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127. Driving Business Success Through People-First Leadership with Brent Pohlman


Who has time for reflection in today's economy? Isn't the best mode of working these days to put your head down and don't look up until the work's done? Who has time to worry about that stuff like values, your personal why and getting to know the people on your teams?


Well, our guest today, Brent Pohlman is living proof that putting time and energy into knowing your why, defining core values, and putting people first does not slow a business down. As CEO of Midwest Laboratories he's seen his company grow from 120 to 274 employees and they've set total revenue records every year for the last four years.

He's recently chronicled his journey to transforming himself and his company in the book Leaders Look Within. So that you don't have to wait until your fifties, like he said he did, to unlock your leadership potential and achieve the resulting positive business impact, he came on to share some practical tips with you.


In this conversation, we talk about:

  • Moving from reactive to relational leadership

  • How commitment to continual personal growth serves as an investment in molding formidable leadership

  • How to construct cohesive, value-based teams wired with trust


Resources:



About Brent Pohlman:

Dr. Juana Bordas headshot
Brent Pohlman

Brent Pohlman, owner and CEO of Midwest Laboratories, strives to bring his A-game daily. He has been CEO of Midwest Laboratories since 2016 and is passionate about teaching others to lead effectively. As a person of faith, he coaches people up, leads from the heart, and has achieved success by focusing on people, processes, and technology—in that order. Brent holds an MBA in human resources and has been a requested speaker to several Omaha area organizations.










Transcript


While it's not perfect, we offer this transcription by Capsho for those who prefer to read or who are hearing impaired.


00:00:00 - Teri Schmidt Welcome Brent to Stronger to Serve. I am excited to have you on today, and I look forward to our conversation.

00:00:07 - Brent Pohlman Thank you, Teri, for inviting me on. And no, I'm excited to be here, and I can't wait to get started here.

00:00:13 - Teri Schmidt Yeah, definitely. Well, let's jump right in then. I'd love for you to tell our audience a little bit about who you are, what you do, how you lead today, and your journey to get there.

00:00:26 - Brent Pohlman Sure. So my name is Brent Pohlman. I'm CEO at Midwest Laboratories. I've been at Midwest Laboratories since 2005. And my journey, really, from the professional career, I started out as a high school teacher for five years, and that was, again, working with students. That was really amazing. But at that same time, I always knew that I was going to teach and get into business. So I pursued my MBA, graduate with my MBA, and then I went to companies like Mutual of Omaha on the corporate side, HDR, which is an architectural engineering firm, and Arthur Anderson and I worked there just briefly, too, for two to three years as a consultant. And then after those jobs, my dad gave me the opportunity to come back to work when I graduated from college. That was not an option. He said I needed to go out into the real world and work before I came back. And so I came back to Midwest Laboratories. I had worked there through high school and college and summers and time off from school. But now I was really coming back in 2005, I was in marketing, and I worked in marketing from 2005 to 2016, where my dad and his two partners his two partners retired. And so it was my dad and I for about five years. And then in 2020, in the midst of COVID he had some health issues, and he was at home. He decided to retire at the age of 80. So it was really at that time that I think I saw that leadership was going to be the key to success here. And through that process, I learned a ton over the last five years working with my dad and then taking over. Ultimately. There's just been so many life lessons through that process, and that was really the reason for the book. I thought it's really important when we get to these positions that how do we become effective as leaders? And so that's kind of how I wrote the book, all the stuff that I had to go through in order to get to this place where I'm at and I'm still learning today. So that's briefly kind of where I'm at and how I got here, and we can talk again some more about the book.

00:02:35 - Teri Schmidt Of course. I'd love to. Well, you kind of already answered one of my questions. I'd love to ask authors in particular. What motivated you to write the book? Was there a particular life event or was it something that was kind of brewing for a long time and you finally got down to doing it? What spurred that on?

00:02:54 - Brent Pohlman In the midst of all this change, I ran into a person Julie brought who from Book launchers. And she started this company. She told me your story about how she had published a book and that how her rights were taken away from her. And she started this self publishing company, book launchers. And I thought I should really look into that. And she told me that I could use a ghostwriter, that I didn't have to write it, because I think that's what was holding me back is I can write stuff, but how do I organize my thoughts in such a way that tells a story? And so the cool story about that was I started that process and then I worked with a ghostwriter who really organized my thoughts, pulled things out and after the first year I got all the way done. They encouraged that you should not have anybody read it till it's in its final draft. Then I had my wife Michelle read it and she said this isn't you. And I looked at pretty hard but she was right, she was absolutely right, it wasn't me. So I spent the next year going back and I rewrote every chapter in there and I personalized and owned it and that was probably the biggest step for me and really understanding myself and what I was writing and what message I wanted to get across. I will tell you too, that first part did not first time I wrote it, I went back and forth whether to have a faith component or not. As I wrote it, I said the faith component is part of my life, I have to put that and I think it really did come alive. And then of course, I had my wife Michelle read it again and she said oh yeah, this is definitely you. So it was huge going through that process. Probably the first year was more probably on just getting help myself to that and then second part was taking all this information to move forward.

00:04:50 - Teri Schmidt I'm glad it ended up with you writing it. Not to put any shade or anything on the Ghost Writer, but particularly with the title of your book being Leaders Look Within and then how being CEO of yourself is essential to leading Others, I think it's critical that you had to look within and it really is truly you. You didn't keep the faith component out because it was so critical to your journey and it really is sharing your expertise and there are some just wonderful practical nuggets of leadership advice in your story and it makes it more memorable because it's part of your story as well.

00:05:35 - Brent Pohlman Thank you. No, that's really the message I really want to get out there, that leadership is really personal and each person has their own story and uniqueness about their leadership style.

00:05:45 - Teri Schmidt Definitely. Well, speaking of that, you talk in the book and you said, and I quote, it's never too late to transform yourself as a leader. It took me until my fifty s to recognize the type of leader I wanted to be and to unlock my potential, to unlock the leader within. All I had to do was listen to my heart. I'm curious because many of our listeners are new leaders. What would you say the most important steps are for them in order to be able to unlock their leadership potential?

00:06:21 - Brent Pohlman I think we go our whole lives, at least in my case, professionally. I worked so many hours. I thought the only way you moved up the corporate ladder was to put more time in than anybody else, work harder than anybody else, meet the deadlines, drive, drive. I would work 1012 hours, days, come home and still be thinking about work. I couldn't let it go. And I think what happened during this transformation was I'll never forget that. It was a conversation actually. Our flight was canceled and myself and another person where we took an Uber from Austin to Dallas and that's about three and a half hours. She kept asking me what's your why? And I couldn't answer. I could not answer because all these years I really didn't have a true why. I think in that process, I think I just realized that I didn't know why I was getting up every day. I didn't know what was driving me. I think it was just more like, again, career aspirations or I'm going to meet this certain dollar amount, or it's about this number or this many clients. But I never took anything to heart. I rationalized everything. And I think that was the key for me was I probably analyzed and overanalyzed so much so that I was forgetting who I was basically. And I was doing things for everybody else, but I had no idea who I was inside. And so you have to really take that time to really find what's in your heart. And I worked with coaches to do that after that, but it was really critical. And today, I mean absolutely without hesitation, I say I'm a person of faith who coaches people up and leads from the heart. And that's my why and that's my how and I just stick with that. And when that finally came together, that was so powerful and I live it and breathe it every single day. I want to bring my A game every single day. And it just changes you again. It is the key to be an effective leader. I believe so. That's a great question. Absolutely.

00:08:27 - Teri Schmidt I love that. Our leadership development model at stronger to serve is ground. Grow and then give. And the grounding is all about what you just said, knowing what your strengths are, what your values are, what your why is so that you can then have with that clarity, develop confidence in the leadership skills that you need to drive those business results like you were talking about.

00:08:50 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, it is. It was probably the most important thing to unlocking my heart, as you asked in that question.

00:08:55 - Teri Schmidt And I'm curious because I think the tendency is to keep going, hitting the next objective, the next goal, getting the next metric to where it needs to be. When you changed your perspective and focused on your why and were really aware of that, did all the other stuff just go away? Or how did those two work together? How did knowing your why help you to better drive business results?

00:09:26 - Brent Pohlman Yeah. And so I think I call it my intentionality. My intention really changed when I really discovered who that was. That's who I wanted to be. And your daily routine changes. And it really started out that intentionality was in faith. And when I lost my mom to cancer, she was a lady of prayer, and she had prayer journals. She prayed for her friends and family. And so I remember praying that I wanted to be more intentional about my faith. And I had no idea what I was asking for. I just did those words. But then through that, I got more, as you say, grounded in faith and grew in faith to the point that on her birthday, this really did happen. On her birthday, I was with my dad. I didn't want him to be alone. And we walked into this coffee shop, and on this chalkboard are the words, how can we pray for you? And I looked at my dad and I said, I think Mom's trying to tell us something here. And we need to incorporate this at our company. And so if you walk into our main entrance of our building, we have a prayer wall on the side that vendors, clients, customers can go to and write any type of petition, request any need. And that's, again, where that came from the heart. That's not something that you think about, that's not something you analyze or you get out of a book that's really, truly from the heart. And it's just things like that. Your mind just really idea is more open, and you just see the awareness builds. And I think that's where it is in your building, awareness. You just see to the point where I think you can I used to laugh with people who said they can feel the energy in the room. I could truly feel the energy in the room. I think it's that powerful and so needed today from leaders.

00:11:14 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. And when you were able to gain that awareness and kind of feel the energy in the room, what did that do for the performance of your employees or the performance of your teams?

00:11:29 - Brent Pohlman No, I did not realize I had one of my biggest changes was I brought my A game every single day when I would bring in and people would see how that I was either disgusted or deep thought. I'm a deep thinker, a processor. They'd see me, they'd get really nervous. Today I'm intentional about the way I come in and make sure that it's a positive reinforcing, coaching up type of atmosphere because people will see it right away and the energy you leave or give off, it's powerful. I did not realize the power in that people want to be connected to good people. Only been thinking during COVID when we were all wearing masks and I'll never forget we were like quarantined. We couldn't go another. We really tried to separate people out, all the social distancing. But when those were starting to lift and I started to walk through all our 14 buildings on campus here people would gravitate towards you because they knew they saw in my messages. But this is the first time they could actually interact face to face. And the power in that it is it's big. It is, yeah.

00:12:39 - Teri Schmidt When you're showing up as I mean, I'm sure you probably always wanted to show up in a way that would make people feel comfortable and you wanted to feel approachable, but maybe you didn't have that awareness that that wasn't how you were showing up.

00:12:52 - Brent Pohlman There's a big joke around when I'm in a meeting and somebody says something, I call it uncomfortable. I will take a huge deep breath and then people around me will even just they'll comment, they'll just say, Are you okay? And before that, I would be totally reactive if someone something that like I don't know, we should give everyone a 20% salary increase. I may have come include depending on what was no way I would have said something to that effect. But today if somebody says that, I'd probably go I do. I just take this big deep breath and then I think about what I'm going to say. And again, it's part of that awareness and it's part of really just understanding certain things that maybe trigger yourself and it used to be a lot of things that used to trigger me. Not as much. I mean, there's still some things but when you just take a step back and not I really talk about going from reactive to more relational. And when you take a step back and think about how you're going to say something and the reaction you're going to get, you choose you have a choice which way you want to go. And I really think that's huge. So it's helped these so many ways.

00:14:07 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. And I can imagine that people who are in that meeting with you are probably more likely now to present ideas that maybe they were a little bit fearful to present them with you before.

00:14:22 - Brent Pohlman And I still have to work on it. That's the other thing too, depending on and we haven't talked about it much, but on the physical side. I mean, you got to take care of yourself. You got to get enough sleep. You got to get enough rest. You got to do those things that really because they do have an impact on your energy. If my energy, I use my Whoop and track my HRV. If it's low, then I know I need to really just kind of watch what I say so I don't become reactive. And it's really helped me. Again, there's good signs and metrics in that. Or if I did get good sleep last night or something like that, I've just really found the value in those pieces.

00:15:00 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. And for those who don't know that's heart rate variability. Correct. I love the use of data to help inform kind of how you're going to prepare yourself. Like you said, showing up with your A game, if you know that your energy is low, showing up with your A game may look a little bit different. It may look just making sure you put extra emphasis on controlling how you're responding to things, I imagine.

00:15:28 - Brent Pohlman Yeah.

00:15:29 - Teri Schmidt Great. So I heard for new leaders, definitely knowing their why as early as possible, I heard being aware of your physical health and what you do to take care of yourself physically in our current environment, especially in your seat as CEO. I'd love to hear your perspective on what are the biggest challenges facing leaders today that our listeners should be aware of and perhaps work to prepare for.

00:16:00 - Brent Pohlman I think we're always trying to understand our employees better, but I think they do. We get caught up in these terms of come back to work and face to face. So I would say just being present and having awareness of your employees, one of the biggest powerful things that I've learned is when you call your employees by their name, that really says something, that you are wanting to be personal with them and that you want to understand them more. During COVID we grew from 100 to 278 employees. I did not know everybody's name. And so even in the last two months, I've met with every single department, and they have to tell me their name when they started, because I've had employees here three years that I had never even met through that process because of wearing masks or whatnot. And then they had to tell me. Then in this group, we did it as a group. Tell me something about you that nobody in this room knows about you. And the answers were just very interesting. But again, it showed something about them. I was more concerned about something about them than the work they were doing than all the other stuff. So I think that just really showed that I appreciate them, for one, and I want to know a little bit more about who they are. And some really shared a lot, and it was amazing to me. I also learned that of all of our employees, I think we could start a zoo. I mean, we have so many employees with animals that had no idea. But I think back to that whole process of coming together for it was only 20 minutes with each department, because we pretty much operate like an operational place here. You can't really take disrupt the day.

00:17:54 - Teri Schmidt Right.

00:17:55 - Brent Pohlman But it really did show that that connection. Again, people, I think, really appreciate just meeting, and I would warn them, I remember my time if I was in the CEO's office, it was something bad. You didn't want to be in that office. And so I think by doing this again, I'm going to do it again. It was amazing just to be again in the room with those people. And I think that's what the coaching part is about, too. I'm really high on the coaching piece, and I think that bringing a team together and just being on the same page, everyone has the same question, but we come from it from different backgrounds, different responses, and that was so cool.

00:18:32 - Teri Schmidt We all want to be seen, right, as unique individuals who have something to contribute, as opposed to cogs in a wheel that help you get your business results. And I think that simple action of asking those questions is such a beautiful way to do that.

00:18:48 - Brent Pohlman Yeah. No, it was great, Teri. It was quite an experience. I would suggest doing that if you're a leader, to just reconnect with your people, just reconnect, however that works for you, right?

00:19:00 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. And even if you have a fully remote team that's possible to do, it's different. And it takes probably a little bit more effort and intentionality, to use your word, but definitely is something that can be done. Any other great challenges that you see from your perspective that are facing leaders today?

00:19:19 - Brent Pohlman The other one I would probably recommend. I don't know about you, but I have thousands of books on management leadership. I have a whole library set at home in my office, and for me, I could never find one really good book that resonated with me and everything. So I think the challenge is on is really get to know yourself. Maybe there's something in there that you need to unpack. But what really helped me is I talked about my professional court earlier, but where I came from, where I'm at today, just really take your and I try to give those questions. My book is not a self help book. My book is purely my story. But I know everybody else comes at leadership in such a different way, and that's how you really need to approach it. Find what you like, what's inside of you, to move forward. So that's what I would really say if someone would have told me that ten years ago, or work with someone on that. But as a coach, it's a great way to do that. But find what's inside of you first and then don't worry about so much reading the right book on leadership or management or following ten steps. Find what's in you and it will unlock your heart and you will be able to move forward.

00:20:34 - Teri Schmidt I love that. Starting with what's in yourself. And yes, you may learn a tip here, a tip there from different books, but if you try to take something right off the shelf and put it into practice, it's not going to be authentic and people are going to see that and it's going to backfire.

00:20:50 - Brent Pohlman Exactly, I like that. Yes, that's exactly. Those are great words to describe that process.

00:20:55 - Teri Schmidt Yes, excellent. Well, I know that in the book you talk a lot about Values First and leading with values. And I know that can also help to build a focused and connected team that is really aligned with your business goals, the results that you want to accomplish, and it can also help with your work environment. So I'd love for you to share a little bit more about how that Values First approach helps you with building those strong teams and creating that work environment that people want to come to.

00:21:34 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, I would say it does take a team. It is not easy. When I took over, I mean, we're a 48 year old company. There's a lot of good history and legacy that my father put in place. But when you start to change the culture a little bit, that makes it a little bit harder. And we really kind of needed to do that. And the best way that I think you can do that is develop your core values. We did that right before COVID like literally February and then March COVID came and we were just barely getting started on that. But we kept our core values and we kept our mission and vision going throughout the process and I think it really helped bring us together. And over and over I kept always saying people first, and I think at first, of course, it doesn't sit in. It has to be shown with examples. And during COVID we had to put safety in place and that was like our number one goal was safety. So here's the math. We had mass before there were even mandates and all that. We didn't get to close. We were essential business, so we had to come to work. Our lab people had to come to work. We didn't have working from home. So our office, we did get down in place too, as well as fast. And then I will never forget, the leadership team came to me and said, how long can we stay open? And I did a big deep breath and I said, I need an hour here, a couple of hours to process that. I came back, did the math and determined that we were going to stay open. My commitment was till August. And so through that process, then of course, we were watching the news, and there was PPP money, and we got 2.8 million, and we never used a dime. We gave it all back because we were doing so well. But I really credit that part to our leadership team. We built a COVID handbook that was over 200 and some pages. If you were sick, you stayed home. We were really about taking care of the employees, and I think people saw that as we were going through this process. And that the trust and the open communication during all that. And we're trying to continue that. Again, we have our regular town halls once a month in person, or you can watch it virtually over teams or zoom. And we're still working that all the time. Because, again, I think people here, I even tell them at our townhouse, I know you read the news, it sounds terrible. I know there's so much uncertainty. But here, this is the story here. This is where things are going, and it's very good. And I know I said there's a level of trust here, but you got to trust me that things are going well. This is where we're headed. This is where we're going because people do want to know where you're always headed. And it's not about being positive all the time. It's just being upfront. This is what's happening. Here's what's happening. This is where we're going. And and again, building that trust and making sure everyone's on this, knowing what's happening around the company all the time.

00:24:43 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. So the people first, the trust, the open communication, and then it almost sounds like the safety that you had to put in place was evidence for people of the people first value.

00:24:57 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:00 - Teri Schmidt That's great. And so, again, if we have a new leader who it's their first time leading a team, what was the process like for you? Obviously, you were doing it for your whole organization in terms of coming up with or revising your core values and then making sure that people saw evidence of that. But if you were advising a new leader who really wanted to build a strong team based on values, what are some tips you have for going through that process?

00:25:31 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, that's a great one. I still believe in the people first mentality. You have to know your team, get to know them as well as you possibly can. And I would say I just feel very fortunate. I have some great people in place that mentor our up and coming leaders and directors. We didn't have directors. We actually had a very thin line of management support, but we added a director layer of about 15 people, and now we have directors, supervisors on down, and obviously we have our executive team too. But I think that director level now gets together. It took a whole year last year, and they really got to understand all the different areas together in one meeting. They meet once a week. And I think that's critical is that not only the department that you serve, you need to understand how that fits into the bigger picture and the more you can look at the bigger picture and understand that. So as a leader, you need to continue to ask questions and find out where does your department fit in the whole scheme of things for my sake. It was also very important. My dad was in the day to day his whole life. He never got out of the day to day about. I'll never forget. It was probably during COVID The executive team said, you need to be out of the day to day. We need a new campus at some point. We need this. We need you to focus your time on these things. We'll take care of the day to day part. And I think from a director or from a leader, I would say yes, you need to be aware of what's happening day to day in your business, but feel free to branch out a little bit more, understand the company better, understand again and ask questions. You're not going to know that day one. You're not going to know where that is or get to meet somebody on the executive team and just understand better, but get off from under your department. I think even my whole I think back when I worked in corporations, I just lose this little small piece that was always focused on I spent all my time doing this, the chances, the opportunities, even the small ones. That's where I learned the most was when I was outside those areas and you have to develop that. And I know it's hard if you're in a corporation and you're in this little piece there, find out as much as you can. But I know it's hard. It's not an easy process, but if you've got an entrepreneurial spirit inside of you, you're going to want that more and more and maybe in your career progression at some point you'll get to that and make that a goal. I think that's why this job right for me right now. It's just like I can't wait to get to work every single day. Exciting all the stuff that we're building here and people basically that I get to interact with every single day.

00:28:28 - Teri Schmidt Yes, you can have core values for your team, but if they are not connected to the core values of the organization, there's a bit of a problem there. And I think speaking of having a high performing team and a high trusting team and a team where people feel comfortable and safe, the more that you can gain knowledge about the work of those around you and of the entire organization the more of a sense of stability. I think you can give your team as a leader that can help them to perform at their peak.

00:29:02 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, absolutely. I like that.

00:29:04 - Teri Schmidt Yeah, definitely. Well, last question about teams. And this is a choose your own adventure. I'd love to hear either about the highest performing team you've been part of or had the opportunity to lead and what made it so. Or on the flip side, if you've either had the opportunity to lead a team that maybe was on the other side, not as high performing and you had an opportunity to turn it around, or if you've observed that someone else do that, I'd love to hear one of those stories.

00:29:42 - Brent Pohlman Simply put, it's really right now it's happening around me. I am just seeing because you have to understand our culture with scientists and business people. It was very siloed. I would say at the beginning I did marketing. When I came on as marketing, that's all I did. I just did marketing. Maybe some salespeople, maybe a little bit of account managers, but a lot of people once in a while, but not that much. I think today to see that again, you have to hire the right people to fit the job, to have values that you do and then you allow them to build their teams. It is amazing that synergy that is created there in doing so. To give you an example, my director of operations deanna, I know more about the company today than I ever did being in the operations every single day. And in the morning we text. Well, basically we pray for each other. We tell each other what's on our plate in the morning, if there's anything that we're really working on or the other needs to know about. And then at the end of the day, we'll circle back with a call. We just do a phone call and we just say, hey, how's your day go? Or text, say, here's what happened, here are the highlights. And we know we have to leave that call on a positive note. There cannot be any negativity finishing that day. So I think that's really important. If there's something that I hear that maybe I have some questions about, I call that, that I'm uncomfortable about, I'll write it down and then I process it for the next 24 hours and I look the next day and I see, is this really important? How important is this? I just try to design that and then I follow up with questions. And usually those things that I have questions about, sometimes they're important, sometimes they're not that important. But I just think having that as a team, having that communication and just watching this again, having the trust in people, I know it's counterculture almost to what we hear today. But you have to do that if you're going to really move the company forward. You have to trust there's no other way. I don't know another way to do that. You're going to move the company faster with people on board for you than any process or any technology. I'm still convinced of that, when people are on your side and people know they have their backs from the leadership or from their own people, things move faster, things move better. Absolutely.

00:32:23 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. And it sounds like you mentioned the growth that your company has been through in terms of business results. What have you seen since you've been able to take that approach and have that high performing team around you?

00:32:36 - Brent Pohlman For the last four years, our total revenue has set records every year. The last four years. And we've added we started before COVID we had 120 employees, and now we're up to 274, I heard today. So that's full time. And the amount of work we're doing again, the whole growth in all the lab areas, the investment in instrumentation, we're actually moving to a new campus at some point. All that, again, points back to, I think, having faith in people and trusting what they can do and having open communication along those lines and developing the leaders within them, too, as well. It's it's a very fantastic picture to paint. But it does start with leadership. And it does from your top people and instilling that in the different layers, that's what we're kind of doing right now is just instilling that leadership at all levels so that people know that they are valued people, that they can make responsible decisions and be a part of something really special here.

00:33:42 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. Well, congratulations on those results. Congratulations on what you're building. I love the fact that it all comes back to what you're talking about with people first and knowing the people, because you can't very easily truly trust people unless you know them. And I think so, getting back to that, and then the simple routines that you mentioned that you have on your team, just the morning check in, the evening check in the process that you use when something is uncomfortable for you, that you write it down and reflect on it. And I also know you talked about other routines in your book, too, to make sure that you can show up with your A game. So it comes back to the simple things, but has immense power both in people's well being as well as the performance of the business.

00:34:37 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, no, I think that was well said, Teri. I mean, yeah, it does all those things together. It really does take all those that's why I think leadership is tough. It is tough. It does take a lot of work to really be an effective leader. So I totally agree with what you're saying, Laura.

00:34:55 - Teri Schmidt Yeah. And like you said, it all starts within as well. So we wrap right back to the title of your book. And speaking of your book, if people want to get their hands on it, where's the best place to do that and where's the best place to learn more about you or connect with you?

00:35:14 - Brent Pohlman Yeah, you can go to the book website. Is ceooofyourheart.com, or you can find the book on most places amazon, Walmart, Barnes and Noble. But by all means, check out the CEO of your heart. There's some information there, too, if you're just getting started, if you want to learn more about the book, there's some activities there that you can sign up for. There's no cost there, but no, again, I hope every person really just gets a chance sometime in their lifetime, in their career, to really look deep within and discover that they can be a tremendous leader, whether it's at home, whether it's at work, in their school, however it is. Anybody can follow these simple examples, but it really does take the time to invest in yourself. And that's not selfish. As I say, it's not selfish at all. It should be done.

00:36:05 - Teri Schmidt That is how we do make our contribution to others, by being able to take that time and know who we are and how we can uniquely contribute. So I know you said sometime in their life, I would say the sooner the better, definitely. So we'll make sure that that link gets included in the show notes so that people can access the CEO of your heart easily. And just thank you again for coming on today. Thank you for writing the book, sharing your wisdom and the work that you do day to day as well.

00:36:39 - Brent Pohlman Thank you. Teri. It's been a privilege to be on your show, and thanks again.

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