tech medical device, med tech.
How many have I worked with?
How many do I work with?
How many did I work for?
What was the question?
Any of the three.
Oh, so I've had, since we started about 10 med tech clients that we're on retainer
with and that's just in the last year.
And then I've worked for several.
It was my entire career from 23 to current day.
And my most recent was with intuitive surgical, which is the founder of robotic
surgery and the pioneer of robotic surgery.
And I was there for 12 years.
That's amazing.
And these, uh, these med tech companies, what type of, what type of technologies or
portions of the medical industry do these businesses cover?
And you can feel free to give one or two examples.
I'm just, I'm fascinated by it.
So med tech is just another way of saying like med device.
So if you're a medical manufacturer in any segment of the patient's body or a
service that you provide, then you're considered a med device company or a med
tech company, most of them are technology based companies.
So that's where med tech came from.
It's like FinTech, biotech, you know, all the different texts.
So medical is med tech and it's a medical manufacturer.
Can be a surgical man, manufacturer was out of your 10.
Like what are two examples?
Yeah.
What do they do?
What are their various things?
Is it, is it like a thing to fix an ear?
You don't work with a heart surgeon.
There's a ton.
So, and actually we do have one FinTech customer because it was a personal
friend of mine, so we're kind of in the financial services space, just as a
dotted line, but we do AI, we do AI, we do AI, we do AI, we do AI, we do AI.
But we do AI for blood tests for, um, highly predictive blood tests that can
tell the patient whether they're going to have a stroke or heart attack in the
next 12 months, it's like a 90% certainty.
So that's a really cool, it was one of my first clients after I left corporate.
And another does synthetic tissue models for training so that surgeons no
longer need to train on pigs or cadavers.
And actually the person that created their technology, um, did all of the
costumes for Lord of the Rings.
So he's got this hydrogel technology that's really cool and lifelike.
And so they've been able to recreate all the organs and surgeons and residents
are able to train and get what they need specifically on robotic surgery without
having to kill an animal or, um, use dead bodies for lack of better words.
So that one's really cool.
We've got a couple of new clients this quarter that we're launching ones in
brain health, and actually it's for patients that have drug resistance
epilepsy.
So they've lived their whole life, seizures on demand and they haven't been
able to cure it.
It's a very debilitating disease when you're not able to control with medication.
So they have a technology that they're going to be able to isolate where the
seizures are coming from in the brain and prevent them from happening.
That is going to be really cool.
And I could go on and on and on.
There's other companies that are converting existing low capital assets in
the hospital to a Cadillac, if you will, of imaging, um, by their software that
they're able to convert it.
It's already in the hospital, but they're able to convert it to something that's
over a million dollars in value.
So that one's launching soon.
Lots of cool stuff.
That's amazing.
It spans across all faculties, all solutions.
I'm glad I asked.
So as we get ready to dive into your vision before we do so, creating power
for brands, uh, the showcase there, you know, their leadership.
Um, what would be your first tip?
Um, hold on.
I'm just writing that title down.
So I did have, that was my one question before we go live.
So is this, and I'm happy to know we are.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we're live.
So sorry about that.
Yeah, we, we're live.
And I was like, I want to hear about these clients.
So that way they can, you know, we can get a base for the audience of what
type of med tech clients you're working with.
And now that we're diving, like what we'll do is we're actually move
into the intro in just a minute.
But before we skip to the intro, I want to get one small tip on branding
and leadership and why, why branding and showcasing leadership matters for
any brand that's out there.
I feel like branding and leadership are slightly different topics.
And so that's what I was going to ask.
Do you want me to go down?
My entire background is in leadership, but it also kind of went into branding,
both personal and professional branding.
And so for me, leadership is something that's baseline for me.
It's been a majority of my career.
It's a huge passion of mine.
I consider it an art.
And so I think it's important to have a brand that's
really competitive and has a strong brand.
And so I think it's important for everyone to have strong leaders in their
companies, no matter what their brand is and even have really strong brands as
well.
But on the branding side, why that's important.
If you are competing in a very competitive marketplace, you need to stand out.
And if you're a me too product with a lackluster, unique value proposition,
no one's going to buy from you.
And to me is more of a story.
And I think a lot of our clients, their CEOs, their engineers, they're more
focused on top line initiatives, investments, fundraising, making sure
that the product works, getting the clinical research put together.
And they're not so concerned about the foundation work, which I call
foundation for a reason.
If you don't have a foundation to build on, and that should be your mission,
your vision, unique value proposition in your brand.
I loop that all in the brand conversation.
You don't know what you stand for and who you stand for with.
And you also don't know what you're trying to accomplish.
A lot of my clients, they say, well, I don't know what my unique value
proposition is, or I don't know what my mission or vision is.
I always ask them, think five years from now, five years after your commercial,
what did you remove from this earth or what did you add to this earth?
Meaning what are you trying to eradicate that's already out there?
That's a problem that you're hoping to eradicate or significantly reduce.
Or what are you trying to add to that's not currently there?
And that kind of helps them understand where they want to take it.
That was a very long answer.
I appreciate you acknowledging it, but your passion comes out.
Leadership and branding, it is kind of, they're two parts of me and I'm very
passionate about both, but they're somewhat mutually exclusive.
We agree to disagree in a good way though.
That's the beauty of leadership.
So we agree almost 100% with everything you said until that, which is for us,
vision comes first.
Culture is incredibly important.
Culture attracts the right leadership.
And now I have something holistic to market because people want to belong
with great leaders.
And so that's why I include the two.
But at the same time, apples and oranges, they're both round, but they're both
different, right?
And so there's a harmony that exists in the reality.
And you have so much experience in branding and in leadership.
I was like, let's try to find a way to at least pull the top together.
I completely agree with you.
Unique value proposition, mission vision, those are all things.
They have to be there.
If I start with a client, which we have many times that either doesn't
understand the voice of their customer, the ones are going to be there.
The ones are going to be speaking to and telling the story to they don't
understand their pain and what the necessary transformation is that they
need in order to buy your product.
Then that's a huge problem.
And if you skip ahead to the fun stuff like marketing and social media, but
you have no substance in what you're saying and you're really not hitting a
mark that resonates with anyone that would buy from you, then that is also a
problem.
And that happens.
It's a painful conversation that I have to have often with CEOs that are
tribes because they want to start at the end point.
They want the brochures.
They want the pitch decks.
They want the social media presence.
They want to flash you website, but they haven't really done the hard work on
what do we stand for?
What are our cultural tenants?
Who do we believe in?
What do we believe?
What do we believe in that?
It's all meaningful.
It's what I call the foundation work.
And actually, we have something called a brand blueprint that we provide
every client of ours.
And the first three slides are mission, vision, and UVP.
And if they don't have those as the setup for the brand, then the brand is
baseless.
It is.
And then you create the material without that as I did as a rookie, right?
I think everyone's been there.
I did it with Tribe.
I hate my website right now.
And it was only a year old, but it's nothing close to what we talk about or
what we do on a daily basis.
And so we're actually in the midst of completely overhauling it.
So we definitely need to be by example, step by step, right?
We grow as a process.
And one of the things I loved about what you said about these doctors or
these visionaries, these leaders is that for a doctor, a lot of times
their focus is on the here and now patient, right?
They're there to care about that individual and make sure they're good.
So they're not necessarily thinking about how do I go find 10,000 other
patients?
How do I attract those to come to me?
And so it does get lost in the shuffle.
It's not designed to be their skill set.
So thank you for sharing that.
We're going to cut to the intro real quick.
We'll bring it back on and we'll keep going from there.
This was awesome so far.
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 there.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have Stephanie Plia here with me today.
She's a branding expert with over 20 years of experience in leadership and
she's going to be here to help us specifically with when we get to it.
We're going to talk a little bit about how this applies to med tech, her core
audience that she services.
One of the things I'm most excited to hear about though is, of course, her vision.
What have been some of her worst and best leadership experiences?
What powerful lessons has she learned along the way that will help other visionaries?
We'll dive into that very, very soon as we bring her on stage.
In terms of sponsorships, we've got the wellness shop up here.
The wellness shop is owned by and founded by Sean and Juliana Lechuga.
They believe in integrative nutrition and ultimately, I'm going to skip ahead on this.
This is a holistic approach to nutrition.
They've got this really cool wheel about spirituality and joy and all these elements of life
that so many other doctors and naturopaths and health people I know don't dive into enough.
Their brand is under construction as we speak.
They're in the process of rebranding.
I'm sure Stephanie is looking at the screen right now and going, oh, there's so much room
to improve this.
Of course, there is.
But as Stephanie mentioned with her own brand, as you guys have seen with the unfolding of
our show, progress is far better than perfect.
Sean and Juliana are phenomenal people.
I love and honor their marriage.
They're fun to talk to.
I love how much they care about the audience they serve.
That comes through the moment that you talk to them.
That's why we honor and put them on as sponsors of our show.
Those of you who are on our show or who decide to come on and work with us on the show, you
want to share your visions, you would meet Sean in the process.
You have a 30% chance of meeting him because he works with me on the development of the
show as well now.
Then there's the law spot.
The law spot is with Melissa Gray.
Melissa Gray launched this because she sees that she's an attorney and she knows that
there are so many brands out there that do not have legal counsel and representation.
She came on the show too and I was like, wow, I love her nurturing nature and how much
patience she has for explaining really difficult topics to entrepreneurs.
There's no pressure since when I was talking to her, I was like, wow, this is the type
of attorney that I would want to not only represent my brand, but represent my clients
and others.
She's on this mission to provide that type of a solution for people that goes beyond
the traditional SaaS programs that exist out there for this, the Law Depots, the hands
off approaches, but also bridges the gap where I see a lot of entrepreneurs, they end up
going to an attorney when they're desperate for help, they end up on a $600 an hour retainer
or something similar and they don't necessarily even receive the type of counsel or the type
of help that they should when they're facing a trademark lawsuit or a demand letter or
something else.
So again, very impressed with Melissa and what she's up to.
You can find her at the lawspot.com.
Then there's the water project.
The water project near and dear to my heart.
I am so grateful that all of us listening in, most of us listening in have access to
clean drinking water.
I can go right over to my kitchen and get it within 10 seconds and not even think about
it.
So I try to remind myself every time I do one of these shows that there's millions of
people in the world who do not have access to that.
And we have the opportunity to help out.
The water projects created kind of a crowdfunding style platform to be able to fund specific
projects.
And then you get an update about what's going on with that project, what they're building,
how you were able to help.
And so if you're able to give a dollar, give 10,000, awesome.
If you're not in a position to give financially, my request would be that you share that with
others. We got 8 billion people to help in this world.
That's one way to do so.
And if you know of a cause that you would love to see a support and absolutely drop
that cause in the comments and we'll take a look and see what we can do to spread the
word or possibly contribute ourselves as well.
Without further ado, Stephanie Playa, thank you for being on Vision Pros Life.
I am so impressed that you know how to say my last name.
Well, you know, I got a little bit of a good memory sometimes.
And I don't think I'll ever forget you.
Yeah, I can blame my husband on that one.
It's not my actual last name, but good job.
Yes.
I wasn't fun.
Please.
And we'll call me Calamay for today.
Just kidding.
All right.
Anyway, going into your vision.
So what is your vision for those that you serve, Stephanie?
Yeah.
So can I answer that in two parts?
Yes, you can.
Okay.
So if I'm just looking at people that work with me as employees, I think my vision is
hopefully the same as I treat my clients, but it's always been a principle of servant
leadership.
I've always approached my leadership roles with anyone on my team is I'm there to serve
them.
They're not there to serve me.
And so I've always identified strengths that maybe they don't even know.
I've said to many of my reps in the past or even my current employees, God put a light
on you and it's not yours to put out.
And so if they're not bringing that out, I see that as my job is to help them identify
what that is, create something that's masterful or that they're master level at, find their
niche and get them to stand out.
And so I think that's where this whole branding passion of mine comes from is I've been
branding my reps for years because that's how you get promoted.
And that's how you stand out from everyone else that looks just like you and maybe doing
the same thing.
But on the other side, when it comes to business, the vision I have is to do the right thing
for every client we have and to do something extra special.
So Tribe for us, when we founded it and built it out, some of our tenants is to be concierge
focus and client based.
And we meet everyone where they are, whether they have a unique value proposition or a
mission and vision already scripted out or they're starting from scratch.
And either way, we're going to help them get to the promised land.
We want them to be the best in class.
And I heard this from someone else's podcast and I've just continued to steal it.
But it's better to be best known than to be best.
And if you can be both great, but right out of the gate, as you're starting a business,
you strive for being best known.
And so for our clients, that's the number one motivation behind the brand is we want
to make sure it's not a cookie cutter brand.
It's going to reach a very large audience and it's going to speak to them and convert
into sales.
Nice.
Who is the podcast you heard the quote from?
I think it was Grant Cardone, to be honest.
Oh, there you go.
Okay.
So we give Grant credits, no longer stolen.
I'm giving him credit. It was like one of the 10 X things.
It was one of the 10 X things.
That's cool.
I think I modified it slightly, but I totally aligned with that because good marketing gets
you best known and not all the best people are best known.
And that's sad.
That's a disservice to the community you're serving.
If you're the best in your space and no one knows about you, shame on you.
That's rough, but I feel for it.
I like to say that the best pill rarely wins and that's the travesty, the market.
Marketing typically wins.
And so if we had the cure for cancer, we probably wouldn't hear about it the first time around
when it comes out because it probably won't get marketed the right way.
And there is a travesty there.
And hopefully we grow into honoring that.
Also, I love that you mentioned that it comes from Grant Cardone because people know that
I tend to...
How do I say this?
I love Grant Cardone and I do not love his methods.
I do not love his methods.
No, no.
A lot of his frameworks are very manipulative, but as a human being and as a person, I love him.
And he's learning just like me.
I got things to learn and work on myself.
So I'm glad you honored us with that quote because I do fill the quote.
You mentioned branding your reps.
Do you see your team members as leaders?
Absolutely.
100% of anyone I hire, I believed in from the interview.
I wouldn't hire anyone that I didn't think had chops to be the next leader.
And I think a strong leader, someone that feels confident in what they bring to the
table is not in it for power.
They're in it to enable others.
And so that's always been my principle in leadership.
I had great mentors that had that same approach with me when I was very young
and they took a chance on me and really molded me into who I am today.
And so I pay that forward.
I hire great people.
I try to, and I have a pretty good track record about it.
I focus on what's raw to them.
I look at the raw talent.
I look if there's a light within, meaning are they innerly lit?
Do they have a pilot light or do I have to go and charge it every single day when they're in the field?
I'm looking for people that had success in the past because that's honestly going to repeat itself in the future.
So, yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
I mean, to me, it's funny.
It pulls it full circle for that creating power for your brand to showcase your leadership.
You just said you brand your reps.
Absolutely.
And that does showcase the leadership of your brand.
And so moving into your personal vision, what's your vision for yourself over the next 5, 10, 20 years, 400 years?
How do you want to look at that?
Take over the world.
No, I'm just kidding.
All right, Pinky.
No, I want to be the best person I can be.
And I want to be my best self.
Whatever God intended me to be and do is what I want for myself.
And that's why I decided to leave corporate.
And after a very long and successful career in corporate, no regrets.
That was my journey.
But I felt like I had so much more to do.
And so much more to give.
And so for me, my personal vision is to see out what my purpose is here.
And to also inspire others to do the same.
And that sounds really grandiose.
But anyone who knows me or anyone who's listening knows that that's how I live my life.
I just really do.
And so I've always had this saying on my former sales teams that you've just joined a high performance team.
And if you're looking to kick your feet up on your desk and just mail it in, this is not the team for you.
It's not going to work out between you and I.
And it's not going to work for the team because the team only wants people that are better than them to join the team.
And so that's just been a principle of mine.
And I, you know, I'm super competitive.
So I want to win, obviously, but with purpose.
I want to do something meaningful, make a lasting impression through my work.
And my goal is to hit my revenue goal for this year, just to get really personal.
If I hit my revenue goal, I'm going to contribute a very large sum to the human trafficking project that Tim Tebow leads.
And so I feel like I work hard, one, to reward my family, which I have a big family, but also to allow myself the ability to give back.
So that's my personal vision.
I love that.
You are on a show called Vision Pros.
So we are all about grandiose visions.
That is our standard, mine being to bridge the economic gap between North America and South America.
And so we've we're all about that here.
Feel free to bring that fully.
I'm also a big supporter of Operation Underground Railroad Hour, which is also a leader in the space of preventing and stopping human trafficking.
So I love that.
Appreciate you for that.
What's your what's your worst leadership experience ever look like?
I laugh at this question because it said, don't say you don't have one.
It's not that I don't have one, and I'm happy to give you some because you're asking, but I don't live my life like that.
That's the part that was funny to me about this question.
I don't I don't really fixate on things that didn't work, and I don't consider things that didn't work.
Worst.
I look at them all as lessons, whether they worked for me or not.
They were all lessons.
They were all part of the journey, and they usually all led to something that was much more fruitful.
So that's just kind of reframing it. It's not like the worst experience.
I don't use that terminology, but to answer your question, two things that are a bummer for me from a leadership perspective.
One, if my culture and the way that I run teams, which I have had multiple teams at multiple companies, so I have a very distinct craft and culture that I try to create, which is a very tight knit group.
We spend a lot of time together.
We have a ton of fun that we work together.
We have a ton of fun that we work our butts off.
And if that culture is not aligned with the parent company that I'm working for at that time, that can be a real bummer.
And I have had an experience twice where I jumped from one leadership team to another company.
And when I got there, I was hoping I could just take my same playbook and apply it.
And it didn't fit in their leadership culture.
They weren't as close to their people as I was, and they weren't as indulgent to their people.
So that is one bad experience because you have to find a way to then create a microculture and not let the parent culture overwhelm your team.
So you have to really insulate them if you're wanting to keep the culture alive.
And then the other worst experience would be if someone is forced on me, if I'm forced to hire someone.
I've had that experience as well.
I take hiring very seriously.
I believe in hiring tough and managing easy.
So if you take your time in the hiring process, you really vet out who that person is and how they're going to show up, then you can manage them really easily.
But if you are quick to make decisions and just bring someone on as a head, it's going to be a miserable existence for you as a leader.
And these days, it's really hard to get someone out once you've brought them on.
So those are kind of the two areas that give me a little bit of heartburn with respect to leadership.
But again, those are learning opportunities.
So I don't think of them as worse.
Yeah.
Well said.
On the examples, thank you for that.
I'm going to share my screen a little bit for everybody.
And this is just, again, for paradigm's sake, you said that we said don't share.
And for everybody who's watching, you get the chance to see behind the scenes of how we prepare for these opportunities.
And one of my principles is I try really hard never to tell anybody what to do.
I invite people to take action.
So for this context, if you say that I don't have a bad experience, the audience may assume that you either have no experience or that you're lying.
Now, you didn't do that at all.
You came in and shared a great example and story of how there's a situation that could be optimized.
Right.
And so we're certainly, in fact, another episode, the chief of staff of the United States Department of Defense, Kevin Wayne Johnson came on.
And he had one of my favorite answers for worst leadership experiences and how that worked out and how he views most of his opportunities.
Very similar to yours in terms of I look for the growth opportunities and the experience while making space for different people's word choices.
So what's your best leadership experience?
Or if you want to call it something else, it's totally fine, too.
But for the sake of I'm not going to read your vernacular, the entire podcast.
No, those are easy.
There's so many I could count on, but the two that are like pivotal in my career and just highlights of my leadership is getting getting my team promoted.
That's the number one lot in life for a leader or at least a non self-serving leader.
Right.
So I've had a large amount of people I've hired and groomed get promoted.
In fact, one of my former employees is now backfilling my position when I left my last position.
And that brings me so much joy getting to see these people where maybe they came in with one or two years of experience.
We got an opportunity to work together and help them on their blind spots.
And they take the feedback and run with it.
And they're all now most of my former team from my job that I just left a year ago are now managers on the same management team I left, which I love.
That's a great, great testament to just what I tried to do in the work.
It's like the fruit from the labor.
That's one.
And then number two that I personally am a fan of is a workshop I do with every team called Who Am I?
And it was inspired by a book I read called Authentic Leadership by Bill George.
And he was a former Medtronic CEO.
And he wrote this book and it really spoke to me that people follow authentic people.
And so if you're not yourself, if you're not the same person you are at home, at work, you know, within reason, obviously, you're not going to be silly all the time if you're silly at home.
But core to your being, like what you stand for, who you are, your moral fiber, if that's not coming through, then you're not going to succeed.
And so I've imparted that on my teams.
When we have a new team or even if we're just doing a whiteboard activity with our team, we do this Who Am I? exercise.
It has been profound how many people have found themselves through that.
And at some point, I'm going to market that.
I'm going to package it and sell it because it's been such a great way to break down barriers on teams.
But also, I think it's the opportunity for everyone to get to really know each other at a deep level.
There's a lot of tears usually.
First timers to this get really uncomfortable.
But anyone that's done it in the past with me, we do it every year.
They're like, oh, yeah, I know this now.
And now they've got it down.
But basically, they have to answer the Who Am I? question without saying what they do for a living.
So that's like the one thing you carve out.
And you'd be surprised how much people break down and not like in a sappy way, but break down barriers with their team members and really just get more understood.
And then also, I give an opportunity for their peers blindly to say, who is that person?
And then we merge the two lanes.
So they reveal who they are to their core.
And then the team members, we put it in a wordle so that it's anonymized.
But it basically is all the adjectives that people describe that person before they got to hear their Who Am I? pitch.
And the goal of this exercise is to have what people see you as is identical to how you see yourself.
And if there's really big gaps, that's some self-work that needs to happen.
And that's fine.
Identifying it as a majority of the problem, right?
Or a majority of the opportunity.
Yeah.
So that's just been such a fun thing to lead.
And I've done it for years, probably 5 to 10 years of my leadership experience.
I ran that, and I would highlight that as a peak of my leadership experience.
I love that.
It actually doesn't surprise me at all.
Because one of my favorite chapters of any book out there,
that's one of the most impactful chapters that any visionary can read,
is chapter one of You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar by David Sandler.
And in chapter one, he describes your R versus your I.
And how when we define ourselves based on our role, we have ups and downs in life.
Because we have ups and downs in all of our roles.
Yet, if we define ourselves based on our true identity, our intrinsic value,
then we can be stabilized no matter what's happening in our role.
No matter how well we did on stage or if we fell trying to climb onto it, et cetera.
There's all sorts of opportunity there.
And we double down on that as well with a passions assessment for everybody who comes into our company.
Whether it's client or team member, we explore what our true passions are
so that we can then empower each other to live by those passions.
One thing you also mentioned was, and I love that you dictated this,
most people may not catch it with a book like that,
that just because you change in your role, so to speak,
or when I hold a baby who's four days old,
compared to how I talk to my 18 year old child,
I don't have, I have a 12 year old child,
so compared to how I talk to the two, it's a different experience.
Or when I speak Spanish compared to when I speak English,
there's cultural nuances, there's cadence and tone differences.
Some people would see that as a change in who you are.
In reality, it's a respect, it's learning to respect
and bring forth different virtues in different ways at different times
based on to honor the relationship at hand.
That's what I would say.
So I'm glad you highlighted that.
If this were your last opportunity, Stephanie,
to share one powerful lesson with visionaries
that they can learn from your experience, what would that lesson be?
Again, I have so many, but I would crystallize it down to one
that would be the most return.
So if you're a leader or you're a future leader or an aspiring leader
and you don't have emotional intelligence,
get the book.
It's written by Travis Bradbury.
I'm constantly touting this book, but it had the biggest impact on me.
And I took it a step further because I had a team at the time
that was struggling with emotional intelligence, especially generationally,
that doesn't really seem to be translating in the Gen Z and beyond
because a lot of their communication styles were in text and written form.
And so they're not great on managing emotions.
Everything's so, you know, microwave society right now.
Everything's immediate impact, immediate gratification.
And sometimes it's best to take a pause from whatever is coming your way.
And emotional intelligence is the space between stimulus and response.
That's the best way to put it.
So if you have stimulus coming at you, either it's a triggering text,
a triggering email, a barking coworker, a parent, a child, whatever,
and you're not allowing that appropriate space for your brain
to have the blood in your extremities go back to logic,
then you're doing yourself a disservice.
And so I really made a switch on how I led and managed my teams
with really maintaining emotional intelligence.
And the nice thing about emotional intelligence versus intellectual intelligence,
IQ you're born with, EQ you can foster, and it's a learned behavior.
You have to learn what triggers you and then you have to give yourself that space.
Whether it's 24 hours before you respond to the email or text,
or maybe you need two weeks.
It's when you're feeling logical and you have a logical ability to respond.
And so I actually had this book be part of our team's book club.
And each week, one of the reps on our team took a chapter, read it,
and then would present it back to our team just to keep the book going.
But I know from so many of my former reps that that was really impactful for them.
And they've kind of kept that in their arsenal for the future.
But I feel like that is honestly, even in politics, it's missing.
If everyone could just dust off the book, I'm sure there are several books now
written about emotional intelligence, but the one that I read,
and actually just came out with a second one because I was just messaging back and forth with him.
I don't know the name of it. Sorry, Travis.
But basically the first one I read, emotional intelligence 2.0.
I have a ton of other books that I'd recommend, but if I had to give one, that's it.
That was the one. That's awesome.
And I appreciate the idea and the book reference too,
because it helps us dig further into it.
Myself, I don't know which comes first, but I know that I'm a healer at my core
and I'm a protector of my core.
And sometimes those two things don't coincide super well.
I will say for all you Gen Z people listening, I think it's bull crap
that the generation is the problem.
And I just got to say that strong for them.
I love you too though, Stephanie, as a leader.
What I will say though is Gen Z has certain,
and I love that Simon Sinek talked about this too recently.
They have certain access to emotional intelligence that our generations
can't comprehend and haven't tackled through yet.
And the other generations too, there's no better generation than any other,
as much as there's opportunity for all of us to learn from each other's strengths on that.
And I love to pick on one of the older generations, it's beyond yours and mine.
And that who invented the microwave?
It's beyond ours.
The person who invented the microwave, right?
And the generation who established that,
has taught the younger generation how to live by the law of the microwave
and the law of entitlement.
And so we do have an opportunity there to look at and say, okay,
what can my generation learn from said younger generation?
As I also strive to help invite them to make room for some of the wisdom
that comes from the experience of those years past.
And when we look at it from my perspective, again, this is a very important point.
When we look at it from my perspective, again, this is for the whole audience.
When we look at life with this win, win, win opportunity of,
well, there's a lot of abundance and we can all come together
and learn from each other's harmonies and there's no shame.
And what you do, there's no shame in what I do.
We're constantly changing and shifting.
And that's what namaste is all about in yoga, is my soul where I'm at,
I honor your soul where you're at.
So when you said I have so many powerful lessons,
my thought process was no, duh, you're a human being.
But it was also, wait a second, she's trying to isolate on her most powerful.
And, you know, I'm not sure what causes you to feel the need to say it,
but I just want you to know you were divine.
You have so much wisdom within you to give.
And so it's naturally going to take some time to grab that one powerful lesson.
And I hope that the audience too,
those who are gravitating toward this recognize like, wow,
there's a whole depth of opportunities beyond this that I can learn from Stephanie
based on all the many experiences that she's had in med tech, that she's had in life, et cetera.
And I see that clearly.
If we can, we've got about eight minutes left.
I'd love to shift into branding or leadership, whichever one you want to go into.
What would you prefer?
Which one's going to be most helpful for the visionaries listening in?
Well, I cover branding quite a bit and most of my social media,
because obviously I'm the founder of Tribe Agency,
which is a brand strategist and digital marketing agency.
And we're a consulting firm.
So I would probably leave that alone if I had eight minutes
and I would focus on kind of going back to what we were just talking about.
One, I also love Gen Z years because I have 20 year old twins.
You're deep in the thick of it.
Yes.
And I have a ton of nieces and nephews that are millennials.
And so going back to emotional intelligence, and I mean, I just can't impart this on people.
If your primary audience is leaders or people that want to be leaders,
I cannot impart it on you enough.
This is independent of generation.
This knowledge, whether you came out of the womb with it,
you were taught by your parents or you've never heard of it,
can be acquired by any generation, including boomers.
Because I think boomers actually lack emotional intelligence, i.e. Donald Trump.
Times.
They all have things to learn.
And I think they'd be so more powerful because the sign of a strong person
is a maintained temperament.
And when you get too high or too low and you're not just steady,
it's a sign of weakness.
And so I think so.
And I think especially in business, and I'm only coming from a business perspective.
I'm not speaking to the emotional and personal life.
I mean, people have feelings.
And I always think that.
It sounds general.
So you're speaking in generality.
So that's why I interject a little bit.
Yeah. So I tell my kids, feel your feelings.
I think we're also as a society trying to shut people's feelings down.
And that is the worst possible thing you can do
because they're going to find a way to self-pacify.
And so I think feelings are there for a reason.
Don't pacify them.
Don't self-medicate to get rid of them.
I'm a big fan.
If you have a feeling of anxiety, are you feeling an oppression?
Are you feeling sad or lonely or whatever the feeling is?
Feel the feeling.
It's there for a reason.
But with respect to emotional intelligence,
I just am such a poster child for it.
I am a strong believer it can make you more powerful,
both in your personal life and in your professional life,
if you allow that space.
And then secondly, when you identified as a healer,
I'm like 100%.
You have a very healing, calming energy.
And that comes through.
So you're clearly in the right place.
So kudos to you on that.
And then something that you had mentioned earlier,
and it was funny because it's one of my favorite quotes,
and it's probably going to be a social media post at some point.
But you had said an iteration of this,
but I'll just tell you my iteration of it is,
perfection is the poison of progress.
And it's coming from a former perfectionist.
And so when you get into becoming an entrepreneur,
you cannot be a perfectionist.
It's gone.
There's no chance of those corner.
And I will check myself because I have split hair
or I have three courses that I wrote literally January
of last year, and they just launched at the end of this year
because I was analyzing and paralyzed
on the perfection of it, and the launch needed to be perfect,
and everything needed to be spot on,
and the social media had to be there.
And that just completely will circumvent progress.
And so I really learned good is good enough
in many of the cases.
And I think it also shows a little authenticity.
If everything's so produced and so perfect and so scripted,
it lacks human touch and it doesn't feel authentic.
So that's another thing that you had said
that kind of sat with me is,
I too believe it's the, in my opinion, poison of progress.
There's so much genius in that last segment too
of what you said that if people go back, take notes,
and look at it from different angles, perspectives,
you just covered a wealth of knowledge and what you shared.
So the authenticity aspect is a big component of that.
One of the books that I also recommend on EQ,
it's the best book I've read on the subject
is Tribal Leadership.
I didn't say read.
I've read the first 50 pages of that book.
And the profound impact the book has had,
I've been marinating on those 50 pages for about six months
while reading other books and diving into other materials.
But the ability to recognize the different tribes that exist
and then the ability to transform language of levels
from one to another, helping people go from,
I'm great, but you are not,
to a feeling of we're great, but they are not.
And then to another level of life is great,
which if you're in the life is great,
you have a harder time correlating and relating to
the tribes that feel that life sucks, for instance,
or the office environments,
the show, the office that people love.
I've learned to tolerate the office.
I can't watch it.
I can't either.
It's not my style.
Other than the meme with the guy with the red stapler,
that's about the funniest part I can watch.
The rest of it, I don't have any time for.
I don't watch time.
And our opportunities as leaders,
and those listening in, is to figure out,
okay, if we wanna have an influence,
a greater impact on the sphere of influence in the world,
then there's a dialect.
There's an opportunity to learn, all right,
how do we shift these mentalities from life sucks to
life is great?
And they break down a process for doing so.
And it's built on decades of wisdom.
So again, I would absolutely 100% agree
the more opportunity we spend to learn
for the sake of serving others
and improving our own lives as well,
the more influence we will have.
And that's emotional intelligence,
that's intellectual intelligence,
spiritual intelligence, physical intelligence.
There's a whole lot of opportunities
when we improve our intelligence.
Well, very good.
This was awesome.
Those of you who are listening in,
if you wanna follow Stephanie Pliya,
you can find her on Facebook,
you can find her on Instagram.
We didn't show that one today,
but she's got a great following,
10,000 followers on Instagram.
She's got a great following on LinkedIn.
She's obviously got a huge depth of knowledge
in terms of leadership, med tech and beyond.
I can't put a constraint on the amount of study
and diligence that she's put into her career.
It comes through very clearly, Stephanie.
And so if you wanna follow it,
we'll have these links on the landing page
so that you can go and easily access those.
If you have a question for her though,
and you're busy and you just wanna get it in,
drop it in the comments.
We'll be happy to forward it to her
and make sure that she receives that.
And if you'd like to be on our show,
then definitely don't hesitate to apply.
There's a guest button and an application
that you fill out
and we would love to hear your vision.
Stephanie, thank you so much for being here today.
This was fantastic.
Absolutely.
This is the first live podcast I've done.
I've done a couple, but they were recorded.
So-
Woo, well done.
That's awesome.
Progressing every day.
Not nearly as painful as it sounds.
Well, good.
I appreciate you.
And again, my audience is gonna appreciate that
because there are many people.
I've had guests in the pre-showing,
they'll be back later and say,
Jackson, I can't do it.
I can't bring myself to put myself out there in that way.
And I get it.
I respect that.
It's not easy to do.
And there's plenty of times where my ears turn red.
Thank goodness I'm growing my ears.
Turn red, thank goodness I'm growing my hair out.
You can't see that.
That's my sign of, oh my gosh, Jackson's embarrassed
or whatever, but again, Vision Pros who are out there,
it's not about perfection, is it?
Perfection will be poisonous.
Bring your imperfect self.
Let's explore your vision.
Let's move it to the next level.
And we will see you on the next episode.
Take care, everybody.
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 gonna 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...