The Human-Centered Capitalist, Megan Gluth - CEO of Catalynt

Megan Gluth, CEO of Catalynt, a leading US chemical distributor, shares her journey from overcoming alcohol addiction to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Megan discusses her early struggles, including being kicked out of college and starting over in community college. She highlights the importance of taking responsibility and the impact of her partner's illness on her life. Megan emphasizes human-centered capitalism, focusing on profitability while prioritizing employee dignity and well-being. She advocates for authentic leadership, transparency, and supporting employees through personal challenges. Megan's story underscores the power of resilience, honesty, and creating a culture of care in business. Listen to her story today and choose which action principle resonates with you the most...then schedule it in your calendar!

Action Principles

Pick one to do this week:

1. Allow consequences to happen. Look at areas where you may shield yourself or others from the consequences of choices. Allow those consequences to happen. ACTION: Write down why you should stop shielding someone (or yourself) to remind you when you're tempted to intervene.
2. Prioritize your MVAs. Identify activities you're doing that don't matter as much and eliminate one of them to focus on more valuable things. ACTION: Pick one lower-value activity and commit to replacing it with something more valuable.
3. Give back. As you succeed in your career, look for ways to do good and contribute to others' lives. ACTION: Choose an activity or person you want to help and schedule the first step to making it happen.
4. Be honest. Be your own "chief truth teller" and strive for brutal honesty in your self-reflection. ACTION: Schedule time for reflection and evaluate your goals quarterly.

Guest Resources


Learn more about Megan Gluth at MeganGluth.com.


Suggested LinkedIn Learning Course:

Time Management Fundamentals

Dave Crenshaw develops productive leaders in Fortune 500 companies, universities, and organizations of every size. He has appeared in Time magazine, USA Today, FastCompany, and the BBC News. His courses on LinkedIn Learning have been viewed tens of millions of times. His five books have been published in eight languages, the most popular of which is The Myth of Multitasking—a time management bestseller. As an author, speaker, and online instructor, Dave has transformed the lives and careers of hundreds of thousands around the world. DaveCrenshaw.com

Transcript

Megan Gluth: 0:00

Nobody leaves here saying, I didn't have to work hard. And what's created about that too is like they then only want to be with other people who also want to work hard, but they understand that it's not just because we're all driving towards the relentless pursuit of cash. In

Dave Crenshaw: 0:15

this episode, you'll get to know Megan gluth, the human centered capitalist, and you'll hear the story of how overcoming alcohol addiction helped her become the award winning CEO of a nine figure chemical company. I'm Dave Crenshaw, and this is my success Show. Welcome back, friends to the Dave Crenshaw Success Show. This is where I speak to some of the most successful people I've met in my life's journey. And I'm looking for universal principles of success that can help both you and my family succeed if it's your first time here, by way of introduction, I'm a best selling author. I speak around the world of Fortune 500 companies, and I've taught millions of people how to be successful through my online courses, in particular, my time management courses on LinkedIn learning. But with this show, I wanted to do something a little different. I was thinking about how I could help my children, and I thought I could interview people that I know and learn how they became successful, and I thought you'd enjoy learning along with them. In particular, I'm looking to speak to people who have multi faceted success in many areas of their lives, so not just career or financial success, but they have fun and they enjoy life, and they have a well rounded approach to life. And I'm looking for actions that anyone can take, including you right now, to become more successful no matter what your career is, no matter where you are in the journey. So as you listen to today's episode, look for something you can do, an action you can take today or this week to make my guest success story a part of your success story. Now, before I introduce this amazing guest, I just want to note that we had a little unavoidable background noise around her company's building. We did our best to clean that up, but my apologies if that adds any distraction. Now on to my special guest, Megan gluth is the owner and CEO of catalent, a leading US based chemical distributor known for her energetic leadership, Meg combines a creative vision with a pragmatic approach rooted in her background as an attorney. She's also the winner of the prestigious Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Her commitment to excellence is evident through her extensive board and committee service. Meg enjoys the outdoors yoga and her roles as wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. Meg, welcome to the show today. Thanks so much, Dave. It's good to be here. And where are you located today? I'm just north of Seattle, Washington today. Nice. It's such a beautiful area. How long have you lived there? I've lived

Unknown: 3:01

here for a little over 10 years. I think it's about 12 or 13 years now. Oh,

Dave Crenshaw: 3:05

that's great. Well, you have accomplished so much in your career, and you've had such an influence in people's lives. And when I saw your bio and what you had accomplished, I really was excited that you agreed to be on the show. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, thanks

Unknown: 3:21

for having me. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. So I like to ask

Dave Crenshaw: 3:25

every guest, Megan the same question at the beginning, and it's the question that kids get asked at a very early age, which is, what did you want to be when you grew up and when you were, let's say, in your teens, what was your answer to that question? You know,

Unknown: 3:39

originally, I think I wanted to just be an adult, to be honest, like I craved freedom in a way that I think young people do. You're 16 years old, and that's what you crave. I had this view of adulthood being something where, like you had this reckless ability to kind of do whatever you wanted to do. So initially I wanted that. I didn't think in terms of career, I thought a lot in terms of the way I wanted to feel, frankly, but eventually I thought I would go into a career in the sciences. I really thought I would be like a nurse midwife or something like that. I really thought that would sit well with me. And I thought that until about 20 minutes into an organic chemistry class in college, and then I realized that wasn't that's not my gifting. So things had to sort of rearrange a little bit. So let's

Dave Crenshaw: 4:26

talk for a second about that desire for for freedom. What was it about that that was appealing to you? Did you feel like you had a lack of freedom? What was causing that? I

Unknown: 4:39

think that, you know, I haven't had every child's experience, but I think that part of my life story is probably really normal, you know, just this desire to be taller, to be older, to be adult, to be, you know, sort of unrestricted by the rules and parameters of childhood. But running alongside that, I also have this. Upbringing in this childhood that starts in this place of I mean, we were poor, we were below the poverty line, we were on food stamps. We had a lot of struggle, both in our family and also in a lot of the families around me, which is not atypical when you grow up in a sort of a rural, small community, there's a there's a lot of that. For people who are, where was it that you grew up? I grew up in a small town in Iowa, in northeast Iowa, and so I grew up in a place where, God, there's so many wonderful things about it. It's an awesome place to be from. It's also a really difficult place to be from, because there's a lot of like, I said, struggle, like people who live off the the whims of agriculture and things like that. It creates like, just sort of a different kind of nervousness and anxiety. And so I think I felt that if I could just just be not there, that things would be better, because there's a lot of like, difficulty in that, there's a lot of struggle, there's a lot of trauma, there's a lot of hardship. And so I wanted freedom in a way that I defined, maybe more as like, escape, anywhere but here, anything but this.

Dave Crenshaw: 6:17

Yeah, that's really interesting, because I think there's a choice that a lot of people have when they're in a situation like that. One is you do what you know, and the other is that you want to do something different than what you know. And clearly you took that second path. So when you started to form opinions about how you could leave that what options came to mind, like you said, you took organic chemistry. Where did you go to college?

Unknown: 6:45

Well, I started at a small college, also in northeast Iowa. And the thing is, is that I talk about this like I had this clear vision for I want freedom, and I want, you know, to do better, and I'm gonna go, you know, study the sciences and do this. But it wasn't like that, Dave like I wasn't dealing with any kind of emotional work around my childhood, my upbringing, the environment I was in, none of that. I did none of that. And so what I was majoring in, first and foremost, was avoidance. I spent a lot of time drinking excessively. I spent a lot of time being sort of irresponsible around that. My drinking didn't start off as alcoholism. My drinking started off as just your standard, like, I'm gonna party instead of go to work, and then I don't hold a job, and then I don't pay my bills, and then I get evicted. That creates a thing, Dave, that creates an energy around your life. And so that's what I was doing, and I was doing some of that while I was in college. My grades were fine. Coming out of high school, I got into college, but I was not there very long before they kicked me out, because academic probation is not a sustainable life path, and it's not something that you're going to be allowed to do endlessly. And so I own that that's a huge part of my story, and one that I'm super honest about, particularly with young people.

Dave Crenshaw: 8:08

Well, I really appreciate your candor. Thank you for sharing that with us. So you said you were put on academic probation, or were you were you kicked out of college because of this?

Unknown: 8:20

First I was on academic probation, and then I got kicked out. Okay,

Dave Crenshaw: 8:24

and what was the turning point? What was the moment? If you can remember where you decided, wait a minute, I need to change this path that I'm on. I

Unknown: 8:36

did not change my path away from using alcohol to cope for years after that, but I did change my academic journey. So here's what happens when you get kicked out of college, like you have to get a job. I don't have a rich Uncle Dave. I didn't have parents who could like fund that journey through my youth, like I had to get a job and I had to pay bills and I had to figure out how to stay in an apartment and pay the rent. I was evicted more than once and again, not because I couldn't do it, but because I just, I just wasn't doing it. I just wasn't being responsible. It was a it was a choice. And I can look back on that now and say a lot of things, you know, led to that and whatnot, but I'm a big believer in just sort of looking at your life through the lens of taking responsibility and taking your own bull by the horns. And so what I did is I eventually worked enough at a job that wasn't going to pay me enough to ever leave that area. If you want more freedom, if you want more opportunity, you're going to need an education of some sort. And so I enrolled in community college in Minneapolis. Actually, I left that small town, I moved to Minneapolis and I went to community college because it was the only place I could get in and I needed to get grades at this community college for long enough to prove to a four year university that I could be a good student. In good standing, and so that's exactly what I did. I went from that community college to the University of Minnesota in Twin Cities, and then I graduated from the University of Minnesota. So

Dave Crenshaw: 10:10

I want to dig into this just a little bit more. You adopted this philosophy of taking responsibility for what was going on in your life. What was the catalyst for that? Can you remember, like, was it a conversation that someone had with you? Was it a thought that came to your mind? Where did the point go to say, You know what, I'm going to now work hard and I'm going to take this hard career path through community college to get back on track.

Unknown: 10:40

It was simply necessity and desperation, like I didn't have anyone to bail me out. And this is why sometimes it's dangerous for us to be separated from the consequences of our choices and for people to provide like a mattress at rock bottom, like it's not rock bottom if there are no rocks. Dave, like I needed to be in a place of being desperate and saying, Okay, I can't get out of this community. I can't have the life that I want unless I'm willing to do hard things. Ie go to community college, start all over, take out loans, get a job, get a second job, like I had to do things in order to make this happen, and it really was just the necessity, the desire to not live like I was living. I think that's more powerful than any anything anybody said to me during that time, because I did have people around me saying, You shouldn't be doing this. You could do better. You're worth more. But none of that meant anything until I felt the full weight of my own mistakes.

Dave Crenshaw: 11:45

That's beautiful. I thank you for sharing that with us. And you know, I've had the privilege of interviewing several people who had to hit that rock bottom place and then they chose to move forward, right? Because, again, it's still a choice. Some people hit that spot and they go, Well, I guess I'm going to stay here. That's it. I'm done. But you chose to push through that, and it's truly remarkable, especially knowing now what you have accomplished with your career, which is an amazing amount of things. Okay, so where did the transition come from just going through college, community college, into actually forming ideas that you want something in the realm of chemistry.

Unknown: 12:32

So I, I went to college. I went to the University of Minnesota. I thought I would be a nurse midwife. I like, I said just o Chem wasn't for me. Like it was like, Okay, maybe this isn't me. So I ended up getting a degree in history. And there's two things you can do when you're a senior in college with a history degree coming at you, and you can either teach high school history, or you can go to law school. So I took the LSATs and I got into law school, and I thought this will be cool, because I really like to learn. I learn in my free time. I'm a person who, if you see me on a beach, I'm going to read a biography or something like that. I don't do a crossword puzzle. I like to be challenged, and so it wasn't a stretch for me to want a legal education. I liked that. I liked the challenge of it. I got there and I got accepted. And two weeks before law school, I was trying to shape up my financial aid package. And again, I cannot stress like the lack of like resources I had to make this happen. I didn't have enough of the standard financial aid package. I needed some private loans to go on top of it, and I didn't have a credit score, as you might imagine, that would sustain me being the sole borrower on a private loan, and I didn't have anybody that I knew in my family that could co sign for me, so my friend's dad co signed on my law school loans for me, and to give everybody an enormity of that, Like I borrowed over $100,000 for this education, and this man co signed on my loans, and in so doing, he changed my life like it left an indelible impression on me about what you do when you yourself are in a place of having arrived, so to speak, and come through your trials. As

Dave Crenshaw: 14:20

I'm listening to this, I'm just thinking about my own experience, and there were a couple of moments where someone who had more resources than me helped me. I They didn't give me a hand out, but they did give me the opportunity to make the money to give back to them. And I feel like that's really profound when you have a moment like that. That's right, I'm assuming you were eventually able to pay him back for that. Yes,

Unknown: 14:52

I was, and it that's its own feeling, to be able to pay I mean, I didn't pay him back. He co signed on the loan. I paid the loans off, and then I sent a thank you note. You know what I mean, and how do you write that thank you note like, hey, thanks. You changed the entire course of my life by CO signing on a loan for a kid that didn't have a really good demonstrated track record of financial responsibility. Like, it was amazing, but yeah,

Dave Crenshaw: 15:19

yeah, that was a risk 100% he didn't give you money directly, but he sure put his money on the line. And I think that takes guts, and I also think that takes insight and vision to see you as you would become because of this. That's right. Oh, that's amazing. Okay, so you went through law school, so that was your initial path. Talk to me about, like, the early days of going to law school. I mean, that's a very difficult thing to become an attorney. Did you find it difficult, or was it something that you just took to naturally? I

Unknown: 15:55

actually really, I think, took to the education naturally. My circumstance was difficult. I had my first partner was diagnosed in my second year of law school with ovarian cancer. And so while I was a law student, I was also taking care of a person who, you know, was ultimately terminally ill. And I think that that experience. Obviously it changed me, but it like I can look back on that now. You know, we're a long ways past this, right? And so I can look back on that now and see the richness that that gave me as a human being. You get this sorting hat when a person is terminally ill around you, like, sorry, my kid is really into Harry Potter. So it's like, there's this sorting hat, right? You get these things that, like, you look at like, this is important. This is not. This is important. This is not so a lot of the drama in law school, like, didn't hit me. The whole like, where's my ranking? Like, am I better than my colleague at this class? What number am I going to graduate in the class? Like, none of that mattered to me. Dave, like I just knew I needed to get through law school. I needed to do it. I needed to get it done, and I needed to get out and earn money. Like that was what needed to happen, and I was singularly focused on doing that. And also never missing a chemotherapy appointment, never missing a surgery, and everything else was just sort of I couldn't tend to it. And that ended up giving me some really cool skills for later on, because you need that in business too, to be honest. Can

Dave Crenshaw: 17:27

you talk to us a little bit about how the skills of dealing with that have helped you in business?

Unknown: 17:35

So I think business offers opportunities for things to be like, like, for petty things to come at you sometimes, right? And I don't mean to suggest that people and their problems are petty, or that business problems are petty, but like, some things aren't mission critical, and a really effective leader knows what is and is not. And if we're not caring for ourselves, and we're not taking care of ourselves as leaders, and we're not tuned up. We have a tendency to slip into the rut of following, maybe our emotional pellets, into those things that are not super important. This experience gave me sort of the first initial crash course in learning what in life is mission critical and what is not. And when you have that sorted out, you tend to be a little bit more relaxed about some of like you truly don't sweat some of the small stuff. So again, back to the law school example. I have friends that were checking at the end of every semester, where am I in the class rank? What number did I graduate? Dave, honest to God, I have zero idea what number I was in my law school class, but I will tell you this. I graduated law school in 2008 for anybody who's of age and listening to your podcast, who knows what the economy was doing in 2008 I need you to understand that over half of my law school classmates lost all their pre written offers from major law firms. They did not have jobs. But I had a job. I had a job because I had been working my butt off at that job to keep that job. And nothing was as important to me as keeping that job, because I had this person at home, and we needed health insurance, like, so in my head, it was just like I didn't do the like, what is my rank? Am I working at the best possible law firm. What's she doing? Just like none of that mattered to me. I was going to keep this job, and it ended up being like, just an amazingly valuable life lesson for me.

Dave Crenshaw: 19:32

Thank you for sharing that. What I'm hearing is prioritization, and when you experience true life and death things you know Megan, I've dealt with some pretty significant mental health struggles in my life that were life threatening. And when you work through those, you do start to become aware of I can't believe I've been spending my time doing this or that. I you know, the way I think of it is I would spend. And you know, 90% of my effort trying to get the last 10% of result, and it's like, why am I doing that? I can be happy with the 90% result and save myself a lot of stress and aggravation. Focus on my family, focus on the things that matter. So what you're talking about really hits home with me. I appreciate you sharing that. So you did lose your wife. Is that correct? Yes,

Unknown: 20:25

she died that later that same year, and I'm sorry that happened, you know, thank you. Thank you. I've said it before, like when she died, like all the oxygen went out of the room. Oxygen is that thing that, like, you know, kind of keeps us vibrant and keeps us alive. And what I didn't realize or anticipate was that, again, back to the beginning of the story, like this, lack of, like, really effective coping mechanisms, like Dave, I didn't have any of those. And I'm glad you speak publicly about mental health, because I think every one of us has life challenges, and sometimes those life challenges take root inside of us in a way that blooms into something that can be really, truly, like a mental health problem. And for me, at that time, I guarantee that I was going through the kind of grief that led to a depression and anxiety, even a lot of like a post traumatic stress disorder, there's a lot of like that around chronic and and serious illness, but it also took root in me as, like, really bad alcohol addiction. I say really bad not you know, everybody defines that differently, but it felt really bad for me because I lost myself, and I lost my self respect, and I didn't know how to do anything other than avoid how I was feeling. And alcohol, for me, was like the perfect avoider tool. And so if I if I was a drinker before that, I was like a professional drinker after that, I still didn't have the ability to not do well at work and to not give my effort there, right? So I wanted to do that, and I knew that you don't go to work drunk and you don't like, you know, I had these like values, these promises I made to myself, and so I didn't, I was a really good employee, you know, in that respect, and I really gave my all to my clients and things like that. But when I would get home in the quiet and not have like, a thing to do. It was like, workaholic during the day, or like, throw myself into tasks as long as I could keep my mind busy with that. And the law provides a really cool opportunity for your brain to always be busy, right? It's one of those high intellect jobs, which I love about it. But I didn't cope. And then I'd get home and be alone, and I would start drinking. And what that meant for me is that even if I didn't want to drink, Dave, even if I felt like I'm not proud of how I'm dealing with this, I wish I was dealing with this differently, I'd still go home and drink. It was like a compulsion, because I couldn't do anything else. And when you feel that you you lose some of your dignity, because you're losing your agency, and you're losing your own sovereignty and choice in your life. And so for me, that was really bad.

Dave Crenshaw: 23:11

So how did you turn the corner on that? Megan, I'm assuming you've done that now this is not an issue for you. So how did you stop being, as you say, a professional drinker, and start to take more control of what you were doing. So

Unknown: 23:27

there's a concept saying that when the pain of the unknown of what it would be like to not live like this feels like less than the pain of living the way you are currently living, you'll take the leap and go into the unknown. So the pain of what I was currently living in that spot again, I'm not I'm not losing jobs, I'm not being arrested. I'm not like, you know, all the things that people think they have to be at in order to stop drinking, like I wasn't there. And I like to share that because I think a lot of people wake up feeling like total crap every day about themselves, and they've lost their dignity, and they don't know that that's enough, that feeling like that and feeling like just trash, and that's how I felt. It just felt terrible. Dave, like, what am I that I can't not do this, that I abandon every promise that I make to myself not to do this like that, whittles away at who we are as people, and it whittled away at me. And then it also creates this thing too, where the thing that I say I'm going to do, I cannot do, the person that I know that I am, I cannot grasp like I feel her inside of me. I know who I really am, and this alcohol garbage stops me from being her. That became so painful that the pain that I anticipated in quitting and I had real pain, I had real concern about that. I did not know how to socialize without alcohol. I didn't know how I was going to go to a wedding. I didn't know how I was going. To go camping like I had real concerns. What do you how do you go to a wedding without booze? Like I didn't know, and that pain of all of that uncertainty became less than the pain of what I was living. And so I took a leap, and I'm lucky to have been surrounded and caught and led by a lot of people who have experienced their own addiction in my life and were willing to be honest about that and say, I've been where you are, and I know how to get out. That also changed my life.

Dave Crenshaw: 25:32

Yeah, and clearly it worked, because you're so successful now with what you're accomplishing. What was the first step of that leap? You said you took a leap. What was that

Unknown: 25:45

for me, that was making a phone call to my aunt and uncle, who were both at that time. They had like, 25 years of sobriety from alcohol, and I didn't quite know how they did that, but I knew that they did it. And so I was like, Well, I'm gonna call them and they're gonna tell me where to go next. You. Next, and they told me to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. They told me how to go to AA. They told me what would happen there, and they just told me to go. And they later provided a place for me to live. A lot of people don't do this, but I needed a relocation. I moved to Seattle to be near them, to leave behind all of my like familiar places and steps, and they gave me a place to sort of regroup and start over and to really work a program of of sobriety and recovery. And at the same time that I was doing that, I met the former owner of this business and began working here, and it was like an amazing life transformation for me, wow.

Dave Crenshaw: 26:42

So the fact that you made the choice to get sober actually directly led to the career and the company that you're in. Now, yes, that's amazing. Okay, so how did that growth start to occur? What were the first things that you did in this new area?

Unknown: 27:00

So I was moving out of town, and so I was interviewing at law firms in the Seattle area. And I I sent a very simple text message or email to a friend of mine from law school that I knew had connections to Seattle, and I said, Do you know anybody in these law firms? I just want to know like, what's the atmosphere of the firm? What's the mood like? I want to talk to somebody. And he said, I don't know anybody in any firms out there, but I do know a guy. He runs a chemical business, and he's really well connected. I'm sure he knows some people at these firms, and could tell you about them. You should just go meet him nonetheless. And so I did, and that man's name was Tony, and I met Tony on an afternoon in his office, and I walked in, and he and I sat and chatted for, I don't know, an hour. We hit it off right away. We both, I think, share the same curious kind of mind. We are highly, you know, just driven people, and we find the same things funny. So we really enjoyed, you know, just 60 minutes conversing together, and when I left, we just kind of left it as he was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know anyone, but it was good to meet you. And I said same. And I sent him an email when I got home, and I said, hey, thanks so much for your time today. It was good to meet you and whatever. And he wrote back. He said, one question for you, since you're a lawyer, can you tell me about this, this Affordable Care Act, stuff that time, you know, there was Obamacare, or, you know, the Affordable Care Act and all that. And I wrote back to him, I said, this is a complex piece of legislation, and I can go through it with you sometime, if you want. But what I will tell you is that if you ever want anybody good working for you, you got to give them health insurance. So it doesn't really matter. Does it have a good day. And my phone rang, like, two minutes later, and he said, You got to come work for me. Wow, yeah, we have moments in life where, whether you want to call it the universe or a higher power or God, or whatever you want to call it, like, there's just times where we have these things, these doors in front of us, and you don't know how they appear, but when he offered me a job, I just simply said yes, and I don't know why I did, but I just felt like that's what I was supposed to do, and that's why I met him, and that's what I was supposed to do. So I started at at that time, the company was called TR International, and I was the company's first general counsel, and that's how I started here. And that was in 2012

Dave Crenshaw: 29:19

That's a wonderful story for those who are not familiar. What does the General Counsel do? What's a day in the life of someone in a company like this? So tri,

Unknown: 29:31

as we called it at the time, did and still does a lot of international business. So what I was doing was a lot of contract review, a lot of I would review and negotiate ocean freight contracts with major ocean freight carriers. I would write deals between the company and its larger customers, distribution agreements between its larger suppliers. I dealt with human resource matters. I dealt with communicating with the lawyers that were in charge of. His estate planning, like I did a little bit of of everything. But what also started to happen during that time is that I started to become involved in the business, and I really liked it. And so an opportunity arose for me to be promoted, you know, within a couple years after starting. And I took that too. But even the law job was just was fun. It was fun. No day was the same. What

Dave Crenshaw: 30:24

were those first opportunities to get involved in the business? I'm curious of how someone who's an attorney starts actually dipping into whatever it was operations. Well, sadly, I

Unknown: 30:37

think that one of the first places your lawyer gets to know your business is when things are not going right. And that's true for any business owner. Usually we get called into things that are a little bit broken. And so while there was a certain amount of what I was doing that was preemptive and was writing contracts and was sort of laying that out, there was also a significant part of what I was doing where you just had claims for damages on product. People suing for this. People you know, us needing to sue someone to enforce our end of contracts. There was always that kind of thing. And I, I'll let you know that at the time that I came into the business, the business was doing about 40 to $50 million a year in revenue. So it wasn't the bigger you get, the more you have those kinds of problems, like just that kind of stuff. And when you're involved in trying to thread the needle of a lot of people think that you can just go and file a lawsuit, and that's that. But honestly, in in this business and in most businesses, what business owners really want, and what I started to want, was a solution that kept the deal together. Let's see if we can get through this without, you know, going nuclear and having everything blow up and get a judgment, or maybe we're already halfway there, and we do need to settle this case for the good of all and how can we do that in a way where everybody feels a little bit like they they're taken care of in that? And to do that, you have to become very, very familiar with the intricacies of the business. I'm not doing my job if I don't understand exactly why a plus b then equaled C. What

Dave Crenshaw: 32:02

was the pathway? So you were promoted from General Counsel to what position, and then just sort of share with us the title progression to where you became CEO. Sure,

Unknown: 32:14

I became the President first two years after I was the General Counsel. Okay, so it was right to it, yeah, and not an entirely like uncommon leap. Lawyers tend to have a pragmatic kind of leadership. We tend to be sort of balanced, and we're trained to not be super emotional. We tend to be, if we have the right charisma for it, pretty good leaders. And so it wasn't really odd that I would go from General Counsel to President, I understood a lot of the inner workings of the business, and I just I had some natural leadership capabilities. But what was also happening at the same time is that my predecessor and the owner of the business at that time was in a place in his life where he had been doing this for 25 years. He had founded the business, and he was looking at what his exit was going to be. And so as I'm coming up in my career, he's kind of in a place where he's hoping to scale back and not do as much. And so just a couple of years after I was the president, I became the CEO, and that was because I had demonstrated the ability to lead the business, and he had found someone in whom he could place his confidence so that he could step back. How

Dave Crenshaw: 33:25

have you been successful in developing people's confidence in you, even from the fact that someone co signed on your loan and then that you immediately got this job for general counsel, and then you got trusted. Where is Do you think this is coming from that people see that you are that trustworthy?

Unknown: 33:45

I think that for me, my authenticity is a big plus. It's like even being on this podcast, Dave like, I could sit here and try and wax philosophical about like wisdom for people to hear, but I your listeners will determine what's wise. I'm going to tell you I got kicked out of college, and I'm not going to sugar coat that, and I'm going to tell you that I wasn't paying rent, and I'm not going to sugar coat that. And I think when people see you or see me being really honest about even the underside of things, they know that if you're going to tell the truth about that, you're probably just a truth teller, and that who you say you are is something they can rely on. And, you know, going back to the beginning, I said, being from the Midwest is a great place to be from, I do have that just really simple pragmatism. I'm not so full of myself that I can't, like, just roll up my sleeves and get in there. And I think people can feel that. I think they can sense that. And it's true. Like, if you come and look under the hood of my leadership, and you talk to everybody who works here, they might not like what I have to say, but they all know that I'm being genuine, and nobody's unclear about how I feel about something. I don't make them guess, and I don't play weird games, and I think that engenders trust and confidence.

Dave Crenshaw: 34:58

Yeah. I also think. Because I'm hearing your stories that that's the result of coming through adversity as well. These various anonymous programs when you have any kind of addiction, they force you to be candid with yourself and own up to the things that you're doing and to come through that successfully, just further ingrains that into someone like you. I think you already had that natural tendency, but now you live it. You walk that walk in everything that you

Unknown: 35:29

do. Yeah, for sure. I mean, when you're sitting in a meeting with other people who struggle with alcohol addiction and again, I don't know what your listeners are going through right now, but maybe there's somebody who's been in there like nobody cares what you do. Nobody cares how much money you make. Nobody cares about any of your titles. And in fact, you introduced yourself by your first name only, like this is not a place where who you are is the main event. You're there to get honest in such a way that you can then heal. And when I'm learning from that, and I say learning, because I'm always going to be a work in progress, I hope, is that just by by doing that, by showing up and being as real as I can be in a moment, I think I give other people, then permission to do the same, and then we all can struggle towards what the successful untying of a knot looks like. And I just, for me, feel that that works a lot better. That's

Dave Crenshaw: 36:18

a beautiful phrase, a successful untying of the knot. I like that, and I think this is a good place to transition to the concept of human centered capitalism. I know that that's a phrase that you've been described as, as the human centered capitalist. What does that mean to you? Megan, how do you make that happen in a business? Yeah, let me

Unknown: 36:39

say that the reason that I've sort of leaned into this as hard as I have is because I've been troubled by the fact that we're living in a business world right now where we're forced to feel like we have to separate being good to people and making money, or we live in a weird shame about our desire to make money and We we want to go out and justify like, Oh, but I promise. I didn't keep it. I gave it all away. And here's the thing, there's nothing wrong with making money. So the first part of human centered capitalism is the capitalism part. I am an enthusiastic capitalist. I run a for profit enterprise, and the single measure of its success is whether it's profitable or not, full stop, because if it is not, then nobody works here, including myself. And if you can't say that and be proud of the fact that I'm making money in this company, then something is fundamentally wrong. And so I like to be the first one through the door saying to other people in my position, make money, be proud that your business is making money, and be a firm supporter, as I am, of American enterprise, of any enterprise, frankly, that that does that, because then here's the second part of this, the human side of that this becomes a platform and a place for other people To create a life path that gives them dignity and self respect, which is what I needed in my life. And we can talk about giving free snacks and break rooms and unlimited time off and work from home and whatever, although we can talk about whatever that is for people's business and people should do what they want to do there. I'm not here to comment on that, but none of it matters unless the people that work for you have the opportunity to get promoted, get bonuses, get pay raises, take care of their family and feel proud of themselves at the end of the day, and being human centered means that you care about that. You care about the uplift of them, because when you lift them up and you give them a place to lift themselves up that affects their families, their communities and our whole entire world, and we cannot back away from the fact that we're doing a good deed when we do that.

Dave Crenshaw: 38:50

I love everything you just said. You know my background. When I first started Megan was in coaching entrepreneurs, and I would tell them, and not just tell them, but I would see that in general, entrepreneurs are actually very caring people. They want people to succeed. They want their employees to be happy and their families to do well. And I completely agree with you that when businesses are successful with that mindset, you can change the world. You can change the community, and it's a very noble thing to build these businesses. But what I love about this, Megan, is that you told your story, and now we have context for it. We understand why you are compassionate, because you needed compassion, not just from other people, but you needed to have it for yourself. Therefore you understand this business is a vehicle to make that happen in the world. That's right. How do you do that, specifically on a day to day basis? So profit first. How are you weaving in? The the mindset of we're helping people as you're making a profit. Can you just give us a couple of practical examples of that? Yeah, so,

Unknown: 40:08

so the first thing that happens here is, I'm not going to lie to these people. The first thing you do to engender a workforce that has dignity is to treat them like dignified people. So I said earlier. Everybody knows where I stand on something. We kind of laugh about it like nobody's confused about what Meg thinks. I don't do that in a mean, angry way. I don't anytime my ego is out of check. That's a check engine light for me. It has nothing to do with them. And maybe I need a minute, you know, I just will deliver this didn't go like it needed to go, and we need to fix it like it's all we need to say. And I trust that we're going to do this, and I get in the ring with them and when we figure it out. So the first thing is bringing that level of authenticity to the business, and so that people feel like they have a leader, that I definitely have an agenda, Dave, I definitely have a mandate. I definitely this isn't a democracy here. I'm running the show, but I do so in a way that says I respect you enough and I respect your intelligence, that we're not going to play weird games about it. Second thing I say is that in that I can do anything with your truth. And so in this business, what that has meant is that when an employee is consistently making mistakes and I know that we're struggling with something, instead of, like, dancing around it, I might just say, you have an addiction. Is there a problem? What are we going to do about that? I had an employee who had a stroke. I could have sat there and we could have done the whole thing about, like, how many days of PTO you got? You got to fill out FMLA and but I didn't do that, Dave, because I didn't want her to lose her health insurance. I didn't want that to get weird, because she was a single mom. Single mom with two kids, so what I said is, we're not going to be looking after that. And maybe I lost a little money on her. Maybe I didn't, I don't know. But the point was, it was the right thing to do, to say this place is going to be here when you come back. And when she came back, she didn't have all this baggage of having had to worry about all of that kind of stuff. She could come here and put her effort into the team and work. We've had employees that have tragically lost family members, and there wasn't money for a funeral. We just paid for that funeral because we can, because we're profitable business, and because sometimes diverting those profits to do something like that means that that employee isn't worrying about the fact that they and their brothers are putting, you know, ungodly amounts of money on a credit card they can't pay off. We can do little things like that. Do you know what employees who have that experience, do they do two things. Number one, they work really hard for the enterprise, because they know, and we tell them, You're doing this, so the next time this needs to happen for a teammate of yours, we got the money for that too, and they want to be a part of that. And the second thing is they go and they have that spirit of generosity and that way they were treated, and that that goes out in the rest of their lives. I hear about it all the time. We have a rule at this company that you can use a company credit card if you're in line at the grocery store and the person in front of you can't figure out how to, like, pay the rest of that bill. And I'm not talking about the stories I hear are literally elderly people on fixed incomes who are told they got to put three things back because they can't afford it. Well, my employees know that they should whip out a company credit card and just handle that. But they also know, Dave, that the reason they work hard here is so that we can do things like that. We link those things together, and it creates a group of people who start to want their own success because they like the feeling of raises and promotions and bonuses, and that makes them feel good. But then people who feel good do good, and they're going and they're doing good, and we've just made it our culture, and it's not fake. It's authentic, because it starts because we treat them like that, they treat each other like that, and then we all treat the world like that. And it's been very organic and very, very cool, all the while dodging all of the conversations about, you know, whether we have a nap room or not, like we don't. No, we don't have a nap room we work,

Dave Crenshaw: 44:02

you know what? I mean? Yeah, those silly little things that like we check a box, or we're almost virtue signaling, like we're a good company because we provided a foosball table. That is not the heart of things. The heart is what people are really dealing with on a day to day basis. I'm over here nodding my head, because this is we agree here, and I love the way that you're implementing this principle of tying the vision of the business to their personal visions of how they want their life to be.

Unknown: 44:36

Yeah, for sure, nobody leaves here saying I didn't have to work hard, that's the thing. And what's created about that too, is like they then only want to be with other people who also want to work hard. So it's created a really cool culture of like, we're working hard, but they understand that it's not just because we're all driving towards, like, the relentless pursuit of cash. There's no shame in. Them wanting that next raise or that next bonus or that next promotion, but they also understand that, like, listen, they've each been privately helped in ways that some of them only them in the company. Know, you know what? I mean, everybody needs help from time to time, and we not only offer them the opportunity to sort of get a hand, but then what we're giving them, Dave, is the opportunity to be part of doing that for somebody else, even if they never get to know about that, too. And that is back to what you were saying, like, not a handout necessarily. Like, that's that's a different thing, that's a hand up, and it gives them opportunity to give back at the same time, and it works for us, yeah.

Dave Crenshaw: 45:38

And what I'm getting from this too, is there's a high degree of awareness on your part as a leader, about what each individual actually needs. Rather than just painting everybody with a broad brush, you're saying this person is dealing with a loss, this person is trying to accomplish these things, and you you customize, you personalize how you're helping people with that. I'm going to use that to transition to a question about you. How are you taking care of you? How are you having fun and making sure that you're getting rewarded as you go through this journey as a CEO? It's

Unknown: 46:14

a great question. So the first thing is that I'm I'm having fun because I had a colleague tell me last week, he phrased it so perfectly, and this is how I feel. He said I never realized I was at work because I was having so much fun. I don't feel that way every day, like some days are just hard, but I have to be honest, like, I like what I do, and I would say, like, if I had a piece of advice for like, business owners, like you really if you're going to do this, if you're going to sit in the top spot, and then eventually I bought the business. I own the whole thing. If you're going to own it, like and run it, you got to like it. If you don't, you probably shouldn't be there. So majority of the time, I'm taking care of myself because I'm doing something that interests me and I like it. I'm a builder. I like to create. I like to look for the next entrepreneurial opportunity, and I like to do that. So I'm having fun. I'm also, I teach yoga, and so I have this other side of me, right? I'm a I have a daily meditation practice. I teach yoga. I engage in practices even around the way that I eat, that serve to care for me and to care for my human frame. Obviously, if you, if you do this, you have a high degree of stress, and I travel a lot, much of it internationally, like I have things I need to do to take care of myself. And so I've built a life and a lifestyle around being mindful of the fact that this body needs care and attention and rest, and the same is true for my brain. And so I do prioritize practices for me that happens to be meditation and yoga as my two primary practices that sort of feed that and nourish that. I'm

Dave Crenshaw: 47:49

glad to hear that, and that you have things where you're taking care of yourself because you're taking care of other people, you need to kick take care of yourself as well. So that's wonderful. Where do you see your career five years from now,

Unknown: 48:02

I don't know, because I'm still just walking through every door that kind of opens in front of me. You know, when I bought this business, we were doing about $48 million a year in revenue. We now do in excess of $100 million a year in revenue, and I made two acquisitions last year. I couldn't have planned any of that out. I could not what I did, though, was I positioned myself and my company to be ready when opportunities come. And so I don't know what will be put in front of us, but I I know that whatever I'm doing five years from now, I'm going to be there wholehearted, or I'm not going to be there at all, and I plan on being here, so I'm going to be doing whatever it is, wholeheartedly that's

Dave Crenshaw: 48:41

wonderful. I love everything that you've shared with us. Megan, thank you for being so generous with your time. So at the end of every episode that I do, we like to summarize action items, the idea being that someone's listening to this, and they go, well, she's a CEO. That doesn't apply to me? And the answer is no, it absolutely applies to you. There are things you can do, and in fact, it's the action you take that's more important than just listening to this. So what I'm going to do, Megan, is I'm going to summarize three actions that anyone can take, no matter where they are in their career, no matter what their position is. And then what I'd like you to do is add one action in addition to that at the end. Sound good, awesome. Okay, so, and there's a ton in here, but I'm going to share three that stood out to me as we were talking. The first one, I'm going back to your struggles with addiction and how reaching the bottom was a turning point for you, and the phrase that you said was, it's dangerous to be separated from the consequences of our choices. You experiencing the consequence of your choice led to your success in the future. I would invite someone listening to this to look at this in two possible ways. Number 1am, I. Shielding myself, or too am I shielding someone else from the consequences of their choices? And stop doing that? That's a hard thing. That's a hard action. I'm going to acknowledge that. But if you can stop doing that and allow yourself or someone else to experience the consequence of their choices, it can lead to a turning point in their life. So I would encourage you to do that. The second one is, you know, as you were talking about the loss that you dealt with, was that that led you to be more aware of what's valuable. It put things in perspective. I don't think that someone has to lose a loved one to have that experience. I think you can simply ask yourself, of all the things that I'm doing, if you took a look at how you spent the 168 last 168 hours of the week, what are things that you're doing that don't really matter? And eliminate one of them and move closer to only doing the things that are valuable that matter most in your life. And then this last one, you didn't quite say this, but it's something that I gleaned from your story, Megan, is look for ways to do good as you succeed, not when I think a lot of times we get in the trap of saying, when I succeed, then I'm going to donate to charity. The truth is, you are succeeding right now just by listening to this, just by working in your career. So what are good little things you can do for yourself or for others as you succeed, and think about something you can contribute this week to make someone's life better, and then you can have an impact in their life, like Megan is, or the people that she's had in her life that trust her, that gave her opportunities, you can be that same for someone else. So those are three actions that I picked up Megan. What's one that you would suggest to someone listening? I

Unknown: 51:55

would say that sort of underpinning all of those is being the chief truth teller to yourself and your own life, put crudely, it would be no BS, you cannot do that. You cannot afford to do that. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. And only from there can you work up and out. You think that we talk a lot about having integrity and being an honest person, and all of that is so needed in in the world today, but it means nothing if you haven't done that with yourself. And oddly enough, that's the hardest person to tell the truth to most often. But I would say that that's revolutionized my life, and I continue to have every desire to be as honest with myself every day as I possibly can. I love

Dave Crenshaw: 52:45

it. Be honest with yourself. Be the chief truth teller. Megan, I know a lot of people who have listened to this. They want to follow you. They want to learn more from you. What's the best place for them to go to continue staying in contact with you. You

Unknown: 52:59

can start at my website. Megangluth.com and it's a great place for just starting your point of contact with me. I do work really, really hard to reach back out to people who reach out to me, particularly people who are just in a place where they need a little bit of encouragement. I live for those moments. So start there. You'll find my contact information there, and then we can take off right from that spot.

Dave Crenshaw: 53:22

Fantastic. And just to spell that out, that's M, E, G, A, N, G, l, U, T, h.com, megangluth.com, Megan, thank you so much for being generous and sharing your story with us. It's it really has been a pleasure to talk to you today. I've really enjoyed this conversation. So thank you very much. Thanks so much, Dave. I've enjoyed it too. I appreciate it. Yeah, and thank you everyone for listening. Remember, it's not just about the knowledge that you received or the inspiration that you felt. It's about the action that you take. So do something today based on what you heard from Megan, and you'll make her success story a part of your success story. Thanks for listening.

Unknown: 54:06

You've been listening to the Dave Crenshaw Success Show, hosted by my dad, Dave Crenshaw, and produced by invaluable incorporated research and assistant production by Victoria Bidez, Sound Editing by Nikic, Wright, voiceover by me Darci Crenshaw, and the music is by Ryan Brady via pond five licensing, please subscribe to the Dave Crenshaw success show on Apple podcasts Spotify, wherever you like to get your podcasts. If you have a suggestion for someone my dad might like to interview, please send it to guests at Dave crenshaw.com and please don't forget to leave us a five star review. See you next time you.