties into that Establish racial equity committee committees to respond appropriately to Incidents of racism and develop strategies to improve racial equity within the organization I explained to skip that you know a lot of companies in our industry are relatively small and And then you know if you define a committee of like five people then you you might not even have enough people in the organization so You might not even have five people working right um You know the concept I guess is is is still sound and for larger organizations in particular You know basically what we're discussing here Ernie actually Brought up a good question. Well a good statement. What is what is very valid and true? What's so corporations promote their policies? Recognize juneteenth and so on and so forth, but the actions inside their companies Um oftentimes say otherwise. Yeah, he's spot on Yeah And and it's a shame That a company that looks They're looking for a way to get on this on this train. You know right now. It's the this is the this is the new thing right now So how do we actually get out as a company and donate money or utilize? You know This symbolic day and we actually try to say, you know, we forward black lives matter and it's like Where were you before? What have you done inside of your company? amazon cooked some criticism some some heat because They were one of the companies lacking diversity in their leadership roles and the company executive suites and the board of directors You're not being exactly You know, so Yeah, you can you can talk game, but what are you really doing? And that's why the employees are looking at some of these companies as well is saying We want to see what you're going to really do We're going to see what moves you really going to make Are you going to give me a shot? Are you going to give me an opportunity to be on the board? Are you going to look for someone to be on the board of color? Are you going to look at the motion body of color? And as as we said before are some of these companies going to actually go And into some of these these areas where there are Extremely intelligent kids and bright kids that's doing phenomenally in in academics and actually Given my opportunity Because someone to never know about these kids just because of where they're at in their communities in their school They're going to again know about the kids. That's from private school It's some somebody's school that again recruited by ivy leagues, but Again, are you actually going to go and do in including those areas? Given the opportunity um We talked about number six Number seven is identify social justice opportunities within the community and get involved um Caution and said that this is an area that's important, but you really want to do your homework You really want to do your research that There's a lot of different organizations out there that are are active and getting involved and taking on different initiatives and um some of them are You know positive forces and some of them are Maybe not so positive and and You want to make sure that that you're you're getting involved with groups that are in alignment with with your core values and are Doing things to build the community up and build people up rather than to just you know take a Take a bad situation take advantage of it for their own self-enrichment if you will or their own benefit and I want to speak to sort of this idea a little bit more to that you know And i'm going to speak to i think you said it was amazon that they didn't have any diversity And they weren't doing when you they're saying all of this stuff But when you look at what they've done that it's not panning out what i'm Suggesting for me for my company for my people is Yes, look at the past, but only to see where we're going You not everybody has been doing What needs to be done the whole time, but it's okay to start today It's okay start today, right and don't worry that yesterday Was trashed. All right. Yes yesterday was trashed acknowledge that and make tomorrow better Not you not everybody started doing Worrying about or thinking about or being engaged in this conversation about black lives matter 10 years ago or 15 years ago 20 years ago. That's okay start today and starting today doesn't make you bad I mean i've seen where people are like yeah, well who says Who do you guys know that are saying black lives matter today? But a month ago they were all about all lives matter. I don't care about that If they're saying black lives matter today. Yay, that's good. That's that's a good thing y'all that means They're advancing and things are better and they're they're learning. They're open. They're curious You can't not everybody has been perfect this whole time, but if today I'm trying to be better than I was yesterday. Isn't that a win? Man, I feel like that's a win and if I'm working on being even better tomorrow than today Isn't that another win? Why does it have to be that I suck because yesterday I wasn't as good as I should be It's okay. I'm getting better. I'm getting better tomorrow. I'm gonna be better than today. I promise Not perfect Yeah, not perfect and tomorrow. You know what? I might backslide again, but I still am planning on Climbing up and getting better and if I backslide, okay, remind me so I can again go forward Again, we have you have to make a decision you're either going to be part of the problem part of the solution And if you're going to make a decision to be part of solution, you got to do something You know, and if you deciding All right, and if you're deciding to speak up and you've been silent all that time Okay, we welcome that because you've been silent You know and you and you are taking a risk because there are companies like amazon I mean again, you're gonna have people that don't want to deal with amazon. Let's think about what happened with nike What what what cappered it? Man the Nike took a beating for that The I guess it was the next day for the stock on the stock exchange that stock went Bam plummeted and went down like 10 drop But guess what happened because it was the right cause you looked around two weeks later. It shot up 20 percent more They sold off their shoes So, you know someone has to step up and make a mark You know capernick took a big hit for that to go to the take a knee He sacrificed, you know millions to do that And again, people are going to look at it in a negative way as well. Well capernick You're half black. You're half white. Come on, buddy You know, so, you know, it's always people find it is what's he doing? It's just for publicity people were saying people are always going to have something negative to say We know this and find fault We're right up against the hour Any any last thoughts that that you'd like to share with our audience today I'm proud of you for keeping us on track top before Alonzo says this thing because I would have sworn we've only been talking 20 minutes so Yay, yay for you. Tom. Good job. Go ahead Alonzo you know, Liz you had brought up about the the black lives matter thing and Here's the real the real deal on that When you look at that and say, okay black lives matter and then you hear people come back with all lives matter And we went back and we and again for people that didn't hear It's not that people are protesting saying all lives don't matter. We all know that that's silly when people do do that response That's very silly, you know What's what's really been addressed at this moment because of what's happening is don't forget about the black lives Because they seem like guess what? You're overlooking overlooking us. So, you know, hey, do we matter? That's why it comes to it. It matters, you know But again, you know, we as black people we got to do what we got to do You know and our job is to get better Not to think that we got to go through and burn down places and tear down things Do what we need to do to make ourselves more than what we are and to create what we need to create You know and not get into all this division that division stuff That is not anything that resonates with me I'm always about unity because again, there's strength when we all can have these conversations When we can all get on one accord then we're powerful And our companies the same thing same thing Individually our companies can do this Yeah So this is our opportunity And daylight's burning, right? Yeah Well, you know what like I said if we can all Make a contribution here To to apply ourselves to Making a difference and a commitment to in our companies and our families then we're doing our part and tom I know I know again you uh, you're you're with the Boy Scouts Yes, okay So when when I was when I was a part of again, I told you I got to like cup scouts then the weeblows So I got the weeblows because I looked around in the Boy Scouts There wasn't that many black kids in this You know, I was like I would look around I was like one of a thousand when we go to these big events So again, what can we do? Can we recruit black kids? I mean, it's a pretty cool experience to get out From your environment your community and see the other parts of the world To interact with nature to learn skills I mean, that's huge. But is there any recruiting to go and recruit black kids from anywhere? You know, that's that's that's powerful. I remember when I was a kid they used to have Fresh air kids these kids were all in the city And so we could actually adopt these kids for the summer And you would bring them to the suburbs and they would just be blown away about the difference of the world Because they don't get a chance to see any of that or interact with that So they're a culture. I mean their environment is more aggression a lot of aggression a lot of built up anger and frustration to what they do So definitely I would encourage something like just Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts How do we get more people of color involved in those things that they can get through his experiences? That's a You bring up a great a great point. And you know the name of this Um Smart business moves title today was what are three things you can do? We provided you with at least 10 today Can you just pick three, you know, what are three things that you can do just start there? I'm sure there are three that were that were like, I could do that That seems like something I could do It's pretty easy. They're small stops. It's a good place to start Yeah Don't have to change the world on a day. Just take a stop And tom if you get one of you get one of those kids And they're in there. I sponsor one of those kids. I pay for their expense You know because those are the kind of things that we can do To to help this thing, you know Okay That is uh, okay good Yeah, that's awesome. Now tom's like thinking What am I how am I going to Who am I going to find where do I look? Start with the employees that's where we start what's what's the closest to us? Yeah I'm thinking scouts and school and everything else has been shut down, you know, wow But we got we got we got we got opportunities and got to come back a lot of ways Yeah a lot of ways Um Cleaning business today subscribe if you haven't emailed first name last name Get our newsletters stay up to date on all the cool Happenings in the cleaning industry. Here's our resource page. I'll drop the link And We'll add some of the resources that we shared today here at the bottom of the list and um Tomorrow you'll have Leslie is saying that ideas on Diversifying is the topic of her weekly meeting tomorrow and she's seeking her employees ideas. Yay Yay It's not not surprising Leslie you are are typically one of the people that's at the forefront of of good moves good business moves. So i'm not surprised Okay, so we're four minutes after so that's uh Two minutes past our two minute fudge time. So thank you. I appreciate you joining us for this discussion I'm always enjoying hanging out with you guys coming over to your side Well, thanks so much. I want to We're not done yet. We're Journey well, we're gonna pick this discussion up again. Okay guys be safe. We'll see you uh tomorrow at five eastern You