Minter Dialogue with Ron Szekely (MDE599)

Ron Szekely, a business coach and former L’Oreal executive, shares insights on leadership, simplification, and personal growth. We discuss his journey from corporate life to coaching entrepreneurial teams, exploring the power of accountability and prioritization in business. Ron reveals his passion for hockey and how it shapes his approach to teamwork and life. We delve into the importance of authenticity in leadership and the balance between personal and professional life. Ron offers practical advice on journaling and self-discovery, emphasizing the value of understanding oneself to become a better leader. The conversation touches on the challenges of maintaining passion in growing businesses and the need for empathy in leadership roles.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Ron Szekely:

• Check out their BOS360 (Business Operating System 360) site
• Find/follow Ron Szekely on LinkedIn

Other mentions/sites:

• Branding Gets Personal and the 5E’s of branding here

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes. Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Ron Szekely. I always used to struggle with your sz name. Who, who is Ron? Great to have you on the show. Who are you?

Ron Szekely: Who am I? Nice to, nice to see you again. I know it’s been a long time. We had the pleasure of working together maybe 15 years ago, couple of decades or 10 years ago at least. And so, who am I? So, I am right now a business coach working with leaders, teams of all different size companies. So, most of my career early on was working with larger international companies. And then sort of midway, midway through, I found a passion for smaller founder led companies in that entrepreneurial spirit. And most recently, for the last five years, six years, I’ve been coaching, working with leadership teams of different size companies on my own and now with a team of coaches that allow us to scale that a little bit further. So, helping leadership teams scale their optimism and reach their reach, their full potential and the freedom that comes along with that.

Minter Dial: Of course, you are also a Canadian living in Montreal, the beautiful town, which is how we met when I was working at L’Oreal. And I wonder what is it that provoked this passion for smaller entrepreneurial companies?

Ron Szekely: If I had to bring it to one aha moment. So, I had spent most of my career with big companies, like 20 years at L’Oreal, Sanofi, Keurig, all of these big multinational companies. And one time I was at a food show. These food shows that take place in California, there’s like 6,000 people with their booth set up demonstrating their kombuchas and snack bars and all of their healthy goods. Foodies, foodies. And of course wandering the floor, all of the, the buyers and different, different people that they’re trying to share their products with. And of course there was a big booth from one of the big CPG food companies that had their pretty girls out front that were handing out their snack bars, but they weren’t looking at you, they were looking over you, looking to the next person. They looked great. They had a script, but you could tell it was just a show. And right next to them there was this mom and pop sort of food display booth. Small, you know, they couldn’t afford a big booth, but they had their booth. And the thing was behind the booth were the founders. It was the husband and the wife who literally the night before were making these snack bars that they were so excited for people to try. And when I went to their booth and look in their eyes and when they gave me that sample to try, they genuinely wanted to know, like, what do you think? Do you like the taste? Do you think this thing will sell? Do you think somebody’s going to buy this and distribute it across all of the U.S. do we have a winner? They were so excited to tell the story of the ingredients, the product, the brand story, why they’re doing what they’re doing. The sort of passion of entrepreneurship and that optimism of we’re going to make it big was so igniting compared to the booth next door, which looked very pretty. Everybody was polished, but it was kind of empty in the sense like nobody really cared. Nobody was listening to know that I liked the taste of the thing they were giving me. It was just this sort of big kind of corporate polished machine which I had spent most of my career working and building and creating and celebrating. And when I saw the passion of this sort of up and coming couple that were thinking, we’re going to change the world with our snack bars, they’re going to be healthier, there’s better ingredients and just their sort of passion, personal story, I was like, I wish I could help them, you know, grow and become as big and you know, sort of take some of the market share and some of the, the consumers from these big players that have somehow lost in some sense their appreciation for what they’re doing. The product, the consumer, the brand, the benefits. And so, that was kind of, let’s see, the aha moment where I was like, okay, how can I spend more of my time with people like this that are genuinely passionate about entrepreneurship and changing the world?

Minter Dial: Cool. I love that story. I have two questions. The first is usually when, like, for example, I am a. I’ve written about empathy and people have asked me why I’ve written about empathy and usually there’s something missing that’s made me want to go into empathy. So, I, for example, I would characterize myself as being reasonably empathic, but many times have I not been and not known how to be. And I certainly don’t have what they call as effective empathy, which is emotional empathy, where I can have the same mirror, the same emotions that you have. It’s more of a work. So, that, that is a context for this question, which is what is it about your life that led you to need to help people with that kind of a passion?

Ron Szekely: You know, when I think of empathy, I know that growing up my job was being a magician for kids birthday parties. And so, I wow, Wow. I had a lot of fun working with, you know, the five year olds having their birthday party and just so excited to, you know, have magic Ron in their in their living room entertaining them and their friends. And they were so excited that, I mean, I loved that probably six, seven years of my life while I was going through school and doing that on weekends. But the empathy that I kind of was required to have in order to know what they were thinking, to know if I was kind of tricking them, if I was fooling them, if I was making them have fun, both from a kind of logical understanding standpoint, but also a what are they genuinely feeling standpoint, like trying to get inside their head. I learned to appreciate, let’s say the ability to almost step inside their body and both feel it and understand why am I feeling what I’m feeling? And I realized that that’s carried through in my. For better or for worse in my life, where I kind of have a tendency to want to experience the emotions that somebody else’s to, to know whether the magic of the world is kind of working and so whether that’s. As a marketer to know, like, is this campaign working? You know, back when I was a magician, is this trick going to fool them? And so, I would say I’m naturally maybe wired or have been kind of conditioned to, to play in the space of empathy so much that if, you know, I watch a movie, I’m going to cry when I’m supposed to cry and I’m going to laugh when I’m supposed to laugh. But so, I actually read a lot of stoicism trying to counter the natural, let’s say emotion that comes through empathy.

Minter Dial: That’s wonderful. I. I’m just imagining you with sort of red cheeks painted white.

Ron Szekely: I’m not sure if you were that.

Minter Dial: Kind of a magician or a clown.

Ron Szekely: No, not a clown. Just looked like my regular self. But doing tricks.

Minter Dial: Yeah. And so, there’s the second question about these, this entrepreneurial couple and York and you know, they sort of stayed corporate environment that was being looked over. You how can that passion ever be scaled? I mean really, if we were to think back to Shue le whomever Paula Kent in my world, they had passion. And then little by little, processes size, corporate lawyers, shareholders tend to just screw it out of us. How does one in your mind, do you think that there’s a, a ceiling or there’s some kind of magic sauce that allows those two beautiful, you know, that couple entrepreneuring with that desire to know your taste and love. My new snack bar. Can it ever. How can it ever.

Ron Szekely: Yeah, it is, it is a challenge for sure. As you know, companies become bigger and you, you forget why you’re doing what you’re doing and you kind of get so lost in the data and the systems, the processes and teams and the machine. But I think if you remind yourself why you’re doing what you do, so come back to your core purpose and spend as much time as possible with consumers, listening to consumers, genuinely listening to consumers, I think it can reignite that passion and that sort of obligation and sense of commitment that you have to like you’re making a product for somebody to change their lives. And so, when you remind yourself of who that person is and you kind of reattach the empathy of that actual end user, it takes you out of the machine and reminds you like at the end of the day, everything that we’re doing here is because there’s somebody that’s going to use this product on a daily basis. And so, whether it’s a skin cream that they’re going to put on their face every morning, reminding yourself like there’s somebody every single morning, they’re opening their jar, they’re putting their hand in it and they’re rubbing it on their face and they want to feel a certain way. And when you reattach yourself to the commitment to making great products, the commitment to changing somebody’s lives and seeing the faces of the people that you’re actually trying to change and you listen to them and get their feedback, I think you can reattach to that sort of core purpose that started you off and reignite you and get you out of the machine once in a while. And I think if there’s one piece of advice for marketers or senior leaders is get back out in the field, talk to the people that are actually using your products and do it for yourself. Because that’s how you kind of reignite the mission and the appreciation for the consumer and you feel good about yourself because no matter what you’re making, you realize if you’re making it well, like you’re helping somebody in some way. And so, you don’t have to be, you know, ending world hunger to be doing a mission driven kind of enterprise. No matter what you’re making, you can do it in a better way that makes somebody’s life better. So, talking to the end consumer is probably the only hack I can think of to counter that. That natural tendency to get stuck in the increasingly complex over time.

Minter Dial: Yeah, I know that with your boss360, you do, you do talk a lot about brand. And I can’t help but it really comes back down to understanding of who you are and what you stand for as a brand. And my conviction would be that a one of the hacks that I have is really recreate how you onboard people. And because even in the onboarding thing, you need to have everybody who’s already on board understand that that’s who we are. An example I have which doesn’t go well is France. I became naturalized citizen of France, so they had an onboarding process for naturalization. They told me all sorts of things about France since I’ve lived in France for 20 years. French national, father or French wife, I, at that point kind of knew a little bit about France. And what I completely stark raving got angry about was what they were telling was nothing to do with the reality of how it is in France. And on top of that, the people in France had no idea what we’re recounting to immigrants and people who want to naturalize. So, the issue is making that coherence start at the very beginning. Looks like you have frozen. There you are. You’re back. Did you hear. Sorry.

Ron Szekely: If the sound cut out there, we’re, we’re getting 30 centimeters of snow right now, so we may be. I don’t know if it’s on my end that it’s possible that the wi fi slowed down just recently.

Minter Dial: We’ll get back to that. Do you hear what I just went through?

Ron Szekely: I heard you talking about France and then it cut out when you said what they are not sharing.

Minter Dial: I, it surely would have recorded on my side. But the, the notion is that the presentation of France to the naturalizing people was disconnected from the reality of what France is. And worse, it was not made aware to the French what they’re recounting about who we are as French. And that sort of discrepancy is absolutely vicious. And so, it’s a very disappointing landing, et cetera. And then for brands, if everybody in the company knew what we were telling new employees, recruits, then you would have to kind of live that more often. It’s a constant reminder of why we were invented, who our founders were, what our values are. And then of course, it has to be lived by the top executives. But anyway, that, that’s my hack to bringing it in. What do you think?

Ron Szekely: I think that’s, that’s a great hack. I guess there’s the two parts to it. One is making sure that it’s part of the onboarding so that somebody is telling the story. Because typical onboarding is, here’s the processes, here’s the files, here’s all of the SOPs. But I do recall when we were at L’Oreal, there was a big part of onboarding where you had to talk about the brand. Like people had to really understand the products and the brand. So, that was done. Well, a lot of companies, I’d say today, don’t, don’t include that. So, reminding them at the onboarding, but then letting them participate that on a regular basis with feature onboarding so that first they learn it when they come in, but then they’re now forced to tell that story over and over again as new people come in or externally to make sure that the, the brand and the product and the why and the core purpose are not just on a piece of paper in somebody’s drawer somewhere, but are brought to life. And that story is told with passion on a regular basis. I think that’s a great, a great hack.

Minter Dial: In the, in the, you just mentioned snow in Montreal. And so, I can’t help but sort of veer onto the track of personal life because you being a Canadian, good old Canuck, know what ice hockey is. I say that with great humility because usually when a Canadian says, yeah, I know what it is, they’ve played semi pro as opposed to me, I maybe have played maximum of 10 games in my life. But you have four kids and I wonder to what extent your experience in hockey has been formative for you and why are you transmitting it to your kids?

Ron Szekely: So I did play hockey when I was younger. I stopped and then when I had the, the kids, they all got interested in hockey. So, I got sort of immersed back in it. Learned to love it even more than, than ever before. Hockey is an am. Amazing sport because when you take it up as a kid, you know, you’re four years old, five years old, and you’re, you can hardly stand on your skates and then the next day you’re skating and the third day you’re skating fast and for day four you’re scoring goals. So, the progression is so fast. And the kids, they feel like they’re going to be in the NHL by, by the end of Week 2. They’re just like so enthralled with how fast they’re, they’re progressing. And it’s a great sport in the sense that there’s a lot of individual play, but there’s also teamwork. And so, there’s some great sports that are very individual, you know, tennis or, you know, there’s a ton of sports. There’s also sports that are very team focused, where it’s, you know, football where you have your role to play and that’s your role. And you’re on the offensive line or you’re on the defensive line. And you know you have a very kind of, this is your little box. Hockey is one where it’s that real beautiful combination of teamwork and individual play. And so, you know, when you get the puck, you can be fancy, but you’re always mindful of the full team. And sometimes even as a forward you’re going back on defense and even as a defense you’re going forward with the puck so you’re not stuck in your little box. So, I feel it’s a great kind of life game where it teaches a good balance between individual, like getting really good at your sport individually and then using each other’s strengths, but not being stuck in one position, one box, either offense or defense. It’s good kind of mix, mix that way. And I really love that. The progression is very fast for children. They start kind of unable and they think they’re never going to be able. And all of a sudden they’re, they’re flying around and moving at a really high, high paced speed. So, a lot of fun I, I feel comes from that, especially around the idea of teamwork and yet still being an individual.

Minter Dial: Well there, I mean, first of all, I’m like, oh wow, that sounds exactly like padel. padel is extremely easy to start. And so, even people who’ve never been in racket sports get into it. And here’s the other thing came to me. You were talking about defense and offense because in padel there’s a lot of offense and defense and defenses with the walls and you let it bounce off and pop some lobs and you stay back and let the others attack until you can retake the net. So, you go from offense to defense. And the big thing that is super critical in padel, especially at the pro level, is that transition, learning how to get out of your end, getting the right puck movement is setting up to move into, from the neutral zone into the offensive zone. So, that transition and coming back and skating backwards and holding down your position, not, you know, knowing what your assignment is, even if you’re a forward. It’s, it’s very comparable. I use the same terminology, in fact, when I talk about padelton is because you want to get to the net but you, you need, you can’t just rush it because you might leave too many holes. And so, you have to think smartly because you have to go as two together to the front and then you come back together because you’re oh, lob. Stuff like that. Anyway, that’s. That’s kind of fun.

Ron Szekely: That sounds great. I, unfortunately haven’t played pickleball yet.

Minter Dial: I know it’s padel, padel.

Ron Szekely: Sorry, I’ve. I said pickleball because I have played. It’s taken the space of padel here, but I do want to get out and play. It looks like a lot of fun. And as a squash player, I’m sure it’s. It’s going to feel great for me.

Minter Dial: Yeah. So, the. I mean, my other reflection about hockey, because I know, well, my roommate was captain of my university hockey team and, and one of the things that I really, I. I truly believe is part of the DNA of hockey is when you score a goal, of course you can celebrate, but the next thing you do is you go run over to the guy who gave you the assist. You don’t take off your shirt and show, look at me how great I am. Your job was to freaking school and recognize that you didn’t get there all by yourself. You know, occasionally you do, but, you know, unassisted, for the most part, you go, You’re. You’re very much thankful for being part of that team. Like you’re saying. The other thing, though, is it’s a rough and tumble sport. And in today’s world, I feel like brands as well, by the way, we all tend to run to safety.

Ron Szekely: I agree, I agree. And I’m a big believer in bringing back a little bit more of the rough and tumble of real life for the appreciation of it, for the hardening of it. I think we’ve probably, with our kids and with society, we made things a little too cushy. And the beauty of hockey is we all agree to get on the ice and smack each other into the boards and play incredibly tough. Like it’s, you know, almost a boxing match when you’re, when you’re on the, on the ice with the opposing team. But the beauty is after the game, you’re shaking hands. Good game, good game, good game, good game. And reminding each other, like, we’re going to play hard, we’re going to push each other, we’re going to, like, this is a battle, but it’s not personal. Like, afterwards, we’re going to still say, you know, good, Graham, and we want to play with each other again. And so, I think in general, that life lesson could be. Could be better spread from hockey to the rest of the world where we can play a little tougher with each other without it, you know, demoralizing us. Like, let’s play hard. Let’s you know, have some more rough and tumble. But at the end of the day, let’s remind each other that we still respect each other and want to play with each other again.

Minter Dial: I love that I, I paid 18 years rugby and would play qualify rugby having the same type of spirit without pads, you know, and of course we don’t have a puck to deal with.

Ron Szekely: But yeah, my son played rugby and I remember they. The person that you probably, you can attest to this, I never played. But the person that you were covering the whole game and kind of dropping to the ground and being tough with at the end of the game, that’s the person you bring a beer to. And I thought that’s just like a great. It’s even better than that fist bump. It’s like, here’s a beer. Let’s. Let’s celebrate each other together.

Minter Dial: By the way, sometimes it was in my boot. Shoot the boot. Maybe you do you do that with hockey skates? Shoot, you know, shoot the skate. But the, the. What you were also saying about hockey, again, my mind just goes right back to, to padel because padel, you’re in a, you’re in a box. And the pro padel players call it like a gladiatorial fight. It is a very point by point tough in a box, like a cage fight to the end. And then there’s a tradition in padel of because it’s Spanish or at least, you know, a Latino in, in heritage is to have una cana beer afterwards and enjoy and, and look to play again because that’s, that’s the glory of life as opposed to beating you and winning over you and that sort of control and fear type of mindset. There’s a growth mindset that we can all grow together.

Ron Szekely: Yeah, absolutely. I think Simon Sinek has a book, the Infinite Game, and he talks a lot about that. And I totally on side with that.

Minter Dial: Love it. All right. So, in your bio, you talk about simplifying life and unifying, leading teams towards a common vision. It’s a complex world. But what, how do you go about simplifying life in this sort of vuca world that we’re in?

Ron Szekely: Yeah, I mean first, so when we do work with leadership teams, that’s the first thing we talk about is just how over time and as you grow, things don’t just become a little more complex, they become exponentially complex. More lines of communication, more barriers in the way of decision making. There’s just everything becomes not just a little bit harder, but more and more complicated. So, they have to deliberately Recognize, you know, when can things be simplified, what can be removed? And so, I guess the main thing that they need to be really good at is just be decisive because the added complexity can come not only from the increased people, but keeping too many things open. And the analogy I use is if you’re planning to go on a trip with some friends and you say pack your suitcase, but you don’t know where you’re going yet, I mean, you’re going to be packing, you know, a big suitcase full of everything because you don’t know if you’re going to be rock climbing or scuba diving or you know where you’re going. But the moment you decide, here’s where we’re going, not that any of the other plans couldn’t have been great as well, but like, you pick one suddenly like your, your suitcase is just like, you don’t need all of that other stuff. And so, the more we in business, I guess, and in life is decide, like just cut off, literally cut off all of these other options and focus on one thing that just naturally simplifies everything because you’re not entertaining all of these alternate paths that could open up in the future. You’re saying, no, we’ve decided for the next year, the next three years, whatever your time frame, here’s where we’re going, this is what we need to get there. That way you can kind of let go of all of this unnecessary complexity that sometimes exists because people don’t know, maybe I’m going to need this. Maybe I should put this in my suitcase just in case it’s to say, no. The moment you decide we’re going to an all inclusive, all you need is, you know, your bathing suit and flip flops. Then you can leave all of the other stuff behind and so pick that, pick that destination together and make that. I think that’s one thing. And then just constantly being on the lookout and asking yourself, could this be simpler? Does that person really need to be in the meeting? Could this communication be reduced? Could you know, these, do we need these three reports or is one of them going to be enough? Do we need to track it in units and dollars or tell us the same thing? Let’s just track it this way. So, making the decision to not carry additional things is probably one of the easiest ways to continually work towards simplicity in, in business and life.

Minter Dial: If, if I didn’t know better, and this is a contextual type of statement, I think I could be listening to Elon Musk cutting things down, cutting out the fat, changing the Systems, because we do it doesn’t mean we should.

Ron Szekely: Right.

Minter Dial: Those types of reflections. But yet in business we seem to overload ourselves. So, I’m pretty aware that you have some tools that you use to simplify. Give me an example of a tool that helps you or helps a company to get back to the root.

Ron Szekely: Well, one of the most important would be just agreeing on your priorities. So. Well, first of all, once you have your plan established, where are you going to be in 10 years, three years, one year? Then bringing it down to the quarter and then quarter by quarter, just like, what are the three, four, maybe five things we’re going to focus on for this quarter? Get everybody exactly on that same page so that you’re not trying to do a million things at once, but you’re really saying no, these are the five big things. And you stay incredibly focused on that. I would say the accountability chart simplifies things tremendously as well. Sometimes we.

Minter Dial: What’s that?

Ron Szekely: So it’s like an organizational chart where normally you would have like names and titles, but in an accountability chart, the titles don’t really matter. It’s what are the five things each person is going to be accountable for? And by accountable, it’s like somebody is counting on you for that. And you have your name and you have these take your whole day, take your whole job and put it down into five buckets. And that way everybody has their name plus their five things. And that’s shared across the organization. So, everybody knows kind of who does what. And you don’t need to think in terms of departments or all of these hierarchies. It’s kind of like these are the five things this company is counting on me for. And when you articulate that, you realize sometimes there was some overlap, there was redundancy, sometimes there’s gaps and things aren’t being covered. So, that’s one of the first things that we put in place is let’s just build an accountability chart where everybody’s job can be summarized in five bullets. And then let’s share that with everybody. And you know, first we make sure that it makes sense and it’s the right chart. But then we teach them like, okay, now this becomes shared and it becomes, when you have conversations in a one on one, these are the five things you’re kind of checking in on. How’s this going? How’s this going? How’s this going? And it keeps people really focused on like what’s their, the main thing that everybody’s counting on them to, to get done Those would be probably two things is, is that in addition, there’s probably some playbooks we could talk about, but setting priorities and having clear accountability is probably the, the two that make the biggest impact.

Minter Dial: I love it how you answered that. And I’m wondering, why five?

Ron Szekely: You need a number. And so, what we find is if you don’t give somebody a number, you end up with some people, they can’t stop. They’re like, oh, no. And then I do this and I do this, and they have this list of 20 things, and with 20 things, you can’t remember, and other people will try to put it into one or two things, and then that’s not enough. So, we find when you’re really precise, you’re not flexible, you just say, no, you’ve got to make it five. That way everybody feels like they’re in charge of five things. And so, whether you’re an administrative assistant or whether you’re the head of finance, at the end of the day, if you put it into five buckets, everybody can kind of remember, what are those five things? And when you meet with people, when you do a performance review, these are the five things you check in on. And it just kind of creates a level playing field and a sort of common way of thinking about, we’re all doing five things. Yeah, for sure, somebody’s five might be a bigger five, but they probably have people helping them, etc. But it’s really, it’s somewhat arbitrary, but it’s enough that people can remember and not so few that it, you know, doesn’t allow us to dissect them enough. So, it’s kind of probably the easiest number to keep in your head.

Minter Dial: Well, I, I smile because, for example, I’ve long written about the five E’s. So, there are five E’s of leadership, five E’s of marketing, five in this, that, and the very beginning. I always struggled to remember all five, even though I wrote them. So, I, I looked into this and I, I feel for me, three is a better number in general where I look at it, because three, you can always remember. I feel like the fourth thing you’re starting to fumble on. And the fifth one, hopefully you don’t have to get called on it somehow. That’s my. Been my experience. And so, further to that, it’s not one or two, because that’s a little bit too radical. But the only other thing of three, which is interesting is when everyone has three, the bigger five of bigger game goals of the company may be five. We’re allowing all everyone’s three to fit into the five. Because some of the threes, for example, or some of the five in your case, won’t necessarily directly correlate to the big five of the company, for example.

Ron Szekely: Right.

Minter Dial: That’s. That’s just. What do you think about that?

Ron Szekely: I think you’re. You’re right, it is. You know, for example, when we ask people for their core values and then, you know, on the next time you meet, we say, okay, who knows your core values? If they’ve got more than three, even four, it’s like, oh, it’s that fourth one again. Three is definitely easier. One of the good parts about five is one of the five. For anybody that has to manage somebody, they’re already. One of the five is taken up. We call it lmc. So, lead, manage and coach. And so, you have to make sure that that’s one of the most important things. It’s one of your five is you’re going to manage and coach somebody. Then we explain the difference between lead, manage and coach. But at least. So, now you’ve only got four. Right.

Minter Dial: Right. I love it. That goes back to this idea of the top five.

Ron Szekely: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Where as an overall company, these are. This is how we are. And the question then becomes, I’ve always found it, going back to my initial question of finding that link between the passion of the entrepreneur and the company is making sure each individual who’s in the company, whether they’re the janitor, the secretary or the CEO, that they all have some personal link into what started at the company. You won’t have a total match ever, where everything links in perfectly, but you can find yourself in there somewhere. And finding that mesh is what actually keeps that passion going, which is what was my experience at Redken, which was not my experience and most of the other brands that I have always.

Ron Szekely: And that’s a good point. I’m going to take note of that. I think there’s a way to weave that into the, the accountability chart building exercise that we do. Some way of connecting everybody to the greater purpose and realizing that they have a part to play in that.

Minter Dial: Beautiful. So, you’ve worked in beverages and beauty and health pharma, amongst others. I think for, you know, some people say you have to have a strict focus, vertical expertise, because headhunters only want to hire people who have done exactly the job that you’ve done before. What has it brought to you to have had such a variety of experiences and now that you’re in your coaching world?

Ron Szekely: Yeah. So, I started my Life in Beauty for 18 years I was at L’Oreal before venturing out. So, I was really, I mean it was a great school as you know. They teach you, get you out of your comfort zone, keep you growing year after year after year so you learn best practices. And I learned a lot, but it was within one field after that I did work in beauty a few other times. I worked at coty. I worked at a local company called Group Marcel. So, it allowed me really deep understanding of the beauty world. But it was really when I was able to go into food and beverage, into pharma, and now working with a whole bunch of smaller founder led companies that I realize what is, what is common. So, whether you’re in beauty or beverage or pharma or selling dog poop bags, it doesn’t matter. They have some business aspects that are, that are common, some leadership aspects that are common. The idea of building a business, building a brand and building a team, a lot of commonality. But I was then able to appreciate the specificity of different industries and what makes their business models work and understand that flywheels, the reason a kind of business self perpetuates itself, can be very different from industry to industry, from company to company. And by being able to see different industries, allowed me to connect the dots but also to appreciate their, their differences and something that I probably didn’t at the beginning. I had kind of straight out of school L’Oreal for almost 20 years. I didn’t realize to what extent there were other ways of thinking about the world, thinking about branding, thinking about building teams and all that aspect. But at the same time there are definitely commonalities across.

Minter Dial: Well, that’s a great segue, Ron, at this question, which I’ve never asked. But what is something that you think everybody, regardless of their industry, should stop or start doing?

Ron Szekely: There’s a few things. One thing that I only discovered later in life is the power of journaling, which is sitting down with pen and paper and my thoughts on a regular basis. Something I never did when I was working. And I kind of was so busy, let’s say consuming and doing and going and meeting to meeting. And only in the last maybe five years have I developed a habit of every day and every night, like putting my, my brain and my paper and my pen together to really reflect and to absorb what’s going well, what’s not going well, what am I going to do? Like sort of this, the inner dialogue that was having, making it a little bit more structured. So, the power of tell Me.

Minter Dial: Do you have a routine, do you have a routine you now use for that?

Ron Szekely: I do now. So, every, every morning I start, I read. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Ryan Holiday and the Daily Stoic. So, so I start with some readings from stoicism and then sort of get into the mindset of being a little bit more reflective. And then I write a few things down that sort of priorities for the day, things I’m grateful for, things like that. And then at the end of the day I check back in on, on those thoughts since we’re put a close to the day, celebrate some of the wins. And just when do you do that.

Minter Dial: At the end of the day? I mean like it’s after dinner, before going to bed, at your desk, before.

Ron Szekely: It’s got to be before going to bed. So, it sometimes is when I’m, you know, let’s say I’m working at my desk until 6:00 and then I closing up shop and moving on to the rest of my day. Sometimes I’ll do it then, oftentimes though I don’t. And so, if I don’t, I leave the light on in my office and I know that before bed I have to come back and before turning that light off I have to sit down and, and close that, close that journal.

Minter Dial: And then an atomic habit.

Ron Szekely: An atomic habit. And that’s a book I read every year because it’s, I think one of the best at creating these kind of rituals for the good, let’s say.

Minter Dial: Yeah, I, I used to write diaries but I, I ask with great in curiosity because I don’t have, I mean I write a lot.

Ron Szekely: Right. Yeah.

Minter Dial: I don’t do journaling, so thanks for that. So, journaling is one thing, you had other ideas.

Ron Szekely: And so I work with a company called Brand of Leader. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but they’re a client of mine and I work with them in other ways as well. And so, they work with all different leaders to help them articulate their personal brand and first to identify it and then to amplify it. But the identification process that they go through of sort of self discovery, kind of like what do you stand for? What are your values? What’s your core purpose? Like really getting in touch level on a personal level. And so, I feel for leaders to be their kind of authentic self, they need to know what that is and they often don’t. And so, I see when they work with their clients just articulating like what is it that makes this person unique and great and sort of separating like who’s really them from. Sometimes they’re pretending to be different things or they’re kind of emulating what they think they should be. And just that process of self discovery that goes through this kind of commitment to creating a personal brand of like, who am I and how do I want to show up in the world? I think that’s something that people should take the time to do, not in order to kind of create a brand, but more to demystify or articulate or discover who they already are so that they become more conscious when they are being authentic and when they’re not. But without that activity, I feel it’s kind of hard to know if you’re being authentic or not because you’ve never really asked the question what is, you know, when am I pretending and when am I real?

Minter Dial: So true. I mean, that was really at the heart of my book about you lead, which is when you know yourself, you become a better leader. And in that process, how much do you go for your imperfections? The, the other side, the darker side of yourself, Is that part of the process or is that something that you leave to discretion?

Ron Szekely: It’s a good question. And, and I’m going to take note of that because in the current process, the way they work is, let’s say, more thinking about what parts of themselves do they want to highlight because they’re creating, creating a personal brand. I think in terms of self discovery, you do want to understand without beating yourself up, like, where are you, let’s say weak. So, you know, if we’re working with a company, it’s easy. We’re like, hey, what are your weaknesses? And is it okay that that’s a weakness, you’re just going to leave it there, or is it something you need to fix? And we can kind of be unemotional about it because it’s, it’s a, it’s a business, but on a human level, to come to terms with your weaknesses and decide like, are you good with that or is it something you want to, you want to improve? That’s not currently part of that, let’s say personal branding experience. But I would definitely recommend that on an individual level you come to terms with those parts as well and just be okay with some things being just the way they are and not, you know, not being confused about parts to fix versus parts to, to embrace and accept and actually maybe turn into a superpower in some way.

Minter Dial: Indeed. Yeah. Some, some weaknesses can be that way. You know, I think in today’s world the, the banty around this notion of authenticity, but it is, it’s quite shocking to what extent people are unauthentic or unaware even of how far removed they are from their reality or their truer self. Yeah, I was reading a study that said that 10 to 15 of people actually have a reasonable understanding of themselves. That’s it.

Ron Szekely: That, that sounds, sounds about right. I mean the good thing is media has completely shifted from very polished and artificial to you know, tick tock is like grab a camera while you’re brushing your teeth. It doesn’t matter, you know, so there’s this kind of acceptance through social media and human interaction that has allowed people to be not just comfortable. It’s weird if you’re not authentic, it’s weird if you’re, you know, too posed. It’s, it’s got to be like a Snapchat kind of vibe with the younger generations that I think will, will be helpful. But who knows? As we enter artificial reality, artificial intelligence generated world, it could be a whole new ball game. But, but I definitely agree.

Minter Dial: So then if we go back to our common experience at L’Oreal, to what extent should you bring your personal self to work?

Ron Szekely: It’s a double edged sword. And so, I think you, you know, and it’s definitely. So, when we work with leadership teams, we really encourage them to be open. So, both sharing their own sort of hidden self with the world. Open to listen to have people share with them where they’re blind. Open to discover parts that nobody knows about themselves by doing, you know, working genius assessment or disc assessment or something kind of uncovering things about themselves. So, trying to become more aware. We encourage at the beginning of every meeting, you know, share something great that’s going on in your life on a personal level. Like we encourage definitely people to be more, more human and open and personal. But we do it in a way that it’s kind of contained in the sense like let’s not let personal conversations overtake the daily agenda, overtake the meeting. And so, it’s a kind of structured opening where everybody shares a little bit. Okay. And then let’s get on to, to business more than allowing it to be constant. Like personal conversations taking up the, the hallway chatter and the, and the office. So, it’s, let’s say a mix of both. So, definitely encourage people, the more open the better and the more social opportunities to grab a coffee with each other or drink with each other and become more human. But when you’re working you’re working. And so, just like the hockey analogy at the beginning, it’s like, you know, when we’re playing, we’re playing hard and nothing’s personal, but then once in a while we have a beer with each other at the end of the game and we get personal and we kind of have that balance and that duality between being okay with being personal and then being okay with like, let’s just put that aside for now and focus on work. So, it’s somehow trying to have the best of both worlds, and oftentimes it ends up being the worst of both worlds if it’s not well contained or managed or shared.

Minter Dial: Indeed. I was chatting with a bunch of entrepreneurs in Thailand and they talked about how their culture is, is systematically about going into the personal stories, how they can be often overwhelmed by that. Yet if you don’t really encourage. I tend to, I mean, I subscribe to the idea that branding is personal and I want you to take it personally because if you’re not taking it personally, you’re just taking it professionally, then where’s your skin in the game? I mean, that, that nature of skin in the game is actually personal. So, when you throw your body to defend a puck that’s flying at 120 miles an hour, don’t take it personally. Oh, really? How not to take a puck in the eye personally? I mean, it’s not that you did it to me on purpose per se, but that kind of impacts your personal life. You have to go to the hospital, you can’t see out of your eye for, for a couple of months. So, there’s a personal relationship that has an impact on how you sleep and, and how you have, how you are with your kids, the way you are at work. And, and so I, I tend to, maybe to a, to a wrong degree, overemphasize the need to bring more personal elements into work because I, I feel like if disengagement is so high, it’s because we can’t bring ourselves, we have to lock ourselves up before we open the door into the office, put on a tie and.

Ron Szekely: Well, I, I know, you know, the, I think you do DISC and colors.

Minter Dial: Oh yeah.

Ron Szekely: People. And so, just, you know, when you teach somebody who’s, who’s red that somebody in their very task. And they’re not people driven, they’re more tasked driven, they’re more extroverted. And when they deal with somebody who’s green, who’s more, let’s say, introverted and people focused, the person who’s green. They don’t want to start a conversation without first saying hi, how was your day? How was your night? How’s the family? The person who’s red that drives them bananas. They’re just like I just want to get to work. And so, you know when they have to slow down and recognize that you know, somebody wants to find out how their night was. But recognizing that we’re all sometimes a little bit different in terms of what makes us feel comfortable definitely has helped is helpful and to not somebody who is let’s say not asking me how are you? It’s not. It is. It can be as normal as the person who’s expecting it the other way. And so, recognizing that we’re a little bit different and to make space for people being different than us and if somebody needs me to say how are you? Then I’ll do it more often than somebody who generally doesn’t want me to ask them that question because they’re too busy wanting to move on to the next.

Minter Dial: That’s a very fair statement Ron. And I love it because in reality is most a lot of CEO types are usually heavy on the red and I think that’s what they also forget is that people are people and not just numbers. Not just ahead to cut or head to count but may have had a fight, may I have a health issue and or other needs but it’s all about the number at the end of the day because I’ve got shareholders to go to and that’s my life. Right. And we rarely have the empathy for the boss. Anywho, Ron, we have had a rolling and fun and great chat with you Ron. I’ve really enjoyed your smile. The story of your Ron the magician, your ice hockey days and your coaching bringing in some rough and tumble back into life. So, lots of great things for me. I really appreciate you sharing. How can people find out more about what you’re up to? Any of writings or position, social links, whatever you like to send. Send your listeners.

Ron Szekely: Yeah so you could find us on the web or on LinkedIn. So, the coaching system that we use and I say we because we’re a team of coaches using the same sort of methodology. It’s called Bos360, so BOS360 and it’s CA if you’re looking for the website or you can find it on LinkedIn and feel free to connect with us. So, basically we work with leadership teams and try to help them to build to recognize that they’re building a strong business a strong brand and a strong team and that they do that through strategy, execution and culture. And we have some kind of best practices and tools you bring together to try to become as strong as possible at all six of those things and have fun while we’re doing it. And so, if you want to look me up, Ron Szekely R O N S Z E K E L Y you can connect with me directly on LinkedIn or you can connect through Boss 360. Either way, I would love to, love.

Minter Dial: To chat and I’m hoping there are no tariffs on your work but I understand you work in the US as well in Canada.

Ron Szekely: Yeah. So, most of my clients are in Canada, but there’s some in the US there’s no tariffs that come into play. Most of the work I do is, is in person, but also some is pure virtual as well. And so, different ways that we can work and then there’s different coaches as well that work in different parts. So, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Minter Dial: Well, if you want some down to earth magic, I encourage anyone who’s listening to look up Ron. Call him up, link in with him and hey, hire him sound. He’s a great guy. Thank you very much.

Ron Szekely: I really appreciate that. Nice, nice talking to you again, mentor.

Minter Dial: Likewise.

Ron Szekely: Take care.