an hour away and we're going to go visit them. That'll be about it.
Decompress. Yeah. Yeah, man. That's, that's, that's exciting.
And that's the adrenaline of entrepreneurship right there.
Mellow out and decompress. Yeah, I get that. Awesome, man.
So one of the, one of the things I heard you say in the,
that episode I was listening to, let me find the beginning,
it was the unlock your true value.
You were talking about being your best self, which I'm a,
I'm a big fan of that concept.
You talked about impacting as many lives as possible as well. Where does that,
where did that drive come from?
Man, that is a great question. I think that I ended up,
um,
I was an only child and very much an introvert my entire
life and knew that I wanted to do something big and was meant for more.
And as I started to progress in my career, I started thinking about, okay,
I, I've been able to learn how to do all of these things.
Can I help others do that?
And once I started to learn how to help others do that,
I realized how powerful and fulfilling it is and
decided that I wanted to try to positively impact as many lives as possible.
And so now that that's really my mission and purpose is to try to help build
and develop and positively influence as many people as possible.
Awesome. What, what are, um,
three of the most overlooked tools, um, used to help positively impact people?
Well, I think social media is one that is probably,
we'll say misused a little bit. Uh, I think that it is very,
it is very, it can be addicting and it's very dangerous if you're not intentional
about how you use social media,
because the way the algorithms are designed, they are, well,
they are built to lock you into the platform.
And they do that by tugging on our lizard brain and,
and putting things in front of us that are,
will make us emotional because we just stay focused and locked into the
platform. And so you constantly have to be cognizant of that.
And you have to be intentional about anytime something like that does pop up in
your feed to block it, unfollow it,
remove it and make sure that when you go to the platform,
that you are there to consume the right type of content and
information to make yourself better.
The other challenge is a lot of that content isn't always as engaging.
So it doesn't get pushed out in front of as many people as you would like.
And so there's this constant push and pull,
but I think social media is,
is a very powerful tool that is often overlooked.
It can be extremely beneficial, especially when,
especially whenever it comes to impact at scale, because it's free.
Well said. In fact, I got,
I got a friend who said, Jackson, I'm tired of Facebook.
The only thing I ever see on Facebook is boobs. And oh my gosh,
I felt bad for him. I was, you know, he, he hopefully admits that. Right.
And I'm like, dude, I was like,
I want you to look at my Facebook feed and see what you see.
And he sees entrepreneur ad, entrepreneur ad, entrepreneur ad,
babies, you know, family stuff.
And I'm like, it's feeding you what you consume, what you,
that's exactly right.
That's one tool. What's another, what's another, give me, give me two more.
What's two more tools to help us drive impact in the world.
I think media is, is the biggest one.
And we could do different subsets of like social media, LinkedIn, Instagram,
things like that.
Medium is the biggest one to help us impact at scale.
Media. So when you, you're talking about medium.com.
No, no, no. The different mediums media.
So you can have social media.
You have to argue about that later, but no, no, no.
The.com. You know, YouTube is another one. I mean, I think there's, there's
YouTube and podcasts and social media.
I think if we just want to answer the three, those are all extremely powerful
if used intentionally and, and you know what you're doing and how to navigate
through them, but to your point, most people are not cognizant of.
How those tools operate and work and are not aware that the platform is just
feeding you what you consume.
And are not aware that the platform is just feeding them more of whatever
keeps them locked in.
Absolutely. And where did you get this logo?
This wolf logo that's super cool behind you.
How the heck did you get that?
I started just kind of.
All right. Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up vision pros.
Welcome into another episode of vision pros live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of first-class business.
And I'm excited to have Sean Barnes on today.
Sean Barnes and I, we're going to be talking about leadership development,
culture and coaching.
He's had, he has a unique privilege of having started his own business and
transferring slowly into the entrepreneurship realm.
Now I say slowly, he didn't spend 30 years making that transition.
But so many people feel like you got to just like wham bam.
Thank you, ma'am.
Get started.
There are so many different ways you can go about the process of making that
transition.
I really enjoyed listening to his podcast as well.
So we might be talking about some of the challenges and opportunities that
exist in the podcast development world.
The way of the wolf is the podcast name.
So by the way, it's like, I know some people are like, why would you talk
about that as a podcast host?
Why would you drive people to other channels?
Well, like it's okay that Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kim will get along.
Just saying, it's okay to bring build friendships.
One of my favorite examples of that when I was paying attention to strategy was
when Darren Hardy came out with the book, the compound effect and the forward was
written by Tony Robbins.
And I was like, huh, I bet Tony didn't pay for that.
Not for Darren Hardy, but Darren Hardy was excited and Tony was excited
because they share audiences that are so similar and the collaboration that would
exist to bring them more to the center of attention.
Hey, we really do support each other.
Phenomenal opportunities.
If you live with a scarcity mindset as a visionary, if you're scared to share
your vision with others or put it out there, maybe consider the quality of
people that you have in your life and consider trying to find people who are
more abundant like the Tony Robbins and Darren Hardys of the world.
So with that said, before I bring Sean on, I always want to give a shout out to
the sponsors because these are absolutely phenomenal resources that we
support and love.
Patrick Creighton has launched this program called Laid Back Languages and
he can help people learn languages super fast.
I'm very impressed with Patrick.
I speak Spanish fluently.
A lot of my team only speaks Spanish.
It gives me a competitive edge in the market to be able to do that.
One thing y'all may not know about me is I actually learned Spanish and became
fluent in four and a half months, pretty much from scratch.
I mean, I was in Spanish in high school, but I sat next to Jesus and he helped me
on everything.
I didn't understand conjugation, all that.
What that's done for me from opening up the possibilities and the ability to
hire my own time zone in different countries, too, it's a massive blessing.
And in a world that's becoming more integrated and we have more opportunities
throughout, it's not a bad idea to work with somebody on your language learning
opportunities as well.
I'm not some super genius.
I used the dictionary, read the heck out of all those words and just worked my
little tail off for four and a half months and learned some secrets.
Why is that important?
Because Patrick follows a lot of the same principles I followed to learn that
fast.
Deteo Publishing is the other sponsor that I want to talk about.
Deteo Publishing, most of you have a book within you.
You have a desire to publish or you have content you're trying to get out there.
And they say content's king.
Content's trash.
Great content is king.
You've got to have something that's written well.
Once working with a company that wanted to make sure their blogs were all 900
words deep because that's what Google recommended.
Google doesn't care how long your content is.
It cares about how valuable your content is.
The algorithm's smarter than that.
It knows to recognize what people love, like about the content, what they're
sharing.
And Ashley Deteo is the best research and development person I've ever met.
She's so good at producing content, both in terms of really sophisticated
content, such as on like finances.
She even wrote the book on world schooling.
She wrote a book called Wallace the Westie for children about a little girl
receiving a puppy for Christmas last year.
She is one of my absolute favorite entrepreneurs to work with.
She's one of my favorite people of all time.
I got a big family.
Ashley's on the front end of my favorite people, even with the family size that I
have.
So I just can't speak highly enough of her.
And if you're an entrepreneur trying to produce content or trying to get a book
published, she's a go to source that I highly recommend.
Then there's the water project.
I'll end on this fairly quickly today to get into Sean's what Sean's up to.
But the water project, if you're in a position to be able to give back, please
consider helping these children, these families gain access to clean drinking
water.
There are millions of people who do not have that basic luxury going into the
Christmas season.
One of the best things we can do is give back.
Sometimes the only way we can give is just sharing the word and hoping that
somebody hears what we're talking about and decides to contribute to it.
Had that great experience the other day with Dax, who was on our show, Dax
Stanley, happened to share this live and he went and he contributed while we were
on the show and sent me the screenshot afterwards of having contributed.
Again, that just gets me jazzed and inspired to share more.
If there's a cause that you're aware of, maybe it's something your family's
going through and you would like to see us potentially give to that, just drop
the link in the comments.
We always monitor the comment seat, who's asking questions, who's promoting
things, et cetera.
And if your cause is something that we also believe in, we might bring it on to
Vision Pros and talk about that too.
We got 8 billion people in the world to help and those of us who are in a
position to be able to do so, we have not only responsibility but an amazing
opportunity to do so.
So without further ado, Sean Barnes, founder of WSS Solutions, the founder
of WSS Solutions, podcast host of The Way of the Wolf, welcome to Vision Pros
Live, man.
I'm so happy to have you here.
I appreciate the opportunity, man.
I'm really looking forward to diving into this conversation with you today.
It's going to be fun.
So I didn't dive into WSS Solutions and what you do there.
To be honest with you and the audience, the mechanics of the operation don't
inspire me of any operation.
It's always the virtues I see in the founders.
That's my main focus.
After having met you, I got to grill you a little bit.
I got to talk about what you're up to.
I was just very impressed with you as a human being and I was like, man, I got
to have this guy on the show.
What's WSS Solutions?
Let's hit that first.
What do you do professionally?
Yeah.
So it stands for Wolf Strategic Systems and Solutions.
So whenever you look at WSS and The Way of the Wolf, there's definitely a wolf
theme and a lot of that just comes from whenever you see wolf packs, there's
always the alpha who's the leader, taking care of the pack and always looking out
for them.
And that is just something that has just resonated with me.
And wolves are extremely beautiful creatures.
They're self-sufficient.
I mean, very, very impressive animals.
So whenever I discovered that I have this passion of leadership, it was, I'm
going to say six to seven years ago.
Before that, I had a career in information technology.
I was that individual contributor.
Which is shocking.
I'm just going to say that is just, you do not fit.
If I have to stereotype, something about the size of your cannons, I mean, arms,
that says not IT.
Did you get that comment often when they, are you the IT guy?
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
And so here's the thing.
So the majority of my career, I was that introverted IT nerd to myself,
keyboard warrior, hold up in my office and love data center architecture,
WAN design, all of that nerdy geeky stuff.
And I was able to accomplish a decent level of success in my career.
I made it to the IT director level at a publicly traded oil and gas company.
I've actually gone through a few IPOs at oil and gas companies.
And in my mid thirties, I kind of started grappling because I grew up with not a lot of money
and not really a stable father figure in the home and very quiet, shy and reserved.
But I knew I wanted to do big things.
And in hindsight, it was almost like I had this chip on my shoulder.
Like I was going to accomplish big things.
And by most standards, I was able to accomplish pretty big things.
I had a nice salary and home and cars and, and big director title.
But by my mid thirties, I just wasn't fulfilled, which is very confusing for me.
And I grappled with it for a little bit.
And ultimately I came to realize that I wasn't being challenged and I just needed
something to really push me and challenge me.
And the first four years that I was at the, this particular company, we had had four
VPs of HR come and go, just the revolving door.
And I was the director of IT at the time.
And after the fourth one departed, I actually raised my hand and said, could I lead HR?
And I reported the CEO at the time and she kind of scratched you.
It's like, what?
It doesn't make any sense.
And actually I have to commend her.
She was phenomenal in terms of how she handled that conversation.
She sat back, she listened intently.
And I said, you know, I kind of talked through my ideas and why I felt I could step up and
manage the HR team.
And at the end of it, she leaned in and she said, Sean, it's people like you that make
this company so great.
It's people like you that are going to continue to make this company so great.
And I was like, okay, all right, cool.
That being said, we appreciate everything you're doing.
We appreciate everything you're doing.
We're going to hire an HR professional that knows what they're doing.
That's so common.
Oh, just twist it.
I was like, yes, ma'am.
Understood.
That logic checks out.
So the next day she sent me an email and once again, thanking me for my time and all of
that.
And the last sentence, it said, if you'd like to discuss this further, my door is always
open.
And I thought, so you're telling me there's a chance, right?
So a few days later, knock on her door.
Hey, me again.
And I went back in with even more intentionality and I didn't hold back.
I shared what I had observed with all of the previous HR leaders and said they were
great people, but we had developed a pattern of hiring HR managers and putting them in
VP level roles.
And I said, I don't know payroll processes.
I don't know employment law.
I can learn those things, but what I do know is structure.
I know how to improve processes and I know how to bring teams together to operate as
a cohesive unit.
Right.
And so a few days go by and they offered me the role of director of HR at the time.
And I stepped in and it was like drinking from a fire hose.
Now, thankfully, we had already started building a really strong IT team and they were
pretty self-sufficient, which gave me the bandwidth that I needed to be able to step
in to an entirely new functional domain and start learning how to lead human resources.
And in that process of learning human resources, understanding employment law,
building teams and navigating very challenging conversations.
And I say challenging in that I stepped in, there were seven HR managers that reported
to me, six of them wholeheartedly believed they were going to be the next HR director.
Right.
Then I had to have conversations of why is he guy now my boss?
So not an easy conversation to have, but it helped me develop skills around crucial
conversations, phenomenal book, by the way, crucial conversations, if you've never read
it.
So I started learning and in the after the first year, the, well, initially, whenever
I went in, I said, can you give me six months to a year?
Let me create this foundation.
After that year, I will step back.
We'll bring in a seasoned HR executive that can launch off of that foundation.
Well, after the first year, everything was running so phenomenally well.
They said, you're going to keep HR.
So great experience getting out of my comfort zone.
It was not easy at all, but in that process, and then all subsequent years, I have come
to this realization of leadership development, coaching, mentoring, guiding people.
It is my purpose in life, which is why I started the podcast, which is why I started WSS
Solutions is because I want to positively impact the generational legacy of everybody
that I get to work with.
So what, and then let me go ahead and fast forward a little bit.
So IT and HR, and then three and a half years ago, they also gave me safety and transportation.
They had me start ESG and a PMO office.
So a lot of different functional domains when the time came.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
What that's called, you're given the domain and the space to be able to do it.
You earned that trust.
Not the trust should have to be earned actually, when you are working with people who are of
high caliber, but you did earn it and you went through, you paid your dues on it.
And now like they would be stupid to not give you that opportunity to then replicate the
process in other departments.
Exactly.
And so the opportunities that I had to learn how to jump into all these different functional
domains, the opportunities that I was given to learn more about the operations of the
business, the financials of the business, being part of the IPO process.
It was just such an incredible experience.
I was with them for a little bit over a decade.
And ultimately I had gotten to a point to where I'd kind of reached the pinnacle of what I
could accomplish at that organization and decided that I wanted to have an even greater impact on
more than just one company with the teams that I was fortunate to lead.
And so I stepped off and started WSS Solutions.
And we have two pretty much primary verticals.
We do consulting and then the leadership development side of it.
And the consulting is IT and HR, operational excellence.
But the reason I wanted to focus on these two verticals was because they're very complementary
of one another. Over the years, we would engage a consulting firm to help us with an ERP
implementation, HRS implementation, or integration of an acquisition.
And then also we had engaged leadership development firms.
I'm passionate about both and thought, can we do both?
And in all of my market research, there's a lot of companies that do leadership development,
obviously a lot of management consulting companies, but very few do both and actually
blend those together. And I thought if we get in the door and start focusing on an ERP implementation
or an integration, it gives us exposure to all the people in the leadership team where we can see
firsthand the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders in the organization.
And then the coaching can come in and start coaching and mentoring them with a tailored
program that works exactly for their needs, as opposed to most firms coming in and just casting
a wide net and teaching all things leadership and maybe half of it sticking. We build an approach.
You're generous.
I don't know bunches about industry stats, man. 96% of businesses fell within 10 years,
4% survive. And when you've created, you know, there's a reason why people don't want to live
in modular homes, right? A modular home, a stack of Legos that can be ripped to shreds by any
hurricane, you know, or any tornado. Yeah, we've got businesses that don't even have the
infrastructure of a well-built modular home. They're like modular. They're not even using Legos.
They're using all sorts of crap to put stuff together. There's almost no infrastructure.
And so when you have leadership separate from the building of culture or the building of
operations and infrastructure, yeah, I know exactly what's going to happen. You're not
getting my money and I'm not investing in you. No way. Exactly. And there's still a lot of
businesses that grow and I'm not going to say thrive, but make a lot of money, even though
they don't have that infrastructure in place. And I think that if they had the infrastructure in place,
where could they be? Right. So therein lies the opportunity, right? And then therein lies
the opportunity to not villainize the process. We're humans, right? We're building it perfectly.
And so the formula may be broken, you know, and I like, I heard Brendan Burchard say it. He said,
you know, it's the people are not the problem. It's the processes, right? We can separate the two,
not judge the person, but fix the process that the person's trying to use. And you can create
some great results. And I agree with that concept as well. I would like to interject that whenever
I have conversations and sit on panels and speak and stuff like that, I talk to a lot of business
leaders and they'll talk to me about, Oh, I've got these supply chain issues. I've got these
IT issues. I've got talent management issues. And yes, issues in business are the reality of
the world that we face it. Right? That's fair. Everybody knows that. I actually will distill
it down to one problem. You have a people problem. If you had the right technology team in place,
you wouldn't have IT issues. If you had the right sales staff in place, you might not have
issues selling your product. If you had the right people. I 100% agree with the angle,
the context of that, because people have their, their, uh, inherent value, um, of which they are.
And at the same time, we have to be willing to mold and we also have to get the right people in
place. But if we get the right people in place and we don't have the processes, um, in order to
guide and help them, there's not enough Sean Barnes in the world who will figure that part out. Um,
and then succeed. We end up, we end up roasting or setting people up for failure that otherwise
could have been awesome in the role. And that's, you know, I was president of a, of a particular
company and the COO pulled me aside one day after like a couple of weeks of seeing my system. And
he's like, Jackson, he's like, I don't know what I'm doing. And there I've been COO for 12 years,
you know, in a different company, but I inherited that department from somebody who had been building
it for 20 years. I don't know how to build the stuff from scratch. Like I need your help,
you know? And so nurturing him, I'm so glad he was willing to admit that to me. That gave us an
opportunity to start working on it together. Um, versus him trying to pretend that it was great.
It was a great realization that if he was given the right infrastructure, he could succeed in that.
So we switched his role to something where he could be successful. Um, he's still in the same
amount of money, um, because he was still just as valuable. Now he's more valuable to the company.
Um, but he relinquished the title because he wasn't qualified to build that from scratch. Um, right.
So I love exactly what you're saying. Speaking of that, let's dive into the first question. What's
your vision for those that you serve? Yeah. Great question. Ultimately, my, my mission and or vision
is to positively impact the generational legacy of everybody that we work with. That was a very broad
and big statement to make, but it is. And, and part of me, the data side of my brain is like,
okay, cool. How do you quantify that impact? Well, I'm still wrapping my head around that.
I don't want to put a static number on it. Like, okay, a thousand lives, a hundred thousand lives.
Right. Ultimately my, whenever I think about what we're doing with WSS and the podcast and some of
the other big ideas that I have, it's all in the name of helping others become the best versions
of themselves. And a lot of my content is very career focused and leadership focused. But when
we think leadership, a lot of times we think about business, but we can be leaders in our own
personal lives. We have to bring our best version of ourselves to all aspects of our life, which is
why sometimes on the show I'll have people that come on and talk about meditation and mindfulness.
We talk about fitness, we talk about nutrition, because all of these things play a part in who
we are so that we can bring our best self to the forefront and help others. I believe we both
believe it's correct me if I'm wrong on this, but all of those elements make a far grander impact
than we're often willing to give credit for. I love Steve, I think it was Steve Jobs quote. And
I think he said, we want to make a dent in the universe. He said that, right? And that's not
that we're going to affect a hundred lives, a thousand lives. This goes to what most people
he said that. And my thought was, I do that daily. Yeah, I love it. I actually use that. I didn't
know that it originated from Steve Jobs, but yeah, I want to put my dent in the universe. I want to
help others learn how to put their dent in the universe. And that's a lot of, one of the things
that I run into quite a bit is people are so lost nowadays, especially kids. I say kids, you know,
coming out of high school and college, they're trying to figure out, I know I was lost for a
very long time. And it wasn't until my mid to late thirties that I kind of finally figured out what
my purse, my purpose and mission is, but helping people find that path. And then once they find
that path, helping them get there faster. That is, it's, it's a skill that takes time to develop.
And I think it comes through experience and then learning how to actually impart that knowledge
on, on others. Yep. And, and for me, a lot of that is just helping people value and understand
the impact of the good that they do. You know, we hear about it. Some people are very dismissive
of the idea that, you know, just saying hello to a stranger, you know, might make that fantastic
impact on their day and make them feel welcome. We, we, we undermine that we overlook it. We don't
pause. That's why when you say making the generational impact, one, you're one of the
few people who talks about it and make space for it for you who are listening right now, pause the
noise, right? Pause our episode, think through what Sean just said, right? What does that mean
to you and your heart? I imagine it probably aligns in pretty similar fashion to what Sean
is looking at when he's meditating as well. And those things are not something that we can,
we can just speak through and totally get it's there's a deeper level connection with that.
Same thing is true for all the little daily ways we can go about creating good in people's lives.
Just cause the world says your impact is, is minimal or doesn't matter, does not actually
quantify the value of what you do as a visionary. What's your vision for yourself, Sean?
Oh, well, I mean, I think it's, it's probably aligned with what I was just sharing a moment ago.
It's, I want to be the best version of myself in order to do that. I have to push myself out of
my comfort zone, not just from a physical fitness perspective, but mentally, as much as I
despise reading, I feel so much better. And whenever I take the time to read and whenever I read it,
part of the reason I, I'm not going to say despise, that's probably not the right word.
I like that you said it, at least you're being honest. You're exploring the emotions on it.
And people are like, Oh, he said despise. That means he permanently feels like, no, that's
Yeah. But it's a slow process for me because whenever I read, I usually read books that,
um, not so much story narrative driven, but informational, educational leadership,
that, you know, things like that. But whenever I'm reading, I've got a highlighter, I've got a pen,
I've got sticky notes, I'm going through and taking time. And it takes me a very long time
to get through a book, but I'm doing everything I can to extract as much knowledge as I can
from that book. Exactly. You know, I've had guests that come on my show and they're like,
well, I read, you know, 150 bucks books this year. Cool. How many of them, how much of that
knowledge did you actually retain? And the next step is how much of that knowledge did you actually
share or impart on others? Right? So the process of reading it, it takes a little while, but
I know that in this world of instant gratification, things worthwhile, just take time.
And to kind of go back to impacting the generational legacy, you think of all of the
people in the world that have accomplished really big things, and then consider the timelines that
they think in. When people start talking in decades, in generations, that's big stuff.
And most people, this device right here that we have in our hands, in the world has been
constructed in a way of instant gratification. And so anything that takes a little bit too long,
people just lose sight of and they're like, oh, that's too much work. I don't want to do that.
And that layers into entrepreneurship and stuff like that. Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, it's sad. It's sad for them. It's an opportunity to, there's an opportunity there to
slow down, look at things, you know, from a new angle. Does it make it? I would contest to those
who read fast, they may have a different type of discovery and they may be able to grasp concepts
at higher levels that I would need to touch the surface on. And to your point though, with
reading it at the stage I'm at in business, I need to be very intentional about what it is that I'm
diving deep into. Tribal leadership, I've read 50 pages of, I read it all in one, two sittings,
took like 20 pages of notes on a 50 page portion of the book. And then I began to talk about it
with all my mentors, with some of my prospects and some of my interviews like this. And I've,
and I took a four month break from the book. I will go back as an amazing book, but the depth
of knowledge that it's giving me and the amount that I need to do to implement what I learned on
that is so profound that that book's taking far more time from me than most that I've read. But
that's, I mean, you know, same thing. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have the blessing of being
that type of diligent student and learner as a visionary. If you're on the starting point of that
path and you don't like to read books or you don't feel that go all to that, listen to the audio.
You know, I use audible a lot for what I do as well. Let's dive into a dark subject, Sean. What
is your worst leadership experience ever? This can be your own. This can be one that somebody else
had. This could be one you saw in a movie. Well, let's really get into the depths of darkness on
this. What's that worst leadership experience look like? Oh man. So this is going to be an
interesting story. I had at one of the companies that I worked for, oh man, there's a lot. Okay,
I had a boss years ago. I reported in through the finance function at that point in time. This is
probably 15 years ago and reported the vice president of finance. And I was dead set that
he despised me more than anything in this world. I've always been intrinsically driven and focused
on being a high achiever and always delivering above expectations. Nothing I ever did was good
enough. We go in and have group team meetings and I would have pages and pages of notes and I'd go
through all this stuff that our team was doing and everything that we were doing, all the project
deadlines we met, and well, why don't you have this? Well, what's wrong? Why don't you have that?
And then it would pass over to our applications manager and he would say, well, I'm going to
report this to our applications manager and he would have three bullets that he had jotted down
with a pen and paper while I was talking. And then it was just like, oh my God, Steve, you're amazing.
And I would get just ripped to shreds on a regular basis. This is the aggressive,
yelling, angry, micromanaging boss. To give you a sense, at that point in time, I had about a four
and a half million dollar budget. There was one evening, 9.30 at night, still stuck at the office
on this spreadsheet that had hundreds of rows and columns and everything. He came over one of my
cells with 36 cents off and he came over and ripped into me on a four and a half million dollar budget.
Like there were times, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, there were times when I would go home
and actually cry thinking, my God, there's nothing that I can do here. Now in looking back, after I
got out of that situation, I came to develop an appreciation for the things that I learned
from having him as a boss. I learned how to put budgets together. I learned how to understand data.
I learned a lot about Excel, data manipulation, cleanup, structure, things like that. And I also
learned how to never treat anyone on my team. So while as challenging as that situation was,
there's always a silver lining. It doesn't matter how difficult the situations are with your boss.
It doesn't matter how much you despise them. There is a silver lining. We have to find it.
Sometimes that's tough. Now, interesting point, six years ago, I happened to run into him. I did a
little bit of freelance consulting on the side and he was a consultant for the same company.
And after having a conversation with the president of that consulting company, he said, yeah, I was
actually having a conversation with him. And he shared with me how much you always impressed him.
How crazy is that? My perspective was this man despised me with every fiber of his being
and would send me home in tears. And years later, he's sharing with the president of a consulting
firm how much I impressed him. So it's crazy how our perspective and how we can get in our own minds
and how important it is for us to always seek that silver lining and understand that our perception
is not absolute reality. And we have to be aware of that.
Mic drop, man. If your mic can fall, I'd love to see it happen. We'll keep going though,
because that's just too beautiful, too well said. I hope those of you who've,
I hope those of you who are in a current relationship that's toxic or that is struggling
as you find your way out or creating separation for either safety or health, that you have the
capacity later to breathe and think through, okay, I'm drawing a healthy boundary here. I'm not going
to be like this to others. I'm not going to allow people to be like that to me in a way that
affects, that tears me down. And at the same time, I'm going to look at what did I learn from this
experience? What are the good things I got out of this? I've seen it in my own life. Appreciate you
for sharing that. Brought some things to the surface that I can meditate on later. What's the
best leadership experience? What does that look like? What's your favorite experience, the one
that just feels like Mighty Ducks or feels like remember the Titans, et cetera?
Man, these are good questions. Surprisingly, I haven't really thought a whole lot about these.
I'm flashing back to a mentor and now friend of mine. He at the time was our director of IT.
I was responsible for global infrastructure and had a team of about 20 engineers. We had a
SAN outage at one of our data centers. Myself and my lead engineer, we were in the data center.
We were doing a routine firmware upgrade that went horribly, horribly wrong. Ended up taking
down our SAN. For those of you that don't know, it's a certain type of server that stores a lot
of data. When that server went down, the entire corporation globally, I think 3,600 employees,
could not do anything. I know this is what is my best leadership experience. I know that sounds
really bad to start off with. Myself and my lead engineer, Austin, we were in the data center
working with a lot of data. We were working with a lot of data. We were working with a lot of data.
We were in the data center working with Dell Ecologic Engineers for 36 hours straight.
Didn't go home, didn't sleep, had food brought in. It was horrendous. Some weird things start to
happen once you're awake for 42 to 45 hours straight. We could get into sidebar conversations.
Now, very challenging. Ultimately, we got everything back online. That outage, rough estimates,
cost the corporation to $2.5 million. Very, very stressful time for me. Now, during that entire time,
my only engagement with the business was to our director. His name is Stacy, was with him.
Now, you can imagine how many executives in a publicly traded oil and gas company were freaking
out that nobody could do anything. Why it was the best leadership experience was because I felt
zero pressure from the people in the business. He shielded me and Austin from all of that pressure.
I was already stressed out enough thinking, I don't have a job. I'm going to get the server
online, but I will not have a job after this is all said and done. After it was all said and done,
Austin and I both went home. We got some rest, got some sleep. We came back in, sat down sweating
bullets. Stacy said, talk me through it. We talked him through it. He said, how would we prevent this
from happening again in the future? I said, well, we probably should have done this. He said, think
bigger. I said, okay, we need to do this and this. He said, if you had to architect an environment
where this would never be an issue again, what would it look like? I said, it would look like
a lot of money, Stacy. He said, what would it look like? Draw it for me. We drew it up on the board.
We built this environment and I'm thinking, this is ridiculous because everything was redundant,
redundancies upon redundancies, layer upon layer. I'm thinking just the dollar signs just adding up.
He finally said, stop worrying about the money. Show me what it looks like. We did. We spent
probably six hours in the conference room drawing it out. After it was said and done, he took a
picture of it and he said, okay, y'all go home. We went home, came back. The next day, we had
a $4 million AFE queued up and said, go make it happen. I was given nine months to build
an entirely new data center environment with my team. He shielded us from all of that pressure.
He used it as an opportunity to get exactly what we needed to build something phenomenal. Now,
this was an example of what real leadership looks like. People are going to make mistakes.
Servers are going to go down. That is expected. Real leadership involves protecting your team
and setting them up for future success and ensuring they have all the tools necessary
to achieve the things that they're capable of achieving. In that moment, I didn't think I was
capable of achieving anything. I thought my career was over, but he saw something in me and he
trusted me and he took a chance on me. I will never forget that.
There are so many underlying lessons, again, to meditate on the depth of the story that you just
shared. I'll do some quick open meditation on it. Number one, one of the things that I catch in just
the instant realizations is that was a $2 million to $2.5 million loss. The solution that's come up
with is $4 million and nine months. How much did you lose? I think it was $2.5 million.
$4 million and nine months. However, if you look at the flip side of this, what if you and
Austin had cracked under the pressure of the experience to begin with? If that had happened,
it would not have been a $2 million loss or a 2.5. It could have been, who knows, north of three,
four, five, 10 million. By putting that redundancy in place, he's not only making sure that the
systems are improving and they're being protected from, oh yeah, we'll just have Austin and Sean
come in and fix it next time. They might not be willing to the next time either. There's all sorts
of, again, there's so many different disciplines, lessons I understand. What came to my mind as
you're telling this story too is there's 0.3 seconds left in the clock in a basketball game
and your team's down by one. You got fouled and you're going to the free throw line. In the world
of business, what I see happen time and time again from leaders and again, not championship
level behaviors is the coach from the sideline going, hey, you know if you miss that, we're going
to lose, right? Hey, you know this is all coming down to you. Everybody in the stands is counting
on you and if you don't do this, we're not going to make the history books for the right reason.
It's never that loud, right? It's not from the sidelines. It's an entrepreneur who's in your ear
or that director who's saying, or it's that assistant coach, right? The assistant director
is supposed to be part of the team and it's like, hey, if he misses that, we're screwed.
Does he really have the capability to make that? The other team's player does a better job of
making these than he does. That is so common in the business world. What Stacey did to give you
that space to shield and protect you while you are basically playing heart surgeon for the operation
and in it. It's phenomenal. That's really cool. All right. Let's move into one other massive
question. We're a little bit behind today. I want to make sure to respect your time, Sean.
How are you doing on time? Do you have a few minutes? I'm good. Yeah, I'm good.
Okay. Definitely with the busyness of holidays and all that too, I don't want to overstep my
balance on this, but I'm loving this. We're going to go deep. If this was the last opportunity you
had to share a powerful lesson with people, right? In this case, visionaries, what powerful lesson
would you share with visionaries that they can learn from your experience? Lead with kindness
and candor. That can be extremely challenging whenever the pressures of business, the pressures
of the world come crashing down on us. Our role as leaders, once again, is to shield our team
from that pressure. We are responsible for stopping pressure at our level to ensure that our teams
can do the things that they need to do and the things that they are capable of doing. You
applying pressure on them is not going to help them solve the problem any faster. Now, I will
add a caveat to that. When it comes to developing people on your team as a leader, there are times
when we need to bleed off some of that pressure and let them feel and experience that pressure,
but making sure that it's not too much that they crack under all of that pressure. That is an art
as a leader to know the people on your team, what they're capable of, what they're not capable of,
and pushing them to constantly be better. As people start to reach and approach their limits,
they're going to start to break down and crack in certain different ways. When you see that happening,
you have to relieve the pressure, let them finish up whatever it is they're working on.
After the fact, you regroup with them, have a conversation, and say, Jason, I noticed whenever
this was happening, this is how you responded. How can we stop that from happening again in the
future? Are there skills that we can build and develop to help ensure that that doesn't happen
in the future? Have you ever read the book, Multipliers, by Liz Wiseman?
I haven't, but it's going on the list along with virtual conversations.
It's a phenomenal, phenomenal book. I know this is going to be a little bit of a long-winded
response, so if you need to cut me off, please feel free to do so. The book, they started doing
a study because they wanted to figure out what determines a great leader versus a bad leader,
or a poor leader, undeveloped leader, whatever term you want to use. They started interviewing
people. Their metric was, what percentage output did this leader get from you versus this leader?
People are like, oh, yeah, I was phoned in, I was only half in, all that. Then other people would
say, well, this leader got 110, 120% out of me. At first, they just threw that out as erroneous
data because 100% is as much as you can do. Now, when they started digging into it,
what they came to realize is these leaders were stretching people beyond their limits, beyond
that 100%. When you stretch, it's like developing any muscle. You push it, you build it, and it
becomes better. What was Sean's 100% then became, and I stretched up to 110% of my capacity,
that 110%, once I got familiar with it and comfortable with it, became my new 100%.
When you think about leaders, we need to think of ourselves as force multipliers. We are here to
extract the most out of people, to build and develop them in a way so that they can perform at
their absolute best. That is our role as leaders in business, as leaders in life. We need to encourage
and motivate and inspire people to become the absolute best versions of themselves and show
them and guide them how to get there. I love that. I love that you and I come,
I don't want to say at two different angles because the circumstances are going to adjust
the temperament with which we come in and do things. My natural tendency is to nurture and heal,
though. We have a market that in large parts, the digital world is moving so far towards stretching
towards moving people outside of their comfort zone that it's become a forced situation.
I wear this rubber band. I don't wear it for looks, by the way. It's just a rubber band.
It's fashionable. It is to get to the golf course. I use it more often than not in this particular
analogy and statement. Vision pros who are listening, if I stretch this rubber band on my
wrist and I'm certainly exercising, putting it at an uncomfortable strain for itself,
what happens if I stretch this rubber band too far, though?
Break. That's right. Some people say it'll snap,
it'll hurt. We've got other limiting beliefs to work on if the rubber band snapping you
traumatizes you. Okay, let's go on to what you said, though. It will break if we push people
too far to their comfort zone or if the entrepreneur decides to be manipulated into that.
Again, there's so many people who sell with this. Your best results are outside of your comfort zone
and that's why you should be working with us. We haven't provided any proof as to why you should
work with us, but you should feel that internal pressure and allow me to manipulate you into that.
If we break entrepreneurs and we break people in the process of stretching them,
much like pulling a muscle or worse, dislocating something or worse, breaking our bodies,
experiencing death, no, it wasn't a good idea to stretch that far. It comes back to what you
talked about earlier of balance. That's what I appreciate is I tend to overnurture helicopter
a little bit and say, hey, I see you trying to reach your toes. Let me do that for you.
That's not helpful either. We want to help people. I love that your focus, you said again on the
podcast, you work on becoming your best self. If I work on becoming my best self, we inspire others
to become their best self and we help each other remain accountable to those processes, then
leadership development is taking place. A culture is being cultivated where everybody is now
performing at their best and the coaching process becomes something that is healthy
and beneficial to all while being appreciated by all. I love what you stand for, Sean. This
has been an awesome interview. Appreciate that. Thank you. Absolutely, man. Vision pros who are
out there. If you have a vision you'd like to share. Even if you're in the developing stages
and you don't have these million dollar experiences, budget experiences that Sean's
talking about, you're on a project. It could be passionate. It could be about parenting.
We just had CJ Scarlett on it. It could be about saving the forests. It could be about
entrepreneurship and leadership again. We have such a lack of true principally driven leadership
in the world that it's so important for us to gather more leaders onto this stage and hear
different paradigms and perspectives. That's why we do what we do. We'd love to have you on the show.
If you have questions for Sean, of course you can reach out to him directly. We'll have the links in
the show notes to get access to the resources he's mentioned, the resources he puts out into the world.
I'd highly recommend subscribing to his show. I will absolutely be subscribing to The Way of the
Wolf after we get off this conversation. In addition to that, we'll have the books mentioned on there
too, Crucial Conversations, Multipliers. Both sound like excellent reading materials, tribal leadership.
We really appreciate always being able to give more. If you have advice for us on how to improve
both our shows as well, we can tell Sean's the type of leader who's looking forward to that as well.
So without further ado, everybody have a fantastic rest of your day and thank you so much for joining
us on Vision Pros Live. Sean, we'll see you soon. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy
that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more
engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving
us your time and attention. Have an excellent...