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The podcast where relentless curiosity meets leadership transformation.
Hosted by Tyler Chisholm—entrepreneur, CEO, and lifelong learner—Curious as Hell is the go-to podcast for leaders, innovators, and trailblazers who believe that asking the right questions can unlock new possibilities in business and life.
In each episode, Tyler sits down with top executives, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to explore how curiosity fuels innovation, builds stronger teams, and drives personal growth. Whether it's uncovering the leadership strategies behind top-performing companies, unpacking the mindset shifts that foster resilience, or challenging conventional wisdom, Curious as Hell delivers actionable insights that help you lead with confidence and creativity.
If you're a growth-minded leader looking for fresh perspectives, practical strategies, and inspiring conversations that push boundaries, then you're in the right place.
Hello and welcome to Curious as Hell, podcast about leading and growing with curiosity. My name is Tyler Chisholm and I'm excited to be here today with my guest, Mr. Iggy Domagowski. How you doing, Iggy? I'm doing great. it's my pleasure to have you on the show, man. I've had the privilege of knowing you for many, many years. And more importantly, I've had the privilege of seeing your journey as a leader. Started off, I'm going say, is it fair to call your first gig more of a startup gig, smaller business? Okay. Then you worked your way up into something maybe for anyone who's listening in Calgary.
Thank you for having me here.
I would say so,
Tundra Process Solutions, little bit of a larger company scale up and exit, and then Tundra Way all the way to Wajax, which I know every time we joke about it, one of the oldest companies in Canada, which I find incredibly interesting.
Nine years older than the country itself.
Which is amazing. And I read this morning online as I was doing some professional creeping as I do. I started as a blacksmith shop in Montreal, no less.
It did, it did. Yeah, we're currently headquartered in Toronto, but a third of our people are in Quebec.
That's amazing. So give us, I'm gonna hit you with, we'll get into a little story. We'll talk about the journey and the different stages and phases of your leadership as we go. But I wanna hit you something right off the bat. Season one, we really are camping out on this idea of the risk of certainty for leaders. How do you respond? How does that feel? What resonate? What does that mean to you?
Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me here. a pleasure. think this is our.
I think it is. I think it is. Yes, we have hung out many times. I keep having you back. It's a good sign.
So thank you for having me here. I've thoroughly enjoyed the journey, thoroughly enjoyed watching your journey with Claire Bodev and now with your book and this project and this. So it's wonderful to be here. Thanks. And wonderful to be a part of all of this. And I think it really comes down to almost the title of your book, to being curious and leading and growing with curiosity. And so I've had the opportunity to be a part of companies that are
that are really small where there's a small group of people that really kind of do know everything, at least about the business and what's going on in the business on a daily basis. Of course, there's lots of things that you don't know about what's going on outside of your business, but you have the answers that are kind of happening on the daily. in those businesses, you kind of grow and you grow and you grow and people just assume that you're the person that has all the answers.
And if you've been there the longest and if you're one of the founders, you might not have all the answers, but you, in many cases, you probably do have more context and more information than anybody else in the company. And so, so by default, people just come to you with everything. And, and so you kind of fall into this role almost naturally as the one who either does, or at least is supposed to have all of the answers. And so think that's a pretty natural thing for
You've been there and seen it. Yeah.
for especially for founders to get into or people who join a business when it's really small. And then sometimes things change. You know, you maybe have a rapid growth period where you just hire a whole bunch of people and kind of as you, at least in our experience, once you hit sort of 50, 75 people, you get to a point where you no longer know what's going on everywhere in the company. And that's actually, it can be quite frustrating. I know it was for me and it can be kind of daunting because you
used to being in a position where you were totally in, I don't know if in control is the right word, but at least you had knowledge of everything that was going on. So you had this feeling, whether it's true or not, of control. And then you get to a point where you realize, hey, there's some people over there, those five people, they're doing something I don't even know about. And that doesn't feel good the first time that that happens. And so kind of getting from that...
of where you believe that you have to be the person that has all the answers to thinking that maybe those people know this thing a lot better than I do. And for me, that really came true with project management. In our Tundra business, we're around 75 or 100 people. We started to hire a team to do project management of these larger jobs, and they were doing all sorts of things that I had never even heard of. And you just kind of have to trust that they really know
That's not even just knowing what's going on over there, but you brought in skill sets that were not your skill set.
And I think when you're younger, at least I know you just have this hubris that you think you know the way that things should be done inside of the company that you're leading. But when you look back, you realize you really had no idea. just had some opinions. I just had opinions on things of the way I thought that things should be done based on not very good information or experience. Just on, I'm like, hey, I was the leader of this company. We've always kind of done.
That's a very good word.
things the way that I thought they should go. So let's do it. And so I think that was, you that was probably pretty frustrating for our teams at the.
I'm curious at that moment, did this get pointed out to you? Did you have a mirror moment or a fireside chat moment? Like self-curiosity for me is so critical. think I could have wrote a book about, forget about all the other types of curiosity, just get really curious of how you're showing up. How did you realize that was going on for you? Cause in hindsight, it all sounds pretty clear. Yeah.
And I'm not sure that it's ever really all in moment. I think there's moments when you realize just how smart your team is and they did something and they didn't do it the way that you would have done it and it worked really well. So those are moments and there's moments where you do have, hopefully if you're lucky to, you have some people that are on the team that are a little bit older and quite a bit wiser than you. sometimes they...
one you know you can't yeah
they take the opportunity to point something out to you in a very nice, delicate way. And if you choose to listen, those can be very valuable. And then I the opportunity to, we had this Tundra business, there was about 150 people at the time. I knew there were a lot of things in the business that I didn't know, but I had like a pulse on most things that were happening. And then we got bought,
We all need those people.
in 2021 by company called WageX, which is, as you mentioned, one of Canada's oldest companies, 167 years old and just, and a decent size bigger. It's a publicly traded company. It's got about 3000 people, about a hundred branches across the country. And there was just all of a sudden so many things that I didn't know. In fact, most of the things happening in the company I had no idea about. And so that's
So privately held versus publicly traded. you're just different operating
So everything is new and there you really realize that you can't be the person that has all the answers or even a good amount of the answers.
Did it kind of expect it? Was that also coming into that role? And you and I chatted along the way that there was all of a sudden like, well, you don't have to get involved in this because there's a whole team that's experts at that. But you had to have that broader sense. Was that how much of a transition? I'm going to pause for a second. Let's go back to the smaller one. I don't want to skip over that. When does manager and leader start to move between? Because sometimes in a smaller business, you're the founder, but you're kind of the micromanager. You're in there. You're doing all the work.
versus that role of leading, which is maybe setting that bigger tone. Let's talk about that before we even get into the bigger publicly traded realm of like, how would you look at now going back to it when you go, yeah, I started to become more of a leader versus the guy that just was roll up his sleeves, kind of managing, manhandling things if you were, if you will at that time. Because I think a lot of leaders that I've encountered, especially that are on the rise, they really struggle between what is management and what is leadership.
Yeah, I think I was pretty lucky in that I just had a really, really incredible business mentor. His name's Mike. We're still partners on some things and we work together and we're still really close friends. so that's been, we've been working together for 26 years or so. It's a good one. we've done a bunch of together and we continue to do things together. So we'll easily make it to 30 plus together.
That's a testament. That's a business marriage.
And when
when we started a company buying journey together. worked together for five years and then we started a company buying journey together. And when we started that, was, he's 20 years older than me. And so at that point, he said that he would be kind of the strategic capital allocator. And that, you know, I was much younger and that I needed to get some experience actually running these companies. And so I got to see what I thought, you know, what I thought was, you know, a good...
strategist leader. And so he had a good model that seemed to work. He wanted to have only one direct report in the company. So he was essentially acting as the board. He was a board chair, but there was no board. He didn't like having a board. He just wanted the board to be him, the mirror, and his wife, basically, that he could ask questions to. And so that's how we set it up.
And he was kind of bringing the capital in to go on this journey.
Yeah, he was bringing the capital in and because I was running the business on the daily and he had one direct report, but he was still showing up to the office for 40 plus hours a week. So he was there all the time, but he was really able to step back, take his two decades of extra experience that he had over me and say, here are the things where we're weak in this company that we need to...
to figure out whatever it was, like, you know, we're weak on finances and receivables. We got to fix that. Here's at a high level how I think we should fix it. And then I would go do it. So I got to see.
And would he give you some latitude inside of that? Like, you know, hey, here's the general like coach. I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it, but I'm going to point out, I'm going to keep you in the guardrails, go kind of figure it out. Was it a little bit like, was there a balance there or was it very prescriptive?
Yeah, I think in the beginning it was a little more prescriptive, at the same time, our first company that we bought was a small business. It was just outside of Vancouver. It was a little air compressor manufacturer. And we bought it. And so I moved there. We both lived in Winnipeg. He moved to Calgary because we bought another company there that he was working with. I moved to Vancouver and I was running this thing. And I called him, I think, a week after we bought the company.
Maybe it needed to be.
And I said, so how often are you going to come out here? And he said, well, never. They said, I'm running, I got, got a bigger one in Calgary that I got to take care of. You know, we can talk whenever you want, but I'm not really coming out there. And it wasn't never, but it wasn't.
I'm sorry.
I appreciate the sentiment of like, I'm putting this to you.
Certainly wasn't very often, but he was really good at being prescriptive where, you know, sometimes you just know the answer, right? Like it's like a basic thing that I maybe didn't have the basic knowledge. And he said like, this is how everyone does it. Just do it this way. don't try to mess around. And then in other cases where the answer wasn't super clear, he would say, here's maybe how I would do it, but you got to go do the research. And then as our tenure together,
We don't need to reinvent.
evolved over time. Eventually we got to a spot where it was, here's how I think you should do it, but this is completely your decision. And if you do it totally differently than I would have, that's totally fine too. And cause you have to own it. So I got to see what a good strategist and a good leader look like. And I really just tried to model myself over time after that. I don't know exactly when it really changed, but I think it's one of those evolutions over time where
You all of a sudden wake up and it's.
You're picking up the behaviors of all those that you admire and then, you know, no one's perfect. So, you know, you don't want to be exactly like someone. So you pick up the behaviors.
Nor can we be. Yeah. Yeah, because they're really good at being them. I'll be good at being me, but I can, you know, as my buddy used to say, they've probably stepped on a landmine. You're about to step on. You should take that advice. Yeah. You don't need to lose your leg to learn the lesson. How critical for you, like to me, leading and coaching, leading and mentoring, they feel synonymous in so many ways. And I know the leaders that have had good mentors in their life or good role models, or wherever you want to call them, seem to do better. How critical is it for you as a senior leader to now?
Yeah, absolutely.
pass that down, but how critical is it for people kind of on the journey up to seek out those people in their lives?
I mean, I was pretty lucky because I met this particular mentor, Mike, he recruited me out of university. I that story. So I was really lucky that it was early on, but I just think it's so important. But mentorship is such a tough thing because you really have to find a really, really great fit. And there has to be something meaningful in it for both people. can't just be.
a one way kind of path.
I mean, then it becomes hiring a coach. Like then it's actually a different, right? Yeah. Mentorship is definitely more of this exchange or this relationship where sometimes I might hire a coach to teach me certain things or get me through a certain stage and then I'll move on and maybe get a different coach.
Yeah, yeah, and it's tricky too, because you have to find the right mentors at the right stages that can help you along. so when I looked at my mentor, the benefit to me was pretty obvious. I got a sweet mentor and a job, and I got to get equity in this company and do all these things. And I think for him, it was pretty good too, because I was running these companies that he was allocating capital to.
I think that we had just a, you know, like a hundred percent level of trust, which is very important when you're running like small and mid-sized businesses. I think there's in a lot of those businesses, the governance and controls are never as good as you think they are. And so there actually is a lot of opportunity for people to do bad things and kind of, you know, of to line their own pockets if they're wired that way. so I think having someone that you just implicitly trust.
that can kind of look over everything for you and make sure that things are working properly is pretty good. So I think that was the clear benefit for him. But in a non-working paid relationship, finding a mentor can be tricky. people call you, they call me and say, hey, can we talk about certain things? And it almost has to be at the right stage. If you're a junior analyst and you're going to,
an SVP of a company to get advice like that, that doesn't always fit. kind of have to go like one or two levels above so that they can give you real advice for what you're doing and so that it's relevant. And if you're, you know, if you're early in your career and you're getting advice from a CEO or an SVP or an EVP of a company, like a lot of that advice is just, it's meaningless because you don't even know what it means. So I think finding the right level,
Can I ask for a
always getting some type of warm introduction is really handy. And I've found, I've lots of mentors still to this day. And I've got a roster of probably 10 or 15 people that I call on that I would kind of view as mentors. And I make it a point of reaching out every six months or so to grab a lunch. I have my list of questions that I have for them that I want to go over. I usually hope that I can add some value.
to them and the group that I found is awesome for mentors is those that have just retired.
Because they're hungry, they've got energy for it. They're great.
think when you retire from a very busy role, one of the things that I read and learned over and from talking to these people is you don't realize how quickly it shuts off, right? Like when you retire out of a senior role, mean, the king is dead, long new king and you're out. And so no one's calling.
with the thing and, and, and, and. is not ringing anymore. Yeah. And so.
So if you're the one that's calling, all of a sudden it's somebody who's got a lot of time. And some people have prepped very well for retirement. They've read all the books and they're ready and they have hobbies. And other people don't. Other people think that they'll play golf and they do that three times a week. And the other 100 hours of however many waking hours are just wide open. I've found recently retired leaders are just so willing to share their knowledge.
Not everyone is, that's not true.
You want to meet for a long lunch? No problem.
I've got time, I've got time. When you made something about the context of also the right mentor at the right time and the right level, but you also need to know enough about what's going on with that other person to give advice that's actually worth giving. I've watched a TED Talk recently called Taming Your Advice Monster, and it was great. I'd recommend everyone watch it, because you immediately will think of someone in your life or you think of yourself. But rushing in so quickly is such a human...
to go, I've got it figured out, even though I've learned nothing about your situation. That need to be curious and taking enough time to understand what's actually going on in someone's world that you can give them maybe advice that actually could be relevant, not just what you think in the moment. Which can be very fun to just give random advice. Absolutely. It can be very intoxicating.
And I've, as I've kind of, know, I'm sure you could ask for advice on certain things all the time. get advice on certain things. And I don't almost defaulted to not giving advice anymore, just because like you said, it's so personal to the person. And so where I've sort of defaulted to these days is I just try to go back to a story that, you know, where I was in a similar situation or at least that I perceived was similar and just say, here's,
here's how I thought about it, and then here's what I actually did. And that's what I do with my kids too, because I mean, I've learned that, you know, and I should have remembered from when I was a kid, turns out kids don't like advice from adults, especially their parents.
Everybody just laughed and rolled their eyes and said, look at me right now. Every parent.
Right, it's so true. But I do find that when my kids are going through something and we just talk it through and I say, here's, if I was in your shoes, here's how I would think about the problem, right? Like here's just how I would frame the problem. And then I say, and when I was younger, I did actually go through this exact thing, if I did, and here's what I actually did. here's roughly what I Yeah, here's how it turned out and here's where the lessons that I learned. And I just kind of leave them with that and say, you're gonna do what you're gonna do.
to do.
My kids are almost 16, so they listen. I find they listen to stories and they listen to how to frame a problem, but most teens don't really listen to.
It's part of their journey. They're entitled not to listen. You get smarter as they get older. I found that.
The same thing holds true for leaders, but we get time compression and we get demand. So how do you, because I would argue that that same advice would really work well if you had time in an office environment, someone's like, I've got this problem. Well, let me walk you through and they're like, just give me the answer. Like, how do you, what recommendation or what do you do to try to bring some of that same type of storytelling and gestalt level, you know, exchange. I think that's what that's called. Just specifically when you don't give direct advice, you give a story that could be relevant and then the person gets to socratically go, I get it.
That all sounds really nice when we all have time. But at work, it tends to get killed by the tyranny of the urgent.
It does, I mean, I try to, whenever someone comes to me, I try to think that like, is this actually my decision to make? Like, should this actually be my decision to do something with, or is this their decision to make, and maybe they just need some guidance? And in some cases, you know, as leader of your company, as a leader of my company, you know, there's a certain strategic path forward.
Sometimes you have to remind them of that. Sometimes you have to remind them of, well, this is our strategic priority that we've all agreed on. So it's got to align with that.
Voss, go back to your plan.
And then we'll also try to pull them back to our core values and our purpose statement and say, well, and whatever you decide can't go against these values. So it kind of narrows the fairway for them for where they can actually play. unless it really has to be done a certain way, like sometimes there's a regulatory or an ethical reason or...
or just has to be done this way. Then I'll say, it really has to be done this way, so I need you to do this. But most often I try to make it their decision. It's just so much more powerful when they own it and when it's theirs.
What makes me think is this Bezos that has the type one and type two decisions, like the type one is the revolving door, type two is the non revolve. Like if we do this and doesn't work out, we'll just go through the door again. Versus if we do this and it doesn't work out, we could be in regulatory hot water, we could lose the company. That's a different weight. Not all decisions, I think we, maybe I'm getting it wrong, but think type one is that we treat almost everything like type one, even when it's not. You're like, it's okay, what do you think? Like if it doesn't work out, well, we'll just redo it and go forward again. And like that is part of the process. Yeah. Can be.
think a question to often ask is how hard is this to undo? If this doesn't work, if you're changing a compensation plan or something for a year. I don't love tweaking compensation plans too often, what's worst that's gonna happen? Someone's gonna be a little bit unhappy or...
That can be sacred ground though, have to be careful with cops.
For sure. But thinking of it that way, like is this something that's going to make somebody quit? Or is this something that's, know, hopefully going to incentivize them to do something and if it doesn't work quite as well, we just won't do it next year. And then weighing those decisions, like the quit decisions, like drastically changing people's paycheck is usually not good unless you're very, very certain. But little things, know, if we can undo this or three months later find this was just a silly decision, just cancel it.
just stop doing it. And that's okay too. And I think in the times where we've done that in our company, which is lots, where you kind of do something and then you get a bunch of feedback from our people that say, hey, this isn't working very well. We want to change this. And then you change it. And then you're able to go to your people and say, we did this thing because here were the reasons that we did it. We thought it was going to work out a certain way.
dog
It didn't work out as planned. You gave us feedback saying that you wanted it changed. So we changed it based on your feedback. And here's the new outcome. That goes a long way. I think people really appreciate that in a company when they're like, I gave my suggestions to the leaders based on something I didn't like. They thought about it and then they changed it and they told me why. And now here's the new outcome. Like that's really good. That's a really good thing.
You mentioned project management earlier, something that I fell in love with and like, just a simple racy. Responsible and accountable in projects, that gets really clear. But consulted and informed should not be overlooked. They're incredibly valuable. Someone will go, well, this isn't exactly what I wanted, but they at least talk to me about it. They just ask me. It just feels human that way to like, you we might still do what we do, but you were involved. You were involved.
I think the hardest part with RACES is remembering that you made them. Remembering that you... It usually gets put into a project chart or somewhere and it's almost like that needs to be printed off and just put on your desk or pinned to the wall and every day or two you look up at it and say, yeah, did I consult Johnny or did I inform Johnny? Did I do that?
I'm at the phase of trying to bring it up as often as possible. So our team, because we have some people that really love it and other people that are like, yeah, I think we did that once. So we're at the trying to instill that a little bit. So it's very tough, very tough of mine for me. I'm at the bring it up at nauseam phase. Perfect. had a politician tell me once, Tyler, when your audience starts getting annoyed by your message, that's when you know they're actually hearing you. I'm like, it's aggressive, but I don't think you're wrong.
Good.
It's so true or at least once once you feel annoyed with saying your message over and over then you know Okay, perfect people are people are getting this
And you see the odd eye roll on the Zoom call.
So you made the comment about, well, obviously you joined a company that was 167, but was 163 years when you joined it. Yeah. So four years ago, you're the new guy, but you're also the senior leader. I would imagine most of the senior leadership team was there before you came on. Talk to me about that transition of coming in. And I know you to be a curious leader. I know you to be inclusive and open, but everybody there knew more than you, but yet you're the new leader. You're supposed to have the new way. Talk to me a little bit about.
I'm assuming that was an interesting journey on lots of fronts.
Absolutely. mean, was, I've been the COA Jax here for the last four years and it's just been the most interesting and fascinating learning experience of my career for sure. Very cool. And I wouldn't give up a second of it. yeah, coming in as the new guy, I think probably even a bit as the underdog, like the people that weren't expecting the guy that was running the small little subsidiary to end up in this role.
So, not necessarily having to prove yourself, but needing to build credibility with your team.
There's a little plot line there. There's a little mini plot line there for sure.
There is for sure there is. And so there was, there were just a lot of time spent in the field and with the team. So it took the first three months to travel around the country and visit a bunch of our branches as many as I could. Most of them act a little over a hundred. So I think I got to 80 of them in that period. Yeah. And then just meet the people and find out, you know, where are the growth opportunities? What are the challenges and try to synthesize that into some themes that, that, that makes sense. And so I kind of got all that information together and said, here's what I'm hearing from the front lines.
How many branches do you guys have across country?
Solid. Solid showing.
You know, how does that match up with our existing strategy and try to just meld all of that together. So me and the leadership team worked on that strategy. We didn't have a set of written core values. So we went through the process of documenting those, which I thought was pretty important. mean, the values had always been there. They just weren't on a piece of paper.
You're not around for that many years without having shared ways of doing things.
and they weren't posted on the wall. And then there's a certain culture in the company. And I would say the culture was focused and driven, get stuff done, and just go. Which is great. You want to have a performance-driven culture in a company, which we did. But what we also had was quite high attrition.
And like way above industry standard, losing a lot of people, losing a lot of people in the first year. And as any business leader knows, there's a pretty big cost to that. Absolutely. So we hired a great chief people officer and said, let's try to work on this and try to make it feel like a company that cares more about its people and actually care more about its people.
whatever you think it is, it's more. Yeah.
that will hopefully incentivize them to stay because they're not feeling like they're just being grinded too hard. so we went through that journey and had some success on that front. so that was a different culture and a different feel. Yeah, totally. And so we used the term people first at the company to try to drive some of this caring for the people to just...
create a better sense of belonging and keep people within the company and keep them from going to the competition or going elsewhere. And it was good, but I think where we made some mistakes or where I made some mistakes is, we tried to have this shift in the culture to kind of deal with this attrition problem, but we didn't honor the performance culture enough. And so it started to happen to some extent as almost as people first
terminology started to get weaponized a little bit. I mean, working on evenings and weekends is always normal. And then now I'd hear a story from deep in the organization where a manager asks their person to do that and say, I need you to come in on the weekend. And I said, well, that's not very people first. And so it almost started to pull away from the previous culture. And so I think that was a mistake that we made that we didn't, we weren't.
specific enough and clear enough to say that the culture that we have now is great and it drives awesome results. And what we want to do is we want to add a layer on top of it. And I think that communication wasn't nearly as clear as it was. I think that it set us back a little bit for a short period of time. And then we kind of came back with that communication once I realized what was happening. that was kind of a big learning thing on.
Such a example of like a really good intention, but just not extrapolated out that one notch further on the ground. like, what if this actually starts to eat that? And being a publicly traded company, quarterly results, shareholders, performance is like, I always joke, even I wrote this book, curiosity in life is lovely, but in business, performance is like, this is a performance sport. And we keep score by returns, by results, but also losing people, that's a negative scorecard.
For sure. so we got that sorted out. But it was just a really interesting cultural learning.
I don't want to downplay it, got that sorted out. Thousands of people across multiple jurisdictions. The ship doesn't turn on a dime. So these are longer. By the time you realized it, then you had to unpack it. So is this like a couple year journey for people listening? Because it makes it sound like it happened like, we caught it and we fixed it and two weeks later, everything was good. Yeah. That's probably not what happened.
I wouldn't say it was a couple of years. think it could move quite a bit faster than that. Once you tell people what is really important and just remind them, I think they generally listen, especially if the managers understand and the mid-level managers understand annulant compensation to it and you report on it, which we did all those
I'm assuming compensation and performance are pretty tightly linked. Yeah, and you need to just work the people kind of tricks into that. Yeah, exactly
So it didn't take too long, but it was a full court press to kind of remind people just like, we stopped talking about the real basics for a little bit and started to talk about a few other things. And so we said, okay, back to the basics, what's really important in our business. And for us, it's inventory costs and margins. And so we're just driving that home every day. And our team responded really well.
the team that we have there. You know, we're pretty, pretty lucky at Wage Act. It's just a company full of outstanding people who just care so much about customers, but they care about the business, know, they, they, about each other, about customers. They, you know, I think most of them like what they do and,
And a little bit of design.
Can imagine you're operating a lot of smaller centers? Yeah, where you are a major employer, you're big part of the community. I'm friends with you on the weekend, but I also work with you at that's that small town everywhere. Yeah.
Absolutely. And so yeah, we're pretty lucky that we've got that really great base of our team and customers and suppliers. they responded really quickly. we did have a year. We had a bit of a downturn kind of a couple of years after COVID, just the market in our particular segment. We're an industrial equipment supplier and servicer, and demand just dropped off. And our inventory got high because we were ordering as good.
Directly to basically natural resources, Extraction and production.
Yeah, so we had a year where bonuses were not very good. most people are fairly driven by compensation. whether they say it or not, it's a real thing and it does drive behavior. And so yeah, as soon as that happened, some remessaging, everyone was back on track. So that was really great. But another interesting kind of cultural thing that I found was just the
It gets everyone's attention.
type of leader or leaders that you have affects things. And so, so, so the previous leader to me at WageX, his name was Mark, incredible leader. he did so many good things with that company that really needed to get done. Like he did some big restructuring. He was there for a decade. Incredible leader, incredible man. And I know a mentor of mine and I still call him four years later.
She was there for 10 years.
I'm sensing a theme for you.
And I'll just write down all my questions and say, Mark, I've got some questions here. need to pick your brain on it. give me, you that he doesn't give me advice. gives me, here's how I would think about the problem and here's how I've done it in the past. But him and I are totally different. And so he's about 20 years older than me. He's retired now. so it's a great experience, but at WageX this was his fourth time as a public company CEO.
Okay, so.
So, and he was already, you know, he'd been there for a decade. So, you know, the first couple of years figuring out what we need to do. And then, and then it's like, here's what we're doing. And it's like, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this. And that clarity, you know, is, can be so good.
It clearly works for the organization to work.
Yeah, there's like the teams don't need to figure out a bunch of stuff. They're like, all right, we got our marching instructions. Let's go. Let's just go execute and turn it on to execution. And Mark was phenomenal at that. Whereas my leadership style is just different and it's not better or worse. It's just different. And I'm more of a more, little bit more collaborative. Let's, let's work on the strategy together and, you know, help people figure out, you know, the path that they want to go a little bit more themselves rather than, rather than saying here's what to do. And, and so just.
the company getting used to that.
I'm assuming a lot of your senior leadership team, you inherited like, they got, they inherited you. Yeah. And they were, and they were under the old regime, right? Yeah.
And so just some interesting things creep up when that happens. So when there is a little bit more freedom in how the team strategizes and what they do, just some of the stronger personalities naturally will kind of grab more of the decision-making. And so that inevitably steps on other people's toes who aren't as loud to speak up and it causes some conflicts around, well, who's actually responsible for this?
The extroverts
Why are you doing this? Seems like you're encroaching a little bit on what I previously did. And so I didn't appreciate how much of an impact that could have. And I don't know how I would have done it differently.
Okay, but you know you kind of had to find it out somehow yeah How did it start to show up like was it brought to you or did you start to be like, huh? This has a bit of a smell test. That was going on here.
Yeah, and
Yeah, I I noticed some conflicts between some of some of the team members and I'm like, okay, can't just figure this out. But they weren't they
Exactly what my brain was saying. I'm like, can't you guys just work it out?
Yeah, but, you know, ultimately it was in what they were used to is just having the lines a lot clearer on what they're responsible for or not responsible for. And there's just, there's, I think there's such value in both ways of doing it. Like when you have very clear lines of what everyone is responsible for and the senior leader, the CEO says, this is what we're doing, here's the strategy, you do this, this is what we're doing, you do this.
It just creates such clarity in the organization, takes away a layer of political friction, and it just allows people to get stuff done when you know exactly where going. If you're wanting to build the strategy with the team and believe in that maybe they have some of the better answers, then that one doesn't work so well. And that's where I thought we were.
Exactly. so those are a bunch of the lessons that I really learned from that, just around how the culture of the, ultimately of the previous leader and the previous team can have an impact when you're coming into an organization. So for anyone that's joining a company, really taking a look around and figuring, how do decisions actually get made? How is direction given here? Is it collaborative? Is it very directive? And then understanding that if you,
change that, it's okay, but there's going to be challenges. And I think the same thing would happen if you went the other way. I've not gone the other way, but I think going from a very collaborative, hey, we're all doing this together to someone coming in saying, we're not collaborating on strategy. This is the strategy, you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this. They may not like that.
I think you'd find out quicker. Yeah. Like almost immediately. I think you'd find quite quickly. And did you have some, and again, don't get into whatever deals you feel comfortable with. Did you have some attrition at the senior leadership level? Because there often is that new leader comes in, whoever's not on board with that leader leaves, that leader brings in some of their people. And like, that's an over, it's oversimplified. Was that some of your experience or whatever you want to say?
You know it?
I know.
Yeah, it was. I, you know, I never really, I never really agreed when I, when I, when I heard that happening, there's a new person coming in, they're just bringing in a bunch of people and you know, their own team and why would they do that? There's all these smart people left here. And so I always kind of looking from the outside in when I saw that happen, I thought, you know, it it was just like this bully coming in, that's just firing everyone and bringing in their own people.
But it's actually quite often not the case, right? Quite often the case is just the people that are there are great. They know what they're doing, but just the leadership styles no longer match. And it's just not an environment that is conducive to the type of work that they like to do. And so over time, they just kind of figure out, I'm just going to go somewhere that's just more aligned to my personality and my working style. And in some cases, know, I mean,
If there's a burning platform, I totally understand. If there's been some really bad things that happen in the company financially, you come in, you bring in your own CFO to kind of really take control of the financial situation of the company, right? I get that.
Well, there's turnarounds. There's all kinds of situations. Yeah, exactly. Hey, I wouldn't be here if you guys hadn't messed this all up. To be really. And also, I think sometimes it gets underestimated. It's a pretty intimate relationship, being a leader and having an executive leadership team. If you're trying to do anything of any scale, whether it's just be defensive of the world around you and try to maintain your position but grow, it's pretty intimate. It's a It's a business marriage in one way or another, however you want to dress that up. Relationships are critical.
Absolutely. And, yeah. And you know what we, when I joined Wage X, was, was during the pandemic. And so at that time, the board and everyone in the world thought, well, turns out we can do these jobs from anywhere. And, uh, and so we're based in, uh, we're based in Toronto. I live in Calgary. I'm probably 80, 90, a hundred hotel nights a year. So I'm in Toronto 20, 25 times a year. So I'm there a lot.
and spending time with the team, but it's just, it's not the same as being there all the time. It really isn't. And I personally hated remote working before COVID. I just could not figure it out. I was not good at it. I'd bring my computer home on the weekends and it would sit there staring at me, just ruining my weekends. And so I just, I could not figure it out. And I was always hunched over at my kitchen. My back was sore. So I just, I did not have it figured out.
Interesting.
Good intentions.
Then COVID came and I did like, got a setup, got in a routine. And I found that I actually really quite like it sometimes. It's like probably halftime is my kind of ideal. Which actually worked.
everyone figured it out.
Hybrid is the lovely, is the perfect blend in my opinion.
Yeah, when I was in Calgary, you know, when I had, you know, reading, writing, concentrating work, I could just do that at home on my computer. And then also, you know, because we have branches across the country, I had a lot of Teams calls and Zoom calls. I would just...
You weren't gonna be in their office anyway, so it really didn't matter where your phone happened to be located.
And then when I would go travel, you know, I wouldn't even check emails the whole time I was there. I'm here to meet people and I'd be face to face with people all the time. But they're just, you know, that whole magic of being in the office together. And I got this idea. Let's just grab a couple of people together and chat about it. And the water cooler talk. They were sprinkled around. And, now most companies, you know, including ours are making a move to bring people all
Was the rest of your leadership. OK.
into the all into one city. Companies everywhere are doing it. I think it's probably the way that things would go. think hybrid is still fine, but having people live in a city together just seems to seems to make sense for most businesses if you want that real team.
We're seeing it happen.
It really does depend on what problems you're trying to, like, where stage are you at? Are you just at a delivery phase where so-and-so and so-so can do the work because they know the work? If you're trying to create from scratch, it's challenging. absolutely. Zoom has, you we all gotten better at it. I used hate Zoom girls, now it's like my life.
But creating that camaraderie and just that really increases the speed of decision making. at WageX, our cadence is once a month we're all together for a day or two, lots of decisions made. And then on the other two weeks off, we do online for four or five hours. so that works. As a team, we're together every two weeks and able to make decisions. But that's
You still usually are waiting a week. We can have to say, okay, we'll put this on that agenda. We'll make that decision then.
Because you can pick up and call so-and-so, but to get everybody on the- How many people on your senior leadership? Exactly.
Exactly, so seven. Okay. So having everyone together.
It can turn into a whole bunch of little sidebars, which is dangerous in other ways. Because like, I didn't talk to you. I talked to so-and-so because I couldn't get you on the call that exact day. Didn't follow the policy. Yeah, yes. All the way back. We joked on this before we even got recording today about the reality of like, when I have time, I'll sit back and I'll be creative and I'll ask all the questions and I'll think about my, you think about mid-level management. Time is not on their side. It's always working against them.
the race.
thoughts on how, as leaders, as owners of companies, of individuals in those roles, how do we create a little bit more space for people to think? That's a big, statement question.
Yeah, I mean, it's really hard. I really try to make it a point to listen to people who are a lot older than me, and have had success. They just know things.
They've stripped over the landline before.
Exactly and and and every person that's like older and more senior in their career says the same thing like you gotta take time to think like Take time to meditate and then take time to think and write and problem solve like make time to do it
so easy to say and put a sticker on your fridge.
Yeah, so what I would personally do that I've been doing for years is I just go to a coffee shop. There's a Starbucks close to where I lived. We're in the country now, so not anything too close, but there is a Starbucks.
There's a little windshield time, doesn't hurt either.
And Starford Drive was a 20 minute walk from my house. so I would book, I would just call it a think day, which was usually an afternoon or a morning. I was deliberate about it. I tried to realistically probably happen once or twice a month to do that. And I would go with specific problems that I wanted to solve and I would write them on a piece of paper, just on a white sheet of paper. I would kind of write the problem.
But you were deliberate about it, which I-
Or if there were some articles that were kind of related to that, I would print those off. And then there was also, you know, some, just some more kind of introspective longer-term thinking exercises. And there's a million of them on the internet, know, whether it's, subscribe to Mindvalley and they have a lot of those types of things and that kind of stuff. And so I'd print some of those off and I would just go there and I would just, you know, I like tea, so I would drink tea. And for three or four hours, I would just go through those things and write. And it's just, it's shocking.
how much progress you can make even in one or two hours of just sitting there with a coffee. Put a pop on your headphones and listen to some instrumental music or something. Have your coffee and just be somewhere that's not in your house and where your phone is off.
We credit
Where all the other distractions are not readily available.
Yeah, so never brought my computer. I would have my phone, but I would shut it off when I was there. And it's got like two or three hours. You can just get through. And then I have all these handwritten notes. then I'd kind of pull off what I needed from there into actual action items. And then I would kind of write the date. And then I would just file it. So I got a folder that has all of these in there, which I look back on every now and then. So that's what I did. It seemed to work. And I remember.
chatting with one of our managers. He called me up and he was one of our frontline managers and he would just say that he's kind of drowning and this and that. And I just sent out an email to our staff about hey, trying to exactly this, encouraging our leaders to try to make some time to think. And he said, well, that's all easy for you to say. You can make the time. I'm busy fighting these fires. so just asked, said,
how far is it closest to Starbucks? And he said, he looked it up, he said 30 minutes. said, do you think you could walk there, take two hours and write down some thoughts and then walk back? said, three hours. And I said, well, I can't take three hours to do that. And then, I asked him, said, didn't you just take a week off last week? Like you were gone and your phone was off. He said, yeah. Well, if you can take a week off, how come you can't take three hours off? And then, know, and he, and that kind of just.
challenge.
set off a little light bulb. so, well, if I can take vacation off, maybe I can get out of the office for just three hours once a month. People go to a doctor appointment all the time for three hours. People go to their kids thing.
You challenged somebody else, had to give himself permission. And oftentimes we create our own. I'm very good at my own stories. Yeah, we all are. They're very convincing. I really appreciate that creating like deliberate, what I've heard so often in just chatting with you today, and I've known to be true, like even when you talk about talking to a mentor, you wrote down some questions. Before you go, you made a few notes. I'm hearing a high degree of just intentionality, although subtle. It sounds like you've been very intentional, like, well, before I'm gonna get...
value from this person, let me force myself to go, I'm gonna write down a few questions. How critical is it or where has that always been you or is that a habit you picked up over time?
Oh, that's a good question. That's a good question. Um, I don't know. I, uh, you know, I don't like wasting people's time and, and I don't know.
vice versa.
And so, I think just being prepared when you go see someone makes sense and it takes so little effort. It does. So little effort. mean, five minutes of preparation is usually far more than you actually need. Yeah. For anything. That's awesome. If you're going to meet with somebody, I mean, just pop up with their LinkedIn profile, type in their name to Google.
and then think about something that you're curious about and write down two questions. That is not even five minutes. And I think it just shows a lot of respect for their time. And it really does make for a better conversation, I think.
It's funny, I did something the other day. was, I was going to do a podcast with somebody relatively public figure. And, but I got a call and someone said, Hey, do you want to go skiing? It's a powder day. I'm like, yeah, but I want to prep. And so I actually opened up chat, GBT. said, Hey, pull up this person and get everything you can on them. Now pretend to be them. And let's do a mock podcast while I was driving to the ski hill. And I got there and I was like, wow. I feel like I'm like, I feel like I could just recorded it. And it's funny.
Perfect!
Obviously the conversation with the real person was completely different, but that little bit of prep time that I just did in the car, spent 30 minutes, I kind of laughed and told somebody, they're like, it's an interesting little hack. But to your point about just mentally, I felt prepared, showed up for the conversation, just feeling so much more comfortable. I would believe it felt more respectful because I had some contacts and I'd done a little bit of work. It was a great way to use a tool that we all have now on our phones and on our computers. Costs nothing and it was actually pretty neat experience. It was a lot of fun.
I, I wrote a, a prompt for, copilot, copilot. It works. it has access. it's Microsoft's product has access to your emails. It can search through your files, your calendars and everything that you have online. so it's just, it's just a script that says, look up for my, for my, for my upcoming week. Look in my calendar, find all the email addresses and the invite.
Yeah.
All your data.
in the invite box that are not internal email addresses. OK. Just for people that I'm meeting with externally. And then for those people, I want you to pull up their LinkedIn profile, do quick Google search and find out something about them. And then go through everything that I have. Go through old meetings, go through meeting notes, go through emails, go through all my files, find if their names mentioned. And then just put all that together in just one or two paragraphs for each person for the week. And you just write that.
It took me a few times to get that script. But once I got that script, which probably took me 45 minutes to get it really right. And then it takes now it's like a 10 second operation and you have all this great information.
Yeah
Now you have your, literally, it's your presidential briefing, right? Here's who you're meeting with today, ba-ba-ba-bum, here's some quick. How is Copilot? Because I've heard mixed reviews, but it sounds like you've used it in a way that's working for you.
Yeah, it's okay. think.
Starting to a Microsoft review session here. I'm curious. I'm curious. I can't help it.
I find chat GPT better for most things, but it doesn't have access to my phone. So I, I use co-pilot for when it, when it needs, when I, when I'm doing a prompt that requires searching.
And you should keep it that way.
He needs have some internal intelligence. That's a really interesting prompt. So time consuming for a human to do, but so easy for AI to do. Yeah.
And I mean for anyone that's in sales or anything like that, mean it's just...
Well, if you're not doing it, you're kind of shame on you. A couple quick questions, like more just tips and tricks. You're in a situation and you're catching yourself being called to react versus reflect. How do you manage it?
I'm sorry.
Sometimes poorly.
Appreciate the honesty.
Sometimes I just react. I've got some really great people on our executive team that keep me from doing that sometimes, which is great. But quite often, my default answer to people is, I need to think about that, and I need to bounce this off of a couple other people. And the team that I work with knows that I appreciate bouncing ideas off of others, so they know to give a little bit more time.
pretty rare, like very, very rare that I'll get a request from one of the people that I work with that says, here's a problem and I need an answer now or even today. Like usually I've got a couple of days because they know that I'm going to run.
By the time the problem gets to you, it's at a scope and scale that maybe you need to look at the elephant from a few different sides.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if, if often when things do get to me, it's a, it's, it's, I'm kind of the tiebreaker and it's there. Okay. There's two paths that we could do this and usually, you know, there, there's two people, you know, one person wants to do it one way. One person wants to do it another way. Um, and, and I found our, you our teams really respectful and you know, they'll have kind of, they'll have their opinions. And then at some, at some point they get to a, Hey, this is one of those.
They're responsible, but you're accountable.
Put it in front of the judge.
And that's basically what and then then I'll have say Kate will give me all the information. Let me let me think about it. I'll see if I need any other information. Then I'll get back to you with an answer tomorrow. Which is usually how I try to do it.
Is your natural tendency to want to respond quick and have you learned the other or have you always been like, me a little bit of time, I'll get back.
I think everyone's just tendency is to try to fix a problem. It's mine. It's mine. Or at least that's been beat into us with, you know, just the instant nature of everything that we do and emails and social media. Yeah, we just, you know, I got an email, I need to answer it. I can't have any emails in my inbox. Let's boom, boom, boom, get it done. So I think we've all been trained by the world to do that. I like to think that I try to be thoughtful. And I like to think that I've
The risk of certainty all the way back around.
Tyranny of now.
been that way, but I don't know. think if you ask some of my previous teammates or my wife or friends, they might be able to give you
Well, the best part is they're not in the room, man. It's you. It's you. We're not going to fact check. like, is he really like this? I joke, but I'm like, I try to catch myself because my indulgence is now. my wisdom says, wait a few minutes. So I'm like, who did that feel really good? I probably shouldn't have responded that quickly. Again, try to back to self-curiosity. Like, oh, when do I catch myself? One last one. Maybe not. I should make that promise. The hippo, the highest paid person of opinion, the person that stands up and just prophesies in front of them.
What do do when you encounter it? What do you do when you see it in the mirror?
I really do try to pull people's opinions. I do think over the years that's something that I think it's a strength, that I really will try to get people's opinions. And I do try to pull the opinions out of people who are quieter. It's not because they don't have as good information, it's just because they're shyer to speak up. And we've got some great people on our leadership team who are...
We even still like these are senior VPS, EVP level and I'll have to pull information out of them. it's just, and it's because their view is that, I'm not an expert in this area. So I'm not going to provide an opinion. And so I almost have to coach them to say, I know you're not the expert in this, but you've been at this company for a long time. And I know you have an opinion based on things that you've seen. So just frame it that way. Like I coach them and say,
It's just not their tendency. Yeah.
Start your sentence with, I'm not an expert in this, but based on what I've seen, this would be my opinion. Start it that way so that you don't feel like you're speaking out of turn. And then, and I find we get some pretty good information that way.
Sometimes I find the non-experts ask the best questions. Yeah. Because they're like, maybe this is obviously everybody else, but is that supposed to be blue? And they're like, actually, I don't know. I thought you knew. True. Yeah, I like, I thought you all knew it was supposed to be blue. Like groupthink is so damn.
So
especially with expertise.
I just trusted someone I had figured out what the hell is going on here.
I mean, no one person's smarter than everybody. And so I really try to get as much information from the team that I can. And in some cases, you know, it's, it is up to me to make the final decision. And sometimes it's with good information and sometimes it's not with great information, but a decision needs to be made regardless. And so I'll usually, I'll try to, I'll try to frame it that way so that people know us. Like we don't have all the information here, but this is good enough. You know, this one, decision we can undo with some difficulty, but not too much difficulty.
So this is what we're doing. And when we walk out of here, we need everyone aligned and singing from the song sheet.
But there's a permissibility that if we realize six months from now this wasn't the right decision.
Yeah, and the teams want that, right? any team is fine with that. When their leader says, we don't have perfect information based on what we have, this is what we're doing, this is the path, they're like, cool, great, move Yeah, and then it doesn't.
be like, who made that wrong? No, that's not how it is, right? How much, do you have any client facing time at all? Even some of the major, because you work with, obviously, some very large businesses.
Yeah, so it's a little bit. find most of when in my role, when I'm not doing internal things, it's time spent with the board, time spent with investors, banks, analysts. So those are some of the outside groups that I deal with and also our vendors. our largest and most important relationships are with some of our vendors, just because they're pretty big dollars going back and forth every year. I spend a lot of time with them.
kind of a bit of a value-added reseller is that fair? It's such a scale it's easy not to think of it that way but that's kind what
Yeah, we're a value-added reseller and servicer. Yeah, okay. have a thousand technicians that fix stuff and... Yeah.
You're running equipment, you're doing repairs. And you're buying parts.
Absolutely. So yeah, that's
That can be a different world also when you're dealing with a client who's always right when they're even when they're not. And how do you maintain that kind of openness and curiosity while you're trying to lead, but also fully be in service? But we could do probably a whole other podcast.
I find just that we've got such good teams to deal with our clients that I'm never brought in to solve a problem. And we have a chart of authority for how much they're able to do. so it's always well within everyone's delegation of authority for what they're able to fix with the customers. So I get called in usually just to
for a cat. I just know it live it breathe it. Yeah, exactly.
shake hands, right? Like it's a big customer and things are going well, you know, come in and say, they asked me to come in and say thanks for the business. Our team's asked me to come in or if things aren't going that well, you know, they'll ask me to come in.
Besides we're here to celebrate or hey, we need you to.
Yeah, just show a presence, show that we care, we're putting people on this and tell the customer that we're going to fix it. And just so that they hear it from me.
no how big or how complex the business sometimes just showing up that you actually care. Yeah, absolutely. It makes all the difference. It really does. Okay, well, I guess you guys do care about our business.
It really does go a long way. Just showing up, having a few questions and some knowledge of what's going on is pretty powerful.
We're getting near the end here, but I'm already gonna set up our next episode, which is the CEO to the board and how curiosity lives there. Cause I that's a whole other kind of topic as I think him likes, you know, it is our tendency to already plan the next one. So, because I think that's a whole different layer and we really focused on today and thanks for being so transparent and kind of your journey through the leadership journey and kind of your own, Hey, that's not working. Maybe I should try something else to your experience at, at, at Wage Acts and everything you've learned there. But I think the perspective of now being a CEO of a large company that's established.
and the relationship with the boards. Do you want to touch on that a Maybe a teaser for our next episode? Because that feels like a whole different dynamic.
It absolutely is and it was a new one for me. I'd never reported to a board like this and you know quite a formal board there's including me there's nine people on the board so you know different personalities, different wants. I would say you know we have a great board and there's you know I don't see too many personal agendas but there are agendas on what they think is important in the company to get done.
This is a lot of human beings too. It's a lot of people.
And kind of rallying all those opinions and then landing on something that is the right solution for the business that will be board supported.
And publicly traded. How long has it publicly traded?
since the 1960s.
Again, for a long time. Impressive organization. If people want to reach out, and I know your inbox is probably full, but I know you're on LinkedIn, you keep yourself, you're fairly open to talk to people, even though I know there's only so many hours in the day. Any recommends for people that want to touch base or?
Yeah, LinkedIn is the easiest place to find me. Coming up, I'll have a little more time on my hands. I'm taking a sabbatical. Very cool. Congrats. So we kicked off a CEO search at Wejax four or five months ago. the board and I jointly agreed it was a good time and the company was in a good spot. for you. And so, yeah, so I'll be done in about a month.
congratulations. That's a big, that's cool.
And maybe when this goes live, this might be the future. that's fabulous. Does that mean you're going to have a whole bunch of time to do mentorship? that sounds... Yeah, there you go. All of a sudden your phone's ringing off the... No, that's exciting. That's a cool stage and phase for you.
I've got kids that are 16, twins. so, you know, for whatever weird reason, they still like hanging out with mom and dad. So me and my wife want to spend a bunch of time with them and do some cool things with them. We just moved into a house in the country. So I want to dive into country living. Lovely. And then, you know, I think like every person that's pretty busy in their career, there's just a long list of personal things that you've always really wanted to get to. And you get to them, but not necessarily in the way that you want to
And that was the same fervor, right? You can't really like, I got all day to just do this, this crazy thing.
Yeah, so I've got a long list of personal projects that I want to tackle and I'm going to do them all.
It's like curiosity running rampant.
Yeah, definitely curious as hell. Yeah, really, really excited. So that will be starting up. think that'll be at least a year, maybe more, maybe a little less. I don't really know. I have no concrete plans for what's on the other end of it, but it's something that I've always wanted to do, to take a meaningful chunk of time off. I'm in my mid-40s, so I've got lots of runway left in my career, and I feel pretty fortunate that-
That's exciting times for
are only 16 months right exactly
And I do feel fortunate that I really, I love working. I really, really like it. And I think you're the same way. We're pretty blessed that the thing that we get to go do every day generally we like and then we have fun doing it. I'll probably work into my seventies. don't know. Like a full retirement and just golfing every day, that doesn't, at least at this
We have fun doing it.
means something, when you're doing something you like doing, what am I retiring away from? To do what? To do more of this? I'm retiring so I can do more podcasts. Well, I already got that checked off, so I'm good.
So I think so, but I do like the idea of a mid-career break, you know, at a time when you can still, when you're really healthy to do a bunch of really cool things, spend some time with family, do all these personal things that you really wanted to do, recharge the batteries a bit and then get back to something. I don't know what the something will be. It'll most likely be something in business, but.
I was the place money on it. A little bit of the die was zero. This is a little bit of kind of live life now. Don't wait to live it. know, then I'll have fun when this happens. Yeah. How about do that book? I think it's love. Love that one. You hear the title, you get it. But I still think it's worth it. Shifting to come to my beliefs. like, really like, well, I'm to, you know, I recently bought a property on the country after reading that book. I was like, you know what? Why? Why? Why wait when you've got your house? What do you wear? Absolutely. It's now.
That's a great video to die with soon.
I'm some of my beliefs too.
Waiting for
Any lasting advice for leader aspirational looks at you and go, wow, you've done it. You figured it out. They're on their journey. I very much wrote this book for people that are looking for maybe there's a different way. It's not tyrannical. It's not top down. It's more inclusive, which I know is your leadership style. Any advice for somebody who right now is just finding struggle with finding the time to think about that while they're trying to survive and thrive in their current role.
I think everyone's on their own journey, right? Like it's not a race and you know, the only, well, I guess it is, but the only one you're racing against is yourself. Yeah, they're they're so looking at what other people have done. It's, you know, it's, I don't think that's really the right way to do it.
looking.
The comparison is the thief of joy. Yeah. I read that. I read that on some Instagram meme and I was like, some truth there, some truth there.
Yeah, I think running your own race and you know what I did really find useful is taking those afternoons or mornings at Starbucks or whatever your local place is and tackling some of those deeper questions. You're like, what is it that makes me happy? What is it that brings me energy? know, what are all the ways that success could look like for me in one, two, three, five, ten years for me? And putting pen to paper on that?
for me just really gave just a ton of clarity on what was important, what's not important, where I should be putting my time. And then you can, know, if you want to do it for your work or your business, even those things, I spent a bunch of, bunch of afternoons at Starbucks saying, what is really important in this business? Right? Like what are, what are the, if I could only do one or two things, what would they be? Like where should I put my effort and my energy? And
actually writing that out in paragraphs just really brings a sense of clarity on where you should be spending your time. And when you leave those little sessions, every single time, every single time I left one of those little Starbucks sessions, I told myself, this is just the best use of my time. Like I need to do this more. And then of course you get caught up in all the world.
And like this joke, you know, is this a hundred dollar hour of my time or is this a $10,000 hour? Those are $10,000. Yeah, it was was not more.
Those were absolutely the best hours that I spent in terms of business and personal content.
defining another book. don't know if you're just maybe think about The Psychology of Money by Morgan Houston. Another good one about what you define your version of success and it's not what social media or the world at large tells you it is. It's your version of that. I think that's true for your business and personal. Yeah. I love it. My friend, thank you for another amazing conversation. Thank you. My pleasure. That was wonderful. Tyler. Thank you.
Absolutely.