The Meaningful Podcast #41 - Tom Kereszti

In a world overflowing with distractions, we seek meeting. How do we transform ambition into something deeper, into true fulfillment? I'm Sampa Pai, CEO of Core Central and I'm spending years helping businesses succeed by connecting their goals to something bigger. On the meaningful podcast, we explore not just how to win in business, but how to grow as individuals. Through conversation with thought leaders, innovators, and ever-de-euros, we uncover the stories that drive us towards something greater. Whether you're striving for success, seeking purpose, or just looking for the next steps in your journey, this podcast is your guide to navigating the intersection of ambition, growth, and meaning. So please join me and our incredible guests as we redefine what's possible in both business and life. Enjoy. Great leadership isn't about power. It's about empowering others to succeed. Welcome to the meaningful podcast. I'm your host Sampa Pai and today we're exploring three powerful teams, building leadership legacies, transforming company culture, and the future of organizational success. Our guest today is Tom Terinsky, an accomplished CEO, international business leader, an author of C-suite and beyond. With experience leading global acquisitions, restructuring non-profitable companies, and managing billion-dollar mergers, Tom has mastered the art of leadership across cultures. A specialized in mentoring, a generation of executive, forstoring self-led teams, and integrating AI-driven insights to enhance company culture. From his lessons in cross-cultural leaderships to his strategy for developing high performance teams, times, times insights will inspire you to lead with purpose and drive meaningful change in your organization. If you enjoyed this discussion, please hit the world now with a like, a small review, or even a quick share. You support how more people find meaningful content just like this. Let's begin. Mr. Tom Teresty. Welcome on the meaningful podcast. How are you doing? Great. How about you? Doing fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. It's actually my first time meeting you. And what you're doing in culture and leadership is quite inspiring. So I'm looking forward to great conversations. To start us off, I'd love you to introduce yourself with culture force. So I'd like to introduce myself as a father of three. I don't want my legacy to be culture force. I want my legacy to be what my kids accomplish in life. And they're doing pretty damn well right now. So that's good to them. And then culture force specifically deals with organizations and how people behave, how people interact, how people go about their day. That's what really culture is. It's a DNA of an organization. So we try to find companies that don't have a good DNA or don't like the DNA. I want to make it better. That's what culture force is all about. Interesting. And you begin obviously in the leaderships quite a long time ago. Obviously, as a CSM professional. You had early roles with giants like Colgate and Paul Olde as well. And I'm thinking about how that shapes your early experience, shape, basically your leadership styles and your approach to leaderships. Take us back to that time and how it was to work with different cultures and perhaps refine your perspective through it. Well, it's a journey that you go through. I mean, my first job with Colgate-Pomalov was a ship supervise on a factory floor. So the leadership skills you have to employ as a college graduate, basically, with people who are in the union for 20 or 30 years and they're very structured and very set in their own ways. Those leadership skills that you learn at that part of your life is very different than the leadership skills you need as a CEO of a $400 million company where the people you are leading are smart, teach these MBAs and etc. So they're a little bit different skills, but you can't forget the lessons you learn on a factory floor because the fact is, I think, personally, culture leadership boils down to who you are as an individual. We relate to each other as human beings. So if I was a cocky college kid on the factory floor trying to deal with people who have been in the union doing the same job for 20 or 25 years, then they would have said, "Who did hell with this kid?" When I got to listen to them, so I had to earn their respect and the way I earn their respect was really through my actions. So for example, I get it as the union, so everybody has their job classifications and stuff where this one guy really pissed me off because it didn't seem fair. His job was to basically bring all the supplies to production lines and make sure the production lines were functioning well and they were well stocked. Now that took him about 45 minutes to an hour on an 8-hour shift and then he would go sleep for seven hours. While the rest of the guys kind of will work. Now everybody was kind of doing their job, but it just annoyed the hell out of me that this one guy sleeping for seven hours and everybody else is working. So I looked at the rule book and basically the rule book said, "Well, as a supervisor of the production line, I have the authority to give him tasks." So I gave him clean up tasks. I just want to make sure he's doing something and not sleeping for seven hours because I just didn't think it was fair for the other guys. He can play into the union and everything else, but I earned the respect that the other guys in that shift because they also didn't like it. Why do they have to work 8 hours a day in the other guy's sleep for seven? I was just fair with people. I was real with people of deity to help. I was out there. I was sitting in my little production booth for 8 hours a day. I was out there in the production for helping them, talking to them. And sometimes I was in the midnight shift, right? So from midnight to 8 in the morning. So it's just really gaining people's respect and then showing them the way. And that's really different than when I was a CEO of a $400 million company. I still have to earn the respect of my general managers. I still have to earn my research on vice presidents as a human being of the way I acted the things that I did. Interesting. And when you're thinking about just all diverse, basically, those environments are where you're always somebody that pick up on those things easily, to just basically mold yourself or perhaps mold your environments to those around you so that they can also understand what you want from them. Because that's also very important, obviously, as a leader, our objective is to always be to inspire to have other people that we lead. Not only listen to us, but also actively pursuing what we think as a supervisor or somebody basically of the food chain, as we like to say, are trying to accomplish. Was that always, was that always simple for you or how are you able to mold yourself towards different environment like those? Coming. Oh, interesting. Maybe your, is your connection strong? Yeah. Just all of a sudden, it disconnected, right? So disconnected from the studio and then it closed my windows. So I don't know what had happened. Okay. We'll just, we'll just, we'll just, we'll edit that part out in a, in start back from, from, I already have my question in my mind's dark. That's why. That's a, that's okay. That's okay. And, and, and so I was, I was wondering, Tom, obviously you're talking about earning respects and you were able to do so in, in, in diverse environments as well. Is that something that you pick up quite quickly about not only the, what, what you want they say there should do as a supervisor is, but how to do so so that people follow you and, and her in that respect, basically, quite effectively? Well, look, it's, it's just the way I'm wired. Right. You know, some people wired it self-centered. You just recently, right? I, I, I won't name the individual, but he's, he's the head pastor of the church. I go to, or the church I want to. And, you know, I always felt as a leader, it's my responsibility to walk into a room and get to know the people in the room. You know, who's in the room? What are you about? What are you about? Um, so I am reaching out before I make a presentation before I get on stage. I work the room to find out who's in the room. So I understand who they are, maybe what they're thinking. This particular guy, you know, he, he's expecting everybody else to get to know him, right? So, um, I was at a meeting one time and, and, you know, I finally walked up to this guy. I said, look, pastor, whatever his name is. Um, and I always name, I just don't want, you know, mention it here. I said, look, you and I have been in a room for at least a little times. And you still have no idea who I am. So I'm Tom. So next time you're in a room, you know, why am? Right? Because in that particular situation, he's the leader. And in my opinion, you know, he should do that. You know, another example, I'm working with this, uh, whole improvement company. So they invite me to their sales meeting. And here's the owner of the company and the owner of the company is handing out envelopes with cash bonuses to some of the sales guys. And written on the envelope. And by the way, this is not a big company. It's not like a Fortune 500 company with, you know, thousands of employees. have a bite. about 25, 30 guys on the Salesforce and it's privately owned by one guy. So he's looking at the names on the envelopes before he's ready to hand out. And he has no idea who these people are. I'm like, you're already over to the company. There's about 25 people in the sales team and you don't know who they are and granted you don't know who they are. But at minimum, when you get to the meeting, you look at the names on the envelopes while you're in that room and you go shake their hands to know a little bit, at least to know what they look like or ask your sales manager, which guy is John? Which guy is feeder? I mean, it's just like blew my mind. Right. How self-centered people are. And that's just not the way I'm wired. That's not my DNA. So. - Have you find that a recurring problem with the people who work with the CrossFit career, this perhaps lack of communication to certain points where it's so performance and result driven that everything else, personality and basically, everything's around you and being striving that vision forwards is just a few top reps for them. - Well, at least the higher you go into the food chain, I call it the corporate food chain, but the higher you go up in the food chain, unfortunately, some people become more self-centered because they believe it's about them. They believe that what they do personally is what matters and what that's the thing that moves everything forward. So they become self-centered, they become ego-tistical. And unfortunately, the higher you go into the food chain, that's what happens. And that's not really real life. In real life, what happens is, if you build a good team and you empower that team and you delegate to that team, they'll take care of things themselves and they'll solve problems themselves. Just a little plug for culture force. I mean, that's really what we do is we enable self-led teams throughout an organization to become self-sufficient and to become self-led. So they're not looking for answers from the top down. 'Cause the fact is, I like to quote Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett said, "He likes to invest in companies with great brands that any dummy can lead 'cause one day a dummy will." So that's pretty much our philosophy. We wanna be able to build teams inside of an organization that will be great, highly functioning teams regardless of who's at the top. Because eventually, you're gonna get a moron to the top. Right? But if you have great self-led teams, then they'll survive the idioticity of whoever that leadership guy is or you know, potential to be a leader. - Right, and then I would, what George Bernard Shaw had to say on this, which is noticing and biggest problems in communication is the illusion that he has taken place. Meaning that communication is such a vital core driver of everything, not only performance, but any relationship in life. For you and obviously driving an organization I call your force, what are some of the best insides that leaders can take on to better the communications and make sure that their team's basically are more equipped to be self-led in the first place? - Well, two things. So if you're inside of a leadership, I'm sorry, if you're inside of a team, you have many members and a team and a biggest thing that has to work inside that team is trust. If people don't trust each other, then that whole thing breaks down. And the reason it breaks down is because if you are as individual, if you don't do your part and people are relying on you to deliver something, right? And you drop the wall. Maybe you can do that once, but if you did it more than once or twice, people say, well, we can't trust now, right? So trust is a really integral part of it. And one of my partners in culture for us is it retired Navy SEAL. And trust is one of the key cornerstones of the Navy SEALs because they have, in fact, they have a saying that I trust you with my life and I trust you with my wife. So trust these extremely hard, because look, we're in a battlefield of business, so the worst case happened and somebody gets fired. You're in a battlefield with the Navy SEALs, the worst case is somebody dies. I mean, the stakes are just much, much, much higher. So trust is an extreme, I would say, indicator of how good well teams function. And the second one is relationship, because if you're not a relationship with somebody, how can you trust them? So it's really to get to know people, to connect with people, not to communicate with people. I kind of joke, I said, look, there's three levels of what I call communication. And the first level is informing somebody. And this is probably not, it's sad, but it's probably about 95% of the presentations in conference rooms and board rooms across business is all over the world. There's a guy with a PowerPoint presentation or whatever presentation. And he's just informing everybody in room, why this project is good, or why they should do this. But it's just kind of vomiting all over people with information, right? And that's 95% of it. And one of the times I used this funny story, 'cause granted this guy Larry, he was a VP, and he was just kind of traveling. So there was sometimes zones involved, but Larry's in his senior VP in the company, and they're presenting, obviously when you're in a conference and this presentation, the lights are dim, so there's not a light. And about 10 minutes into the sky's presentation, Larry's snoring like chase, so on. Right? And everybody's like, what was she doing? Should we wake up Larry? Or, you know, it's like, the hell with Larry, he didn't put himself to sleep, the guy presenting. What a good lady. Don't worry about Larry, you worry about the guy presenting. That's the first level of communication, and we're kind of trained on even body language, how to stand up straight and how to use your voice and all that stuff, but it's really just information. And then the second level that of communication is actually what I call communication, where you and I, for example, talk into each other, and we're actually listening like, in my mind, I'm at, like, you know, why is Sam asking that question? Right? What's behind that question? So you're not only using your body and your mind and everything else, but you're not thinking. You're thinking about building rapport with you, you're thinking about why is he asking the question. Right? And it just me answering the question, so I can go to the next thing, you know, just kind of forming a dialogue to say, let's explore that opportunity, or let's explore that issue, whatever. So then real communication starts place. And then the third, the highest level is connection. And connection is extremely important because that's why I say, you know, you go from, first one is information, you talk with your body and your mouth and everything else. The second is your mind, so you're exchanging ideas in your mind, which is communication. And the third was connection, you really get your, you know, your heart, you soul into it. You connect, I connect with you, Sam is human being. It's not about what you're thinking, it's not about what you're saying, but how you feeling, and why are you feeling it that way? You know, why is that thing so important to you? You know, it's a great cause that you want to, you know, make the world a better place to be. You know, how do I help you with that? So I get down to you soul and we, you know, and I love the Irish. I, the first time I went to Ireland, it was so funny because, you know, I kind of, not kind of, but I travel over the world that I've been a loader place. And I look at different societies and different countries with different gifts. And, and they call it the Irish gap for a reason, right? And so you go to Ireland and besides all the green and everything else, which is absolutely beautiful. And I got to give a plug to Guinness, because Guinness doesn't face anywhere like in a world like in Ireland, it's just, it's the most delicious thing there is, but in Ireland, everybody talks to you. Like you, you sit in a table in a restaurant, a table next to you, starts talking to you. You were actually, you know, a canteen on my wife, we were taking a ferry. And we were taking a ferry over from one part on North, more the part of Ireland to another. And it was about 20 minutes. So the little coffee cart there, we're having a coffee and this guy with his, the walk comes by, I said, "Hey guys, how you doing?" Some of them were waiting for the ferry, we were gonna go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I will put this house over here." My wife was over there and my parents, you know, my laws are still living in this house. And I met my wife 25 years ago, we got two beautiful kids, my kids over here. And you know, you guys go all the way from America, well, you gotta go see this place, that was, so he took 20 minutes out of his life, just to talk to us while waiting for the ferry. And not about how's the weather, right? But he's sharing his life, you know, who is married to his kids, you know, what is the one life asking us the same thing? And it's so beautiful. It's a gift of the Irish that they engage you in discussion, they share their stories. And then in turn, you share your stories with them. And you start to connect them on a human level. So going all over back to your original question about the two things of teams, you know, what is trust and the other one's connection? And the way connection happens is, you know, sharing your stories, getting other people to share their stories, to open up, heart to heart. Not just body, mind to mind, but heart to heart. And then you have this human connection, along with having, you know, the trust in the other visual, that they will show up and they will do what they do, and then teams begin to really function very good. Right. And I want to talk a little bit about cross-feltual leadership because you beautifully led businesses across Central America and obviously used to Europe and you were just talking about the fact that you were very, very in touch and loving the islands cultures. And that's fantastic. It gets a very open, very vibrant cultures. But I'm wondering when you were obviously navigating those different cultures and how you were still able to basically unify teams and then she's business success. Where the fact that basically where they were, what's their background and their city cultures and so on. Why do you think you were able to do so? And what's basically, you would say, "Can I be the point of leadership where you're able to actively get people together regardless of perhaps their differences or what makes them basically tackling it with a different lion's press. I would like to call it." Well, two things. So the first thing is, "I listen. Anytime I walk into a room, I don't speak I listen." God gave me two years and one month for a reason. And many leaders and many people in position of leadership, they think they have to have all the answers and they think that when they will, they'll walk into the room, they have to own the room and they have to show everybody how smart they are in the room. And I'm exactly the opposite. I walk into the room, I listen, I learn. So the first time I went to Brazil, how could I possibly claim what's going on in the Brazil of Arc? So I went to Brazil once, one week, I don't want every month, when people have that business to learn about it. And I didn't just sit in a conference with the guys, we went out to the trade, with the store checks, we talked to customers. So I need to understand, before I'm making the decisions, I need to understand from my local team, how they sort of work it and verify myself. So I listen a lot. And that also gives me respect or an earned respect of that team there because they're like, "Well, he's not an asshole. He's actually listening to what we say. He actually has an input on what to happen here." So that gives a lot of, I would say, energy and satisfaction to the local team because I'm actually listening to that. And the second thing is, okay, make sure you have a team and I call it diversity of thoughts. So when you put a team together, or even if you inherit a team, make sure, and I don't know whether you take this or my as a Briggs or LSI or PII, that's PII, it doesn't matter which test you take, but put your team through a skills assessment. So you understand how they think and how they view the world. One of the problems with leadership is people tend to surround themselves with like-minded individuals. Because it feels good. And we all kind of get along and we all think alike. And before I learned the skill set about 30, 40 years ago, my approach was, man, this guy's a total idiot. I mean, there's just a freaking loser. They don't do anything. All they do is procrastinate and procrastinate. And then later on in life, I learned that this is not about procrastination. They just analytical mindsets. They're highly analytical. They want to analyze data and they do have difficulty making decisions. So on the flip side of that, if you put a rule full of analytical people together, they will never make a decision. Because they will never have enough data. They'll just analyze and analyze and no decision will come out of it. That actually happened when a banker was consulting with, they brought it me in for a strategic, they want me help with their strategy. And then after about a couple of hours, I wanted to see the man goes, "Look, you don't have a strategy problem. You got a people problem." Because you got a bunch of financial analysts in the room and I don't care what strategy you're going to have. They're never going to make a decision. They're just going to analyze the shit out of everything, right? And they never make a decision. So getting back to the point, make sure you put a team together where you know people's strengths and make sure it's a diverse mindset team. I talk about diversity, they love it, but I'm not talking about skin color, I'm not talking about gender, I'm not talking about all that stuff. I'm talking about how you think. Because look, if you want to be a diverse individual and you go DEI and you put a room, you know, awful of, you know, Afro-Americans there. But they all think alike, you're not diverse. All you've done is you put the same people. So now you're kind of thinking it's totally different mindset, but it's not a diverse mindset, right? That's why I say diversity of thought is the most important. And what you have to do is you actually have to do two steps. One is to make sure that you have people who think very differently. And I don't care if it's disc or my is of breaks or whatever test you've ultimately, they're going to put you into four quadrants. All these tests kind of name in differently, but you know, eventually they're in four quadrants of how people view the world problem solving, etc. And what you have to do is you have to make sure that you got all these covered. And then when you have all covered, the next step is to make sure that people understand that the guy across from you is not a bad person. He's not stupid. He just sees the world different than you, right? And get him to appreciate it because look, you're in a room with three other individuals. Let's just say it's, you know, one of each and you've got a problem to solve. Now if you're all thinking alike, you're all going to come up with the same solution because you all got the same blind spots. And you may be the wrong solution. Now if you got four different people thinking about four different mindsets, for the same problem, you're going to have four solutions. Isn't that a much better? No, I mean, because now you can, you can have a healthy debate. And you say, well, okay, I thought this was the best solution, but actually the other one is the best solution, right? Because people look at it the problem, they analyze it differently. And you come up with four solutions to set a one. Now, isn't that a better thing? So that's kind of, you know, listen, you know, getting back to the original question is the first thing is, is really force yourself to listen, force yourself to understand before you speak, right? And then once you understand, then you can add value to the equation and then make sure that you have a really diverse thinking team. And then I think you have the foundational elements of going forward. Yeah, it's because you have a proven record, obviously, of of of turning in the rest of the structure, perhaps non-profitable companies into one that are profitable. And you seem to truly focus from my research on crisis management and strategic alignment. You were, you were, you were, you're lighting this example with the bank, which I think was very interesting, where you came back to this year and makers, and you said, well, the strategy might be fine, but the people executing it, I've just, they, there's just no chance. Basically, it can be the right people to do so. Is that what you typically find with non-profitable business where the strategy basically might be viable to, or to, to, to, to, to extend consciously, basically, it's, it, it consciously taught for, by the way, but not executing in a way in which mid to long term is, is sustainable. Is that typically the biggest gaps or tell me what you typically found as the main problems of non-profitable business these days? Well, I, I found, uh, from, and look, there's, there's no right or wrong answers. Um, I'm not the smartest person in the room always, uh, but all I can talk to you about is, is my story, my experiences. And, um, you know, I, I've had some success and I also had some failures and that's how I came up with my books. He's shooting beyond and I called the four keys of leadership success. And what I found in my life and that's how I started writing this book is when I looked at my life, I reflected on it and I said, look, what was happening when things were working well, and what was happening when things were not working well? What I found is these four things and, and the first one that I talked about culture, uh, or in a case of individuals, the character, the second one is vision, the third one is strategy, uh, I'm not a strategy, a strategy, uh, and it, which is a growth strategy. And then the, the fourth one is, is the team you're in a circle. So when I looked at all those things, um, I said, if you have a check walk in all forties and old forties are fine, uh, you're going to be successful. Uh, if one or more of those missing, that's when I looked at my life and I said, okay, well, things are not working like, for example, I, I left my, uh, I would say W2 back in 2005. So 2005, I built a corporation, so I started my first business and I thought I was a superstar, so I tried to do a little, so if I look at, you know, how could I have done much better for my first business? Well, if I looked at my inner circle, my inner circle was me, right? It was my own business, it was my own start business. I hired people, but my inner circle was, you know, I had a good team, but my inner circle was me. Said, well, I could have done much better if it wasn't just about me if I had some business partners. So then my second business, I had two business partners and that business failed miserably. And the reason it failed mentally because the two business partners that I teamed up with, it just didn't work, all right? So. You know, the lesson there was, okay, well, I like the idea of business partners versus just myself, but I chose the wrong people, right? So that was just two quick examples on, on, you know, what happens when the team's not working right? Or you're in a circle's not working right, right? Also, if you have a disconnect between vision and strategy, you know, things are not working right. Like, I always use codex. Codex is a great example. They had a grid vision. If, you know, back in my co-gay days, we actually had a partnership with codex about the most beautiful smile in the world. We had an important role in the circle, what code gate was about teeth, and codex is about photographs. So, Santa's the most beautiful smile. So we got all these pictures from all over the world about people smiling. It was, it was a contest. It was a promotion, right? And codex at some time, their vision was to be the best imaging company in the world, right? So it's a great vision. And they were a great company. Also, the best imaging world became a film manufacturer. And that with digital cameras came along. There was no more film. You know, then, you know, it was, you know, basically, you know, copying and paper. And so they just lost their way because they didn't hold through their vision. At trying to vision and they braced digital technology and they, and not worried about digital technology as always just different technologies. That's us who are in filmmaking. Film will never go away, you know, and also the whole world changed. And it's all digital. And, you know, a 35 million-meter film is a novelty now, right? Just because they forgot what their vision was. And pretty much, you know, they're still a business, but they're a fraction of what they were at one time or what they could be. So, you know, you gotta, you know, stay true to your vision. So again, the first one, we talked a lot about your already culture or individuals' character, the second one's vision. Third one is the strategy and it's a growth strategy 'cause we don't wanna be fatter, we don't wanna be more out of shape, we don't wanna be poorer. So you always wanna be growing as an individual, going as a company and again, you're in a circle. So those are the kind of four things that I think is key to really lead a healthy life and a healthy company. It's just my story. I'm sure there's other stories out there. - Beautiful. And I was able to preview that book. I want to touch on it a little bit. It seems to me that it was, it truly you wanted at least, or that's what I pick up as a young leader myself, as serving as a guide for young leaders that are as powering basically to reach executive roles. Was that, was that the odds in who we're trying to reach out to when perhaps was that the intentions behind the writing itself? Tell me more about when you were doing a book, was that was a division? - Exactly. The way that what happened was born was, my wife is very entertained. She, we're actually living all over the world and she has all these millions of stories. And she's just us folk. And I mean, if we're a dinner party, she's always dominating the conversation and talking about this story. And people are just like very entertained and used by her stories. She's very graphic. And then somebody said, well, you guys should write a book. So I don't, my wife wasn't gonna write a book 'cause she's very entertaining, which is not a writer, right? So I said, okay, well, let me figure out how I would write a book about all these stories, right? So I kind of gathered all these stories and I started putting together and I said, okay, well, who the heck would want to actually listen to all these stories? I mean, it doesn't make sense. They're all over the place. And then when I started putting the puzzle together, I said, well, shit. And I was like, these stories, I was, you know, doing pretty well in life. And these stories, my life was a mess. And you know, these stories, blah, blah, blah. So I said, okay, well, okay, it starts making sense. These are the keys to leadership success. And these are the stories that illustrate how successful in building a vision or how you failed in putting a team together or excited. So just a life full of stories of failure and success where I get things right, illustrated by those four keys. And well, so it's a pretty easy read. It's just a bunch of fun stories and a couple of key points about, you know, what led to my leadership success or leadership failure. And that's how the book came apart. How the book came together. And it's really to, in by the way, you know, when I was 22 years old, when I was starting out at work, if somebody came up to me and said, Tom, let me ask you a question. The image vision for your life. You know, like I would have said, what the hell are you talking about? I'm 22. I just got out of college, you know, I got a little convertible car. What do you mean vision for my life, you know? And nobody asked me that question. And I wish somebody did, because I think maybe I would have approached life a little bit different. And so that's also part of the book is is to have someone who is younger to pick it up to read it and to ask some questions in their lives to say, what am I doing? Am I doing the right thing? - Yes. And you're talking a lot about pattern recognition, but then also pattern duplications, right? So those are the keys. There's some stories to illustrate basically those keys and to validate, perhaps justify why I'm why I'm saying what I'm saying. But then duplicating basically those patterns you can stay on the only one top or on path for that vision to unfold is also extremely important. It's interesting you mentioned if somebody would ask you this question when you were younger, that might have changed the way you were operating where I suppose living in the first place. What are we importance are mentors, would you say? You're not at age where you're able to mentor a lot of people yourself, but would you say that should be an intrinsic portions of each basically ambitious people's journeys and lives is to find great mentors, at least seek to perhaps wisdom from others? - Well, you know, I mentioned to you earlier the first thing I do, - I walk into a new room is listen, right? And I think that's very important for anybody to recognize that they don't have the old answers. So look, I'm in the light of parts of my life, I don't know how many more years I got left, but hopefully a few more, but I learn from everybody. I don't care, I don't learn from you because you're a wiser and older. I learn from you because you did something in life for your experience and something in life that I can learn from. Right, I say I don't know how old you are, I'm guessing you're about probably half my age or even less. But that doesn't mean I can't learn from you. Right, you probably experienced something in life that I haven't, that I could benefit from. So I think it's just, it's a person's attitude of being open to learn from others. And it's just, it's part of being humbleness that you don't have all the answers. And it's a little bit tough because I remember myself when I was young, you know, guy coming out of college, getting my first job and second job and really being on that rocker ship of the corporate food chain that I was on. And, you know, it's tough to humble yourself. Life will humble you by the way, if you don't, you know, humble yourself, like to humble you. But, but you think you're, you think you have all the answers because you're the brightest individual. And, you know, why could you have all the answers because they just gave you this promotion and they put you in charge in this, you know, you team or whatever. So you think you have all the answers, but I think if you're humbled or you humble enough or life humbles you that you're forced to be humbled, then you start listening and start learning. And if you are, start listening and start learning, then I think you can become, you know, somebody much better version of yourself than if you don't listen. So I think that's, and I kind of got lost with your original question, but just be humble, be willing to learn and it's just an attitude that you have. And, you know, some people have it and some people get it by being humble. - Beautiful. And you obviously, in M20 years old, so I appreciate you saying such things. I don't know how old you are. I would guess that it's less than half the age, but from my perspective, also from reading your story, obviously we're part of very, very high stakes moments, and high stakes deals most importantly. And obviously you direct to the, a billionaire, more merger and kind of spearheaded this process of acquisition yourself and across the audit of consensus as well, which also was quite mind blowing to me at least. When you talk a lot about listening, which is super fantastic, and I'm sure that that position in your rooms, that you were only dreaming of when you were kind of like on the market ship of the corporate ladder. But when it comes to that, those high pressure moments of those major, major mergers and major acquisitions, what you think is the differentiators from those that have the, when I call having the shoulders to end all that pressure, and those that typically simply do not have it, when you're talking about that 0.001%, what makes them difference and how were you able to reach that status alongside your career? - I'm gonna say something very simple. It's your values, right? - Whatever values you have, and values are kind of funny, because I am of the opinion that you don't learn values when you become an adult. You learn your values when you're a kid, You know, when you're not even a teenager, but you know, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. That's when you learn your values that stay with you for the rest of your life. I would contend that people that quote unquote learn values when they're 30, 40, 50 years old, really learning those values. They're just maybe habits. Then they exercise habits. Then what happens is values are really true values when they're tested on their pressure. It's really easy to display values when there's no pressure. That's why I call them habits, the things that you learn when you're 30, 40. If those values are ingrained in you, when pressure strikes you, that's the only thing that you have to fall back on. Because they're part of you, they're ingrained in with you. When shit happens and chaos is all over the place, if your values are strong, they'll get you through that. If your values are just habits and not values, then you're crumble. In all those high pressure situations, you in a room, you go back to those values. Let's assume it happens many times. I'm in a room with some very high-flying individuals where we're trying to make an acquisition or do a merger. What's my first instance? My first instance is the add value to the situation and start listening. I don't try to come into the room of bulldoze. I come into the room and observe. What's put myself in the other side shoes? What's it for them? Why are they trying to do this merger? Why are there open to being acquired? How do they benefit? How do I add value to the equation to see what makes the other side win? Most people walk into a situation and say, I want to buy this company, I want 100%, I want it tomorrow and I want it for the cheap price. That's my objective. I walk into a room and say, what is the other guy want? What's going to make them click when they pick me to acquire them versus one of my competitors to acquire? By the way, this is something I can talk about it because it happened many, many years ago. When I was working for the Strasse family, we had a strategy of consolidating roasters all over the world. If you look at the coffee market, it was pretty consolidated. In the US, you had not in the US for globally, you had Nestle, you had Kraft, and you had Sarily at the time. Sarily is no more, but at the time, you had Sarily. Those were the big three you found all over the place. Then you had the specialty, what I call the tallies, you had the love otter, the sacred fatos, and then in Europe, you all said, if you're really lush, flier, called Chibo. But anywhere else in the world, when you looked at Brazil, you look at Africa, you look at, you know, not just Brazil, but Latin America, you had small roasters all over the place. They all tend to be not public companies, but they were family companies that grew throughout the years. What happens? Kraft goes into a meeting and said, hey, we want to buy you. We want to start at 51%, minimum, we won't take anything less than 51, but the starting discussion is 51. We'd love to get 100, but if you don't want to sell a small company, minimum is 51, and within five years, there's automatic triggers that gets us to 100. So what does this signal to the older? We spent his 20 years, 25 years, maybe a second. From Bay, what, I'm out because you got 51% of money. So that was slightly different discussion because we said, look, you know what, we can't take 49, but we'll take 50. We'll be equal partners. So you have 50, we have 50, and in fact, instead of selling your company now for $50 million, you'll benefit from just selling half of that 50 million to us, and then participating in the growth of the value ring to the equation. So when you sell the 100%, whatever you want, and if you don't want to sell it, you want to give it to your kids, it's okay, right? We only have one stipulation, we run the books, right? So we always put the CFO into the organization, but we said, look, you've printed it, you know, the reason we want to buy you company because you've killed, you built a pretty big brand, and you got great customers. So why in guys name would, what I want to shove you out and put my own people in there? I want you to stay along for the ride because you're pretty smart individual. You got the business to this, this far, and now all you want to do is you want to be an expertise in, and to honor manage your larger business better, how to grow to business better, but we still want you to be part of that growth. And whenever you're ready to cash out, no cash that and watch higher multiple, because you participated in at least have the business growing. Without failure, every one of those guys sold us 100% within five years, right? And we didn't have to force them, right? So that's why we were able to make acquisitions in those emerging markets, that big guys like, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 times the size was, couldn't make those same acquisitions because they were like just bulldozers. All right? So we just kind of put ourselves, and I put myself in the other guy's shoe, as a T1. Well, let's give him recognition, let's give him recognition, and their families for the recognition of all the blood, sweat, and tears that they did, you know? Let's just let's say, hey, you're not important, you're a bunch of idiots, you know? No, you are very important. You're not a bunch of idiots, and we want you to participate and we want you to benefit. And that's how we're able to do all those acquisitions. So that's how you approach complexity, right? Through and through and through and through and ensuring, you see me, my inspiration and my innovation on both sides. That part of the DNA says, we are people of value, who value people, who add value to people. So what does that mean? Well, with people of value, I mean, you got to value yourself, you got to say, I got something to bring to the table. I know something, I have some skill sets, so I value myself because I'm a very important piece of repuzzle. And I value you, my value to the other individual, because if I don't value you, if I don't value your contributions, if I don't value you, then then, and it's all about me, it's not about us. And then that's the really only way I can add value to you is if I values an individual and value myself. And that's just not personal, but that also goes for culture, that also goes for organizations, you know, I value my organization because my organization is really good at X, Y and Z. So I'm a consultant, I'm really good at culture. My organization, my company, culture force, who really good at building cultures inside of organizations. I value you, or I value you company because it's important. You're maybe making a difference in the world, and you may be making widgets, or you may be making clean waters for African kids so they can have clean water. So I value what you do, I value your organization. And then I can add value to you. So whether that's for an individual, or whether that's for organizations, that formula works. Right. And when you talk about this at line, but obviously part of of of of teal building is is understanding that the strength of each and in the talent of each makes us makes us a team, right? The team members and in from from that basically where we're stronger than collective, then only basically pieces and individuals outside of that team. When you're thinking about not only the the team building aspect, which you talk has liked about, but how you were able to identify and nurture basically towns to create these team in the first place, especially for those bigger companies that were the people that were joining you on those high state decisions. How how how are you able to where you don't want to charge basically of creating these teams in the first place? And if that was the case, how can you can lead us and people basically right now trying to build a lot of class teams can can better can bear shaped and mold themselves this understanding of diversity of of mindset as you like to say, which I really love which I will definitely steal by the way, so thank you Tom. And because I think it's fantastic, the eye of mindsets, but but on a more serious note, how how are you able to to identify and and and and and the murder in the course that we talked about is identified with certain ties to which necessary for ex-wisey job at ex-wisey known. So picture this in an ex-backed world, you know, they basically pick you to go solve a problem and stick you to companies somewhere you know across the world right. So whether it was cold get pomalab or wreck a bank easier or strouse or philipsylletrionics, they would say, okay well Tommy's our guy so we're going to send them to you know Mexico or send them to London or send them to wherever because there's a company that's not being profitable. That's what you send you there because maybe the company's not going as fast as it could was a general manager. So you go in there, they're going to write you up and say hey Tom, you know this and this and this and this and he's coming to be a new boss. So it's a great guy, you know, be nice to him. So but eventually you end up in a company whether you the company's there a year or the new guy. You're in a new person walking in, has to figure out what the heck is going on and how do I fix it. And by the way in the ex-fab world you have three years. So basically within three years you either made that company very successful or you haven't if you made a successful descent to something bigger and better. If you haven't they fire you. It's pretty simple. So two to three years is what you have it, and if it's not working, you're out. If it is working, you're still out, just done something bigger and better. So that's a little different than as a consultant I work into an organization today. It's different in the sense that as a consultant, I don't have a direct responsibility of telling people what to do, but the challenge is the same to assess the situation, what's going on, why is it not working, and then making recommendations on how to fix that, and hopefully have an ally in that local team, and in that local leadership to make those changes, which you believe will move that peanut forward. So it's a very similar thing again, and at the expense of repeating myself, because I'm repeating myself in any situation, whether it's a room or turning a company around, or making an acquisition, I walk out of room, and the first thing I do is listen and observe. What the hell is going on? And then kind of just take it all in, and also what helps me is just the experience that I had from all these situations to say, "Oh yeah, I recognize this. This happened two or three times, stops ago, and this is what I did." So it just helps shut up, open your ears, open your eyes, observe what the heck is going on, before you make any decisions, before you make any recommendations. And that's pretty much what we do with a company that hires us to do a culture assessment. So we do an assessment portion of it. We'll be talked to a lot of people. Some of it is just assessment by, "Okay, take this online question gear. Part of it is quality-thitty, but we're sitting down and talking to individuals. Maybe not every person, but we'll ask the company to give us maybe 15, 20 people to talk to so we'd have quality-threat assessment." So we listen and say, "Okay, what's going on inside your organization?" And it's a little signs also, like you want an organization and tell you just by looking around, looking at people's faces, I can say, "Only shit we're in trouble." We've got a bunch of really isolated individuals that are not talking to each other with a bunch of plus faces. Versus you walk into another organization, you go, "Wow, that's maybe it's not as stuff as we think it is, because there's a lot of people smiling, there's a lot of people interacting." So something must be going right. So just as a sidebar, when I got my first job, and the reason I joined Colch and Pomyle as a ship supervisor on a production floor, when I graduated college, was this one of reason. At those times, there was no websites, there was no internet, there was no net that. So it was customary for companies, when they were recruiting you to bring it to the company and give you what I call the nickel tour. So they would bring it to the company, they would walk you through the company. This is our cafeteria, this is our engineering room, this is our production floors, whatever. And I was always an extroverted guy, I like talking about it. So while doing these tours, I would always kind of sneak off and have a mini conversation with somebody in flowy each. "Hey, what's it like working here?" And I could tell you like, I was at, I once, I once named the company, but it was in the defense industry, where I walked over, because I graduated as an undergraduate engineer. So my first job was engineering interviews. The guys did the math, this place sucks, you don't want to work here. So I mean, just talk to people and say, "What's it like working here?" And then when I did that same thing at Koldate, I talked to probably about half dozen people. And every person just said, "This place is great." It's like, just people love and vibe. In fact, my interview was with this guy Dave Benz, I'll end it up getting to know him much better, but like on campus college interviews, Dave Benz starts out with the interviews as top. Now, let's not talk about your grades, because you either were smart enough to get your GPA, or you were smart enough to cheat you through college, you get GPA. So put that aside. Who were you as an individual? What makes you tick? What do you like doing? That was the interview. And it was such a breadth of fresh air, because just, you know, the approach was like, "Okay, you want to get to know me?" You know, and I was ready to work a while. You know, I got this screen and this screen, because that's what you have in college. And I was the captain of my kind of steam, and it's all this stuff. So, you're the foot of the interview, and I was like, "Hey, you're even smart enough to cheat you through college." Or, "Oh, God, you're great." So, just, you know, tell us who we're getting. You know, who are you as an individual? And I think, you know, that's, that's, you know, extremely important, you know, in your role, your role works your life. So, you know, going in there, just to kind of recap, as I went off from a little rabbit hole, whether I'm consulting, or whether I was an expert, going back to my values, you know, listening and understanding. Any time in the situation, "Okay, why am I here? What's going on?" Let me gather facts first, before I see the big picture. And once I see the big picture, then I can make some recommendations. (coughs) Yeah. And obviously, leadership workshops and culture developments as a center of what you're doing. But it seems to me we're touching on very very important and relevant teams from the conversation we're having this far. When you're thinking about the workshop methodology, because that's something that was quite interesting from, from my research was, "Havi, you have truly your own methodology." It's obviously I'm sure it's inspired by the fact that you're in John Maxwell and so on. But it's quite unique in its, in its fashion that it's unfollowably fun. And how that works is when you're thinking about the ability of those workshops, "Oh, this is not an odd meaningful change." And what would you say if any problem you from basically what you were talking about from listening to the value stress and that kind of glitch change of the assimilized interventions, why I found a workshop to be the most effective way to use it. Of kind of the way, basically, these diverse teams for the opportunities to figure out what the problem is. Now, once I understand the problem and the big picture, and 99% of the time I can say, "Yeah, this workshop will work, or this exercise will work." Because the problems are not unique. The problems are kind of general because they're human problems. And as human beings, we kind of have the same issues. So that the workshop just becomes a solution and that just goes in my bag of workshops, whether that's one of the John Maxwell workshops or some other workshop and just say, "Okay, well, this will probably fit this particular problem to get these people to open up, to listen to better, to work with the church." So, you know, if you go into the situation and say, "Look, people are just not taken responsibility for their actions." So trust is breaking down because there's no accountability inside the organization. So then we say, "Okay, well, we've got to do an accountability workshop." Right? If you go inside and you basically say, "Look, I looked at the big problem and it's like that example where I said, "Well, they all think alike." Well, now it's not a workshop that's a solution. Now what the solution is is we have to restructure that team, maybe move some people from part of the organization to the other, vice versa, to get that diversity of mind, of thinking in that sense. Right? And then you do a workshop to basically say, "Okay, now, how do we learn to get along with each other because we're thinking very differently?" And that's actually good, not something bad, that you know, that shouldn't raise animosity, that should raise collaboration. So you kind of just sit back, look at what the heck is going on, understand it, look at the big picture, and then look into your bag of goods and say, "Okay, what would work for this particular situation?" Interesting. So more, you had a point now where you've been analyzing these so much, you're more of the, you take a decision based on a very, very personalized basis, a Cinecchirchial wave flakuki cutter type of approach. I want to talk to you about something quite new and something very exciting Tom, which is you wanting to integrate AI obviously in leaderships. Well, I've heard and called, "Hair is not what it's doing." You're thinking about the AI tool, only that you're using, but also, I'll leverage it to enhance basically the leadership and build more of this basically that company cultures. Tell me more about it. No, we are with AI doing that. Are they already good enough basically to be able to find their own? So they'll need to order, will they place some of the issues? Tell me more about the relations that we've hit as worthy, not really worth days. So think about our work, our start work with the company. So again, the first thing we do is the assessment phase. And we come up with a big picture and then come over the implementation phase, which may be a workshop. Now, what happens with a workshop? Well, a workshop is probably about 90 minutes. Maybe it's a happy day. You can't get people's attention. You can't do one workshop for two days. So you do workshop for maybe 90 minutes at most four hours for a really complicated workshop. It's people's attention chant, it's fantastic. You're up so off, right? And then that's a picture in time that's gone. Right. So now, how's that workshop working in people's lives? Are they actually doing what they're learning at workshop? Well, I love to be a fly in the wall on the next day. leading to see what's going on in the next meeting. How are people be aiming, right? So with the technology we have today, it's, it's, we can have this fly in the wall to sit in a zoom meeting, to sit in a team meetings, to sit in a Google Meet meetings where it actually listens to what you say and a lot of tools, like auto AI and all these stuff, you know, kind of transcribe all things you say, but no, don't even listen to my say, but also map out when I say versus those objectives that we're trying to say, I would try to achieve. If you feedback and you know, it's not a spy because it's it's not a fly in the wall that reports to the leadership of their company and and it's okay, now we got something on you. So, you know, it's it's a leverage against you, but it's real-time feedback for you. In fact, we're working on a module that basically says during the meeting, while you're talking and you say something stupid, you'll get a text on your phone to say, hey, heads up. That was, you know, maybe you want to apologize for what you just said, right? Or, hey, Adaboy, that was a great thing. You want to reinforce what you're saying. So it becomes very interactive and helps you to the individual to say, okay, I've got some blind spots. I said something that doesn't trust you, right? It violates our trust that we have. So it's a fly in a wall that says, in between those workshops, in between those executive coaching sessions, how you were implementing that or your name and program. And look, it's not overnight. So you had a bench walk and then let's say you're a 6.8 when you started. We're a month into this. Great. You're a 7.2. You're still out of 10, but you want from 6.8 to 7.2 instead of going down to a 5. So augmented intelligence is just another tool to use in our tool bag. All right. Yeah. So it's actually, you got it. So that the tool that you're working on right now, if I'm understanding it's kind of a meaning with order or something that basically was able to to be at that, at a meeting where the conversation done or everybody's read that, but where that you realize it's really needed to scan their rooms and then intelligently basically make some feedback. There was not only what was talked about, but how people reacted. I just should have liked the conversation as well. Right now, it was the text on the face. Is that the idea that this ripple you're talking about in meetings like, you know, like you and I, if I had it in here, it would analyze what I would say in analysis, what you would say and it would give us some edge for us and some feedback. It's good because of technology knows that I'm speaking and it knows that you're speaking. It can look at not just what I said, but it also looks at how I said it. So if I said something humorous and everybody was laughing, hey, you know, that was good. If I started laughing when I was talking about my grandmother's funeral, it kind of would give me a feedback to say, maybe that's not laughing matter. Right. So, and then we're working on, you know, version 2.0, which will actually take some facial cues while we're sitting on this. So like if you're rolling your eyes, you know, it's going to say, well, okay, was that authentic? Or if I'm looking down, you know, that means I'm probably looking at my phone and distracted and do something else than they're listening to you. So some facial cues, you know, how we say it, you know, what we say. So to give you some some life feedback, but it's maybe that's a lot of knowledge. Yes. It's evolving. I mean, five years, you can do this. Yes. Absolutely. And technology is, I mean, it's it's it's at an expense, it's pace. It is gone. It's not not only not going anywhere, but it would involve regardless of if you'd like it or not to involve. So better, better use as a tool as you call it, the thing as the right way to look at it. It's an amplifier, right? Great work done with technology will be better work and that work done with technology will be not that will still be about work. And I think that's something to always keep in mind. I want you to very, very quickly touch upon a term that you use a lot, which I think kind of like summarized very well this conversation and maybe can put a little bit of the of the me around the bone. You you you identify basically what we call culture calisists. And you talk about this quite often. Obviously focusing on on creating basically healthy cultures and in allowing them with organization goals. When you're thinking about what I call those typically buzzwords or branding right. Culture Calisists. I was that was that something you might see find was there was from from from from you was that I've wanted to venture as a as a as a way to see you get as it goes. Second, I'm not going to scroll or entitled. Sure. But as some type of individual or open to these or what would you say? How would you say is it? Are you able to utilize culture Calisists inside an organization that you're just getting into you're just getting higher basically for example let's take banking industries. You're trying to analyze it who is or what can be a culture Calis for them. How do you how do you operate within your framework to to finance implemented and do so in a successful fashion? Sure. Can you hear me now? Okay great. I was I was saying that you you talked about culture Calisists. And in fact the importance of not only identifying them but also right. I was just thinking of the lion's or other relationship. Oh my gosh. When you're thinking about how do you do that? I didn't really constructs you're getting in you're getting higher. I was getting it by and through basically example. You know what's what's to get familiar? How does it say within your methodology to either identify the culture catalysed I might already be there and identify it or they in the case you which is not there. It will like to be some actually make sure that you have a one on that so that so that base your human knowledge. Yeah. Where it's like how do you make that decisions and how does that come into own tangible actions? And we believe that we have two issues. One is that people are not accountable and two is we don't think people are communicating right so that was a specific brief from our company. They didn't ask us what our problem was. You know they asked us come and do an assessment. They didn't ask us we don't know. They said our culture is based on ESOP and people are not accountable. So come fix it. That was a specific brief right. We had another company that came to us a very large company and said look we spent two and a half million dollars with the Lord and Tush to tell us what our culture should be. So the last thing we want to do is spend another two and a half million dollars telling us what our culture should be. So we're pretty happy but it's not working all out. You know we're a very large organization. It's working in some places. It's not another place. Right. So again that particular client with a culture problem came to us and said tell us why it's working in some places and tell us why it's not working in other places and how do we fix it. So that's that's a very different break. Right. Well versus a third company that was actually part of a very large company and and they basically came to us and said look you know we've got very clear culture from the large organization but people in this organization have been wanted to it. Right. The big what the big but you know they own us and we got all these posters and you know it's stuff on the wall but people are not actually walking the talk. They haven't bought into it. They think it's a bunch of bullshit. Right. So again a very different brief. So on that one it's it's more of a okay well we're not going to throw out the mother company's culture because obviously that's very important but how do we take that culture and make it your culture. So in that sense it's it's okay let's build a culture for this subsidiary of this you know it doesn't buck that big culture but it's not exactly that it's something a little bit different than you guys can own and it's your culture and how do we implement that. So again just three quick examples of working in with companies. So I don't kind of specify what their problem is. They'll come to me and say okay this is a problem can you help. Yeah. Every once in a while you cut out for like 10 seconds or 15 seconds I don't know what it is. Okay. Interesting. Love it. The clients are informing to what basically they're not only thinking but they want help with and therefore you're positioning the the solution of it's basically from your perspective through theirs which which obviously makes sense. Love this very flexible and basically model and Tom truly and just kind of like to conclude obviously you spend now decades in diverse roles and in obviously leaderships yourself and so I was I was thinking do you know yeah it's it well I told you that it's definitely coming from your side but they have to hear my sound you made me very very aware I like well I did that basically from them for our side but just wish to you what to send you one last questions grabs but when you with the Tom don't know if I have to sing obviously as you spend decades in obviously leadership roles and in building diverse organizations and you still do I was wondering you write a book as well on it's yeah different and I get for me I'm fine for the style of the world that's becoming better leadership wise but what do you and your legacy be if you had to live with your words and just put yourself in a point where you're not working in your world or whatever basically happens out there what would you know you like your legacy to anyone people to make it really us then what are you doing beautiful fantastic so nothing nothing as a business legacy perhaps every time on a podcast they answer this question and and I have the same answer so if you're very manner different podcast this is not new to you I love it what and I didn't have the answer to these three questions until later on in life so I don't care if your 18 20 30 or 70. What did you do? Like you're absolutely right. So if you're rap's valuing value personal dream all over over professional one, Mr. Turner. She was just such a broad review to be able to get some of your best insights and some of our best stories and all that sort of this out. Absolutely. You know, brish you can wing us. And I was not if we can share some last words of which way. I will be a wild to figure it out. I was not a certain leader when I was my 20s and 30s. I was a self centered, you know, egotistical seven of it. You know, you got to meet the some certain places, but then and you know, later in life, the light went on and said, this is not the way to go. So it's about, look, it makes sense. When I was a CEO, I had the easiest job at a room. My job was simply to pick the right people and to create environment when it could be successful. So I just had to serve them. And then the second question that you got to cut, play on it is, is what are you passionate about? You know, because it's a, if I'm not passionate about it, how the hell do you want me? You know, why are you going to be passionate about it? I was like, Oh, man, time looks like this full of the sleep. I mean, you know, that doesn't really light him on fire. I guess I'm light interested in either. So I don't know what you're passionate about, but find that passion and then live it and have it coming oozing through your, you know, through your skin. And so people see that you're on passion and you're fire for something. And then they all get on fire about it. And what I'm passionate about is making people better, making companies better, making products better. I just, I want to make, I love to make the world much better, but I'm just not that big of a fish to make the world much better. So I just do it, you know, one little step at a time. And then the third question is, what are you good at? Right? And, you know, nobody likes to follow incompetence. So find out what you're good at. And, and please ask people what you're actually good at may not be the same thing. Right? So do some social soul searching. I say, what are you really good at? And so I'm really good at mentoring a leading. That's what I find out through to all my years. So I'm a servant leader. I'm passionate about making people better, making companies better, making products better. I'm pretty good at mentoring a leading. Now why does that work in my life? The reason that works in my life goes I can take that former love anywhere and apply it. Right? I've heard people say, well, you have to be one way at work. I won't be it's, you know, it was like, that's just a frenic. You know, why would you wear different hats depending on where you're on life? So look, and I said, I want my like to do my to be my kids. So, you know, I can mentor my kids. I can lead my kids. Right? I can add value and make my kids better. I can be a servant leader to my kids. I, that former love works in my family life. That former love also works in my work life. Right? I can be leader of my organization. I can be mentoring my employees. I can be passionate about adding value and, and, and making my customers better, making my product better. I can serve my products. I can serve my customers. I can serve my employees. I can serve my company. So that former love works in my work life. I could be, you know, playing and joining tennis with my friends. Right? That former love works in that part of my life also. So I don't have to reinvent myself every time in a different place. It works consistently. So if there's any words of wisdom that I drafted this podcast, I would say that's the most important point of my life. Thank you for spending your time with us today on the meaningful podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review or share it with someone who could benefit from it. And always remember, your story matters. Make it meaningful. We hope to see you next time.