S13E31: Get better every day, with Stan Middleman (CEO, Freedom Mortgage)

An episode of The Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast

S13E31: Get better every day, with Stan Middleman (CEO, Freedom Mortgage)

We're continuing our season on "business as a force for good." Richard speaks with Stan Middleman, who serves as the President and CEO of Freedom Mortgage, one of the largest and fastest-growing independent mortgage companies in the USA.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

  • The mantra that has led Stan to business success at scale over the last 33 years
  • Stan's formula for being credible as a leader
  • The 5-phase scaling model Stan employs to test out promising ideas
  • How Stan anticipated and profited from major market shifts (and how you can)
  • The moment when Stan realised he was doing well, but was he doing good?

"You don't have to be right, but you need a point of view."

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Transcript

Stan Middleman
And you have to give the people that are with you a good reason to listen to you and to to follow you and to to take that path with you. So first I think it’s, you have to establish credibility and credibility is incredibly Impact. And it really starts with, you know, who you are and The interview and The person that’s that’s inside you. And then you start applying that person to a wider and wider audience. And that audience accepts you because what you have The offer is valuable to them. And I think that where people get in trouble is they start buying their own nonsense. Right. And, you know, oh, I’m this or I want that.

And they start to, to consider them products of their successes. And, I think that it’s not about that. I think it’s about understanding where you are and taking that next step or forward so that you can be in the better business.

Richard Medcalf
Welcome to the Impact Multiplier CEO podcast. I’m Richard Metcalfe, founder of Xquadrant. And my mission is to help the world’s top CEOs and entrepreneurs shift from incremental to exponential progress and create a huge positive Impact on our world. Now that requires you to reinvent yourself and transform your business. So if you’re ready to play a bigger game than ever before, I invite you to join us and become an Impact Multiplier CEO.

Today, I speak with Stan Middleman, The CEO and the founder of Freedom Mortgage. Stan is really interesting guy. He’s done this business. He’s founded this business over 30 years ago, 33 by my reckoning. And, he’s got that, that perspective, that distance, that philosophical approach that you might expect Somebody who’s got such a a long track record of success. I think Bill had his business of thousands and thousands of people and managing, I think billions of debt across America. And, he’s a very pragmatic, Very thoughtful person, and he distills his wisdom into some real key nuggets here. It’s a really fun conversation.

So I’m not gonna spoil the surprise. Just listen in to this great conversation with Stan Middleman. Stan, hello, and welcome to the show.

Stan Middleman
Hi. Nice to be here.

Richard Medcalf
So what I know about you is that you are the founder, the president, the CEO of Freedom Mortgage, which is one of the largest, The fastest growing independent mortgage companies in the USA. And you’ve been doing this for, I think, it must be 33 years At this point, and you’ve you’ve grown an incredible business over that time. And, what I’m really curious about is what’s been that Secret source over the years. And, I think your answer is something around getting better. I see this as something key as to who you are, Getting better every day. So I’d love to understand, first of all, is that right? Is is that perhaps one of the key things that is distinctive about you? And if so, How do you make that happen? How do you help everyone get better every day for 33 years instead of many days?

Well, it starts with, a fundamental belief in yourself. If you don’t think you’re prepared to move forward, You know, people don’t lead, people are followed and you have to give the people that are with you a good reason to listen to you and to, to follow you and to, to take that path with you. So first I think it’s, you have to establish credibility And credibility is incredibly Impact. And it really starts with, you know, who you are and The interview and that, that person that’s that’s inside you. And then you start applying that person to a wider and wider audience. And that audience accepts It’s ups you because what you have to offer is valuable to them. And I think that where people get in trouble is they start, buying their own nonsense. Right.

Stan Middleman
And, you know, oh, I’m this or I want that. And they start to, to consider them products of their successes. And, I think that it’s not about that. I think it’s about understanding where you are and taking that next step or forward so that you can be in the better business, and being better means understanding where you are and what the next thing that you can do. And just approaching the world with the understanding that you have, that success is cumulative And that you’re just piling up The achievement on top of the next, that gets you to a better place than where you’ve been, And that helps build your credibility and all those other things.

Richard Medcalf
Yes. So you talked about credibility is The, the way by which people would start to follow. So How do you approach credibility? Right? So as you’re building the business, I mean, I guess now you’ve got all this 30 year track record and everything, but if you go back To the beginnings, what was your anchor?

Stan Middleman
It’s very simple. I mean, it’s a simplistic thing. I, I mean, I, I can almost boil it down to a few words, say what you mean, do what you say, and have, have people know they can rely on you and that you’re the person you purport to be. Nothing more, nothing less. This is who I am. This is what I’m doing. Do it with The. And then going about the business and getting it done now.

And that’s, that’s in a, in an extraordinarily general sense and has application across virtually every field. But if you, if you can be the human that says what they mean and does what they say, You become irrefutable in your credibility.

Richard Medcalf
It’s sound simple. Right? Do you see it as widespread, Actually, or do you see it as surprisingly rare?

Stan Middleman
Well, in, from my perspective, it’s the way I live my life. Right. I think that that’s incredibly important. Not everybody does. And sometimes I feel like I’m in the minority, but, sometimes I think that People appreciate that. So, they, so in a, in a world like the world we live in, that has such a propensity to be politicized where there’s agendas and, and ambitions and, Machiavellian approaches. And everybody thinks that you have to have some secret hidden agenda in order to propel you forward, or as you put it, a secret sauce. I think that, The life needs to be simplified, not necessarily easy, but simplified with Clear understandings and clear goals, because the hardest thing I think for a CEO to do is to create a shared vision.

And, you know, when you talk, when you talk to people that run large organizations, The they’ll all tell you the same thing. It’s hard to get everybody oars in the water and pulling at the same time. And I, and I think that starts with a clear vision and a clear understanding of people know that you’re genuine. And if you can give a genuine, clear vision that is easily communicated and understood, Then it becomes easier for people to execute and build strategies around that vision and understand their part in this particular play. Right. So that they can go about the business of executing their share of this.

Richard Medcalf
So you’ve got a business that’s, I think you’ve got thousands and thousands of employees. Do you find everybody is as straightforward as you, Or, you know, if you find that as your business has grown, actually you have to deal with politics and, you know, power plays and all this kind of corporate stuff.

Stan Middleman
How have you found that? So I’m fairly intolerant of that. I, I want to live in a drama free zone. Which means that I’m kind of anti political positioning, you know, some, Hey, you know, and it kind of goes to the fundamental philosophy. If you’re going to have a stable of, of resources, then all have their own agenda and that are going to be independent, and, and not interested in, in The, the global good. That’s a problematic situation. I’d rather have a stable of plow horses that everybody understands their role and charges out every day to, to, to move things forward so that you know, who’s doing what, how they’re getting it done and that they’re reliable and dependable. I put a high stock in reliability, dependability, Loyalty. I mean, these are, these are odd words for people to speak because you hear them talk about talent, skill, and expertise.

And I think we can, we can give or hire for The, but I think there’s an underlying piece to that. And that’s people that you truly want to be around. And, you know, you give me the right 10 people. I can do almost anything in any community and, and get big changes and big accomplishments. And I think that you have to have the right 10 people The have that shared vision and that’s, that’s, that shared purpose. And it, and I think that that’s, that would be the cornerstone of what my responsibility is, to share that vision and purpose.

Richard Medcalf
So if you had to interview and find these 10 people, what would you, how would you go about that?

Stan Middleman
Well, I would identify what I need. I need 1 of these and one of those, The of that, and one of this, And The I would make sure that they were qualified and well vetted. And after these people had been screened, I would then start to meet with them personally and find out their personality, their characteristics.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. That’s really what I’m wondering about is how you get into that Like the, The character traits, right? Which, you know, in an interview situation, people can say one thing and then do something else. So wondering what, how you.

Stan Middleman
Yeah. And by the way, there’s, there’s people that don’t stay with The, because I’m fairly inflexible about that, the drama free zone business. And I really expect people to do the right thing and to support me. And if they’re unwilling to do that or unable to do that, where they feel that moving in their enlightened self interest as people are want to do, is contrary to that, then they should find somebody that’s more aligned with their vision and maybe they should have, more responsibility in creating the vision.

Richard Medcalf
So it’s The if I’m being a little bit provocative is, is what you’re saying is that like, you don’t like people aren’t like, Dissenting. In other words, you, or do you encourage like debate around the vision?

Stan Middleman
No, no, no. I, I love people that can contribute and they can make a difference. But once the die has been cast, I believe everybody’s in the fray with the same purpose. And, you know, I believe of, of doing things on purpose with purpose and whatever you’re pursuing. I want to pursue it with all your heart and all your, your vigor and energy. And I don’t want to have people having silly thoughts walking their way. There’s no room for doubt once you’re going, before you go, there’s plenty of time for debate. In fact, one of the things that I really believe in is that when you create an initiative, you want to make sure that it’s viable, That it’s a good idea The other people think it’s a good idea and that people vet that idea.

What do you think of this? What do you think of that? Oh, if we were to do this, How do you think it works? And then once you’ve got the idea that you have consensus is a good idea, then you turn that into a small model and you operate the model and see if in fact you were right. And then you start to scale that model. And once you’ve scaled it a little bit, make sure that that model holds up to scalability. And then you go into the fray And you’ve had 3 or 4 or 5 levels of tests for viability Before you commit all your resources, you want to be pretty sure what you’re going to do works before you throw your whole heart into it. You don’t want to go off, in a half butted manner. Right? You want to, you want to be into, into something seriously. So, you know, crawl, walk, run, and you know, we all hear that, but I don’t know that we all know what that really means. And I think if, if you talk about it from the birth of an idea to the building of, an on, like on an task basis, on an individual basis, Let’s do this and see if it works and then try it in a few times, like with a 1 person or a 2 person or a 3 person deal, and then Build The model around that and then do it in a small group and then scale that to a slightly larger group before you’re really roll it out.

And I, and I think that you have to, you have to do things in an organized methodical fashion. If you wanna get good results.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah. Sounds, well, sounds great. Especially as, as you’ve seen, you’ve, you’ve built this business out in a very,

Stan Middleman
Nobody’s right. All time. I’m not in the right business. I’m in the better business. Right. I don’t need to be right. I don’t need People tell me I’m wonderful or brilliant. You know, if you’re right, you’re a visionary.

If you’re wrong, you’re whimsical. So do I wanna be whimsical? Do I wanna be a visionary? I don’t care about any of those things. What I wanna do is I wanna be better.

Richard Medcalf
So at this point, 33 years or whatever it is into the business, how can you still be better? Like, where how where do you put your focus?

Stan Middleman
On a paragon with so many things. I, any human that’s honest with themselves knows that they’re awful at a 1000000 things. And the more things you do, The more things you’re awful at The might have never had so much work to do on my entire life as I do right now. I am so busy. I don’t know what to do with myself. I have so many opportunities and places to turn The I couldn’t possibly get to. So I have to kind of pick my spots and, and try and focus in and make things work in that kind of approach that we just described.

Richard Medcalf
Mhmm. Love it. So let’s switch gears and talk about another thing, which I know is is That’s interesting thing about you, Stan, which is that you call yourself a contrarian, and that you zig when others are zagging, or perhaps it’s zagging when others are zigging.

Stan Middleman
I don’t know. It was me that said that I have heard that said about me.

Richard Medcalf
Fair enough. Well, I I I think, we’ve changed some text for before this this interview. I think you said that doing is Doing what’s unexpected is the foundation on which we have built freedom mortgage.

Stan Middleman
Yeah. So I, I think rather than that, it’s probably, trying to have a good understanding of what’s coming next. And it’s not so much that we want to be contrarian. You know, again, it’s a philosophical thing. If you spend all of your time today dealing with today, tomorrow, you have a bunch of empty yesterdays and you have to be living into the future. You can’t spend your time focused on now, whatever now is. If you plan this or didn’t plan this and cause this outcome through your planning or lack of planning sometime ago where you are in a particular point in time. It’s too late for you, probably to alter that, especially in any kind of scale.

And when you’re trying to react to the moment, your chances of success drop significantly. So I think that, what you have to do is you have to really think of things in terms of Where did, you know, Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player used to say, I want to be where the hot, where the puck is going, Not where it’s at. I want to spend my time going to where it’s going to be, not where it was. Does that make, Does that make him a contrarian or a visionary? And I think that The, the point, the point is, is you have to embrace change Because if you want to live in the status quo and you want to go with the flow, that’s always easier then preparing for what’s next. And it makes you The appear to be contrarian where rather you’re really, preparing, Right. And you’re, you’re getting ready for what’s next. And you, you understand, and I I really have come to, to grips with. There are certain cycles, the world moves in cycles and those forces are really almost title And we don’t control these title forces, but we have to try and anticipate it.

Whether you want to call that connecting the dots or seeing around corners, We’re being contrarian. Going with the flow is not where success is born. Going The where, where you think the world is going is where success lives.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. I love it. So How’s that shown up for you? Like first of all, how do you, how do you do that? How do you see around the corners? How do you skate to where the fuck is going? Or what do you actually do? That perhaps other people don’t do, but how did you, is it, do you go off on a retreat? Do you, do you shut the door and just think, do you bring this on with your team? Do you just wake up and you know, do you have a bath and it all comes to you a downloader from The, from the blue? What, what what’s going on?

Stan Middleman
So, unfortunately I’ve not been able to commute with God, and, and get the answers. There are, there haven’t been any Tablets handed to me on any mountain top. But I do make sure I get my time to think This is where we are. I grow, I get the, the, data that’s available, the empirical data that’s available to me. And I form a point of view, by the way, you don’t have to be right, but you have to have a point of view. And the first thing I do is I develop a point of view that goes, you know, short, intermediate and longer. And then I prepare to have my actions play into that point of view.

Richard Medcalf
So can you give an example? Can you give an example from like a moment in the business where you, where you A fence?

Stan Middleman
Oh, sure. So, many years ago I attended, a dinner and the, and the Keynote speaker at this dinner was Paul Volcker, who was the previous head of The, the fed. And during a time of rampant inflation, in the, in the eighties. Right. And his job was to tame inflation and he shared it, that dinner, The feds dual mandate, which I really, you know, I was a young man. I really hadn’t had, all that much experience, But I was listening very careful because he was a, he was a person that was iconic in what he had accomplished, getting inflation under control of the US during a period of, you know, runaway inflation. What he said really has become the foundation of my career and the way I see the world. And that is that the fed had a dual mandate to keep unemployment low.

In other words, you wanted people to be employed and inflation low or control We’re predictable at, at particular levels, and to get those 2 items in balance. And they, he called that the dual mandate at the fed. So the planning that I made was really fundamentally around Those 2 items now over the next 35 years, from the time that I heard this speech, Inflation became less of an issue, as we’ve all know, the technology age, and the development of what has really become a world village in terms of tree has led to a lot of deflationary trends, around the world. And, The tied with unemployment gave me variables to watch and, Kind of, leading indicators to follow.

Richard Medcalf
I hope you’re enjoying this conversation. This is just a quick interlude to introduce you to 2 transformative programs that we run. The first is Rivendell, my exclusive group of top CEOs who are committed To transforming themselves, their businesses, and the world. It’s an incredible peer group and a deep coaching experience that The will push you to new heights no matter how successful you’ve already been. The second is Impact Accelerator, A coaching program for executives who are ready to make a big leap forward in their own leadership. It’s regularly described of life changing, and no other program provides such personal strategic clarity, a measurable shift in stakeholder perceptions, and a world class leadership development environment. Find out about both of these programs at xquadrant.com/services. Now back to the conversation.

So what I’m understanding is you thought to yourself, okay. If he does a good job on these numbers, We’re going to have low unemployment and lower interest rates. And what does that mean for my mortgage business?

Stan Middleman
Right. Well, so I was able to translate that more importantly to the impact that would have on interest rates. So when unemployment is high, interest rates come down. When unemployment is low, interest rates go up based on the relationship of unemployment to inflationary pressures. And I was able to connect those dots and, You know, The changes are never really dramatic, but they are directional. And if you took The direction of these changes and the expectation of where those changes were going and people opine on them quite regularly. And aren’t all that often directionally incorrect. They may not be Specifically, right? Because, Economists are like weatherman.

They’re never right. Right. However, they do get the right direction of trends. And if you can follow The trend line, you can predict things like interest rates And being able to predict interest rates gives me an advantage to upsize or downsize my business according to where I think it’s going. So I develop a point of view and then I apply my actions to that point of view. And that leads me to appearing contrarian because I moving before there’s anything to move to, But it, and it may gives me the appearance of seeing around the corners yet. That’s not really what I’m doing. I’m having a point of view and exercising my activities to support that point of view.

And if I’m wrong, it’s generally a timing issue. For example, in 2019, I anticipated interest rates to come down. And I started to build up my workforce with the expectation that we were at a cyclical low. In my business, I say we have misery on the 8th, and we have a cyclical environment The Mortgage origination volumes are generally lowest in years that, you know, they start to deteriorate in the year with 8 and then kind of manifest themselves in the nines. And if you go back to the financial crisis and, the commercial paper Prices, in the nineties, the Russian commercial paper crisis, the savings and loan crisis, in the late eighties. And you’re seeing a pattern here after a fairly short period of time, you know, you know, once as an exception and twice coincidence, 3 times a trend, But you can take this backwards and see a pretty good trend line over time built around this kind of thought pattern. And I can’t really explain why that is. But I can’t really explain the impact of lunar movement on tides either.

I’m sure I know it happens And I’m going to, I’m going to go with that empirical, observation. So, if I think these kinds of things are going to happen, Then I develop a point of view around that so that when the pandemic hit and it was exactly what I expected, but in magnitudes of 10 or 20 of what I expected. I was far more prepared than most people were to deal with that. And our organization also had begun to prepare, for disaster recoveries. Now I was thinking hurricane flood snowstorm, But we had equipped everybody with laptops and when it came time to send everybody home, because those were geographically dispersed event. So we had to prepare everybody. Everybody was prepared to work on broadband from home.

Richard Medcalf
And so that, that was because you just thought something’s going to happen around On the end of the decade.

Stan Middleman
We, no, we, we knew there were going to be hurricanes. We knew for sure The would be mudslides We knew for sure there would be snowstorms. So we pray and we knew for sure we had the capability to have people work from home because the widespread acceptance of broadband and the quality of that broadband. So not only did we have, desktops in our offices, which at the time everybody had, and everybody worked in the office. Oh, we had laptops that empowered almost our entire staff to work from home. So we went home on a Thursday, in March and by Tuesday One Thursday, we’re 98% working from the office on Tuesday. The following week, we were 98% workers from home. And, and we made that switch almost seamlessly, which was very exciting to us.

Amazed me on cause you know, what do I know about all that stuff? But, you know, I did know that we were going to have disaster recovery events that we needed to be prepared for. And this one was just by, you know, multiples of magnitude, you know, you just like, it could like crazy stuff. But, you know, we were ready for it, and it, and it really worked out well for us.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Beautiful. So at this point, are you taking positions on other things? Are you taking point, creating points of view on other things that are coming down the road, whether it’s AI, the economy, The things like this, because I can also be aware The. Are you ever worried about being wrong, like really moving boldly in a direction, and then that doesn’t work out and you actually,

Stan Middleman
Well, I try not to move too boldly. I try and build out my point of view. And I constantly test my point of view because it’s not static. So this is where the difference between a static relationship and a dynamic relationship come into play points of view need to be dynamic. They can’t be static. You can’t lock into, this is what we do. This is how we do it. The you can’t be that way and run a successful organization, in my opinion.

And I, and you, by the way, there’s a lot of evidence and case studies around companies that have become static and, you know, arrogant and bureaucratic. And, you know, that’s probably good for ownership that wants to dilute Right. And take money off the table. That kind of governance is good to have, but you have to apply your points of view to your mission. Right? And if your mission is to be better and to grow, The you have to have a dynamic point of view, not a sonic word.

Richard Medcalf
Great. So actually, it possibly, like, brings us onto this topic of mission and purpose because this season is called business is a force for good. So I’m interested. Where do you stand on that? Right? Because obviously you’ve got a business. I’m sure he’s doing a good job with his customers and stakeholder. You know? So Obviously, you got happy customers. Is that, like, enough? I mean, that’s a really good thing. You’re serving customers.

Do you have a broader view about what it means to be a business that’s a force for good?

Stan Middleman
So many years ago, I was giving a talk, at temple university, which is a college here in Philadelphia. And, and, you know, I guess it was about a 100, 150 kids in the room. And in the back, there was a young man who was Now kind of, introspective of any, his head was down. And after my talk and I talked about all these things, kind of in an entrepreneurial event, he raises his hand and he says, Apparently you do well, but do you do good? And I listened to that and I really took that perspective to heart. You know, prior to that, we had many missions, right? In order to try and make the world around us a little better place from sponsoring little league games, teams, and, you know, youth sports and all these, these different things to, you know, food drives, but we didn’t do it from a universal perspective. And, you know, I always built my business on a particular mission. So The business that we are in. We are the largest FHA lender, the largest VA lender.

And what that is is they are, these are government insured loans that are targeting really underserved communities, whether it’s the, army veteran or, you know, The, the, military veteran or The, the underserved communities. And by taking up that particular approach to our business. We’ve given people an opportunity to own a home and build family wealth. And we’ve taken that really to heart and offshoot of The, was supporting things like the USO and providing active duty military families with backpacks and school supplies. And we’ve been doing that for about 12 years now. And, w I think we did something like 20,000 backpacks this year. And we, and every year it gets bigger than it was the year before. And now We’ve been able to have an impact where we see peer groups The in our industry doing the same thing, which is just great.

Cause you know, the more the merrier, when it, when it comes to doing great stuff, the more people that are inspired to do great things, The better job you did doing good things for the people around you. And we got involved during the pandemic. There were so many charitable organizations under so much pressure. And I was sitting home at, watching TV because there was nothing else to do except work. So was it live at work or work from hell? I’m not sure which it was, but I had the television on and I saw these giant lines of people in their cars, Trump, to pick up food. And we built a campaign around feeding America The really became a force. And we donated 1,000,000 of dollars to the support of this cause. And the reason was deeper than that.

It wasn’t just The good works and the good works are Impact, but when you had, and I, and I really thought about this a lot. I was worried about my team. And I was worried about the psychology of those folks that all of a sudden lost social interaction And they’re sitting at work and I was worried about things like burnout. I was worried about disorientation and, and all, All the things that isolation does to people. And I started doing, weekly, zoom chats To the entire organization. I reported messages every week I met with, I made sure that not only that I met with the teams, But that the whole company met in groups as teams every day, particularly in the beginning And it slowly, it went to once a week and then I went to, you know, once a month, but we, we did this for a long period of time, trying to keep that link. And I came to understand that the most important thing that I could do as a leader was to give Folks purpose in their lives. That was more important than the work they were doing and make their work bigger than them.

And we were able to do that.

Richard Medcalf
How did you articulate that? Yeah. What was The.

Stan Middleman
You know, well, we did that a lot of ways. We, we had challenges and we had, goals and we did promotions around, philanthropic endeavors. And, and we, we, we really had, You know, and we had a lot of fun with it. So everybody embraced this. They made their own videos. They made them with their families. We had contests around the best video so that we could create a shared environment and do things on purpose with purpose so that the people in our organization not only felt connected, but empowered and engaged and self directed so that they could get the things that was, that were really taken away from them. They had no power over.

And you know, the, probably the scariest thing about the pandemic was the creation of powerlessness and hopelessness that could consume you so easily. And so many people succumb to that. But I think we did a really good job of trying to get everybody engaged on an individual level so that The were able to do their part. Maybe they didn’t have the most Impact role in the company, but in their mind, their role was important and they were contributing and doing something bigger than their role. And I, and I think that really played out nicely.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. It was just so important. Beautiful. So just looking at time ticking away here, Stan, I’d like to kind of perhaps So to wrap up, but I’ve got, like, one of my key favorite questions, which is, and I’m interested in your response to this because you’re somebody, you know, who’s been at this for a long time. So the question I’d like to ask people is how might you want to multiply your own impact in the coming years? So, you know, you might say, you know what? I’m gonna retire and leave and stop this. Or you might say, I’ve got I wanna I’ve got an ambition which is still 10 times bigger than anything I’ve ever accomplished. I mean, It could be either way. I’m just curious.

I, what, what does that mean to you to multiply your own impact?

Stan Middleman
So I’m a big believer in, If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. And I, and I’m, I’m, I’m it, I think I have so much to do. And by the way, a lot of what I have to do is to Share what I know with the people around me so that they can do more and mold philosophies and perceptions and theories and cultivate talents and skills and capacities and empowerment. I think that I have the ability to invest for good. I think I can, I try and get out and speak on things like The, and a thousand other things? I probably do 2 or 3 of these a week. I, I try and get out. I Spoke in a high school, last week.

I, I am very, I’m speaking at a college next week. I, speaking at a gathering in New York city, in, you know, The, the 1st week of, November. So I I’m trying to share my message because I think the message is fairly universal, you know, plan act, react, assess, begin again. And if, if you can follow a formula to success and then add all the nuance that you can to that formula and empower people with not only a base formula, but a nuanced plan to attack that and let them engage in conversation and learn how to apply that. And I try and do as much mentoring and sharing and, and, inspiring and, and helping the people around me be better. And it, and it really goes to that a rising tide floats all boats. And you know, you never do poorly by creating good karma. And the more good things you do, the more good things will come to you.

And, I found that to be true.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Well, Tom, thank you so much for, sharing The. Right. I think this philosophy The Richard really deep within you, right? If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse or whatever, you get better every day. And then, then be simple about it Straightforward about it. Clear, do the right thing really comes over clearly. And, so I wanna just thank you today for The, It’s very, almost poetic kind of reflection on some of these things, you know, and kinda your philosophies of The some of you CEO you through the Podcast, 30 so Yes. And The business.

So if people wanna find out more about you or about the business, you know, what’s the best place for them to go to do The.

Stan Middleman
I guess they could go to LinkedIn. My assistant fields, all the non crank, inquiries, The cares? They could probably get, all that they need there and, and reach out and ask for more.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Well, Stan, hey. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you, and look forward to, following along as you, continue to get a little bit better every day.

Stan Middleman
Thank you very much. I appreciate you

Richard Medcalf
On your favorite podcast platform, we deeply appreciate it. And if you’d like to check out the show notes from this episode, head to squadron.com/podcast Podcast you’ll find all the details. Now finally, when you’re in top leadership, Who supports and challenges you at a deep level to help you multiply your impact? Discover more about the different ways we can support you at xquadrant.com.

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