00:00:03
Speaker 1: Ruby.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: You can't spend your entire business life trying to anticipate every problem or every crisis. We don't do that here, We certainly didn't do that at Dell. Those crisises are going to happen. The question is, and the moment of truth is can you overcome them or not? And that is a direct function of your organization's ability or inability to adapt and adapt.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Quickly, adapt quickly. Two words from Joel Cohor that saved Dell from becoming just another forgotten nineties computer company. Hi everyone, I'm Jessica chen Emmy Award winning journalist, founder of Soulcast Media, a communications training company, and author of the book Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at work for all the right reasons. Today, on leading by Example, we're talking with Joe Coher, CEO of Human who learned his most valuable leadership lessons not during Dell's crazy fast rise, but in the humbling years that followed. Joel joined Dell when it was a one hundred million dollar company and it was growing fast, but he realized he needed to make some bold moves in order to survive, and that wake up call ultimately propelled Dell to fortune. Five hundred status. But surprisingly, Joel's biggest leadership lesson came after he left Dell, where he learned that success isn't about repetition, but rather reassessment, coming to every situation with fresh eyes and never assuming that you already know the answers. In this conversation, Joel shares why he makes every human employee lead weekly team meetings, why he wishes companies could operate without titles, and why you need to walk your talk one hundred percent of the time. I'm Jessica Chen, and this is leading by example, Joel. It's so great to have you with us today. Let's start from the very beginning. What do you feel like your parents taught you? Like some of the key values that still stick with you.
00:02:22
Speaker 3: Truth.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: Truth is the only reality. I distinctly remember I was in a little league baseball game, and I was very competitive, by the way, So in a little league baseball game, playing second base, man on first batter ripped one up the middle. I made a diving catch and then swiped the runner as they went by and threw to first for a double play. The crowd was cheering. It was amazing. Only one problem, I did not tag the runner, I missed him. So I called time out and stopped play and went over to the Empire and said, I missed him. I did not tag him. You made the wrong call, and I'll never forget. The coach wanted me to just go to the bench. The empires said, go away, go away, go to the bench. But my reality was what my father had taught me, which is truth is the most powerful force of trust. It was all about doing the right thing with the right outcome, truth and trust.
00:03:22
Speaker 1: So once you started growing up, you went to college and you started working at Dell, was working in technology something that you had always aspired to do? Or how did you kind of fall into that industry?
00:03:33
Speaker 2: Oh, I aspire to I went to the University of Florida, MI undergrad degree and I got a degree in marketing. And then came into the workforce and I was.
00:03:42
Speaker 3: Not in tech.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: But it just became really apparent to me very quickly that personal computers were the next big wave. So I went back to school, went back to the University of Florida to get educated on tech. Quit my job, which was a great job, and it was a great paying job. My father's thought I was insane, but I was going to plug in into this uber groundswell because I just knew it was going to be the.
00:04:07
Speaker 3: Place to be.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: So you're now at Dell. I think at the time it was like a one hundred million dollar company, and then during your time there it grew over four thousand percent. So during those early years at the company, was there something that you saw that you experienced that changed the way you think about leadership today?
00:04:27
Speaker 3: Definitely.
00:04:28
Speaker 2: I think the first thing that I saw was a focus on tomorrow, and I think you could probably expect that given the age of the two individuals that were running the business. But what you came to understand very quickly is that we had to play loan ball. We had to think about the long term. One hundred million, two hundred million, three hundred million dollars in the technology industry doesn't meet the bar of relevance. You had to crack the code on how to get to a multi billion dollar company to be relevant. And I remember the moment I was sitting in an executive staff meeting and we were just celebrating the most recent quarters performance. Nice numbers, you know, twenty five percent growth, nice profitability, beat the street by a penny and then it dawned on me that it didn't matter because they were already multi billion dollar players in the personal computer industry. At the current rate of growth that twenty five percent compounded, we'd be eliminated from the marketplace because ultimately, as markets play out, it comes down to five. So I said Michael, we are basically screwed, which really upsettled at the moment because he wanted to be in a celebratory mood. But once he went off like he so often did, and thought about what I said, he came back the next day and said, you know what, You're absolutely right. Twenty five percent growth is not going to cut it. We're going to get scaled out of this business. So we went to work to figure out what is the growth rate that we have to be at. How are we going to end up being a top five, if not a top one player. Now, the number was scary, but it prompted a set of actions that we took as leaders that changed the trajectory of that company from growing twenty five percent to growing thousands of percent, and of course the rest was history. Dell achieved the number one market share position in the marketplace.
00:06:30
Speaker 1: When you set the bar so high like that. Does it ever feel scary in terms of disappointing people if you don't reach that goal?
00:06:38
Speaker 2: Oh, it was scary, But it was scary in the sense that you had to literally grow the business four digits. We were probably young enough and brash enough to just go, well, that's what you have to do. That's what we're going to go do. But it was bold moves we took. You know, one is a complete re architecture of the technology supply chain, which to this day it's had a global effect. We were the first to do that changed our financial model from twenty eight percent gross margin to running the business and succeeding in the teens. Those were all very bold actions that we took as leadership of the company.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: So that's something that I'm hearing grow bold as something that you learned, especially during those early periods during Dell. Was there anything that you felt like you had to unlearn from what you've seen or experienced at the company.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: Well, there was, and that was just that every company I'm going to lead in, every company I'm involved in, is not going to be a prolific fortune five hundred and five years from start to finish company. I mean being quite candid, when I left that situation, I really felt like anything I touched would turn to gold. It was really intoxicating to be part of that experience, and I think probably anybody that was involved at that time, certainly in a leadership position, probably believed that.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: But that's just not reality.
00:08:10
Speaker 2: So I got involved in many situations over the remainder of my career were some were huge successes in some were not. But it took a different calculus for every single situation. And I think that's probably true of any leadership situation. Before you apply what you think you know, or you believe or no, assess and keep assessing until you got it right.
00:08:38
Speaker 1: One of the things that I talk and I teach a lot about is humility and that being a very core leadership straight and you talked about how after leaving Dell you felt like everything that you touched would turn into gold. But was there like a moment where you kind of realized humility? Right, it may not be that case.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: Well, I think you had to relearn humility. I think I probably had humility going into the situation. Post the Dell situation, mean put an entirely different business situation, an entirely different set of variables. The definitional winning was different. Now you have to be really capable at processing the variables, regardless of how different they are. But just success is defined in a different way. And the more humble you are approaching that situation, the better off you're going to be, because you do not have the formula for every single situation that's out there, whether it's business or personal, each one requires that you figure it out, and you figure it out starting from zero. My father once said to me, said, son, the greatest and the worst thing about being in business is that you start off at zero every single month.
00:09:52
Speaker 3: How profound is that?
00:09:54
Speaker 1: So after Dell, you then worked in several other companies in different roles as present it is CEO, CEO, and then you retired. That wasn't fun. You unretired, and then you started this amazing company. So tell me during that stint of retirement, like what was going through your mind?
00:10:13
Speaker 2: Let me give you the good and maybe the bad about that. I think the good was that I got to really connect with my children. When you are involved as a CEO or a top level leader in large public companies, they own you more than you own yourself. So it was difficult. You're on the road a lot, if not all the time, you're traveling internationally, and you just don't have the time to give to young children. And because I was younger, I guess than the norm for senior executives doing those kinds of things. You know what affected my family life. So the good thing about being retired is I got to go to every practice, I got to take them to school every day.
00:10:55
Speaker 3: I got to, you.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: Know, really immerse myself and my sons when it really mattered. The negative was I hated the part about not having a mission. I found out I'm a mission guy. I am a purpose guy. I've got to have deeper meaning and deeper purpose than just live your life as a retired dude.
00:11:19
Speaker 1: There's so many people out there that I feel they want what you are talking about, But finding that purpose is hard. It's confusing. They don't know where to start. What would you tell a person who wants to find that clarity.
00:11:34
Speaker 2: It's not just going to come to you. You've got to seek it. And that's what I mean when I say find deeper purpose and meaning in your life. Go seek that meaning. When you live in this country, there are opportunities to go change the world. But you have to be highly attuned to what you do well to the fact that you have to have courage to go seek and find those things and then take the leap to leave that comfort level that you currently have in your current lifestyle, because let me tell you what's not going to happen. What's not going to happen is you are not going to conveniently just fall into the way to change the world in your current life and your current trajectory. You have to understand that if you just follow the river's current, you're not going to be led to that answer.
00:12:31
Speaker 3: You've got to be willing to fight the current.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more leading by example. After a quick break, tell me about your company, human, How did you even decide to start this company?
00:12:57
Speaker 2: I at least realized I needed to have my eyes open and I need to be looking for the next lane. But I had a friend who invited me to an investor presentation where the University of Texas Hell Sciences Center was looking for a commercial partner to commercialize some technology and know how in a program that had actually been started by a gentleman who won the Nobel Prize for medicine, and he had discovered a molecule it's the most important molecule in the cardiovascular system. And I couldn't move my I was like, wait a second, you're telling me that this molecule won the Nobel pricere Mission. Why have I never heard of it? And by the way, the molecule is nitric n it riic oxide. I was like, this molecule, you have discovered a way to get the body to replenish what age takes away for the typical human being. We've got to figure out how to productize this.
00:14:00
Speaker 3: We can do that.
00:14:01
Speaker 2: We can help change the trajectory of human cardiovascular health, because when you think about it, cardiovascular health is the number one killer of human beings in the world.
00:14:12
Speaker 3: Right.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: It's dysfunction by a wide margin. It's not cancer. America and people in general around the world have cardiovascular wrong. They think it's heart only number one, and then number two is that it's for old people. Quite the contrary. You have sixty thousand miles of blood vessels in your body, give or take that service, about thirty five to thirty seven trillion cells. There's nothing in the human body, nothing that is more foundational to human health or to longevity than the functionality of those sixty thousand miles of blood vessels and the blood flow that emanates from that.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: You have this in many ways, this blank slate, right, And now you're thinking, I need to start a company to help bring this to market. How are you building this company right from the beginning?
00:15:09
Speaker 3: Well, first, not quick.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: So one of my cooperating principles as an entrepreneur is do it right, not quick. And I think when I look at the failure of businesses, right, I think there's about thirty three million businesses in the United States at any given time. The failure rate you pick the number. I've seen failure rates of forty percent. I've seen failure rates of sixty percent. In most cases, I would say, at least with early stage companies, the biggest failure driver is trying to do it quick, not right. So we set out to do it the right way, and it took us a while. I mean, we had to invest in the science, doing clinical trials and clinical data. We went to physicians first, because not only had I never heard of it, but nobody that I talked to had ever heard of nitric oxide. And not only that neither had physicians. Pretty shocking when a molecule is awarded the Nobel Prize that not even physicians have heard of it. But Western doctors are just not trained in that way or to think that way. So going to physicians for a couple of years and going to all the physician trade shows to get validation educate them so that when we started talking to consumers, they would indeed be able to have the confidence that what we were telling them was accurate because we had physicians backing that and along that. One of the benefits of doing it right, not quick, is the discovery process is a lot more robust. I actually became more and more convicted as that early stage process went along, And I call that doing the hard yards. So you can't go from first base to third base. You got to touch every base. In fact, in many ways you have to touch them more than once. But the benefit is you learn, you gain additional insights. It also feeds your conviction because in the early days of any company, I would say to entrepreneurs, look, even if you have five million dollars in sales, you haven't done anything yet.
00:17:22
Speaker 3: You have to.
00:17:23
Speaker 2: Get customers to vote again and again and again when they come back for more, and they keep coming back for more, I would proffer that's when you know you're on the right path. And doctor ferdmir he was so committed to the science. He just helped me understand that to do this in the right way, to do it the responsible way, and to do it in a way that people are gonna believe it, because you have to realize that something as profounded that people aren't just going to take at face value. You're going to have to prove it to him that it made complete and total sense for us to do the hard yards to invest in those clinical trials. I mean, we've invested in double digit clinical trials. I don't think you or anyone else could name a supplement company that's done double digit clinical trials. And I think that's one of the reasons and one of the drivers for why doctor Muright actually joined our company in twenty nineteen. Can you imagine a Nobel Prize laureate as part of a supplement company to me that speaks volumes?
00:18:31
Speaker 1: Do you feel like a lot of entrepreneurs just because of the culture, because of how things flow influencers Do you think a lot of entrepreneurs these days are just so impatient. And if so, what do you say to that.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, the last three generations are impatient, but maybe the last fifty three generations are impatient. You know, it's in the human perspective that you have to go fast. I can't tell you there wasn't a time when I went too fast, but I've just learned. I think you gain this unique perspective that doing it right over the long term is going to have a much better outcome than doing it fast. And you know that applies to probably most things in life when you think about it.
00:19:18
Speaker 1: I can hear some listeners right now thinking, well, Joel, you did it fast at Dell. You built this company x percent in X number of years. You did it fast, and look how successful it was. Why can't I take that same fast approach?
00:19:31
Speaker 2: You know, that's a great question that no one's ever asked me. I think there were a couple of things that were probably omnipresent in the Dell experience that may be really tough to replicate.
00:19:42
Speaker 3: One was just Michael Dell, right.
00:19:44
Speaker 2: He had an incalculable ability to press, press, press and somehow come up with the right answer. So he was much better at going fast than probably ninety nine point nine percent of the population. But if you we look back at the history, there were also mistakes made that probably could have been avoided if we have just gone a little slower. The other is, if you looked at the industry at the time, it was still early. Even though there were some mature players, the industry itself wasn't baked. So there was enough variability in the environment that if one could come up with one or two significant ideas on how to approach the marketplace different that truly could shift the paradigm.
00:20:32
Speaker 3: And that's what we did.
00:20:33
Speaker 2: We just shifted the entire paradigm on the competitors, and that was really I think what resulted in such a prolific growth rate.
00:20:43
Speaker 1: By the way, what was it like working for Michael Dell?
00:20:45
Speaker 2: It was tough on one dimension and easy on another. You know, working with Michael Dill and doctor Faridmered who won the Nobel Prize for medicine, one was a hammer and one was a violent. I think with Michael that we were both built and architected to be super competitive kick ass. Don't even bother to take the names. It was just rolling right, but He was very demanding. He was in perpetual pursuit of the competitive edge. So you had to be willing to think that way to make that level of investment in time and effort, or you just frankly fell away, and many did in those years. The executive turnover was pretty high. Farred, on the other hand, was in constant pursuit of changing the world, but he committed his life to the science because he realized that it was going to take decades to achieve his objective, which went way beyond capital gain.
00:22:00
Speaker 1: That's interesting to me because obviously two different leaders, perhaps two different philosophies and how they work. So what did doctor Farid Murad teach you about leadership that was perhaps completely different?
00:22:14
Speaker 2: He taught me to care about humanity, to be completely fair, you know, to girl a business from one hundred million to multi billion in five years, you're so focused on the stuff and so focused on the things, and probably less focused on people than you probably should have. Now. On one hand, you are who you hire as a company, so I don't mean that you're not going to build it by yourself, but you're probably less focused on humanity itself. And I know technology has a tendency to not have a focus on humanity. Farred taught me that the only thing that really matters was did you change the trajectory of humanity? And I think that's the difference in where I am in my life today and where I was when I was thirty is I want to change the damn trajectory of human health. I want to do something that has lasting meaning that it has a permanent duration. And that's what drives me today versus what drove me, you know, thirty years ago.
00:23:25
Speaker 1: I love that. I think I read somewhere that you said the word adaptability was very important. That's a core competency. Yes, how does one learn to be more adaptable?
00:23:37
Speaker 2: Well, you called out a great trait that I should have listed, because if you asked me, and I've led smallish companies, I've led an entrepreneurial company, I've let a Fortune five hundred company. If you asked me, if you only have joel one competence as a company, what would it be? And I would say, regardless of size, is the ability to adapt.
00:23:59
Speaker 3: And I think it.
00:24:00
Speaker 2: Probably even applies to the human being in the singular, having the capacity or the core competence to adapt. Is everything, because you're never going to get it right before you act, because you're going to encounter things you do not predict. You can't spend your entire life or your business life trying to anticipate every problem or every crisis. We don't do that here, We certainly didn't do that at Dell. Those crisises are going to happen. The question is, and the moment of truth is can you overcome them or not? And that is a direct function of your organization's ability or inability.
00:24:43
Speaker 3: To adapt and adapt quickly.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: So just drawing on that ability, being conscious of it and saying, look, this is what I need for myself. I have to do this and rather than taking the easy way out, put yourself in a position where you've got to adapt.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: I sometimes feel the barrier to someone feeling confident enough to adapt is the mindset of getting over that fear, because adapt means change, and a lot of people are afraid of change, They're afraid of the unknown. How do you overcome that barrier?
00:25:20
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you a question. I note that you talk about this topic. What brought that to your attention?
00:25:28
Speaker 1: So I work in the communications world, and for me, when I first started out, communications was not something that I was good at. I think part of it was culturally, you know, in my family, we weren't really taught that, and in the workplace, I felt stuck, and I think, similar to you, Joel, I didn't want to stay stuck, and so I started asking the questions of, well, what do I need to do to overcome that? And for me, a lot of it was just what actions do I need to take? And I think just having small actions like that, at least for me, allows me to then make progress forward. So I think in the process of that, perhaps I'm learning to adapt as well. But I think it's really overcoming that fear of staying stuck and thinking what can I do about it. That's my own personal story.
00:26:14
Speaker 2: That's very good, it's very insightful and I think can help a lot of people because I don't know a single person, not one that has been successful without overcoming fear. It's a universal blocker. I think, when you think about leadership efficacy or even life efficacy, how can you succeed without the capacity and the willingness to overcome fear. One of the things we do in our company is in our weekly staff meetings rather than me or another leader executive leader in the company run the meetings. Our employees run the staff meetings on a rotating basis, and we'll give plenty of notice. You know, it's like, OK, weeks out, Johnny, You're running the staff meeting. And always those meetings start with a short presentation on what they do and what role they play in the company. And almost without fail, people are fearful the first time of doing that. They don't want to speak in front of the group. They don't want to calendar or an agenda the meeting, they don't want to be on point. But also without fail, they always tell me after that's the best thing that I ever did. I'm so glad that you had me do that. And I didn't make an optional I think to be fair, most people would probably opt out. But after they did it, they were so proud of themselves and they learned so much. And my hope is that one of the key things they learned was just they can overcome their fear, and that overcoming and confronting your.
00:27:59
Speaker 3: Fear is worth it.
00:28:01
Speaker 1: What do you think that experience of having your team members lead a meeting, what do you think it teaches them about leadership.
00:28:08
Speaker 2: I think it makes them more aware. I don't think any of them ever thought before they ran a meeting like that, what it must be like to try to orchestrate a meeting number one. Number two is a meeting that was relevant to their peers and their teammates, and number three is to motivate and rally them to the cause. We all want to be relevant to our peer group, but I think learning how to do it and being put in the situation of really thinking about your ability to direct the orchestra is a unique position for most people to be in.
00:28:49
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about a time you misjudged your team and what they needed from you, and how did you course correct.
00:28:56
Speaker 2: I have this ability to toggle between CEO visionary and CEO operator, and sometimes I get it wrong, and sometimes my team needs one when I've applied the other, and I love it when they pointed out. But most recently, as an example, we're going through a very significant rebranding and I leaned heavily into the CEO visionary versus the CEO operator. And what I realized or came to realize, was they needed my help because I've done it before, and they haven't, so I had to make that adjustment to CEO operator.
00:29:43
Speaker 3: You know.
00:29:43
Speaker 1: Having this conversation with you, Joel, I feel like in many ways you are truly embodying what this podcast is called. It's leading by example. I feel like I can completely see that you're instilling this within your team. So as you kind of start to wrap up here, I'm just curious. You know, has your leadership just evolved again the fast paced growth to now you running human as a company? Has it changed?
00:30:06
Speaker 3: I would say it's evolved.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's been an evolution, not a revolution, and probably the vast majority of what you see is what you get. Early on, I was put in the position of having to step up and learn how to do this, how to be an effective leader. I think leadership efficacy, though, begins with walking your own talk. And you got to walk your own talk one hundred percent of the time, not ninety percent of the time. There is nothing that destroys that efficacy more than not following the path that you're telling others to follow. And I love that about leadership. I mean, I'm that guy anyway. I love getting in the dirt and rolling around, even though I've led very large organizations. I have a lot of pride in the fact that if you want to get down and race to take the garbage out, I'm a game.
00:31:04
Speaker 3: Let's go do it.
00:31:05
Speaker 2: But ultimately, people are going to follow people that they believe in, and people are going to believe more in your actions than what.
00:31:15
Speaker 1: You say, which goes into my last question, what does leading by example mean?
00:31:21
Speaker 2: I think leading by example starts with realizing that just because you're a CEO, or you're a vice president or you're a manager doesn't make you any different. In fact, it makes you less important. What you do has a level of importance to it. But the bottom line, and I say this often in our company, is I wish we could operate companies without titles. Now that's not realistic because you have to have a level of organization and you have to have order. The hierarchy of decision making has to be clear. But I wish there didn't have to be that, because at the end of the day, human beings tend to place more credence in those titles than are actually there. We're all just a bunch of people trying to change the world. Let's think about it that way and live on the most common denominator.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: I love that. I can't help but draw it back full circle to one of the stories that you shared in the beginning of when you were a kid and your parents teaching you do what's right, tell the truth. That's the way to go, and that's how you lead.
00:32:31
Speaker 3: Human You're a very insightful person.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: I never connected those two dots, and you know what, I think you're right over the target. Thank you, Joel, Thank you, Jessica.
00:32:45
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Joel. I walked away with a lot of amazing golden nuggets. In fact, there are three takeaways that really stood out to me that I want to chat with you about. The first one is when he talks about how leadership is not about speed, it's about doing things right. And it made me think about how we are all living in this world that glorifies speed. You feel the pressure to hit that deadline with your team and get to market quickly. I feel it too. In fact, I even asked him when he was at Dell part of their success was their ability to move fast? Well, if you remember, he candidly said that he believes that it was a moment in time for them. The tech industry back in the eighties was ripe for major transformation. The industry was just taking shape, so they had to move fast. But I do see the value in what he is saying now. In fact, it's a great reminder that sometimes making that decision to slow down to do things right with your team is really about playing the long game. This can be measured through time, but it can also be measured through creating the environment with your team to ask thoughtful and thorough questions together. In fact, we know better decisions are made when there are diverse perspectives in a room. I even think about the way consumers make decisions today. Right, everything gets amplified, especially a mistake. One mistake can mean a lot of angry customers and a loss of trust. The second thing that Joel said that really stood out to me was about how adaptability is leadership, and to me, it makes total sense. You know, right now, all of us are undergoing what is probably one of the biggest changes in how humans work after the Industrial Revolution. AI is fundamentally shifting the way we work, including the kind of work we do. We're all living this right now, and if we stay stuck in our ways, stuck in our own thinking and assuming we know all the right answers, that's just going to compound to make us fall backwards. For Joel, he spent years in the tech industry, He took a break, and then he went back, but into a whole different industry. He talked about exercising his muscle of reassessing, learning, and adjusting in real time. I think that's key his environment change, therefore his approach needed to change too. I also love how he trickles this lesson down in a really practical way at his company, which was he gets every single person at his company to lead their team's weekly meeting. Now, I imagine most people wouldn't want to do this, but this exercise forces people at his company to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It allows them to think quickly on their feet, put themselves in an entirely new position. In other words, they are adapting and I love that. So the question is, how can you lead by getting your team comfortable with change? Maybe it is as simple as getting them out of their comfort zone. The third point that stood out to me was this change the world, but do it in your own way. So Joel said that he's energized by the thought that he is changing the world through his work. Now. Initially, to be honest, when I heard that, I was like, Okay, that's a grand statement, which I'm not sure all of us can relate to. But then I start to think about it differently. Changing the world while grand isn't only reserved for the CEOs and founders of major companies, I actually think we can instill a very similar perspective in our own work with our team. So it makes me think about the word purpose, like why are we doing the work? If we don't remind ourselves of the why, we will quickly feel burned out. So the question is how how do we take this sentiment like I'm going to change the world and make it our own, or more importantly, how can we share this sentiment with our team. The answer it's reminding them that our work matters, their work matters, or more specifically, it's letting them know that the work that they're doing makes an impact. I think as a great leader, it's up to us to remind our team of the impact we're making, especially when it's super easy to get bogged down with task meetings, deadlines, revisions in the communications world. We say, you can actually remind people of the vision, the why through storytelling, analogies, and yes, even presenting data. You and your team are changing the world in your own way, and as a strong leader, you just need to communicate it. I think that's a great way to lead. Thanks so much to Joel for joining us. This was such a great conversation, and to all of you listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or you have feedback on what you want to hear and guess you'd like to hear from, please rate and review Leading by Example. Every review, every rating really does help us reach more people and make this show the best it can be. I'm Jessica Chen, the author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons, and the CEO of Soulcast Media, a communications training company. For more information about me and what I do, you can head over to my website Solcastmedia dot com or add me on LinkedIn and Instagram. A huge thank you to our production team at Ruby Studio, especially Matt Stillo and Sierra Spring. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Leading by Example. I'll see you then,
Speaker 1: Ruby.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: You can't spend your entire business life trying to anticipate every problem or every crisis. We don't do that here, We certainly didn't do that at Dell. Those crisises are going to happen. The question is, and the moment of truth is can you overcome them or not? And that is a direct function of your organization's ability or inability to adapt and adapt.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Quickly, adapt quickly. Two words from Joel Cohor that saved Dell from becoming just another forgotten nineties computer company. Hi everyone, I'm Jessica chen Emmy Award winning journalist, founder of Soulcast Media, a communications training company, and author of the book Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at work for all the right reasons. Today, on leading by Example, we're talking with Joe Coher, CEO of Human who learned his most valuable leadership lessons not during Dell's crazy fast rise, but in the humbling years that followed. Joel joined Dell when it was a one hundred million dollar company and it was growing fast, but he realized he needed to make some bold moves in order to survive, and that wake up call ultimately propelled Dell to fortune. Five hundred status. But surprisingly, Joel's biggest leadership lesson came after he left Dell, where he learned that success isn't about repetition, but rather reassessment, coming to every situation with fresh eyes and never assuming that you already know the answers. In this conversation, Joel shares why he makes every human employee lead weekly team meetings, why he wishes companies could operate without titles, and why you need to walk your talk one hundred percent of the time. I'm Jessica Chen, and this is leading by example, Joel. It's so great to have you with us today. Let's start from the very beginning. What do you feel like your parents taught you? Like some of the key values that still stick with you.
00:02:22
Speaker 3: Truth.
00:02:23
Speaker 2: Truth is the only reality. I distinctly remember I was in a little league baseball game, and I was very competitive, by the way, So in a little league baseball game, playing second base, man on first batter ripped one up the middle. I made a diving catch and then swiped the runner as they went by and threw to first for a double play. The crowd was cheering. It was amazing. Only one problem, I did not tag the runner, I missed him. So I called time out and stopped play and went over to the Empire and said, I missed him. I did not tag him. You made the wrong call, and I'll never forget. The coach wanted me to just go to the bench. The empires said, go away, go away, go to the bench. But my reality was what my father had taught me, which is truth is the most powerful force of trust. It was all about doing the right thing with the right outcome, truth and trust.
00:03:22
Speaker 1: So once you started growing up, you went to college and you started working at Dell, was working in technology something that you had always aspired to do? Or how did you kind of fall into that industry?
00:03:33
Speaker 2: Oh, I aspire to I went to the University of Florida, MI undergrad degree and I got a degree in marketing. And then came into the workforce and I was.
00:03:42
Speaker 3: Not in tech.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: But it just became really apparent to me very quickly that personal computers were the next big wave. So I went back to school, went back to the University of Florida to get educated on tech. Quit my job, which was a great job, and it was a great paying job. My father's thought I was insane, but I was going to plug in into this uber groundswell because I just knew it was going to be the.
00:04:07
Speaker 3: Place to be.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: So you're now at Dell. I think at the time it was like a one hundred million dollar company, and then during your time there it grew over four thousand percent. So during those early years at the company, was there something that you saw that you experienced that changed the way you think about leadership today?
00:04:27
Speaker 3: Definitely.
00:04:28
Speaker 2: I think the first thing that I saw was a focus on tomorrow, and I think you could probably expect that given the age of the two individuals that were running the business. But what you came to understand very quickly is that we had to play loan ball. We had to think about the long term. One hundred million, two hundred million, three hundred million dollars in the technology industry doesn't meet the bar of relevance. You had to crack the code on how to get to a multi billion dollar company to be relevant. And I remember the moment I was sitting in an executive staff meeting and we were just celebrating the most recent quarters performance. Nice numbers, you know, twenty five percent growth, nice profitability, beat the street by a penny and then it dawned on me that it didn't matter because they were already multi billion dollar players in the personal computer industry. At the current rate of growth that twenty five percent compounded, we'd be eliminated from the marketplace because ultimately, as markets play out, it comes down to five. So I said Michael, we are basically screwed, which really upsettled at the moment because he wanted to be in a celebratory mood. But once he went off like he so often did, and thought about what I said, he came back the next day and said, you know what, You're absolutely right. Twenty five percent growth is not going to cut it. We're going to get scaled out of this business. So we went to work to figure out what is the growth rate that we have to be at. How are we going to end up being a top five, if not a top one player. Now, the number was scary, but it prompted a set of actions that we took as leaders that changed the trajectory of that company from growing twenty five percent to growing thousands of percent, and of course the rest was history. Dell achieved the number one market share position in the marketplace.
00:06:30
Speaker 1: When you set the bar so high like that. Does it ever feel scary in terms of disappointing people if you don't reach that goal?
00:06:38
Speaker 2: Oh, it was scary, But it was scary in the sense that you had to literally grow the business four digits. We were probably young enough and brash enough to just go, well, that's what you have to do. That's what we're going to go do. But it was bold moves we took. You know, one is a complete re architecture of the technology supply chain, which to this day it's had a global effect. We were the first to do that changed our financial model from twenty eight percent gross margin to running the business and succeeding in the teens. Those were all very bold actions that we took as leadership of the company.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: So that's something that I'm hearing grow bold as something that you learned, especially during those early periods during Dell. Was there anything that you felt like you had to unlearn from what you've seen or experienced at the company.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: Well, there was, and that was just that every company I'm going to lead in, every company I'm involved in, is not going to be a prolific fortune five hundred and five years from start to finish company. I mean being quite candid, when I left that situation, I really felt like anything I touched would turn to gold. It was really intoxicating to be part of that experience, and I think probably anybody that was involved at that time, certainly in a leadership position, probably believed that.
00:08:08
Speaker 3: But that's just not reality.
00:08:10
Speaker 2: So I got involved in many situations over the remainder of my career were some were huge successes in some were not. But it took a different calculus for every single situation. And I think that's probably true of any leadership situation. Before you apply what you think you know, or you believe or no, assess and keep assessing until you got it right.
00:08:38
Speaker 1: One of the things that I talk and I teach a lot about is humility and that being a very core leadership straight and you talked about how after leaving Dell you felt like everything that you touched would turn into gold. But was there like a moment where you kind of realized humility? Right, it may not be that case.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: Well, I think you had to relearn humility. I think I probably had humility going into the situation. Post the Dell situation, mean put an entirely different business situation, an entirely different set of variables. The definitional winning was different. Now you have to be really capable at processing the variables, regardless of how different they are. But just success is defined in a different way. And the more humble you are approaching that situation, the better off you're going to be, because you do not have the formula for every single situation that's out there, whether it's business or personal, each one requires that you figure it out, and you figure it out starting from zero. My father once said to me, said, son, the greatest and the worst thing about being in business is that you start off at zero every single month.
00:09:52
Speaker 3: How profound is that?
00:09:54
Speaker 1: So after Dell, you then worked in several other companies in different roles as present it is CEO, CEO, and then you retired. That wasn't fun. You unretired, and then you started this amazing company. So tell me during that stint of retirement, like what was going through your mind?
00:10:13
Speaker 2: Let me give you the good and maybe the bad about that. I think the good was that I got to really connect with my children. When you are involved as a CEO or a top level leader in large public companies, they own you more than you own yourself. So it was difficult. You're on the road a lot, if not all the time, you're traveling internationally, and you just don't have the time to give to young children. And because I was younger, I guess than the norm for senior executives doing those kinds of things. You know what affected my family life. So the good thing about being retired is I got to go to every practice, I got to take them to school every day.
00:10:55
Speaker 3: I got to, you.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: Know, really immerse myself and my sons when it really mattered. The negative was I hated the part about not having a mission. I found out I'm a mission guy. I am a purpose guy. I've got to have deeper meaning and deeper purpose than just live your life as a retired dude.
00:11:19
Speaker 1: There's so many people out there that I feel they want what you are talking about, But finding that purpose is hard. It's confusing. They don't know where to start. What would you tell a person who wants to find that clarity.
00:11:34
Speaker 2: It's not just going to come to you. You've got to seek it. And that's what I mean when I say find deeper purpose and meaning in your life. Go seek that meaning. When you live in this country, there are opportunities to go change the world. But you have to be highly attuned to what you do well to the fact that you have to have courage to go seek and find those things and then take the leap to leave that comfort level that you currently have in your current lifestyle, because let me tell you what's not going to happen. What's not going to happen is you are not going to conveniently just fall into the way to change the world in your current life and your current trajectory. You have to understand that if you just follow the river's current, you're not going to be led to that answer.
00:12:31
Speaker 3: You've got to be willing to fight the current.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more leading by example. After a quick break, tell me about your company, human, How did you even decide to start this company?
00:12:57
Speaker 2: I at least realized I needed to have my eyes open and I need to be looking for the next lane. But I had a friend who invited me to an investor presentation where the University of Texas Hell Sciences Center was looking for a commercial partner to commercialize some technology and know how in a program that had actually been started by a gentleman who won the Nobel Prize for medicine, and he had discovered a molecule it's the most important molecule in the cardiovascular system. And I couldn't move my I was like, wait a second, you're telling me that this molecule won the Nobel pricere Mission. Why have I never heard of it? And by the way, the molecule is nitric n it riic oxide. I was like, this molecule, you have discovered a way to get the body to replenish what age takes away for the typical human being. We've got to figure out how to productize this.
00:14:00
Speaker 3: We can do that.
00:14:01
Speaker 2: We can help change the trajectory of human cardiovascular health, because when you think about it, cardiovascular health is the number one killer of human beings in the world.
00:14:12
Speaker 3: Right.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: It's dysfunction by a wide margin. It's not cancer. America and people in general around the world have cardiovascular wrong. They think it's heart only number one, and then number two is that it's for old people. Quite the contrary. You have sixty thousand miles of blood vessels in your body, give or take that service, about thirty five to thirty seven trillion cells. There's nothing in the human body, nothing that is more foundational to human health or to longevity than the functionality of those sixty thousand miles of blood vessels and the blood flow that emanates from that.
00:14:57
Speaker 1: You have this in many ways, this blank slate, right, And now you're thinking, I need to start a company to help bring this to market. How are you building this company right from the beginning?
00:15:09
Speaker 3: Well, first, not quick.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: So one of my cooperating principles as an entrepreneur is do it right, not quick. And I think when I look at the failure of businesses, right, I think there's about thirty three million businesses in the United States at any given time. The failure rate you pick the number. I've seen failure rates of forty percent. I've seen failure rates of sixty percent. In most cases, I would say, at least with early stage companies, the biggest failure driver is trying to do it quick, not right. So we set out to do it the right way, and it took us a while. I mean, we had to invest in the science, doing clinical trials and clinical data. We went to physicians first, because not only had I never heard of it, but nobody that I talked to had ever heard of nitric oxide. And not only that neither had physicians. Pretty shocking when a molecule is awarded the Nobel Prize that not even physicians have heard of it. But Western doctors are just not trained in that way or to think that way. So going to physicians for a couple of years and going to all the physician trade shows to get validation educate them so that when we started talking to consumers, they would indeed be able to have the confidence that what we were telling them was accurate because we had physicians backing that and along that. One of the benefits of doing it right, not quick, is the discovery process is a lot more robust. I actually became more and more convicted as that early stage process went along, And I call that doing the hard yards. So you can't go from first base to third base. You got to touch every base. In fact, in many ways you have to touch them more than once. But the benefit is you learn, you gain additional insights. It also feeds your conviction because in the early days of any company, I would say to entrepreneurs, look, even if you have five million dollars in sales, you haven't done anything yet.
00:17:22
Speaker 3: You have to.
00:17:23
Speaker 2: Get customers to vote again and again and again when they come back for more, and they keep coming back for more, I would proffer that's when you know you're on the right path. And doctor ferdmir he was so committed to the science. He just helped me understand that to do this in the right way, to do it the responsible way, and to do it in a way that people are gonna believe it, because you have to realize that something as profounded that people aren't just going to take at face value. You're going to have to prove it to him that it made complete and total sense for us to do the hard yards to invest in those clinical trials. I mean, we've invested in double digit clinical trials. I don't think you or anyone else could name a supplement company that's done double digit clinical trials. And I think that's one of the reasons and one of the drivers for why doctor Muright actually joined our company in twenty nineteen. Can you imagine a Nobel Prize laureate as part of a supplement company to me that speaks volumes?
00:18:31
Speaker 1: Do you feel like a lot of entrepreneurs just because of the culture, because of how things flow influencers Do you think a lot of entrepreneurs these days are just so impatient. And if so, what do you say to that.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, the last three generations are impatient, but maybe the last fifty three generations are impatient. You know, it's in the human perspective that you have to go fast. I can't tell you there wasn't a time when I went too fast, but I've just learned. I think you gain this unique perspective that doing it right over the long term is going to have a much better outcome than doing it fast. And you know that applies to probably most things in life when you think about it.
00:19:18
Speaker 1: I can hear some listeners right now thinking, well, Joel, you did it fast at Dell. You built this company x percent in X number of years. You did it fast, and look how successful it was. Why can't I take that same fast approach?
00:19:31
Speaker 2: You know, that's a great question that no one's ever asked me. I think there were a couple of things that were probably omnipresent in the Dell experience that may be really tough to replicate.
00:19:42
Speaker 3: One was just Michael Dell, right.
00:19:44
Speaker 2: He had an incalculable ability to press, press, press and somehow come up with the right answer. So he was much better at going fast than probably ninety nine point nine percent of the population. But if you we look back at the history, there were also mistakes made that probably could have been avoided if we have just gone a little slower. The other is, if you looked at the industry at the time, it was still early. Even though there were some mature players, the industry itself wasn't baked. So there was enough variability in the environment that if one could come up with one or two significant ideas on how to approach the marketplace different that truly could shift the paradigm.
00:20:32
Speaker 3: And that's what we did.
00:20:33
Speaker 2: We just shifted the entire paradigm on the competitors, and that was really I think what resulted in such a prolific growth rate.
00:20:43
Speaker 1: By the way, what was it like working for Michael Dell?
00:20:45
Speaker 2: It was tough on one dimension and easy on another. You know, working with Michael Dill and doctor Faridmered who won the Nobel Prize for medicine, one was a hammer and one was a violent. I think with Michael that we were both built and architected to be super competitive kick ass. Don't even bother to take the names. It was just rolling right, but He was very demanding. He was in perpetual pursuit of the competitive edge. So you had to be willing to think that way to make that level of investment in time and effort, or you just frankly fell away, and many did in those years. The executive turnover was pretty high. Farred, on the other hand, was in constant pursuit of changing the world, but he committed his life to the science because he realized that it was going to take decades to achieve his objective, which went way beyond capital gain.
00:22:00
Speaker 1: That's interesting to me because obviously two different leaders, perhaps two different philosophies and how they work. So what did doctor Farid Murad teach you about leadership that was perhaps completely different?
00:22:14
Speaker 2: He taught me to care about humanity, to be completely fair, you know, to girl a business from one hundred million to multi billion in five years, you're so focused on the stuff and so focused on the things, and probably less focused on people than you probably should have. Now. On one hand, you are who you hire as a company, so I don't mean that you're not going to build it by yourself, but you're probably less focused on humanity itself. And I know technology has a tendency to not have a focus on humanity. Farred taught me that the only thing that really matters was did you change the trajectory of humanity? And I think that's the difference in where I am in my life today and where I was when I was thirty is I want to change the damn trajectory of human health. I want to do something that has lasting meaning that it has a permanent duration. And that's what drives me today versus what drove me, you know, thirty years ago.
00:23:25
Speaker 1: I love that. I think I read somewhere that you said the word adaptability was very important. That's a core competency. Yes, how does one learn to be more adaptable?
00:23:37
Speaker 2: Well, you called out a great trait that I should have listed, because if you asked me, and I've led smallish companies, I've led an entrepreneurial company, I've let a Fortune five hundred company. If you asked me, if you only have joel one competence as a company, what would it be? And I would say, regardless of size, is the ability to adapt.
00:23:59
Speaker 3: And I think it.
00:24:00
Speaker 2: Probably even applies to the human being in the singular, having the capacity or the core competence to adapt. Is everything, because you're never going to get it right before you act, because you're going to encounter things you do not predict. You can't spend your entire life or your business life trying to anticipate every problem or every crisis. We don't do that here, We certainly didn't do that at Dell. Those crisises are going to happen. The question is, and the moment of truth is can you overcome them or not? And that is a direct function of your organization's ability or inability.
00:24:43
Speaker 3: To adapt and adapt quickly.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: So just drawing on that ability, being conscious of it and saying, look, this is what I need for myself. I have to do this and rather than taking the easy way out, put yourself in a position where you've got to adapt.
00:25:03
Speaker 1: I sometimes feel the barrier to someone feeling confident enough to adapt is the mindset of getting over that fear, because adapt means change, and a lot of people are afraid of change, They're afraid of the unknown. How do you overcome that barrier?
00:25:20
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you a question. I note that you talk about this topic. What brought that to your attention?
00:25:28
Speaker 1: So I work in the communications world, and for me, when I first started out, communications was not something that I was good at. I think part of it was culturally, you know, in my family, we weren't really taught that, and in the workplace, I felt stuck, and I think, similar to you, Joel, I didn't want to stay stuck, and so I started asking the questions of, well, what do I need to do to overcome that? And for me, a lot of it was just what actions do I need to take? And I think just having small actions like that, at least for me, allows me to then make progress forward. So I think in the process of that, perhaps I'm learning to adapt as well. But I think it's really overcoming that fear of staying stuck and thinking what can I do about it. That's my own personal story.
00:26:14
Speaker 2: That's very good, it's very insightful and I think can help a lot of people because I don't know a single person, not one that has been successful without overcoming fear. It's a universal blocker. I think, when you think about leadership efficacy or even life efficacy, how can you succeed without the capacity and the willingness to overcome fear. One of the things we do in our company is in our weekly staff meetings rather than me or another leader executive leader in the company run the meetings. Our employees run the staff meetings on a rotating basis, and we'll give plenty of notice. You know, it's like, OK, weeks out, Johnny, You're running the staff meeting. And always those meetings start with a short presentation on what they do and what role they play in the company. And almost without fail, people are fearful the first time of doing that. They don't want to speak in front of the group. They don't want to calendar or an agenda the meeting, they don't want to be on point. But also without fail, they always tell me after that's the best thing that I ever did. I'm so glad that you had me do that. And I didn't make an optional I think to be fair, most people would probably opt out. But after they did it, they were so proud of themselves and they learned so much. And my hope is that one of the key things they learned was just they can overcome their fear, and that overcoming and confronting your.
00:27:59
Speaker 3: Fear is worth it.
00:28:01
Speaker 1: What do you think that experience of having your team members lead a meeting, what do you think it teaches them about leadership.
00:28:08
Speaker 2: I think it makes them more aware. I don't think any of them ever thought before they ran a meeting like that, what it must be like to try to orchestrate a meeting number one. Number two is a meeting that was relevant to their peers and their teammates, and number three is to motivate and rally them to the cause. We all want to be relevant to our peer group, but I think learning how to do it and being put in the situation of really thinking about your ability to direct the orchestra is a unique position for most people to be in.
00:28:49
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about a time you misjudged your team and what they needed from you, and how did you course correct.
00:28:56
Speaker 2: I have this ability to toggle between CEO visionary and CEO operator, and sometimes I get it wrong, and sometimes my team needs one when I've applied the other, and I love it when they pointed out. But most recently, as an example, we're going through a very significant rebranding and I leaned heavily into the CEO visionary versus the CEO operator. And what I realized or came to realize, was they needed my help because I've done it before, and they haven't, so I had to make that adjustment to CEO operator.
00:29:43
Speaker 3: You know.
00:29:43
Speaker 1: Having this conversation with you, Joel, I feel like in many ways you are truly embodying what this podcast is called. It's leading by example. I feel like I can completely see that you're instilling this within your team. So as you kind of start to wrap up here, I'm just curious. You know, has your leadership just evolved again the fast paced growth to now you running human as a company? Has it changed?
00:30:06
Speaker 3: I would say it's evolved.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's been an evolution, not a revolution, and probably the vast majority of what you see is what you get. Early on, I was put in the position of having to step up and learn how to do this, how to be an effective leader. I think leadership efficacy, though, begins with walking your own talk. And you got to walk your own talk one hundred percent of the time, not ninety percent of the time. There is nothing that destroys that efficacy more than not following the path that you're telling others to follow. And I love that about leadership. I mean, I'm that guy anyway. I love getting in the dirt and rolling around, even though I've led very large organizations. I have a lot of pride in the fact that if you want to get down and race to take the garbage out, I'm a game.
00:31:04
Speaker 3: Let's go do it.
00:31:05
Speaker 2: But ultimately, people are going to follow people that they believe in, and people are going to believe more in your actions than what.
00:31:15
Speaker 1: You say, which goes into my last question, what does leading by example mean?
00:31:21
Speaker 2: I think leading by example starts with realizing that just because you're a CEO, or you're a vice president or you're a manager doesn't make you any different. In fact, it makes you less important. What you do has a level of importance to it. But the bottom line, and I say this often in our company, is I wish we could operate companies without titles. Now that's not realistic because you have to have a level of organization and you have to have order. The hierarchy of decision making has to be clear. But I wish there didn't have to be that, because at the end of the day, human beings tend to place more credence in those titles than are actually there. We're all just a bunch of people trying to change the world. Let's think about it that way and live on the most common denominator.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: I love that. I can't help but draw it back full circle to one of the stories that you shared in the beginning of when you were a kid and your parents teaching you do what's right, tell the truth. That's the way to go, and that's how you lead.
00:32:31
Speaker 3: Human You're a very insightful person.
00:32:34
Speaker 2: I never connected those two dots, and you know what, I think you're right over the target. Thank you, Joel, Thank you, Jessica.
00:32:45
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Joel. I walked away with a lot of amazing golden nuggets. In fact, there are three takeaways that really stood out to me that I want to chat with you about. The first one is when he talks about how leadership is not about speed, it's about doing things right. And it made me think about how we are all living in this world that glorifies speed. You feel the pressure to hit that deadline with your team and get to market quickly. I feel it too. In fact, I even asked him when he was at Dell part of their success was their ability to move fast? Well, if you remember, he candidly said that he believes that it was a moment in time for them. The tech industry back in the eighties was ripe for major transformation. The industry was just taking shape, so they had to move fast. But I do see the value in what he is saying now. In fact, it's a great reminder that sometimes making that decision to slow down to do things right with your team is really about playing the long game. This can be measured through time, but it can also be measured through creating the environment with your team to ask thoughtful and thorough questions together. In fact, we know better decisions are made when there are diverse perspectives in a room. I even think about the way consumers make decisions today. Right, everything gets amplified, especially a mistake. One mistake can mean a lot of angry customers and a loss of trust. The second thing that Joel said that really stood out to me was about how adaptability is leadership, and to me, it makes total sense. You know, right now, all of us are undergoing what is probably one of the biggest changes in how humans work after the Industrial Revolution. AI is fundamentally shifting the way we work, including the kind of work we do. We're all living this right now, and if we stay stuck in our ways, stuck in our own thinking and assuming we know all the right answers, that's just going to compound to make us fall backwards. For Joel, he spent years in the tech industry, He took a break, and then he went back, but into a whole different industry. He talked about exercising his muscle of reassessing, learning, and adjusting in real time. I think that's key his environment change, therefore his approach needed to change too. I also love how he trickles this lesson down in a really practical way at his company, which was he gets every single person at his company to lead their team's weekly meeting. Now, I imagine most people wouldn't want to do this, but this exercise forces people at his company to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It allows them to think quickly on their feet, put themselves in an entirely new position. In other words, they are adapting and I love that. So the question is, how can you lead by getting your team comfortable with change? Maybe it is as simple as getting them out of their comfort zone. The third point that stood out to me was this change the world, but do it in your own way. So Joel said that he's energized by the thought that he is changing the world through his work. Now. Initially, to be honest, when I heard that, I was like, Okay, that's a grand statement, which I'm not sure all of us can relate to. But then I start to think about it differently. Changing the world while grand isn't only reserved for the CEOs and founders of major companies, I actually think we can instill a very similar perspective in our own work with our team. So it makes me think about the word purpose, like why are we doing the work? If we don't remind ourselves of the why, we will quickly feel burned out. So the question is how how do we take this sentiment like I'm going to change the world and make it our own, or more importantly, how can we share this sentiment with our team. The answer it's reminding them that our work matters, their work matters, or more specifically, it's letting them know that the work that they're doing makes an impact. I think as a great leader, it's up to us to remind our team of the impact we're making, especially when it's super easy to get bogged down with task meetings, deadlines, revisions in the communications world. We say, you can actually remind people of the vision, the why through storytelling, analogies, and yes, even presenting data. You and your team are changing the world in your own way, and as a strong leader, you just need to communicate it. I think that's a great way to lead. Thanks so much to Joel for joining us. This was such a great conversation, and to all of you listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or you have feedback on what you want to hear and guess you'd like to hear from, please rate and review Leading by Example. Every review, every rating really does help us reach more people and make this show the best it can be. I'm Jessica Chen, the author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons, and the CEO of Soulcast Media, a communications training company. For more information about me and what I do, you can head over to my website Solcastmedia dot com or add me on LinkedIn and Instagram. A huge thank you to our production team at Ruby Studio, especially Matt Stillo and Sierra Spring. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Leading by Example. I'll see you then,
