S3:E4 (Video) Live with Coach Mike Manoske

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Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If you need to develop into a better leader, this podcast is for you. If you want to achieve a greater level of success, this podcast is for you. His mentor, Dr. John C. Maxwell, said it best: everything rises and falls on leadership. We hope to inspire you today and provide you with an insight that has the potential to positively impact the trajectory of your life. Welcome to the Leadership and Success Podcast.

Guest.

All right everyone, this is Coach Bizzy. Thank you so much for being with me live right now. So far we have about half a dozen people. Please let your friend know we're going to be talking about leadership and success. I have a very, very special guest with us today and I'm going to introduce him to you right now. All right, uh, hello Coach Mike, how are you doing?

I'm doing great, Bizzy. It's great to see you. Great to Great to finally take some of the dialogues we've been having and expand them a little bit. This is great.

Yes, I'm really, really excited because you are such a leadership coach. So in this podcast, we usually talk about leadership and success, and I want to focus on leadership. Can you introduce yourself for just a few moments so people in the audience know who you are? And by the way, everyone, If you're watching, please let us know where you are watching from, your city, state, and country. Thank you.

Well, no, thank you. And by the way, you know, you're— you— I'm with a peer today, so I want, I want that clear. I'm, I'm Mike Manosky. Uh, I've got a really unique background in healthcare leadership. Uh, 20-plus years ago, migrated into tech where I've been a leader there as well, startup founder. Uh, I'm a certified coach, uh, through mid-level certified coach, been coaching now for over a decade. My, my previous, my background as I was getting into coaching, I left, I left being a manager and a leader in a tech company. And because I was a single dad raising a kid who's done great, I went into recruiting because I could have more time with my son. Uh, it's turned out well because my son is a venture capitalist. So it's worked out all right. Um, and what I found was as I was recruiting, they gave me a chance to build these great teams. And as a recruiter, I hired myself in the tunes I like. I've hired thousands of people. Uh, the entire process of recruiting I have worked in from I want a new job all the way through negotiation, done that for thousands as a recruiter. And about 10 years ago, I joined the Wharton Business School, uh, and helped develop a program that's now being used throughout the entire, throughout the entire curriculum, uh, undergraduate and graduate. I was working with the graduate side around job search and around career transition. And naturally, as you're starting to look at career transition, leadership becomes a big part of that. And so this very successful program working with great people. Spawned a book, The Job Search Manifesto. It's spawning other books that are coming out later this year around their job success and how to really dive into interviews for both the interviewer and candidate. I have a really active practice and to be blunt, I'm having a blast. And I love being able to talk about this because I think you, you embody so much of the work that I did and the kind of the kind of messaging that you do. And that's why I'm so excited for you and I to get together today, because leadership is this combination of hard work, art, and perseverance and resilience. So love to be talking about this today.

Wow, this is really amazing. I'm very, very fascinated by your journey. And by the way, Josephine, thank you so much for letting us know you're watching all the way from the UK. And please also let us know if you have any question for my guest. I guess there are many, many different definition for leadership. One that I like the best is one by my mentor John Maxwell. He says leadership is influence, right? Nothing more and nothing less. Being able to influence somebody else to do something, hopefully it's going to be positive for themselves and for you and the entire organization without you being their boss, right? Without having any legal authority, uh, over them. How, how would you describe leadership and kind of, uh, what has been your leadership journey so far?

Well, I think it's a good— I think that's a really good definition, and I think that's a, that's a, a really strong aspiration, you know, to be able to have influence, to, to have earned the right to influence. Because I don't think it's something that you just automatically gain. Uh, to me, leadership is that combination of how much, how do I learn about the space I want to lead in? In other words, the technical, the logistics, the operational side of that. How do I learn to communicate that clearly? And to me, influence, before you can influence, you have to communicate effectively. How do you do that? How do you, how do you know that? When I say let's go 5 degrees to the left, that they understand we're going 5 degrees to the left. So, you know, that element of knowledge gain, communication, uh, resulting in influence. But then there's also this fact that communication, knowledge gain, iteration— this never stays— this never stays static. And you and I were talking about this before we got started, you know, about, about your dad and his 25-pound camera on his shoulder in the '80s. And look what we're, look what we're doing here this morning. So the fact that things change around us and adaptation, exactly, adaptation to change, it's critical for leadership. Even if you don't like, like change, change is there, there.

That is true. I guess change is the only thing that is constant, right? I guess it's just all the way back to the Greek era. But yeah, I think I couldn't remember which philosopher it was, but he said he never swam in the same river twice just because the water is always flowing. Yeah. So I got, especially now we are in the 21st century, there has really been an explosion of knowledge and science and technology. We're talking about generative AI now. It looks like AI is taking over everybody's job and there's just So many changes happening in the economy, in the world and everywhere. And it seems to me like the one skill that is really critical, that's gonna make a human being not be replaced, is really developing that leadership skill where you are the one people are gonna go to in order to implement the change or at least oversee the implementation of new tech technology and things that are gonna completely, you know,, change your industries. Is, is there any, anything you can say more, uh, about how important it is today in the 21st century for people, anybody, not, not just people who have your position, because again, in my opinion, positional leadership's probably the lowest level of leadership ever. You don't have to know anything. It's just because you are the CEO or the, the boss or, or commander or whatever, and people have to do exactly what you say, whether they like it or not, right? Because they expect a paycheck from you. But being the person that people actually want to follow willingly, voluntarily in the midst of change where there is some type of trust between you and the people you lead. Can you tell us a bit more?

Oh yeah, I think you're highlighting something that's critical. I heard a great quote recently from another leader. Who said, you're not going to lose your job to ChatGPT. You're going to lose your job to somebody that knows how to use ChatGPT. And I thought that was outstanding. And I think, I think what you're, my interpretation of what you're hitting on, and I'd love your thoughts around this, is the idea of, okay, everything's a transition. And, and as you know, as a coach and me as a coach as well. What coaches work on is how do you move through transition? That's our, that's our bread and butter. That is the core of coaching. So with everything changing around us, how do you want to show up? And do you want to show up as a, I'll respond to it as other people tell me, or do I want to know enough that I can respond to it the way that I feel is best for me? And so that's, that's that first stage. The second stage after that is, okay, now that I know how I want to respond, I want to share that with others now. And that's leadership to me. That's the idea of, okay, how do you want to show up? How do you want to take all those trends that should go on around you? How are you going to learn about it? How are you going to execute against it? And how are you going to keep that cycle moving forward? And to me, that's the motivation side of leadership is let me show you what I've done. Up to you if you wanna do it this way, up to you if you wanna do it. I mean, and ultimately, you know, you people have to determine what they wanna do in terms of growth. But that to me is leadership. How's that fitting with what you're thinking, VC?

No, that, that is quite, uh, amazing. Really, leadership is a choice. And based on what you just said, I feel like some people, they live life almost like zombies. They, react to everything that happens to them, but they don't actually respond. Right. And I feel like as a leader, you need to have a buffer space between what's happening and then your response to it, where you say, okay, this is how I want to show up. This is what I want to say. This is the impact I would like to have of the effect. And, uh, sometimes I think what makes it more interesting is it's not like you, you, you are using the same leadership techniques with everybody, right? It really depends on the situation and the people you are interacting with. You really have to know your audience, know exactly what's going to motivate them, inspire them, and eventually get you to the end results that you are seeking, but not just auto— automatically respond. Yeah.

And, and you know, the core of what you just said is so important. Stimulus response. And you know, there's kind of a ton of writing in this and, and, uh, uh, the idea is we cannot control other people's actions. We cannot control the macroeconomy. We can't control our response. And typically, and we've all done it, you know, the classic one is you're in your car, you're in, we drove down from, we drove down there, I, uh, to our home here in Southern California where we live part-time. We hit LA traffic. And when you hit LA traffic, you're going to be sitting around for a bit. And we know it, but you know, if you're in a rush for something, we respond and it's like, okay, I'm going to get mad at the car in front of me, even though they're not wrong. But the response there is, let me be, let me just react very quickly. The idea is, how do I want to react? And learning to, learning to take that pause in my reaction. And as a leader, helping other people see that, okay, we just got, we just got a project dumped on our desk. How are we going to deal with this? And, you know, people sometimes flap the handle, a swear word or two will come out. What happens if they go, oh, I don't like this, but let's speak through this? How do we move people from that reactionary state to that thought positive? They have to decide to do it, but we can, we can be both an example of that as coaches, as leaders, but, um, you know, and then we can also be, hey, let's think about this in a different way. We can be, we can be the catalyst. To, to change that.

Wow. That is, that is, that is quite, uh, amazing. And I'm in my own personal life, I'm always looking for that other perspective. And, uh, sometimes it's very strange where you would get the, uh, wisdom from or the, uh, advice that may just, you know, change or significantly improve your life. So, uh, I am always open. And by the way, we do have a question on LinkedIn. Joash is asking, What would your advice be to leaders when implementing change management? And she was focusing on avoiding, avoiding fear and confusion.

It's a great question. I'm actually working with a company this week that is a small company, but smaller size, that is doing a layoff. And it's interesting how the reactions of the people staying is tough. And I was, I was talking with them yesterday while I was driving down. But I think the thing that's critical with this is as a leader, knowing where these people are in transition, are they scared? Are they frustrated with it? What is their stake? Where, what is their current state? What are they feeling about the transition? Can you get them to articulate that? And sometimes a goal, this is where, this is where coaching and leadership blend. There's a concept called spot coaching where you go, okay, we've got it. We've got a situation here. What you're really trying to do is go, okay, I hear where you're at. I want to sit here and you listen for a while. Now, what do we do with it? And that, that's the key question. What do you want to do with our, with the situation we're at and the feelings you have? And as a leader, I want to, I want to be there for you. I have an aspiration. I know that we're here today. We can be here soon. Are you game? Will you buy into the future of the space? And then if we understand what the future state looks like, can we work together on this action plan to get us there? And a little bit of that is inspirational. A lot of that is, is generating hope. But, you know, everybody comes at it at a different pace. But it's that starting point of understanding and letting them feel like, I get you, this sucks. But what do you want to do about it? Wow. I hope that helped the answer.

Absolutely. And Joe, we just answered your question. If you have a follow-up, please let us know. And everybody else that's watching us live right now, about a dozen of you, let us know where you are watching from. And also type in any question you may have for my guest today, Coach Mike. Thank you so much. So Mike, let's get into the 7 questions I like to ask all of my guests. I'm really, really passionate about this subject. I think I was about 17 years old when I made up my mind I was going to become an expert in this field. And I don't know where it really came from. I was 17, that was back in the '90s, and I felt like, okay, there are 3 things I need to become an expert in no matter what I'm going to become, right? One is to become a better leader. One is to really master technology because I, I, I saw that technology was really the, the future of the world. And then number 3 was to also get some business skills, being able to run a profitable, um, business. So for the rest of my adulthood, I really focus on those, on those 3 areas. But anyway, uh, number 1, what is the greatest lesson you have learned so far?

It's two words, you know, and as you gave this to me ahead of time and I, these are questions I went, we only have 45 minutes. I mean, this is one question is 45 minutes. Um, humility and hope. And, you know, I've had some great wins in my life that I am so grateful I had. I've also, I've also been knocked down. In some cases physically knocked down. And how did I get up? And you, you know, everyone says you need resilience. I get that. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and run through my failure stories because we'd be here for 2 days. Uh, if we run through the success stories, probably the same amount of time. So I'm done. I figure I'm about 50-50 with these. But here's the thing that's most important is what I found is to get up. You need to believe it will get better. You need to go, okay, I'm going to stand up in the hope that this will improve. And to me, you could say all you want about resilience, but you got to have some trigger to go, all right, we're going to at least take a step forward. Humility is also the other extreme. I just nailed something. I have, you know, wrote the book. I, I've done this, I've done that. And you know, you can get, you know, pretty, wow, I'm the greatest guy in the world. I'm the dude. You know what? You're not. There's always somebody smarter than you. There's always somebody more articulate than you. And that's great. I can learn from that. But that's the humility of it. You know, the humility and the hope to me are kind of the two drivers.

I love it. Humility and hope. Especially on humility, I think you must have met my wife, right? Because especially I remember when I made commander in the US Navy, which is really big, right? Being a senior officer, O-5, it's like Lieutenant Colonel in French. Huge. Huge, huge. So I had this big head for a few seconds, and then I come back home and she's like, okay, I am the boss here, so you better just sit down and shut up. I'm like, yes, ma'am.

Have you ever heard the story about the rock singer Bob Seger? So, so Bob Seger, uh, who's had an amazing, amazing career. Bob Seger would go on a tour and would spend months away from home. Thousands, tens of thousands of people cheering. He would go home and as he would start to walk through the door, his wife would walk out holding a bag of garbage and said, would you put this away, please? And every time he got home from a tour, she did that. There was a way of saying, Welcome home. Level down there, rockstar. And I thought that was great. I, your, your wife and I, and I send the emails back and forth. Same thing here. It's great. It's wonderful.

No, this, this is, this is great. And, and you, you mentioned failure earlier, so I'm gonna skip question number 2, go to question number 3. How has failure shaped your life? Because it's true, when we, we see people we want to, um, be like, uh, we always think about their success and sometimes we even say, you know, this person is an overnight success, which I think is just not true. Uh, and everybody Everybody who's successful has gone through a lot of failure in order to find success on the other side. So how has failure shaped your life as a leader?

It's catapulted. It's been the trend, frankly. And I talked about this a lot with clients and to my work is if you knew, let me just give a quick failure story. I had been, I don't know, I was a director in one of the fastest-growing companies in Seattle, tech companies. Uh, took a sabbatical, met my now wife, moved to the Bay Area and started looking at roles. But I'm now a single dad with custody and I'm looking at roles and I realized that they want me to do the same thing, which is 68 hours a week. You can't do that. So I went into recruiting because I could, I could build the teams and do all of that, but not have necessarily the overhead in my life like that came with a directorate or chairmanship. I got so much flak, BZD, from people going, going, what are you doing? You're, you're almost 40 and you're going to do this? This is career suicide. Um, those are the same people that asked me if they can see the tapes of my talks on World War II. And, and I, and I talked at Harvard. Technically, that was a failure here. That was always win-win. So, so what may, what may be in the, you know, what may be in the, in the current timeline of failure. What are you doing with it? What are you going to make out of it? And that to me, if you really take that idea, okay, this isn't about them and stepping away from this binary thing that was good or bad, that I play or win. What am I going to do going forward? And recruiting, recruiting was a step down economically sort of year and everything else, but I wouldn't have written the book, would the Tavern Harder, wouldn't we as, uh, Is Xi Zhuxun.

That is really amazing, which reminds me too, right? Success is different for everybody, right? It means different things to different people. It's not everyone who has the same dream or who believes that achieving whatever amount of money or job level or whatever, you know, is success. It is— people really need to figure out what success really means. To them, right?

And let's take that a step further because that's a really important concept. As a leader, what is important for me? What are my KPIs, my OKRs around success as a leader or success in my role? But guess what? The more people you lead, the more you find out their KPIs, their measures, entirely different. And as a leader, if you think it's the same way for every person, you go into cookie cutter. That's failure as a leader. So you have to understand what, what, what, what really gets people passionate is what they're doing.

Wow. That is, uh, amazing. And, and I guess that's another challenge for leadership as, as well, right? When you get to, uh, motivate people is knowing exactly on your team, what is the motivation for each one of those individuals? Because not everybody's gonna be motivated. By money or by training or recognition or whatever it might be, right? So really being sensitive, I guess developing that emotional intelligence, not just awareness of self, which many people do, but awareness of others, right? And I think that's really, really key. What do you think?

And I think the step after that, because you're going away, you'd say in Cuban, servir, servir, you know, the concept that, okay, Let me step away from your model that I'm top-down. And I think your background is really, really busy in the fact that you see leaderships from both the military standpoint, a public service standpoint, and also private sector. And there's differences there. And yet the fact that you've been able to maneuver this so well is really unique. And, and what, what I find interesting is as you go through this, really giving it, really giving it, giving an understanding of what these people are doing. Accepting the fact that not only are they currently, this is what motivates them, but this, but they're going to change too. They may be motivated by something else entirely. As a servant leader, if we hone in on that and go, okay, Sam, and that isn't being wimpy, you know, people think, wow, you're going to bend your staff down. No, you're going to understand your staff down. Leadership, leadership's job, leadership's job, particularly if you're not in the C-suite, in the C-suite too. Is the idea, okay, how do we reach the SaaS aggregation? We have this moonshot. We want to go to Google. How do we get there? And how do I get people to buy into the common passion and desire to achieve this? And you've been on teams and I've been on teams and people listening have been on teams where that happens. That's magic. How do we, how do we understand the passion of the people that work for us? Their needs, their desires, and how to read the languages to external, external aspiration with their internal passions. That to me is the art of leadership.

Wow. Yeah, I think one thing they've really drilled into me in the military is taking care of your people and your people will take care of the mission. Yeah, you do have a job to do, but if you take care of your folks, everything else will take care of itself.

I, I was thinking of you last night. I, one of my clients, uh, is a physician at one of the top medical facilities in the world. And he and I, he and I got together last night. Um, he's a former, uh, he's a former flight surgeon in the Navy. And to see what he's done, he's been able to do. Um, but he understands that on board environment, you have to take care in his case. You literally had to take care of your, your, your people. But at the same time, how do you, how do you keep them motivated and understanding that their mission, you know, as a flight surgeon is, is in some cases saving lives. And, you know, how do I integrate that and how do I make sure the team around me knows, okay, you know, we have to save lives. But we don't do that all the time. We do that maybe 5% of the time. But how does filling out that paperwork and ticking that course assist us in that key mission? We're gonna rise.

Wow. This, this is really fascinating. I feel like I could talk with you for, for hours, but let me get back on track here. So we did question 1 and 3. Let me go back to question number 2. Uh, I know leaders are learners, right? We are always learning. And I guess that's another thing I figured out when I was about 17, 18 years old. I'm going to be a student forever and ever and ever. There is really no such thing as a terminal degree, right? You never get to a point where you feel like you've learned everything there is to learn. Because the more you learn, the more I feel like I need to learn even more. But anyway, what are you learning right now?

So the focus I have at the moment is, you're going to love this, I'm focusing on how to learn. I'm in the middle of finishing a book. And one of the things I realized that I need to show people learning arm wrestling. Okay. And the book is actually very simple. It's about iri iri. But you know what? To learn how to enter iri iri is a process. And for our, I have a background in learning Ludo Belt Belt. But what I'm doing right now is that, okay, everybody learns differently. How do I take this topic? And a little simple little learning, like to do silences, to have that resonate when you do vocal, to be able to communicate clearly. So I'm learning about rhetoric and I'm applying what I'll call, I'll be a geek for a minute, learning wordalogicalism and how do I apply it to ancient Jewish mystical area. And I'm literally, that's my work, work I'm going to do.

Wow. That is really fascinating. I think it was when I was in college, I realized that, uh, my superpower needed to be the ability to learn, right? Because we, you mentioned earlier, things change so quickly, especially here in Silicon Valley. You have brand new technology within 6 months or so, almost obsolete, and you have to keep getting on.

You're a graybeard.

Yeah. So, wow. Amazing. Okay. So question number 4, who do you know, whom we should know? Who are some of your mentors or thought leaders you believe my audience should be following right now?

Um, there's, there's several and, and there's two things that come to mind. One is client, uh, and his name is Chris Matthews. Yes. Like, like the, uh, one time to fund it on TV.

Yeah.

Um, this is, I hired him right about years ago to be the VP of marketing at Engora, a company on the day they first survived a marginal health problem.

Wow.

And, uh, Chris has gone on to being a leader in marketing at a number of startups. With a focus on consumer and business robotics and is involved in a bit of it. Chris wrote a book called Start Telling People. And the idea of the book is, okay, you have this great idea, you're building this tech company and you assume, and you, you, you're going to, there's going to be a bunch of names, you're going to pick it, that I built this great technology. Therefore everybody's going to buy it. I just have to sit back and wait, wait. And Chris's point is, yeah, that's it. That doesn't work real well. How do you take this good idea and get it out into the world and create a following, a community, customers on it? And he's written a book on it. He's done it a number of times. And what's interesting is I would, I was able to coach him a little bit through the book. This is to slow down. Chris is giving talks all over the world on social value. He was just at a Crunch Summit. Yeah. And what he's really talking about is, and what he's really emphasizing, I think, is how to communicate the value brainwave with your product. And I know that sounds simple. It's not. And, but he's chunked it out and made it so that something you do because every, okay, and think about it this way. You've been to hundreds of places where they, I got the screen idea and you and I know there's a lot of ideas. That next step of creating something from that idea is a huge leap. But then we all, and again, you've seen this a ton as well. How do you take that leap from I built it or I've got it pre-roll done to letting the world know? And that leap, a lot of people struggle. Chris is trying to be a part of that, and I'm really proud of him for what he's doing.

Wow, that is pretty amazing. And by the way, I did find him on LinkedIn, and I show this LinkedIn, uh, profile, uh, Chris Matthew. So right now it looks like he is the principal at Very Small Robots, LLC, San Francisco area, which is pretty—

Very Small Robots is his company, and he's emphasizing the robot side because he Uh, he and his team at a company called Mayfield Robotics built one of the first consumer robots. I had had one. It was great. And then, uh, he's gone on to do some other work. But he's really finding this idea of, okay, how do you get the word out is huge and is, is a really underused medium.

Awesome. I've also added, uh, his, uh, LinkedIn, um, profile URL in the comments for the guests to, uh, this is really, really wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. So, uh, number 5, what have you read that we should read? I know leaders are readers.

I read a whole bunch, but I just finished a book this week called Magic Door by Jonah Berger. And Jonah Berger, so this is just your side hack, Jonah Berger is the best salesperson in the world. I've met Mara Jordan. I know Jonah. Bye-bye. It's a really, really good book on language. And that sounds really dry. It's not. It's extremely helpful. It's a well-written book, not a long book. But the idea of how do you build trust in communication? How do you— interesting. He gets down into something I thought was fascinating. When do you use the word should or could? And, you know, Good is directionary. Okay. You should do this. In other words, it's very judgmental. Could is, hey, what if we could we, and the idea as a leader, we can often get ourselves caught in the directive side of knowing, you know, should you do this? Could you do this? You know, you know, it starts to explore a little bit more. Funny how two words, just a few letters difference, can have a big impact in how you communicate as a leader. So Magic Words, great playbook. And there's just a, there's a, yeah, second one is I actually know the author. Uh, the book, it's one of his older books. His name is David Burkus, B-U-R-K-U-S. David is a longtime New York Times bestselling writer. He's also, uh, taught Harvard for many years. Is foundational to building effective business relationships. And he, uh, quote David and Arbor. I've actually— we've actually brought Brendan in, and David, myself, and my co-author have taught together. Um, it's the idea that the people that can help you the most in your journey are not necessarily your closest reference. It's this It's people that, you know, maybe know about Sean Durek lately. And why that's important is those types of people don't have the positive bias about you that someone close to you has. And they also have a different view of the world. And that ability to be a little bit broader and introducing you to new things, amazing. You and I are an exact example. We started talking over LinkedIn chat. And here we are. I mean, this is the classic scuffle about.

Wow, this is pretty cool. And I have links to both books and also I showed a picture on Amazon. This is really amazing. Understanding the Eden Network that can transform your life and your career. And maybe I can also encourage some people out there on LinkedIn who are trying to build their network or get into an industry where we don't know anybody yet. I must tell you, yes, it definitely makes a huge, huge difference when somebody you know can put in a good word for you for a job that's not even advertised yet, right?

Can you, can I share just a simple one-minute thought around that? Because so often we have this tendency when we reach out, particularly on LinkedIn, you go, hi, I want a web. And you know, that'll work maybe 5% of the time. But I have this interesting approach when I send out a book. I call it a green jury. Imagine, Bizzy, if someone reached out to you and said, Bizzy, I love how you went in your journey and went from the military's backbone through the private sector, the deep amount of security. I'm really considering security as a career. I'd love to talk about your journey. How likely is it that you'd talk to them then? It's huge. Imagine, and I'll share this with everybody out there, imagine that you have an interest, you're joining an organization, or you have an interest, you know, you'll move to a particular field. What if we reach out to somebody who's a success in that field or a success in that organization and say, tell me about your journey, I want to learn from you. Hmm. The response rate is typically between 25 and 30%, which, which in LinkedIn I'm a longtime recruiter, so we measure metrics a lot around responses. That's a massive success as well. Wow. Go talk to somebody about their journey and make it about them.

Yes.

Wow.

It really does make a huge, huge difference when you feel like someone is just trying to sell to you or get something from you, but when they actually want to engage and get away from the transaction, get to the person. Exactly. That is worth every minute of this call. And another question I have for you, if you could choose 3 people to have dinner with, who would you choose and why? They don't have to be live and they could be fictional too.

Wow. Um, well, one would be Martin Luther King because I think he, his ability to make change, his ability to communicate that change, stunning. I've always, I just found him so inspirational, not only just his ability to communicate, but his story in the background. So he'd be one. Ironically, one would be Warren Buffett. And the reason I like Warren Buffett is The Wizard. What's interesting about Kean to me is this guy doesn't have pretense. This is a guy who could be living in, you know, 500 different castles, all fully paid for, but he lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and he's humble about that. And that guy, he's the word for it. I just find him absolutely fascinating, uh, from that aspect. I could keep going, but those are two guys. That have always kind of bet up on my whims. I understand there are 5. I wanted to try to get lunch with Warren Buffett. It's like a half million dollars to a charity. I don't have, I don't want to put my money, right? So I'll just, I'll just read about him. But those would be 2 people. Um, I mean, sound very different, but I just find people like that fascinating.

Definitely somebody I'd like to meet someday. Him and Bill Gates, right? They used to be the richest people in the world at one point, but now they're getting rid of their wealth. It's just incredible.

I, I think I, I will just say this and I can't go too much deeper, but my brother, my brother worked for Microsoft in the early days and, uh, uh, I do, I would, I would categorize Bill Gates as a lead talent in other words. I know people that know him and I do think the growth he's done, but particularly in the last decade is kind of amazing. Uh, But I have seen, I have seen Bill Gates stories over time. I can't remember which one publicly, but, but they're all, but he's grown a lot. The, the, uh, there was a, there was a, uh, a documentary called Bill's Brain.

Netflix, I believe. Yes. Yeah.

And he acknowledges when I was, when I was, I worked down the street from Microsoft and his management and leadership sucked. It was terrible back then. And I have stories about that. But what I saw here on Bill's brain, he said, I realized I wasn't as good as I thought I was. And I thought, good for you. That's pretty awesome.

That takes a lot of humility to, uh, does that.

And we keep coming back to that word this morning.

Yeah, it is, it is really amazing. And I know the, uh, current CEO of Microsoft is just Outstanding doc.

He is. He's hopeful. Yes, yes. He really is. But he's also a venture capitalist. We could do a whole other thing on how do you be a venture capitalist.

Yeah, I know a lot of investment they made on OpenAI and ChatGPT and all of that. And to me, Microsoft has really become a security company, right? Any company that spends more than a billion dollars every year on security is a security company. It's incredible.

Do you know what I think would trigger that was cloud? You know, the minute you, and the minute you recognize your core products are cloud-based products, or you, the Office Suite into the cloud.

Yeah.

You're a security guy because that's my data. Don't be messing with my, don't be messing with my stuff. Yeah.

No, this is incredible. We are running out of time so quickly. Question number 6. Uh, if you had one day and only one day to live, what would you have liked your final contribution to be?

My contribution or what I would have done?

Uh, maybe a little bit of both.

My contribution would be I would do my sessions. I mean, I coach. I do, you know, 6, 7 hours a day and go coach. Uh, I would still do that because I mean, that's my contribution. My contribution is the contribution to people I work with. With me. It is, it's no longer me, it's what they did. So I would do that. Then the other thing is, I go straight for me. I love this one. Wow.

That is really, really, really deep. Uh, cause it remind me again, my leadership mentor, Dr. Maxwell, once said, big difference, right, between success and significance. And he says, once you test significance, success will not mean anything anymore. Cause it seems to me like for most people when they start their adult life, right, they're working, they wanna be successful, make money and all that, and nothing wrong with it at all. But it comes a point where you reach your goals and an extra dollar, an extra million dollars isn't gonna make a difference in your life at all. You know, how many boats can you ride, right? How many cars can you drive? At a certain point, it's not going to have the effect it used to have when you first earned it. And it's really up to you to really think about the future. How can you contribute to the life of of somebody else.

And, and see, when would you make that jump? And then there are— and I feel really, really, really fortunate. I've worked with people who made that jump. And it's ironic that when you can move from this idea, okay, accumulation, uh, to sharing, you know, I want to accumulate— accumulating knowledge you're always going to do, but, you know, I want to accumulate repertoire, things like that. But if you can then start moving to, how do I share this out? That's what's what, to be honest, that's what I'm out for.

Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, because I mean, I definitely believe in hard work ethics. I think I've been like that for most of my life, but I do think that you kind of have to be lucky too, right? Because there are hundreds of people who are much smarter than you are. More skills, more intelligent, have more resources, but for whatever reason, no, the universe chose you to be selected in this time, not to, to be in this position, in this company, or have all of the blessing you, you have. And I'm always very grateful, uh, for that, right? Just for, for being here.

I 100% share, and I think, you know, more important one is the idea of, okay, I didn't get something. I didn't, I didn't get a win. I, you know, I mean, one of the disappointments a number of years ago was we were trying, we were doing an acquisition. We were trying to, I had a startup, was doing really well, and a larger company wanted to buy us. The last minute they backed away. I would, that was it. I mean, I ended up, I was hoping I'd die in bed for a fight. And that hurts. But you know what? Everything just grew from there. And the people I did have the merger taking place, I'd even talk to the guy later. I realized it, it was the best for both of us. It was best for everybody involved. But at the time, man, it hurt. But I'm so glad I keep on. Wow.

That is, uh, very, very deep and, and wise. I think we can really all learn, learn from it. Uh, so we are getting toward the end, uh, of this interview session. So question number 7 was about how can we add value back to you? How could we, uh, what, what, uh, could we do to make a difference? And if you have any products or services that you would like to share as a great benefit to the audience, that would be great.

I might—

whoops. The Job Switch Manifesto is, is, uh, the program that we developed at Ward Ward. It's what I still— about half of my practice is focused on career transition, lots of them. The other half, I really focus on through success and leadership. People want to talk about that, MikeCoach.com is my website. But those are your— I've even made some of it, I mean, even more work or some of this research. I'm doing a lot of posts these days on LinkedIn. Comment, man. Read it. Connect with me. Because what I'm doing is, it's research of several books I'm talking about. And some of the best ways to write is to pre-write, get the ideas out there. Lots going on. And I would love comments about what you see me post on it. And also on one, not as much on Twitter these days, we won't go into that, but I'm really focusing on LinkedIn because I think that's where I'm finding a lot of good resources. So I love people to read and comment on it.

Wow, that's amazing. And I'm showing your website right now. So you definitely provide coaching, job search, career success, and leadership coaching. And you are really, really passionate about that? Why do you think anybody listening to us now, they may say coaching is not for me, why would they want to hire you or someone like you, a leadership coach?

Because you have an aspiration you can't actually try yourself. You got desire. I want to achieve this. And what you find is you can get in many cases, you may be able to achieve it on your own. But you know what? How do you scale that? How do you take the achievement and build a process, an actual plan that you can scale? Because once you've achieved that, there's always something else. How do you take what you've learned and that process and put it on the next higher aspiration?

Yes.

That's coaching. We help with that. We help clarify the aspiration. We work on the action plan, but we're also always keeping an eye on how do we scale this? How do we grow this? That's coaching. And coaching is for everybody at every time. And I like talking to people just to kick it around. I don't have pressure. I have really successful clients as well. But so feel free, words in tongue tied. It's for free.

Now, the very last set of questions, and I think I already know the answer for you. What is the most rewarding aspect of your life experience so far?

Other people's success.

Yes. Wow. That is, that is great. Okay. Now, uh, last 3 questions, they're gonna go really, really fast. I don't want you to spend too much time thinking, but just, uh, give me answers. What are 3 adjectives that would describe you as a child?

As a child? Uh, adventurous, curious, and, uh, Risk.

Okay. As an adult?

Adventure, curious, and champ.

Wow. Okay. Didn't change very much. That is good to know. And finally, I love that. What is one word that represents our shared experience in this, uh, meeting right now? What word comes to mind? To me, I think it's humility. Awesome.

At least you know what it is when you have it on your desk.

Good. Thank you so much. And I'm going to triple check, make sure I don't have any more questions on LinkedIn. I don't think we do actually. No, I think we are good. And thanks again for your time. I really appreciate that. It's been almost an hour. And this is going to be on LinkedIn for rebroadcast immediately. And by the end of the day, it should be everywhere on podcast. Podcast are, are unfound. So thanks again for your time, good man. Really appreciate it. We're definitely gonna do that. Until next time. Bye.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership and Success Podcast with your host, Coach BZ. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to our channels and come back for more wisdom nuggets on how you may develop into a better leader and achieve greater levels of success. Success. Leadership is the most critical skill. The world will always need leaders to lead others, deploy the next disruptive technology, or execute a business strategy. You may as well decide on counting yourself among the 21st century leaders. See you right here next time on the Leadership and Success Podcast with Coach BZ.