Episode 187 - Bill Keller - Leaders On Leadership
Before living the entrepreneur’s dream, Bill Keller, the founder of Staffing Global, found himself on a rough path along the journey to reach that dream. Although he experienced loneliness on that journey, Bill learned to become comfortable with loneliness. He also explains how alignment with your mission and vision will help you forge forward and persevere through weariness because weariness will always be on the path towards success. Bill also shares how he abandons a dream for others to keep theirs and believes that is what leadership is about. This is an inspiring episode with Bill Keller. So, sit back and relax, and let’s retrace Bill’s journey towards living the entrepreneur’s dream.
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Bill Keller - Leaders On Leadership
Get ready for another Leader on Leadership episode where we pull back the curtain on leadership and we talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. In this episode, I am tremendously excited because my guest is Bill Keller. Bill, welcome.
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be on the show.
Thank you, Bill. Let me tell our readers a little bit about you. Bill Keller's entrepreneurial journey evolved from leading manufacturing businesses to founding Staffing Global, a pioneer in remote staffing. Although Bill is a PA native, he currently lives in Colombia, South America with his wife and two children. In his free time, he enjoys reading, traveling, and biohacking. I want to hear about that. Again, Bill, welcome.
Thank you so much. It's great to talk with you again. It's always a pleasure whenever we get a chance to speak. We had a great conversation not so long ago. It was awesome.
To our readers who wonder, “How does Tracey know all these tremendous people?” Bill and I go way back, and his sister was also on the show. I think that's what led you to reach out to me. Is that correct, Bill?
I've already seen you on LinkedIn and I see a lot of your posts. We have some conversations that way and I was thinking about leadership for my own podcast. I think the podcast with my sister brought you to mind again and I said, “She would be an awesome guest.” That’s what brought us together again.
Before Living The Entrepreneur’s Dream
I want to talk as we unpack this. You're in Colombia, so Bill's like, “You're on my podcast, but I don't live in this country.” I'm like, “What?” As somebody who's lived all over the world, I love that. I love that you're running your business. We'll talk a little bit about that so our readers can hear about that because you were truly living the entrepreneur's dream.
I was doing this before and it was cool. When COVID came, everybody was like, “We can travel and go anywhere.” I was doing it many years ago and it's been quite a journey. I don't know if we talked about this. There were some books that led to my journey. It always goes back to books. You're going to be the same person five years from now except for the people you meet and the books you read. It's so true in my own life. There were two seminal books that led to that transformation for me. One is called The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, and then the other is The 4-Hour Work Week.
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
The World Is Flat talks about how the internet was flattening the playing field all over the world and gives some examples of everything that you could do. Coming from a manufacturing business and then being exposed to this virtual world, I was like, “You could do that. What could I do with that?” It got my mind spinning. The other was The 4-Hour Work Week and that was a life changer as well. There was a lot of tech in that book in the beginning, but it's about a mindset shift. It’s about changing the way you're thinking.
I found it to be an incredible book that opened up the possibilities for me. That started my journey to build a remote company and specifically made it that way. I had four things. I had come out of bankruptcy. It's a long story and it's one that your readers might want to learn about sometime. I got caught up with the wrong partner. I was investigated by the SEC. There were some challenging times. That's all part of leadership. While I would never want to go through it again, I'm thankful that I went through it the first time because it was an amazing learning experience.
I love the fact that you're talking about staffing because as we're going to talk in leadership, no matter what your vision is, you can't get it right without the right people. I'm reading all these books on Jesus and how he developed his exemplary followers and it's like, “You've got to be very intentional about that.” I can't wait to unpack this and I want to hear about that wrong partner story because I know our readers have gone through that. I went through that. I want to hear about that because that goes into one of the prices you're going to have to pay.
However, let's talk about loneliness. Charles, in his speech, The Price of Leadership said that leadership isn't for the faint of heart. It's what we're all called to do, but it's not for those seeking the easy road. He says that one of the things you're going to have to do is be able to tolerate and deal with loneliness. Can you unpack what loneliness looks like for you as a leader when you were in a season of it, and what words of wisdom you would share with our readers?
Be Comfortable With Loneliness
I don't think about being lonely a lot. I think it goes back to when I was a kid. I was a loner. I never had a whole lot of friends. I went to a private Christian school. One, there weren't many kids in the school to begin with. It was one of those. I was not integrated with the kids in my neighborhood. There wasn't a lot that was my age. My sister was seven years older than I was at the time. It was just me and myself. I got comfortable with that.
There's a quote that I like. “Loneliness is a tax that one must pay for a certain complexity of mind.” I think there's a lot of truth to that. I hate to say that quote and say it like you're bragging that you have a complex mind. I think I could probably say that and the people who know me would probably say that as well. I think there's some truth to that. As I've gone about this, I think this is all about perspective. We assume things should be in certain ways. I should not be doing this alone. I should have other people supporting me. Other people should be willing to come alongside me and help me with my goals.
Loneliness is a tax one must pay for a certain complexity of mind.
I’m like, “Why?” Why do we automatically assume that that should be the case? I think when faced with adversity, we often ask, “Why me?” “Why not me?” I've experienced that loneliness, but I think that I've also become comfortable with that loneliness. Also, the older I get, while I like being with people, I'm even more comfortable being by myself than I was at one time. I was like, “Okay.” The other day, I went out to eat by myself. I was away in a city on a business trip and I went out to a restaurant. I sit and eat by myself. I was okay with that.
You have to be okay being comfortable with yourself and I think that that is something that you can learn over time but something you need to be prepared for if you're going to be in business. You think your family's going to be there to support you. They aren't going to understand you. I think of Andy Andrews. “People don't understand the higher purpose to which I've been called.” He has that, and it's one of his quotes. Also, I think that's so true. Be prepared for that. Don't expect certain things.
Expectation is the cause of a lot of pain. I know that's a Buddhist philosophy, but I think there's some truth to that. Expectation and attachment are the cause of a lot of pain. I've been going through over the past ten years a lot of soul searching and saying, “What are these expectations? What am I attached to? What am I thinking that I'm entitled to?” By doing that, it's allowed me a different perspective to be okay with not necessarily having the people that I would like by my side all the time.
Expectation and attachment are the cause of a lot of pain.
Also, when you're okay with it, you're at peace and that's priceless. I think that's the thing beyond success and fame is we want to be at peace. I love that. Expectation is the cause of a lot of pain. We look in the world, “I did this with the team,” and we all understand we're meant to be in this collective call humanity yet as you said, there are going to be times when we are going to be the only ones getting the call. It's our call. I love how you unpack that. That's what I love about getting older too. You become so much more comfortable with it. I wouldn't want to do my 40s again or 50s.
I don't know if you've ever heard of Scott Galloway. He talks about the smile of happiness. He says when you're young and you’re in your early twenties, it's generally a happy time. There's not a whole lot of anxiety. You then go into the 20s, 30s, and into your 40s. He says that's when the stuff gets real. Typically, you're dipping in your happiness, and then as you start to come out of that, as you go into your 50s and your 60s, that happiness increases. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Hopefully, I'm an early bloomer. I've noticed that. I think that I've gotten that before I've gotten into my 50s. I've experienced that in my 40s and it's taken a lot of work. You can do it sooner, but it requires a lot of introspection.
Thank you for unpacking loneliness for us, Bill. The next is weariness. Charles was always in the mindset that you're always going to encounter some people that do more than what's required and a lot that do less or in your case when you talked about with the wrong partner, people that do something you didn't even expect was going to be done. I'm sure that was incredibly taxing and draining. Any of our readers out there who have been through something like that, it is a drain like no other but can you unpack weariness for us?
How do you deal with it and how do you stay strong when you are in those challenging seasons? As I said, half the stuff maybe we should have seen coming, but the other half, it's the nature of living in a fallen world. Bad stuff happens to good people. Some of the stuff, there's no way we could have prevented it. For whatever reason, God threw it on us. It is what it is. Can you talk to us about weariness?
The Road To Success
There was something you said there that I want to point out. “Bad stuff happens to us.” I think in the podcast with my sister, I shared a story with her about the Chinese farmer. You mentioned that. I think that's so true that oftentimes we don't know what's good and bad. We think we do because we equate pain with bad but pain doesn't necessarily mean that it is a negative or pleasure with a positive all the time. As I've gotten older, we think that the things that cause pain are bad. I don't know if that it's the case. We only know that in time.
As far as the weariness is concerned, I think it's Jim Rohn who said, “Do you have enough reasons for success?” What are the reasons that you're moving forward? You might be having this vision, but what are the reasons for completing this vision? I think you need to keep that in mind. “Why am I doing this?” This other thing is delayed gratification. Am I willing to put it off? Am I willing to do the work? That's what we're talking about. Am I willing to do the work before the payoff?
Understanding that it's a prerequisite to success and understanding what it's going to look like. Again, going back to the expectation portion of it, it's like, “Why would I expect that I am any different than anybody else?” If you go back in and look at Edison, a thousand light bulbs he had to do 1,000 times or 10,000 times. I don't know what the actual story is. You say, “I shouldn't have to do that.”
No, he persevered. There's a book by Andy Andrews called The Traveler's Gift. One of the principles in that book is, “I will persist without exception.” Weariness is part of the process on the road to success. If you're getting there and you haven't experienced the things we're talking about, the loneliness and the weariness, my guess is you probably are not that successful. Maybe you think you are, maybe that's okay in your world but the reality is there's going to be a price that you're going to have to pay.
Entrepreneurs Dream: Weariness is part of the process on the road to success.
Also, that expectation to understand that, the only thing that I would tell people is if they truly understand the price that they would have to pay, they probably wouldn't go on the journey. That's the great thing about youth that I love is this incredible belief that they can do anything. There's this balance as I get older because I'm like, “I wouldn't do that again,” but it's this foolishness of youth that allows us to move into places that we probably shouldn't have gone.
However, by doing it and going ahead anyway, we get it done and then we persevere through. We don't understand when we begin and then if we have enough reasons to continue, we continue through the weariness. What are your reasons and how does that relate to your mission and to your goal? How do you want to be remembered?
Thank you so much for unpacking weariness, Bill. Loneliness, weariness, and I love that you tied that back into expectations again because that can make you tired too because just the thought, “Why did this not happen?” That can drain you too. I love that you tied that back to that. You mentioned the Chinese farmer. What is that? Unpack that. I think I know what parable you're talking about, but you mentioned that.
The Chinese Farmer
The Parable of the Chinese Farmer is that there was a Chinese farmer and he had a horse. One day, his horse ran away and everybody in the village came to him and said, “This is terrible. This is horrible,” and he said, “Maybe.” The next day, his horse comes back with seven wild horses and now, he's a rich man in his community and everybody says, “This is fantastic. You're richly blessed.” He says, “Maybe.”
The next day, his son breaks one of the wild horses, he falls off and breaks his leg. Everybody comes around and says, “This is horrible. What a horrible turn of events.” He says, “Maybe.” The next day, the subscription officers come and take the rest of the men to go to the army, but they leave his son because of his broken leg. Everybody says, “This is fantastic,” and he says, “Maybe.” That goes back to we don't know at the moment what we think is good or bad. I think that having that perspective allows us because when things go bad in our minds, you're like, “This is the end,” and they're like, “No, this isn't the end.” It could be the best thing that ever happened to you.
I think back to Paul, my biblical hero who talks about, “Yay. You get to suffer. You have been chosen to suffer.” That's a beautiful thing. I still struggle with that, but an excellent point. We don't know at the moment. Thank you so much for that.
I wouldn't want to contradict Paul, but I would like to say pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional though.
Entrepreneurs Dream: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional, though.
I think in his, it's a spiritual sense. Certainly, we're coming up on Easter. I think Christ suffered on the cross. There is suffering like anybody that's dealing with cancer. We live in a fallen world.
I think there's that difference between pain and suffering. Sometimes you use that synonymously. Sometimes we make a distinction between that because I've seen so many people who are in pain who aren't suffering in the way that we would think. That's the choice. You see them and you're like, “How are you doing that? You're in so much stress.” What I would be in distress, and you're able to come out and go, “You have such a cheerful attitude. Even in the midst of all of that, it doesn't seem like you're suffering.” Also, you have other people who seem to have everything and the world is falling apart.
Do you know what Charles would call them?
Thumb suckers. That is so indelibly imprinted on my mind. We talked about this before I had seen him as an early teenager and I've heard many speakers after him but to use thumb sucker, no holds barred. I understand there was an act to it, but there was a way to try to build it up and I think he did that. He brought it forth and said, “Why me? Why not me?” That's the same thing. You are a thumb sucker. What's your problem? Why are you expecting it should be any different for you?
He’d say, “Of course, you got a problem. You're not dead.” In other words, “Welcome to life. Get up, you thumb sucker.”
You better have a problem. If you don't have any problems, you don't have a job.
You better have a problem. You don't have a job if you don't have problems.
That's to your point where you said, “If you're not experiencing this, you may be a LINO, a Leader In Name Only.” You may not be paying the price kind of thing. Bill, loneliness, and weariness. The next you talked about is abandonment. Typically, abandonment is one of those words I want to unpack the meaning of. We hear a lot about fear of abandonment, abandonment issues, or I'm in pet rescue abandonment. It’s a very bad thing but for Charles abandonment was stop thinking about what you like and want to think about in favor of what you ought and need to be thinking about and doing.
It was almost abandoning or pruning away the non-value added or not the highest use of your time to focus on what you need to. As entrepreneurs, we're chronically involved with ideas. Can you unpack for us what abandonment was? How did you abandon what you did in high volume running, a very tangible stateside manufacturing business, which is where I grew up as an operations girl into this world of virtual global staffing?
Abandon Old Ideas
What are the things you're going to need to abandon? You're going to need to be able to abandon old ideas. It's one of the things that I think people have a hard time letting go of. They say, “It shouldn't be this way.” Going back to my partner, I address that. I was in the manufacturing business. I think 21 at the time. I didn't have any money to go back to school. My family didn't have any money.
We found a partner to back us. My dad had found a partner who was going to provide us with the money and we were supposed to have a division of labor. My father was supposed to do the sales, I was supposed to do the manufacturing, and he was supposed to do the finance. He was from the community and basically, because of his former profession, he was an accountant. People were coming to him to invest money. He was taking large amounts of investments from 1,500 people across seven different states. If it sounds like a bank that's basically what it was but he didn't have all the licenses and all the regulations therefore causing a lot of problems.
He didn't steal the money. He didn't do anything like that. It wasn't nefarious in that way, but there was a lot of hubris involved that got me into a very bad position where I had to make some very difficult decisions. Having to abandon a dream because I had worked thirteen years, sometimes 100-hour weeks up to 36 hours straight. I wouldn't recommend that to anybody. I think that was stupid. At the time, I wore it as a badge of honor but as I look back at that, I don't necessarily think that that was a good thing, I had invested my life and had to pay a lot in terms of loneliness and in terms of all these different things.
Weariness definitely, as you're working all these hours and you're giving up your time. You're saying, “It shouldn't be this way,” but I think you need to abandon those ideas and say, “Why do I say it shouldn't be this way?” You need to understand what are you willing to sacrifice for. What are you willing to gain? It will help you to understand what you might need to abandon and what you're willing to leave behind or if you're willing to leave “easy life” behind.
It’s hard decisions now, easy life later. Easy decisions now, hard life later. I think that willingness to make the choice to do things that others are unwilling to do will lead to a life that others don't have. I think it was Jerry Rice, the famous football player. “Today I will do what others won't so tomorrow I can do what others can't.” Whether that is, “I'm going to work harder. I'm going to abandon things that I need to leave behind.”
Hard decisions now, easy life later. Easy decisions now, hard life later.
I was talking about what you need to abandon. You need to sometimes abandon a dream. Sometimes you need to abandon foolish beliefs or naive beliefs that I had when I first went into business like, “I'll be in this for two years. We'll make a bunch of money and then I'll go back to school. Thirteen years later, I was going bankrupt but I understood where I was going and that helped me to stay the course even when during those difficult decisions because I structured a deal in which pretty much all of my employees got to keep their jobs except for me.
I had to abandon that dream so that others could keep theirs and that's part of what I believe leadership is all about. What else do you need to abandon? If you have friendships, sometimes you're going to need to set those aside because those aren't the people who are going to drive you forward toward your vision. I think it was Jim Rohn who I remember saying it first. “You are the average of your five closest friends.”
If you have a desire and if you have a vision to go far, you need to make sure that those people around you that you have close to you are going to be leading you forward. I think it was you in another conversation. You can't change the people around you, but you can change the people around you. You can change the people you associate with. It doesn't necessarily mean when we say abandon that it has a very negative connotation like, “I'm leaving you. I'm never going to talk to you again.” I don't think that's what I was talking about in there.
“I can't spend as much time with you. I can't invest in you the way that I could have if we were on the same page or if we were headed in the same direction but we're not. At this point, my vision, in my role and goal in life holds a higher importance right now than our friendship does.” For many, that might seem bad. Those who it seemed bad probably don't understand what it takes to be successful in the calling and where you want to go.
I appreciate you unpacking that. I love the “Easy life now, hard life later.” We got Ben Franklin's The Way to Wealth coming out and that's the same thing now. You work hard and you save now so you can retire early. That's it. If you don't do it, you're going to be in debt to your eyeballs until the day you die. It's like, “It's so simple everything that we do right now.” We're not talking about ghosting people or discarding them, but when you said, “I can't spend time with you if,” and I said, “If we're not reading the same book,” because life even work is like a book club discussion.
I always say this. We talk about this. Leadership and followership as a dance. If you're not hearing the same music, reading the same thing, or that value congruence, you can still be friends but when it comes to the large chunk of your life that is developing your passion, you're calling making money, helping other people make money, and paying taxes entails being very intentional about who you spend time with.
For me, going back to the loneliness portion, I never had a lot of friends that I would call good friends. My friends and how I tried to keep people close or how I tried to keep people around me through books. I was in the same company, the manufacturing company, and we were having some serious problems. I had the worst employees ever. They were horrible and I was like, “I need better employees.”
I started to sit there. I was thinking and I go, “What do all these relationships have in common?” I figured out it was me. I was the problem. I wanted to blame it on others and then I just started diving in because I was like, “Somebody else has figured this out and they know more than me.” I started surrounding myself and listening to the John Maxwell podcasts and every book that I could get ahold of.
I remember one about Danny Cox. I think you know him. He was The Sonic Boom Salesman. He talked about how he had to go out and sell that Sonic Booms were good for people because he was an Air Force pilot. I don't know what he was selling at the time, but he had taken his number one office to 32nd place in a matter of three months. His boss came in and said, “I have to tell you that I am looking for your replacement.” He says that is not only the shortest but the finest motivational speech I have ever heard.
He then determined at that point in time that he was going to get moving and find out what he didn't know. I think he said, “I called all these people and said, ‘I took my office from first place to 32nd place. I need to have lunch with you now.’” He said it was never turned down. For me, it wasn't necessarily calling other people, but it was reading those books and taking that to heart. That's one of the things that I have an innate ability to do is take in huge amounts of information, recall it, and hopefully, assimilate that into my decision-making process.
We can always call people. People know they can call me. We can call each other. I called Dave Ramsey to get him on the show. We can call each other, but I love that you talked about reading because then you get to unpack it for yourself. It’s because sometimes people may not be as truthful as you. Although we love smacking people around, we're kind and we don't want to hurt anybody but sometimes they need to hear the tough stuff.
I love that you said somebody else's has figured out. It's why I went back for my PhD, not so I could be the smartest person in the room. That never dawned on me. It’s not so people could call me Dr. Jones, although that was a little bit of it but somebody else has figured this out. At 45, I could not figure it out. I was having some successes, but a lot of failures.
I'm like, “It shouldn't be this hard. Something's not right. I've worked in enough places,” as you said. Maybe I should work on leading myself first and not others. I love that you talked about it. Read it. There is nothing out there. There is nothing new under the sun. There's no new revelation. You just have to go out and discover it. I love that you talked about it.
I think a wise man once said that. Let's go back to Solomon of the Bible.
He said that. It's all revelation and wisdom. Now, we're going to talk about vision. Again, some of us, I grew up sitting under people like Zig Ziglar and Og Mandino. I'm like, “These guys’ brains are wired in ways that mine is not.” My father was like, “No. Vision is not something so esoteric where you're like Nostradamus, Elon Musk, or these great inventors.” He said it’s seeing what needs to be done, the attraction kind of thing, and then doing it. It’s the action.
My father was always very pragmatic about, “Yes, you can have strategic planning, but without strategic execution. Vision is very tangible and very active. It’s not just this esoteric thing. How do you define vision, Bill? How do you craft your vision for the future? You can tell our fans a little bit about the different offices you have in different countries, and I can't wait to hear it.
One, for me, it took me probably at least 20 years or maybe closer to 30 to try to figure out what my life purpose was. I've figured out that I'm here to give people opportunities and help them to grow. I'm taking all this information in and then, “Am I able to speak into their lives to help them to grow?” Also, I believe in giving people opportunities. That's why I like working overseas.
In the book The 4-Hour Work Week, he talked about using overseas resources and I was like, “This is a whole new world for me,” because I had problems with employees and I had also seen a lot of people where I'd given them opportunities and they didn't take advantage of it. It costs me a lot to give them those opportunities and it was disappointing to me, “Here's your opportunity,” and they were like, “I don't want it,” or, “I'm not going to take advantage of it.”
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
However, I find that working overseas, people are more appreciative. They understand that this is an opportunity and it also helps us as business owners. That's one of the reasons that I moved into the staffing. I used overseas staff to help me run my marketing company, which I still have. That's how I moved into the staffing company. I was using these resources. People were asking me how am I doing this because I'd go to Costa Rica for three months. I'd worked from Florida for a couple of months before remote was cool. They were wondering how I did this.
That made the transition into staffing. I still have the marketing company but moved away from the marketing because it was all about products and it wasn't about people. If you're going to make a difference in this life, especially with my vision that I had to help grow people, I was going to need to move more into that. That's one of the reasons that I moved into the staffing side.
I partnered up with a gentleman in India, and he runs our India operations. He helps with making sure that all our people are taken care of, that our office is going well, and that our HR activities are going well. We partner very well together. I think that the vision is going back to the book, Good to Great. It’s having a BHAG. If you're not familiar with that term, it's Big Hairy Audacious Goal. What is that for me? We should be so much bigger and everybody nowadays is talking about scaling. How do we scale this?
If you look at most of the companies that have scaled, they just threw money at it. I'm going through India in Uber and I'm looking at this. I can go a whole way across town for a half an hour's drive for $2 or $3. It’s a crazy amount of money. I’m like, “How are they able to do that?” I see an article that Uber's paying for 40% of my ride. They're borrowing money from some VC firm and they're paying for 40% of my ride so I can go across a city in India at a reduced rate. It goes back to the old adage. “I'm losing a dollar on every sale, but I'm making it up in volume.”
If you see all these people scaling, we often get disappointed in our own growth, but not understand at what cost did that growth come. I want to make sure that people keep that in mind but I would say is one, have a big vision, but understand you're working in the present. Also, do not get discouraged by that big vision because you say, “How far am I from that?” The other thing I would say is there was a gentleman. We used to go to Vistage. You're probably familiar with this CEO group. Those speakers were also influential in my life.
He talked about where you have a rubber band. I think it was in The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. If you have a rubber band between your two fingers, if your down finger is your current reality and your top finger is your goal or your vision or where you want to go, the further you are from your current reality, what does that create if you have a rubber band there? It creates tension. Think of tension as being bad. He says, “No. It's just tension.”
Part of this vision process and the reason I'm getting to this is to be able to have a good vision in my mind you need to be okay with tension because if you're going to have a big vision for your life, you're going to have this tension in your life because you're not there. You haven't met it. The thing is with that rubber band in between your two fingers, there are two ways to reduce the tension, isn't there? I can bring my current reality up to where I want to go where I can drop my vision down to my current reality but one could be done immediately and one takes time.
Being comfortable in this constant tension, which is not easy, is paramount to a great vision. As far as what does that vision mean for you? I don't necessarily know. I think that that comes partly through action. Most people think that they're going to go into a room and that vision is going to be handwritten on the wall. They’re like, “There's the handwriting on the wall. There's my vision,” in this miraculous play of vision or whatever. It’s this Nostradamus-like type of effect.
It could be the road to Damascus.
I don't think that that's the case. I think it's more of working through the small things. John Maxwell said, “Do what you can, where you are with what you have and that will lead you forward.” It's like rock climbing. If you know me and you've seen me, I'm not a rock climber. I don't have the body for that. I’m a little too heavy but when you go to that wall, you look up and you say, “There's no way that I'm going to be able to climb this wall.” If you look at it closer, you’re like, “There's a handhold right there, but I could probably only go two feet.”
I think it's a matter of starting and as you move forward through that, more of the vision is shown to you. You'd never probably get a full vision right from day one. That vision, as you're moving forward through the fog as it were, it can get clearer. There are things that you can do through personal growth and through introspection that can give you greater clarity through the fog but there's also this portion of faith and understanding that you're moving towards the vision even though it's not fully developed. If you're waiting for the plan to be fully developed, you're going to be waiting a long time. I'm sure you've heard the analogy, “I'm going to go across town, but I'm going to wait until all the traffic lights are green.” That's not going to work. You need to go from one to the next and that's the way life works.
Bill, we covered loneliness. We covered weariness, we covered abandonment, and vision. Is there anything else leadership-related that we haven't touched on that you would like to share with our readers?
Personal Growth
Going back to the expectation, I think spending a lot of time on personal growth, it's the development of ideas but I think it's also the understanding of self. It's that understanding and until you understand yourself, you're going to have a hard time leading people. It’s because to understand, “Why am I doing this right? Why does this upset me?” I think this ability to handle your emotions, I find it very interesting because while I do get upset, I very rarely get to the point where I'm not in control.
Many people like to say, “You don't understand what they did. You don't understand how they upset me.” I’m like, “You're giving them your power. You need to understand yourself.” If that's the case, you need to go back in and I think that leadership is a lot about understanding self. When you can do that, it is the key. There was a book that I read called Awareness by Anthony de Mello and that for me was a fantastic book to open up my mind and to what I didn't understand about myself and why I wanted certain things.
Let's say we're in a crisis. He says, “You don't want enlightenment,” but people say, “I want to know about myself.” He says, “No. You just want your toys fixed.” Let's say your business is going bad. Do you want to understand why it's going bad or do you want somebody to come in and fix it? “Put it back to the way it was before so I don't have this problem anymore.” He talks about that in the book. The book is made up of his talks. Each one is probably only a few pages, but as you go through it, at least for me, I had to read each one a couple of times because it hit me so hard.
I think another good book is Mind Hacking Happiness. I don't know if you've ever read that. I don't always agree with everybody's philosophy or the books. Depending upon your audience, if they read this book, it’s like, “This doesn't jive with some of my values.” It's so you know that but I think we as Christians and people of faith need to understand like, “I can read an idea and there could be truth in an idea that might not necessarily be a “Christian” idea per se.
Although there’s something in my mind that the Mind Hacking Happiness helped me to understand like, “What am I attached to and why am I feeling this pain?” That allowed me to disconnect in many ways so that I wasn't so emotional about the issues and I was able to be more dispassionate and able to make better decisions in my life. Also, there's a place for emotion. Be moved by the emotion but don't let it control you.
Don't be held hostage or have it cause you to go off the deep end. I love that you're talking about emotional regulation because, with leadership, I think 1% of it is about people doing things. Everybody knows how to do things unless you're a rocket scientist and even they already know how to do things. It's all about personalities and how you show up. Also, attitude, emotional regulation, thumb sucking, optimism, and self-efficacy.
I love that when we dial ourselves in you're always going to have to be dealing with this with people. One of my dearest friends, Arnette Wright, in my PhD program, used to say to me. She goes, “I love people but people.” Charles would say that. My problem isn't motivating me. My problem is keeping other people from demotivating me.
We're fairly intrinsically motivated and a little bit of a loner. If it was just me, my dogs, my books, and Mike and that was it and the whole universe, I would be cool with that but it's all the other people that you have to interact with. I love that you're talking about it. You've got to unpack your biases and your self-awareness blind spots. What is it that's triggering you and see it for what it is? Thank you for sharing all these books that have made quite an impact in your life.
If I leave you with one other thing, don't go into this for the accolades. If you're going into leadership and business and you're like, “I'm going into it because I need something and I need affirmation,” you are in the wrong business.
What would you do to be that? Go rescue a pet. It’s the quickest way to affirmation. No matter what you do. It's love. That's why we love our animals so much. It’s pure affirmation. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you, Bill, in case they're interested in hearing more about what you do or about your business? Are you for people like us all over the globe or who's your ideal client too?
The ideal client is primarily a small business owner who is looking for accounting help. We also do some other things. We are focused on bookkeeping and accounting. We feel that it's the easiest entry road for many people to use remote staff. It's a language in itself. I have offices in Colombia and in India, but I also work in three other countries. Our job is to connect people. We hire them in the other countries. They come work for you inside your business, albeit, remotely.
Our job is to make sure that that relationship is working because we work on both sides. We have coaches who coach our team in India and in Colombia to help them gain a greater perspective on culture and then also success principles. We also are the glue that brings everybody together and makes sure that it is a successful relationship.
We backed that up with like a three-month 100% money-back guarantee to make sure that it is absolutely fit for you. If you're looking at remote work, even if it's not about accounting, I'd love to talk with you even if it's not the right fit for us. I can give you a lot of helpful hints and tips. I've been doing this for over fifteen years. Look me up on LinkedIn. You can go to our website StaffDifferent.com. We also have a YouTube channel @Staffing Global.
Bill, thank you. I hadn't thought about accounting, Bill. I'll have to talk to you about that. That's one thing. It didn't even dawn on me, but that makes sense. I love the fact that if not, Bill, you will help people talk about it because I think everybody, especially entrepreneurs, is dealing with staffing issues and there is no shortage of success stories about remote workers. I use it for everybody in the publishing industry from pagination to cover artists to uploading stuff.
We do that as well. We have an art division, but your readers might like to know this. I do the ads for five Amish newspapers across the country. In the Plain community, they send us our ads. They get shipped over to India. We produce the ads for Amish newspapers here in the States. They send them back, get printed in the States, and go out anyway.
If somebody in the Plain community can use us to run their ads, anybody can do this. We do artwork. I've done many different things, but our focus moving forward is on accounting, if you need artwork design and all sorts of other things, I will be happy to help you and point you in the right direction.
Bill, thank you so much. To our readers out there, I want to thank you for tuning in and for paying the price of leadership. As Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said, remember, you're going to be the same person five years from now that you are now, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. Now, you met tremendous Bill. You heard about his tremendous experiences. He gave us probably about 25 different books that we can go out and read too. If you like what you read, please hit the subscribe button. Give us the honor of a five-star review and send this out to other people so we can continue to grow our tremendous drive. As always, thank you for paying the price of leadership. Thank you again, Bill.
It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. I hope you have a great day.
Everybody, you have a tremendous rest of your day too. Bye-Bye.
Important Links
Bill Keller - LinkedIn
@Staffing Global - YouTube channel
About Bill Keller
Bill Keller's entrepreneurial journey evolved from leading manufacturing businesses to founding Staffing Global, a pioneer in remote staffing. While a PA native, he currently lives in Colombia, South America, with his wife and two children. In his free time, he enjoys reading, traveling, and biohacking.