S E753: Part Two: Stephan Bajaio on Digital Visibility

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No, I'm not as confident as I come across. No, I'm not as capable as I might look. Well, look, I don't know, act. But I'm trying and I'm recognizing and I'm aware enough to realize that it's not gonna show up. I'm gonna have to act. And that action doesn't mean big verbs always. It sometimes is little things. It's little traditions, it's little moments, it's gifts you give yourself. I give myself the gift of 15 minutes. That 15 minutes is for me, and I choose to use it in the way I do, hopefully to help others and myself.

Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. I was enjoying my conversation with Stéphane Bégiat so much that we didn't get to finish. We barely scratched the surface. So Stéphane, I'm so excited to welcome you back to part 2 of this conversation. We spent the whole literal hour last time Talking about your business, right? From Conductor to the WeWork chapter, helping businesses stop being visible online. And I realized we really hadn't touched on what it means to just lead people in a way that outlasts you. Talking about the human being versus human doing part. I know that's something that you said you're still trying to get better at.

Oh yeah.

Every day.

And, and this is really where I wanna go. So thank you for being willing to give me another hour of your week.

I know the other way around. I, I appreciate you and I appreciate you letting me wax poetic more with, uh, the folks that are watching and listening. So, thank you for bearing with my voice and my face to provide you hopefully some more insights. Hopefully you get one valuable thing out of today or out of this session. You can tell I switched my shirt. This really is a different day.

I did also. I'm like, oh, my shirt is still dark.

I thought about that. I'm like, do I wear the same shirt so we make this seem like it was a two-parter or like, nah. Things I literally think about.

Sorry.

It's okay. Same, same. And I love that we're already going off on little rabbit holes and tangents. And by the way, before we jumped on and pushed record, we already spent 15 minutes talking about a whole bunch of other stuff. And then we were like, okay, better get to business. Yeah.

This happened last time, by the way. So it really is thematic. I'm sorry. Uh, this is a bad habit I have.

So yeah, there's no reason to be sorry. This is the most fun part of this process is I get to meet you. We get to spend time together. I get to learn. And you were generous enough to come back.

Vice versa. Vice versa. So wonderful. Thank you for the opportunity. Really, I appreciate it.

Of course.

Yeah. So let's talk about people first, right? We talked some about that, company value slides, but then I really wanna get into what it really does mean, especially in this AI era, to be a people-first leader. What does that mean in practice and how does that look different from what other leaders do?

Interesting. I only say interesting because AI is changing a lot of things, but I think first and foremost, the best place for me to start on this is basically to talk about what I believe as a leader, right? And so I'll kind of break it down to 4 major things that I look for when I think about leadership. So one, I think passion is your most valuable asset. So I have never been able to teach passion to someone. In fact, I'm often told I'm very passionate. Even when I don't mean to be passionate, I come across as passionate. I always kind of sound like I'm on the pulpit, like preaching, which isn't really always a good thing. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I get people excited and that's a good thing. And like I said, I set ships off to sail and everyone gets excited. I'm not as good as bringing them back to harbor.. But I definitely am good at like getting us all excited and jazzed and like crystallizing a vision and going. And that falls back to that whole evangelism concept that we spoke about in the last episode, how I was the evangelist for Conductor. And that really suited my personality in many ways, right? Believe it or not, I'm an introvert who can be— I'm an extrovert who can be incredibly introverted because of the energy it expends. So that's just a personal thing. Don't think that all extroverts are always extroverts. They require a recharge in a weird way and in ways, shapes, and forms where you'd be like, really? You spent all of the Saturday in bed? Yeah, sometimes that's the way it works. Like, I'm just completely drained and I'm tired of my own voice and I just need to like veg and watch something to get me out of my head. But you all don't need to know that. Next, failure is not only welcome, but it's expected. So Saying that seems a little weird, right? But I'm a big fan of having people take steps outside of their comfort zone. I think if you're not doing that, I don't really think you're challenging yourself. I don't think you're growing as an individual. I don't think you're expanding the potential. And in all fairness, like, we could live our entire lives inside the bubble that is comfortable. And I have— I love comfort. I am someone who defaults to comfort. If If given my dredders, I could stay in bed forever. No one's supposed to say that. Entrepreneur is never supposed to say that. But the reality is, and that's not me like saying, oh, I need to waste away in bed. I don't want to see anyone or be around anyone. But it's only to say that like, I love comfort. I love it.

I love it.

I love it. I've built it into my domain, as you can tell, with lighting, with this, with that. There are times I don't even know it could be snowing outside, by the way. And just for everyone's edification, it's the middle of June. I wouldn't know. Why? Because I don't open my window. I don't go outside. It's not healthy. I'm not saying I'm trapped here, but the people on the International Space Station might get more exercise than I do. Just saying. I do have a treadmill under my desk and one of those things to move my legs around like old people, all because of that. But anyway, Failure. Failure is important. And I think like if we don't allow space for failure, I really think we're minimizing the potential of what we can get done. I mean, everyone, there's the old adage, right? You don't learn from your successes. You learn from your failures. And that whole concept is as old as time, it seems, and really long in the tooth when it comes to entrepreneurship. But I will say that like, I don't need spectacular failure. But I do need some level of it to know that you're really trying to go a little bit beyond your own capability, right? Or else, like, what's the point? Like, and again, getting back to passion also, like, I can't teach you passion. Passion is what carries you in moments, times, and places when failure happens and you keep going, right? It allows you to have desire beyond. And that's not something you teach, that's something you find. I always look for passion in my interview process. I ask what people are passionate about. I ask them what motivates them, what gets them up in the morning, that sort of stuff. If you're gonna lead people, you need to understand their motivations and you need to understand the things that matter most to them. I heard a great story. A friend of mine has an agency and they were trying to think of gifts, right, for one of their employees. And the gift they got for such a great job on an account for this person was a photo of an old B-2 bomber from World War II, and it was his grandfather's.

Wow.

Now he was super into aviation and he always kind of talked about aviation and stuff like that. So they, they knew what, like, That doesn't mean he was passionate about it to the tune of that's what gets him up in the morning. He wasn't going to become a pilot, but he worked at a digital marketing agency and he was constantly— this was his thing. This is what he cared about. This was something. And you could tell that it had more value to him than simply, I like airplanes, they're cool, right? It ties back to his family lineage and so forth. And the fact that someone took the time to go do that isn't a $1,000 bonus. It's not something that you— but you know what? He's never going to forget that. He's never going to not associate that with that company. He's never not going to think about the leader that took the time to do that research and find that plane. Like, that is an amazing— that's texture. That's texture. And people forget that we're in the people business and dealing with one another. All these other things around us, hate to be hippie about it, are all constructs. They're all constructs. But humans, we can argue, aren't a construct, but they physically exist and they are, and they have spirit, they have soul, they have thoughts, they have feelings. And you have to stop treating them, not treat them like a prompt, not treat them like a number. No one's ever shown up for a job where they're treated like a number and not left if given a better opportunity.

Right. Those are important points, but let's go back to the failure because we all say this, right? I mean, I say this and I have truly learned how to make every— the next thing I do better because of the lessons I learned from making mistakes. But I think people are still afraid to show up that way. They're afraid to show vulnerability, especially if they're not the leaders, if they're not at the top. So how do we make an environment where people feel comfortable taking those chances and having those opportunities to try something? And maybe not get it right.

You have to embody it yourself. It goes back to one of the other tenets I have, which is leadership is a behavior, not a position, right? It's not a title. I hate org charts. In fact, I learned from Seth, our original co-founder of Conductor, this concept of flip the org chart. So you take this supposed pyramid, which is super egotistical, right? And you flip it. And now my job is to support my VPs or directors, and their job is to support the people that report into them, and their job is to support those people. And if you think and switch that mindset, then you are really— that's servant leadership at its highest core, right?

Out of my mind, out of, right out of my head.

Yeah. Servant leadership is what you need to move towards because if you don't show the vulnerability yourself, if you don't show that you also— there's this concept of I'm here and you're here. And I don't actually think that exists. I think that's, again, some nonsense construct that we put in to make ourselves feel better about the amount of time we devote to a career or to something that's supposed to signal others. I know this for a fact because I walked into rooms that, in all fairness, I probably didn't have the right to be in simply because I had a co-founder title. And I used that on purpose that way as a crowbar sometimes to get in, right? And that's okay. But you know what? Like, ultimately, does that make me a better person, a smarter person, a more capable person, a more respected person? We could argue certain people are going to think that, but I don't like, and that's just the approach I take to business. I don't, you can be the VP of PP for all I care. I don't really, it doesn't matter. What matters is the now, the moment, and what are you bringing to the table? And if you're willing to say, Hey, you know what? I screwed up. I should have done this. I didn't get back to this client. And in all fairness, like, that probably cost us something and I wish it hadn't. And, you know, now what am I going to do because of that? Well, I'm going to make sure that I have reminders set up for these types of things so that we don't have this issue again. Because— and you know what else I'm going to do? I'm going to tell that story to the new people that come in, not because I'm asking them to go screw up, but, and not that I'm going to chastise them if God forbid they made the mistake I made, but only to say, hey, we put this process in place because this happened. So like, if you can think of an even better way for us to deploy this, great. Fresh set of eyes. Like I always want someone, by the way, if you're not doing this with new employees, shame on you. They are the A new set of eyes is one of the most valuable things you can use, but you have to make sure that their mouth is comfortable sharing this stuff. So if you're not setting the environment for a new set of eyes to tell you your own blind spots, you can continue to be blind. That new set of eyes is so valuable. Always doing it the way you've always done it is not an edict anyone should follow. So the more new set of eyes and openness you can have to change. I also think that setting up, like you said, Anika Jackson, setting up the environment for that is super important. So if you're the type, and listen, I can come across this way, so I have to be very careful. And I have, I've made this mistake many times where I can take someone's idea and just go, okay, and then keep moving, right? I don't give it the space to breathe because I'm very ver— right? And if you don't give it the space to breathe and you don't give it the time and the justification, others can see that as dismissive. And that's really bad, especially when you don't mean for it to be dismissive. You're just trying to move on because you're thinking of the next thing. So being attuned to that and almost like taking a beat more than you think you should, especially if you're an extrovert or you're like a high I or a high D if you're in a DiSC profile, like type of leader. Take a beat, make the space good. This is another one that actually falls right into my other point of the 4 things I like to think about in leadership, which is empower your people first. So like, maybe I'm not the one even running that meeting. Maybe I'm giving that to someone else. Maybe I am, because I have these conversations when I first start with a team, if the team I'm inheriting or we're bringing people on. I like to, I think we talked about this. I like to talk about, well, what are we going to look like a year from now and how's that going to be? And personally as well. So if I know someone's having wants to be in a leadership position and I can't just give them people to manage. And by the way, side note, this is a fallacy of business. Success has unfortunately been associated with managerial. Not all people who should be successful should be managers. It's this horrible thing of like going up this pyramid and like, oh, now I'm above more people. No, individual contributors can be aces and they could be amazing at what they do. The problem is you have to give them, you have to be more cautious with an individual contributor on that track to ensure you're showing them their growth because they may be doing many of the same things. In perpetuity, because they're doing those same things in perpetuity, they don't get a variety of experience. They fall into traps and habit, and they also don't see their own growth. So then it becomes a, if my money doesn't go the right way, I'm still doing the same thing, which is why people go to management. They're like, oh, now I'm managing new people. I'm managing people who manage people, and your environment continues to change, right? So that change along with salary and responsibilities tends to be a thing. And that's why people seem to be, it's okay to do the management track, but not every ace should be a manager. And it's okay to have careers that don't end up managing people. But back to the empowering idea, if you know someone needs something like that leadership, give it to them in small doses. And remind them afterwards. Not, I let you run this meeting. And a one-on-one a month later, hey, you know, like, I just want to tell you, one, thank them and remind them what great work they do. Don't overlook the ability and the value of a thank you. I think people often do that. They throw things in passing because for you it didn't mean as much. I have trouble sometimes. Those are blind spots for me. Because some things come easy to me that don't come easy to others. And you don't realize that. And so when you realize that it took someone, they went out of their comfort zone to do something like present or do something, shower them with compliments that they deserve, hopefully, but shower them with those compliments. You will, no one will be angry with you for doing that. Right? Like, It's shocking to me how many people just don't empower their people, don't give them the opportunities. By the way, I try to give people who report into me as much credit above as possible because I hope, and in the right environments, I'm responsible for having brought them in. I'm responsible for empowering them on the shoulders. Hopefully they're standing on. But I don't need that. I fight off that ego and say, that's not for me. My job is to hold them up. My job is to give them opportunity. My job is to be able to make them into the things they can become. And in all fairness, as I may have said in our last conversation, the way someone's exited from a company is more indicative of the company's culture than the way they're brought in. If you aren't proud of the alumni that now has gone off to all these amazing places, if you're not celebratory of the fact they now manage this or do that, you're missing the point. It's not about owning them and keeping them and trapping them in your business. People are, especially now, no longer willing to, to go for that ride with you, and you can't blame them. The models don't add up. You get more money by jumping job to job. It's just the reality. And I've seen it. I think it's backwards. I think it's stupid because the historical and tribal knowledge that someone leaves with, right, versus hiring someone new to take on the next role is just wild to me that it's this belief that the grass is greener. I'll get more value from someone who knows more because they've been at a bigger brand. Well, they don't know the texture and they don't know the teens and they don't know the stuff. And they're going to have to learn all of that to get to a place where they can can even be effective. AKA, sales reps have ramps. We give a certain ramp to all employees to get to a place they need to get to. I just, I'm of the belief that you don't do that. Side note as well, and then you can cut me off. PIPs, performance improvement plan, okay, are not meant to fire someone. Okay, that fallacy of we are using this to just force someone out is a corporate nonsense. Okay. If you want to let someone go and you have justification to do it, you should be doing it. You should not string them along in order to do that. If you're going to do that and you know you're not going to get productive work out of them and want to let them go, give them severance for that time period and help them find a new job. Okay. But otherwise, performance improvement plan is meant to improve the performance. In fact, I've seen many people where they have been given a performance improvement plan and they have improved. They've improved to the point that they've actually become star players, right? Some people, even in sales, I've seen this too. They hit a valley. They've been selling this stuff for a long time. They've been carrying people or they're putting them in managerial position and they can't figure out how to run their own book of business and then run, run someone else's or manage someone else's at the same time. Doesn't come naturally.

Okay.

They hit a valley. But I've seen those same players, performance improvement plan, we come in, we say, okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to work on it together. This is the North Star. We agree. Let's go. We're going to take these steps. You're going to see this action. And here we go. And all of a sudden, those people, they get on a track and they're like laser-focused. They make it a point. They know that we're not trying to get rid of them, and they're trying their best to get to where they want to. As opposed to, oh shit, I'm now on a performance improvement plan. I got to worry about whether or not I have to find another job while I'm trying to supposedly do my job now. What a joke.

There are so many key points. First of all, I do want to go back to you.

Sorry.

No, no, no.

You made a statement that makes it very clear that you are a parent of a small child, which I don't know if anybody else caught, but I thought that was pretty funny. When you do empower people, they have agency, they feel ownership, and you're bringing them along to an idea that they might not have been warm on before, and this can help them warm up. I've seen this time and time again. I've also seen the informality of a lot of workplaces. I know I'm fairly informal, I'm very transparent, and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. When I had my PR firm, I had a very young team. I elevated many of them in title pretty quickly. Some of them took that and ran, it doesn't mean that they should be that same title level in a bigger company. For my company, it was perfect. So, I see some interesting things there where sometimes then I get, there's positive feedback, but then there's also feedback of, oh, this person was very casual with me in conversation and I'm trying to come to them as a client. So, I, I feel like there's still some learning that's missing from younger generations that we have to teach them up while still giving them the agency, while still telling them about the experiences we've had, the failures, ups and the downs, and also being those servant leaders to them.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, and at the same time, I'm kind of thinking to myself, wow, I don't work in those places. Like, there's a reason, and it's so funny, I forgot where it was. Well, I was at a networking thing yesterday. It was really interesting and very, very like unique individuals. We were talking about growth in companies. And someone was a business coach and we were talking about it. We were talking about teams and C-suites and so forth. And we made the comment, or I think, I don't remember if it was me or someone else made the comment that not every team is meant for every moment, right? In a business. So oftentimes a business goes from a family business, and I don't literally mean family, but the way it's run is a family business. Which has its dysfunction and has its stuff and has all the warts that come along with the reality of that and all the informality of it. And then it can become a baseball team. I personally don't like baseball teams. It's just not my thing. I don't like it. It gets too competitive. It goes into, frankly, a level of politics that I don't enjoy. I don't like the concepts. It becomes a little Game of Thrones-y at certain points if you go high enough and if enough money's involved. And that's just not my thing. And so I've realized that I'm better at a certain revenue point to deal in, like, as a leader. Like, I was just saying this to one of my clients earlier today. I said, I don't think I would be a great billion-dollar CMO. Could I do it? Sure. I probably could, but I probably wouldn't be the best at it and I definitely wouldn't be in my comfort zone doing it. Now, I know I just said you want to go out of your comfort zone, but you also don't have to go so far out of your comfort zone that you don't ever feel comfortable. Right. And I think that concept, sure, there's a lot of ego and, you know, again, the titles and this, and I do it for a publicly traded company and da da da da. Sure, I would love all those accolades. Who wouldn't, right? But when it really comes down to what am I going to get dopamine out of, what am I going to get the most enjoyment personally in, take the salary off the table, take the money and the stocks and all that stuff out of the picture. What am I going to get the most joy out of? I'm going to get the most joy out of people and out of growing teams and out of seeing others succeed and out of enabling situations or coming up with great ideas that we can actually deploy because it doesn't take 700 people to make a decision and you're not going to get scrutinized by a board or the street or a bunch of investors who really don't have the same— they don't have the same skin in the game and frankly, they don't have the same reasons and motivations for what they're trying to what you're trying to accomplish. So that's why I would say for me personally, that's not really what I want to do. I'm always probably going to be the informal guy. And, you know, does that make me seem a little aloof in the formal setting? Sure. I could put a tux on if I need to. Not that I'm going to wear a tux to a business meeting, but I'm also going to be the one that's going to say the things that probably feel uncomfortable to others in the room. And I'm, I'm gonna call out things that I'm just gonna be honest about it because that's who I am. And, and I'm not trying to hurt opinions, hurt feelings, or cause problems, but I, that's the value I bring to the table. And hopefully that value is recognized. If it isn't, then maybe I'm in the wrong room.

I think that a lot more companies in the future will be more like that. I, I really do, because I think a lot of us of our generation are those kind of leaders. I think there are places for every kind of leader, but I also, I mean, I like to be more informal. I'm not going to be a super buttoned-up person no matter what the situation is, probably. I'm going to, again, be very transparent, probably overly transparent and overly sharing. Sometimes that does mean people feel overly familiar with me, but that's also, this is, I've chosen to be in the teaching profession. I've chosen to be a podcaster, right? Whether I know people or not, they're going to feel like they know me, and that's okay. And so you have to take both parts.

Oh, the good comes with the bad for sure.

Yeah.

I've made relationships in business where quote unquote subordinates, which I don't like that term, but people who report into me have become incredibly comfortable giving me feedback that at times may not even be justifiable. And I might take it to heart more than I should. Because of the relationships that are there. Now, those are also the people that'll probably hopefully follow me into hell if necessary. So you have to kind of take the good and the bad in that respect. You know, if you want to earn the right to make a statement like that, that people will follow you into hell, then you've got to earn that again as a behavior, not a position. If you're doing that day in and day out, and if you're challenging yourself and you're recognizing your failures All the things I said about leadership that would apply to a team apply to you. It has to start with you. If it doesn't start with you, and if you don't, you know, I have this right hand, left hand approach to business. So I say you need two hands. Now the two hands don't necessarily have to talk to one another, but they do have to work together. Often one hand is really good at something, another hand's really good at something else, but both hands are better at whatever it is, than I am. So if I'm not good with process, then I get someone for my right hand who's a process-oriented individual. And if I'm not good with finishing things, then I get a finisher to come in and be the left hand who always gets things finished. And then I don't have to think, are my hands going to do what I need them to do? No, because hopefully if you've understood the motivations of the individual, what hurts me and feels like gashing a vein and watching it bleed, which is like maybe like trying to make process work great. Actually, the fulfillment of process doesn't do that for me. For someone else, that's dopamine. Like, they actually come so easy to them, things that are hard for me, and they actually get joy out of that. And so why shouldn't we offset each other's weaknesses and strengths and allow me to come up with the idea and you're going to do this part of the execution because you love execution and you get dopamine when you cross the finish line. And I don't need that finish line crossing feeling. Like, you can have that. I'll take the idea thing of, oh my God, I was able to come up with all this creativity and wax poetic and, you know, all this. That gives me dopamine, right? So it's like finding those complementary skills and motivations. Allows you to build a team. We seem to think teams are positions, as in titles with roles and descriptions. But how many times in a startup, I'll tell you, do you really follow the description of a job? Oh my God, I've never— I have never— one, I've always written my own job descriptions because I was always creating the next one to get into, right? But even then, anytime I was ever handed a job description, did I ever stick to it? No. Did I ever hold people to their job descriptions? Not really. We were trying to get things done and we did them by the means we could. And if that fell within a description, great. But there wasn't, I don't do windows and I don't do drapes. Like, we weren't in that business. We were— and I think everyone at some point should work in a startup because it forces you. People don't talk about this enough. 3 months of the startup is 1 year at any other company. I guarantee you that. Like, the The number of 14 years that I worked at Conductor is equivalent to about 45 years. I know that sounds maddening and wild. It really is. The amount of experience and things I would experience within 3 months, other companies would take a year for you to see that kind of thing.

But let's talk about this trap though, right? Because one of the things that you've mentioned briefly on the last episode we didn't get into. Is figuring out how to be a human being instead of a human doing. And when we do, a lot of us are that doing phase, and that's the startup mentality. That's really thinking about yourself as how many things do you check off the list? How productive are you? So, talk about your journey into figuring out how to be a human being, what that looks like, and what shifts do you have to make? Do any of us have to make to get there?

All right, I'll disclose. You got me. I'm gonna disclose. So this is a little strange in these times to even talk this way, but I'm going to do it anyway. I have always wanted to learn meditation. I've always wanted to learn gratefulness and to do that. The problem, as you can imagine with my ADD, is never being able to to force function that, right? It's good intentions with no physical tie to it. I'm Jewish. It's a weird thing to say in these times. It's weird that I have to say it's a weird thing to say in these times. After October 7th, as a Reform Jew, I had to do a lot of reflection in a lot of ways that I think others had to do. Very difficult ways, ways that I never thought I'd have to, but I was warned by my ancestry that someday I could feel this way in my own country. Now, I'm not going to get into the politics. I'm not going to get into any of that stuff, but I am going to tell you there's this thing in Judaism called tefillin. What it is, is it's, you bind this on your arm and you put it on your head and you say a prayer. And anyone who I grew up with would be like, whoa, that's super religious. And I would be like, that's super religious. I'm not super religious. That's not who I am. I always saw religion kind of as this, like, I don't know, I don't like organized religion. I don't want people to do things because they're fearful of what might happen if they don't. Like, I want you to have an open mind and an open spirit to what's the potential, right? Without getting too deep, even though I probably have already skipped that about 5 miles back in this. I started wearing tefillin every day and I do it differently. So I, I don't even read Hebrew. I read the transliteration, which now I've memorized. So I feel really good about that, but that's what happens after you've been doing it for 2 years. So I bind and I do this and I do it every morning. At least I try to. And then the thing I do is I— the first thing I do is I'm grateful. And I literally think of all the things I'm grateful for, which, by the way, is super hard if you have a crap memory like me and you're trying to remember what happened yesterday. But I try to just thank God in a way that's like just being thankful, grateful. And I've always wanted to do that. I've always realized that It's too easy to go through life and not recognize the being, like, not the doing. We do all day long. We're never, like, present, right? So it forces me to stop and, like, think, what am I grateful for? Small things. A roof over my head, food in my stomach, the ability to breathe. A moment in which you don't have that is so different. And unfortunately, people usually have to go through that to recognize the gratefulness of that. I don't want to have to go through that. I hope I never have to go through that. Right. Who doesn't? Whoever wants to have a problem breathing? You really like good health is something you take, you take for granted until you don't have it. Right. So there's that. And then the next thing I do is I think of all the people and I actually physically do this with my hand as to what direction I think they're in from where I am. That's really strange, but I do that just to name like my mom, my dad, my sister, my in-laws who are up in Canada. Like, I actually take the time to do this. And this does take something that should have taken 5 minutes, by the way, and extends this out to about 15. But if I know they're going through something or I know someone needs something, I, like, actually hope for it for them, right? I hope that every day my daughter is able to make friends and grow and expand. And so I'm putting that out into the universe. We can call that manifestation. We can call it whatever term we want. But I'm actively trying to do that. And then the last part is I ask for what I want today. And I stop, I stop making excuses or feeling selfish for wanting it, which I very much have felt most of my life. Like if I ask for something, isn't that too much ego? Isn't that too much? Instead, I say, you know, what I really want to have happen. Now, does it always happen? No, but I try to put out what I want back and aim it. Because oftentimes, like, I want more money.

Cool.

How much more? Oh, I don't know. I want millions. Okay. How many millions? No, couldn't tell you. Right. So how will you ever know what you ultimately want? And again, I'm not sitting here just begging for millions, right? I'm just telling you, like, how do you know? It's the same idea of writing down your goals, right? If you want to get somewhere, you got to know where you're going. And I will 1000% say all of this to say I don't have those goals written down the way I should. I don't know exactly where I want to be. I don't know all of it. I really don't. So I don't come to you today with this honesty saying I have all the answers. But I will say that by doing this, the days I do it, I see a difference. Maybe it's just placebo. Maybe it's my mindset, maybe it's— but it's different. And it's not about the Judaism, though I do feel closer to it than I ever have spiritually and even religiously. But I really do feel that you need to ground yourself. Now, unfortunately, fortunately, I had to feel what I felt from the outside world to prompt me to take some actions to force myself into the moment because life is going by so fast that it just seems like it's forgettable, right?

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What you're talking about, I think this is something, this is where we find the commonality between religions, philosophies, right? When we start with the steps. And this is not the direction I thought we were gonna go in, but, uh, I'm just thinking because one of the conversations I had to do today was with the, the former Zen monk that I work with. And we have a podcast and I just bring, you know, he's older gentleman now. And so we bring him on and have conversations and he's created a 9-step program from when he left being a monk and had to go back into the real world. And it does involve some of the things you've talked about, which is, you know, the first step is like where are you, like, in life, in your health, in your wealth, in your family, your friendships, all of the different aspects of your life, the wheel of life. The second part is about reflecting, but it's really about, like, forgiving yourself of the wrongs that you think that you did to yourself, forgiving others for wrongs that you think they did. And then the third part is that future vision that you're talking about of, like, you know, what do I want my life to look like, how am I going to get there. And then we get into What are the steps to stay in the Zen zone and the meditation? Like, it doesn't necessarily— meditation looks different for everybody. Those rituals that you do look different for everybody, but the important thing is doing them because you are getting yourself in that state. And I have ADHD and I have all these things as well, but I all— I have this inner peace from knowing those steps, right? And having tried to work on myself. And I'm sure that, that, like you said, it sets your day off a little bit differently because you're being really intentional.

Sounds like I need to listen to the Zen Podcast.

I'd love to know what you think of it because it is funny because we just come on and he's like, what are we going to talk about today? And I'm like, all right, here, let me tee you up. But you know, so those things though do set us up to be beings and to think about our whole selves and celebrate our whole selves. You talk the spirit, the mind, to honor our ancestors and to honor our loved ones who are living.

And acceptance, just a level of acceptance. I think who doesn't want to be better, but who's too afraid to try, right? I've been too afraid to try. I've been too uncomfortable in my own skin. All of this might sound weird to people who are like, oh, but he's well-spoken and he's able to get on stages all over and he's able to do this and he's able to do that. Well, I guess that's the imposter syndrome or the hidden thing, right, about me, which is, no, I'm not as confident as I come across. No, I'm not as capable as I might look. Well, look, I don't know, act. But I'm trying and I'm recognizing and I'm aware enough to realize that it's not going to show up. I'm going to have to act. And then action doesn't mean big verbs always. It sometimes is little things. It's little traditions, it's little moments, it's gifts you give yourself. I give myself the gift of 15 minutes. That 15 minutes is for me and I choose to use it in the way I do, hopefully to help others and myself. And that to me is something that's fundamental and it changes my perspective and hopefully it changes my situation. So I just think we are way too into the doing part of life. And if we let it, we will do nothing but do. And I just, I don't think I, as much as I've done a lot in my life, I don't think those are the things that mattered the most to me. I think when I, I think when things, when I was able to be, be in a moment, when I was able to be present when I was not distracted by a thousand screens, right? We now use multiple screens at the same time, and I don't even mean the 6 that are in front of me right now. Literally, we watch TV shows while we're scrolling. Like, it's madness, and I don't see it getting any better. So the only way to counter that is to say, can you do it? Can you be with yourself for 15 minutes and let yourself actually exist with your thoughts and, you know, without the distractions, without the stuff. Again, I'm not great at it. I try every day and I feel guilty when I don't. And I have a rabbi who goes, did you put your tefillin on? And I'll probably hear it today because I didn't put it on today. And I'm supposed to go to an event later tonight and I'm sure I'm going to hear like, did you do it? And I'm going to be like, I can't lie to the guy. No. Okay. I didn't, you know, But again, I just think it's a, it's a way to ground yourself. Happy I have found that even at the ripe age of 47, I've given myself that gift and I think it allows me a little more comfort in my own skin than I had before. Yeah.

Well, and we did talk also about being— you're a girl dad, you have a 5-year-old. I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum. I'm a girl mom, but my daughter's graduated high school. That also has to really influence what matters to you at this moment, how you structure being the top of your career, being a CEO, being a founder, running a big business, also trying to find time for yourself to, to be present. But then also your family needs to be present for you.

Yeah, I will say I'm not by any means close to the perfect dad in that regard. I have to put the phone down more, experience more. You know, my daughter's an only child. I was not an only child, nor was my wife. So really know the context of that. I know fighting with my sister, but she doesn't have that.

So yeah, they're delightful. I'm not an only child, but I will say that although I do wish sometimes that she would have, you know, she has a lot of cousins, but that she would have siblings. I also know that the relationship is so special. It's so, it's a just different caliber of relationship. Oh, for sure. Because there's no competing.

No, there's no competing. And she is getting that. And I'm trying to make sure that she doesn't become, you know, become absorbed, self-absorbed because of that. But I will tell you this, as a girl dad, the dynamics of recognizing so many things I have recognized and having the privilege of leading women and having women on my team, having powerful women on my team, having women who've taught me me so much. And also having been so close to so many in the workplace where I've seen lack of confidence, where I've seen the things that men often are blind to— and by the way, I'm blind to many of them as well, and I have to see them and they need to be brought to my attention so I can recognize them sometimes, but that's not by, you know, by intention. And I think, like, thinking about how I build a self-confident, self-confident woman.

Yes.

Is an incredible— who doesn't need the validation.

Yes.

From a man or a woman or anyone else for that matter, but is still empathetic.

Yes.

Does have care. That is something that I think I am trying to figure out a way to instill in my own daughter so that she can live up to the potential that I think she has.

100%.

And that I hope she realizes she has. Not the potential I will put on her, but rather that she'll be able to own her own narrative and feel comfortable doing that. And I think that's something that is a really interesting thing as a male. And also just seeing that side of things. I'm very attuned to that, almost too attuned. And I need to make sure that's not where I over-index, right? I'm not going to be the dad who tries to make her into the Olympic skater, but at the same version of that, for like, you need to be an independent woman. Like, no, no, I don't want to be over-indexing on anything, but I do want to be cognizant of that because I just think society, it's out there and I can't control it as much as I probably would love to for my child. So I just need to prepare her as much as I can.

I've already sketched out 5 other episodes of different podcasts with you. I mean, this whole— this conversation is its own podcast. I love this. I do want to talk about one last thing. Vibe Logic as a value statement, not just a business. Vibe Logic is literally how you work. I don't usually say the word literally because people way overuse it, but the vibe is a human element, the logic is the technical rigor. So how much of it was a positioning decision versus a personal manifesto for you?

So it's really funny you say that. I actually named the company that before I even met my business partner or even the concept of Vibe Logic. It, it really does come from a lot of what I saw both in myself personally, but just as well in dealing in marketing and dealing in SEO specifically. In search, we always say there's an art and a science to search, right? And people definitely polarize index on those. You can see them, right? And I used to say this in interview processes that I'm remembering now. I used to say, if I put you in a magic box and you either lose your ability to be creative or your ability to analyze, which would you choose and why? There is no correct answer. Explain. And people get shocked because it's like the, oh, strange question from the executive. No, no, no, this is not a gotcha moment. I promise this is not how many marbles fit into this room. We're not going for that. This is literally, I want to understand how you express your decision of foregoing something as well as indexing on something else. And immediately I'm starting to see where someone is. Are they more logic or are they more vibe? Are you team logic or team vibe? And I wasn't thinking about it in those terms. And the word vibe, was like an old '80s term when I chose the name. Now it's Vibe Code and Vibe this, Vibe that. And it's like, whoa, okay, I guess I have a domain that's worth something. But that's really the, the thought process there is there's an underpinning of both. You paint a Picasso and you put it in a box. I don't know how valuable that is. At the same time, you think about how to sell Picassos, but you never paint one. What are you doing? Right. So I just, I think that there's, there's, there's duality that exists in life, in business. I'm trying to be a bit of both, and I'm recognizing when I don't have enough of, of one or the other and left hand, right hand, right. Recognizing if I don't have the logic that doesn't come naturally to me, then I'm going to find people that know logic and get dopamine out of logic. And all they see is logic often. And I have to bring them back and say, well, we need a vibe here. Let's do, you know, so I think there's a yin and yang, a balance to it. And even the logo, right? You'll see there's a squiggly line for the creative, like wild, connect the dots, one side of the brain and the other side of the brain, very circuit board logic aspect to things. So that really is the way I'm trying to look at things and realize that there's a bit of all of that in us. And we just have to— moments, times, shapes, and places, we index one way or the other. But being cognizant of that is a self-awareness that I don't think I've had until later in life.

Oof.

I still have more questions for you, but I also want to be cognizant of our, of your time. I know it's, you know, a lot, it's later for you. You also have things to do, places to be, family to see. So we're going to stop here, but I am going to have you, Stéphane, on at least 1 or 2 or possibly 3 of my other podcasts.

Wow, I think I'm going to be a regular. So, I'm excited. I'm getting my first regular spot.

We should just start another podcast with the two of us.

Let's do it. I'm down. I've hosted 2 before, so I'm more than happy to. But, I really appreciate you, Anika. Thank you so much for letting me share whatever diatribe I just went on.

Amazing.

I'll wake up to it. I'll wake up in a moment and be like, "Wow, I shared a lot of stuff." But yeah, thank you for letting me share with your audience. I really appreciate it. And I, I hope they were able to get some insights and some value and that it actually allows them to try or do something they haven't had the chance or willingness to do before.

I think you brought your whole self to this space, and I think that you felt like it's a safe space. So I really appreciate that.

Thank you for making that safe space.

Of course. And I will say, I think a lot of these conversations, we do have a lot of male audience, but we have a lot more women who listen, women founders. And these are the kinds of things they need to hear from other founders, other leaders, that we all are coming as people who have a lot going on. We're all trying to be, not just do. We're trying to bring our best selves, but you also have other obligations. We have other concerns that are things going on in the world. And so how do we just show up and how do we make sure that we're being kind to each other and that we are able to give people opportunities to lead, to bring their passions to work, to fail and not be afraid of failure, and to not be afraid of those PIPs and to know that we really see a place for them and we want them to grow and improve. And when they decide to leave, that we're happy and excited for their journey. So thank you for everything. I'm just, I'm so happy and I'm so happy we got to have another conversation and I'm already like, we need to get on again. When do we schedule more time? So to everybody who's listening, thank you for hanging in with us. Again, Stephan Baggio will have all the links in the show notes for the second episode. Go back and listen if you haven't listened to the first. You didn't have to listen in order, but go back and listen to that one next so that you can really understand flow of our conversation. And I did tease out a little bit, I have a couple of AI podcasts and then one that's completely departure from everything else. It's really about dating and finding yourself again after divorce, after big things happen. And so you'll be seeing me start to tease those out. And Teaching Tomorrow: AI First Pedagogy and the Future of Work is going to launch July 2nd. So please look out for that one. I'm looking forward to having Stéphane on that one to talk about what's What skills do people really need in the workforce? How do we keep the humanity alive and well while using technology to the best of its use? So again, thank you, Stéphane. I so appreciate all of your time. Thank you to everybody who's watching or listening to this episode. It means so much to me, and we'll be back again soon. Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.