got him on too okay steve
anderson welcome back to
the show well thank you
it's been a while I think
it was during the pandemic
we uh we did one so yeah
and it's always fun to talk
to other podcasters in the
beginning it felt weird
right it felt like
self-aggrandizing like
podcast it's obviously
there's just like a uh a
crossover episode remember
back in the eighties
They would do like character crossovers,
like the Fonz would show up
on some other show that
didn't make any sense,
but they'd crossover.
Yeah, there you go.
And now I feel like people get it.
And it's like this Venn
diagram where people might
have but have never heard of my show.
And now they listen to yours
and vice versa.
And it sort of works.
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Well, thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
So give people the thirty
thousand foot view if they
haven't tuned in since
since the throes of covid.
You were the leader of a I mean,
I guess a decently large
organization up in the Pacific Northwest.
You had a couple of clinics
up there and then you've
you've you've done other
things in terms of coaching
and things like that with your insight.
So what do you when you're a
cocktail party and someone say,
what do you do, Steve?
How do you answer?
Well,
I'll start from the current and go
backwards.
So what I do now is I'm semi-retired,
but I do executive coaching.
So I work with high-level executives,
some in the physical therapy world,
but not all.
And so I do that coaching,
and then I have my podcast on the side.
And the podcast is called
Profiles in Leadership.
I'm going on eight years now,
which seems like a long time.
Crazy.
I've interviewed over two
hundred and thirty,
thirty five people and which is, you know,
been very interesting, learned a ton.
And then before that,
what you're referring to,
I was the CEO of Therapeutic Associates,
which is a private practice
physical therapy company in
the Pacific Northwest,
which I still I believe is
still the largest privately
owned company.
uh private practice in the
nation I think they're up
to about a hundred and ten
or or more clinics now and
uh yeah it was a great
experience I was a ceo
there for nineteen years
and so um that's uh let's
say I'm a pt obviously and
uh started out you know in
a clinic as a staff pt
became a clinic director
and then eventually I was
elected to the uh ceo of
the company and did that
for nineteen years
Well,
so obviously that that experience for
nineteen years sort of
qualifies you to give
executive leadership advice to people,
which is, you know,
probably not easy to come by.
Right.
There's not many people
who've done something like
that for nineteen years who
are now also saying to
someone who either wants to
do it or who is doing it,
wants to do it better.
Not a whole lot of people
who do what you do, I imagine.
well it's you know it's
interesting you say that
because there's a million
business coaches now and
leadership coaches and
whatever but uh it is I
always do scratch my head
sometimes when I see uh you
know a business coach uh
you know um uh this has
never run a business yeah
so it's kind of interesting
so I do hope that it gives
me some uh insight experience and
and knowledge you know boots
on the ground type of thing
that I think is valuable
and you know you can read
the books and and uh you
know hear the speeches and
all that but experience I'm
not sure you can buy so
that's just something that
you either have or you
don't yeah you've you've
been there done that fallen
into a trap figured out how
not to fall in that trap
and that's what that's what
you buy with insight is
that person is seen and
done even if it was twenty five years ago
I imagine things like AI.
Well, how does Steve understand AI?
But you're saying, okay,
there's a new thing that's come on.
How is my business going to react to it?
It doesn't matter if it's AI
or something different.
I imagine the thought processes, at least,
maybe not these steps,
but the thought processes
are probably pretty similar.
Yeah, yeah.
And another thing that...
you know,
people pay me for and they don't
probably realize it when
they hire me and sometimes
don't even realize it when
I'm working with them.
But I feel like, you know,
I have experience, so I know a lot.
But what you're also paying
for is I know a lot of people.
So, you know, I can say, hey, you know,
I don't maybe I'm not on
the cutting edge of AI
other than what we all know.
So here's a guy that I know
that I've talked to,
and then I can make that
connection and make that introduction.
Right.
It's when people watch Shark
Tank and they go, well, yeah,
of course they're getting
money from Cuban.
That's valuable.
I go, yeah,
but they also now get a warm
introduction.
They know now they get they
know what Cuban knows and
they get to be introduced
to people Cuban doesn't.
And instead of you having to
Google how to solve this problem,
Cuban's like,
I own a company that solves that problem.
I'll get you a good rate and
I'll introduce you to the manager.
So it really is, you know,
your network is your net worth.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I'm not sure people
appreciate that until they experience it.
So, yeah.
Right.
All right.
So I've done a little bit of
media consulting and I'm
going to say I'm going to
say a statement and you
tell me if it's if you
think it's true or not.
I went into doing some media
consulting with PT organizations.
And I thought it was going
to be ninety percent
communications and ten
percent psychology.
And what it wound up being
was ninety percent
psychology and ten percent media.
Is that similar?
Oh, yeah, I think so.
I mean, you know,
I focus pretty I have a niche, you know,
which is leadership.
training or development.
So it's like helping the
person I'm working with
become a better leader,
helping them work with
their executive teams to
communicate better,
working with how to grow
more leaders within their organization.
You know, and that's all, you know,
as you say, psychology, communication,
human nature, understanding personalities,
understanding what
resonates and what doesn't,
and that type of thing.
So yeah, that's kind of my niche.
And yeah, I love doing that.
And what you didn't include
in your resume in the big
picture is every once in a
while you get a call from
Jimmy McKay who goes,
what am I supposed to do with my life,
Steve?
And you give me advice and
you send me off in a better direction.
So thank you for that.
Yeah.
And sometimes I have ideas
and sometimes I'll refer
you to somebody who I think
I have a better idea.
So yeah, exactly.
All right,
so you mentioned doing profiles
and leadership for a long time.
I think I saw you post
something on LinkedIn a week or two ago,
and I thought, man,
you've been doing something
so narrow in leadership and
having conversations that
if you're looking for that,
that's the spot.
You're the guy who's like, I just do this,
but I go an inch wide,
but I go a mile deep.
And I just sat there thinking –
Man, if I forced Steve,
if I put his feet to the fire and said,
you got to give me ten of
your best pieces of information,
and he gave it to me, wow,
what a treasure chest of
info that would be.
And I think I DMed you or texted you,
and you're like, yeah, sure,
let's do that.
So, man,
what was the process in sitting
down and looking back over
two hundred and something
episodes and even finding that stuff?
Well, that was a real chore or challenge,
let's say, because when people ask me,
why do I do this podcast?
What's the motivation behind it?
And I honestly say every
time because I learn
something every time I do it.
Every time I do an interview,
I learn something new and I
didn't know that or that's
so interesting and I'm a
curious person to begin with.
So, you know,
I started going back and looking.
It's like every oh,
I knew here I could have
had maybe two hundred fifty, you know,
impactful insights, you know.
But I tried to narrow it down to ten.
Obviously,
didn't have the time or the
bandwidth to re-listen to
every single one of them.
But the ones that I do
remember that stuck in my brain, yeah,
I wrote down some ideas.
And so, yeah,
I'd be happy to share them with you.
hit us with uh with number
one and if someone's being
left off the list doesn't
mean steve doesn't like you
of course because people
have asked me my favorite
episodes and I'm like I'm
not going down that road
because I feel like I'd
leave people off and just
so you know you can find
profiles and leadership
like wherever podcasts uh
are heard to get the the
raw uh insights so what's
number what's number ten or
number one are we going ten
well so I I've got ten here
um but I'm not going to
Rank them in order of the
most significant.
OK, so here we go.
So so the one that I had
recently was Nancy Phillips,
who is a founder and CEO of
Rally Rally Day Partners.
OK,
so that's a private equity firm that is
actually working with one
of our colleagues we know
well and love her so much,
Michelle Colley.
And so I was trying to push her like, OK,
you're saying all the right things.
I get it.
You know, whatever.
Boy, it really comes down to it.
Isn't it all about making
money and getting the best
return on your investment?
And she made this statement
that I thought was profound.
She said, look, Steve,
you can't get a good return
on your investment unless
you focus on culture and
leadership development
within your organization.
and as I told her that's
speaking my language
because I've been promoting
that for years and years
and years and years that
you know you got to focus
on the people and the
culture and the leadership
development and things like
that then your profits and
your success will come
where, you know,
I think sometimes people
get so focused on the
numbers and that that they, you know,
they forget about that kind of stuff,
you know,
and that's why people feel
pushed and burned out and, you know,
not not part of the
organization decision
making process and so on.
So coming from her, who's in that world,
I thought that was very profound.
And I thought, wow, you know,
if they all felt and talked like that,
I'd be in a better, better spot.
And private equity is
something that I haven't
really been involved with a lot.
But these are people who
come into an organization.
And you correct me if I'm wrong.
I'll give you my version.
They come into an
organization and they look
at what's there, the culture, the people,
the land.
What do they do?
How do they do it?
And who is involved in doing it now?
And then they say,
could our expertise and our
funding make this thing go better?
Could we be an element that
we add so that that
organization and our
private equity organization
both benefit from that?
How do I do?
Yeah, no, that's fine.
And often what they do then
is then they say, okay,
so we're going to be in this business for,
say, three to five years.
And then we're going to do the next thing,
either find some other
private equity company to
buy this or maybe sell it
to somebody else.
So that's how they make their money.
So it's it's and it's often
that they would come in and say, OK,
we need to be more productive.
We need to cut expenses.
We need to do this, you know.
Yet a lot of times they sell
because we have more money.
We have more resources to
provide to your company.
So I will say that over my experience,
the private equity is
changing its tune a bit,
and I think they're getting
better in the physical
therapy market than they used to be.
But there's still that pressure like, okay,
how do I get my maximum
return out of this in three
to five years?
Well, if you're a numbers data guru guy,
you're going to say, you know,
make people more productive,
treat more patients and cut expenses.
That's how I make my money.
Well, as we know,
most PTs we know don't do well with that.
Okay.
So so to me, what Nancy's saying is, no,
what we need to do is
invest in the people and
the culture and get them
excited about things.
Therefore,
they will become more efficient
and more productive because
they love what they're doing.
That's how we get our return.
Yeah.
Take care of the big thing.
Take care of the big thing
in culture and people.
Exactly.
So I was I was thrilled to hear that.
Love that.
All right.
So that was that was
actually the one that was
the one you shared on LinkedIn.
Yeah.
And I just thought, man,
if that's good advice, what are the other,
you know, two hundred plus episodes?
What's next?
Well,
the next one is I like to try and get
some really.
So the theme is leadership,
but I can see leadership in
so many different aspects of our life.
OK,
so this next one is a woman by the name
of Mary Gauthier.
And she is a
singer-songwriter from Nashville,
Tennessee.
And I saw her at a TEDx
event in New York once.
And she just, gosh,
there's just something
about her that I thought,
this woman is amazing.
So I DMed her on Instagram.
And believe it or not, she answered me.
And so so here she is.
And what she kind of does is her, you know,
to give back to the community,
so to speak,
is she sits down with wounded
warriors from the military
and they're having trouble
with PTSD or whatever.
Sometimes they have these
horrible things they're dealing with.
And then she spends a
weekend with them in a
songwriting workshop.
And they write a song
together about their story.
and then she plays it and
often records it and when
when they do that it like
it just gives voice to what
they went through and it's
just very profound but
anyway she's an amazing uh
artist in person and so her
quote um we're talking
about imposter syndrome
And she says, even in music, too,
we have imposter syndrome, like, you know,
I'm not that good or people
are going to think, you know, gosh,
do they like this?
Do they not like that?
They're going to think, you know,
whatever.
So they have it as well that
we talk about all the time
in the business world.
And she said about imposter syndrome,
she said, it's just an ego problem.
She goes,
I'm just trying to be to be of
service and connect with people.
I don't think ranking people
by value is a healthy way
to look at the world.
So she just says, man, I just, you know,
I'm going to connect with this person.
I'm going to provide a
service that I can maybe do for them.
And between those two things, if I do that,
then I'm good.
I don't have to get seven
million followers or I
don't have to do this or that.
I connected with a person.
I made a difference.
That's what it's all about.
Ironically,
if you want seven million followers,
doing what she does is the
way to actually get there.
Yeah.
Focus on one person at a time.
Yeah.
You know,
share one good minute with seven
million people.
That's how you get seven
million people to buy in.
And it's not that different
than what we just talked about.
Correct.
You know,
because you're focusing on that
one person doing that one
thing and that translates
to bigger numbers.
So, yeah.
And what was her name again?
Her name is Mary Gaucher and it's spelled,
I think she's from Louisiana,
probably Cajun country.
It's G-A-U-T-H-I-E-R.
Somehow that that spells Gaucher.
All right.
I like that.
Sliding into the DMs,
as the kids call it on.
Yeah.
So, I mean,
it's one thing I've always said
is I've never been afraid
to ask the question.
So sometimes you just reach
out and you get some people
that will respond.
And so it's awesome.
I tell people all the time.
The great Terry Gross is an
interviewer on NPR.
Her her biography was called
All I Did Was Ask.
Yeah, that's true.
Sometimes that's hard.
It is hard.
All right.
What's next?
You led off with two good ones.
Yeah.
Number three, Rich Devaney,
who is a Navy SEAL.
OK.
And Rich not only became a Navy SEAL,
but he also then became a
trainer of Navy SEALs.
And so he was telling me
about the process.
And, you know,
they have this Navy SEAL training.
They have this thing called
the Bud's Week or whatever it is,
which is they do all these
horrific endurance things
that don't make any sense,
but you just have to keep doing them.
And the dropout rate on that
is eighty percent.
So eighty percent of the
guys that get the Bud's don't make it.
And getting there isn't easy either.
And getting there is not easy either.
So he said that I said, well,
who makes it?
Who becomes a Navy SEAL?
And his answer, I thought, was perfect.
He said,
I can always tell when someone's
going to make it.
When they make the step
between worrying about
their own suffering and
worrying about the guy
beside them and helping
them get through their suffering.
When a guy makes that step,
that's the guy that'll make it.
And again, I mean, take that to business.
As soon as you start being a
team member that helps
others and helps them rise
and helps them become
better at their job and whatever,
you both rise.
You both get better.
And I think that was
profound because he says at
the beginning of the BUDS training,
all people can worry about is how bad me,
me, me, me, me is suffering.
But when I start helping other people,
I make the jump.
So I think I thought that was profound.
That is, I mean,
I've seen videos and
documentaries on that
training and it is even the
stuff that I imagine
there's some stuff we don't see,
but the stuff that you see
is pretty horrific, but it's,
they've said it before.
It's a, they're testing your mind.
Yes,
it is a ridiculous endurance and
strength test,
but what they're really
trying to see you do is how
do you work with others?
What are you focused on?
If you're focused on you, you, you,
when we get out there in a real situation,
you're going to be focused on you, you,
you.
We don't want those guys.
We want people who are focused on we.
Exactly.
A hundred percent.
All right, what's up next?
Somewhat related,
I interviewed a guy by the
name of Walter Bond.
Probably never heard of him.
Walter Bond was a Division I
basketball player for the
University of Minnesota.
He played all four years in college,
never started a game.
He was the sixth man coming
in off the bench.
And his coach would always tell him,
when I look at my players,
you're not one of the five best players,
so I don't start you.
But whenever you're in the game,
we're better.
So he usually would go in
early and play a lot of the game.
And so amazingly enough,
now think of the NBA.
There's only four hundred and fifty five,
I think,
players in the in the world that
play in the NBA at any one time.
So, you know,
that all those guys have come
from being the best player
on their team by a mile.
That's who makes the NBA.
Well, somehow,
some coach hears and knows
about Walter Bond.
So he drafts him or chooses
him to come into the NBA as
the sixth man off a
University of Minnesota
basketball team that wasn't
necessarily the national
champion or anything.
Walter Bond played eight years in the NBA.
And I said, well, what did you do?
I mean, what was the difference?
And he said, again, what I think, you know,
I learned.
He said, well, when I come into the game,
what most players do,
they come into the game and they say, OK,
this is what I do.
I'm a great three point shooter,
so I'm going to make three
pointers or I'm a great rebounder.
So I'm going to go get the
rebounds or I'm a good defensive player.
So I'm going to play defense.
And he goes,
I go into the game and I'm
sitting on the bench.
Watch.
I go, what do we need right now?
What does the team need me
to do so that we're better?
Sometimes I need to rebound.
Sometimes I do need to shoot
a three pointer.
Sometimes I need to play a
really tough defense on the
guy that's killing us.
He goes,
so that was my approach to every
every job, which, again,
it's not about him.
It's about the team.
So what can I do to help the team?
And again, fantastic story.
And, you know, eight years in the NBA,
having never started a game
in his college career.
Yeah, he doesn't think about me.
He thinks about we.
And it goes back to what you
said that his coach said about him.
When I look at you,
you're not one of my best five,
but when you're in the game,
we play better.
It's because he tailors his
game and where he's going
to put his effort on what's needed now.
Yeah, exactly.
Of course it's going to get better.
We need this now.
So I'm going to do that.
And sometimes, you know,
you see good leaders do that too.
Like sometimes, you know, they,
they don't lead from the highest level.
They might roll up their
sleeves and help dig a ditch, you know,
or something, if that's what's needed,
you know?
So it's just somebody who's
able to see what is needed at the time.
And that's what I do.
That's smart.
Yeah.
See,
I always like when I look at your show,
it's not always the same.
guess.
You just talked to me about P.E.
and Navy SEALs and
basketball players and musical artists.
Leadership isn't about just
being in a boardroom.
Yeah, one hundred percent,
one hundred percent.
And that's why that's why I
try to look at all aspects.
You know,
the next one on the list is is
Gabby Reese.
Oh, yeah.
So, you know, Gabby Reese,
for those who don't know,
is a professional
volleyball player and a model and,
you know, very successful.
And
What I asked her a question,
I don't remember exactly how I said it,
but basically People
Magazine in the nineteen
ninety somewhere in the mid
nineteen nineties said that
she was one of the ten most
beautiful women in the world.
Now she's a professional
athlete and they made that
statement as well.
So my question more was like,
how at a young age do you deal with that?
I mean, holy cow.
And she said, she goes,
as I've gotten older,
I've learned that people
may thank you for this or that,
or sometimes it can be very flattering.
But I just focus on holding
the line for myself to live up to.
And realizing what other
people think is their issue, not mine.
So she said,
so People Magazine is going to
find somebody next week
the next pretty face and whatever.
And if I focus on that and I
just think I'm all that, you know,
it's just, yeah,
like it's a roller coaster.
So I thought that was pretty
profound at her young age
that she was able to think that.
And then now she's lived
that her whole life and, you know,
she's doing great things
and she's not a model right
now and she's not a professional athlete,
but she's still doing great things.
Yeah, this reminds me of,
do you know who Mel Robbins,
you heard of Mel Robbins?
Oh, yeah.
She's got that let them theory.
It almost sounds like Gabby
Reese understood that a long time ago,
which is whatever you're going to think,
I'm flattered.
Thank you.
But if I put too much stock
and too much stake into
that of you hyping me up, when you stop,
I'm going to crash.
So don't do either.
Just let them.
Yeah, I got a funny story on Mel Robbins.
She was a keynote speaker at
the PPS one year.
I didn't know that.
Yeah,
and so I was in the back of the room
and I wasn't president at the time.
I think it's after I was the president.
And so I know a lot of
people at that conference, right?
And I see this woman like in
a flowing skirt and high
top red tennis shoes and
she's kind of pacing back
and forth in the back of the room.
And my first thought, well, who is that?
And then my second thought was,
I like her style.
She just seems like she's
got something going.
And then the person says,
and our keynote speaker
today is Mel Robbins.
She goes running down the main aisle,
gets up on the deck,
and that's who it was.
So I thought, yeah, she's amazing.
Yeah,
the reason that comes to mind is I
just started reading her
book just a couple of just
a couple of days ago.
But it it really is like if
you look at her book and what Gabby said,
it's not rocket science.
It's also one of the hardest things to do.
But when you figure it out,
as Mel says in her book,
and it sounds like Gabby understood,
you take your own power
back when you stop either
blaming other people for
how they made you feel or
just owning how I feel
should be how I feel or my
perception should be my.
Yeah.
And sometimes we look at false...
accolades you know like for
me and you you know
sometimes you get a little
caught up like what are my
downloads what are my
downloads and I'm like and
my wife is great because
she always says well do you
care and I go what do you
mean she goes well if you
had ten times as many
downloads would it make any
difference what you're
doing and I go no and she
goes well why do you do
what you do and I go
because I love it and I
learn something every time
she goes then forget about
the downloads it doesn't really matter
I did some media training every day.
Someone found me through
LinkedIn and asked to talk to me,
and she's trying to become
a media writer.
And she said, what do I need to do?
And I took someone else's quote was,
if you want to be a better writer,
you don't need more readers.
You need to write more.
If you want to be a better podcaster,
you don't need more listeners.
You need to podcast more.
And I think she I don't
think she liked my I don't
think she liked my advice because I said,
listen,
do you want to know why I've been
successful?
I showed up twice a week,
every week for ten years.
And it was easier for me to
show up because I really
just liked doing it.
I'm like, I'm very sorry,
but how come you haven't written?
And she's like, well, I'm waiting.
And I said, no, can't do that.
Can't wait.
No, that's it reminds me, too.
I'm a guitar player.
So you have an acoustic guitar.
A lot of people say, God,
your guitar sounds so good.
How can my guitar sound better?
Well, if you know anything,
you know anything about the
wood and an acoustic guitar, it it.
vibrates and it expands and
it you know it it has a
life so the answer is just
what you said you might
want to make your guitar
sound better play it more
often play it more because
that's what the wood wants
to do it gets warmer the
more you play it so yeah I
think that's interesting
all right where are we at
now five okay so we're
going to go to another navy
seal uh this guy's name is
uh earl dobler and he gave
what I think is really
profound advice he said whatever you do
make sure that your identity
is something that no one
can take away from you.
Okay.
And I said, okay, explain that further.
He says, okay, for instance, he said,
ever since I was a teenager,
all I wanted to be was a Navy SEAL.
Everything I did was to be
to prepare for a Navy SEAL.
I go to the training.
I make it through BUDS.
I get selected.
I'm a Navy SEAL.
I'm doing all I ever wanted
to do in my life.
And then I got injured.
And I couldn't be a Navy SEAL anymore.
And he says,
I went into a spiral for two years.
I didn't know who I was,
what I wanted to do.
He said it was just brutal.
So he said,
so now I learned that my
identity shouldn't be a Navy SEAL.
It should be something like...
I give back to my community
or I'm kind or I help
others or something that no
matter what happens,
no one can ever take that away from me.
Yeah.
And I thought that was
really amazing advice.
Yeah.
Yeah,
take apart the elements of what a
Navy SEAL is.
It's someone who shows up,
cares about his team over himself.
You can do that lots of different places.
So if you can't be the Navy SEAL,
you can still be that
person who shows up early
and goes to the nth degree
and cares about the team.
You can plug that in lots of
different places.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's great advice.
I like that one.
So here's another one.
So Brad Zimmerman,
just a leadership coach and
been around a long time.
And he wrote this book and
there was a story in it
that really caught my attention.
So if it's OK with you,
it comes off better if I just read it.
Yeah.
So so listen to this and see
what you think.
So in his book, he says, tells a story.
An old Cherokee is teaching
his grandson about life.
A fight is going on inside me,
he said to the boy.
It's a terrible fight.
It's between two wolves.
One is evil.
He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, inferiority,
lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other one is good.
He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity,
humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy,
generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.
The same fight is going on
inside of you and inside of
every other person too.
The grandson thought about
it for a minute.
Then he asked his grandfather,
which wolf will win?
The old Cherokee simply replied,
the one you feed.
Isn't that awesome?
It's just a great way to look at it.
It doesn't say that there
aren't bad ideas or bad
thoughts in you and that
would make you bad.
It says there is.
Yeah.
But you can decide which one
will win by which one you feed.
Yeah.
Where you spend your most
time is what's going to happen.
So it's just one of those things where...
Easier said than done often.
But I do think that it's a mindset.
It's the Carol Dweck mindset theory that,
you know,
what you focus on and what you
think and how you think
makes a difference on what you do.
Yeah, there's some people that say,
you know,
it sounds real new agey and self-helpy.
But when you really start practicing it,
there are people that say, like,
I don't even don't speak
negatively about yourself,
even in your own head.
like make sure that you're
only feeding that other wolf,
like even in your own thoughts,
because that's where it starts.
Because when you start thinking,
you start becoming.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
That's a good one.
So are we still going?
Another one?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Daniel Pink, who I did a long time ago.
And so there were a lot of
good ones out of that one.
But one that I thought was
interesting is he said, you know,
great leaders are
incredibly generous with their teammates.
He said they are not dictatorial leaders.
They provide vision,
provide direct feedback in the moment,
not at performance reviews.
but at the moment and
connect with them in a very deep level,
not afraid to use the word
love when having discussions with them,
you know,
to show that empathy and that
caring and whatever.
And he says that and then
just genuinely ask their
opinion and listen.
You know, again,
not anything we haven't heard before,
but but I think it's true.
And then we went into a real
deep discussion, too, about,
what I felt for a long time
is that a lot of ceos of
companies often come up
through the finance side of
things and in the finance
world there's a lot more
left brain thinkers than
right brain thinkers and
you know left brain is more
data analytics numbers
spreadsheets you know
whatever and the right side
of the brain is is kind of
what he just described there
And so we had a lot of talk,
and he thinks that as
companies move forward and
as we evolve in business in the world,
that there's going to be a
lot more right brain
leaders in our future than in the past.
So I think the right brain
leader is getting a lot of
traction in the sense of
these are the leaders our
companies want because they
Help us discover purpose.
They help us work together as a team.
They help us give back, you know,
to our communities.
And it's not all about the
numbers and the spreadsheets.
Yeah.
We dealt with this a lot in radio.
There were very much left brain,
right brain.
programming versus sales.
It was always that
programming versus sales.
It was like, hey, what should lead?
Should the creative people
lead and the logical left
brain people figure out how
to make it happen, right?
I set the vision,
figure out how to pay for it, man,
because that's where we're here.
I'm going to set course,
you set the sales.
And I think we had the most success
It for me anyway,
in my radio career is when
I realized it wasn't left versus right.
It was how do we figure out
how do we get the most
almost back to your
baseball analogy or sorry, basketball,
six man.
How do we get the most out of both?
What do we need right now
from each side and how can
we apply that right now?
It shouldn't be all or none.
It shouldn't be that forever.
It's what's needed now.
And that that is exactly
true what you said.
And I think Daniel Pink said
this in the interview, too,
is that the best leader is
one who can do both, you know,
because you don't want
somebody who's so far right
brain that they don't even
look at the numbers and
then you probably get in trouble.
Sure.
You know,
so it is somewhere in the middle.
And a good leader is someone
who can access both sides
of their brains when they need it.
And know when to do which.
Isn't that the hard part?
It's like, well, when do I do that?
It's like, well, you got to figure it out.
You got to feel it.
You got to see it.
Exactly.
That's not a small guess there.
Okay.
Another one.
Vivian James Rigney.
So this is a guy who I think
he's from Ireland originally,
and he was one of these guys.
It was everything was
accomplished achievement.
I got to do these things.
So he set out in his life to
climb the seven summits,
which is the highest summit
on each continent.
And so he got to this point
where he was at the top of
Everest climbing.
The weather turned.
It was miserable.
He was only six hundred feet
from the summit.
He couldn't see where he was going.
His body hurt terribly.
And he actually said,
I went into a space where I
don't I don't think I'm
going to make it out.
I don't think I'm going to get there.
And so then he said he
started thinking and he says.
Let me just read it here.
What will people remember me for?
All these amazing
accomplishments I've done?
Or will they remember me on
how I made them feel and
how I helped them improve their life?
Again,
we're talking about a common theme here,
right?
Other people said that in different ways.
But he said he had that
thought and he said it's obvious that,
you know, the latter was more important.
And just then the Sherpa
came and grabbed him by his
goggles and said, follow me.
And he said at the time that he thought,
oh, thank God,
he's going to take me to the bottom.
And the Sherpa, so he followed him,
not even knowing which
direction he was going.
The Sherpa took him up to the top,
to the summit.
He summited.
And then he said, follow me.
And the Sherpa got him back down.
But, you know,
it was just a really
profound story that all of
a sudden it was like, oh,
my whole life was focused
on doing these seven
summits and saying how
great I am to do that.
And it's not really the answer.
Yeah, there's so many lessons there.
In climbing a mountain, right?
I mean,
I climbed a couple mountains and I
heard a great quote.
I think it was in a book I
was reading before I
climbed my first mountain.
Just a spoiler, it was not Everest.
And someone said,
do you climb the mountains
so the world can see you or
do you climb the mountains
so you can see the world?
And it was like, it goes back to,
is it about me or is it about we?
And if you do it for that second one,
the we reason,
things get a little better.
Maybe not at first.
Right.
Let's say you were working
with a team and you were
going to split up
commissions or you could
keep all the commission.
Well,
keeping that commission is going to
make you feel good and feel rich.
But if you spread it out
five years from now,
you might have ten or a
hundred times that.
But it's simple to say,
but it is not easy to do.
Yeah, no, it's true.
And I mean,
it's all these things that I've
brought up with you all
kind of have a common theme, you know,
which is it's not about me.
It's about the team or it's
about the group.
And then my final one here
that I wrote down of my ten
that you had talked to me
about was Jan Jensen,
who is the head coach of
the Iowa Women's Basketball Program.
And, you know,
you know the success they've
had and what they've done.
And her quote that I thought
was amazing in that, she says,
my goal is not to win at any cost.
Although winning is great,
it is developing amazing women,
doing their time in the
program to prepare,
then to serve in the greater good.
bit of life after basketball.
I've heard Coach K say a
very similar thing, which is,
you know what?
I'm here to help people
develop and become better
and prepare them for life,
not to just win a basketball game.
And again,
looking at the big picture and
looking at what I can do to
help others that really
make a difference.
So, again,
I could have pulled a quote or
multiple quotes out of all
those interviews,
but those are kind of the
ten that came to mind.
Yeah.
Well, on my show,
I do a thing called the parting shot.
Yeah.
And did I ever tell you why I did that?
why I started doing that.
So I was talking to people.
I started this podcast when
I was a student, second year PT student.
And I did it because I just
want to learn stuff and
realize with my radio background,
I learned best like this.
And this was back when you
had to explain to people,
like when you started your show,
we had to explain to people
first what a podcast was
and how they should listen to it.
Now I think it's a little more mainstream.
But what I realized was I
was talking to all these
people I looked up to, clinical leaders,
professors, leaders in business,
things I wanted to learn.
And I didn't know how to
wrap up the conversation
without cutting them off.
So I stole an idea from P.T.
Barnum,
who used to have the Barnum &
Bailey Circus, the big top.
They used to have the
sideshow where you'd go and
you'd pay a nickel,
and you could go see the
bearded lady and the sword swallower,
and you could just sort of
walk around the tent.
And his problem was when
people paid their nickel,
they wanted to spend all day there,
but he had to get people out.
So he put up a sign that said,
an arrow on a sign that said,
see the egress around the corner.
So people would get to the
end and see the egress.
They'd walk through it.
And egress, of course, is exit.
So he changed the meaning to
make people enticed about the exit.
But I did parting shot
because I wanted to sort of say, hey,
listen, that was great.
Let's wrap it up.
But give me one overarching
idea or sentiment because
we know when people at the end,
they'll pay attention.
You've got their attention.
What would you want your
parting shot to be?
What's something that maybe
was a common theme amongst
all these ten ideas that
you shared with us today
from your two hundred
episodes of Profiles in Leadership?
Gosh, parting shot.
I would just say that people are amazing,
but they are more amazing
and accomplish greater
things when they focus on
helping others reach their goals.
So like one of my mantras has always been,
what do I do?
And I always say, I help leaders grow.
And so it gives me the
greatest amount of joy if I
can see other leaders start
from here and get to there.
And that just warms my heart,
probably even more so than
seeing what I've been able to do.
So I think that if you can
just focus on all these
things we talked about today,
um you know kind of relate
to that same thing and one
other thing I might say is
uh so you know um uh
copying somebody is the
greatest form of flattery
right so you're ahead of me
so I copied you too so I I
needed I needed something
that I could say at the end
so in my interviews I I say
the same thing I say at
this point in the interview
I always ask my guests the
same common question
And that question is,
in relation to leadership,
what is a pearl of wisdom
that you can leave us with today?
And, you know, again, great quotes,
great things.
And so it's very similar to
your parting shot,
but it's something that we
could kind of end the show with.
and whatever good artists
borrow great artists steal
Picasso said that he wasn't
he wasn't too shabby uh
check out profiles and
leadership uh just google
Steve Anderson he's had a
track record he's not he
doesn't really have to tell
you uh about what he's done
he can sort of just point
to a few things and show
you and show Trump's tell
every single time show is
better than tell so Steve
thanks for doing what
you're doing and thanks for
doing it here uh on the show
Well, thank you for having me, Jimmy.
It's always a pleasure.
And I enjoy seeing your continued success.
So keep on rolling.
Perfect.