Our special guest on this episode of The Vibrant Leadership podcast is Adam Mendler, CEO of The Veloz Group and host of the Thirty Minute Mentors, Leaders To Listen To podcast. He is also the Co-Founder of Beverly Hills Chairs, a leading office furniture e-tailer, Custom Tobacco, a one of a kind cigar customization ecommerce platform, and Veloz Solutions, a technology company and software development practice. As a leadership expert, Adam remains active in each of these businesses, providing strategic guidance and support, and provides business thought leadership as a speaker to businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations.
This week, Adam asks, “Am I performing at my best, and what can I do to become a better leader? How can I grow? How can I improve? How can I take my performance to the next level?”
We chat about what NOT to do as a leader, as well as:
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The first step to becoming the best leader you can be
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How to pursue feedback from those that really know you
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Questions to ask yourself to dive deeper into your own self-reflection
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What to do if you are struggling
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And more
Mentioned in this episode:
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Twitter: @adammendler
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Instagram: @adammendler
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Website: https://www.adammendler.com
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30 Minute Mentors Podcast: www.thirtyminutementors.com
Transcript
Adam Mendler: At the end of the day as a leader, spend your time listening rather than talking because when you do talk, your words will have far greater impact. And they’ll be coming from a place where you will have observed and absorbed the really important points that you need to ultimately make an impact.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership Podcast with leadership speaker and consultant, Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Hello everybody. This is Nicole Greer the vibrant coach and welcome to another episode of Vibrant Leadership. I am so excited to have today on the show Adam Mendler. He is the Chief Executive Officer of The Veloz Group. Did I say it right?
Adam: You did Nicole you nailed it. You’re a pro. One for One. Your batting average is 1000. So doesn’t get better than that.
Nicole: Fantastic. Alright. He co founded over and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries, Beverly Hills Chairs so I’ve never been to Beverly Hills. I want to hear all about that. He’s which is a leading office furniture e-tailer and Custom Tobacco a one of a kind cigar customization, e commerce platform, and Veloz Solutions, a technology company and software development practice.
Adam remains active in all of these companies and provides strategic guidance and support because he is a leadership expert. And Adam also provides business thought leadership as a speaker, to businesses, universities and nonprofit organizations. And he is the host of the podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, as expert regularly cited in national media outlets. And as an advisor, consultant, coach and board member, listen up vibrant leadership podcast people, we have a real pro in the house. Adam, thank you so much for joining me.
Adam: Well, Nicole, thank you so much excited to be here with us this morning and excited to be with your listeners.
Nicole: Yeah. So, you have like two of my favorite things. You’re an entrepreneur, of course, I’m an entrepreneur as well. And you are a thought leader in leadership, I see myself in that same place. And these are my two favorite things ever to talk about. So tell me, you know, you’ve got into all of these businesses. How did you find your little entrepreneurial, you know, Mojo.
Adam: I was an accidental entrepreneur, I didn’t wake up out of the womb, aspiring to be an entrepreneur. When I was a kid, I wanted to run a baseball team. That was my dream growing up, really all the way through my early 20s. And it was in my late 20s, that I was working at a big company, it was my fourth experience, either working or interning at a big company, I had two internships at large organizations, two jobs at large organizations. And I felt like at that point in my life, I kind of knew what it was like working at a big company. And I was 28. And thought that if there was ever the right moment in my life to try something entrepreneurial, it was then in there, my feeling was my energy was never going to be higher my expenses, whatever it may be lower.
And I really wanted to make an impact. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to do something that could really make a mark. And at that point, I walked away from my career. And my brother at the time was working as a software developer, he sort of walked away from what he was doing. And we joined forces and started the Veloz Group, which we named after the street. We grew up on Veloz Avenue in Tarzana, California, a suburb of LA. And the rest is history.
Nicole: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, I love that. So you’ve been the leader in this organization and over these three different businesses that you have. What do you think makes somebody an excellent leader? How have you been so successful?
Adam: Nicole, we could spend hours and hours hours on this question on this topic. I love talking about leadership. And as I’m sure you can spend hours and hours talking about this topic. Let’s start off with what doesn’t make someone a successful leader. You can’t tell someone what to do. You can’t force someone to do something leading by fear and by intimidation doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for a long time. It doesn’t work now. It’s not going to work in the future. So if anyone out there who’s listening to this podcast is trying to understand how can I become a better leader, cross that off the list right away.
The first thing you want to do is you want to understand that before you can effectively lead others. You need to be able to lead your own life. You need to understand who you are. You need to understand your strengths. You need to understand your weaknesses, you need to recognize that in each of us, there’s that one thing that makes us special. It’s our superpower. It’s the thing that makes us unique. It’s the thing that makes us different. And the more quickly you could figure out what it is about you that makes you special, the more successful you’ll be in life, the more successful you’ll be in business, the more successful you’ll be as a leader.
So I implore anyone listening to this podcast to get on that journey of self discovery. Understand who you are, understand what makes you different, what makes you special, uncover and unlock and unleash that superpower that you have. Because in order for you to effectively lead others, you need to be comfortable with yourself, you need to be comfortable in your own skin, you need need to be someone who people are going to want to follow. You can’t lead if no one wants to follow you. So those are a few thoughts just off the top of my head, we can dive deeper or or we can stop there. But hopefully at a minimum, that at least provides a couple of first steps for anyone interested in the topic.
Nicole: Yeah. those are fantastic things. So I love what you said you said, you know, find your superpower. So how did you find your superpower? And what would you think your superpower is? And how might somebody else go about it? Talk more about that superpower. That’s exciting.
Adam: Yeah, it’s definitely a process. And something that I tell audiences that I speak to is that that process is going to start for different people at different stages of their journey. It’s never too early or too late to get on the process of self discovery. And I encourage people to get started as early as they can. So if you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re in high school, get started right now, or you’re in college get started right now. But if you’re in your 50s, your 60s or 70s, it’s not too late for you. So no matter how old you are, get started. And in my case, I didn’t get started on this journey.
When I was in high school, I didn’t get started on this journey when I was in college. And Nicole, like I told you a couple minutes ago, when I was growing up, I aspired to be the general manager of the angels, my favorite baseball team, I still am a huge Angel fan love baseball, as much as anyone I’m counting down to opening day. And hopefully this is the year that we win our second World Series. It’s the 60th year that the Angels have been around. And we only have one World Series, it was in 2002. And I think we’re all ready for another one. But my journey has been a little bit different. And it’s taken me some time to figure out what my superpower is. In my case, in my case, it might be a little bit different than the cases of people listening to this podcast.
It involves some trial and error. It involves talking to those closest to you. What I would encourage people to do is to go out and seek the advice and counsel of the people who they know who knows that. So speak to your friends, speak to your relatives, speak to your neighbors, speak to your classmates, speak to your colleagues, speak to people who you believe truly know you and can give you honest feedback on who you are. Ask them what is it about me that makes me different? What is it about me that makes me unique? How am I different than all the other people? You know, what is my defining characteristic? What is my defining trait, my defining feature, and take the time to do that, go through that exercise and listen, in addition to that, really carve out some time to reflect and go on this journey, which will partially be a journey of asking questions.
I recently did a podcast which is going to air next week with a well known CEO. And one of the things he told me is great leaders ask great questions. And what you need to do is you need to go out and ask questions. be inquisitive, do that, but also ask these questions of yourself. Sit in a quiet room, whatever you need to do to reflect and ask yourself, what is it about me that makes me special? Don’t be afraid to ask these hard questions of yourself. Because you need to get to that answer. And whatever that answer is, is going to help guide you on the path of how you can best spend your time going forward.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love what you said. In fact, I call this figuring out your unique ability but I love superpower. And this is this is a great thing for people to do. And I think Adam what you’re telling people is like literally get on the phone with people send an email with people that know you and actually get this feedback. Okay. So it is Something that you could do you take your responses, you do a little analyzing, and then you do the reflection part that Adam just talked about. I love that.
And I love this quote, you guys might want to write this down. great leaders ask great questions. I want to dive in a little bit deeper there, you know, as a coach, and you’re a coach as well, Adam, you know, asking really great questions is is important. So I’m wondering, what do you think are the great questions a leader should ask themselves? What should a leader ask themselves? Maybe every week, every day? What do you think?
Adam: Yeah, Nicole, that is a great question. So kudos to you for asking a really good question there. I think that we touched on a few of them. But going forward, I think it’s important to ask yourself on a daily basis, am I being my best self? Am I getting the most out of me? Am I living up to my abilities? I know that it’s, it can be hard to, you know, avoid beating yourself up sometimes. But it is important to ask yourself, Am I doing on a day to day basis, what I am capable of doing? Is my team doing? What my team is capable of doing? At the end of the day, being a leader is the art of bringing others bringing those around you to the next level. It’s taking one plus one and turning it into three.
So I think it’s extremely important to continually ask, not only am I performing at my best, and what can I do to become a better leader? How can I grow? How can I improve? How can I take my performance to the next level? But to ask those same questions of those around you? How can I make my team better? How can I make my people better? How can I make each stakeholder in my organization better? What can I do to improve my organizational culture? What can I do to ultimately enhance the not only performance, but the overall experience of those around me?
Nicole: Well, I love this list of questions. And we’re going to put them in the show notes. But I want to make sure that you guys got these, you know, he started with Adam started with, you know, what can I do to be my best self and that’s what Nicole Greer would call self actualization, right? Like, so how can I self actualize? And I think that is actually beautiful. And then we ended up at culture. So Adam, it’s this whole thing of asking questions of myself, of my people, and then of the culture of my organization.
So that is fantastic. So we’re hitting everything. And in there, Adam, you sneaked in a definition of leadership on me. And I don’t want to make sure people didn’t gloss over that. But you said it is the art of taking those around me to the next level. I love that. I love that. So I’m wondering, Adam, if you’ve got a story, or maybe a how to on how do you take your team to the next level? What are the things that a leader can do to really help their people grow?
Adam: You know, a quote that I use all the time. And I can’t say that I invented it, because I think you hear this from anyone who knows anything about leadership, but you’ll hear from me a lot is great leaders are great listeners. And that’s the first step. So for anyone who’s interested in leadership, you need to recognize that what I’m doing on this podcast right now is not what you should be doing as a leader. I’ve been doing a lot of talking. And as a leader, you should be doing a lot of listening. And if you listen to my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors, one of the things you might observe is that my guests do 95% of the talking, I get out of the way, I view myself as a point guard where I’m there to facilitate the action and put the ball in the right place.
And let the scores, put the ball in the hoop. And as a leader, you should have that same mindset. Your job should be to set up those around you to succeed, to facilitate success. And to do that, you have to really get to know those around you. You have to understand those around you. And that’s not going to happen by you speaking. That’s not going to happen by you, trying to prove yourself to the people on your team. And that’s kind of goes back to the original point that I made, which is you need to be comfortable in your own skin. You need to know who you are. And if you are out trying to prove yourself if you’re out trying to demonstrate that you’re the smartest person in the room.
You’re not a leader. And Firstly, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. And secondly, If you’re continually trying to prove something to your team, your team is never going to want to follow you. They’re never going to want to listen to you. So, at the end of the day as a leader, spend your time listening, rather than talking, because when you do talk, your words will have far greater impact. And they’ll be coming from a place where you will have observed and absorbed, the really important points that you need to ultimately make an impact.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And, you know, I think I’m kind of hearing you say that, you know, if you think you’re the smartest person in the room, stop proving yourself, it’s this whole idea of, you know, like, put your ego pocket at the door, come in with a little bit of humility. So I love that. And I think this is really important to write down everybody is Adam is saying, if you’re listening, you’re not talking. And then when you do speak, he says, Your words will have a greater impact. I absolutely love that. I think that’s so true. So Adam, I know that you get called by people to go into their organization and kind of take a look around and, and then you coach, you speak you do different things with these organizations? What what are some of the common mistakes that leaders make? That’s, it’s an easy fix, if they can just like remove the blind spot? And I’m imagining, that’s what you do when you go into these organizations, as you’re like, hey, look at this. So So what do you find? And and what are the fixes for those things?
Adam: Yeah, it’s a great question, Nicole. And a few things are things that we’ve kind of already touched upon. I think that oftentimes, a lot of leaders haven’t taken that first step, which is, and I will, I won’t even use the word leaders, I think oftentimes, a lot of managers, a lot of people who are put into managerial positions, haven’t taken that first step of getting on the journey of self discovery. They haven’t taken the necessary legwork, to become the kinds of leaders that their team is ultimately going to listen to my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors, the sub title, I guess, the secondary title of the podcast is leaders to listen to. And I got that actually from, I don’t want to offend any of your listeners, I don’t know if your listeners are Democrats or Republicans. So we won’t talk about politics.
But what I will say is that someone who ran a number of presidential campaigns who I know, I was telling him about the concept of the podcast, before I was starting it, and I was giving him the vision for it. And he’s a well known guy in the world of politics. And I told him about my vision for the show. And I said, it’s the name of the show is Thirty Minute Mentors. And these are the people I’m going to be bringing on, and this is what I’m doing. And he said, do podcasts have secondary names? And I say, well, I don’t I don’t think so. We said if they do, your secondary name should be leaders to listen to. And I said, interesting. So that’s that that’s leaders to listen to 30 minute mentors, leaders to listen to.
And why do I bring that up, because at the end of the day, you want to be a leader to listen to, and the leaders who I bring on to my podcast are leaders to listen to. And you have to ask yourself, am I going to be a manager who is in a managerial position, because some executive at the company promoted me into this role. And maybe I did a good job as a worker, and I excelled, filling out TPS reports, because I did that. I was now given this authority to manage people that doesn’t make you a leader. So I think all too often in organizations, we see that some of the fundamentals are missing. And that’s been a big observation for me.
And I enjoyed coming into organizations where I can go in and work with people who are in positions of authority, and give them the tools to become better and more effective leaders because at the end of the day, and Nicole is, you know, and as I’m sure anyone listening to this podcast knows, leadership is so important, not only because great leader enjoys greater success for themselves, but because greater leadership impacts every single person in impacted by your organization, every employee, every customer, every stakeholder, and we’ve all had bad bosses. Hopefully we’ve had some good bosses. And when you compare the experience of working for a bad boss to working for a good boss, you know just how important it is to have a great leader and that’s one of the reasons why I get so passionate about this topic and about this work.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s exciting. Yeah. So I think it’s important to to give the fundamentals to people, right, and one of my favorite fundamental to give to people is to set expectations, to let them know I’m going to hold you accountable, you know, just some basic communication things are really, really essential inside of organizations, and that’s what I find when I go in is we we need to talk to each other and do it more effectively. Right. So I love that do the fundamentals. Go ahead? I’m sorry.
Adam: Oh, no. I just agree with you completely. I think it’s so important to understand how to communicate effectively. And so many problems that we see in organizations and just in relationships in general, revolve around communication and a breakdown in communication and being able to resolve communication breakdowns is oftentimes a solution to solving problems that seem to be much larger than they really are.
Nicole: 100%. I agree. All right. Well, I know that there’s somebody listening to this podcast right now that, you know, maybe they’ve got their sights set on a leadership position, and they’re trying to move themselves toward it. Or we might have somebody who is actually in a leadership position, and they’re like, I am on the struggle bus. And I you know, since you are doing all about mentoring, put your mentoring hat on right now, Adam, and if you were mentoring a single special listener right now, what is the one final piece of leadership advice that you would give them like this would be what you would send them out at the end of your coaching session with them? What would you tell them?
Adam: Well, that’s a big question. And for someone trying to get to that next level, for someone trying to figure out how do I get into the C suite? How do I become the CEO of my company? I’m going to tell you a story, which is, from my interview, I did an interview with the CEO of Deloitte Consulting, he was one of the earliest guests on my podcast, Dan Helfrich. And I asked Dan, how did you become the CEO of Deloitte Consulting? What did you do that allowed you to become the CEO of this incredible organization?
And what he said to me was, I never tried to become CEO Deloitte Consulting, I never focused on becoming CEO of Deloitte Consulting, I focused on my job, I focused on being the best that I could be at my job. And I excelled at it, I excelled at what I did. And I let my work, continue to do the speaking for me. And that’s advice that I give to listeners, if you want to rise within your organization, continue to excel at your work. And I can tell you in my company, when people do great work, they get promoted. So let your work speak for you. For people who are what can you remind me the second group of listeners that you would address this question to?
Nicole: A gentleman who are a woman who is on the struggle bus. They’re like, I can’t seem to get it, right.
Adam: Yeah, so if you’re struggling with your organization, if you’re going through difficult times, I can tell you that we all struggle, we all scuffle, it doesn’t come easy to anyone. I think that one of the themes that listeners of my show really enjoy is that with many of the guests, and I would even say most of the guests, we really do deep dives around their struggles, their failures, and how they’ve bounced back from them. And one of the themes that has emerged from all these conversations with America’s most successful leaders is that it is through those struggles, it is through those hardships. It is through the very failures that so many of these great leaders have experienced, that have allowed them to become the great leaders that they’ve become.
So what I would tell you is not to be discouraged, not to be locked down, not to get knocked down. But to understand that no matter what you’re doing, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a leader, if you’re a baseball player, there are going to be tough days. You’re taking on something that is hard. If you wanted to do something that was easy. You wouldn’t be a leader. You wouldn’t be an entrepreneur, you wouldn’t be a baseball player, you would do something easy, right? So recognize that this is what comes with the role, but it is three through the tough times that you’re ultimately able to grow, that you’re ultimately able to improve, that you’re ultimately able to become a better leader.
Nicole: Fantastic. Yeah, I agree. It’s kind of like the hero’s journey, right? He’s got to have his struggle so that he can find the truth about what’s going on. And then he can persevere. So I absolutely adore that. And listen, everybody, Adam Mendler knows how to build a business. He’s got three cooking right now. Plus, he is a speaker and coach, Adam, tell everybody, you’ve mentioned your podcast several times. I don’t want them to miss it. So tell us your tell us your podcast again, where we can find it. And then also your website. And and we have enjoyed having you so much on the Vibrant Leadership Podcast. Thank you.
Adam: Nicole. Firstly, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the great questions. Thank you for the fun conversation. I have been on a lot of podcasts. But it’s rare to be on a podcast where it’s just focused on talking about leadership. This is so fun for me. I love doing this. So this is awesome. And thank you to everyone tuning in for, you know, having to listen to me. Again, if you listen to my podcast, the nice thing is you don’t have to listen to me you get to listen to my guests. So for anyone who’s interested, the podcast is called Thirty Minute Mentors. It’s all spelled out.
I go one on one with the most successful people in the country, Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, three and four star generals and admirals, celebrities and athletes who pretty much everyone knows. And you can find it on your favorite podcasting app. So whatever app you’re listening to this great podcast on you could also find it at thirtyminutementors.com that’s all spelled out. You can find me pretty easily. It’s just my name Adam Mendler. So you can go to AdamMendler.com there’s a lot of information about me and how to learn more about me and my speaking your you could find me on social media at Adam Mendler on Instagram on Twitter. And Nicole, just thank you again. And thank you so much for everyone tuning in.
Nicole: All right, thank you, everybody. And we will see you next time on The Vibrant Leadership podcast. Have a great rest of your day, Adam.
Adam: Thank you.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDTalk
