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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Kevin Rice (00:00):
There was so much pressure and so much stress. The only way that I could really get through all of that was to use a coping mechanism of shutting everything down and really disconnecting from my emotions. And so I call it robot mode and it's really this kind of way of operating through life, career, family where you just don't feel anything, but you're highly productive. It made me question, what am I doing here? If I can't celebrate the joys of life, what's the point of all this?
Matt Poepsel (00:44):
My very special guest believes the future of leadership belongs to people who can hold both ambition and presence. He co-founded Hathway and built it from a scrappy startup into a leading digital agency acquired by Bounteous in 2021. And today he's host of the CEOs and ABC's podcast where leaders share how they scale companies without missing the moments that matter at home. He is Kevin Rice. Welcome to the show, Kevin.
Kevin Rice (01:05):
Aw, thank you so much for having me.
Matt Poepsel (01:07):
Well, I'm really excited to be having this conversation because I think you've been through some things that a lot of us can relate to when it comes to those professional ambitions, but trying to juggle family at home. So I'm looking forward to diving into it. And I wonder if you might take us back a little bit. I know in our earlier conversation you mentioned you were running a fast growing company, you had some things going on at home, then all of a sudden COVID hit. But can you take us back and just tell us what were you managing at that time day-to-day? What was that looking like for you?
Kevin Rice (01:33):
Around 2019, 2020, I was the president of Hathway. So I was overseeing the leadership team. I was overseeing operations, sales, marketing, project management, client services, a lot of the different functions within the organization. And we were growing like crazy. We were doubling year over year. And in a service business, that means both doubling revenue but also doubling headcount. So our team size was scaling, adding new layers of management and there was just a lot going on. And then COVID happened. And at first I had no idea what was going to happen. Our primary business was serving restaurant brands like multi-unit large chain restaurants like Dutch Bros and Burger King and Wingstop. I didn't know if they were all going to go out of business. And in turn, we would go out of business. Turns out it actually was fuel for the fire. It really pushed all these restaurant brands to invest heavily in digital and we became their only source of revenue.
(02:33):
And so while they were laying off vendors left and right just to keep their doors open, or actually their doors were closed, but just to keep the business going, we were the only vendor that they desperately ... They needed us to keep revenue coming in and our contract sizes were doubling. We ended up going from probably 80 people pre- COVID to over 250 by the time we sold the company.
Matt Poepsel (02:54):
Wow. That's amazing. It's one of those things where, like you said, the uncertainty of you just don't know what can be happening and then all of a sudden turned out to be a boon in some ways as leaders we just don't know all the time. But when we have to respond, sometimes you can lose yourself in that response too. You mentioned tripling the size of your headcount and growing the business during a very stressful time. That wasn't all that was going on. I know that you mentioned getting into robot mode almost. And I think a lot of us were prone to that. I'm like, what was going on there when you described that robot mode?
Kevin Rice (03:22):
This was kind of the ascent, almost the height of my career, but at the same time I became a single father of two very young children and I became a full-time single father solo parenting. My oldest was three and a half. My youngest was four weeks old, so he was very much an infant. And so the responsibility of raising these two children fell on me. And at the time I had so much going on with work, there was so much pressure and so much stress. I didn't really have much left for my kids. And the only way that I could really get through all of that was to use a coping mechanism of just shutting everything down and really disconnecting from my emotions. And so I call it robot mode and it's really this kind of way of operating through life, career, family where you just don't feel anything, but you're highly productive.
(04:16):
And so I could work 12-hour days, I could work 14-hour days, I could travel and I could have really intense phone calls with clients. I was also going through a divorce, so I was on calls with my attorney, but none of it got to me. Now the problem with that, because it actually sounds pretty good as a strategy for managing pressure, but the problem is when you disconnect from your emotions to avoid the presure and stress, you also disconnect from your emotions and you don't get to experience the joys of life. And so we would have these wins or I would have special moments with my kids and I just wasn't really feeling anything. And so by the time that we actually sold the company in 2021, I mean, it was a life-changing event for me. I thought this was going to be the pinnacle.
(05:02):
This would be the peak mountain that I had been climbing for so long, but it didn't land like that for me. It really ended up just kind of being like another day. It made me question, what am I doing here? If I can't celebrate the joys of life, what's the point of all this? And so it really made me take stock of trying to figure out what was going on with me emotionally. And I had to go in and do a lot of inner work to process what I had been through for the past couple years.
Matt Poepsel (05:31):
And I'll call time out on listener's behalf here for a second because I think most of us haven't experienced the extremes of what you're talking about professionally or at home. You're talking about tripling a business that you are running. You're talking about having an exit. I know it was a nine-figure exit, so this is rarefied air to be sure, but also on the home front, the challenges that you talked about, I think there are parallels here that a lot of us can relate to this notion that work can be very demanding. And home is one of those things where sometimes it feels like a luxury. I know for me personally, I often felt when I had kids that were your age, your kid's age at the time you were describing this part of your life, I felt like when I was at work, I was thinking about home and when I was at home, I was thinking about work and I never felt like I was anywhere, almost like I was floating between these two places.
(06:16):
I'm like, well, where am I in all this? And it's very disorienting and you feel guilty but at the same time determined and it's a weird cocktail of emotions to be sure.
Kevin Rice (06:26):
Yeah, you feel very divided and that's where it makes it really difficult to be present. You described thinking about work when you're at home and thinking about home when you're at work. I was 110% in work during that period of my life. So I'd be at home reading bedtime stories to my kids and I'd be reading the story because I pretty much had them memorized, but I'd be thinking about my next client presentation. I'd be thinking about my next leadership meeting. I'd be going through strategies in my head and I thought I was doing a great job. I thought I figured it out. All you got to do is multitask. That wasn't it. I wasn't present. My kids were not feeling me. And at three and a half, he's my oldest son, he's nine now. He could tell. He could tell if I was actually in the room energetically with him or not and he would call me out.
(07:16):
He'd be like, "Dad, why aren't you doing the voices? Dad, what just happened? I don't even know what I just
Matt Poepsel (07:21):
Read." Yeah, right. And you always get, "Read it again, daddy." And you're like, "Oh no, here we go. No, 20th time reading this book." But you're exactly right, Kevin. They know. I mean, they can see it when you're not fully present. And it's one of those things where you really feel torn. You feel torn because work can be so demanding. Like you said, you got this big leadership meeting the next morning, so of course you're going to be preoccupied with that, but at the same time it's like trying to decide where am I going to be? It sounds a lot easier than it actually is.
Kevin Rice (07:51):
Yeah. Well, and we put so much into developing our careers. We go to school, we learn from managers, we have mentors, we take courses, we do trainings, we're reading books, listening to podcasts. We put so much effort into developing ourselves as leaders in our career. But then at least for me, I'll speak for myself, I wasn't doing any of that for my personal life. I wasn't developing myself. I wasn't developing myself as a parent because when I became a single parent, that was a curriculum that I just hadn't studied yet. And so there was a lot of work to do to figure out, okay, how do I help raise these kids in a way that instills values and helps them learn how to regulate their nervous system? And there was just so much to learn. Now at the time I was reading parenting books, I hired a parenting coach.
(08:42):
I went to parenting retreat courses and none of it really spoke to me. Being a business professional with a lot of demands, I felt like everything was speaking to a stay-at-home mom and I needed something that could speak to me and it just didn't really exist. And so recently I just finished writing a book on this and I'm working on getting a publisher, but the idea is how we can take all of this investment in our career and start looking for the parallels of how to translate that into our personal life and how to be a better individual and a better parent through all this investment in developing ourselves as leaders.
Matt Poepsel (09:19):
Yeah. And you have been on a journey, my friend. Holy cow. But I know that after you had sold the business, you mentioned you took a step away a bit, you took a beat and you had the opportunity to do that. I know not everybody does, but I think that there's this moment of clarity that can happen sometimes if we're able to hit pause on so much of what's consumed us for some period of time, whatever that might look like. What did you discover about yourself or about the world or about your relationship with work or anything else that might've showed up during that time when you had this opportunity to step away from the business, maybe that you just don't think you could have done if you just jumped right into something else?
Kevin Rice (09:54):
I had to do a lot of inner work and that involved therapy, that involved going to seminars and retreats and just kind of figure out where did this all come from. I was a high achiever as a student and throughout college and I was like, what's driving all of that? Because it's at the sacrifice of things in my life that I would say are very meaningful. And I started to look back and I was like, "Man, I needed a lot of external validation." And in my career, I got that because I was good at what I did. I worked very hard on developing my skills. People would tell me like, "Oh, you did great in that meeting. You nailed that. Oh, you just signed this $4 million client." And I would get a lot of kudos and I would get a lot of pats on the back and I needed so much of that external validation because I wasn't self-assured.
(10:42):
I didn't have my own self-esteem. I was relying on others and I got so much of it from my career. Now, when I came home, my kids weren't giving me a pat on the back. My kids weren't being like, "Dad, you did a great job making breakfast this morning." So then naturally, subconsciously, I gravitate back towards work where I get that need met. And so it took a lot of inner child work to understand what from my childhood and growing up turned me into the person that I am today, what motivates me? What are those needs? What are those core wounds that I'm trying to solve through work? And then how can I fix those without having to rely on a career that gives me all this external validation?
Matt Poepsel (11:26):
And it's so layered, isn't it? I mean, when you think about it at the surface level, it's so true that you go to work and there's actual projects with milestones and dashboards and deliverables, whether it's external validation or just even feeling like you're making progress. I'm the kind of guy that likes to start new things and I like innovation and creativity. I hate maintenance. I can never be a gardener. Planting would be great, but then having to maintain. I hate brushing my teeth only because I'm like, again, I'm doing this again. And you're like, yes, for the rest of your life, you're going to be doing this. And so when it comes to family, you hate to say it, but I'll say it. And it's this point that sometimes there's not the same sort of satisfaction when you're doing like, okay, you just had your shoes on.
(12:09):
Where are your shoes? Why'd you take your shoes off? We're trying to walk out the door. It just doesn't feel the same as work. So I don't think there's any harm in that necessarily, but I do feel like you went deeper with that it sounds like when you started saying, "Where's all this coming from?" And that when it crosses over to that external validation and it started to control our behaviors and depriving, it sounded like you experienced it and I know I have too, depriving us of some of the depth of the human experience, then it's like, okay, now we need to call time out now. We got to take ourselves in the shop and figure out what's going on here.
Kevin Rice (12:42):
Yeah. And I was very fortunate that I was able to take that time to reset. But I would say during that break, I did a lot of work. I went from working very hard in my career to working very hard on myself. I didn't check out during that time. I took that break to really invest in myself. And we had sold the company. I had moved into an executive vice president role at the company Bounteous that acquired mine. I had a career trajectory to keep going, but I just didn't want to keep going with career success without fulfillment. Tony Robbins is somebody I follow religiously and he always talks about success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I just didn't want to keep feeling like a failure because it looked so good on the outside, but on the inside I was falling apart.
Matt Poepsel (13:30):
I think you're also showing us though that for high achievers, and this happens a lot. I'm one of those people in my own life where I've been that insecure overachiever. The achievement part's great. It just doesn't come with a lot of happiness with it sometimes. And so you start to understand where is all this coming from? What is it that I'm trying to accomplish? And I know the conclusion I came to in my life was that it's almost like this bottomless pit and you can shovel achievements into it all you want, but it'll never be full. And you have to understand that that's not how the game really works. If you're looking for fulfillment, it's not going to come from a title or a number or whatever it might be. These things, they seem like exactly what's going to complete the puzzle and declare victory, but then you get there and it doesn't quite work that way.
(14:12):
It's sage advice from you in that regard.
Kevin Rice (14:14):
The meaning comes from being in the present moment and as a high achiever, you're constantly thinking about the next thing or you're reflecting on something that happened. You're rarely in the present moment. So when you translate that into your personal life and being with your kids, if you can turn off the work stuff, if you can stop worrying about what's going to happen next or what's already happened and just be there in the moment, it sounds obvious, but it's really hard. That's like the unlock. You're never going to have as much time with your kids as you do in your career. If you have ambitions and you're trying to develop a really successful career, it's going to take long hours. You're not going to have the same amount of time with your kids, but if you can be really intentional and be present in the moments you do have, then a couple hours of intention and presence will win out over eight hours of kind of default mode and distraction.
Matt Poepsel (15:12):
Yeah. And at the time we were telling you at this point of your timeline, your kids were little kids. And I think when you're a professional and you have the little kids at home, this takes a lot of energy. But I would say that I know that over the courses of my kids got older, my relationship with them changed through their different phases. I remember when they went from being babies to having the ability to tell jokes, I was like, oh, this is the next level. And then they got older and we could tell dirty jokes. And I was like, okay, now we're really getting somewhere. And then I only found very recently my kids are at the age now where they've transitioned into college and they've just finished up their undergrad, so they're kind of entering the working world. Now all of a sudden I'm actually useful to them because I was only a nerd before and they're saying, "Oh, can you help me with a cover letter?
(15:52):
I don't really know what that is. " And you're like, okay, here we go. It's all coming full miracle. So the reason I share that is just because for the listeners, whatever stage you are in, it's pretty wild.
Kevin Rice (16:04):
Yeah, it's interesting because I spent a lot of time thinking about translating the terminology and jargon that I used in my career and how to apply it to family life. And there's this concept you're probably familiar with of authentic versus assigned leadership. And in your career, you have assigned leadership when somebody reports to you. They kind of have to do what you tell them to do their superior, their boss. Now there's authentic leadership where you're bringing people along and you're leading them in your vision and direction and they might be senior to you, they might be adjacent to you, but there's no assignment of that leadership. And so with kids in the first half of their life or at least childhood, you have assigned leadership. They're going to listen to you for the most part. Right now, my middle son is six, so he's really testing boundaries.
(16:54):
He's kind of seeing what he can push back on and everything is pushed back. So he's starting to phase out of listening to me. But when your kids get older, and I haven't experienced this personally, but I imagine it would be more of that shift to authentic leadership. They don't have to follow your rules anymore, but hopefully you've done a good enough job of deeply connecting with them and when they go off and they start their own adult life, they want to hear from you. They want your wisdom and guidance.
Matt Poepsel (17:26):
Yeah, it's not going to make anybody feel any better, but in my experience, when they get those teenage years, they really start to depart, but eventually they do come back. And if I was an odds maker, I'd say it happens right around 25. So you get a couple of hard years stretch in there. And when you have three kids that are close in age like mine, it's a lot. But ultimately they do start putting things together once they start hitting adulthood and they say, "Okay, maybe you weren't as off base as I might've thought at one time." But you didn't just stop with authentic leadership versus assigned leadership. You also, I remember talking about using some of these other more corporate sounding things like RACI matrices or other types of flywheels and all kinds of things. How much have you been able to draw on kind of work concepts, I'll call it for lack of better term, and bring those into the home life?
Kevin Rice (18:13):
I mean, I had to. So I raised kids as a single father that creates a little bit of childhood trauma because you don't have a primary parental attachment with a mother figure. And I was also working really long hours in the first couple years of my middle son's life. And so those materialized in things like low frustration tolerance or defiance, just nervous system under development, things like that. So I had to figure something out because just being a default parent was not going to work. And like I said, all the parenting books were not really written for me. And so I had to figure out a way to take what I did know and apply it to something I was trying to learn. And so yeah, I wrote a book on what I went through or what I had reflected on and in the book I talk about a lot of different frameworks and strategies that we all learn in our career.
(19:06):
You'll learn them in books like Good to Great and all of these core books as part of your business curriculum, I try to apply them to parenting. One example is often you use this concept of a flywheel when you're developing a growth strategy and a flywheel is meant to have different steps that compound and over time start to become self-fueling. And so in career or in business, the currency is revenue, profits, EBITDA, but in family it's really about connection. So I say, "Okay, what are the steps to building connection with your family?" And so I created this acronym called SPARC and it's the Spark Flywheel and it's about starting with safety and then developing your presence and then being able to truly attune with your children and then creating rituals for consistency and repeatability and then celebration and actually celebrating the connection you're developing with your kids or celebrating their wins.
(20:09):
And as you go through these steps, they start to just spin on their own and they start to develop connection. Another example is I'd often sit down after a really difficult interaction with my kids and I'd be confused of like, "Okay, what's happening with them? Why are they melting down over this? " And so you're probably familiar with an Eisenhower matrix, like a two by two matrix. When I was working with employees, I'd try to figure out, okay, is this a skill gap or is this a will gap? Do they want to develop and fix this problem or is it really a skill thing and I need to help them? And using that matrix, I would understand where do I need to work with this team member. Now with kids, you're talking about a brain and a nervous system that's maybe 20% developed compared to an adult.
(21:01):
So the axes change a little bit and it's more about are they regulated and are they connected? So I noticed if I went and I worked 12 hours and I came home and then I just started barking orders and telling them, "Hey, it's time for dinner or brush teeth." They're like, "Do this. " They wouldn't respond very well because they weren't connected with me. I also noticed if they didn't get a good night's sleep, they hadn't eaten or maybe they were just overstimulated from something that had changed, their nervous system just couldn't handle it so they weren't in a regulated state. And so then I'd start thinking about, okay, this isn't really about skill or will. This is about are they regulated and are they connected? And then that would help me figure out how do I need to navigate this parenting moment? And so there's just so many examples of just business strategies and frameworks that we can apply to our parenting with a little bit of massaging to help somebody like me who needs this jargon because it's what I'm familiar with to help us be better leaders at home too.
Matt Poepsel (22:06):
I love that. I absolutely love it. And I feel like they're human systems, whether we're at work, whether we're at home, there's differences obviously, but there's also a lot of carryover that we don't realize how we've been trained for leadership, but then when we think about home as if leadership doesn't apply anymore, but it absolutely does to your point. I didn't have the benefit of your book, so I ended up trying to make it up on my own back when my kids were little and I would have family meetings and I would run them like work meetings and they would groan, "Oh, what are we going to do? Another team building exercise." But I tell you what, later on in life, they were in late high school at that point. We were sitting around the fire one day and they were reminiscing about all the family meetings and which ones were their favorite.
(22:46):
So I'm like, "They pay attention.This stuff actually worked if you do it. " So that's pretty cool. I like that a lot. And it kind of leads me to this. You mentioned you got a podcast now, you got the book all in this area. My question for you, Kevin, how has your definition of success changed? Because you were on a path now, you did some reflection, you've made some changes, you've got a different path that you're on now effectively, or maybe you can clarify that for me, but that's kind of the question I have for you is how do you define success now?
Kevin Rice (23:14):
Yeah, I don't know if I have an exact thing, but it's definitely around purpose and is it purposeful? After I took some time off and I spent some time working on myself, I actually got to the point where I started questioning, is this actually going to be a disservice to my children if I just now don't work anymore? Because I grew up watching my own father work incredibly hard in his career and I inherited his work ethic. I don't think I would've been the same professional had I not seen my dad do that. And so I started thinking, what's going to happen if my kids just see me playing golf all day? Are they going to think that everything is handed to them? Am I going to create entitlements? So I decided, okay, I'm going to go back to work, but it needs to be something that feels purposeful and meaningful.
(24:02):
And so for me, that was coming up with a podcast that was doing some very selective consulting and doing some investing in some startups that I really believe in. And so now my career looks very different than it used to, but my kids are seeing me do something that I'm passionate about and I tell them about, oh, I had this really awesome podcast interview or, oh, I was working on this chapter in my book and I kind of bring them into my experience so they can see what it's like to be passionate about something that you're pursuing.
Matt Poepsel (24:36):
I like that a lot. I found this that coming out of the pandemic, a lot of us had our priorities shifted a bit and it changed our relationship to work and how we looked at work. But there's a natural tension sometimes between the job you have, the work you do that you hopefully enjoy, but it may not be the most fulfilling thing for a variety of reasons. What advice would you have for an average listener that might be in there saying, "No, I've felt the shift. I know there's something else that kind of gives me that purpose or fulfillment, but I'm kind of in this other job too and there's certain realities. How do you help navigate some of that natural tension?"
Kevin Rice (25:08):
Well, the shift might be something subtle. It might be something that's just more mental. So I had a shift midway through my career where it was probably like 2017 or something like that, 2018, I had started working with a new executive coach and he is like, "What are you doing? Why are you doing this? " I was like, "Oh, well, to grow the company, to sell it and retire." He's like, "Well, sure, but when you show up to work every day, what fills you up? What gets you excited to get out of bed?" And I had to rethink my intention of showing up to work. So my intention started to be around helping my team members grow in their career and helping my clients grow in their career. So I was working with a lot of vice presidents and now all of a sudden my mission became, how can I actually support their career and help them move up to the C-suite?
(26:02):
And so when I started showing up to work thinking about how can I help the team, how can I help our clients in their actual career, not just the company that they work for? I still found myself doing a lot of the same activities because I still had responsibilities to fulfill, but the underlying meaning for it changed and ultimately helping your team grow in their career helps your business and helps your leadership management goals. But there was just this subtle change of how I showed up and how I carried myself because it wasn't like, "Okay, what's the number? We're off. How are we going to get back on track?" It was more of like, "Okay, what are you working through right now and how can I support you? " Something I use in my personal life is like, "Do you need me to hear you?
(26:49):
Do you need me to hug you or do you need me to help you? " I didn't say those exact words in my career, but I was kind of thinking, "What do you need right now? Do you need to be listened to? Do you need to be supported and helped? Do you need to be comforted?" Obviously, not going to hug an employee, but comforted through a challenging moment. It wasn't like I had completely changed. I just shifted my intention and it created a different underlying meaning of purpose.
Matt Poepsel (27:17):
Yeah, I think that's reassuring for a lot of us that are like, "Well, okay, if you can't make a big wholesale change, you don't have to. " Tilting yourself in the direction of the sun, so to speak, and thinking about purpose and even small micro actions, you may only have five minutes to live your purpose tomorrow, but that's still five minutes. And that can change, that can start to open up the aperture a little bit and let a little bit more light in. And before you know it, new possibilities and new doors open. Continue to work hard the way that you have been trained to, and I know my listeners do too, that eventually over time you can grow that share of how much fulfillment and purpose. And you might even come to look at things that you do in a different light too. I think it's really solid advice and it's reassuring to know that it's like, I don't have to quit my job and go follow my bliss.
(27:59):
That may not be the best course of action on a given day, but it doesn't mean we can't do anything.
Kevin Rice (28:03):
It might not be the best decision right now. It's an interesting landscape right now in the business world. We went from the shift of in the mid 2015, 2018, it was really a employer's market and there was a lot of pressure. And then all of a sudden COVID happened and everything shift and it became an employees market and they could work remotely and employers were paying more and trying to bring in employees. And now all of a sudden we have AI coming in and it's flipped again and now all of a sudden everybody's feeling the pressure of, am I going to get replaced? Am I going to get downsized? And it's happening all the time. The headlines are covering it left and right. And so yeah, it's a really intense period to be an employee right now. The nature of work is shifting. So it might not be to completely quit your job, but maybe you spend five minutes, an hour a day on something that feels purposeful and you're intentional about that and that can make all the difference.
Matt Poepsel (29:05):
Especially if you can carry some of that energy home with you because it's one of those things where the boundaries between work and life have really broken down. Many of us work from home and you can instantly go from a family conversation into a work conversation on Zoom two seconds later and you're like, "Whoa, man, I don't have a lot of lines anymore." But it's also true that the stressors of work and if somebody's listening right now and they're like, "I don't know if my job is safe or I'd prefer to go somewhere else, but I can't." It's hard not to take that home with you. So again, finding those little moments of purpose actually helps you be in better shape for when you do switch into that home mode too and show up for your partner, for your kids, if you have them, whatever it might be.
(29:45):
Like I said, it's pretty reassuring. Something that's also reassuring for you, Kevin, we're going to have trivia question and what's reassuring is that it's multiple choice. Again, AI can ask this question. I love to do this, so I don't know the question, I don't know the answers, but here's the thing I climb Mount Washington, which is the highest point in New Hampshire here in New England. It's just over 6,000 feet, but you climb Mount Whitney, which was over 14,000 feet. So that's significantly. Some would say more than twice as much. And so I thought I'd get a question about mountain climbing.
Kevin Rice (30:16):
Oh, no.
Matt Poepsel (30:18):
I know, right? We'll just call it amateur alpinist here. So give us a break. You know the answer if you're listening in. What is the term for the point on a mountain where the snow never melts year round? Is it A, the summit line, B, the snow cap, or C, the snow line?
Kevin Rice (30:35):
I'm going to have to say the snow line. What do you think?
Matt Poepsel (30:38):
Yeah, it can't be the summit line. That doesn't make any sense. The snowcap, that sounds like that might be different. Audience, if you're playing along at home, what's the term for where the snow never melts year round on a mountain? Is it A, the summit line, B, the snowcap or C, the snowline? We're going with C, the snowline and we're going to see how we did here. And the answer is that is not quite. It actually is. Yeah, it is. Absolutely it is. It is the snow line also called the permanent snowline or the snowline. It's elevation where it persists year round, even in summer. So there you go. We got one right. How about that?
Kevin Rice (31:10):
I was always terrible at jeopardy, but multiple choice worked out pretty well for me in school.
Matt Poepsel (31:15):
Yeah. Did you have a good time on the mountain up on Mount Whitney?
Kevin Rice (31:17):
Oh, it was amazing. I did it for my 40th birthday. Yeah, I had a few of my closest friends. I had done Mount Shasta before and I just wanted to do something, have a peak moment for my 40th birthday and it was great. It was a incredible experience.
Matt Poepsel (31:34):
Awesome. Well, you're an awesome dude. I love the conversation we've been having, but I'm going to have a very important question for you, Kevin. Where can my listeners go to learn more about you, about your podcast and about the book?
Kevin Rice (31:44):
The podcast is called CEOs and ABCs. So there's a website, CEOs and ABCs, but we publish all of our videos on YouTube. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple Podcasts. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so that's the best way to reach me with a message. The book, I have a draft written, but it's going to be a long time before it gets published, so stay tuned. Hopefully sometime next year I'll have a book on the shelves.
Matt Poepsel (32:08):
I love it. Listeners, I'm going to have those links for you in the show notes. You're only one click away from getting over to the podcast, learning all about Kevin. Kevin, thanks so much for being with us today and sharing your sage advice, your lived experience, the peak experiences you've had at work and at home. Loved hearing every bit of it.
Kevin Rice (32:22):
Thank you so much for having me.
Matt Poepsel (32:24):
And to my leader listeners, thank you as well. Really appreciate you listening in, getting the great information that Kevin just gave us into your ears. You got 30 extra seconds with love a five-star review on Spotify. That's where I'm trying to do most of that good work and your ratings help me attract amazing guests like Kevin and as well as other listeners to the show. So that's it. Until next time, don't just manage the business when you can lead the people.