Driving Business Growth with Mergers, Acquisitions, and Strong Leadership | Darren Traub

Darren Traub:

I used to tell people exactly how I wanted it done and I really didn't take into consideration their expertise, their knowledge. As I matured, you realize there's more than one way of getting things done, and if you've hired somebody to do a job, let them do the job. It may not be exactly the way you would've done it, but if it works and it's successful, there are other more important fish that you need to deal with.

Nick McLean:

Welcome to Ambition. It's Nick McLean, your host, and today I'm sitting down with Darren Traub. Should the term mom and pop be retired? Can policies and procedures really make or break a company? How do you know when a good opportunity is staring you in the face? These are just a few of the topics I get into with Darren, and let me give you a spoiler. His answers never disappoint in their wit or wisdom. Years ago, Darren and I met in a mentorship program. After listening to this episode, it will be clear who was doing the mentoring and who was doing the learning. While we weren't matched as a pair, he and I have kept in touch over the years. I'm glad we did. Darren is the founder and CEO of Dynamic Transformations providing executive leadership for small to mid-size manufacturing and distribution companies based out of Leawood, Kansas. But his journey began in a much different place. First off, Darren, thank you for joining. Just to start, it would be helpful to hear a little bit about your background so that our listeners can better understand who they are hearing from today.

Darren Traub:

Perfect. Nick, thank you for having me. It's good to be here. My name is Darren Traub. I'm an engineer. Graduated from the university in South Africa. That's my natural accent you're hearing over here. The South African accent. Immigrated to the United States in '94 and in a few days we will have been here for 30 years. My career has spanned and split into two different segments. The first segment was being an engineer, a project manager, a project engineer for some very large projects for national companies such as Procter &, Gamble and Anglo-American. Second part of my career, I was on the other side of the fence where I was actually buying equipment and installing it and making products as a manufacturer. So I had that initial experience and then the second part was in using the equipment that I had from the first experience. Being in private equity or private equity backed for the last three decades, various different projects that I've worked on over the years, trying to essentially grow the enterprise value for my private equity partners and then planning an exit for them. So that's what I've been doing for the last 30 years. Having a whole lot of fun at it most of the time.

Nick McLean:

Well, that's great. I think a lot of operators out there have heard about private equity. They probably have heard the horror stories. As you think about your experience working with private equity, what were some of the challenges that you faced that perhaps are unique to being in a private equity backed enterprise?

Darren Traub:

It is an interesting thing. Private equity, it's a single word, but it doesn't really represent a single industry. My experience is there's good private equity and there's bad private equity and everything in between. Some private equity funds have significant amount of assets in their portfolios and significant amount of assets to invest. If you are a small investment in their portfolio, that can cause problems for you when you have some problems and as a business, you will always have problems. My experiences with better private equity where they are vested in the enterprise that you're working in and are therefore support the board is active. They involve themselves with you at a high level and they are smart individuals. So essentially private equity is a business that is intended to make money work and get you a return on your investment, and they do that using various different strategies and methods to accomplish that. I think you're very familiar with that.

Nick McLean:

Perhaps a little. I do know a little bit about private equity. That's true. A couple of comments there were very interesting. One of which was the fact that there's good and bad private equity. I can attest to that 100%. Just like in any other industry, you're going to have folks that you really want to work with and folks that perhaps you don't care so much to ever see again or ever work with again, to put it nicely perhaps. Another comment you made was that in business you're always going to have problems. One topic that interests me is if you've noticed any difference between the types of problems or challenges you've had at companies earlier in their life cycle as opposed to the challenges and obstacles you face as the company gets past that mom and pop scale to the phase or to the point of being a larger enterprise with processes, procedures, etc, etc.

Darren Traub:

I'm not a big fan of the term mom and pop. It conjures these images of the corner cafe from my youth. I prefer to refer to them as lifestyle businesses. So there is nothing wrong with lifestyle businesses. Those are the businesses where the RV and the boat is landing on the balance sheet. Everyone is happy. It's providing a great quality of life. So the thing about it is that in most instances, those type of businesses are just really not realizing their full enterprise value. Problems that they have are somewhat different to larger, more sophisticated businesses. But not always. A lot of the problems that are out there in business relate to people and there are people in both sides of those enterprise systems. So the thing about it is that the fundamental difference or the commonality with regards to those smaller businesses that you spoke about is that they are either founder-based. In other words, the founder started them or their next gen. That's an inherited business from the next generation, or it is someone who is buying a business for the first time.

And very often those types of individuals have not had exposure to sophisticated corporations and understanding how those corporations run. So they have essentially no experiential knowledge of how those businesses run. So they get themselves into a position where scaling becomes very difficult and they are very involved in operations because they don't have systems, methods, procedures or policies in place that will allow the business to run effectively without their involvement. So there is one aspect of the difference between those two types of businesses. My emphasis is to try and help those smaller businesses evolve into more sophisticated businesses and improve the enterprise value through that process.

Nick McLean:

Sometimes I'll talk to business owners that are considering selling and they will have a month or two of great performance or a month or two of poor performance or some period of time. I'll ask the question, what happened here? Is it repeatable? Those types of questions. The answers I get are all across the board. However, I would say that the common theme or one common theme is that there's not a good understanding of the key drivers of the business, why the business is growing, why the business is facing challenges. As you think about the processes and procedures that you talked about, how do you try to implement processes and procedures to help you better get a pulse of your business so that you can foresee that your month is going to be down 10% of revenue and you can adjust more quickly than two weeks after the fact when you look at your income statement or your bank account and it's not quite as large as you think it might be?

Darren Traub:

Well, you speak to policies and procedures, but the question you ask really relates more to reporting and more to your financial systems and the availability and transparency of your transactions represented through your financial systems. So as a leader, you need tools to be able to manage your business and to make good decisions. And you need good data to be able to make good decisions so that data is coming out of your system. So you should for your own business, any owner, any operator, any CEO leader ... And I'm a firm believer in open book management. So effectively any manager should have access to reports that give them visibility as to what's going on that are coming out of the financial system. And those are reports that not only deal with your revenues and your contribution dollars and contribution margins and your fixed expenses all the way down to your bottom line, but also with regards to productivity and efficiency and also with regards to your staff.

So those kinds of reports are things that are real time, at worst case once a week, but you should be getting information out of your system that relates to the performance of the business and provides you with really good information comparative data from prior year, current year budgets, all of those kinds of things. I call them pulse reports. I'm pretty sure everyone has their own version of that. But that's where that data should be coming from.

Nick McLean:

So I think it's a good point certainly that it's more about financial reporting than processes and procedures. Slightly switching gears, sometimes I will hear the comment from owners of manufacturing companies, something to the effect of, well, if that machine is running, I know that I'm making money. If you were a manager or the CEO of that division and that was your general manager talking, what conversation would you have with him or how would you get him to see that perhaps it's a little bit more nuanced to put it mildly that it's more than just whether or not that machine is running, is it whether or not you're making money.

Darren Traub:

Well, it's an interesting concept. Obviously each specific scenario would have a different set of parameters to discuss. But a machine running, making money is so general. How much money? Is it making, the most money that it can actually make in the way it's running or is it just making some money? And in terms of your overall performance and operations, making money is one piece of the total puzzle. There are so many components towards how well you spend the money that you're making to be able to make more money. So if somebody is talking that way, I think it's more colloquial. I would guess that they don't really mean it literally. They're just telling you we're in production, we're making some money. How effective and efficient that production is, that's a completely different question.

Nick McLean:

I would agree with you. It is a bit colloquial, but I have heard it and it was said with perfect earnesty and genuineness, but point taken, we can move on and not belabor that one. Let's go to some of your specific experiences that you've had. I noticed from your background that you were able to increase revenues approximately $23 million annually within two years through team development and strategic acquisitions. We all know how quickly acquisitions can add to the top line. But could you talk through the team development piece of that and how that impacted your ability to grow revenues, your ability to find those acquisitions, close the acquisitions and ultimately integrate them?

Darren Traub:

Well, it's a process, Nick. It's not something that just happens. You have to design it. So you've got to define your path and objectives in order to be able to have that growth. So there's a methodology. Everyone has their own methodologies. My preferred methodology is that you define exactly what it is you want to accomplish and then you have to find the right resources. So you have to surround yourself with smart, capable, and competent individuals that can allow you to achieve the objectives that you've defined. And then once you've done that, you need to implement or develop tools to attain those goals and then design systems to be able to measure what it is that you're actually doing. So that's the process that you do. You've got to hold people accountable for what it is that they do, and you've got to review these processes and then retrain and repeat that whole process to have continuous improvement.

So with that being said, as you go along this path, you identify strategic potential acquisitions and then you go down the path of trying to figure out how you can make that acquisition, whether it is something that you're going to go into as an outright purchase or if you're going to incorporate it into your portfolio, retain some equity with the original founders. All kinds of strategies with regards to how you go about doing that. Our preference has always been that you buy a company outright in terms of an acquisition, bring it into your portfolio, and then you consolidate all of your resources and you repeat and you continue along the path.

Nick McLean:

To folks that the process of acquiring and integrating an acquisition, to the folks that seems daunting. What would your ... Not necessarily advice. But what would your counsel be? Is it something that they just need to get over or because it seems daunting and whatnot, perhaps growing their business through M&A isn't the right path for them. How do you balance that dichotomy, if you will, about concern to do that, but also the acknowledgement that there's no quicker way to grow your business than through M&A?

Darren Traub:

Yeah. Obviously the business that you're acquiring has to be something that is beneficial to your business. It's not always a bolt-on. There can be some vertical integration that you can accomplish by an acquisition. So you have to really understand what it is that you want to do. But for the person who finds it daunting, obviously the biggest concern regarding that is if you're outlaid of your cash and your ability to be able to support the investment, and then of course the people, because you do have redundancy when you do these kinds of things. And there are ways to manage around it. I've seen through time in many instances, when you make those kind of acquisitions, you've already identified prior to the acquisition, what kind of cash flow you're going to have from the joint operations that you can support your investment. And then frequently you will merge your management. You will split up certain territories. In some instances, you will bring on their systems. They may be more sophisticated than yours. There's no one answer for all of that, but it's strategic. It's an easy way to grow. You really do have to do your diligence on what it is that you're looking to buy.

Nick McLean:

So almost all of the questions I have asked, part of the answer in some way has revolved around people and managing people. As you think about your own ability to lead, do you feel like that was something that you were naturally drawn to being a leader of people? Was it something that you had to develop because you experienced success as an individual contributor and as you continue to experience success, you continue to rise through the ranks and ultimately manage people? Will you talk to me about your personal leadership journey?

Darren Traub:

That's a question I actually haven't been asked before. It's an interesting question. One of the things that I pride myself upon is my leadership ability. I think that my philosophy is that respect can only be commanded and not demanded. And you earn respect by the way you behave and by your actions and how you interact. I have been fortunate that I have had some mentors who have helped me along my career to grow my leadership skills and to be able to interact and elicit the best out of people. But at the end of the day, there is a realization that people who are successful will have, and that is that without a really good team of individuals around you, you will not be successful. No one that walks this planet has created success all on their very own. So you have to realize that, and then you have to have respect for the people that you work with. You have to have expectations from them. It has to be clear. There has to be clarity in terms of what you expect from them, and you have to hold them accountable. If you're asking them to do something, they need to know that you are expecting them to do what it is that is needed to be done.

So it's been an organic growth, Nick. I can't say that at day one the way I managed is the way I do now, but it's a learning lesson. Believe me, in my early stages when I was an engineer and I was a project manager or a project engineer, I used to tell people exactly how I wanted it done, and I really didn't take into consideration their expertise, their knowledge. As I matured, you realize there's more than one way of getting things done. And if you've hired somebody to do a job, let them do the job. It may not be exactly the way you would've done it, but if it works and it's successful, there are other more important fish that you need to deal with.

Nick McLean:

Well said. Well said. Your comment about earlier in your career trying to get people to do things your way made me think of the idea that at least throughout my career, failure has been a huge part. As you look at your own career, life, etc, do you feel like failure has been a core part of who you are today in that you've had to overcome that or do you feel like you've gotten maybe luckier than other folks and haven't had as much failure in your career?

Darren Traub:

Okay. So if anyone tells you they've had no failure in their career, I would really alert you to believing anything else that they're going to say. Everyone has had failure. I've had some significant failures in my career, and failures can be defined in different categories. Some you can recover from, others are unrecoverable. And unfortunately I've experienced the latter and lots and lots of the former. But the truth is that you have to really think about what is failure. And there is a saying out there that it says it's only a failure if you don't learn from what it is that has just happened. So if you're learning, you don't have to necessarily consider it a failure. But I think we've all had failures. Some of them have been things that have been directly related to things that I've said and done or decisions I have made or directions we have gone. Others have been things that are totally outside of my control. People will talk to you about a failure that we had in 2008. That was a time that there were very little levers and you could not anticipate what was coming. We've just come through a pandemic. Those are two areas in my career where we had failures. Weren't my doing, but how you deal with them, what you learn from them and how you mitigate the outcome is really the important thing. Failure molds everyone.

Nick McLean:

Another topic I talk about with business owners is controllable versus uncontrollable factors. It's foolish for us to think that we can completely manage around all the uncontrollable factors. On the other hand, I think it is too easy or dismissive to always blame uncontrollable factors as to why the business isn't performing as well as it can or whatnot. I don't want to say that it's the manager's or the business owner's job to control the uncontrollable, but to some effect, they at least have to mitigate the uncontrollable factors. Is that a concept that you would agree with that you have tried to implement with your teams throughout your career? The focus on controlling what you can while minimizing the uncontrollable?

Darren Traub:

Well, in terms of running a business, you have to have a strategy to deal with things that are out of your control. The legal term force majeure. Things that happen that you just have no control over. So those strategies need to be built into your business model. You need to know in the event of those things happening, how you can manage and work through them. As I said earlier, some are non-recoverable, but in the vast majority, if you have a plan, a risk abatement, risk analysis for those kinds of instances, you should be able to manage your way out of them. Again, that is a team effort. You can't do that in isolation and have an expectation that in the event something happens all will come out fine. Everyone who's involved needs to contribute to those kinds of plans.

Nick McLean:

But I'm sure you've had people that you have worked with in your career that their first answer is always, well, this happened, this happened, this happened without taking personal ownership. I feel like there are some people that when they answer that way, they really are trying to pass the buck because they don't want to stand up for the responsibility or whatever term you want to use. However, I think perhaps maybe it's younger people or people earlier in their career, they want to blame those things because they don't really understand how they could have impacted the outcome. Have you encountered those circumstances?

Darren Traub:

Who hasn't? People want to blame somebody else. I don't know who it was who told me this many years ago, but it's something that I have lived my entire life by, and that is that you're pointing a finger at someone. And when you point a finger at someone for doing something wrong, you need to realize there are three fingers that are pointing right back at you. So as a leader, you really do need to introspectively analyze the failure or the lack of performance. And the buck always stops with you. You don't blame others. You work with them. You try and understand what it is that went wrong. But that's what a leader does. A leader takes responsibility and tries to resolve it. They don't blame others.

Nick McLean:

I would agree with that. Switching gears a bit, I like to think about the interplay between hard work and luck and the determinants of those two factors on your career, your life, etc. Some folks say it's a hundred percent hard work. Other very successful people actually say it's luck. Some people say, that's a stupid question. I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to go be successful in my job. As you think about the concepts of hard work and luck, how do you talk about those? How do you think about those yourself as it relates to your career?

Darren Traub:

So there's very famous South African. His name is Gary Player. Have you heard of Gary Player?

Nick McLean:

I have heard of him actually.

Darren Traub:

So Gary Player had a very famous quote and his quote was, the harder I practice, the luckier I get. I think there's a lot of merit in that. It emphasizes the importance of hard work and preparation in order to be successful. But having said that, that's only one component. I believe that every successful business has some element of luck involved. Something that was out of your control that happened to strengthen your position and to allow you to grow. So you can't rely on luck and businesses can and have been extremely successful without luck, but if you get a break, take it. Those are the kinds of things that stars the line and you just have to take that opportunity.

Nick McLean:

My argument though is I hear comments like that very commonly where it's something along the lines of if you get a break, take it. However, my pushback would be that it's not always easy when you're in the moment to see that you're actually given this opportunity. How do you make sure that you're identifying a break when it comes and not perhaps thinking that certain events are the break you've been waiting for, when in reality they're not?

Darren Traub:

Well, it just depends on how you attribute it. If you don't know that it was luck, consider it hard work. That's perfectly fine as well. I can tell you that ... I can't think of specific instances where good luck has provided good fortune. I can think of a lot of circumstances where bad luck has also impacted some of the things that we've been doing. Specifically weather-related things in one of the ventures that I was involved in and the economics as well, which whether you call, as we mentioned earlier, things that are outside of your control, luck or bad luck, that's a point that we can debate. If something happens and you can't describe it to being specifically luck and you think it's hard work, well that's great.

Nick McLean:

Well, let's forget about classifying it as hard work or luck. How do you get better at recognizing when a big break is staring you in the face? Sometimes, to be honest with you, I don't know if I recognize those big breaks and I feel like sometimes I let them go. As a manager, as a business owner, do you have a mindset? Do you have an approach so that whenever those opportunities come knocking, you're the one that's answering the door and making sure that you take advantage of it?

Darren Traub:

Well, if you have a good team, they identify it, they bring it to you, they say, "This is what we've got. We've got a great opportunity here to increase our revenue, to have a great marketing campaign, to reduce our cost of goods," or whatever that opportunity is. It's something that as a team you acknowledge and you work with and you implement, and sometimes they don't actually work out as you expected. But I think that the identifying it as being a break is also somewhat interesting to think about. That is hard work. If you find an identify and it comes in as an opportunity, I don't know why you would try and categorize it as anything other than well done, good effort and much appreciated.

Nick McLean:

I think that's a good point that you bring up perhaps unintentionally, is that consistent with everything you've said today, it's not all you. You've got to build the team so that they're out there finding those opportunities because as you said, no single person can drive their organization to success. It's management, it's leadership, and because of that, you have to rely on other folks.

Darren Traub:

Absolutely.

Nick McLean:

So I definitely want to give some time to Dynamic Transformations, your newest venture, if you will. Would you mind talking to me a little bit about that, how you got started doing it, why it's the way that you currently choose to spend your time, if you will, and what your plans are for the business?

Darren Traub:

As I've mentioned to you over the last several decades, I've been working with private equity and my role within those organizations has been to increase the enterprise value with the focus of a liquidity event at the end of that. The people who have been ... And the private equity folks may not appreciate what it is I'm saying, but the people who have benefited from that mostly or have lost money occasionally are the private equity folks. So there is a group of businesses out there that have that same potential to increase their enterprise value. But they simply don't have the experience and the tools to be able to do that themselves. Very often, they're stuck. They are very, very integral to the day-to-day operations of the business. So rather than look for the next deal as you love to do, I decided what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for owners that are looking to increase the enterprise value of their businesses, that are looking to become less engaged in their businesses, but still have the businesses operating as efficiently if not more efficiently than they operated. So that is my focus with Dynamic Transformations. I provide services to business owners to increase the value of their businesses by making change.

I'm a change agent essentially. And I will help them by facilitating the change within their team. Each business is completely unique and different, so I can't tell you I have one methodology because that would be a lie. You have to really get to know the business, get to know the people in the business. You need to understand the personalities. You need to make sure that they have all the right people in the right seats. Fundamentally, from an organizational standpoint, they are not very well-structured most of these businesses. We spoke about policies and procedures. They don't have good robust policies and procedures, and if they do, they aren't implemented. They haven't been trained through to their individuals. So what I do is I work with them, I work with the leaders, I coach them, I advise them, and then I work with their teams to improve the methodologies in which they operate.

When I talk about systems, I'm not talking about electronic ERP systems or MRP systems, or I'm talking about how they actually function, the systematic way in which they operate their business. Frequently it involves implementing a new software system to be able to benefit the most. But that's essentially what I do. I work with very few clients. I have no interest in building a huge business with a bunch of consultants or advisors. It's just me. I pick my clients carefully. It is important for me that my clients are, as I term enlightened, meaning that they know what they know and know what they don't know and want to make improvements and are committed to making that improvement. I have no desire in trying to sell to somebody that they can potentially improve it if they want to change. They need to know that they want to change. So that's essentially what I'm doing. And I think I am providing a value to those individuals. Part of what has helped me get there is that I have been mentoring young entrepreneurs in the Kansas City area for a long, long time, and I really enjoy doing that. I enjoy seeing them benefit and grow from just suggestions and implementing some of the ideas that we share. So that is my motivation and I'm having a lot of fun and enjoying it at the moment.

Nick McLean:

Yeah. One last comment before we break, or at least go into our conclusion. Sometimes I will talk to folks that are earlier in their career, maybe not yet owning a business or on the path to buying a business and haven't been successful yet, and I wouldn't say they're down, but I would also say that they're getting disheartened by the process because they see all these other folks that are able to buy a business or grow to the CEO position. And sometimes my response is, well, if you would encounter some of the folks that are actually running a business, you might be surprised how they lucked into that position. As you think about some of the opportunities perhaps that you've passed on or client or potential clients that weren't able to recognize that they really needed help, how could you translate that experience to the folks that are earlier on that feel discouraged because success doesn't seem to be coming to them as quickly as it at least seems to be coming to other people?

Darren Traub:

I'm not sure I understand your question exactly, but I will answer it as how I understand it. Any business is difficult. There are no easy businesses. And if you talk to any entrepreneur who is really successful, they will talk to you about as they started, as they grew even further into a more mature business, how they have had sleepless nights worried about project supply, payroll. These are all the realities of being an entrepreneur and owning a business. I think that young entrepreneurs or people who are just getting into business for the first time, running businesses, they have preconceived ideas as to what that looks like, and unfortunately, that's not really reality. And I think also that running a business where you have somewhat restricted resources is something that cannot be shared with you or articulated to you adequately for you to really understand what it is to be in that circumstance. You will only know if you've been through it. There are many things like that. So it's not always easy. Not all businesses succeed. I think the vast majority of them do not succeed. But when you do succeed, you will look back on those times, not with fondness, but you will look back at them and realize how much that allowed you to grow as an individual.

Nick McLean:

I completely agree. I remember in the first acquisition we made when I was the president of the company, we experienced working capital issues and we made payroll, never missed payroll. However, there was some stress regarding whether or not we would be able to make payroll. At the time, I thought I was a terrible business owner. I thought I was doing a terrible job because I had to worry about payroll. However, fast-forward a few years, and I was in a CEO peer group. Universally in the group everyone said that they had troubles making payroll at one point or another. It was almost a badge of honor, and they said that if you haven't had those troubles, then maybe this is the wrong group for you because you haven't gotten out of your comfort zone enough or tried to grow or this or that. So completely resonates with me, and it was something that I had to learn just by doing, even though you know cash is king, you know you have to manage cash more so than just the income statement and whatnot. So I don't know if that answered my question either, but it was a really great answer and I thank you for it.

Darren Traub:

Okay. No problem. Yes. The interesting things that you do in your cash management strategies, I think we've all thought about them and done them. I have obvious memories of calling vendors and saying, we need to extend terms because cash flow is not ... It's just something that in that circumstance, you have to be creative, but you also have to have confidence that you know that it's recoverable and have contingency plans in place as well. So it's just similar to the risk analysis contingencies.

Nick McLean:

Well, very good. Is there anything else that you would like to cover that I perhaps should have asked you about, but I failed to do so? If now is your moment to bring that up.

Darren Traub:

Well, not really. This is your interview. I appreciate the chat. It's been very enjoyable for me. I appreciate the time. If we ever want to do this again, this is something I'd be more than willing to be able to participate in.

Nick McLean:

If folks would like to learn more about Dynamic Transformations, where can they go?

Darren Traub:

Well, I have a website. It is www.dyne-tran.com. It talks a little bit about my business. There is a page there that speaks specifically to founder's syndrome, which is a very common thing. Most people don't know about it, but in a nutshell, it's stubborn leaders and how they actually stifle the growth of their business. But through that, you can get an idea as to what it is I do and some of the methods that we employ doing that.

Nick McLean:

Well, Darren, I want to thank you again for your time. I can honestly and genuinely say that anytime I have the opportunity to talk to you, I feel like I'm at least a little bit smarter and have a better approach on certain aspects within my business. So beyond the time, just your wisdom, I appreciate and value so thank you very much.

Darren Traub:

And me too. I appreciate you, Nick. I thank you for all you do.

Nick McLean:

Now, folks, this is a new podcast and we're trying to get off the ground. I would really appreciate it if you enjoyed this episode to like it, to tell people about it, maybe subscribe as well. We're trying to tell stories about how to grow your business and the challenges that you overcome, and to the extent that that is interesting to you. We'd love to have you stick around for the journey.

I always enjoy my conversations with Darren, and this one was no exception. His wisdom always leaves me with a new perspective to reflect on. One comment in particular stood out to me, which was his personal philosophy, that respect can only be commanded, not demanded. This really resonates with me as it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about leadership from President Truman. My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don't want to do and like it. If that doesn't embody the concept of commanding respect, instead of demanding it, I don't know what does. Being a leader is hard work that requires critical self-reflection for lasting growth. Insights like this from leaders like Darren can help us reflect on our current leadership journey and take action in new ways. If you were inspired by this conversation on ambition, please follow the show wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss the next episode. Thanks for listening.