In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Bernie Swain, co‑founder of the Washington Speakers Bureau and author of What Made Me Who I Am. Drawing on nearly four decades of experience representing world leaders, presidents, business visionaries and sports legends, Swain outlines the essential traits of effective leaders. He emphasizes self‑awareness (knowing strengths and weaknesses), continuous learning, a clear vision, strong communication, respect for others, passion, persistence, and caring for the people you lead. Swain shares personal turning‑point stories—leaving a promising athletic‑director career, early financial hardship, and a pivotal summer‑job firing—that illustrate how adversity fuels passion and drives self‑determination. He highlights the importance of “paying attention” to one’s own experiences and to the lessons of others (citing Alex Haley’s library‑burning metaphor). The conversation concludes with Swain’s view that leadership is about granting autonomy, establishing guidelines, and caring for others, not merely issuing directives. Listeners are directed to proteusleader.com for additional practical leadership resources.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you will get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show, everybody. We're thrilled to have you. And today my guest is Bernie Swain, the co-founder of the Washington Speakers Bureau, which is one of the world's most prestigious providers of speaking talent. He's also now the author of What Made Me Who I Am, his new book that captures the leadership transformations of 34 of his company's most eminent speakers. Now, as you all know, at the Proteus Leader Show, we always focus on practical insights and tips to help you become a better leader and manager. And Bernie, we thought that based on your nearly 40 years of working with some of the world's most noted leaders, that you'd be in a better position than almost anyone else to talk about what makes someone a great leader. So welcome to the show, Bernie.
Thank you very much. I'm very grateful that you took the time to do this.
Oh, you're so welcome. We're really thrilled to have you. So let me just start right in. I have a couple of questions for you. So given everybody that you've worked with over the years, from former U.S. presidents and other world leaders to business visionaries, sports legends, what are some of the key leadership characteristics that you've observed throughout the years in these people?
Well, I learned a lot not only from those I represented, but I learned a lot from starting a company on my own. Trial and error, failure and success. Leadership requires a positive attitude and passion, and if you believe in yourself, if you stay true to those beliefs and remain driven and passionate, you can stay— you can do just about anything in life. And I know that because it is what happened to me. The adversity and failure and the speakers I experienced taught me this about leadership. First, You need to evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses. If you can't understand your own strengths and your weaknesses, how can you possibly evaluate and ultimately lead others? I also found that you need to know what you're talking about. Learning is what leaders do. You can't expect others to follow you if you don't know what you're talking about. You need to share your vision and your goals. Those who lead must know where they want to go, And how they're going to get there. And you need to communicate. Whatever you say, you need to say it so it's well understood. And lastly, whether you're running a company like I did or just a leader in whatever you're doing, you need to respect others. In my instance, I had to hire good people. I had to teach them and I had to pay them well. And then I had to let them do their own job.
Yeah. Oh, these are great and so lined up with what we say and teach. I completely— I couldn't agree with you more. So I love— I want to dig a little bit into your idea about learning. I completely agree that those who learn can lead. So especially now when there's— things are changing so quickly, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you've seen that in great leaders, what they do to just keep themselves on that, on the top of that wave of learning that's necessary?
Well, I got to a point— I started the company without any experience. I was in a 15-year career. I just walked away from it one day because I read a newspaper article. And so 3 or 4 years into running the company, I was sitting there one day thinking, how did I get where I ended up? One of the people I represented was Alex Haley, who was the author of Roots.
Yeah.
And Alex said to me several times, when an old person dies, it's like a library burning. What he meant was that throughout life you learn from your experiences, and what you learn assembles in you like pages in a book. When you ask successful people, accomplished people, leaders, the people I represented, about their achievements and listen carefully, I found in truly enlightening and inspirational stories about their experiences. What is the lesson they taught me? Pay attention.
Yeah.
What are the powerful influences and moments in your life? What are the forks in your road? What did you learn about yourself? The decisions and choices you made and how you've been changed. I think if you pay attention and you learn from your decisions and choices in life, you'll make yourself stronger and wiser. And many times it makes you— your character and accomplishment and success stronger. I found persistence. Paying attention means staying the course no matter what the obstacles or difficulties placed in your way. We almost went out of business in the first year. We made no money in the first year, and the second year made $700. All of our savings were gone. I was— I had been earning a job as an assistant athletic director earning $32,000 a year. My wife was earning $11,000 a year in her job. We both walked away from it, and we both ran out of money in a year and a half. So I think passion comes from these turning points in your lives, the decisions and choices you make. New thinking, some of the new research that I read, says that passion is more important than talent.
Mm, yes.
Successful and accomplished people are characteristically driven by talent. If you believe in yourself and you remain unwaveringly passionate, you can succeed at almost anything.
Yes, yeah, and I really like what the connection you're making between learning and self-awareness. I really liked when you said pay attention. It sounded like you were saying both pay attention to yourself, and back to what you were saying earlier about self-awareness, so you can really understand your own strengths and weaknesses, but also pay attention to people around you who have things to teach you.
Right, I'm not sure what you call it. I think it's called by different words, but consciousness, Yes. Is one of the words. I think we're all guided and defined by the influences and the moments in our lives, and these don't change us, but they educate us.
Yeah.
If we're ready to learn from them, they can make us stronger, as I said, and wiser. And we're all subjected— I found we're all subjected to one big turning point in life, and it's a turning point that's ultimately personal to us. It's hard for that reason to predict it. It can dramatically change the trajectory of our life and the direction of our life. And I think the leaders that I represented were fortunate people who recognized this critical turning point. They embraced it and they were able to draw from it. It is what gives you passion to succeed.
Hmm.
I was in education and my wife recognized in me that I wanted to make my own decisions. And so that's what made me walk away from a career, and I was only 2 months away from my dream job. So there's got to be a passion in life that drives you. And when you're in business for yourself, there's going to come a time when things seem difficult. And you say— I remember sitting in the office after about 8 months and thinking, shaking my head and thinking to myself, what have I done?
Yeah.
And it is, but you wake up every morning if you have that passion and you're ready to go again.
And what was that turning point for you? What would you call out as your main turning point?
It's odd because you have so many influences and turning points in your lives. You know, I started on an athletic career. I wanted to become a teacher or a phys ed teacher or an athletic director. I had a mentor in high school who put me on that trajectory where I went to undergraduate school, I went back to public I went back to get a master's degree. I was assistant athletic director at a major university. After 5 years, I was 2 months away becoming the athletic director at George Washington University when I just walked away from it.
Hmm.
It is— the turning point in my life was that years before, I had been fired from a summer job where I desperately needed it because I needed the money for that summer job to survive graduate school. And I wasn't fired— in my mind, I wasn't fired for a reason. I was replaced by a board director's daughter who needed the job. And my wife and I constantly laughed about it and kind of made fun of it, but in the back of my mind, it stuck that I could never trust anybody else making decisions for me. So when we read an article about another speakers bureau in Fortune magazine where back then they had no internet. And, and the head of the agency said, I have no competition. There was no way for us to know whether he did or didn't.
Ah.
And so my wife talked me into leaving our careers and starting this. And it took us years to make any money or start to do anything, but it was the passion and the drive that of me wanting to either succeed Or fail on my own terms.
Yes, so it sounds like that turn away from the dream job was a turn towards self-determination.
It was. And there is something that— the question is, can we find it in our lives? Can we sit and think about ourselves? We often think about other things that happen to us, and we think about the environment around us or other friends or family or coworkers. The idea is to think about ourselves. Who are we? What Oh, that's lovely.
So, and it sounds like this has really been reinforced not only in your life but in the people that you've dealt with all these years, that if you really get clear about what is most important, most critical for your own sense of success and happiness and turn toward that, that's the key.
And that in turn teaches you to care about others.
That's great.
That's great. And that's the key of any leader, I think, is to— it's got to be one of the major objectives is to care about the people that you lead.
Yes. When you're focused on the thing that gives you the most joy and the most passion, then you have— you're free, in a sense, to care about other people and their lives and their outcomes.
Exactly.
That's great. Oh, Bernie, thank you so much for your time and insight. We always try and keep these short. I feel like we could talk for another hour or so, but it's been— It's been such a pleasure having you for this little bit of time. Thank you so much.
Well, thank you. I will add one thing. I know I was talking about making my own decisions. One of the lessons I learned quickly was that we all want to make our own decisions. And whether we may not be leaders of an 80-employee company like I was, but we're leaders of our own families and we're leaders in our own lives. And we want to be trusted and given the freedom to think and be creative. So being a leader means not just telling people what to do, but establishing guidelines Oh, that's wonderful.
I completely agree. Thank you so much. And for all of you who are listening to us today, remember that you can find lots of other great practical resources for becoming a better leader and manager, very lined up with what Bernie's been talking about, at ProteusLeader.com. So thanks to everyone for joining us, and until next time, have an excellent life.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, Join us at theproteusleader.com. Have an excellent day. And thanks for listening.
