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Tara Jaraysi Kenning: "Teamwork makes the dream work." John C. Maxwell. I'm Tara Jaraysi Kenning, and I'm a Tri-Cities influencer. Paul Casey: So to be a go-to guy or a go-to girl, you must push through your fear of failure. Announcer: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast, where local leadership and self-leadership expert, Paul Casey, interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: It's a great day to grow forward! Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Michelle Whitney. She's the superintendent of the Pasco School District. And fun fact about her, she's sort of a driver. So she said she can do a two-minute meditation a lot faster! Michelle, tell us about that. Michelle Whitney: Well, I just think it's about efficiency. You've got a lot to do. Two-minute meditation, we do it in 30 seconds. We move on to the work. We have things to do. I don't have time for that. Paul Casey: And her staff teases her about how fast she walks. Michelle Whitney: Right. Paul Casey: It's with intention. Well, we're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor, Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario what types of services do you offer? Mario Martinez: Hey, Paul. Thank you for letting me be on here. We run bifurcated practices in that we focus in two areas of financial plan. The first one is we do protection pieces, which include life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, really the things that people should be focused on to protect their families, their businesses. On the other side of our practices, we do investment services. On the investment platforms, we do both the brokerage platform, and we do the advisory level services. So depending on what someone's looking for as far as guidance on their investment strategies, we can curtail and build a strategy for them that makes sense. Paul Casey: Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way, you can reach out to me directly on my business cell phone is 509-591-5301. You can send me an email at mario.martinez@nm.com. Or you can reach out to us on our social media platforms, the easiest one being Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual on Facebook. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well, welcome, Michelle! I was privileged to meet you seven years ago in Leadership Tri-Cities. You were class- Michelle Whitney: 18. Paul Casey: And another one of the best classes ever, right? Michelle Whitney: That's right. We were actually the best class. Paul Casey: Oh, okay. I see. As opposed to number 11, which really was. Yes, and you had a different job at that time in the school district. You had gone from being a middle school principal into HR. Michelle Whitney: Yeah. Everyone was glad to see me when I was a middle school principal, and that changed drastically when I became director of HR. So it was tough transition. Paul Casey: HR managers, we love you! Thanks for listening. So Michelle, tell us your career highlights that got you to where you are today so our Tri-City influencers can get to know you and why you love what you do. Michelle Whitney: Well, I appreciate that question. I have a huge commitment to public service. My grandparents were both public servants. My grandfather was a police officer and chief of police of Pasco. My great-grandmother was a nurse at Our Lady of Lourdes, so I really come from a foundation in my family of civic service, and in particular, civic service to the community of Pasco. So I always wanted to be a teacher, and it was only right for me to tailor my education to be able to come back to a community that I loved and that my family had served in such amazing roles. And to be important in the lives of the students in Pasco has just been a gift. Michelle Whitney: And I've been extraordinarily blessed to serve in a variety of roles. I was a kindergarten teacher. I taught fourth grade. I was a counselor. I was a technology facilitator, a librarian. Paul Casey: Wow. Michelle Whitney: And it was always really just about offering my unique skills and talents to the organization so that I could be of best use to the organization and the kids of Pasco. Michelle Whitney: And then I really started a leadership journey, which I never intended to end up in a leadership role, but I was invited to the leadership table, if you will, by a mentor of mine. And I just feel a lot of gratitude towards the amazing mentors I've had over my career. I never saw myself that way, and it was by someone else recognizing those leadership talents in me and encouraging me in that direction that I took the risk to do an administrative internship program, became an assistant principal and then principal at the middle school. Then that started the trajectory into the district office with director of HR, which, having been a middle school principal and a counseling background, I was really uniquely prepared to do that job. Paul Casey: Yeah! Michelle Whitney: And I actually really loved that work. People joke with HR managers, but I do believe that in any organization, being able to be at the front line of hiring talent into an organization is just an extraordinary opportunity and gift. So that was amazing, and then I stepped into some other district office jobs. Michelle Whitney: And again, I would love to tell you I had this trajectory. I was going to teach kindergarten and then be the superintendent, but it wasn't really like that. And the opportunity to apply for the superintendency became open, and it really was about me throwing my name into the hat for a leadership position in a district I loved my entire life. And to be awarded that position was one of the greatest moments and has continued to be great moments since I was awarded the position. Michelle Whitney: I'm going into my fifth year. Every single year has had its complications. Every single year, I've been proud to be on the team and honored to do my part. So I have the best job ever, and the best part of my job is the students for sure. So sorry adults, you're second. Kids will always be first. Paul Casey: And I heard you tear up pretty easily when you think about those wonderful students. Michelle Whitney: I do. I do. In our organization, it's not uncommon for me to stand in front of a group of people, and I say, "We are," and the response is, "Pasco." It really for us is an outward commitment to our value of standing in the gap and bridging the divide for the students who need us the most. So when I'm in front of students or I'm in front of staff, it is not uncommon for me to be emotional about it because it isn't just a job for me. It truly me living that outward commitment every day. Michelle Whitney: And even when it's hard, I feel so extraordinarily blessed to be able to be part of what we're doing. And then when it's great and there's a success, those successes are just that much sweeter, and they really do truly move me to tears. Even talking to you about it, I get goosebumps. I live my purpose every day. And they say if you live your purpose, you never work a day in your life, and I truly feel like that I'm lucky in that way. Paul Casey: I think we're done here. That was an amazing- Michelle Whitney: Well, there you go. See? Efficiency. Paul Casey: ... story. Michelle Whitney: I told you. Paul Casey: That was an amazing story. Now I want to cry too. But living your purpose, so huge. Obviously, that's why I do what I do as a coach is to help people do exactly what you are feeling right now, so that's awesome. Paul Casey: Let's go back to that crossroads where you are going to take the jump into leadership or not, and you decided to move that direction. What helped you make that decision, and also what advice would you give someone else who might also be at a crossroads? "Should I take the jump into leadership, or should I just stay as a individual performer that I'm doing really well at?" Michelle Whitney: Right. So I think what helped me make that jump and take that risk was the courage of the support of the mentorship I had. So had it not been for Jean Carlton, who was the person who very first invited me into a leadership role, she really stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me in those early years in making sense of who I would be as a leader. And without that personal connection with her, I'm not sure I would have had the courage to take that first step. So I think that, as a leader now, I find that one of my purposes is to recognize other leaders and invite them in and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. I don't think you can ever underestimate the power of somebody with that invitation and that offer of support.... I could give you a list of 100 people that have been amazing mentors to me. And I just I think it's that support from trusted mentors that gave me the courage to do it. Michelle Whitney: Really as I reflect back on it now as having had some experience and I hope some wisdom, there's really, all of us, no matter what role you play, you're a leader in your own right. So there's never really a downside to leaning in to the desire to explore that leadership characteristics of yourself. The worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to learn some great skills and learn some things about yourself that will make you even better at what you're currently doing. But if you take that little bit of a risk, and maybe it's just a toe dip, it doesn't have to be a full jump at first, you'll likely find that it's a good fit for you. And then that success breeds success, and the more you try it out a little, and it's like you put the sweater on and it fits pretty good so you wear it around a little bit. But I would just encourage people, especially if you're nervous, find a trusted mentor, start slow, start small, but just continue to take those steps, and it's only going to make you better at whatever you choose to do. Michelle Whitney: You may never choose to be the person that is the front of a large organization, but leadership skills, regardless of what you choose to do, will always just make you a better contributor. And that's really what we are as leaders is contributors. So I would encourage anyone to take the risk if you're thinking about it, and again, find a trusted mentor that you can lean on because there are times where it's challenging, and you'll have self-doubts and having that mentor you can go to and be vulnerable about that is very important. Paul Casey: Fantastic answer because leadership is influence wherever you're at, and it will fill up your game no matter what you're doing. And I love how you said mentorship was a courage builder for you, even up to 100 people, which is probably true. It's probably not hyperbole. There's just a ton of people that we would not have taken that extra step had it not been for someone giving us that boost and saying you can do it. Maybe you're further along your journey, and you're like you need to turn around and bring somebody with you and mentor them, even if it's informal and you don't call it mentoring, but you want to help somebody along their journey. Paul Casey: Like you said, in five years, you've had a lot of issues to deal with in your position. You're smiling still! That's good. A lot of hassles, a lot of disappointments, a lot of things that get in the news making some people choose one side of an issue or another. But then there's the rewarding part of the job. We're not going to go into those other places. Here's the rewarding question, What allows you to focus then on those most rewarding things, and what is actually the most rewarding part of your job? Michelle Whitney: Well, I was very serious when I said the most rewarding part of my job is students. And, from the very first day that I started as superintendent and actually even prior during my successor year, I had a transition year, which was gift, I prioritized being in classrooms. There is nothing more magical than the relationship between students and their teachers. So I scheduled on the calendar Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays every morning when we were in person to start in classroom. Michelle Whitney: Most days I would get there. Some days I wouldn't. I got there more than I would if I didn't schedule it in. Some days I could stay a long time. Some days I could only be in one or two classrooms, but I always prioritized that. And it does a lot of different things. Michelle Whitney: One, it keeps me connected to what teaching means now. It's been a while since I've been in a classroom, and teaching is not the same as when I was in a classroom. So I think that's very important to stay in touch with those you're in service to so you can do right by them in your decision-making. Michelle Whitney: But there is nothing that feeds my soul more than students. So in this pandemic environment, I've done the same thing in that I am scheduled to go into Zoom classrooms. And one morning, I was in a kindergarten classroom, and they were doing this good morning routine where they would say good morning to one another. And of course, I'm in tears. There's nothing more sweet than kindergartners saying good morning to each other by name. And it's those moments where you can really connect with why we do our work, the sweetest kindergarten doing the most genuine thing by saying good morning to one another reminds you that those hard moments are worth it, that there's students depending on you, and that there's this kindness in our system. That's what makes the hard moments for me worth it is I stay connected to those things that are closest to students, students, teachers in the classrooms. Michelle Whitney: And I have to tell you, that's what's made this pandemic so challenging is we're thrust into the really hard parts of our job for most of our job, and you have to be a lot more intentional about getting out and participating in those things that the really feel your soul, feed your bucket, whatever those things are that you say. For me, I have never lost sight of what it means to be a teacher. I walk around with a teacher's heart, and I think that's why I cry is it touches that part of me that is so important. And like I said, I stay really closely connected to students, and that for me is the difference in those dark moments. Paul Casey: So cool that you kept your goal of being physically present, even, well, Zoom is not physical, but you still kept that goal alive. You found a way to still be in classrooms, even though it's online in order to do that. That's pretty neat. Michelle Whitney: Yeah. It's incredible. I get to read stories, and the kids bring their puppies and baby sisters to the Zoom. So in so many ways, you get to experience even more of a student's life. So it's been a gift really. And while in-person education is what we're about and who we're about, there really truly have been some silver linings to this environment. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I was an elementary principal so I totally get teacher, vice principal, principal, the journey. And playing with the kids at recess was a bunch of fun. I even sprained my ankle one year playing freeze tag. Michelle Whitney: Mine was flag football. Paul Casey: Was it? Michelle Whitney: So yes. I, yeah. Paul Casey: It's like the scar of courage- Michelle Whitney: Yeah, it's a rite of passage. Yeah, uh-huh (affirmative). Paul Casey: But that is where the joy was for sure. So leaders must keep growing or they become irrelevant. How have you matured as a leader, I'll just say in these five years of being superintendent? Michelle Whitney: Oh, that's a great question. I think the number one way that I've matured as a leader is by listening. I do a lot of listening to the people that I'm in service to. So I meet with parents a lot. I've done lots of different ways of doing that. Of course, pre-pandemic I did community coffee events. I've done Soup with the Superintendent. Since the pandemic, I've done some virtual town hall meetings. You go out and listen, but it's listen with intention. And it's really listening to understand those you're in service to, what they need from you, and reflecting on those decisions that you need to make and the kind of leader you need to be on behalf of those you're in service to. Michelle Whitney: I also do a lot of listening to teachers and staff in a lot of the same ways by being present, and I have the most amazing thing. I have a superintendent student advisory council. So I have 30 high school students that meet with me six times a year, and we tackle really difficult issues together, whether it's planning for a new high school or changing boundaries or overcrowding issues or social, emotional, health issues. Again, it's about being present with them and listening to them and tailoring my leadership and the way that I make decisions and what I prioritize and focus on in a way that they need me to do right by them on their behalf. Michelle Whitney: I would love to tell you it was some professional development training I went to or some class I took, but it really wasn't. It was being present in my system and listening to those that I've made a commitment to represent and learning from them how I can be better and different in order to serve them in the best possible way. Michelle Whitney: High school kids know what they need from us, and know what they need from us around very complex issues. The most diligent group of people that I saw work on a set of boundaries in a couple of facilities plan was that superintendent student advisory council. Michelle Whitney: So I joke that really we should let the students run the place. I just need to buy lunch and give them a ride. They truly do know what they need from us, and we just have to create opportunity for them to participate. And it's in those moments where I feel like I'm my best self and I'm my best leader for them. And I feel like it's a gift. Paul Casey: Learning by listening. Yeah, I was part of a group in Richland School District. I feel like it was called Focus years ago. I don't know if it still exists today. I was part of the faith community then, too, to come in, and it was all the folks that cared about students and could provide auxiliary services. Plus, the principals were in there. Plus, these cream of the crop students were in there, and they blew me out of the water! The maturity of speaking in front of these scary adults, and they're holding their own and saying, "These are the programs that we got growing. These are the thing we needed." I could totally see how that would be an energizing meeting for you. Michelle Whitney: Oh, it's incredible. Paul Casey: Just to further validate the whole listening post, I had a boss who do a listening post, he would call it. He would invite a dozen of the constituent monthly, and he would ask the same set of questions to each one to hear on the ground level of how to serve them in a nonprofit. And then just yesterday, I'm part of the National Speaker Association, and a board member called me from the Northwest Chapter and just said, "I'm a board member, and I'm just trying to get ground-level intel of how we can best serve our constituency." And I was like, "Wow!" He followed up with an email, and we even played with a couple of ideas for the pandemic of how to speak virtually. I'm like, I think it's always a great move when a leader gets down on the ground with the frontline people, who know all the answers, like you said, they how to run the school, and listen to them. Paul Casey: Well, as a superintendent, it must be hard, with a huge to-do list and probably a billion emails coming in, to know how to spend your time, how to triage tasks, how to know what to delegate and what you have to own. How do you sort how to spend your time? Michelle Whitney: Yeah. That's a great question, and I'm going to be really honest with you because if I'm not, the people that know me will call me on that. That probably is my biggest weakness, because I believe so deeply in every single person that I'm in service to, and we have a large organization, almost 20,000 students, which represent 40 to 60,000 parents, 2,200 employees, five board members. And every single one of those interactions is important to me. So the whole delegation and all of that is absolutely a work in progress. Michelle Whitney: For me, I think one of the biggest pieces that I'm blessed with, and this may sound cliché, but it's absolutely critical is to have an executive assistant that you trust. My assistant is absolutely incredible. She knows what I need to work well. She knows what I need as a person to function well. She's my number one fan. I'm fairly certain I'm her favorite person in the universe above and beyond everyone else. And on those hard days, I know for sure that my assistant still likes me. That's just that, not only does she help me organize myself professionally, she makes sure I'm where I'm at with what I need, my calendar is organized and squared away, but she's also that person that's there to bolster and support on the days when days are tough. Michelle Whitney: And I think that executive assistant and, for me, superintendent of management relationship is so important to have a person that you can go, "Oh my gosh. I don't know how to... I'm not going to be able to get all this done," and something that you can delegate and help follow through with those priorities. Michelle Whitney: The other piece is I have a great team. And we're learning about the strengths of the team together over the last five years. We've utilized a book called StrengthsFinder 2.0. And that was really a game changer in terms of knowing and understanding where people fell out around those strength characteristics and really now trying to organize work function up against and those and trying to collapse some of the siloed nature of the way work is typically done in a large organization to be able to align work tasks with people's strengths. Michelle Whitney: So I'm not a great executor. That's not my strength. I'm big vision, relationships, but the details of beginning to end is not my strength, but I know I have a colleague and a teammate that that is her strength. So when I need help with that task, I go to that person. I think knowing the strengths and talents of the people around you is a real efficiency builder, and then having someone like an assistant like I have, Jenny is amazing, that really can help you prioritize, especially for someone like me that everything is equally important all the time. And that's just not viable in the long term. You can do that for a short period of time, but at some point, you need some help in making sure that you're keeping the right things up front all the time. Paul Casey: What do those meetings with Jenny look like? How do you sort, prioritize? What do you discuss? Is it regimented? Is it ad hoc? What does it look like? Michelle Whitney: Yeah. That's a great question. I think with Jenny and I, it's evolved over time. We started out with it being scheduled that if I get to go to a kid thing or meet with Jenny on virtual. Paul Casey: That's going to bump it. Yeah. Michelle Whitney: Yeah. So Jenny was getting bumped all the time. Then it became more ad hoc. Lately, what's been amazing about this virtual environment is she just comes to the meeting, whatever meeting I'm in that I feel like I'm going to need her in, she is in there virtually, and she can listen to the meeting and help me prioritize that way. My thinking post-pandemic, when we're back to a more normal environment, I think that organization works best for us. So those meetings that she can be at with me or helping facilitate or there as a note-taker, I think that, we've landed on that arrangement for us probably works better. Michelle Whitney: But I think the key to all of that is you have to figure it out for yourself. That management system with your assistant is going to be very assistant-and-manager-specific in terms of how your personality works. So the key is finding something that works. I don't think it has to look any single way, but it has to work for both of you. Paul Casey: Sounds good. Well, before we head into our next question on external relationships, a shout-out to our sponsor. Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, why should people work with a financial advisor? Mario Martinez: Hey, Paul. That's a great question. Really, I think there's two types of people who should be seeking out a financial professional. The one person is somebody who has very limited access to financial guidance. Maybe they're a younger professional or somebody who just hasn't had an introduction to a financial professional yet. And the other type of person is really someone who has a lot of different exposure to different professionals. They just haven't found the one person that they really trust to take guidance from. So there's really an over-information in that sense. Those are really the two types of people that should be looking to be introduced to a financial professional. Paul Casey: Fantastic! So Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way is to reach out to me directly on my business cell phone, which is 509-591-5301. You can send an email to mario.martinez@nm.com, or you can find us on our business Facebook page, which is Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual. Paul Casey: So it's been very clear, Michelle, that leadership is relationships for you, that you believe that like I do. You've talked about a lot of internal relationships within the school and school system. Now you've got this community around you. So how do you intentionally develop relationships with the City of Pasco and beyond? Michelle Whitney: That's a great question. I feel very lucky. The City of Pasco, the city manager, Dave Zabell in Pasco, we have what's called a Create Group. It's the port, the city, the public utility, the county. I'm sure I'm leaving someone out, but it's the leadership of the infrastructure of Pasco. And we meet monthly, and we keep each other updated on those core functions that would overlap. So for me, I often report out on facilities or potential construction projects. They're also very interested in our educational programming. So we give updates there. That, I think, is an incredible unique opportunity for us to partner as a collective for the good of our community. Michelle Whitney: I'm also a Kiwanian, and we have representation at all of the local groups like the Chamber of Commerce and so on. I think that's very important. Maybe it's not always me that's at those tables, but there's someone from our organization at those tables that can act as a liaison. Michelle Whitney: The other piece, though, for me is, like I mentioned earlier, those community coffees, that I do them monthly. I've done that almost consistently in at least the last four years if not five in some variation, whether it's at the Starbucks, or we did Soup with the Supe at the Booth Building one time. But that really is just an open invitation to anyone who wants to come and sit knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder with me. And we talk about whatever they want. It's not a pre-canned presentation that I do. They just bring topics and discussion and we talk about, and I answer whatever questions there are. I think those are the relationships, too. Michelle Whitney: So there's the organized groups that you would expect an organizational leadership to be interacting in. Certainly we participate in all of those, but there are people out there who want to build relationship or want to be in a relationship with the school district and don't maybe know how, or maybe don't know what they want to do. That's where those more informal opportunities like a community coffee come in really handy for people who just come and say, "Hey, here's a skill or talent I have. I want to get involved. How could that look?" And then I just am a big connector at that point, and I'm like, "Hey, you need to get in contact with that person." The night Jenny's there, and I say, "Hey, Jenny, will you get them in contact?" Then she takes care of making those connections. But it's that central location at the Starbucks community coffee that they know the superintendent will be there and listen. Michelle Whitney: Then over the last year or so, I've started to invite some of my executive team there, too, so that there's other people other than just me there that I can connect folks to. So that's been a great relationship builder. Then we have phenomenal programs like our PEAK! Partnership Program where I have a staff who go out and talk to organizations in the community that want to partner directly with schools. So we have some real innovative organized efforts like that as well. Michelle Whitney: We don't do the work for educating kids on our own. It's truly a system-wide and a community-wide effort to build that network of support and lift all of our students. And I'm proud to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in the community. Paul Casey: Well, Tri-City Influencer listeners, Soup with the Supe, so you could steal that idea if you're a supervisor- Michelle Whitney: There you go! Paul Casey: ... not just a superintendent. Michelle Whitney: That's right! Paul Casey: And post-COVID you can have with you. I love it! So we rarely talk about money on this podcast, but every leader has to know their organization's financials. I know you've got a whole finance department, I would assume, within the district. But what do you have to stay accountable to? What does evaluation of finances look like in your position? Michelle Whitney: Yeah, that's a great question. Education finance and funding has been in a state of flux over the last three or four years…Probably longer than that, but since I've been in the superintendency, it's been in a flux and change post-McCleary. So I've had to stay very in tune with learning all the new legislation and how the laws are impacted because it was a complete shift in the way things were done. One, it was legislative advocacy around the McCleary decision, pre-McCleary decision, and then post-McCleary, it was about learning and understanding those aspects of the change in the way education funding was done. Michelle Whitney: But then it's really about my interfacing with the school board to build some benchmarks and goals and priorities for a philosophy about the way we spend our dollars. So my interface with the school board to ensure that we're building budgets that are in alignment with their philosophy and their goals and to meet our strategic planning priorities. So that's really the level that my leadership and influence is at is making sure that the way that we're budgeting and prioritizing dollars is in alignment with our strategic plan and our board's vision for our district. Michelle Whitney: And then I work very closely with our business office. I typically supervise directly assistant superintendents. My business officer is an executive director, but I directly supervise him because he is in charge of the district finances. And that was personal decision that I made. Not all superintendents or supervisors do it that way, but one, he was new. The funding was new, and I was new. So we all are learning together, and it's again, that spending time together, knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder learning is the best way, I think, to build team and accountability together, especially around something as important as finances. Michelle Whitney: We also do a fair amount, or I do a fair amount of interfacing with the community around things like bond planning and levy planning. And we do that through community task forces. And I had an assistant superintendent who did an extraordinary job in interfacing with a group called the Community Builders who helped us plan out a district strategic plan around our facilities. And then of course, layered on top of that is bonds and how those cycles will work. So it's really a multi-tiered effort as a superintendent in a school district, and there's a variety of stakeholders who are involved in different ways in education and finance decision-making. I think it's a really fascinating part of the work. It's a very complicated part of the work. Michelle Whitney: Recently, in the last couple of years, we've had to make some adjustments because the McCleary funding that would require us to repurpose dollars and really there were some areas that we were going to need to reduce. And we got teachers very involved, staff, building-level staff very involved in that. I went out and did a budget presentation, actually two presentations at every single building, and then invited people to come to the table to help us build some budget efficiencies. So we're really working hard to broaden the ownership and leadership around educational finance in Pasco. And we just started to get traction around that work pre-COVID, and then of course, COVID hit. So once we get back to something that appears a little more predictable, we'll get back to that. Michelle Whitney: But I felt like that was an extraordinary opportunity to peel back the curtain of finance of any big organization is complicated. I'm really excited about picking that work back up. Paul Casey: You mentioned strategic planning. You also mentioned in your StrengthsFinder. Vision is huge for you, by the way, huge StrengthsFinder fan. It's called CliftonStrengths now, but Tri-City Influencer listeners, please look up StrengthsFinder 2.0 the book or CliftonStrengths. There's a $19.99 version which will give you your top five. You'll be like, "Someone's reading my mail when you look at it." You're like, "Wow! This is what I love." And if you can be doing that 80% of your work day, you're going to love what you do. And talk to your supervisor about that. You can do it as a whole team. Paul Casey: I can facilitate that for you. It would just be a super fun thing to realize, "Wow, you're so good at that. You should be doing more of that!" And, "Wow, you don't do good at that? What's a way that we can move that around on a team?" Paul Casey: So when you think about the next hill to climb as a district, and you think about continuous improvement, what's your process for that? Michelle Whitney: Well, right now our focus really was derailed in the face of and the impacts of COVID. My eye now is on transitioning our students back into some kind of in-person learning that's safe for them over the course of the next few months and then really getting specific and intentional about how we bridge the impact of the disruption to their educational experience. Michelle Whitney: So we had a really nice trajectory of focus starting in my first year with identifying some outrageous outcomes and strategic plans, and we just refreshed and got a brand new strategic plan approved in January before COVID. So those things really are push-pinned on the bulletin board right now as we're getting really hyper-focused on how do we met the needs of our kids during a pandemic in this just extraordinarily complicated environment. Michelle Whitney: We will need to get back to that. Matter of fact, in January, we'll start again with the board re-calibrating our expectations of the strategic plan, and it will then be focusing on what is life after, post-COVID, or as we start to get kids back. It will be about how do we fill those gaps that have been created by a disruption in the traditional education environment. So those processes for me are done in coordination and collaboration with stakeholders that are closest to the work. So we involve our teachers and our students, and there's a lot of listening that happens and serving that happens and focus groups and task force that happen. So I would envision those things starting to occur. Michelle Whitney: Once we get back to something that's a little bit more predictable, right now, people's priority and focus is dealing with the current crisis. And it truly is still a crisis for us. We've been in a crisis mode since March 13th, so it's really difficult to get people to, and really probably inappropriate to try to get people to think about something more long range. It's like you wouldn't be thinking of building your next house while your current house is on fire. So we really just need to honor where we are right now and know that there'll be work to be done when we get back to something that's a little bit more normal. Michelle Whitney: But my process is really around valuing those closest to the work. They know what they need from us, empowering them in the decision-making, and then being really specific and strategic and intentional about a few key priorities, and I think that was mistake I made early on as a leader is taking on too many things. I'm a person that likes to do too many things, but organizations don't. And I don't mean any single person in an organization. Just systems don't. So when you think about a system like a rubber band, if you stretch it too tight, it'll break, and systems are the same way. So that's been a huge learning piece for me as an individual leader, that you really have to be keyed into systems don't work the same way as you do as an individual leader. Michelle Whitney: So part my leadership responsibility is to help narrow people's focus so that we can get really good at a few things versus having our attention spread across a lot of different things. And I'll tell you, we're not quite there yet as an organization, but we certainly have our eye on that. And this strategic plan that we had in place pre-COVID puts us in a nice spot for that. So we'll be able to pick that up post-COVID and move forward. Paul Casey: Great. Yeah, that makes total sense. I like to say too much change too fast kills change, and it kills you! Michelle Whitney: It's true. It's true. Paul Casey: Well, finally, Michelle, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Michelle Whitney: So, new leaders, I would just say, be kind and gentle with yourself. Find a network of people that you can talk to and that you trust, and be vulnerable with them about what you don't know. Maybe don't be vulnerable with everybody about what you don't know, but find a few people that you really, really trust because none of us as leaders know everything. There is such great learning in vulnerability. So that would be a huge piece of advice for new leaders. Michelle Whitney: And like I said, be kind and gentle with yourself. There are things looking back now, I wish I would have done differently in my first couple years, but I learned from that. We make changes, and we move forward from there. Michelle Whitney: Continuing to evolve in your own leadership, while I talked about listening as learning, that's one part of learning. But there really is the piece about extending yourself beyond your current knowledge base and whether it's through a professional organization that you're involved in or a group or a network of people, reaching out and maybe targeting one key professional development that you want to extend, one in a year, and just being really thoughtful and strategic and gentle about that choice. I think that's always a good thing, to pick one thing that you're going to really extend, maybe beyond your own comfort zone and lean into something that maybe scares you a little every year, and making a commitment to doing that. And either doing it as an individual leader or as a leadership team, I think is always also a really a great thing to keep in mind. Michelle Whitney: Because it's easy in the busyness of our lives to forget about extending ourself in some formal professional development, too. So there's the informal listening and learning to be a better person and a better professional, but there's certainly that formalized professional development that also meets a need for us as leaders and influencers. Paul Casey: Well, Michelle, how can our listeners best connect with you? Michelle Whitney: Well, email is always the best way to connect with me. I'm on that thing all the time. Just ask my husband. He'll tell you. But I do take great joy in interfacing and being a support and assistance to fellow leaders. People always say, "Oh, but you're so busy. We don't want to bother you." It is never a bother to sit with someone who needs me to be a good listener. Email's always a great way to get in contact with me, and I'm always happy to help and be of support and assistance. Paul Casey: Well, thanks again for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well! Michelle Whitney: Thank you. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. Michelle was just talking about getting more leadership proficiencies in your professional development, especially if you're an emerging leader or a young professional. I offer a program called Leader Launcher. Paul Casey: Leader Launcher is a Tri-City program for young professionals and emerging leaders where I do a training two hours every month on a leadership proficiency. You'll turn that into an action plan, be able to bring that back to your workplace and use it right away in your workplace. It'll be professional growth or leadership, and you can go to leader-launcher.com to sign up. For a full-year program, you'll get 24 hours of training that you'll be able to then apply right on the ground there at work. So leader-launcher.com. Paul Casey: Again this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest, Michelle Whitney from Pasco School District for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to inspire leaders in our community. Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you to make a difference in your circle of influence. It's a quote from Zig Ziglar. He said, "What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." Until next time, KGF, keep growing forward! Announcer: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show! Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams, so that they can enjoy life and leadership, and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Announcer: Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you his free Control My Calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000 and type the word Growing. Paul Casey: Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

Brandon Anderson: The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. Ralph Nader. I am Brandon Anderson and I am a Tri-Cities influencer. Paul Casey: And if we must assume, the only thing I would say is to assume positive intent. So if there's a gap between why that person behaved as they did, and you don't know the answer, fill in that gap with positive intent and check it out. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI Podcast where local leadership and self-leadership expert Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and non-profit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams, so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Speaker 3: Here's your host Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Rocco Luongo. He is an executive coach for professional services and he's got a fun fact I think we're all going to like today. It has to do with dad jokes. Rocco. Rocco Luongo: Thank you, Paul. Great tee up. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show. So with all the homeschooling going on, I've got three kids at home. So we do a walk every morning before school, what's on the agenda for today, how we're going to do it, and we start off the walk every morning with a dad joke. So that's my thing. So, I thought I would share today's dad joke with you all. Paul Casey: Please. Please do. Rocco Luongo: The cringe factor has to be there. Any good dad joke has to make you cringe. So today's joke was, I once had a hen who could count her own eggs. She was a mathemachicken. Ooh, isn't that horrible? Paul Casey: It's terrible. Rocco Luongo: It's terrible. Paul Casey: It's terrible. Rocco Luongo: It's terrible. But it got a big laugh. Paul Casey: You're owning it. And you're wearing the shirt today. Rocco Luongo: I even have my dad joke shirt on. You can't see it, but it is. I have my “dad joke loading” shirt on, so it's become a thing. We have to adapt. We have to adapt to these things, Paul. Paul Casey: We do. Well, let's dive in after checking with our Tri-City influencer sponsor. Paul Casey: Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, what types of services do you offer? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul, thank you for letting me be on here. We run bifurcated practices in that we focus in two areas of a financial plan. The first one is we do protection pieces, which include life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, really the things that people should be focused on to protect their families, their businesses. And on the other side of our practices, we do investment services. And on the investment platforms, we do both the brokerage platform and we do the advisory level services. So depending on what someone is looking for, as far as guidance on their investment strategies, we can curtail and build a strategy for them that makes sense. Paul Casey: Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way, you can reach out to me directly on my business cell phone is (509) 591-5301. You can send me an email at mario.martinez@nm.com or you can reach out to us on our social media platforms. The easiest one being, Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual on Facebook. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well, welcome again, Rocco. I was privileged to meet you here in this building and Fuse, walking by your office one day. Who is this guy? He's got the word coach on the doors. I’ve got to meet this guy. Did a one-to-one I think a few months later. And we even staged a picture in this very studio, here in Fuse for the Tri-Cities Journal of Business and the podcasts that are starting to pop up all over the place. So glad you could be with us today. Paul Casey: So, tell our Tri-City influencers a little bit about you, a couple of your career highlights that got you to where you are today and why do you love what you do? Rocco Luongo: Yeah, thanks Paul. I appreciate it. Yeah, we definitely met here at Fuse. It was so great. We've seen each other around, we swim in the same circles with the chamber and with community events and things. We're both very community oriented and I think that's important for everybody to do. And so that was great. And about my career, so I've been in the business for about 22 years. My background is engineering, did my undergraduate in New Hampshire in mechanical engineering. Sold a lot of table saws, swung a lot of hammers to pay for undergraduate. And I think a lot of people probably did the same. And I sold a table saw to the right guy. He turned out to be a director of engineering for a German firm. And before long I was an intern with them working in the same town, doubled my pay, working on engineering projects. Rocco Luongo: It was amazing. I thought, great. I was still a senior doing my undergrad. And like I said, it was a German firm. And I said, "Hey, could I ever maybe work in Germany someday?" And they said, "Yeah maybe two, three years, with some hard work you might get there." And I thought, 'Well, that's not bad." Six months later, the project got called back to Germany and they said, "Everybody who wants to go can go." Paul Casey: Whoa. Rocco Luongo: And it was just a great opportunity. And I said, "Well, there's some more schooling I want to do." They took a look at what I was doing and said, "I tell you what, we're going to bring you over there. We'll hire you as a German and we'll put you right into our master's program." Rocco Luongo: And so I did my master's program there too. So I got a master's in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering in Germany, in German, which I didn't speak. So I had to learn to speak German. Paul Casey: Wow. Rocco Luongo: Yeah, that's hard. I got hazed too. They were telling me all the time, "An American engineer, is there even such a thing? Can an American be an engineer?" It's like, "Hey guys." We had one Australian there who used to always say, "Who won the bloody war?" I'm not trying to incite violence or anything, but there was definitely some hazing going on. Rocco Luongo: Then from there, came back to the US. Was supposed to be a two year program, stayed for five years, had a great time, just stayed there working. I had six weeks of vacation, it was an awesome time. Came back to the US. Then actually got recruited by a tech company that was a spinoff of WSU working on some very cool technology. Helped them raise 180 million bucks. They were called Infinia. They subsequently sold off a chunk. Is still here handling government projects. The other part was sold off to a company in Utah. That was a heck of a project. We did NASA projects, DOD. We made these miniaturized nuclear power points basically for Mars rovers and for other projects that we can't talk about, but other interesting things. Rocco Luongo: So that was really fun. From there, started my own engineering consultancy. Started realizing that management and leadership and business acumen stopped many more of these projects than engineering problems. And just, I was always managing right from Germany. When I was in Germany, every engineer, there is a manager and a leader, even if you're no good at it. And so I stumbled through, and I learned to manage by listening because I couldn't speak the language super well. So I just would listen to everything everyone said, and I would just give simple, as clear guidance as I could. Do this, do that by Thursday, Donnerstag. Rocco Luongo: We would just do it as simple as possible and just evolved that out into my own consultancy. Now I still do engineering work, mostly expert witness stuff. And then I do a lot of coaching and consulting for professional services for engineers, architects, healthcare lawyers. And it just expands into certain areas. Rocco Luongo: Like this year we had helped one of our clients change a federal law. So kicked off a lobbying campaign and got that changed because of there was just a problem... It's complicated. But a problem with the way the services were being done. The government wasn't paying on time and these benefits just weren't being paid on time to people. So we had to change a federal law. Rocco Luongo: Done that a couple of times with new products and new services. And so it's expansive. And I think you'll agree with this, it ultimately comes down to fundamentals. It comes down to what you get up every morning. What your mindset is, what you choose to do and what you choose not to do. Paul Casey: And why do you love what you do? It's apparent that you love what you do. Rocco Luongo: Oh yeah. It's challenging. It lets me use my whole brain. I don't have to just use the science stuff. I love science and math, but I like it when it can tell a story when it can solve a problem. That's what I always loved about engineering. It was just problem solving. And very soon I realized, in product and service development, is that the product and service is just a way of solving a problem. And that's really a business problem. Meet the customer's needs, hit the price point delivery, all those other things. And so it's really all just business problems. And so I engineer the business solutions, is what I do. And just use the good leadership techniques and help people solve their own problems. Try to lead them there, but not give them the answer so that they can solve it and learn it for themselves. Paul Casey: So our second engineer in a row on the show, and engineers with personality, I like to say. Rocco Luongo: We're a lot alike. Thank goodness. I was about to say, I'm glad you didn't say just one of them because then I'd be like, "Wait, which one am I?" Paul Casey: I also work with another group here in town. They call themselves accountants with personality. We like to tease some of the professions. They're scary smart. Rocco Luongo: Perfect. Paul Casey: So there were key moments along your journey. What helped you make some of those decisions about whether to jump or not to jump to a new opportunity? And what advice would you give to our listeners who have a crossroads decision to make? Rocco Luongo: Well, humans are emotional beings. And so ultimately, every decision you make is going to be emotional. If you're an engineer, you're going to do the math, you're going to do the projections. You'll figure it out. Hey, I'll make more money going this way or that way it'll take me more time this way or that way. But ultimately, you're going to make an emotional choice. And so what I recommend when you're at any kind of a crossroads is, examine your options, keep your options open. And one thing I like to do is I just take a look at the best case, worst case of making the choice or not. And you end up having four boxes if you take a look at that. And then you you can dig into those. You can look at financial specifics in each box, timeline specific box. Rocco Luongo: You should certainly include emotional impacts in those boxes. If I make the choice, wow, I'll feel amazing because I told my grandma on her death bed that I'd finally do this. And this is a big deal to me, even if it doesn't make as much money down the road. Or whatever it is. But realize, ultimately, your heart is going to choose. And so let it, but get all your thoughts together on paper so that you can sleep at night too. Rocco Luongo: And then when you've made the choice, do it, just do it, go and do it. And a lot more is lost due to inaction than wrong action, as I'm sure you've seen. Making rapid, high quality decisions is essential in business and in life. And one of the things that holds people back all the time is, they don't quite understand that not everything is quite as permanent as they might feel. If I'm at this crossroads, man, I'm going to be on it for the rest of my life. Not necessarily. If you look close enough, tomorrow, there'll be another crossroads you can see. And the day after that there'll be another one. Life is a series of opportunities if you keep your eyes open and you're tuned for it. Paul Casey: That's great advice. I love the four box system, but it doesn't have to be four boxes probably. Rocco Luongo: Sure. Paul Casey: But it's weighing out all the different categories. Like you said, emotional being one of those and that every decision you make probably isn't permanent. There's going to be a chance to iterate off that or go a different route. It's not all or nothing kind of thing. Rocco Luongo: That's right. Paul Casey: Good stuff. Rocco Luongo: Thanks. Paul Casey: What's most rewarding for you in your job? How do you stay focused on that? There's probably some hassles, disappointments like in every job, but instead of focusing on that, you're going to focus on what's rewarding. What is rewarding? Rocco Luongo: My client success is ultimately my success. And so, if you can just tune your services to the betterment of your client, so that literally you are doing the very best you can for them. And if you like to do that, then you're in the right field. That's going to be it. You'll enjoy it. And I also have learned, as I'm sure you've learned too, that you have to say no to certain clients, that there are just some clients that it's just not going to work out. And I can tell right away. At first, I couldn't. And so earlier in your career, you just want to try and serve everybody. I can help anybody. I can do anything. I can help with anything. And so you just learn that there are certain people who, what they need, isn't what I do. Rocco Luongo: If you want to grow, I can help you do that. If you want to set a measurable goal and set metrics and track them on a regular basis and adjust, I can help you with that. If you like feedback and accountability, I can help you with that. If you like treating your business like a business and actually building an advisory board, building a board of directors, if it's big enough, managing that, building your team, managing your team, if you really want to do all those things, not every company has to, but the more you want to take your business seriously, the more I will be able to help you with it. Rocco Luongo: I've had some clients that haven't done so well. They talk a good game, but they don't really deliver. I have been told erroneous numbers. How are sales going last week since we put in that thing? "Oh, it's going great." Weeks and weeks in a row. By the time we get to the monthly report, what's happened here? It's like a calamity. What is this dumpster fire of a report? Where are all these numbers? "Oh, I guess I wasn't right about that stuff." What are you doing? You're wasting your resources, my resources and time. You're not getting anywhere. What's going on here? I've understood what the DNA of an ideal client is. And my success is just their success. So if you'd like to grow, if you like to work towards measurable goals, especially in professional services, that's where I shine. Paul Casey: Your rubrics were very clear with that. So if someone, no matter what field they're listening to this podcast, how would you say they should figure out what their ideal ideal client is? Rocco Luongo: Yeah. And of course that can really vary. For example, in engineering, you may offer more than one service, in which case you may have more than one ideal client. Law firms, especially, too. Practice area. If you're in family law, if you're in crim or if you're in civil litigation, that ideal client is going to vary again. Rocco Luongo: But definitely understand your business in terms of the business model canvas, which is one of the models that we use here all the time at Fuse for the accelerator. Really take a look at who your client channels are going to be, your customer channels and customer segments are going to be, how you're going to reach them. Create personas for those people, give them a name like Paul, Cheryl, Brenda. Something that means something to you. Empathize with them, understand what it is. And then you can build it up. And then you can test it out with your clients. You can really see if that's going to be the right model for them. Am I going to be answering the questions right for them? And just try it out. You have to always test. Paul Casey: That is really important. So my ideal client, her name is Leslie Maxwell. I did give her a name and she's a middle manager on the way up, she reads Self magazine and does yoga and never has enough time for that. And has a couple of kids. Rocco Luongo: That's the perfect point. Paul Casey: Working with homeschooling right now and struggling with that. And I've created a whole page on my ideal clients. So that in your marketing, or as you say, when you're discerning whether this would be a great client for you, run it through that sieve and go, "Yeah. That's somebody that I could really serve." Paul Casey: So leaders have to keep growing or they become irrelevant. How have you matured as a leader, as a coach, even in recent years, maybe even in the last five years? Rocco Luongo: So, one thing that differentiates me is, I may not be the smartest guy, I may not be the fastest, whatever, but I love to learn. I absolutely love to learn and I spend a lot of time on it and I spend a lot of money on it. I'm constantly going to seminars. The last six months, not necessarily. Paul Casey: Right. Rocco Luongo: In case you guys haven't been paying attention, we've been having a bit of COVID issues going on. But I love going to seminars. I love going to learning opportunities. My wife and I actually go together. We're kind of nerdy that way. Paul Casey: Cool. Rocco Luongo: We do these things together. We're both into learning and professional development. So we do these things together. I love to read. My engineering side is math and tech heavy, so when I learn and read leadership books and business books, I can quickly distill down elements that I can work into models and tools that I can use in my practice. So I quickly build tools out of things I learn. And I can put them very rapidly to use because I've got a good recurring slate of clients on constantly trying these new things and seeing how they work. Rocco Luongo: So putting those things to use is really what helps. If you only read something, but don't write or create anything out of it, don't make a computer model or a guide or just a note to yourself, or whatever is meaningful to you, if it only stays in your brain and never comes to the real world, to some level, that's just entropy. That's just heat being wasted. It's energy, not being directed at a purpose. Once you write something down, that's a neural muscular process that really crystallizes your thoughts into something real. And if you want to take that and share it with a friend to hold you accountable, "Hey I wrote this down." Paul Casey: Even better. Rocco Luongo: Even better. So the number one thing really is just, I love to learn. I love to put it in action. And I think that energy just carries forward into my clients. They feel that and while we set goals and we achieve them. Your clients too, every client has setbacks, this happens. So how do you deal with a setback? How do you deal with the pivot? You just deal with it. Paul Casey: So you're sitting at a seminar at a conference... I'm just going to go there with you because this is so much fun. And a speaker is up there sharing. What are you doing while you're sitting there with your notebook? When right in the middle of a seminar, that person maybe sends a great idea or maybe it's just, you're in the zone with them. Rocco Luongo: Right. So I tend to listen with my whole body. So I just sit back and I just listen. I take it in with my eyes, my ears, just everything, the room around me. I just want to see how this whole thing is happening. It's just very exciting because I love doing talks myself. I love training. I love speaking. I did a Ted Talk. I just love this stuff. So I love watching every one of these presentations, because I'm always looking for a little nugget I can take back. Rocco Luongo: So what's in my notebook? Usually a top three is what I try to get, three things that are really meaningful to me out of this talk. Because I can't just spend my whole time writing notes or else I miss a lot of stuff with my head down. So I try to capture three big bullets. Rocco Luongo: And they are sometimes simply substantive, like a piece of information, like you can get 16% better web traffic if but blank. Oh, okay. That's cool. I'll write that down. That's a great idea. Sometimes it's about the structure. I saw one great talk and I've adopted this, and I encourage anybody out here listening to try this as well. Whenever you're doing any kind of a presentation, like a sales presentation, you're talking to a group, it's a free talk. Come on in. If you like, what I'm saying, come on, sign up. We'll have a meeting. Move into the process. I love having my clients come up and talk too. I share the stage with them. I let them talk about the challenges that they've been through, how we've solved them, how things are going now. Thank you very much. Rocco Luongo: So I end up doing relatively little of the talk. I provide the platform to my clients so that they can share what great things they're doing. And all of a sudden you've cleared a tremendous gap of credibility in the minds of the audience, because wow, this guy's got his clients up here saying great things. They're doing the talk for him. So I saw that one time and I'm like, "I'm definitely doing that. That's fantastic." Then I thought, "Man, can I get my clients to do that?" And guess what? You can, if you do a good job for your client. So couple of nuggets. Paul Casey: Yeah. Really good stuff. And just Tri-City influencers, it's really important to write after you read. And I love what you said about the neuromuscular connection that happens when you do that. I'm a massive filer, so I'll rip stuff out of magazines that have been highlighted, I'll file it by a certain leadership topic. Rocco Luongo: Nice. Paul Casey: And then that turns into a seminar or a book or something eventually. But you're right, I'm always ripping stuff out and doing stuff with it, journaling it. So much fun. Paul Casey: Most of our a to-do lists are greater than the time we have to do them. So that requires a leader or an entrepreneur to triage tasks, and delegate, outsource things so that you can focus on the most important tasks. So Rocco, how do you sort how you spend your time? And maybe what tips could you give on delegation or outsourcing? Rocco Luongo: Yeah. So how I sort my own time is, I've got overarching goals, like assets I'm building for other programs that I'm working on. I've got current client matters and I've got some administrative time. There's always some biz dev as well. So there are different categories. So I try to keep myself moving in each one of those categories. I've got a pretty good formula that keeps me moving in each one of those. Rocco Luongo: I developed a template I called the block and tackle sheet. And we'll probably talk later about my website, so if you can get it there later. We'll do that plug later. But it's one tool. It's a weekly organizer. It keeps me on track. I use it all the time. But how do I choose the stuff? I'm a big fan of Covey's four quadrants model. Paul Casey: Oh yeah. Rocco Luongo: The important versus urgent matrix. That one. Every now and then, we all get jammed up with too much stuff. And you've got these task lists that are maybe exploding out of control. I'm starting my third one before I finished the first two. Paul Casey: Day's gone wild. Rocco Luongo: Day's gone wild. Exactly. That's funny. And sometimes you do. I think you said triage in there. I sometimes just call it audit, but sometimes there needs to be a reboot. You got to pull the plug out on this, let it calm down for a minute and plug it back in and see what really matters. And so I generally have each one of my tasks on a little sticky note. I just like it. It's very visceral. When it's done, I put a little checkmark on it and I put a pile that at the end of the week, I review all my sticky notes. It helps me journal for my next week. So that's just my little model that I do. Rocco Luongo: But if the sticky notes get out of control, I will take them and literally take the four quadrants, put it up on one of my whiteboards and I'll just find a home for each one of them. And all of a sudden, you start seeing, well, man, if this thing is not important or urgent, time for them to go away. Sometimes a thing you thought was worthwhile to do, just didn't have enough priority and it kind of went away. It's been replaced by something else. And we just try to keep everything in that important, but not urgent box- Paul Casey: Yes. Quadrant two. Rocco Luongo: So you can plan it. That quadrant two. Exactly. As you know. And if anything else is urgent, then just handle it. Just handle it. And you can get wrapped up in so many things. Well, I'm a procrastinator or I feel anxious, or I just don't know what the right thing to do is. Well, you're a procrastinator or you're anxious, the same kind of thing to do is just start going. Just take action. Any action is so much better than wrong action that you are going to be moving yourself in a positive direction. Rocco Luongo: And if you don't know what to do, this can be the hardest thing in the world. Ask for help. Call a mentor, call you, Paul. Paul knows a lot of stuff. Call me, call any number of people. The Fuse mentor network. If you don't know them, call the pastor at your church, call the neighbor, call a friend, whatever is meaningful to you. Don't let it stew. I think people sometimes feel so very alone, especially early business folks can feel very alone, like it's me against the world. And that's really not true. Even here, especially in the Tri-Cities, we have a great community supporting entrepreneurs and there's a ton of people who'll give you help support for very little or for free. There's a lot of good people around. So ask for help. Paul Casey: Yeah. I love the “pull the plug and then plug it back in.” So I've asked my clients, this very week, one of the questions for an icebreaker, I asked them was, what do you do when you get overwhelmed? And you said the three things that are the number one, two and three answers. One is you’ve got to pull the plug, you got to step back, breathe, compose yourself. Second, you might have to just tackle one of those tasks and get something to done. Or make some progress, kick something down the road, spin that plate again. And then, ask for help, being that other one, because clearly it's too much for you because you're saying the word overwhelmed. So you're going to have to get some help. Rocco Luongo: Yeah. That's right. Paul Casey: Before we head to our next question on relationships and leadership, a shout out to our sponsors. Paul Casey: Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual, Mario, why should people work with a financial advisor? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul, that's a great question. Really. I think there's two types of people who should be seeking out a financial professional. The one person is somebody who has very limited access to financial guidance. Maybe they're a younger professional or somebody who just hasn't had an introduction to a financial professional yet. And the other type of person is really someone who has a lot of different exposure to different professionals. They just haven't found the one person that they really trust to take guidance from. So there's really an over information in that sense. So those are really the two types of people that should be looking to be introduced to a financial professional. Paul Casey: Fantastic. So Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way is to reach out to me directly on my business cell phone, which is (509) 591-5301. You can send an email to mario.Martinez@nm.com or you can find us on our business Facebook page, which is Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Paul Casey: So Rocco, you probably believe like I do that leadership is relationships. So talk to us about what relationships are key to your success? How do you intentionally develop relationships? Rocco Luongo: Well, I do agree that relationships are instrumental to leadership and business in general. Business is about people. You have to think of your customers as people, as individuals, solving an individual's problem. And if you do it right enough times, it becomes a business. And a big part of having a successful business is having good, both client relationships, but also other partner businesses that can provide complementary noncompeting services to help you become successful. Rocco Luongo: For example, like if we do off-sites for example, I'm not going to have everybody come to my home necessarily. We're going to go and rent a space. So you need to have that. You're going to have to understand how to work with catering. You're going to have to understand how to get your materials printed. You're going to have to understand how to work with event coordinators. In my team, I've got marketing people, I've got web people. So you need to be able to manage your team, both internal and external. Rocco Luongo: You also need to be able to manage your clients so that you can understand where their gaps are and augment them and help them be successful. And what I have to do to help one client be successful, isn't necessarily going to be the same thing as a different client. So I always mold my programs around their needs, as I'm sure you do too. That's one thing that a mechanical engineer learns is that people are not machines. Whether we all do something about it is different, but we all learn it pretty early. Some are just frustrated and stay stuck there. But the rest of us, we learn and people are emotional beings. And so you have to be intentional and well, start with your intention. That's how I do it. What is it that I need to get done? What value can I bring to this relationship that will be worthwhile for that person to come and get excited, and be motivated, to be a marketing affiliate or to be a service provider of whatever kind? Paul Casey: Which is one of the best networking tips that we could share is, go into those relationships serving. What can I do? What can I get? Can I give advice? Can I give a tip? Can I connect you to somebody else? People love those kind of connectors in our community. And people are going to love working with you if you're just kind to them and you treat them with honor and respect and value. So, I don't like the finance part of my job personally. So I've got a CPA and I've got a bookkeeper and I've got a wealth advisor and I love those folks and I want to treat them awesome because they're taking care of the stuff that I don't want to do. Rocco Luongo: That's right. And we need those results to be good. Paul Casey: We do. Rocco Luongo: Yeah. Paul Casey: Well, self-care is also essential to our mental health, especially in the land of COVID and just for top performance in general. Because if you melt down, you're not good for anybody. So what recharges your batteries? Rocco Luongo: So I'm a very athletic person. I played a lot of sports. I played Div One rugby in college. I love that kind of stuff. I did CrossFit for a long time. I love cycling, mountain biking. I mountain biked over the Alps while I was in Germany, a seven day trip. It was beautiful. I still go bike packing with friends. Carried that forward with my kids, biking and hiking to the level they're able. They're growing up. A lot of that has been changed because of COVID. Can't really go to the gym. It's not quite the same. So repurpose exercises as I can around the house. Going for a jog is pretty easy. You can pretty much always do that. Going for a bike ride again, pretty easy. You can always do that. Doing yoga, doing the video of yoga, sometimes some strength or flexibility based yoga is good. Rocco Luongo: It's really just about really picking a time to do it, and then following through on that time. And if you keep doing that long enough, then the pattern starts forming, breaks into your brain and into your heart. And then you start doing it. You look forward to it more and it becomes less of a burden and more of a true benefit. And some days you just don't feel like doing anything. And so you can honor that time too. You can say, "Well, I'm going to take a day off." If there's a couple too many of those days, then maybe you should say, "Well, maybe I'll do a 10 minute ride, not a one-hour ride?" Just get into it and do it. Rocco Luongo: And a lot of that, if you're resistant to it early, a lot of it's just this out the door factor. Once you're out the door doing the thing, you're probably going to like it. Paul Casey: Get started. Yeah. Rocco Luongo: It's just that activation energy to get you going. And I'm sure you've seen it too, but in coaching and consulting, you see that activation energy hurdle get in a lot of people's way on a lot of different kinds of topics. But get them started, that momentum will start building. Paul Casey: Yeah. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. Rocco Luongo: Yes. I'm pretty sure an English scientist who died a virgin said that a long time ago when an apple hit his head. Paul Casey: Activation energy. We just got to get going, put something into play. We've got to move. Rocco Luongo: Right. Paul Casey: Well, we've rarely discussed money on this podcast previously, but every leader, every entrepreneur has to know their organization's financials. What does evaluation of financials look like in your position? Rocco Luongo: So I'm also not a CPA. Pretty good with numbers. I do like numbers. And so what we do is, also bridging on what I said earlier, just to make sure no one is telling me baloney, we have standard reports that we take a look at. So I think the three most important financial reports that you look for in a business are going to be your balance sheet, your profit and loss and your cashflow statement. If I can see those things on a monthly basis and certainly on a quarterly basis, that's going to be adequate to handle that side. Rocco Luongo: What we do, then, we tie that back to other sets of metrics like number of impressions, or number of posts or a number of meetings, or whatever is meaningful for your business, that we can then tie to that top line in terms of revenue. And once you've done that, you basically can distill pretty much all businesses down to five numbers of business. You've got your leads, your conversions, number of transactions per client and average sale price per client, and then margin at the end, which incorporates all of your efficiencies and all of your inefficiencies, if the case may be. And then what comes out of it is profit. And so you can basically find what those four top line numbers are and tie them back into those standard three cashflow, profit and loss, and balance sheet statements. And then you can really see how the business is going. Rocco Luongo: And that's usually where we go, because money is an output, as you know. People get wrapped up on and it's also very emotional, but it's really an output. When you do enough of the right stuff, money ends up in your account. If you don't do the right stuff, money doesn't end up in your account. And that might seem flip, but it's pretty true. Rocco Luongo: What do you think? Paul Casey: Yeah. See, that's a lag measure. That's what you're describing. Right? Rocco Luongo: Exactly. Paul Casey: Money is that. In the lead measures, what are those things we can control? And as coaches, that's what we try to do is help people set those goals that are within their control, that's going to get them that money in the bank later. Rocco Luongo: That's right. Paul Casey: Good stuff. Finally, what advice, Rocco, would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Rocco Luongo: So the thing that I would say is, read first of all. Read a couple of key books, if you haven't already read them. Read Seven Habits by Steve Covey, which we talked about earlier. Read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie. Go down the Collins road, probably do some Good to Great. That will really help you out. Boy, if you do any kind of management, checkout Blanchard stuff, One Minute Manager, that stuff is really good. I think between, I think four or five books I just said, man, if you get started there, you've really got a good foundation. Find yourself a group of other like-minded people who want to talk about these kinds of books and work together, if you can. Maybe like a little business book club kind of thing. Or come on down to Fuse or come on down to whatever your local business accelerator is. Rocco Luongo: Get involved. Get involved somewhere. Maybe it's a nonprofit that you want to get involved in, but put that leadership into play. Maybe become an advisor on a board somewhere or a board of directors member somewhere. Just take action, take motion, go in a direction and serve. And like we said, when you show up at that first meeting, what gift can you bring? If you go to someone's house for the first time, you're going to bring a gift. Well, I hope you will. Please bring a gift. Bring a gift with you. And this is also metaphorical. Maybe the gift you're bringing is a connection or a favor or something else, but bring some kind of a gift. And when you do that, it just makes everything easier. People are going to like you. They'll show that you care, you put some effort into this moment. Just everything goes a lot smoother if you do that. So I think you should prepare and then you should engage. Paul Casey: Great stuff. Well, Rocco, how can our listeners best connect with you? Rocco Luongo: You can check me out on my website, gorocco.pro. I've got my coaching and consulting stuff there. You can read what I do. You can see some of the other companies that I've worked with. You can also connect with me there. I have stayed pretty far away from social media over the last few months. It's just become dead toxic. So you can get on my mailing list there if you want. And I send out periodic emails with offers of services and also just things to think about and templates and tools. Paul Casey: Yeah. You mentioned one tool earlier. Did you want to plug that? Rocco Luongo: Oh yeah. The block and tackle sheet. That's my weekly planner. It's a two pager. There's a PDF. You can check it out on gorocco.pro. Go under resources, search for block and tackle sheet. It pops up. You can download it and fill it in. No charge there. Just trying to help. Trying to help you guys out. Paul Casey: Well, thanks again for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Rocco Luongo: Well, thank you, Paul. And thank you for having me on here and thank you for being a great leader of the Tri-Cities too. Appreciate you. Paul Casey: My pleasure. Well, let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. It's a program I'm offering here in the Tri-Cities for young professionals and emerging leaders. It's called Leader Launcher. You go to leader-launcher.com and it is a monthly seminar. Right now, it's virtual. We can't wait to get back together live, but it's a two-hour seminar on a leadership or personal growth proficiency. If you want to move up in your company, your organization, to the next level, you want to come to Leader Launcher. Paul Casey: You're going to meet some awesome people that are also at the same stage of leadership growth. You're going to pick up 12 proficiencies in a year. You're going to be able to put those right into play, like we talked about in our podcast. Again, leader-launcher.com. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey, and I want to thank my guest Rocco Luongo who is an executive coach for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so that we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tip for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. Leonard Bernstein said, "To achieve greatness two things are needed. A plan and not quite enough time." Until next time, KGF, keep growing forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. Speaker 3: If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org. For a consultation that can help you get past your current challenges and create the strategy for growth for life, grow your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you his free Control My Calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message to 72000 and type the word growing. Paul Casey: Tri-Cities influencer podcast is recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

Speaker 1: I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel, by Maya Angelou. I am Michelle Oates and I'm a Tri-Cities Influencer. Paul Casey: What specific behaviors must everyone on your team do every week to live out the vision and keep it alive? One of the only ways change happens in a company is if people change their behavior and align it to the vision. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI Podcast where local leadership and self-leadership expert, Paul Casey, interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs and non-profit executives, to hear how they lead themselves and their teams, so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. And here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Jennifer Cunnington. She is the home loan sales manager of STCU here in the Tri-Cities. And a fun fact about her, is I found a lady who likes fantasy football, but Jen, you better tell us more about that. Jennifer Cunnington: Yes, indeed Paul. Thanks for having me. Yeah. My family put together a league a few years back and I was the only girl. And so I thought that I had to do a ton of research in order to be good at it. Over the years I've rested on my own laurels a little bit, but they always tease me, because I do so much research. I haven't won yet, but I've come pretty close. Top five out of 10, I think is pretty good. So I'm still working on it. Paul Casey: Awesome. Well, we're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor, Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, what types of services do you offer? Marion Martinez: Hey Paul, thank you for letting me be on here. We run bifurcated practices and then we focus in two areas of a financial plan. The first one is, we do protection pieces, which include life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance, really the things that people should be focused on to protect their families, their businesses. And on the other side of our practices, we do investment services. And on the investment platforms, we do both the brokerage platform and we do the advisory level services. So, depending on what someone's looking for, as far as guidance on their investment strategies, we can curtail and build a strategy for them that makes sense. Paul Casey: Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Marion Martinez: The easiest way, you can reach out to me directly on my business cell phone is 509-591-5301. You can send me an email at mario.martinez@nm.com or you can reach out to us on our social media platforms. The easiest one being Mario Martinez - Northwestern Mutual on Facebook. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well, welcome Jen. I was privileged to meet you through leadership Tri-Cities just a couple of years ago. It seems like it's been longer. And you were a shining star in your class. What number was that again? Jennifer Cunnington: Best class ever. Paul Casey: Yet again, best class ever. And we've done some work together, with some team building with your awesome team over there, STCU. I'm glad you could join us today. So start us off by telling us a little bit about your career highlights that led to what you're doing now and why do you love what you do? Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. Well, I started in banking when I was in college and then just was introduced to the mortgage arena through that big financial institution. Then I went to work for a credit company who started acquiring banks, back in the day. And so, because I was the only one with a little bit of knowledge about something big that they were going to be involved in, they took advantage of that. And I rolled with it, learned a lot about things I had not a lot of knowledge about, but that helped me embark on this... Gosh, I won't say how many years, but have had just a really engaging time in this industry. Jennifer Cunnington: So, I had a lot of really wonderful mentors and as I went through different positions in finance, I decided that I wanted to be on the forefront of the origination part, because I wanted my clients to have the very best experience possible. So, I really wanted them to get to the closing table, feeling comfortable with paperwork, and there's a ton of it. And really understanding what their terms were and that it was all in their best interest. So, it's been a big ride over the years. I've gotten to do some really, really fun things and meet a lot of great people. And now we're here. Paul Casey: And why do you love what you do? Jennifer Cunnington: I love what I do, because really being able to assess needs and be a part of one of the biggest financial decisions in one's life, is huge. Really priding myself over the years of gaining that knowledge of all different programs and the nuances of the benefits. Being able to provide that to people and helping them get into the homes and realize a lot of their financial goals is huge. Paul Casey: It's great to know that why; it reminds me of the tire commercial that it says, "It's not about the tires, it's about the child that's riding in the car." So, I love that your why is very clear of helping people with that big financial decision of buying a home. So throughout that journey, you hit some obstacles to success as we all do. There's some speed bumps there. What's one of the biggest hurdles that you overcame in your career? Jennifer Cunnington: Oh gosh. I think just the cycles in the financial industry is huge. Back in 2008, I was just really getting going in my career and of course, too big to fail. And so our economy goes through so many changes and the mortgage industry was a big part of that back then, but I didn't know any better because I was relatively new. And so I didn't know about some of the things that people used to do. I just was able to adapt quite quickly and just move forward with new procedures and regulations. And so, taking that all into account, I really wasn't that phased. And so I was really one of the lucky ones. Jennifer Cunnington: A lot of my friends and colleagues in the industry, unfortunately shut up to work and doors were locked. All those folks that they were trying to help, they weren't able to do so, because the companies ran out of money. Lots of different changes, but I think just being able to weather a lot of these cyclical changes that we experience from time to time, whether it be political, economic, all those things, are just huge. So, that was a big one. Paul Casey: So, you've used the word adapt a couple of times already. Why is that such a valuable skill for a leader? Jennifer Cunnington: Oh, well we have to be flexible. There's one thing that's constant, which is change. And so really if we find ourselves being too regimented, or set in our ways, we won't be able to move forward when these changes occur. So you really do have to have the flexibility to learn new things. And especially salespeople, they're not really good at that. We like the ways that we have our day set up. And the technology that we get just good enough at, to get to the next step and maybe have somebody else help us with the next things after that. But really, you have to be flexible with people as well. You have to know how to communicate effectively with all different types of folks. There are folks that come in and think that they know everything, that you're just going to be their conduit. But really, hopefully at the end, we can help them realize that we do have a little bit of knowledge and if we can add to what they already know, or help along with something that they don't, it really is important. Paul Casey: And I heard a John Maxwell quote the other day, "Change is inevitable. Growth is optional." Jennifer Cunnington: Oh, definitely. Paul Casey: So leadership is difficult. What is your biggest ongoing challenge as a leader? What really stretches you, either in just in a hard way, or just in a really good way? Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. Well, I think I was a pretty good producer and so I was tapped to become a leader and we all know that not all producers, or successful salespeople make good managers. Paul Casey: Right. Jennifer Cunnington: You could be a manager or you can be a leader. Over the years, I have really evolved myself because I’m pretty direct, an achiever, if you will. All of Enneagram 3. And so I was brought up in the business as being really quite autonomous, but you can't do that when you're in leadership. And so I think my biggest challenge has been really employee engagement. We've got so many folks that come to this business because they hear it's super easy, anybody can do it. People have the ability to be so exponentially successful, but not everybody can be good at it. Jennifer Cunnington: And so it takes a lot of effort and engagement. And so employee engagement really has been my challenge, all different personality types, aptitudes, styles of communicating, all those types of things, played big roles. And as leaders we're really have to find out a little bit more about each of our team members, to find out what makes them tick, to hopefully appeal to that, to give them maybe more resources or direct them to those resources, so that they can become better. And that helps everybody involved. So that's been a really big challenge. Paul Casey: Love employee engagement. And you said one of those ways is to fully get to know your team and what makes them tick, what maxes them out, what's their sweet spot for them. You got another employee engagement tip that you tend to employ? Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. Well, we have been really fortunate to be able to take advantage of some team building. Paul, you were helping us as well, and it's true learning about each other. So, anybody can want to do this autonomously, but really I think when you surround yourself with a really wonderful team, it's great to know a little bit about a lot of things because the rest of us can fill in those gaps. But providing resources and like I said, directing people toward things that they might be interested in, what really might push their button, as you mentioned. But team building I think is big, because again, it takes a village to do what we do. We can't do it by ourselves. There's absolutely no way. Jennifer Cunnington: And so learning how to rely on each other, be truthful and open, and say, "Hey, I need some help." And then being open to that assistance and then also rewarding each other. A lot of our support staff, they don't always get the recognition that they deserve. And so it's really buying into that mindset of, it does take a village. And so it's really a holistic environment. And more and more, as time goes on, with all of the changes that we were alluding to earlier, you really do need a wonderful team and that's an expansive effort, not just your team that you see every day, but all those folks behind the scenes that are helping make your clients experience the best that it can be. Paul Casey: Fantastic. And you alluded to the Enneagram assessment, and maybe our listeners don't know what that is. It's probably the most ancient of the personality assessments. You could say, it's having a resurgence lately, through a gentleman named Ian Morgan Cron. And he wrote a book, The Road Back to You, which I would give as a recommend for you Tri-City Influencer listeners. And Jen is a three and I'm a three as well, which is the achiever one. And achievers, also one of these strengths finder strengths, which we got to do with your team. And if you take the CliftonStrengths Assessment, it will give you your five top strengths. And you read it, and you're just like, "Wow, that is so me." And everybody else nods their head and, "That is so you." Then you can place people in the right spot in an organization, or when you have a project to come up, you know where to place people. Jennifer Cunnington: Exactly. Paul Casey: Well, if you had a leadership philosophy, and you've probably already alluded to some of it already, what would you put front and center on a bulletin board in your office for all to see, what would those messages say? Jennifer Cunnington: Well, I think because I'm a little linear, the first one is, input equals output. One of my mentors, a long time ago told me that, and it's about engagement and commitment to the process. And so really I still believe that, we can do the minimum and we can get a little bit less back potentially. But if we just go a little bit above and beyond, imagine what the possibilities would be. So input equals output, but on the more emotional side, it's do what you love. Most of us have choices of what our profession is, and I would recommend that everybody really dig deeper, especially as we get a little older and we're really settling in and becoming experts in our fields. It's so good to recognize that, Hey, what I'm doing right now, I really like it. And to find out why, and to really take a deeper dive into looking into the why. Paul Casey: That maybe isn't like, Woo hoo. I love every aspect of it, to try to find out those areas of your job at 20%, that really does light you up and try to spend more time there. And it's like football, I can't do that either. Well, there's probably a hobby, or some other passion that you can light up outside of work that will carry over into work, because I find if one area of your life is humming, then it bleeds over into the rest of life. So I love that and love the input equals output. It reminds me of the saying, "You reap what you sow". So, you get what you give and put into it. Most influencers I know, have a bit of a visionary inside of them in order to take that next hill. Where do you take time to dream about the future? What does that look like? Jennifer Cunnington: I have sisters-in-law, that are just wonderful. And so one of them just signed me up for book of the month club. And so, it gives you some choices every month, all different genres, but I'm still getting back to now. Finding more time to read, taking some more time, especially what we've been through this year in 2020. Some of the solitude that we have been forced into in different ways, has given us a little bit more time to start reading about things that we love and then engaging back into professional books as well. You just mentioned a couple. There's some really great ones at the beginning of the year, took a look at that Brendon Burchard book, High Performance Habits, all those good things. But I think it's really important to... If you love to read, get into that. Jennifer Cunnington: Podcasts are awesome. So if you're in the car a lot, just taking the time to actually research them, download a couple, so that you have something a little bit more interesting to listen to, maybe than just constantly searching the radio stations. But really now, I think it's future planning. I do this with my team a lot and I'm always encouraging them to revamp business plans all the time, because the world isn't just changing around us, but the economy's changing, our industry landscape changes all the time. So being able to take a look at all of these factors and then put it into a plan. How can we back into it? Where do you want to be? Jennifer Cunnington: And so, I still love Pinterest. I'm getting a little bit bigger on Instagram. I know people are laughing, a lot of pictures of my new dog, but- Paul Casey: I've seen him. Jennifer Cunnington: ...I think he's adorable. So, but motivational quotes and stuff, tons of people have been sharing those. And you never know when that one post that you put out there in the universe that day, is going to make an impact on somebody else. And so I think that's huge too. Paul Casey: How far do you future forecast with your team as far as business planning? Do you go out one year? Do you go out more than that? Is it just quarterly? Jennifer Cunnington: Great question. We started with just one year, especially as we have a little bit newer folks getting into this full-time. And then mid year, of course, we keep mentioning this year, but we have to make some adjustments. And so, we've been taking a look at those more frequently, but our standard business plan, everybody I think can have a pie in the sky goal of five years. But you never know what life is going to hand you, say in June of any set years. So really, the focus is one year and then scaling into it on a monthly basis and then having connections, what we call connection meetings. Trying to still do that once a month at least, and find out just one-on-one where they're at, what other resources they might need, what challenges they're having specifically and how we can triage and solve those equations for them. But it's all meant to be able to provide them with a better experience for their clients as well. Paul Casey: Yes. And I'll kudos the audio books and the podcasts. And usually I have the Libby app for here, the Mid-Columbia Libraries going, I read the 4-Hour Workweek, on vacation last week. So I'm able to do that on the way there and back, got the audible. I usually get the free one with Prime, always using that credit, and then podcasts or so. Those little bursts of 30 minutes that you can stay current with things, or just get that inspirational burst. Well, before we head into our next question on Jen's typical morning routine, let's do a shout out to our sponsor, Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, why should people work with a financial advisor? Marion Martinez: Hey, Paul, that's a great question. Really, I think there's two types of people who should be seeking out a financial professional. The one person is somebody who has very limited access to financial guidance. Maybe they're a younger professional, or somebody who just hasn't had an introduction to a financial professional yet. And the other type of person, is really someone who has a lot of different exposure to different professionals. They just haven't found the one person that they really trust to take guidance from. So there's really an over information in that sense. So those are really the two types of people that should be looking to be introduced to a financial professional. Paul Casey: Fantastic. So Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Marion Martinez: The easiest ways to reach out to me directly on my business cell phone, which is 509-591-5301. You can send an email to mario.martinez@nm.com or you can find us on our business Facebook page, which is Mario Martinez - Northwestern Mutual. Paul Casey: So Jen, what's your typical morning routine before work, maybe even once you arrive at work, if there's any rituals that you do to start your day strong? Jennifer Cunnington: Well, I love to exercise and in the beginning of the year, it was three times a week. We get up super early. My husband and I would take part in what we call, triad class, which changes, but it was a punch class. So it's essentially boxing with a small group of people. 5:00 AM. We get home about 6:15. Get ready. I love to make breakfast in the morning. I think that that's super important just to have a couple of minutes, not necessarily talk about work, but just to talk about where our days are going. Jennifer Cunnington: But those things have changed a little bit, now it's sometimes still more working out, maybe online, just became a beach body coach too. So yeah, putting that out into the universe. And a lot of my friends, they were just reaching out for some camaraderie. Everybody's going through the same thing and if I can just find a little bit more energy and I can help them too, then that's been super great, but we just got a new puppy I mentioned. And so boy, that's changed our routine a little bit. So. But still, I think exercise is key to finding some kind of an outlet for yourself, so that you can clear that path from the day before, to get ready for the day ahead. Paul Casey: Love that. Love that so much. Yeah. The gym just opened again, so happy to get that routine back. Because it was hard and I did some of the video workouts as well there. Can't keep up with them, but I gave it a try. Jennifer Cunnington: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very good. Paul Casey: But it is really important that we move. We try to get moving, especially as we've been quarantined and it's been just difficult. How do you deal with the everyday grind of your work without burning out? So I heard, exercise. I've heard you listen to motivational things. What else? Jennifer Cunnington: Well, I love music, all different kinds. And so every chance I get... Haven't really been able to go to concerts, so getting online and watching just little titbits of concerts or YouTube. I really like, like I said, all different kinds of music, but EDM and cello music. So I find, if I especially put that on, as soon as I get home, I'm able to download a little bit from the day that just happened and do that. I've got a great tennis team. We still managed to play a really good tennis tournament a couple of weekends ago outside. Paul Casey: Wow. Jennifer Cunnington: And so really staying in touch with just all different kinds of people too. It takes a lot of effort when we're just trying to take care of ourselves sometimes, but really reaching out to at least one person a day that you want to keep in contact with. And it's not so much about you. It's about finding out, gee, what's new with them, what's going on in their life? And I don't like to really watch the news right now. That's a bummer, sometimes a little frustrating, but we can still make our worlds, even if we are living in our own sphere right now, as good as we can. And so, reaching out to people, exercise. Of course puppies again. Paul Casey: The pound doesn't keep too many animals these days. Jennifer Cunnington: No, but I think family is a big thing as well. I mentioned I'm super close with my family and I think that's a real blessing as well. So we've got our great friends, but if you've got great family, that's just an extension of your support system. Paul Casey: Yeah. I totally agree. We have to reach out to one person a day. A text only takes a few seconds to at least initiate, and I found, throughout the years, friends have really appreciated when I have initiated. I always appreciate when they do, because we're just in our worlds. And then someone has to put themselves in front of you to be able to focus. And I was like, "Oh yes. How are you?" And all of a sudden you're back in that place where you were before. So relational wellness is huge, especially in this land of COVID. And love music too, because that's a dopamine release that we get. Yeah, I tell Alexa to play electronic chill music as well. Jennifer Cunnington: Usually they sound great. Paul Casey: They do. They do. Good stuff. So you mentioned family, it's a big deal. So how do you prioritize family time, yet still be a high performer at work? Because sometimes one or the other has to give. And again, I know we're in the land of COVID right now, so maybe you can answer before and after COVID. Jennifer Cunnington: For sure. Well, I think before, that connection with your immediate family was there. We were able to have so much more flexibility to see each other and to really plan activities. Gosh, this year was going to be the year of vacations with friends and family. And so I got a ton of vouchers, I have no idea how I'm going to use them all, but really just having routines too. I mentioned tennis. We just have different groups of people, but family is a huge part. The balance too, was there a whole lot more, before summer. Now, I think we've become really more reactive. And so we're working on that, because I think we're having to reset now that we've gone through this season. We've just been so busy and I hate that word sometimes, because busy is just a- Paul Casey: Intentionally scheduled. Jennifer Cunnington: ...general word. Yeah. But just, I think that the volume of our electronic communication has increased. And so we went from maybe talking on the phone, or meeting in person and being able to knock out a whole lot of conversation and business that way, to now being so focused on Zoom meetings and Teams meetings and email. And I think that does force one to struggle a little bit with how they're prioritizing their day, because when everything is so scheduled within certain timeframes where you have to be seen online, it does hinder the ability to be super relational, as you mentioned. Paul Casey: That blurs the lines. Doesn't it? Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. And so scheduling maybe from 7:00 or 7:30 to sometimes six o'clock at night, when other folks have already been online working and now you have to maybe meet needs of clients, but you really need to download a little bit and get back to your family and your safe place. That has been a struggle. And so right now I think we're going through a period of reset and just re-introducing ourselves out into the universe and if... The weather's changing. So we're forced to find other avenues where we can still get in touch with people and make sure we get all of our work done, but in a more efficient way now that we don't have so much coming at us. Paul Casey: Yeah. And they say due to Zoom fatigue, which is a real thing now. The wellness experts are saying we have to get eight hours of sleep, even if you could get by with six or seven before, you got to get eight, because it's a different kind of tired. Just stare at the screen all day. Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. It's almost like from the neck up. Paul Casey: It is. Jennifer Cunnington: Because your brain is working overtime already. And then you're like, okay, well I've got 15 minutes for a quick break and then I got to get back on. And so you're never really able to take a breather. Paul Casey: Good for you for the 15 minute break. Because I find myself getting too back to back and if I can run across the room and do some stretching, or anything to move, even if I go to the furthest bathroom in my house in between, it's still movement. In between say, get out of that chair. Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. Paul Casey: Well, influencers aren't know-it-alls, but they're learners. And I know you're a learner, Jen. So where do you go for the wisest advice? These can be, people here in the Tri-Cities, it could be authors and motivators, or industry professionals that you've never met, but they're your mentors from afar. Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. So, I mentioned that I've had some wonderful mentors in my career and now I'm grateful to be able to call on my spheres. So we were just talking about electronic communication, being able to check in with folks and find out what they're going through. Is there a better way to do something for right now? That's huge. But I always go back to the lessons I've learned out of some of my favorite books. From a sales perspective, we've got Darren Hardy. The Compound Effect was one of the first books I ever read. Again, input equals output. Your efforts are important in order to meet your goals. Jennifer Cunnington: One of my favorite books too is called, The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. And it's a really interesting study on sociology. Two people, seemingly on the same path, but the choices that they make, make all the difference. And so I love, love, love that book and really can use anecdotes from that book for a lot of different situations that we go through on a regular basis. We mentioned I love podcasts and I don't always do it well. I have time to download them first. So I'm always going, oh, I should listen to that one. Oh, darn it, I didn't get to it. But Brendon Burchard, we talked about him. Dave Harney. Todd Duncan, he's one of my industries gurus and he's written a ton of books, but gets back down to common sense. You start with the want to help people, and then you just apply yourself in the right direction to get the knowledge that you need in order to do so. Jennifer Cunnington: Tim Ferriss is a big one. You mentioned The 4-Hour Workweek. He keeps revamping that. He puts out a Friday email. He tells us about a book he's reading, he's got a podcast as well. And then his favorite quote. So again, I love quotes. I love learning new words, English minor- Paul Casey: Me too. Jennifer Cunnington: Great. Paul Casey: Love grammar. Jennifer Cunnington: So all those good things and also I like reality TV. I think that we could find a lot of cool things from some of these, especially industry reality TV shows. Some of the Million Dollar Listing and things like that. There's a guy named Ryan Serhant, I'm not being paid for that, but he had a show for a while called, Sell It Like Serhant. It's just about, again learn a little bit about what you're doing and how it affects people. And then eventually you learn how to help them the best that you can. Paul Casey: Well, Jen just gave a whole bunch of great resources. So they'll be in the show notes and you might want to hit the rewind button and jot some of those down. For my podcasts, I use Castbox to find other people's podcasts. And so then they're all lined up in the library, so you can click on them. So finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Jennifer Cunnington: Yeah. So I always say, my mentors' helped me define my goals. So those would then help you determine your path. I think anytime you get into a job, some people look at it as just that, a job, but you really need to define first what you want to accomplish and then how the heck are you going to get there? And so a lot of things that we've talked about today, are about applying yourself, getting that knowledge, because again, anybody can do jobs. But to be the best that you can be, you've really got to dig a little bit deeper and figure out some resources that are going to work for you. So that's one of my biggest pieces of advice and it's not always easy to do. Some days we just wake up and we might have really good mojo. By noon, it's gone. But then, we all hope that something great is going to happen near the end of the day, so we can go home with a smile on our face. Jennifer Cunnington: You can have goals, but you still need to have a path to achieve them. And it takes a lot of work to do business planning and figure out what system works for you. Then I would also recommend trying to figure out how to prioritize. I'm a list maker, I make too many lists, those who know me, I have 18 notebooks. Paul Casey: Good point for the list makers. Jennifer Cunnington: Oh my goodness. So I know that there's got to be a better way. There was a time when I was a lot more efficient. Again, I talked about reactivity right now, so it's just whatever path is going to be best for you, to be able to reach those goals and attain your dreams. Paul Casey: Define the goals to determine your path. So Tri-City Influencer listeners, good advice there. And then, like she's mentioned earlier, backing into that with the prioritization of your time, to literally get those done by putting them into your daily schedule, your weekly scheduling, your monthly schedule, to eventually get at that yearly goal. So Jen, how can our listeners best connect with you? Jennifer Cunnington: Absolutely. Well, online of course, my website is stcu.org and then you can look \JenniferC or a phone number 509-598-7711. Our team is out and about in the universe as well. We've got a great community relations team that's always out there. We're extremely philanthropic. So we're definitely around the community and we'd love to connect with you. Paul Casey: Well, thank you again, Jen, for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Jennifer Cunnington: Thanks Paul. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. A lot of people say, I need to be more assertive. Well, there's actually a website that you can assess how assertive you are. It's TheHRSpecialist.com. And if you go into TheHRSpecialist.com, you can look up these 18 questions to test your ability to be positively persuasive they say. So how assertive are you at TheHRSpecialist.com. And remember, you don't have to be aggressive, but we all can up our confidence a little bit more and be more assertive. Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest, Jen Cunnington from STCU, for being here today on the Tri-City Influencer Podcast. And we want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership titbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's from Bruce Lee, he said "A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer." Until next time KGF, keep growing forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning into today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams, so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org, for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growth in your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done everyday, by offering you his free Control My Calender Checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalender.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000 and type the word "growth". Paul Casey: Tri-Cities Influencer podcast is recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies

Speaker 1: The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. I'm Richa Sigdel and I'm Tri-city influencer. Paul Casey: We measure what we value. I love that because what gets measured gets done. If you want to make sure a new habit is going to occur, you've got to track it. You've got to measure it. So if you want to get better at whatever your goal is, track it. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI Podcast where local leadership and self leadership expert Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and non-profit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Scott Sax. He is the president and project manager of the Central Plateau Cleanup Company, and Jennie Stults, who is the business development director of Amentum. And they like hanging out together so we decided to do it together. And I asked them what's funny and they sort of give a yin and yang kind of answer that one loves green pens, one loves purple pens. So tell us the story of that. Scott Sax: So, yeah. That's something interesting that Jennie and I have discovered about each other. She asked me why I always wrote in green, and there all kinds of quirky answers that you could have like Navy captains always write in green. Well I wasn't in the Navy. But I do have a real story. It's a leadership story. I was walking into one of my plants in Colorado when I was running the site. The manager was with me, and he was signing a work permit to access the area, and he signed in red ink. And our control technician said, "You can’t sign in red. You have to sign in black." And he said, "Why?" He says, "Well, that's just the way you do things." And so when we went out, I figured out, "I’ve got to find out if he has to sign in black ink." And sure enough there was no real reason to sign in black ink. It was all stuck to the old xerox machines that you signed in black or blue in the 60s. And it stayed around and it just became a legacy requirement. Scott Sax: So from that moment on, I always signed everything in green ink to remind myself that you can change anything. Okay? And remind yourself that anything can be changed if it's inefficient, dumb, or just a legacy thing. Paul Casey: A great leadership principle from a quirky thing. I love it. I love it. It's sort of like the ham. "Why was the ham cut off?" "Oh, it's because my grandma cut it off because her grandma..." "Because the oven was too big, and we had to cut it off." Scott Sax: Right. Paul Casey: Well we're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor. Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, what types of services do you offer? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul. Thank you for letting me be on here. We run bifurcated practices in that we focus in two areas of financial plans. The first one is we do protection pieces which include life insurance, disability insurance, long term care insurance, really the things that people should be focused on to protect their families, their businesses. And on the other side of our practices, we do investment services. And on the investment platforms we do both the brokerage platform, and we do the advisory level services. So depending on what someone is looking for as far as guidance on their investment strategies, we can curtail and build a strategy for them to make sense. Paul Casey: Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way you can reach out to me directly on my business cell phone is 509-591-5301. You can send me an email at mario.martinez@nm.com. Or you can reach out to us on our social media platforms, the easiest one being Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual on Facebook. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the tri-cities. Well, welcome Scott and Jennie, and thanks for being a part of this today. And we had the hard drive crash of 2020 in among the other crazy things that have happened in 2020. So thanks for coming back and re-interviewing here on the Tri-City Influencer. So tell us a little bit about your backgrounds so that our influencers can get to know you. Maybe a little bit of your journey to your current position and why you love what you do. They're just pointing at each other. It's sort of funny. Scott Sax: I‘ll go ahead and start since I’ve got the longer story because I'm way older than Jennie. So I started my career after college training sailors in the Navy Nuclear Power Program. In the center of Idaho there's actually an aircraft carrier and two submarines, or there was. And that's where they train sailors before they could sink their submarine. And that’s what I did. I was working for Westinghouse. I went from there to Plutonium Production for weapons at Rocky Flats in Colorado, and I've done a variety of things since then, came and ran the plutonium finishing plant here in the early 2000s, worked at Tank Farms as a chief operating officer. In the early 2010s, I went to the UK and I was in charge of all of the commercial nuclear fuel work for the United Kingdom. Came back, ran River Corridor Closure Project as a project manager and president, and starting Monday, I'll start kicking off my new job as the president and project manager for Central Plateau Cleanup, cleaning up the center of Hanford. Paul Casey: What a story. So all the Hanford people are just, "Yeah." Checking things off the list. "I remember that. I remember that." And the rest of us are, "All those sound like acronyms that I don't understand.” Jennie Stults: Every time I hear him talk about his career it's really amazing. So, yeah. He deserves all of a lot of credit. Paul Casey: Incredible. Jennie Stults: Yeah. So my career has been a little different. I've been mostly at Hanford. I started out at, well I actually started out way back when I was in high school. And then I went on, was at PNNL for multiple years. And then took a career change out to Hanford and I worked at Tank Farms, and when my second kiddo was born, I took a state job at the Department of Ecology, and worked on the flip side of being a contractor, actually doing the regulatory work, and did that till I think my youngest was in kindergarten or so, and then went back to the contractor, which was a highlight. I actually got hired a four, and went into a completely different kind of career into the hardcore DOD group out there, which was a great highlight. It was a big change for me, and really loved it. And I worked in Hanford for 13 years doing that work. Jennie Stults: And recently joined Amentum last year as a business development director. So I took another career change. So I've done a lot of different kind of things, which is good. I call myself kind of a utility player. But I've adapted because of different things, a lot of different challenges. And so I'm enjoying my current job. So that's a highlight too. So... Paul Casey: And what does Amentum do? Jennie Stults: So, Amentum, which is the parent company for where Scott has been, you've been Amentum and all the legacy companies, right? Scott Sax: Correct. Jennie Stults: Yeah. So we're a government contractor that has around 20,000 employees. And we just bought DynCorp, so now we're going to have 37,000, 40,000, I don't know, 20 some odd countries. I probably should know the tagline a little bit better. Jennie Stults: So all over. But our division that has gone there, and nuclear environmental, so we run a lot of the DOE sites, our partners on the DOE sites as well as other federal, state, local cleanup work across the US, and in the UK and Japan. So we've got a big division. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Scott Sax: So a little bit to add onto what Amentum is. So a lot of people know who Amentum is, and Amentum was born out of AECOM, which was a partner with URS which bought The Washington Group which bought Morrison-Knudsen, and Westinghouse. So a lot of the old companies that have been around Hanford for literally almost 60 years, since the beginning. So, a very big company and now Amentum is just focused on those government supports primarily for the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Department of Energy. Paul Casey: Okay. And why do you both love what you do? Got to love what you do. So what wakes you up with enthusiasm in the morning? Jennie Stults: So for me, personally I like to be challenged. I like to do a lot of different things. I like to take on new roles. That's what excites me. I think my thing in terms of leadership is I really like to work on teams. I like to bring people together and foster a sense of kind of collaboration. That really drives me. I don't like environments where it's just very you're one on one, and everybody is kind of free for all. I like to get consensus. So I think if anything that kind of drives me at work, is to work on new things. And for me, I'm not afraid to try something new. I like change. A lot of people don't, and that's fine too. So I'd say that kind of drives me for sure. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Has virtual been hard for you being a team person? Jennie Stults: No. Actually in some ways it hasn't because I've gotten to do different things again. It just forces you to- Paul Casey: Another challenge. Yeah. Jennie Stults: Yeah. Yeah. And there's other things I like about virtual. I'm actually not too much of a people person believe it or not, but I do like to work in groups and teams, and so we've just tried different things. Scott Sax: I'll give you an alternate answer to that. I hate virtual, okay? I love to work with teams too, and I love to get stuff done, and the stuff I like to get done is executing projects, delivering products, all the people I work with have heard me say, "We deserve to provide the taxpayer a nuclear baker's dozen. We need to give 13 units for every 12 units of money they give us." And that's not the reputation of the Department or Energy kind of work in the nuclear cleanup. It's always going to cost more, take longer, et cetera. Scott Sax: And so that's what gets me charged up is working with a group of people to figure out how to do more for less, and save the taxpayers money. Paul Casey: Sounds like efficiency to me. Scott Sax: Yeah. Paul Casey: So give us a hurdle along your journey that you've overcome in your career. Scott Sax: I think my biggest hurdle, and I probably will never overcome it, is that self confidence in my own ability to get things done, and understanding what's possible. So I think there's always a little bit of insecurity when you're going into a job. "Am I good enough for this? Am I going to deliver or not for the people? Am I going to leave my guys that are working with me and for me lacking because of some weakness I have?" So I think the hurdle I have every single day is to strive harder and work harder, and I think that that's probably consistent with a lot of type A kind of people is that they have that little bit of insecurity that makes them think they're not as good as anybody else, so they work harder, or try harder. Paul Casey: Sounds like humility to me, Scott. Jennie how about you? Jennie Stults: So I probably have something very similar to Scott on that part. I think so my biggest hurdles in terms of growing as a leader and moving up or achieving more, have been because I am a utility person, I have quite often my career found being turned to the left because there has been a company project, and, "Oh, you were kind of on this trail, but oh my gosh, there's an emergency out here. So Jennie, you're perfect." And one day I'm out at the 100K area trying to figure out how to do X, Y, Z, and I've never done it before. Jennie Stults: So I think it's great to be a utility person. I think you need them. I think the hardest part for me with that is it led to sometimes hard to establish a path up into leadership. And so I guess one of my lessons though is you still need to be true to who you are. If you enjoy doing a lot of different things, then do that. Eventually it will work. It may feel like you're getting to the left, to the right, but the one thing I learned about all of my jobs, and I know Scott has probably had jobs where he thought he was going this way, and well I know he has, and you end up going a different way. You didn't get what you wanted. Is that, "I wouldn't be doing my job today had I not done all those different things." Jennie Stults: So at the time it feels a little bit to the left or a set back or different things, but in reality I think every time, I learn something. And so you just have to approach things that way, is you can't see it at the time, but six months later, a year later, you go, "Oh, well that's why that happened." So I think those are some of the hurdles, but I think it is how you face them when you do have those hurdles. Paul Casey: Would you also be an advocate of cross training for that reason? Being versatile to be able to be put in different places in an organization? Jennie Stults: I think so. I think that's one thing as leaders, that's hard to do when you have good people working for you, or around you or even up, is you do not want to let them go because they're there. But I think, and Scott might have some experience with this, is I think it does people good to be forced into different things. You learn some new tools, you learn adaption, you learn how... And sometimes it makes you better I found. I think I got better in positions where I was the least comfortable, but you really have to work hard. Paul Casey: What's your biggest ongoing challenge as a leader? What really stretching you even after all of your years of experience? Scott Sax: I'll give you two answers to that. One answer is directly with a current job, as we're about ready to kick off a transition and take over a major contract. And so establishing the vision, and bringing the team along, and establishing the culture we want, but also growing and learning the culture that's already existing in there. So I think that vision and that leadership part of that is really important for me personally. I'm not at the beginning of my career. So personally I'm at the end of my career. I'm not going to have a lot more jobs. So keeping that passion every single day to get up and drive and make a difference is different in the different parts of your job. So that's it. That's my two. Paul Casey: What does stoke that passion for you? Scott Sax: People. People. And I think in analogies, and I think in pictures. And so, and the things that really just absolutely turn me on is when I talk to somebody that has got a Ph.D in forklift, that just is absolutely a master in running a forklift because I'm not. And asking them how do they do their job so well, and what could I do to help them do their job better. It's real exciting. And so that does turn me on when you get to see somebody just do something that is just marvel. Paul Casey: Love it. Jennie Stults: So for me, I think you work on things all the time. It's kind of funny. And you go through one week, it seems like you're working on something the next week. So for me, it kind of varies depending on what I'm working on, but sometimes I think us type A people try and take on too much, and that's probably my biggest thing I work on, is- Paul Casey: I wouldn't know what that means. Jennie Stults: Yeah, I know. Setting those good boundaries. And so I have really tried to embrace that over the last few years, and chosen to build up my teams around me, and rely on them. And I have found a passion for doing that. I really enjoy mentoring people, I really enjoy working as a team and getting them, because sometimes it's amazing what ideas... I can't remember who. I think it might have been Patton who even said you just tell them where you want to go and they're all figure it out, and there will be a better answer than you could ever come up with. And I've seen that in action myself. I've tried some techniques like that, and it does work. So not just saying, "Oh I can do this because I can do it." but actually stepping back and letting other people start to shine, I think us leaders really need to embrace that, and I think it's something I work on myself is making sure. And I get a lot of reward out of it but it's tough still too. Paul Casey: It is. But it multiplies your influence, doesn't it? Jennie Stults: Yeah. Yeah. Paul Casey: If you both had a leadership philosophy that you put front and center on a bulletin board in your office at all times for everyone to see, what would those messages say? Scott Sax: So it's funny you ask that question because I actually have four signs that I've had with me, and I've added them throughout my career. And the very first one I put up on my wall was just sign that said Pride. And I had my favorite coach in college, a guy named Sonny Holland, and his leadership skill, and what I took away from him was you need to be proud of your individual effort contributing to the team's success, and if you are every single day to try to do that, you could be proud of your team. And I think being proud of something as a father, as a manager, as a teammate, is probably the thing that is my philosophy is, "Don't do anything that you wouldn't be proud of, and try to do things that you can be proud of." Jennie Stults: What's your other signs though? Paul Casey: Yeah, now we want to know because you said there's four. Scott Sax: There's four. "Be part of the solution, not part of the problem." Paul Casey: Love it. Scott Sax: I put that one up when I was a maintenance manager. "The key to getting better is working smarter not harder." And I did that to keep reminding myself every single day that extra hours don't necessarily mean extra productivity. Paul Casey: True. Scott Sax: And then probably my favorite of all time is, "If you aim at nothing, you hit it every time." And so that ties back to that vision. You got to know where you want to go, where you're expecting to go, where you want your team to go, instead of just marching off smartly in all directions. Paul Casey: Good ones. Good ones. Jennie Stults: So I have two, or three maybe. But the one I would say the teams that work with me the most hear me say the most is, "We’ve got to get to point B first." So I see a lot, and I understand totally that you got to have a whole team that sees things all differently. But a lot of times in leadership you'll hear all sorts of things about a step that's 20 months down the road, and we'll have spent 30 minutes on it. And I really try and focus my teams on, "Yes. We have to think long term, but you also have to get to B." You know what I mean? "You're worried about G. Let's get to B first, and let's figure that out." And I think Scott probably sees a lot of that in his leadership that he has done too is we could worry about every single thing going wrong but let's try and figure out the near term, and then we'll keep going. Jennie Stults: And so I think that's probably the one, if you ask some of the people that work with me that hear me say that the most. The other thing I would say is a philosophy of mine is to do what you're doing today the best you can. So we all have things on our jobs that aren't our favorite, but you got to focus in, and I think as leaders, it's really important to remember that because you always lean towards the things you'd like to do. But I really do try, I'm not perfect at it, but I really do try to do my best at what I'm doing today, and sometimes that is stuff that you think, "Oh my gosh. Why am I doing this?" But sometimes you just got to do it and stuff. Jennie Stults: So that's something I try and always make sure the teams around me always know that you got to pitch in, you got to do stuff, let's all work together. And usually it works pretty good that way. Paul Casey: Yeah. I do one thing, I saw you do everything. So that's why you do your best at everything. Jennie Stults: Right. Paul Casey: Well before we get into our next question on vision and more of these guys; dream about the future, let's shout out to our sponsor. Mario Martinez, Northwestern Mutual. Mario, why should people work with a financial advisor? Mario Martinez: Hey Paul. That's a great question. Really I think there's two types of people who should be seeking out a financial professional. The one person is somebody who has very limited access to financial guidance. Maybe they're a younger professional, or somebody who just hasn't had an introduction to a financial professional yet. And the other type of person is really someone who has a lot of different exposure to different professionals. They just haven't found the one person that they really trust to take guidance from. So there's really an over information in that sense. So those are really the two types of people that should be looking to be introduced to a financial professional. Paul Casey: Fantastic. So Mario, how can people get in touch with you? Mario Martinez: The easiest way is to reach out to me directly on my business cell phone which is 509-591-5301. You can send an email to mario.martinez@nm.com, or you can find us on our business Facebook page which is Mario Martinez Northwestern Mutual. Paul Casey: So Jennie and Scott, most influencers I know have a little bit of visionary inside them, and as the leader we have to think about the next hill, even though as Jennie said, we get to point B first before we get to Z. So where do you take time to dream about the future? What does that look like for you? Scott Sax: So I find that I get my best dreams about the future when I'm really tired of fighting the daily mundane bureaucratical stuff. I'm actually not known for my patience. In fact I'm pretty famous for my impatience. Paul Casey: Jennie, stop laughing. Scott Sax: When I get very impatient, I start grading even on myself. I just go out into the field and I watch work get done, and wander around and talk to people. And they just energize me. And most of the things that I can actually say about myself is I've had a tremendous number of ideas or great ideas, but I'm a good implementer of ideas. So if I can ask somebody, "What's your idea for something to make our job better?" and they have it, I love to grab that and run with it and turn that into the future. And so I think dreaming up what you can be and what perfect looks like is important. But again, embrace today and get everything you can get done today. And it enables a lot of stuff in funny ways for tomorrow. Paul Casey: And you listen to your constituents to help create the vision it sounds like. Scott Sax: Right. Jennie Stults: So I get a lot of my personal inspiration stuff because I'm a very avid reader. So I actually like to read different sources: leadership newsletters in my email, sometimes some of them speak to me. And I would say that's probably my biggest source. Sometimes I listen to different things when I'm walking or whatever else, but I tend to do that. I tend to go in batches, and try and really take on some things, especially when I'm finding some challenges, I'll go and look for some inspiration there, and, "How do you handle this? How do you handle that?" And so I think that probably is my biggest source of different things, is doing that, but there's all sorts of different inspirations. I think Scott is right. Every day you get inspired by co-workers, friends, family, whatever it is. Paul Casey: And you can learn from everything, right? Jennie Stults: Absolutely. Paul Casey: Yeah, I'm sitting at a conference, and I may not even completely connect with the person that I'm listening to, but my brain takes one of those concepts and runs with it in a applicable way for what I'm doing, or if I'm listening to a podcast, same deal. And so with the emails. And it's hard not to be compulsive because, "Oh, this newsletter came in. I've got to get something from it. Before I delete it, I have to..." And sometimes I can get a little OCD about that. But I want to learn from everything. Paul Casey: But let's go a little granular with your life here. What's yourtypical morning routine for both of you? Maybe before work, maybe once you arrive at work, do you have any rituals that help you start your day strong? Scott Sax: Well I get up, get in the shower, and get to work in 30 minutes. Paul Casey: And you probably have to get up early, right? Scott Sax: I do. And I try to get to work between 5:00 and 5:30. I did that primarily when I had little kids because I added all my time onto the beginning of the day, and tried not to take their time away from them at night, or on weekends. And so my days got longer. Now I just go to bed earlier. But so I get up, get to work, drink coffee, and I dive into those mundane emails that you're talking about, and try to get the routine stuff cleaned off my system before everybody else starts getting to work. And then I can engage people. Paul Casey: So many leaders I've interviewed use that morning time before they get interrupted by the flood of people arriving to really get some quality stuff done. Jennie Stults: So I have kind of a typical routine, at least when I'm working onsite or a project, I get up very early but I'm a very avid exerciser. So I usually am up about 3:45 and I'm exercising by about 4:15, and I really like to exercise before work. I actually get a lot of my creativity there. I do. I listen to podcasts when I'm doing stuff, I get a lot of great ideas. My team actually one time said, "You've got to stop running." Because I got on a running kick and I come into work going, "All right, I got it. This is it." Paul Casey: Something about the open road. Jennie Stults: I had a thought. So I have been accused of that. But, so I usually do that, and it's very good for me. It clears my head in the morning, it lets me focus. And I did start doing that similar to Scott because my kids were little, and that was the only time I had for a little bit of me time. And so but it does clear my head, and really get me focused and excited for the day. Paul Casey: It probably helps you avoid burnout too. Jennie Stults: It does. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my typical morning. Paul Casey: How did you both prioritize family time and yet still be high performers at work? I know the lines get blurred as you go through your career, but how did you make sure there was time for both? Scott Sax: I think the priest that married my wife and I said something to me when he was telling us how to be married, which I always thought was an interesting me for a priest to teach me how to be married. And I guess, but his explanation for that was, "I see all the problems when it's not working." Paul Casey: Oh, sure. Sure, sure. Yeah. Scott Sax Yeah. So I took his- Paul Casey: Research. Scott Sax: Exactly. But he said, "One thing you have to understand Scott..." and we had known each other for quite some time, "...is being a good father and being a good husband, one of your roles is being a provider and the way you're doing that. So providing and doing your work is a key responsibility for you as a family member." So that relieved a lot of guilt when you had to stay late or you missed a birthday, or you had to work on Christmas, or some of that stuff because that was part of my role as a dad and a husband is providing. And so, didn't relieve all of it. Okay? Scott Sax: I never missed my kids' sports and I was engaged with them in at least their goal setting of all their school. Their mom raised them. I have a amazing wife, and she did a lot of the different stuff to get them through their lives setting their goals and doing all that stuff. But I tried to never work on weekends. I tried to never take my phone out at a basketball game. And phones are detrimental to your family I believe. So putting your phones away and focused on conversation instead of texts, that is really important. So... Paul Casey: We'll tweet that. Phones are detrimental to your families. Scott Sax. Jennie Stults: So I have kind of a different thing because I had my first son when I was 23 I think, not quite 24. And so I've had a challenge of being a mom, and a single mom relatively when my kids were relatively young. And so it was a hard balance for me. I'm very open about talking about this because I think it is really important for people to know that some of us have tough barriers that way, and I never asked for anything special because of it, but it was a challenge. But I think that what I did myself is I looked for roles that I could do. So Scott talks about being the operations manager at PP and some of the other roles. I couldn't do those. It just wouldn't have worked with my family and my kids, that they needed me home at 5:00 so that I could take them to the sports and be there for the dinners. And we always had dinners together and everything. I just could not take some roles I would have liked to. Jennie Stults: But what I learned is that's okay. I had great roles. It just was different. So I think one thing I tell people when they come and ask me about advice for this, because they do know my story, is I tell them, "Look around and find the role that fits. Talk to your manager. Tell them your things, but tell him what you're willing to do." So me, I did a lot after my kids went to bed at 8:00, I'd log on the computer for an hour and a half and I'd work till 10:00 and catch up on those emails that Scott was doing at 5:00AM. I did them in 8:30 at night. Paul Casey: Sure. Jennie Stults: And I never missed deadlines. So sometimes I had to work Saturday nights when my kids were watching movies with their friends. I was working to get ahead. So I did what I needed to do, but I accepted the roles. And the other thing I did was, when I got asked to do some of these emergency roles, I would talk to the manager and say, "Look, I am a single mom. Here's my thing. But here's what I will do. I will work very hard. This is what I do, and I'll work with you." And after that, usually we can work something out. But you do have to realize I think when you do have family balance issues, but the other thing is it doesn't last forever. So my youngest just left for college. So I'm now free to go do whatever I want. And so, it's not permanent. You can work it out. So, I think people just need to try and learn that balance for them, whatever works for them. Paul Casey: Yeah. I love that. It's contentment with whatever situation you're in, and it's also being very clear with your boundaries, "Here's what I can do, here's what I can't do." And doing it with the utmost respect. Jennie Stults: Yeah, but you have to be prepared to work hard though if you do have some of those challenges. I mean I did when Saturday night and they had friends over eating pizza and everything, I would have loved to have just sat there and whatever. But, no. I was working. So it doesn't mean you don't have to work really hard, especially if I want to be a leader and go up. So... Paul Casey: Yeah. And if you want a special work arrangement, you got to almost work double hard to show that, "Hey, I'm on board." Jennie Stults: Yeah. Paul Casey: Well finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining new influence? Scott Sax: Well I think being a new leader, leading is different than doing, okay? And I think having a mentor to learn your leadership stuff is very important. Colin Powell's Rules on Leadership are really my Bible on leadership. And I know which leaders in my career gave me the most positive attributes to work on. I also know which ones gave me some of the negative attributes not to work on. And so I think get a philosophy that's not perfect, but you can sink your teeth into, and anchor yourself with that. And that's what Colin Powell did for me. Scott Sax: Second thing is I think always listen and learn. You talked about cross training at the beginning of this, and I think one thing cross training really does for you is it some people think that if you're cross training, you can do all of it, right? For me, cross training gave me the ability to notice when somebody was exceptional at it. So I just knew enough to watch somebody and say, "That's the person that needs to be doing this, not me. I just know enough to appreciate real quality." So listen, learn. When you're in doubt, go do something. Find something you can do that day to cause the project, the team, the company to move forward. That gets noticed. You might not think it's getting noticed, but it is getting noticed, and those people that are always causing stuff to happen seem to advance. So that's what I'd say. Cause things to happen, continue to learn, and listen. Find your own mentor. Paul Casey: Good stuff. Jennie Stults: So, I would want to echo what Scott says about finding a mentor, and I think you need to look around for mentors. I've had some mentors. I will tell you my best ones were not the ones that were like me at all, and they weren't necessarily even the ones that I said, "Oh, this needs to be my mentor." But looking back on it, I learned the most from them. So Scott is a great leader but someone who's a lot like Scott, might actually find a better mentor in someone who's totally not him. So I actually think personally, I learn the most from mentors and leaders who I wasn't drawn to, but they challenge me in a different way. I learn something from them. Maybe even appreciation for finding someone else who is like them to counter me. So I think that but there's a lot of great leaders at Hanford as elsewhere. You can find a leader to be with that isn't in your field. I think you can learn a lot. I've learned a lot from people that have nothing to do with Hanford, and really pushed me in different ways, opened my opportunities. Jennie Stults: Volunteer is another one that I like to do. I'm on a board, Scott is on boards. Personally I've got a lot out of that. You meet a lot of different kinds of leaders that way because they're usually from a whole different wide variety of industries and stuff. And usually that way you usually can find some passion about some things, and really get into things. And then the other advice that I found in my career for being a younger leader when I was younger, and then middle age, and starting to be older, is look around. And I've coached this lot for people when they've asked some tips for success is, look around for those items that are getting just dropped. They're just going anywhere. They're the thing on the schedule that keeps pushing to the right and whatever, the things that people just are not that excited about." And even if it's not your favorite, try and embrace that and go after that because that's usually the stuff that actually you can shine at. Because to Scott's point, they'll appreciate you. Jennie Stults: So for me, I went and did the Department of Ecology job and did the regulatory thing just as kind of so I could be at home at normal hours with my kids and have a normal 8:00 to 4:30 kind of job for a while when my kids were young. But it ended up leaning me to a lot of things, and so a lot of times I do a lot of the regulatory work because it wasn't as high a priority as some of the other work. And so it made me shine in my career in different things and take on some new projects. So, I think trying to look for some of those. And I don't know about you Scott, but I've seen a lot of people shine just picking up kind of the stuff that nobody is picking up, and then all of a sudden you're looking and you're, "Wow they took off. Look at that." Paul Casey: The team says, "Hurray." Jennie Stults: Yeah, exactly. Don't know how they made that happen, but great. Scott Sax: I agree. Paul Casey: Great stuff. Well how can our listeners best connect with you both? Scott Sax: Well I'm pretty good at responding to emails, and so my corporate email is scott.sax@amentum.com. And be happy to respond to an email. Paul Casey: Thank you. Jenny Stults: And so my email just like Scott is @amentum.com jennie.stults. And I also am on LinkedIn. So people can connect with me there. And then Scott did mention the brand new website that's going to be launching for his company. So you can probably catch him there too and find out how to get him there. Paul Casey: Cool. Well thanks for all you do to make the Tri-cities a great place, and keep leading well. Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. From a gentleman I met last year at a National Speakers Association conference: Kevin McCarthy. He specializes in blind spots that leaders have. And you might say, "I don't have any." Well that's why it's called a blind spot. So you can go to www3.blindspot.com, and you can actually take a little survey, 14 quick questions to reveal your blind spots. It's a free assessment. It actually comes with an eight page PDF, and Kevin McCarthy is his name, blindspots.com. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guests today Jennie Stults and Scott Sax from Amentum for being here today on the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. And we want to thank our TCI sponsor and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to inspire leaders in our community. Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road. To help me make a difference in your circle of influence. The secret to leadership is simple. Do what you believe in, paint a picture of the future, go there, people will follow. Until next time, KGF, Keep Growing Forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning into today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership, and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for a consultation that could help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life, or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you his free Control My Calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool, or open a text message to 72000 and type the word growing. Paul Casey: Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

When you sit and talk to Mario Scalzi about Itlay, it's like a living version of Google. Ask Mario a question, and he doesn't even need time to think, he answers instantaneously. Maybe Amazon can rename its Alexa to Mario. "Hey Mario, what about the Marche region of Italy can you tell us?" If you want the answer, you will have to listen to this edition of the Total Tuscany Podcast. Mario is one of our regular guests on the podcast because he brings so much value to you when we talk with him. Of course, we always find time to talk about his company, Parker Villas, but the stories he shares about going off the beaten path are what inspire to plan our next trip! When planning a trip, you are going to need a place to call home. Sure there are several places you can rent from online. But do you really know what you are getting? Take the guesswork and the worry out of your rental property. Parker Villas offers exclusive homes throughout Italy. What does exclusive mean? Well, you can't rent them anywhere else. Every villa has been inspected and meets the five star standards that Mario has demanded since he founded the company in 1993. "So Mario, what about Etruscan history can you tell us?" Again, if you want the answer, listen to the podcast! Not only will you get lots of information in detail, Mario tells us the best places to visit if you want to experience the history of the ancient people had had a significant impact on Roman culture.

**Game talk starts around 18:45**   I love Mario. And while it hasn't aged all that well, I'm pretty fond of the original Game Boy too. We could play video games anywhere!! So Mario on the Game Boy should have been a match made in heaven. And eventually it was; Super Mario Land 2 is incredible. But Mario's first road trip, Super Mario Land, wasn't quite as good.    That's not to say it was bad. Mario is like pizza; even when it's not great, it's still pretty great.    This game felt more like a demo for what the Game Boy was capable of. It was also overshadowed by a little known Game Boy launch title called Tetris. They introduced a bunch of new stuff, like different enemies, a new world, they replaced fireballs with rubber....balls? You don't save Princess Toadstool, you save that weirdo, Daisy. The only real thing that makes this a Mario game is Mario himself. But dammit, that's all it takes.    My buddy Patrick returns to the show this week, you may remember him from such episodes as "Game Collecting" and "Resident Evil 4". Patrick loves the Game Boy, loves Super Mario Land, and I loved talking with him. Come feel the love on this week's episode. 

Mario Nawfal is the founder of the Athena Group of Companies, a conglomerate that operates in more than 40 countries. He started in 2012 with $300 in the bank selling blenders door to door and built that into a business (Froothie) that generated $10m in its second year. Next he built global brand status with Optimum Appliances, a brand he created from scratch. Next he established a range of brands in niches such as personal mobility, fitness, and e-cigarettes. In 2016, he started GoGlobal, an incubator that helps businesses scale their product or ecommerce operations to more than 30 countries rapidly and efficiently. In 2017, he established International Blockchain Consulting (IBC), a network of experts in more than 40 countries that rose in less than a year to become an established industry authority in the rapidly growing blockchain and crypto space. After the success of IBC, Mario launched IBI Ventures (a venture capital fund), IBA (blockchain accounting), and IGC (cannabis and hemp business consulting). In 2019, he launched a new company, Zense, to provide entrepreneurs with insight on how to launch a successful business with a limited budget. Currently, he has created the 7Figure Launchpad, the world’s first and only full-access business program.   “That’s when I realized that the person I had trusted to build my business and I was actually in discussion with to become the CEO, because I didn’t want to get too involved in my VC (venture capital) had just walked away and taken clients with him.” Mario Nawfal     Support our sponsor   Today’s episode is sponsored by the Women Building Wealth membership group, the complete proven step-by-step course to guide women from novice to competent investor. To learn more, visit: WomenBuildingWealth.net.       Worst investment ever After e-commerce success, Mario looks at blockchain Back in 2017, Mario’s main enterprise was Froothie, an e-commerce business and an area in which he had expertise. But he was very interested in blockchain technology after looking at it for a while. He had free time, was travelling around Europe and started learning about the industry, mainly by reading to learn as much as he could and building contacts, calling people. With an assistant scheduling calls from morning until night, that’s what he would do day in, day out. One of the people he talked to was a Mr. “M”, with whom Mario started working, and who along with another gentleman, helped him start IBC. Mario knew how to start, build and scale businesses, but had no knowledge about blockchain, was not a developer nor could he write code, so he needed some experts around him. IBC starts well and grows to seven figures in six months While his businesses were doing OK, Froothie took a hit with a legal challenge over a supplier mishap. IBC was his next venture but he had to be careful as he couldn’t put in a lot of money. So he had brought on people working to build the business. It started out well and the experts he had brought on built the company as Mario was learning and pivoting when pebbles started to hit and testing different tactics to ensure they worked. He started doubling down and all this worked well to that point that IBC had scaled to seven figures in less than six months. So everything was going well, but he had forgotten to attend one of his main weaknesses - due diligence. Mario trusted people too easily. ‘Trusted’ colleague earmarked to be CEO ‘disappears’ Everything was going well, the company was going well, the company was scaling despite a few issues over delivery that he had to get involved in, but at the end of 2018, suddenly M. vanished. Initially, he was in hospital for a week and Mario was very worried, and sent messages to him and got everyone to send him wishes for a speedy recovery, and then he just disappeared and Mario had no idea what was happening. Then a payment in large six figures bounced from IBC’s biggest client, and they were unresponsive also. Even though some alarm bells were ringing in the back of his mind, he felt there was no way anything was wrong. Betrayal sinks in But then when M completely disappeared, the facts of the betrayal started to sink in. Mario even sent him forgiving messages: “Don’t worry about what you did. I don’t know what you did. I’ll forgive you, it doesn’t matter man. You know, everyone makes mistakes, chasing money. It’s a game,” but the messages on WhatsApp were being read but ignored. The biggest client was still not responding and other clients M was close to were also concerned. M had been screwing Mario and IBC for a lot longer than they had initially thought. M had also bad-mouthed Mario to everyone he spoke to, including clients, team members and other partners. So that’s when he realized that the person he had trusted to build his business and was in discussion to appoint him CEO had just walked away and taken many clients with him. Hits keep on coming as industry also collapses But the story became even darker. He turned to his team to start taking drastic measures to rebuild after this loss. So they had to cut the company down rapidly. The industry was also going through a rough period and collapsed in the same month. Other businesses laid off more than 90% of their teams, and Mario and his team were ready for that. But they were not ready for a scam that went deeper. While rebuilding, staff discover second ‘snake’ So there they were: seven figures in the red because payments were all meant to come in as one payment, key team members had disappeared, and they didn’t know how much damage was caused. So they started rebuilding. He got his team going again, riling them up, making inquiries as to who they could trust before they started calling customers again. One of his team, a confidante in the process who had been there since the beginning, and who was responsible for scheduling calls to key clients (“Bob”), had been very supportive. He would say: “We’ll do this Mario, forget about the pain you’ve gone through. Forget about M. He’s a snake. Now we’re family. We’re close to each other.” Mario recalled the day he started saying those things. “I’ll be there for you until we get through this. We’ll do it together.” And then Mario started filming himself and started blogging as a response to the scam that was by this time about two months or three months old. ‘Nice guy’ was stealing data with GoPro video The same day Bob was saying nice things, Mario found out that Bob was still funneling data out of the company to M, and that M and Bob had been childhood friends. They were unable to steal in a normal way, because there Mario had put protections in place such as screen recorders and users couldn’t take screenshots nor could they export data via a drive because the company would know. So Bob was wearing a GoPro and working and filming as he was working, and as IBC were about to close clients, none of them were closing and it had been a huge mystery. All the clients that they knew IBC had spoken to and were about to close, Bob was just talking to them and funneling them to the M’s other company. While Mario and his team were trying to recover, they were actually losing more clients. So Mario sacked Bob even as more stories emerged about how deep the damage had been and how many had been misled. Head tumor discovered as legal battle continues In the same month, Mario was diagnosed with tumor, while non-cancerous and not serious, it was in head initially he thought he would need immediate surgery because of associated bleeding. His other company meanwhile was dealing with a legal crisis in which one of the suppliers had breached their agreement due to patent concerns and that was pretty serious also. It was a very tough period but Mario managed to bounce back. IBC is now stronger than ever but it took a very stoic mindset to get through it all. Once the last rotten apple in the company had been removed, and all leaks were patched, IBC started to make money again.     Some lessons The people you hire will make or break you Thorough due diligence must also be applied to hiring people, because hiring is the heart of any business, where an investment bank or a restaurant that needs waiters or chefs. The more due diligence you do, the more likely that luck won’t play a big role because you’ve done the work to make sure you have the right people to build your business. All investors ask about your team They look at the team more than the idea over every time, so again, due diligence in hiring is crucially important.     Andrew’s takeaways When it rains it pours As Mario had so many struggles going at the same time, with one team members’ betrayal and another’s, fighting a lawsuit, and serious health issues, one thing Andrew likes to highlight is that most young people going into the business of being an entrepreneur do not realize that having a business is your complete life. Having a serious physical issue on top of that can throw all plans out the window. So to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to have endurance and the energy to relentlessly pursue your goals. This is critical especially when unpredictable things happen. “When it rains, it pours and you’ve got to push through it.” Trust can only be built with time There is no way to accelerate the trust between two people except through time. Six common mistakes Collated from the My Worst Investment Ever series, the six main categories of mistakes made by Andrew’s interviewees, starting from the most common, are: Failed to do their own research Failed to properly assess and manage risk Were driven by emotion or flawed thinking Misplaced trust Failed to monitor their investment Invested in a start-up company Andrew identified mistakes No.2 and No.4 No. 2 Failed to properly assess and manage risk Ultimately, it was the risk that affected Mario’s business, not the success. The story of the return actually sounded very good. No. 4 Misplaced trust Mario is not the only one struggling with this. When an investor or a business person is in a situation where they really need a person, and they go ahead and work with them, the trust part is the most difficult.   Actionable advice Keep in mind when there is a lot of money at stake, when you get to that level, if you’re an investor, or you’ve got successful companies, be very careful about the people that are making the decisions with that money, because their incentives may not be aligned with yours. Greed is very powerful and people will come up with stories to justify doing the wrong thing when it comes to money – Greed is a very strong bias.     No. 1 goal for next the 12 months Mario wants to find people to run his various companies, “but the right people”. Mario’s response to this story is not to retreat and be a hermit, and do everything himself because to avoid being scammed again because such things will often happen anyway. They are part of business. Instead, he wants to look logically and find partners through doing proper due diligence and continue to build companies. Right now his focus is on IBC, which is helping businesses to raise capital.     Parting words “Anyone listening to this, you will lose. The way you respond to that loss will determine what happens next.”   You can also check out Andrew’s books   How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market   My Worst Investment Ever   9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them   Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points  Connect with Mario Nawfal LinkedIn Website (Athena) Website (Personal) Instagram Medium YouTube Email Connect with Andrew Stotz Astotz.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast  

Today's guest Mario Arace worked in the corporate world for over two decades. As technology advanced, he noticed that his days may be numbered. So Mario embraced the change and adapted to the tech world as we know of it now. You can find out more about Mario by going to the link I have listed. https://marioarace.com/

Today's guest Mario Arace worked in the corporate world for over two decades. As technology advanced, he noticed that his days may be numbered. So Mario embraced the change and adapted to the tech world as we know of it now. You can find out more about Mario by going to the link I have listed. https://marioarace.com/

So Mario can be a T-Rex now, that's a thing. Anyway, we discuss the last bits of E3 and Avery makes everything angry right at the end. For shame. ~Parris Sigma Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BoxofRandom