Growing Lean
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Growing Lean
Mastering Adaptive Leadership: From Military Precision to Corporate Innovation with Tom Geyer
When the precision of military leadership meets the fluidity of corporate management, magic happens. That's precisely what Tom Geyer, the brain behind No Label Leadership, brings to the table in a thought-provoking conversation that spans the breadth of his colorful career. From the disciplined ranks of the Army and Air Force to the innovation-driven floors of Amazon and Chewy, Tom's tale is a masterclass in adaptability and the art of people-centric leadership. Throughout our dialogue, we unravel how navigating crises shapes unwavering leaders and why prioritizing your team's well-being can spearhead transformational change in any organization.
Strap in as we venture beyond the boundaries of traditional business approaches and into the digital age, where AI and SaaS are no longer buzzwords but essential tools in our entrepreneurial toolkit. Tapping into the power of technology, Tom and I dissect the role of AI in refining communication and the strategic use of apps to keep tasks in check. But it isn't all algorithms and interfaces; we underline the human element by examining how partnerships and mentorships can be the fertile ground for business growth. As we wrap up, insights flow on leveraging local business resources and networking channels to fortify your business presence. Tom Geyer's wisdom is a beacon for those steering through the complex world of entrepreneurship, and this deep-dive is your compass.
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Hey folks, welcome back to the growing Lean podcast sponsored by Lean Discovery Group. This is your host, dylan Burke, also known as Dij. I'm happy to be here today with Tom Geyer, founder of no Label Leadership. Welcome, tom.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Dij pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:It's a pleasure to have you on the show, so can you get us started and give us a little bit about your background, your history and how you ended up doing what you do?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. When I graduated high school at 18, I joined the military. Did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up, spent four years in the army and decided that wasn't quite for me. It's been about six months as a civilian after that. Didn't enjoy that either, so I went back in the military, did about a year of National Guard. Wasn't quite enough.
Speaker 2:And then I did 20 years in the Air Force. My first 13 was the Air Force Intelligence Analyst and my last seven was as a first Sergeant, and that's really where the leadership thing grew. I had a lot of leadership as an intelligence analyst I haven't become an NCO, a non-commissioned officer and as a Sergeant I was in charge of a lot of folks and managing programs, but also leading people Ended up not enjoying the intelligence side as much as the people side and had an opportunity to volunteer to be a first Sergeant, which is all about taking care of people. So anything you can imagine somebody goes through in life financial struggles, mental strife, mental health struggles, you name it. I probably have seen it and I really enjoyed helping people get through those struggles and come out stronger on the other side, and so that led me to retire from the Air Force after 24 years, went to Amazon for a year and then Chewie for about two years, and then to start an old-level leadership and really dive into helping others become leaders, both of themselves and of their teams.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Well, firstly, thanks for your service. That's a long time to be in the Army, and when did you found no-level leadership?
Speaker 2:So it's kind of an interesting story, I suppose. But the short version is when I left Amazon, I really didn't have a backup at the time and decided to go ahead and establish a business. I jumped into John Maxwell leadership and got on to that team, got immediately certified as a disc trainer and then a consultant and I really formally established my business the 3rd of November of 2022. So it was sort of born out of slash COVID, slash not having another job when I left Amazon.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome, and could you run us through your overall business strategy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think about this often. I'm like, well, do I have a strategy? Because a strategy is always about how you get to a spot, and I'm not a businessman by nature. I never saw myself as much of an entrepreneur, so the more I think about this, the more it's really just I want to help people and teams be the best that they can, and how I do that is through assessments, coaching, training, conversation and observation so just really being in the moment with people. I know that's not much of a strategy in most cases, but that's kind of my strategy. I'm intentional about being with the people and not probably intentional enough about my business. I suppose is one way to look at it, which is not very helpful. I realize it's a strategy, but I'm still pretty new in trying to figure that part out. I do know that I've got a lot of tools out there that I'm not leveraging yet, so I've been researching a lot of different things, from AI to apps to other services that can help me out.
Speaker 1:Okay, amazing. Well, look, if it works, it works If you get results. It doesn't matter if you have a strategy or not. I like to live by that, Thank you. So you say it. This was born out of the pandemic and all that. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and how that impacted what you do, Because it was obviously a crazy time for everyone.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was so. You saw, during the pandemic a lot of people kind of we had the great resignation, but a lot of people also became kind of listless, resigned to their homes. They had to now lead small groups as their family, or they found other jobs. You know, they had to leave one that totally shut down to go to another one that was going to remain open, and warehousing was one of them. Amazon was a big one, right State, open. They just changed their rules and leadership there just had a hard time, like, how do we lead to crisis?
Speaker 2:And so when I left the military because I only spent, oh gosh, nine, maybe about nine months of the pandemic in the military and we handled it, I think, pretty well in the military we were used to crisis and leading through something like that, but the civilians weren't. So when I got to Amazon, it was a little bit of chaos and I just really wanted to help folks do better. So I started to dive even more into leadership. I had always been an avid reader about it. It's been a passion of mine for more than a decade where, like, that's my hobby. So when I'm done with work, I would go home and read about leadership and listen to podcasts about it, and it really just was born of that and understanding that people needed more help with it. There was a leadership deficit, especially in crisis. How do we improve that?
Speaker 1:Okay, a hundred percent. And yeah, I remember there was a huge controversy with Amazon and forcing the employees to go back. What was your position at Amazon?
Speaker 2:I started out as a well, not started out, I was an operations manager. Same thing I do it chewy and it was a operations manager is about three or four levels removed from the floor level employee, depending on kind of how you count it, Cause we got some some lateral, parallel positions as well. But you've got operations manager, area managers, Then you have your process leads and your your floor personnel.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, and what was there? A bit of leadership in that role. Is that something that was part of your?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, the operations manager is responsible and in particular I was. I was handling all of the picking, so grabbing all of the items, getting them into totes and sending them down the line to get packaged and shipped out. So the picking department, along with quality assurance, was, was my folks and as an operations manager I had to plan the shift and lead us to success based off of that plan. So I had to make sure that you know if there were crises or things that came up, I led the team through that. I had to educate my team on better leadership. When we had something shut down whether it was the whole, you know the electricity went out or we just had a couple of pieces of machinery go down, you know I had to work with maintenance to get that fixed, all those kinds of things. So it was just that leadership against still kind of in crisis, not even just the pandemic, but those small crises.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, and I can imagine there was a crazy time at Amazon because it there was a huge surge in e-commerce and online shopping bred from the pandemic, so it must have been a while time to be there.
Speaker 2:It was and you know it was. It was a bit compounded by the personal nature of the pandemic because people were bringing themselves to work. They really were they. They weren't really leaving anything at the door. You know, I have these struggles, these concerns from what's going on outside. They brought it into work and they, they needed somebody to talk to, they needed a way to work that out and you know Amazon and other workplaces really, I think, did try to figure out how do we do that? I know, I know I did and my team wanted to help our folks out.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, 100%, and I want to go back to no label leadership. What has been the biggest challenge that you've faced in? Mostly launching and running and growing with business challenges, man.
Speaker 2:You know I was my biggest obstacle. If I'm really honest about it, my biggest challenge with no label leadership has just been. So I mentioned I do disc assessments right and on the disc assessment as a behavioral indicator, I'm a high I and my biggest fear as a high I, as an influencer, is fear of rejection, and I've always been that way too. I think that my, my levels on the disc have probably changed through the years, although I wouldn't know because I didn't take it as a child, but I've always been really fearful of that not that everybody isn't, but it's kind of been like it paralyzes me sometimes, and so jumping into a business, even as an adult, even as a military retiree, was scary. I really had to push through that and say you know what? There's never going to be the best time for this. There's never. I'm never going to be fully ready. I just need to do it.
Speaker 2:I, as long as I'm working on it, I'm getting the training, I'm learning things, I'm connecting with people, and as long as I keep it centered on other people, I find that that really helps when I'm working my leadership on a team on Amazon or chewy, or for a team that I am helping as a client who's my client, it's it really. If it stays about them, it's leadership. I'm really doing something that is bigger than myself. But if I start to make it about myself, that rejection starts to set in and it starts to feel very different. So I just try to keep it focused on them and push through my fear of possible rejection.
Speaker 2:So that was my my biggest one, I think. Aside from that, I just had to. I had to overcome my lack of knowledge of business and marketing, both how to run a business and how to market myself, which I'm still learning. I'm not I'm not a very good self salesman in most cases, so I'm still working on that one. So those are probably I would say those are the biggest ones. I've definitely stepped in it a few times with clients too. So learning humility might have been the fourth one, I guess, which is an important one because that builds credibility with clients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. And who is your typical client?
Speaker 2:Oh, typical, I would say typical. Right now I'm really focused on trying to capture the attention of local small government, so townships, boroughs, as well as nonprofits, where I'm not so much working them as a client, it's just volunteer time. I recently connected with Bethany house in Cumberland County here in Pennsylvania. They do help young ladies who are about to age out of the foster care system or who are homeless. I've got a couple of others similar to that that help out boys and girls, just really trying to find those that are most in need, those that just don't have a whole lot of help. Small government doesn't usually have a whole lot of help because they don't have a big budget. And then you know folks in the foster care system, those kids, they they've just been left out to dry in many cases and they don't. They don't have a lot of resources. So just trying to figure out how to help them. And then another one I've been really working on getting into, which is hard because I don't have all of the the required federal numbers yet.
Speaker 2:But I want to work with veterans or those who are about to leave the service. So I'd love to connect with the DOD and help veterans that they transition out because they have a transition assistance program. Great information. It's a really wonderful program. There's some assistance there, but there's not a lot of warm hands. They only have one part of it that hands off a veteran to the job centers, america's job centers, and it still just doesn't seem like enough. They need someone else and it's you know, it's a team sport. This life that we have, we should play it together. So I really want to get in there and help somebody 100%.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love your passion for helping people. It's it's becoming more and more rare these days and it's very admirable. I love that. And how do you measure the success of what you do in terms of, firstly, your business metrics and the people that you're helping? How do you measure, like, how well you've done with him?
Speaker 2:I love this question and I actually have to reference back. You had Dr Burl Randolph Jr on several episodes ago A great episode and I really loved what he said and it's what I've been saying all along. Is my clients all I asked them what does success look like to you when we get to the end of this, or even at the middle of it? What does success look like to you? Write those things down. Okay, we're at the middle or the end. Did we hit the mark? If you say we were successful, I am successful, then I have hit the mark. So it's all really measured on. Did the client feel like we achieved what they set out to achieve?
Speaker 1:Okay, amazing, yeah for sure. And where do you see your industry heading in the next couple of years?
Speaker 2:What I see right now it appears like leadership in general is heading towards a focus on children in the grade school, high school.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of curriculum that teaches children values-based leadership, so we are seeing a lot of that. John Maxwell and his Maxwell leadership team has ILEAD, which is a curriculum for leadership that's working its way into the school systems. Officially, I believe, it started out of South Carolina and it's starting to make its way into some other states. There's other countries that are already running it as part of their national school programs. So that's one area, and I think that there's more and more talk about servant leadership, while we see a deficit right now in that there's a lot more talk about it. You hear a lot from Simon Sinek and some of these other big leadership thought leaders that really talk about focus on the team, the group, the tribe take care of these people because it's so important, because when you go down they're gonna help you and I just I really see the heart of humanity starting to want to go that direction. It might not necessarily be there yet, but I do think it's gonna get there.
Speaker 1:Okay, amazing, yeah for sure. And are you making use of all the technology that's at your disposal in your business in terms of AI and all these, like SaaS products that are available to help you be more efficient and operate smoothly?
Speaker 2:All of them? No, I'm sure I'm not. I do use. I use chat GPT here and there. Mostly I'll come up with something. I'll write something for a social post or I'll write a document, even a contract, for a client, and I'll run it through chat GPT, like keep the tone the same, because a lot of times I'll stray off my tone or something, and it'll help me get that right or it might catch something I missed. I might say you know, evaluate this for X, y, whatever, and you know it'll give me some thoughts on what I might have missed for something there. And I've used it for a few other things as well, but that's kind of been the the crux.
Speaker 2:For the most part I love my iPad. I absolutely dive into notability on my iPad all the time. It's where all my notes are kept. Most recently there's an app out there called structured that I absolutely love. Having come from the military, I like structure in my day and I have found that doing my own business and not being not going to the warehouse anymore, I very much find my day is get away from me, and Structured has helped me build my day out better than a calendar and it really just outlines my day, I could set my timeline and I'm hitting all my marks, so I just feel much more productive with that now.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's awesome. I also use chat gpt a lot. I'm not really for content generation, because I find it sometimes it's a bit generic and obvious, but for spell check, grammar checks, for compiling lists, eating plans, exercise plans, everything like that. Yeah, it's actually unbelievable what you can do with that.
Speaker 2:You know, where I found it really helpful was when I was writing something and I have a tendency to write out of. I Like to use big words sometimes and I'm working on bringing that down, so I'll write something and I'll say, okay, write that, for you know, a high school graduate, because I want to pitch something to high school students that are graduating, and It'll help me bring that language down to something that just makes more sense.
Speaker 1:Take those yeah hundred other words out exactly if I see a post about like Crypto or something that and I don't understand the words that they're using I put it in and I'm like Please explain this to me as if I was a 12 year old and it's actually amazing. It's so cool. Do you have any partnerships or collaborations within the business, or is it just you solely running the business?
Speaker 2:So I do run my business as a sole proprietorship but, like I said, life is a team sport, so I don't go out of the loan either, aside from Bethany house. So I've partnered ship just for the like, you know, volunteer and stuff. But I learned things from all clients, even those guys at Bethany house. In particular, my best partnership right now is Steve gobel from the global group. He's out of Lancaster PA, same business.
Speaker 2:He was part of the original founding team of the Maxwell leadership team back when it was the John Maxwell leadership team and I Connected with him through LinkedIn actually, which is another one of my favorite platforms. I absolutely love LinkedIn connected with him and I just he's been a great mentor, a great friend, you know, guided me through some things. We partnered on running the leadership game. He hooked me up with that with one of my clients, ran the leadership game and, you know, just to help give me some pointers and some perspective, and you know those partnerships are super invaluable. I have some others in the works too, but that's been the most impactful by far. So, while I run it myself, it's it's a team sport.
Speaker 1:Okay, amazing, amazing. And If we were to sit down again in 12 months time and Everything's gone right for your business, everything that could go right has. What does your business look like and what has changed?
Speaker 2:And I think in 12 months it's not unrealistic and my goal is really to be pretty close to my goal has been 750,000 a year, maybe even a million, but 750 because I'm not looking to be making the big bucks. For me it's about helping the people and living comfortably. I got to provide for my wife, right? I've been married for 25 years so I want to take care of the woman that supported me for that all that time, and so I would say somewhere between three-quarter and a million dollars a year in the business, but mostly that we would have clients who have looked back and said you know, our small business, our small government sector, has done really well because Thomas come in and been able to help us see through the pain points, see through the missed communications, the working in silos, helped us build language around what we were missing, those kinds of things. That means more to me even than the money.
Speaker 2:To be really straightforward with you, I want people to be helped. I want no label leadership to that business. Maybe I expand to an LLC. That's a possibility. Grab a partner, I wouldn't mind that and I would definitely like the name to be out there. From a dream perspective, I get an opportunity to be like on the John Maxwell podcast or Simon Sinek or something like that, because I just review those guys.
Speaker 2:I think they've been just fantastic. Pat Lanchoni would be another one. I'd love to be on a podcast with those guys too. This is fantastic. I mean, I would have never guessed this opportunity to come up either. So, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and what do you have to do to get to your financial goal? You don't have to give too much away, but what do you need to do in terms of customer acquisition, et cetera, to get to $750 to a million?
Speaker 2:It's more about the consistency of closing with clients. I have a lot of conversations, I go to events and talk to a lot of people. I've given myself the first quarter of next year to really lock down dare I say perfect my ability to close with clients.
Speaker 1:Okay, 100%.
Speaker 2:And that will do it.
Speaker 1:Are your clients? Are most of them retained? Is it like an ongoing thing or do you contract for a couple of months at a time?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's mostly more like contract for a few months at a time kind of thing. Or hey, here's the contract, we're going to do X, Y and Z and we'll work the timeline as we go. So it's not necessarily like we'll do three months or six months, it's we'll do these things and we'll get it done in your time. I don't like to rush my clients. If they feel things are moving too fast, we're going to slow it down. And if it's moving super slow and they're like we got to pick it up, then we'll pick it up.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's awesome. I love it. And what advice would you like to give to other business owners looking to succeed?
Speaker 2:That's a big question for such a young company. Go for it, you know, go all in as far as you can. If you're all in is $100, then go in $100. If you've got $500,000, then go in $500,000. Like I said earlier, there's never the best time. Someday is not a day of the week, so you can't keep putting it off. You're never really going to be ready and you're never really good the first time. So go for it. Don't worry about the fears. It will take care of itself. Most of our fears are just projections in our mind. They're not real. So go for it. Just don't go at it alone.
Speaker 2:Buying mentors there's so many resources from things like small business associations. Chambers of commerce are fantastic. They're so underrated. My Carlisle Chamber of Commerce has been phenomenal and I'm a fairly new member and then just reaching out to other entrepreneurs and other business persons to say what have you done? What worked? It does help if you're not afraid to say I don't really know the rules and I don't care. So I kind of just do what I think I need to do, even if it's not the normal way a business would go about doing that.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love that. Thank you so much, and Tom, thanks for your time today. We have come to the end of the show. What is the best way for people to reach out to Tom Gaia if you've got any offers for them or if they're looking to follow your journey?
Speaker 2:So all of my basic information and an ability to contact me is found on my website. No label leadership, all one word nolabeledeadershipcom. That's the easiest way to find me, but I am on social media the big ones with Facebook and Instagram at no label leadership. And then I can be found on formerly known as Twitter, now X as no label leader, and yeah, those are the best ways to reach me.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much, Tom.
Speaker 2:Thanks Dij, thanks Dij.