The Fast Lane of Leadership with Mark Walsh

10 employees, $10 million. That's where this company started. 2.5 years later, it was worth $13 billion on NASDAQ, and the man running it was flying to Japan, Israel, South Africa, appearing on CNBC almost every week, and commuting between Washington and Philadelphia every single Monday. When growth moves that fast, something has to give. Today, we're talking about what actually happens to a leader's brain, decisions, and life when days start moving like weeks and weeks start moving like months. Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge, where we break down what actually happens in your brain when the pressure hits and simply what to do about it. I'm Claire Hayek, NeuroLeadership expert, TEDx speaker, and founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. 3 things you'll take away from today's episode: what hypergrowth actually does to decision-making speed, why boards and investors And a pressure most leaders never really name, in a way. The real difference between steering a company and surviving one. Before we get into it, hit follow so you don't miss next week's episode. My guest today has spent his career at the intersection of technology, media, and government. He took a company from $10 million to $13 billion in valuation in under years. He sat on multiple boards, advised the highest levels of politics in Washington, D.C., and has seen firsthand how government and business either work together or completely miss each other. He's also one of the leaders I spoke with for the workbook I'm building and writing as the follow-up to my book, and where we go even deeper into what leaders actually do in the moment pressure hits. Please welcome Mark Walsh. Mark, how are you?

It's great. I'm having a flashback as you describe some of those crazy moments. So this is already getting me excited about it.

Well, there we go. This is the whole point of this episode. We want to hear your story and your insights so you can share it with people listening right now, leaders out there. I thought it was such a great story and there's so many of them when we spoke together. So let me start with this. First of all, I'd like to welcome you to the show, of course. I want to start with the scale of what you're leading. 10 employees to almost 3,000, $10 million to $13 billion in about 2 and a half years. What did that speed actually feel like to you from the inside? Let's put it this way. What was going on?

Well, it's funny. They say history doesn't repeat itself, but it echoes. And I think right now in the AI boom, and whoever is watching this long in the future will probably be reflecting on that, but this AI boom and spasm and incredible valuation acceleration that we're seeing on all the marketplaces is bringing back a lot of echoes in my mind and my colleagues' mind for the internet boom from '97 to '01. But to your point, to go from a few relatively tiny amount of employees to thousands of employees, to go from a valuation of $10 million to $13 billion, and to have that happen in a compressed timeframe like that does a whole lot of things, some of them good, a lot of them not so good. One of the things, and I'll start with not so good, one of the things is you tend— leadership tends to lose connection with the leadership in the company in various divisions and silos and efforts pretty rapidly. And I use the word silos on purpose because what starts to happen is people become siloed. And you want a company, especially a hypergrowth company, to have constant interaction between the various departments, between the various supply chains, so to speak, of who's doing what for whom internally and externally. And oftentimes, customers that you're working with, they figure that out, that you're not really that efficient in message management and supplying what they bought from you and all those other features. So, this idea of employee super growth, it's very difficult to keep contact. A quick example, I tried from 10 employees up to meet every single new hire. We'd have a lunch. I'd bring in 15, 20 of them. I give my come-to-Jesus talk. I tell them a lot about the history, why we thought they would be great, et cetera. And I did 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 of these. You could do the math. That's only about 600 people. After a while, especially because we bought a lot of companies in Palo Alto, companies in Chicago, a company in Ireland, we bought a company in Israel. As you buy companies, this idea of acquiring them and integrating them into your culture becomes even more fraught with peril because you just can't go there and tell 35 people who you just bought, hey, this is how we want you to think. Right. You have to sort of show that every day. And I guess the final point is that from the employee standpoint, I hate the term, but walk the walk and talk the talk. That's all you can try to do in individual one-on-ones, in group meetings, in— it was long before Zoom, but videos you would have with people. Or large gatherings of 500 employees in a conference hall. You just tried to be consistent in what you said you hope happened here every single day because they sense inconsistency pretty rapidly. It was an amazing experience.

I bet. I mean, one thing you mentioned is the, the, the word compression. And I want to kind of slow down there for a second because There's real brain science behind why that compression is so dangerous. But when you're speeding up the clock, the brain has to literally narrow down its field of view. It's going to stop scanning for every option, maybe every lunch, every— right? And it's just going to start reacting to whatever is directly in front of it because you've got to compress it. There's so much going on at that speed because scanning— Takes time that doesn't feel available at this point, right? So I kind of want to slow down on that for a second. You mentioned the word compression, and there's real brain science behind why that compression is so dangerous. So if you think about it, when the clock speeds up, the brain is narrowing down on, on, you know, its field view. It stops scanning for every single option out there and starts reacting to whatever is directly in front of it. And scanning takes time. So that doesn't feel available, right? So you really need to know, it just wants to narrow things down, just a survival pattern. And that's useful when you're in actual danger. However, it's expensive when you're making decisions that will shape a company for years. Did you feel that narrowing happening in real time during those times as things were going so fast?

Like, Crazy feeling. Yes, it was. The joke was, sadly, it wasn't that much of a joke. We were interrupt-driven, as they used to say, that whatever sort of interrupted you last is what you ended up thinking about at the moment. The second analogy, which is even more tragic, was RAM versus ROM. You know, RAM, read— random access memory, the most recent memory in your computer versus ROM, read-only memory, you know, the basic instruction set in your brain.

Yeah.

that you operate every day. So RAM versus ROM, what I found out and many of my colleagues did too in this hypergrowth period is you sort of reinserted your RAM each day when you came to work, like, what do I have to do today? And then as you tried to execute against that, you realized there was very little ROM left. What happened the day before?

Mm-hmm.

What was the mistake you made last week? How could you learn from something that happened last month? So to your point on options, you know, it's the old, Was the game show with door 1, 2, or 3. You really started— but if you had 10 doors, it went down to 3, and sometimes it went down to 1 or 2. And those decisions, I guess the final point to your comment, you often couldn't see the perspective of that decision's impact on tomorrow and 100 days from tomorrow and 100 or 1,000 days from tomorrow. It just was, it was just, it was conically forced down into—

Mm-hmm.

A very short timeframe. And the other part of that I found also frustrating, it was a lot of fun, by the way. I shouldn't say it was a horrible moment, but the amount of data you could gather in a short period of time to influence your decision was also truncated. You couldn't call 10 people. You couldn't do a lot of research. Remember, the internet was so new. There wasn't a lot of research going on. We were sort of making it up as we, as we went along, which is not a good way to— to run a railroad, as the old phrase goes. But this idea of input being truncated, output being demanded in a very short period of time, and very little perspective on the RAM versus ROM dichotomy I mentioned before was a daily challenge.

Yeah. I mean, you told this to me. A friend of yours once described leading that company to you as not steering a giant oil tanker through calm water, toward far-off islands, but navigating a raft down a river, just trying to keep clear of the rocks in front of you. I think that image really stuck with me that I literally wrote it down. I wanted to mention it on this episode. So what would that— what did that image capture for you that a more traditional leadership metaphor couldn't? This is— I mean, if people are listening right now and you're thinking of Navigating a raft down the river, just trying to keep clear of the rocks in front of you. Tough operation. I mean, what did that— how does that capture— that image capture the reality of what's going on?

So I'll even take the image further, which is not just a river. It's one of those rivers in Colorado with rock walls and giant boulders and rapids going down. It was extraordinary. I'll tell you what, at least I found pretty rapidly, is a trusted circle of people around you. That I was lucky when I joined the company, I was brought into the company by a venture capital firm, and I was the CEO. I had 2 co-founders who worked for me, and then obviously many other leaders. Is you found that you had about 3 to 5 to maybe 8 people, and sometimes at varying levels, that you trusted to give you direct feedback on what you were thinking of doing. If you take the raft analogy, they were in the front corner of the raft and they saw that boulder. They were in that corner of the raft and they saw that boulder. There was a guy or man or woman behind you on the tiller just trying to shove it left or right. And you, at least I found, I kind of relied on that donut of trusted advisors a lot. Now, the actual list of who was in that donut would change sometimes because sometimes you'd graze a rock and you're like, what? Hey, schmuck, what are you doing up there? So you had some replacement theory going on.

I like the image.

I really like that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, but just to close, the relationship between that experience and the, you know, the large oil tanker who's changing a 1-degree direction and then 2 days later is 50 miles away where it was, that tracking experience was so reliable versus the inability to track and rely upon the bouncing around of one of those inflatable rafts in a Colorado river. Again, it, uh, I hope I'm not telling the folks listening to this that it was just this horrific experience. A lot of it was extraordinarily energizing and extraordinarily fun and very rewarding. Because as you passed each boulder, you're sort of like, yeah, one more chapter down.

Let's keep going. It's like a dopamine adrenaline, uh, So just to be sure that we're on point, this is definitely not, as you said, talking about this is a bad thing, this is horrible. What we're trying to share here is that yes, you can and you're able to, but what does it cost, right?

Yeah.

It's not something you could— you couldn't be— you can't be doing that, going down that river 24/7. without sleep, without checkpoint, getting a bit of rest and getting back on that raft, right? I mean, it's just, if you think about it, if you use that image. So, and which brings me to my next question on the human side of that pace, just talk about the human side of it. You know, you're commuting from Washington to Philadelphia every week, flying internationally for joint ventures and fundraising on top of that. If you can share with us, what did that kind of sustained pressure actually cost you, whether it was at work or outside of work. I can't even imagine the toll on family, physical health, personal relationships. It's only normal. I'm sure everybody's going, yes, but what was that cost?

Just so you know, I'm only 37 years old. This gray hair is a complete result.

No, no.

To your point, there were 3 significant impacts. And I'll start with the most personal one, which is family. I literally fell asleep in the chair next to our Christmas tree in the late '90s, in the middle of this maelstrom, as my then children, I guess, who were sort of 12 and 10, and my lovely bride, we were having an opening of presents. I just fell asleep Christmas morning.

Mm-hmm.

And it was embarrassing. Because what do you say to your kids? You know, you're celebrating this special moment that comes once a year. And I just couldn't power through it. So, and that's one of many examples. I mean, I'd like to believe my kids felt that I was— they tell me that I was a good dad. But it's just this idea of interpersonal relationships with friends you have in DC where I lived versus friends I made in Philly versus familial relationships versus— My parents who lived in Baltimore, I saw less of them. It just, it's an accordion. It really stretches out where the impact becomes, the touchpoints with people you care about become more and more difficult to physically keep going. So that's personal. The second is interpersonal within your business. Again, I mentioned so many new people. It just, it was hard to, it was hard to maintain a productive personal relationship with colleagues, sometimes with employees. And the fatigue kicks in where I sometimes found myself being short, critical of employees when I could have been more coaching and more supportive. And that was also a real, a real toll. And then the third is the external one of I flew to Tokyo and back and spent more time in a plane than I did in Tokyo. I flew to Johannesburg to do a joint venture And spent more time in a plane than I did in Johannesburg. The same is true for London. The same is true for Israel. So the idea of travel where you just land in a place, you force as fast as you can the conversation to get to a conclusion, to buy the company, to cut the joint venture, to do the paperwork. I mean, I appeared live on television in Tokyo with 12 TV cameras, every station covering me with the head of SoftBank at the time, and then got on a plane an hour later to fly back. This compresses the experience. So frankly, I look back, I can't remember the joy that I should have felt when I went to Johannesburg, a fantastic city, or Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem. All this, it's all kind of a blur. So those are 3 impacts— personal, inside the company, and external.

Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. And I think it makes sense. You're human. You're not a machine. And there's so much you can— You can take. And then the body is not designed— the brain, the body, everything— the human being is not designed for such an experience over a long period of time. It is exciting for a short period of time.

Yeah.

Even just doing it within a week or two. A lot of people do like, let's say, press releases. Then they, you know, whatever they're negotiating. But it's something that is unsustainable over time. It'll take a toll. Now, you've spent real time in Washington watching how government and business actually interact, sometimes well, sometimes less well, if we want to say. What do leaders get wrong about that relationship? What was your experience?

So that's a great segue because I'm even going to add to your question. I was also chairman of the board of trustees of my college, my alma mater. And being the chair of the board of trustees of academia, higher education and the United States government. I was a political appointee by Barack Obama at the— in the Small Business Administration. I ran the Office of Investment and Innovation, kind of the venture capitalist for United States government. The first obvious one is pace of change. Colleges and universities have a pace of change that, gee, guess what, is different than the Colorado Raft River experience. That's an obvious one.

Yeah.

Number 2, it's understandable. You don't want to have the college and its curriculum bounce around from fad to fad. You don't want the US government— and people criticize them for this— but you don't want them initiating programs and killing programs. You want consistency and solidity and dependability and reliability in the programs that a federal or state government provides and the academic experience that a college or university provides. And that stability, that reliability, that predictability implies a rate of change that is galactically slow compared to what me and others in hypergrowth arenas have done. So that's sort of what do you get wrong, to your point of your question. Most people get wrong the ability to change. And I mean no disrespect, but here we're talking now around the time— if you've heard of DOGE, remember that Department of Government Efficiency? And a lot of what I saw Doge doing, which clinically made sense— gee, there's waste in government, let's come in and get rid of waste. But you can only truly understand waste, I think, by being inside the waste bucket, so to speak.

Right.

The only way you really see how a large organization— remember, United States government, $4 trillion top line, 4 million employees, 2 million in uniform. This is a large organization with extraordinary complexity. one that I came to appreciate. But slicing off waste is impossible to do unless you see where the value and reliability and predictability is, and then look for the waste. And that same is true with, I would argue, with higher education. People keep saying, oh, look at all those stupid professors and all those people. What are they doing on that campus? Some are wasting money. I agree.

Yeah.

But the only way you get to know that is by getting inside the tent And seeing what happens. So that second point of what did they get wrong is not just rate of change, it's, oh gee, I can fix that because I know there's waste there. And I'll finish with the third thing, which is, what is the goal? A company, a goal is to reward shareholders with increased value. That rarely applies to what a government's goal is or a college's goal is. A college's goal is to provide people with critical thinking skills who'll be productive citizens, not generate shareholder value. A government's goal is to provide a donut of services and provide services to make your life as a citizen happier, more productive, and for you to feel safe. Again, not shareholder-driven. So this Venn diagram, the mapping of what is the government supposed to do for you with the dollars they get? What is a school supposed to do with you versus what a shareholder expects out of a CEO and a board of directors? The overlap is very thin and very rare.

This is really interesting. And I love how diverse your experience is. It's not just with, with the company that you grew, the first story we're talking about, but it really goes in different lanes. And I love how that connects because you're speeding, then it was just, you know, we're talking about the oil tanker and then we're talking about the raft. The pressure is still there. There's still decisions. There's still calls you need to make. Now, thinking about it, without going into too much detail, what's the biggest lesson you took from a call you think today you'd make differently throughout your career?

Well, you and I chatted about this. You and I chatted about this in a subsequent— in a prior conversation. And it's very personal. I'll keep it sort of vanilla if that's OK. Sure. Yeah. I replaced myself as CEO in this hypergrowth arena. Actually, I've done it a few times, but the one time I did it the worst is I was, I wouldn't say pressured, but my board suggested, hey, you've been doing this for 3 years. You're, we think you might be topping out. We think you might be, you know, you, you've hired a lot of new people. You've spread out the growth of the company. You've done a great job. You've delivered shareholder value. The market cap is huge. Mazel tov, way to go. But we think you might be running out of gas. So why don't you become chair— excuse me— you become chair and hire a new CEO, which is what I took their advice and I decided to do that. And they had a recommendation for somebody for me to interview. I spent time with this person. And now that I look back on it, it's the old something seemed fishy from day 1. And here is my lesson learned tragically with a great deal of emotional cost, economic cost, and cost to my colleagues in my company. If something seems a little bit off in the beginning, do not brush it aside. They all joke that dogs know how to smell fear, right? We all know how— we're all animals. We know how to smell fear or some, some disconnect that just isn't matching up. And a lot of times, oh no, that'll be fine. We'll fix that later. If something isn't right, particularly in a hiring process for you replacing yourself, somebody to be a new leader for a company with thousands of employees that you care about. This was probably the single biggest mistake I made. This individual, they had a horrible experience for everybody. We had to let them go after a number of months. And it was a very, very, very expensive mistake psychically, philosophically, emotionally. And economically.

And thanks for sharing that and being so open to share it. I think that the lesson here is trust that instinct. If something feels off, it's never too late, even if it looks like it's too late. You know, there, there is such a thing that it's called the coherence between your 3 brains, which is, you know, your brain, your heart, and your gut. It's all got, you know, neurons, right? It's all communicating. And when Something is screaming at you. It is a signal. It's not random. It's definitely something to be aware of as a leader. It's part of leadership. It's part of trusting that instinct. But you know what? You know, this is how we learn and this is how we get to trust that instinct in the future. I mean, you know, the unfortunate thing is sometimes it costs us. It has to cost us so much for us to wake up to it. But I like that, you know, we're able to share this because I think it's relevant for people listening.

Yeah.

And hopefully this will have a ripple effect and somebody listening, wow, this is what I'm going through right now. I should take that in, right? Yeah.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I gotta— to this day, to this day, it bothers me. And it was a long time ago. And then secondarily, to the folks who are listening, I learned almost the whole lesson, but not the whole lesson. I wish I could tell you I've been a perfect It was such a searing experience that I've been a perfect person ever since. But hey, brains are brains, right?

Yes.

I have made similar mistakes, but at much lower cost, thankfully, similar mistakes in the subsequent 20-plus years. But I've gotten better. Life's a journey, right? And I just wanted everybody to realize I had a horrible experience that was very costly, and I've learned from it. But you have to keep learning, I guess, is my point.

Absolutely. When do we stop ever? And thank you for being— that humility is key. And thank you for demonstrating that. I really respect that a lot, Marc. And quick pause here. If this conversation is useful to you, hitting follow means you catch the rest of this series as it comes out. And it genuinely helps the show reach more leaders like you. Okay, back to you, Marc. Let's jump into the rapid fire. This very, very short— Answers, try your best. All right, so one word for what hypergrowth taught you that nothing else could. One word.

Flexibility. Flexibility. You have to be flexible. Otherwise, not going to work.

Okay, great. Oil tanker or raft, right? Let's go back to that image. Which one describes your leadership style today?

Still raft, slower river. Fewer rapids, smaller rocks, but still raft. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I'll admit it.

I love how you described that. I mean, we saw the picture. I saw the picture right in front of me, that image. Last one, the best advice you ever got from someone in government?

Every single day, state and— the states and federal government of the United States of America Impact positively millions and millions of lives. Don't ever forget it.

I love that. Thank you so much for sharing this. Quickly, everybody, my book is out now and it's called The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You: Calm Under Fire in the Age of Disruption. Thanks, Marc, for the little clap. In case you're listening to the audio, he is clapping. Scan the code for more info about the book. You'll see it here on screen, or you can check the link in the description. And before I wrap up, Marc, any last words? It was lovely having you. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. And I just want to give you time if you want to say a couple of last words before we wrap up.

I appreciate the fact that you and I have met each other and you've asked me to think about the neurological impact of business behavior. It's— I don't think many men and women in leadership positions often reflect upon that. So you've been very helpful to me, and I appreciate it.

My pleasure. And this is, uh, thanks for the feedback. It really helps. But most importantly, this is why I do what I do personally. I had to learn this the hard way, applied it for myself, and I saw that it made a huge difference. And this is why I want to bring it back to the world and impact as many people as possible. And let's save each other the pain. And if we can speed it up and learn much quicker and make less mistakes, in a good way because all mistakes are good because we learn something. And so on that, I'm gonna tell you all, lead boldly, stay human, and again, let every challenge sharpen your edge. It's all good. See you all next week. Mark, a pleasure, and hope to see you very soon. Thank you.