Big Boss Biscuits

Wes Love once swore he'd rather work twice as hard for less money than ever go back to school. Today he's a doctoral candidate in Business Psychology, an author, speaker, and educator who studies leadership, culture, trust, and the human side of work.

Wes and I talk about companies that say they care about their people and then cut training, development, and staff first when money gets tight. Wes defines workplace culture as the behaviors we accept and the ones we don't. He explains why leadership culture changes so slowly, and what he learned from Rockefeller's answer when someone asked him how much money is enough.

We also talk about generations at work, from the Great Depression to millennials who look at the corner office and decide to pass. Wes shares a personal story about an abusive boss and how long it took him to believe he deserved better. I'm grateful he trusted me with it.

At the end I asked Wes for one small step anyone can take this week. His answer was to say something while the problem is still small.

Wes's book, The Culture Catalyst, is available now.

Follow Wes on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Content note. This episode includes a story about verbal and physical abuse at work.

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A year ago Yas Longoria was a Director of Customer Success. Over twelve years she built and led support and success teams at Tableau, Nintex, Mitel, FastSpring, and Mitek Systems. At Mitel they managed 125 people and led a turnaround that set a company record for customer satisfaction. Their proudest metric: No team member left her teams. Ever. Unless they got promoted.

Then her wife passed away. When she tried to go back to work, they found they no longer had the energy to keep up the version of herself she'd been performing for years.

Today Yas works at CTL Corporation, a B Corp in the Pacific Northwest. She started there packing and shipping boxes. Within seven weeks, the company created a new role for them that combines customer experience and logistics.

In this episode we talk about what belonging feels like when you finally have it. We look at the energy people spend managing how others see them at work, and why companies can check every diversity and inclusion box without ever building belonging. We talk about grieving a career identity, the loss nobody sends flowers for. We share what it's like to be called too loud or too direct, and why safe teams built by managers in the middle so often fall apart at the top. We also ask how to fix a broken system, and we admit neither of us has a full answer.

Yas ends with the advice they'd give their younger self:

Put the mask down.

Learn more about Yas Yas runs Post Sale Labs, an advisory practice that helps B2B SaaS companies strengthen customer support, customer success and post-sale operations. She writes about grief, identity and belonging at work on Substack.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yaslongoria

Post Sale Labs: yasminlongoria.com/post-sale-labs

Substack: substack.com/@yaslongoria

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What happens when being a “good” woman at work means being brilliant, confident, ambitious, kind, articulate, emotionally intelligent… and never too much of any of those things?

In this episode, Michelle DeKeyrel, Founder and CEO of Eutemia, and I talk about the impossible standards women face in corporate leadership, the double standards around confidence and ambition, and the ways imposter syndrome can convince even highly capable women to shrink themselves.

We get into speaking up, taking credit, being seen as “intimidating,” advocating for ourselves, and why women shouldn't have to choose between shining and helping others shine.

We also talk about self-leadership and the uncomfortable reality that imposter syndrome probably isn't going anywhere. Maybe the goal isn't to finally feel confident enough. Maybe it's learning to show up anyway.

Women have spent enough time being taught to be perfect.

Now it's time to be brave.

Michelle DeKeyrel is the Founder and CEO of Eutemia, a Leadership as a Service company built on a simple but powerful belief: you have to know yourself before you can lead anyone else. The name Eutemia comes from a Greek concept meaning the sense of your own path — and that philosophy runs through everything she does.

With a career rooted in healthcare and a deep commitment to developing leaders at every level, Michelle created Eutemia to give organizations and individuals access to high-caliber leadership thinking — human-first, right-sized, and built to last. She also founded Unboxed at Eutemia, a community for people ready to step out of the corporate box and find their own way forward.

Michelle is passionate about the inner work of leadership — the self-awareness, self-efficacy, and equanimity it takes to show up fully, especially in the moments that are hard. She believes the striving is the point.

You can find her at eutemia.com or on Instagram @eutemia_makeitbetter.

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Coach Rios has spent 25+ years leading customer experience and support teams — from scrappy startups to giants like Cisco and Fitbit, and now at Cityside Fiber. But his real leadership lab? His son's youth soccer and football teams. In this episode, Coach Rios gets refreshingly honest about his first management job — the one he took without asking a single question, and the one he eventually resigned from after realizing good intentions don't equal good leadership. We dig into why micromanagement happens (hint: it's about trust, not control), why "it's the coach who has to adapt, not the players," and how the same playbook that builds a winning team also builds a winning support org: set the game plan, build trust, master the fundamentals, and get a little better every day — one practice, one ticket at a time.

In this episode:

• Why Coach Rios's first "dream job" became his hardest lesson in leadership
• The difference between intent and impact when you're a new manager
• Why micromanaging is really a trust problem, not a control problem
• The sports mindset shift every leader needs: "it's not the players who change, it's the coaches"

Coach Rios is a Global Customer Experience and Support Operations leader with more than 25 years of experience building and transforming support teams at companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 organizations like Cisco and Fitbit. He is currently leading the Customer Experience team at Cityside Fiber. What makes his leadership style stand out is that he applies the same principles he uses to coach customer support teams to youth sports.
As a youth soccer and football coach for his son’s teams, Coach Rios believes great leadership is simple: set the game plan, build trust, focus on fundamentals, and help people get a little better every day or every ticket.
Through his leadership coaching, speaking, and practical ‘Coach Rios Pro Tips,’ he’s helping leaders build stronger teams, better cultures, and customer experiences that actually win.

Connect with him: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riosa

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What happens when your worst day at work becomes the foundation for how you lead for the rest of your life?

Early in his career, Fred Neis was part of a team that lost a patient — a tragedy with missteps, his own among them. What he and his team did next is the reason this conversation exists: they told the truth, they asked why, and they let the answer reshape them. Out of that came a leadership philosophy built on discipline, clarity, and the quiet power of controlling the variables you actually can.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why "consistent inconsistency" — the endless pivot-pivot-pivot — quietly burns teams out and erodes trust
• How honest debriefs and owning mistakes out loud build stronger, safer, higher-performing teams
• The playbook principle: giving people clear roles so they can adapt when the curveballs come
• Why mission and clarity matter more than any three, five, or ten-year plan on paper
• The courage it takes to look at a bad outcome and grow from it instead of hiding from it

True to form, this one doesn't stay on the rails. We wander into fatherhood, sports, and the messy human middle — the tangents that seem unrelated until you realize they're the whole story of what shaped a leader.

About Fred: Fred Neis, RN, FACHE, FAEN, is the founder of AdvisorRN and founder and CEO of RESCUE ID. A healthcare executive with nearly three decades of experience, he moonlights as a firefighter and medic, has provided medical care in a clinic in Kenya, and in 2025 published the #1 Amazon best-seller The Disciplined Leader: Habits and Practices for Healthcare Leaders That Get Results. His best role, by his own account, is dad.

Links:

• The Disciplined Leader (book): https://amzn.to/4g8tIQJ
• AdvisorRN: https://advisorrn.com/
• RESCUE ID: https://www.rescueid.com/

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We're more connected than ever—and lonelier than ever. So what does that have to do with how you lead? Everything.

This week, I am joined by Devin C. Hughes—internationally recognized keynote speaker, author of 21 books, and leadership expert who's spoken in more than 20 countries. As founder of Devin C. Hughes Inc. and a professor in the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University, Devin has spent more than two decades helping Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, healthcare organizations, nonprofits, and schools build cultures where people and performance thrive. Global Gurus named him one of the Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals, and PeopleHum tapped him as a Top Thought Leader—but on the podcast, he's just a guy who'll tell you the truth over a coffee.

And the truth is this: work isn't broken because of your strategy. It's broken because of your behavior.

We dig into what good leadership actually looks like when the cameras (and the Zoom calls) are off:

• Why loneliness is a leadership issue, not just a personal one—and what the UK's Minister of Loneliness reveals about the state of our teams
• How to lead intentionally in a remote world, where connection doesn't happen by accident and "we'll catch up later" quietly becomes never
• Devin's rule for leaders: "If it's not on the agenda, it's not important"—and how ten intentional minutes can keep the business from hijacking your humanity
• The power of rituals that give people permission to show up as people, not just performers
• Why kindness keeps getting mistaken for weakness—the Ted Lasso problem—and how approachable leaders build the strongest teams in the room
• Trust, accountability, and psychological safety as the everyday behaviors behind real results (not the posters on the wall)

The throughline? When people feel seen, heard, and valued, performance follows. Connection isn't the soft stuff you get to after the real work—it is the work.

Pour some coffee, grab a biscuit, and join us on "the front porch."

Connect with Devin:

LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and check out his YouTube channel.

What could a 2,000-year-old conqueror and a mustached fictional soccer coach possibly have in common? More than you'd think.

We get into the culture shocks, the mentors who made room for his voice before he had it all figured out, and why psychological safety and buy-in are the quiet engines behind every team that actually innovates. Then we do the fun part: unpacking what Alexander the Great and Ted Lasso — two wildly different leaders — both understood about genuinely caring for their people.

Whether you lead a team, coach one, or are still finding your voice in a room that speaks a different language, this one's for you.

In this episode, I sit down with Mukul Sheopory — product marketing leader, storyteller, and author of Bucephalus' Shadow, a book that mines leadership lessons from Alexander the Great and draws surprising parallels to modern greats like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Mukul grew up in India, built his career in the US, and learned firsthand that speaking the same language doesn't always mean speaking the same language.

Connect with Mukul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mukulsheopory/ 

Grab the ebook on Amazon or the paperback at www.mukulsheopory.com

What if the biggest thing standing between you and becoming a great leader... is investing in yourself?

When Brandon Lee first stepped into leadership, he was driven, ambitious, and laser-focused on results. But he also admits something many leaders never will: he wasn't a good leader.

He lost talented teammates, even valued friendships. He struggled to build trust. He treated people more like a means to an end than human beings. And it wasn't until difficult feedback forced him to look inward that he realized something so many of us experience: we're rarely taught how to lead ourselves well, let alone lead other people.

In this candid conversation, Brandon shares the uncomfortable lessons that transformed him—from learning emotional intelligence and receiving hard feedback to understanding that leadership isn't about managing tasks, but about connecting with people, acknowledging them and their work, and lift them up.

We also explore why vulnerability isn't a weakness, why leadership can (and should) be learned, and how investing in your own growth changes every relationship in your life, from your team to your partner.

If you've ever wondered whether people can truly change, this episode is proof that they can.

Leadership isn't about being perfect. It's about being willing to learn, unlearn, and grow.

Follow Brandon Lee on LinkedIn and YouTube. To access the personality test and discover the best career path according to your passions, strengths, and inspirations, go to GeniusofYou.com and use the code BIGBOSS to get 20% discount on the paid version.

What do you do when you've climbed the ladder, earned the title, and finally "made it" — only to realize the seat you fought for isn't the one that fits?

In this episode, Kirsten sits down with Taylor Coleman — systems thinker, former CX leader, and the kind of guest who tells the truth even when it's uncomfortable. Taylor traces her unlikely path from a bored tier-one rep to senior manager of a seven-person, six-specialty product support team — and the quiet, gutting moment in a leadership book club when she realized she had the skill for management but not the passion for it.

We talk about:

• Why saying no to leadership can be the bravest career move you make
• How a pivot — sideways or even "backward" — is self-awareness, not resume damage
• What it looks like when leaders recognize a talented person is in the wrong seat and build a better role around them instead of pushing them out

If you've outgrown your role, second-guessed the next rung, or ever wondered whether "up" is really the only way forward, this conversation will sit with you long after it ends.

Borrowing a concept from EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), we dig into the idea that you can be the right person and still be in the wrong seat — and why that's not a failure, it's a starting point. Taylor opens up about the performance review line that both validated and gutted her ("you're underutilized"), the several good cries that followed, and the courage it takes to say "this isn't where I do my best work" out loud.

I pulled my own podcast data and didn't love what I found.

52% of my listeners are women. Only 16% of women who apply to be guests actually show up.

That number sent me down a research rabbit hole — imposter syndrome, the broken ladder, the sponsorship gap, the airtime inequality — and into a solo episode that's equal parts data and personal confession.

This week on Big Boss Biscuits: why women aren't showing up even when the seat is theirs — and what leaders, allies, and women themselves can do about it.

Grab your biscuits. This one hits close to home.