A book review of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - A leadership fable, by Patrick Leoncioni

Why Listen:
Matt brings the perspective of what I'd call a midlife entrepreneur, someone who had decade in the military almost a decade of experience a couple degrees before he founded a company and I just always love hearing those stories. His company uses blockchain. So we talk about that how that impacts his business. What that industry looks like, like might be appealing to our listeners, he talks about COVID and how it actually helped him grow as a company in an unexpected way, a very atypical story. He talks about managing cash flow to the day predicting when he was going to run out of money and it's the pandemic he talks about playing Super Mario Brothers as an analogy for keeping a company alive and up leveling, I talked about over communicating in a crisis how Navy pilots are like entrepreneurs, how you figure things out and supplement your knowledge in whatever career you do. He talks about how in career in life, it's a game of at bats not batting average really great point that I'm still thinking about. And he talks about how we're migrating from in person not not migrating from in person to digital but connecting the two and really forward looking thought of where the industry is going. 

Why Listen: Jeff works in the insurance industry, which is not an industry I knew a lot about before the interview, but I can see why he chose to spend 30 years in this career path after his time in the Army. In this interview, we talk about selling companies, understanding how companies are valued, how to drive value, how to increase the value of a company, how to defer benefits in selling a company versus finding a company that pays you a good salary from the start. We talk about approaching your career in 15-year increments, three different chapters in one's career, and what matters at those points. We also talk about identity, which comes up a lot in this podcast when it comes to identity as a Veteran. 

About Jeff:

Jeff Arnold is an authority in the insurance industry. With over 30 years of experience managing deals ranging from six figures to 100 million-plus, he currently serves as the president of Rightsure, where he has distilled the zeal for the discipline he learned in the Army into profitable joint ventures. He's passionate about entrepreneurship, mergers, and acquisitions, and has also written multiple best-selling books.

Normally on the show, I interview military veterans about what they're doing post-service. My guest today is not a military veteran, but I believe her message and perspective are a great contribution to our community. 

Diana has helped a lot of veterans and is one of the authors of a book called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, and I am so honored to have her on the show. I love this book so much that I send a copy of it to every new client that I sign up for my company, Executive Presence. In this conversation, we talk about your zone of genius and how to find a career that fits into that. We speak about limiting beliefs about ourselves, how those can cause us to rule out careers and career paths that we really shouldn't, and how to identify and overcome those limiting beliefs. We also talk about integrity. Diana's definition of integrity is slightly different from what I learned about at the Naval Academy and in the military. And I think it's very powerful. And then lastly, we speak about shifting to a life of play, how to gamify things rather than take everything seriously, and how much faster we learn when we find a way to do it through play.

About Diana:

Diana Chapman is an advisor to exceptional leaders who has worked with over 1000 organizational leaders and many of their teams, and is a founding partner at Conscious Leadership Group. She has created and implemented professional onboarding and ongoing programs—based on the comprehensive body of work she developed with CLG co-founder Jim Dethmer—with clients such as Asana and Esalen. In addition to facilitating CLG Forums in the Bay Area for founders, venture capitalists, and CEOs, Diana facilitates YPO Forums and Chapters worldwide. She also trains coaches in conscious leadership in the CLG training program she and Jim created. Diana co-authored the best-selling book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success, in 2015. She has been a speaker at TEDx, Mindful Leadership Summit, Wisdom 2.0, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Haas School of Business, YPO, and Kauffman Fellows.

Normally on the show I interview a military Veteran about their civilian career: what they do, how they got there, and advice for others seeking to do the same. Today's episode instead is a book review of a book I just finished that has helped me in my career, and I hope it helps you as well: Masters of Scale.