Episode 154 – The Dream Team – Tom Wheelwright & Charlie Gilkey

Speaker 1: 

This is The WealthAbility Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

When we talk about business and investing, we always remember, well, this is a team sport. And this is the team that we go, “All right, so we know our team's so important to us.” What we're never really sure of though is how to get that team to function properly and to really drive towards the success that we're looking at.  

So today, we're going to discover how to use personal habits to build Team Habits that amplify that success. And we have a returning guest, Charlie Gilkey, who is back with us, a new book Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results. And Charlie, it's great having you back on the show. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Tom, Thanks for having me, period, but also having me again. I'm really excited to talk about this, because as you mentioned, I think there are a lot of mysteries when it comes to teams that I'm hoping that we can unpack and help people navigate. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

So you come from a background where teams are rather important from a life and staying alive standpoint. So can you give just everybody who doesn't know you yet a little of your background, and why teams are so important to you? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Yeah, thanks for that. So prior to starting my company, Productive Flourishing, I was an Army Joint Forces logistic coordinator, which means I made sure the Army, Air Force, and Navy were on the same sheet of music around their logistics operations. And I deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom, came back, held company command, and was really involved in that world.  

And the Army for me was the second stage of team training. I actually did a lot of that through the Boy Scouts as well. And so it was sort of a natural, you do it at the kid junior level and then you do it at the real level. 

So when I started Productive Flourishing, it was in this weird space where I was like, “Okay, I know how to move battalions of equipment and thousands of soldiers. I know how to do that,” but this 5,000 word essay, because I'm a graduate student or all my dissertation for philosophy, but, “This paper is kicking my butt. That doesn't make sense to me.” And so my previous book Start Finishing handled a lot of what was going on there. 

But I approach the team space by thinking about the fundamental paradoxes, because most of my work deals with paradoxes, right? The fundamental paradox with teams is that generally, we like the people we work with. Generally, we humans are wired to be in good relationships with each other, like we want to do well. Generally we want to do a good job individually. And so it seems like teaming should be a lot easier and simpler than it is until you try it and you realize something is off. And so Team Habits really addresses some of the things that are off that really make teaming and doing teamwork harder than it needs to be. 

And my real goal with Team Habits is to have us to remember that fundamental humanity and empathy that we have for our team when times get tough, and to go back to that and think, “What if the individuals on my team aren't broken or wrong or need additional motivation? What if there's just a bunch of stuff in the way, that if we remove that, we'll get back to winning together with more fun, more belonging, more results, and less effort?” 

Tom Wheelwright: 

So thank you. I think about teams, and I think about of course, the competitive sports teams, that you grow up playing these competitive sports. You go, “Man, this is fun.” It's fun playing together. It's fun playing soccer together. It's fun playing football together. You've each got a role. I played baseball, I played basketball. I mean pretty much did all of those team sports. I even was on a swimming team and did relays, and I loved the relays actually better than the individual events. I loved the relays. 

And then we get to college and we have a team project and we hate it, because what we find is that we're thrown together. We didn't choose to be together. We're thrown together, and we have a team that some people are pulling their weight and some people aren't pulling their weight. Then we go that next step, like you say, we get into business. So you get into business, you go, “Okay, so I have to have this team work.” And you go, so I have three teams right now. I have three different businesses, and I have three different teams. I'm going to make this personal if that's okay. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

I love it, let's go. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

But I have three different teams. One of them moves just as fast as fast can be, and they're just amazing. One of them is like everybody just loves being around each other. Everybody does that. And then one of them, I'm going, “Everything's slow.” And I'm going, “Okay, why is this?” What is that difference between teams? Let's start with that. You talked about some of the dysfunctions, you kind of alluded to some of the dysfunctions of a team. What do you see as some of the dysfunctions that we actually need to correct for that's not the team itself, it's actually the dysfunctions of the team dynamic? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Well, I need to unpack that by way of an analogy and then a little bit deeper on that one. So the analogy that I start the book with is the broken printer. Because every organization I've ever consulted at or worked with has a broken printer that everyone knows about, but no one fixes, right? And most of the time, it doesn't matter until it's crunch time or until something really important. And then the printer, that by the way we all knew was broken and busted, does what it does, and we're screwed, and we're scrambling, and we're frustrated and huffy. And it seems to be that the broken printer is an intractable problem. 

And when you look at the downstream effects of that broken printer, lost productivity, lost morale, increased frustration and friction, it adds up to quite a lot. So it's not the printer, it's what the printer causes. 

And we can't fix it even though for most teams, it's at most a $500 decision that someone can make in 30 minutes. And yet, when there's another type of work mystery, we'll call a meeting quicker, right? We'll be like, “We could just call a meeting and talk about it.” And when you add up how much a meeting costs, it's significantly more than the printer. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Right. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

And so I point that out because it's a way of saying we have workways, which are a constellation of org structure, policies, decisions, procedures, and team habits. So all of those are part of workways that make it so that the printer can make our life hell and remain busted, and we can just slide into a meeting, not know what we're doing, waste a lot of company time and focus. And that's somehow okay. 

So what's in the way is that we have bad team habits. And the concept of team habits isn't hard. We know a lot about personal habits, so we don't need to rechart that industry. If you need to read Atomic Habits by my good friend and colleague, James, Clear, you'll get all you need to know. But my point is teams have habits as well, and most of the mechanics work the same way. 

And so what I would say to answer your question, Tom, yes, it's part of the people. But really what's going on is those three different sets of team habits that one is enabled and has created habits that make them fast. There's another that are created habits that have had them indexed towards belonging activities and bonding activities, but not so much towards results orienting activities. And your other has team habits that actually make the team slower and more deliberate, and think through things more. And those different teams, and you haven't gone through and really looked at, “What are the habits that we're participating in?” And what I'll do with a lot of leaders when I talk about this is say, “Okay, what are you doing to reinforce or participate in the very team habits that you don't like?” Because while team habits endure and change the way people operate, leaders specifically often don't realize how much they're incentivizing the very team habits that lead to outcomes they don't want. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Well, so let's drill into that. So if you can, give us some examples of team habits that might slow down an organization or Team Habits… Bad habits, basically. I mean we're talking about bad habits here. Let's get down to it. Bad habits. We had a guest recently said, “Look, bad habits are much more impactful than good habits, because bad habits will pull you down so fast.” And so if you think about some of those examples, what are some of those bad habits that you see common in business organizations? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Okay, I'll zoom up and then zoom down. So there are eight categories of team habits, and I call them categories because these are typically functions like meetings, and goal setting, and prioritization, and belonging that when you look at those categories, you can get a lot more traction with the habits that you need to change. So if you have a low belonging team, you need to have more team habits that increase belonging. 

I'll go to one of the go-tos though, because it's easy in business. Meetings. So meetings is a category of team habits that generates so much waste, and low morale, and frustration for teams. And it's very simple things, Tom. We can change our team habits. And I need to pause here and say, when I say team, I mean something very specific. I mean the four to eight people that you work with 80% of the time, day in, day out. So for the purpose of this call, I'll just presume that me and Tom are on the team. We're on a little short team here. 

But I know Tom, I know the books that he's written. I know what he's interested in. I know his favorite music. I know all of these things about Tom. Our kids might carpool together, all these sorts of things. And I want us to remember that fundamental relationship that Tom and I or you and your teammate has, because a lot of times, “We'll say my team does this,” and we actually have not built a culture amongst ourselves that I can say, “Actually, it's Tom that does this thing and we need to talk to Tom about it, but we also need to look at how we're either enabling that or how we're not so that Tom is still able to do that sort of thing.” Right? 

So meetings, very simple things. And so much of what I'm going to say for the rest of this when we dig down to the we weeds, it's not rocket science. Nothing that I say is going to say it's going to be hard to understand, but I call it rocket practice. It's hard to practice consistently. It's hard to maintain the team at that high level. 

And so simple things like no agenda, no meeting. Just make that a team rule. It's four of us. I can talk to Tom and say, “Look, we know when we show up to a meeting and spend 25 minutes figuring out why we're there. Let's stop doing that to each other.” If you call a meeting and it doesn't have an agenda, we're all going to decline, until you make the agenda and get clear about what we're talking about. Because I don't know how to show up. Is this a decision meeting? Is this a brainstorming meeting? Is this an update meeting? And if it's an update meeting, send the damn email. What is the purpose of that meeting? So a simple thing like that. 

Another thing that we can do on meetings is leave five minutes at the end to capture next actions and ownership of those actions. And I'd go even further. This is a collaboration habit, but where do those actions live? Do I just have 18 stickies on my desk, and then I show up next week and then sort of unpack my stickies? Or do I put it in Asana so that if you needed to see it, you can see it? Build the team habits of not only capturing those next actions, but putting it in a place to where one, you're not relying on your memories because memories are faulty and we know that. But two, Tom has to come to Charlie and be like, “Hey Charlie, what are you working on this week?” Look at my task list. If you really want to be curious, but really what's underneath that, that's asking that question. So simple things like that, Tom, are team habits that we can change. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

So let's explore meetings just for a second here, because one of my favorite quotes was actually from a church leader and he said, “It's got to be a really good meeting to be better than no meeting at all.” But I go a step further and I'm going, why do you think people value money more than time? Because to me, you said, “Look, that $500 printer, we will let it go. We will agonize over, it's $500.” And yet a meeting, a hour meeting is thousands of dollars. So to me, what that tells me is well, if that's the case, then clearly you're valuing money more than time. Why do you think people do that? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

So part of it is because of just the workways of the organization. Because for me to buy a new printer, I have to talk to the boss. For me to call a meeting, I don't have to, right? And so there's more friction. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

It's the friction. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

It's the friction on that piece. And so what I'm trying to do for meetings is create more helpful friction for our team so that we do value our time. Because Tom, it's not just the meeting. I talk about this in Team Habits. It's not just that hour. It's the 15 minutes before and the 15 minutes after where you're transitioning and trying to figure out what your next options are. If you have to prepare for that meeting, it's the two hours or the focus block to prepare for that meeting. It ends up being not just the meeting, but sometimes two, three times that meeting, that are invisible costs, that are not dollarized in the same way that the printer is. 

But when we look at next week when we have that conversation about what we didn't get done, guess why we weren't able to get it done? Because we were in meetings talking about what we needed to do versus doing it. And so point one is we make it harder for people to spend money than to waste each other's time. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

There you go. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Two, because that's the way we roll, that's the team habit and precedent. So because I allow… Well, I'll say it, so I'll throw myself under the bus. Because Tom allows me to show up and waste his time and not do the hard work before the meeting, when Tom is busy and needs a break, he can just call a meeting because he allowed me to. And we reciprocate that bad behavior, even though we both hate it and would prefer that we not do that as a team habit.  

Third, it's because… The really great parallel between Team Habits and our personal life is in our personal life, we will accommodate and tolerate behavior that's annoying or frustrating. So just because we don't want to have that conversation, and it's uncomfortable, and we don't know how to deal with conflict, and we feel like it's going to threaten our belonging. But if we have high belonging in our team, because we practice Team Habits around that, I can go to Tom and be like, “Hey Tom, you know I got your back. You know we're in this together and I love so much of what you do, but we got to stop at this meeting stuff. It's really not working for us. This is not about you being wrong. This is not about you being broken, but this thing is getting in the way of what we're trying to do together. Let's fix it together.” 

Tom Wheelwright: 

This is great. I think meetings is one really good example, because 100%, I actually just cut back… Because I saw it. I saw it happening in one of the organizations. Too many meetings here, and too long of meetings. Meetings can be 15 minutes. They don't have to be an hour and a half. 

And if you really have to discuss it, great. But if you don't have to discuss it, emails are great too, right? I mean to me, people complain about emails all the time, but I would much rather get an email than have a meeting. Besides meetings, can you give us two or three other examples of bad habits, and then we'll talk about how to develop the good habits? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Goal setting. Super easy one. So much of the dysfunction that happens in teams is because we set goals, and expectations, and priorities of ourself that we know are unachievable, and people in the room know they're unachievable, but there's no room to really talk about that and engage with it, until we're having that debrief about why we didn't hit the goals. 

And so there are a few things we can do here, is really do a better job whether they're using OKR methodologies or whatever sort of goal setting methodology you do. As a team, have a discipline around that and have some rigor, and enable what I call the voice of no to be in the room in goal setting conversations to be like, “Hey y'all, we already got a whole bunch going on, and it seems like we are doing more things on top of that. How's that going to work out? What do we need to let go?” 

And in so many business spaces that are full of toxic positivity, you can't have that conversation. And so that gets stuffed down. And then we overcommit as a team, and all sort of know that we've overcommitted, but no one can say that. And so we we're back to meetings, all of the team habits sort of clustering and sort of change together. 

So we're not meeting our goals, so we have more meetings to talk about our goals and what we're going to do to switch, which removes the activities, the collaboration activities that we need to do to hit the goals. So we have more meetings. You see how the cycle replicates itself? So all of the team habits create a system like that. So that's what plays to go. Another one- 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Did I just hear you say toxic positivity? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Yeah, I did. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Talk about that just for a second. I love that term. That is awesome. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

I wish I came up with it. And off the top of my head, I don't remember who is, but I'll send you a note so we make sure to credit their work. But the idea that in business and in teams, if you're not smiling, and can do, and positive, and always going to win, you're wrong. You need to get right, try harder, put the mask on, show up. 

And let's be real, Tom. You and I might be generally upbeat, positive, we're going to win guys, but not everybody is wired like that. And what happens for us is we hire people like us that then might be overambitious and overcommitting, and over things like that. And we create the very problems as a team level that we have as an individual, when what we really need to be doing is building complementarities and embrace that we want that sharpshooter to come in and be like, “I love what we're talking about here. I really need us to talk about how we're going to create the capacity to do that.” 

That's not them being a negative Nancy, or devil's advocate, or shooting it down. That's them saying, “Look, we got 11 players on the field that are all doing their best right now. Are we going to get more players? What's going to change here?” So that we can win. Not so that I can shut this down, but so that we can win on this thing that's important to us.  

So if your team culture is such that the only thing you can do is be positive or be quiet, well, you're going to continue to replicate some of these problems that we see in business over, and over, and over again. And it doesn't take much when we start talking about that relationship between belonging and goal setting, for us to look at that person who's really good at telling us what we need to hear, to actually encourage them and invite them into the conversation, and be like, “Hey Shannon,” I know I say Shannon because she's my executive assistant and client services manager, and she's really good at this. And so we will look at her and be like, “Hey Shannon, what do you think about this?” And she's going to say, “Well, I'm concerned about the capacity. Have you thought about these three, four things?” And whenever Shannon says, “Have you thought about that?” What she's saying is, “That's a problem that you need to pay attention to.” 

By the time we get to the end of the meeting and commit to it, Shannon is also invested in it. She got a say, and she got a perspective, and she was heard and baked into the plan, versus having to be quiet and then being brought into yet another meeting to talk about why we're not reaching a goal that she knew we were going to struggle with.  

And so part of what we can do to build team belonging and better teams is to be clear when we're norming toxic positivity, and that's the only thing you can do. It's like, “You know what? Actually, let's be real. That's not working for us. We need to have broader perspectives here.” And so here's what I'm going to do today. So I'm just going to pretend that Tom and I are both the enthusiastic, eager folks, right?  

Tom, you get to wear the voice of no. You get to wear that hat today. It is your job to point out the concerns, and flaws, and things in this. I'll do it next week. I know you don't like it, because I like being the can-do, let's make it happen guy. But you do it this week, I'll do it next week. And then maybe we start thinking about if there's someone on the team, or we need to hire someone on the team that is especially gifted at that. 

Because what you'll find over time is that the absurdism that happens in goal setting gets diminished, and your goals start to be closer to stretch realistic, which is where you want them to be, versus it just being like, “We're going to 3X our revenue next year.” How? You've been on the decline by 30% for the last three years, and you're just going to triple your revenue next year? 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Right. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Okay. That's a goal, but let's be real, that's an aspiration at this point.  

Tom Wheelwright: 

No, I can echo what you're saying. I'm fortunate to have a partner for over 20 years that she is that person of reason, and she always has been. She goes, “Tom, this is great, great ideas.” I'm always coming up with new ideas. She goes, “Let's talk about capacity. Let's talk about priorities, let's talk about when we're going to do this.” And honestly, that's what makes us so good together is that she is really that voice of reason, so to speak, in my over exuberance. I remember a quote that's been attributed to Warren Buffett where he supposedly said that he became a millionaire by saying yes, but he became a billionaire by saying no. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Precisely. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

And it sounds like that's what you're talking about. So before we dove into this one, you had a third one. What was the third one you were going to talk about? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Decision making, and empowering the team to make decisions, and really being clear what types of decisions they can make. So there are three types of decisions that you can talk about with your team. So there are level one decisions. And these are decisions people can make, or an action they can take without telling anybody. Just do it. Don't need to know. 

Level two decisions are decisions that they can make or actions that they can take, but they need to tell someone. And then level three decisions are decisions that they can't make for different reasons that need to be specified, but you want them to come to you with a recommendation or insight that helps the decision maker, the person who can make the decision do that. And in an ideal world, about 80% of teamwork would be level one decisions. Just get all the notifications and- 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Just do it. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Just do it. About 15 are those level two decisions, and 5% or so become those level three decisions. And why this is really important, not just for bosses to talk to their team about, but teammates to talk to each other, is when someone walks in your door and they're like, “Well, I want to talk about this thing.” You can be like, “No offense. I want to be helped, but this seems like a level one decision that's a part of your job. What's going on here that you feel that you need to bring other people into it?” If it was a level two, I might understand. You want to make sure that when you tell someone that it's that. So it just gives you that. 

But it also gives people on the team who are not leaders the capability to say, “Hey Tom, I think this is a level two decision. Am I correct about that?” And Tom can be like, “Yeah, absolutely.” He's like, “Great, okay, I can go do it and I'll come back.” Versus being like, “Hey Tom, I need to schedule 20 minutes with you to have a conversation for you to decide this thing.” And Tom can also say, “That's a level two, it's on you. Not my problem, not my question yet.” Just because, not my problem in the sense of it's not worth my time, but it's actually literally not a part of my job. That's a part of your job. And holding each other accountable in that way to do their work, so that we're not in this place to where it takes three or four people half owning something to push it forward. And so in your third team that you mentioned, I would think there's a lot of that probably going on. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Probably. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Where it's not clear who makes the call and how that call gets made, and so they have to keep coming together and talk about it, and then getting more research, and then talking about it, and then getting more research, and then talking about it. And no one's saying, “Who makes this call, and what do they need, and how do we get out of this cycle?” And they might have hired people like themselves for that team, thinking that it's even better as opposed to hiring complementarities. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

No, I like that. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Yeah. So if we work on a little bit of the meeting stuff that we've talked about, getting your goal setting in a place where people can actually talk about real goals, and then getting your decision so that people have more autonomy, they know what's going on, they know what they need to own something and make a decision versus what other people might need. We can just pull out some of the friction and muck, and the social overhead of working in teams, and get to the work that we really love to do. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Yeah, I love that. To me, the word of the year right now is friction, because I have a software company, and the whole goal is let's take the friction out. Take the friction out for the customers, take the friction out for the advisors, let's reduce the friction. And everything I'm hearing, meetings, let's reduce the friction, right? Meetings are just friction. That's all they are. They are- 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Well, I want to caveat here. What I actually want to do is make it such that when we meet, everyone wants to be there, they know why they're there, and they're happy that they were there. I'm not trying to remove all meetings. I'm trying to remove the 80% of them that create the noise, and distraction, and actually erode performance, and belonging, and morale. Let's get rid of those, but keep the really great ones and make those better. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Yeah, I love that. Any one positive habit? We've kind of talked about three on the negative, and of course obviously we know what the opposite of positive is. But any one positive habit do you think that has a bigger impact from a team standpoint than the others? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Yeah. So there's a relationship between… Well, I got this from the Gottmans, right? And I'm generalizing here. But some people need to feel a sense of belonging and intimacy before they can do hard things together. And other people need to do hard things together before they can feel a sense of belonging and intimacy with each other. Right?  

So part of it is knowing your team and figuring out what's going to do that. Because sometimes, we need to commit to a crazy goal, and go through the launch, and look back. And Tom and I might be that way where we look back at what we did like high five, we can do anything together, let's go do more things. And there might be other members of the team where it's like, “Actually, I really do need to trust you and I really do need to know that you've got my back before I'll commit to something that we might fail big on.” 

And I say that because the positive team habit that I was going to talk about is actually in the core Team Habits, last section of the book, which is personal effectiveness habits that we do together. One of the best of those is actually creating a support map for your team so that you know when they fall behind, what are their behaviors that they do when they fall behind, and what actual support they need when they do. 

And why this is important, Tom, is because a lot of times, we will either project on other people what we need or we'll make decisions for them. And so someone falls behind, they're sick, they're struggling. So we're like, “Okay, they got too much. We're going to take work away from them.” But we don't know what's going on in their life. And work might be the thing where they're finding autonomy, mastery, purpose, and meaning, and all those different things that are important. And if you take that away from them, they feel less belonging, and trust, and partnership with you. And it actually makes things worse than if you said, “Hey, seems like you're falling behind,” and having that conversation with them. And it's okay, let's normalize that. 

Because at any given point in this world that we live in right now, someone is going to be behind, they're going to be sick, they're going to have Covid, they're going to have a family thing going on, which means the team is going to be behind. That's the reality of it. Let's stop beating ourselves and other people up for being behind and instead say, “Okay, what support does that teammate actually need?” And it's going to be very individual.  

But again, the great thing about Team Habits is they don't have to scale. We're talking about the four to eight people. I, Charlie, need to know what Tom needs, and Amy needs, and Alex needs. I've got four people. I can do that, and I can expect that of them to me. I don't have to talk about how to do this for 50 people because that's not a team, that's an organization. 

So creating that so that when Tom, for whatever reason is falling behind and not getting it done, I can come to him, and he knows it's coming from the place of I got his back. “We're on a team. I got you. It seems like you're doing this thing that you do.” You've told me what that thing is, and it seems like you need this thing, and I am going to proactively do that thing. I'm not going to ask you, because Tom's stubborn, and he's not going to ask for help, right? I'm not saying that about you, Tom, but you get my point, right? I'm just going to do that thing that you've already told me supports you because it's your turn. 

Next week, it might be my turn, and I know you'll have me at that time. We don't have to place this with shame. We don't have to place this with beating yourself up. It's just your turn to be in the seat to get the support, because you've been behind. My turn will come. And when it is your turn, it is very important that you let your team support you.  

And I know that sounds obvious, but part of why we unintentionally break trust, and morale, and partnership is we actually don't let our teams have our back. And so we tell them implicitly, “You can't. I'm better than you. I don't need you.” Right? “I got it. But when you need help, I'm better than you and I can help you.” 

So when it's your turn, accept the help, because you've told them what you do and what you need. Don't fight people on your team who you have partnership and rapport with about trying to help you all win together. If we did that, especially in this time where we're all overloaded and overwhelmed because of life in the last three years, I think it will let us take a lot of the destructive anxiety and insecurity out of the team. Because we know with these four to eight people, with our squad, I'll use my military language, my squad has my back. I don't know about the rest of the organization, that's fine. But most of us stay at work because of our squad, especially if our squad is taking care of us and we're taking care of them.  

Tom Wheelwright: 

I love it. I love it. So the book is Team Habits. If you liked this show, by the way, Charlie and I had a previous show with his other book Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done, and there was another show we did a while back with a book, The Cactus and Snowflake, which goes to your point of those two opposite types, belonging versus doing hard things, right? The cactus, they like doing the hard things. The snowflakes, they want the belonging. They need to have that trust. So those are a couple of other shows. And thank you, Charlie. Where can we go to get more information about Charlie Gilkey and Team Habits? 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Thanks for having me again. I hope you enjoyed the show, listeners. Fundamentally, what I want to say is remember, whenever teamwork gets hard, focus on the team habits and the practices. And as much as you can, don't make stories about your teammates, and what they're doing, and what they're trying to do to you, because that's probably not what's going on. Okay? 

So if you like this conversation, you want to learn more about Team Habits, go to betterteamhabits.com. You'll learn more about the book and what's available for support resources there. My broader body of work is at productiveflourishing.com. 

Tom Wheelwright: 

Awesome, thank you. And just remember, everyone, that investing and business really are team sports. And so there's nothing more important than talking about how do we make the team more effective. And really, the more effective the team, the more money we're going to make. And we don't typically think of taxes in terms of teams, but the reality is that reducing your taxes and tax in general, that's a team sport as well. And so don't forget that you've got to include your team. You got to be thinking about all aspects, both the revenue side, and the expense side of your business and your investing. And when you do, you end up making way more money and paying real less tax. We'll see everyone next time. 

Charlie Gilkey: 

Thanks Tom. 

Speaker 1: 

You've been listening to The WealthAbility Show with Tom Wheelwright. Way more money, way less taxes. To learn more, go to wealthability.com.