The Leadership Stack Podcast

Sean: And what's the problem? Why aren't more people doing it? Why aren't more people going out of their way and asking for help from mentors? Alan: I think it's probably because most of us believe that good enough is good enough, right? We advanced down the process of development of expertise, and we got to a point that I would refer to, in the literature it seems reference is just an element of...

Sean: How weighty was it that you knew what your expertise was? You knew that you were an expert in this, this, this, and that, so much so that you deciding on risking some of your hard-earned money seemed like the best thing to do. Alan: Yeah. What is that about entrepreneurs, right? Sean? I mean, why would someone do this? It's kind of masochistic, really. Right? It's really you don't know how m...

Sean: When's the best time to know that you need to hire people already? The best time is number one when you have the budget. I mean when you don't have the budget, you can't hire them because you're going to lose money. So you have to make sure that you've got a budget. You have to make sure you have the money and you have that revenue coming in that's going to be sustainable for you to pay them...

Sean: Next question, at the moment, the platforms that I am operating on are Facebook and Instagram. And I paused the production of my product since I want to further improve and optimize it, so basically, I'm back to R&D. When I reopen the business, should I build a website or should I stick to these platforms and build the website later on? I think if you're doing well on Facebook and Instag...

Sean: What are the advantages of a reseller business? The advantage is mostly it depends on the reseller business that you've got. So if you're a consigner, you have a lot of advantage because you don't need to pony up capital at the get go. You just sell and sell and get a part of the profit. But if you're an outright reseller, that means you buy the inventory outright, that's a lot more risk for...

Sean: What would be some words that you would want to give to these business owners who are not only frustrated at the government, at some of their people, maybe at their business, but are also in a desperate and depressing situation right now? Craig: Yeah, it's a great question, and I'll take myself back to that situation in the global financial crisis. So I went 18 months where my lunch was a br...

Sean: What are some of your top three or five leadership lessons for leading yourself and the team that you could share with us today? Craig: Look, I'm always about the evolution of yourself, so I've invested, and not everyone has the capital to do that. So you need to lean into podcasts like, you know, listening to your podcasts, my podcasts, whoever, to continue to grow and evolve your mindset,...

Sean: One of the things that asked the most, especially in my live events or on my AMA's online, is how do I ask mentors for their time? How do I ask them to mentor me? When you mentioned investing in meaningful relationships, it's kind of like the same approach, right? Where you go to a person, just hit them up. What are your thoughts on that? How do you do it? Yeah. Craig: Look, I'll share a qui...

Sean: So, Craig, usually I start the podcast with the founder's journey. What led you into entrepreneurship and what allowed you to hone your leadership and management skills? Craig: So I left home to get a good education, to get a good job. So financially, I've been self-funded since the age of 17. I became an engineer, and I didn't have a burning desire for trading time for money, so I fired my...

Sean: What advice do you give your kids with regards to building wealth and managing finances? Randell: All right! Here's where people are surprised because I'm the finance guy. People think that my kids are really experts in finance. Contrary to popular belief, I do not open my PowerPoint on the dining table or put it on my tv and talk about these things. I do have a little bit of talk with them,...

Sean: What is a simple rule for managing your finances? Randell: Well, number one, simple rule, I've been married for more than 30 years. My wife told me, "What is yours is mine and what's mine is mine." That's the rule. That's the only rule I live by. know this man is in that role as the only rule. I live by it. I guess for me, number one is I respect money. I know money is more and everything, b...

Randell: I'll give you words that are cautiously optimistic. It's not looking too good, I believe. Of course, there has to be a benchmark. If my benchmark is going to be our neighbors, we are lagging behind it because we've taken a long time to try to do the vaccines, opening the economy, and things like mass testing. That has an impact on the economy in general. So again, that's a problem. So in...

Sean: We have a question here about ADA Cardano. So what do you like most about ADA (Cardano)? Sean: I don't know if you have a vlog about that. I haven't checked yet. Randell: I don't. I'm careful because if I say anything, it's like a recommendation. Right? But personally, I'm very transpired with these things. That's my biggest exposure - Cardano. Out of all of my cryptos, that's number one. Fo...

Sean: Why is managing finances more behavioral-based? Why is it behavioral? Because whatever you actually do is what is going to be affecting your finances. Why we say it's more behavior-based than anything else is because when we say behavior, it's actually what builds habits. And habits are so important because habits are what you do on autopilot. These are things that you don't think about, tha...

Sean: Well, you know, a lot of people go through that when times get tough in business, we look into ourselves again and we wonder. "Why am I doing this again? Why am I going through all these hard things, dealing with these difficult people in my team and in my client's list?" So what happened then? How did you get to realize why you still want it to go on? Jan: Well, increasingly I didn't and I...

Sean: Look, Jan, a lot of people, when they hear the leader, the thing that comes to mind is the guy or the girl that's most paid, that gets the special parking slot, that gets the special corner office that gets all the perks of the executives like. These are the things that come to mind in our world today when you say, leaders. So what do you mean when you mentioned earlier that you're going to...

Sean: And what were some of the things that maybe give me the top three things that you learned during that startup phase all the way to having two factories and 40 people? Sean: That's a pretty good scale. It's actually a very good scale. You can live off of that. But from Point A where a lot of people are, you know, a lot of people are starting out, they have no idea, they're clueless where to g...

Niño: Growing up in a family that wasn't really into business since they are licensed professionals, every time I pitch a business idea, they tend to forcibly alter or worse reject some of the plans which I think would be detrimental for the business. How do I change that while still maintaining a good relationship with them? Sean: That's a pretty tough question. If they're the ones in charge, it'...

Niño: I sometimes stay away from goals, and I tend to procrastinate, what do I need to do to keep me motivated? Sean: This is the struggle of a lot of professionals actually, so you're not alone in this. A lot of people struggle with that. What I realize is if your goals, if the reason why those goals are on your plate is not big enough, then you won't work hard enough. So it may be that the goals...

Sean: From Mich: What are the best and most cost-effective ways to do market research for a learning and development business? The easiest way? Look at Google trends. I mean just punch in Google Trends. It's free. Put in Google Trends. Look it up on your browser and just check those keywords for online courses, for example. Online courses for brewing kombucha, for example, just because I have komb...

Sean: How can we better evaluate our employees? I would say, evaluate based on your core values. That's one that for me is very, very important. You don't have to copy our core values, right? I mean it would depend on your founder's DNA. I know a lot of companies here in the Philippines have malasakit. That's one of their core values and that's really great by the way. I'm thinking about incorpora...

Niño: The next is: In either choosing a business or a career path, which do you think you should anchor it on: your passion or your skill set? Sean: In my opinion, business or career path, if you only had two choices, passion or skill set, I would go for skillset. Because if you're so passionate about something but you're not really great at it, that's going to take you a while to get paid well an...

Joining Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si, is Mr. Marvin Germo, a stock trader. They will also be accompanied by none other than Mr. Cliff Yung, the CEO of Imperium Empires! Stay tuned as Mr. Cliff Yung gives a sneak peek at this upcoming GameFi project - Imperium Empires - the first AAA quality space metaverse that will take NFT games to the next level! Listen up as they also discuss crypto gaming and what...

Sean: And talking about growth, all these books that you were able to read through, how did you know what books you want to read next? And how, what other methods of growth do you have, aside from books? Did you have mentors? Did you pursue them? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you watch YouTube videos? What channels do you watch? Can you share some of that with us? Chris: I would always go to the b...

Sean: Aside from taking your name off the wall, and stepping back on the sales process. What other things did you fully commission or fully delegate so that you can work on the business rather than in the business? Chris: Yeah, well, and I think it was gradual, cause I started out doing everything. So the first thing I took myself out of was any kind of the front-end customer service type of thing...