Episode 235: Winning at Business and Life with Craig Whelden

This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1, in a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.

Hi Pete, thanks for asking me to come on today. My name is Craig Weldon. I spent 30 years in the Army, then I was in the private sector for about 7 years, went back into the federal government working for the Marine Corps for another 9 years. So I've got about 40 years of military experience, and now I'm a Global 500 Fortune 500 speaker and an award-winning international bestselling author.

Well, Craig, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Question number 2: What is something that makes you smile and/or laugh about working working in your industry?

Well, I'm a speaker first. I use my book to help open doors for speaking engagements. And what really makes me smile is when I connect with an audience after the presentation, when people come up to me and they either have a big smile on their face or sometimes they're in tears because they heard a story that I told that they could relate to. And they said, you know, I really appreciate hearing from your heart, uh, something that I'm going through myself.

And I totally agree with you. Connecting with the audience in a way that really connects with their heart makes all the difference in the world. So congratulations when you, when you're able to accomplish that. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?

Well, let me tell you about a non-fictitious book, and that's my book. When I wrote it, it was a manuscript. It basically was a a story of my life. And I hired an editor, and he said, "Nobody's going to read this." And I said, "Why not?" He said, "It's a memoir. You are not Michelle Obama or Amoroso. You're not famous, you're not infamous, and so nobody's going to really read about your life." And I said, "Well, my intent was to make it a leadership and life lesson book." He said, "All the ingredients are there. Go find them in the chapters, pull them out, make them chapter titles, and fold your stories underneath." That's exactly what I did. And when I got done, he said to me, what's the most important chapter in leadership? And I said, character. He said, that ought to be chapter number 1 then. And so it is. I titled it Character: The Foundation of All Great Leaders.

I love that. And it's great storytelling that you talk about too, and how you came up with those chapters. I absolutely love that. Thank you. Question number 4. Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

Well, as you heard, I spent 40 years in the military, and what I found with about 9 or 10 years now in the private sector is that many of the things that I learned in the military are transferable to the civilian sector, to the commercial world, to the corporate world, and to life, quite frankly. First, you need a plan. The military has what they call a 5-paragraph field order, which kind of lays out a plan for an operation or for training. In the business world, we call it simply a business plan. You need a vision statement. The military teaches you how to do that too by writing a mission statement. It's essentially the same thing. And we include values in that. I think for any business, any company, they ought to include values. What are their values? So that not only do the employees understand the values, but the customers do as well. You need functional expertise, obviously. And if you don't have it as the president as a CEO, or as an entrepreneur, then you need to go find it. You need to either hire people or to contract people in marketing, in sales, in financial, in legal, in media, social media. And then you need to scale to the appropriate size for each of those. You need to measure risks. What are the risks associated with the business that I have? Financial risk and others. And the military taught us very deliberate risk mitigation processes. And then you need to be able to adapt to change. And the military taught me to adapt to change. When we write an order, a 5-paragraph field order, we write into that branches and sequels, because we know that the plan is never going to survive the first shot. And so you have to be prepared to go left, to go right, to go under, to go over, or to go through your objective. Finally, as a leader, you need to lead. To do that effective, I go back to the first chapter in my book about character. If you don't have a strong foundation and character, you are eventually probably going to fail. What is character? It includes ambition, perseverance, self-awareness, honesty, trust, empathy, humility, integrity, and always taking into account the responsibilities of a leader while sometimes subordinating your own self-interest. And then finally, the last thing I guess I would say is you need balance in your life. If you put 150% into your business, into your job, and you don't put that same level of energy and interest in your family and the other things that are most important in your life, then you're going to find yourself looking back on that experience and regretting the path that you took.

Very wise. It's so interesting to hear how closely aligned the business world and the military world are in terms of the whole planning stages, as you described there. And I really love that last point about having that balance, because the last thing you want to do is be, you know, on your deathbed and you're, you know, I don't know anyone who would be sitting there regretting that they didn't spend an extra half an hour on their career. You know, so it's really, really wise words. Thank you. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?

Well, I met a guy on LinkedIn about a year ago named Blaine Bartlett, and he has become a good friend. Blaine hosts his own podcast. He invited me to participate with 24 other thought leaders around the world in a 3-day global mindset forum. And I've gotten to know him pretty well, and he's easy to find. I think if you just Googled his name, you would find him, but you can certainly find him on podcasts, you can find him on LinkedIn, and I think he'd be a great guest. His name is, again, is Blaine, B-L-A-I-N-E, Blaine Bartlett, B-A-R-T-L-E-T-T.

Perfect. I'll reach out to him. Thank you for that referral. And our final question, question number 6, please tell me about your first job.

Well, let me tell you about two first jobs. When I was 14, I worked, I lived in Paris, France. My father was in the Air Force and we shopped at a thing called the commissary, which is basically a food store. And at 14 years old, I bagged groceries. And one of the things I learned, because the only thing we got were tips, they didn't give us anything, just for tips only. But I learned that the nicer you are to the people that you're bagging for, the bigger your tip. And so I started to learn about customer relations then at age 14. And then fast forward a couple of years later when I was a freshman in college, I was a janitor and I worked 5 nights a week from, uh, 7 o'clock to 11 o'clock and I cleaned the second floor of the Purdue University Library. And what I learned from that was the value of everybody that participates, uh, in, uh, the team. The janitor kept the place clean quite frankly, and I've never forgotten as I grew more senior, and I was a 2-star general in the Army, I was a senior executive for the Marine Corps, I've never forgotten the roots from which I came. And I too was somebody doing something like that at one time. And so I make sure that I seek those folks out and tell them how much I appreciate what they do for us.

You know, and I love that because I do the same thing in, you know, acknowledging the people who are doing the very difficult work. And it just, it doesn't take a lot to acknowledge them and show a little bit of kindness. And it makes for just a better interaction. And for, you know, and if it helps them in their day, you know, what's the challenge from us? So I absolutely love that you did that and you remember that those humble beginnings. So thank you for sharing that. And Craig, thank you so much for being on the show. How could people find you?

Well, I'm easy to find. You go to Google, type in Craig Weldon, and my website will pop up, my LinkedIn page will pop up, and a lot of other things will pop up. But, uh, I'm easy to find on the internet.

Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.