The Leadership Stack Podcast

Sean: So yeah, the next question would be, how do I start managing my money better? I think this might be from coming from the context that she's having some difficulty managing money right now. Nicole: Oh, this is like hot fire personal finance question. I would always say that with anything that you do, it's always important to know the reason why you're doing it. I think this is a broad questio...

Sean: And so Vince, I'm wondering during that time when things went bust and you were you couldn't sleep well at night, as you mentioned earlier, how did you get through it? What were the things that you really try to think about that gave you peace or gave you a hope that I could face tomorrow? Vince: Yeah. There's two challenging times in my life. That first one was in college, and I would say t...

Sean: Vince, I noticed that one of the first things that you actually gave advice for is are you going to be able to sleep well at night when you take on this loan? And I wonder right now, I'm just curious how many people actually say, no, I can't. I don't think I could. And how many people say, 'yeah, you know, I sleep well at nigh. No problem.' Vince: Yeah. You know, on the personal finance side...

Sean: And Vince, now that you're into personal finance, I wonder, can we do a little role play? A little role play just for fun . So let's just say I'm a business owner and I'm new. I'm a new business owner. I've been doing this for like a year. I've had some success. And now I'm thinking, Hey. I think I need to take out a $500,000 loan because I want to expand my manufacturing plant and I manufac...

Sean: What is it about these people? You mentioned that five, six months later, that's not a long time and they get themselves headfirst into debt again. It is such a horrible thing. I cannot stress enough being a Filipino-Chinese and being super conservative about money - to get into debt. In fact, the first time that I thought I needed to go into debt in business, I was so stressed out. I know t...

Sean: But what about these SMEs, small to medium business owners? Maybe small business owners are mostly our listeners. What do you advise? Where do they start? They start with paid ads. Do they start with Facebook? Do they start with Instagram or a website? Farzad: There is a process I always recommend folks because I get a lot of people asking, Hey, that's worth my time for any business. It does...

You will not be able to lead other people if you do not know how to lead yourself. It all starts with self-leadership. Watch this to know how! If you know how to lead yourself effectively, then you are a person worth following. Join Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si, as he answers the question: Why is it so important to learn to lead ourselves and to become a better leader? Stay tuned as he also shares six g...

Sean: But that conservative mindset and the question is like, how powerful has your marketing guy been? Because you mentioned that you put screenshots step by step, people and competitors might just download them and copy them. Yeah. What's the trade-off and how is it been? Is it worth doing that, worth exposing how you did it, versus your competitors being able to copy what you did? Farzad: Yep,...

Sean: Do you lead by position, by persuasion, by your productivity, by what you've been able to do before, and how were you able to influence them to say, "Hey, this is a new idea of mine, super risky, but it's worth it and you should invest." Farzad: Yeah. So one thing, Sean, that I always prided myself in is my work ethic. And when I joined the company, Visme was the first company I had joined a...

Sean: We go through all of these checks and I'm wondering, what are some checks that you have in place if you do have them, to make sure that people you have in the team are at the least bit have a standard level of reliability, and then that is where you measure them to what your actual idea of reliability is. So to give a more concrete example for that question a lot of companies might include i...

Sean: And now I'm wondering, what am I missing when it comes to your leadership? How do you lead all the way from Singapore? You're leading a multinational team from different places, mostly from the Philippines, but from different places. How do people see you as a leader? How do you build on that? Wouter: That's a very difficult question to answer because that's going to evolve throughout, right...

Networking is very valuable not just in work, but in life. If you want to build and grow your professional network, watch this to learn how! Like what they say, “Your network is your net worth.” Networking can benefit you in so many ways. It can help you with your business, it can lead you to a potential client, or it can even open up a new opportunity for you. Join Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si, for a v...

Sean: So this is one of the mind-boggling trajectories of the job market day, where a lot of people want to work from home, and want maximum flexibility, as you mentioned. But the question is, how are you building a strong team culture? What do you do that is different from what our other companies are doing who are struggling to keep their talents right now? Wouter: It's very funny because even b...

Sean: And what I love about that story out there is you were actually trying to build something else and you found some problems along the way, some roadblocks, and you just tried solving it yourself and this is where you wound up. And how is it doing now? How many people are on your team? How many customers have signed up? Walter: Yeah, I'm happy to talk a little bit about that. But back to your...

Sean: With your 130 employees. You've got leaders there, some senior, some associates. I wonder, how do you try to make sure that they're growing, that they're learning new things, or for your leaders at least, how are you encouraging them to grow in their leadership? Read some leadership books, listen to these podcasts, or get some mentors to help them out. Rob: Yeah, that's a really good point....

Sean: Now I'm wondering when some of your people that you hired and you're paying for told you that - "Hey, Rob, you got to step up. You've got to have more presence in the team. They've got a feeling more as a leader." How did you respond to that and how have you evolved yourself? You said that you had to be more open to that. What happened then? Rob: Well, I believe just in general, in being ope...

Saying “yes” all the time may put you in difficult situations. Here are some practices on how you can say “no” in business or in the workplace! Declining or rejecting an offer or a request can be hard, but accepting them may end up with you not feeling great at all. You have to realize that you can’t agree to everything since you can be putting your business at risk too. If you want to take care o...

Sean: I want to get some pointers from you with as much as you could recall, and I'm going to rewind it a little bit because I want to know when you tried it out and not a lot of companies, not a lot of people were trying out remote work way back then. You're way ahead of your time. How did you adjust your leadership? And we always say that you got to they've got to feel your presence. You've got...

Sean: So how do you expect them to give you the best ideas without the entire context of the situation? Because there's going to be some stupid ideas being thrown around for sure. And that's okay because those are still ideas. But how do you now expect that you're going to get some good ideas and it's not going to be a waste of time that you're all there thinking about these things? Michael: Leade...

Sean: When do we need to start doing that? Is it when we bump someone up to be a leader of a team of four or five like we mentioned earlier? Or is it when they're managing a team of ten like two teams at the same time? Because that is a really good thing. That is a fantastic thing to do, develop your team's decision making skills and maybe telling them own up to it. If it fails, it fails. That's g...

Sean: How do you identify who's going to be a good leader or who's your potential leader? How do you process these things? Because we make wrong decisions about putting some people in the leadership role, and all they want is the title, the perks, right? And not about serving others. How do you know who's in it because they want to serve other people? Michael: Yeah, that's a great question. Mean S...

You wouldn’t want a toxic person pestering in your own organization, and who can break your team down. Watch this to know the signs of a bad hire! All companies want a team who are productive, who want to grow and learn, and most importantly, who can work well together. However, with just one wrong hire, all of these can easily go down the wire. It can disrupt the team, or worse, can cause damage...

Sean: How did they make this alive? Because too often do we see core values, mission statements, and purpose statements plastered on the wall. And that's all they are. Michael: They're espoused. They're not lived. I can't tell you how many organizations I go to in and out of education where folks can tell me what their core values are. They have them, but nobody can tell me what they are. It's jus...

Sean: What are the simple ways to maintain your motivation career for career success? Jeff: I like how you framed it, as you say, how to maintain your motivation, because I also believe that motivation is not external - it's internal, it's intrinsic. So it's something that you do for yourself, not how others would eventually prompt you to be motivated. I follow Francis Kong on this one, he doesn't...

Sean: Okay. Next question. How does your leadership style contribute to the personal development of your employees? Jeff: Huge. Huge. And again, it was John Maxwell who popularized this one. "Everything rises and falls on leadership." Sean: Yeah. Jeff: The level of growth of any employee within our organization cannot exceed the level of growth that the leader has or where the leader is already at...