The Vision Architect

Episode 206 - Brad Lee
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[00:00:23] Simon Vetter: Welcome to the Vision Architect. I'm excited for another episode today. Uh, we have Brad Lee. Um, little background about Brad. He started his career in sales marketing in medical device, and then for 13 years, he was the CEO of Breg. It's a leader in orthopedics. And, um, so we're gonna talk a little bit about his experience as a CEO and then the last few years he moved into, uh, CEO coaching and, uh, advising CEOs.

And also he uses approach called Scaling Up, how to Help Companies Scale. So we'll address all those topics, uh, under the umbrella of how to create a compelling vision. Brad, welcome to the show.

[00:01:15] Brad Lee: Yeah. Well Simon, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

[00:01:19] Simon Vetter: So, um, let's dive into your role as a CEO. Um, now you coach CEOs, but when you were CEO, especially in your early. Days or early years, what do you wish you knew That what you know now?

[00:01:36] Brad Lee: yeah. There's so many things, Simon. it's interesting you were, I was noticing in some of the, uh, background information you sent me ahead of time. You were talking about catalyst to change and. That was a big catalyst of change for me was that I realized after 13 years in the role how much I didn't know the first day I stepped into the job and how valuable.

it is to understand and learn through that process.

So I was, uh. Very under prepared for, for my role, uh, as a CEO and I had a, you know, it's, it's interesting how these things stick with you. I, I, I can remember the smell in the room when my head of HR, about three months into the job, walked in and said, Brad, if you don't tell us where we're going, we're not gonna be here to support you.

You need to figure this out. And it was really the first wake up call I had about setting vision, about setting direction and helping people put themselves in a position to be able to connect with a higher purpose around the organization versus, um, not having that emotional attachment to, to what the company was doing.

So that was a very important thing for me, and as I went through that, that catalyzed. A massive learning curve for me. Um, and also was a big catalyst for me to transition into CEO coaching because I realized how critical it was for people to not just communicate what we need to do, but why we need to do it and why it's important to us as an organization.

So, yeah.

[00:03:18] Simon Vetter: Let's unpack that a little bit and at that question that your HR manager ask is, is really at the core, people wanna belong to an organization where they see a future. And it's not about what to do. It's not about the goals. It's, they're all important aspects, but it's how do you create that emotional connection where people have a sense of pride and commitment to the organization.

How did you learn to craft, communicate and articulate that vision, that future direction, where people started to engage?

[00:03:53] Brad Lee: Yeah. So, um, I was very fortunate. First of all, I was in the, the medical device space, so. There, there's a pretty compelling reason to be, if you're a medical device provider, you're, you're saving lives or certainly improving the quality of a patient's life and many times the caregiver's life, uh, as well.

So I was lucky that I started from that base, but I really did. I mean, to your point, Simon, I really didn't understand, you know, what framework or approach would help me really clarify not only. A purpose, but the purpose that really fit us as an organization and where we were and the capabilities we had or we could evolve into.

And so I actually leaned on a lot of the good to great dynamics from Jim Collins, and I'm sure you're very familiar with his work, but he talks about the hedgehog concept, what you're passionate about, what you can be best in the world at, and what's your economic engine. And so we spent a lot of time really.

Diving in as a senior leadership team and trying to be very candid and objective about, okay, what could we really be best in the world at? Um, not what do we want to be best in the world at? What actually do we have the capability to do? What are we passionate about? And so, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way as we, you know, fumbled through that process.

But that was the core of the, uh. Work that we did was to leverage that framework and the flywheel that Jim Collins uses to talk about perpetuating the momentum in the business. We use that a lot as well. But that was The start,

of my education around that and really understanding. And after that, I, of course.

Branched out into many other areas to, to try to learn more. But it was all self-education for me along the way, which is one of the things that I realized at the end of my tenure, like, why does it have to be that way? It doesn't have to be that way. Like, like there are plenty of people like you and others in the world that can support you and, and walk you through that process, which I wish I had had, you know, at the time.

But, uh, learned a lot going through that.

[00:05:56] Simon Vetter: What framework do you now use to help CEOs craft that path forward?

[00:06:02] Brad Lee: Yeah, I, so a lot of the work I do now, Simon, is with founder owners, and so a lot of the work I do now is really getting at the root of why did you start this company? Like what is behind that? Because I think, you know, particularly many, many founder led businesses, they start with a passion. They start with a perspective of something they're trying to change and make better in the world, and they lose sight of that.

Over time and it becomes more about the daily grind and the the annual objectives that need to be hit. So I spend time with founders. Let's, go back and explore what, what happened?

what Put you in a position to take the risk you did, to take a second mortgage out on your house, to do whatever you did to put yourself in a position to create this company and get where you are today.

And let's package that up. So you can tell that story very, very effectively to the others in the organization. And what I also find, Simon, is that, um, there's kind of a tough reality that that hits at that point. There's some people in the organization that are not aligned and there are a lot of people that are right.

And so, um, I run into, you know, some reaction from the leadership team like, well, we don't want to do that. Some people might leave. My reaction to that is

[00:07:25] Simon Vetter: That's good.

[00:07:26] Brad Lee: not a good. it's probably not a good fit.

[00:07:28] Simon Vetter: And sometimes we cater to the people who are misaligned too much.

[00:07:33] Brad Lee: Exactly, exactly. And so being definitive and clear on that purpose, and, and I, I, I've also found that, you know, over time what the, the driving force or the emotional drive to found the company may have evolved a little, but it, at, at the core, a lot of that is still in place.

[00:07:52] Simon Vetter: Yep.

[00:07:53] Brad Lee: And so that's where I, I do most of my work now.

And then in the other, in other organizations where it's not founder led, I really spend time focusing on the hedgehog stuff with the organizations that I work with. Like, what, what are you guys really passionate about? And let's get off of your wishlist and let's get onto reality. And what really, why do you wake up every morning and come in here, um, to do what you do, you

[00:08:18] Simon Vetter: It's interesting you said, uh, about, uh, alignment. I work a lot with, uh, teams and companies who go through transition and then the, the leadership team or the, the CEO or the, the leader kind of sets the new direction and what happens 80, 90, 90 5% want and welcome that new direction. And there are people who are not.

Getting on the bus and they self-select themselves and move off the bus, which is a good thing.

[00:08:49] Brad Lee: It's a great thing. It's a great thing because they are slowing you down or creating friction in the organization and without you setting that new direction. I, I always refer to it, you know, it's like melting the snow and you see the stumps. Well, that, that's what that does. You can, you melts the snow and now you can see the things that are going to get in your way from gaining the momentum and reducing the friction and drama that you have in the business.

[00:09:13] Simon Vetter: Yeah. Let's, uh, talk a little bit about the emotional commitment, uh, and then give, give people a sense of purpose and motivation.

[00:09:22] Brad Lee: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:23] Simon Vetter: How did you tell the story? How do you create a story for people to feel like, I wanna be part of this journey, I wanna be part of this company.

[00:09:33] Brad Lee: Yeah. So, um, when, when we, it, it probably took us, Simon, 18 months to two years. To really, and, and, and we were always clarifying kind of, you know, not only the vision and the purpose of the organization, but what that meant to us on a daily basis. But after about two years, we had a pretty good sense for it.

And then. We really looked around at the storytelling opportunities that existed to support the impact we were having on achieving our vision and having an impact on the, the purpose that we were really trying to achieve. And so we had monthly all hands meetings and we would bring stories into those meetings to help people see the connection.

This is what you're doing on the manufacturing line, or this is what you're doing. On the customer care team, or this is what you're doing in the finance team and here's what we did. Here's the impact we had relative to what we said we wanted to do in the market. And our, our real focus was simplifying and elevating the or the orthopedic patient episode.

Let's take as much friction out of that as we can, and let's bring as much joy and satisfaction to not only the patient but the caregiver. And you would hear stories about physicians partnering with us and talking about how much easier it was to service and support their patients in the clinic as a result of the products and services we had put in place and the people we had hired.

And so it was really the storytelling to reinforce. That we were making progress against what we were doing. And by the way, we identified some things that could put us in a position to do it even better. Um, and so we told those stories as well, like, here's, here's where we fell short on simplifying the orthopedic episode, and what can we do now to put ourselves in a position to do a better job there?

[00:11:27] Simon Vetter: Yeah. Yeah. What do you enjoy most about being a CEO and what was most annoying or most difficult?

[00:11:35] Brad Lee: That was a good question. Um, so what I loved about being a CEO the most was being surrounded by really talented, capable folks who pushed me to be a better version of myself and had this kind of endless passion about what we were doing for the business. And they, that wasn't always the case. Like on my team, I didn't always have.

The alignment. Uh, of course we did as good a job as we felt we needed to, to select the right people, but we missed sometimes and we didn't always get that right. And so, um, but when, uh, over time when that team evolved and I was working with that caliber of individual, it really didn't matter to me what we were gonna be working on.

It was being with that team and being in a high performance environment that was just phenomenal. Um, what did I dislike the most about it? Um, think. uh, I'm more of a visionary than I am an operator or an integrator, so I definitely have a lot more passion around the strategic elements of the business and the vision and purpose elements of the business, and getting into the grind of the financial management and the operational management.

Um, it's all necessary and I did it and it was my least favorite part as well. Yeah.

[00:13:06] Simon Vetter: I think this, this. High performance environment is, uh, absolutely a, a key success factor, and especially when the team is aligned and unified around a calm direction, uh, around, we call it a vision. And because if you have two visions, it's becomes a division and it becomes misalignment. And so it's like how do you get the team running in the same direction?

We all run fast, but we don't run in the same direction. becomes

[00:13:38] Brad Lee: very hard.

[00:13:39] Simon Vetter: conflict loaded. And so do you have any, any advice or any, any tools that helped you bring that team together?

[00:13:49] Brad Lee: Yeah, it's a great question. I think the, and this is something I learned over time through the school of hard knocks, is that the, the frequency with which you. Remind yourself and keep the overarching purpose and vision of the company in front of yourself and measure your activities against that outcome.

And are they having the impact that you think, you know? Things change. You set your strategy, you set your vision, and so many times that's not revisited frequently enough, and your execution starts to drift away from your strategy and purpose because things happen and you have competitive threats. You have environmental threats, you have things changing in the market that you're reacting to because they're all probably good decisions, and slowly but surely, you become misaligned. what? What you were trying to do. You know, a good example for us is we were not the low price player in the market. Well, a big competitor comes in and lowers their price and you're gonna lose a big customer, and then all of a sudden you're off chasing that and realizing that, you know what, that's probably not the right customer for us.

And going back. And so I. I was talking earlier about our all hands meeting. We just reviewed that every single month in the meeting, we would bring back to, here's where we're headed, here's why we said we were gonna do that. Here's what we started the year out doing. Here's how it relates or doesn't.

Here's what we've changed. There were many times we would get in that meeting and say, you know what? We thought this was gonna be the way we would impact it, but we need to change because we've got new information and things change. I think that's one of the. One of the most challenging things for leaders is to balance the diligence with flexibility and being able to understand now is the right time to stay the course, now is the right time to change course and the the really strong leadership teams.

Drive themselves to do that. And that helps you stay aligned with the purpose and helps you be in a position to do a better job of supporting that. So that frequent interaction, we did it monthly with the entire company, and then as a leadership team, we would do it once a quarter separately and spend three or four hours making sure we had connected the activities to what we were trying to accomplish.

[00:16:15] Simon Vetter: Yeah. Now, um. The role of A CEO, you have to work with a lot of different stakeholders, of course, your management team, the employees, and then with the, you were a, a backed, um, VC backed company, and then you have customers, you had patients, you have surgeons, you have hospital, hospital systems. How did you.

Balance and how do you work with the expectations of all those different stakeholder groups?

[00:16:51] Brad Lee: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. I think one of, one of the tools we used, Simon, is that there, there's a framework we use called, called the balance scorecard, which really has you focus on. The things that are needed to do to support all those elements of your business, your investors, your customers, your employees, and making sure that those key stakeholders are routinely, um. Considered and part of what you're doing, and I think the, the answer to the question is, we picked the biggest gap to desired performance at any given time. Sometimes it was investor, sometimes it was customer, but we. We worked really hard to say this is what good customer interactions and satisfaction look like.

This is what good employee satisfaction looks like. This is what good investor satisfaction looks like. And again, we monitored it every single month so that we knew. We've got a drift here on our customer satisfaction. We need to over invest in that area right now. And then four months later it may have shifted to investor and or it may have stayed at the customer.

So I think getting super clear on what success looks like with those stakeholders first. And then being able to balance that against the other things going on in the organization to make sure that one's not overweighted or underweighted in, in the focus that you have.

[00:18:26] Simon Vetter: Now you are a CEO coach. You work a lot of CEOs. Um. What do you see are some of the key challenges, the biggest questions they come to you for?

[00:18:41] Brad Lee: Yeah, I, I, I'm working with a lot of organizations, Simon, that are like I I mentioned earlier, they are founder led and there's a lot of generational transition or next, either family generation or generational leaders. And what I'm finding is that so many leaders, and I wasn't a founder, but the same thing applied to me.

Feel like your number one job is to solve problems and to be a key element for the success of the business, and actually that's not your job. Your job is to create the capabilities that are necessary to problem solve and make decisions inside the organization. And reduce as much as you can. You'll need to be involved in that.

And so that's what I see as one of the biggest challenge was with the CEOs I work with because they got where they are, because they're very good.

[00:19:38] Simon Vetter: Yep.

[00:19:38] Brad Lee: what they do, they're very good at what they do, and it's highly likely nobody in the business is as good as they are at the things that they're good at.

And that is a very difficult thing for somebody to release and to transition the accountability and responsibility to others in the organization. That's one of the biggest challenges I have. The second one is related to that, which is when they do do that, there's not enough. Support and accountability established with the recipient of that responsibility, you know, and that outcome.

Um, because they're very good at it. They just assume somebody else can be very good at it. What they don't know is they have a superpower and. Not everybody has that. So you don't just walk onto the field as a super athlete, a lot of times you have to train and you have to have the support. And I see the lack of that at the necessary level for the recipient of this new, um, responsibility, which is, it's on the leader to, to provide them with that and get them prepared or.

Find the right person to do it because sometimes you pick the wrong person. Um, and, and being very clear about, about who that is. So those are the two things I, I spend a lot of time on with, uh, with CEOs.

[00:20:58] Simon Vetter: one of the concepts I use with leaders is there are three timeframes you gotta deliver and perform in the now you gotta plan the next and you have to create the new. To your point, most people are in performing the now problem solving, task management, focusing on this and that you do some poor performing the next budgeting and planning and resource allocation, but most time they don't spend enough on creating the new, who is the successor?

How do we develop talent and capabilities to be competitive in 2, 3, 5 years? What systems and operations do we need to start? Building now. And so it's like that short term focus gets in a way, and I think leaders need to have more that long-term perspective. But again, the longer you go out, the less uncertain it is.

And so it's like what advice do you have for A CEO who gets caught up in that short term mode?

[00:22:03] Brad Lee: So it, you know what's interesting about it to me, Simon, is it's hard for a CEO to see the risk of doing what you're talking about until they make a big mistake. And so sometimes it is helping somebody get to the mistake fast. So that they really see the impact of not doing a good job here. Um, so sometimes, and, and other times there are open-minded leaders who understand that.

I think, again, the discipline that you have to frequently put that topic on the agenda. We talked earlier about balancing investors and customers and employees. I think there's an equally important discussion on balancing short and long-term planning. Right, and, and, and execution. And I think the thing that sometimes sits with leaders that that's difficult is when you sit down and you put your three year plan together.

I think anything longer than three years is kind of silly because too much changes, but let's, and even three years is the long time and something changes that makes your three-year plan not the right plan. Don't be so upset about changing direction. It's, it's what we were talking about earlier, about the diligence versus the flexibility.

And don't be worried by that. It's not that you made a bad decision, you made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time. Guess what? Things have changed, and that's just life. That's just the way things happen. And so. Giving yourself the grace and the flexibility to change what you're doing, I think helps people get more comfortable with the long range planning.

Know that they're not locking themselves into anything, or they're not gonna make any investments. That won't be valuable later, but it, it puts you in a position where you're constantly thinking about that and seeing what needs to come up for you.

[00:23:58] Simon Vetter: I have a technology client, um, and the technology changes so fast and rapid and it's really hard to predict and say, Hey, where we're going with, with this technology. And so my philosophy is the next best thing is how do we create a team environment? How do we create a culture, how we communicate, hold each other accountable?

How do we. Challenge each other. How do we listen to each other and create a way of helping people understand how we work together?

[00:24:31] Brad Lee: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:33] Simon Vetter: And because that prepares the team to make decisions when decisions are due, which could be very short term. And so how, what do you see is. Your approach to creating that culture, that team environment, and, and establishing values people

[00:24:55] Brad Lee: Oh yeah. Yeah. You might be sorry you asked me that question, Simon. It is something I'm very passionate about. Um. So I learned a lesson. You, you know, you're talking, we were talking earlier about stories. I learned a lesson, um, about halfway through my career. I was with an organization, I'll tell a real brief story.

And we had been purchased by a venture capital firm, uh, heavy, heavy debt load. And the company started to, uh, falter, uh, very close to bankruptcy. And the CEO was a turnaround guy. He came in to turn the company around and I remember I was in a staff meeting. I worked for him at the time. I was in a staff meeting.

He goes, I don't know what to do. He said, I've pulled out every trick in my bag of tricks and I have not been able to turn this organization around. He said, I was talking to some colleagues of mine and they talked about how the. The importance of getting the team aligned and getting the friction out of the interactions with a team and how powerful that had been for them.

He had never really put any weight behind that element of a company's success, so he leaned into it very hard. For 18 months. Long story short, uh, the company sold, it was about 55 cents a share at that time, sold for in the mid $20 range per share. So a massive increase in value. And what that showed me, Simon, was the point you just made, that if you take the friction and out of the system as much as you can and you.

Put an environment in place that allows you to leverage the collective capabilities and insight of the team. It has massively powerful impacts. And so from that point forward, anytime I had the opportunity to influence the way people think and act together, I spent a lot of time doing that. It was, it was a major, major component of.

What I spent my time on as a leader at Breg, we called it the culture of accountability. And we talked about here are the four to six ways that we are going to think and act together as a team. Some people call 'em values, we call 'em cultural beliefs. Some people call 'em operating norms. and we did something very similar to what we did with our mission and purpose.

And vision for the company is we told a lot of stories about people doing a great job supporting the way we're gonna think and act together or not doing a great job. And we, we used those to hire, to performance, manage, to fire, and they became a very, um, bonding and cohesive. Foundation for the organization.

And it was easy to tell when somebody wasn't aligned with the way we said we were gonna work together. And everybody's way of working together is different. The CEO's different, the management seems different, everything's different. And it doesn't really matter what those specific four, four to six things are.

It just matters that you have 'em then, and then you have and select, uh, groups of people who can support those operating norms.

[00:28:16] Simon Vetter: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I think the values or operating norms, when you look at companies, 80, 90%, it's always the same. Integrity, respect, quality, performance, and I think the fact that you define them, and I like four, five, max, because people have to remember those if they don't remember them.

[00:28:39] Brad Lee: They're useless. They're, they're, they're totally useless. Yeah. And to, to your, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

[00:28:45] Simon Vetter: and to your point, use them for hiring. Use them for performance management. Use them for And you established a, a culture that people know how to behave and act with each other. And the other thing is. It defines what's acceptable in that culture and what's not acceptable

[00:29:07] Brad Lee: Right.

[00:29:08] Simon Vetter: and not acceptable.

Behaviors are dysfunctional behaviors. That's the behaviors that create that tension and sucks a lot of energy out of the organization and is distracting.

Yeah.

[00:29:20] Brad Lee: and, and right and, and to, to the point you were making. If you don't define what those are, nobody knows if they're adhering to 'em or not. They, they don't know. And, and so it's not fair to the organization to leave it up to them to operate the way that they see fit. Um, and so it's, it's super important, I think to, to have 'em for sure.

The point you made earlier about integrity and quality and excellence. To me, those are throwaway words because they're, they're way too common and the, the interpretation of what excellence means in company A and what it means in company B are totally different. So. Be responsible and take the next step and define what excellence here looks like and call it something else.

Call it what it really is, you know, amazing customer experience. That's what excellence is here, right? And so that's, that's to me. Very important to get away from the platitudes and the hanging on the wall. And if you're not talking about it, at most every meeting in the organization, we used to, we had, uh, an approach we would take, we would start a meeting and the first thing we would say is, okay, who has a story to tell about one of our cultural beliefs?

And can tell us how somebody supported it or where we, wow. We found ourselves challenged. We weren't able to do what we thought as well as we thought we could. And so it was really challenging for us, or it was super clear what I needed to do because we had those in place, you know, and so that that level of discipline, and that's hard.

It's really hard because everybody is busy and they think that there's not enough time to invest that way. It saves so much time, it's, it's more than pays off.

[00:31:11] Simon Vetter: and I like the, the specificity of the story. It makes

it applicable, it makes it relevant. again, using a, a, a value. I always, when I work with a a team, I say, okay, good. You have this value, integrity, or innovation. What are four or five behaviors?

[00:31:29] Brad Lee: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[00:31:30] Simon Vetter: demonstrates this value on a daily basis. So I gotta get people to think.

And one of the values of, of a client, they are, they have accountability and competitiveness. It's a, a sales organization and they say we compete against our competitors, not among each other.

[00:31:51] Brad Lee: Oh, right.

[00:31:52] Simon Vetter: I see that often people who get promoted, they start to compete with their colleagues or peers, and it creates, again, it sucks out, uh, energy and it creates misalignment.

It's like we don't have to compete against each other. We have to compete against our competitors. And that mindset sometime is, is just

like, gets people in a way that those behaviors, yeah.

[00:32:18] Brad Lee: Yep. And, and to your point, you can go back and hire fire and performance manage against that dynamic.

[00:32:23] Simon Vetter: Yep.

Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:32:26] Brad Lee: Yeah,

[00:32:26] Simon Vetter: So, um, what's next for you? I mean, you are now, uh, working with, um, all these companies and what's your vision for the next few years? Where do you wanna make a positive

impact?

[00:32:39] Brad Lee: yeah, so, so I started this business, Simon, with the real desire to help leadership teams. Succeed in their, their professional experiences and their business experiences and be able to balance the other elements of their life. I had a very, very challenging experience late in my career. Um, when, when we experienced the pandemic, our company lost 65% of its revenue in the first three months when the pandemic hit.

Uh, I thought we were gonna have to declare bankruptcy. It was a very, very challenging time for me, and I came out of that on the other side. Um, and one of the major reasons I left my job is it was just not putting me in a position to have the holistic elements of my life balanced and in in place. And so one of the key reasons I went into doing what I'm doing is to partner with leaders.

And help them achieve that. It's absolutely achievable. You can absolutely have a phenomenal professional, family, partner, friend, and spiritual life. You can have all that. And so you asked me what's next for me is, is spending time making sure I'm continuing to support leaders to do that. And I focus on taking the friction and drama out of the business because that's usually.

Where the leaders I work with, they default and ignore the other elements of their life because they've got all that. So if I can reduce the friction and drama in the business environment, they now have time and energy to spend in the other elements of their

[00:34:18] Simon Vetter: I agree. You can have it, you can have a, a personal, professional, emotionally satisfying life, but again, it's not easy.

[00:34:29] Brad Lee: It is not easy.

[00:34:30] Simon Vetter: What is the one or two key success elements that. Makes that happen and reduces the risk of derailing.

[00:34:42] Brad Lee: Yeah. Uh, so I'm gonna sound like a broken record here. Simon. Simon. It's the same. What does success in my partner relationship look like? What does success in my friend relationships look? What does the success in my family? What does success for my professional? What do those look like? And keep 'em in front of you.

Just keep 'em in front of you. And you know, we talked earlier about balancing investor and customer and an employee. You balance those five elements and you're constantly looking at them. Say, okay, this is out of balance right now. I need to make sure I'm having dinner with my family one night a week, and I'm leaving work at four 30 if I have to do that and have the discipline to make that happen, you know?

[00:35:26] Simon Vetter: What I see, especially in in bigger companies, people are really good strategizing. For their product, for their department, for their organization. And then I start to talk about, okay. How do you strategize your life, your relationships, your family, your

balancing, and it's, I don't do that.

[00:35:48] Brad Lee: right.

[00:35:49] Simon Vetter: then they wonder because there are, like they have issues at home or they're overweight or it's just all those things are not taken care of to your point, because you're not putting enough emphasis on those elements.

Yep.

[00:36:03] Brad Lee: Yeah. As I'm sitting here staring at you into my camera, sitting above you. Are the five things in my life that are important to me

and they stay. So mine is I have personal, family, friends, partner and work, and I have specific targets under each of those. My objective for, I'll just read you. Um, my objective for personal is engage in self-loving activities.

And I have a list of the things that are important to me for my family. Uh, here's my objective and around time for my friends. These are the people I'm gonna get really close to. These are the people that I want in the peripheral friend group. So I've gone through and specifically have those and I keep 'em right over my computer screen because it's just that important to me to keep those elements in

play.

[00:36:54] Simon Vetter: I got the same. I have, uh, a vision board with pictures. I have health wellbeing. I pictures what success looks like. How do I wanna, like, one of them is having a handstand. I wanna be able to do a handstand because

[00:37:08] Brad Lee: That's

[00:37:08] Simon Vetter: if I can do that,

like, uh. I know I'm gonna be fit.

[00:37:14] Brad Lee: Right.

[00:37:15] Simon Vetter: I have relationship, romance, friends, family, social life, and then hobbies and adventure.

And then I have business, uh, my brand and what I do. And, and so I got those pictures just like you. And I look at it every day and say, okay, good. How do I organize my day today? How do I organize my week today to make sure in those all areas and, um, all of those areas I evaluate one to 10 how I'm doing at least every three months, and my definition of success, successes, and eight in all of those areas.

[00:37:53] Brad Lee: And, and again, like you said, like we were talking about earlier, if something's a six, you know, you've gotta overweight your investment in that right now,

[00:38:01] Simon Vetter: Yep. And then what do I do differently and where do I make some changes? What do I emphasize here? Yeah,

[00:38:07] Brad Lee: Yeah, I, I had, I had it happen to me today. I had a friend of mine that I don't see very often, lives on the east coast. He's in town. He said, Hey, I forgot to tell you I'm in town and I wanted to see if we could get together. I said, I can't. I'm having dinner with my daughter. And that is the trait. Those are the things that you have to do to put yourself in a position.

And without that sitting in front of me, I probably would've said, sure, Scott, let's, you know, let's get together and, um, and tell my daughter I could do it later. But that's, that's the trade off you make.

[00:38:37] Simon Vetter: Good for you.

[00:38:38] Brad Lee: Yeah.

[00:38:39] Simon Vetter: If you had to give one advice to a very busy, overwhelmed leader, what would you suggest he could start doing next week to get his life in order?

[00:38:52] Brad Lee: to me, the, the, it's, it's fairly easy, which is most leaders that I interface with, and I certainly was this way, lack the level of vulnerability they need to exhibit. To leverage the people around them, that care about them and wanna support them in being successful. They try to do too much for themselves and don't allow their ego to take a backseat.

Show their vulnerability. Leverage your partner, leverage your family. Leverage your management team. Leverage your friends. That is the one thing I would say, and I can, I work on it all the time. I do a poor job of it routinely, and I find myself trying to get better. But that is the one thing I would say people can do for themselves is to realize most people in your life are trying to help you succeed.

Let 'em,

[00:39:43] Simon Vetter: Yep.

[00:39:44] Brad Lee: let 'em help you.

[00:39:45] Simon Vetter: Wonderful. Yeah, I always say if we sincerely ask for help, people are willing to help, but it has to come from from the heart. It has to be genuine because people wanna help, but we as leaders get it ask and elicit.

[00:40:03] Brad Lee: Yeah.

[00:40:04] Simon Vetter: Awesome. This has been a great conversation. Uh, before we finish anything else, uh, where can we find you?

LinkedIn or.

[00:40:12] Brad Lee: Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, um, Brad Lee, uh, scaling up and my, um, scaling up certified coach. And my business is Clarus Leadership Partners. Um, and so if I can help anybody, you know, clarify any of the things we've talked about today or support them and putting them in a position to have a more enjoyable professional and personal experience, I'd love to help.

[00:40:35] Simon Vetter: Thank you, Brad, for your insights, your wisdom, your tips. Good to see you.

[00:40:41] Brad Lee: Yeah. Good to see you too. Thanks.