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The purpose of Speed Mentorship is to take your leadership to the next level while still reflecting your time. The first guest on the Speed Mentorship Podcast is Mike McAlear and my inspiration for leadership and continued growth. The video was recorded in February of 2017, about four months before he passed away.
Mike had an incredible impact on the community and the garage door industry. He was passionate and cared deeply for each of his employees. And while the video clip is just over eight minutes long, there are some beautiful pieces of advice.
Typically the art of mentoring can take several months, but Speed Mentorship optimizes the time needed to get useful and actionable items from today’s top leaders to make you tomorrow’s top leader.
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Matt McAlear: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of speed mentorship. My name is Matt. McAlear your host.
So the purpose of this podcast to take your leadership to the next level. I believe that when a leader gets better, everybody wins. I believe leadership is so incredibly important. And so the format of this
podcast is going to be, we're going to interview the top performers, people who are world-class at what they do, we're gonna ask them difficult and challenging questions so that we can learn from them.
Hopefully learn from some of the mistakes that the. And grow and get better through some of these phenomenal, phenomenal leaders. Um, and we know your time is valuable. So we're going to keep each episode to roughly 15 to 30 minutes. And I want to make sure it's filled with action packed, rich content that you can learn and grow from.
If this content is something that you find value in, make sure you hit the like and subscribe button so we can continue [00:01:00] to deliver it to you. Now today's first guest is one that's very near and dear to my heart. It is my father. It is where my leadership journey started. And I just have so much respect for this guy and what he's done.
Um, so I recorded this back in February of 2017. It was about four months before he passed away. And the reason I chose to open it up with this is because not only this is where my leadership journey started, but this guy had had, has had such an incredible. On the community and really the garage door industry as a whole.
So, um, there's a tremendous amount I've learned from him now.
the video is only about nine minutes, eight to nine minutes, but I think you're going to find that within those eight to nine minutes, there is some beautiful nuggets in there. And I think you're going to learn a lot from this.
You're going to see somebody who's past. About, um, what he does. You're going to see somebody who really cared about the people that [00:02:00] he worked with. And I think you're going to see how authentic, uh, he was as well. So with that, uh, I hope that you find as much value, uh, with this video as I did.
Mike McAlear: Alright? As a note dad is not super awake right now. It's about 8 23 in the morning. And, um, here we go. Got some good questions going on here. All right. So. First question, what is your major motivator in life?
I just liked the intellectual challenge of a new something new to try to figure out, try to improve things away there from where they are. Sure. Okay. Number two. What is [00:03:00] your legacy? I don't know. My legacy, I hope is it's a combination of a lot of things.
My family, what they've learned from me, my legacy, I hope is that of a caring person, person that overcame obstacles with grace. Of a person that
put others ahead of himself and it's a little altruistic, but I'm not sure if I'm always there, but that's something I would, I would hope people understand about me.
Absolutely.
I got 10 questions. Okay. Number three. What are you most afraid?
Sitting in an MRI machine claustrophobic. [00:04:00] I don't know what I'm most afraid of. I think there's always a fear of the unknown for everybody in this, going through that you have to keep moving forward. I don't know what one thing can't say for your dying. I dont know.
Okay. What are you most proud of?
I think I'm most proud of my family. For the most part. I was proud of the legacy that I will leave when I do exit this earth.
what excites you? What wakes you up in the morning? Well, I think if you get talking with me and you start talking about the business, [00:05:00] you'll start seeing that. I get excited and animated start talking about being a change agent, starting to say, well, this is the way we want things. We want to go to this.
And you get, you're starting to see me get pretty animated. So there's a being able to change life change circumstances. Not only for myself, for other people excites me. Yeah.
How do you balance work and personal life depending on how you talk to? I don't know that I've done that. I think I've. Back. I've been involved intermittently with kids growing up. I tried to make every know every, every one of their, their concerts or whatever. I helped coach when they were young and, um, tried to be involved in their lives.
And then I tried to be [00:06:00] me. And so they learn there's all kinds of personalities and all kinds of ways of looking at life. So the work balance. Have you talked to my wife, it was skewed very highly towards work. And, um, I, I'm hoping that part of my legacy is teaching my children that,
that, uh, you know, you're only here once, if you try to influence and help as many people as possible. So it's a hard one for me. Work life balance is I think it's, uh, uh, this theorial thing that's out there that we want to shoot. No, it's, it's hard to attain and it has to, there has to be a partnership with the other half of your work, your life, you know, how do you define a successful business?[00:07:00]
I think a successful business is one that's growing because you're doing things. People want more of it, of the product and services. Are you providing successful businesses and just growing for growth's sake? It has a bottom line that you can use to invest back in to the business itself. A successful business is also people that are engaged has people that are engaged, just not doing what you ask them to do when they're doing things at their own pace.
how do you educate yourself on a day-to-day basis or monthly, weekly, whatever. What's, what's the way that I think a lot of different things at different times of my life, it did a lot of reading when I was young, a lot of reading about books of leaders, about a lot of strategy, which I. I want the [00:08:00] college have my master's and bachelor's, and master's, there's a, there's an element that, that, of that that's important in today's day and age.
There's so much information available at your fingertips. You just have to take the time, open your mind and learn. And, and, and I think a lot of people will take, if it's hard to stop, you've got to, that's precisely the moment where you keep going. And once you grasp something, guess what you've learned it.
So I'm doing it constantly. Exposing myself to all sorts of demographics, people that I've not grown up with youth. I like being around younger people. I like being around older people, learning from them. So there's lots of ways to put yourself out there. I've been involved in non for profit organizations, learn from people, quality people that were also involved in those organizations.
There's just a myriad ways. It's limited by. And imagination.[00:09:00]
What are the top three things a CEO should be doing?
CEO's primary responsibility is leading the talented people around them towards a specific goal, vision casting. It's that's something that's used a lot, but you ain't able to provide. The vision where would, would like to be, and why would we like to be there providing the why is a big portion of it? I think being able to attend to a CEO and sometimes there's they're into conflict resolution things.
Aren't exactly aligned in the team. Being able to say, no, this is the way it's going to be. And then I think the other one is just be a good communicator and be able to. I go back to the alignment's a big parts. I don't know what number three is off the top of my head. I can answer these more later, but yeah, [00:10:00] no.
Good, good, good, good. All right. Two more. What do you believe has helped you to be successful? Uh, drive like the weather? Um, I've been fortunate to have an intellect and ability to process. But I've also honed that I've also practiced those things. I think, um, my, my parents have taught me and my dad in particular.
I've taught me how to say things. I'm less diplomatic with my family, but more diplomatic there's ways that there's a lot of ways of presenting ideas and presenting direction in how you do. It's important.
and one last question. Any, um, words of wisdom for the next generation.
Hard work, dedicate yourself to a craft. [00:11:00] We continue to move forward and educate yourself and be humble. I don't care how much money you make, what title you have. So people lose that humility when they see success. And my contention is when you're, when you feel you've made it. That's your biggest vulnerability in life.
So always stay home. Always move forward. When you're ready to say I'll stop. I got stopped. This was ridiculous. And also just that intellectual curiosity continue to and get to know your people.
Matt McAlear: Well, hopefully you found value in today's episode. Once again, if you did make sure you hit that like, and subscribe button also rate us and review us. I'd love to hear your feedback on other things that we can do the questions I can ask during the interviews to continue to add value to your leadership.
Thanks so much for being a part of our community [00:12:00] and look forward to you joining on the next one.