Lens of Leadership: A Ted Lasso Rewatch Podcast
Marnie Stockman and Nick Coniglio, authors of the book Lead it Like Lasso, dig into each episode of Ted Lasso with a lens of leadership. Each podcast starts with a fun quick-clip summary of the episode. Marnie and Nick tie together the leadership principles from Ted Lasso, their own business successes, thought leaders and everyday advice to help individuals level up as they lead themselves (and others). This is a great podcast for TedHeads! There are many other Ted Lasso podcasts out there - this is the "same but different."
Lens of Leadership: A Ted Lasso Rewatch Podcast
Do the Right-est Thing | S2 Ep3
What happens when creativity meets national security? In this episode, Marnie and Nick dive into Ted Lasso’s “Do the Rightest Thing” with special guests Erik Oksala and Brian Layer, who share how their innovative company uses entertainment-industry techniques to tackle some serious challenges. Together, we unpack leadership lessons from Sam’s principled stand against Dubai Air to Ted’s quirky team-building methods (and yes, even Led Tasso makes an appearance).
We explore ethics, trust, and mentorship, drawing connections between Ted’s optimistic world and real-life leadership challenges. Erik and Brian sprinkle in military insights, showing how humor, surprise, and physical presence can strengthen connections—whether in a boardroom or a locker room.
Tune in for an episode packed with wisdom, wit, and practical tips to level up your leadership game—and learn how you can connect with RL Leaders online to further explore these groundbreaking ideas.
Welcome to Lens of Leadership, our Ted Lasso rewatch podcast. Before we dive into this episode's leadership lessons, let's watch a quick recap.
Speaker 2:Season 2, episode 3. Do the Rightest Thing starts off with an introduction to Nora, sassy's daughter. While Ted aims to make today our masterpiece, afc Richmond is struggling to do so with so many ties. Keely is working on branding the players. Rebecca aims to win back Nora with a fun day. Jamie has taken his place on the reserve squad.
Speaker 2:Sam texts his dad about the ad for Dubai Air. His dad is very disappointed because of the practices of the company. Roy and Phoebe run into Rebecca and Nora. Roy counsels Rebecca that kids don't need elaborate play dates, they just want to be with them. Rebecca takes Nora to work with her. The job of being the boss is to react and anticipate. Keely is excited to talk to folks about banter. Sam doesn't want to sponsor Dubai Air anymore. The team isn't bonding with Jamie on the pitch, so Ted pulls out the last resort, also known as the Lead Tasso. Dubai Air wants Rebecca to fire Sam. Jamie tells Lead to stop the Jekyll and Hyde bit. Keeley drops Jamie off at Dr Fieldstone's. Nora helps Rebecca write a letter. Sam takes a stand against Dubai Air by taping his kit. The whole team has his support. Ted is asked about it at the press conference. He says, quite simply doing the right thing is never the wrong thing. The episode ends with a team photo with Nora.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone, I'm Nick Coniglio and I'm Marnie Stockman, and this is Lens of Leadership, a Ted Lasso rewatch podcast. We are the authors of Lead it Like Lasso, a leadership book for life, your life.
Speaker 3:And this podcast is an extension of many of the elements outlined in our book. We invite you to join us as we take a deep dive into each episode and explore the leadership principles as they play out in the series. And for today's episode, we're diving into season two, episode two Do the Rightest Thing. We're excited to jump into a number of different topics with our special guests Eric Oxala and Brian Lehrer.
Speaker 1:We're so excited. If you ask Nick and me what we love most about the experience of our book Lead it Like Lasso, we'll both say without a doubt that it's the opportunity to meet cool and interesting people, and today we are thrilled to chat with two people who run a business that we find quite fascinating. So more on that in a minute, but first let's welcome Eric and Brian to the show.
Speaker 3:Welcome guys to generate novel solutions to your greatest challenges. This simply just sounds fascinating to us. So tell us a little more about yourselves, about your company. We'd love to hear it. Either one.
Speaker 4:Great, I'll start. I think Eric is cool and I'm interesting.
Speaker 1:You have a great line.
Speaker 4:That's how we come together, eric. He'll tell you some of the history of the company that even I don't know, because he goes back to when the seeds were planted, even before the entity was formed. I grew up in the Army, which is arguably the best leadership training program in the world, and we take it really seriously. And I met RL when I was in the Army. I got a call one day where they asked me to allow some training to take place on a post that I was responsible for, and so I said, of course, because it was my higher headquarters and I didn't have any reason to say no. And these guys came down and I met them and I thought you know the same kind of the same thing that you did, that this is a really interesting approach to a niche in national security.
Speaker 4:And so what we do is we help our clients solve problems that they're stuck on, and our clients tend to be big organizations in the national security space, so they're big and bureaucratic, which doesn't always lend itself to great creativity. It doesn't mean that people aren't creative, because they are and I know that from my personal experience. I was surrounded with them throughout my career but their processes discourage creativity, and so what we do is we disrupt that. I would say that everybody in our company is driven by kind of a common core ethic that we don't want to pass problems on to our children that we can solve on our watch, and so that's what we do. When we meet a new client, we offer them the help with the problems that are keeping them up at night, and then we have kind of a unique approach to how we do that, and I'll let Eric talk a little bit about that and maybe the where we came from.
Speaker 5:Yeah, absolutely Thanks, brian. So for at RL, I yeah. When I'm asked what we do or how, what sort of work we do, I say we sort of fancy ourselves as a nexus between the entertainment industry and the national security world and a lot of times people think, oh, you help Top Gun get made, you help you know Tom Cruise get jets and everything. It's actually exactly the opposite. We help organizations like the Navy, the Army, the intelligence community think creatively.
Speaker 5:We bring creative arts professionals writers, producers, directors, actors, people in the video game world uh, hair and makeup. We bring the creative arts broadly defined to national security challenges. And so, whether it's helping, uh, intel analysts think creatively about different scenarios, that that that might happen, or if we're asked to bring entertainment technology in to help make a scenario more realistic, um, we can lean on folks from the theme park world. Really we bring. Our secret sauce is being able to have access to a network of hundreds of creative arts professionals that we've worked with over the years to bring that creativity and expertise from the entertainment world and apply it to challenges in the national security space.
Speaker 1:Can I interrupt with a question, cause I find this fascinating? So you mentioned bringing in folks from like theme parks. Is there any example you're allowed to tell us? Common folks.
Speaker 5:The majority of the things that we do, we can talk about the theme park one we worked. We were asked by and this is where actually we met Brian is. We were asked by a part of the Defense Department that was tasked with addressing issues related to IEDs and roadside bombs to help imagine a training program that would train soldiers to better to spot and assess an IED prior to it going off, but also to do events post-experiencing an IED event, and so we built a training simulator using experts from the theme park world to build. You know, we use the motion platforms that were similar rides that were at magic mountain, things like that. So we we teamed with people in the entertainment industry, both on the technical side for the sort of for, for the mechanics of it, but also on the narrative side, for coming up with scenarios, and that was the system that was brought over to Brian's base that he was talking about, and that's where we first crossed paths.
Speaker 1:Okay. So that's fascinating. And I'm curious if, brian, when you heard it at first, you're like wait, I'm a general on a base and we've got theme folks and theme park folks coming at me, like, did you? Was your initial reaction like what's going on here? Or did you see, like, was it not presented in such a way that it maybe kind of threw you?
Speaker 4:Well, I was surprised that somebody had taken such a novel approach, but I wasn't. You know, at the time we were really struggling with the IED threat and in particular the IED threat in the early part of a deployment, before people really learned about their terrain. And so this was an attempt to try to figure out how to solve that problem before the deployment, to maybe reduce incidents of IEDs in the early part of the deployment. And so our you know, we were struggling, the Defense Department was struggling with a solution to that problem, and so this was sort of a novel approach and what it did was unique because we certainly trained people for the threat but we couldn't really create the emotional experience of it. And it was very realistic of it. And, um, and it was very realistic, smoke sound ringing in the years, the uh, you could turn it up to eight G's, uh, so, which they didn't, thank goodness, um, but, but they had the capability to really create an event that you would remember, ability to really create an event that you would remember. And one of the things that we knew from, you know, kind of our training science was that if you could create that emotional event, that it would imprint better. And so you know it was really effective.
Speaker 4:It was expensive and the Defense Department had a lot of efforts going on at the time, but it was novel. And the Defense Department had a lot of efforts going on at the time, but it was novel. And you know, I guess in the frame of Ted Lasso I would say that I didn't really question it because I trusted the people that called me and told me that they wanted to do it. It may have sounded a little crazy to me, but I knew they weren't crazy and so I, you know my reaction was sure anything that you know might help, yeah. And then you know we got really tremendous feedback from it. And then they left, they went away, and then I didn't see them for years.
Speaker 1:Now you're back.
Speaker 4:Now we're back and back together.
Speaker 3:Uh that is one other question about. I'm just curious, uh, the creatives right that that you've built this network of creatives over the years. Um, is it? Is it hard to find them, or do you find that they're really excited to help out with their always security issues?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. We, we, uh, we have a really broad network and it is um, and it keeps growing. Just last night I was connected to to someone new who is a writer out on the West coast, and so, um, usually it's friends of friends, uh, word of mouth Um, we're over, I think, 500 people that have participated in events of ours since we started the company, and so it's very, you know, people are on the creative side, interested in the intellectual challenge. It's different than their daily jobs. I have a friend who was a comedy writer who says I get to make mud pies all all day.
Speaker 5:The fact that that I can do, uh something for national security, that I can, you know, view this as a way of giving back. Um, even though you know, we always, you know, are paying people for their time, maybe not quite at the rates they're getting from Netflix and Sony and Apple, but, um, but we will, we, you know we won't ask for people to give their time for for, uh, free Um, but but the intellectual challenge, the opportunity to do sort of that greater good for the country, um, we have, we're, we're lucky that we have, uh, a lot of folks that are interested in those sorts of challenges.
Speaker 1:I I just find it fascinating on all fronts and I think the example you gave really helps solidify what it actually is. Right, it's not creating Top Gun, the movie and it's interesting that the episode we decided we want to chat about with you all is called Do the Rightest Thing. Right, so like this is folks doing the rightest thing? And what the episode is talking about is kind of talking about when Sam takes a stand against AFC Richmond's sponsor, dubai Air right, when they found out that that company was polluting Nigeria, where Sam's from.
Speaker 3:What are you doing? What Dubai Air not paying you?
Speaker 1:enough.
Speaker 5:No, no, dubai Air is owned by a horrible company, one that has turned the southern coast of Nigeria my home into a hellish fiery swamp.
Speaker 2:I can no longer wear their name on my chest.
Speaker 1:So after the match, just to give some context around the question I want to ask Ted gets asked if he knew that the players were going to put. That's the episode where they put the black tape over their chest to hide the name on their jersey and he says no, but it's never wrong to do the right thing. So as leaders, both professionally and personally, there seems a lot of opportunities to act wrong or unethical for kind of short-term gains, so in the case of business, maybe for very, you know, consequential outcomes. So have you ever, like, witnessed a decision like this and if so, what was? What was the outcome?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll, I'll jump on that grenade. In my Army life you know, obviously, lots of ethical decisions that were hard to make, hard to make, um. But you know, when the West Point Cadet Prayer has a line in it that says give me the courage to choose the harder right over the easier wrong, and that's um. You know that's what Sam did, that's what the team did, um, and and that's the uh. And you know it never really is wrong to do the right thing and in our business, what we do. Discretion is a really important value to us. Our customers don't always want people to know they're working with Hollywood and people in Hollywood don't always want people to know that they're working with some of our customers, and so we won't put that at risk. We're always focused on discretion and so we've turned people away who would work with us because we weren't comfortable working with them.
Speaker 3:That makes a lot of sense. I remember I was working for a small company at some point in time and it was a consulting company and our lead consultant happened to manage our biggest client, which represented about 30% of our business our biggest client which represented about 30% of our business and at some point that lead consultant decided to go out on his own and approached our customer about taking over the project on his own and legally he could not do that based on his employment agreement and we had started going down the road of pursuing legal action against it. And you know, we had started going down the road of pursuing legal action against it and we at some point we realized that that was not the right thing for the customer.
Speaker 3:The customer really worked hard, worked well with this individual and you know, we just kind of let it play out at the risk of our business and the CEO my CEO at the time, you know he didn't sleep for days and days because he was worried about his business, but he did the right thing for his customer and at the same time, it really worked out well for us in the end because we ended up getting more business with that customer.
Speaker 3:I think it's such an interesting dynamic when you're posed with those dilemmas and I and I love the way, Brian that that you kind of couched it in terms of of um, you know, making sure that discretion is part of of your decision-making, which is pretty cool, um, but I'm going to build on that question just a little bit more. Kind of um we think it speaks to kind of the, you know, being Ted Lasso fans, we all love the culture that Ted built and it's kind of cool that Sam even felt like he could take a stand against Dubai Air right. There's some trust there and even more that the team felt like they can support Sam and again, I think that speaks to, you know, the culture that Ted built. What are your thoughts about leading an organization that supports a culture of change? In this case and you guys talk a lot about creativity and same question, right, what do you, what are your thoughts about leading an organization to support both change?
Speaker 5:and creativity.
Speaker 5:For us, I think, being able to foster that environment where people feel comfortable. That's the beginning of all of the engagements that we have. When we bring together these two worlds that might not have crossed paths and probably haven't crossed paths from the national security world and the entertainment world, probably haven't crossed paths from the national security world and the entertainment world, you get the entertainment folks thinking you know, I'm not sure how I can contribute, but I'm happy to be a resource, and you get some of the folks on the on the government side maybe a little cross-armed and like how's this Hollywood wacko Kind of? You know, help me out, but by the end you have them arm and arm, taking selfies, sharing. You know family photos, and we're intentional in how we try to create the environment of.
Speaker 5:There are no wrong answers. You know it's very much. You know a writer's room mentality where you know ideas. You know you can criticize ideas. You don't criticize people, things like that and so, um, you can. Uh, we really are intentionally trying to foster in all of our engagements that that uh environment where you're free to be creative. Brian, do you want to build on that at all?
Speaker 4:yeah, I'd actually like to pull on a different thread kind of inside the show and that it appears that the writers and maybe this is a metaphor for mentorship for them, but the relationship with parents. So, sam, you know, they very intentionally show us that Sam's excited to hear from his dad, first person he wants to tell, and then his dad shame is probably too strong a word because I think that probably that's not the kind of relationship that they have but he sort of reminds him of his values and who he is and gives him permission to make him proud and maybe challenges Sam to make him proud in a way that might be uncomfortable for Sam. And so that's what Ted does too. He gives permission to people to be their best self and he kind of calls them out when they're not, and so I thought they handled that really well and it seems to me it's just a theme that goes throughout the show. Is this relationship where they're?
Speaker 4:You know, I don't know if you I think you're okay with some spoilers, but the, you know Ted and his father and Jamie and his father and Rebecca and her parents, and this just comes up again and again. And you know, none of us are the person who showed up, and you know, none of us are the person who showed up. Our slate wasn't clean when we showed up at the workplace. We bring all of that experience and baggage with us of reminding a leader that you know. The more aware you are of people's kind of history and who they are and who influences them, the more you can shape their future.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so true. And the next question I wanted to ask about actually kind of builds from that, because there's the scene where Ted is very aware of sort of the dynamics of what's going on with the team and he has to call in the last resort, where coach beard, who knows Ted, is like oh boy, and Nate's wondering like what is this? What's the last resort? You know, and it's, it's led Tasso, you know Ted's alter ego On this pitch, interested in not sucking at soccer. All right, coach, we get it.
Speaker 4:Just stop yelling at everyone. I don't know whatever this Jekyll and Hyde thing you got going on, but just leave it out, yeah.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that Nick and I talk about all the time on this podcast is sort of the power of a counterexample, which is what Ted Lasso is. It's the opposite of really what you ever want to have happen as a leader or to a team, but it's a really great way to demonstrate a point or learn fairly quickly, like, okay, that's a big what not to do. So is there any place for counterexamples in your line of work?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. I think that Brian and I chatted a little bit about this ahead of time in terms of our methodology of being able to reframe a problem for a client, maybe a little offset from what they're exactly asking for, asking for, and so we'll come up with scenarios that are maybe adjacent to what the client specifically said they're looking to solve, but only in the creative space to be able to allow for that discussion where we avoid things like, well, we tried this years ago and it would never work or the boss would never go for this. And so if you come up with a problem, if you come up with a scenario that is adjacent or offset, but not exactly head on, that allows people, that gives people the space to be a little more creative and collaborative with the creatives from outside their sort of ecosystem.
Speaker 1:So that is interesting because you've explained that. You know, when we first met, you talked to me about the fact that you sometimes take a scenario and then switch it to a more commercialized example, and so I was only thinking of it from the protecting national security aspect of it. But brilliant strategy that it also protects the folks that have lived in that realm to not go down the yeah, that's not going to work because I've done it this way and that way, so that's that's really interesting, yeah.
Speaker 5:And that's Brian, I think, has seen that from years through his his life at the army and other leadership areas.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know what we? What we try to do is is have everybody bring all of their education, training, experience to bear on the problem for the time they're with us. We want them to bring everything they know. But what we don't want to do is we don't want to bring all that institutional friction that they have in their workplace. So we try to get them just enough off the problem where they feel like they're not compelled to use their position power to say, well, that's a dumb idea and if you'd been here for 20 years you'd know that, or we'd never do that here, or whatever we try to create that.
Speaker 4:We always try to create fun because people just you know they stay more focused when they're operating at a level of joy. But the other thing that we've learned, which may not surprise you, is that people, all humans, really enjoy acting evil, and so we often, you know, we'll red team things and come at it from the you know, the opposite direction. Tell me why this will fail. So if I bring a group of people together and say I want you to protect this building, figure out how to do it, everybody will work really hard and diligently. If I ask them to blow it up I mean everybody you know Ask them to blow it up, I mean everybody you know becomes Dr Evil, and you know it's just a lot more fun and humans like it. No-transcript. And so we use that technique quite a bit.
Speaker 4:I would also just add one other thing from my kind of personal experience. You know everybody likes a leader who's sort of consistent, particularly emotionally consistent or predictable is maybe the better word. You know you know what's going to make somebody mad and whatever a better word. You know you know what's going to make somebody mad and whatever. But you know most of us don't have the chops to pull off the lead tasso. But you know it is a really effective technique to maybe just get upset about something or maybe a little more magnitude than you normally would, or just to react differently than what people expect. It does get their attention. But you know that's a hilarious scene in the episode for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my brain is just so. There are so many teaching examples that are running through my head right now, and I did one day absolutely pull a Ted Lasso. But I also remember one day where I got super silent and said you thought yelling would be bad. When I get to this mode, you should be very worried. And they were like what's going on? So, yeah, I will not bore you with the stories, but, boy, my brain's just spinning through them. Sorry, that's the whole parenting.
Speaker 5:You know, I'm not angry, I'm disappointed oh yeah, that's actually sam's sam's dad. You know that I'm disappointed. I think the text was something like I'm disappointed that you lost your values, or you know something to that effect. Um versus. You know anger. You know that, uh, that it was the disappointment that you could that crushing. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, when Marnie goes silent, I get scared. I'm just going to let you know that right now. So let's switch gears a little bit. In the episode we were I think this is the first time we were introduced to Nora, right, and obviously Rebecca has had, she had disappeared from Nora's life for a little bit and she comes back and she attempts to kind of, you know, bring her in through extravagant events and gifts and things like that, and it's not working.
Speaker 2:And Roy, and if you guys have listened to us.
Speaker 3:you know we love Roy Kent, we love everything about Roy Kent. But he makes a real good assessment here and he says you know, sometimes kids or people just want to hang out with you. They don't want to be, you know, thrown with gimmicks and surprises and events and gifts and stuff like that. I'm prone with gimmicks and surprises and events and gifts and stuff like that. And we talk a lot about authenticity and how important it is in relationships. You know we're curious, from y'all's perspective and experience, what advice you would give to our listeners around how to effectively build relationships.
Speaker 5:Any thoughts that you guys can share about that. I would just say, you know, for me personally, it's finding ways to be present, physically present. I try as much as I can to whenever I'm meeting with folks. You know, skip the zoom, let's grab coffee, let's, you know, let's get to. I know, marnie, whenever we we were able to catch up, there were some emails but it was like, look, I'll drive over halfway through your let's, let's meet up in person. I know, personally, that's how I work the best and forming so much of our business is relationships, um, with our creative network, with our customers, and fostering that trust and it it. For me it's, it's a face-to-face um world. And I think face-to-face, you know how, is the best way that I prefer to work, um, and that, I think, translates also for personal things. You know, I'd rather catch up with someone for a quick cup of coffee than um. You know, a few texts back and forth. Or, you know, like, just the physical, the physical presence I found to be such an accelerant for that relationship.
Speaker 3:Did you notice during the pandemic that the negative side to that, because you couldn't have that physical side to that, because you couldn't have that physical.
Speaker 5:I did and I was also the person that was like let's go walk in the park, let's have a business meeting over coffee or on the golf course or just, you know, drive to some place and have our cars and windows next to each other and chat for 20 minutes. So I, I found ways to um socially distance but be, you know, physically, you know, to be able to see people. You know you look them in the eye, you'll be able to see my micro react, you know, just reactions, um, that, that presence. I tried wherever possible to still maintain those, uh, but yes, of course it did suffer for folks that were. You know I wasn't getting on planes and traveling to, you know, back and forth to the West Coast at all. So yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm just one oh go ahead.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was just gonna say I'm just the opposite. Where you know I'm in, I'm an introvert. So if it weren't for the illness and the dying and all the bad that came with it, I would say that it was a wonderful, wonderful time because I got so much alone time. But knowing that I'm an introvert, and back to Nick's question, one of the techniques that I learned kind of early in my career, that was really effective for me because I'm much more comfortable with people I know I can have an intimate conversation with them. But small talk is not my thing, maybe sports. Beyond that it gets complicated.
Speaker 4:But everybody that worked directly for me or worked two down for me, I would schedule two hours with them. When I first came to work with them, whether they came to me or I came to them, and we would spend two hours talking about their life story. And I started out say tell me your life story. And they would always start by I graduated from college or I, you know I came to, you know join the army or whatever. So I said your life story from birth. And because I wanted to hear about their childhood, I wanted to know where they grew up. I wanted to know all of that because I always felt that all of that, because I always felt that as this kind of senior leader in the formation, my job was to build the team, and it was easier for me to do that the more I knew about you. Then I could make connections with other people.
Speaker 4:And we have this technique that we use in all of our events where we ask people to kind of give their credits.
Speaker 4:So for the entertainment people, you know that it shows, you know that they're who they say they are and that they're really cool and all of that.
Speaker 4:But it also shows a lot about people's backgrounds and we find that often the government folks that we'll bring together they'll come out of that and that's like one of the first things that we do with them. They'll walk out of that and say you know, I've worked with Joe over here for 15 years and I never knew that about him, and so you know, I tried to avoid that in the organizations I led. But I also wanted to make sure that I would never be uncomfortable walking across the room and starting a conversation with somebody that I worked with when I knew that wasn't my natural inclination, and so that just made it easier for me to be the leader that I knew that they would need to get to know them better. For some of them it was really very uncomfortable I'll be very honest with that. But it was important to me and I think for most people it just demonstrated that you know, at least I was interested. I could prove later whether I cared or not, but I think that interest is unique enough where it made a difference.
Speaker 3:I love that. I mean as a fellow introvert you know same way right. So much of my apprehension is knowing where to start the conversation right, so putting the work in ahead of time. Have an interest to learn as much about somebody as possible you can. Then you know where to start because you know about them. I think that's brilliant and wise, especially for us that really struggle in those kind of open environments where you don't necessarily know where to start.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to ask if there was a trick play slash life hack called the Brian layer. Would that be your trick play?
Speaker 4:So that's one of them, for sure. But I will jump back to an Easter egg that Ted laid early in the episode where he said make each day a masterpiece. And you know, I think I read they Call Me Coach the first time when I was like 11 years old, and I've read it several times in my life and that always stuck with me. I think if you approach your life that way, it kind of helps you focus on remaining in the present, recognizing that the canvas that you have is what's right before you and you do the best with that that you can, and not to worry too much about the stuff that you can't control before or after. And so that would be my life hack that I'll share with you today.
Speaker 1:Excellent. If there was a trick play called the eric oxala, what would that be?
Speaker 5:um, I would say it came out of an exercise that brian and I did, um, when we was a team building event that we we did seven or eight years ago now, um, where we had sort of come up with a personal mission philosophy, and I was, you know list. I was trying to figure out what it was. You know lots of words, you know three sentences and they just started slashing. You know, the more brevity is the soul of what, and trying to just get to, you know, as concise a statement as possible, and what I landed on was give joy. I was thinking, you know, this is really what I want to be about professionally, personally, people come to me when they want a recommendation for a cool place to eat, or whether they, whether we're doing something on the work side. I want to.
Speaker 5:Everything I want to do centers around giving joy. I get joy out of making other folks happy, and so that's my um, if I, if I can work. The word joy and Brian, I noticed you, you said the word joy, uh, a little, a little while ago, and so, um, we, we try to work, you know, and it's not a word you hear in business, you know, in the business world and government. Um, but try to find joy, and when you can give joy to others, that's. That's. That's my little hack.
Speaker 1:So that's fantastic. We, um, we interviewed Bob Berg on this podcast and he's the one that wrote the go giver with John David Mann. Um, which is all about you know giving, and I think you all would get along well with Bob Berg.
Speaker 4:Great book too.
Speaker 3:It is a great book yeah. Gentlemen, I mean this has been fantastic. We can literally talk for hours about this stuff. Your work is fascinating. You as individuals, you guys are fascinating. You have such a great demeanor. You come across, you present so well. So thanks for joining us. We appreciate it To everybody else out there. I believe our next Rewatch episode is our favorite holiday episode ever, which is Carol of the Bells Before we oh go ahead. No, go ahead please.
Speaker 1:I was going to say before we let them go? Where can folks find out more about you?
Speaker 5:So the RL Leaders uh website uh is best way to catch us. Um and uh, we have contact info there and uh, both on uh also on uh LinkedIn, where we should be able to be reachable there. And um, yeah, we'd love to. You know, we do work outside of government. We've worked with a number of non-governmental entities as clients and so happy to chat.
Speaker 3:Awesome, Awesome Guys. Thanks so much. We appreciate your time. Thank you both.
Speaker 4:This has been great. Thank you, appreciate the opportunity.
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