Crafting a Flavorful Future: Isaac Lee Collins' Recipe for Vibrant Workplace Cultures

Tune in for a masterclass on nurturing vibrant workplace cultures - with tasty outcomes!

Listen as we chat with Isaac Lee Collins, the innovative leader behind Yogurtini KC and Streamlined Profit Academy.

We uncover the pivotal moments from his launch into the business-sphere with little foundational knowledge to creating a flourishing food retail empire. There are hard-learned lessons Isaac has garnered through a myriad of triumphs and trials - discover how his strategic expertise shaped his successes in the ever-evolving world of food service.

Isaac distills the essence of nurturing a thriving work environment into three core elements: open communication, a well-defined hierarchy, and clear pathways for career progression.

As Isaac shares his journey of managing multiple Yogurtini locations and fostering culture by mentoring up-and-coming business talents, get ready to absorb a wealth of actionable advice that will inspire and empower your leadership style.

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Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers podcast. I'm your host, will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. Our Culture Think Tank community is committed to advancing workplace culture and well-being. We're a virtual hub for authors, investors, leaders, managers and employees worldwide to connect, engage in candid discussions, share ideas and explore resources for cultivating a healthy work environment. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Isaac Lee Collins, owner and CEO of Yogurtini KC. He's also a business coach and he will share more about that in just a minute. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Isaac Lee Collins: 0:45

Hey, I'm glad to be here. Thank you for that intro.

William Gladhart: 0:47

Excellent. Well, I thought we would start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your organization, your background. You have a wealth of things that you do, so I'm really excited for you to share those things, but also for you to share a little bit more about things about culture today as well.

Isaac Lee Collins: 1:02

Absolutely Well. Again, thank you for having me here. I'm excited to be here to talk about leadership and all the fun stuff. Yes, Isaac Lee Collins, current CEO of Yogurtini KC and founder of Streamlined Profit Academy, those are my current projects.

Isaac Lee Collins: 1:16

I started doing the business coaching about three years ago, but it all started almost 12 years ago. I launched my first business when I was 23 years old, right out of college, and it was amazing opportunity through this entrepreneurial program through my college. It was very interesting because I started with the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory with no experience. I had years of business training through business school and mentors talking and helping us get into this thing, but I made dang near every mistake you can make when you first become a business owner and through hard work, you could say, and some amazing advisors that kept me in the game and pushed through until I could figure out what I was doing. My first business was Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I did that for four years. At the end of my third year, I actually wanted to move back to Kansas City to be close to family and there was an opportunity to get into this small self-serve frozen yogurt chain. The ones who know my business know that that's Yogurtini. That's why I bought my first one in 2015. For about a year I owned both of those concepts.

Isaac Lee Collins: 2:26

Midway through 2016, I ended up selling the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Honestly, I came across way too much money for a 25-year-old and fell into the deceptive lie that the average millionaire has seven income streams. I started just investing in stuff nonprofits, my own startup, doing more food concepts, and some worked. A lot of them didn't, but the coolest thing out of that was one. I learned a lot of lessons and then two I was able to refine and hone what I really love. What I really love is food retail. My wife and I have gained two more Yogurtini locations. Since then, across the Kansas City Metro we have our Plaza Location, Shell Creek and Overland Park. If you're in Kansas City, you know those areas with the hopes to expand more in the upcoming years. So yeah, we'll get more into the coaching later, but that's 11-and-a-half-year little synopsis of my entrepreneurial journey.

William Gladhart: 3:27

We will be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to start our conversation. Would you share while you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Isaac Lee Collins: 3:35

Yeah, I think it's. For me it's tiered when I think about this and talking to my clients or even my managers, the things I've kind of learned over the last 11 and a half years. I wish I could jump to the fridge with the beer on it and the shuffle board in the ping pong and all that because fun is one of those top things. But for me it's not. So for me to have a good, healthy, happy culture, it starts with the foundation of three things. One is open communication to is a clearly defined hierarchy. So there's no confusion. I know people want to skip that one and say we don't need a hierarchy. Yes, yes, you do. You need to know who you're answering to. Really defined rules for that. And then the third piece of that bottom layer for me is detailed opportunities for advancement. I have seen with the teams that I have had that when I don't have future opportunities to kind of guess you could say dangle out there or for them to earn, and they're not looking up at what's potentially next, they start looking side to side, and side to side is other jobs. So to me that's foundational.

Isaac Lee Collins: 4:38

The next rung or the next thing, that kind of get stacked on, stacked on top is two things. It is empowerment and delegation. Those are two things that we like to incorporate early and often give people the train they need to do the job and then empower them to do that job without micromanaging them and give them responsibilities. Like we think that we're hiring these kids that just can't do Anything without messing it up, and that's not true. We literally hire kids. So we're literally hiring kids and you know what? They're pretty dang smart, they can do the job. And the last piece that kind of sits right on top is fun. So whatever that means to your organization, if you have that component of fun, I don't think it is necessary for a good, healthy culture, but if you have it, you can do it where really make sense and it's the cream of the crop, yeah thanks you're sharing those insights about Not only clarity of role but also opportunities in the organization.

William Gladhart: 5:38

Give people the tools, but then give them the opportunity to move up, see the next opportunity, the next step. So let's begin with question one what do you see is the biggest challenge leaders face when addressing cultural change within an organization, or what specific challenges have you faced in your organization since you sit in kind of a unique role of working not only is the CEO and founder in an organization, but also working with other executives?

Isaac Lee Collins: 6:01

Sure, and it's interesting because I think that's the tough thing about being a coach and a consultant is I'm seeing inside other people's worlds and having the experience that I have. I know all of the failures that I made over the time of me being an entrepreneur, and then I see it in my friends, I see it in my colleagues and see it in my clients, and it's tough. I almost feel like you have to go through it. But the biggest thing for me, and the issue that I had for a long time and took me to figure out, is the inability to change. When change is needed. You have to be able to be flexible, to actually adapt and to change.

Isaac Lee Collins: 6:39

When I played football, my coach always said keep your head on a swivel, don't just be fixed on what's right in front of you.

Isaac Lee Collins: 6:44

Have your head on a swivel, be able to look around and see things from all directions, and that's the same exact thing you have to be able to do as a leader inside of a business, or a parent who's leading a family, etc. And so most time managers and leaders are older, and so one of the things you hear a lot of times is oh, you're behind the times or you don't get it or whatever it is, and sometimes that's just gonna happen. But when those things happen, when those times happen where you don't get it, you missed the mark. Being able to listen to your team and take their feedback and then adjust accordingly. And it's interesting because there's going to be this intersection of what your team wants to tell you and what they think they want or they think that they need, versus what the organization needs, and then you, as the leader, being able to make that good decision somewhere in the middle for the organization. But it's incredibly pivotal to be able to make a decision and make a change and to pivot when it needs to happen.

William Gladhart: 7:43

Yeah, I think. I think that's a really excellent point made about keeping your head on a swivel, but also being hesitant and or resistant to change, because I think any leader struggles with that, because sometimes if you are the leader, owner, etc. Of a business, you view that as a reflection of yourself and you have to throw it out the window and be like hey, this is the best for the organization.

William Gladhart: 8:03

How do we move forward? How do we create that communication? And I already that next step. So what do you think the leaders can do to address the challenges they're facing, or what is something that you specifically have done?

Isaac Lee Collins: 8:13

So it kind of goes to the last question. For me, the first thing is humble yourself. And that's really hard for us leaders to do because, hey, we built this thing from the ground up or we purchased it with our hard earned money and we're going to try to grow it to wherever we're going to go. A lot of us are visionaries with these really amazing ideas or ideas that we think that are amazing. But we have to humble ourselves, especially if it's not a solo apprenticeship and you have employees. They're also working really hard to fulfill, a lot of times, the owner and the leader's mission, but they also have boots on the ground and they also see what's going on and they also have really, really good ideas A lot of the time. If you empower them to actually use their brain, we're in there at work.

Isaac Lee Collins: 8:53

So humble yourself to know not every idea you have is a good one, just like not every idea your team has is a good one.

Isaac Lee Collins: 9:02

And you know I'll tell you this again it took me about six years to learn this lesson into my journey, because I kept just beating my teams over the head with here's the mission, here's the vision, here's what we're going to accomplish, and there was almost no room for failure and no room for their opinion when it came to it.

Isaac Lee Collins: 9:20

But it wasn't until I started to humble myself that our organization really started to grow, because I was finally accepting these really good, deep thought out ideas that my team had, because they were there sometimes more than I was, because, you know, my business is open 12 hours a day and we're only there as managers a certain amount of time, a third of the time.

Isaac Lee Collins: 9:42

They're there two thirds of the time, so the team is there more than we are. They see more things than we do, so for us to not listen to them is a shame. So that'd be the first thing. And then the second thing for me is you really are working for your customers and your employees. If you flip that model and have it be more of a bottom up approach, they're going to tell you exactly what they need and what they want, and again, it's for you to discern which things do you implement and which things do you not implement. But if you have a bot and customer base and employee base, they're going to give you a lot of the answers that you're looking forward to how to make your organization better.

William Gladhart: 10:18

I think that's some very sage advice, from humility to you know, listening to the people that are boots on the ground to making those changes and being flexible in the journey as a business owner, but also as a CEO and a leader. So you've shared some really great insights. Is there anything else you'd like to share? Add as a leader for other leaders?

Isaac Lee Collins: 10:39

Sure, yeah. So when we're talking about this, this leader concept, usually it isn't too much being talked about a solo partnership, because if you're by yourself, you're leading yourself, which is also important in another podcast. But normally when we're talking about leadership is because we have employees that we're having. So one of the things that I see is the managers, the leaders, the owners, whatever it is starting to interact with their customer base or their teams less as the business goes on, and so I always bring it back to leadership is a contact sport, and I say that a lot because in one way or another, you have to be in the thick of it and even if you aren't in store or you know customer facing or answering all the calls, you have to have those systems in place to always have your finger on the pole so you know what's going on. And, again, you can be flexible and move when you need to.

Isaac Lee Collins: 11:30

So each level you ascend to, you're going to face getting your face bloodied, and so what do you do in those times? Whenever that happens, are you going to be flexible? Are you going to be in contact enough to be able to change on a dime or understand why, or take the defeat and get that going when it comes that if you're amongst the chaos and you know what's going to come, and you know what's going to happen, it gets a lot easier. Versus you know us ascending to a certain perch and thinking we're untouchable. That is when you take the eye off the ball and you start to miss it. So, yes, be amongst it. Contact sport let the contact happen, just like in basketball, you want to lean into the contact is going to happen and you know, get that in one, make that shot and make the free throw. So if you like those sports, analogies.

William Gladhart: 12:15

Great Isaac, I've enjoyed having you on today. Thank you so much for your advice and insights Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks for your friendship. Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers podcast. You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes in our Culture Think Tank community at www. culturethinktank. ai. Join the community at no charge and tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experience strengthening culture, one action at a time.