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Surviving the Side Hustle
Welcome to "Surviving the Side Hustle," the ultimate podcast for balancing the demands of entrepreneurship with maintaining mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
Hosted by Coach Rob Tracz, an expert in helping driven professionals achieve 'personal development for professional success,' this show is more than just storytelling—it's a masterclass in thriving amidst the entrepreneurial grind. Each episode features candid conversations with leaders who are rewriting the rules of entrepreneurship, sharing their unique stories, the creative solutions they're offering, and the everyday challenges they’re overcoming.
Whether you’re a side hustler looking for your big break or an established entrepreneur seeking fresh perspectives, "Surviving the Side Hustle" provides valuable insights that resonate with the movers, the shakers, and everyone in between.
Feeling burnt out and sidelining your own health? This podcast empowers you to overcome stagnation, build resilience, and optimize your life and business. We dive deep into your goals, identify obstacles, and share strategies to boost your energy, improve your strength, and keep the entrepreneurial grind enjoyable.
Join us for inspiring stories, expert insights, and practical advice to help you look good, feel good, and do great things at every stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Let’s not just survive the side hustle—let's master it.
Surviving the Side Hustle
E121 - Stop Pushing, Start Pulling: Life Lessons from Walter Dusseldorp
What separates successful leaders from those who struggle? According to Walter Dusseldorp, known professionally as "The Dutch Mentor," the answer lies in a fundamental shift from doing to leading—a transition many technically skilled professionals find challenging.
Walter's remarkable journey began when he arrived in America at 18 with just $500 in his pocket. Through determination and an entrepreneurial spirit, he built himself up from restaurant work to business ownership, eventually becoming a paramedic, helicopter pilot, and now a sought-after leadership mentor. His diverse background gives him unique insight into the pitfalls that derail promising leaders.
Throughout this conversation, Walter shares powerful frameworks that transform leadership effectiveness. His performance equation (Performance = Technical Skill × Behavioral Capacity) explains why many training programs fail—they focus exclusively on technical skills while neglecting the behavioral components necessary for consistent application. Similarly, his leadership equation (High Performance = Trust × Engagement) emphasizes that trust must be established before meaningful engagement can occur.
Walter makes a crucial distinction between coaching and mentorship. While coaches provide motivation and accountability, mentors offer something more valuable: deep personal experience. This experience-based guidance helps mentees navigate complex situations with confidence, drawing on the mentor's past successes and failures. For organizations looking to retain talent and accelerate leadership development, Walter estimates proper mentorship can save $75,000 to $150,000 per employee in turnover costs.
For those seeking to grow as leaders, Walter recommends creating a clear development map with specific milestones and incorporating the 70-20-10 approach: 70% learning through current role experiences, 20% through coaching and mentorship, and 10% through formal education. His parting advice encapsulates his philosophy perfectly: "Less is more. Be focused, know your value, take action, measure everything, and hold yourself accountable."
Ready to transform your leadership approach? Connect with Walter on LinkedIn or visit his website to book a free consultation call. His YouTube channel "The Dutch Mentor" offers daily one-minute leadership nuggets to keep you inspired and accountable.
What's going on and welcome back to another episode of Surviving the Side Hustle. Today I've got my buddy, walter, on and he's an interesting dude and I'm excited to kind of dive into the conversation with him, because he's a passionate advocate for personal development, like myself, and, more so, mentorship. He's dedicated to empowering individuals to really unlock their full potential. He's got a rich background in coaching and leadership and he loves to cultivate a wealth of knowledge and his experience and uses that to inspire others to pursue their goals with confidence as well. He's a dynamic speaker and engaging storyteller, so I'm excited to dive in and hear some of these things. And, a fun fact, when he's not speaking or coaching, he's actually out and about flying his helicopter. So I'm excited to kind of dive in and hear a little bit more about what you've got going on. So welcome to the show, walter. I'm happy to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Rob. Thanks for the invitation. I look forward to a great conversation today and see if we can add some value to people.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to kind of dive right in. You're the Dutch mentor himself. Where did that come from? How did you get started with that? Where did your leadership and mentorship kind of journey kick off? At you kick off?
Speaker 2:at. Well, interesting enough, right, as an entrepreneur, somebody who has a business, you always have to come with a personal brand. I was born and raised in Holland, so the Dutch connection made a whole lot of sense. I really wanted to have the flying Dutchman, but of course that was already taken by somebody else. So the Dutch mentor made sense to me and that's what I've been going with since 2012, and it's certainly sticking. So to tell you my backstory a little bit is I was born and raised in Holland, came to the United States when I was 18 in 1988, a few years ago, by myself, with literally $500 in my pocket.
Speaker 2:We had planned to go work in a local camp for eight weeks and travel the country. Well, after my few-day stay in New York City I think I did not have a penny to my name I came up to upstate New York and really had to make my own way. And the good thing is I had a bed to sleep in and they gave me three meals, but I still had that big dream of traveling the United States. Long story short, I met a wonderful person and got connected to her, but she went to college in September and, luckily enough, I was able to take her job in a local restaurant, you know, and they gave me another bed, another three meals and I kind of make my way into the new world of living in the United States, learning to speak the language. With literally one shirt and one tie, I was waiting on tables in a small restaurant, interesting enough, right then and there I had the opportunity a year later to take over in bakery, delicatessen and pizzeria in that small town in Hancock, new York, and I took the chance. So that was my first entrepreneurial opportunity was presented to me. I grabbed the bull by the horn, took over a shop that was losing money and turned it around into making something that actually worked for me and my small family at that point in time.
Speaker 2:But I always had that underlying, you know, inkling that itch that I wanted to be in medicine and originally I wanted to be a doctor. But I kind of got sidetracked a little bit because of my own, you know, behavioral issues as a teenager, being rambunctious and wanting to travel, not paying attention in school. But I always was a hard worker and because of that I joined the local volunteer fire department in Emile Square and I caught a little bit of love from the local team and they said listen, this is what I really want to do. And that's how I pursued my career in healthcare and sold the pizzeria. A few years later which, luckily, the pizzeria is still in existence. So we must have done something right in the early beginnings, sold it at a very small little profit and went to school and became a paramedic.
Speaker 2:I've been a paramedic for over 30 years. I flew helicopters for many years in between as a medevac medic. But along the way in my 30s, I said hey, listen, I have three kids and eventually I would have five kids. They said how am I going to pay the bills? How am I going to send all these kids to college? And that's when I went back to school and I got my bachelor's, master's and my fellowship and started working in the more corporate world, worked my way up the career ladder, with lots of bumps and bruises and twists and turns along the way, and we could dive into all of those, but at the end of the day, what I learned there is something what I'm doing today.
Speaker 2:The struggle of the people who go from doing to leading is real and often they don't get the support necessary to be successful, and too many of them fail. That is what I do today is I work with people, with small operators, with startup businesses, with new leaders or people who are emerging leaders, and help them build capacity as a leader, to help them build a vision, teach them how to solve problems or root causes, create opportunities and put a rigor into place around operational rhythm in order to be successful on a more predictable level. So, listen, let's dive into any of the subjects that you might be interested in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it because I feel like this perfect conversation to have you on here for because I think we got a lot of young leaders or people in position where they're taking on new leadership roles and responsibilities. So I'd love to even just kind of kick it off there if you're down for that. When someone is kind of thrown into or taking or stepping up, I guess, into a position where now they have to, they've got these new set of responsibilities and a team to lead or different expectations and such, what is what do you? What's like the number one common mishap or mistake that people kind of take when they do step into like a leadership position?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so interesting that we have to remember that most people who are successful in law and life were high performance at some point in time doing things, and that could be the startup entrepreneur who was laser focused on a new product or a new service, or somebody who came up with the ranks as a doctor or a nurse or other type of technician in banking or IT, and they were then promoted into a new role of a leader, and the biggest mistake they make in that role is to continue to do rather than to lead, and they end up pushing rather than getting to what we call pulling. Learning how to delegate is an art and you need that's a learned behavior. Of course, there are innate natural leaders who are phenomenal, but that's far and few in between. Most of us need to get some kind of you know education and support and structure. Sadly, when you do your bachelor's or master's degree, nobody teaches you how to become a highly effective leader. They teach you all the foundations of math and accounting and operations and strategy and all that stuff, but not how to effectively lead.
Speaker 2:So we see a lot of small companies, and that's part of the reason why the most small businesses in the United States actually fail, it's not because they don't have willpower, it's not because they don't have skill. They just don't know how to manage processes and lead people, and that's where the biggest barrier is, and so my advice always is that, if you start working as an entrepreneur, ask for help. Brene Brown is a well-known speaker worldwide. Her key thing is you do not need to go at it alone. And interesting Rob women are much better at asking for help than men. And you say why is that? Because of a small phenomenon called ego. Guys' egos often are too big and their pride stands in the way of progress. It's almost like they unintentionally fail and have to ask for help. That's what I see as the greatest opportunity for learning, as people are listening to this is that be vulnerable. It is okay to ask for help. It is okay to be vulnerable because if you want to be successful, you have to become a phenomenal people leader and process manager.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That's very powerful stuff and I was blessed because my graduate program that I had gone through they put a pretty decent amount of emphasis on leadership and management Although there's two totally different things between leadership and management but they did put a lot into it and there's a lot of philosophy and principles that they kind of talked about. But afterwards I was in a position and I agree with you I feel like so many small businesses failed to kind of move to get to that next level, because whoever is in the leadership position is afraid or unable to really step aside and really step into that leadership role and start to delegate and move some things around or instill new processes that they need to, and nobody wants to give up the reins. So if someone's like in that position where they really like being in there and working on the floor and doing things, I feel like you got to kind of bring somebody else in, to kind of bring into that leadership type thing. And it brings to my memory of this one place that I used to work at a facility and that was it to the T we had so much business was booming, but the main guy just never got off the floor and he could just never move into the next role and kind of step away.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you sharing that. That was, that was great stuff there. But I want to ask now is like how do you or what? Let me take a step back there. Let me ask you what is your definition of success?
Speaker 2:Well, that success is defined by the customer right. Not my sense of success, but my success is is getting up every morning inspired and motivated to go to work. So, in other words, I'm happy to go to work and making an impact and a difference in the people that I coach and mentor. Success is defined by the individual. One of the things when I work with people and I ask them the question what is your big dream? Too many people say I don't really know. Or their big dream is maybe one step up from where they are today. So those limited thoughts limit your ability to be successful.
Speaker 2:Now don't get me wrong. There are some people say listen, they might be in a supervisory position and they are happy as a clam, that's all they want to do. Or they're great technicians, that's good too. So not everybody needs to become the CEO of a company, but it is important to dream. So if you, as an entrepreneur, have a big dream, then you need to learn to articulate that. But the key to a big dream is that you need that follows with small action, steps you need to take to get closer to that bigger dream. And that's the next thing. Is that people procrastinate, or they suffer from imposter syndrome or they don't have the confidence or they don't have the courage to take the steps to get one step closer to that and again they end up losing out or not being happy and sadly, I think it's 72% of the workforce not quite happy going to work on Monday morning. And you know, imagine 40 years of work in your lifetime and not being really fulfilled. It's a shame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I've got a friend who was in a position where he really dislikes his job and he's just doing it because he's got a family and he's just counting down the days to retire and I'm like, dude, you're not even 30. You've got a while. That's going to be a brutal trip. But I asked you about the definition of success because I agree totally with you. It totally is individualized and I also believe that it changes, and I think it changes over time.
Speaker 1:As you were kind of sharing about your story, you definitely had different goals and different ideas of what success was for you. As you've kind of grown and evolved as an individual and I've gone through the similar thing my background is in strength and conditioning and I was a strength and conditioning coach for a long time and as I continue to grow and evolve as an individual, so too did my coaching and my coaching practice. And that was a challenging step for me to kind of take because I didn't want to forget my identity of who I was, but it was slowing me down from really stepping into the identity of who I wanted to become. And I want to ask you for individuals who are kind of in a similar situation where they are kind of stuck and maybe their definition of success or their goals or things that they're working on is kind of where they're at and they're limiting and preventing themselves from getting into that next level. How do you know when it's time to adjust or redefine success or set new goals?
Speaker 2:I think that the best indicator is burnout, right or near burnout. You don't want to get to the point? At the foundation of all of our being, there's mental wellness, spiritual wellness, physical wellness, relationship wellness and financial wellness. Those are the five pillars. Those are the things we need to continuously work on, and when we see them being out of whack, we need to sometimes take more drastic steps. Of course, what is the number one barrier to change? Of course it's money. Most people are very afraid, and no different.
Speaker 2:When I was young and had kids and married, you know, having a regular paycheck every two weeks coming in helped put food on the table and have a sense of security. If you have an underlying entrepreneurial spirit, it's very difficult to say listen, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to now go out on my own my job, and I'm going to now go out on my own and fighting for every single you know, colonel Brett in order to be able to feed my family. And that's difficult. It's a very difficult decision for people to make. With that said, of course, there comes a point in time that you have to weigh the options. You can continue on the path that you're in and really get into a depressive state or you can start taking some chances.
Speaker 2:Now my approach, what I recommend for folks to do is they do things simultaneously. They can still work in a job that your friend who's a 30 is looking at you know how many more days of retirement but what else can they do on a daily basis to continue their own development, to get one step closer to something they would like to do? And that is very powerful and that is certainly very possible. It requires you to develop a journey map, right? These are not things that will come overnight or on its own, so I use an individual development plan for that, so you can actually literally write out what that looks like in one year, three years, five years.
Speaker 2:Then you take in that 70-20-10 approach in your current role and say, okay, in my current role, what else can I learn in order to get one step closer to my big dream? The 20% represents who can be my coach or my mentor, who can A hold me accountable to making progressive steps and provides deep experiences so I can maybe prevent some of the pitfalls or get some guidance how to accelerate that. And the 10% is about learning, right? Is that what you know what is the gap between where I want to go to, where I am today and what education do I need to receive in order to be eligible for those types of roles. So by having a map and by taking small action steps with key milestones and measuring and that the key is measuring your own performance on a daily, weekly basis you're more likely to be successful and getting out of that rut where you're in or creating opportunities or things that you really want to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, yeah. I love that. The idea of creating that map and kind of pushing it through is really powerful. And then going back to what you said earlier, that it's okay to be vulnerable and ask for help and seeking a mentor or a coach or somebody along the lines, because that's just going to expedite your journey and get you there way faster than anything else, which makes me curious to ask you who's been a good mentor for you along your journey.
Speaker 2:So I've had three phenomenal mentors, and I will say the first one. His name is Ed Horton. He gave me my first opportunity as a paramedic to become a paramedic supervisor and I was not quite sure what does that look like? I love being a medic, I was very good at it, but now I'm going to lead other people right and he helped me see the bigger picture and provide not only guidance, but also he led to example. He was a servant type leader at that point in time. Now we talk about the early you know early 90s. Then I met a gentleman along the way, mike Fursina. He's now retired. He wrote several books, but one book I would highly recommend to any of your readers to pick up is called Leading with the Upper Brain. He's a neuroscience executive who really helped me understand how the brain functions and how into being an entrepreneur. Mark O'Byrne phenomenal gentleman, wise beyond words, and he really helped me understand the bigger picture.
Speaker 2:Now, interesting enough, none of these trees came to me, but I found them to be part of my life and that's the key, right?
Speaker 2:If you sit back in your chair and wait for your company to bring somebody to you, the likelihood of that happening is not very good. So I found ways in the companies that I worked to raise money to find the best in the industry, to bring them into the company and to help guide including, you know, be my coach and my mentor along the way, and I've developed deep friendships ever since and even today, years after the last paid engagement, we're still checking on a regular basis because that's the kind of partnership relationship that we have formed. So I highly recommend anybody in a role today that you say listen, I'm kind of stuck, or I have a big dream and I don't know what to do, or I have a big dream and I don't know what to do. Find yourself the right mentor to work with in order to get you out of your chair and on the road, and hopefully these people can help accelerate and expand your network as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's powerful stuff, because I used to be in a position where I was always asking everybody like, okay, well, I know I gotta get a mentor, I know I gotta get a coach.
Speaker 1:And I've gone down that road where I've hired tons and tons of coaches, all great in their own regard, but never somebody who really connected or helped me in the way that I was really looking for.
Speaker 1:I spent a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy on a lot of things that weren't really aligned with me until I found my mentor.
Speaker 1:And for me at first I didn't know he was going to be my mentor, but I signed up for one of his things and I just continued to sign up, sign up, sign up, started going to a lot of his workshops and then all of a sudden he was like hey, dude, like I would love to have you bring you in and start to go through some of the material as well, and brought me on to start teaching some of those things. And now I have such a great relationship with him and I couldn't be more grateful for it too. But I had to go out there and actively find that and continue to seek it, and it took a lot of time, but I'm grateful for it. And you can't, like you said, sit back and just expect somebody to just plop into your lap. And even if they do, I feel like it's probably too good to be true and there's probably some sort of a scam associated with it.
Speaker 2:So on that note, I just want to make a distinction that what we look for sometimes is coaches right, because we are familiar with the word coach like on a soccer team or a football team. The thing is, what you need is a mentor. A mentor is somebody who speaks from deep personal experience, somebody who's been there, done that successfully not successfully, but they can bring value to you, to whatever it is that you focus on. A coach is somebody who can keep you motivated, who can keep you accountable, who can give a good lecture, who can give a good motivational speech and talk about strategy. But that's higher level, right. What most people need is really mentorship. So one of the things that I strongly advocate for is that any new leader coming into an organization for the first six months they get tied to a mentor and with that they can accelerate the onboarding process and they're also more likely to stay with the company and be more productive in the long run. The people are still a bit narrow-minded about that as well. That comes at a cost. They say well, have you ever checked what the cost of turnover is? And the answer is no, because it's not on the P&L. The cost of turnover in an organization can cost somewhere from $75,000 to $150,000. No-transcript. Well, I take that return on investment every day of the week. So again, the key thing is to think of this.
Speaker 2:The second thing I want to say is this A lot of people make mistakes. You can go online and learn. You can go to a webinar, you can go to a conference. The problem is, by Monday morning, most of it is forgotten, unless you take actionable steps. So when I say I mentor everybody I work with on a weekly basis for 30 minutes, they have action steps that they learn to hold themselves accountable to. These are small little building blocks. That's the difference. So you and I can talk for once a month and I can add value in that monthly conversation to you. You feel good about it. The likelihood you will follow through and do something with it is not so great. So you keep going back in the same month after month after month, talk about the same things or different issues, but you don't really accomplish anything. So the key to mentorship is to have measurable objectives that you can teach the person to be self-accountable to and that will allow you to accelerate in anything that you try to accomplish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like that is really important to kind of distinguish there.
Speaker 1:I know, back when I was in strength and conditioning, I had plenty of clients who would come in and they would essentially rely on me just to keep them in check.
Speaker 1:I would teach form until my brain was numb and coaching cues, cues, cues, cues, spending hours and hours and hours. But the second that I don't cue somebody, they just kind of fall apart and I would have to revisit them and be like, hey, you need to start to internalize some of this information and you need to go through this yourself, because I'm not going to always be here. You need to put yourself in a situation where you can hold yourself into the correct positions throughout and through, because you also don't want me forever. You want to be able to move on and grow and continue to train and do your things yourself, and I feel like that's important thing. There is when you're talking about the mentorship too, you want to, otherwise you're going to fall back into it and then you're going to be in that cycle of continuously never moving and growing forward so there's actually a very but I.
Speaker 2:So there's actually a very interesting equation you can use for that. So performance or high performance, is the function of two things a technical skill and behavioral capacity. So you're teaching them a technical skills. In other words, when you do it four, five, ten times, you know how to do it. But if they don't do it, it's not the technical skills we keep going back to. We teach them the technical skills. It's really their behavior.
Speaker 2:And one thing is that we are not very good at is teaching and transforming people's behavior, and one thing is that we are not very good at is teaching and transforming people's behavior, and that is an area of weakness that most people have, because their own behavioral capacity isn't very high. So when I work with clients, the first place I start off with is identify something that you resist doing. That is very difficult, but you know you should be doing and start holding yourself accountable. So we want to create people who are fully committed and self-directed, and that requires you to first learn to be self-accountable. So funny, I'm talking to you.
Speaker 2:I don't like going to the gym, but I know that. So on my calendar, every Monday, wednesday, friday, it tells me I need to go to the gym, I need to work out, and I score myself every Tuesday morning on. Did I do it? Yes, no, yellow and green, and if I have more yellows than reds, I need to ask myself why is that? And then I need to withhold something for myself, not as punishment, but as an encounter measure or a fancy friend, because I didn't do what I set out to do, and that is critically important to success. And that is where, again, most people are falling short because they say, oh, report parts like we were in elementary school, I don't need that, I will just do it in my head. Well, I promise you, I've worked with enough clients. Those who measure their performance on a daily and weekly basis outperform those who don't every day of the week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, walter, I wanted to ask you. Coming to the States, I imagine you didn't have too many people around. You're like your young age. You're starting off in the city. Moving up to upstate New York, which I'm very familiar with, population is a little bit different compared to the city. So up to upstate New York, which I'm very familiar with, population is a little bit different compared to the city. So I got to ask you how did you get connected, where did you get started networking and how did you do that when you are essentially all by yourself?
Speaker 2:So I'll add one complex layer to it is by nature I'm an introvert, which makes it even more difficult along the journey. I'm very comfortable having a one-to-one conversation. I get really no energy in sitting in crowds or going to meetings or working in a room. But I did have an enlightening moment that in order to be successful you have to network. And that started off in the early days when I said I had just one fancy shirt and a tie and I worked in a restaurant. You can go there and do your job and never talk to anybody, but on the end of the day you don't take any home, any tips or very little. So I try to make a connection with every single person that was in the restaurant and because of that I earned far more than most others who worked in the same restaurant and I carried that forward. And, interesting enough, when I took over the bakery pizzeria.
Speaker 2:There too, it is always about interaction. Customers could come in, get their cup of coffee, sit down and we don't say a word. They might come back, might not come back, but if you engage them in conversation then they're more likely to come back because they find a sense of familiarity and comfort. So somebody told me a long time the magic to that is to learn to relate to each other rather than compare to each other. If I learn to relate, or if I put six people in a room and I've done this as a leader with a very diverse group you know everybody gets to represent five values around the table that each one of you can at least relate to one or two of the things, like family or religion or sports or an activity, that you get to know each other and you can learn how to relate. So that was key and I always did that. So as a leader, you have to go on the gamba, in other words, go to where the work is done and show real interest in the people that you lead.
Speaker 2:When you belong to professional organizations, you can't just sit back in the back row, you have to participate. So I made it a point whenever I went somewhere I wanted to meet two new people and ask one question. It's difficult for me to stand up and say I want to ask a question. I always made a comment, always asked a question, and through that you start developing a sense of comfort and a sense of confidence and that's when you can start becoming more outward and it feels more natural, even if you're still that introvert, right, and that's what I do today.
Speaker 2:So when I go out networking, for example, it is our natural tendency to start to form a circle around the table and talk, and I try to present a way. Listen, let's make this a horseshoe right, open the circle up, because there's always new people like you and I coming into the room who feel very uncomfortable, and it's much easier to join a horseshoe than get in a closed circle itself. And the groups that I belong to, like the American Council of Healthcare Executives, New York, new Jersey and other groups, we do that now and it seems to be very successful and people find it easier to make networking connections and people will find it easier to make networking connections. But, yes, always remember that if you want to be successful in business or you want to be successful in your career journey, networking must be it's not an option, must be a part of what you do every single day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you on that. That is very important and that horseshoe information there is pretty cool. I'm going to try pretty cool. I'm going to try that out next time I'm out and about, because people do tend to fall form into like circles and close off everybody, whether it's the restaurants, bars or networking events or conferences. People tend to do that. So I'm going to keep an eye out for that and try my best to kind of stick to that as well. But I feel like the other side of networking you've got the connecting and relating and making sure that you really develop those relationships. But how do you develop those relationships? How do you build the trust and the engagement and kind of create your reputation and whether it's networking or in a business standpoint with your audience and the public itself?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'll give you another equation. It's similar to the first one, that it's still high performance equals the function of trust multiplied by engagement. So the first thing is trust. Trust is non-negotiable. If there's no trust, nothing else really happens.
Speaker 2:So what can I do to build trust? What I can do is to show genuine interest in the people that I want to have a relationship with or who I need to have a partnership with. So getting to know the people is critically important, not from an inward perspective, but from an outward perspective. Right, Show empathy, show understanding, use phenomenal listening skills, asking the right questions, keep coming back over and over, not just making it one time affair. So that allows you to build a network and a relationship and that you sometimes need to empower that to become a true partnership. As an entrepreneur, you need to build relationships, because the more people you know, the more likely it is that people will tell about your service and utilize your service. That's how you drive revenue. Well, sometimes you need partners in the business too. So it takes time to develop an integrated or maybe even a synergistic partnership that relies on getting to know the people. And getting to know the people is not and it's the book that I always recommend everybody to read is the Five Love Languages by Gary Kaplan. So that is good.
Speaker 2:At home, in your relationship, as well as in business, you need to understand the language, the intrinsic value of the person you're trying to build a relationship or partnership with, and once you know and understand that, you need to cater to that and hopefully vice versa as well. But that takes time and effort on your part. So in business, as an executive, I would send out a survey to all of my team members, 14 words. On it I'd say circle the four words that mean the most to me, to you, and they'd give it back to me.
Speaker 2:Now one person would say hear me, inform me, appreciate me. Another one says grow me, push me, use me. So each one of them gives you feedback that you now can utilize in your day-to-day operation in order to be able to give them what they want, and often we think I give them what I want. Well, good luck with that. That's an inward leadership behavior rather than outward leadership behavior. If the people trust you and you engage them the way they want to be engaged, that is powerful. Now, if you can now align that to the North Star or whatever it is you're trying to accomplish, and people get to buy into it rather than being controlled. Listen, you can be on fire, right, you can become unstoppable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and I do. I'm in and out of the communication world and the conflict resolution, navigating power dynamics the kind of world like that pretty frequently, with different workshops and groups of individuals, and I was told once that great leaders or good leaders know how to communicate effectively to a lot of people but great leaders know how to communicate based off of how the other person likes to communicate. So that's like different communication styles and understanding their drives and motives and things like that. And I think you hit the nail on the head there with that and really understanding those motivations and the love languages and all that and gaining that more insight on your audience, whether it's public or if it's your team or even yourself.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I feel like it's good to kind of revisit and check in with yourself because kind of like the definition of success and different goals, things change over time. I know for myself I used to be in achievement drive and then I shift to adversity drive and sometimes I'm in a unity kind of drive and things change different seasons of life and I think that's powerful to point out to everybody. But so I got to ask us you're working with a lot of different people. Who are you working with specifically nowadays? Are you doing doing? Is it more corporate kind of things? Is it bigger businesses or is it small personal brand entrepreneurs who, if you even, are still opening to working with people?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, absolutely. So I have a great mix. I have a half of what I do is working with individuals across the spectrum, from from it to banking, to startup to healthcare, and then the other half of my time I spent with corporations or larger healthcare systems or companies where they send me individuals and I work with small teams. So when it's individual, it's often to help them accelerate and you know through the culture where they have been selected as somebody who's going to be a future leader at the company, and it's often done for recruitment and retainment purposes or to accelerate the performance. On the point of how they function as a new leader with a new team, as a team, and I really enjoy it. I meet with people on a weekly basis around a very specific target that they need to hit and I teach in both the leadership as well as A3 thinking on how to solve problems that would cause us, how to set a team up for success, how to have the right people in the right roles, how to develop the unified vision, have meaningful metrics, that cadence of accountability, and how to take action for the duration.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm always open to engaging with anybody. I love working with people. I do 99% of my work in a virtual environment, so it doesn't make a difference where I am or where you are. The only thing I ask people to do is to reduce the noise around them so we can have true, meaningful sessions Again, once a week for 30 minutes. That's my goal and of course, I always make myself available. I say to people I say you know, all you do is text me and say, well, do you have a minute? I'll make time for you. As a leader, you have to be flexible. As a mentor, I have to be flexible as well and try to meet people in the time of their needs.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's pretty awesome. So how do people get in touch with you if they're interested in hearing more about you or staying up to date?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, I mean you can go to my LinkedIn profile. I'm pretty easy to find. There's only one, walter Dusseldorp, in the United States. Follow me there or go to my website. You can book a free consultation call and we can talk about your journey and see if there's any opportunities for collaboration. There's lots of information there. I write an article per week. You can go to my YouTube channel at the Dutch Mentor. I post every day one-minute nuggets around leadership so it keeps your brain engaged Always a small little action item attached to it. So I welcome conversations and I'd be happy to come and to do lectures or to do talks. Always remember that every talk is action-based.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, walter, I really appreciate this conversation. I know I took down a bunch of information and, like this is going to be a masterclass I'm with. I know I'm going to be listening back to this episode multiple times and I can. I can imagine a lot of my listeners are going to be diving in and and listen in multiple times. So this was powerful. I really appreciate it. And taking the time too. I know it's super busy, the week's coming towards an end and it's tough to kind of fit things into the schedules and I appreciate you taking that time. But before I let you go I got to ask you if you were to boil it all down and take all the information and lessons you've learned from the mentors and different experiences that you've lived through. If you were to boil it to one piece of advice that would help somebody kind of level up or get to that next level or create a little bit of momentum to get the ball rolling, what would be your piece of advice for them?
Speaker 2:The key takeaway that less is more. Be very focused on what it is that you want to do. Don't dilute yourself. Know your value and it is that you want to do. Don't dilute yourself. Know your value and with that, you need to take action, measure everything that you do and hold yourself accountable. If you do that well, day in and day out, you're unstoppable.
Speaker 1:Boom. I love it. That's awesome. Again, Walter, thank you so much. This was a great conversation. I really appreciate it and looking forward to staying connected and chat with you again soon, man For sure, Rob.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me on and I look forward to our next conversation.