The One Thing Most Leaders Get Wrong

Leading by example builds trust, drives accountability, and sets the standard for performance. When leaders model integrity, focus, and innovation, teams move faster, collaborate better, and scale without losing what makes them strong.

In this episode, I discussed with Jay Jacobson, a seasoned funeral director, entrepreneur, and leadership expert shaped by high-stakes moments of grief, pressure, and responsibility. Having testified before the U.S. Senate on funeral ethics, Jay draws from decades in disaster response, business ownership, and mentoring to reveal authentic leadership. Author of Lead by Legendary Example, he explores integrity, presence, service, and legacy. We covered communication, trust-building, efficient meetings, work-life balance, faith, funeral industry insights, Senate testimony, disaster response, and practical advice for professionals on skills, focus, and outcomes-driven leadership.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayscookies/
https://www.jacobsonprostaff.com/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Communication
02:20 The Importance of Trust in Communication
05:50 Training for Effective Communication
09:05 Hiring for Leadership Potential
15:06 The Journey of Writing a Leadership Book
17:33 The Power of Attention in Leadership
23:28 Addressing Attention Span Challenges in the Workplace
26:43 Enhancing Meeting Efficiency
32:40 Work-Life Balance and Leadership
38:13 Navigating Regulatory Challenges
42:02 The State of Leadership Today
44:57 Strategies for Business Growth
48:51 Connecting with Jay Jacobson

Transcript

Introduction to Leadership and Communication

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It takes a lifetime to develop leadership skills. A lot of people don't realize that, you know, it's it's built in the small decisions. It's not the huge, I'm gonna step up and be a manager and a and a boss. It it's those little tiny decisions and in terms of integrity and being present with people and and actually uh helping build up the people around you that that really result in in a truly effective leadership. The largest commodity in the next 20 years is not gonna be a knowledge-based commodity, it's gonna be a people skills-based. Um we all have access to uh the internet now. We all have access to the the sum total of pretty much of the human knowledge, but we don't have access now to the skills that were developed when we were growing up. And so we have to look back at those. We have to look at how do we get those back, and we have to be intentional if we miss that opportunity, intentional about helping these young people when they do hit the workforce. As leaders, we don't think we're being productive unless we've got uh five different things going through our brain at the same time. And quite the opposite is true. If we focus on the one thing at a time, it's done better and quickly, and instead of trying to bring in two, three, four, five different things and and try to deal with all of them at the same time. Um, but that's that's the way our culture lives. Uh that's the way our our schools teach. Uh it's just a constant onslaught of input um without a real focus. What is the outcome we want to have from this meeting? What is what is the goal of having this meeting? And unless that can be answered ahead of time or within the first few minutes of the meeting, then you're you're spinning your wheels. And and there have been many times I've come onto a meeting and said, What you know, what are what's our goal for this meeting? And the person who called the meeting has no idea. They just know that we needed to have a meeting at 9 o'clock on Monday morning. Like, then why are we here?

The Importance of Trust in Communication

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Hi there. Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with a Jay Jacobson, a funeral director, entrepreneur, a leadership voice shaped by moments where pressure, grief, and responsibility collide. Jay has testified before the United States Senate on a funeral ethics and draws decades of experience in a disaster response, business ownership, and mentoring leaders to explore what leadership looks like when it actually matters. He's also author of Lead by Legendary Example, a story-driven book on integrity, presence, service, and a legacy in a real-world leadership. Now, this was a very interesting discussion. We talked about various topics around business and leadership. Jay outlined his approach to communication, trust, efficient meetings, work-life balance and faith. He also shared funeral industry insights, um standard testimonial on ethics, disaster response, and advice for new professionals on a skill, attention, and outcome-focused leadership. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I did. And if you find a value in this discussion, don't forget to like, subscribe, and send us your feedback. So until next time, please welcome Jay Jacobson. Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Jay Jacobson. Jay, you know, your areas of expertise. Um, people need a lot of help in the area. So I'm looking forward to the discussion. Thank you so much for time today.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

I'm glad to be here. It's an honor to sit here and have a discussion with you.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Okay, go ahead. Likewise. So let's start from uh from you know, I just gone through your book, enjoyed your book as well. So before we get to that, I want to talk about leadership itself. I I know there's the it's not by title. So how do you how do you uh what do you make of leadership? What's what's uh in your words, what what what the leadership means?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Leadership, it takes a lifetime to develop leadership skills. A lot of people don't realize that you know it's it's built in the small decisions. It's not the huge, uh, I'm gonna step up and be a manager and a and a boss. It's it's those little tiny decisions and in terms of integrity and being present with people and and actually uh helping build up the people around you that that really result in in a truly effective leadership. Uh you can be a boss, you can be a manager, a supervisor, but you're not really a leader unless people are wanting and willing to follow you.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Understand. So, where do you see some of the challenges are? You know, over the last few years where we've gone through GI, you've been helping a lot of business leaders. So, what do you think some of the challenges are? What people struggle against most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

What one of the biggest thing areas that I'm seeing a deficit, particularly in the people now, just now entering the the job market, is in communication skills. And uh I've done a lot of research and I do a lot of training in in this area because the young people coming into the workforce now, just at the very time that they should have been learning the the communication skills of being able to read body language and and reading the tension or lack of tension in a room, those don't develop because we hand them a cell phone, we hand them a tablet. And so they're at the time they should be learning to observe those skills. They're looking at a screen and they're communicating through text, through emails. And so we take a lot of time walking those particular individuals back and say, okay, these are the things that you watch for in a room. This is the body language you watch for, this is how you stay fully present and during those crucial conversations that that we all have to have.

Training for Effective Communication

SPEAKER_00 5:42

So let's talk about communication and and your experience. If you can walk us through what what's uh some of those, you know, even we're talking about communication, your experience with the funeral homes, you know, you you you spent a lot of years there. If you can talk about some of the sky, you know, I'm sure communication is one of the critical parts in that area. So, what else leadership lesson you you know used you thought was important that business can use? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Most times as a funeral director, we're sitting with a group of people or family members and a lot of broken families, a lot of people who make a practice of being able to avoid each other and avoid hard conversations outside of an arrangement room where you're sitting and making funeral arrangements. But when you get to that point, when you when you're having to make funeral arrangements for your loved one, you have to be in the room. You have to be able to make discussions with people you may disagree with, people who you just soon not be around. But as a funeral director, we can become kind of the facilitator, the referee to make all that happen. And so it's crucial within the first three minutes that we sit down with the family that we establish trust. And we found and the research has found that if we don't manage to establish trust in that first three minutes with the family, you will spend the entire rest of the time trying to gain that trust. So when we do training, we start talking about how do you work to get people to trust you? How do you honestly interact with them so that they know that when push comes to shove, you they can depend on you, they can trust on you, and you can they you will do exactly what you say. And the main part of that is is being able to read the expressions and read the body language and understand the things that are not being spoken out loud. I do some training of questions that help open up the room, you know, just basic open-ended questions that allow them to share concerns, share things that they hadn't previously felt comfortable in doing. One of my favorite questions that will float out with a a spouse who's making arrangements when sitting there with their kids is how did you and your husband or your wife meet? And many, many times, the kids that are sitting there never understood that story. They never heard it. But it opens up a dialogue, allows the surviving spouse to share something that was very important and very intimate, and it may be even funny at that time, with the kids and with the funeral directors to to invite you in, to allow you to be part of that experience. And just those types of questions and drawing people out and allowing them to share the stories that are buried deep helps soften the room, helps bring people who are on the fringes back into the conversation.

Hiring for Leadership Potential

SPEAKER_00 8:34

That's a totally different level of communication than most businesses can complain about that they cannot communicate properly because as minor steph, you know, this is this is life-changing, you know, you know, it's a very, very sensitive, you know, you know, uh time sensitive in and I've there's a lot going on in that area at that time. So you mentioned you you made a couple of good points. I want to dissect it a little bit deeper. So before we get to the training part, you mentioned something, the building trust and all this stuff. So how do you do that building trust when and and especially the communication, when emotions are so high in that room, you know, whether your side or other side, you dealing with a very high emotional you know, situations, how do you focus on building those skill set and having those communication to the level when so much going on emotionally inside you?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Well, you have to realize as the professional walking into the room that it's your job to slow things down. Because people who are are going through grief or who are going through emotional things, whether it be in to a funeral home or in the workplace, are running mentally at 100 miles an hour. Every nerve in their body is on edge, all the chemicals that are flowing through their system are all hyping up their brain. And so if you can walk into the room and just start slowing things down, whether that's by your speech, by your actions, uh just by the comfort, you know, people will mimic what you portray. So if you portray somebody who is in control, who's calm, who is is carefully speaking, they start reflecting that back to you. And so that's one of the skills you you you sense that you know that when you walk into that room, that every single time that we do that, and we may, as funeral directors, we may do this three or four times a day, where we have to go and sit with different families. And every one of those is a critical conversation. Now, most business people don't function at that level in terms of every single conversation they have with a client being at that critical level. But as funeral directors, we live it every single day and every hour. And so the training that we see and the results of just being able to pay attention, even the young funeral directors without instruction, they will develop those skills over time. But we go in and we help them do it early in their career so they don't make a lot of the mistakes that you might otherwise make and cause real hurt feelings in families. I I started my my profession, and why I got interested into this was because there was I went to a funeral of my aunt's uh when I was in high school as a pallbearer. And the funeral home, they just did a horrible job. They didn't communicate well, they didn't process things well, and I walked away from that thinking somebody's got to be able to do that better. And that kind of started me on the track of helping mentor and train others to do the very best that they can. We do this every day as funeral directors. Our families do it once. You only get one shot at bearing their loved one, and and we constantly have to remember that.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Okay, so let's talk about training. Very interesting. So so you know, one is you building your skill set, Jay, in this area. You know, definitely you you want, you know, communication has to be totally different level where you can provide that kind of comfort to people so you know they can mimic your, but as you mentioned, your your your your face on emotional, but then how do you train those people? You mentioned that leadership building the skills in uh in a the newcomers in a in a market or or somebody somebody newer in the in the business. So are we are you simply just teaching communication? Are you teaching the tone of voice? Are you you get to the word worst word to come out of it their mouth as well when they talk? You know, all these kind of makes up for all the the communications and the skills that they need. So how do you how do you manage that communication training?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

We train first by modeling, we model the behavior that we want to see come back, and then we we move into observing. We observe, you know, how is the person I'm training interacting with the people around them? How are what is their judgment process when they make decisions? And then in providing a safe environment for them where they feel that they're not being criticized but being helped, you quietly correct those areas that need correction. You you explain to them not just that they did this incorrectly, but this is why you do it a different way. To understand the why behind the instructions that are given allows them to build not just how to do it, but how to think through the process. How what what is the ultimate goal? Why why do we make the decisions that we make? And if you can train the next generation to think about the why behind the decision they're making, then they become better leaders in the long run. They become better employees in the long run. They understand, you take this even further into the the values and the the mission of your organization. If your employees all understand the why behind what we're doing, you know, why do we have these values? What does it do to protect you as a as an employee? What does it do to serve our overall purpose? They will make the right decision, even though you're not there in the moment. When a crisis comes up, you've trained their mind as to think as to why, what is the outcome ultimately we want, and what's the best, then they can think through the process what's the best way to get there.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Got it. Okay. So when you hiring these people in, you know, you think they're gonna learn all that the leadership skills that we're teaching. What do you look for when you're recruiting people, uh Jay, that that tells you that listen, this person's gonna have that. I'm gonna be able to build a team. I know we make all of mistakes in that area, not how everybody's gonna be 100%, but what are some of the key uh skills the that the personality edibilities you look for?

The Journey of Writing a Leadership Book

SPEAKER_01 14:29

I'll I'll share a story about how we hired people in my funeral home in small town Iowa. Funeral directors, there's a lot of small tasks, menial tasks that have to be done that that the funeral director themselves don't necessarily need to be doing, things like mowing grass, washing cars, those type of things. We would hire high school students to do that. And unlike a lot of my colleagues who would would look for somebody who was ex, you know, didn't do anything else. They were exclusively just going to be an employee, be available anytime they were called upon. I went for the busiest, most involved high school students I could find, the ones who were in every smort, the ones that were in every activity, whose schedules were completely booked. And I understood when I would seek out these folks that they're they couldn't commit to a regular schedule. They couldn't hold down a regular job. But in funeral service and the tasks that we were looking for, you know, mowing grass, washing cars, they didn't have to fit into a schedule. So when I would hire these young men and women, I would say, when you have this job, it is your job to get these things done. I don't need to be one to call you and remind you of it. So I will call and I'll tell you I need cars cleaned by 10 o'clock, three days from now. It's up to you to make sure that that's done between now and then. And every single time they would get it done. They might do it at two o'clock in the morning. They might do it at 4:30 when they got done with their first activity at school before they had to go back to the other one, but they would get it done. And the same thing with mowing the grass. I would tell the young people, I don't ever want to have to call you. You will you drive by the funeral home every day, and you can see when the grass needs mowed. I never had to call and tell them. But it's a mindset of recognizing that busy people, people that are involved, have already trained their mind to get things done. And so when you look at hiring and onboarding people, you start looking for those kind of people, those skills. Because the the day-to-day activities that we do in most of our businesses can easily be taught. But the kind of thinking and the kind of organizing it takes to juggle a schedule like these kids had isn't something that you can easily recognize or or easily train.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

And if they have a discipline enough, enough structure, enough license, and they can get these small jobs done, they could be trained for the bigger job from your example, what you just mentioned. If you tell them to enlist uh model on or or wash the cars, if they can be structured enough and follow instructions and do it on time when you ask them to, then you can build those skill set, what you're looking for on these people as well.

The Power of Attention in Leadership

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Absolutely. And and these young people have gone on to do some amazing things. One of one of my employees that was cleaning cars played for the NBA, another is a Grammy nominated bass player, one's a physician, one worked in the White House, one's an executive in an insurance company. So they all had those skills that were were marketable beyond just what they did in high school. And and to watch what has happened with these young people is is really rewarding for me. But you see those kind of skills and you see those kind of people and and you know that they're going to achieve great, great things. Yeah, very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

So, what inspired you to uh write a book, uh lead by a legendary example, Sad. So, how did that idea come along?

SPEAKER_01 18:02

It I never I never sat down to write a book. This book is born out of a great pivot in our lives. My wife two years ago had knee surgery to replace a knee, and it's supposed to be a real simple procedure. She went in, she's a nurse, she went in and expect, okay, I'm gonna be off for six weeks and then I'll go back to work. Well, things went horribly, horribly wrong. And and over a period of 18 months, she had 12 major surgeries. And so I started writing just a kind of um a minute by minute of what the doctors were saying, what the nurses were saying, what the care plan was, and in a document for my two daughters so they could know what was going on. And over the process of time, a lot more of my thoughts of about the whys, about the the things that that are important in life started creeping in to this document. Ultimately, I started treating it as this is a way for me to write down some of the lessons I want my two grandsons to know when they grow up. And when I got to the end of writing all of this, it it was obvious it was, it became a book on what leadership means, how it's developed, what the important pillars that that are associated with legendary leadership are and how they're practiced. And and throughout the book, this is it's not any like any other leadership book you you will read. It is pulled directly from living experiences that illustrate these pillars of leadership, how they developed and why they're important. It then walks you through the important ways of using them in your your business and your communities and organizations. And ultimately it it concludes with a 10-week study course of how to build leadership in a group.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, a lot of interesting stories in a book as well. I enjoy the book. You know, the football story you were you were you were recommending, you know, you mentioned in it it with the with the plane, uh, you know, the going through all that, you know, the obstacles. So you know, there's tons and tons of stories in it. But one of the items I want to talk to you about, I think that's very important to uh uh businesses these days, is the power of uh attention you were talking about. I think it's a chapter, it one of the chapters part two is power of attention. What do you mean by that and where you see some of the challenges is is uh on attention.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, you you had mentioned uh briefly about the the uh United Air disaster. And for for your listeners who may not know, and back in 1989, aircraft with nearly 300 people on board crashed in a small airport in in northwest Iowa. And I was called to go up and help assist with the folks that did not make it. There were about 112 people who did not survive the plane crash. So funeral rectors from all over our state and surrounding states converged on Sioux City to care for these people. It was seven days of very intense work, very emotional work. At the time, I was was only 28 years old and very young in my career. And when I came back from that experience, I was not the same person. I could not be present in the room. I I would sit there with my family and my friends and the community and just literally be spacing off. And now they all wanted to talk about what you know what the experience was up in Sioux City and and how you know how I was doing, but that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. And became more and more detached the longer things went on, but finally was able to bring myself back into that focus, back into being present with my family first and being able to to reconnect to to actually you know listen to the conversations that were going on around me. And we built that from the immediate family into the community and friends. But it it is so important to be present in in the room that you're in, and and I I One of the comments I make a lot is you want to be where your feet are. If you're not where your feet are, then something's wrong. And it's a hard concept for people, particularly today, when you've got a cell phone that is constantly vibrating or ringing and calling your attention away from the people who are literally in the room with you, the people that have given of their time to be with you. And so it becomes necessary for us as adults and as people who want to stay connected to be able to tune out those outside distractions, to be able to turn a screen off, to leave a phone in another room so that it's not even vibrating in your pocket to pull attention away. We've gotten so used to that total connection with everybody that we've lost the total connection with the people in the room.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

But going through that experience, J, you know, when you were 20, 80 years old, that might have changed your perspective on many different things. Just going through those seven to eight days that you mentioned that you were dealing with it.

Addressing Attention Span Challenges in the Workplace

SPEAKER_01 23:12

It did. It taught me a great deal about the power of collaboration, because there was not one of us funeral directors who went up there that had any idea of how to solve this problem, how to structure it, uh, how to organize what was going on. But when you sit in a room and you listen to others who have expertise and different and experiences in different areas, and you start building a plan together, you begin to realize how important that collaboration is and how much more a group of people can get done if they don't care about who gets the credit. And so we were literally building a system on which to process 112 people who did not survive the flight. How do we take them from identification into caring for them to get them back to their loved ones back home? And the stations that needed to be done, the care that needed to be taken, the dignity that needed to be maintained through that whole process. And so we had we literally had three days before from the time of the crash until we started our operations to organize all that and to make sure that every single person that came through our care was treated with the utmost indignity. And and it was a it was a battle in a lot of ways because we we had to make sure we were being caring to the families, but but also keeping them separate from the area we were working in, making sure that the press was not intruding upon uh the privacy of the people that we were caring for. And and that was a that was a daily and hourly battle because we had press that were trying to sneak into our morgue area and with you know fake credentials. So those kind of things we had to plan for it, things we had never anticipated before, all the way down to you know, how are we going to care for the people when when we transfer from our care to the the air lives and and how that how dignified that needed to be.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Very interesting. So so yeah, that's get back to that uh attention side of things. This is the area, you know, you mentioned that, you know, you know, being in a present and a room. Uh this is the area a lot of young people that uh you know struggle with, you know, with social media, with the digital, all the devices, we kill that attention span from people, you know, the young kids, especially. You know, we are so busy with the those reels and and the two-second videos and short form videos. Everybody struggled with this area. And I think this this day and age, you know, to be successful in a whether it's a business or whatever you do in life, you gotta have uh attention longer than two, three seconds, but people struggle with. So where do you see some of the challenges are and and what do you recommend some of the people how do they how do they start building this if they wanna, especially in a work environment, you gotta coach these people. They come with a very small attention pass spam, and now you gotta train them.

Enhancing Meeting Efficiency

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Well, it it starts at home. It starts with recognizing as parents that we we are not always doing a service to our young people when we allow them too much time on a phone, unsupervised. We aren't helping them when we allow them to check out from family activities instead of sitting in a room quietly. And we're not and we're we're not doing uh we're doing a huge disservice to them when we do other activities and we have screens on, whether that be a television or an iPad or whatever. We have to be able to start teaching them the people skills. As business owners, we have to understand that the largest commodity in the next 20 years is not going to be a knowledge-based commodity, it's gonna be a people skills base. We all have access to the internet now. We all have access to the the sum total of pretty much of the human knowledge, but we don't have access now to the skills that were developed when we were growing up, and so we have to look back at those. We have to look at how do we get those back, and we have to be intentional if we miss that opportunity, intentional about helping these young people when they do hit the workforce of building those skills and less of the knowledge base and more of the people's skills.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, it's uh you know, I I hire a lot of young people that are workforce as well. You know, these people come from computer science degrees or or any technical skills. Attention spam is a skill. You know, when when business owners were running a company who are trying to scale their businesses, definitely you hire a young force and they come to your work spores, they have the same challenges with attention spam. So, and at this at that point, you cannot prevent them because they already gone through that. They're the habits are already built. So, what can you do as a business leader, Jay? You think that uh that you can deal with this? Because I see sometimes in the meetings, people checking their screen, they they they they're trying to uh you know check up something that is not so. How do you from a business owner's standpoint? How do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Those you have to you you have to be cognizant of the fact that you're gonna have to do the training or you're gonna have to find somebody who can help you with training those skills. They can be taught as an adult. And second, you've got to have good guardrails. When you have meetings, you you have to you you have to make it clear that the that our organization, when we have a meeting, these people, whoever are attending the meeting, are here giving of their time. So the outside world, you turn off your phones, you can get your messages, you can get all the other things when you the meeting is over, but when you come to the meeting, you're in a meeting. And having those kind of guardrails, whether it be a staff meeting or a client meeting or whatever it is, you separate the outside forces coming in, whether that be a phone or a text, from the people in the room, the people you're actually supposed to be giving your time to. It makes your meetings more efficient. People remember what you had in the meeting, what was said. They they didn't miss that key point when they were reading their their message on their phone. They walk away with shorter meetings so they have more time. The the outcomes of the meetings in terms of decision making is better because you're having to bounce back and forth to explain things you've gone over already. So that's that's probably my my biggest thing that I I talk to business owners about is just cleaning up the guy guardrails that they have in in their meetings within staff. I also work with them in terms of using some AI to help establish better communications within the office, using AI to help build culture by programming it with the values that you want and the kind of culture you want to see reflected in in the staff members. So when you run those through an AI program, it will automatically refocus those with the information you want to share, but in a manner that reflects the culture that that you're dealing with.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah, this is a biggest challenge I see, uh Jay, with a lot of businesses, right? It's a hard skill, the technical skills are easy to teach, right? So you can walk somebody through what needs to be done and they'll pick out very quickly. But this you know, people skills, you know, soft skills, what whatever we used to call it, or human setup, these skills, attentions, this these are hard to build and hard to clean up the as you mentioned, that you spend a lot of time with the leaders, very hard to do. And a lot of business owners don't know how to do that because we also not only the young kids coming into works uh workforce, their attention spam is damaged. As a business owners, we are humans too. Our attention spam is not the same as as what it used to be before because there's uh the digital media and and the social media uh all around us.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Exactly. We don't think, as leaders, we don't think we're being productive unless we've got five different things going through our brain at the same time. And quite the opposite is true. If we focus on the one thing at a time, it's done better and quickly, and instead of trying to bring in two, three, four, five different things and and try to deal with all of them at the same time. But that's that's the way our culture lives. Uh that's the way our our schools teach. It's just a constant onslaught of input without a real focus.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Yeah, yeah. And and one of the challenges I see that you know, business owners, when they we know all this stuff, but we train once and we forget about it. You know, we tell them, okay, you need to be you know attentive in a meeting, you you gotta stay focused, this is this, and then you forget about it, and then you expect people to do it. It's like they needed more information. This they don't need more information, it's not the knowledge about the looking part. If you're putting their guardrills, you gotta practice that on a daily basis. You can't soften on that or on uh any, you know, every day is you gotta stay on top of that.

Work-Life Balance and Leadership

SPEAKER_01 32:04

And that's where leadership is built. It's in those small decisions, it's in that small decision to leave the phone in the other room so that I can be present. The small decision to be cognizant of people's time so that we plan meetings that are productive, but no longer, not one minute longer than they have to be. The the concept of not having a meeting unless you have a clear agenda, a clear idea of what are what are the results we want to have? Why are we getting together? And if that is communicated clearly, then you solve the problem and the meeting is done. Or you, you know, or you task it out and the meeting is done until you you have to come back and review. Those are are hard concepts for a lot of people, and particularly in corporate America, who thrive on meetings. And you, you know, you're not a you're not important unless you have 10 meetings in one day. Well, if you refocus, you you learn that you don't have to have 10 meetings in a day. You need to have one really productive meeting and and start moving things forward and in instead of meeting about things.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah, they people measure productivity based on how many meetings, how many tasks you have instead of the outcome of it. You know, what is the outcome out of those meetings? What's what is the outcome out of that decision you make in, you know, that's what you need to measure instead of just meeting, measuring the quantity of the meetings.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, exactly. And and I have a lot of meeting requests that I get. And one of the things that that I always ask, and it's never clear up front, unless you know it's the exception when it's clear. What is what is the outcome we want to have from this meeting? What is what is the goal of having this meeting? And unless that can be answered ahead of time or within the first few minutes of the meeting, then you're you're spinning your wheels. And and there have been many times I've come onto a meeting and said, What you know, what are what's our goal for this meeting? And the person who called the meeting has no idea. They just know that we needed to have a meeting at nine o'clock on Monday morning. Like, then why are we here?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Let's go back to the even smaller meeting, four or five people spending one hour in of the company time in a meeting, if it's not productive, you know, that's a big cost on a payroll side, right? So people, a lot of people don't understand that the impact of that, that even one hour, two hour meetings, how many people you multiply that, now what's what's the cost of the hour?

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Exactly. And and if you're accomplishing a purpose, if you're if you're moving toward the mission and the values of the organization, yes, have a meeting. And that meeting should long last as long as it takes to uh accomplish the the goal of the meeting. But it to have a meeting just to have a meeting is is counterproductive.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah, yeah. So you you work with a lot of business leaders, uh, Ajay. So what other challenges you see? You know, we definitely talk about uh attention and and that communication. What do you see other challenges that if you if you pinpoint, you know, what what do you think the struggles are?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

I I think a lot of business people struggle with work-life balance. I was very fortunate early early in my career, one of the first funeral homes I worked for, I had two very different funeral directors. One, Mr. Bickford, was 85 when I met him, and and just as calm and reassuring and and always present in the room. He was and he was always the same. Whether you met him in the office, whether you met him out on the street, whether you met him in church or at a at the grocery store uptown, he was always the same person. Very consistent. You knew who he was, he knew who he was, and there was a calm presence to that. As a gentleman who was active in his church, he'd been married when he passed away over 65 years. Very consistent. Now, the younger funeral director in the same business that had bought the funeral home was 27, and he was on. He was when he was doing his funeral business, he was on. There was nobody better. But as soon as he was off this the clock, his life went to heck. And he ultimately ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol. He lost his business and his family because he couldn't sort out the balance, the work-life balance. There's a time to work, there's a time to be present with your family, there's a time for faith. And you have to have those in balance. You have to understand the importance of each of those and give them the same level of importance when you're making your decisions and your plan.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

Very interesting. So you mentioned a faith, uh, especially your line of business. Communication is, you know, generally majority of businesses don't have a requirement for that level of commitment, that level of emotional uh involvement, that level. So, how does the faith play a role in that for you to stay, you know, I know you know true to do this, you know, the service that you guys provide?

Navigating Regulatory Challenges

SPEAKER_01 36:49

It it's interesting because I saw the role of faith both in the families we serve and the colleagues that I associated with. And the colleagues that I associated with, those who had a good, strong faith, who had that good work-life balance and could rely on something higher than themselves, ultimately became successful in this business. They could handle the stresses of what we have to do on a daily basis. They could handle the constant knowledge that life is fragile, life is short, we aren't given tomorrow, that there has to be more than what's here. When we saw that play out in my colleagues, the ones who had faith did well. Those who did not really struggled in this career, struggled with struggled with their marriages, struggled with their business finances, and struggled with addictions, whether, you know, whatever kind of addiction it may be. Those who had strong faith, they succeeded. They did well. Now, in our families, when we would serve them, we saw a huge difference between those who were well served in a faith community and the support that they had. There was a calm, there was a presence in them that that wasn't reflected in those who didn't have that underlying faith. For those who had deep abiding faith or even a remote faith, walking through the processes of their faith in their church brought them comfort, it brought them a sense of community, it helped them start moving forward. For those who didn't, there was no hope to give them at the end of the funeral. Uh they walk away from the cemetery or from the crematory very empty because it's this is this all there is moment. And we see that played out in terms of the search for folks who don't have that faith in trying to find meaning in what's just happened and and filling that with items, mementos that they carry with them forever, that they can put uh on display in the home. More stuff than content.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Yeah. That must be challenged, Jay. You know, if when you people with the faith, what when you especially dealing with that you lost a loved one and you're going through that transition, you're going through all that all that, you know, funeral homes, you know. Process, I mean, God is something provider of faith. You know, it's easy to connect with those people who have some who believe in something higher than them, right? So you can you have a way of comforting them. But when somebody doesn't have that, how do you how do you even deal with that? How do you even provide any comfort to those people when there's no belief system, there's no faith?

SPEAKER_01 39:27

To be honest, it's a struggle. It is hard to to provide hope when when people look at what's just happened as this is all there is.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

And so, you know, it there is very little comfort that we can offer. We can try and do things like uh celebration of life services, where we plan a service that is more of a party, more of a celebration than it is a reflection. But there again, when when the party is over, what's left?

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Yeah. Yeah, I can understand the challenge. What are interesting? So let's switch gear. Let's talk about you had a hearing on a Saturday as well in the U.S. Talk about that experience. How did that come along? And what you were testifying there.

The State of Leadership Today

SPEAKER_01 40:11

That that was a very interesting early test in leadership. I I was working my way up through the leadership in the Iowa Funeral Directors Association and I was going to be the next president of our association when in Washington, D.C., the Federal Trade Commission began having informal meetings about changing some rules that pertained particularly to funeral service. And so I was asked to sit in on those since our senator from Iowa headed that committee. So I formed a relationship with his staff and with that senator. And ultimately they scheduled hearings to talk about funeral service practices and in particular what the funeral rule with the FTC was was going to be doing and why changes were necessary. And you know, we were led to believe all along that this would be just kind of a collaborative meeting. We would we get there and and we would just kind of discuss some of the needs that we saw. And so we prepared for that. We were ready for you know just a kind of a congenial meeting with the senators on the committee. And so I get on a plane, I fly to Washington, D.C., and I'm met at the airport by our lobbyist, which was not a good sign to start with. And he quickly, as soon as I got my luggage, whisked me off to a hotel room, and he said, We've got a lot of work to do. He said, We've got the the witness list from the hearing, and we were just about to get blindsided. They had lined up a whole host of very anti-funeral witnesses uh to testify before this committee. And so it became very obvious this was not a friendly hearing. They were going to make us look very bad. So over the next 36 hours, we spent revamping our entire testimony, going from one of just providing information to almost being adversarial with the senators and and a very senior senator from my state and and having to go toe-to-toe with him. We were, you know, the the information that was being presented at the hearing, some of it was over 20 years old, long before the the first uh regulations hit funeral service. And so having to sit there as a as a 28-year-old and tell these senators that you know what they're doing is wrong, what they're portraying is wrong, and that that they in essence know better because they've worked with funeral homes and funeral directors in their home states, serving their families and basically calling them out on it, was a very difficult thing to do. But the integrity of understanding who I was and who I was representing. So when you step up and you realize, you know, leadership is more not is more about more than just protecting yourself. It's it's about stepping up to the higher purpose and and stepping in when it's necessary. And this was one of those cases when there's no bo no way anybody would ever have been ready for this, but you step into it because your whole life has been built toward developing those kind of leadership skills.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Very interesting. So you know when you go through this kind of a process, uh definitely you take away that, you know, over the years you've been building all those leadership skills. So when you when you observe these leaders today, whether it's political leaders or business leaders, do you find that the leadership, the quality of the business leaders are getting better, or or or is it going the other way around? Otherwise, is there hope for it? You know, where where do you think that state of leadership is, whether it's a political or business leaders or any any personality you see out there?

Strategies for Business Growth

SPEAKER_01 43:51

I think in the human sector, where people are are dealing directly with other people in crisis like Funeral service. I'm very optimistic. I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing. The skills that are missing are skills that we can we can teach. COVID has has done a number on a lot of different businesses, and the funeral business is one of those. That our industry will never be the same. We went from very traditional services to overnight to where we we normally had about 25% of our cases, the people were cremated to all of a sudden 85% were cremated. Wow. Because nobody could come to the service. And we had our own government saying funerals aren't important, that you can't have a funeral with anybody more than it started off as 10 people and then it moved up to 50 people. And then but we it the the message was sent is that okay, this is not an important thing. It's not important enough for you to attend an event like this that we have to limit it. And then it became a matter of we have to schedule these things out so far. And now instead of funerals happening in a normal try time frame of uh within a week, now we're looking at funerals. Okay, well we're gonna schedule this for the convenience of everybody in the family, and the date that works best is three weeks from Saturday. And so now there isn't that urgency, there isn't that importance to slow down, to stop, and to recognize this is important enough to put the rest of our life aside. And so we've lost something very valuable there. We've lost that that eschatological urgency of understanding that if we die today, the world will go on tomorrow, but we should pause. We should take a step back and realize that all those tasks on our calendar, all those things that we gear as extremely important, aren't if we weren't here tomorrow, those tasks wouldn't be done by us, they would be done by somebody else. So to understand that that our role, although important in this world, isn't what makes the world go round.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we give so much importance to that. Wow, very interesting. Well, let's talk about businesses back to the business leaders. Uh Jay, I know we're getting a little bit short on our time, so I want to make sure I capture this. Business leaders who are working on a business is definitely we, you know, as you mentioned, we came out of COVID and you know, they're trying to scale their companies, they're trying to build their companies back again. They gotta do tons of things, you know, in the same time. They definitely gotta, you know, build the companies, build the teams, grow the grow the revenue, get back in a business. So what are some of the items they can do? As you mentioned, that you work with a lot of them on a business leadership side. What are some of the stuff if they want to start you know developing companies, developing team, what are the some of the stuff they can they can do on a short side, you know, start working on it and then build some sort of long-term plans?

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Well, one of the things that they have to establish first is, you know, number one, you have to understand your mission and your values. You build from there and you have those in place, and then you look at what what is the landscape that we're looking at. It's changing. How do how do we approach that landscape that's changing out there on a daily or hourly basis and still maintain our values and our mission? And we have to be honest with ourselves and say, okay, these are the things that we were providing before that people no longer find value in. And we have to let go of those things. We have to say, these are not the things we're going to focus on. We're going to focus on what are the needs of the new norm out there. And in funeral service, that became, okay, how do we, how do we pivot to understand that people don't want that three-day time period? How do we how do we staff for that? And you start looking at, okay, what what positions need these kind of credentials, what positions don't, and making sure that we're not using the wrong people and spending resources on people that that demand a higher salary to do things that can be done in a more efficient uh manner by by somebody that hasn't maybe doesn't have all those credentials that can be doing those tasks. And and really being focused in almost on lasure vision as to which tasks are best assigned to which people. And then that helps you in this, particularly in this market where we're starting to see artificial intelligence come in, to understand, okay, now which of these tasks that we have can we do better if we are implementing the latest artificial intelligence? How can it enhance what we're already doing so that the staff we have can focus in on doing the things that we need them to do and less on the on the tasks that AI can perform?

Connecting with Jay Jacobson

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Yeah. Yeah, especially when when business leaders are working in this area, Jay, you know, there's there's so many items that you need to you know spend time on. You have to stay focused, but there's so many blind spots, you know, whether it's a communication, whether it's a team building, whether or uh or uh it just some team you know meeting structures, all the items you mentioned are very, very important. I think that's where we need a people like you to you know spot some of those blind spots and help business leaders to get there much faster than making mistakes and trying to divorce in the 20 different areas. And uh, you know, the help in that area, listen, you know, focus on this, you know, go with this. So you you can get there much faster than trying to uh learn from trial and adok and approach than somebody like you on a site.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

Absolutely. And and that's that's where it helps to have people out there that if you don't have the expertise, get somebody in and help you train. I one of the my favorite statistics that I've I've run across lately uh helps to understand the limit of what we know. A hundred years ago, the sum total of all human knowledge doubled every 100 years. Back in the 70s, it was down to doubling every 12 years. Today they estimate the total sum knowledge of humankind doubles every 12 hours. So we don't know what we don't know. And as soon as we recognize that we cannot keep up with everything, we have to have people that come in and help us with the things that that we have deficits in, the better our companies will be.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Yeah, yeah. What interesting. How can people connect with you? Where can they find you, OJ?

SPEAKER_01 50:27

They can find me at Jacobson Professional Staffing online at JacobsonProstaff.com. They can find me on LinkedIn or Facebook. They can read a lot of the material that we've talked about today in my book, which there's a link on on the staffing page.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

It's called Leadswell the link below this video. They can click a button and uh either get a copy of the book or they can connect with you on the website.

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Okay, it's it's called Lead by Legendary Example. Yep. It's not written by like any other leadership book you have ever seen. So I encourage you to check out a sample of it and and give it a read.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

The best way to uh reach out to you is a LinkedIn or your website, Jay.

SPEAKER_01 51:11

The best way to reach out to is just through our website. Okay. That'll get us, that'll get you to everything else. So if you remember one thing, that's the one to remember.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

Yeah. Yeah, I know that when I was reading a book, there was a lot of stories. Very interesting. So definitely uh, you know, uh, encourage business leaders to, you know, I I had a quick discussion with you, but told you know, your level of communication, what you know, from your background, from the experience and and the leadership and team building. Generally, I don't see that in a business setting. You know, they definitely you know it's just an environment you came from, a totally different level of communication that that a lot of businesses that they you know they have. So there's so much to learn from you, whether it's communication, team building, or just a team structure. There's so many areas. So I'd encourage all the business leaders listening to us or watching us uh to click a button uh below this video, reach out to you for conversation. Um, as I learned from you, I'm sure everybody's you know reach out to you, they're gonna learn, take away something from you, and and who knows what the opportunity looks like after that.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

Well, thank you for having me as a guest today. Uh, this has been a very enjoyable experience.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

Thank you so much for your time, Jay. It was a pleasure talking to you. I learned so much. Thank you so much for time.