Thriving In A Changing Environment With Eric Hoplin

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof. Hey

everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof Podcast. I am your host, Adam Markel, and I'm so thrilled to be here with all of you today. I'm also thrilled for the guest that I've got, and I'm gonna share a little bit about him, read his bio, and then get right into it. His name is Eric Hopland. He is the CEO of NAW, the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors. NAW and its affiliated trade associations represent nearly 30,000 companies that account for, get this, 1/3 of the American economy. The distribution industry stands at the center of America's supply chain, distributing goods and services across nearly every sector of commerce. Eric is a seasoned executive and communicator who has worked at the highest levels of government and business. He was previously the head of external relations for Wells Fargo, where he led a team focused on improving the company's reputation and advancing pro-growth policy objectives in concert with third party organizations across the political spectrum. I know you're going to love this conversation, so sit back and relax and enjoy. Okay, Eric, so I'm going to hit you with a question. The first question, it's my standard first question, but you probably know what question's coming at you. Based on your bio, based on your introduction, your work history, your life history, what is one thing that's not a part of what I just shared with folks, what I just read, What's one thing that you would love for people to know about you at the beginning of our conversation?

Well, I share a common thing with a lot of people, and that is I'm a dad. I've got 3 boys, age 15, 14, and 13. And Adam, before I had kids, if you told me that being a father was going to be one of the great parts of life, I would have had no idea. But what I found over the last couple of years is you get to kind of relive your childhood. You're playing Legos and hanging out in the backyard and doing all that stuff. But it's more than the fun and the enjoyment, you know, taking these 3 young minds and helping to kind of mold their character and form them and, and prepare them to go into the world and hopefully contribute something positive. I tell you, Adam, being a dad is the second half of my life. And through work-life balance, really try and make sure that as the leader of my team, that for whatever it is, whether you're a parent or whether you're a health nut, whether you love to travel, whether you love to read, whatever it is in your life, I find that if you've got time to do that piece too, You're so much better at work. And so I try and lead by example.

God, there's so much there. And obviously, people listening to this, not everybody's a parent. Not everybody wants to be a parent. There's a whole lot of stuff there, but there are plenty of parents out there. And certainly, I sometimes joke with folks, you have kids? No. Well, you want a child?

Yeah.

You know any children? You ever seen any children? So we can all relate to it on some level. I am a dad as well, and it is a big part of my identity, for sure. We have 4 kids. They're really— and I think that we all can relate to— is the idea of the influence, the potential impact that we have on other people. Clearly, when you get to mold or be involved in the process of molding a mind from the time that they're such a young, young age, that's a profound responsibility. It really is.

And it's fun along the way where there's just little moments in life that you realize you've had an impact. I had one this week. My 15-year-old is a golfer and he's on his varsity golf team, but he's in 9th grade and competing with the seniors and he wants time to play. And so when you're in a tournament, getting that low score is important to decide whether the coach is going to play you the next day. And he came upon a ball that he thought was his and he hit that ball. And when he got to the green, he realized that it wasn't his ball. And no one would've ever known that he hit a ball that wasn't his, but he called a 2-stroke penalty on himself. And that's one of those moments where, I thought that's the right call. That's what you're hoping was ingrained somewhere—that that you've raised a person of integrity.

Oh my God, Eric! You literally—I mean, I don't know if other people feeling this right now—I literally got full body chills right there.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it reminds me because I'm a golf nut these days. I don't know how that happened, but I just ended up that way. And Sahith Thigala.

Thigala. Yeah, yeah.

Yep. PGA. professional, one of the best players in the world, thinking about his dad, his family. They're very, very close Indian family. His dad, anytime Sahith is in the running, they're going to have his family involved because he's just such a super— just like this guy, I don't know, exudes a certain joy in watching his son, as does the whole family, it seems. But some years ago, Sahith was in the running in a really important I think I'm trying to remember the name of the tournament where he could have won the tournament, but he called a 2-stroke penalty on himself for potentially— I mean, he thought perhaps that his club touched the sand when he took it away from the ball. He's in a sand trap. Yep. Yep.

I hope I'm not—

you know, like, people that don't know what we're talking about, we're going to get past this fast, I promise. But the big picture here is nobody saw it. His dad didn't see it. Nobody. Not the commentators. There was a camera on him. Nobody saw this thing.

But I remember this. And this, by the way, cost him about $2 million.

It cost him a couple million bucks.

But I tell you what, the respect that he gained, I think, from his fellow PGA professionals and from the fans all around the world, I think was worth more than the prize money at the end of the day.

Right, that we're even talking about it now. Right, exactly. So yeah, wow. There's— I want to create a bit of a bridge here from the personal, and I want to come back to the personal. But I also want to talk about just What's happening right now in the marketplace? And I said to you before we even hit the record button, I don't expect you to have a crystal ball or be a prognosticator, but you're an experienced business person and you're working with other really seasoned business people. And the market, the time that we're in right now is pretty tumultuous. There's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of people are pretty nerved up about it, frankly. I mean, I can't tell you how many organizations Workwell serves. and wants to serve, I would even say, that we cannot serve at the moment because there's a complete lockdown inside those organizations on spending when it comes to certain things like leadership development or any kind of training that from the outside that might actually offer support for wellbeing and resiliency. And there's just no money for it because people are so nerved up about the future and not being able to make heads or tails of where the market's gonna be. So, can you share any of just your thoughts and both on the current situation and having been around the block as I have a time or two, should people be really wigging or is there something more going on here that we could observe?

Well, I tell you, Adam, representing the trade association, my members account for about 1/3 of GDP in the country. And so, I'm talking to CEOs of, you know, multi-billion dollar revenue companies and CEOs of, you know, $5, $10 million. And everybody in business likes one thing. They like certainty. They like to know where things are going so it can be predictive. When you don't have certainty, you start to see the pullback in spending, some of the other things that you were referencing, you know, so they can prepare for the certain times. And so we spend a lot of time in Washington, work closely with, with both sides of the aisle. And the advice that I give business leaders is to try and understand the why. Why is something happening? You know, oftentimes people are reading the headlines and they're reacting to the what. But if you can understand the why, you can have a bit of a longer trajectory view of where things are headed. And I'm counseling business leaders and, you know, this is not meant to be partisan, but to try and understand Donald Trump, understand what he's trying to do and where he's going. You can agree with it, you can disagree with it, you can be agnostic towards it. But the more you understand, I think the better you can prepare your business. So, so for example, the tariffs that we're expecting on April 2nd, might be applied all around the world, might be applied to certain countries. We're not entirely sure how they're going to be applied. It looks like they're going to be applied across all businesses. But if you try and understand the why, Donald Trump is trying to do is reset fairness in America's trade relationships. And so there's a couple of different outcomes. One outcome is, as a result, we get a trade war and inflation goes up and the stock market goes crazy. Things get more expensive here. That's a potential outcome. Some businesses are preparing for that. Another outcome is it forces a renegotiation of some of the imbalances in the relationship. And so instead of there being a trade war, these other countries come to the table and they say, okay, well, you know, maybe we can reduce our VAT tax, or maybe we can reduce this cost and this import to Americans. And so in that scenario, there's some short-term pain. Maybe it's 3 months, maybe it's 6 months. We're all going to feel it in the next couple of months. But after that, there's a potential that things are going to be better. And so I don't think Donald Trump is trying to destroy the economy. He's not trying to make everybody's lives terrible. He's not trying to be a bad president. You understand the why. And again, whether you agree, you think he's right or not, that's what he's going for. And so what I'm counseling businesses is let's just watch 4 to 6 months before we react too much, before we make fundamental change, before we start slashing budgets or this or that, is let's give the president a little time to see if he's right. And if he's wrong, the markets are going to tell him he's wrong. Inflation is going to tell him he's wrong. The electoral consequences are going to tell him that he's wrong. And my guess is he'll self-correct. But I think a little patience here is what I'm counseling leaders. And you've got a good business plan. Put your head down, stay the course, do what you're going to do before all of this. And hopefully on the other end, the economy is moving and it's even in a more stronger position than it was before.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I think we're back to square one when it comes to being a parent because you use the word P. The P word, patience, is so— ridiculously important in every area of one's life. You just can't even overstate how important patience can be in various situations and being reactive and having knee-jerk reactions to certain things, which I think Wall Street is really famous for.

It sure is.

Yeah. And it almost makes, to me, want to ask this sort of follow-up question around when business leaders do react in the way they do, especially the publicly traded the ones that are involved in publicly traded companies. In part, it's because there is such an intense requirement. Well, I'm not going to even say responsibility. That's maybe a debatable question. But there's a requirement that you satisfy the demands of the stakeholders. And the stakeholders in a publicly traded company are public shareholders, which more than 25% of all public companies are owned by a fund of some kind, mutual fund or an index. So there's a massive amount of the marketplace that's just really owned and in many ways being directed by institutional money or by shareholders in general. And that creates— well, when I ask the question, do you think that Wall Street has too much influence over the public, obviously over public companies in the marketplace? And maybe that's an unfair question, but I'd love to just get— because it's nuanced, but I see that oftentimes in our work in the organizational development side, The time when you would backstop your workforce, because to me, that's the greatest risk in any business. That to me is not even a debatable thing. But often what's ironic is that the workforce is sort of the least on the radar when it comes to what could be strategically, what could create a risk to strategy in an organization. Often consider the workforce to be that kind of risk. Marketplace, tariffs, president, administration, et cetera. Those are on the high priority list of risks. But the workforce is different. And when things change and there's, as you say, uncertainty and layoffs occur and restructurings occur, it's a rinse repeat that we've seen over and over again. And then years later, we're in a different part of that cycle. I get leaders that'll say, I don't understand, why is our culture hurting? Why don't people have psychological safety here? And you go, why don't they trust? Is that what you're asking? Why they don't trust? Mm-hmm. When every time There's a hiccup or your visibility changes or Wall Street isn't happy with your numbers, you start laying off hundreds, thousands of people. Just having, again, been around the block a minute, I don't understand how that cycle continues to repeat itself. I didn't even know if there's an actual question in there, but just off—

Well, I'll give you a couple of reactions. I've worked at a publicly traded company and We represent many of them. And what I find is that sometimes the pressure from Wall Street is really good when they're pressing companies to reduce expenses. That company may have been operating in a bloated fashion for too long and isn't going to survive and isn't going to thrive. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes the pressure is bad. I've seen it where, you know, there are some goals that they want somebody to accomplish and that they're contrary maybe to the core business reasons. And but beyond Wall Street, there's a lot of other stakeholders. The employees, they've got a lot to say. about where things are headed. Sometimes the union has a lot to say. There's outside activist groups and other stakeholders, their board of directors. And, and so, you know, you've got voices that have different agendas on all sides surrounding the leadership team. And this is where I bring it to Adam, is I don't think that Wall Street has an undue influence. I think it comes down to the leader and it comes down to the leadership team really defining who they are, who that company is, what their value is, what customers that they're serving, what their mission is and what they're trying to accomplish. And sometimes that outside pressure is helpful to give them a gauge of what's happening in the market or for their employees, what's a gauge of how the team is reacting. And so you want to listen, but you don't want to blindly follow. And so I think the best leaders are able to navigate all of those stakeholders really, really well and hopefully ultimately lead their companies to the right place. I think it's those short-sighted leaders that only listen to one side and allow them to drive them and push them to make decisions that aren't ultimately in the best interests of the company.

I'm reminded of— to me, it's a shout-out to a great leader that what you're talking about here, somebody that I've come to know, it's a gentleman who ran WD-40 for about 30 years, Gary Ridge. I'm not sure if you know Gary Ridge.

No, I don't know him.

Yeah. And a very successful publicly traded company. And they didn't have to have layoffs in part because his philosophy around leadership and around attaining, being able to still create growth and exponential growth and satisfy the myriad of stakeholders, but at the same time, not give up on the workforce and the talent that takes so much time and care, like a parent that cares for a child that goes through all that stuff so that that kid— your son is 15? 15.

Yep, 15, 15, 14, then 10. Yeah,

yeah. To be on the course and make that decision to call that 2-stroke penalty against himself, it's integral. That's a moment of integrity that didn't happen by accident. So, um, there's a reason. And so Gary running D40, which ultimately was headquartered in, in San Diego— that's how I know him— they just— he had conversations, difficult conversations with his board of directors at times, I believe is the case. And when was necessary, executive leadership, senior leadership, they felt the pain along with the workforce, and everybody felt the pain in some equal measure. And then they didn't have to have layoffs. And that was another way to approach that situation. So there's plenty of people that listen to this podcast that are in leadership roles. And I think it's really good that we had this conversation because that sort of cycle that repeats itself where there's perpetual reorganizations, it's like the 6th— Mm-hmm. reorganization in 10 years kind of thing, you would think would tell people that that doesn't create sustainable success. And yet they— it's like, it feels to me like it's a recipe in the cookbook that people know and go to, and maybe go to a little too much by default. So in any event, we'll leave it at that. I'd love to get your sense just in terms of your role, how have you developed resilience within your organization? And what have you seen in and around the folks that you all serve that would suggest that sort of there's a recipe, to play on that theme again for a moment, a recipe for resiliency? And by resiliency, I mean organizations, teams, individuals that are able to move forward and bounce forward, if you will, that learn lessons, valuable lessons from mistakes, and then ultimately thrive despite whatever the market conditions or the political wins or any of those kinds of things, that resilience?

Yeah. So when I came into MAW as the CEO, it was the middle of the pandemic. I think everyone's got resiliency stories from the middle of the pandemic, but we had a couple of different dynamics going on. First of all, the economy overnight was completely turned over on its head. And yeah, there was a shortage of some chicken and some toilet paper and a few other things. But if you think of it, while most people went home, Distributors went to work. Things don't just show up at your house through Amazon delivery or wherever else because magically you need somebody who is at the warehouse driving the forklift, who's putting something in a box that's getting it to FedEx or one of their, their own trucking companies to move it all over the country. And so before the vaccine, before we even really knew what this was, distributors were doing what they could to make sure that their people were safe, but they were keeping the supply chain moving. And, and so, you know, I learned a lot from my leaders as I came in about the resilience that they had shown and their teams had shown. There was one CEO that a family member of his had some underlying health conditions, but he had to be with his team at the distribution center. So for 6 months, slept in his office because he couldn't possibly bring something home. But they were supplying critical things for families across the country. So he had to stay and make sure that the shipments were going out every day. And so when I came in, I learned a lot from these leaders. But I inherited an organization that it's an incredible trade association, but of had rested on its laurels for maybe 5, 10 years. And so, it was in need of a cultural change. And so, the second dynamic that I was dealing with, Adam, is how do you take an organization that had always seemed to do something one way, but really, for it to succeed, it had to do a radical transformation and it had to do it quick because the moment our industry needed us was happening right then. It was unfolding. So, I would propose ideas and And the team would kind of look at me like I had 3 heads. Well, we've never done anything like that before. A great example, when the vaccine came out, well, our distributors are experts at getting things to the far corners of America, the most rural places, the most urban places. And so we wanted to be part of the vaccine distribution to make sure that it could move quickly. And, you know, so inserting ourselves into those conversations, and that was a tricky time because the Trump administration had a whole plan for it. They left. The Biden people came in and said, well, everything Trump did was junk, so we're starting over. And by the way, here comes the vaccine. Who's going to do what? So we had to step into the void and put politics aside and say, look, we're going to help save lives. And then we were creative with partnerships. We partnered with the NFL. They were opening up their stadiums to do mass vaccination sites, and they sort of expected FEMA was going to back up with a truck of all the materials and supplies they would need to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of people. Well, FEMA had nothing. And so distributors stepped up. We donated millions of dollars. And so everything you needed, the people wearing the vests to direct traffic outside to the tables where all of the supplies were sitting, little rubber bands that you put when you're getting a vaccine, people's rubber gloves, all that was donated by distributors all across the country. And, you know, that was something we'd never done before, come together as an industry to help with a large national pop— large national crisis. And so to, to be changing an organization and transforming it in the midst of Now, that's a difficult challenge. And so you fast forward to today, our team is so much better because if we can confront a pandemic and the economy changing on its head overnight, it seems like nothing can stop us now. And so that's given us a lot of confidence moving forward.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Yeah, that must have— just feeling like there's a blueprint there. People understand if we could have done that or been involved in that, we could pretty much step into anything or—

Absolutely.

Be agile in any situation. So a couple, 2 things as we wind down the show. I want to start with what you said about cultural change because there's 2 things. It's funny that you mentioned, and this is totally self-serving, but I wrote a book called Pivot. So you literally came in with a pivot, which oftentimes is a lot of early pivots are rejected and people are not ready to sort of embrace change. So I wrote Change Proof because again, same thing. We ultimately have to understand that transformation, and that's a big word and sometimes maybe overused, that is the nature of the universe. It's our first calling, I think, when we're born. Let's get back to being a child. It's like the first mission that we've got is to grow. And it's like, so an organization made up of just people and systems must grow. It has to grow. That's its mandate. Or we know in nature, things grow or they die. They're either growing or they're dying. So to your earlier point about how you go about doing that, I think the culture is in many ways overlooked, is back to that. And you coming in and thinking there's got to be a cultural shift here because perhaps the status quo bias, the idea that we play it safe instead of being on our growth edge. and creating transformation through change and through difficult and uncomfortable change. That's not something that a lot of people will embrace because there's a lot of fear around it. So you coming in and saying, hey, we're gonna do it differently here. I wanna get a sense of what was your playbook there? A little bit of your game plan. How did people, you already said it was met with some resistance, but you persevered, you know, like, so give us a little bit of that if you could.

Yeah, so I took a look at the culture and it had become sort of stagnant. Great people, hardworking people, But really in a fixed mindset of here's how we do things, here's how we've always done things. And, and, you know, over time, I think the quality of what they did was sliding. And so they would do things because they'd always done it, not because the members needed that, not because it was something great. And so, you know, the first cultural element I introduced was excellence. If we're going to do something, it's got to be excellent. And if it's not, we're not going to do it. We're either going to figure out how to make it great or we're not going to do it. And so you apply that to every single product, program, service that you offer. And we did a rating scale. What's excellent? And if it's not, how do we fix it? If we can't fix it, we don't have the resources, it's out. And, you know, because we did some great things, but if you list the 100 things that we were doing for our members and if 50, 60 of them were sort of okay, well, members interacting with those 50 or 60 thought we were sort of okay. We weren't excellent. We weren't great. And so I wanted to get to that excellent mindset. So what mindset was number one? You know, number two is because we were in the way of doing things the way we always did it. As a membership service organization, we were serving ourselves really well. Well, this is the process that we've always used that makes it really easy in our team to do X, Y, and Z. Well, it might be really arduous for the member, make it hard for them to engage with us to really realize all that we're able to offer them. And so the second mindset shift or cultural shift was a shift of membership service. You first ask the question, how is this going to impact them? How is this going to affect them? How is this going to help them engage with us? So we really tried to change that mindset. And the next thing is, you know, I think sometimes organizations, they just do things to do things, but it doesn't really have an impact. And so that was the third cultural element that I introduced, is you always had to ask yourself, is this thing I'm doing today, whether it's a small project or something that's going to take me 6 months or a year, is this going to have real impact for our members and for our industry? And if the answer is yes, then let's do more of it. If the answer is no, if we're just trying to— it's not pretending, but if we're trying to demonstrate that we're important, but we're not really moving the needle, Let's stop that. And, and so really focus on impact. And then the 4th and the final element for me was collaboration. You know, this team that I came into was relatively small. We're much larger now, but I couldn't believe how siloed it was across a very small organization. And it just shocked me that the left side of the group didn't know what the right side was doing or anything else. And so we really brought in this element of collaboration and cooperation and let's help all of us to succeed. And when we do, we can make that impact in an excellent way that's focused on the members. And so that's the cultural elements that I brought. They're not earth-shattering. They may not apply to every organization or every moment in time. But at that moment where we needed the transformation, those were the 4 things that I felt the organization needed to fix. And so, we did a lot to ingrain that in the culture. And I think we've had a lot of success since we introduced that.

I just want to call it out to our community as well, to people that are consuming this in this moment. You might think that was a planned question, that Eric and I had perhaps rehearsed that or that that was set in ahead of time, and it was not. And what I love about that is that I asked you a question, an important question, and you as a leader were able to articulate immediately what was going on. I don't see that frequently. I think leadership is difficult on a good day, just like parenting is. It's like a baby. We're going to keep this theme going to the end for sure. Cries in the middle of the night. You got to have a lot of patience. You get up at 3 o'clock in the morning to feed that baby, especially when you're tired and you're not at your best and all that good stuff. You know, honestly, a leader has to be able to communicate. It's absolutely essential. And communication, other topic, other podcast for another day, but communication is really in need of help in many organizations.

And if that's for another day, I'll, I'll just say one thing about communication that I've learned over the time, over the years.

Oh, please.

Is people tend to communicate in the way they like to be communicated to. And so what, what I've really learned to do is to try and understand, well, how does your team like to be communicated with? Some people want a one-on-one meeting. Some people wanna read what you have to say. Some people need to have a conversation And be able to give input. Some people are visual learners, and so they need to see the graphic of what all of this means. And so there's 100 different things we can talk about communication, but the first piece of advice I always give to a new leader is you want to listen and you want to understand how does your team communicate best. Because if you try and communicate the way that you best— how you receive information, you know, there's 2/3 of your audience that's tuning you out or is not understanding you. And so start with that. And so you got to use Multiple modes of communication to be effective.

That's the right level of sensitivity, I would think, so that you don't leave people behind, right? So my last question then is just really around your personal rituals for resilience and what is, from a standpoint of your own wellbeing, mentally, emotionally, physically, even spiritually speaking, how do you maintain wellbeing or what's something that you could share with us that you do that's just a constant for you?

I sort of took my health for granted for a long time. To be honest, I was young, I was unstoppable, but I had a problem with my hip and I became less active over time and I started gaining weight. And we talked about my kids at the top of the podcast, and because it hurt to move my hip, I would be sitting on the porch watching them play soccer instead of out there kicking the ball. And so finally, one of my kids was at a soccer tournament and it was up on a hill and I physically could not walk up the hill. I had to get on my hands and knees and crawl up this hill. And my wife looks down at me. She said, I know you have not wanted to get a hip replacement or do something about your health because you think you're too young, but look at you. You can't even get up this hill. And so that was kind of the moment that crystallized for me of, I'm not going to be healthy and vigorous and energetic and able to do all the things I want to do unless I also invest in myself. And so this is more radical than most people need, but I got a hip transplant and it changed my life. All of a sudden, it didn't hurt to move my leg. And so then I got a health regimen. I hired a physical trainer, you know, not because I didn't know how to do, do the workout, but, you know, she disciplines me to be in the gym every Monday morning and every Friday morning. I found a partner, my wife. Will you do this with me? Make sure that I get down there. And then you start doctoring in a way that you're focused on longevity. You start eating in a way that you're focused on fueling your body. And so it's incredible. You know, I lost 50 pounds. I'm the strongest I've ever been. And so as you get older, you can lean into health. And if you do, I think it's going to pay big dividends. And it was just something I didn't know until I was crawling up a hill to try and see my kid's soccer game.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. We take ourselves for granted. That's sort of like uniformly the case to one degree or another until there's a reason not to. It's sort of like we don't, you know, we're not thinking about the gas in the tank until we're on the side of the road with a gas can in our hands.

I was focused on being a great CEO. I was focused on leading. I was focused on making an impact. All those things, I wasn't focused on myself. And you realize you got to invest in yourself as well to be able to do all of those other things really well.

Exactly. It serves the mission ultimately. I had that conversation with my late father-in-law, who I miss literally every day, and happy to even just speak about him in this moment for a moment. We would have that debate. His family was all that was important, you know, was the most important to him, as many of us also feel. But he put himself second so often. was like a distant 3rd, 4th, 5th, whatever it might be. And that's why he's not around. And I debated that with him. I said, Dad, if you just take better care of yourself, we'll have you, you'll have us for a lot longer. Right. So it is, again, back to that whole idea, is there a fixed mindset here that needs a shift? I love the fact that I personally, on behalf of Workwell, get to speak to organizations like yours because I talk about those things. Mm-hmm. In an audience of people who often either haven't thought about them or it sort of rings, you know, like it's a reminder of something. But then there's also this element of, you know, maybe we have permission here. Maybe there's actually being permission being given to us. And that's the reason why this guy's on stage having this conversation with us, because somehow or another, the leadership here are open to the idea that we will take care of ourselves better. And it's not just sort of on a mission statement or in some vision

Right.

Etc.

Well, and your audience knows this, Adam, but, but you set the room on fire when Adam walked out on that stage, you know, between those 40 minutes when you came out and you left, you changed people's lives. And so I would just encourage any of your listeners, if you haven't brought Adam to your stage to meet with your teams, you're missing out because I thought it was an incredible presentation.

Eric, well, you're making me blush now on my bald head here. All right. Well, listen, I don't know that we could end it any better. Personally speaking, I think that's a perfect place to Conclude, but I look forward to talking to you again. I think our audience would love to get more from you. There'll be full show notes. Everybody will be able to learn more about NAW and everything that you do.

NAW.

NAW. NAW. Better than that acronym. But I would love to leave you with the last word too. If there's something that you were saying to a leader who's either seasoned in whatever that word means, but, or somebody that's brand new, if there's one thing that's just sort of leadership advice, not 101 advice, but something that maybe your earlier self that 20-something, 30-something, you know, that you would love to say, what would that be?

I think there's a lot of different traits of leaders that are important, but I think it all starts with integrity and character. And so, if you're a leader who leads with integrity and with character, so many things come from that. You make wise decisions. You are careful in the choices that you make. Your team can trust your word and want to follow you. People are proud to follow you. They know that you care about them. You know they care about the business. The organization you're leading. And so that's what I always say. There's lots of different traits that you can develop and lean into, but at the core is really integrity and character.

And this is the reason why you have a 15-year-old that called out that. I hope so. I mean, I know that, again, none of this rehearsed and just the perfection of it all, that that's the advice that you would give is evidenced by the fact that that's exactly what your son chose to do. So absolutely love that. Again, reminder to our audience to find out more about NAW. And all things that they impact, which is so vast, as you said, about a third of the country's GDP are the people that are part of this organization, its members, then those things will be in our show notes. Eric, thank you so much for your time today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate both the kind words to me and more importantly, all the sage advice that I know people have taken away from your words. So thank you again, sir. Thank you.

Well, Adam, it's my pleasure. Wonderful to be with you on Change Proof.

Absolutely love that conversation with Eric Hopland. He is the CEO of NAW. It is, as he said, about a third of the entire GDP of the United States represented by his membership. Distributors, wholesalers, every product that you can think of probably included in that grouping and companies that we've all heard of, that we all use, et cetera. And he came into that role as CEO knowing that there was change that was required. In fact, I would imagine— I didn't ask him this, but I'd imagine that the reason he was hired in the first place was because there was something that just wasn't working any longer, that maybe some people had been resting on their laurels or were playing it safe, or as he pointed out, maybe there was a fixed mindset around certain things. And he identified the ways in which Change had to occur. And he was definitive, I think, in his articulation of it. You could tell that he really believed in all of these things. And it doesn't mean, as again, he pointed out, it's not the only recipe. It's not the only ingredients that could be included to create a recipe. It's very much personal take on leadership, but also on how it is that you craft, curate, even if you use that word, Culture. How do people feel at the places that they work? How do we feel doing the work that we do for the organizations that we do that work for? And Eric was very intentional. And again, I thought just how wonderful it was that he, at the beginning, started out with a story about his son and a moment of integrity by choice, not something that was forced, but just something voluntary. Something that was optional, if you will, and yet not optional. Because in the world that this young person is living, having parents and in a culture, a family culture, where integrity is so valued, why should it be a surprise that this young person, this kid, would call a 2-stroke penalty on himself when nobody would have known the difference? Nobody would have known. that, that penalty was required. So just love that conversation. Loved how we got to talk through even some of the market forces that are happening, discussing stakeholder expectations in Wall Street and the role of the leader, CEO, and others in that context, as well as what's happening in our markets globally and here at home, if home for you is the United States. And many of you are listening to this from outside the US as well. So we did talk about that global perspective as well as sort of what's going on in that politically charged environment in the United States. So love the conversation. Eric is a solid guy, obviously. And really, you could tell why he's in the role of leadership that he is in. Guy with a heart, but also a tremendous thinking head for business and a process for thinking that is Different, because we have to be different. That's ultimately— resiliency is about adaptability to changing environment. That's what resiliency is. You could call it anything you want, say anything about it. There's a lot of ways to describe it, bouncing back and all that, taking on adversity, uncertainty, ambiguity. True. All that is true. And yet ultimately, we are either adapting to a changing environment and then thriving in that new environment because of that ability to be agile and adaptable, or we are not. And for any institution, any organization, any team, any individual to be thriving in the future, that is what has to happen from a mindset standpoint and from all the ways in which we develop that resiliency mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually as well. So loved all that, as well as the conversation around well-being. And the rituals for that recovery and that resiliency. Got to be intentional. Can't take ourselves for granted because when we do, we know exactly what happens. We run out of gas. We end up burned out. We end up depleted. We end up impatient. We end up angry and disappointed, frustrated, et cetera. These are emotions that we're all familiar with. There's a lot of sort of anxiety is rampant today. And in many ways, I think The ways that people are feeling is a result of just having not been taught, not felt as though it was acceptable even to really put yourself first, to think in terms of how am I taking care of myself, as though you were an Olympic athlete and you're preparing yourself for the event of a lifetime on behalf of your country even. What would you be doing? How would you be taking care of yourself? What would you— Your thought process be around your intake, your food, your water, your sleep, and your mental health, your emotional well-being, etc. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with a friend, a colleague, a family member, somebody that that might benefit. And also, as always, I thank you so much for the reviews. When you leave a review, it actually helps the algorithm help us, so it expands our reach. Expands the community, size of the community, the people that are having conversations around these really meaningful topics because you have taken just that moment. Maybe it's even more than a moment to leave that rating. 5 stars is great. That helps. But whatever makes sense for you. And if you want to leave me a personal comment, share your thoughts on this episode, adamarkel.com/podcast. You can do that there. But thank you again for your time and for listening. Thank you. Being a part of this community, uh, whether you're new or not so new to it. Thanks again. Ciao for now.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to RankMyResilience.com. Thank you.