The Leadership Stack Podcast

How do you deal with a team leader who has no leadership skills?  Demote him or her to a follower. Having a team leader who can't lead is dangerous, I have firsthand experience. Demote that person, or you have to let that person go if they don't want to get demoted. And that's because a person who can't lead and is in a leadership position will cap the entire team. They will slow down the entire t...

Sean: I want to ask one very important question that also a lot of entrepreneurs who have a retirement plan at the horizon is how do you, how did you find Julia? How did you know that she is the right person to replace me as CEO? What was the process like? Laura: Honestly, I placed a lot of ads, but the people that know you best will lead you to the people you need. And I firmly believe that it wa...

Sean: How did you jump from where I am right now To being where you are? Laura: I hated who I had become, you know what I mean? When I looked in the mirror, I just saw grumpy. Dirtbag looking at me and I'm like, I didn’t like her. I wasn't proud of who I was being. That probably hurt the most. I remember leaving my first marriage and one of the major reasons why I wanted to end that marriage is be...

Sean: What is so important about happiness? Why do you give it such weight? Especially when I read about it in your book, the six habits you give it, you gave it so much weight. There is a lot of times that you mentioned it and the six habits are there for you to have happiness in your life. I just want the audience to know what is so important about happiness.  Laura: Happiness is basically-- it'...

Sean: I want to know how much should you really pay yourself as an entrepreneur when, like you, Tracey, has a three-year-old startup? How much should I get from what I'm making? How much should I pay myself?  Tracey The first thing that needs to be assessed is your profitability. Do you actually make money on the products or services that you sell? I can tell you that 80 to 85% of the entrepreneur...

Sean: Some of the struggles with, not just entrepreneurs but, people, in general, is about cashflow. What are some of the most common cashflow problems that entrepreneurs need to avoid and or that the ordinary people who are employees would that you know, that they need to avoid as well. Tracey: The first thing I see, especially with entrepreneurs, but it's certainly is prevalent on the personal s...

Sean: When you're going to be starting to engage someone in helping them with their journey to becoming financially fit, I wonder how do you analyze or benchmark a person's or maybe an entrepreneur's financial fitness? Tracey: So the first thing I like to do when we're working together is I usually ask them what they know about their finances. Most times they tell me they don't know anything, whic...

Sean: It has been a tough time. Me and my organization, we had our revenue kind of rewind four or five years back. It's still more than when it started 10 years ago, but it's tough as the founder and CEO, I see my bottom line and think: Hey, you know, all that hard work just wiped out. Four to five years. I'm wondering, how is this time treating you? What are you doing to get out of it and just im...

Sean: So what is the number one wrong thing that you think clients that you have are doing when it comes to the hiring process and how do you fix that? Keziah: I don't do relationship coaching, but people can use it for that. This process that I've developed works really well for hiring because you get to enter the core of what you really want. Often that'll help you with screening out people who...

Sean: I'm wondering... You've spoken to how many business owners by now? Approximately? Keziah: In the course of my career, I've probably met with a thousand companies. I was in investments. I was a small-cap analyst. I work with these tiny, very small market cap companies. I've talked to a lot of executives, business owners.  Sean: With the ones that you have been able to engage with, I'm wonderi...

Sean: What if it's a client who's misbehaving or they're unhappy and they're acting up? How do you handle it?  Carlos: I get mad at clients. I'm not afraid of clients. Clients pay me to tell them what's true. I’ve reached a certain point in my career where I'm not a slave to the clients that I work with. The clients that I work with, I really love them. They're really good friends of mine and I re...

Sean: Do you hire your own people in the team? Do you hire them and do you instill your company values in them, your values in them? Carlos: I stopped interviewing people about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, because in the agency life, the attrition of people can be too much. In advertising, people hop from agency to agency. So I started to get emotional, like, I thought we were frien...

Sean: You have been in sales and business development for what, seven years now.? Carlos: I've been in sales and business development for about 15 years now. Sean: So as a sales and business development guy, and also as a business owner, what keeps you going? Carlos: You know, I think it all comes down to the people around you. It all comes down to not just your network, not just your community, b...

Where was the switch from mourning and grieving to waking up and turning your assets into your first businesses? Huda did not want to become a burden to her mother anymore. That was when she started to find a way to generate her own income. However, she couldn’t find a job. She applied for almost 2000 jobs and not once was she called for an interview. Huda didn’t have a university education. She d...

In a bustling and advanced country such as Singapore, what are the chances of a startup entrepreneur making it? There is a lot of government support for businesses, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs. As Huda said, first-time entrepreneurs can make it. It’s only a matter of how much effort you put into your business; how much you are willing to grind to get to where you want to be. Are ther...

Can you tell us a bit more about how you help create brands and come up with flagship products? Doc Williams view signature products as either something that gives a business the reach that they want to be perceived with. That way, the signature product becomes like the lamp that makes you known to people or something the most money in a business. He does this improving all the products for one to...

I remember when Noah Kagan had an awesome time during that charity bike ride. He even published about it. What kind of guy was he? Noah is a very chill person. Noah was a busy body, but he was more than happy to take the time to talk about things. He even came in Doc’s show. They’ve been working together for years and right now, Doc acts as a consultant for AppSumo. He’s also built some things, pa...

Please tell us about your monicker, is “Doc Williams” a nickname? Doc William’s real name is De Kari. Ever since his school days, his name would be butchered because of how unique it is. Later on in his life, people around him started to call him Doc, hence the name Doc Williams. You are the CEO and founder of Brand Factory Inc. We want to know about your entrepreneurial journey. Were you always e...

A lot of people and businesses have been shaken up by this pandemic. I want to know how you’ve been leading your team through this. Can you share a little bit about that? Leaders should show up and be accessible and available. They should not hide or run. They should make it clear that if there’s anything that they’re team needs, he is there. According to Adam, this is what your people, your custo...

One of the ways that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially startups, validate their ideas is through the lean startup model by Eric Ries. Are you familiar with this model? Were you able to practice this for any of your businesses? Unfortunately, Adam and his brother weren’t knowledgeable enough at the time to do so. Right now though, he is a very big believer in the model. He believes that companies...

Today’s guest is Adam Mendler. He is an entrepreneur, a public speaker, a coach, and a consultant. He is the CEO of the Veloz group. When you started the Veloz group, what was the first product or service that you guys went into? The first business that Adam was able to get off the ground is currently their biggest business-- Beverly Hills Chairs. When they first started, they had a lot of ideas f...

What’s the difference between the 150 people in your first business and the 25 people working with you right now? How do you lead them? In his last business, Bryan took pride in the fact that he will never ask someone to do something that he hasn’t done himself. He built that business from the ground up. All of the services that they executed, the sales work, the way they answered the phone, the a...

It’s hard selling your first company. A lot of entrepreneurs have their identity intertwined with their first startup. In the Philippines, when you say Sean Si, people would think SEO Hacker. My next question is what your advice will be to people who are wondering whether they should bootstrap and start a self-funded business or take a loan from the bank, from friends and family? Bryan’s business...

For today’s episode, our guest is Bryan Clayton. He is a serial entrepreneur that has just recently exited from his first company.  One of the two companies that you founded is named Peachtree. When did it start and how young were you when you started the company? Peachtree was a landscaping business. It was a company that would mow people’s yards, plant trees, shrubs, mulch-- things like that. Br...

Sam mentioned earlier the quote that goes along the lines of “you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take. That leaves us to just take the shot and learn from it. Learn from the missed shot and recalibrate. Sam had his own share of failures as well. He had his own startup projects that didn’t succeed such as a platform for photographers. He didn’t succeed in several of them, but it...