The CEO Mindset: Leading with Curiosity, Risk, and Genuine Human Connection

[0:00]  changes when the exciting thing comes out of it a lot of bad ideas are talked about before the great one is expressed so risk is important I think in nonprofit specifically it's difficult to risk when you don't have stability and so that's why that was my first goal is to gain stability of the organization the more stable and stronger Foundation I have at the company the more risk I can take you know we have a a daak team it's called Direction alignment and commitment and it's 30 of our leaders that meet with me every other month to talk about things leadership but also the business and they were asking about the endowment and they said what are we going to spend with that endowment and I said we're not going to spend the endowment that endowment is giving us opportunity to take risks I budgeted

[0:50]  this year with a deficit in all of our departments I overstaffed all of my departments with the hope they can backfill it with census and product and service I could not take that risk if I didn't have an endowment I I would have been afraid to cuz I don't want to lay people off and I if we make a mistake at the end of the year that I misjudge this I could pull it back without laying people off and making a big mistake risk is important if you're not moving forward you're going backwards all right guys welcome back to a brand

[1:41]  new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm really excited to be able to sit here with this amazing leader sitting across from me here today I've got the president and CEO of helping hand this is Bill dwire who's joining the show Bill welcome to the show man thanks Kenan this is uh exciting for us to be able to get our mission and vision out there and learn more about us yeah exactly I mean so part of the heart and hustle podcast is learning about the leaders who sit across from us right there's a huge fathom or a huge SWAT of our society that thinks that CEOs presidents of organizations leaders just pop up someday we don't really know their journey and how they got there now one of my observations that I've been able to obtain by having so many conversations here on the podcast is there's an interesting pattern that I see in CEOs that work specifically in your space often they start as licensed marriage and family therapists which is

[2:32]  really interesting to me and you have that same Common Thread so why do you think the I would say your professional life as being a therapist has translated so well into you being a CEO and leader of your organization because you got to know how to battle I guess that's you know marriage counseling is is not always easy um I think originally it it's because you learn how to communicate and bring people together um to listen to multiple sides of the truth because everybody's got their own truth and then trying to connect them uh to a common belief you know and My Philosophy as a marriage therapist was I'm not here to keep you together I'm here to help you make a decision on what's best for you guys um and so it's not always to force two

[3:21]  things together that may not belong anymore um it's to make sure they're comfortable in the decision they make I I really didn't know that a lot of nonprofit CEOs uh have that background I think specifically this organization definitely needed that we had a lot of miscommunication and bad relationships and it it needed my skill set it's just interesting how those skill sets right of being able to be a people person create that human connection and help people navigate through challenges both in the personal but also professional lives create such good leaders and I think that's so interesting another guy on the podcast his name is uh Matt Simons out of uh South Carolina works for an organization called New Hope treatment centers and he was like I think that is personally my secret superpower was because I was an

[4:09]  lmft now I'm the leader of this organization I can use some of my you know skill sets to be able to engage with team members and meet people where they are and I thought that was so so so beautiful you know you made me think about it too is when I I was a director of clinical for a long time trained a lot of therapists and I use the skill set even today as a manager you you have to care enough not to care and that's a strange thing to say is I cannot be completely invested in everything that you're doing or I will not be objective and so I have to keep some space and compartmentalized uh way of thinking um so I don't get caught up in the story that I can actually help work through the whole thing to find the best for

[4:56]  them you know there was a a small statement that you made in our conversation when we first met each other you said you know I was a therapist for a long time and then I got really tired of the Christmas parties it was just me by myself and so I decided you know I want to be a CEO and a leader of a nonprofit let's talk a little bit about that aha moment if you will when you decided like really in grounded truth and I'm going to Pivot I'm going to do the work that's necessary to kind of you know create an opportunity for myself in the future walk the audience through that yeah I love helping people and so I think that's why I was drawn to being a therapist and um I guess in my naive I thought being in private practice is the way you do it that's the only way that it you can help people um but once I start exploring that I can help in an organization a

[5:44]  nonprofit and then started seeing how I could help more than just the person in front of me that really caught my interest of I would like to lead a team that I can just Inspire them to do great work and we're just growing and and multiplying how much we're doing things to to make lives better the the journey that I I went on um it it wasn't quick it was definitely a a long thought process that I went through for that and what was that process like I want to kind of put ourselves right in the shoes of this younger version of Bill who saying you know what I think I I can do bigger things I want to be more impactful I want to invest into opportunities what does that look like so I I met a CEO

[6:33]  when I was just starting out in my career and I was just impressed with her and how she was able to um bring people together and now that I think about it she was a therapist too um you know all coming together you're right you're right I I never thought of it that way um I was trying to figure out how to make an impact in the world and I I was talking to my coach last week and we were visualizing what my next steps are to being because I had this vision board of sorts to be a CEO and my vision was Anna Harley pulling up to my nonprofit well I never got the Harley but I definitely got where I am to be a

[7:22]  CEO what I knew was is that I wanted to do it well and I wanted to give a 100% in it and so I I decided that I'm going to choose different nonprofits that are really good at certain things and work there now my family had to accept this because I took pay cuts everywhere I went um title wasn't necessarily that was important to me it was the experience of learning so I went to an organization that was good at fundraising and I got a job I want I want to I want to pause really quick here because this is a really awesome conversation for us to think about because you know often our younger I would say people who have aspirations of being leaders and you know CEOs of their own types of companies often forget that there are seasons of learning and there

[8:11]  are seasons of earning you were in a season as an lmft right of earning but then you intentionally took a step back to say I'm going to go into a season of earning or learning which is really interesting to me how did you grapple with that nature to be able to say I need to learn the skill sets that are necessary for me to be the best CEO possible it I think I was born that way to just make sure that I give 100% And I don't like faking it till you make it I I don't believe in that um because I think people that fake it till they make It could wind up faking it the whole time and learning poorly and then they just believe that they they're doing a good job I I needed to learn from people that I thought were really good at what they do um

[9:00]  you you can't when it comes to leadership and management I just don't think that you can walk straight in and understand how to be a good leader and a manager I had an opportunity as a CEO when I was in my early 30s the best thing that happened in my career is I didn't get it I would have been terrible and I would not have been where I am today taking a sacrifice money title all those things because you keep your eye on what you're trying to accomplish and I didn't want to take a side step to make a little more money here or there my goal was to be a great nonprofit CEO and so I didn't make as much money in private practice until almost 10 years 11 years after you

[9:50]  know it it it took a while but money was not my goal money will come if you work hard and you get where you're supposed to be you'll be surprised that the money just is there this is a realization that I've been having a lot with my team but also some of my business partners who are a little bit younger right we often think that in order for us to be successful we need to have automatic wins accolades things that come our way praise from others but if you think about what true success is it's building the skill set over a long enough time Horizon that you are so good at the end of that Journey that the financial Rewards just come because of the person who you have become rather than the faking it till you make it skill sets right of dealing with challenges and things like that

[10:37]  which is a really interesting perspective and it moves you from arrogance to confidence you know when I first started out I remember uh this director talking to me and said boy you're arrogant oh no boy you're a little arrogant and I said no I'm a lot arrogant and that was my young self not very bright that didn't get me any points that didn't help him it didn't make him want to teach me or connect with me instead all right smartass you do what you want to do and I appreciate people who learn on their own but if you don't know what you don't know how do you keep learning you need mentors and coaches and so by being humble you open the door to people

[11:26]  sharing everything in their mind with you you know I'll go to a a hardware store and I'll ask this teenage kid I need this tool or this tool and my wife's like why are you asking him you know everything about that tool he can't tell you anything and what I tell her is I know everything I know but he may know one thing that I don't and I'm going to I'm going to sort through it I'm going to um sift through that information because I want all the information as much as I possibly can to make a good decision was it the way in which your parents upraised you did you have early experiences that kind of I would say instilled this mindset in you to ask for help to be to be humble right of course

[12:14]  we all go through our times of arrogance but there's obviously some sort of like hard coding in your system and how you raised to kind of help you come back to this place it comes from my grandmother mostly um my grandmother grew up in depression times um but she was an actuary and so that's crazy to think of a woman going through that much college and then being successful in her career but when I hung out with her as a child we were helping the senior citizens at the Y we were going to the library and volunteering and so at a very young age she taught me how to give back I have dyslexia and that's very hard for me to learn and they didn't really know about that kind of stuff when I was a kid so I was told lazy or disruptive and it wasn't

[13:02]  until College well High School I I figured out about dyslexia but I didn't care about school and it wasn't until I was told you're never going to graduate if you don't get it together and so I then went yeah same thing just like me man yeah exactly and so I said well how can I graduate and the thing that's strange is my parents had very little to do with this back in the day parents didn't involved that much you know it was just this counselor talking to me telling me you're not going to go to college so what are you going to do and I said well how am I going to graduate and he said dude you you can't do this you got to take all honors classes and get A's sign me up and that's what I did so I graduated with a

[13:50]  2.0 because I got straight A's my senior year in all honors AP classes and went into Construction because I'm not smart enough to go into school but my parents pushed very hard at you can do anything that you want to do and you can accomplish things and I think that's what drove inside of me is once I accomplished that year it it sort of told me I am capable reset your thermostat that internal thermostat of what you recognize you could accomplish yeah and now I think of the world like um shooting pool I look at a pool table and I go I can get maybe two balls in that doesn't mean they all can't go in there are

[14:38]  professionals that'll clear that table clear it again and again the solution is there I just have to figure out how to get it and the more I learn the more balls I could put in the more confidence I get and if I can't do it who can I I love this mindset because there's a a lot of people out there um especially in this younger generation right the emergence of social media and all the language about like you don't have to go to higher education you don't have to accomplish all these things there's a lot of people who check out a lot earlier in school now back when I was going through school um I remember coming home in second grade and being like Mom how long do I have to keep going to this whole school thing because something doesn't seem like it's connecting to how I like to learn or engage right and she said Keen you have a long time to go I like you graduated from college or graduated from high

[15:26]  school with like a 2.3 GPA because I was on honor rooll my senior year because I actually kind of everything click for me and I was like oh wait if I actually just do this work if I'm preemptive if I try I'm GNA get good results right so I want to reverse a little bit when you recognize that school's not for you right there's a validating system around us of people who are in our class who are getting good grades maybe we're not we're always being told that we're lesser than based on the scales that were being measured how did you keep between the ears solid to recognize there was more on the other side wow I I don't know if I did it in high school I I um I don't know if I did really it it wasn't until I hit psych 101 um when I finally took a

[16:15]  course that I connected with and I was like I'm pretty good at this in high school I built relationships up I was funny and you know popular in that way um so I connected with people that that way but I I I I did not get the school stuff and didn't think I was going to get it really until sophomore year in in college and I didn't go full-time I went full-time to school but I didn't go away to school I went straight into being a construction worker because that was my career and my parents said no try and I did the best I could and it wasn't until I really was reading about people and I said you know people are easy to me and I'm watching these others say that it's so hard to understand people

[17:02]  just like I said it was hard to understand math and I go well maybe this is a skill set I have later to find out that people with dyslexia are very good with people very good at systems they understand big picture they're able to see puzzles and just see how Pieces come together I didn't know that at the time because I was being measured on reading and and numbers it seems like you naturally had that CEO Gene right top down can see the whole picture right got the people element which is really cool I had the same experience as you I went to a school called Coastal Carolina to go play baseball once again got there and was going through my classes and I was like none of this really resonates with me until I sat in a Communications 102 class and a communication Theory class at the same time and we talked about your ability to connect with

[17:50]  others hold conversation and make them feel safe in a moment was something that just like got my brain thinking I was like who this is for me I can talk to people I can understand the structure of a conversation why we communicate in the ways that we do and it was that human gene that kind of popped up in front of me that said maybe this is my skill set very similar to you exactly it I'm I love humans I mean I really do and being around them is how I learned to be the leader that I am even that Anita was that CEO that encouraged me to to do my job and move up and at a very early age in my career and I said you know I don't think I can do it I can't be you and her wisdom was you can't be me you have to be you if you're going to be a CEO if

[18:39]  you try to be somebody else as a CEO you will get caught and it won't go well and she that really released me into embracing and building confidence in this is the person I am it's not who I'm faking to be and when I went on interviews it's like here I am if you like me great if you don't that's okay too I don't want to trick you into hiring me cuz we won't be happy that's the same as a marriage if you start pushing people together that don't belong it's not going to work you can't fake it it has to be like breathing it has to be just life and I think successful leaders are out there because they found the right connection to their soul or to their you know Aura whatever they are

[19:29]  it it's not hard work it's stressful it's tiring all those things but it I'm not against the grain on who I am isn't that a beautiful element to recognizing who you truly are and leaning into that person not only are you subconsciously and consciously recognizing that Bill's showing up as Bill I'm not trying to fool or convince anybody but the people who are also sitting across from you in those rooms recognize that you're showing up as yourself as well not trying to be a copy and paste version of some book or some other leader who was a mentor to you which is so powerful it's that natural human yeah ability to pick up on that authenticity to be genuine you know and that comes with confidence not arrogance and it's taking those little risks where you you I'm going to try this personality thing I'm going to

[20:16]  try the way I communicate I'm going to try this and let's see the results of that and and really look inwardly of did it work what did I do to influence that moment in a good or bad way can I change it do I want to change it and that's how things get that that's how people will join you because they just are like wow he believes it I believe him let's go so we go to college we come across that psych 101 class where we fall in love with this work we become an lmft right then we recognize we're going to become a c I wish it was that quick the way you said license that's the beauty of the podcast baby right exactly psych license now we're a CEO um one of the things that I recognize is although we found our confidence in ourselves and who

[21:03]  we're going to show up as often sometimes when we take on New Opportunities like you did at helping hand sometimes it doesn't always feel like the right element and our support system like our wives or our partners will sometimes remind us of why we're doing the work that we're doing can you share that that little story with us because I thought that was so impactful if you're okay with that yeah um that that was a big moment milestone in my career so most of what I've done in my life has been with atrisk kids gang members and and drug dealers and I really enjoyed seeing the child in them and bringing out hope um but then there was this opportunity that came up in another state because I'm from Indiana and I work in Illinois now and it's in Illinois helping people with

[21:51]  intellectual disabilities one thing that I knew I did not want to do all the education that I went through was you can't help people with uh intellectual disabilities you you can't connect with them blah blah blah blah none of that's true anyway I went to this job and I I walked into the day program where it's all adults they're in a very large room probably about 10 and some of them and if you know anybody with an intellectual disability they want to get to know you right away that's their number one thing is who is this guy and so so they got into my space and I like my space I don't want to be hugged I don't want to be touched well they came and they wanted to hug touch feel they were speaking

[22:40]  differently they were sounding different smelling different and I had a panic attack I freaked out for the first time in my career I'm always in control sadly I've had guns in my face when I did my job those things didn't scare me being around all these people with intellectual disabilities scared me and I had to get out of there I drove home it was probably my second or third day at the job and I drove home about 45 minutes pulled over three times on the road to throw up because I destroyed my career I've been working so hard to learn so many things and move up the ladder and learn and here I am choosing a field that I cannot help these individuals I can't do anything and when

[23:28]  I got home my wonderful wife said what's wrong with you and I told her that story I said it's just too much for me and she said are they people and I said well of course they're people and she said you'll be fine go back tomorrow you're good at people and I did and what I forced myself to be is with them more often than not to get to know them more and it was like The Wizard of Oz their diag nosis disappeared and everything became color they became human beings with great talents and skills and I wanted to be around them more they literally transformed my life and now that I am so happy at doing this for the last 13 14 years um my wife has changed her career

[24:20]  she's now a par professional working with children with disabilities in a middle school my kids were involved and they connected more with people with disabilities it literally makes your life better you understand kindness and patience and so much more but thanks to my wife understanding that I kept forward on my career and you transformed everybody's lives in the same manner you I hope so I hope so I mean it's just like one of my favorite sayings is we do not gain confidence by shouting affirmations in the mirror but having a stack of undeniable proof behind us that we are who we say we are and when your wife said are they are they people right and you said yeah of course they're people and then she said go back to work you're going to be okay you're going to figure it out like that confidence that she had in you she believed in you there's an amazing quote

[25:08]  by an author named Kevin Kelly he says we lead others by knowing what or by letting them know what we expect of them which often may exceed what they what they expect of themselves let them know or give them a reputation that they can live up to and it seems like sometimes in our moments of Doubt our support system and the partner who we have has the ability to breathe that conf confidence into us which is such a powerful story you know just a quick moment on that too is that that happened as I became my first CEO position here you know walking in the door to my office I was like yes I did it and within seconds oh crap I did it what am I supposed to do now you know all this training I still didn't know what to do and in time in a few months I met with my executive team and I said to him I don't know what I'm supposed to do

[25:57]  you guys are all very good at your job I don't know how to make you better cuz I don't know how to do your job I'm not a finance HR whatever and the thing that happened was they Lifted Me Up they told me this is what you we saw your good at Bill keep doing that that makes me feel good and makes me drive harder and all this other kind of stuff so when I'm weaker and there are moments that I get like that my team is there to support me and say you know they're people you can go and do it you know they they still push in the same way I'm not perfect I'm a human being I don't always have it together and I love that my team doesn't see weakness in my vulnerability and it's the culture that

[26:45]  you've created right in our previous conversation you said something like helping hand right we've got two hands one to help ourselves and one to help others it's amazing to think about how that's not only for the clients and the community that you serve but it's also the leader of the organization it's the team that we're helping as well like what an amazing opportunity I expect that of our mission and vision is used for all of us all the time and we talk about how it applies to our everyday life because then you're living it so here's a question for you you know I think we should really hammer on the necessity of the services and the role that you guys play in your community I talked about previously when I got into this space right of helping people with you know any type of intellectual disabilities with the grant to gift autism Foundation here in uh Southern Nevada One in uh 56 children were being

[27:35]  diagnosed with autism as an example in 2018 as of our year this year our Gala event it's one in 36 children so not only are we seeing more kiddos in our communties being diagnosed with intellectual disabilities but it's also the families who are looking for support and the work that you guys do is so fundamental so how does the mission what you guys do at the organization fill your cup every single day with the work that you do so our our mission actually says transforming the lives of all connected through genuine care and education it doesn't talk about people with disabilities because people with disabilities are not the problem that need to be solved it really is the rest of us that have to learn how to be kind and open-minded and willing to teach and help and we preach that all the time

[28:24]  they hear it from me all the time of of our mission statement and making sure that families know how to apply it to themselves if the family unit maybe my marriage and family stuff again coming out is not strong the identified patient is not going to get any better and so when we point at somebody with a disability and say well that's the one you have to fix it really isn't it's the per people around of how we're we need to change to work with those individuals that have different needs or different ways of explaining themselves and then it goes bigger to the community needs to figure out how to work with all people you know forcing individuals to to

[29:12]  comply to certain things that say just like you said you're smart if you know math no there's lots of Genius you know we hear that all different levels of Genius but when we only measure it one way we're alienating a lot of people that can bring so much to the soup or stew of life you know that's what's awesome it's all that stuff mixed together makes us all better and this is where I think you know organizations and leaders like yourself that can continue to hammer home this message that it takes a community to come together to support everyone to be able to deal with things like this as we deal with the kind of our societal changes the analogy in my head popped up there was a famous image I was popping around social media

[29:59]  for a while and it was a whole bunch of animals a monkey a zebra right an elephant all that kind of stuff I think I know where you're going yeah if you asked all of these animals to climb this tree right the elephant would be looked at as completely inept it wouldn't be able to climb the tree that does not mean that it does not have other areas of genius and it's like thinking about how our society is just so multifaceted today with our ability to support each other is so important but also you know I think about the role that you guys play in the community as being The Trusted resource of good education for a family in need you know we talked about my kind of upbringing our previous conversation biracial man father's black Mother's white two sides of the family approach mental Behavioral Health any type of diagnosis completely different and it's really challenging to think about here in southern Nevada we have a 6,000 family weight list for access to

[30:47]  services and diagnosis in your area how big is that list yeah a little over 30,000 30,000 people so it's like you guys are playing that's just who we're counting there's so many that we can't count that that we don't even know about exactly so how are you guys thinking about creating that safe space or that opportunity for Connection in the community for people to reach out and ask questions even though they might not feel comfortable about their situation we're really getting some traction here is it's again it's not about this is the service I want do you want it it's we go to them and say what are you looking for because we run all the gamut you know we have housing we have employment schools all that and what our older generation wants is nowhere near what the next

[31:34]  generation wants and if we keep trying to make the VCR better I don't know young people even know what the VCR is but I think of people with intellectual disabilities programming is is that's what it is we keep we go here's a VCR well let's add a little extra to it no we have to think completely different on how we're doing something we have to get into you know past the CD disc and past the the downloading it's something new that they need to hear so first we try to connect with families and listen lots of listening and figuring out how to meet their needs one thing that we've heard is they don't want this institutional feel they don't want their kids to live in a home with five six seven eight people in the

[32:25]  home um they don't want necessarily staff to be around 24/7 that's something that they feel is not normal so we've really embraced technology and we've grabbed on to a few different ways that it's going to complement the human being that's working in the house but you won't need as much and that individual can learn how to do more for themselves using the iPhone or using software Ware using robots that are going to be coming uh out soon I would imagine um AI all that kind of stuff and it's being successful with us ultimately what families want who's going to take care of my child when I'm

[33:13]  gone peace of mind and are they going to be safe and what we try to do what my job is for helping hand is to stabilize the organization we're a $26 million uh company right now we have zero debt we secured an endowment that's going to keep us around forever millions of dollars to do that we have a great Foundation uh Foundation of of donors that understand the difference from having money in the bank and needing money to operate and so they invest in us so we can be the best um stabilizing our Workforce we don't have very much turnover our retention rate is around 89% in Illinois the Aver is 50% for this field yep we treat our staff with

[34:03]  value respectful pay them as best we possibly can all those foundational things then I think secure the agency to be around forever and allows all of our staff to think outside the box and create I am not the one that has all the ideas you got to let people be free and let them create I heard a really interesting perspective on a podcast yesterday I want to get you two cents on this um so there's a guy out there his name is Jason freed he uh owns a company that creates these software platforms and he said you know one of the things that I've started to recognize as I've become a more seasoned CEO is my job in the organization is often to insert risk into the organization now before you

[34:51]  start freaking out this is what that means you know people who often show up to work and work inside of organization they're often risk mitigators they want to make sure that everything goes well they want to create a good experience for their customers they want to retain their job they want to create sustainability and predictability it's often the CEO's role to create Frameworks around how we can insert risk how can we be curious about how we can tackle these challenges how can I get people to experiment to do things differently because if we do things the same we're going to get the same results and the future is looking for different I would say approaches to challenges how do you think about twofold C osity in the organization but also your ability to add a little bit of risk as that like little special spice to the culture of the organization my team would say I'm risk averse I I like Risk and that's

[35:39]  where we grow change is when the exciting thing comes out of it a lot of bad ideas are talked about before the great one is expressed so risk is important I think in nonprofit specifically it's difficult to risk when you don't have stability and so that's why that was my first goal is to gain stability of the organization the more stable and stronger Foundation I have at the company the more risk I can take you know we have a a Dak team it's called Direction alignment and commitment and it's 30 of our leaders that meet with me every other month to talk about things leadership but also the business and they were asking about the endowment and they said what are we going to spend with that endowment and I said we're not going to

[36:27]  spend the endowment that endowment is giving us opportunity to take risks I budgeted this year with a deficit in all of our departments I overstaffed all of my departments with the hope they can backfill it with census and product and service I could not take that risk if I didn't have an endowment I I would have been afraid to because I don't want to lay people off and I if we make a mistake at the end of the year that I misjudge this I could pull it back without laying people off and making a big mistake so I think risk I love what that person said risk is important if you're not moving forward

[37:15]  you're going backwards I mean we're always having to push the L the the envelope you know what I mean especially you know I love hearing the the mindset of curiosity or exploration I'm trying to figure out how I want to frame this and what you were saying about using technology right to be that accelerator not a replacement so we can do our job better be able to support individuals in more ways which is really important I like fun ideas so creativity to me is fun I I will giggle a lot of times when staff will say something to me I'm like yeah that's cool I have no idea how to do it but what you just said is very cool let's go try that who knows we may make what they said come true or we may go a completely different direction and create something even more exciting you want to hear a funny story about that sure so um back in the day said no I mean I I would

[38:05]  still tell you anyway this is this is my show okay um so you go you one of the examples that I love about this is the the culture of experimentation and creativity creates so many opportunities that we can't even see um back in the day Amazon made a $690 million mistake they tried to compete with the iPhone and the Google pixel with what they called the fire phone ended up not being able to get Market penetration and they're like we're going to have to shut this down and somebody was like man Jeff is going to be really upset with us Jeff Bezos and he came into a board meeting with all of his Executives and said hey we're shutting this down and they're like you know what are we going to do who's going to get fired because of this and he said guess what the things that we did here in experimenting created opportunities for us in the future what did we get from this $690 million experiment well we got the Kindle because we recognized

[38:53]  a digital reader was something we were going to put in this phone but we also got Alexa the The Voice agent out of it as well and so if you got Alexa and the Kindle out of a $690 million experiment that was supposed to be a phone that's still a win because you still were willing to go down the path of discovery which I feel like is so important for so many organizations I I I exactly there there is some wishful thinking and um I do caution young CEOs on wishful thinking I have an idea and somehow it's just going to happen um there has to be some plot thought that you're going um but yeah some of the exhaust is worth the money and and it you create some really cool stuff and I've created a lot of programs along my career and some worked and some didn't but I'm using

[39:41]  pieces of them to make something even better you know one of the areas of transition which I want to talk about here is you going from an lmft to a president and CEO the skill set of leading others is really difficult and it often takes time to mature that skill set what were some of the biggest lessons that you learned in this maturation journey and becoming the leader who you are on how to invest into others and get the most out of your team that maybe the younger version of buillt didn't recognize you don't have to be right you don't have to be the smartest person and know everything um it's okay to be vulnerable um vulnerability is not weakness that I I remember and as I was growing up in my career one of the meetings I

[40:31]  had I I was vulnerable as a director and I said it to my team I said you know I'm not really sure what the answer is here and they they came at me well if you don't know then who does know and how are we going to know and I heard myself and I stopped and I said I didn't say I wouldn't figure it out don't confuse me admitting what I don't know today with what I'm going to learn tomorrow and I think that's the same thing here I I can be put in any situation I believe and I will learn you know I don't learn by just osmosis you got to put the effort in you got to work hard but I know I'll figure it out I trust my brain can put things together and figure out what's going on

[41:20]  to make the best decision people I I think I've always known this but people are what make you a leader if you're by yourself you're not a leader you know and if you're forcing people to follow you because of your title or because of any other thing you hold over them that is not a leader you're more into the management people are going to listen to me because I'm a CEO but they're going to follow me because of it's Bill it has nothing to do with my title and I I tell that to my staff all the time oh if I got promoted people would follow me I said no I could be in a room full of firemen and the house is on fire if I know what I'm talking about more than they do they'll

[42:06]  follow me yeah you know that's a big thing for me that I learned the I'm going to figure it out attitude makes you incredibly dangerous you know I feel like so much of the world and how we perceive it is we have to have everything figured out before we're going to make our next move but it's often your ability to figure things out right or like build the plane as you're taking off right is something that's super important my team crazy but they do learn to live with it yeah you know because I don't always have the finished product in my head and people we follow the dis I don't know if you know the disc so majority of the population are the S you know they tell me what to do and I will get it done

[42:55]  great and so they want not really strong Direction and I force people to think and to make decisions on their own in the environment they're capable of that's when you're going to get great ideas I've been having this slow but steady transformation in how I kind of look at how I'm thinking about building my team right I always thought as a younger entrepreneur that Kenan needed to have the answer to the challenges that my team was trying to solve in order for them to do their job but at some point in time I started looking at myself not as somebody who's on the court as a point guard with the team dishing the ball around basketball reference for everybody but rather the coach on the sideline who focuses on

[43:43]  developing the skill sets in each of my team members that are necessary so they can overcome challenges create ideas and take initiative on their own that sense of Leverage has been a big realization for me and I'm not sure why it took me so long but when did you have that realization as being the coach instead of the point guard who's also the player coach if that makes sense probably halfway in my career you know I mean I I was just starting to become a chief of something and um I was able to accomplish more when when you let people be people and stop trying to boss them around um I I think about the hard part is I have an idea in my head and I want you to do it and then when you're not close to it I say move out of the way and I

[44:32]  micromanage you mhm where I try to teach people is that long as they hit the target we're good they don't have to hit the bullseye we may even move the bullseye because of the new Target that they hit and sitting in this mindset that I have to know everything is so stressful and and it's it's just we just aren't smart enough you know and your company will fail you have to surround yourself with people who don't think like you who are different and they constantly challenge each other and have productive conflict you know through respect and Trust then great things happen I it

[45:22]  there are so many things that happen here and they're happening right now while I'm having this podcast that I had nothing to do with because in my mind I just got things out of the way for them to make them do their job better servant leadership how can I help you how can I be Stellar customer service for you not how can I tell you what to do here's a quick thing I learned I remember learning this when I became Chief Operating Officer for the first time my first Chief literally I just remembered this as you're you're talking to me and and I said you know if I ever become the boss I'm going to change this this this and this because those bosses are morons and I know better finally I work my way up the ladder and I become a chief and what

[46:11]  I realized was the things that I knew were from years ago they're not from today and so I had to ask my staff what do you want now and my joke was I didn't have a say back then and I don't have a say now because the right thing is to listen to the people that are doing the work and figure out how to get them the tools to do it to tweak or nudge them so they're following in the right direction of your vision not in the day-to-day tasks or the short-term goals are they getting the big term goal that's the most important thing you know there's a uh a saying which is really impactful for this moment you know if the here's one of the dangers of thinking that we have

[46:59]  to have everything planned out over something like a career right when we make a 5-year strategic plan in year three and year four we are doing what we thought back when we started the Strategic plan yes instead of doing what we think in the moment with better data better opportunities to make decisions does that make sense I'd rather be thinking in the moment what I'm thinking now than what I thought years ago when I made the plan to get to where I'm at now I got challenged on that just the other day on LinkedIn somebody wrote about you know you got to think through cuts and it's hard to cut during this time of the year and all that kind of stuff and what I wrote um on there was cutting is not a strategy it's the results of poor

[47:48]  strategy and the author wrote back goes no cutting is a strategy and sometimes needs to be used and blah and I didn't respond I don't make multiple comments after that but my point was is that if you weren't thinking far enough ahead you wouldn't be in the situation that you're in yes cutting is a crisis tool we made a mistake something's not right how do we save the ship from sinking here's one way of doing it but if you have a true strategy you will Lim eliminate the opportunities for those things to happen it's like saying my my Strate for creating Financial Freedom is at the every at the end of every single month I'm going to dispute my credit card chall or my credit card transactions you know what I mean be like no no no you

[48:35]  didn't budget correctly to actually execute on the plan and now we're trying to go back to the system you know what I mean um so I'm a big Sports guy I've talked about it a couple times here um you know I really was a baseball player when I went to college and so I want to give you an opportunity for your Babe Ruth moment Baby Ruth has a famous clip where he calls his shot to center field what are the next couple years going to look like for helping him Bill well that you made it an easier question you said helping hand because I am in uh trying to figure out what's the next for me I love helping hand I think it's amazing and helping hand may be my next but I've always had personal goals and I've become so much part of helping hand that I sort of forgot about me and so very

[49:23]  important okay yeah let's let's pivot a little bit and talk let's actually let's go back to the more challenging answer here now we're going to get into it yeah exactly so what's going on with Bill what are we thinking about well it's because I've always had a goal to be a nonprofit CEO and then once I got it was like okay let's make sure we know what we're doing and we can do it well now I'm trying to figure out is did I reach the Pinnacle of where I'm supposed to be and now I just keep doing it better is there something else out there for me um is there something on the side maybe I'm still meant to be here at helping hand but I got to pick up something else that I need to do to make me feel like I'm still growing and and improving we challenged nothing is

[50:11]  ever easy here um my board tells me all the time take a break slow down um it's just not in me I can't um so I don't know what that is I I I really don't have this drive to well I want to run a $500 million organization maybe I I don't care how much money that is I don't necessarily even care about how much money I make you know it's it's all about purpose is my purpose still here or is my purpose supposed to be somewhere else yeah I mean the question that I had a mentor asked me one time is Keenan who are you becoming you know the skill sets the experiences our abil overcome challenges how we show up in the face of

[50:59]  adversity right is all a nod to the person in the future of who we are becoming and to kind of acting that provocative I don't even know what that means I don't care but it's provocative but it is that's deep man it is and if you can me you know uh meditate on that that'll help you get there where you want to be and and I don't think it's going to help you oh there's the solution it's going to get you the next step to creating your legacy what are people going to remember you for so helping hand as a as a whole we're going to continue to grow slowly but we're going to maintain that we are the top quality in what we do and that uh we're very Innovative in working

[51:48]  with families to do things differently um I have a great team and it only gets better as we go to our directors and our associate directors so feel like we have a good succession plan um so when I'm gone I I hope it keeps going so Bill we talked a little bit about this you know part of the tradition on the podcast as we put the wheels down to land is our previous guest wants to ask you a blind question now blind question is coming from an amazing leader out of the indianap or the Indianapolis area I talked about him as a part of a GDC Inc president there um he wants to know would you rather be smart or charming it's hard when you're both that was my answer too but you got you gotta you gotta pick one you gotta pick one gota pick one I I'm going to go with

[52:37]  charming because then you can bring more smart people around you you can um connect with more people I think Charming gets you further in the world knowing all the answers but nobody wants to play with you it's good for you but it's not good for everyone else and that sir is where we're going to end today's episode once again Bill dwire the president and CEO of helping hand what an amazing definition of heart and hustle sir thank you so much for coming on the show this great thank you so much for thinking of us absolutely all right guys we'll catch you in the next one that's a wrap