#117: Brad Smith - How Purpose, Grit, and AI Are Rebuilding West Virginia

Brad D. Smith became president of Marshall University in January 2022 after a globally recognized career in leadership and philanthropy. Formerly CEO and executive chairman of Intuit, Brad co-founded the Wing 2 Wing Foundation with his wife, Alys, to support education and entrepreneurship in Appalachia. The foundation's Ascend WV program recruits remote workers to West Virginia. A Marshall alumnus with a bachelor’s in business administration, Brad is committed to empowering future leaders. A proud “boy from Kenova,” Brad champions opportunities for his home state and its people.

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- Joshua K. McMillion

Transcript

Vulnerability And Regret

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Everyone says you have any regrets in life. And I really can say that I don't because I wouldn't have ended up learning the lessons I've learned, marrying my wife, all the things that have happened, my two beautiful daughters, being able to serve mom and matter. But the closest thing to regret that I have is leaving West Point because in my mind, it was not transferring from one school to another. It carried the label of resigning. And I've never done that in my life. I have never stepped back or back down. And even though I can look at the academic achievement I had while I was there and the way I was scoring, and I know that I chose to be a lover, not a fighter. And I mean that just romantically, not any other way. As I had a crush on a girl and I was thinking like an 18-year-old kid might, I can tell you it's been so important for me in life to come to terms with the fact that some of my classmates have gone on to achieve amazing things. I do believe that God and heaven and the universe had a different path for me, and I went down the path I was supposed to. But that other path would have been just as amazing and glorious with a whole different set of reasons.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

You're listening to the Tells the Leadership Podcast. This podcast is for leaders at any phase on their leadership journey to become a more purposeful and accountable leader. What I like to call a POW. Join me on our journey together towards transformational leadership.

Introducing Brad Smith

SPEAKER_01 1:23

All right, team. Welcome back to the Tells the Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Josh McMillian, and I am on a journey to become the best leader that I possibly can. And I plan to bring on other purposeful, accountable leaders or POLs, learn from them, those who lead with intention, integrity, and make an inspired impact, and also share my self-study, my leadership habits through my journeying experiences, all through the lens of my leadership and my why. It's important to talk about every single time. I've seen the cost of poor leadership. How it can destroy morale, break trust, and in worst cases lead to a loss of life, including suicide. That's why I'm committing my life to helping others lead with purpose. And through Tells of Leadership, I share real stories and actionable insights on how to overcome adversity and become the kind of leader people remember for the right reasons. So here's a couple of free resources before we begin. Link tree slash tells of leadership. Everything is right there, beautifully rolled up. If you click the article tabs there, you'll get every single leadership article that I've ever written. And I want to highlight this today's episode, you'll be able to go there and get a full summary of this episode distilled down in a single one pager. So if you don't have the time to listen to the full hour plus uh podcast episode, you can just go read that article and get everything from today's guest. And you can also go to tales of leadership.buzzsprout.com. I have the full transcript for our episodes there. Just all free resources for you. So you can go out and make an inspired change and absolutely crush it. And as always, stay to the very end and I'll share with you my top three takeaways. So today's guest, I'm super excited to have on Brad Smith. He became the president of Marshall University in January of 2022 after a globally recognized career in leadership and philanthropy. He was formerly the CEO and executive chairman of Intuit. And Brad co-founded the Wing to Wing Foundation with his wife, Elise, to support education and entrepreneurship in Appalachia. The foundation's Ascent West Virginia program recruits remote workers to West Virginia. A Marshall alum with a bachelor's in business administration. Brad is committed to empowering future leaders. He is a self-proclaimed proud boy from Canova, West Virginia, and he champions opportunities for others in his home state. So without further ado, let's bring on Brad Smith. Brad, welcome to the Tells of Leadership Podcast. I I am truly humbled to have you on the show, and thank you for making the time.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Thank you, Josh. It's a privilege to be with you today.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Yeah, so we share a lot of similarities, and that was one of the main reasons uh that I really wanted to have you on the show because I think a lot of our passions align, especially with innovation and bringing back uh that spirit to West Virginia, knowing what people from West Virginia bring when it comes to work ethic. Uh, but I would love to start off with a couple of the same questions that I always do just to get a barometer for the episode. And the first one, sir, is just how you define leadership in your terms.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

I appreciate the question. I know it's a term that many use, sometimes they misuse. Over the years, I've had a lot of opportunity to reflect on this in my prior life and industry and then here in academia. The definition I found most helpful is leadership is the ability to inspire others to achieve shared objectives. And each of those words are carefully chosen. Starts with ability. It is something that is learned. It is not an innate trait. I do not believe that leaders are born, I believe that leaders are made. The second is to inspire not only the head through facts, but also the heart and the hands through filling them with inspiration and an action. So if you have the ability to inspire, the next is others. It is focused not on yourself, it's focused on a greater cause, something bigger than any individual can achieve on their own. And to do that, you have to be willing to serve others. Then, of course, is the word achieve. It is about action, it's about movement, it's about getting people to do something that may not be in their comfort zone. And then shared objectives. And that obviously is a common purpose. It's a commander's intent. Yeah. It is something much larger than any individual. So when you put it together, I believe leadership is about the ability to inspire others to achieve shared objectives.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I love that because their correlations uh are within the military too. The definition of leadership is to provide purpose direction and motivation or to inspire. So that's that's awesome. And you're speaking my love language too, with commander's intent. So thank you for putting in the military language.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

You're welcome, my friend. It's a privilege. Uh many of the lessons I've learned in my life and benefited from have been from the military and great leaders like yourself who came through the military. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, I so I think a great place just to dive in is where you think your leadership journey started. And maybe we could start, you know, you're growing up in Canova, West Virginia. So it's funny, uh, Heritage Farms Museum and Village. That is my kid's favorite place to go to when we get uh back to Huntington. And that's really close to Canova. And I really didn't know that until I was prepping for this interview.

Roots In Canova

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yes, in fact, my hometown of Canova is just 10 minutes from Huntington, and it is the place, unfortunately, in 1970 where the plane crash that took the lives of the 75 that was made famous with the We Are Marshall movie, yeah, that was just outside of my hometown, the Tri-State Airport. So I was able to see the sky glowing red at the age of six the night of that tragedy. So my destiny's been intertwined with Huntington and Marshall since I was a child. And going to the question you asked about how early in my life did I reach this definition or at least start to understand the importance of leadership. And I think it starts with the examples you see around us, and it starts with my parents, my mother and my father. Um, my father role modeled for me servant leadership. I saw what it felt like to serve others before you serve yourself. He did that first for many, many years as the patriarch of our family, the one that would leave on a Monday and come back on a Friday, be out of town working as a salesman for Nestle Foods, then ultimately went into public service as the mayor. He rode the sanitation trucks every weekend with those who picked up the trash in the neighborhood. And I asked him once, Dad, why do you do that? You're the mayor. You don't have to go out and pick up the trash. He said, son, there's no better way to learn about the lives and the things that matter to your team than to ride with them eight hours in the cab of a truck. And by the way, if you would really want to see what's happening in your community, don't go down the front yard where everyone has the lawn all manicured, go down the alley, see what's happening in the back of the house. So it was a wonderful way for me to see that leaders need to be engaged. It's not a press box job, it's down in the field. And then the second part was my mother. My mother role modeled unconditional love. She also role modeled the ability to see potential in her children and in others that they may not see in themselves. And reminds me of Coach Tom Landry, the famous Dallas Cowboys football coach in the 60s and 70s. He said, a coach is someone who was willing to show you what you don't want to see, tell you what you don't want to hear, so you can be the person you always wanted to be. And my mother was that character. She was that person in my life that gave me unconditional love but held me to a high standard. So those were two examples. And then I can tell you, and we can talk about it more. I won't go on in this particular response. But I had things in my life that started to shape my journey towards where I ultimately ended up in both my industry life as well as academia.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, that's so fascinating. So I guess before we jump into that, you you have that tagline which I love, a boy, boy from Canova. Can you describe what that means to you?

SPEAKER_02 9:16

I can. Canova is a small town, population 3,000, if you round up. It's like so many other communities, not only in this country, but around the globe. Yeah. It is not a major metropolitan area. We were lucky to have a couple of fast food restaurants. We had a few stoplights. You know, it's that classic rural upbringing. But the reason why I love it is because of two things. First of all, I learned life's values growing up in that community. I learned the learned the importance of integrity, humility, grit, and teamwork. In terms of integrity, in Canova, your word is your bond. You still do business with a handshake. If you say something, you want to actually pay off on it. When I got to Silicon Valley, they turned that into a term, call it a say-do ratio. Do your words and your actions match? I learned that in Canova. The second was humility. They taught us that there was always going to be someone smarter, faster, more talented. It's okay to ask for help, and it's okay to admit when you don't know something. And then I find out when I get to Silicon Valley that great leaders are measured not on the answers they have, but on the questions they ask. And so I was already taught to be comfortable with that. The next was grit. We all know that adversity leads to resilience, which leads to perseverance and success. There's a great book by Angela Duckworth. Obviously, the name of the book is Grit, and they've done a lot of analysis. It shows the number one predictor of success in any domain is the ability to persist in the face of adversity. And I learned that in Canova, and it helped me in the tech sector where there was a lot of competitive rivalry and a whole lot of disruptive technology. Last but not least, teamwork. Seeing that plane go down in 1970, I saw a community wrap their arms around those victims' families, raise those orphaned children, take care of those families, and help them through the healing. And I learned life's a team sport. And then you get out into the private industry or higher ed and you call it shared governance or shared vision, but we all work together. And so all of that came from Canova. And then the second thing I mentioned that I was going to allude to is my tagline on social media is I'm just a boy from a small hometown who dreamed for 22 years of what was out there on the other side. And then once I got out of that town, I spent the rest of my life dreaming of a way back home.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

And I'm now home again.

West Point To Marshall

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah, that it's so funny. And I wanted to kind of sh make sure we shape that as we start to dive into your very impressive, uh impressive resume. You know, I'm from a similar small town, Fenwick, West Virginia. Uh Richwood, West Virginia is where I graduated from. It's in central Pinprick of West Virginia, Nicholas County, right at the foothills of Monongiela National Forest. And there's just a different level of grit. And you perfectly kind of summed that up in terms of servant leadership or just work ethic that is just ingrained in the fabric of the culture of the people there. And same with me, between my father and my mother and that upbringing that they had. And you touched on something else too that I didn't know. Uh, but I was there at Marshall University when I was getting my uh bachelor's degree uh filming of We Are Marshall. And I remember we had to go be extras at the football stadium to get the chance we are Marshall, and that was a special time. I could only imagine you as a young child how that shaped you uh at such an early age. It probably definitely motivated you to push yourself maybe um outside of your comfort zone at a very early age.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

It did, Josh. And I know we'll get to some of these stories later, but I've worn this ring every day since I graduated as a son of Marshall. My mother and father didn't have the chance to go to college, but they committed that each of their children would. And I have two brothers, and each of us graduated from Marshall. And when the third of the three brothers finally graduated, my mom and dad scraped together enough money. We didn't have a lot of means, but they certainly provided love and everything we ever needed. But we each got a class ring with our year, and we've never taken these rings off since our mother and father paid off in that promise. And then who would ever think that I would come full circle and be the very first alumnus in 188 years to have the chance to serve the university that changed my life?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, that that's that's absolutely humbling. And you and I share that story too of like when I left West Virginia, I wanted to go see what the rest of the world had. And I find myself uh wanting to go back, like go fishing and go hunting and spending time in the woods and being with my family and my friends because it's something just beautiful about West Virginia, wild and wonderful. That's the tagline. And if you've never been there, it's it's definitely a special place. So I would love to maybe dig into you transitioning from high school and the college, going to Marshall University, and then just pivoting in um through those experiences before you started out on your own.

Early Career Lessons

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Sure. So mentioned that I'm the middle of three brothers, grew up in Canova, West Virginia, uh, had the opportunity to graduate from a high school, Cerrito Canova High School, in 1982. At that time, the high school was still a vibrant powerhouse in football. In fact, in a 20-year period from 1964 to 1984, we played in 16 of 20 state championships in football and won 10 of them. And won the senior year that I was there as well. So we were really a well-known school. Ultimately, population decline led us to consolidate, and that school is now a part of what's known as the Spring Valley Timberwolves. But it was an idyllic childhood. I graduated from high school, and at the time my mother and father had saved enough money for my older brother to go. We were at the point where we would still figure out a way for me to go, but it would have been better if I could find a way to have a scholarship. And I was blessed with the appointment to West Point. And so my freshman year, I enrolled at West Point. I went through Beast Barracks, basic training, of course, was in the United States Army. Went through my first academic semester, but had a young love back home. Someone I dated in high school, I really did not want to be apart from her. We felt that if we were together, we might have an opportunity to make it. So I resigned my commission at Christmas, even though I loved, and it was probably some of the most formative moments of my life when I was at West Point. Came back the second semester of my freshman year and enrolled at Marshall, and then completed that in a four-year period. When I graduated from Marshall, I was recruited off campus by Pepsi and was sent to Indianapolis to be a part of a college recruitment rotation program where I got the chance to start driving the trucks, delivering soft drinks, loading the trucks with forklifts, calling on the supermarkets to try to sell an NCAP display at Halloween, all this sort of early stuff. And I don't know if you want me to walk through my career now or kind of stop there, but that's how I moved out of West Virginia and got my first job.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I think it's it's funny too, because it kind of shares a story between your father and this the how he instilled in the fact of like, hey, go down the alleyways, don't go down the main streets. And then having that type of job first out of college showed you the tactical level of how things work. Um and then moving from that, where did you go next?

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, so I spent five years at Pepsi. I ultimately was promoted out of Indianapolis, went to Kalamazoo, Michigan, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Incredible leadership development factory. They invested so much in growing you as a people leader and got a master's degree at night, which Pepsi paid for. And it was an amazing five years. I got a phone call from a competitor of Pepsi at the time. I was a 27-year-old man, and they said, we'd like to make you the general manager of the 7-up company of Akron, Ohio. And I'm like, general manager at 27? I could never get there at Pepsi until I'm in my mid-30s. And so I violated one of the principles my dad had given me as a guiding principle for careers. He said, Brad, when you have an opportunity to choose between jobs, I ask you to think about what makes your heartbeat the fastest. Where will you be surrounded by people smarter and more talented than you? And do me a favor, never take the job because of the title or the money. Because the title and the money will change over time if you do the job. So always choose a thing that aligns with your purpose and your values. It makes your heartbeat fast. And be around superstars that make you work super hard just to keep even. I had that at Pepsi. Unfortunately, I did not find that same experience at 7 Up. I went there for several years. I had the chance to learn a lot, but most of what we were doing at 7 Up was trying to replicate what Pepsi and Coke had already done a couple years ago. We were in catch-up mode back then. So after a couple years of being the general manager of the 7 Up company of Akron, a Pepsi mentor left the soft drink industry completely and moved into advertising. And he called me and said, I would like to have you come and lead sales for us. A company was called Advo. And it was back when you used to use the mailbox before the internet to send direct mail to try to send coupons to a household. So this is how you used to target before Facebook and Meta. You used to do it through the US mail. And so I joined him first as a sales leader in Cleveland and then got moved to Connecticut, where I became the head of marketing. And it was an exciting four-year run. And during that period, I got into big data. We were using algorithms to figure out where were the diet coke drinkers so we could mail them Diet Pepsi coupons. And so that really started to scratch a new itch called technology. And that's when I got a call from automatic data processing, ADP, payroll HR, benefit systems. And they called and said, We would love to interview you to be the head of marketing for our small business division. And I took the interview, ultimately got the job, moved to New Jersey. And in that period of time, the internet came out big time.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

And they said, We need someone to go down and lead a little group far away from the mothership and launch an internet payroll product which had never been launched before. So I read Steve Jobs' book. I was inspired by his famous quote that it is better to be a pirate than to serve in the Navy. I love that. And that meant break all the rules. So we hung this Jolly Rogers skull and crossbones black uh flag, and we went down to Atlanta to get away from the headquarters in New Jersey. And our team built the first internet or what was called a hosted payroll product. The good news was that product was in demand. The bad news was I also convinced the board to give us$40 million. To say we could sell it all online, and we ended up not making any of that money back. So it was a classic dot-com failure, but they were inspired enough to say you all did something no one thought possible, which is building this first hosted product that I was brought back to headquarters to lead sales and marketing, or excuse me, marketing and business development for ADP. And so I did that for a couple years, and I get a phone call from a company on the West Coast. They say, we keep running into you in conferences. We wonder if you'd like to get together and just have dinner, professional courtesy. And the company's name was Into It. And so I fly out, I have an opportunity to interview with a gentleman by the name of Dan Manick. He's leading the accounting business for them. He then has me interview with the CEO, the founder of the company, Scott Cook, and the chairman of the board, Bill Campbell. Next thing I know, it is an offer, and I end up joining the company. And in a five-year period, I lead a group down in Texas and Dallas for accountants. I'm asked to move to San Diego and lead the turbo tax business. I'm then asked to move up to headquarters and lead the QuickBooks business. And at the end of five years, they surprised me and said, we'd like to have you step in as the CEO of the company. I was 43 at the time. I had the privilege of serving as the CEO for 11 years, the chairman of the board for six, and then stepped down in 2022.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

So there's so many things there that I want to unpack. And I love that your dad's three rules for taking on a position. One of the things that stuck to me, well, two of them really is the talent. And I've learned this too. Um being in the military, you can call it a blessing or a curse. I take a different job almost every year. Um I move into a different position every year until I get to a more senior rank and they they keep them between two to three years. But I've noticed that certain organizations are not made the same, if that makes sense. Like when you're in a strong organization with really, really purpose-filled people, it raises the standard that's what's expected. And I love how that was one of your dad's guiding principles is shoot to work at a place where the talent's very high because you'll stretch to get to that level. And then if you have that fire inside of you, you'll grow beyond that capacity. Um your dad should have written a book. I would have loved to read the lessons that he taught you as a young kid. And the next one was um the passion, find something that you're passionate about, align it with your purpose, and then I'll add one more there too. Um have precision, use those skills and go out and make an inspired change. That that was that was absolute fire. Could you repeat those again so I could write them down?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

I sure can. So his three principles for me were choose the thing that makes your heart beat the fastest so it aligns with your purpose and your value system. The second is surround yourself with people smarter and more talented than you because you'll have to stretch and grow every day. The way he said it is you'll find yourself at the base of a steep learning curve and there's no better climb. And the third is never take a job for the title or the money, because at the end of the day, if you do your job, those things will come to you.

Leap To Tech And Intuit

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah. Yeah, that that's another great one, too, is like I can see that now. I've you have you walked me through your journey, you've always done the next hard job and you've done a best of your capacity. And then eventually you got offered the position to be a CEO. And I couldn't but help but think of what if you would have stayed at West Point. You probably would have been a general officer given your drive if you wanted to stay in. But you getting out and choosing um this path, the amount of impact that you're able to create, especially for the state of West Virginia, I think everything happens for a reason. And I would just say that you're definitely uh that you were definitely on the right path.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

You know, Josh, I appreciate you saying that. And you know, I have a ton of respect for you and the life you've chosen and the way you live your life. And I haven't shared this before on a podcast or in an interview, but everyone says you have any regrets in life. And I really can say that I don't because I wouldn't have ended up learning the lessons I've learned, marrying my wife, all the things that have happened, my two beautiful daughters, being able to serve mom and matter. But the closest thing to regret that I have is leaving West Point. Because in my mind, it was not transferring from one school to another. It carried the label of resigning. And I've never done that in my life. I have never stepped back or backed down. And even though I can look at the academic achievement I had while I was there and the way I was scoring, and I know that I chose to be a lover, not a fighter, and I mean that just romantically, not any other way, as I had a crush on a girl when I was thinking like an 18-year-old kid might. I can tell you it's been so important for me in life to come to terms with the fact that some of my classmates have gone on to achieve amazing things. Mike Pompeo was in our class of 86. I have others that have done the same thing. But I have not made it back to the academy yet. I've been invited every year to come back and watch an army game, and I don't know why I have not been able to go back. And it's not because I don't love it, I revere it, I root for Army all the time, except when we're playing Marshall, and then I root for Marshall.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

I would too.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah, I appreciate you though, buddy. I'm and I just thought I'd just confess that moment of vulnerability that um I do believe that God and heaven and the universe had a different path for me, and I went down the path I was supposed to. But that other path would have been just as amazing and glorious with a whole different set of reasons. General or no general, just the fact of serving this country with amazing people like yourself would have been the achievement of a lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

That's the one thing that I'm I'm learning as I continue, you know, just to live life is that I think God definitely has a clear purpose for us all. And regardless of what we want, uh there's a path laid out in front of us. And uh sometimes he pulls you along, kicking or screaming, uh, even if you think you don't want to do that. And then you realize once you do those things or you've lived life and you gained those experiences, how much better off you are at the end um and equipped to fight at the challenges that's ahead of you uh at the present time. It's funny, I I reflect on all of those decisions, uh, but I I deeply, deeply respect what you have done. And I think that that would probably be a great place. Um, before we jump into some of the initiatives you're doing for West Virginia, you mentioned and you talked about technology. You you learned to grow and love that. And I think you have seen the the beginning of what we call you know technology boom, uh the dot-com boom to where we are now uh with the artificial intelligence and the machine learning and the autonomy, human machine teaming. Um, I've done that within the SOCOM side of the house and with the army acquisition side of the house, and I've seen that from your experience. How how was that uh on the industry side, seeing all of that and how disruptive it can be?

SPEAKER_02 27:17

It's been thrilling. And what it really teaches you is to not think about higher education, but continuous education, lifelong learning. It took me back to the lesson in Canova to be humble and to learn to lead with questions I ask and not answers I have. I'm not a computer scientist, I've never written a line of code in my life. I end up in Silicon Valley with one of the most iconic companies in the Silicon Valley. And when they tell me that they want me to lead as the next CEO, I said, I'm not an engineer. And at the time, Bill Campbell, who they've written the book about the trillion dollar coach, was our chairman and my mentor. We can talk about Bill at some point. But he said, We have thousands of engineers. We don't need someone else to write code. We need someone to paint a grand vision or a grand challenge that inspires them to do the best work of their lives. We need someone to create a culture and an environment where they actually don't have friction in their way. We need someone who gets everyone to play the orchestra and not just their instrument, but let's move together. And that's why we want you to take this role. So I learned early on that technology doesn't come with instructions. And even if you were coming out of college when I did, and we were trained to write in COBOL and Fortran. And then you go through, you know, BASIC and Java and C and C sharp and Python, and you go on and on and on. Everyone has to relearn technology. So even if you're not a technologist, lean into it and figure out how it'll make your life better and those around you better. And that's really from my upbringing in Canova. Just ask questions.

Wrestling With The West Point Choice

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Yeah, that that's one thing that I've seen a correlation with all great leaders that I've had, regardless um if they're in the military uh or if they're in the civilian side, is that they're curious. Uh at their core, they're curious. And what curiosity sparks uh a lifelong learning mindset. And you and I share that. It's funny, I I graduated full transparency. I chose from Marshall University a criminal justice bachelor's degree, not to challenge myself, but so I could make sure that I got infantry when I commissioned in the Army because it was an OML list, so I needed to get as high as I could, so I needed the best grades possible. And then yeah, and then uh the army does a 180 on me, and they're like, Hey, you're going to go to the Naval Postgraduate School and you're going to get a systems engineering degree. And I was like, Oh, well, I don't know if I'm well positioned for this. Uh, but it's funny, uh, but doing that, it's made me even better because it forced me outside of my comfort zone. And I understand I'm not an engineer, uh, but I know how to communicate and inspire engineer types, uh, which is which is a challenge if you've never worked with engineers before. Um, but I was I was just so curious of how uh that technology has uh matured over the years and where it's at right now. And what do what do you see for the future of artificial intelligence, especially from the president of Marshall University, how how it plays a role in the academic upbringing of the youth?

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Well, I will start with I think we're living in a period where this will be the most transformative technology of our generation.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Agree.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

And I know it sounds like hyperbole, but you can go back, and many have said this is just as transformational as the Gutenberg press, electricity, the world wide web. They're talking about a concept called the AI dividend, which is many economists have looked at this and said that it'll increase annual productivity as high as 30%. It can, it's not a 10 or 15% improvement. It can be a 30% and in some cases a 10x improvement. So I think it is so mission critical for us to build our digital fluency, starting with our children, K through 12, postsecondary, every single field is going to have to figure out how to build this into the way they think about their craft. And this is not about outsourcing our thinking, our critical thinking, our ethics, any of the other pieces, and that we'll have to come with some guardrails. But at the end of the day, I can go back and look at the 1900 census of the United States. At that time, roughly 60% of Americans, if my memory serves me well, listed their primary occupation as agriculture. They were farmers. If you go to the most recent census, it's less than 2%. But we have more food and less food insecurity and higher employment at this time than we did in the 1900s. Humans know how to adapt. And so we will figure out how to coexist with this technology and to do amazing things that never one anyone thought, you know, years ago they would have thought it was impossible. But we have to be willing to face our fears, lean into our discomfort, and practice and use the tools. Here's a very simple technique, Josh, that I picked up that I've been using, and our campus is using. It's called the 30-30-30 rule. 30 minutes a week, I use one of these tools, whether it is Chat GPT or it's Anthropic and Quad or it's Gemini, to try to do some part of my job. I spend 30 minutes a week either reading a book, watching a video, or listening to a podcast about someone who's using these tools and how they're using them to improve their life. And the last 30 minutes is I spend discussing it with someone like yourself, my wife at the table, my fellow cabinet members in the administration, or I sit in the boardrooms, as you know, of Amazon and JP Morgan. So I'm a part of those conversations. And just by putting that 90 minutes in a week, 30 minutes using it, 30 minutes reading, listening, or watching a video about it, 30 minutes discussing it, my acumen is leaping forward because you become more comfortable and you start to see how that solution can be applied to many problems.

Curiosity And Continuous Learning

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Today's show sponsor comes from 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. They are a philanthropic award-winning craft distillery located in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. For being a listener of Tales of Leadership, you get 10% off on any order using the promo code PandoCommando when you place an order at 10thwhiskey.com. Both of those are in the show notes, so you'll be able to find them. 10th Mountain Whiskeys and Spirit Company are honors heroes and they craft a legacy. I've commanded two organizations in the 10th Mountain, and both of which are very deeply impactful to me. This is a company that I stand behind. And if you're looking for a great bottle of bourbon, look no further at 10th Mountain Whiskey and Spirit Company. Back to the show. When I was taking over my last position figuring out how I can communicate that in this level, uh, but uh within uh SOCOM for robotics, uh, it was a very steep learning curve. Uh I understand the basic mechanics of warfare because I'm an I'm a maneuver officer, I'm an infantry officer by trade. But I would drive to Brag a lot. And every time I would drive to Bragg, I looked at that as a five-hour opportunity, one way to bring Chat GPT up. I would put it on uh a dictate function and I would have a conversation with it of like, hey, teach me about the term FPV. What is that? First person view drones. What are some of the components with it? What are some of the current limitations of it? And it blew me away. It was like having a one-on-one uh discussion with a subject matter expert. And then I love how you've kind of walked that through too of like a crawl, walk, run within the military. We do the same thing. I'm gonna show you, uh, you're gonna then do it, I'll watch you, and then you're gonna go run uh or teach it to someone else. And I think that that's the learning process that we all have to have to become subject matter experts of that, to have it to be tacit knowledge, to move it from just the the the learned knowledge to actually something that we could do, and it's a muscle memory. The the other thing that I was thinking of when you were bringing that up is Moore's law, and we've always saw technology double in a year's time. It's not outside the realm of possibility that technology could double within a month's time or within six months' time in a specific sector. And I was having an an MIT I'm sorry, because now you got me fired up. Um I had an MIT professor uh do a lecture on when would artificial intelligence technically be as smart as a human brain. So the human brain roughly has like 40 trillion connections, which is absolutely mind-boggling. Right now, the largest AI models that are out there have somewhere, and this was you know four or five months ago, uh, so it may be old data, but around four trillion. So it's within my lifetime a hundred percent, artificial intelligence will be as smart as as humans. And that's the thing that I find myself struggling with. And you said it too, as a as a father. How how can I have my children begin to interact with these things, but not ruin their ethical and moral compass, if that makes sense? Like, hey, this isn't an easy button to just write your papers, it's a tool for you to become better. And I'm I'm struggling with that. I'm trying to figure out how to do that.

AI’s Promise And The 30-30-30

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Well, you know, Josh, everyone, all of us, we're struggling with that. I I'll go back because you talked about this journey of the amount of time I've been in technology, but it goes back to right after World War II. And after Turing and his team had decoded the German code in the early 50s, he wrote the original paper that most say was the starting point for artificial intelligence. I think it was around 1953. And it was a handful of years later, if I remember correctly, it was a Dartmouth research project that wrote the official paper that many claim is the birthday for artificial intelligence. So we're talking the 50s. And then artificial intelligence, they started to work on it, whether it was machine learning, early versions of that, it was more program and coding. But you go all the way out to the early 70s to the early 80s, you have the first AI winter where everyone starts to become disillusioned. We had fallen in love with this concept. We had rockets, we had the Sputnik moment, we had sci-fi, we had Star Trek, and then all of a sudden we get a little disillusioned. And then in the early 80s, you get this concept Microsoft and Clippy and Microsoft Windows and all this great. Yeah, remember Clippy, and then you get into the mid-80s to the mid-90s, and you get the second AI winter, and then you kind of fast forward, and all of a sudden, a couple years ago, you have a combination of storage and compute and processing power that all come together in the cloud for the first time. And this thing starts to have a heartbeat at a pace that no one ever thought possible. And we're now on this hockey stick, and everyone thinks, oh my gosh, this started two years ago. It's been going on for a long time, but this is the magic to talk about the example you just had as a father. So Benjamin Bloom, back I think in the 80s, had developed this concept called the two sigma opportunity. The two sigma opportunity is if every child could have a one-on-one personalized tutor, they could actually improve the proficiency of their education to where they could outscore 98% of their classmates. All it took was one-on-one tutoring. The challenge is to scale one teacher to one student is cost prohibitive. But now you have Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, and he launches a version on AI called Con Migo. And what they've been able to do is demonstrate a one sigma improvement, taking a student, giving them one-on-one tutoring where they interact the way you did in your drive to brag, and they're able to not get the answers given to them, but to teach them how to think through the problem. And they're accelerating their learning one and a half grades in a period of months. And so it's an incredible opportunity for us to improve all of our proficiency if we just harnessed it and use it for good.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

That that was one of the beauties, too, of me going through Marshall University, is that it was more intimate settings, if that makes sense. Like the classrooms were smaller to where at least I had a direct connection to my professors. Uh, it wasn't like two or three hundred classroom settings, it was maybe between 30 to 50, sometimes less than that. But I never thought about uh that. That artificial intelligence could be used as a tutor capacity because a lot of the times uh my hours just wouldn't work well with with tutors, especially when I was in ROTC. You have drill within the National Guard. I had to go do labs, which you know often took me out of state, and then we still did PT in the morning every day at 6 30. So I had very strict timelines, almost like a student athlete. So I have to work around my schedule. So that could be an extremely powerful tool that at least I see in higher education that I never thought of. That's that's why you get paid the big bucks.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Well, we've also had the privilege of partnering with SalCon. He's done a couple of fireside chats for us here on campus and with our board of governors, and we've licensed ConMigo that we're using right now with our students. We've also worked with Adobe, with Adobe Firefly, and we're the first campus in West Virginia to be a creative cloud campus using AI that Adobe has. We're working with Salesforce and their AI product, Einstein. So we're making all these tools and training available to our faculty, staff, and students. So we're all leaning in and we're all applying that 30, 30, and 30 kind of model so we can all become proficient for the 21st century.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

I think another place that I really wanted to ask you is that West Virginia, every time I go back, it's so beautiful. But it's to me, it's almost depressing. When I go back to you know, Summersville or Richwood, West Virginia, where I'm from, it used to be the highlight, like the town used to be alive, and now it's like slowly dying. Uh people are moving away from the mountain state. I understand those things. How can we bring back industry? How can we harness artificial intelligence as a disruptor to reignite that fire within West Virginia?

Tutoring At Scale With AI

SPEAKER_02 41:42

Yeah, Josh, this is what I dedicated the remainder of my life to. And if I really put it into context my entire life, but I needed to go learn some lessons, gain some experience, in some cases, collect some resources so we could come back and invest them here. I'll start with who we are. We have always answered the nation's call. If you go back in our history, we have mined the coal, we forged the steel, we built the highways, we manufactured the automobiles, we fought the wars. More people volunteer from West Virginia per capita than any other state in the nation.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

When our presidents and our visionaries said we need to go to the space, go to sky. You go back and look, Orville and Wilbur Wright built their first planes out of West Virginia spruce. Chuck Yeager was a son of West Virginia that broke the sound barrier. Homer Hickam was a son of a coal miner in West Virginia that built the first NASA rocket. Catherine Johnson and the hidden figures actually came from West Virginia. The Tuskegee Airmen were trained here. All of the metal in space, most of it's manufactured in constellium, which is a manufacturing plant in West Virginia. So we have been at every step along the way. But somewhere along the way, people told us we no longer belonged, that we were yesterday's people, that the things we did were no longer relevant. And that could be true if you narrowly define yourself as everything we've done comes from the ground. But today the future is in the cloud. And we have an entrepreneurial mindset. A person who settled in West Virginia had to learn to blaze trails, not follow paths. They had to be entrepreneurs from day one because 90% of this land is mountainous and it's trees. So we've had to figure out how to build things, and we were born in adversity. So I tell you, I feel like West Virginia's time has come. And that's why I'm home. And why am I excited? Because of what you said. Technology levels the playing field of opportunity. You've probably read our family foundation, my wife and I, has funded a program called Ascend West Virginia. It's the nation's premier remote workforce program. We studied Tulsa, Oklahoma. We studied Bentonville, Arkansas. We studied Vermont and all the others. And we now market anyone who wants to move to West Virginia. We will pay you$12,000 to move here. You can choose one of five locations in the state. We have a co-working facility in each location. We pay you$12,000 to move here for two years. You get a year's worth of free outdoor recreation. If you want to go Whitewater Rapids or crafting, if you want to go snow skiing, we pay for that. And what we've discovered, we're going to pay for 1,000 people,$12,000 each, to come in over a five-year period and bring their families. Here's where we stand today. We launched it on October 12, 2021, which was the 50th anniversary of John Denver's release of Country Roads.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Oh, that's awesome.

Reviving West Virginia’s Economy

SPEAKER_02 44:35

And we launched it then, and here we have today 428 who have chosen to move to West Virginia with their family members. We have 804 people who live here. 11 babies have been born. 43% have bought homes. Their average income is$107,000. And as a result of all that, we are bringing new people to the state, and the retention rate is 97%. The next closest remote worker program has an 80% retention rate. So what we have is what people now want. They want to work in these communities where they can go outside and have an amazing experience after work. They can do it remotely by using new tools, the cloud, AI, smartphones, and they can have an amazing quality of life at 16% cheaper than the national average. So I believe our students no longer have to leave. We've launched First Descent, where we're getting them connected with remote jobs so they don't have to leave the state. And now we're inviting people to come in. And I'll finish with this, Josh, because you know I get excited. When we launched this in 2021, people looked at me very sober and said, Man, we have potholes we have to work on. We have this issue, we have that issue. No one's going to want to move here. Well, I can tell you today, we have received 58,600 applications from 108 countries in all 50 states. Everyone would like to be a part of almost heaven, and that's what we're working on.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah, what West Virginia has this it's such a special place, especially in my my my kids already. So just to paint the picture, you know, if April uh spring gobbler hunt uh hunting opened up, and I come from a very rural part of West Virginia. It's close to Fayetteville, where um the New River Gorge is, and that's where all the great whitewater raftings are at. My daughter day opening, we uh were able to get a spring gobbler. She's 30 minutes in a blind uh life memory that we're always going to have. And we did it with my father, which was awesome. But I can go 30 minutes behind my house and do some of the best trout fishing that this world has to offer. Uh catching 16, 18, 20 inch rainbow trout. So if you're an outdoor enthusiast and you love to rock climb, you want to go rafting, especially the New River in the Golly in October when they let the water out of uh Summersville, it is one of the most beautiful states in the world. And that's something that I've always uh always played that what if question. What if I had the resources? How could I help turn around West Virginia? And my wife and I, every time we go back, I always talk about this place has so much potential, it has so much potential. So it inspires me, it fires me up to see someone who has those things taking purposeful action and then have done this your entire life. So it's truly inspiring to see. And those stats that you just um, you know, spit off, you have those memorized, and I'm excited to see where that goes in the next like five years.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Um I appreciate it, Josh. I will tell you, we set out on this journey, and it's a collective we, so John Chambers, who obviously is an incredibly famous and successful son of West Virginia that led Cisco and is still out in the Silicon Valley, so many others. We got together and we studied other regions that had transformed from a period of despair into a period of abundance. And we studied Ireland, who by the way happened to be many of our descendants who settled in West Virginia. We studied Israel, India, France. We looked at Pittsburgh, Detroit, and we said, what are the lessons that they applied? And one of the things they did is they chose where they could be distinctive. And so we did work in 2018 with McKenzie Consulting on behalf of the state and the major universities, and it's called West Virginia Forward, and it pointed us to cybersecurity, rural health care, advanced and additive manufacturing, new forms of energy, in addition to the existing forms we've had, like coal and natural gas, aviation and entrepreneurship. So we have put our energy into that, and as a result, we are really starting to see the green shoots of the next chapter of growth. And I am very optimistic that our best days are ahead.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

I'm super inspired after this because next week uh my daughter has summer camp in Cowan, West Virginia for Camp Luthor, and and my son is going to be attending uh a youth camp at Marshall University. So I haven't been back home in like Huntington, I would say, within the last four years. So I'm excited to come back and see some of those changes and see how Marshall University has grown. So that's going to be awesome. And I think that's the net the next great place because I got to try to get this in too. What did it mean to you when you finally did become the president of Marshall University, getting to come back home?

Ascend WV Results

SPEAKER_02 49:29

Josh, I will say to you that it was not an aspiration to be a university president. It has been the privilege of a lifetime. I said to someone recently that I traded a profession for a purpose. I always knew that one day I would come home. I would find a way to serve the state. I would find a way to support the university that unlocked a future that I would have never imagined. I would find a way to be around those who had invested in me when I didn't see anything in myself. My family and I thought that would be through our family foundation, which we founded in 2019, Wing to Wing Foundation. And that's what led us to do things to help advance education, entrepreneurship, and the environment and create things like this remote worker program, Ascend, where we have first generation scholarships for kids who no one else in their family's gone to college. We do full rides to go to Marshall or to Ohio State. And there's other things we've done. But I never would have imagined that I could ever be a candidate to be president. And I loved my predecessor. My wife and I was supporting him and Marshall. And when he let me know he was stepping down, he suggested maybe you should put your name in the hat. And I told him I had to be the least qualified person to be a university president. And he said, I think you're underestimating it. Why don't you talk to some people? So I called a bunch of university presidents who had not come up through academia, but had come from the military or government in these non-traditional paths. And I sat down with them and they said, Brad, it will be the most fulfilling work of your life. So I threw my name in the hat. I go from 116 people who apply to 16 who get interviewed off campus. Five of us get interviewed on campus, and I am getting beat to death because I don't have a PhD and I've never come through the academic setting. But somehow they must have a soft spot in their heart because they chose me. And the last three and a half years has been the thrill of a lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

So looking uh some of the programs that you started, Marshall for All. Could you walk me through what Marshall for All is?

SPEAKER_02 51:37

I can. So the number one barrier to college education for most families, if you look at Gallup research, is affordability. Tuition has outpaced inflation over several decades by multiples. And so you get to a point where you have families who have to make a decision. I'm either not going to send my child to college, or if they go, they're going to have to take out student loans. Well, of course, you now have the backlash to that, which is this forgiveness that was happening, and people saying, hey, I had to pay my way through school, and now people are just forgiving these loans. That's not fair. So when we came in, we realized that Marshall University is a prosperity platform. We are a place where people may come from humble beginnings, but they can actually stand on this platform and reach higher heights. I'm a great example of that. So we said, who out there has already solved this problem we can learn from? And we studied Berea College, which has an amazing program in Kentucky where you come and you work and that pays for your tuition. So you literally have a work study program and then you go tuition free. Ohio State had just launched a program back then called the Scarlet and Gray Advantage. We studied that. And we decided we would launch a program called Marshall for All, Marshall Forever. The commitment is by our 200th anniversary, which is 2037, just a handful of years from now, 15 plus years. We will have every student graduate with a job and no student loan debt. And the way we do that is if you come from a family making$65,000 or less, we will help you get all the federal money through the Pell Grant, all state money available, and then we will privately raise your final dollar in. But in return, you have to take a financial literacy course, do a work study program, or a paid internship. And the first cohort, we brought in 100 to see if we could test this in the fall of 23. They outperformed their peers on campus in grade point average, year-over-year retention, and campus engagement. We brought in the second hundred last year. They did even better. Now we're doubling the program and bringing in 400 in total if you count this coming fall. And by the year 2037, 100% of the students who qualify, we will be able to commit, will graduate with a job and no student loan debt.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Well, that's that was one of the barriers for me. So kind of walking through super quick my backstory. I'm the first person to ever break the mold and like go to college, but that was a rocky road. I uh I was going to join the Marine Corps. I 100% was dead set on doing that because I wanted to go challenge myself. And then my buddy's like, hey, you can join the National Guard and go to college. Uh had no idea. I didn't know you needed to take an ACT, any of these things. I was always dead set that I was going to join the Marines. I did a community college at Marshall University for a year and I finally was able to get in um through the next semester, and I realized like, oh crap, this is going to be expensive. And my father was going through a divorce at the time, and you know, bless his heart. He was able through the OASIS payments to figure out a way to get me through that first year. And the second year, I was able to be a resident advisor, uh, was able to get paid for through that way, and I was able to have the National Guard pay the rest of the way. But I had to get super creative. Um, and uh who would I don't even know where I would be today if I didn't have that time going through Marshall and really um challenging myself a lot of the times too through the ROTC program and some of the more uh challenging things that I did just through camaraderie, hiking the Appalachian Trail with you know the men of Marshall. That was our uh that was our call sign. We would do that through spring breaks of who I would be today if I didn't have those shared experiences. So I I definitely wanted to bring that up. That's again another amazing thing that you're doing. Um, and Marshall is a great school. Uh academically, it's a great uh university. And I I'm excited to see people get out of school and not have to pay debt and then just focus on creating, making an impact and living life and making a change. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

I appreciate it. And you know, I would tell you that the team wrote this plan together. We had an entire campus effort. We did it year of 2022, and then in the fall of 23, we unveiled Marshall for All and Marshall Forever. Our aspirations would be the most affordable, flexible, and lifetime achievement-oriented education you can get. And to that point, Marshall's tuition today, we have the lowest net tuition for any four-year school in the state of West Virginia, in the entire Sunbelt Conference, which are our 14 competitors that we have in the Sunbelt, of all 16 states in the southeast part of the country, which is 110 universities, and all other R2 research institutions across the country. There's 137 of them. And even with that, students still have to need help to get their tuition covered. So that's why we launched Marshall for All to close that gap for those who don't see it as a potential opportunity for them.

Becoming Marshall’s President

SPEAKER_01 56:39

And then God bless you too for the financial education piece. I needed that, and I didn't get that until I was roughly around 23 and 24, where my wife forced it upon me, especially when I got back from Afghanistan, because I was just like, oh, I made all this money, so I'm just going to buy a lift kit for my truck and all these things. And I finally learned. Uh, so that's absolutely amazing that you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

It's time for our final show segment that I like to call the killer bees. These are the same four questions that I ask every guest on the Tales of Leadership podcast. Be brief, be brilliant, be present, and be gone.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

Question one: What do you believe separates a good leader from a great leader?

SPEAKER_02 57:24

Vulnerability. Someone who recognizes kindness as not weakness and the willingness to admit that you don't know something or you need help is a strength. It's not a weakness.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

I love that. Uh number two, if you could recommend one resource that could help someone on their journey, what would you recommend?

SPEAKER_02 57:45

Someone who's already traveled the path you're on, reach out to them and ask them what lessons they learned that they wish they would have known when they were at the point that you currently are. Uh as I think it was Mark Twain once said, at 15, his father was the most uneducated man he'd ever met. By the time Mark Twain was 18, it's amazing how much his dad had learned in three years. And that was really a joke to say it was his own learning journey. But if you ask those who've been there before you, find a mentor, a coach, be willing to just reach out like you did and say, Hey, I'd like to sit down and talk, and you'll be amazed at how much you can learn.

SPEAKER_01 58:21

So, third question. If you could go back in time and have a discussion with your younger self, what advice would you give and why?

SPEAKER_02 58:30

Dream big. Don't limit yourself. Michelangelo once said that success is seldom limited by aiming too high and falling short. It's when you aim too low and hit the target. You are capable of anything and everything. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy, and it doesn't always mean it'll be the biggest title or the biggest paycheck. But if you actually fall in love with the problem and you don't limit yourself, you will be amazed at what you will accomplish in life.

SPEAKER_01 58:56

Wow. I I am blown away by your memorization of these quotes. Like I don't know how you do that, but that is absolutely inspiring. So the last one is how can our listeners help with all the different things that you're doing right now? Not necessarily connect with you one-on-one, but begin to invest in some of the missions that you're currently on. What is the best way for them to go take action?

Marshall For All, Debt-Free Pathways

SPEAKER_02 59:21

I would say it's less about helping me and it's more about finding their why, their purpose. And I'll show another quote. Mark Twain once said the two most important days in your life are the day you're born and the day you discover why. When I retired as CEO in 2019, I wasn't quite sure how I would feel my days. And someone suggested what I just suggested to you to go out and interview people 20 years down the road further than me in their 70s and ask them what do they what did they do in their 50s to set them up? And they told me there are four questions I need to answer. One, sit quietly for several weeks and reflect back on my life and ask. Myself, when was I filled with the most purpose and passion? And it was amazing how quickly those dots connected. The second question is okay, starting today, what do I wish I could prioritize higher? And what do I want to deprioritize going forward? Because I'm writing an entire new book now. I wanted to spend more time with my wife. We wanted to do things together, and so that was a priority. The third and fourth are two sides of the same coin. In what environments are your natural abilities and superpowers accentuated? And the second is in what environments are your natural abilities and superpowers suppressed? And then if you look at those things, it's going to reveal what things in life really light you up, what things you want to approach with a different set of priorities than you have thus far, and make sure you create the environment where your natural abilities will actually be optimized and avoid the things that will drain your energy. And I would say by doing that, you will have an impact on the world. And that will help me because we all need to find a place where we can learn to speak without being offensive, listen without being defensive, and leave even our adversary with their dignity at the end of a disagreement. And if we're all fulfilling our why, I feel like we'll be much more civil in our discourse.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

That was the best answer that I've ever had on this podcast. And I will tell you, sir, this has been a humbling opportunity. One, just to get to connect with you and see how you think through problems and your life story for the past hour. And then just seeing the amount of purposeful action that you're doing every single day. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for investing in the mountain state. I will leave this uh feeling inspired and continuing to do great things. So thank you for everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Thank you, Josh. Strength and honor and go herd.

Killer Bees: Rapid-Fire Wisdom

SPEAKER_01 1:01:58

Have a great day, sir. That was a phenomenal episode. There's so many things that I've written down in terms of key takeaways. But that's why I just love doing podcasts. And I know I say it all the time, but I really mean it. Just having people on that are going out in this world and they're modeling the way. Deeds not words, right? They have the resources, they have the tools, they have the means, and they're they're doing good things, uh, only for the the greater good. And I love how that last question I always ask hey, how can you connect or add value to the mission that you're doing? And his answer just beautifully summed that up. Go out and live your why. Live your purpose, go make inspired change. And if you're living your why, um, that's all we need because we need more doers that are willing to do good work in this world. So the first key takeaway I have is choose work that is purposeful and challenge. I had a boss recently, we'll won't name names, but he summed it up really well. If you get to the parking lot of where you work and you are looking for excuses to stay in your car before you walk into the building, you don't absolutely love your job and you can't wait to be there, we'll find you another place. You have to find that for your own self, right? Like if you are purposeful, if you're purpose-filled, if you're passionate about your job, those two things align. You have a head, heart, hand alignment. It's so much easier to do great work. And that's what we need more than ever. We need people, especially in this day and time, to go out and do great work and challenge yourself. Shoot for organizations or teams that are going to stretch you. So think about this. It's called the S curve, is that we will naturally encounter obstacles at the beginning of anything that we do, and then we'll grow exponentially over time, and then we'll plateau until we continue to grow and we stay curious, right? But when we are surrounded around other people that are high performers, they set the standard of the organization at such a high bar, it's so much easier for you to close that distance to become a higher performer. And I think the last organization I worked for is a testament to that because once you get there, you quickly learn you need to be uh a performer. So you're gonna have to put that work in, that self-study in, things that you just can't get done to get that tacit knowledge built. Uh, that's what you need to shoot for. Find something that your purpose filled in and then challenge yourself. Number two, focus on doing good work, everything else will work itself out. I loved how he talked about that. Oftentimes, this goes to the whole James Clear method that he talks about in atomic habits, that we're always focused on the outcomes. We wouldn't even need we need the money, we need the job, we need the title, we need all of this crap. No. What you need to do is put your nose to the grindstone, do purpose-filled work that's challenging, and just focus on doing the best work that you possibly can. Focus on being a servant leader. If you're focused on being a servant leader and adding value to other people with not having a clear agenda, everything else will just naturally work itself out. If you're well spoken, you do great work, your reputation over time will build. And that is no, that's the secret sauce. There is no magic way to get to the top unless you lie, cheat, or still, at least in my opinion, it takes time, it takes consistency and it takes the ability of having a strong performance over that period of time. Number three is ask powerful questions. And he did a beautiful job of listing out the questions that you need to ask. But one of the ones that really set with me was just spend time in quiet reflection. And Joe Byerley, the creator from the Green Notebook and countless other people that I've had on this show, this is one theme that always aligns is that who do we spend the most time with? It is ourselves. If we are not willing to do the work of trying to unlock our own thoughts, we'll never truly understand the lessons that we've lived. Everything in life is usually just a blur. We go to the next job, we go to the next job, we go to the next job, we have the next obstacle to overcome, the next obstacle overcome, but we never think about how we overcame those obstacles. How did we feel? Were our strengths aligned with that specific job? If so, how? If not, what were our weaknesses within those jobs? So here's a really simple acronym. I've used it a thousand times, I'll use it a thousand more. I call stop, silence your mind, take a tactical pause, observe your surroundings, then pursue with purpose. If you can do those things, if you can learn from your successes and your failures and reflect on what makes you happy in life, you will have a much greater game plan when the enemy gets a vote. All right, team. Again, this was a phenomenal episode. I absolutely loved it. My only regret is I only had an hour. I wish I had two hours. I had so many questions that I wanted to dig in. But again, thank you. Everyone who's listening around now, thank you so much. Um, I wouldn't be able to do what I do without your guys' support. So that being said, do me a favor. I got four things that I'm always going to ask you at the end of the show, and I really, really mean it because it helps me out tremendously. Number one, is just like, share, and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. If it's on Apple and Spotify, leave me a review. Number two, uh, give me feedback. I absolutely love feedback. If there's a specific leadership topic that you would like for me to look through, you can go to Buzzspro and you can leave me some fan mail there. I'm currently in the process of working some paid sponsorships, which is freaking awesome because now I don't have to pay for this out of my own pocket that I've been doing, uh, but I digress. Uh, and I'll have a way that you'll be able to get a hold of me a little bit more streamlined through a website where everything will be nice and buttoned up. Number three, follow me on social media. I try to push out good content that is wholesome, that will empower you, that'll give you the armor needed to be equipped to go fight the battles that you're going to have to do as a leader in this complex world. And you can find me at tells the leadership.com. And number four, if you want to support the show, all proceeds go back to Tells the Leadership. The best way to do that is through Tells the Leadership.buzzsprout.com. All right, team. As always, I am your host, Josh McMillian, saying every day is a gift. Don't waste yours. I'll see you next time.