From Fine Arts to Advertising Leadership: Lessons in Adaptability with Brent Poer

In this episode, Brent Poer, Global Client Lead at Publicis Imagine, joins me as we explore the journey of understanding your unique value and harnessing your superpowers to create success in your career and life. 

We discuss how often our self-perception is influenced by others' opinions and the importance of finding clarity through introspection, especially in times of change, challenges, and failures. We also explore how he:

• Learned to read the room
• Connects meaningfully with others
• Navigates the complexities of both personal and professional life
• Believes in embracing nuanced phases throughout your career
• Engaged in honesty and vulnerable conversations with Leadership
• Keeps routines to stay structured

Brent shares his insights on how he keeps his mind sharp, finds peace in his daily routine, and stays adaptable in an ever-changing marketplace. 

Show Guest
 Brent Poer is the Global Client Lead for Publicis Imagine and oversees Zenith US operations in Los Angeles while serving on the agency's Executive Board. With over 30 years of experience at Publicis Groupe, Brent has led award-winning initiatives and secured significant clients like The Walt Disney Company, TikTok, Lululemon, and Arlo. He has held significant roles, including CMO of Zenith US and overseeing the Content Practice, winning Cannes Lions and Effie Awards. Brent began his career at Starcom Mediavest Group, leading LiquidThread North America. He has also worked at Warner Brothers and Lifetime Television. Brent lives in Los Angeles with his husband, Beau Quillian, and their three dogs.

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Career Success With Brent Poore
• 8:49 Navigating Career Transitions and Value
• 21:21 Career Growth Through Change and Transparency
• 29:01 Uncovering Personal Superpowers for Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, I'm Jill Griffin, the host of the Career Refresh podcast. In this episode, I'm introducing you to Brent Poore, global client lead at Publicis. Imagine he joins me as we explore the journey of understanding your own unique value and harnessing your own superpowers to create success in your career and in your life. Brent was my boss for a few years and played a key role in my journey. He selected me to co-lead a division of publicists and this experience sharpened my business skills, my leadership skills, enabling me to lead teams globally, launch and scale a startup and eventually move on to launching and running my own business successfully.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Brent has a remarkable ability to recognize people's unique talents and build impactful teams. We used to joke and say he was the client whisperer, because he understands people on an intuitive, empathic level, and he's really honed those skills over the years. And I'll tell you, as I said in the podcast, there is no faster way to build trust than for someone to see you, get you and know how to serve you in a business sense. We discuss how often our own perception is influenced by others' opinions and the importance of finding clarity through introspection, especially in times of change, challenges and failures. We go on to learn how he reads the room, connects meaningfully with others and navigates the complexities of both his personal and professional life. Brent will share insights on how he clears his mind, how he finds peace in his daily routine and, most of all, how he stays adaptable in an ever-evolving marketplace. Brent is a wonderful storyteller and a delight, so lean back and listen in. Here's Brent. Brent, we are finally here doing this. I really thank you for being here today.

Speaker 2: 2:06

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 2:10

All right. So the question I ask everyone, as our listeners know, is take us way back and tell us, what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up?

Speaker 2: 2:19

Oh God, this is a winding road and part of it was the fact that I and it kind of formed some perceptions about myself. To be honest with you, that carried through a large part of my career, which is at the beginning. I was a drawing and painting major at the University of Georgia. I had no idea that I was going to work in advertising. I thought I was going to be a fine arts painter In my mind. Growing up as a kid in the South, I looked around and I knew that I was eventually going to be gay and that I was probably going to have to leave the South and I was going to move to New York where the center of the art world was. I was going to live in Soho in a giant loft and I was going to be like a famous artist. And no, in my mind I was like, really I was like I love the conviction of it all.

Speaker 2: 3:25

I was going to be hanging out with Andy Warhol, I was going to be at city of 54 and I was going to be painting during the day and then living, you know, a glamorous night. Uh, life at night. And my June sophomore year of college, my mom called me and said you need to come home. And I lived in Atlanta and I got in my little rabbit GTI and drove back to Atlanta and my mom greeted me at the door and she said this will take five minutes and I was like okay, and I walked in the door and my mom, dad sat me down in the living room and my dad really didn't say much and my mom said we are not rich, you are not going to be Picasso. You need to go back to that school and figure out something that makes money, because we are not supporting you for the rest of your life. And I said, excuse me and she's like, you heard me you need to go back to that school and figure out something that makes money, because we're not going to support you for the rest of your life. And, brent, you're talented, but you're not that talented. And I hate to say it. And a lot of people have asked me. Were your feelings hurt? And actually they weren't.

Speaker 2: 4:51

I think in my heart I knew that this was a wistful dream, but I hadn't thought about what was next and I had spent so long burying myself in the art room at this school in Atlanta that, you know, between sports and art, there wasn't much left, you know, beyond that, of like what my imagination was. And my parents are like. My mom, you know, was a housewife and running some small businesses. At that point in time, my dad was in real estate. I didn't know much about anything else outside of that, but I'd seen, bewitched and I knew what advertising was and I would drove back, drove back to the University of Georgia and it's like I'm going to go, like it seems creative, I'm creative, I'm going to go do that.

Speaker 2: 5:33

And so the crazy thing is I was at, I was in Cannes, not to be like a name dropper, but the University of Georgia has a semester in Cannes now and they certainly did not have it when I was there and for their advertising students, and there was a teacher there, karen, who asked me to speak to a bunch of students and I said beforehand I was like I need to tell you something. She was like what. I was like I cheated to get into the school. And she's like what? And I said, well, you had to take a typing test Because the advertising school, as part of the Grady journalism school, copywriting typing 60 words a minute and I didn't know how to type.

Speaker 2: 6:12

So I had a fraternity brother who looked sort of like me who took my ID. I paid him a hundred dollars. He passed the typing test and I got in and she's like you know what? You're not the first person who's told me. And she's like you know what, you're not the first person who's told me we did away with the typing test and I went into the school and I would sit there and say it opened my mind up to this idea that you can be creative and you can be a business person, that you don't have to pivot between the two Right, right and weaving the storytelling.

Speaker 1: 6:43

Oh, pivot between the two Right right. And weaving the storytelling almost of the two of those. Especially if it's underpinning in journalism school, the advertising piece is going to bring the storytelling forward.

Speaker 2: 6:54

And for me that's where it got interesting.

Speaker 2: 6:57

I was like, oh my God, I can use both sides of my brain versus I need to be one-sided and you know I think the thing that has been the underpinning of, like my career was another piece of advice that I had from a former boss his name is Rick Haskins who was, you know, we worked together and he was the CMO of Lifetime Television back in the early 2000s. And Rick told me at one point in time he's like you're a generalist. And he said you're a generalist. And he said you're going to make a lot of people uncomfortable because you're a little good at everything. And he said and people are going to want to put you in a box.

Speaker 2: 7:35

And you know I will sit there and say that he gave me a run at doing a lot of different things which probably formed a lot of my opinions on, or formed a lot of things that had shaped some of my later career. Because I've done a lot of different things. I found in different companies that you know I've been a bit of a head scratcher at times because they're like we don't know which box to put you in. And I'm like don't put me in a box and don't why confine me by labeling me.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Let me go deeper on that with you, Brent, because I think a lot of our listeners can understand that, meaning that they also are a generalist and they also maybe don't want to be in a box, or maybe they're really good at two things and they don't want to choose. How did you navigate that? Because the company is still going to want you to deliver on whatever the goal is. So how did you deliver? How did you navigate the box?

Speaker 2: 8:41

Look, I think at the beginning, beginning it was incredibly confining. Um, you know, I have dealt with people trying to to put me into a single role by then wanting and asking to do other things and to switch, kind of like, what my focus is. And, honestly, if you looked at my resume you'd be like I have no idea who this person is. It's all over the place. But part of it was A I didn't want to get bored and I was always afraid of being bored. So I was like I want to go do this, I want to go do that. I mean, I got into. You know, I went from an advertising focus to working for Reebok with the woman who invented Step Aerobics, because she met me and thought I was smart and I was like you're working at Reebok, sure I'll take a job. And went on a journey with her to launch Step Aerobics. You know, then met someone who said you're pretty smart, would you like a job? And jumped on that job.

Speaker 2: 9:52

And it has been my thing to sit there and say when someone opens a door and says, would you like to try this? I've always been someone who says, sure, I'll try that. And my husband says that I have something and this is not a compliment, and I want to just put it out there. It's not a compliment. He says that I have blind confidence. I tend to believe that it's not blind confidence. I have something called faith. Bo says that blind confidence is. I walk into scenarios and I'm like, oh, everything's going to be fine. Yes, I am someone who says that things will be fine, because I believe that we can always find some solution at the end of the day. However, I believe in myself enough that I've been able to take swings at things that I was probably not prepared for, but I know, at the end of the day, that I have enough of a survival instinct that I can figure it out.

Speaker 1: 10:56

So let's go deeper on that. I know that you know for our listeners. Brent gave me a chance. I was working in digital, he was running the content division and needed more digital talent and he said come over here. So his idea of like, yeah, come over and try something new and when someone opens your door, jump for it. And it was some of the most impactful professional parts of my career and I owe a lot to Brent for that my gift of storytelling being honed under his auspices. And when you think about the idea of you know you're coming in saying you have blind confidence, or, as Beau says, blind confidence, you say faith. The understanding of your value, I think, is what's underpinning and what I know is one of the philosophies of yours, is that when you understand your unique value, that you can bring that to the table. That is what is going to pay off. So tell us more about how you tapped into that.

Speaker 2: 11:51

Here's the crazy thing I don't think that I knew what my superpowers were until about 2017.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Okay.

Speaker 2: 12:03

Okay.

Speaker 1: 12:05

I'm going to keep saying tell us more.

Speaker 2: 12:07

I go back to the story of I started off as a painter and then was do, it was creative and everyone. I kept telling everyone I was creative, like that was my superpower, my core superpower. I don't think that is my core superpower at all. I think and I did not understand this I was as much as I was fighting labels. I was also willing to accept a label called creative. Okay, okay, I felt like that gave me the way to open a door. I'm creative, I can figure this out. I'm creative, I can do this. I am a creative person.

Speaker 2: 12:48

I do not think that my creativity is what makes me unique, and it took a lot of soul searching, had reached a point in my career that I had a decision and you know, in 2016, there was you know, I work at Publicis Media, at Publicis and there was the merger of Publicis Media and the agencies were all coming together and we had been I had been part of Starcom MediaVest group and I was very proud of like that, because I thought that we were the best and I was also leading a content division and I was like I'm creative and we had been through kind of a tough period of time. The agency world can be very cyclical and so sometimes you're like number one and then you can, can turn around and then you just start losing accounts one after one, and you see it happen to everybody and, like, honestly, my heart goes out to anyone who's at an agency. That starts that cycle because it is hard to live through and it's hard to have the faith that you're going to come to the other side.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Until you see that to your point. It's cyclical and it's like you're up, it's like everybody's got this.

Speaker 2: 14:11

You spiral, see that to your point. It's cyclical and it's like you're up, it's like everybody's spiral up, you spiral down and we were on a downward cycle and you know we've lost a bunch of major accounts and I had we've been in the, you know, in a pitch and I had retained a big a section of a piece of a piece of business that then was being transferred to a different agency and within Publicis because they were merging with another company and I'd never heard, I didn't know anyone at Zenith and all of a sudden I was told that I was moving down to Zenith and I was like but no one asked me and I have 30 people on my team that had been through a war zone of losing accounts and we have banded together to hold a little family together. And they told me that we were all moving and they went to ask us and I resigned, yeah, I went home and I told Bo, my husband, and he was like you need to go back there and you need to get your job back. But the crazy thing was, is the day afterwards I got a call from a guy whose name is Sean Reardon, who was then the CEO of Zenith, and he said hi, it's Sean. I was like hi, and he's like I'm the CEO of Zenith. I was like sure, and he's like so I need to talk to you.

Speaker 2: 15:26

I was like I'm not sure we need to talk. I resigned and he's like I know, but there's a problem. I need you and those 30 people to come down to help transition this business. And I've been told that if you don't come, no one's coming. And I was like I don't know if my heart's in this anymore, like I've just lived through losing some of the major businesses. It's like that I poured my heart into and we talked for a little bit and at the end of it Sean said Brent, I know what it's like to have poured your heart into an account. And I said I'm not prepared to like you. And he said but you do. I said don't be so fresh. And so for three days he called me and we would start talking and he was just trying to warm me up. And at the end of this he said so what are we going to do? And I said look, this is going to be a little out of left field. I said but I want you to come up to our building in New York. I want you to talk to the team. And I said I want you to talk from your heart, the way that you've been talking to me about what you want to do with Senate. And I said and afterwards we're going to vote and if it's unanimous we'll all come and if it's not, you're going to have to negotiate with us individually. He's like you can't do that. I was like but I can because I've resigned. And he came up and I helped him prepare. And he came up and he talked to the team from his heart and then I shoved him out the door and we closed the door and he's like I'll call you in 15 minutes. Just trust me, trust me.

Speaker 2: 17:08

And I sat down with the team. I was like what do you want to do? I thought we needed wholesale change. We didn't need wholesale change, we just needed enough of a change for people to take a breath from what had happened. We had lost four major accounts.

Speaker 2: 17:29

You had watched teams that you were super proud of being part of be disbanded and people leave the agency world period to do other things. And these are your friends that you've worked with for 10 years, things like that. And you're thinking the entire time. Oh my God, should I be getting out? Like, what am I doing here? Did I miss the rescue boat, the lifeboat off of the Titanic? Did I stay too long? And I thought that we needed to just all let go. And this one kid who was brand new, his name was Dylan, he was an associate. He had just started, like four months into his job, his first job, and he said you seem to trust him. And I was like I don't know why, but I do. And he said well, we trust you. So if you trust him, why don't we just try this? This is an associate he's 23 years old, and I said so. Who wants to do this? And everyone raised their hand.

Speaker 2: 18:36

And I called him and I said we're all coming.

Speaker 2: 18:38

What I didn't know was the change of scenery and then change of environment was what I needed, and it needed for me to clear my head of the past. I needed to be able to get to a point where I could reboot myself, and a lot of this was also. They provided me with, you know, the ability to like, really think about myself, what I had done in the past, the things that, like I'd done that were wrong, to tell you the truth, and who I wanted to be moving forward. And part of that was an evaluation of what I am good at and what I am not good at. And I went to Sean one day and I said I don't think you're using me the right way. And he said okay. And I said, look, I can do this content thing, I can do this creative thing till the cows come up, but that's not what I'm really good at. And he's like okay, I said I'm really good at understanding people and understanding and being almost like an emotional empath to understand how people feel, what's going on. And I said and I'm going to give you an example and he's like what is it, sean? You run these town halls Like they are Baptist tent revivals and, by the way they're fun, they're great, like there's so much energy.

Speaker 2: 20:07

I said but people don't believe you, I said because you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. They need to hear the truth. You keep saying we're doing well, we're doing okay, but we're not doing great. And you know there are things that are going on where they're you know, where there's a little bit of a hiring freeze, promotions are being held back, and that is totally in conflict for what you are telling them. Like we're doing great.

Speaker 2: 20:32

And I said I understand that you want people to feel excited. I said, but people also want the truth, I said, so I need. I said I think I can help you change the way that you were communicating with people so that they're still excited. But there's enough transparency and truth to this that they don't feel that you're potentially delusional or you're not telling them everything. And I said because people will fill in the gaps of what they don't know with what they believe, whether it's right or not. And I said and that is what you're fighting right now. There's a lot of people talking about things that have nothing to do with what is actually going on.

Speaker 1: 21:14

So I just want to stop there for a second, because you've said a lot of really interesting things that I think our listeners will benefit from. So the first thing I'm thinking that I'm hearing you say and I know we don't all have the luxury of being able to resign without other work, but it doesn't have to take a resignation, it can take a pause. Where you need to pause and think about okay, I need a change of scenery. Does that mean I need a vacation? Does that mean I want to talk to leadership and see if I can rotate whether it's temporarily or permanently into another department for a couple of months? Is there a way to doing a job swap with another city or another department? Finding that change of scenery is really important in keeping your career fresh, because it's going to give you the pause. It's going to force you, whether you like it or not, to think differently and interact differently, because you're not with your same cast of characters that you're working with on a regular basis.

Speaker 2: 22:07

So that's the first thing that I'm hearing and it gives you the ability, more than anything, I think, the thing that is a career killer. And yeah and jill, you know this because you and I've talked about this before. I I call the three s's safe stretch and suck and suck, and those are the three components of every job Tell them more about your three S's, because it's great so.

Speaker 2: 22:29

I believe that they're like a perfect job has an equal amount of safe and safe being the things that you know and you're really good at Stretch, which is you're learning, you're over your ski tips, you're a little scared and it's it's pushing you forward. And there's something that no one tells you, which is there's going to be components of your job that suck, that no one could ever take away right because it's work, it's not a hobby.

Speaker 2: 22:54

It's always going to be it's just life, man life, and where people want is they want this, this job, that it's all safe and stretch and that is too ideal. That never exists. But where you get bored is where it is safe and suck and there's no stretch and you become complacent, you, you start repeating things. The worst other side is that it's all stretch and suck, which means that you're scared out of your mind all the time because you're so over your ski tips and you're covering things.

Speaker 1: 23:29

You're not able to, if you're thinking scared we know this and our listeners know this.

Speaker 2: 23:33

If you're only in the fear.

Speaker 2: 23:34

You cannot be using your prefrontal cortex to be strategic, you cannot be doing both at the same time and you're reactive through everything and you're reactive and you see people all the time at work and how I have done this, lindsay is like when people are reactive, I'm like okay, what is going on? What is the motivation behind this? Why are they scared? Like what is going on? I want to help understand this because I don't believe it's what's going on physically in the office. There's a lot of other things that contribute to it. But like, understanding where people come from helps you also guide their careers. But like also being realistic with everyone about like well, that goes to your second point.

Speaker 2: 24:14

You want to turn the dial enough that you've got enough safe stretch and suck throughout the day that it evens itself out, that you can leave and be like, okay, I accomplished some things. There's some things that, like, I didn't get done, but you know what? I still feel really good about what I'm doing. I really looked, you know, and I don't think a lot of people have the time to look and say am I bored? Am I bored? Am I not growing? Is there not enough stretch in what I do, in this switching of things and change, whether you want to embrace it or not, forces stretch, yes, matter what? Yes, we like whether you're working out and you need to be more limber, whether like whether it is, you know, in your job. Stretching is incredibly important because it gives you the ability to understand what you can do.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Yeah, and it's also that point of you know I've said this before that in our education system, failure means the end, and in real life, especially within our career, failures and endings that suck, that stretch, that scaredness, that discomfort. It might not be the end, quote say, but it's actually the beginning. It's actually like, oh, there's something rich here for me to lean into, for me to decide am I going to learn this, am I going to delegate this, am I going to partner with someone who we're going to collaborate and do it together? But it forces that. It forces us to take different actions. So what? Again, what I'm hearing from you is change of scenery and it can take different ways to get there. The three S's, which, of course, is a sidebar, but it's a philosophy that I think everyone should really think about. What is the right balance and the right tolerance for you to have that safeness, to have the stretch and to know that some of it's going to suck, cause that's what it is?

Speaker 2: 26:09

But also be super clear on your boundaries. Be super clear on your boundaries Also. Suck can take over your life If you have no boundaries.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yes, what are your non-negotiables? But what do you need?

Speaker 2: 26:22

Boundaries but also vulnerability, but also boundaries but also vulnerability. I have found more comfort later in my career in being vulnerable and saying I'm scared of this to someone who is my supervisor. This makes me scared, and I'll tell you why this makes me scared. When I was being promoted into my current role of being a global client lead on a you know, a piece of business at Publicis, the night before the day before it was to be announced, I went to Lauren Hanran, who's the CEO of Zenith in the U? S, and I said I think you're making a terrible mistake. It was one of my few prices of confidence, like I have confidence to tell you the truth. And she said why. And I said look, this has been the biggest win that we've had in 20 years. I'm not sure I'm the right person, and she's like we don't feel that way, but you need to go talk to Dave.

Speaker 2: 27:16

And it was Dave Penske. And I went and she's like you need to go upstairs. And so I went up to his office. It's like look, don't send the email out. I think we're making a big mistake. And he's like we're not. And I'm like but I think you are. She's like but we're not, and the email's going out. The email's going out and I need you to take a deep breath, because we believe in you and we're not going to let you fail.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Awesome, awesome. And that's the part which you said. You know, with the win to transfer jobs, which was the change of scenery, you had a very honest conversation with your leadership and you talked about how you felt and you treated them like a human versus somebody who's in a different stratosphere that you couldn't necessarily talk to. You talked to them respectfully, as a human and was sharing what you were looking for, but also asking questions. You also pushed on the transparency, both with that other CEO and then, of course, in the wind that you just mentioned, right going to two leaders and saying here are my thoughts, here are my fears, and getting a real clear, transparent conversation. Again, I understand that not everyone in all circumstances is going to be able to have this level of transparency, but if you think through, what are the points you want to make and what are the questions you want to ask, and get really neutral on them, meaning if you're coming at them with passion or anger, no one's going to be able to hear you.

Speaker 1: 28:40

But, when you're able to neutralize them and clearly say here's what I'm thinking, what are your thoughts. That level of transparency is also what is going to grow your career. I think those points are great, brent, and people will really benefit from hearing those things. Thank you for that. Well look.

Speaker 2: 28:58

I will tell you I am again. My superpowers come from. You know, I think your superpowers are really rooted in many cases in the way that you grew up. My ability to read a room emotionally, to understand people, their motivations, et cetera, comes from the fact that I had an older brother who had mental illness and you know, and also grew up in a family with alcoholism and so like. Look, when you aren't sure how someone's going to react to something, you have to read the room very quickly because you're afraid of what the outcome is going to be. I didn't know that at that point in time.

Speaker 2: 29:47

That, like you know and people used to say this to me all the time, and I think you've even said this to me at different points it's like how do you get to know these people so well, like, how do they open up to you? Like, like it's, it's bizarre how you can like go deep with somebody. Yeah, and a lot of it is just like getting to know people very well, but also understanding the, the un. You know, it's the, the little language that lays underneath between, like, body language, shifting their seats and things like that, the uncomfortableness, and like making sure that people are okay and I think my openness has always in being very vulnerable. In some ways, we're very transparent. It works for me because that's kind of like who I am and I think that in some cases I can't they don't recommend it to a ton of people unless it's really authentic to who you are or you need to get to a place where there's a major breakthrough and that vulnerability is like going to be something.

Speaker 1: 30:49

Well, I think what it is actually because I've worked with you for so many years is that it's the situations you're sharing are facts. You're not still in the story. You're able to say there was mental health in my family, there were challenges around substance misuse in my family. If you're still in the story, then the conversation becomes about you and your story and in a professional environment, we're all getting dragged through that. When you're able to say it with a confidence, where you've done your healing and you're coming from a place of centeredness and you're just stating it as like here's the reality, this is my makeup.

Speaker 1: 31:29

You have this amazing gift and I've told you this before where you're able to whether you say it or whether people just feel it people are able to know that you see them, you hear them, you get them and you can help them. And I will tell you I think, as a leader, there's no greater gift to be able to give to either peers or your executive leadership or the people that report to you, than to really see them, get them, know them. And then, when I say help them, it might be with the challenge in front of them or it might be part of their career, and you've always been a champion of helping people move through the corporate matrix environment.

Speaker 2: 32:06

I actually love this phase of my career more than any other part of my career because I've realized it's not about me anymore and there are phases that happen in your career that no one really talks to you about, but they're just facts. The beginning, when you start, it's about learning as much as you can. You are a sponge taking in everything, but then there is this moment where you've got to start making decisions about like where you're going, which track you're on, et cetera, and it's incredibly unnerving and certainly I talked to a bunch of our younger employees who are afraid of making decisions. They're like, oh my God, what if this is the wrong decision? I'm just like you are 23. There is not much that you can do right now that is going to ruin your career. You've got to go on a journey and be open and say yes and learn as much as you can to form the opinions about where you want to go. And some people are very clear and they know where they want to go, and some people want to experiment more.

Speaker 2: 33:09

I tended to be a little bit more experimental in the middle because I again a journalist would see things that I it was like a magpie bright, shiny objects. I want to go do that, I want to go do that, I want to do that. But I also was afraid of being bored. And now, in the middle of the career, it's about you, it's like you, all the things like you're going to do. Getting to the next thing, and frankly, I didn't really love that part, because it's scary about whether you're making the right decisions or not, and it's scary especially if you're not sure that you really know who you are, what benefits you're bringing to a company.

Speaker 2: 33:52

Then, when you're a little bit more settled and I found this place that is more at ease for myself I realized that the tail end of my career is not about me at all. It's about what I can do for other people. I'm supposed to be here to set up everyone else for their thing. My time is coming to an end and that's okay and I don't mean, like you know, 57 is over for me, but like I'm not going to be like no one's, I'm not gonna be at the top of somebody's list, you know, for like you're gonna do this or that, um, but I am so settled in the fact that I've learned a ton, I'm comfortable with my journey and I'm more comfortable with myself and what I can do for other people and taking that pressure off of it's about me and what's next. And the next thing that's going to happen for me has been a real piece of peace that I didn't know, that I wanted.

Speaker 1: 35:00

Yeah, it's really beautiful. It's really beautiful. So a couple of rapid fire questions. How do you keep your mindset fresh? How do you like what? Some of the routines that you do so that you're able to continue to create value Pretty much every day?

Speaker 2: 35:21

First of all, I'm a firm believer in getting up and doing something to clear your mind. I think a cluttered mind to start a day is a potentially dangerous mind and I think this being some form of physicality and it's the way that I burn off my energy. To tell you the truth, and look, I'm up at 5 am. I've got the dogs. I have three dogs that come to the office with me every day and we go for a hike. We live in Pasadena, we hike up to the base of the San Gabriel Mountains and back.

Speaker 2: 35:59

I work out, I get here and I find peace and quiet early in the morning, being in the office where I can get things done and, frankly, I look. A routine I think is great. I think it's great to keep structure, because I think a lack of structure makes people feel far more uncomfortable than anything else. And if you can find comfort in that, and also things that are important to you, I think the mornings for me and I say this to a lot of people, even though I work in a global job, which is, you've got to give me time in the morning to do something for me, because the rest of the day is going to be yours and so I need to focus on me.

Speaker 2: 36:42

If I can get that done and I can get into the office, it means that your your mind's clear, you're settled, you're calm, and then you know that there's going to be a burning trash can somewhere in the world that you're going to have to deal with and you just go at it and instead of it being in my current role, I took it very personally at the beginning of running this business that there were problems every day and I thought that I could get this place to find I'm going to solve all these problems. It's like don't be so arrogant, brian, you're never going to solve all these problems. Problems are part of life in general. They're going to be things that go on. I try to be someone who is there to help people figure out how to get over whatever hurdle it is, and the other thing is, I think, also with clients or anybody. The idea that you're going to fail people is just inherent and I have learned to say I'm sorry a lot.

Speaker 1: 37:51

And bounce back from it.

Speaker 2: 37:53

Yeah, and sit there and say, look, I failed here, I'm sorry. But I've also found that if you apologize genuinely, that most people will forgive very, very quickly and move on. But it's when you dig into things and you're like, no, I'm going to be, I'm afraid of being wrong, I'm afraid of like this, I'm going to, I'm going to like, try to wash this clean before I get it to you. People see through the facade of that and it doesn't feel genuine. And if, when you can tell people I was wrong and I get it, it is amazing how much forgiveness people will get back and move on.

Speaker 1: 38:40

Brent, this has been such a treat. I really appreciate you taking the time and talking to people and just really just having an open conversation and sharing a bit about your journey. There are so many gems here that I know people are really going to listen to and take note of. If you have questions, I want you to email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. We will get those questions to Brent and, as you know, I always say we'll bring him back and we will have him answer those questions because I know, as he's smiling at me, he will do this.

Speaker 2: 39:07

I will answer them very honestly.

Speaker 1: 39:11

It'll be good, or maybe we'll do a LinkedIn live together and we can answer the questions that way. So I appreciate everyone for listening, and all of Brent's information and where you can follow him on the socials will be in the show notes and until next time, I thank you all for being here.

Speaker 2: 39:26

Thank you for having me.