Why You Need to Do Hard Things with Billy Boughey

speaker-1 (00:18.894)
Well, hey everybody, and welcome back to the Community Bank Podcast. This is the podcast by Bankers for Bankers. I’m Caleb Stevens with South State Bank’s Capital Markets Division. And in keeping with last week’s theme, we’re going to play you another backstage conversation from our Elevate Banking Forum that happened a couple of weeks ago in Charleston. Today we’re going to be playing a backstage interview with Mr. Billy Boughey. Billy was the first ever guest on this show way back in 2020, and he also came on earlier this year. We caught up with Billy to talk about his keynote that he delivered for us at Elevate called “What the Mountain Taught Me About Hard Things.” So a really good conversation with Billy. Always enjoy his perspective. Billy is a world-class speaker, event host, MC. He works with brands like Delta, Home Depot, Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta Braves, just to name a few. And so enjoy my backstage conversation with Billy Bowie.

speaker-1 (01:23.49)
Billy Boughey, welcome back to the Community Bank Podcast. You are on for the second time in a year, so welcome back.

speaker-0 (01:29.836)
Man, I love being on this podcast with you. Each time I leave, I leave encouraged. So if you’re listening in right now, so thankful that you’re listening. And I hope you’ll share this podcast with others if I say something that you enjoy.

speaker-1 (01:43.266)
Well it’s great to have you back. We’re sitting here backstage at our Elevate Banking Forum, which we took inspiration from your company, Elevate Experiences, as we were thinking about our event. But we’ve got fifty bankers here. We’re in the Charleston area, and you just got off stage about an hour ago as our keynote speaker for the day. And so I want to spend just a few minutes kind of hitting some of the high points of what you talked about for the bankers who were not able to make it out to Charleston this year. And folks, stay tuned as we announce our events for next year.

We’ll be hopefully coming out with some some new things for you soon. We always love having great speakers like Billy come to share their wisdom and get us fired up. But talk about the premise of your talk today. The title was What the Mountain Taught Me About Hard Things. And I knew a little bit about it going into this, but not much. So kind of give us a quick kind of layout of what the idea was here.

speaker-0 (02:37.058)
Yeah.

Each person in their life have hard things, right? You’re listening to this podcast, you’re in your car, you’re walking, you’re doing something, you’ve got something hard in front of you. And I think there’s something powerful when you intentionally put something hard on your calendar. So I did this event called 29029. It was a mountain climb the same vertical distance as Mount Everest. And it’s not easy, you have 36 hours. And went through the story of the final three ascents, because you have to climb this one mountain 17 times. So it was it was a grip. But the last three, I had three different

Different coaches walk with me side by side up the mountain. And all three of them were totally different styles of coaching, totally different styles of thinking on how to get me up the mountain. The punchline is I end up making it

with fifteen minutes before the deadline, but I share the story of each coach. The first one taught me to see the big picture. How do we step back and zoom out a little bit? we get a lot caught in the details. How do I actually see the big picture again? The second coach taught me a bit about the details, about maybe we need to stop zooming out and zoom into something really important. Specifically in the mountain, take a certain number of steps, a certain number of breaths, what are we eating? What are we drinking? How do we finish this thing well? And then the third coach on the final ascent

Taught me what the power of the traverse, which means to walk back and forth, not in a straight line up the mountain, go back and forth as much as you need to, but just keep moving. That’s the whole idea was to keep moving. So just encourage the leaders that were here and had such great engagement. I mean your folks, Caleb, were awesome one. we played a couple interactive games, had them standing up, talking to each other, and it was fun to see them engage around those three topics. And I hope they had some good takeaways.

speaker-1 (04:16.002)
Well anytime you can get a group of bankers, you know, get the energy going, that’s that’s always a win for us. So we really appreciate you coming and and sharing your ideas. So you mentioned the importance of coaches. I think the bankers listening, they did not get to where they are without some level of mentorship or coaches in their life. But something I’ve observed is that the higher you go up in leadership, especially when you’re a CEO and executive,

You you can sort of lose that mentality of needing outside external coaches in your life to help you. you know, you sort of s it can be easy to see yourself as a mentor and and you know, have a lot of mentees, but talk about that importance for you, not only with the mountain climb, but just in general, you know, why do we continuously need third party voices and perspectives in our lives?

speaker-0 (05:05.366)
So think about as you’re listening to this, who’s your favorite coach of all time?

And I’ll put teacher in that category too. Who’s your favorite teacher or coach of all time? Think about it for a second. Think about the name, think about the face. Now, next step either write them a letter or text them thank you. I think a powerful thing we can do is express gratitude to the folks that help along. I have some amazing teachers and coaches that really some pivotal seasons helped me see some things I couldn’t see. I think the the biggest thing a coach does it helps you see those blind spots, call you to a new level. And for me, Miss Conway, who is my teacher in high school, I remember one time.

I was acting really silly in class and she pulled me out in the hallway and I was probably a foot taller than her in seventh grade. And I remember her looking up at me and saying, Billy, one day you’re gonna make an impact on a lot of people. but until then I need you to to calm down and get after it in class and stop being a goofball. She said it in not so many words. And I remember feeling like challenged, but also she was right. And I think

Now personally, I get to be a coach. I have 12 different executives that I personally coach on a one-on-one basis. And I love asking the questions of people that might be a bit older than me, have different roles than me, but ask them questions that maybe they’re not asking themselves. So I think a great coach is able to see something and ask those questions. We’ve all seen videos of good coaches in the MBA, WMBA, NFL, NCAA, and you see the coaches asking specific questions at specific times. I think we feel like we have to have all the answers as you grow.

in leadership, Caleb, as I grow, as we all grow that are that are listening in on this, we need people at times just to come alongside us and say, hey, have you considered this? Hey, have you thought about maybe changing this? And it’s a series of questions that helps all of us. I think getting a coach, I personally have two right now that are coaching me in what I do for a living, both are keynote speaker coaches that I trust a lot to not only teach me some things but also ask me questions that maybe I’m not asking myself.

speaker-1 (06:59.682)
You t you s said in the talk that you had one coach who really got in your face. And you know, I think we can all as we look thinking back on your childhood, maybe we we play played sports and we had that coach who was just always, you know, always riding us, always in our grill.

But something you said that was interesting is that was okay because I had a relationship with that person. I knew what they were about, I knew their values, I knew they wanted the best for me. So you sort of were able to give them permission, you know, to maybe say some things that were hard to hear. Talk about sort of that tension of whether we’re leading our bank or we’re, you know, leading our families or whatever, times where we have to call someone up and call someone out a little bit.

But in a way, hopefully that they can actually, you know, hear it and benefit from it. Talk about that coach and why that person was so impactful.

speaker-0 (07:47.586)
Yeah, it was a moment. He he was my second coach, I mentioned in my talk today, and he was very intense, got in my face, called me out, but he also knew the names of my kids. So I think what’s powerful is we earn the right to speak to somebody that way when they know a bit about our story. You know the grid of know yourself, lead yourself, know others, lead others. We tend to skip that third one. Even if we’re knowing ourselves and leading ourselves well, we want to jump right to leading others. Well, it’s it’s got to get to know those other people. So I think there’s a a powerful element.

Of once that coach knew my story, he knew my family, he knew what I’m wanting to accomplish, he was able to say that. And I mentioned something to you, Caleb, before we turned these microphones on of something my wife said to me that got me up the mountain that I needed. Yeah. She was my coach in that moment and said, Hey, you know, nothing easy or simple, but we we got to get after it. So, you know, if you know someone on your team doesn’t respond well that way, maybe it’s a one-on-one conversation pointing out some things. What I like to say is if you can get that team member sitting.

on the same side of the table as you, looking at that problem out in front of you, versus sitting across the table from you and you’re battling each other. I think great coaches are able to pull the chair alongside. I’ll never forget Truett Cathy, who I got to sit with before he passed away.

Pulled two chairs close to each other and got went knee to knee with me. My knees were like literally touching his. And he was looking me right in my eye, and we had a conversation. I’ll never forget it, of him just the founder of Chick-fil-A, incredible leader looking at me, and he challenged me on some things. He challenged me to think about my business differently and challenged me to take my game to the next level. So yeah, lots, lots of stories of leaders that call people up and out. But I think that third element of those steps is getting to know the people that you’re leading.

And getting on the same side of the table so you can look at the problem objectively instead of making it an adversary relationship is a powerful thing.

speaker-1 (09:36.214)
Listeners of this podcast will have heard this before

So sorry if you’ve heard this for the third or fourth time, but kind of tying in with Chick-fil-A. When I was an intern at Chick-fil-A in 2015 in the marketing department, my manager was talking about how they do performance reviews, and he said I always, always, always, always sit beside the person, never across from them when I’m doing their performance review, because it said it sends the non-verbal cue that this is a coaching moment, not a judgment moment. This is not me pronouncing on you, you know, you you got a B minus this year.

speaker-0 (10:15.918)
You’re both on the same like you’re you’re you’re winning the same game. Right. This is not, well, I’m telling you how you do wrong. It’s hey, let’s take a look at it. I love that you said nonverbals, because I think as a leader, our nonverbals set the tone. Our eye contact, the way we cross our arms, the way we walk into a room. When we’re in a tough conversation, like you said, what if you did it differently? Even just sitting on the same side of the table. So I love that.

speaker-1 (10:37.122)
So another thing in your talk that I thought was interesting was you talked about the importance of seeing the big picture. I think oftentimes in banking can be very easy to sort of myopically just sort of think of your job in terms of, well, I just make loans. I’m a lender and what I do is I get to know the community and I make loans. Or I’m in the back office in the accounting department and I’m responsible for putting together reports and helping close our call report for that quarter.

Talk about the importance of sort of seeing the big picture and connecting the dots. You know, it’s it’s what we say all the time around here is, you know, if you’re keying in wires in our wire department, you’re not just keying in wires, you’re helping community banks move money. The money that they’re moving is helping a family close on their first home. but unless we sort of take a step back to see that big picture, it can be very easy to get myopic and just sort of see, define your role as limited what’s to what’s the task you’re doing in that moment.

It’s important to step back and see the big picture. Talk about kind of what you hit on there.

speaker-0 (11:39.746)
Yeah, it was an incredible moment in my career when I’ve actually taken the time to step back. I’ve got many different moments in my career where I was in the details, diving in, had my blinders on, was just in the one thing, and then I step back for a second and said, wait, why why am I actually doing this? And so I’ve developed this activity idea with some of the folks that I coach. It’s called 10 minutes tops. 10 minutes tops. And if I have an hour with you, we get to select five topics.

You have 10 minutes apiece on those, and then at the end of 10 minutes we get to debrief. But you have 10 minutes for five topics. For eight minutes, you get to unpack that topic, whatever that might be. And then for the last two minutes of that section, one of them is see the big picture. And the last minute is let’s get in the details and define an action. So I think whenever you talk about something with your team, get all the things that you need to talk about and say, if we had a big picture lens on it, what will we do?

Great, let’s talk about that for a minute. And then if we had a detail to actually make that thing happen, let’s do that. And then it’s ten minutes tops. And we literally put up my phone and I put ten minutes on the clock. And when it gets nine minutes and fifty nine seconds, wherever we are. All right, all right, great next thing. And it’s amazing when you get into topics and you decide every topic deserves big picture thinking and detailed thinking.

Sometimes we think topics just deserve one or the other. And I think with leaders themselves, if you could just look at every topic and say there is a big picture thing to this and a detailed thing. You mentioned a little earlier some folks in the banking industry are behind the scenes doing the detailed things. Some folks are out sales maybe perceived as a bigger picture thing. Gosh, they both need each other. We can’t do one without the other. So what if we’re able to engage the conversation and everything you talked about you

You reserve the right to talk about big picture and details. I think that’s an important part to make sure both of those topics are engaged around everything.

speaker-1 (13:25.646)
And and I can’t remember if it was you or a mutual friend of ours who talked about you may be more gifted with the big picture with vision, you may be more gifted with the details. it’s important one to play to your strengths, but it’s also important to get your weaknesses above a lethal level, is I think what the person said. Get your weaknesses above a lethal level. Like if you are big picture oriented, don’t be an accountant, you know, and if you’re a detail oriented, you know,

Play to that strength, but at the same time, don’t neglect your weaknesses to the point that it’s it’s could be detrimental to your organization. And at minimum, make sure that you’ve got a team of people that’s complimentary, you know, in those ways. Any thoughts sort of on that? You know, because I when I hear you talk about details, that’s never been a strength of mine. In fact, going back to my performance review at Chick-fil-A, I asked my manager straight up, I said, I want to learn and grow. Can you give me any feedback? And the only-he said, Caleb.

The only thing that I want you to work on is attention to detail. And he cited three different examples that summer where I had not paid attention to detail. He didn’t fill out your time card, right? You know, the Excel spreadsheet that you sent me was wrong. yes just he he he had clear evidence to support that feedback. But any thoughts there just on how as leaders we can play to our strengths but also not ignore our weaknesses to our detriment.

speaker-0 (14:44.492)
Yeah, we have a short life.

You know, we think there’s lots of years. I don’t know about you, Caleb, but now with kids it just seems like the days are long but the years are short. Like I get these snapshots of things. So I think there is a lot of merit on just focusing on what you’re the best in the world at. Just do that well. But I like just above the lethal level for the detail side. Wice versa. And I think we can glamorize whichever one we’re good at and almost demonize the one we’re bad at. Right. Instead of let’s be neutral towards both. Yeah. If you’re a vision person, awesome. We need it. If you’re a details person, fantastic. Let’s

look at it as we absolutely need each other and maybe lean in and this is a a practical thing that I do when I find myself getting prideful about my certain element, I’ll put my hands under the table in a meeting and I’ll just open up my palms. I’ll literally just put my hands face up on my legs and and be open.

And just the posture of that, we talked about nonverbals earlier, just the posture of having my hands open helps me engage in these conversations on both senses. So I know that I am a 100% vision person. details are not my strength. And I have an assistant who understands that about me. And she fills in the gaps. I don’t glamorize her, she doesn’t glamorize mine, but we work together in that. And so, yeah, finding out what you glamorize, I think if you’re listening to this and you’re a visionary, like, details, sh me tells, who needs them? Like, I get it, I can feel that. If you’re a details person,

like those visionary people they never get anything right like we we all we all can

speaker-1 (16:08.138)
They storm in the meeting with a thousand ideas and leave me with the execution and how is this gonna happen?

speaker-0 (16:13.16)
Exactly.

We need both. Like the thing is, is if you’re a detailed person, listen, fantastic. Don’t poo-poo on the idea. Just like, hey, tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. Be exploratory. And if you’re the person who is the vision person, come in with the details and they’ll go, don’t think about all the details. No, like these questions need to be answered if that’s gonna be moved forward. So be good with diving into those answers. You know, I I I tell people all the time that when someone questions you, or when someone presents you with a question,

Don’t view that they’re questioning your talent or your ability. They’re just asking a question because they want more information so they can move that thing forward.

Like a lot of times when somebody asks us the question, we get defensive. I’m just talking maybe for me, maybe for you listening, that’s not you. But if I get a question, I’m like, wait, no, just why are you asking me these questions? Let’s just move forward. It’s like, no, this it’s like a key unlocking a door. Like I’m up to this door and I’ve got to unlock it with this answer. that makes sense. Great. Let’s move to the next door. So I think there’s there’s lots to learn in that. But I think if we just simply don’t demonize the opposite of us, then I think it’ll take us a long way.

speaker-1 (17:13.902)
Last question, Billy, and we really appreciate you being here in Charleston for our event. as I was listening to you talk about you climbing this mountain, one of the things I was thinking of is: man, this is a guy with a family with four four kids. Four kids, right? Four kids, yeah. you run a events company, your keynote speaker, and yet you have intentionally carved out space in your life to do something that really has nothing to do with your job, with your with your professional vocation, and yet

I’m sitting here and you’re, you know, you’re a professional speaker hearing you talk about something, and it’s like, wow, he’s intentionally created margin in his life, or he can dive into something that has nothing to do with his job. And yet, interestingly, it pays back so many benefits professionally in ways you may never even think about. And so one of my favorite questions to ask people is like, what’s a hobby, something you find super interesting that you really enjoy that has nothing to do with your job at all? And I love hearing people’s answers.

And what you find oftentimes is in a roundabout way there’s often more correlation and carryover than you might imagine. So any encouragement to the CEOs out there who are working hard, they’re grinding, they’re in the trenches, and they’re just like, what are you talking about? I don’t have time to go climb a frickin’ mountain, you know, like what what are you talking about? Any any just general advice to why that was beneficial to you and and how our how our listeners could maybe take something.

speaker-0 (18:36.63)
Yeah, I know the the listeners are listening and not viewing. If you were viewing you would have seen my face light up when you said, What’s one thing that has nothing to do with your career? Caleb, I am obsessed with one YouTube channel.

It’s called the killer bee guy. Okay. It’s everything to do with a coachis Arizona about killer bees that are there, and this one guy named Reed and his assistant named Hosh. I can tell you their whole story. I watch them live on YouTube probably 90 minutes a day of what they’re into and in the killer bee hives. So you relate it back to how does that relate to my work? I feel like my work is like that, because it’s it’s very crazy, it’s all over the place, it’s pretty messing, solve a lot of problems. Want this one to solve, I gotta figure out another one. So I’m obsessed with it, and it’s one of those things.

It it allows me to calm down, even though it’s killer bees and it’s crazy. Go watch the channel, it’s wild. But I’ve enjoyed just sort of seeing how they deal with problems with people and how they deal with all the crazy circumstances. That’s category A. Category B: if you don’t take care of yourself, fitness, how much water you’re getting, how much sleep you’re getting, how much time you’re scrolling, these basic things that every listener, you’ve heard this a bunch. I don’t I’ve

What I’m supposed to say, I’m doing air quotes, if you can’t tell. Those are absolutely true. And I have to put every year on my calendar, I’ve decided, Caleb, about a decade ago, something that’s super hard that I don’t think I can do.

Jesse Etzler, amazing entrepreneur, we’ll call it a Masogi. It’s a Japanese principle where once a year you put something on your calendar that’s like, I don’t know if I’m able to do this or not. It’s a Masogee. Great. So I just think that earns our right to be a better parent, to be a better spouse, to be a better team member, to have something else on our calendar that’s causing us to be better because it’s really, really hard. I think hard develops us for lots of other things. So I, you know, if if you’re not doing that as a listener, I would just examine like how many fruits and vegetables are you eating every week? How much water are you drinking? Can you

speaker-0 (20:31.47)
Trade one diet coke for a water, you know. Could you trade a walk for one of those conference calls instead of sitting at your desk? Could is there anything you could trade? Because I think you’ll find that wow, I have more energy. I actually enjoy this more. So that’d be my encouragement to the leaders out there that feel burnout, that can’t quite reach their fitness level, or they feel like we were talking about mental health a little earlier, about just going into the depths of like how am I thinking, how am I feeling, how am I approaching this problem? And I realize this thing just really frustrates me and makes me really mad real quickly. Great. Well, let’s let’s zoom back a little bit. Okay.

How’s your eating habits? How is your walking? Do you get any sunlight during the day? Like just these basic things will help those other things get better. So that’s my best advice. And I it’s it’s funny I’m saying this really basic advice, Kayla, because the executives that I sit with, it’s amazing if I can get them really, really honest. A vast majority do not have the basics down. They’ve almost think they’ve ran past the basics.

Like I’m gonna drink eight coffees a day and eat like junk and not get any fitness and just not do it. But let me just solve these problems. Like it just doesn’t it does not work. The math does not math. It does not equate that equate that way. So I just would encourage everyone to make sure those basics are there. And I’m telling you this, not from someone who has it all down. I’m in I am a pilgrim in the progress and I’m continuing to learn what that means for me.

speaker-1 (21:48.854)
I was at the hotel gym last night at like nine o’clock at night ’cause I had an early morning so I wasn’t wasn’t gonna go this morning. But I was thinking to myself, Man, I really don’t wanna be here right now but then I also thought I’ve never

said to myself, I wish I’d gone to the gym less this past month or this past week. I’ve never looked back with regret having gone to the gym. But many nights where I’ve said, Man, I shouldn’t have stayed up so late watching a football game that where I I care about neither team. It’s not a Georgia game. I’m just sorta mindlessly, you know, numbing myself with T V.

speaker-0 (22:19.928)
And we gotta ask ourselves, do we motivate ourselves into action?

Or do we action ourselves in the motivation? I think what you discovered last night, at many, many times, I’m sure you have, at nine o’clock at the gym when you don’t want to be there, is like, I don’t I’m not really motivated right now. But you went and you did the thing. Whether it was if it was some kettlebell work or s lifting or a little bit on the treadmill or Peloton or whatever it was, then you’re like, huh, I feel better about myself today. 100%. Like you instantly feel motivated, like the engaged in the conversation, your clothes fit better, like they’re well, I think we’re waiting for motivation to go do something.

And I I one hundred percent agree the adage that like we just have to flip that. Like you have to act your way into motivation.

speaker-1 (22:58.838)
Don’t wait to feel courageous. Hundred percent. You know, act and then you’ll feel courageous after you’ve acted or motivated. Good. Billy Bowie, if folks wanna check you out, if they wanna book you to speak or if they’re looking for a way to take their events at their banks to the next level, how can they find you?

speaker-0 (23:13.614)
The best thing to check out is Billy B Speaks. Billy B Speaks. We’ve got a brand new website, pretty proud of it. We’ve got a lot of things there from a what content do we provide, keynote speaking, workshops, executive coaching. And then from the event standpoint, it’s just elevateexperiences.com.

our phrase I’d like to use Caleb is we eliminate the plague of boring events. And we’re very thankful to come in and be a part of your events. And then also anybody listening, if you have something coming up, team building, anything you’re doing with your team to help it get better, we would love to be a part.

speaker-1 (23:45.858)
Fantastic. Billy, great to have you back on. We appreciate all that you do for us.

speaker-0 (23:49.248)
Absolutely. Thanks, buddy.