A Geek Leader Podcast - inspiring technical and creative leaders around the world

In this episode I interview Anthony Roldan from HubSpot about the companies culture code. I was pretty much blown away with the autonomy and freedom that HubSpot offer’s their employees.  Their growth is amazing and there is no doubt that they are a leader in the marketing software industry.  I’ve followed their blog for a while and used lots of their free tips and tools for marketers...

You can’t grow if you don’t stretch If you’re looking for advice on yoga, flexibility or getting shape, then you’re in the wrong place. This is going to be a short episode about getting better. Ever had a rubber band, and stretched?  If you stretch it too far to fast, it snaps.  We’re the same way.  We need to stretch ourselves in small steady ways. If you stretch a r...

Part of being a great leader is being a great learner.  If you decide to be leader, either in a leadership/managerial role, or just leading those to your left and to your right, you must also decide to never stop learning.  When you stop learning, you stop leading. Last week my wife and I rented “ The Intern .”  It’s a movie with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway.  De Niro plays t...

When most people talk about Leadership they talk about the psychology side of it, but I believe that it goes much deeper that than.  In this episode I’m going to talk a lot about brain chemicals and I’m going to get a little deep into the biology of leadership.  I was first made aware of such a think when Simon Sinek talked about the makeup of the brain in his famous “Start with...

A few months ago I read the  Jesse Itzler book, “ Living with a Seal. ”  I heard it was really funny, and I knew a little about Jesse through some podcast interviews that I heard him on.  I also thought it might motivate me to get in serious shape, however, it sort of scared me a little bit.  In this book, Jesse meets this Navy Seal, who he calls “Seal” and invites him to l...

I loved this book ( click here to pick it up for yourself ).  It took me a few weeks to read through it all, but I really enjoyed the wonderful stories that Richard Branson tells about his experiences in Entrepreneurship and leading the Virgin Group. He breaks down the book into four main categories: Listen, Learn, Laugh, Lead and then gives a nice recap of his top tips.  Many of his insights and...

SMART Goals.. Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Time Bound. Specific – The Goal must be specific in nature.  Which of these is better?  Improve on customer service.  Or Increase our customer service survey rating by 10% over the 2015 numbers by July 2016. Measurable – The goal must be clearly measurable. In the example above, you can see that the first goal was not measurable.  Improve…...

Yesterday I gave a talk for the South Carolina iSTEM group at Saluda Trail Middle School. It was exciting to speak to teachers. Teachers that are working towards bettering the education experience. If you don’t know what STEM is, its an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education. I spoke on the Hour of Code, which is an initiative from Code.org to get students to learn an hour...

In order to be a leader, you must be brave.  I’ve focused on leadership for many years now, and my wife even says I focus on it too much sometimes J. I see countless people that have so much potential for leadership, but have never stepped out and gave it shot due to fear. Now Fear isn’t always bad.  There are good fears too.  For example, I’m afraid of snakes.  God gave me that fear so that I don...

As I’ve said before, I’m reading Richard Branson’s book, The Virgin Way .  This book is full of amazing nuggets of greatness.  There’s a whole section on hiring the right people, which, is where these three rules come from.  I’ll be adding in some of my own tips at the end. Don’t Delegate, Do it yourself. Hiring is important.  So much so that you can’t alw...

Below are some things you can do to improve your luck.  I hope you enjoy this episode and please leave me a review in iTunes to help spread the word. 1. Go to where the luck is. – People get lucky when they are in the right place at the right time.  The more often you’re in the right place, which is something you can totally control, the more likely that you’ll be there, when the...

A lot of time people confuse being a good speaker with being a good leader. They aren't related, but usually, with a little practice, you can become a good speaker, just like with practice you can become a good leader. It does help your influence if you're a good speaker, whether you're speaking at meetups, conferences, or just to a small team in a conference room. To see some of the best speeches...

Things aren’t always going to be good as a leader.  As a leader we must learn to lead in the good times and in the bad.  Leading through a crisis is just a fact that will come along with being a technical leader.  I recently was able to both witness a good leader lead through a crisis and be the leader in a different crisis.  I want to share a few things that I took away from it. Stay Calm. The be...

As a Professor and a leader, I’m passionate about college student’s success both in and out of the classroom. I should be an expert at this, seeing as I’ve been either in college or working for a college (I’m a professor) for more than 15 years.  Here are a few tips that will help students be successful. Stay busy (get involved) – Studies show that students that are involved in more th...

You’ll never have more opportunity for salary negotiation than you do just before you accept you job.  If you already have a job and you’re happy where you work and the idea of looking for something else scares the crap out of you, there’s still hope.  You can still negotiate your salary or other perks at your job. So let’s say job negotiation isn’t what you’re looking for, you can negotiate other...

Dan Pink gave what might be one of my favorite TED talks of all time as he explained the puzzle of motivation (It’s also one of the most viewed with over 14 million views at the time of this posting).  This talk made me want to read his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us . This book changed the way I motivate my employees and teams.  It also inspired me to use the infor...

In Todd Henry’s book “The Accidental Creative” he talks about five elements of Creative Rhythm.  As an IT Leader you’re called to make creative decisions and come up with brilliant solutions at a moment’s notice.  In a future episode I’ll do a full book review of “The Accidental Creative,” but I feel the 5 elements of creative rhythm is worthy of a s...

If you do want to be a leader, you have to train. You have to work hard at it. It’s not just something that you can just try to do without work. Have you ever run a marathon? It’s not something that you can just go out and try. You have to put in a lot of time and effort to train for marathons. Becoming a leader is the same thing. You have to train hard. There is a difference between reading leade...

We all are afraid of something. Being a leader demands bravery. In this episode I talk about getting over FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). I list and explain these 4 steps for dealing with fear: Play it out. What's the worse that can happen? What's the likelihood of that thing happening? How can you reduce the likelihood of that happening? If the worse happens, how can you recover? We need to...

In this episode I talk about likability.  Being liked at work is actually pretty important.  A lot of people believe that being good at their job, or having some special skill will help them get ahead.  But the truth is that likability plays a huge role in where you end up. People want to hire people they like and promote people they like.  Don’t you want to work with people you like too?  Y...

I listen to a lot of audiobooks.  About a year ago, I listened to Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last audiobook.  I loved this book.  In my opinion its better than his first best seller, Start With Why. In this book, Simon Sinek tells the story of Johnny Bravo, a military pilot and how he risked his life to defend ground troops in battle. He uses this story to illustrate the idea of the “Circle o...

Having Difficult conversations is really important.  I don’t think anyone would argue that. Many times we feel awkward and don’t want to have the conversation and things go from bad to worse… or they just never get resolved.  This podcast is to give you 3 tips on having difficult conversations that I got from Ash Beckham’s Ted Talk from a few years ago. I hope you guys like...

Distractions overwhelm us everyday… They overwhelm me every hour. This podcast episode is a short talk about how to deal with distractions. I hope that it helps you handle daily distractions that you encounter. Please leave me a comment below and subscribe in iTunes. Thanks so much. Sponsor : What’s HTML? – Learn it in 4 Hours. Amazon Link Audible Link

I’m super excited to share the TEDx Talk I gave back in March of 2015 at TEDxHickory.  I gave this talk on motivation and leadership.  In this talk I mentioned other talks and books by Simon Sinek, who taught us to “Start With Why” and Dan Pink who explained that autonomy, mastery and purpose are what motivates creative thinkers today.  I hope you get a lot from this episode and...

I was so pumped to talk to Todd Henry. He’s one of my favorite authors and speakers. He’s the founder of Accidental Creative and the author of The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, and his newest book, Louder than Words. I’m such a fan of his work, I actually use The Accidental Creative as required reading for a class I teach at Winthrop University. You can order his books using th...