Finding Your Voice as a Leader: Tom Gegax on Resilience, Change, and Self-Forgiveness

Starting the conversation:

What would you give to forgive yourself — and unleash your business’ real potential? This is possible when you regularly assess honestly, without judgment. Tom Gegax, Gramercy Fund / Confessions of a CEO Film, discusses that it is BOLD to break your current expectations of what the CEO role entails.

Servant leadership is both warm-hearted AND tough-minded. With a deep care for people both employed and served by your organization, standards and accountability for results drive day-to-day actions and longer-term initiatives. This requires self-awareness so that you can champion accountability built into culture so that everyone thrives.

In the BOLD Business Podcast Season 9 launch, you will hear that it is absolutely possible to find something that isn’t being done well and improve it; to absolutely reach for the incredible because it is a real business destination; and accept your flaws and forgive your past self. Jess Dewell talks with Tom Gegax, Gramercy Fund / Confessions of a CEO Film, about why it is BOLD to break the current expectation of what a CEO’s role is.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Tom Gegax

What You Will Hear:

05:05 Tom introduces how his voice changed due to radiation damage and discusses the difference between physical and cognitive disabilities.

• People often misjudge cognitive ability based on a voice disability.
• Important to separating limitations of the body from those of the mind.
• Check in with yourself about what you decide on autopilot to confirm it is right for right now.

07:55 AI technology enabled Tom to participate in his documentary by recreating his former voice, improving audience engagement.

• Creative technology solutions can help overcome unique barriers to communication.

10:20 Tom Gegax revolutionized the tire and automotive industry by making the customer experience extraordinary rather than unpleasant.

• He targeted an industry that was seen as unprofessional and unpleasant for customers.
• His approach included innovations like better smells, kid-friendly activities, and elevated customer service.
• After selling his business, larger companies did not maintain his high standard for customer experience.

15:20 Over the past 50 years, corporations have shifted away from giving back and employee-centric practices in favor of profits and shareholder value.

• Corporate charitable giving and focus on customer service have significantly declined.
• CEO pay has increased compared to the average employee.
• Regulation has loosened, allowing corporations to prioritize profit at the expense of other stakeholders.

18:40 Small and mid-sized businesses can thrive by addressing real needs and balancing the interests of all stakeholders.

• Businesses can ensure they provide a unique service with true market demand.
• Treating customers, employees, and communities well yields greater long-term success.
• A shift away from profit-only thinking led to dramatic improvements in both culture and profitability for Tom’s business.

24:35 Transformational business leadership often follows personal crises that spark deep self-awareness and change.

• Experiencing multiple personal crises pushed Tom to evaluate and improve his leadership.
• He only realized the importance of treating people well after intense self-work and reflection.
• Tom advises others to respond to early warning signs before a crisis emerges.

27:50 Slowing down through breathwork and mindfulness provides leaders with the clarity needed to notice problems and make better decisions.

• Practicing intentional breathwork helps reduce anxiety and increase presence.
• Leaders who slow down are better able to recognize early signals and act effectively.

17:30 Better leadership and lasting business requires honest assessment, personal growth, and willingness to confront flaws.

• Leaders should rigorously assess their business’s value and their own weaknesses.
• Seeking support through therapy or spiritual mentorship can accelerate personal development.
• Expanding beyond intellectual and physical effort to include spiritual and psychological growth is crucial.

45:25 Servant leadership means caring for people while still holding them accountable — a balance between kindness and toughness.

• Effective leaders avoid being either dictators or doormats by finding a middle ground.
• In Tom’s organization, servant leadership placed customers at the top and leaders at the bottom of the hierarchy.
• Leaders should make it their mission to improve others’ days while maintaining high standards.

46:15 It is BOLD to break the current expectation of what a CEO’s role is.

Resources

• Tom Gegax on LinkedIn
• Confessions of a CEO Movie or Watch on Amazon
• Four-pronged challenge to change Corporate America
• Can David fix Goliath: How to save Corporate America

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
I am a big proponent of gratitude and it shows up in so many forms outside of thank you. I find gratitude in eye contact with strangers as I walk down the street.

Tom Gegax 00:12
Forgiveness of myself and others is one of the key elements to my happiness. Gratitude is the other.

Announcer 00:30
Your go-to resource designed to break the inertia and refresh your perspective so you can start making moves. Here is your host, an insightful truth teller who serves as the catalyst for getting the right work done and who asks the questions that truly matter, Jess Dewell.

Jess Dewell 00:49
Today on the Bold Business Podcast, you are going to hear an incredible conversation on so many levels and so many fronts. First of all, I’m going to start with what you’ll take away. The things I want to highlight that you will take away and it’s only the surface include in your business, it is so important to find something that is being done poorly and not do it better, do it extraordinarily.

Second, you can start right where you are to make a big difference because that extraordinary, that incredible is the level that is necessary to create your company’s future. And the third thing are flaws. We all have them and how we interact with them, how we show up to them, and most importantly, being able to forgive ourselves for them and bring all of us into situations is what makes lasting business people so that businesses can continue to create and evolve.

Tom Gegax and I spent some time talking and one of the things I will tell you is that I want you to know right up front, he has a voice disability and he explains that for us at the beginning of the conversation. It won’t stop you from listening because the three things that I talked about, the importance of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, the importance of disruption and what makes it happen and where we get to really play and thrive as well as forgiving ourselves so that we can meet others and do great things. All of that comes down to, and he came across my radar because of his documentary, Confessions of a CEO.

I will tell you this film can be streamed on Amazon by searching Confessions of a CEO or you can visit confessionsofaceomovie.com and find one of many places to stream. I didn’t think our conversation was going to go the way that it went. We were able to talk really about the becoming, who we are, where we’re going and what it takes to actually get there without the manifestations of trouble.

Not to say that we can remove difficulty, but that we can use that difficulty and embrace it without having it interfere with our lives in a very negative way. I will tell you that the chairman of the Gramercy Fund, a socially responsible venture capital firm, they invest in over a hundred companies that are doing great things in the world. This is what Tom does.

Tom is also a writer, a director, and he is the body of work. The information stems from him in this documentary, Confessions of a CEO. The stories he tells, the reality of the situation, what we say we’re doing as executives, running companies as effective leaders with great organizations, and what actually happens is still incredibly far apart.

That became clear to me in our conversation. Regardless of the world stages he has been on, the people that he has interacted with, like mentoring former Vice President Al Gore and working with Deepak Chopra, having best-selling books where he’s working with companies big and small, the question here is, what can you take away now from exactly where you’re at to make those ripples better? And I’m excited for you to have this conversation available to you both in listening form and in visual form.

So here is my conversation with Tom Gay-X. Tom, we have had a couple of times where we’ve had some really good conversations and in deciding to do this podcast, there was something that was very clear to me and to you that it was important that we set up beginning of our conversation, and that is your voice. I want to know more from you about your voice and why it is the way that it is today.

Tom Gegax 05:05
My voice changed 10 years ago. 35 years ago, I had radiation for cancer. And for 25 years, it was fine.

I was a national, international public speaker. But then 10 years ago, my voice started getting more and more challenging. And now it is what it is today.

And that is the result of radiation damage from the throat area. I applaud you for having someone with a voice disability. I still have my same mind and my same mobility and movement.

Sometimes people I’ve learned, when someone has a voice disability, they try to think that their mind is affected too.

Jess Dewell 06:14
I do. Stereotypes are hard to change. And I’m so glad that you were here because we get to do that with our words and our conversation today.

Right. Yes. And it’s true.

I think that’s really important. Our brains are one piece. Our mouths are another.

It’s almost like our hands or our feet. I don’t know about you, but I sprained an ankle. And it is debilitating.

And hopefully, it goes away for most of us. Usually, it does. And the time it doesn’t, does not change what goes on between our ears, does not change what we feel in our hearts.

It just changes how we show up in the world, which, in my opinion, is the way we’re supposed to be here right now.

Tom Gegax 06:55
An extreme example of voice is Stephen Hawking. Yes. That’s a great example.

One of the most intelligent people in the world. And he had to have that. The computer, huh?

Jess Dewell 07:11
Yeah.

Tom Gegax 07:12
Computer cleaning for him. Yes.

Jess Dewell 07:15
Yes. And the fact that we can communicate and the fact that we are able to do this, to your point of Stephen Hawking, this is amazing. And I actually love this because one of the conversations Tom and I had was about how they used his voice in his documentary Confessions of a CEO.

And I found this fascinating. So when you decided to do this documentary, Tom, you actually already had, your voice had started to change. Was it during the process or was it before the process that your voice changed and your disability arrived?

Tom Gegax 07:55
One of the reasons I did the film was before that, I’ve had best selling book. But the way I wanted to have my voice now is through a film. And with artificial intelligence, it changed.

It was able to make my voice, my previous voice, so people didn’t tire of hearing my voice throughout our docu-drama.

Jess Dewell 08:25
It’s interesting because when we can be creative about technology and when we can apply it to risk being able to get our message out there in a way that will be received and perceived the best way possible. Did you come up with this? Did you, were you like, yes, let’s use AI and see what we could do with my voice?

Or did that come from somewhere else?

Tom Gegax 08:49
No, it came from the life of our co-director and co-producer. And as he launched an earlier run, he said, you have got to get an AI. And he said 11 labs is doing great stuff.

So I credit Alex for that.

Jess Dewell 09:19
I think that it’s fabulous to have found a technology and to do that because as I was watching your documentary, Confessions of a CEO, one of the things that I found myself doing was, Oh, how cool is it that I am hearing a voice of Tom from a time he’s actually talking about. Yeah. Isn’t that so you, okay.

And now we’re going to switch gears just a little bit. We’re going to switch gears because when we talk about what this film is about, when we talk about the message behind it, it is actually really powerfully important today. The audience of the bold business podcast tends to be small companies to mid-market companies, and you were the CEO and you were achieving, I’m going to call it world domination, Tom, in your business.

And I want to know, did you fall into it or was it calculated?

Tom Gegax 10:18
It was calculated in terms of me seeing something that wasn’t being done well. People would say, why did you get into tires and automotive repair? I said, because it was dishonest.

It was dirty. It was unprofessional. I didn’t want to do something that was already being done very well.

Okay. So my niche for the plant was improving that area, taking an experience that some people would say was slightly above a root canal and making it, we ended up having it where people that came into our store, they didn’t sell tires, but we had pipes in, we had games for kids, our people were in dress shirts and ties. It was a totally different experience.

Our employees, teammates, we had people go around and give them massages in store. And we taught yoga.

Jess Dewell 11:50
This is all 35 years ago. So you found an opportunity to do something that connected people more around something they really needed to just have done.

Tom Gegax 12:03
It was a boring, unfun thing that remained in their people. Wow, this is really, really neat.

Jess Dewell 12:17
Do they still make them not smell like tires?

Tom Gegax 12:19
No.

Jess Dewell 12:21
I was going to say, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that.

Tom Gegax 12:24
The company that bought Redstone China Company, although they committed in writing, actually, they had me on a five-year employment to help them through not only in our store, but throughout and that philosophy.

Jess Dewell 12:46
The biggest acquisition that I ever went through was not that big, but it was big enough that I was surprised when the ink dries, the game can change. How amazing is that?

Tom Gegax 12:58
Yeah. I knew that was the potential. And that’s not right, but it was an ethic.

They had a loophole. It was legally right, but it wasn’t morally and ethically right.

Jess Dewell 13:15
I’d like to talk about that in a minute, because I think the timing of your message, the timing of what you’re putting out into the world right now matches so many things. It’s easy to find models that use loopholes, that stick realities. When it’s advantageous, you have to look at the advantageousness.

I’ll speak from my perspective, and I’ll be interested to hear yours, is that easy road with those loopholes and those technicalities, it ends up being about money. And money goes to just a few people. Very rarely in those particular exchanges is the money about the greater good, is the money about that ripple effect that goes out.

I know you having a breadth of experience that’s a lot bigger than mine. I’m curious, does it feel like it’s circling back around, or does it feel like it never left? I mean, because I have this image where, and this is only from the reading that I have done in all of the business books and things that I have read over the years, is that at one point, corporations, big corporations, it was heavy.

They had a lot of regulation that went in their favor. There was a lot of law that went in their favor. And then there was a period of time, basically most of my, I’m 47.

So my adult life, at least, there has been big changes that have for big companies that are real around things like regulation of resources, or how accessible we can get to certain resources, or making sure that it’s not all about the money and it comes back into the communities where these companies are at. And now we’re moving back into this phase where it feels like it’s very corporate heavy and corporate benefit.

Tom Gegax 15:16
Yeah, you’re right. Earlier times, when I started in business in the 70s, yeah, there was more regulation, A. And B, companies acted more responsibly.

And today, there are fewer regulations, they more control government policy. And they don’t, everything is about shareholder value. And what has gone down in that period of time over the last 50 years, corporate giving gone from 2% of net income in the 70s to 2.8%, less than their customer service index has gone down, their employee satisfaction index has gone down, and their CEOs were making 20 times the average worker in the 70s. Today, they’re making 350 times more than their average worker in their company. Really hit it, really got, and I’m talking about this in our film.

Jess Dewell 16:59
And I use my life experiences and used to being in the CEO club to devise what- Do you have opinions or thoughts for those of us that are not big corporations of how we can do things in a positive, impactful way that doesn’t strain our already strained resources?

Tom Gegax 17:31
A, again, it’s important to ensure that your company is having a proactive service, where there really is a need, there’s a large enough addressable market, and that the competitors, that whatever you’re doing, that you have a point of differentiation or points that make your offering better, a reason for people to switch. If that isn’t the case, I don’t care what you’re doing, it’s going to be a tough road to home. But if you meet that frontier, by the way, if you don’t, that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak your current business in such a way that you are able to do it.

So that would be the first couple of points. Then, I think it’s so important that these other stakeholders are treated well, and there’s a balance. Because when you treat your customers well, they do more business.

When you treat your teammates right, then they’re going to go to bat for you. What I found, when I switched, after I had my wake-up call of divorce, cancer, and financial ruin, where I was about to go bankrupt, when I switched and became a leader that was not all profit-focused, and focused on all in our area, incredible things happened. Our profits went from $100,000 a year to $10 million a year.

Tons of incredible things began happening.

Announcer 20:25
Feeling stuck? Like…what got you here won’t get you there? The pressure to grow is on, yet the path isn’t clear. Yet. You don’t have to walk that path alone. This is the BOLD Business Podcast. Like and subscribe wherever you listen. Your host, Jess Dewell, is the strategic partner you’ve been looking for, asking the questions that truly matter. It’s time to break the inertia and get the perspective you need to make your next move.

Jess Dewell 20:37
In some ways, being small in a company feels challenging in a different way than a big company, but I actually think they’re just a different scale. So we would treat the question differently. When I heard you talking about, you can make tweaks today to ensure the service that you are providing has the value add.

Of course, it’s a value add. Somebody is paying you for it, so they need it. So that’s a value in and of itself.

But that value add of, am I seeing you? I understand. We’re going to have a transaction that has depth instead of, I’m going to use the example of getting gas.

We don’t talk to attendants at the gas station anymore. So that’s just a transaction. There’s a gas station, I need gas, I go, I get my gas and I move on.

There are things in our world that are like that. Grocery stores do that too with self-checkout these days. But when we’re in business, how can we do that to our capacity?

And how do we balance the efficiency and the opportunity? Because I think grocery stores listened to their customers. I’d like to be in shorter lines, right?

We went from regular grocery lines to 10 items or less to self-checkout, right? There’s evolution that is supportive and then there’s evolution that is opportunistic. How do we find that unique balance, which is what makes our companies unique in the first place?

Tom Gegax 22:04
How are you differentiating your other competitors? And that can be various things. But you can make the experience more enjoyable and different.

And when you do that, you’re going to get traction. I told our teammates that if we have people have a great experience, that if they have an incredible experience, then they are definitely going to come back and they’re going to say, man, did I have a neat experience. So, doing doesn’t cut it.

Incredible cuts it. And everyone needs to feel that. And they need to share with their teammates not to do that because we might make more money.

Have that be part of your mission on the planet to every person that comes to us, that you’re going to make it a better day for them. That’s why, you know, I was part of the orientation. Every one of our 2,000 teammates.

Your mission on the planet needs to be to help others to make it a better day. If your mission on the planet was only to give pain to your breast mother and consume natural resources, it’s not enough.

Jess Dewell 24:05
Okay. So, what was the tipping point when you realized that? Because you said something that every time, I’ve heard you say it before in our conversations, but every time you said, I’m so surprised.

You had household disruption with divorce. You had physical disruption with cancer. You had financial disruption and actual ruin.

And they were all happening despite making this incredible experience.

Tom Gegax 24:32
So, what went wrong? I didn’t provide an incredible experience before that. Got it.

It was only after I experienced those things. And when the therapy, spiritual reading, and learning from spiritual mentors, that I really had that body work when they wrapped through my upper neck. And once I became a different human being, then I said, hey, I need to treat my teammates differently, our customers differently.

And I knew that I had made a difference. One day, at a company picnic, he came up to me and said, you really do care about us now. Whoa!

And I knew that, okay, you’re watching your top. Because it’s not about what I said. That, oh yeah, you’re gaining the action.

Jess Dewell 25:52
And it was, my body can’t do this anymore. You had to have the third one too, and be like, oh, my money’s in shambles too. The universe kept telling you, and you kept ignoring.

Tom Gegax 26:04
Yeah. Yeah. To not wait to see those warning lights on your dashboard and say, you know what, my spouse and I have not, we’ve been having some rocky times here.

We need a counselor, whatever. A one-week retreat, or my employees, I think they’re unhappy, take a closer climate survey and to address them in the name of customers. So address them before you get cancer.

Jess Dewell 26:47
Yes.

Tom Gegax 26:48
Before you are in financial shambles.

Jess Dewell 26:55
Absolutely. I’m guessing there were clues before the big things. Yeah.

And so if you, which means by the way, wherever we are right now, we probably ought to start something. We probably ought to start something like self-awareness. Am I hearing you right, Tom?

Tom Gegax 27:14
Exactly. Be candid enough, honest enough to look at things. Not through rose-colored glasses, but through what is actually happening.

But that takes a level of honesty, of slowing life down, of looking at things honestly, that many people currently don’t care.

Jess Dewell 27:47
I can relate to the not slowing down part.

Tom Gegax 27:53
This hot sofa that was in our movie caught me when I went through that crisis with a vader breath, Darth Vader. Oh yeah. Slow everything down and you can see things more clearly than you were listening to.

Jess Dewell 28:20
Yes. Oh yeah. I don’t know if I’m, how about this?

I’m sure I’m rushing, but I recognize time moves fast and it’s pretty cool to have that tip from Deepak Chopra. Also to have the tip living it and saying, I can change the speed of the day. I can change the speed of this moment.

In this moment where I have just created time because I paused with intention and took this breath. Something can show up.

Tom Gegax 28:51
You hit it right off. And to show you how that occurred, I was consulting Alan Tipper one morning and I brought Deepak in the night before we had dinner, Alan Tipper, Deepak and I. Deepak had to leave early that next morning and in the consulting session, I was telling Alan Tipper about slowing down the vader breath.

And I said, did you notice Deepak, how he was doing that last night? He said, yeah, we thought he had asthma. No, that was his vader breath.

Jess Dewell 29:49
Yeah. I love that. It’s interesting.

I appreciate that. And that I’m trying to, I’m trying to experience that because there’s some breathing that I learned, which is slightly different. And one is through your nose, right?

And that’s powerful. But what you’re doing is a third way that I haven’t learned, which is the more of the, if you’re doing it that way, I’m trying to feel up my body.

Tom Gegax 30:16
You go in your nose and out your mouth. So, you know what? There are subtle differences.

There are various ways to do it. And whatever’s more comfortable for the individual.

Jess Dewell 30:35
And to recognize when you might be hyping yourself up. I know, like, for example, as a mother, and now I know myself because I learned this. And then I saw it as a mom and I’m like, oh, that happens to all of us.

If I walk into a meeting and somebody’s at the table and they look a little tense and I try and have a conversation to assess what’s going on before we start working on the meat of the conversation and they do this, I’m like, oh, we got transformational energy. Okay. It may not have anything to do with us, but okay, we’re here.

So whether we like it or not, this meeting may be the place the transformation occurs. You must see. And so I’m noticing because if we can notice what the energy does in our body and how we feel it in our body, what you are describing is very different than what I just gave the example of.

It’s very settling. It’s very grounding. It’s very, I’m in my whole air pathway, which goes the majority of the length of my body, right?

Tom Gegax 31:38
Yeah. We have short, shallow breaths. But when you deepen your breath and slow it down, the anxiety lowers.

So that kind of breath, if your viewers can be aware throughout the day, it doesn’t have to be the extreme beta breath, but some type of deeper breathing is powerful in lowering their anxiety.

Jess Dewell 32:20
And I think is in your experience, it is this way in mine, in your experience, when you do it before you reach higher levels of anxiety, you can help prevent said anxiety from showing up. Going back to your comment about the lights on the dashboard, don’t wait until they come on. This is something that we could do right now to see more, feel more, experience more.

Tom Gegax 32:43
Yeah. That’s it. But slight tweak.

Great. You’re going to see warning signals in your life. They’re there.

So notice them and rather than ignoring them, take action before they get more serious.

Jess Dewell 33:08
So talk to me about, are you a person who is always looking to the future and you’re excited and you’re rooted in what’s coming? Or are you a person who is excited to build on what was in the past and keep bringing what was in the past forward in a new way?

Tom Gegax 33:27
I believe a lot in planning. Yeah. So I look at where I want to be.

I do it annually and I have a mission statement for my life. But annually. But then once I have that, then I look at what do I need to do day and night, week and night, month and night in order to get there.

And once I have that, I begin doing that. And I’m in the present moment doing the things I know I need to do to get the reward that I’m hoping for in the future. And as far as bringing things forward, I bring learnings forward that have been serving me and look at dropping the ones that I believe that aren’t serving me well.

Jess Dewell 34:38
Do you, in self-forgiveness with all of the things that you have been through and the way that they showed up in extreme forms in your life, do you forgive yourself for the things that ultimately, of course, these are the outcomes and the manifestations of a whole bunch of choices. Have you forgiven yourself for those things?

Tom Gegax 34:59
Yeah, that is an outstanding question. And it’s one of the things your viewers will get from the film. Because I divulge all of my flaws in the film.

My former executive assistant was interviewed and in our film said, when Tom’s wife would call and ask where he was, I knew, but I couldn’t tell him. And that was very uncomfortable for me. So that and all kinds of other flaws I revealed give people that I believe everyone has their light side and dark side.

And the dark side often causes us to be stuck in shame and not able to move forward. So yes, I have definitely forgiven myself. But it’s important not only to do that, but to engage in the new behavior.

But forgiveness of myself and others is one of the key elements to life happiness. Gratitude is the other.

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Jess Dewell 37:21
I am a big proponent of gratitude, and it shows up in so many forms outside of thank you. I find gratitude in eye contact with strangers as I walk down the street. Somebody who’s willing to look and see you as you’re walking and be seen by you is the most powerful way that I have found to be present in this world and be in this moment.

Tom Gegax 37:47
Amen.

Jess Dewell 37:49
Yeah. Are there things you’re still working on forgiving yourself for?

Tom Gegax 37:57
No, I’m not like telling you, but it’s very important. It’s almost impossible to be in the present moment if we’re feeling guilt about the past and fear about the future. So I try to let the guilt and the fear go so that I’m able to really be in the present moment.

Jess Dewell 38:35
I’m thinking about reflection time. You work very hard to be in the present moment, and planning is looking forward, and reflection or assessment is looking back. How much time do you spend looking back to bring into the present moment to understand what your learnings and your lessons are as you make your next plans?

Tom Gegax 38:59
First of all, you’re an outstanding interviewer. Your questions are amazing. I quickly visit the past that would help me now.

I don’t linger there. I just quickly visit to help in the here and now.

Jess Dewell 39:22
Okay, so here’s a question for those of us. Is that how you knew you had forgiven yourself enough to keep moving forward?

Tom Gegax 39:30
It’s a feeling. And there are different gradations, different levels in that. And my guilt level now is very low, but that took a lot of work, a long time.

That’s not an immediate thing, but I believe that. Now, a lot of people don’t believe in therapy, but if I have a tennis coach, if I have a tennis coach, why wouldn’t it have been okay? I don’t today have that, but for seven or eight years, I had an emotional and psychological coach.

And they helped me unbelieve. So that is the important part, spiritual reading and a spiritual mentor, whether it’s a priest, a pastor, a rabbi, a Zen master, have those two areas. Because before I hit my wake-up call, I was chatting with two players of the four players of who I am.

I had that, but I did not have my spiritual player or my psychological player. They were not present. So I had to access them and have that be part of my four-person team.

Jess Dewell 41:23
We’re in a place where executives today, presidents, CEOs, all of the acronyms, it is more welcome today to have external support and to be open, honest, candid, and vulnerable with each other. Yet my sense in the work that I do, when I go into companies, I do not see it practiced.

Tom Gegax 41:51
No, absolutely not.

Jess Dewell 41:53
Okay.

Tom Gegax 41:54
No, that kind of honesty and openness and humanness is thought of as something in your personal life, in business. See, there’s a saying, you be one person in business, another in your personal. I believe we need to be the same person in both.

And that type of honesty and humanness and caring needs to be present in both areas of our life.

Jess Dewell 42:45
So we have to keep working to make that mainstream. I think that might be some of the work of our conversation today. Mainstream, be who we are, all of who we are in every part of our life.

And if I were to take that one step further, recognize that the relationships we have in one part will be different because they’re with different people in other parts. And the work for that relationship is a lot of effort, and it has a lot of powerful benefit when invested.

Tom Gegax 43:27
That humanness means that rather than the C-suite, the executive leader, the CEO, the board, that they aren’t looking down from on high that you are a worker. They’re down here and I am better than them. That is something, they don’t say that, but you see it in their tone and their body language.

And in my company, in our organization chart, the customer or guest, we call them, was on the top, I was on the bottom. And servant leadership is important. Now, this is maybe the most important tip I would give your viewers that are in management and leadership.

That when I talk about servant leadership, I don’t mean being a servant and having your employees or teammates get whatever they want. But the other end of that spectrum is being a dictator. So, very few leaders have found that sweet spot between being a dictator and a doormat.

And I, it took me years, but I found it. And I have a term for that. It’s being warm-hearted and tough-minded.

Warm-hearted and I care about you. Your happiness and wellness is important to me. And I respect you as a human being.

And that said, you are responsible for your plans to our team, to accomplish things that you are committed to do. So, I will hold you responsible for that.

Jess Dewell 46:18
So, tell me, Tom, what makes it bold to break the current expectation of what a CEO means and change that rule to be warm-hearted and tough-minded? Yeah. What’s the bold step to do that?

Tom Gegax 46:44
It’s what I mentioned earlier. It’s important to look at what your flaws are. Not to shame yourself, but to assess them in a scientific and honest look.

And then where they are, if that is emotional and psychological, get a therapist to help you with that. When I went there, I thought, oh, I’ll go in for a few weeks, find out what everybody else is doing wrong. And I found out, wow, seven years later, as I got my doctorate degree in emotional health, same way with spirit.

I want to know, is your spirit still at work, doing the stretch every Sunday and forgiving to get forgiveness for what you did last week? And ask for forgiveness for what you’re about to do next week. Or is it deeper to where you’re missing everyone around you?

Smiling at them, as you mentioned, yes. So, they need to look at that type stuff by finding those are the steps they need to take to be able to be on the path of being real, authentic, human beings, human becoming in their lives.

Announcer 48:56
And that brings us to the close of another powerful and fresh perspective on the Bold Business Podcast. In today’s volatile landscape, growth is a double-edged sword. To truly thrive, you must engage with your strategy, not just react to the day-to-day.

Without absolute alignment, your company faces a stark choice, outmaneuver or be outmaneuvered, grow or get left behind. Thank you for listening. And a special thanks to The Scott Treatment for Technical Production.