Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Jeremy Fischbach, CEO of Happy, a mental health company providing frictionless, non-clinical support for people in demanding environments. Happy supports large organizations like hospitals and the Department of Defense and operates by eliminating barriers to accessing emotional support. Jeremy drew on his background in psychology and law, as well as his personal difficulties accessing mental health support, to develop Happy. He tells Sara exactly how his innovative approach prioritizes accessibility and impact.

Jeremy’s personal struggles and dissatisfaction with the time-consuming and inaccessible nature of mental health support led him to envision a system where emotional support was readily available and proactively offered. He focused on creating a frictionless system with a platform where users find emotional support without facing complicated processes. Sara explores how Happy’s model addresses a growing need among people who feel disconnected from support.

Sara and Jeremy discuss Happy’s high adoption rates and clinical-level effectiveness, the real-time emotional support offered, and how it enhances employee engagement. Despite struggles with disrupting traditional and digital mental health systems, Jeremy highlights the importance of continuing to challenge old models and assumptions. Happy’s success highlights the need for compassionate, accessible, and innovative mental health solutions that make user experience the priority.

About Jeremy Fischbach:

Jeremy Fischbach is the Founder of Happy, whose mission is to create a more supportive culture by expanding access to the essential ingredient of mental health and by teaching and inspiring people to better emotionally support each other. Prior to Happy, Jeremy was the CEO of Myne, which built interactive educational and sports analytics software that leveraged users’ psychographic data to improve performance. Jeremy has a psychology degree from Princeton and a J.D. from NYU.

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Jeremy Fischbach | Happy

• Website: FrictionlessMentalHealth.com
• Jeremy Fischbach on LinkedIn
• Email Jeremy

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Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'm joined by Jeremy Fischbach, CEO of Happy, a frictionless mental health company that is completely disrupting how large organizations care for their employee's mental health. Many of the large organizations that are working with Happy have employees that are in harm's way or in very demanding professions like military organizations such as the Air Force or the Department of Defense, large hospitals with health care workers including nurses and doctors, just to name a few. By the way, their clients are reaping huge returns on investment. Jeremy is the founder and CEO of Happy, whose mission is to create a more supportive culture by expanding access to the essential ingredient of mental health, and by teaching and inspiring people to better emotionally support each other. Prior to Happy, Jeremy was a CEO of Myne, which built interactive educational and sports analytics software that leveraged users psychographic data to improve performance. Jeremy has a psychology degree from Princeton and a JD from NYU.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:01:39] I'm honored to be here, Sara. Thank you for making time on a Saturday.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:44] Absolutely. Jeremy, I find you to be a truly fascinating person. Can you tell me a little bit about your backstory and how it led you to where you are?

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:01:57] I'm not sure that I agree with your characterization, but I think I've taken the same type of circuitous path that a lot of people have to wherever they are in their lives today. I think for these purposes, my story begins with a deep curiosity about people which preceded going to college. I just happened to always be on the outside of any population I was a part of looking in, and I think it gave me a chance to better understand who I was, who other people were. When I got to Princeton, I majored in psychology and neuroscience and was actually going to be a psychiatrist. I was pre-med and then had a near-death experience right before graduation that sent me on a whole different course. I was a composer in New York City for many years. Then for reasons no different than a lot of lawyers, just went to law school because I didn't know what else to do. Briefly practiced, hated it, and have been in psych tech and now mental health for the last decade, including the last 4 or 5 years with Happy.

Sara Sheehan: [00:03:25] That is a truly fascinating path that you've taken. I'd love to double click on some of the personal trials and tribulations that you've had in another conversation. Tell me a little bit about the story that led you to create your business.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:03:47] It's a story that I think a lot of people can relate to. It's really a story about a failure to get mental health support at a critical time in life. I was coming out of a divorce, I needed support, I knew there were-and really, when I say support, I mean mental health support, emotional support, interpersonal support as opposed to other types of support sometimes people need coming out of a divorce, like financial resources. I needed interpersonal support, emotional support, etc. and I knew there were two places to get it. My primary support system, i.e. family and friends, where we get 99% of the mental health support we ever get in life, and secondary support systems like therapy. Happy, this company, the movement around it, was born out of the failure of both of these systems in rapid succession. Sara, you and I have talked about this sequence of events, but my primary support system failed first. Unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of people can resonate with that experience. That looked like me feeling really down, lonely, worried and nine out of ten calls I made to family and friends went right to voicemail. If they actually picked up the phone they had, typically, nothing more supportive to say than 'I told you not to marry that woman'. My situation got worse. I started chain smoking kind of out of nowhere, was having not suicidal thoughts, but cousins of them. Like, who cares if I die of lung cancer? Which was one of the darker thoughts I had, and I really meant that. I didn't actually know who would care.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:05:49] At some point I said, okay, this has gotten serious enough that I should try therapy, and that failed for the reason that I would call friction. Namely, it was too hard to get it. I had to be struggling, obviously, I had to be aware of it, which most people are not. They're not even aware they're struggling because we don't bleed when we're anxious. The signs that I were struggling were conspicuous, like waking up for the first time in my life and needing a cigarette. I needed to reach a breaking point, which I did. Then I had to research my benefits, send out two dozen emails to therapists. A month and a half later, one of them responded, maybe a few eventually responded. Most responded to say, no, not taking anyone, not in your network. Something I didn't really want to hear or, you have to pay for this yourself. Eventually, I got to somebody who was taking new patients. Their first opening was a month later, and I had to go through opt ins and registrations and probably two and a half to three months after I began that process, I was sitting in a therapist's office and she was good.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:07:13] I think mostly she gave me emotional support. She just listened to me and gave me a little bit of compassion. But mostly, all she said that I remember was just, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Fischbach, your time's up'. I just thought, is this what I waited three, four months for? Because this is really just emotional support. It feels like something I should have been able to get much sooner. It led me to the sequence of questions that really lays the groundwork for Happy. The first question was, is there a single person on earth who thinks that what I just went through is their dream version of mental health? I wasn't being facetious, I really was trying to figure out, is this system, this gauntlet I've been navigating in place because people want it that way? Or is it just 'exist'? I really was trying to figure out, is there a single human being on the planet who, when you ask them, wave a wand and create your mental health solution from scratch, would have named anything that I had just experienced, particularly the experience with therapy. I thought there may literally not be one person who would say that the most common experience that we have today in America for mental health is their dream version of it.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:08:45] I thought at the time that was quite interesting, given that there were so many other areas of life where I think the solutions on the market really match up with people's dream version of it. I don't think most people can imagine an easier version of getting rides places than Uber. I don't think most people can imagine a better system for delivering goods to our house than Amazon. As much as we sometimes complain about these services, they've really created frictionless experiences that are, at this stage I think, hard to beat. The next question I asked was, what is the dream version of mental health? I couldn't answer for anybody else, but for myself, the answer was simple. I want my friends and family to check in on me more, and when I had to acknowledge that was unlikely to happen, the next question I asked myself was, what would be the next best option? Again, for me, the answer was simple. It was somebody 'like' my friends and family checking in on me, and I was imagining my phone ringing and a call that I had absolutely nothing to do to initiate. On the other end was a really caring person just calling to hear my story, to hang on every word, to offer me comfort and really dive into all the pain I was experiencing at the time, but also delve into my dreams. Not the dreams I have when I'm sleeping, but the ones I have when I'm awake and to help me achieve them.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:10:32] It was pretty clear to me at the time that that was never going to happen. It was a little heartbreaking to realize that, or to believe that. Then I started to wonder why that would never happen. Because for something to be impossible, it has to be novel. I couldn't think of anything novel about that, Sara. Just somebody, a caring person calling me. Why is that so novel? Kindness, not new. Emotional support, thankfully rare, but not new. The only thing I could think of was that it was frictionless. That was the single element of that experience that was novel, was that I was getting that support without having to take a single step. Then I started to wonder, is making something frictionless enough? Is that such a big deal that I'd want to leave everything else I was doing at the time and start a company around it.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:11:48] Then back to the connections earlier to companies like Uber and Amazon. I realized, Uber, you can say the same thing. Taxis are not at all innovative, all they did was make taxis frictionless. Amazon doesn't sell innovative goods, all they did was make buying frictionless. I thought, isn't making mental health frictionless at least as important as making e-commerce and taxis and all the other things in our life that have become frictionless. And yet, as I looked at the market, I just didn't see any frictionless mental health solutions. The most frictionless services I could find still required people, like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or Warm Lines, now, still require people to be struggling and be aware of it and reach a breaking point and research what resources are there and typically do the hardest thing of all, which is to actually reach out for support. So I took this idea, just to wrap this up, to the Princeton psych department. It was a large group of people orbiting around it that were interested in this same question. Long story short, we ended up having all agreed that there was something there to this idea of frictionless mental health. We ended up piloting early versions of this. The most significant thing we did was survey hundreds and then thousands of people and asked them the same questions that I was asking myself and we were asking ourselves.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:13:25] Namely, if we could wave a wand, what mental health solution would we create? Across the board, not unanimously but overwhelmingly, we heard people say, Sara, I want my friends and family to check in on me, they're not going to. In the absence of that, I would like somebody 'like' my friends and family checking in on me. They were describing the same experience that I wanted. A proactive, non-clinical type of support which makes complete sense, that people would want support that came to them, as opposed to support that required them to take a lot of time and energy to access it. They wanted something non-clinical, which also makes sense when people are struggling. I've yet to hear a person struggling, and I've encountered thousands, who say when they're really down, I would just love to spend a few weeks waiting in line to see a cognitive behavioral therapist. Most people I know who are struggling say, I just wish I had someone to talk to, or, that somebody would reach out. We went ahead not seeing any proactive, non-clinical solutions on the market and reach the conclusion that, at a time when our mental health crisis is spiraling out of control, it could be the case that the one solution people want most is not just underrepresented, but nowhere to be found in the country. That's the lead up to Happy.

Sara Sheehan: [00:15:04] That is a fascinating story. I had no idea that it had so many personal implications for you based on your own experience as well. I do find the disruptive nature of the service that you're offering the most compelling part of it. The fact that it is non-clinical, the fact that it is frictionless, I find it absolutely-it is truly going to change the way companies interact with mental health opportunities and create a culture of support for employees. I know that you have had tremendous experience with customers having great return on investment, and I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the tremendous results that you are experiencing.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:16:11] I'll briefly say that Happy, just so the ROI makes sense, is really a few pieces. The main piece is frictionless mental health, and that is a nationwide network of non-clinical mental health providers, among if not the highest skilled mental health support network of it's kind, that's non-clinical. These are nurses, social workers, people with extensive backgrounds in healthcare. Then we obviously have a proactive delivery model that allows us to support people who could be members of a Medicaid or Medicare plan, or more to the point of the workforce, it could be workplace employees of any organization. We happen to be focused on large health systems, some of the largest in the country, the Department of Defense, Air Force, Army, and critically for anybody to get support in any of these environments, they don't have to be struggling. They don't have to be aware of that. If they are, they don't have to reach a breaking point, they don't have to research their benefits, they don't have to connect their struggle to a benefit. No registration, no downloading an app, no opting in, no making an appointment, no waiting for appointment. They literally have to do nothing. The Pentagon, with whom we're collaborating, refers to this as zero step support.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:17:41] When you deliver support like that to people, Sara, amazing things happen. Number one, leading up to ROI, you get very high adoption rates and Happy has among the highest, if not the highest, adoption rates of any mental health service in the country. Not because we've been innovating in the actual support we're providing. The support we're providing, emotional support, has been around since the beginning of humanity. This is just undivided attention, compassion, encouragement. It's because of, obviously, all the innovation and removing obstacles. In a Medicaid/Medicare population, our adoption rate is 20% to 30%. In a workplace, it's 30 to 40%, which is much higher than an EAP, where you typically have adoption rates of 3%, 4% or 5%. Then we see clinical level impact, which means the same reduction in symptoms of isolation, stress, burnout, anxiety, depression that you'd see with a therapist. Sometimes Happy is doing this more rapidly than you'd see in therapy, because we don't have the same obsolete scheduling system that most therapists have. We're actually-when we encounter people measuring how much support they need to stabilize, 4.2 hours let's say, and we're giving people all that support right away.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:19:17] We generate more workforce intelligence than any employee listening or employee survey company in the country. Huge amounts of anonymous, aggregated data that help employers fight turnover in real time. Help health plans address their members needs in real time. Then the ROI comes from all that. With a health plan, Happy's achieving, in this case, the largest Medicaid plan in the country, almost an 8 to 1 ROI based on reduced health care spend. Just utilization of Happy reduces utilization of the emergency department, inpatient psych, any self-insured employer would benefit from a service like this for that reason. Then with our employer partners, large hospitals for example, we're showing mostly high ROI based on lowered turnover, significantly lowered with one of the largest hospitals in the country. We're reducing turnover by close to 40%. Most of that's just the support we provide, but some of it's all the real time analytics and our ability to help our partners quickly synthesize and respond to those data. In short, Sara, I would say in the workplace side, what's leading to such high ROI with some of our partners over 25 to 1, given how affordable the service is.

Sara Sheehan: [00:20:49] That's remarkable.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:20:51] It's mostly just helping our employers compress the time frame of their approach to turnover. I think there's a lot of companies that view retention, engagement, turnover as something tied to employee engagement surveys, which may happen every six months or every year, sometimes even less frequently. With our partners, turnover is something we're helping to fight on a daily basis, on a 24 hour time frame. Which is the same time frame that employees are experiencing when they are deciding whether to leave or stay.

Sara Sheehan: [00:21:27] Absolutely. Those numbers are remarkable to me because they're double digits, they express a tremendous uptake or utilization of your service. Employees are responding, they're leaning into it, which I know many companies, generally speaking, have a 1% to 4% uptake of EAP services. Comparatively, that is just remarkable to me.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:22:06] Keep in mind, Sara, a lot of EAPs are designed not to be used, or are specifically not being improved upon because of a lack of utilization. The less an EAP is used, the more profit the company providing the EAP realizes. We had the largest health plan in the country. We're talking to a director of their behavioral health commercial line, when we were talking to them about friction, they said, you're misunderstanding friction as a bug rather than a feature. If employees actually navigate this gauntlet and access support, that comes out of our bottom line. It just has to be noted that, the systems that we have in place that oftentimes are very hard to use, and it could be traditional models, but it could be digital apps that force people to download an app and register and do self-guided surveys. They all have the effect of reducing the number of employees who get support. I'll just observe that if you understand the vendors, how they make money, you'd be surprised to understand, perhaps, that the more people who end up making it through and getting support, the worse off they are, as in the vendor.

Sara Sheehan: [00:23:37] I'd love to hear some, Jeremy, about what your biggest challenges have been in starting your business and how you've overcome them.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:23:47] The biggest challenges, I'll put them in two categories, Sara. One is, it's hard to start a company. It could be a lemonade stand or Happy. Any company, as you know, you're an entrepreneur, is hard to get off the ground. One of the hardest professional things you could do is take something from your brain to the back of a napkin. That's all been covered elsewhere, I don't think it's all that interesting to discuss. If any listener wants to understand how hard it is to start a company, you can type that into Google, and I think it's been well covered. For us, I would say, the more interesting challenge has been-is very specific to mental health, Sara. It's really, mental health, and the mental health paradigm and infrastructure we have, is very unique. It's unique in a particular way, and specifically, there's a lot of sacred cows. People do not like to challenge old ways of thinking, or even new ways of thinking, that are ineffective with mental health for a lot of reasons. One, I think this is one problem that does tie the whole country together. I don't think that there's very many people-I think it's a bipartisan thing to say, that we're experiencing a mental health crisis.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:25:21] Mental health providers themselves, I know many of them. Some of the most accomplished mental health providers in the country are on Happy's advisory board or service in other ways. They're amazing people. I think that for some of those reasons, and also just because-there's obsolete thinking in a lot of fields. Bad ideas don't go challenged that much, and I think that has been Happy's greatest challenge, is taking on both traditional and digital mental health, which are riddled with, in my view, bad ideas. As an example, Silicon Valley keeps spinning out and funding, this is just one example, new apps that are supposed to be the answer to old school mental health. They are based on very, I would say, suspicious assumptions. Many apps, for example, require users to take a lot of steps to eventually get to a therapist and pride themselves on giving users access to every single possible mental health option under the sun on the assumption that people are snowflakes. If 'Sara' is not the same as as her husband, or me, and today 'Sara' may want peach flavored kombucha, but tomorrow she may want watermelon infused sparkling water. We need to make sure 'Sara' has access to all this.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:27:07] Happy has a very different position. It's actually been hard to-it's hard to combat the idea I just expressed than it has been to do anything else. Our assumption is that, we are in a drought with respect to mental health. People are literally dying of thirst, and we need to make sure that people have water. For us, the water of mental health is emotional support. Our mission has been, not to maximize options but to maximize adoption. If you just look at two scenarios people face when they're struggling, since most people who are struggling have not downloaded apps, I think our model is self-evidently more likely to lead to somebody getting help. If you, Sara, are struggling right now, think about in which of these scenarios you're more likely to get support. In one scenario, you have to download an app, you have to register, you have to even know that there's an app to download. If you've gotten that far, you need to register, opt in, go through a lot of paperwork, probably do a medical history, self-guided assessments, it may be days before you can actually speak to somebody. Or alternatively, what if a call just came into your phone from one of the most caring people in the country?

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:35] The latter sounds amazing. I do love your comment about, bad ideas aren't challenged enough. We need to set aside time so that we can be more creative and think of new ways to approach old businesses so that we are actually disrupting an industry. Yes, just getting a phone call from a caring person sounds wonderful to me. It sounds like the barrier has completely been dropped from where I need help, to having help.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:29:27] That's the idea. When we talk to our partners, it's interesting to ask them to imagine how they would react if it were as hard to fulfill a lot of other basic needs as it is to get mental health support. Imagine to get toilet paper, they needed to go through all these steps, and it was days before they could get it. Imagine getting pizza required a lot of steps. Again, nothing's coming for days. Or water. It is preposterous how difficult it is in the 21st century to get mental health support, but it's because of bad ideas. In fact, I'll say the 'baddest' idea of all, the worst trend that still dominates in mental health, Sara, as you and I have talked about, is over-clinicalization of mental health. The idea that the DSM, the ultimate catalog of mental health issues just keeps growing up to the point where, if somebody is feeling lonely after a divorce, they can get diagnosed with a temporary adjustment disorder.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:30:42] This has real consequences. The reason this is so, is that mental health clinicians are more or less in charge of mental health in America. Just like lawyers have a tendency, if they're just being lawyers, to write laws and coat everything in more rules and regulations, mental health clinicians, if they're just doing their job, have the tendency to keep clinicalizing the human condition, including very common emotional states. The costs of clinicalization are really staggering. Every time we clinicalize an issue, it means that now it requires a clinician to treat it, and that clinician's hundreds of dollars an hour perhaps, and there just aren't enough of them, of course, so now it's going to take weeks to get there. You're going to have to fill out a whole bunch of paperwork, and you wonder why mental health is stigmatized. For anybody having to go through that much effort to get help and pay that much money, of course somebody's going to think, wow, I must be really sick. So yeah, just a note on that.

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:57] It's remarkable that a very simple approach can have such breakthrough impacts. I'd love to shine a light on that, which is why we are talking today, because people need to wake up and understand that it can be a simple answer, it can be easy to access and it can change your life.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:32:31] I think so, Sara. I would ask you, not to turn the tables around, but I'm sure your listeners would appreciate hearing from you. Have you ever had a struggle in life, without getting into the details of the struggle, where you had friends or family just supporting you? Where it didn't even involve therapy, but just your own support system came to the rescue?

Sara Sheehan: [00:33:01] Sure, and I've had situations where maybe I wish they could have been more available. I completely identify with your story so very much. Life has a way of having many twists and turns, it's not a direct line. There are many ups and downs that people experience in life, and having a service like you're offering, I can see how it would absolutely transform employee's attitudes and desire to deliver at work. Because 'my employer is caring about me'.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:33:50] I think that's spot on. I think you put it very well, Sara. I would just say, if I had a choice between two employers and one of them-and I really understood mental health inside and out, which most people just don't think about it that much, but if I knew that they were just offering a standard EAP, and really what they were saying is, look, we care about you not enough to offer anything other than some of these wraparound services or an EAP that are going to require you to take dozens of steps and wait weeks to get support. If the choice were between that and an employer who said, I'm going to make sure one of the most caring people in the country is checking in on you every month and giving you unlimited support. That, to your point Sara, does say something different about the employer and if that's their investment in me, makes me want to much more significantly invest in them in my work, etc. So I think you're spot on.

Sara Sheehan: [00:34:56] Absolutely. I'd love to hear, Jeremy, what are you learning now, personally?

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:35:05] I was going to say, do you want a 20 minute treatise on what I'm learning about contracting with the Department of Defense? I think what I'm learning personally, is how important it is-I'll say, we refer to our providers, Sara, as support givers. They are among the most caring people, caring community, I've ever met. They do what we alluded to. They check in on and provide unlimited support to large populations of people every month proactively. I think what I'm learning most through Happy, to be honest, is how important it is for me to be a support giver in my own life, with the people I work with, with the people who I live with, or in my family, etc. As I've shared with a few people, nowadays, when I get into the car, instead of putting on a podcast or listening to music, a lot of times I'll just go through my phone. Not while I'm driving, but at stop signs or stop lights, and check in on the people in my life proactively. An amazing thing has happened. This is people who I work with, family, friends. Which is that, when my friends and family have learned, I guess from me in most cases, just how nice it is to have somebody check in on them.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:36:44] I'm not trying to share at all times what's going on in my life, I really want to hear what's going on with them, they start doing that to me. What I've learned the most is, that for me, as important as personal development and self-help and this whole craze, that you could put in exercise and all our new fangled ways of thinking about nutrition and meditation. As much as I really appreciate that, the journey that I find myself on most now, is one where the arrow is much more clearly pointing outward toward other people. I find myself getting excited about becoming a better listener, getting excited about learning the nuances of compassion and encouragement. I still haven't met a single person in years who ever came to me and said, I've got to tell you about this new X, Y, or Z, this new podcast I'm listening to, or book I'm reading. It's getting me so excited about just supporting other people more effectively. It's always about something that relates to themselves. So, that's what I've learned most. I think that's not just a way to build better relationships. I think professionally, personally, I truly believe that. It's not just me, there's many people in the country, thankfully, I think that are starting to do this kind of thing, but I think that, to me, is the beginning of a more supportive culture.

Sara Sheehan: [00:38:34] It absolutely is. Clearly you are the best example of paying it forward in your own life, where you are sharing of the support that you might have longed for at a different time in your life. Openly, without judgment, just caring about other people. That is an art that we need more present in our society. People need to care more. People need to be more kind and be fully available and present in the conversations that they do have. Jeremy, what are your big goals and aspirations that you're working on right now?

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:39:39] I guess personally and professionally, I would just say, getting happy, farther off the ground. Creating a more supportive culture is maybe the broader goal. You and I have discussed working on a very long textbook, now, that's all about the set of ideas that surround Happy, and is meant to be a blueprint for creating a more supportive culture. I think when I'm not stressed about the company, or one way that I actually escape from stress, which is inevitable to a startup, is by writing. Or doing writing the way I write, which is walking around the streets of New Orleans extemporaneously, trying to dictate a textbook into existence. That's been a lot of fun, a lot of hard work. I can't believe how many people have written one book, let alone multiple. It's been a lot of fun to articulate all of these ideas that I find myself having more and more about. The importance of creating a more supportive culture and really how, in light of recent events, whoever is in the White House, whoever is in Washington, I really do believe each of us can, should, must do a lot more than we're doing to create a supportive culture. I think it's a beautiful thing that maybe Happy, the book, and just through conversations like this, we can inspire people to do that.

Sara Sheehan: [00:41:20] Absolutely. So when will your book come out? Do you have a target timeline?

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:41:26] 2090. I'm hoping within a couple of years. It's just about done as a draft, so now we're in a extensive editing phase. Some cool features to it, there's going to be a lot of submissions. I'll just say, there's going to be not just my voice, but the voice of the people in this. A lot of the ideas that we're talking about are new, but they've been blowing in the wind for a long time. So yeah, we'll come back on when that book is out, we can talk about it.

Sara Sheehan: [00:42:01] I would love to have a conversation about it. It sounds like you'll have, essentially, a multi-author situation where, maybe there would be articles or a chapter by another person. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:42:18] I'm actually thinking that we're going to write the whole book without any contributions first, and then with all the different areas, have so many submissions that we could completely remove our own voice from it, and just have a book by, for, from the people. From just ordinary people to experts and show that, as new and important as these ideas are, again, they've been out there, I think we're just stitching them together in a very novel way that I hope has profound consequences. Because I think I'm seeing those consequences in my own life.

Sara Sheehan: [00:43:00] I am certain that it will. Very certain. So, Jeremy, is there anything else that is percolating in your mind that you'd like to share today?

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:43:17] Mostly, thank you, Sara, for giving me a chance to talk to you about this. I know that you're as passionate about this as I am, and that really has come through in getting to know you. If your listeners want to know more about this, about Happy specifically or our approach, we try to lay it all out, more of an open source model. You can see more at frictionlessmentalhealth.com. I would just say on a personal note, as we go into Thanksgiving, in the holidays it's quite a time for a lot of people, that I would encourage your listeners to, I'm sure many already are doing this, to go in with the simple mission of making every interaction as supportive as possible. When you encounter people, family members, friends, strangers, set a little goal of doing everything you can to support that person, leaving them feeling as supported as possible. It really simplifies life and I think makes it more supportive. That's all I got, Sara.

Sara Sheehan: [00:44:32] It makes everything better when you have a good conversation with someone that really cares. It absolutely makes everything better, there's no question about it. Well Jeremy, I can't thank you enough for your time today. As we close, I would love for you to share if there is additional contact information. I know that you gave your website of frictionlessmentalhealth.com.

Jeremy Fischbach: [00:45:04] Check that out. Anybody can email me directly at [email protected]. I would love to hear from any of your listeners, whether they're-if they just want to talk more about this stuff. Obviously you and I, Sara, are collaborating, and I'm sure a lot of people may be interested in what you and I are trying to work on together. So yeah, we'd love to hear from people.

Sara Sheehan: [00:45:37] Absolutely. I can't recommend what Jeremy's doing enough. The power that it has to make an impact on employee culture in an organization, to make your employees want to stay and lean into your organization. It could even increase company revenue, which is a mind blowing possibility when you're talking about mental health. I very much appreciate your time today, Jeremy, and I very much look forward to hearing comments from listeners.

Sara Sheehan: [00:46:17] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan where I interviewed Jeremy Fischbach, CEO of Happy. We explore the critical inefficiencies of traditional employee assistance programs and how Jeremy's approach is revolutionizing the industry. Here are the three big takeaways from today's discussion. First, frictionless support systems. Jeremy discusses the importance of removing friction from mental health support services. His company, Happy, offers proactive, zero step emotional support, ensuring employees receive care without the burden of navigating complex systems. The model boasts significantly higher adoption rates compared to traditional employee assistance programs. Second, ROI and workforce retention. Happy's innovative approach doesn't just improve employee wellbeing, it also results in tangible benefits for companies. By providing real time emotional support and data analytics, Happy has demonstrated high returns on investment, including an 8 to 1 ROI for a large Medicaid plan and a remarkable reduction in workforce turnover by up to 40% in some organizations. Third, simplifying mental health care. Jeremy critiques the over-clinicalization of mental health, which often increases stigma and complicates access to care. By offering non-clinical, supportive interactions that mirror the care of friends and family, Happy achieves clinical level outcomes in a simpler, more accessible manner. I can't thank Jeremy enough for giving me some time out of his busy schedule. I feel like he, truly, is on the path of revolutionizing access to mental health in large organizations, and the return on investment in mental health, truly disrupting the industry. I would be remiss if I didn't mention, please subscribe and never miss an episode.

Sara Sheehan talks about the power of authenticity in leadership in today’s episode. Authenticity is about leading in a genuine way, with transparency and in alignment with personal values and the organization’s mission. She breaks down exactly what authentic leadership looks like and how it sets executives apart by making them trusted and effective.  

Sara shares five core components that define authenticity in leadership: The Core of Authentic Leadership, Why Authentic Leaders Are More Trusted, The Competitive Advantage of Authentic Leadership, How to Cultivate Authentic Leadership, and Authenticity as a Catalyst for Change. She breaks down each core value into directive steps that examine how to incorporate it into daily leadership. 

The ways in which authentic leadership improve how an executive is viewed are many, but it’s not simply a perspective change. It’s a change to the way in which an executive operates. Authentic leadership understands alignment between words and actions, it shows that vulnerability is strength, and it cultivates open and frequent communication. As Sara unpacks authentic leadership, she reveals a path to a more genuine way of leading that will effect sincere change with repercussive benefits to the organization as a whole.  

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

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Transcript:

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today, I'm talking about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, the power of authenticity in leadership. Why CEOs and executives who lead with integrity inspire trust and drive business success. In today's fast paced, interconnected world, the one element that remains constant in high functioning organizations, is trust. As leaders, CEOs and business executives are in a unique position to influence culture, foster resilience, and drive meaningful change. But with skepticism on the rise, due to an era filled with buzzwords and spin, the best leaders are finding that authenticity is a key to inspiring loyalty and commitment within their teams. Authenticity goes beyond simply being yourself, it's about leading in a way that is genuine, transparent, and aligned with your values and the organization's mission. Authentic leaders build organizations that attract and retain top talent, maintain trust with key stakeholders, and develop lasting resilience to weather market uncertainties. This monologue explores why being an authentic leader not only sets you apart, but also makes you a far more trusted and effective executive.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:48] 'The Core of Authentic Leadership'. Authentic leadership, in essence, involves a commitment to being open, consistent, and true to one's values and principles. An authentic leader exhibits self-awareness, a clear understanding of personal strengths and weaknesses, and maintains integrity regardless of circumstances. This approach helps leaders foster genuine relationships and develop trust based cultures that drive long term success. Research shows that authenticity has become increasingly valued in the workplace. In Deloitte's Global Human Capital Trends report, over the last four years they have found that more than 80% of employees expressed a desire for their leaders to demonstrate empathy, an element closely linked to authenticity. As employees and clients alike seek trustworthy and transparent organizations, leaders who prioritize authenticity become magnetic forces, naturally attracting both talent and clientele.

Sara Sheehan: [00:03:01] 'Why Authentic Leaders Are More Trusted'. For CEOs and executives, the ability to inspire trust is indispensable. Trust is at the heart of every successful relationship, from boardrooms to client engagements. Here are key reasons why authentic leaders inspire great trust. First, consistency and transparency. Authentic leaders are consistent in their actions, providing employees and stakeholders with a stable foundation upon which to rely. When executives are transparent about their intentions, motivations, and even setbacks, they send a message of reliability and accountability. This builds trust because it allows others to see that the leader's decisions are rooted in a clear and honest approach. For example, consider an executive leading an organization through a difficult restructuring by clearly communicating the rationale behind the change, addressing the challenges openly, and ensuring a process that respects employee's contributions. Authentic leaders demonstrate commitment to fairness and ethical standards.

Sara Sheehan: [00:04:26] Second, alignment between words and actions. Actions that align with words form a strong foundation of trust. Employees and stakeholders watch carefully to see if leaders walk the talk. Authentic leaders not only talk about core values, but also consistently act upon them. When leaders say they value innovation, for instance, but discourage new ideas and meetings, employees quickly notice the inconsistency and become disengaged. CEOs and executives who embody alignment between words and actions model a type of integrity that resonates throughout the organization. When an organization's core values are demonstrated from the top down, it encourages every team member to live up to the same standards, creating a cohesive and motivated workforce.

Sara Sheehan: [00:05:26] Third, vulnerability is strength. Contrary to the traditional notion that leaders must always project invulnerability, authentic leaders understand that showing vulnerability humanizes them. This willingness to admit mistakes, acknowledge shortcomings, or seek input from others demonstrates humility, which strengthens the connection with employees. In many corporate cultures, acknowledging mistakes has historically been discouraged. However, by demonstrating a willingness to learn and grow, leaders give permission to their teams to do the same. Vulnerability in this way is not a weakness, but a bridge to building authentic relationships that foster creativity, resilience, and innovation.

Sara Sheehan: [00:06:22] 'The Competitive Advantage of Authentic Leadership'. In addition to building trust, authenticity provides leaders with a clear competitive advantage. Here's how. First, stronger team engagement. Employee engagement and retention are paramount concerns in today's business environment. Gallup's research shows that organizations with highly engaged teams experience 21% higher profitability. Authentic leaders foster environments where employees feel seen and valued. By engaging authentically with team members, leaders cultivate a culture that enhances commitment, creativity, and loyalty, ultimately driving performance and reducing turnover costs.

Sara Sheehan: [00:07:19] Second, enhanced customer relationships. Customers today seek authenticity in the companies they choose to do business with. Studies indicate that 86% of customers are more likely to support a brand that is open and honest about its operations. For executives, leading authentically extends beyond the organization's internal culture and can positively impact client relationships, brand loyalty, and market reputation. When an organization is led by someone who genuinely believes in its products, services, and mission, that conviction resonates with customers and builds brand loyalty.

Sara Sheehan: [00:08:06] Third, navigating change effectively. Change is inevitable in today's fast evolving business landscape. Whether due to technological advancements, shifting market demands, or economic disruptions, authentic leaders are more adept at managing change because they prioritized honest communication, which is essential for maintaining stability during times of transition. When teams trust their leaders, they are more willing to adapt to new strategies and rally around long term goals. By fostering a culture of trust, authentic leaders help create a resilient organization that can navigate change with greater agility.

Sara Sheehan: [00:08:56] 'How to Cultivate Authentic Leadership'. While authenticity is increasingly recognized as vital to effective leadership, it does not always come naturally. Executives looking to become more authentic can take concrete steps to develop this style of leadership. First, practice self-reflection. Self-awareness is an absolute cornerstone of authenticity. Executives benefit from routinely engaging in self-reflection to gain clarity on their personal values, strengths, and areas for growth. Practices such as journaling, seeking feedback, and mentorship are effective tools for cultivating self-awareness and can help leaders better align their personal values with their professional goals.

Sara Sheehan: [00:09:51] Second, communicate openly and frequently. Open communication is a critical tool for authentic leaders. Regular, transparent updates to teams about organizational goals, changes, and challenges, build trust and reduce speculation or fear. Open dialog should also be bidirectional. Executives should create spaces for team members to voice concerns, ideas and feedback, thereby fostering a culture of mutual respect.

Sara Sheehan: [00:10:28] Third, seek genuine connections. Build genuine relationships within an organization. It enhances the leader's ability to understand and connect with team members. CEOs and executives should make time to know employees, whether through small group meetings or informal interactions. Leaders who take a vested interest in their employee's well-being and development demonstrate that they value individuals beyond their job titles, thereby building a more engaged and loyal team.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:09] Fourth, lead with empathy and integrity. Empathy allows leaders to understand the diverse perspectives and challenges that employees face, creating a more inclusive and supportive workplace. Leaders should actively work to understand different viewpoints and address concerns fairly. Moreover, demonstrating integrity through ethical decision making reinforces the leader's commitment to a principled approach, strengthening the trust that employees and stakeholders place in them.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:48] 'Authenticity as a Catalyst for Change'. For CEOs and executives seeking to foster growth and drive successful change, authenticity is no longer optional, it's essential. By leading with authenticity, executives can create a positive organizational culture built on trust, openness, and resilience. Authentic leaders inspire loyalty, commitment, empowering teams to excel, adapt, and innovate in a fast changing business environment. Ultimately, authenticity in leadership is not just about making good decisions, but about building a legacy of trust and excellence that transcends the challenges of today and creates a foundation for tomorrow. As a leader, embracing authenticity may be the single most powerful way to influence not only your organization's performance, but also the trust and loyalty of those who drive it's success. For CEOs and executives, leading authentically is more than a strategy, it's a catalyst for genuine, lasting change. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast today. As always, subscribe and never miss an episode.

Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Kevin Wilkins, CEO of Trepwise, a New Orleans-based strategy firm that has worked with over 550 purpose-driven organizations. Kevin talks with Sara about what life events changed his career path and why Trepwise is such an important step for him. They explore what it takes to build a sustainable business in the present day and what leaders need to know. 

Kevin describes moving his family to New Orleans 4 and ½ years after Hurricane Katrina had hit after his wife got a great job offer. Once in the city, he began to look at how nonprofits had sprung up to assist New Orleans after Katrina but how despite the money flowing in, they were all vying for same funding and not many had a sustainable plan. That ultimately led him to found Trepwise. He unpacks what Trepwise is designed to do and how it functions, especially amongst the specific needs of New Orleans. 

Sara and Kevin talk about the driving motivation behind Trepwise and the human-centred approach Kevin focuses on taking. He points out that not only has he learned a great deal about nonprofit business and sustainability in that format but that the work he’s doing has taught him a lot and brought him immense personal satisfaction when goals for child welfare or improvement initiatives are realized. Kevin’s passion for his work and the city he lives in is evident throughout and his vision, through Trepwise, has created a sustainable foundation for many organizations wanting to help.

About Kevin Wilkins

Kevin N. Wilkins is the Founder and CEO of Trepwise, a growth consulting firm with a mission to unlock the potential of purpose-driven organizations by aligning people, process, and vision.

Kevin moved to New Orleans in 2010 and served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence and COO for The Idea Village from 2011 – 2013. His experience working closely with entrepreneurs in the New Orleans area led him to launch Trepwise in 2013. With more than 30 years of experience in corporate and private ventures, Kevin has built a strong team of consultants at Trepwise who collectively have worked with over 500 organizations within private and public sectors, nonprofits, and foundations.

Kevin has also served on several nonprofit boards, currently for YPO Louisiana, Tulane Hillel, Institute of Mental Hygiene, City Year New Orleans, Touro Synagogue, Collegiate Academies, Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, The Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education, and formerly for Louisiana Children’s Museum, Pelican Bomb, Propeller: A Force for Social Innovation.

Kevin is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, as well as holding executive leadership positions with Procter & Gamble, Fidelity Investments, and State Street Research & Management. In addition, Kevin is a lead mentor for the national Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program and a mentor to startups in the Spark10 accelerator program based in India.

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Kevin Wilkins | Trepwise Strategy Consulting

• Website: Trepwise.com
• Kevin Wilkins on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:03] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'm joined by Kevin Wilkins, CEO of Trepwise, a New Orleans based strategy firm who has collectively worked with over 550 purpose driven organizations. Kevin found his greatest impact serving nonprofit, foundation and public private spaces with one goal in mind: developing thriving and equitable communities nourished by good ideas. Kevin is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has held executive leadership positions with Procter and Gamble, Fidelity Investments, and State Street Research and Management. Kevin, I am so glad to be chatting with you today and to have you on my show. Welcome.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:01:09] Thank you, Sara. I appreciate being here.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:11] Wonderful. So Kevin, I'd love to hear from you what led you to, and motivated you, to create your business?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:01:24] That probably requires some additional background. First of all, thank you for sharing my bio so I won't dwell on that too much. The one headline from my bio that was not there is that I married a woman from New Orleans, and that will become relevant in a few minutes. Apparently when you marry someone from New Orleans, you do end up living in New Orleans at some point in your life, it just took us 28 years to get here. We met in college many years ago, and we spent most of our married life in New England. I started my career in packaged goods at Procter and Gamble, as you mentioned, and then I went to Harvard Business School and transitioned into financial services. What I learned at Procter and Gamble was tremendous and transforming for me. They really invest in training, they really invest in helping you understand what it means to run a business. I was able to do that as part of their brand management program, I really liked it. I was in the household cleaning division and I was 22 years old, and to be honest with you, household cleaning was not the biggest passion of my life, but I learned a lot about how one manages and how one engages with consumers, and how you get some insights and how you can do the marketing and the finance and all the manufacturing behind the scenes. It was very interesting work, I just didn't love the category.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:02:36] When I went to Harvard Business School, I got exposed to the financial markets. I was intrigued by them, and I thought they were very dynamic. I liked what I did at Procter, can I do my general management concept? But instead of household cleaners, let's talk about the financial markets. That's what led me to Fidelity Investments, as you mentioned. That began a 20 year path for me in financial services, which was interesting because every time I went back to Harvard Business School, people would say to me, you're still in financial services? I'm like, yeah, somewhat surprised. I was more the marketing guy maybe, I was more the creative, so I don't think people saw me in that space, but I really did enjoy it. I was running organizations within financial services. I was often doing innovation and product development, I was doing some change management work, so it allowed me to leverage a lot of general management skills. 20 years later there I was, still in financial services. I reflect on that, but 20 years later I was president of an organization that we ended up selling to a larger organization in financial services in New York.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:03:42] At that point, my time at financial services paused. I was reflecting on my time, and realizing that I was put on a path right out of school. I went to the right company, I went to the right business school, I ended up going to the other right company. I always linked to big brands, although that wasn't necessarily my intent, that's just where I ended up. I knew what to do to be successful. You're on a path and they tell you, to get to the next level you need to do A, B, C, and D. You work hard, you excel and you do your best and if you do well, you can continue to pursue the path. 20 years later I had reached a pinnacle on the path, but what I began to realize was this path was given to me. I made decisions to stay on the path, but in order to stay on the path, you had to do A, B, C, and D. I did A, B, C, and D and was able to succeed. I didn't really think through the choices I'm making in my career. I was on a career path, I followed the rules and I did well. 20 years later I was still in financial services.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:04:49] That's when you pause and say, what just happened? I reflect on this phase of my life, I benefited and I enjoyed my time. I don't want to minimize that, I did enjoy the time, I did enjoy the people I worked with. I enjoyed what we were able to accomplish, but at the same time, maybe it wasn't as intentional as I would have wanted it to be. I believe that it's really important when you're managing your own career, I've got three children and I say this to each of them, you want to make sure you're making the right choices for you in any given moment, and you need to make sure that you're not being dictated by others in terms of what you need to do to succeed, but you're instead making choices around what you feel you need to do to succeed. I think many people of my generation, maybe less so in this generation, find themselves on these paths unintentionally. 20 years later, there you are. I joke about mid-life crises, maybe this is why people have midlife crises because they begin to realize that they really haven't made many choices in their careers.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:05:55] They stick to what they know, and they stick to what they're good at, and they just follow the rules and they get to a certain level. I share that with you because, when we moved to New Orleans in 2010, everything shifted for me. My wife, as I said, is from New Orleans. The transaction had happened with the firm that I'd been at, so I had some flexibility to do different things. My wife is a professional fundraiser in the university setting, she was raising money for Harvard for many years, and she got a phone call from Tulane. She said Tulane was curious in terms of whether she would consider raising money for them. Never had she gotten a headhunter call from Louisiana, let alone New Orleans, let alone Tulane. All of this was something that would really be good for her career and her choices. We're like, is it time? We've been in Boston for over 20 years, we loved it there. We didn't have family there so we build our own networks. The kids were established. It was a big decision to shift. The one constraint that we didn't have was my career. I could do what I was doing at that time, I was doing some advertising work, I was doing some investing work, I could actually do that anywhere.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:07:00] So we decided in 2010 to move. Packed up the truck and we moved on down. My boys were 7, 9 and 13 at the time. My 13 year old said that we were ruining his life single handedly, those special parental moments. We're like, let's see if we can find a smile and let's move on down. Then three years after being here, he was like, this is the best place to be from, this is the best place to be a teenager. I'm like, yes, in fact it is. Nevertheless, it was a very good move for the family and a very good move for my wife's career. It gave me a moment to ask an intentional question. That question is, what do I want to do? My wife asked that right when we decided to move. She's like, what are you going to do? What do you think about doing? Do you want to do early retirement? You can do some volunteer stuff. I'm like, I don't know, that doesn't sit well, no I don't think so, way too young, not going to do that. I'll explore, and maybe I'll see what I want to do. What what was interesting is never did it come to me, never in my consideration set did I say, I wonder what I can do in financial services. Instead I said, I wonder what I can do to help the community in a post-Katrina world.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:08:23] We moved here four and a half years after Katrina. The city had made progress, clearly, but still had a lot of recovery to do. The money was drying up, the cameras had all gone away, and suddenly the city is faced with some challenges around, how can we sustain momentum? How can we continue to recover? The good news is a lot of people move to New Orleans after Katrina, really wanted to come and help the city. A lot of money flowed into New Orleans after Katrina. A lot of nonprofits were built, a lot of social services were put in place, and a lot of really well-intended people wanted to come here and help the city. Unfortunately when I got here, as I said, the cameras had all gone away and I was seeing a city that had a lot of non-profits that were established, but perhaps they were all chasing the same money, and some of them would not be sustainable. I began exploring the city. What does the community need? What kind of impact can I make? I started in, what I call, the incubation and acceleration space. A lot of money had come into New Orleans to help fund organizations, to help startups get off the ground. I worked for a few organizations that were helping entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground. The idea was, if we could build different companies within the New Orleans ecosystem, we would then help create jobs, and we would help build out a middle class. New Orleans really did not have a strong middle class as part of its community design, so how can we create more industry that would create more jobs? That's interesting, I think I can understand how to build companies, I can help with that. I began building curriculum out, I began teaching, I taught at Tulane as an adjunct for a few years, and was diving in to how to help entrepreneurs get their organizations off the ground. There were several types of incubators in the city. Some were for profit, some were nonprofit, but they both had the same idea. How can we get these organizations off the ground in generating jobs? What I noticed, though, is that there were not a lot of organizations that could help these organizations stay off the ground. I joke that Louisiana was very good at launching ideas, we need to help these organizations sustain and grow their ideas.

Sara Sheehan: [00:10:51] Staying in business is definitely harder than many people plan for.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:10:56] 100%, because everyone focuses on the launch. Get it off the ground, it's so exciting. We have to talk about year two and year three and what that looks like. What was interesting is, I met with the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is a fantastic organization in the city, a community foundation that's doing transformational work. When I met with them, it was around ten years ago, right before I started Trepwise. They wanted me to look at some of the nonprofits that they had been funding, and they wanted to get my perspective on what's it going to take to make them sustainable. I said, listen, I've sat on boards before, but I'm not a nonprofit leader of any kind, I'm more of a business background. They're like, exactly, we want to have a business acumen placed against this nonprofit structure. The light bulb went on. I'm like, isn't that interesting? If I could help these nonprofits put together a plan to sustain themselves and grow their impact, wouldn't that be great for the community? My background is actually pretty well suited. I know how to run organizations and I know how to grow organizations. You have to familiarize yourself with the operations of a nonprofit and how the fundamentals work, but it's not rocket science. It was really interesting to see the diversity of ideas and the diversity of purpose that existed within New Orleans.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:12:19] If I was able to help just one of these organizations do well, than it would have been worth the trip. I talk about intentionality, because for the first time it wasn't about me. My career was about me, let me be clear. When I was in financial services, it was about me. What was my title? What was my role? What was my responsibility? What was my stature? It was about me, for the good and the bad. In New Orleans, it wasn't about me, it was about the community. It was about the needs of the greater whole. It was about how can I help contribute, and wander into places that, if you told me that I was going to start helping nonprofits grow their impact, I'd be like, what education do I have to do that? But when you wander your way into something because you're curious, because you're making intentional choices, because you've asked yourself the question, what do I want to do? What do I really want to do? What is the impact? What is the legacy that I'm looking to build here? Then the outcomes tend to be slightly different.

Sara Sheehan: [00:13:27] Definitely. That's a wonderful way to frame the time that led up to you creating Trepwise. Can you share with me what lessons you have learned from building and scaling Trepwise so far? I'm sure there are many.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:13:49] I've learned a whole lot. First of all, I never intended to build this type of consulting organization. When I started Trepwise, it was more, what can I do to help support these specific nonprofits that I've been working with? I need some support behind me. I started Trepwise with the idea that we can help purpose driven organizations. I wasn't thinking about the scale, and I wasn't thinking about the breadth of work that we could be doing. It was literally, in the moment I had a lot to do, so I'm going to start a company to help me do this, I'm going to hire someone who can help support me. Ten years later, there are 15 of us. We've got subject matter experts that we work with, which would make us a larger organization as well, that we do that as contractors. We're working with not only nonprofits at a national level, but we also do strategic planning work for the nonprofits, we do systems planning work, helping organizations work together to solve a common challenge. Then we do a lot of organizational effectiveness work, how can we strengthen what you have and how can we maximize what you do? Those three areas started in New Orleans, and I say I built this for New Orleans and it will always be for New Orleans, but having this national platform right now and working with nonprofits from around the country has been so fulfilling.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:15:10] I think one of the first lessons was, do not limit yourself. Don't say, I can only do a few nonprofits right now and we'll see how that goes. Think big, think about what you can do to maximize your impact, and think about how you can perhaps scale yourself. That was the question that I was dealing with early on, how do I scale me? My team often laughs at me because I would ask the question, is Kevin bigger than Trepwise, or is Trepwise bigger than Kevin, as a bellwether. The answer often was, Kevin's bigger than Trepwise. People come here because of Kevin, and he's helping these organizations. 10, 11 years later, Trepwise is much bigger than Kevin. We have clients that I have never met. We have work that perhaps I wouldn't even know how to do specifically, but I've built an incredible team to do this type of work, and you stay on point. The other lesson that I've learned, number one don't limit yourself. Number two, stick to your vision, stick to your mission, and stick to your values. If you can stick to your values and live your values every single day, then you're going to continue to do the next right thing.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:16:22] We're also very much of a human centered firm. What that means is, we understand who the stakeholders are for any given opportunity that we're working on, and we want to understand what their perspectives are, what are their needs. We do that with all of our clients. When you're working with a nonprofit, you talk to staff, you talk to board, you talk to funders, you talk to the beneficiaries of the nonprofit because you want to understand what exactly is working and where some of the challenges are, and you want to get the full picture of it all. Then everything you do is human centered in terms of what's driving you. What I often say is, lesson 3 or 4, do not fall in love with your own ideas. Do not fall in love with what you're doing. Stay consistent, consistently show up and do what you do and stay agile. Listen to what the clients are really saying, listen to the diversity of stakeholder voices that are really important. If you can do that for yourself just as much as we do it for our clients, that's the huge win. We continue to evolve this team, as we continue to strengthen our team and to deepen our team's talent. As we got larger engagements, as we got larger systems work, it was all a very logical set of choices we were making as a firm.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:17:42] The pandemic changed everything for us in many ways. One, it really helped us help the community because the community was in crisis. New Orleans is a tourism town, 80% of revenue for tourism. Suddenly the pandemic hits, and hotels and restaurants, the layoffs and the musicians and the cultural economy, it was all so challenged. We were able to take that moment, and we did a ton of pro-bono work. We're like, we're going to help you, we're going to stay focused, we're going to stay present, we're going to stay the course in terms of what we need to do as an organization, and we're going to help these organizations maximize this opportunity of transition. We're going to make sure these organizations feel like they are supported. In doing so, we were able not only to help the New Orleans community, but our reputation led us to help other communities as well around the country and helping different nonprofits and different organizations weather this pandemic. Whether it be in the hospitality space or across across the board. When you are facing a huge pandemic, the funders aren't necessarily going to be funding your programing because your programing isn't necessarily happening. So how do we help organizations reimagine how they do what they do in a very uncertain time?

Sara Sheehan: [00:19:05] There's no question, the pandemic really changed the rules for so many people. Hospitality was disproportionately affected overall, but take into consideration that there were 1 billion adults globally that were laid off during that time frame, and that data point alone, and that is from the Gallup organization, that is an absolutely shocking statistic that tells you how far ranging the economic downturn from the pandemic really was. Very compelling and interesting. Kevin, I'd love to hear, based on some of your comments, you've talked a little bit about the lessons that you've learned from building your business and the focus that you have in the nonprofit space. I can only imagine, from the efforts that you've taken to influence and impact others, that you've gotten a lot in return personally for the impact that you've made in your market. Can you share with me what the three most significant things you've gotten in return for the work that you've done with nonprofits?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:20:36] That's a great question. It is the most satisfying work that I've ever done. Let me be clear, I'm running a small consulting organization. I am not making nearly as much money as I made when I was in financial services. No one has heard of Trepwise until your reputation continues to grow. It's not Procter and Gamble and it's not Fidelity Investments, let's be clear. All of that criteria for me absolutely went away, yet I've never been happier and I've never been more satisfied with what we're doing. When I think about impact, I think about seeing our plans come to life and actually working. I see leaders, who we coach in terms for leadership and executive development and professional development, I see them thriving and I see them making choices, and I see them giving credit to what Trepwise has done in order to help support them. I think some of our biggest impact has been not only working within organizations to maximize their impact through planning work or through organizational effectiveness work, and to see organizations transform themselves, but I've also seen the impact of organizations working with each other. We have an interesting seat because we work with a lot of different organizations, both locally and nationally, and we've been able to introduce different organizations to each other to combine efforts to make even a bigger impact.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:22:11] What I've seen, and I didn't actually see it coming to be honest with you. Again, you need to be intentional, you need to make the choices. We do a lot of systems work, and systems work is, how can we address a community need collectively to ensure that we can get the outcomes that we're striving for. We are stronger together than we are alone. An example of that would be a plan that we did for the state of Louisiana two years ago called Whole Health Louisiana. What we did is, how can we address childhood adversity across the state? Let's understand what childhood adversity looks like. Let's talk about what trauma means. Let's understand what we need to do to identify trauma and childhood adversity. What do we need to do to help address it, and what do we ultimately need to do to help prevent it from happening going forward? If you think about it, we worked with over 100 organizations together, funded by the First Lady's office of the state. It was not a political office, it was the First Lady's foundation, Donna Edwards. We worked over a two year window to understand the space, understand the players, understand outcomes that we'd be looking for collectively, understand who would play what role within the system, understand the system leverage points that need to be shifted and need to be addressed, and then see it come to life.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:23:45] That is the work I am most proud of. If we can help move the needle in Louisiana when it comes to childhood welfare, that is a win beyond a win. People were in a room talking with each other, and we were facilitating conversations, and we were designing experiences where people could work together to come up with common solutions. Was 100% satisfied. Since then, we've done the youth master plan for New Orleans, how can we help opportunity to youth create pathways to success? We are doing the Vision of New Orleans plan, what is New Orleans going to look like in 2035 because of the work we've done here? We did the cultural economy plan in Houston. I often say New Orleans is a fantastic incubator because they've got lots of new ideas here, and we're very strong in culture and we're very strong in the arts, and we've got a lot of youth that need support. If you can manage it in New Orleans, you can manage it in other cities as well. Again, I didn't think this way when I started. I was like, I just want to see if I can help the community. I want to see if I can help these organizations. I loved what we did so much, it continued to grow.

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:00] It sounds like some of the things that you got in return were some incredible opportunities to dive into areas of interest that had even more impact in the community and the state. Very interesting and compelling, that's fascinating. I know that you are in the process of writing a book on intentionality, which is a very compelling and interesting leadership topic. I was wondering if you could share with me what your books through-line is.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:25:44] The idea is defining what an intentional career really is, and understanding the pathways that you are on and the choices that you are making, and ensuring that you are moving in a direction that you personally want to move into, and that you can control what you choose to do in your life. The minute you shift to an intentional concept, the more satisfied you're going to be, the more ownership you're going to feel, and the real outcomes that you're looking for are personal. You feel like you own your path and you can own the outcomes that you're able to achieve. It's not about the brand you're linked to, it's not about your title, it's not about your money. Those are all nice trappings, that's fine. I'm not going to minimize the importance of that in terms of people's ability to live a full life. I don't want anyone waking up one day and say, I've been on this path for 20 years, the path can go away. If you're not intentional, and you are living by someone else's rules, and you just keep doing the next right thing on this path and you keep excelling, fine. The path can go away. For example, in my situation, when we had the transaction with the firm in New York City, that was it. I stayed on for a little while, but I wasn't moving to New York City, and that was it.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:27:16] That path had a moment and it stopped. I could have hustled to get another job on the path and I could have jumped back in without thinking and just keep focused on what I had been doing, but I didn't want to. I took a moment to breathe, and I think that moment to breathe was the lever to say, you know what? Let me shift it. It's not what they want me to do. What do I want to do? Shifting your mindset to intentionality and to choice is so important, and it's never too late. I think the generation of my kids, perhaps, I think they tend to be more intentional. I think they are making choices because they want to do good in the world. I think this is slightly different with this younger generation. I think they want to work for organizations that are making a difference. Yes it's a paycheck, and yes they want to do well and they want to have benefits and all that, and they want to make a difference. I think if we can help this generation be intentional about their careers and the benefits that come with intentionality, then that's going to be the huge win.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:35] That's fascinating and very interesting. I'm very interested in exploring the book when it's available. When do you anticipate the book would come out?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:28:48] The goal is to have it completed in 2025. Hopefully halfway through, so the summer of 2025. We're aggressively working on it right now.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:56] Perfect, that's not very long at all. That's very exciting, excellent. So Kevin, what are three things that you would like to impact most by working with nonprofit clients?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:29:17] Are you referring to social impact work, or are you referring to what I want to help a client do?

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:23] I'm referring to, for instance, if it were an opportunity of your dreams and you could make a difference in these three areas, what would you like to do?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:29:40] The good news and the bad news is, society is not lacking in social issues. I love the idea of being able to help move the needle in different spaces. The cultural economy is so important to the fabric of New Orleans. What you find, you talk about our vision of a thriving and equitable community. Oftentimes who we call the culture bearers of the city, whether they be the Mardi Gras Indians, whether they be crews that dance in the Mardi Gras parades, often are featured as part of the tourism story, but don't necessarily benefit from the tourists coming here, they don't get compensated, but they draw the people here. How can we create a system that's so valued within New Orleans and help build out that economy, such that all culture bearers benefit from the tourism that comes here? That is not a unique idea, and that is not a unique issue. There are cultural assets across other cities that fall into that same area. There's also so much culture here in terms of the types of activities that New Orleans provides. How can we help coordinate that system to ensure that everyone's benefiting and that we're creating a major impact in the tourist space? I really love that work, I value that work. I know culture bearers in the city who are so passionate about this, and I just want to make sure that everyone can benefit from the tourism that comes into this city and the tourism that's generated by other cities as well. Mental health is a huge issue out there and our youth are suffering. We did the mental health work supporting Tulane at the university level and put together a significant plan that helps support the mental health challenges of youth within the university.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:31:37] Taking that concept, and we've been applying that to other schools as well because mental health is so important. How can we help move the needle on that space? Food access, food insecurity is a big deal. One of our first systems effort, I didn't even think of it as a system. I was like, how can we help these organizations coordinate? When the pandemic hit, people were going hungry, and the city and FEMA and the Greater New Orleans Foundation came together and said, we need to create a process that all these restaurants that we have, a ton of restaurants that we have per capita, more than any other city in the country, all the food that they had on the shelf, what can we do to help them make meals and distribute that through a system to the people who needed them most in New Orleans, and how can FEMA help support this? It was an economic challenge to say, we need to build a system. Although I didn't use those fancy words back then, we just need to help these organizations coordinate. We stepped in like we did with a normal organization. Instead of working within an organization, we began working across organizations. FEMA was involved and the Greater New Orleans Foundation was involved, and the cities were involved, and the end users were there, and we did it quickly.

Sara Sheehan: [00:32:57] Those are three really compelling areas. You're talking about success of the cultural ecosystem in your market, you're talking about food insecurity is huge, and mental health is absolutely a giant area to make a big impact. Those are pretty tremendous. It sounds like that you might have something else on your mind there, you were about to share something else. Was there something else in that space that you wanted to share?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:33:35] Oftentimes when I was in financial services, you were able to say, I did this. I built this organization or I helped manage this money or whatever the claim might be. Almost heroic in a way, but not truly by any means. I look at this work that we're doing now, the work that I've chosen to do, and I realized, you know what, we're going to help move the needle. We are not going to solve this problem, and we need to be okay with that. We need to be okay with the idea that we're here to help coordinate, we're here to help maximize the impact of any given organization, and we need to be comfortable with the incremental concept. As opposed to, I'm going to solve world hunger. That's a fantastic claim to make, and that's a fantastic goal to have, but I think you need to be more realistic with this work. We need to continue to move the needle, we will never, ever be done, and being okay with that. It's not about the problems of solving something, it's about the ability to help move things forward.

Sara Sheehan: [00:34:46] Very much so. Moving something forward and being patient, sometimes you can have an even bigger result if you are patient. When you move too fast or you're doing something that may not have a good strategy or vision behind it, you may not have, what I would call, a path to success that you would have if you were just a little bit more patient. It may not be a straight line.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:35:27] Never, and being okay with that is key.

Sara Sheehan: [00:35:30] Exactly. I'd love to hear from you, Kevin, if you could influence other businesses or business leaders out in the world to do one thing in the nonprofit sector, what would that be?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:35:49] That's a great question. I want to go back to my comment about this current generation of workers want meaning in their life. They want to work with organizations that can provide meaning, both through the work they do for the core premise of the organization as well as the social impact it can do. In fact, studies would show that people will take less salary if they feel they're working with an organization that's trying to do good in the community. That's the framing. There's a motivation for organizations to want to do good. It's not necessarily about the profit that they can make all the time, it's more about that triple bottom line of trying to do some social good at the same time. I would encourage organizations to find their passion. What is their philanthropic strategy? What do they want to do to give back? Question number one, do you want to give back? Is that something that is important? Some organizations might be like, I got to focus on other things. I would argue that baked into your fundamentals needs to be this concept of giving back. Let's understand what you can do as an organization from a philanthropic strategy. Choose what you want to do and where you want to make a difference.

Kevin Wilkins: [00:37:07] Then encourage your employees and encourage your leadership team to look at the time, look at their talent, look at their treasure, and see what they can do to help support the issue that you, as an organization, want to make an impact on. Then finally, align vision with the actual work. If your vision is A, B and C, your vision to reimagine the world, if you're a technology company. Cool, let's reimagine the world, we can use technology, and then we want to create a cultural literacy class that helps individuals learn how to use technology and create pathways for them to build a career in technology. You're aligning with your vision, but you are doing something that's really good and strategically in line. That's one approach, or you can survey your employee base and say, where is the energy right now? Is the energy in climate, is the energy in food access? Then build programs around where that energy is. For Trepwise, we have this program called 'Trepwork for Good', and it was established because I, during the pandemic, we did a ton of pro bono work. I saw the benefit of it, and I never want people to be priced out of what we can do. We have a 'Trepwork for Good' platform where we were able to choose every quarter, two engagements that we can help maximize their impact.

Sara Sheehan: [00:38:36] That's phenomenal. It creates that cycle, the pay-it-forward cycle I like to say, which I absolutely love. I love doing it on an individual level and I love doing it in the marketplace, it's very compelling. So Kevin, are there any other big goals or aspirations that you are currently working on accomplishing that we haven't talked about today?

Kevin Wilkins: [00:39:07] Not really. Continuing to lead and manage this growing firm and making sure that we're making the right choices in terms of the work that we're doing, I think is super important. I do want to complete the book and get that done on time and have it be impactful and relevant.

Sara Sheehan: [00:39:25] Wonderful. Well, Kevin, I can't thank you enough for our conversation today. I think that business leaders and businesses can make a bigger difference in the marketplace if they just consider how they are impacting others and how they would like to impact others in a more significant way. Thank you so much for your time today, Kevin.

Sara Sheehan: [00:39:27] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. My conversation with Kevin Wilkins is filled with interesting and remarkable insights. In today's episode, Kevin sheds light on the importance of intentionality in your life choices and shares his insights on fostering meaningful work that benefits the community. Here are three key takeaways from our discussion. First, intentional pathways. Kevin emphasizes the significance of making deliberate choices that align with personal values and the broader goal of making a positive impact. He discusses how younger generations are increasingly driven by the desire to contribute to societal good through their work. Second, philanthropic strategies in business. He encourages organizations to integrate philanthropic efforts into core values and align these initiatives with their vision by focusing on the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. Businesses can create lasting community impacts. This approach also enhances employee satisfaction even when salaries might be lower. Third, focus on incremental progress in nonprofits. Kevin shares insights into how nonprofit work is often about incremental progress and coordination, rather than solving all the problems outright. He talks about supporting culture bearers, addressing mental health in educational institutions, and tackling food insecurity through collaborative efforts. This episode is a must listen for anyone interested in creating a meaningful and sustainable nonprofit business path. No matter what sector you're working in, if you want to make an impact on your community, you can do it. Tune in and explore Kevin's remarkable journey and his insights. Thanks so much for listening today, subscribe and never miss an episode.

Sara Sheehan examines how to create a positive company culture based on guidance from Daniel Coyle’s book The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. She identifies the three fundamental skills that Coyle singles out as key to sustaining a strong organizational culture - building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose - and discusses how each skill improves team performance when implemented.  

Sara gets in-depth into how each of the three skills affects company culture for the better. Building safety allows teams to perform well because their members feel safe, connected, and supported. Sharing vulnerability may seem counterintuitive to high performance but Sara reveals that in truth it leads to deeper trust. Establishing a purpose comes through sharing a defined mission and values. Everyone should feel guided by a clear and shared understanding of why they do the work they do.

Far from being merely theoretical, Sara shares how these foundational skills would look in operation through the example of a fictional company putting them into practice. She then follows up with real-world success stories from an unnamed client of hers. Having already used these skills to guide real clients to better results, Sara’s sharing of Coyle’s book and examination of what it means in practice becomes an invaluable tool for unifying companies into a positive culture.

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Resources discussed in this episode:

• “The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups” by Daniel Coyle

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

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Transcript: 

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'll be sharing a monologue message with you on creating a positive workplace culture. Over the course of my career, the number of companies with toxic workplaces has increased dramatically. There are three key skills that leaders can build to develop and sustain a strong workplace culture. Building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose. This month, I'll be talking about building a positive company culture and the insights from 'The Culture Code' by Daniel Coyle. This book provides a wonderful guide for how to address and create a great place to work. Building a positive company culture, key insights from 'The Culture Code'. In 'The Culture Code', Daniel Coyle explores the secrets behind the success of highly productive teams, emphasizing that effective group culture is not a fixed attribute, but rather a dynamic living process. Based on extensive research and visits to eight of the world's most successful groups, Coyle identifies three fundamental skills that leaders can cultivate to create and sustain a strong organizational culture. Building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose. In this talk, we will break down these key points, illustrate their practical applications, and offer concrete steps for implementing them in the workplace to foster a positive and thriving company culture.

Sara Sheehan: [00:02:10] First of all, building safety, creating a sense of belonging. The first step toward developing a positive organizational culture is fostering a deep sense of safety within the group. High-performing teams excel when their members feel safe, connected, and supported. They feel like they belong, and this sense of belonging encourages them to contribute their best efforts without fear of exclusion or judgment. Key concepts here include belonging cues. These are subtle signals that people send and receive and social interactions reinforce the message you are safe here and you belong. This can include eye contact, physical proximity, tone of voice, and active listening. Connection and support. Teams that thrive are ones where individuals feel they have each other's backs. There is an implicit understanding that everyone is part of a tight-knit unit working towards a shared goal. Some practical tips for building safety. Create inclusive environments. Leaders should actively create spaces where everyone's voice is heard, regularly soliciting feedback and input from all team members builds a sense of inclusion and value. Focus on nonverbal communication. Small, consistent acts of nonverbal communication can reinforce safety. For example, leaders who make eye contact, nod during conversations, and lean in while listening create an atmosphere where team members feel acknowledged and respected. Celebrate collaboration. Recognize and celebrate not only individual successes, but also collaborative efforts. This shows that teamwork is valued and that the company recognizes and prioritizes group over individual glory.

Sara Sheehan: [00:04:42] Second, sharing vulnerability. Building trust through mutual risks. The second foundational skill in Coyle's framework is sharing vulnerability. High-performing teams do not shy away from vulnerability but embrace it as a path to deeper trust. This involves leaders and team members being open about their weaknesses, uncertainties, and challenges, fostering an environment where trust can thrive. Key concepts here include leaders setting the example. Leadership plays a crucial role in modeling vulnerability. When leaders acknowledge mistakes, ask for help, or admit when they don't have all the answers, they may signal to the team that it's okay to be imperfect. Mutual risks. Teams that perform well together often do so because they take risks together. This collective risk-taking builds resilience, trust, and a willingness to cooperate in times of uncertainty. Some practical steps to share vulnerability. Model vulnerability as a leader. Share personal challenges and lessons from failure with the team. This creates a ripple effect, encouraging others to do the same and building a culture of transparency. Encourage open dialog. Create regular forums where employees can openly share struggles and ask for help. Whether it's a weekly meeting or an anonymous platform, provide spaces where vulnerability is seen as a strength, not a liability. Promote cross-functional teamwork. Working across departments on shared projects can encourage team members to embrace vulnerability. When employees step out of their comfort zones to collaborate with others, they grow to rely on their peers, deepening trust.

Sara Sheehan: [00:07:05] Third, establishing purpose. Defining a shared mission and values. The third key ingredient to a positive company culture is establishing a strong sense of purpose. High-performing teams are guided by a clear and shared understanding of why they are doing the work they do. This shared mission creates alignment and motivation, allowing the team to work with passion and commitment. Key concepts here include defining the why. A strong purpose is a vivid motivational story that gives meaning to the team's work. It answers the question, why are we here, and what are we working toward? Purpose as a compass. When challenges arise, a well-defined purpose serves as a guiding light, helping teams stay focused and motivated. Teams with a clear purpose are more likely to view obstacles as opportunities for growth rather than setbacks. Practical steps to establish purpose. Craft a compelling vision statement. Leaders should invest time in creating and communicating a vision that resonates with the entire team. This vision should inspire, align with the company's values, and be revisited often. Link daily tasks to the bigger picture. Employees are more engaged when they understand how their day-to-day work contributes to the organization's larger goals. Managers should regularly connect with team achievements to the overarching mission. Foster storytelling. Share stories that exemplify the company's purpose in action. These stories should come from customer feedback, significant project milestones, or examples of employees going above and beyond to embody the organization's values.

Sara Sheehan: [00:09:34] Now, I'd like to share a practical example of applying the culture code in real life through a hypothetical example. We'll call the company 'Innovate Tech', and it applies the three principles to cultivate a strong culture. Step one: building safety. Innovate Tech begins by redesigning its physical office layout to encourage open communication and collaboration. The company also implements regular check-ins where every employee has an opportunity to speak. Leaders are trained to actively listen, give feedback, and use nonverbal cues that reinforce safety, such as eye contact and attentive body language. Over time, employees start feeling more secure and valued. Step two sharing vulnerability. The CEO of Innovate Tech sets the tone by openly discussing a recent mistake they made in a project meeting. This admission sparks a company-wide initiative where employees are encouraged to share lessons learned from failures. Innovate Tech adopts a practice called 'Failure Fridays', where employees present a failed project and what they learn from it. The vulnerability increases trust within teams and accelerates problem-solving. Step three establishes purpose. The leadership team at Innovate Tech revised its mission statement to emphasize how the company's innovative products help improve people's lives. They communicate this mission during all-hands meetings, where customer success stories are shared to remind employees of the company's impact. The company also decorates its office with posters highlighting its purpose, constantly reminding employees why their work matters.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:47] Now let's take a look at a real client example whose name will be protected. This is a recent client that I worked with, and I supported them in creating behavior change plans based on these principles, their desired business outcomes, and key metrics that will help staff adopt new ways of working. Building safety. The client needs to support staff in moving beyond fear to courage and empower them through training so that everyone has a baseline competency in their functional area. The client is planning training across several functional sub-teams that will help them create a level playing field, encouraging employees to take action on a daily basis. Additionally, recommendations included guidance for the functional executive to complete a listening tour to hear the needs and concerns of all employees on a very personal level. Sharing vulnerability. The client set a goal to continuously improve processes, learn from past experience, and use metrics to track performance on a monthly basis. This will involve creating new habits, habit stacking, and sharing results with the team. These actions will certainly provide opportunities for leaders and staff to get vulnerable about how it's going in a personal and a team level. When you choose to get vulnerable and let your staff experiment with new approaches, you will build trust over time. Establishing purpose. The leadership and staff needed a reason to work together on problems with a shared purpose. One approach they will be implementing will be the creation of a two-solution culture. When an employee raises a concern or business problem to a leader, the leader's response will be, let's schedule time on the calendar to discuss this further and bring two solutions to the problem so we can explore the best solution to implement together. This ensures more staff opportunities to work with leaders on a shared purpose and breaks down barriers that were once impermeable.

Sara Sheehan: [00:14:26] In conclusion, building culture with intention. 'The Culture Code' offers valuable insights into how organizations can intentionally craft positive and productive cultures. The three key principles, building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose, serve as a blueprint for leaders seeking to create high-performing teams by fostering an environment where employees feel safe, supported, and aligned around a common goal. Companies can unlock the full potential of their workforce and drive sustained success. Building a strong company culture is not an overnight process. It requires commitment, consistency, and, above all, a willingness to lead by example. By implementing these principles, leaders can build an environment where people feel empowered to do their best work, collaborate meaningfully, and move toward shared success. As always, subscribe so you never miss an episode. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Sara Sheehan: [00:15:50] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode on creating a positive workplace culture. The key takeaways from the podcast today include, first, build safety. Creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels safe, supported, and valued is the foundation of a positive culture. Second, share vulnerability. Foster deep trust within your team by embracing and modeling vulnerability. This encourages openness and strengthens resilience. Third, establish purpose. Define and communicate a shared mission that aligns with your company's values. A clear purpose fuels passion and commitment. Building a strong culture is an ongoing journey, but with intention, consistency, and a willingness to lead by example, it's absolutely achievable. As always, subscribe and never miss an episode. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Sara Sheehan focuses on change management in this episode, stressing that CEOs in today’s fast-paced business world must view change not as an exception but as an expectation. Managing the changes facing an organization, whether it be a digital transformation or a large-scale merger, is the crucial element that makes or breaks the success of the endeavour. Sara outlines why mastering change management is so vital and how to approach prioritizing that management. 

Research from McKinsey & Company reveals that approximately 70% of large-scale transformation projects fail to achieve their goals and one of the primary reasons is a lack of focus on the human side of change. Effective internal change management empowers the humans of the organization to lead the change, rather than relying on external consultants. Sara explores the most critical steps in mastering change management by sharing a 9-step approach for every CEO to consider. 

Speaking from expertise and knowledge, Sara names the 9 steps: 1) Establish the groundwork. 2) Secure the right resources and build the team. 3) Engage and align stakeholders. 4) Create a robust change network. 5) Assess and prep the ground. 6) Create the vision and plan messaging. 7) Mitigate business impacts. 8) Cultivate behavioral change. 9) Empower talent and execute strategy. Sara explains in detail how each step benefits an organization’s transformation and allows the CEO to build a sustainable change with minimal disruption.

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

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Transcript:

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hello, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I would like to cover a key topic that is near and dear to my heart, and that is my course which I am pivoting to offer a self-paced option rather than attending a live cohort that is either private for one client or an open enrollment opportunity. I definitely have heard from interested participants that they would prefer a self-paced option, and as luck would have it, ACMP decided to offer the self-paced option to qualified education providers, and they allowed them to submit their course design for approval and submission for offering a self-paced option. I was approved within a week of submitting my application, and I'm in the process of setting up the self-paced option in Kajabi, along with updating my website right now.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:32] In terms of today's message, I really want to talk about why mastering change management is so important and why, as a CEO of a leading company, you may be taking your company through a major and challenging project. Whether it's a digital transformation, a large-scale merger, or a new operating model. There's always that one crucial element that often makes or breaks the success of your endeavor, which is change management. Today's message will outline the compelling reasons CEOs need to address adoption early, and the context of a sound plan. Truly, this is a message about a strategic imperative for CEOs that are navigating major projects. In today's fast-paced business world, change is not an exception, but an expectation. Organizations that can effectively navigate change are the ones that not only survive, but thrive. Yet, as a CEO leading a company through, yes, your next major challenging project, whether it's a digital transformation, a large-scalelong-term merger or a new operating model, the one crucial element that often makes or breaks the success of the endeavor is change management. When leading a project that requires widespread adoption, the focus is not solely on implementing a solution or process. The real challenge lies in securing buy-in, shifting organizational behaviors, and building internal capabilities that will enable your team to manage change effectively long after the initial project is complete. Change management is no longer a nice-to-have competency. For organizations undergoing significant transformations, it's a strategic imperative. Today's message will outline why mastering change management is essential for CEO's overseeing major projects, and how building this capability across the organization can drive sustained success.

Sara Sheehan: [00:04:20] Why CEOs should prioritize change management. As a leader of your organization, you already understand that projects involving sweeping changes, whether cultural, technological or operational, come with really high stakes. The success or failure of these initiatives can shape your company's future in profound ways. Here's why change management needs to be at the forefront of your strategy. First, projects often fail without effective change management. The statistics are staggering from research by McKinsey & Company, that indicates approximately 70% of large-scale transformation projects fail to achieve their intended goals. One of the primary reasons, a lack of focus on the human side of change. When employees don't understand why a change is happening, resist it, or aren't equipped to manage the transition, even the best laid plans can unravel. Second, change management is a long term investment. Building change management capability in your organization is not just about the immediate project, it's about setting up your team for long term success. Effective change management ensures that your people can adapt to future changes, helping your company remain agile in a constantly evolving business landscape. Third, it protects organizational culture. Large projects often disrupt existing processes, hierarchies, and even organizational culture. Without proper management of these changes, you risk alienating employees and creating a culture of resistance. A strong change management approach ensures that transitions are smooth and aligned with your company's values. Fostering a culture that embraces rather than resists change. Fourth, building organizational capability reduces dependency on consultants. Many organizations lean heavily on external consultants to manage change during large projects. While this can provide temporary relief, it often leads to long term dependency. Instead, by investing in internal change management capabilities, you empower your own people to lead change, reducing reliance on outside support and driving down costs over time.

Sara Sheehan: [00:07:18] The critical steps of mastering change management. To effectively master change management, it's essential to break it down into manageable steps. A comprehensive approach can be boiled down to 9 key steps. In the first phase of mastering change management, it involves laying a solid foundation for your change initiatives. This is where you align your leadership team, define clear objectives, and ensure that the right resources are in place. First, establish the groundwork. Change management begins long before the first meeting or implementation. As a CEO, it's vital to create an environment where change is understood and accepted as a part of a company's DNA. This involves clarifying the strategic importance of the project and setting expectations from the top down. Second, secure the right resources and build the team. Assembling the right change management team is critical. This group should include leaders from across the organization who can champion the change within their respective departments or functions. The team must possess not just technical expertise, but also strong interpersonal and leadership skills. They need to be trusted voices who can rally their teams and communicate the benefits of the change clearly. Third, engage and align stakeholders. Stakeholder buy-in is non-negotiable. It's essential to engage both internal and external resources early in the process, ensuring that their concerns are heard and addressed. Create a stakeholder map, assess their levels of influence and interest, and ensure that your engagement strategy is built around transparent, consistent communication. Once the foundation is set, the second phase focuses on ensuring the organization is prepared and equipped to manage the changes that lie ahead. Effective communication and readiness assessments are key components of this phase.

Sara Sheehan: [00:09:43] Fourth, create a robust change network. A change network refers to a group of employees within the organization who will help facilitate change on the ground. These change agents are often not formal leaders, but are influential peers who can help ease concerns, answer questions, and foster enthusiasm. A strong change network acts as an internal support system that drives momentum. Fifth, assess and prep the ground. Before executing any major change, it's critical to assess the organization's readiness. This includes understanding how prepared your teams are, where resistance might occur, and identifying areas that may require additional support. Readiness assessments help CEOs and change leaders identify roadblocks before they derail the project. Sixth, create the vision and plan messaging. A compelling vision is a cornerstone of any successful change initiative. The key here is crafting a message that resonates with employees at all levels of the organization. The message must be clear. Why is this change happening? How does it benefit the company and the individual? As CEO, your role is not only to craft the vision, but to embody it in all communications and actions. The final phase focuses on the execution of the change management strategy in ensuring that the organizational impacts are managed effectively.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:30] Seventh, mitigate business impacts. Unexpected business impacts will arise during execution. As CEO, you need to anticipate and address these dynamics, adjusting strategies and resources as necessary. Flexibility during execution is key. Change plans should be adaptable to ensure they remain relevant in evolving business conditions. Eighth, cultivate behavioral change. Changing organizational behaviors is often the most challenging part of the process. This is where leadership development and training come into play. Employees need to not only understand the new processes, but also be motivated to adopt new behaviors. Creating a culture that rewards adaptation and continuous learning is essential. Ninth, empower talent and execute strategy. Finally, your team's talent is your greatest asset in driving change. Empowering your workforce through training, leadership development and mentoring ensures that they have the skills and confidence to execute the strategy. Remember, change management isn't about executing a project, it's about equipping your team to manage future changes with minimal disruption.

Sara Sheehan: [00:13:03] The role of CEOs in leading change. As CEO, your role in mastering change management is not just strategic, it's deeply personal. Your employees look to you for leadership, guidance and reassurance. By embedding change management as a core capability in your organization, you ensure that your team is prepared for the current project and equipped to tackle future challenges head on. Building an internal capability in change management creates a sustainable competitive advantage. It empowers your leaders and employees to take ownership of change, reduces dependency on external consultants, and fosters a culture of resilience and adaptability. In an ever evolving business world, mastering change management is no longer optional. It's the key to staying competitive, fostering innovation and ensuring the long term success of your organization. The question is, are you ready to lead your team through the change that will shape your company's future? As always, please share your thoughts in the comments.

Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Sid Mohasseb, the "Entrepreneur Philosopher." Sid is a twice-bestselling author of two books: 'You Are Not Them: The Authentic Entrepreneur's Way,' and The Caterpillar's Edge: Evolve, Evolve Again and Thrive in Business.' He is also a university professor at both engineering and business schools. A two-time TED speaker, an advisor to Fortune 500 leaders, and an innovation thought leader who has built multiple companies and invested in many more. 

Sid and Sara Sheehan explore and discuss many interesting mindset issues facing entrepreneurs today, both in business and in life in general. Using the analogy of a caterpillar's transformation into a butterfly, Sid illustrates how gradual evolution is the key to personal and professional growth—change doesn’t happen overnight. Sid also explores the employer-employee relationship and the novel approach called the "whole life balance", where understanding the reasons behind employees' decisions takes precedence over a narrow focus on outcomes. His insights highlight how the mindset shapes how we define success, approach risks, and navigate leadership challenges. Sara Sheehan and Sid also emphasize the importance of self-awareness, trust, and listening as foundations for success in all areas of life.

Sid also shares his plans to launch an academy aimed at fostering personal development and entrepreneurial growth. This new venture will feature short videos on topics like fear, resilience, and finding one's reasons, designed to provoke thought and inspire continuous improvement. Sid invites listeners to join him on this journey of transformation and to stay connected for future updates on the academy’s progress.

About Sid Mohasseb

From a very young age, Sid learned not to leave change to chance. At 7, he learned to be self-sufficient in treating the genetic blood disorder (Hemophilia) he suffered from. At 14, he learned to balance intellect and humility and published his first book of poetry. At 16, he convinced his parents that his future must be shaped in America and migrated to the US without his family. Working through engineering school, he learned that self-sufficiency begins with selflessness; to succeed one must be able to continually deliver value to friends, family and society.

Embracing his entrepreneurial talents, at 21, Sid started and exited his first company while at college. Pursuing his curiosity about the purpose of life, he explored various spiritual and philosophical schools of thought. At 25, he taught comparative Eastern and Western philosophy. Sid’s professional career was built on being a trusted advisor. At 27, he became the youngest partner of a national management consulting firm serving Fortune 500 clients.

Early in his career, Sid realized that trust, flexibility, agility and authenticity are the cornerstones of progress. During the next three decades, he supported large-scale acquisitions, and acted as the principal investor and operator in company turnarounds. As a serial entrepreneur, Sid founded and led several early-stage and hyper-growth companies from inception to acquisition. Many times over, he shouldered the responsibility for meeting payroll and wrote checks to acquire or invest in companies; learning to think both like an investor and a founder; facing, accepting, and overcoming his share of failures and successes in ideas and ventures. Along the way, Sid learned that the wounds of failures are the pathways to our next best version. 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• You Are Not Them: The Authentic Entrepreneur's Way by Sid Mohasseb
• The Caterpillar’s Edge by Sid Mohasseb
• “From Reason to Profit” Forbes Article by Sid Mohasseb

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Sid Mohasseb | The Entrepreneur Philosopher:

• Website: caterpillaredge.com
• Instagram: SidMohasseb
• X: SidMohasseb
• Linkedin: Sid Mohasseb

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Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there. I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'm joined by Sid Mohasseb, who is known as the Entrepreneur Philosopher. Sid is a twice bestselling author of two books: 'You Are Not Them: The Authentic Entrepreneur's Way', and The Caterpillar's Edge: Evolve, Evolve Again and Thrive in Business'. He is a university professor at both engineering and business schools. A two time TED speaker, an advisor to Fortune 500 leaders, and an innovation thought leader who has built multiple companies and invested in many more. He is a frequent contributor to Forbes, Time, Newsweek, USA Today, Fox, Independent, Foreign Policy, Globe, London School of Economics and Harvard Business Review. Thank you so much, Sid, for joining me today and being willing to invest your valuable time in a fruitful discussion.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:01:19] I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy to also thank the folks that are going to be listening to us to have invested their time in listening to both of us.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:30] Excellent. And so, Sid, where I'd like to start today is with your book, 'You are Not Them: The Authentic Entrepreneurs Way'. Such an interesting read. One of the most important things to do in exploring the book is to create your personal entrepreneurship philosophy and have a self-aware, growth oriented mindset, like a sculptor that's shaping a great work of art in yourself. Mindset really is key in all we do in business and in life. Can you tell me, Sid, how has mindset helped you create your businesses?

Sid Mohasseb: [00:02:21] Sara, what we don't realize when we're doing what we're doing is that it is really our mindset that's directing us. We often think it may be the environment, the situation, the education, luck, but it's truly on the back. What drives us, what positions us to be successful or to accomplish things is how we think about things. What do we define as success? What do we define as satisfaction? How do we look at risk? How do we look at building an ecosystem that involves others? All of those things. How do we lead? How do we follow? How do we create trust? All of those things are part of our mindset and our approach to things. And while we're not necessarily aware of it, we are applying our mindset and the way we think and the way we look at ourselves and our future and what we can accomplish or what we cannot accomplish is involved in our progress. A few things become important. For example, if I believe that I can be LeBron James and I'm five foot three, that is a foolish belief. I cannot. I'm not tall enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not young enough. So when we talk about mindset and how it helps us evolve is, one of the elements is being anchored in reality.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:03:58] That doesn't mean that I can't own a basketball team. It doesn't mean that I can't have enough money to bring in LeBron James to sit in my living room or play in my court back there. We can, it just doesn't mean that I can accomplish things that are not accomplishable. So the mindset that we talk about is based on an analysis of the realities of life, the probabilities of success, and our ability to evolve. I use the analogy of caterpillars a lot because they turn into butterflies. Now, if a caterpillar thinks that, first of all, it can sleep overnight and, boom, it's going to be a butterfly, it doesn't happen. Some caterpillars, it takes 14 years for them to become, in the amazon and some part of the world, usually they go through 4 or 5 stages of growth to become what it is. So if I am a caterpillar and I imagine that, first, overnight I can become a butterfly, it's a foolish thing for me to believe. Second, if I think that I can sleep and tomorrow morning I'll be a racehorse or I'll be an eagle, that's also foolish to believe. We evolve in certain ways, in mindset, in actions and structure. And that's what makes us, as you mentioned, the sculptor and the sculpture. We are both the art and the artist. And none of us are without flaw. So the idea of an artist is, sometimes you draw something, it just doesn't look good. So it's okay. We sculpt something and it's our next best version that we thought. It may not be the best version, there's always a better version. So we're always in this pursuit of creating the next best version of ourselves.

Sara Sheehan: [00:06:06] If you're willing to sharpen the saw and continue to refine that work of art.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:06:12] And that doesn't mean that the previous art was bad. This is not an admission of guilt. We are exploring. We are an artist. We draw things, we sculpt things, and as we do it, sometimes it's a little bit crooked and we fix it. And sometimes that crookedness becomes part of who we are. And that's the beauty of it. That's what makes us, us. Those are the things that makes us unique. The key is, if you are aware that it is your mindset that drives you places, now a lot more things are in your control.

Sara Sheehan: [00:06:53] Being self-aware is the first step, because if you realize how you're interacting and affecting others, you can fine tune what you're doing.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:07:07] You can, it's in your control. I use an analogy, I'll say, hey, if you take two points, any two points, and you draw a line from point A to point B, mathematically, between these two points, there are infinite points. If you draw a line, on this line there are infinite points. Now, if I move the lines and I say, okay, here's A, here's B, let's have a point C in between, there's still infinite lines between A and C, and C and B. If you take those A and B points, and you say that's the time we're born and that's the time we die, there are infinite points in between. At any point, 8 years old, 18 years old, or 80 years old, we have an equal number of instances behind us, infinite, than we have ahead of us, infinite. And each one of those allows us to make a decision to change, to evolve, to take a path. Now, our options may be different, but there are infinite options. There are infinite instances at any given time, at any age, in front of us, that we can make a choice. We are the artist that can, at any given point, change the direction of their art. You don't like classic? Go a different direction. You're completely in charge. There is nothing stopping us from being who we can be.

Sara Sheehan: [00:08:40] That is absolutely beautiful, Sid. I'd like to pivot, if we can, from talking about 'You Are Not Them', to chat about the concept of 'From Reason to Profit', which you've written about this concept, particularly in an article that I read on The Hill. There's an excerpt from the article that I would like to ground our conversation on before I pose a question, if I may. "By focusing on reasons, motivations and causes that lead to consequences, effects, and eventually profits, businesses shift their focus from controlling outcomes to aligning with world class talent and opportunities. They learn to embrace the give and take of value exchanges and understand the nuances each relationship requires. Sid also proposes that we should ditch the concept of work-life balance, and embrace whole life balance, in recognition of the great importance employees have on an enterprise's success." Sid, can you elaborate on the reason to profit framework and why whole life balance is so very important today?

Sid Mohasseb: [00:10:05] The the article you're referring to is focused on one of the five pillars, which is the employees. The other four pillars that hold up an organization, any organization, are customers, partners, investors, and society. And the fifth one is the employees. Each one of those pillars involve people, and they make decisions based on the exchange that they receive. Somebody makes an investment in a situation, it may be because they like the owner, it may be they like the cause. Maybe they like the dividends, or maybe they like that it has the opportunity of giving them ten x money. A partner, a supply chain place, works with the company because they think you pay on time, because they think that you give them enough business, because they like you, because they're the same affiliation politically as you are. They give you the stuff because your brand is important, they can put it on their sign. The same thing happens to customers. Customers actually make the decision of buying things from you. We are fooled to think, as companies, that we sell. In reality, they buy. As a company, we have zero decision. Zero. No decision at all in a purchase. So if we have no decision, we are not generating revenue. They are generating revenue. We are not generating, they are giving us revenue. So what that means is, it's the decision that they make that drives an outcome which is our revenue. So the thing to focus on, is their decision. The same thing happens with employees and it's often ignored. Companies believe that they give people a job. Here's $100,000. Here's $80,000. Here's $27.50 an hour, something. And here's your job, you clean this and that, you quote this and that, you manage these five people, there's a job description.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:12:19] The assumption is that we have made a pack, but the employee who accepts that $100,000 or $50,000, or whatever the number and job description is, in their mind, have a series of reasonings for accepting that. 'Rent is due.' 'I want to move to California and this gives me the opportunity to do that.' 'Oh, they have options, maybe the options would turn out to be something interesting.' 'This is a good company to have on my resume.' 'They have good benefits and I have a son who is sick.' They, in their mind, accept what that employment term is based on their reasonings, not based on our reasoning. They never said, 'I'm going to bring my best creativity and innovation to the table at 3:00 in the morning.' We may accept that. We may expect it as an employer, but that's not why they did it. They did it based on their own terms. The idea is that there are decisions outside of a company's control that are really driving the revenue and the profit that the company makes. They are driving the innovation within the company. They're driving the revenue and the profit that comes in. Every ask, they're driving the quality of the company because of the supply chain folks. They're driving how they can get more investments and grow the company. It is the reasons that drive our success. So the idea is, we need to focus on those reasons. When you focus on revenue and profit, you're focusing on an outcome that happens in a quarter. You're not focusing on what drives that profit or revenue. It is the cause that we have to focus on, not the effect. If the decision of revenue, if the decision of creativity, productivity is in the hands of the employee, we can measure that they were not productive at the end of a quarter, but then that's an outcome. We're not focusing on the reason that drives that outcome. And if we focus on the reasons, we would be able to do a much better job. That actually drives what our culture may be. We can't satisfy everybody's reasons. So we are able to drive, we are able to satisfy certain types of people with the certain types of reasons. This is a place good for people who look for stability and benefits. This is a place where people who are looking for massive growth through options. If we can harmonize those kind of reasons by people, we then automatically have a culture of people that think alike.

Sara Sheehan: [00:15:12] That's right. Whole life balance, for you, it sounds like you're really taking your employees' desires and wants into consideration, and you are motivating everyone to be part of the results and outcomes equation.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:15:37] Let me correct a few things, by the way. I want to go back to your pivot comment that you made, because that's a pet peeve of mine. Let's look at this. I am not motivating anybody. They are motivating themselves because of who they are. This notion that I am empowering people to do something, I am not. Who am I to have the power? They have the entire creativity power. It's in their mind. It's in their ability. I just have to, as a company, facilitate their growth. The notion that the company drives innovation, the company doesn't. There is one thing that people say, 'you have to belong to the company.' That's how the culture is built. Have a sense of belonging. You can't belong to a company, the company has to belong to a series of people. And that puts the power of creativity and innovation where it belongs, which is in the hands of the people who are creative, who at 3:00 in the morning, get up, think of things, do things, believe things, drive things, accomplish things. The notion that we believe as a company is something that's been driven to us because we look at profits at the end of the year, and Wall Street has pushed that to us. That's nonsense. If you look at all great companies, they were built on people being creative. Here's the other thing. Let's talk about this whole-life and balanced life. By saying that I have to have balance, you are saying that these are two equal part things, and you're telling me that I, at home, I am a different person, than I am at work. So you're actually promoting bipolar behavior? I've got to be this at home, and I've got to be this at work, and I'm two different people? Nonsense. I'm the same person. I'm as much creative when I'm having breakfast at home, that I could be thinking about my wife having a problem when I'm at work?

Sara Sheehan: [00:17:47] That's very fair.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:17:50] I am one person. And if you force me, and you say there's equal parts to my life, that's nonsense. What I have to do is look at it as a harmonized process. If I don't like what I'm doing, let's search for something that I belong to and I like to do it. It's like, let's have people not pass red lights when they're driving. So as opposed to having people not pass red lights and we create a culture of people not passing red lights, we're putting a cop on every corner to catch them. We're saying, hey, let's have a work-life balance. This is this and this is this because people can't harmonize. Well, let's create an environment where they can harmonize and they're much better at what they would do. We work to exchange what we do to have our kids happy. So now, let's keep the kids away, and this is what I do over here. And this is what happens after 20 years, they say, hey, I haven't seen my father because they didn't know what their father was doing, because they were balancing and separating the pieces of life. We are one person, every one of us. Part of us is work, part of us is home, part of us is our parents, part of us is our failure, part of us is accomplishments. All of that makes us, us. Not the outcome. Success isn't that I had two homes or three of these or four of these. That's a nonsensical thing that we have developed, that's been embedded in us. That success. Success is a social defined element. What is important is satisfaction. Satisfaction is when you and I are satisfied.

Sara Sheehan: [00:19:42] And it's the process.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:19:44] Success is when somebody says, do you have a PhD? Then you're successful. Do you have $1 million? $2 million? Do you live on this street? Do you have a Louis Vuitton bag? Do you have a Mercedes Benz? Then they define your success. They are defining your success. But satisfaction is what you feel, what you create, what you build.

Sara Sheehan: [00:20:03] So you are focusing on the process by which people are engaging, in being creative, and not compartmentalizing that, and looking at your entire life as a canvas and trying to create the scenario where the any employee can be their most productive because they choose to, and the company then reaps benefits from them.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:20:44] They choose to be productive. It's not mandatory. It's not, I've chosen. We've created. We've hired based on their reason. And yeah, we can't hire anybody and everybody because then we don't have a culture. A culture is built after a group of people come together that are like-minded, and when they're like-minded they have this cohesiveness and they create things and they build things. So we can't get a bunch of people because we put a statement on top of the door, or the CEO emailed something, or we have a 4th of July barbecue that makes us cohesive and have the same vision, mission and culture. It doesn't work. It's nonsensical change management stuff.

Sara Sheehan: [00:21:34] I understand where you're headed, though. You're headed in a direction that no one is really talking about this from. That when you're thinking about the whole-life and you're thinking about what your self-aware, growth oriented mindset is, you're going to be a much more productive person in general. And so I think that's a very deep and valuable lesson learned.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:22:08] And you think that's an unreasonable place to go?

Sara Sheehan: [00:22:11] No, I don't. I think it's a great place to go.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:22:14] It is what we're built for.

Sara Sheehan: [00:22:16] It's a great place to go. And I think with having a growth oriented mindset in general is the only way I can manage life, because that's the way I think. I always want to be improving and growing.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:22:39] And sometimes we make mistakes. Because whatever we do helps in our growth. It doesn't mean that whatever we do, the outcome is better than what we had before. It may not. As an artist, I put a little yellow over here and I thought it would be good, but it's not good. Okay, so I change it. I mix it up with red and I get blue. It's okay. We're not expected to have created perfection every time.

Sara Sheehan: [00:23:09] That's right.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:23:11] Now, there's one thing you mentioned. There is a section in the book that you mentioned, that deals with this notion of pivoting. You said 'let's pivot to a different discussion.' A lot of people use pivot in their businesses and companies and what they do. I am super against pivoting. Let me explain. Pivot is when you hit a dead end, and then you make a right turn or a left turn. We have to be a dancer. That is, a dancer plays with the rhythm of the music, sometimes choreographed, sometimes improvised. If you look at the timing of change, you don't wait until you hit a block and then you pivot. If you're reading the market, you don't let your ego drive you. By the time you are at the end of the road and have to pivot, your resources are depleted. Your time to market has been changed. The fact that you are pivoting means that you are bull headed, you're not accepting, you're not listening. You don't see the timing of the market, you don't see the value. You're just saying, it's either me or death. If you don't fear, that means you're not really evolving. If you're not nervous, you're doing exactly what-and if you say, I am fearless, I don't have any fear in doing this, you're ignoring the dangers ahead, and that's not a good thing. That's being bullheaded, that is nonsensical. Oh, he is fearless, you should have no fear. No, you should have fear. You just should learn how to deal with it. Because fear is signals that there is something, not necessarily, and I need to know, okay, this is a winding road. There's dangers and I should be aware of it, be fearful of it, and then push through it.

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:18] And so, Sid, you're speaking to developing courage through fear by listening and being self-aware. That's beautiful. I think that we all need to listen more and be self-aware so that we can make great choices.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:25:41] Listening is, I think, key. And what I found, and I tell this to my wife, she says, oh, there you go again. What I found is, most people don't listen. They hear, they don't listen. They're planning on their response. Here's the thing, this is a fact. If you don't listen, not to me, to everything and everybody. To the guy who's pumping the gas, to the guy who's at the gas station 7-Eleven store, to your teachers, to your boss, to your colleagues. If you're not listening, you are ignoring the knowledge that could be added to you, some things. So whatever decision you make next is compromised because it is the knowledge that you have that improves your decision. By not listening, you are simply compromising your future decisions because you have less than enough knowledge. You are making a decision based on a historical set of knowledge that you had a year ago or two years ago, not what happened today.

Sara Sheehan: [00:26:56] Yes, and I think we have a major issue on listening. There are a lot of people that are not listening, and there are a lot of people that don't know how to take new information and assimilate it into their next best action.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:27:18] And it's partly a culture of how-to, it's a culture of combativeness. It's a culture of embedding in the past, it's the culture of 'my way or the highway'. It's this notion that an entrepreneur or a leader should be strong and bullheaded. It's a combination of things that has led us to not be receptive, not accepting. The article you refer to on Hill, originally when it came out, at 8:00 in the morning, I believe California time or something like that, 5:00 California time, 8:00 eastern time. I looked at it because I get these Google notices that you've been published somewhere. So I get it, and I clicked on it, and I went there. There's 352 comments on it in three hours.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:12] That's impressive.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:28:14] I said, ooh, look at me. People actually care. And then I read the comments. Only out of the 350 comments, only two people had actually read the article. Only two. The rest of them were on this gobbledygook conversation. They've read the title and they've gone on to their own argument. They didn't even read what I wrote.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:39] That just proves exactly what I said to a tee, Sid. Let's talk a little bit about what lessons you've learned in building and scaling your four businesses.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:28:54] Lessons that I've learned, I think some of them, is quite obvious in the way I think. Listening is important. Trust is hugely important. Trust is earned, and there is a three-way trust. First, I have to trust in myself, then I have to trust in my employees, then they would give me their trust. I can't expect their trust before I give them my trust. When you do that, that creates a compounding effect of benefits. That trust leads you to, for people to do things, to accomplish things, for investors to believe in you, for markets to believe in you. The self-trust goes back to having being grounded in what reality is. There's another element which is the element of, I have learned that certainty is a foolish game. There is no certainty, everything is probabilistic. Certainty does not exist. If you go to companies, they have a 'here's a best case and worst case.' No, there's a shade of gray in between. And it has to do with what we do and the decisions we make. Life is probabilistic. The more I understand the probabilities and the options, the better my decisions would be. So don't look at life as a probabilistic, as a certain outcome driven. I can't sit here with the knowledge that-let's do this. A lot of people have these vision boards, and they put that together when they're 24 years old or 18 or 30. I don't trust the 18 year old of me to be creating a vision for me. That 18 year old was naive.

Sara Sheehan: [00:30:50] Yes, you definitely grow and change quite a bit over time.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:30:54] So the thing that I believe, the knowledge that I had at a certain point, I have the right to change my mind. At 18 I wanted to be a gold medalist or whatever, that was foolish. Now I know I can't, and that's not a failure. That's not changing my goal. That's just adjusting based on what I see as a better alternative. Now, some people stick to that and they say it's either that or nothing, and if I don't do it, it's failure. No, it's not failure.

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:26] And that definitely mirrors your thoughts about self-awareness, growth oriented mindset, you're continuing to refine what that vision is for your life based on your goals and aspirations at that time.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:31:43] And you have the ability and every right to change your goals. Now, there is there is something, though. I know your program is about transformational minds. People confuse transformation, as I mentioned like the caterpillar and the butterfly, with instantaneous achievement. Transformation takes time. It's assumed that transformation is somehow outside of some level that we can think, outside of the box. The box is an imaginary line you and I create. There is no box. Where is the box? The box is wherever I'm afraid of thinking about something, then I call it the box because I don't want to say, oh, think outside of the box. Which box? Who drew this box? There is no box. It's an imaginary line that we have to go above it or below it. I've said about, you're able to change your vision, you're able to change your goals, but I want to emphasize on this. A caterpillar stays the course over stages and stages of growth and change in order to become a butterfly. If you become fascinated by change and every shiny new object that comes to you, you will never transform into the next being because you're not committed to the path. If you plant a seed, you have to water the seed and you have to give it the fertilization that it needs, and you have to make sure it gets enough sun to grow, and you have to take care of it. We're not saying that this is your only flower that you can grow. You can grow other flowers. But if you leave this one and all of a sudden are fascinated by some other thing, this will die.

Sara Sheehan: [00:33:58] And so, Sid, you're saying that we all need to make sure that we're continuing on the right path so that we transform the way we're supposed to.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:34:11] The way we want to. In the interest of change, you can't be tempted by the devil that the change offers you. The devil is the shiny new object. There's always a lot of things to do. Without change, there wouldn't be any options. Change provides you infinite options. And hey, if there wasn't change, everything would be so boring, would be exactly the same, there wouldn't be any progress. So change provides you with this ability to choose between options. But if you get dazed and confused with the devil that the change offers you, which is all these shiny new objects, and you jump from this thing to that thing, to that thing, to that thing because you think you're transforming, you're just confusing yourself.

Sara Sheehan: [00:34:57] Right, and you're not actually making progress.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:35:01] And you're actually not making progress. And you say, well, I saw an opportunity, I jumped on it. I see entrepreneurs today, they're doing this, oh, there's a better thing over there. They go buy this software and before it produces anything there is a better software. So they abandoned this one and go to the next one and then, oh, there's a better way of doing this. Oh, I don't know why we don't make any progress, these people are idiots. No, the people are not idiots. We're just changing for the sake of change. Not for the sake of creating the next best version of ourselves.

Sara Sheehan: [00:35:35] And that is a very valuable point. We need to keep our eye on the ball so that we are transforming and growing each and every day. And so, Sid, what big goals and aspirations are you working on accomplishing right now?

Sid Mohasseb: [00:35:50] Big goals and aspirations. I'm going to tell you something that, frankly, it's been between me and a couple of a couple of people, including my wife, brainstorming. We'll get there. I'm thinking about creating what I call an Academy, where we would have a series of maybe 4 or 5 minute videos that belong to a collection. A collection maybe around fear, around resilience, around reasons, and build a community of members and people. Could be students, could be people who are in startup mode or could be managers and so forth. One thing that you have to understand is my view of entrepreneurship. I believe we are all entrepreneurs and it is in our genes. 500,000 years ago, a gene was developed in us to thrive. Not survive, thrive. To look for something better. The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has something and likes to exchange it with something of higher value, has something, and wants to exchange it with something of higher value, knowing that there is risk. Now, the 'something' is not defined. It could be your ideas, it could be your time, it could be a product, it could be a service, it could be anything. And what you exchange is of higher value, the higher value is also your decision. Are you curing cancer? Are you solving poverty? Or you want to be Elon Musk and have a lot of money? That's your choice, and knowing that there is a risk. With that mentality, we are all entrepreneurs, wherever we are. If you have a job somewhere, you're an entrepreneur. Because you want to get a better job, you want to excel, you want to exchange what you have with something better. Or, you get that $22, $27 or $127 an hour and you take it home and you take your kids to Disneyland, and you're exchanging your time for something of higher value, which is the happiness of your kids.

Sara Sheehan: [00:38:06] I think that could be of tremendous value. You're talking about an academy that essentially would provide key learning opportunities around personal development and transformation. That's amazing.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:38:25] And it's quick. It's examples, just like what we're talking about in terms of, let's get to the roots. What is this nonsense about big words and making life complicated to prove to people that you're smart and all this stuff. Life is pretty simple if you think about simple ways of approaching it. Trust is trust. We all know what it is. Listening is easy.

Sara Sheehan: [00:38:53] It is the hard stuff, though, too. It's easy but it's hard, too.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:39:01] It is hard, but they are not hard ideas or concepts.

Sara Sheehan: [00:39:04] No, they are not. It's hard for people to practice them, I think. I think that's where the struggle might be.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:39:13] The other thing that I've been thinking about, this academy thing, is we are filled with ideas and things that have to do with how-tos. We are bombarded with how to do this and how to do that. Life is like Ikea, you go buy a bookcase and then they say how to put screw number 17 into hole number 72. That's not life. Life is filled with all sorts of different things. So my notion of this is, this is not a how-to thing. I just want to provoke you, you can find the how-tos.

Sara Sheehan: [00:39:50] You're trying to get people to refine the way they think, and that is priceless because I don't think enough people are doing that in the world.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:40:04] That's the thing. And if in your audience anybody is interested, drop me an email when we get it up and running. It would be in a few months, it's not tomorrow. If I don't derail off of it, it would happen and I'd be happy to include them in the process.

Sara Sheehan: [00:40:20] Fantastic, Sid. Maybe we can stay in touch about how things are going and maybe I could provide an update to my audience about your academy and how they might be able to explore it. Sid, can you tell me what being a transformational thinker means to you?

Sid Mohasseb: [00:40:42] I think we talked about it a little before. Transformational thinker is somebody who is not satisfied with their past version. They were satisfied, but they believe that there is more satisfaction in evolving that and being more satisfied. I'm saying, they are not unhappy with who they were before because they built it. Remember, every version that we build, it's our art. Every artist loves his or her own art. We make it, so we love it. But we also know that there is more in us. So a transformational thinker believes that there is more in us. More to build, more to create, more to give.

Sara Sheehan: [00:41:35] That is beautiful. There is more to become, for sure.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:41:44] There is more to become.

Sara Sheehan: [00:41:45] That is so beautiful, Sid. And so, Sid, how would our listeners find you?

Sid Mohasseb: [00:41:52] My name is Sid Mohasseb, and my email is [email protected]. Very simple. And they can find, as you mentioned, I have lots and lots of articles all over the place. Yes, you can blame that I am old and opinionated, I do express my opinions in a lot of different places and it's easy to find me if you Google me.

Sara Sheehan: [00:42:22] Well, I can't thank you enough for your time today and illuminating the concept of, maybe there's more work that we have to do on ourselves, and we need to continue to think about where our mindset is and how we can improve it each and every day. Thank you so much.

Sid Mohasseb: [00:42:45] Great to be with you, thank you.

Sara Sheehan: [00:42:47] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today we were joined by the visionary Sid Mohasseb, who's known as the entrepreneur philosopher, and brings his vast experience as a best selling author, TED speaker, professor, and advisor to Fortune 500 leaders. Key takeaways from our discussion today include: the crucial role of mindset in defining success and satisfaction, the power of self-awareness and continuous evolution, embracing a whole-life balance over the traditional work life dichotomy, and finally viewing life as an artist's canvas filled with infinite possibilities. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or looking to ignite your inner innovator, this episode is packed with insights to inspire and challenge your thinking. As always, please subscribe and never miss an episode, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is CEO of Diversity in Luxury, Luxury Weekly News Podcast and Elizabeth's Cake Emporium, Elizabeth Solaru. Elizabeth is a luxury business consultant, author, and a world-renowned cake artist. Her clientele is high-end and royal now but she didn’t start in luxury, she started as a microbiologist and headhunter. Sara Sheehan learns all about how Elizabeth started her companies, found such wealthy clients, and the advice she offers in her new book, The LUXPreneur.

While working as a headhunter, Elizabeth relieved stress by reconnecting with her early love of baking and indulging in cake-making as a side hustle. When business in London collapsed in 2008, she decided to launch her luxury cake business instead of going back to headhunting. It was through cold-calling that she connected with a planner who worked for the late Queen Elizabeth, and the Queen became Elizabeth’s first high-end order. How Elizabeth built from that first order and scaled out into celebrities, other royals, and high-end brands, is her story of hard work, determination, and taking the lessons learned along the way to heart. 

Sara Sheehan and Elizabeth Solaru discuss creative ways to scale businesses and why every entrepreneur needs a financial planner they trust deeply. Elizabeth shares the five pillars of building a business brand that she writes extensively about in her book: storytelling, perception, customer experience, having an incredible product, and vision. She speaks on the importance of diversity, specifically diversity in luxury, and how writing her book has prompted her to dream about something big to do with books in the future. Sara Sheehan’s talk with Elizabeth Solaru is a fascinating glimpse into how luxury brands work, how to reach them, and practical advice that business owners need to know.

About Elizabeth Solaru: 

Elizabeth started her first multi-award winning business with a secondhand mixer and £40 in the bank. Over the years, through creativity and sheer hard work, she built it up into a world-renowned business brand called ELIZABETH'S CAKE EMPORIUM.

She serves Ultra High Networth Individuals (UHNWI) and royal families in a world of discretion, confidentiality, press embargos, and Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

Elizabeth has also collaborated with many luxury brands including Harrods, Oscar de la Renta, and Fendi. She has been called a pioneer in the industry, and her work has appeared in Vogue, Tatler, HELLO!, Martha Stewart, Wedluxe, and The Telegraph.

There have also been personal appearances on the BBC, Sky Living’s “Who’d be a Billionaire” and she has consulted on films such as Sony Columbia’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Contact Elizabeth Solaru:

• Website: ElizabethSolaru.com
• Website: LuxuryBusinessEmporium.com
• Elizabeth Solaru on LinkedIn
• “The LUXPreneur: How to start and build a successful luxury brand” by Elizabeth Solaru

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Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'm joined by Elizabeth Solaru, CEO of Diversity in Luxury. Luxury Weekly News Podcast and Elizabeth's Cake Emporium. Everything about Elizabeth's expertise focuses on scaling businesses for the luxury market. She is an award-winning luxury business consultant, author, and world-renowned cake artist. As an expert microbiologist and headhunter, she began her luxury business journey as a celebrated cake artist, earning international acclaim for innovative designs and practical craftsmanship. Her clientele includes ultra-high-net-worth individuals and royalty. Her creative talent and business acumen led to a successful transition into luxury consulting, where she now advises brands on how to navigate the complexities of the luxury market. Her latest book, 'The Luxpreneur: How to Start and Build a Successful Luxury Brand' has been described as a blueprint for a luxury business and a must-read for those interested in working in the luxury industry. Elizabeth, I am so glad to welcome you to my podcast today.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:01:32] Thank you Sara. I'm really excited to be here.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:36] Excellent, excellent. And so, Elizabeth, you have a really interesting focus, and I love the cake part as well. I want to make sure I comment on that because that is such a fine art in today's world. First of all, Elizabeth, I would like to hear a little bit about your backstory and what led you to where you are today.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:02:05] Thank you, Sara. A little bit about me, I'm an ex-microbiologist, and I then went on to become a headhunter in the city, I remember working as a headhunter and then 18-hour days, very stressful. So to relieve stress, I started baking again. I'd always baked as a child, but I kind of dropped it over the years. So I started baking again, and my colleagues would make amazing comments about my cakes. And it was just something I did as a side hustle, but the one thing I did do though is, I remember I'd save up my money and come on holiday to America. One of the best chocolate schools is actually in Florida and run by Ewald Notter, and he used to do so many classes, and I'll come and I'll just take classes, take classes. So that went on for a while. And then 2008, the City of London kind of collapsed. We know what happened around the world. And then I lost my job and I got to a milestone birthday, and I said to myself, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it. So I decided to set up my cake company, and in order to get clients, I reverted back to what I usually did when I was a headhunter, which was make 100 cold calls a week. So I took the Yellow Pages, in those days Google wasn't much of a thing. So I took the yellow pages, and then I called every planner in the yellow pages and one particular planner, the one that changed my life and moved me into the luxury business, happened to be the Queen's cousin. So that's the late Queen Elizabeth. It was her cousin.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:03:55] Her name was also Elizabeth, and I'm an Elizabeth. So I just said to her, I'm going to be in your area in the next few days, I'm happy to drop some samples. I dropped the samples and before I even got home, I got a call back to say, Lady Elizabeth would like to speak with you. And that's how I got my first high-end order. So again, I did cakes for many years. I was able to do cakes for ultra-high net worth celebrities, flown out around the world. And then the pandemic hit. And when the pandemic hit, over the years, I've been asked to speak at several conferences and I just talk about the luxury world because those were my clients, and I assumed that everyone knew what I knew. And then during the pandemic, I gave so many talks online, and that kind of started the journey into becoming a luxury business consultant because many companies, especially small businesses, they wanted to know what to do. And I started giving advice and that began the other stage of my journey.

Sara Sheehan: [00:05:09] That is so very exciting. I love, love, love that your experience started with a royal client. That is just fabulous. Isn't that exciting? I can only imagine how exciting that day was.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:05:29] Oh, absolutely. And thankfully I didn't realize the implications right away. Thankfully, that came gradually because it wasn't just the fact that she was a royal connection, it was the kind of person she was. She was extremely kind. She was one of the most hard-working women because she was the very first official party planner in the UK. She started her business in the 60s organizing debutante balls, and she was a person of integrity. And she gave me this amazing testimonial, which she didn't have to, but it was a written testimonial. And she said to me, Elizabeth, you can use this in all your marketing. And that generosity, even nowadays is very rare. So I owe her a lot.

Sara Sheehan: [00:06:23] Yes. You cannot overestimate or underestimate the value of a wonderful testimonial and quote for sure. Having that kind of social proof absolutely propels business and is wonderful to have in marketing. And so, Elizabeth, share with me what lessons have you learned from building and scaling your business?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:06:49] I've learned so many lessons, in particular from failure. The first lesson that I learned was not going into things blind. So you need to get all your information together. You need to have what I call scenario planning. And also, another lesson I learned is that things take twice as long as you want them to take. You project 6 months, but the 6 months could be 18 months because there's always going to be bumps in the road, unforeseen problems. Another lesson I learned is to get the right mentors in place. So people who've done it before, or people who are great at observing the pitfalls so they warn you ahead of time, you're likely to run into x, y, z. And because you're likely to run into x, y, z, I will suggest you do this. Such people are very rare. Also, another lesson I learned is you will run out of money at some point. So you need to start on the premise of having no money. So you get creative in ways in which you can scale and also make your financial person, your financial planner, they need to be your best friend. Because they are the ones who are going to, when you're scenario planning, they're the ones who would bring in that dose of reality. So those are some, I mean, I've learned so many lessons, but those are a few of the lessons.

Sara Sheehan: [00:08:23] Those are tremendous lessons. And the financial side, that one is a really great point. Because cash flow is one of those things, working capital actually makes or breaks many businesses. And so getting a strategic plan so that you can have working capital and be able to manage your own personal life in the meantime, this is absolutely huge. So I thank you so much for bringing that up. Can you share with us a little bit, Elizabeth, what the insight is on the blueprint for developing a luxury business that you've outlined in your book, 'The Luxpreneur'.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:09:13] Thank you so much for that question. Because people, they often think, okay, what's the secret sauce to setting up a luxury brand? And what's the difference between an ordinary brand and a luxury brand? So in my book, I talk about five pillars. There are many pillars, but I bring out the best five and, putting money aside, the five for me are storytelling, perception, customer experience, having an incredible product. Now, the product doesn't have to be the best, but it's got to be good. And then the fifth one is around vision and longevity. You want to build something to last. You are not building based on a trend or based on the latest social media fads that are out there. Because if we look at the brands that have lasted and come through in terms of test of time, they were started, again, I say this as a one man band for the most part, one man businesses, one woman businesses, but they have lasted through the ages because of the vision. And there was always something in the DNA around storytelling and around changing something. So there was a little bit of innovation. If we take somebody like Coco Chanel, she, again, a little, little black dress. Little black suit. She hated the frou frou fashions. So she took a very humble material, a Jersey tweed, very humble, very practical material and then she elevated. If we take somebody like Louis Vuitton who was so poor, he walked barefoot all the way from his village to Paris, he noticed, again, it could be something you notice in your business or in the industry, he noticed that trunks that were built in those times, you couldn't stack them. So he made trunks stackable. So again, there's always something in the DNA. And for me, I always say it starts with you as a person.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:11:29] Apart from those five pillars, I've spoken about the different archetypes of people that set up luxury brands. For example, if you are a visionary, what kind of people do you need around you to support you, to work with you? If you are an artisan, I'm a bit of an artisan, and if I was left to my devices, all I would do is create cakes and not keep an eye on cost and not care about marketing. But these are things I've had to learn to either do myself, or have people around me who can keep an eye on the money, who can keep an eye on the right marketing and the right image projection. So those are some of the things that I feel are the basis of building a luxury brand. The last thing for me is around the client. The one thing that people don't talk about often in the luxury industry is that there are different types of luxury clients. To give you an example, I use this example a lot because it's a famous meme. You have King Charles, our current king, and you have Ozzy Osbourne. Both born in the same year, a month apart. They've both been married twice and they both live in a castle, and they're both rich white men. Would you sell to them the same? No, you wouldn't. Probably not, because they are different luxury buyer archetypes. They're completely different. And those are some of the things I break down really, really well in my book, 'The Luxpreneur'.

Sara Sheehan: [00:13:15] That is fascinating. I love your five pillars of storytelling perception, customer experience, having an incredible product and vision, and longevity. Those are all really critical things, and I love that you're using things that make a difference in propelling any business in a special light for the luxury market. So I feel like anyone could learn something from your book and what you're doing. Elizabeth, what are some of your big goals and aspirations that you're working on now?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:13:56] That's a great question. Right now my book is my baby. So once that's released, I'm doing a book tour, et cetera, et cetera. But I've got a follow-up book. The follow-up book for me is to focus more on the luxury client. And with that, I'm hoping to involve a behavioral psychologist. I'm hoping to involve a couple of high end clients who can, again, there's nothing quite convincing like first-hand testimony, etc. So I'm thinking of a follow up to my book. And then, I'm also thinking of a possible program around my book, because usually when people do programs on luxury clients, it's always one-dimensional. It's not rounded. And people don't look at the different types of luxury clients, so they tend to look at celebrities. But I can tell you this, a lot of my clients could possibly own-there could be a farmer back in the sticks to someone who is an aspirational or to someone who is a member of the royal family, and they are completely different. So that rounded experience that, multi-dimensional personalities are often missing from the narrative. And another big thing that I'm working on is diversity in the luxury sector. And I don't mean diversity the way people talk about diversity. I'm talking about cultural diversity.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:15:38] So, for example, there are differences in attitude between North America and South America. In the United States, you've got your small town values, you've got your big city values. So that for me is diversity. The way I see it, there is something for me around, because right now, the luxury industry, the last year has been a bit rocky for the industry. And we need new innovation, we need new ideas, and quite frankly, we need to treat our clients better. You hear of brands where, in order to preserve exclusivity, there are some practices that are not quite great for the look of the industry, for lack of a better word. You have people on a waiting list. Being on a waiting list is not bad, but then you hear these stories of, you've got to buy certain things before you're allowed to buy that thing. I go to a lot of luxury business forums, and if you want to improve as a business, I would suggest you bite the bullet and you go to these forums and you see what people are saying about your brand. Also, for me, the Diversity in Luxury Awards that I hold every year, we celebrate people in the luxury industry who are making a difference. So to give you an example, Chanel, when the CEO of Chanel was appointed a couple of years ago, the first thing she did was increase the fund. They have a fund for the education of girls, and the fund is about €20 million. She increased that from €20 million a year to €100 million. And that was her first-I mean, imagine that. Your first action as a CEO. That's huge. So to me, there's quite a number of luxury brands doing similar things, but nobody talks about it. I don't know what it is about luxury brands, but they're doing so much good, but they're keeping it under wraps. If you take Cartier for example, they do galas and dinners for women in particular, women in shelters. But again, nobody talks about that. So those are some of the positive things that I would love to highlight moving forward.

Sara Sheehan: [00:18:11] I think that's a wonderful thing to do and to show where people are giving back in the community. That is so incredibly valuable. And I really do appreciate the specificity by which that you're sharing, hey, this is not just DEI, as everyone explains it today. It's really about cultural differences globally, and this is such a powerful conversation. Having been involved with many global outsourcing engagements, where you're taking part of someone's business and giving it to a service provider somewhere else in the world, we have to be able to work together to make it work long-term. So cultural diversity and being able to navigate those relationships, that is going to add tremendous value in the business world, for sure. So thank you so much for all that you're doing there. What does being a transformational thinker mean to you, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:19:26] I think part of my last answer actually, it fits really well with this question. So for me it's about, first of all, transforming my own thinking before I can then put that onto a whole industry. It's about, for me anyway, it's about looking at things differently and also looking for the links, because people say one thing about me, that I'm able to link random things together. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think my background as a scientist and then, me being a bit of an artist, you can take what's seemingly random patterns and then put them together. So it's about looking at your industry differently, looking at your business differently. And I do something I call an audit. So I do an audit of my thinking, and for that I may go off and do something that looks completely random. So to give you an example, this was way before it was a thing, I remember going off and doing a course in coding. It was C, the language is C. I was the only girl in a room full of almost 50 boys. I didn't really understand much, but I just wanted to challenge my own thinking. Because in those days, having a personal PC was the dream. And I was like, I wanted to know what was inside the PC.

Sara Sheehan: [00:20:56] Right. How did it work?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:20:58] How does it work? So again, it's about putting yourself in what may seem to be uncomfortable, unconventional situations to challenge your own thinking and the way you view the world. To some people it could be travel, for example. And you notice that, in a particular market, there's a way they stack things, or there's a way they do things. Just noticing that and thinking, okay, how can we bring this into our world? How can we learn from what they're doing? So those are some of the things that I feel makes me a transformational thinker. Because I always assume that, okay, the way I look at things is normal, but to some people that's not normal. And that gets me excited because I want to see the world how they see the world from their perspective. And you don't necessarily have to agree. You spoke early on about, if you're taking a business, you're trying to outsource and you're trying to work with different cultures. You don't necessarily have to agree with certain things, but there is a way of working that can transform your mind and their mind. So that, to me, is what a transformational thinker is.

Sara Sheehan: [00:22:20] That is fabulous. I love how you combined addressing mindset and growth all at the same time. That is very powerful, Elizabeth. Very, very powerful. What a fascinating conversation we've had today. Elizabeth, is there anything else that you're working on that you would like to share with us?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:22:47] I would love, again, this is a dream. I'm working on something around, and it all ties in, I promise you. I'm working on something around the business of books because I'm a big, big reader. I love books, and one of my heroes is Dolly Parton because of what she's doing with libraries. She has given millions of books away, and she actually pays everyone who graduates high school from her hometown. I think that is tremendous. So I'm doing something around building a knowledge bank, building knowledge that can transform minds, building capacity. Because as human beings, sometimes we forget that a lot of what we do is learned. A lot of what we do is conditioning or to be conditioned right. To be conditioned the right way, you need the knowledge and you need the right kind of knowledge. So for me I want to do something, again, around knowledge bank, around books, around economic inclusion. Because right now the model of the book industry is, you either independently publish or you belong to a publishing house. But with the publishing houses, I know a lot of people say, the model is out there, but for me, look at it this way. I see the model, the publishing houses can only take on so many people. They can only take on so many new. So there's a lot of really good books slipping through the drains. So there is something there around, how can we then reconcile the seemingly opposed industries around self-publishing versus traditional publishing? And both have their pros and cons. So there's something around that in mind. Because next year, every year we have the London Book Fair, and I'm trying to engineer conversations around that.

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:00] That is fascinating, and I will be very interested to see what develops for you in this space, because it's really clear that you want to leave a legacy of giving back and create that circle, that positive circle of repeating in society where you're helping someone else do something and achieve something good, and then they help in return. And that is so incredibly moving to me. When is the London Book Fair? Just so I know from a timescale reference.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:25:41] It's March next year. It's early March. I'll check the dates again. I'm not sure if it's before or after International Women's Day, because International Women's Day is around the 8th, and I know the London Book Fair tends to fall around that.

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:55] Okay, excellent. You've got about six months. That's interesting. That is really interesting. Just one point, one question. Do you have a formal publisher relationship for your book?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:26:11] No, I don't. It's something I'm doing independently. I'm working with a company who published my first book, which was quite a seller. It was a best seller because it was a book about cakes.but I but I did a limited run of that particular book because it was meant to celebrate ten years of me making cakes so I thought we'd do a book. So that was almost like a coffee book/baking book, as it were. But this one is a business book, and it's completely different. And my experience writing it was also different.

Sara Sheehan: [00:26:48] I'm sure it was very different. Very interesting and exciting. Six months is a really good amount of time to be able to do something innovative and transformational. So I'll be very excited to see what comes forward for you in early spring of next year.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:27:08] Thank you.

Sara Sheehan: [00:27:09] Absolutely, absolutely. And so, Elizabeth, how would our listeners find you?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:27:16] The best place to find me is on LinkedIn. I've been on LinkedIn for, oh my gosh, a decade and a bit. And then obviously when Instagram was 'oh yay', we all went on to it. But now, back on LinkedIn enjoying my people on LinkedIn. So just type in 'Elizabeth Solaru luxury' and I will pop up. And that's the best way to reach me. And then my book will also be on Amazon, 'The Luxpreneur: How to Start and Build a Successful Luxury Brand', that will be on Amazon as well. So yeah, that's how to find me.

Sara Sheehan: [00:27:55] Excellent. And when do you expect the book to be on Amazon?

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:27:59] It's going on Amazon next week.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:01] Excellent. Perfect. This is wonderful timing.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:28:06] It's going on next week because, initially we would have done a preorder, but I just thought, you know what? I'm going to be like Dolly Parton. Just drop my project because she doesn't announce, she doesn't do this long lead. She just drops it. So I'm like, okay, what would Dolly do?

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:26] That is amazing. And so that means that I will probably be able to grab the link to your book and include it in the show notes.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:28:37] Yes, I will send it to you for sure.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:38] Excellent. Wonderful. Well, I can't thank you enough for your time today. I think you are an amazing story of resilience and creativity and constantly sharpening the saw, which we all need to do so that we're always growing. And it is very telling that, having a growth mindset, it definitely is a situation where growth and comfort do not coexist.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:29:11] That is incredibly, beautifully said.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:19] But if we are putting ourselves in the position to constantly sharpen the saw, really great and unexpected things might come our way.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:29:31] Absolutely.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:32] Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Elizabeth. And I look forward to hearing great things about your book and the wonderful new opportunities that you're bringing to light in your business.

Elizabeth Solaru: [00:29:49] Thank you so much, Sara. I've really enjoyed this interview. You've been such a gracious host. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:57] Absolutely.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:58] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. My conversation with Elizabeth Solaru is filled with wonderful lessons learned that I want to make sure that I'm highlighting in my takeaways. From Elizabeth's book, 'The Luxpreneur: How to Start and Build a Successful Luxury Brand', there are five big pillars in building a luxury brand. Starting with storytelling, perception in the market, the customer experience, having an incredible product, and finally, vision and longevity. Elizabeth's focus on helping people build their business and providing a blueprint for a successful luxury business really sets herself apart in the marketplace, and I'm really, really excited to share this episode with all of our listeners. As always, please subscribe and never miss an episode.

Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Alan Lazaros, Business Coach, Consultant, Trainer, and CEO of Next Level University. Alan’s approach to coaching comes from the heart, from lessons he learned through his personal life experiences, and has become an honest approach to inspiring, motivating, and educating people on what it truly takes to get to the next level in their lives and ambitions. Alan shares his story and thoughts on transformational thinking with Sara.

The revelations that came to Alan through losing his father to a fatal car accident and then surviving a terrible car accident himself brought him to the realization of his purpose; to assist people in re-tooling and reinventing themselves to achieve a greater level of success in their futures. He learned a lot about leadership through founding his business and guiding his team, and those internal lessons also enriched his coaching. He shares one of his most important principles, which is to ensure that a client’s goals are in alignment with who they really are.

Sara Sheehan and Alan Lazaros discuss Alan’s identified path to success and why self-awareness is what dictates how people will spend the three resources allotted to everyone in the human condition: time, effort, and money. Alan breaks down how our perceptions of ourselves and what we do dictate, to a large extent, who and what we become, and that it’s through habits and measurements of our progress that we achieve success. Sara learns more about Alan’s current work, his future business goals, and what he’s in the process of creating to achieve those goals. This conversation will inspire and transform the way we think about our ambitions.

About Alan Lazaros: 

With a powerful combination of technical expertise and business acumen, Alan is a Business Coach, Consultant, Trainer, and Speaker specializing in helping businesses maximize their growth, impact, and profitability online. He believes in a heart-driven but NO BS approach to inspiring, motivating & educating others on what it REALLY takes to get to the next level.

At age 2, Alan’s father passed away in a car accident. At age 26, after getting into a nearly fatal car accident himself, he questioned everything he was doing in life. He questioned who he was and the choices he was making. He was at an all-time low.

Filled with regret, Alan searched for answers and found two of the brightest lights he had ever seen. The first bright light was a book by Bronnie Ware entitled, “The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying,” and the second was a Ted Talk by Tony Robbins. Both of these resources helped Alan find his way and guided him to make the choice of going ALL IN on self-improvement to design a life of meaning and purpose. On this self-improvement journey, Alan has learned he believes in a heart-driven but NO BS approach to inspiring, motivating, and educating others on what it REALLY takes to get to the Next Level.

Today, Alan is proud to say it is his mission to help others create a life full of both success and fulfillment. He learned the hard way how empty success without fulfillment is and how limiting fulfillment without success is as well. Today, he leads a global team of 21 people, and he’s quickly approaching his 10,000 hours of speaking, podcasting, training, and coaching individuals from all walks of life.

— 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
• “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
• “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Contact Alan Lazaros:

• Website: NextLevelUniverse.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Podcast: Next Level University
• LinkedIn

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Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'm joined by Alan Lazaros, CEO of Next Level University. Following a career in corporate, Alan had a near death experience that made him change the trajectory of his life. He became passionate about self-improvement and peak performance. His ultimate goal was to help people improve in business, love, life, health and wealth, dedicating his knowledge and resources to becoming an entrepreneur and peak performance coach. Along with his business partner, he founded his own podcast dedicated to personal growth and peak performance and business. Alan is the founder, CEO and CFO of his podcast, and he has succeeded in bringing and building and scaling his business with over 1680 episodes, sharing his strategies to positively impact people and help them succeed in all areas of life. What a great day it is, Alan, to have time with you and to actually be able to dive in to your story. Welcome, Alan.

Alan Lazaros: [00:01:27] Thank you. It is always a very humbling and awesome experience to hear an intro like that. To see from an outside perspective look at your own accomplishments, your own life, and I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:44] Absolutely. So, Alan, talk with me a little bit about your backstory and your near death experience.

Alan Lazaros: [00:01:52] So backstory, the context of this. And again, the important thing to understand here is that I didn't understand any of this at the time. It's kind of like rewatching a movie you saw as a kid, and you sort of rewatch the movie and realize, oh, got it, got it, got it. So it's been a lot of that. So at the time I didn't understand any of this. But now in hindsight, it's more clear. So when I was two years old, my father passed away in a car accident when he was 28 years old. I had a mom who was 31, stay at home mom, and a sister who was 6. From age 3 to 14, I had a stepfather named Steve Lazaros. My real last name is actually McCorkle. And my dad, my birth father, his name is John McCorkle. Big Irish Catholic family, Jim, Joe, John, Jean, Joan, Jeanette, six kids. And when he passed away, we sort of stopped associating a little bit with the McCorkles, I think partially, just unconsciously, because of the pain and the trauma of that. But the other part of it was us trying to be the Lazaroses. So a lot of times people see Alan Lazaros, they see this blond haired, blue eyed, German, Irish, Scottish, Polish person. And they go, Lazaros? Because it's a very Greek last name and I don't have a hair on me.

Alan Lazaros: [00:03:04] So anyways, my real last name is McCorkle. My stepfather came in and I chose his last name around age 7. Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. My stepfather left at 14 and he took 90% of the income with him. He worked for a company called Agfa, sort of late 90s, early 2000s, they did hospital computers. So we were upper middle class, boats and ski trips, and he had a motorcycle and we had snowmobiles, and we lived on a lake, and we did fairly well. And I was known as sort of a "rich kid" by some of my friends. Although in hindsight, I realized that's probably not true. But we did well. And when he left, we went from boats and ski trips to, now I get free lunch at school because our income is so low. My mom trades in her BMW for a little Honda Civic, and I go from I can't wait to go to my dream college. WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It's kind of like a mini MIT. $50,000 a year. This is back then. I went from I can't wait to get in to, even if I do get in, I don't know how I'm going to go. We weren't going to starve, but we were definitely struggling financially.

Alan Lazaros: [00:04:13] So I did the only thing I knew how to do at that same time. So 14 was the hardest year of my life. I realized this in hindsight. So stepfather leaves, takes his entire extended family with him. Haven't seen a single one of them since. Talked to my stepdad a little bit on Facebook Messenger. Same year, sister moves out with her older boyfriend. Same year when I'm 14, mom gets in a fight with my aunt Sandy, her sister. And my aunt Sandy ostracizes us from my mom's side of the family. To this day, I've only seen one person from that side of the family, so by the time I'm 14, I've kind of lost three families. And again, did not know this at the time. At the time it was just life. Four trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Fawn is sort of appease. So I became quite the social coward. But behind the scenes it was fight. The past is painful. The present is painful. What am I going to do? I don't have a trust fund. I don't have a father, I don't have-there's no future that's bright here, and I need to do it myself. If it's going to happen, it's going to be me. So I did the only thing I knew how to do, which is aim higher, work harder, get smarter.

Alan Lazaros: [00:05:16] Got straight A's through all of high school. I got what's called the President's Award, it's behind me. Signed by George W Bush. And essentially you have to get straight A's for all four report cards all four years. I was the obnoxious kid at the award ceremony that never sat down. Tons of scholarships, tons of financial aid. I get into my dream college WPI, and I go and I get my bachelor's in computer engineering. Fast forward, I stay for my master's degree and at this point, Computer Engineer, 21st Century, Masters in Business combination, very sought after suddenly, which was interesting. Worked for a ton of different tech companies. So I worked for a company called iRobot. I worked for a company called Sensata Technologies, which used to be Texas Instruments Lens Americas. A little software company called Oz Development. Tyco Safety Products, which eventually became SimplexGrinnell, all these different companies. Job hop, job hop, job hop, soul search, soul search, soul search, 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, 125 to almost 200 grand a year at a company called Cognex. Started a little inside sales engineering team. Got promoted to outside sales. My territory was Connecticut, Western Massachusetts and Vermont. I'm on the road selling industrial automation equipment into manufacturing facilities, big manufacturing facilities, particularly in Connecticut. And Cognex does machine vision equipment, it's kind of like the eyes of a robot. Quality assurance stuff.

Alan Lazaros: [00:06:41] I'm in my early 20s, probably 24, 25. I pay off 84 grand worth of college debt in a single year. I don't have a family. I don't have kids. My rent is 500 bucks a month. I bought a $5,000 car. 2004 Volkswagen Passat. Paid off 84 grand worth of college debt in a single year. Started investing all my capital. Built a Vanguard account, investment portfolio all the way up to $150,000 in my early 20s. And my goal was, okay, when my stepdad left, we didn't have enough money, I'm going to get really wealthy. That was kind of my goal. Then I get in my car accident. So I'm 26 at the time. I'm up in New Hampshire with my little cousin, the only cousin that actually came back from my mother's side, and we're driving to TGI Fridays. I was supposed to yield, I didn't. The snow banks were covering the signs in the bad winter back in 2015. I was supposed to be on the right side of the road. I ended up on the wrong side of the road past the double yellow lines. Look up in front of me. I see the brightest lights I've ever seen.

Alan Lazaros: [00:07:43] Two things in hindsight saved my life. Number one is the Volkswagen Passat 2004. This car, I used to call it The Tank. German engineered steel trap of a car. The whole front end was completely smashed in, but the frame stayed. Airbags deployed. So grateful that I was driving that car. If I was driving a little Honda or something, there's no way I'd be here. So drive safe cars, everyone. Number two. I thought it was a Mack truck. So it wasn't a Mack truck. Biggest, brightest lights I've ever seen, thought it was a Mack truck. Ended up being a lift kitted pickup truck. Kind of a lighter pickup truck, actually. And so that's the only reason why I'm here. So both airbags deployed. My cousin hurt his knee on the airbag. I hurt my face on the airbag. So physically we were okay. Rattled, but okay. Whiplash. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually though, this is the second chance my dad never got. And I've seen pictures of his car and I've seen pictures of my car and they don't look very different. And so for me, this was my existential quarter life crisis of mortality. Just completely filled with, what was it all for? Did my life really matter? Filled with regret? My poor choices? Was this the life I chose, or is this what my mom wanted for me or my family wanted for me? Like everything, just uncertainty.

Alan Lazaros: [00:09:15] Now, in hindsight, I realized this. And this is only in hindsight. At the time, I didn't get it. Before 26, I was extremely successful and achievement oriented and goal oriented and professionally developed. Resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, degrees, bachelor's, master's. But I wasn't as self-improvement oriented. I was focused on achievement rather than self. So I was very successful, but deeply unfulfilled. After the car accident, I flipped the script. I went all in on self-improvement, personal development, inner work, therapy, coaching, books on books on books. I started my own company, became really fulfilled. Healthy. Happy. Productive. Fitness model. Fitness coach. Fitness competitor. Starting my own company, but I went broke. Liquidated all my assets. So now I'm fulfilled, but I'm unsuccessful. And so now here I am, 9 years later, almost 10 years later, I'm going to be 36 in November. And now I can honestly say that I'm both successful and fulfilled. And I now want my future to be an amplified version of what it already is. Whereas back then I never could have said that. And so that's now what I help people with. I actually think success is fairly easy. I also think fulfillment is fairly easy. I think doing them both is actually really hard.

Sara Sheehan: [00:10:27] I would agree with that, yes. Really hard, especially when the mindset gets in the way or derails you, which it often does. You got to learn to wrestle that demon down.

Alan Lazaros: [00:10:44] The ego death that I had after that car accident. The identity death. The ego death. The metaphorical phoenix burning down and then rising anew from the ashes. I mean, it really did clear me up to go to work on me. And it's obvious now, in hindsight, how lost I was before that. But again, of course, it's relative to where I am now, right? So we're all lost. It's just to what extent?

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:12] And you can choose to keep growing and have a growth mindset and everything that you do. So you can make that an upward trend for the rest of your life if you want too. Which is super exciting. And so, Alan, talk with me a little bit about what motivated you to create your business.

Alan Lazaros: [00:11:37] So that is actually something that's super vulnerable to talk about because I don't know if this is unique to me or not. I doubt it is. But I do think as an engineer it might be a little bit unique to me. So I'm a math thinker, and I remember when I was in corporate I saw these trends, particularly automation. I worked in industrial automation and I saw these manufacturing facilities, and think of an ice cream company that's a really famous one. Keep it anonymous. And I'm there and I sell equipment that checks to make sure every carton is optimal, every carton quality assurance. And before I went in, there was these people at the end checking the cartons manually. That was their job. Make sure everything was good, put them in the bin. And I made a sale, and I'll never forget this. And I remember thinking, all of their jobs are gone now, and I just made a big commission check. And big is relative. And I remember thinking, okay, so automation is going to happen whether I'm a part of it or not, like it's coming whether we like it or not. I mean, everyone's been to the grocery store and seen kiosks more than people at the cash register. That's going to happen forever. It always has been happening. It's just been kind of under our noses and now it's exponential. But I saw this really interesting trend, and this is the vulnerable part that I'm always scared to share. The less educated population, statistically speaking, tends to have more children and tends to have them younger. The more educated population tends to have less children and tends to wait. So Emilia and I, she's 29, I'm 35. We were going to wait. We're waiting even longer. And she's extremely well educated, I am too, and again, that's not an elitism thing. It's just the truth. I'm very grateful to be very educated. And so I looked at the stats and I got scared because I saw the uneducated, the less educated population exponentially increasing, and I saw the amount of jobs available for those people exponentially decreasing due to robotics automation.

Alan Lazaros: [00:13:43] And so I decided, you know what? Listen, if you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem. And I knew I was part of the problem. I'm a computer engineer. I know that I'll have a job. The 21st century, every company needs people who understand tech. And that's just the truth. And if you don't understand tech, you are a little bit in trouble and you know it. So please come up in that. And I'm not saying that because I'm being mean. I'm saying that because the future is tech. That said, that was really what inherently got me to start my business, is just realizing that I was out of alignment with the solution. Now the solution is not give everyone a handout. The solution is not save everybody. But the solution is, instead of selling equipment that takes jobs, I'm going to create a company that helps people retool and helps people reinvent themselves so that they are relevant in the 21st century marketplace. And so now I help entrepreneurs and I help individuals grow and scale their small businesses, which creates jobs, but also just helping people realize that, listen, technology is exponentially increasing. The world has changed more in the last 20 years than the previous 200. So you have got to come up and retool and reinvent yourself if you want to be relevant. I mean, I have friends from college. I went to a tech school that are all multi-millionaires, and there's no shortage of job offers for them. But if you don't know tech and you don't have an engineering degree or technology in your background, it's going to be a lot harder for you, potentially. Now my whole company is built on this idea of retool, reinvent yourself, and then you'll have a bigger, better, brighter future. Because I saw a lot of people's future and I got scared.

Sara Sheehan: [00:15:31] That is a fascinating story, Alan, and the fact that you are part of the solution is an even more exciting facet to the story. You have chosen a path to make a difference and help multiply not only your impact, but the people that you work with and help to grow. So that's a wonderful story that I love sharing. Alan, can you talk with me about what lessons you've learned from building and scaling your business?

Alan Lazaros: [00:16:08] The first lesson I learned from growing and scaling my business is that leadership is the hardest thing in the entire world.

Sara Sheehan: [00:16:14] It's definitely not easy, that's for sure.

Alan Lazaros: [00:16:19] So we have a 22 person team, and we talked offline, you and I, and we playfully joked about how I didn't start at 22. So it was 5 and then it was 3 and then it was 7, and then it was 5, and then it was 9. So it's been a lot of challenges. So the first lesson I learned is leadership is the hardest thing in the entire world. The amount that you have to be both professionally developed and personally developed in order to be a 21st century leader is wild. I mean, you need the hard skills because you need to be able to use these softwares. You need to be able to use Zoom. You need to be able to type fast. These hard skills you need. Not all of them, but you need a lot of them. And then you also need the soft skills. You need the emotional intelligence. You need to understand the human condition. You need to understand what motivates people, what inspires people. You need to understand org structure and how to harmonize a team of multicultural, multi-country individuals all toward common goals. And then you also have to have a systems thinking engineering brain that says, okay, these are the things that matter. These are the results we're going for. And if we focus on these inputs, we'll actually get this output.

Alan Lazaros: [00:17:32] It's almost like you're making chocolate cake. But the chocolate cake is an infinite game and you are making it with 50 people, and it's a cake that you are consistently making and then taste testing and then improving and then taste testing and then improving. If you have the right recipe, you can make chocolate cake. But what about in a world where that recipe changes every day, and the people that you're working with evolve and grow and change every day, and then the roles and responsibilities of each of those people change every day. And so the biggest lesson that I learned is leadership is the hardest thing in the entire world. It's a ton of responsibility. In a way, you're kind of responsible for the success of other people. The best vehicle that I've found for leadership has been coaching. Coaching and training, really. And coaching is 1 to 1. Training is 1 to many. So I have training on Saturday with my team. But ultimately you have to be both hard skills, mathematical, systems thinking, structure, self-discipline, lead by example. But you also have to be able to communicate really effectively and understand and be empathetic and vulnerable and humble and courageous and use communication. So you need both professional development and personal development in order to be a great leader, I think, and I can't imagine a great leader who doesn't have both of those.

Sara Sheehan: [00:18:55] I know from all of the leaders that I've worked with in my long career, there are some that are good at both sides and there are many that aren't. I would love for it to become a norm in business that the office bullies and the people that actually are very negatively impacting their teams, that those people would literally be put in a corner. I would love that, over time, because we need more multi-dimensional, effective leaders everywhere, without question. One of the things that you hit on in that answer, Alan, is the need for emotional intelligence, which I think is more now than ever. I don't know if you've read Emotional Intelligence 2.0, but I do highly recommend it if you haven't. Because it actually does document that if you improve on emotional intelligence, you'll actually change your income. It will actually have a numerical impact on what you bring in. So I definitely recommend that book not only to you, but anyone that's listening.

Alan Lazaros: [00:20:30] I just wrote it down. It's on the list.

Sara Sheehan: [00:20:34] Excellent. And so talk with me, Alan, about the context around your business' habit tracking tool and your perspective on metrics.

Alan Lazaros: [00:20:48] So the first thing about the habit tracking tool you're referring to. I've been trying to figure out how to help people be, it's ultimately underneath all of it. It's how to be more successful and how to be more fulfilled. Because yeah, it's business coaching. I have 28 people as of today, actually, on my roster. Everywhere from, hey, I'm 16, I want to start a YouTube channel to I'm 63, I've been in business for decades, I'm already a multi-millionaire. So all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, all different cultures, all different sexes, all different countries. And I've learned more from my clients than anything I've ever done. It's just been amazing because you learn all these different industries, all these different people. But there's certain common traits with every single client, and the first common trait is everyone wants to be more successful and more fulfilled. Everyone. Now the path to that is completely different for every single client, but there's principles that apply to every client. One of the principles that you asked about is metrics. So what I've figured out, and again this is going to sound a little bit overly simple fortune cookie like, but here's what I do with my clients ultimately. And it's so interesting because I can tell you what I do and then it's so complex to actually do it. So here's the deal. A client comes to you and says, I want this goal. The first step is making sure that that goal is actually in alignment with who they really are. I think one of the reasons most people don't achieve their goals, and statistically only 4% of people, I've just researched this, achieve their resolutions, their goals. The reason why I think is, number one, they're outside of alignment. The goals are outside of alignment with who they really are.

Sara Sheehan: [00:22:27] And so they didn't actually set a goal that is something that they could actually do is what you're saying?

Alan Lazaros: [00:22:34] Either it's outside of alignment with their strengths and weaknesses, or it's outside of alignment with their core values.

Sara Sheehan: [00:22:40] That's a serious problem.

Alan Lazaros: [00:22:40] If you have a core value of being present with your family, and then you set a goal to be a billionaire, you're in some serious trouble. Because those are incongruent for the most part. So, number one is figure out who you really are, not the facade. Who you think you are is different than who you really are. So we've got to get to the core. And this is what my car accident did for me. It burnt down the phoenix, my ego. And it got me to face the truth of who I really am. And so that has to be done as a first step. So let's assume that you know 10 out of 10 who you are, self-awareness, which no one is 10 out of 10. And if you think you're 10 out of 10, trust me, you're definitely not. Which is funny. But anyways, so let's get closer to who you really are. Your real strengths, your real weaknesses, your real blind spots, your real core values, what you actually value versus what you tell yourself you value, that kind of thing. Number two is setting a goal based on that. Now once you have the goal, in order to achieve it, you have to reverse engineer it. And that means, and I'm closing my eyes right now because I have to think about this. So if you say, I want to gross a half million dollars in my business this year, okay, how do you do that? To me, there's only three resources in the human condition that all of us have: time, effort and money. It really boils down to those three. Where you put your time, your effort, and your money is going to determine your success.

Sara Sheehan: [00:24:01] That's correct.

Alan Lazaros: [00:24:03] Awesome. And there's only four things you can invest in: persons, places, things and ideas. So where you are going to put your time, effort and money, into which persons, places, things and ideas is going to dictate the results that you get in life. So how do I, as your coach, get you to invest your time, effort and money into the proper or optimal persons, places, things and ideas based on your goal, assuming it's based on who you really are? I figured out, to answer your original question, metrics. If I can get you to measure the right metrics and track the right habits and behaviors, you can get your goal.

Sara Sheehan: [00:24:40] Absolutely. This is something I do all the time in helping clients manage and adopt change. One of the things that they need to do is they really need to think about what their business outcome is. First, they need to identify behaviors that they would like to see in the future, and what measures they will use to track whether or not those behaviors are getting embedded.

Alan Lazaros: [00:25:09] Exactly. And then the behaviors won't happen unless the identity is there first. So you got to go into the identity work. I said this to my client recently. I said, you have all these achievements you want, but you don't identify as an achiever. If you don't identify as an achiever, you're not going to do what achievers do.

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:30] That's a huge problem.

Alan Lazaros: [00:25:31] You're an achiever. I'm an achiever. We identify as achievers. So therefore we're going to act like achievers. And therefore we're going to statistically achieve more than people. I told this to my business partner. I said, Kev, do you identify as an achiever? He said, no, not really. I said, that's holding us back. He says, well, I do identify as a peak performer. Okay, awesome. So what do peak performers do? Every label has a meaning, and that meaning dictates what we do and don't do. And so if you identify as an athlete, you're going to do athletic things more than someone who doesn't. Back to the metrics and habits though. This is a James clear quote from Atomic Habits, it's very valuable. He says every behavior you do is a vote for the type of person you want to become. And so if you podcast consistently, you consider yourself a podcaster, which then gets you to podcast more consistently. It's this positive identity feedback loop.

Sara Sheehan: [00:26:26] We become what we do.

Alan Lazaros: [00:26:28] Yes, 100%. We become what we repeatedly do. I have that quote behind me from Aristotle right there. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit. So ultimately, to answer your question, though, that's what I do, is I break down the top three metrics. Okay, so here's your top three goals for the year, which lead to your dreams. Then let's break that into quarterly goals. Top three quarterly goals. So for the end of Q3 we're ending in a month and nine days. Then we break that down into inch pebbles. The inch pebbles are your daily habits. The daily habits lead to the milestones. The milestones are quarterly goals that lead to the annual goal. The annual goal leads to your goals and dreams. And the metrics are basically, if you want to lose 10 pounds in ten weeks, you have to measure your weight. There's a book called Measure What Matters.

Sara Sheehan: [00:27:16] And maybe the calories you take in.

Alan Lazaros: [00:27:19] Yeah, that too. Perfect. So those are the three main metrics for losing weight is measure your workouts, measure your weight, and measure your calories. But a lot of people don't want to measure. They want to wing it. And the truth is, and I'm an engineer, so I'm biased on this. If you don't know your numbers, you're in trouble.

Sara Sheehan: [00:27:36] There's no source of truth there that you're reckoning with. If you don't measure what you're doing, you're not actually dealing with the fact if you need to make a change and lean in more. Or, I need to change what I'm doing so that I am practicing this habit more. Or, you know what, I may be doing that too much, and I may need to pull another lever and add something else to the mix. If you're not looking at what you're doing, you'll never know.

Alan Lazaros: [00:28:12] I concur. I think one of the biggest problems in people's lives is they're unfulfilled, and the reason they're unfulfilled is because they're not actually in alignment with what they value, and one of the reasons they're not in alignment with what they value is because they don't measure anything. If you have a core value of family, are you measuring the amount of quality time with your family or are you just winging it. And there was this website when I was in college, it was really silly, it was called StumbleUpon back in 2007. It's wild. But I remember thinking it was the dumbest thing ever. But anyways, it's like webcam roulette. You basically do funny things in your webcam and you stumble across other webcams doing funny things, sometimes gross things, whatever. And I remember thinking, dumbest waste of time ever, but whatever, it's a dorm room. But that's how a lot of people live their life. They stumble upon persons, places, things and ideas. They didn't design anything.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:13] That's an important point.

Alan Lazaros: [00:29:15] And so I'm biased because I'm an engineer. I designed all of this. I mean people say, well, how did you get here? And how did you go through all that adversity and still make it? And whatever. The truth is, it was through massive pain and failure. I designed it all in advance and then just worked really hard and iterated along the way. And I know that sounds overly simple, but the truth is, that's exactly how I did it. And I measure every day. I have 22 habits I track every day.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:49] That's phenomenal.

Alan Lazaros: [00:29:51] Thank you. And that's the only way I help my clients is, I say, if you don't want to track metrics and habits, I cannot coach you. And in the beginning, trust me, I didn't say that because I needed clients. Now I do, and that's really how I help is just keep you on track. Set up the train tracks, stay on the train tracks, improve the train tracks, and then you get momentum.

Sara Sheehan: [00:30:12] It's pretty simple.

Alan Lazaros: [00:30:13] And you start to believe in yourself. It's really cool what happens, but it's not overnight. It takes sometimes years.

Sara Sheehan: [00:30:19] Well, it takes a minimum of 90 days to even work on three habits becoming a habit. James Clear, I believe he says it's 66 days to truly create a habit in your brain where the neurons connect, and there is an automatic response. And so 90 days working on three habits. Is that realistic?

Alan Lazaros: [00:30:50] Change your whole world.

Sara Sheehan: [00:30:51] Yes it is. It can change your world. Absolutely. I love what you're doing in that space. What other big goals and aspirations, Alan, are you working on accomplishing right now?

Alan Lazaros: [00:31:07] So there's sort of the long term visionary mission statement that I can give, and then I'll break it down. So the mission statement, I have it on my desktop background right now. I can actually read it. It's actually a North Star, so I wear this around my neck. It's a little North Star to remind me of my purpose. To build the most positively impactful, holistic self-improvement company in history. So that's the ultimate, everything gets filtered through that statement. And so if this wasn't in alignment with that, I wouldn't even be here.

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:42] Thank you. That's nice.

Alan Lazaros: [00:31:44] I don't mean that in a negative way, it filters everything. So I'm trying to have a positive impact, and you're having a positive impact, so it's a good thing. So you actually did take that as a compliment?

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:54] Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Alan Lazaros: [00:31:56] Of course. Thank you for having me. And then I'll break it down. So in terms of what else we want to achieve, ultimately the podcast is kind of the main thing. I break everything into two trains. I think there's a short term train and there's a long term train. One of them is short term profitability. So right now my focus is business coaching. So my current milestone for this quarter is 30 clients. My goal that rolls up to for 2024 is 35 business coaching clients. And then that's the short term profitable train that actually pays for the long term brand and business builder, which is the podcast called Next Level University. And Kev does the same thing, but he's a podcast coach and then has his own other podcast called Podcast Growth University. Ultimately what we're trying to accomplish is, we call it listeners, longers and business owners. So we have Next Level University, which is the main podcast. He has Podcast Growth University, and I'm starting Business Growth University. So there's listeners, longers and business owners. And I'm an engineer, so this is-I have to close my eyes to think about this. So next level University is about self-improvement, success and fulfillment. Life, love, health and wealth. Holistic self-improvement. Podcast Growth University is how to start, grow, scale and monetize a podcast. Business Growth University is going to be, it's not done yet, is going to be about how to start, grow, scale and monetize a business in the 21st century.

Sara Sheehan: [00:33:22] That's so needed.

Alan Lazaros: [00:33:24] Listeners, longers and business owners.

Sara Sheehan: [00:33:25] So needed, that last part of your pyramid there. Very needed, Business Growth University.

Alan Lazaros: [00:33:37] That is my next main thing.

Sara Sheehan: [00:33:39] Excellent. When can we expect to see context around Business Growth University?

Alan Lazaros: [00:33:48] So right now I have something called The Next Level Audio Blog. I'm rebranding it to Business Growth University hopefully by the end of the year, but honestly I'm a little overwhelmed, so we'll see. Hopefully by the end of the year, definitely in 2025 though.

Sara Sheehan: [00:34:01] You have enough time to get it done. I understand when you have too many priorities, sometimes you need to take a look at it and move it out.

Alan Lazaros: [00:34:12] We currently have too many priorities, I would say. But the listeners, longers business owners thing. So listeners are people who want to learn from us. Longers are people who want to build their own podcasts and build their own communities. And then business owners are people who want to start and scale an actual business with skin in the game. And a lot of listeners turn into longers, longers turn into business owners. There's some business owners who want to start a podcast, and they go to Kev, and there's some podcasters who want to start a business, and they come to me. We actually have several clients we're both working with, and he's helping them scale their podcast, I'm helping them scale their business. But ultimately, we're just helping people do what we've done. And so it's this really cool metaphorical mountain that we're all climbing together and we're learning together along the way. And it's a mountain that gets higher as you climb it.

Sara Sheehan: [00:35:00] And your impact increases as well which is super exciting. And so, Alan, what does being a transformational thinker mean to you.

Alan Lazaros: [00:35:11] So when I saw the title of your podcast, I got very excited. There are six leadership styles and there's a bunch of different modalities of leadership. So the six that I use are: there's servant leader, there's participatory leader, there's delegative leader, there's transactional leader, there's dictator or assertive leader, and then there's transformational leader. I think I got them all. Servant, delegative, transactional, assertive, participatory and then transformational. And to answer your question, transformational thinker, I think, is a transformational leader. And the difference between a transformational leader and all the other leadership styles is that a transformational leader deploys whichever leadership style is necessary in the moment. So we joke, we have three chief officers, me, Kevin and Christina, and she's the COO and really the backbone of the company and I'm the CEO and Kevin's the chief sales officer. He was the CFO and then we transitioned that to me because I'm the numbers guy. So that didn't make any sense. Whoops. (Good lesson learned) Yeah, it was. We playfully refer to ourselves as the three cowards. And the reason why is because no one wants to be bad cop. And so it ends up having to be me. And I think a transformational leader is someone who is willing to fight for what's the best win win win scenario. There's a book called High Road Leadership that I actually think is garbage, but the concept of high road leadership is amazing and garbage is probably too harsh. I mean, it wasn't terrible. I was just so excited and it ended up letting me down.

Alan Lazaros: [00:36:52] But anyways, high road leadership is, in my opinion, what it means to be a transformational thinker. You don't think about just the now. You don't really care about the now, actually. I don't care that much about the now to be completely honest. I care about the future. I care about the greater good, and sometimes the greater good means that an individual needs to stop craving such significance in the moment. I'm just going to give an example, and I think I'll get a little villainized for this, but whatever. Anyone who says, oh, it's my birthday week. It's like, listen, the world doesn't revolve around you. And you don't get a week. I don't care about my birthday. There are there are bigger problems in the world. Have you ever heard someone who's like, oh, well, you didn't wish me a happy birthday. I don't want to be mean. But the truth is, who cares? You need to find some perspective. You need to go work on problems that are real. I'm sorry, but your birthday doesn't matter to me. My own birthday doesn't matter to me. You think yours does? That's what a transformational thinker is. Someone who doesn't care about trivial, mundane things that just don't really matter that much. It's someone who orients their life around meaning and purpose and the greater good, and usually gets wildly villainized for that.

Sara Sheehan: [00:38:13] The only thing I'd add to what you just said is some of what you said earlier, which is that the part of now that I think that you are concerned about is the, what people are doing now. Because you know that what people do now is what creates the future. And so you are concerned about those behaviors, habits and metrics. You are concerned about that.

Alan Lazaros: [00:38:46] Fulfillment, virtue, growth, contribution, maximizing your potential, that I care about. I do not care about your birthday.

Sara Sheehan: [00:38:55] I understand. You can know, I think, in developing more emotional intelligence, which we all can stand to do. Because it means that we'll have deeper connections with people that we interact with and have more impact, not only on the individual that we're interacting with, but in others around them, because they will have more impact on others. When you get into a situation where you are caring about the people that are on your team, you're going to see them be more engaged. And when they're more engaged, you're going to see business performance increase as well.

Alan Lazaros: [00:39:43] I didn't plan on this, but a little side tangent. You asked me, what's the best lesson that I've learned in growing Next Level University. If I could go back and tell this to my younger self, this is what it would be: humility is the most important character trait in the world. And it's sneaky because inward humility is different than outward modesty. Inward humility is someone who reads the books behind the scenes when no one's watching. Inward humility is someone who is still working on themselves and has a therapist, and has mentors and coaches and learns and is a student mindset. Leading people without humility is almost impossible. I have a new rule, and the new rule is, and this is to your point too, when you say that pouring into your team, caring about your team, that's going to lead to more engagement, which will lead to more success. That's absolutely true, but not if there's not humility, because then you're going to keep pouring into someone who's deeply significance driven, and it's going to go to their head and you're going to create delusion. And that's always ended up a mistake. So someone with high humility who checks themselves constantly. Because leaders want to pour into people and build them up. What happens when you're building someone up passed into delusion.

Sara Sheehan: [00:41:06] That's not good. Not only is it not good, it's not healthy. It's not. It's going to breed a toxic environment.

Alan Lazaros: [00:41:16] Agreed. And then you create entitlement, delusion, and then it's all about status and perception and smoke and mirrors and it becomes this whole thing. I basically will never, ever bring a team member on who doesn't have high humility ever again.

Sara Sheehan: [00:41:31] Very insightful, Alan. And so is there anything else that you're working on that you would like to share?

Alan Lazaros: [00:41:37] No, I think that's it. We have a website called nextleveluniverse.com, spelled just like it sounds. And the podcast is Next Level University. 1% improvement. Health, wealth, life and love in your pocket every day from anywhere on the planet, completely free. And that's it. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Sara Sheehan: [00:41:59] That's phenomenal. And so, Alan, are there any other ways for our listeners to find you?

Alan Lazaros: [00:42:04] Those are the two best ways. You can also email me, [email protected]. Please just provide context. Because, like all of us, I get a lot of spam.

Sara Sheehan: [00:42:19] Absolutely. Well, the personal touch always makes a difference. So when someone can actually reach out to you and ask their question, they might be more likely to engage you in the future. I definitely am a proponent of actually sharing how people can reach you because it does make a difference. Thank you so much for your time today, Alan, and for sharing your personal lessons learned as you have pivoted not only your life, but your professional world, and you are absolutely creating a ripple effect that is going to be a great thing for people that really want to increase their performance. So I applaud you.

Alan Lazaros: [00:43:12] Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This is an honor. I do not take it lightly to speak into the lives of others and for that opportunity. So I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Sara Sheehan: [00:43:21] Excellent. Thank you so much for your time today.

Sara Sheehan: [00:43:22] Thank you so much for joining today's session of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. My conversation with Alan Lazaros is just full of insights. Alan's remarkable journey from overcoming a near-death experience through a car accident to creating a transformational self-improvement platform offers invaluable lessons for leaders and entrepreneurs alike. Here are three big takeaways from our insightful conversation. The power of emotional intelligence. Developing deeper connections through emotional intelligence can significantly impact both personal relationships and business performance. The importance of humility in leadership. Maintaining humility is crucial in leadership roles. It helps prevent the pitfalls of entitlement and delusion, fostering a healthier, more productive team environment. Metric driven success. Identifying and measuring the right metrics can make or break your goals. Every behavior is a vote for the person that you want to become, so align your daily habits with your long term vision. Alan is not only revolutionizing personal growth through Next Level University, but also sharing his expertise on how to scale and monetize businesses in the 21st century. This conversation is just full of actionable insights that I'm so glad to share with you today. Don't forget to subscribe to Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan and never miss an episode.

Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Dr. Bruno R. Cignacco, an international business consultant, TEDx speaker, and best-selling author. For over thirty years Dr. Cignacco has advised and trained hundreds of companies on trade activities and social marketing. His latest book, “The Art of Compassionate Business” examines the long-held assumption that employees are and should be treated like commodities and customers perceived as difficult. Bruno instead explores the need for humanity and healthy relationships not just with employees but with customers and shareholders as well. 

Businesses frequently resort to operating only on the quantitative outputs of a company, which can be measured, instead of qualitative values such as compassion, generosity, and engagement. Dr. Cignacco challenges the assumption that humanistic love has no place in business. He asserts the many benefits of humane and compassionate dealings with the people who comprise the workplace. The benefits become quantitative when they turn the workplace into a supportive environment that fosters a sense of safety and innovation where employees and customers feel valued, and when the fear of losing jobs, money, or status can be pushed aside.  

Sara Sheehan and Dr. Bruno Cignacco discuss how organizations have stepped away from operating with any degree of love or care for the people who create and sustain their success, why the need to embrace seeing people as humans deserving of empathy and support is so great, and the overall benefits to the paradigm shift that’s needed. Bruno shares what is required to change the cold approach of businesses and how to embrace a more compassionate engagement with people. There is room for humanistic love in business, and it can help an organization flourish.  

About Dr. Bruno Cignacco:

Dr Bruno Roque Cignacco (PhD) is an international business consultant, TEDx speaker, lecturer, and best-selling author. For over 30 years, he has advised and trained hundreds of companies on international trade activities and social marketing. He is a university professor at different institutions in the UK. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA - UK). He is also the author of business and personal development books published in different languages. His new best-selling book is titled “THE ART OF COMPASSIONATE BUSINESS. MAIN PRINCIPLES FOR THE HUMAN-ORIENTED ENTERPRISE" (Routledge). His TEDx talk titled "The art of compassionate business" at Bonn Square Salon (Oxford, UK) has been viewed thousands of times. 

This specialist has delivered countless talks and training at a myriad of organisations, such as  YPO (Mexico), Hult University, NCC Education in Manchester (UK),  HKU SPACE (Hong Kong), University of Wollongong (Australia), Karachi Institute of Economics & Technology (Pakistan), Federation of Small Businesses UK, Jaipur Rugs (India), University of London,  Guizhou University of Finance and Economics (China),  Centre for Sustainable Action, Edinburgh Napier University,  University of Bahrein,  The University of Law (UK),  Bicol University (The Philippines), Kamara Youths,  DUAL Group (Howden Group Holdings),  ASM Institute of professional studies (India),  Deloitte (Denmark), and Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution (UK), among hundreds of other institutions worldwide.

— 

Resources discussed in this episode:

• “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey
• “The art of compassionate business with Bruno Cignacco” TEDX BonnSquareSalon

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Contact Bruno Cignacco:

• Website: BrunoCignacco.com
• Book: “The Art of Compassionate Business: Main Principles for the Human-Oriented Enterprise” by Dr. Bruno R. Cignacco
• LinkedIn

Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Does love make business better? Yes, it certainly does. Not sentimental love, but humanistic love and compassion can aid in employee health and well-being, nurture collaboration with competitors, develop better relationships with investors and suppliers, and increase efficiency, productivity and the bottom line. Today, I'm speaking with Dr. Bruno Cignacco, a pioneer in compassionate business practices. Bruno is an esteemed international business consultant, TEDx speaker, lecturer and best-selling author with over 30 years of experience. In today's episode, we delve into Bruno's latest book, The Art of Compassionate Business: Main Principles for the Human-Oriented Enterprise. This book challenges long held assumptions about business dynamics and offers a refreshing perspective on how companies can operate more humanely and with humanistic love. Bruno shares insights on how to view employees as individuals, embrace competitors as collaborators, and foster creativity within a compassionate business framework. Get ready for an enlightening conversation that could transform the way you think about business.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:01:42] Thank you very much.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:43] Thank you so much for joining me here today, Bruno.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:01:49] Thank you Sara. Thank you. I feel very honored to be here.

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:52] I am so glad to be engaging in this conversation. Compassion and business is a topic that literally no one is talking about, so I am super intrigued with what you're doing and I want to amplify your message. So tell me, Bruno, is there a way to perform business activities in a more humane way?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:02:24] Yes, there is, of course. Thank you for the question. We can first define compassion because many people might think about compassion in different ways. Compassion can be defined very simply as an attitude toward other people, where you understand how they think, you understand how they feel, and you try to support them, especially when they face challenges. This concept of compassion can be applied to business because you will be related to colleagues in the workplace, you will be related to customers and other stakeholders like suppliers, community members, business partners. And being compassionate, according to research, brings about a lot of benefits that then we will enumerate much more in detail. But what I observed is that many companies tend to focus only on what I call the quantitative aspect of business. What can be measured? What can be precisely counted? For example, market share, productivity, profitability, these are what we call the economic parameters of business. What makes a company successful, economically speaking, in the market place. And they're very important. But they in many cases dismiss what I call the qualitative aspect of business what cannot be measured precisely what cannot be counted. For example, compassion, camaraderie, commitment, engagement, generosity, gratitude, and this qualitative aspect of business, what cannot be measured cannot be counted precisely. Build strong, long lasting relationships with different stakeholders and why it's so important because we can mention Stephen Covey, a very important thinker in management, that he observed that a very important principle in life and in business is interdependence.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:04:15] No company can succeed without stakeholders. No company can succeed without customers, without employees, without community members, without suppliers. So when you build a strong relationship with these stakeholders, this economic indicator profitability, productivity, efficiency, market share tend to be achieved naturally. Instead, when you focus only on these economic indicators, in many cases you tend to achieve these indicators and you try to achieve this indicator by all means, in some cases in a very unethical way. For example, exploiting employees, polluting the environment, deceiving customers, developing win lose agreements with suppliers. And obviously, when you behave in this unethical way and this unkind way, how do you expect this stakeholder to support your company. No, they will withdraw. They won't cooperate. In some cases, supply will look for other companies. Employees might work for competing organizations. Customers might leave negative reviews, so this means that being compassionate implies building a strong, long lasting relationship with these stakeholders and creating a balance between the qualitative aspects of business that cannot be measured precisely. Camaraderie, compassion, generosity and quantity the aspect of what can be measured precisely.

Sara Sheehan: [00:05:38] Thank you very, very much for that. I know that fear is a very powerful emotion, and it can derail many people right in the middle of being in productive flow. Why does fear in business prevent people from being kind?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:06:03] Very interesting. First of all, we want to define fear. Fear is a contracted emotional state. When people feel fearful, they feel fear, they tend to act in a defensive way in a very non proactive way. Why? Because they look for threats in the environment and they tend to adopt what the psychologists call flight or fight mode, which implies that we are looking for something to defend from, something that could be threatening. The types of fear that are in the workplace are, for example, fear of being fired, fear of making mistakes, fear of, for example, being outpaced by colleagues, fear of acting in an innovative way. So this means that when you have fear in the workplace, the workplace tends to be psychologically unsafe. People cannot be themselves. They cannot cooperate. In workplaces where there is a lot of fear, they are not trust based workplaces and people act in a very defensive way. This means that they don't like to share resources with others. In some cases, they are competing with each other and this creates a lot of inefficiency. And why? Because the cost goes up in a way that people don't share resources.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:07:30] In some cases, they want to put everything in writing. Imagine you don't trust your supply. You might write a very detailed contract. You might contract lawyers to check that all the conditions are very clear. Why? Because you don't trust, you are fearful of this supplier deceiving you. Well, when there is fear, not only do people not cooperate, but they tend to withdraw. And when people are fearful, they cannot be compassionate because they are in incompatible states. And when they are fearful, they cannot be innovative. Why? Because there is a lot of research on innovation and creativity. People tend to be innovative and creative when they have much more expansive emotions. For example, joy, when they have more contracted emotion like fear. Why? Because when you are fearful, your reasoning skills are temporarily impaired. You think about the threat. You focus on the threat, and you don't think about how to become more productive because it's not relevant at that moment. You don't think about how to become much more innovative because you try to defend yourself.

Sara Sheehan: [00:08:30] We were just talking about fear and about how fear keeps people from being kind. Moving forward, what kinds of fears do you see in the workplace?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:08:46] As I mentioned, there are different types of fear in the workplace. People are fearful of being fired. People are fearful of making mistakes or fearful of being outpaced by other colleagues. And also, in some cases, people are fearful of not abiding by the consensus in this organization what we call groupthink. They are fearful of dissenting with others. And this fear brings about a lower productivity, lower creativity, lower trust. And this brings about a negative impact on the economic results. Because when people are fearful, they cannot be proactive, they cannot be proactive and they cannot be innovative.

Sara Sheehan: [00:09:32] This is a great conversation. When I think about fear in the workplace I often think about situations where employees are fearful of layoffs, or they're fearful of retribution from a certain situation, something that comes back to harm them. And when I think about situations where either I've had fear or I've seen fear in others, it's always been an unproductive situation. It's a very powerful thing to make sure that leaders are cluing into how people are feeling, and trying to get them on the positive side of the equation. That's very powerful because it will help your people be more productive. It's a great point. Moving forward, what would you say are economic impacts from being more human oriented in business?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:10:50] There are some research studies that observe that when you have a loving workplace, and here we are talking about love in a humanistic way. Which includes some byproducts such as compassion, empathy, support, care. When you have a loving workplace, employee satisfaction goes up. Customer satisfaction also goes up. Why? Because employees that are satisfied, employees that are happy, they are content, they are fulfilled, tend to serve customers in a much more effective way. They look for the happiness of this customer, but also in this workplace that are supportive, they are kind. They are trust based. There is lower absenteeism, lower stress levels, lower turnover and all this factor impact positively on the bottom line, which means profits. Companies also reduce the medical bills. Why? Because people get less stress.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:48] They're healthier.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:11:49] They're healthier and like to go to work. They don't go only for the salary because they go also because they feel that they are making a meaningful contribution to this company and to a stakeholder in general.

Sara Sheehan: [00:12:01] That is a powerful message. Love is good for business. Caring for your people is going to pay dividends in your business. So powerful. Let's transition to talk a little bit about manipulation and how that impacts the environment at work. There is so much, there is a huge proliferation of manipulation in the business world. Why do you think that is?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:12:40] Well, manipulation implies generally acting without integrity. So this means that every time that a company adopts a manipulative strategy, this company is more prone to act without integrity, and integrity implies acting with transparency. Acting with kindness. Acting with supportiveness. And manipulation is the opposite. Some examples that you see of manipulation is when companies consider customers not as human beings with legitimate needs that need to be acknowledged and need to be addressed and satisfied whenever possible, but they consider these customers as specific figures in the database of this company that will make this company profits. So they don't care so much about the customer needs, but they care about the profit that they can obtain from this customer and customers feel used, utilized. And these companies, some cases when they act in a manipulative way, they use deceptive strategies. They try to force customers into buying certain products that they don't need, or in some cases, they are not transparent with the terms and conditions. They have a very nice fine print that is hidden in the contracts to deceive customer when they have problems. In some cases, the companies are grateful when the customer buy from them, but then they leave these customers to their own devices. When they have problems with the product, they don't sort out these problems at all. But also, employees can be manipulated. They can be considered as cogs in the company's machinery. This means that when they are faulty as parts of this machinery, this employee needs to be replaced. They are not considered as human beings that they have some challenges, problems. They have emotions too. They have emotional needs. They have social needs, mental needs besides economic needs. In some cases, employees are considered only as resources and resources can be used and can be used in excess.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:14:51] Instead, employees are human beings, and they are the most important resource that the company can resort to. Why? Because employees are meta resources. They are resources that help the company generate other resources. Employees can help the company generate new products, innovative services, new business models, new processes, systems. So employees should be taken care of. Because when you take care of employees, these employees will take care of customers. So most companies get profit from customers. But also another point to highlight is that many companies consider employees like costs. Costs that need to be reduced. So we're affected by the recession, we need to cut off the cost. What are the ones suffering from this cost cutting? Employees. And employees don't feel appreciated. In some cases, the company take for granted these employees. And micromanage these employees. This means that they treat these employees as little children, not the children that need to be educated, that need to be supervised continually. I don't give this employee the autonomy. A very important thing for every employee to decide is the best way to act in every situation. So these employees are feeling manipulated and unappreciated. And this employee, when they find better job opportunities, even job opportunities that they will have lower salary. They will look for this opportunity because in other company they might have not only the economic mismatch, but they will have emotional needs met. They might feel appreciated, they might feel supported, they might feel valued. And they will also have social needs. Meaning connecting to others, have been meeting with colleagues inside work and outside the workplace. So these employees are not resources to be used and abused, but they are human beings with legitimate needs.

Sara Sheehan: [00:16:39] Yes, absolutely. I love the detail that you went into there. It's super helpful. One of the questions that comes to mind as we talk about people and how they are impacted by manipulation, and how if your employees are happy, they are going to also make sure that your customers are happy. They're going to go the extra mile. When I think about these concepts, it immediately makes me think about having a strong and productive sales function. And so I'd love to hear from you about what the human centered approach is for building an amazing sales function.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:17:28] Very interesting, very interesting. Well, we have to change the paradigm because most of the companies have a sales paradigm, and in my research I use a different paradigm, a completely different way of seeing business and seeing the relationship with the customer. I call this service paradigm. This means serving customer. Instead of trying to sell products to customer, you try to serve customer. And being of service doesn't mean servitude. This means that you look for the best, for this stakeholder, for the customer. You try to be less self-centered and try to focus on the customer needs. This means that you try to find out what the customer needs are first, and try, if possible, to meet these needs and if possible, to exceed this need. This means you try to delight customers. This means giving them more that they need.

Sara Sheehan: [00:18:25] Surprise and delight.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:18:27] Surprise and delight. Try to engage them in a positive relationship, in a long term relationship. You don't adopt a transactional approach, it means a one off sale, but you try to bring a long term relationship and try to assist customers not only before sales, during the sale process and post sales. And also customers that are responding to this approach where the company tries to delight them, feel that the company care for them, and this customer tend to respond very positively. There is a lot of research on delight and customer service, and they observe that when customers are delighted, they are more prone to become loyal to this company and they are more prone to leave positive reviews. They are more prone also to recommend these companies products to other customer, and they might become silent or overt ambassadors of this company's product, recommended silently or in close circles to friends, but recommending this product overtly, for example, using social media to other potential customers.

Sara Sheehan: [00:19:34] Absolutely, become an influencer. Absolutely. I just want to double click on one of the terms that you use, just to make sure that it's really clear. Is it a service principal? Is that what you were mentioning?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:19:48] The attitude of service or attitude of serving customers.

Sara Sheehan: [00:19:51] Yes. I couldn't agree more with that. Why are generosity and gratitude not part of business anymore?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:20:08] Because people are focused on the urgent. This means that first off, they are not focused on building strong relationships with stakeholders. Why? Because they have, in many cases in the workplace, they have tight deadlines. They have multiple projects that are complex and in some cases with very urgent delivery of this project. But in practice, in many cases, people believe that being generous is giving only tangible things to others. For example, if the company is generous with employees, they might believe that it is only paying bonuses according to the employees performance. But a company can, for example, a boss in the workplace can be generous with their subordinates in different ways. For example, giving them intangible things. For example, if the manager sees that the employee is worried, concerned, this manager can give an ear and listen to this employee's concerns to see if they have family problems or health problems or some issues at home in order that they can provide with some support. For example, flexible time or some days off and so on. They can give some coaching, they can give some mentoring, they can give technical advice. They can provide this employee with valuable information, information about training or workshop or seminars so this means they can give thanks to this employee for their contribution. So generosity and gratitude are very connected.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:21:40] And in practice, most companies are focusing on obtaining. Obtaining market share. I want more profit as a company, I want more customers. And there should be a balance between obtaining and giving. Most companies are focusing on themselves, on obtaining, on getting wealthier, bigger, more productive. But as anything in life, there should be a balance between being self-centered and being centered on others. So when you are generous, you are focusing on the well-being of others, and this helps generate a positive cycle of generosity. And about gratitude, we can comment about some study that when people are thankful to others, these people are feeling more engaged in the workplace. They feel connected. Why? Because they feel that their contribution counts. They feel valuable as employees and they feel that they are making a positive difference to the company's mission and to the world in general. To different stakeholders, bringing about more well-being to different stakeholders, customers and other employees, and so on. So when people are acting in an ungenerous way, they tend to be much more self-centered. What is in it for me, and this is not the right question. When you are generous is how can I help others? How can I support others? And this helps. Being generous builds strong, long lasting relationships. Also, when people witness act of generosity, they tend to be infected by this act in a positive way. They tend to become much more generous. So this means that generosity begets more generosity.

Sara Sheehan: [00:23:15] Yes, I've noticed that.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:23:17] When people are not generous, they tend to become, or people around tend to follow this example. Being stingy or self-centered.

Sara Sheehan: [00:23:25] Absolutely. When you're giving and you're willing to share with others, they are going to be willing to pay it forward. I've seen quite a bit of that in my career, and I feel like it is so very powerful to be generous and kind to others. And I want to see that repeating cycle where it repeats in the future.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:23:59] Very interesting. I want to comment about a very little experience. I'm half Italian and I used to drink a lot of cappuccino, and here in London there are many coffee shops that are very famous big chains. And I went once to a coffee shop, and I talked to the waiter and the waiter told me, we will bring the coffee to your table. Don't worry, there will be a couple of minutes. 15, 20 minutes later they came with a coffee and the coffee was cold, delivered late. I went to the competing company two days later, and the same. Similar type of cappuccino, told me go to the table, we will bring the cappuccino to your table. And when they left the cappuccino on the table, the waiter, two minutes later, only a very short time, they brought a tray with a biscuit and I said, sorry, you forgot the tray with the biscuit. I didn't order this. No, no, this is not a mistake. This is for you. It's a gift from the house to enjoy your cappuccino. Look at the difference. The first company couldn't even meet the basic need. Bringing a cappuccino on time and hot. The second company, look at the detail. Small details count. How much these biscuits cost this company? Probably a few cents, but in practice make a lot of difference. Why? Because the company tries to focus on my satisfaction. They were acting in a non-manipulative way. They were trying to exceed my needs. And I enjoy this biscuit because they were the perfect match with the cappuccino. And which company do you think that I still go and have a cappuccino?

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:38] I think you go to the latter.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:25:40] Yes, exactly. So this means that generosity makes a lot of difference.

Sara Sheehan: [00:25:44] That is a wonderful example. Truly, I very much appreciate that. Talk with me, Bruno, about what big goals and aspirations you're currently working on right now.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:25:58] Well, we are training companies on compassionate business. And also I'm working on my new book that I cannot reveal the topic because of confidentiality. And also we are training companies on compassionate business and international marketing. I continually research on business topics, and also I'm teaching at various universities here in the UK, and my goal is to disseminate these ideas as much as possible. And also maybe in 20 years time we will talk again and all companies will be compassionate and this topic will be completely outdated. But a dream would have come true and hopefully this will come.

Sara Sheehan: [00:26:44] Absolutely. Well, I know you're going to make a difference, because you're going to help people to understand that when they stay in a negative mindset, they're only hurting themselves, and they really need to think about how their people feel around them and doing things so that you're creating an environment that's motivating and engaging. If you care about your people, your business will take care of itself.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:27:18] So true, so true. I completely agree. It doesn't take a lot of time to be compassionate. There is a very interesting piece of research that observed that it takes a very short time to engage in a compassionate conversation with others. For example, in the health sector, there is a case of doctors that were to go through a very serious operation with some patients that were very critical. And these doctors engaged in a one minute conversation with this patient before the operation, because the patient was very anxious, very stressed. When they went through the operation, they noticed that this patient needed less anesthesia as compared with the patient that didn't have this one minute conversation, soothing conversation. And also the recovery time was shorter for this patient, that they have only a one minute compassionate conversation with the doctor. Why? Because they felt more supported. This is very incredible. So this means that compassion is not only supporting but has very tangible effects. Mental and emotional.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:29] It has physical, medical benefits that will help you recover faster in an operative situation. My goodness, that is just phenomenal. I know I've always preferred to work with doctors that are better on the bedside manner side, and maybe that's a window into why I've always been motivated in that way. That is truly fascinating. Well, now I would like to ask you, Bruno, what does being a transformational thinker mean to you?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:29:14] Being a transformational thinker means to me that, well, I have some good examples of transformational thinkers such as Stephen Covey and also Peter Drucker. Transformational thinker implies making a difference in the world. Small or big difference, doesn't matter. Why? Because the propagation of this idea brings about small ripple effects. But this ripple effect compounds and I strongly believe that anyone can be compassionate in organization regardless of their role. Doesn't matter if you are the CEO or you are the janitor cleaning the toilet, you can always bring about positive influence and bring about positive role model that will allow others to emulate this model and also bring about wider effects in this organization. So this means that the transformational leader brings about a ripple effect that brings about, at the end, a bigger impact on organization, but also on the organization environment. The cases that I mentioned in the book about companies that are compassionate, they are not only bringing about a better workplace, but also they are bringing about a better world, a better relationship, a better relationship with suppliers, a better relationship with the community members, a better relationship with customers, and so on. So this means that they bring about what the experts call win, win, win, win agreements. Everyone wins. Nobody wins at the expense of others.

Sara Sheehan: [00:30:47] Yes. Having mutually beneficial situations across the board, that is a very powerful way to engage with others. When everyone wins, it makes everyone excited to engage and that is a very positive energy. It just makes me smile and light up when I'm thinking about it. I want to work with people that want win win situations. And additionally, I want to help people win, too.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:31:28] So true. Because imagine if there is a win lose agreement. The relationship won't prosper. Won't thrive. Why? Because nobody wants to be in a relationship, business relationship or non business. Where one wins at the expense of other. And they might feel manipulated. Instead, when people are center of developing this agreement that are mutually beneficial, the relationship not only prospers, but tends to become stronger over time. Much more solid. Much more robust.

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:59] Yes. We've had a fascinating conversation today, is there anything that's coming to mind that you would like to share?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:32:10] Yes, I want to share a couple of self-reflection questions for the listeners. To implement this in a very practical way. I feel that any of the listeners could ask themselves this question on a regular basis. Doesn't matter if they are the CEO or working as an employee in this organization in any level. How can I be more compassionate with different stakeholders? How can I be more compassionate with my colleagues? How can I be more compassionate with customers and with any other stakeholder that I'm related to? But also, how can I support them when they face difficulties? How can I be more generous, and how can I be more grateful to them for their contribution? And also, this is a very important point to think about this, because any of the listeners can make positive impact on the internal environment of the company, the workplace and the external environment, too.

Sara Sheehan: [00:33:10] That's a wonderful thought to end on. I love the thought provoking nature of just reflecting on, how can I be more generous? How can I do more for others from a truly authentic place in my heart? That is a very powerful reflection. I thank you so very much for that. Can you tell me how our listeners can find you?

Bruno Cignacco: [00:33:48] They can find me on LinkedIn, or they can find me, for example, they can check one of my website, www.brunocignacco.com, with double C. Or they can find my books. For example, the Art of Compassionate Business can be found online or offline. The second edition is with a white cover and include hundreds of examples of compassionate organizations from different sectors and sizes.

Sara Sheehan: [00:34:14] Fantastic. I thank you so much for your time today.

Bruno Cignacco: [00:34:18] Thank you very much.

Sara Sheehan: [00:34:20] Thank you so much for joining this wonderful conversation today with Dr. Bruno Cignacco. We dove deep into the art of compassionate business, where Bruno shares invaluable insights on how compassion can revolutionize the workplace and drive success. The three big takeaways from today's conversation: First, embrace compassion alongside productivity. Dr. Cignacco emphasizes the importance of integrating qualitative aspects like compassion, camaraderie, and engagement with quantitative ones such as productivity and profitability for a thriving business. Second, foster a loving workplace by cultivating compassion, empathy, and support. Companies can boost employee satisfaction, reduce absenteeism and turnover, and create a ripple effect that positively impacts customers and profits. Third, practice generosity and gratitude. Generosity in the workplace goes beyond tangible rewards. Intangible acts like listening, mentoring, and providing support can create a positive cycle that builds strong and lasting relationships with employees and customers alike. This conversation is absolutely groundbreaking. No one is talking about compassion and business, and I would love to create a ripple effect of not only people talking about being compassionate in the workplace, but the actual manifestation of more compassion at work, where people are actually caring about their employees, and their businesses thrive at a much higher level. As always, subscribe to Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan and never miss an episode.

Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Terry Tucker, a speaker, international podcast guest on the topic of motivation, and author of “Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles to Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life”. Terry has a storied history including working as a marketing executive, hospital administrator, and SWAT hostage negotiator, in addition to surviving cancer. Sara and Terry talk about his books, his cancer journey, and why communication and connection are vital to living extraordinary lives. 

Our job doesn’t always have to embody our purpose, which is a lesson Terry learned through living and now widely shares. He stresses that we should lean into our soul’s purpose to fulfill our lives. He also learned the secrets to effective communication through his time as a hostage negotiator and explains why the 7% how you communicate, 38% words you say, and 55% body language and expressions formula is so important to consider. Of course, a large part of communication is listening and that leads to greater connection, which Terry says is his greatest focus in life currently.  

Sara Sheehan and Terry Tucker explore how to foster deeper connections and why those connections are so important to both life and success. Terry reflects on his cancer journey by discussing how life will always bring us challenges and adversity and that it’s how we rise from adversity and what we learn from it that defines us going forward. Sara Sheehan learns that Terry wouldn’t change the course of his life because he believes cancer made him a better person and that his next book will focus on being of service to ourselves, our families and friends, and our communities. This motivational episode is not to be missed. 

About Terry Tucker:

Terry Tucker is a sought-after speaker who believes in the power of a good story to motivate, inspire, and encourage others to lead their uncommon and extraordinary lives.

By combining his twelve-year cancer journey with his diverse business, athletic coaching, and law enforcement expertise, he delivers compelling yet relatable presentations for conferences, virtual events, panels, meetings, and seminars.

Terry is the Founder of Motivational Check LLC and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from The Citadel and a Master's degree from Boston University. 

He has been an NCAA Division I college basketball player, a marketing executive, a hospital administrator, a customer service manager, a SWAT Hostage Negotiator, a business owner, a high school basketball coach, and a cancer warrior.

He is the author of the book Sustainable Excellence, Ten Principles To Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life. Terry has been featured in Authority, Thrive Global, and Human Capital Leadership magazines. In addition, he is quoted in the new book, Audaciousness, Your Journey To Living A Bold And Authentic Life by Maribel Ortega and Helen Strong

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Resources discussed in this episode:

• “Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection” by Charles Duhigg
• “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt
• “Do Hard Things” by Steve Magness

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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:

• SaraWSheehan.com
• Sara Sheehan on LinkedIn
• Meet with Sara

Contact Terry Tucker:

• Website: MotivationalCheck.com
• Book: “Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles To Leading Your Uncommon And Extraordinary Life” by Terry Tucker
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

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Transcript

Sara Sheehan: [00:01:33] Hi there, I'm Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I'm speaking with Terry Tucker. He is a speaker, author and international podcast guest on the topics of motivation, mindset and self-development. He has a Business Administration degree from The Citadel where he played NCAA Division One college basketball, which I love, and a master's degree from Boston University. He held many diverse professional roles in his career, including being a marketing executive, a hospital administrator, a SWAT hostage negotiator, and most recently for the past 12 years, a true cancer warrior. He is the author of the book Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles to Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life, and he is featured as an author of the new book Perspectives on Cancer: Stories of Healing, Hope and Resilience. He has been published in Authority Magazine, Thrive Global and Human Capital Leadership magazines. He is also continuing to write and has a current book underway, which we will discuss today. Terry, I am so excited to have you in conversation today. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to shed light on all that you've learned in your very fascinating career and life.

Terry Tucker: [00:03:33] Well, Sara, thanks for having me on. I'm really looking forward to talking with you today.

Sara Sheehan: [00:03:37] Thank you so very much. Terry, in your career, I find it fascinating that you pivoted from traditional business roles into being a SWAT hostage negotiator. And I know that choosing an opportunity in law enforcement was very important to you personally. What would you say that you learned when you went into that role?

Terry Tucker: [00:04:09] I think one of the biggest things that I'm proud of in my life is that I never let my dream die. As you mentioned, my first two jobs were in the business world. I was in the corporate headquarters of Wendy's International, the hamburger chain, my marketing role. And then I went to work for the hospital that had treated my father and my grandmother before they had passed away of cancer. So, just a little bit of the back story. My dad's father, my grandfather, was a Chicago police officer from 1924 to 1954, and in 1933, he was shot in the line of duty with his own gun. It was not a serious injury, he was shot in the ankle. When I expressed an interest in going into law enforcement, my dad recalled all the stories my grandmother used to tell of that knock on the door. Mrs. Tucker, grab your son, come with us. Your husband's been shot. And my dad was, absolutely not. You're going to college, you're going to major in business. You're going to get out. You're going to get married, have 2.4 kids and live happily ever after. But that's the job, that's the role, that's the life my father wanted me to live. That wasn't the life that I felt I was supposed to live. And so when I graduated from college, my father was dying of cancer, and I had probably my first big adult decision choice to make.

Terry Tucker: [00:05:32] I could have said, sorry dad, I know you're dying of cancer, but I'm going to go do my own thing and blaze my own trail, or out of love and respect for you, I will do what you want me to do. And so that's where my first two jobs were in business. And I sort of joke, I did what every good son did. I waited till my father passed away and I followed my own dreams. And I know I'm not unique in that. I know there are a lot of people out there probably listening to us that, somebody in their family wants them to go into the family business or wants them to be a lawyer, like dad was a lawyer or whatever it ends up being. And that's not what they feel they're supposed to do. That's not what they feel is their calling. And that's a really hard thing, I think, to deal with, especially when it's a family member. And when it's a family member that's doing it, not because they're trying to hurt you or out of spite, but because they love you and they want something that they feel is better for you. So I guess that's kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but like I said, I am incredibly proud that I never let my dream, my purpose die. And I actually made that pivot to go into law enforcement at 37 years of age.

Sara Sheehan: [00:06:36] That's amazing. Talk with us a little bit about how that helped you live out your purpose. 

Terry Tucker: [00:06:43] I guess I need to back up a little bit. We, I think a lot of times, talk about purpose as a singular thing or a singular event. And at least in my life, purpose has been plural. It's been purposes. When I was younger, I felt my purpose was to be an athlete. And then, as I said, I felt my purpose was to get into law enforcement. And now, in all honesty, with my cancer, is I'm probably coming towards the end of my life. I feel my purpose has shifted or pivoted again to put as much goodness, positivity, motivation, and love back into the world as I can. We always like to think that if we could have that purpose, that it would be aligned with our job or our occupation. That would be great. But it doesn't have to be. Your job could be over here, it's what you do to pay the bills, but your purpose is over here. To be a podcast host or to be an author or a painter or an activist or whatever you feel. I'll end with this, and I tell this especially when I speak to young people, if there's something in your heart, something in your soul that you feel you're supposed to do, but it scares you, go ahead and do it. Because at the end of your life, the things you're going to regret are not going to be those things you did. They're going to be those things you didn't do. And by then, it's going to be too late to go back and do them.

Sara Sheehan: [00:08:10] That is absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with me and with our listeners. In conversation with you, Terry, you had mentioned to me one of the things that you learned in being a SWAT hostage negotiator, that you learned an awful lot about listening, asking the right questions, having effective communication in those very difficult situations. And you had shared with me that it's only about 7% is how you communicate a message, where 38% of it are the actual words that you use, and 55% of what you're doing in communicating is the actual body language or expressions that you're bringing to the message that you're sending to the other party. I do find that fascinating. And so if you could talk a little bit about what went into you learning more about how you convey a message effectively and get someone to communicate with you that may not want to.

Terry Tucker: [00:09:39] That 7/38/55 formula that I was given when I became a hostage negotiator applies to how we, not just police officers and that, but how we as human beings communicate with each other. And the interesting thing about that is understanding that as we were negotiating with people, if somebody was barricaded with a gun in a room, I was not in the room with that person. I, more than likely, was blocks away talking on the phone, so I didn't have the benefit of that 55% of seeing body language or facial expressions. For example, of saying something, well, Sara, what do you think about this? And then have you kind of roll your eyes and be like, oh, I can't believe he said that to me. I didn't have that luxury. So we got good at figuring things out, certainly based on what people were saying or telling us, but also what they weren't saying and how they were saying it. The overarching theme of what we were doing, and I think the overarching thing of any relationship that you have in your life, whether it's with your spouse, your kids, your boss, your friends, whatever, is trust. If you don't trust that person, it's very hard to have any kind of relationship. So we were trying to build trust with an individual that number one, was probably having the worst day of their life. If you're talking to me and your house or apartment is surrounded not by the police. Yeah, not having a good day.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:04] Not having a good day.

Terry Tucker: [00:11:06] And secondly, somebody we've never met, and in many cases, had no idea why we were there. What precipitated this? What got us to this point? So we were trying to develop trust, and we did that through empathy. And empathy was basically, for example, if you and I were negotiating, it would be, well, Sara, help me to understand where you're coming from. And the big word there is understand, because I want to understand where you're coming from. I'm not necessarily going to agree with you. If you're a homicide suspect that just killed three people, I'm not going to say what you did was right. But I need to understand where you're coming from, because empathy builds trust. And trust gets to a point where I can try to change behavior, getting you out safely or getting the hostages out safely.

Sara Sheehan: [00:11:55] This is so applicable in many environments. It doesn't have to just be in a hostage situation. Learning to have a better conversation is applicable in any part of your life. One of the books that I'm reading right now is very applicable in this discussion. It's by Charles Duhigg and it is Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection. It is a wonderful book. He proposes that there are truly only three conversations that we have in life. They are practical conversations, where we're trying to get to answer the question, what's this really about? There are emotional conversations that help us understand how we feel about something. And then finally, there are social conversations that define who we are. By recognizing the type of conversation that we're having, we can seek to connect with the others in the conversation more if the tactics that we use match up with the type of conversation that we're having. In your situation, you were in a very high-stress, high-stakes situation. If you could understand more about what's going on for the individual in that very difficult position, you might be able to find a way to negotiate with them that would work, correct?

Terry Tucker: [00:13:42] Absolutely. We used to talk about what we did, we tried to make it simple. We've all been, when we're little kids, to the park and played on the teeter-totter or the see-saw. When we started negotiating with somebody, usually their emotional brain was way up in the air and their rational brain was down on the ground. And by asking open-ended questions, we would use 'how and what' questions, we would stay away from 'why' questions. Because if, for example, if I said to you, well, Sara, why did you wear that today? Wait a minute, do you not like what I'm wearing? 'Why' questions sound accusatory. So we would use 'how' and 'what' questions, and we would get the person to burn off a lot of that emotional energy and try to get that teeter-totter to equilibrium. And then by continuing to talk, to dialog, hopefully get to the point where the person's rational brain was up in the air and their emotional brain was down on the ground. Because we all make better decisions for ourselves using our rational brain than our emotional. We would never, I mean, it could be hours into the conversation. We were not talking about solutions.

Sara Sheehan: [00:14:58] Understood. You're just trying to get them to calm down. Clearly it's an emotional discussion. Clearly it is. Trying to get someone to get out of their head, literally, and calm down, cool off and have a little bit more of a level frame of mind was critical. Tell me, Terry, what would you like to double down on, or focus on, so that you can have more impact in your life?

Terry Tucker: [00:15:35] I'm going to shift gears a little bit now, and I would say it would be connection. One of the nurses who cares for me now, I still have tumors in my lungs, gave me a book called Imagine Heaven, and it's about people who had near-death experiences and many interesting things in the book. But one of the big things I took away was that no matter who the person having that near-death experience saw or encountered, the one question almost everybody got asked is how do you treat my people? In other words, how do we treat each other? How do we connect with each other? How do we work together with each other? If COVID taught us anything, it's how much we need each other. When we were isolated, and today we are isolated. We've got these devices that we take, well, how I feel today depends on what's said on this device. We put our sunglasses on and our earbuds on and we walk around like, don't talk to me, don't involve me. I don't want to have anything to do with you. We need that connection. We are better together than we are separately. I mean, during COVID, alcoholism rates went up, drug abuse rates went up, domestic violence rates went up, divorce rates went up. Because we're not good separate. We need each other. So the answer to your question is connection. I'm looking for more connection with people in my life. It's not money, it's not power, it's not influence. It's connection with other human beings.

Sara Sheehan: [00:17:06] That is so critical. And I believe it's very healing when we're able to truly plugin with another person and engage in a transformational way. It's so powerful. I'm also reading right now a book called The Anxious Generation which I highly recommend, and it actually speaks at length about how bad technology is in social media and how it's changing childhood in a negative way. So you're on to much more than what you're just feeling in your heart. There's many hypotheses out there about how we need to connect with others at a much deeper level, to make our world a better place to live. Literally. Tell me, Terry, what do you think you've learned on your cancer journey?

Terry Tucker: [00:18:15] I've learned a lot of things, but two important things that I've learned are, number one, I don't think you really know yourself until you've been tested by some form of adversity in your life. And if you live long enough, you're going to be tested by adversity. Something bad is going to happen to you. The writer Ernest Hemingway had a great quote that went, life breaks everyone, and afterward many are stronger at the broken places. So as I said, you're going to experience adversity in your life. Somebody close to you is going to die. You're unexpectedly going to get let go from your job. You're going to find out you have a chronic or a terminal illness. Life is going to beat you to your knees, but you can also learn from that and rise from that and be stronger. So I don't think you know yourself until you've been tested by adversity. And the second thing, and this is going to sound really crazy, is cancer has made me a better human being. It's made me focus on the things that I think are really important in life. I mean, when I was young and playing sports, I mean, was it nice? Yeah. Was it fun? Absolutely. But was it important? Probably not. And now that I don't have a left leg because of my cancer, I'm in a wheelchair, you kind of balance those things. And I think when you can't do what you're good at, you do what's important in life. And that's what I've been doing. And I don't think, honestly, if you ask me, if you could live your life over again without cancer, I'm not so sure that I would, because I think cancer has made me a better human being.

Sara Sheehan: [00:19:52] That is deeply profound. That's remarkable, it truly is. And it tells me that in your heart, you know that your transformation is truly significant.

Terry Tucker: [00:20:08] Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. Like I said, it focuses you on what's important. For me, what's important are what I call my three F's. Faith, family and friends. That's really, to me, what's important in life.

Sara Sheehan: [00:20:20] And focusing on what's important makes every day better. And so, Terry, I know that you are continuing to be active in writing and in authoring books, and I know that you have one that you're currently working on, and I would love to talk about it if you're open to it today. Talk with me about what you're currently writing and what you're writing about.

Terry Tucker: [00:20:48] So I'm writing my second book that focuses more on service. My first book was a book I felt about success, how I saw success or how I thought people could be successful. When I wrote that book, I always kind of had an itch, so to speak, that I need to write a book, or I'd like to write a book about another word that begins with S, and that word is service. And so this second book is more about not necessarily how you can be successful, but how you can be of service to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to your community. And don't get me wrong, I think you can be both. I think you can be successful and be a servant in life. I learned a lot in college about servant leadership. I went to a military college and I learned about servant leadership. Leaders eat last, how you support people, how you care for them, how you make them better. Another one I always speak to young people, I always tell them this. It's more important who you work with and for, than it is the work that you do. Find people that care about you. Find people that are willing to invest in you. Find people that want you to be successful, and hitch your wagon to those people and climb your mountains together.

Sara Sheehan: [00:22:10] That is amazing advice. I hope that anyone that is at the beginning of their career, in their earlier days, that they are listening and they are taking that to heart because that is absolutely right on. The people that you grow with will be the people that take care of you. And if you're not in a position where you're growing, find people that will help you grow in the right way. So that is absolutely beautiful. Is there one through-line that you could describe in the book that's the most important message?

Terry Tucker: [00:22:59] I've got these ten principles in the book, and I don't think any of them are necessarily more important than the other. Although the more I think about it, the more you ask that question, I think there is one. And it's the last principle. It's the importance of love in our life. And I'm not talking about romantic kind of love. When I was younger, I was a big fan of a basketball coach at the University of California at Los Angeles by the name of John Wooden. I read everything he wrote, I read articles about him. And I remember one day I was listening to an interview that he was giving with a sports reporter, and I was sitting there with a pad of paper and a pencil, and I was ready to, come on, coach, give me some good X's and O's, things that I could use on the basketball court. The reporter asked him, what's the most important thing that you want your players to learn or to understand or to come away with, from their time as basketball players at UCLA? And I'm on the edge of my seat, alright here, this could be something great. And he said, I want my players to understand the importance of love. As a 13-year-old kid, I was like, no! Love, are you kidding me? I could care less about love. Come on, coach, give me something good. But what he was saying with that is, I want my players to understand the importance of loving themselves, of loving what they do, of loving their teammates and things like that. And I didn't get that as a 13-year-old kid. I was not emotionally intelligent enough to understand that. But as I've grown, and I think that's why I put it as the last principle in the book, that love is the most important thing that any of us will ever experience or ever do in our lives.

Sara Sheehan: [00:24:35] I really appreciate you sharing that. And I think that there are so many people in the world that would be happier at work and in their personal life if they had more love, whether it is their boss and how their boss treats them, their team at work and how they work together, their family at home, and how they conduct themselves and care for one another. More love is absolutely transformational. I can't wait to read the book, Terry, I can't wait to read it. Talk with me about what your big goals and aspirations are that you're currently working on.

Terry Tucker: [00:25:26] I don't focus that much anymore on goals, so to speak. I look at the processes that I have in my life. Are those processes where they need to be? How can I make them better? How are they serving me in terms of my life and things like that? I figure if I've got the processes in place that the goals or the things that I'm interested in will come with those things. In all honesty, I want to connect with other people to get more information out there about disease, about how you can overcome it, how you can fight it. I think cancer, I had this discussion with my oncologist a couple of weeks ago, cancer's getting to be, it used to be a death sentence. Oh my God, I got cancer. I'm going to die. There's nothing I can do. And I think cancer is moving more from a death sentence to more of a chronic illness. You may have it for your entire life, but you're going to be able to live a decent life with that because they have so many different things. When I was diagnosed in 2012, I was told I'd be dead in two years. And now, 12-plus years later, I'm still here. I'm dealing with a chronic disease and I probably will for my whole life.

Sara Sheehan: [00:26:38] Exactly. I definitely experienced that myself with my father's case, in that he had very advanced colorectal cancer that he was diagnosed with, and he was told he had a very small chance of living a few years, and he ended up living 15 years. And it wasn't enjoyable or pretty for him. But that, I believe, was the beginning of them being able to treat and find pathways to help someone continue forward. I'm hopeful that treatment will truly progress in future years, where the patient can retain more choices in what they do and retain a higher quality of life is what I would say. Very interesting. One of the comments that you shared with me there really tells me that if you're looking at the processes that are in your life, you're thinking about what your habits are. And if you're thinking about what your habits are and what you're doing, you're tuned in to where you are on the healthy scale.

Terry Tucker: [00:28:05] I would absolutely agree.

Sara Sheehan: [00:28:08] Interesting. Very good stuff. Terry, what does being a transformational thinker mean to you?

Terry Tucker: [00:28:15] I guess I would equate it to being a lifelong learner, of never being to a point where I've figured it all out or I know it all. I would, in all honesty, like to die learning. And I think if you can take that knowledge and apply it in your life. Think about it. What does that mean? I don't think we think enough. We don't spend enough time with ourselves. I read a really great book called Do Hard Things by a man by the name of Steve Magness, and he talks about a study that was done at the University of Minnesota, where they took students, put them in a room with nothing else. No devices, no pens, pencils, anything. Just a table, a chair. And the only other thing in the room was a buzzer, and they asked the student to stay in there 15, 20 minutes. Not a long time. And it was amazing, 68% of the men and 25% of the women pressed that buzzer. And when you press the buzzer, and you knew this, you were going to get an electric shock. What the study basically concluded was, we're not comfortable in our own skin. We're not comfortable with our own thoughts. So I think being a transformational thinker means being able to be comfortable with our own thoughts, and then taking those thoughts and applying them to the world outside of us to make life better for ourselves and for others.

Sara Sheehan: [00:29:36] That is a great book, by the way. Doing Hard Things. And that's something that I feel like we as a society have gotten off rails with a bit. So I definitely appreciate that mention. And yes, we need to get more comfortable not only with ourselves, but being present and being mindful seems to be a huge task today. Very difficult and trying for some people. Excellent. Terry, is there anything else that you are working on that you would like to share?

Terry Tucker: [00:30:13] I'm also working on working with two doctors to basically do a webinar that sort of marries the traditional western medicine with some of the other things, in terms of what we eat, meditation, things like that. Not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but maybe finding the best of both worlds that can help people from a medical point of view, and also from a mental or a mindset point of view as well.

Sara Sheehan: [00:30:41] Yes, I love the idea of making sure that we're taking note of what we're eating and what else we can do that might be more natural or organic and less harmful. I will be very interested to see what comes of that discussion, and would love to even share it if there's a link that I could share in the future with my network or listeners. Excellent. And so, Terry, tell me, how would our listeners find you?

Terry Tucker: [00:31:16] I have a website/blog called Motivational Check. Every day I put up a thought for the day, and with that thought usually comes a question. But Motivational Check is the easiest way to get a hold of me. You can leave me a message there and I respond to everybody who reaches out.

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:33] Excellent. Well, Terry, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time and appreciate your story. You have so much light and positivity to share that the world desperately needs.

Terry Tucker: [00:31:47] Well, Sara, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed talking with you.

Sara Sheehan: [00:31:50] Excellent. Well, thanks so much.

Sara Sheehan [00:31:52]: Thank you so much for listening to Episode 18. We had such a fabulous conversation. Three big takeaways from my discussion with Terry Tucker include: First, pursuing purpose and overcoming fear. Terry Tucker emphasizes the importance of pursuing one's true purpose in life despite fear or external objections. He shares his personal journey of transitioning from traditional business roles to becoming a SWAT hostage negotiator, driven by personal significance over familial expectations. This reflects the underlying message of not letting fear dictate your life's direction to avoid future regrets. Second, effective communication and building trust. Drawing from his experience as a negotiator, Tucker highlights that effective communication relies heavily on body language and tone, not just words. Building trust through empathetic and open ended conversations, especially in difficult or high stakes situations like hostage negotiations, is crucial. These skills are applicable in various settings, emphasizing the importance of connection and understanding in human interactions. Third, integrating love and empathy for a fulfilled life. Tucker shares insights learned from legendary basketball coach John Wooden about loving oneself, loving what one does and loving others. He underscores the necessity of incorporating love and empathy in both personal and professional relationships to lead a happier and more meaningful life. His focus on serving others, and his evolving perspective on goals and processes, particularly in the face of his chronic illness and advocacy for cancer research, further illustrate the principle. Thank you so much for joining us for this fascinating conversation with Terry Tucker. I do hope that you will share your thoughts in the comments, and that you will subscribe and never miss an episode.