Farrell Middleton with The Bell Curve of Life

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is made possible by the Main Street Warriors program Defending Capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street Warriors dot org. You guys are in for a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with the Bell Curve of Life. Mr. Farrell Middleton. Good morning, sir.

Farrell Middleton: [00:00:57] Good morning. Stone. How are you doing today?

Stone Payton: [00:00:59] I am doing well and have really been looking forward to this conversation. I think a great place to start. If we could share with us, if you will, a little bit about mission purpose. What are what are you really out there trying to do for folks, Man?

Farrell Middleton: [00:01:14] All right. Well, my goal with this, I retired from a very long career in production homebuilding just last year. And I’ve always wanted to be a teacher in my second career of some sort. And my desire right now with this program is to basically help people live a better life. I’m going to go very simple here. I want to help them work on overall better attitude, improve problem solving ability, enhance interpersonal communication skills and healthy relationship building. That is what I want to do.

Stone Payton: [00:01:46] So I got to know, man, tell me more about this back story. What compelled you to open up this this next chapter of your life?

Farrell Middleton: [00:01:54] Well, again, after a very successful career, I just wanted to spend my professional time differently. I’m only 58 years old. I got a lot of years left and just desperately wanted to get into the arena of, again, being a teacher, a life coach guide. There are many words to describe it, but then all of them are very appropriate. But I just felt compelled to have my life experiences help other people, and my one of my main focuses is going to be managers in their early thirties and younger. I think I can really help anybody with my program. The materials appropriate for everybody. We’ll get to that in a minute. But managers in their early thirties and younger, they could benefit tremendously from the program that I’ve put together.

Stone Payton: [00:02:42] So have you chosen a niche or to a type of industry, a geographic area.

Farrell Middleton: [00:02:51] Geographic areas here, the Metro Atlanta area? And right now my main focus of business clients is going to be the homebuilding industry. I was in the same industry and the same city for 36 years. Yeah, I know a whole lot of people and they know me. And I can say comfortably, I’ve got a very good reputation in the industry and I feel very comfortable with that. And so that is my current wheelhouse of potential prospects with homebuilders, suppliers, subcontractors, that type of business arrangement. But my program can help anybody. I actually had a two hour session, as I call it, with some Chick-Fil-A folks last week, the International Supply Chain Group. I went in and helped them. They had a one day seminar offsite and I went and helped them a little bit. And I am working with some other companies outside the homebuilding industry so I can help anybody. I really can.

Stone Payton: [00:03:48] So where in your experience, do things sometimes come off the rails or where is there opportunity for more efficiency and effectiveness when people are managing these? What I can only assume are incredibly complex projects.

Farrell Middleton: [00:04:04] Yeah, what basically can happen there is and very quickly, I was a manager at the age of 22 when I started my homebuilding career, and since then I have of course recruited, hired, trained, managed and motivated hundreds of people over the years. And what I have found and I’ve confirmed this with many of my friends that are in business, that with the current employment situation that we’re facing right now, they as business leaders are needing to promote younger individuals maybe a little sooner than they were expecting into a management type of a role. And I witnessed this and experienced it myself in my career as an executive manager. Basically, we just unfortunately, in some cases, that was just the better choice that we had. And some of these younger folks, male, female, you know, doesn’t matter the educational background or whatever the case may be. They just need some guidance in how they just manage their daily life. And my program can help them do that. The program is broken down. I call them topics, and I have what I call sessions and the sessions last 90 minutes. I am very deliberate about that. Everyone’s time is very valuable and basically with the way the world works with phones. And I watches and, you know, iPads, all that kind of stuff. 90 minutes is about the the amount of time somebody can break away for a little while.

Stone Payton: [00:05:32] So are you sharing skills, disciplines, methodologies and then sharing it and then having them practice it with each other? Is it kind of a peer to peer?

Farrell Middleton: [00:05:41] It’s not really a practice thing, but basically it is a group engagement in the session, and my optimum session is ten people in a room with me and we will discuss a topic, for example, for my middle manager category. My favorite topic is there is no wrong answer, which basically means that if a subordinate or employee comes to them with an issue, ask them what is going on. Please give me the facts without any repercussion. They solve the problem together. The manager becomes a better manager with this skill and hopefully the employee becomes a better problem solver along the way. So hopefully we get two things out of that. And the main thing that I’ve got going with me is that the I have my sessions and I have bundled them into what I call a series, which is five sessions, 90 minutes at a time, once every other week on the same day of the week, the same time of day. So maybe Tuesdays at 10:00 or Wednesdays at 4:00 or whatever the case may be. And Stone, I want less than one business day, seven and one half hours of group face time with these people. And I know that I can help them live a better life. I know I can.

Stone Payton: [00:06:55] So at this point, what are you what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Farrell Middleton: [00:07:01] What I’m finding very rewarding is and this was a hope that I had, is that the participants, as I call them, they are learning as much, if not more from each other than they are from me. And so what I’m doing is I’m kind of facilitating the conversation. Again, there’s one topic for that particular session and we will discuss that and I’ll start. I’ll prime the conversation with my experiences related to that topic and basically I’ll kind of get it going. And then I will ask people to participate in the conversation, share their experiences relative to that topic. And so the conversation gets a little, you know, it starts kind of flowing a little bit, that kind of thing. And then what I have found, you know, the first session can be a little bit awkward if people don’t know each other, you know, you know, just that kind of thing. I’m sure you’ve run into that before in your career, but once we get going in the session and then have the second, third and fourth session with the same people, everyone is very comfortable and the conversation flows very nicely. And I believe that people so far have gotten a lot out of this and they’ve been very appreciative of my efforts.

Stone Payton: [00:08:06] So tell us a little bit about the experience of putting the curricula together, because that I mean, that is the that’s the fulcrum, right? You got to have the right stuff. What was that?

Farrell Middleton: [00:08:19] Basically, this is a compilation of my 58 years of being alive. And I’ve got information that goes back to my childhood years on the personal side of things. For example, my topic there about relationship building is Kathy and Farrell had nine parents between them and my wife Kathy. We’ve been together since high school about 40 years ago. But yes, through divorces and remarriages, all that kind of stuff, we ended up with nine parents and that is the basis of the topic for relationship building. And so go back to my childhood years with that. The majority of it as well, of course, is professionally related. And for example, I’ve got material for personal life. I’ve got four categories, personal life, and then three for professional. I’ve got owner, CEO director material, I’ve got middle manager material and I’ve got associate material. And my favorite topic for the owner, CEO director is a performer, C performer, a environment, C environment. And the fundamental of that is that a a C performer in an A environment can become an A performer. A a performer in a C environment will become a C performer or they will leave. Yeah. And so the goal there in helping to guide the owners, leaders of these businesses is number one, work on an a environment, whatever that may be for your business. But the basic fundamental thing there is do you have a clear vision of the desires and goals of the of the company? And do you share that with your staff? And then the next part of this is, as managers, how do you manage your staff on a routine basis for them to be as productive as possible? So you want a performers in a environments and there’s nothing that will stop you from having a great business.

Stone Payton: [00:10:11] So you made a conscious decision to include personal life, life skills. Why did you make that decision and what are some of the topics that you.

Farrell Middleton: [00:10:22] That was a big part of it. And, you know, I think one of the terms that’s been overused a little bit sometimes as work life balance. However, I’m a firm believer in that I worked very hard in my career. All of my friends work very hard. And, you know, you come to find out that stress of work can certainly get to you. But personal life is very, very important. And I’ve worked with some companies where that was a main focus and I’ve worked with others where it was not a main focus. And so when the personal side of things like the relationship building, I start in that I’ve got family relationships, that’s how you do it. And then my other favorite topic that I end the series with is Try to be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Stone Payton: [00:11:07] I like that. Yeah. By the way, shout out to Kathy. I’m a little intrigued. What was that like when you went home one afternoon and said, you know, I’m going to quit this thing that I’ve been doing for so long, so successfully and I’m going to jump off this cliff over here. What was that like?

Farrell Middleton: [00:11:22] Well, that was kind of interesting, I must say. I think she was a little surprised by it. However, we had had the pleasure, I suppose, of raising two daughters and they both live in Atlanta now. They’re working professionals now, but they were we educated them. They were out of college. One is now married. We’re very pleased with that. But I was at a point in my life where I was just ready for it. And yes, there was a little, little challenge there. Also, I’ll admit it, Hey, I’m a regular guy like everybody else. And we’ve been together, like I said, for 42 years, married for 36. But she is my best friend, my soulmate and my biggest supporter. And it didn’t take too long to get her on board with it.

Stone Payton: [00:12:03] So moving into this line of work, did some things surprise you? Did you come across I don’t know if you would characterize them as myths or, you know, it’s not really quite like it is. I thought it might be like this. And it’s more like that as you’re as you’re starting to do this kind of work.

Farrell Middleton: [00:12:16] Well, I think what I’m coming to find is that everyone let’s take our business leaders and owners. And I’ve got friends that work for Home Depot, for example. And like I said, I’ve got my Chick fil A friends, and I’ve got some very good friends that work in the waste management business. And what I am coming to find is that they all have the same issues relative to personnel management growth of their employees. You wouldn’t call it training. Again, I think training is very, very important, but my training is on life skills. And what I have come to find surprisingly, is that everyone’s got the same challenges out there. And it was a remarkable when I did my Chick fil A thing last week, the similarities between Chick fil A opening restaurants and builders, opening neighborhoods. There were some extremely close parallels. And I was I was just very surprised that other that was that was what I found. And, you know, they they get all kinds of supplies from all kinds of different places. And they end up in one spot, that being the restaurants. And they serve the product to the customer, similar to home building where we get a lot of products and they get assembled on site and we they converge to a spot where we deliver a house for a customer. And so I think I’m going to be coming to find that out quite a bit. But again, getting back to the main thing for this is that over the last several years in all of my business relationships and I had, I’ve got a ton of relationships with folks outside my direct companies against suppliers, subcontractors, county government that I’ve dealt with as well. They all have these similar challenges of how do they help their employees just be better employees, and I want to help them be better employees, better managers, better directors, that kind of thing.

Stone Payton: [00:14:07] So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like this, a business? Like, how do you get to have conversations like this with someone in charge who can at least consider engaging you?

Farrell Middleton: [00:14:19] Okay, well, well, basically that’s where the networking thing comes in. And again, like I said, I know a lot of people in the homebuilding industry here in Atlanta and, you know, and surrounding areas. Last company I was with, we did some work in Alabama as well, had a couple of neighborhoods over there. But what I found myself doing is getting out face to face. I’ve joined the Atlanta Homebuilders Association as an associate member. I go to a lot of their social events. I go to the board meetings, that kind of thing. And I’ve just let people know what I’m doing. And I’m going to a remodelers association event this evening. So I am just getting out face to face, introducing myself. And obviously I’ve got some marketing literature that I’ve got that I send out specifically once I introduce myself to someone. And basically it’s a matter of engaging, again, ownership CEO director in my services and the value that I can provide to them and their organization.

Stone Payton: [00:15:12] And you do have to get them engaged, right? I mean, if you don’t, they’ll train them quicker and you train them, they you.

Farrell Middleton: [00:15:18] Might be right about that. I want to be careful there. But yes, I think you’re absolutely correct. But. The principles of what I have put together back to where the where this came from. The principles are timeless. What I have put together can be reviewed in one year, five years or 20 years, and the fundamentals will still be the same. Like, for example, in relationship building with a in a professional environment, my first tip to the folks that I get in front of is return every phone call, email or text in an appropriate time frame. If you can do that, then people will recognize you as someone that they can take seriously, will be a problem solver, will communicate well no matter whether it’s good, bad or indifferent news. Respond back to people and you will find yourself in a totally different place professionally.

Stone Payton: [00:16:10] And it sounds so simple, but it sends so many critical messages when you exercise that discipline, doesn’t it?

Farrell Middleton: [00:16:17] It does. It does. Yeah. These the concepts here, they are simple concepts, but they can be complicated as life unfolds. You know, people have to wake up every day. And, you know, one of my topics as well is there are five workdays in a week. You’re going to have one good, really good day, three good days and one day that you would wish you could forget. But your day starts when you pull your head up off your pillow and we kind of just go through what are the things that make a day unfold. And the best thing you’ve got is your attitude. It is the facet in life that dictates whether you will be successful or happy or content or whatever it is. If you have a good attitude, no one can take that away from you. And that’s where it starts.

Stone Payton: [00:17:03] So if I’m a senior executive in an organization that might be a good prospective client for you, what are some signs that I ought to at least reach out and have a conversation with you? What are some symptoms or things that I might be seeing that indicate, you know what, I probably ought to reach out and at least have a conversation referral.

Farrell Middleton: [00:17:21] Okay. A few of those signs would be let’s take a company with, you know, 100 employees. And that was the size company that dealt with mostly my career, and that’s the SAS companies I was with. They will have a few vice presidents over different departments, that kind of thing. And of course, you know, staff levels going down there, some assistant managers, that kind of thing. Number one for the business owner are is that executive management level? Are they getting along well? You know, are they on the same page? Do they share your mission of what you want, the goals of your organization to be? And then below them, the same thing. And one thing that can happen very quickly and easily, and nobody’s blamed for any of this stuff. Stone Let me be clear. No one’s to blame for it, but it’s just the way that human nature works. But I call it what’s the silo effect where a department of people in a company, they focus on what they do. For example, in production, home building, you have your internal operations department, the purchasing, estimating architecture people, and then you have your on site construction staff.

Farrell Middleton: [00:18:24] If those two departments aren’t getting along well, it’s going to be a tough draw to get those houses built. It really will. And so those folks have to be on the same page. And that is a that’s a big, big issue. And again, in my conversations with folks, as I have been doing this for the last seven months, I have found that they’re saying, yeah, yeah, gosh, now that I think about it, my folks really could get along a little bit better. They could communicate a little bit better. And one thing as well that I’ve noticed back to your question a few minutes ago, in companies departments, they are their own internal customers. And if they don’t act like they are their own internal customers and they have to service that, then again, you’re going to have some problems that yours are going to grind and things like that. And if you don’t have that inside your company, then how in the world can you produce a good product for your customer in order to be a good are you good to that customer? If if you don’t have good internal customers in your departments?

Stone Payton: [00:19:22] So over the seven months that you described, are you finding that leaders are embracing the idea?

Farrell Middleton: [00:19:28] They are. Without a doubt. It’s it’s new. And I’ve always got the economic situations again. For example, home building is kind of slowed down a little bit. We all know, you know, with the interest rates and that kind of thing. But basically the feedback have gotten has been very, very strong. And I think it’s just a matter of can they commit the either their time And again, I got material for owners as well and I would love to get directly with owners.

Stone Payton: [00:19:55] Yeah.

Farrell Middleton: [00:19:56] And I’ve got all the stuff on my website of course with what I’ve got broken down. But you know, basically it’s just a matter of convincing them that if I can get less than one business day overall in an eight week period with their staff, they will perform better. And that’s that’s the task that I’ve got, is how do I convince those people to do that? And my, my, my material is it’s good quality. It is. And it’s a very fair price as well. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes, I’m sure. But yeah, it’s a good program.

Stone Payton: [00:20:26] Yeah. Let’s talk about fee structure and maybe dive into a little bit about some, at least at the headline level, some of the key components of the material, if that makes sense.

Farrell Middleton: [00:20:35] Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, the cost structure is very simple. Like I said, I’ve got a five session traditional series, which is 590 minute sessions. That’s $500 a person. Basically, the simple math is $100 a person for an hour and a half, you know, in a group setting. And then I do have an executive leadership series as well that I’m working on promoting, which is a meeting once a month, the same 90 minutes and again the 90 minutes. I have talked with educators at Kennesaw State University about. That’s about the maximum span of a session for learning and that kind of thing, just the way people are wired these days. But anyway, the executive session, again, it’s $600. There are six sessions of 90 minutes each and it’s $600. And then as well, what I’m also offering are my services for one or two hour sessions with either monthly or quarterly staff meetings. Like I mentioned, the Chick fil A, and it was an offsite retreat for this particular buying group. And then as well, trade associations with their with their, you know, quarterly meetings or whatever the case may be.

Farrell Middleton: [00:21:42] I’d love to be a guest speaker there. And so I’ve got I got that. But, you know, I’m flexible, I’m available. And, you know, some of the material, like I said, I’ve got material for personal life. We’ve already talked about the relationship building with my family situation. And then as well, try to be yourself. Everyone else is taken. And actually, it’s funny, I read that on the outside fireplace side of the volunteer fire department in Hickory Flat, Georgia, about 20 something years ago. It’s never left me. And then as well, I already mentioned for managers, my favorite topic is there is no wrong answer for the ownership. Again, I think I might have mentioned this. Maybe not, but anyone can hold the hill when the sea is calm. And that is absolutely true. True leadership comes out when things don’t go as planned. And how do owners, CEOs, directors handle that in making sure that, you know, they might be churning on the inside, but they have to let their people know they’re in control?

Stone Payton: [00:22:40] Yeah, I would think that coming back and and sharing some of the experience that folks have had and relating it to some of the topics that we talked about last time, I would think that would be invaluable, particularly and sharing the stories with each other, right?

Farrell Middleton: [00:22:55] Yes, it is. And a couple of the groups that I’ve had so far, one was a grouping of ten people and they were from four different companies. There was an HVAC company, a sheetrock company, an insulation company and an erosion control company. And again, these are all folks that I’ve dealt with in my career. And so I had some ins, so we had this fantastic group of these ten people that came from different companies all in the same industry. They had the same challenges every day of how do we provide our finished product to the customer, which is the builder. But it was just a fascinating exercise. And again, as the sessions unfolded, everybody got more comfortable talking and that kind of thing. Another one I did was with a specific homebuilding company based here in Woodstock, Georgia, right down the street from here, Tony Perry’s company. Tony Tony’s a great guy. And so I did some work with eight or ten of his employees over a five session period. And we did talk a lot of specifics about internal workings of homebuilding and, you know, skill sets, priorities, policies, procedures, that kind of thing. And they all got a bunch out of it as well.

Stone Payton: [00:24:04] So I hadn’t thought about that. But so so there’s the in-house committed program for for an organization, and there’s this more open enrollment opportunity where.

Farrell Middleton: [00:24:13] Yes, there is, Yeah, yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:24:15] I could see advantages in both.

Farrell Middleton: [00:24:17] There are advantages to both. And basically what I’ve got and again, there are over 90 topics in my portfolio. Wow. I’ve scripted 20 of them so far. Those are the ones that I focus on. I’ve got five of those topics per category, like I mentioned, personal in three professional categories. And what I’ve done as well, I’ve mixed and matched topics from the, the different categories for a particular group, like I’ll have one for the personal side of things combined with a middle manager topic or two, and then with a traditional staff level topic or two or something like that. So I am very flexible with this.

Stone Payton: [00:24:51] Well, congratulations on the momentum, man. It seems like you’ve got an awful lot of good stuff going. You’re making the right connections. You’re beginning to help the right kind of folks. Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with a couple of pro tips. I mean, number one, pro tip game is reach out and have a conversation with Farrell. But you mentioned one pro tip earlier, but maybe just a couple of other things that they should be beginning to think about. Read about.

Farrell Middleton: [00:25:15] Absolutely. Let’s let’s take one and I mentioned earlier about the, you know, professional contact getting back to folks. Let’s take one on the managerial managing your time. Let’s put it that way. One of my topics is Friday. Pm Did I have a good week? This is going to be an excellent topic for me as I move forward. I’m going to use it quite a bit. And basically the goal here is that the at the end of your workweek and let’s say it’s a typical Monday through Friday workweek on Friday afternoon, Saturday or Sunday, reflect back to see how you did that week and then before the next workweek starts, you want to identify the have twos and the want twos. My topics are very simple, as we’ve already discussed. And so in everybody’s professional life, no matter what they do, the next week is filled with the half twos. The thing. So just have to get done daily, weekly or routinely. And then what you need to do is fill that in with some want to’s. The things that are sitting on the corner of your desk or in the back of your mind that you know, you need to get to at some point in time, but you just can’t find the time to do it. The way to have a productive week is, number one, get all the have twos done and an extra productive week is if you can throw in one or two, one twos, whatever that may be, just just decide what it is. And if you can get that done, then you will have an extra successful week. It’s very simple stuff, very simple, but it’s hard for people to focus on it on a routine basis.

Stone Payton: [00:26:38] Yeah, I’m glad I asked.

Farrell Middleton: [00:26:40] Well, there you go.

Stone Payton: [00:26:41] All right, man. What is the best way for folks to reach out? Learn more about tap into your work, maybe have a conversation with you, website, LinkedIn, email, whatever you feel like is appropriate.

Farrell Middleton: [00:26:51] Sure, sure. So basically the website is the Bell curve of Life dot com. My email address is Ferrell at the Bell curve of Life. That’s F as in Frank a r e. L l at the bell curve of life. My cell phone number which I give out, I give this out to my homeowners over the years. I wouldn’t scare. I’m not scared of anybody. My cell is six, 786182024. I’m available by phone or text as well. And LinkedIn, it’s under Pharell Middleton, Facebook, Pharrell, Middleton and that’s how anybody can get in touch with me. And as I mentioned earlier, if you get in touch with me, I’m going to get back in touch with you because that’s the way to be a good professional.

Stone Payton: [00:27:33] Well, Ferrell, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show today. Thank you for coming in and joining us and sharing your insight and your perspective. Congratulations on the on the early momentum and keep up the good work.

Farrell Middleton: [00:27:46] Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. And my last statement here is the only thing I’m truly an expert on is being me. Let me be very clear. And I’ve channeled my 58 years of personal professional life into this program, and I just want to share that with people, to have them live a better life. And we’re going to have a lot of fun while we do it as well. It’s a very casual environment and basically I’m so excited about it. I’m having a great time.

Stone Payton: [00:28:09] Well, I can tell your enthusiasm just comes on over the airwaves and here in person. And I’m just thrilled for you and delighted to to have you in our circle here at Business Radio X, man.

Farrell Middleton: [00:28:20] Thank you. All right. Well, thank you very much, Stone. I really, really appreciate the time.

Stone Payton: [00:28:23] Absolutely. My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guests today, Ferrell, Middleton and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.