In this inspiring interview, Ron Scheese, Andesa Services CEO, a provider of integrated solutions to life insurance and annuity carriers and producers, shares his unique leadership philosophy.

Ron continuously contributes to the body of work around leadership and he is working on an upcoming leadership book.

Some of Ron's insights:

• Finding your purpose and aligning your professional and life purpose
  
  
• Leverage strengths to pursue the purpose using a StrengthsFinder
  
  
• Maximize strength to fulfill your purpose
  
  
• Planning is an emergent process
  
  
• Starting and failing fast
  
  
• Leadership means to outgrow the professional domain into 'people first'.
  
  
• See the whole ecosystem - employees, families, customers, and supplier stakeholders
  
  
• Match leadership style to the situation.
  
  
• Servant leadership is the default mode, but in crisis, sometimes there is a place for command and control to make urgent decisions
  
  
• The benefits of an employee-owned company
  
  

Ron was promoted to CEO 10 years ago after serving for almost 5 years as the company’s CFO.

Prior to Andesa, Ron had a career in corporate finance after a few years as an audit manager for Ernst and Young.

Learn more about Andesa Services at https://andesaservices.com/

Learn about Ron at / ronscheese

Stuart Frankel, Narrative Science CEO, shares the leadership lessons he learned over the last 11 years since he founded the company.

Some of Stuart's insights:

• Prepare to play the long game
  
  
• Embrace the ups and downs
  
  
• Don't treat problems equally
  
  
• Differentiate existential from non-existential decisions
  
  
• Empower the team to move the business forward
  
  
• Executives should prioritize their team of peers over the team that reports to them
  
  
• Keep asking for that context until you find it
  
  
• Have a healthy skepticism in data analysis to eliminate data biases
  
  
• Conflict is sometimes necessary to get the team on the same page
  
  
• Get clarity about the final decision made before leaving the room
  
  
• Identify the wrong assumptions that lead to a bad decision.
  
  

Narrative Science creates software that writes stories from data to drive understanding and results. In its artificial intelligence, power technology automatically turns data into easy-to-understand reports, transforms statistics into stories, and converts numbers into knowledge.

Prior to Narrative Science, Stuart was the president of the performance division of DoubleClick and was a member of DoubleClick’s senior management team, where the company was sold to Google. He started his career as a lawyer and a CPA.

Learn about Narrative Science at https://narrativescience.com/

Learn about Stuart Frankel at / stuart-frankel-aa63b6

Reid Carr, the CEO of Red Door Interactive, shares the leadership philosophy that has helped him shape and grow the company over the last 19 years.

Among Reid's insights:

• How to balance long-term sustainability with short-term needs
  
  
• How to operate within a world of chaos
  
  
• How to create a 100% jerk-free workplace
  
  
• How to hire talent that balances confidence with humility
  
  

Red Door Interactive is a fiercely independent full-service marketing and advertising agency. It helps brands effectively, efficiently, and emotionally deliver their stories to the audiences through full-funnel marketing programs.

Red Door Interactive balances brand building with a performance marketing strategy,y with execution, and technology with the talent to help their clients win.

Reid co-founded Red Door Interactive 19 years ago. Next month is the 19th anniversary in downtown San Diego, California. Since then, Red Door Interactive has grown into one of the largest independent agencies in the country, representing some well-known brands such as ASICS, Nissan, Intuit, Bosch, and many more.

Reid won multiple awards, such as the Most Admired CEO 40 Under 40. And the agency won the Best Places to Work 14 years in a row.

Learn more about Red Door Interactive: https://www.reddoor.biz/

Learn more about Reid Carr: / reidcarr

Reid's TEDx talk 100% jerk-free workplace: • 100% jerk-free workplace: Reid Carr at TED...

Arman Eshraghi, the CEO of Qrvey, shares his entrepreneurship and leadership lessons from founding and growing tech companies.

Arman is truly a serial entrepreneur. Qrvey is the 4th company he founded.

Qrvey simplifies business analytics on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and moves analytics beyond just visualizations by offering an all-in-one cloud-native platform for making your data collection, analytics, and automation fully self-service.

Some of his team members worked with Arman on a startup 20 years ago. That reflects on his leadership capability to attract talent and to stay connected over many years.

According to Arman, the team is the greatest enabler for some of the most critical goals of an early-stage startup, such as identifying product-market fit, executing growth plans, and attracting capital.

In this inspirational interview, André Chapman, the founder and CEO of Unity Care, shares his purposeful journey and leadership foundation that has driven his move from high-tech to nonprofit.

Unity Care is a California-based nonprofit organization that provides safe, stable, and affordable housing for youth and young adults as they age out of foster care and provides them with the supportive services they need to achieve self-sufficiency.

André left his lucrative Silicon Valley career in high-tech sales to start Unity Care and fulfill his mission to advance and evolve foster care of young adults.

25 years since its inception, Unity Care has served thousands of foster children and families, while stimulating revolutionary improvements in foster care and public education.

Some of André's insights:

• The executive team should be as diverse as the community it serves.
  
  
• Engage communities outside the organization.
  
  
• Give permission to your staff to go deeper and question how the leaders show up.

Learn more about Unity Care at https://www.unitycare.org/

In this fascinating interview, Sanjeev Kumar, the CEO of Skience, a digital transformation platform for broker-dealers and Registered Investment Advisors that provides wealth managers with an efficient way to unify their technology and increase their productivity, shares the lessons he has learned growing the company to 200 employees strong.

Some of Sanjeev's insights:

• Reinvent yourself to stay relevant.
  
  
• Choose partners based on the ecosystem they have created.
  
  
• Working unconventionally during the pandemic.
  
  
• Leveraging technology in innovative ways.
  
  
• Looking at how behavior is changing in the target market.
  
  
• Integrate solutions from the wider ecosystem to create innovative offerings.
  
  
• Collaboration as a foundation for innovation.
  
  
• Agility applies not just to product development but to the organization.
  
  
• Identify and stick to the core strengths of different teams.
  
  

Sanjeev founded Skience in 2001 with $400, lots of patience, determination, and passion for leveraging technology to solve business problems.

Without borrowing or getting investors on board, he and his team have grown the company to more than 200 employees with offices in Herndon, Virginia, and Bangalore, India.

Sanjeev likes hiking and biking, and he also participates in fundraising bike rides each year to sponsor education for children who would not have the funds to go to school otherwise.

Learn more about Skience at https://www.skience.com/.

Connect with Sanjeev at / sanjeevsk

In this inspiring interview, Kunal Chopra, the CEO of Kaspien, a NASDAQ-listed company that grew from a third-party Amazon seller into a robust e-commerce platform, shares the leadership principles that enable him to thrive in a fast-growing, highly complex, and technology-driven business environment.

Here are a few of Kunal's individual and team principles:
1. Being a lifelong learner and applying the theory learned to work.
2. Keep a constant loop of absorbing information and giving back.
3. Integrate work and life.
4. Bring your whole self to work.
5. Everyone should become a well-rounded person and think like a CEO.
6. Create partnerships as a core principle.
7. Make decisions based on data.
8. Innovate on behalf of your customers
9. Believe in the power of diversity and inclusion.
10. Embed the principles and framework into employee journeys.

Kaspien offers an expanding suite of proprietary software and leading services. It consistently delivers secure and sustainable growth for both established and emerging brands across e-commerce marketplaces.

Prior to Kaspien, Kunal served as a senior executive at Microsoft, Amazon, and Groupon. He managed up to $800MM P&L with 500 direct and indirect employees.

Kunal grew up in Mumbai, India, and after finishing his Bachelor's in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai, came to the United States to do his Master's in Computer Science.

Kunal authored 5 books: Searchability, Get what you’re worth, Promotionary, From Average to Executive, and Start with A Vision and End with a Job Offer.

You can find them at https://kunal-chopra.com

Learn more about Kaspien at https://www.kaspien.com/

Connect with Kunal at / kunalchopra28

In this insightful interview, Rob Castaneda, CEO of ServiceRocket, a Silicon Valley-based company transforming how fast-growing software businesses engage with their customers for effective implementations, shares his leadership philosophy and guiding principles.

Key highlights include:

1. Viewing service as an art form, where beauty lies in the details and nuances.
2. Rob’s unique application of the Yerkes-Dodson law to find the balance of optimal anxiety.
3. Incorporating emotions into the check-in process to build trust and connection.
4. The CEO’s role in fostering an emotionally safe environment for teams.
5. Empowering leaders to help individuals improve and achieve greatness.
6. Why CEOs must evolve alongside their growing companies.
7. The value of peer networks and mentorship for leadership development.
8. The importance of being accessible and approachable as a leader.
9. Recognizing patterns and signals as a CEO and designing strategies around them.

ServiceRocket specializes in helping software companies and their customers maximize the value of their software. Its innovative cloud-based platform offers an integrated suite of products and services, including training, support, implementation, and tools.

Rob Castaneda discovered his passion for technology and training at just 17, working on the Sydney helpdesk for a Silicon Valley software company. Within three years, he had gained hands-on experience across multiple departments, including pre-sales, training, support, and R\&D.

In 2000, Rob moved to Silicon Valley to join a startup, where he co-authored several publications on Enterprise Java. The following year, he founded ServiceRocket, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Over the years, the company has grown to over 240 employees worldwide, with offices in the U.S., Australia, Chile, and Malaysia.

Rob’s leadership philosophy, rooted in teamwork and knowledge-sharing, has been instrumental in building a globally successful, bootstrapped company, achieving this without venture capital funding. His achievements have earned him recognition as one of Silicon Valley’s Top 40 under 40 leaders.

Read his full story at https://www.servicerocket.com/about

Connect with Rob at / robertcastaneda