1571 – Figuring Out Your Organizational Health with The Bravery Strategy’s Tim McDiarmid

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey, their thoughtful listener, would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than 10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live, and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the Thoughtful Entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you with us right now. Tim McDiarmid, Tim, some may be surprised as you start talking. You're, and you've leaned into this as a brand. Your website is tim the girl.com, and not only that, you have a very thriving catering business, but you also are the founder of the Bravery Strategy, which we'll be talking about. But Tim, thank you so much for joining us.

Tim (00:01:23) - Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Josh (00:01:25) - All right. So, I'd love to have you kind of give us an overview of the impact that you have in the world today.

Tim (00:01:33) - So, I started my business. I moved to San Antonio from New York City 12 years ago, and at the time I had zero understanding of San Antonio. I was a full-time single parent of a young child. So I would say I got into business as an accidental entrepreneur. I remember when someone called me an entrepreneur for the first time, and I was like, what? So that then led to over time I established a business that is now a hospitality company called the Good kind Hospitality Group. I am the c e o, started as a chef, more creative through time in many trials and tribulations. You know, I raised a bunch of money for growth. I got into the growth of my business with a bad business partner. I mean, name any sort of business mistake, and I have had it happen . So the last, I'd say five years, I really, with my own business.

Tim (00:02:40) - So we have a restaurant, a catering company, and an acre event venue in downtown San Antonio. I realized that I, and I think this happens for many entrepreneurs, is you just get ahead of yourself and you think that you can control the world, and then if you don't control the world, all the pieces are gonna come crumbling down. And I hit pretty massive burnout then covid hit. So it wasn't like covid hit, and then I got burned out. And at the time I started doing coaching. So I taught myself all the parts of the business, and I realized that the amount of people, particularly I'd say in hospitality, and I would even say in my experience, my niche has definitely passion, you know, mission driven businesses, meaning that, you know, purpose and people come before profits. Obviously, you need profits to make sense, to keep your business going, but I really buckled down and implemented very structured systems in my business, in order to be able to free myself from it.

Tim (00:03:57) - So I am no longer involved at all in day-to-day in the hospitality company. I still, I still am active, but I am not involved in day-to-day. So I started the Bravery strategy, which is a coaching and consulting business in order to help people hone down and figure out their organizational health. And then to be able, I, come in either for, you know, long term working with the team, working with entrepreneurs, but also with very specific, specific deep dives with entrepreneurs who've been in business, you know, four to five years they've reached, you know, let's say two to 10 million in revenue, and they are still the one that makes everything happen. And so it's like, how do you then go dive into your organizational health piece apart? I think it's very easy for entrepreneurs to, you know, who everyone can come up with a mission statement and core values. How much are they actually doing anything with your business, right? Like, does anyone that works through actually could they recite them unless they're like written on their piece of paper? So that is where I have a partner in this business. We also, she is, she does more startup and people wanting to get clarity and identify kind of what they wanna start. I come in more as the asking the hard questions, helping people get clarity on where they want to go.

Josh (00:05:32) - You've run Tim a very successful catering company and hospitality group. Obviously you're working with some, some, some decent teams. So I can imagine that, especially, you know, if you're kind of working more with maybe more entry level staff that, you know, they haven't necessarily perfected the art of catering, so they might be new or to the space. It can be very tempting to constantly kind of micromanage and be involved in how things are doing. How have, how did you walk that? Because you wanna provide excellent service. But at the same time, you cannot drive yourself crazy. I dunno if you've ever watched Party Down have you seen that show?

Tim (00:06:21) - Mm-hmm.

Josh (00:06:21) - S it, it's a comedy, but, anyway, so one of the other catering companies, I mean, she's just, just this incredibly, it's Kristine Bell, and so she's just Okay. Incredibly micromanaging every aspect of it. And like everything, she's just so high strung and I'm like, I, you can't do that. I mean, it just, right.

Tim (00:06:41) - Well, it's not sustainable. Yeah. You can do it. You can do

Josh (00:06:44) - Short term, yes.

Tim (00:06:45) - You can do it. I mean, you can do it until you die. Like, but that'll be pretty quick if you continue to do it. I know people that still run that way. And that is like, how did I, so yeah, I mean, it's also a very, like you said, entry level position. It's a very difficult and very unique business. And I, as I like to say, I mean, it's, it's not a friend and I that both own restaurants and hospitality businesses used to say, you know, it's where the misfits come, but we mean that in a very loving way, right? Like, there are people including me that didn't want, you know, regular nine to five jobs. Itt's a very inclusive and, just by its nature, a very inclusive and very diverse industry. And so in that, I mean, I just, I think again, I'll just go again and again and again, it is all about systems.

Tim (00:07:40) - And I don't mean systems that you, that you make up, but no one follows. It's also not sustainable to be checking every single minute of every day. Like, it's a bigger issue. Do people know what the identity of your company is? Do you know? Right. So I really think that until you get these, you know, I work, I've done a lot of training and I've had many coaches over many years, but one of my coaches I've had for four years, I do a lot of training with him. It's called Six Levers, and it's sort of this organizational health mm-hmm. and then the six levers are identity, focus, cohesion, leadership, rhythm, and momentum. It would take me a long time to break them all down, but basically in order to, even for things to trickle down to the brand new out of high school intern person that wants to learn how to serve tables mm-hmm.

Tim (00:08:40) - , right? Like, how do you get them right away on board with what the big picture is? Yeah. And I think that is very, very hard for entrepreneurs because you, you know, if you're, and let's say too, this is with mission-driven businesses, you are so close to it. And the whole, when people talk about work-life balance, I'm just like, yeah, you're clearly not an entrepreneur. . Like, that is not like you're always thinking about it. And so it's so close to you, it's so embedded in you that it's, I mean, I know the amount of times I would just be looking at people being like, what is wrong with you that you don't understand what we're doing here, . Right. And that is just unfair to expect people to understand. So there's many little, you know, yes, I think that systems, but it's like the rhythm let's, you know, talk about even the rhythm letter, lever the rhythm of when you meet and with who. And I think it's so tempting, and I also would say I'm pretty particular to entrepreneurs that, you know, that are, that are founders, right? So different, I think there's right people that have multiple companies and they have all the you know, they're selling a product. Hospitality is a very different animal.

Josh (00:09:58) - And how important it, you know, if you're working in hospitality, is it to lean into mission, purpose, values with new hires as opposed to, listen, here's the job. You do the job, you're gonna get paid for the job. Thanks for showing up. Where, where are you on the

Tim (00:10:13) - Right? I mean, well, obviously, you know, it costs a lot to train new people. I mean, you, I really do believe, and I've done a quite, I've done a decent amount of training on keeping hiring and retaining millennials. It's a completely different subject than what things used to be in my time of the people. Like, they're like, yeah, we need to make money. There's something has very much changed about the, like a work ethic. And I don't mean that that it's very easy for people I hear all the time, but millennials don't have a work ethic. You, no, it's just different. Right? So it's purpose matters more. Yeah. People want to feel like they are, they want to be part of something bigger than them and something that matters. And I think it's very easy in hospitality for people, oh, but we're a family.

Tim (00:11:04) - I'm like, okay, sorry. Most families are very dysfunctional and most restaurant families are too, right? Like, so I think that when people feel like that support of being part of something bigger than them, really, it will retain people. Yeah. Yeah. And they will also, like, if you have opportunities for leadership for them, I think another big mistake entrepreneurs make is that no one can do it as good as me. Right? No one can do it as well as I can do it. That's just absolutely not true. And you know, everything in my business changed when I thought I am never hiring anybody again, that is not way smarter than me in their given field. I do not wanna be the one that people are coming to, to ask what they're supposed to do. Right.

Josh (00:11:54) - Your website, Tim, the bravery strategy.com, what is,tell me what co the coaching or engagement looks like? How are you actually working with folks?

Tim (00:12:06) - So as far as people that are just starting out, so I have a partner in this, in this business. Anne, she is a highly trained, amazing coach. She is doing people that have an idea and they're just trying to get to some clarity with what they're about to do. My part in it, we do, people. So a company could hire, would hire us to come and assess the health of their organization, meet with the entrepreneur. I would be meeting with them to like really dig in and ask the hard questions and, and roadmap a strategy of how they can have some freedom and be able to like, balance out what they want in their life. I think hospitality, businesses, restaurants, chef, like I started out, I like chef and creative was my original talent. What I did that is, was my profession.

Tim (00:13:06) - And then starting a business, becoming an entrepreneur, I learned all the other side of it also. And was like, oh, wait a minute. There is so much that people, right? There's also always a thing of you don't know what you don't. As soon as you know it, you think you always knew it, right? But I realized how many people I have helped that just didn't, and they don't have time. When you are the one that is day to day, like making sure everyone showed up at work and what's happening in the kitchen and all, it's, it's intense. So I will come in, I can do deep dives with entrepreneurs, like one-on-one. Ideally I'd be coming in and doing an organizational health assessment with their team, because it's very, when you go work with somebody that owns the business, their take on how things are going is very different.

Tim (00:13:56) - Oh yeah. Than their team's take on how things are going. So from there, we are very pragmatic as far as like, okay, so here's the different things at play. How are we, what is our strategy? And it's very different. I like to make it clear that I don't, I'm not gonna go in and like, come up with people's SOPs and you know, it's like starting with your identity. Why are you doing what you're doing? Do you remember why you started this? And then work from there to be able to get people on board with what your purpose is.

Josh (00:14:33) - Yeah. All right. So again, Tim, your websites, number one, take a look at San Antonio's favorite caterer and that the website for that is tim the girl.com. And then as well for the coaching website, that's the bravery strategy.com. And, so congratulations on all this. Again, Tim McDiarmid, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for the interview. Thank

Tim (00:15:03) - Thank you very much.

Josh (00:15:04) - Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything in particular for someone on the coaching side of things, like something that you would recommend, Hey, if you're happen to be listening to this interview, it's cuz you're checking me out now. You've heard the interview, here's the next step. What is that next step for them?

Tim (00:15:20) - The next step? I mean, I think do. I am definitely someone who's not like, do your, do a little bit of research on what you are looking for as far as a coach. I highly recommend that anyone in business should have some form of a coach. So I think the next step is to sort of, for me, I'd say dig into, you can look up six levers, which is the training I've done with my coach. It is the basis of what we are doing. Mm-hmm. I, you know, yeah, I'd say check us out and you'll find a lot of information on our website, and from there you can do a little more research on your own to see what's the right fit for you.

Josh (00:16:02) - Awesome. All right. Tim McDiarmid, thank you so much for joining us.

Tim(00:16:06) - Thank you.

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