February 8, 2022 • 31 mins
On this week's episode of The Blueprint Connect, Host Louis Carr speaks with Stephen Bailey, CEO and co-founder of ExecOnline.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Louis Carr, host of the Blueprint Connect podcast. The
Blueprint Connect podcast is an extension of the Blueprint Man's Summer,
where we have consistently given man a prescription for growth,
not just for themselves, but also for their families and
their communities. During these podcasts, we will educate and motivate
our listeners about entrepreneurship, careers, finances, health and wellness, and relationship.
(00:28):
Today we have as our special guests Stephen Bailey, co
founder and CEO of Exact Online. Welcome Stephen, it is
a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh,
thank you well, Stephen. You have one of these unique
(00:48):
business that you know a lot of people don't know about.
All right, so we're excited to have you and sort
of really understand your journey to Exact Online and uh
what you can sort of teach us in our audience
along the way. Excited to share whatever I can do it. So, Stephen,
you received your b a from Emory University, a law
(01:11):
degree from Yale, and you spit most of your career
working for yourself. Was that sort of your plan from
the very beginning? It depends on how you define the beginning.
So you know, certainly growing up, UM, I have two
parents who are who are both doctors. Um. I was
a debater when I was in high school and college,
(01:34):
and I saw myself becoming a lawyer and working for
a big law firm, and particularly in Washington, d C.
Where I was interested in politics, I saw my career
headed in that direction. So that you can say I
started out thinking I was gonna work for the man,
so to speak. UM. But as I kind of made
my way through law school, I was a summer associate
(01:56):
at law firms. Over the summer I learned a bit
about what it was like to work in a big
firm environment. And then I was also lucky enough to
be introduced in law school to a couple of entrepreneurs
who had founded companies before law school. And when I
compared what I was seeing at the law firm to
what I heard about in this world of entrepreneurship, and
I thought about what motivated me personally, particularly around creativity
(02:20):
and innovation, I quickly realized two things. One, law firms
weren't creative enough for me. And to it turns out
that I'm not very good at working for other people.
And so that is what led me early in my career,
within a couple of years of getting to the law firm,
to realize I was going to pursue a different path. Well, Steve,
once I saw you had a law degree, I see
(02:42):
you know from Washington, d C. He must wanted to
go into politics. Pretty good guests, So how did your
journey lead you to this opportunity to exect online? So
my first experience with entrepreneurship was actually not exactly mine.
(03:02):
This is my second company. As I mentioned, when I
was in law school, I met a couple of boats
who had started companies previously. One of them ended up
being an investor in the company that I left to join,
and when I was at my law firm for that
brief stint, I did the legal work for that transaction,
(03:23):
and so I joined the company called Frontier Strategy Group
uh in information services company focused on emerging economies. So
this was two thousand five two six. A lot of
companies were investing internationally for the first time, and we
helped them make strong investments in those markets, but provided
(03:43):
them with access to best practices and data. And so
that was my initial foray and I learned that although
I was the first hire of the company. So there
were two founders. I came on as the first higher
that there was a difference between being the first hire
and being the founder. And I was CEO of that
company for a few years and I realized that that
(04:05):
was great, and I was running an organization, but I
wanted to run an organization that I started, and so
that's what led to the journey of Exact Online. I'm
a big believer in following your passions, and I was
really passionate about education. I was passionate about um creating
more equity and representation in corporate America. Excited experience that personally,
(04:27):
and the combination of those two passions is what led
me to Exact Online. Great. So tell us about executiveline,
what what type of business is it and what do
you guys provide? So we're an online corporate training company.
What makes us different is that we pioneered online leadership
(04:49):
development within corporation. So back in twelve when I started
the company, the idea was, yeah, you might be able
to do some online training, but leaders need to be
development person and we said, actually, that doesn't need to
be the case. And when you make leadership development purely
and in person enterprise, it tends to be exclusionary because
(05:12):
not everyone can participate, and the people who get access
to the best opportunities and get tapped on the shoulder,
so to speak, are often individuals that are in certain networks,
that have certain backgrounds, and typically you see rooms full
of largely white males. And so what we said was
that experience that these this few set of leaders is
(05:33):
having at a Stanford or a Warton or Columbia or
any of these top institutions can be democratized by bringing
it online and offering it to a much broader range
of leaders than ever before. And that's what we do
at e Tech Online. At this point, we partner with
a dozen of the world's top business schools, so the
schools that I mentioned are being amongst them, and we
(05:54):
work with hundreds of organizations and developed tens of thousands
of leaders every year, most of whom would not have
gotten that opportunity without an online offering like execon. So So, Stephen,
so your services offered to corporations is it also offered
to individuals. So the way we think about it is
(06:15):
we've got the corporation who is the sponsor. They're purchasing access,
and then our and the user are the leaders from
those organizations, so leaders are able to participate through their companies,
and then if individual leaders come to us and want
to sign up, we also support that as well. But
our main focus is on selling two companies and democratizing
(06:41):
leadership development within their organizations with the goal of creating
much more leadership mobility. So when you look forward one,
three or five years, how many underrepresented groups are actually
progressing through leadership? People of color, women, uh, you know,
afferent um, sexual orientations. That's all really a piece of
(07:05):
what we do is to create the building blocks for
that leadership progression by developing those leaders in ways that
allow them to advance their careers. Now, I heard you
say you partnered with some of the leading academic institutions
in this country. When you have an economy and a
world that's changing so fast, especially over the last twenty
(07:26):
some months, how do you address that because most academic
institutions can't turn that fast. So how are you guys
addressing some of the current situations. That's a great question. So, um,
one thing I'll say is that we believe we're in
the midst of a learning economy that that represents the future,
(07:48):
and that's ultimately going to determine the success of organizations
and individuals. And what I mean by a learning economy is,
to your point, lewis the world is changing so quickly.
The skills you to adapt to that change, particularly in
corporate environments, to half lives on those skills is constantly short.
And so the critical capability that will allow individuals to
(08:10):
progress their careers and organizations to remain competitive is how reliably,
um and consistently can you learn to keep up with
the pace of change. And so what we're really working
with our schools and our companies to understand is that
if you're a school, it requires you to adapt your mission.
You can't be thinking about traditional models only. You've got
(08:33):
to be thinking about how you can adapt that model
to keep up with the learning economy. And if you're
a company, we're talking about different pace of investment than
ever before, and you really got to be investing in
your number one asset. Right if you think about how
economies have changed, and what asset is not human capital?
How are you helping that human capital learn and up
(08:56):
level to stay ahead of the pace of change. Now,
do you also do like some of the academic institutions,
do you bring in quote unquote adjunct professors, like people
who are in business and running companies, like maybe a
kin Chen or Dick Parsons or somebody like that. Do
(09:16):
you guys also bring on those people as part of
this program or not? Yeah, great questions. So when we
work with our schools, we really work to identify the
right faculty mix for a given program, and ultimately what
we find is that the right mix is often tenured
faculty that have really strong intellectual property around particular concepts
(09:43):
on strategy or innovation or finance, with the right set
of practitioners that have actually put those concepts to use
in organizations. And that's ultimately what gets our leaders really
excited is to learn helpful intellectual frame work and then
to also hear how it can be applied, and we
(10:04):
build that into the design of our programs as well.
So every leader is actually working on a personal project
where they're applying what they're learning to a real business challenge.
So they're not just learning, but they're also advancing their
career in the process and proving to their organizations that
they can step into stretch assignments in roles as they learn. Right,
(10:30):
we'll be right back with more of my interview after
this quick break. So on your website it states that
leaders are within us and among us. Does that mean
that everybody can be a leader or has the potential
(10:52):
to be a leader. Absolutely. I think there's an inner
leader inside of all of us. And if you think
about leadership as really influencing and um supporting people to
achieve a common mission, all of us have that capability.
All of us have personal passions, all of us have
(11:13):
personal expertise, and the question is can we unleash that
inner leader to address the things that were really passionate
about because there are other people who share those passions
and we can help like minded individuals come together to
solve pressing problems or to pursue really cool hobbies. Right,
(11:35):
there's you know, you can go from sports to cure
and cancer and everything else in between. But I truly
believe that when people identify their passion and really look
to cultivate that passion and build expertise around that passion,
all of us have the potential to be so Steve,
and here's here's here's a personal question that I debate
(11:56):
with my friends. I've been debating for decades our leaders born?
Is it inherent or is it learned? So I think
a lot of the conception of what it means to
be a leader is um in my view, exclusionary. And
so there's this idea that a leader is born and
(12:20):
there are just a certain set of folks that happened
to be born with that capability and if you have it, great,
and if you don't, then don't find something else to do.
And I just don't believe that. I believe there are
many different leadership styles. I certainly think what we're born
with might dictate the type of leadership style that we
might express. But we can all be leaders in our
(12:42):
own way. But what that doesn't replace the need for,
like anything else, is skill built. So you might have
some natural leadership traits and capabilities inside of all of us,
but who are the people who are going to take
the time a to recognize that they've got that leadership
potentional inside of them and then second, cultivate that potential.
(13:03):
And I'm a big believer that you've got it, you've
got to cultivate it in order to express it effectively,
but that it is there for all of us to
achieve if we so choose. So, Steve, and I'm going
to invite you to some of my Saturday morning debates
with with my friends. All Right, I'm in, I'm in.
(13:24):
So you also talk about connecting leaders to their future potential,
which is sort of similar to the Waymaker mission where
we say, grow your life and change the world. So
how do you guide leaders to that? What? What is
that process like? So? I think one of the things
(13:44):
that we try to help and we do this in
our own organization as well, is to distinguish between leadership
and management. So leadership is about influencing and supporting people
toward a common purpose. Management is really the blocking and
tackling and the skills around how you actually lead a
(14:07):
team or the organization data day and so one of
the things we try to help people understand is you
can be a leader no matter what right and don't
let anyone define you as an individual contributor only if
you have if you want to be a leader, that
doesn't require you to be a manager. So first we
try to help people understand the right mindset and then secondly,
(14:32):
um we help really connect them to uh the set
of programs and experiences that are going to be helpful
to their leadership journey right in their leadership. And it's
gonna be different for individuals based on the industry you're in,
the type of role you have. There's no one size
fits all approach. But then the other thing we do
(14:53):
at the organizational level, and this is really about the
equity piece that I mentioned earlier, is we push for
in as stations to think about how they're distributing opportunity
and whether they're distributing that opportunity affortably, and we think
about We've created a concept called development Effort that is
designed to do that. So think about the pay equity
(15:13):
movement that has made such progress, still a lot of
progress to make when you think about gender pay gaps
over the last ten or fifteen years, they've been um,
we've made progress in closing it because we defined it
as an issue pay equity, and then we've measured it.
And I'm a big believer that you don't manage what
you don't measure, and so we push organizations to measure
(15:36):
their distribution of leadership development opportunity, who's getting the opportunity
And then once you understand that, how do you inflect
it and change it. So it's got to be institutional,
it's got to be individual, and often what you see
is a lot of talk of, you know, pull yourself
up by your bootstraps. It's all about the individual. If
you want to succeed, you can disease. And that's an
important mindset to have. But you've also got to attack
(15:57):
the systematic inequality that exists the organization asians and hold
organizations accountable for creating that opportunity as well. So that
sort of leads me to this next question. In this
rough and tough world of corporate America, we all know
there's a lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that
(16:17):
sometimes can make African Americans and people of color sort
of second guess their potential. How do you get them
over that hump? So the first thing I when I
talked to particularly young leaders or young aspiring leaders that
are earlier in their careers, about you know what advice
(16:37):
I have and how do you get over that hump?
The biggest piece advice I give is don't allow anyone
else to define it. Doesn't matter who that is. To
be your parents, be your friends, be your boss. But
in life. It's really important to go on a journey
of self discovery and self definition that ultimately connect you
(17:01):
to your passion and your purpose. We're a very purpose
driven organization. I'm a purpose driven leader. As you mentioned, Louis.
Our mission is to connect all leaders to their future potential.
When I stand up in front of our organization. That's
the first thing I talked about before. I talk about
numbers and sales and revenue and growth and all these
things which are extremely important front of business. But why
(17:21):
are we all here? What brought us together? We could
have chosen to do many things in life. Why do
we choose to do this? What's our common purpose? And
I think it's very important at the individual level as well.
I experienced that firsthand in building a company. As you know, Um,
I've raised about ninety million dollars of venture capital. They're
not very many black people who have done that. And
(17:43):
the challenges you know, you're in these networks that are
often exclusionary. You've got to know someone to get in
front of the right people who can write checks. And
even when you get in front of these people, they
often wanted to find Oh, you're a black entrepreneur, you
must know something about the urban market, tell us you
know something interesting us as white males don't know. And
I can tell you a lot of interesting things that
(18:06):
you might not know as a white male in Benjamerica.
But it doesn't just have to be about the urban market.
It can be about leadership development and leading institutions and
how to build a B two B sales organization. So
you know, those sorts of things I think are probably
the biggest piece of vice providers that that self definition. Uh,
it's interesting Stephen. There there's a video on i G
(18:29):
of Beyonces and the problem is people are always trying
to define you and put you in a box. And
she said, I'm just not gonna have that exactly, It's
not gonna happen. Happen. So we we've been in two
pandemics over the last couple of months, you know, one COVID, uh,
(18:53):
the other one social injustice has been brought to the
forefront of society. How has your company whoe there that
storm over the last one months. Well, you know, I'll
start with COVID. We're very fortunate and I think a
lot of CEOs whose businesses have drive through COVID often
(19:15):
like to ascribe it to their own genius. You know,
we were just we figured out how to an advocate,
and you know, we obviously did a lot. Actually, most
of my are real challenges around COVID were human challenges.
How do you meet your employees where they are, how
do you understand what's going on in their lives? How
do you help individuals and teams managed through it is
a very challenging personal circumstance. Um, we'll take some credit
(19:37):
for that, and our culture really helped us manage through.
But we're also we're very fortunate to be in a
space where Covid created a tail wind for us in
terms of accelerating the whole thesis behind our business, which
is leadership development. It's going to move online over time,
and when it does, we want to be to go
(19:58):
to company to provide that leadership development within corporation. So
that piece for us was the tail wind, and then
we had to we had to really think about our
business not just as a PowerPoint presentation with market dynamics
and size and all that, but a collage of humans
that we need to all get to that common purpose
(20:18):
as it relates to social justice. I think what I'm
most proud of is. You know, we were talking about
these issues and we were really driving this mission of
equity and corporate America long before the murders of George
Floyd and Brianna Taylor. This was court of who we were,
and we started in for anyone's talking about this gender
(20:41):
benchmarking our program. So we went to companies proactively and said,
we're going to tell you, whether you want to know
or not, when you distribute leadership development opportunity organization, how
does it break down along gender lines. And we also
started to push our organizations to provide other data, which
is much tricky to capture around race and other areas
of identity. And so that's been a huge portion of
(21:02):
what we've done and we've seen the effects of investing
in that. So when about of the leaders in our
program to women you've asked forward to today, it's in
the load of mid forties, and that's because we measured
and moved the metrics, and so we're now pioneering a
lot of other data collection to to do the same. So,
(21:23):
you know, for us, it's almost been kind of surreal
because we've been saying these things for years, and frankly,
a lot of organizations were sort of like, you know,
everyone is polite, no one says I don't care about it,
but they weren't putting their dollars right where their statements were.
And we've now seen that shift um as well. And
our goal is how do we make it sustainable and
(21:46):
not just something that's flash in the pan and then
people move on to something. We'll be right back with
more of my interview after this quick break. Yeah, have
(22:07):
any of your clients, Stephen started to see the benefits
of improving d E and I over time, do any
of them sort of you know, want to raise it.
I want to make a testimony. I want to have
a statement because it really has improved my bottom line absolutely. So.
I think organizations, though, there are set of organizations that
(22:31):
are committed to this because it's the right thing to do.
Their organizations at the far end dispetrum, and I think
are fewer and fewer fortunately that don't care even still today.
And then you have a lot of organizations that a
largely in the middle that believe that this can help
them improve their bottom line and that's why they're committed
to it, and and they're overlaps between those populations it's
(22:52):
not all mutual exclusive, but we've got a Development Equity
Council over for the organizations, and I mentioned development equity
is about, you know, how do you provide equitable access
to leadership development opportunity. These forty companies have co created
this with us. They've helped us understand how do you
set the right measurements and metrics, how do you put
(23:12):
the right processes in place. How do you bring development
equity to life so it's not just a tagline. How
do you live by it in an organization. We have
a lot of our organizations who have now branded themselves
development reorganizations, and that's what they talk about internally, and
a number of those organizations have come to us and
sort of shared, yes, this is having a huge impact,
(23:33):
particularly in the moment we're in now where you've got
a very tight labor mark and recruiting top talent. If
you're just recruiting from analog set of pipelines, you're you're
not going to be a successful company to future. You've
got to broaden your pipelines. And that's about gender, that's
about raised, that's about first generation college students, geographic diversity.
(23:55):
You've got to broaden out and organizations who understand how
to be inclusive and distribute opportunity effortably can hire from anywhere,
and they can retain the people that they hire. And
that's the big difference we're seeing from a business impact perspective.
Got it, Stephen, The waymaker community believes that every successful person,
(24:16):
I don't care who they are, where they came from,
has had a way maker. Can you tell us about
some of the people who have been a waymaker for
Stephen Baker? So it's pretty straightforward for me, and I'm
very fortunate I had the ultimate waymakers from a very
early age. My parents, um, you know, just big believers
in the value of education. I mentioned both my parents
(24:37):
are doctors, my dad's and then as from our psychiatrists
didn't love the fact that I was thinking about becoming
a lawyer because not as a lawyers typically don't get
along that well. But they accepted it. But but in
all seriousness, you know, they always pushed me two be great,
to invest in my own education, but also to invest
in self discovery. And even though they had some idea
(25:00):
is about what I should do, they never imposed those
ideas in ways that stifled my creativity and self actualization.
And I remember very clearly, you know, after my parents
had gotten over the fact that I was going to
be a lawyer, they were proudly, you know, great law firm,
went to Yale Law School, and I came to them
less than two years later and said, actually, I'm leaving
(25:22):
to go start a company at my dining room table
right with two other people. And they didn't really understand why.
You could tell there was so like, why would anyone
in their right mind do this? But they were supported
and at every step along the way, they've been cheerleaders,
they've been supporters, and they've recognized how their role is
(25:43):
a way they for evolved from when I was a
kid and it was about telling me what to do
and making sure I ate my vegetables and went to
school and all of that to being true friends now
and being supportive and cheerleaders from the sidelines even through
all the twist and terms of life. That's great. So
tell us about some of the things you hope to
accomplish an executiveline, hope to accomplish in two. Well, I'll
(26:09):
go a little beyond, and I would say two is
a you know, kind of a good marker, because it's
great to mark annual progress, but we think more broadly,
for us, it's about changing the face of leadership. When
we say connect all leaders to their future potential, what
we really mean is when you look up at corporate
(26:29):
America at the end of two or the end of
or the end of does the leadership level of those
organizations and then the culture that flows from that look
different than it did before it? Dack online, are you
seeing more people of color and leadership? You see more
women in leadership, You've seeing more first generation college graduates
(26:51):
and leadership um that laud Range University we believe is
great for organizations, but we also think that it is
what the society moment that we're in demands. It's always
been that way, you know, as as Martin Luther King said,
you know, the more lark of the universe is long,
but it bends toward justice. And so for us, it's
(27:12):
about how do we use this moment to bend it
faster um and contribute to changing the face of leadership,
not just in a country, but so as we are
in this new year, give us five things, Stephen, in
order for us to grow our lives so that we
(27:33):
may have the possibility to change the world. Well, Louis,
if you talk to my team, they would tell you
that everything I do is in three, everything in threes
and believer in three. I had three goals, three metrics.
It's just something about I know a lot of people.
(27:55):
I give you three. I give you three. Maybe maybe
five to do is worth of wisdom, but compressed into three,
that would be the goal. So, uh, First is define
your purpose, so understand why are you on this earth.
(28:15):
I think it's an empowering idea. I think we're all
on this earth for a reason, but I don't think
we often reflect on why we're on this earth and
really what can drive you there? If people sort to say,
that's kind of cliche, how do I know? What are
you passionate about? If you enter as a new Year's resolution,
defining your passion is a really powerful resolution because it
(28:37):
helps set the guiding purpose for not just your year,
but potentially for your life going for it. I think
we're great when we pursue that things were passionate about,
because that's what we're gonna be best. Secondly, surround yourself
with people who share your passion. If you find yourself
(28:57):
in a place right now where when you define your passion,
you look around and saying, none of these people share
what I'm passionate about, why are you there? That can
mean a job change, that can mean broadening your friendship circle.
There are variety of ways to surround That can be
joining different organizations, but really affirmatively surrounding yourself people who
share the passion. And then the third piece is unleash
(29:20):
you're inner leader and recognizing that you have the ability
once you surround yourself with people with the shared purpose,
to actually influence those people, not to be their manager,
be the friend, but you can influence people towards that
shared purpose emission. And so if you define your passion,
surround yourself with the right people and unleash you're in
(29:42):
a leader is going to be great, but the years
after will be even better. Wow. I love those three Stephen,
Define your purpose, surround yourself with people who share your
purpose and believe in your passion, and unleash the inter leader.
I love that, man, I appreciate it. This has been
(30:03):
an amazing interview. Thank you so much. I clearly understand
why you decided not to be a lawyer, and I
don't know this has been amazing, and uh, thank you
(30:25):
for sharing this. I'm sure our audience will get a
lot of it, a lot out of it because I
have and uh, I believe in this space of purpose,
of passion of education in order to change things and
and be about growing things. So thank you so much
for sharing this with our audience and wishing you a
(30:50):
great twenty two same to you. Hope you're hope you're
bringing the new year in style. All Right, thank you
so much man. All right s
I'm Louis Carr, host of the Blueprint Connect podcast. The
Blueprint Connect podcast is an extension of the Blueprint Man's Summer,
where we have consistently given man a prescription for growth,
not just for themselves, but also for their families and
their communities. During these podcasts, we will educate and motivate
our listeners about entrepreneurship, careers, finances, health and wellness, and relationship.
(00:28):
Today we have as our special guests Stephen Bailey, co
founder and CEO of Exact Online. Welcome Stephen, it is
a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh,
thank you well, Stephen. You have one of these unique
(00:48):
business that you know a lot of people don't know about.
All right, so we're excited to have you and sort
of really understand your journey to Exact Online and uh
what you can sort of teach us in our audience
along the way. Excited to share whatever I can do it. So, Stephen,
you received your b a from Emory University, a law
(01:11):
degree from Yale, and you spit most of your career
working for yourself. Was that sort of your plan from
the very beginning? It depends on how you define the beginning.
So you know, certainly growing up, UM, I have two
parents who are who are both doctors. Um. I was
a debater when I was in high school and college,
(01:34):
and I saw myself becoming a lawyer and working for
a big law firm, and particularly in Washington, d C.
Where I was interested in politics, I saw my career
headed in that direction. So that you can say I
started out thinking I was gonna work for the man,
so to speak. UM. But as I kind of made
my way through law school, I was a summer associate
(01:56):
at law firms. Over the summer I learned a bit
about what it was like to work in a big
firm environment. And then I was also lucky enough to
be introduced in law school to a couple of entrepreneurs
who had founded companies before law school. And when I
compared what I was seeing at the law firm to
what I heard about in this world of entrepreneurship, and
I thought about what motivated me personally, particularly around creativity
(02:20):
and innovation, I quickly realized two things. One, law firms
weren't creative enough for me. And to it turns out
that I'm not very good at working for other people.
And so that is what led me early in my career,
within a couple of years of getting to the law firm,
to realize I was going to pursue a different path. Well, Steve,
once I saw you had a law degree, I see
(02:42):
you know from Washington, d C. He must wanted to
go into politics. Pretty good guests, So how did your
journey lead you to this opportunity to exect online? So
my first experience with entrepreneurship was actually not exactly mine.
(03:02):
This is my second company. As I mentioned, when I
was in law school, I met a couple of boats
who had started companies previously. One of them ended up
being an investor in the company that I left to join,
and when I was at my law firm for that
brief stint, I did the legal work for that transaction,
(03:23):
and so I joined the company called Frontier Strategy Group
uh in information services company focused on emerging economies. So
this was two thousand five two six. A lot of
companies were investing internationally for the first time, and we
helped them make strong investments in those markets, but provided
(03:43):
them with access to best practices and data. And so
that was my initial foray and I learned that although
I was the first hire of the company. So there
were two founders. I came on as the first higher
that there was a difference between being the first hire
and being the founder. And I was CEO of that
company for a few years and I realized that that
(04:05):
was great, and I was running an organization, but I
wanted to run an organization that I started, and so
that's what led to the journey of Exact Online. I'm
a big believer in following your passions, and I was
really passionate about education. I was passionate about um creating
more equity and representation in corporate America. Excited experience that personally,
(04:27):
and the combination of those two passions is what led
me to Exact Online. Great. So tell us about executiveline,
what what type of business is it and what do
you guys provide? So we're an online corporate training company.
What makes us different is that we pioneered online leadership
(04:49):
development within corporation. So back in twelve when I started
the company, the idea was, yeah, you might be able
to do some online training, but leaders need to be
development person and we said, actually, that doesn't need to
be the case. And when you make leadership development purely
and in person enterprise, it tends to be exclusionary because
(05:12):
not everyone can participate, and the people who get access
to the best opportunities and get tapped on the shoulder,
so to speak, are often individuals that are in certain networks,
that have certain backgrounds, and typically you see rooms full
of largely white males. And so what we said was
that experience that these this few set of leaders is
(05:33):
having at a Stanford or a Warton or Columbia or
any of these top institutions can be democratized by bringing
it online and offering it to a much broader range
of leaders than ever before. And that's what we do
at e Tech Online. At this point, we partner with
a dozen of the world's top business schools, so the
schools that I mentioned are being amongst them, and we
(05:54):
work with hundreds of organizations and developed tens of thousands
of leaders every year, most of whom would not have
gotten that opportunity without an online offering like execon. So So, Stephen,
so your services offered to corporations is it also offered
to individuals. So the way we think about it is
(06:15):
we've got the corporation who is the sponsor. They're purchasing access,
and then our and the user are the leaders from
those organizations, so leaders are able to participate through their companies,
and then if individual leaders come to us and want
to sign up, we also support that as well. But
our main focus is on selling two companies and democratizing
(06:41):
leadership development within their organizations with the goal of creating
much more leadership mobility. So when you look forward one,
three or five years, how many underrepresented groups are actually
progressing through leadership? People of color, women, uh, you know,
afferent um, sexual orientations. That's all really a piece of
(07:05):
what we do is to create the building blocks for
that leadership progression by developing those leaders in ways that
allow them to advance their careers. Now, I heard you
say you partnered with some of the leading academic institutions
in this country. When you have an economy and a
world that's changing so fast, especially over the last twenty
(07:26):
some months, how do you address that because most academic
institutions can't turn that fast. So how are you guys
addressing some of the current situations. That's a great question. So, um,
one thing I'll say is that we believe we're in
the midst of a learning economy that that represents the future,
(07:48):
and that's ultimately going to determine the success of organizations
and individuals. And what I mean by a learning economy is,
to your point, lewis the world is changing so quickly.
The skills you to adapt to that change, particularly in
corporate environments, to half lives on those skills is constantly short.
And so the critical capability that will allow individuals to
(08:10):
progress their careers and organizations to remain competitive is how reliably,
um and consistently can you learn to keep up with
the pace of change. And so what we're really working
with our schools and our companies to understand is that
if you're a school, it requires you to adapt your mission.
You can't be thinking about traditional models only. You've got
(08:33):
to be thinking about how you can adapt that model
to keep up with the learning economy. And if you're
a company, we're talking about different pace of investment than
ever before, and you really got to be investing in
your number one asset. Right if you think about how
economies have changed, and what asset is not human capital?
How are you helping that human capital learn and up
(08:56):
level to stay ahead of the pace of change. Now,
do you also do like some of the academic institutions,
do you bring in quote unquote adjunct professors, like people
who are in business and running companies, like maybe a
kin Chen or Dick Parsons or somebody like that. Do
(09:16):
you guys also bring on those people as part of
this program or not? Yeah, great questions. So when we
work with our schools, we really work to identify the
right faculty mix for a given program, and ultimately what
we find is that the right mix is often tenured
faculty that have really strong intellectual property around particular concepts
(09:43):
on strategy or innovation or finance, with the right set
of practitioners that have actually put those concepts to use
in organizations. And that's ultimately what gets our leaders really
excited is to learn helpful intellectual frame work and then
to also hear how it can be applied, and we
(10:04):
build that into the design of our programs as well.
So every leader is actually working on a personal project
where they're applying what they're learning to a real business challenge.
So they're not just learning, but they're also advancing their
career in the process and proving to their organizations that
they can step into stretch assignments in roles as they learn. Right,
(10:30):
we'll be right back with more of my interview after
this quick break. So on your website it states that
leaders are within us and among us. Does that mean
that everybody can be a leader or has the potential
(10:52):
to be a leader. Absolutely. I think there's an inner
leader inside of all of us. And if you think
about leadership as really influencing and um supporting people to
achieve a common mission, all of us have that capability.
All of us have personal passions, all of us have
(11:13):
personal expertise, and the question is can we unleash that
inner leader to address the things that were really passionate
about because there are other people who share those passions
and we can help like minded individuals come together to
solve pressing problems or to pursue really cool hobbies. Right,
(11:35):
there's you know, you can go from sports to cure
and cancer and everything else in between. But I truly
believe that when people identify their passion and really look
to cultivate that passion and build expertise around that passion,
all of us have the potential to be so Steve,
and here's here's here's a personal question that I debate
(11:56):
with my friends. I've been debating for decades our leaders born?
Is it inherent or is it learned? So I think
a lot of the conception of what it means to
be a leader is um in my view, exclusionary. And
so there's this idea that a leader is born and
(12:20):
there are just a certain set of folks that happened
to be born with that capability and if you have it, great,
and if you don't, then don't find something else to do.
And I just don't believe that. I believe there are
many different leadership styles. I certainly think what we're born
with might dictate the type of leadership style that we
might express. But we can all be leaders in our
(12:42):
own way. But what that doesn't replace the need for,
like anything else, is skill built. So you might have
some natural leadership traits and capabilities inside of all of us,
but who are the people who are going to take
the time a to recognize that they've got that leadership
potentional inside of them and then second, cultivate that potential.
(13:03):
And I'm a big believer that you've got it, you've
got to cultivate it in order to express it effectively,
but that it is there for all of us to
achieve if we so choose. So, Steve, and I'm going
to invite you to some of my Saturday morning debates
with with my friends. All Right, I'm in, I'm in.
(13:24):
So you also talk about connecting leaders to their future potential,
which is sort of similar to the Waymaker mission where
we say, grow your life and change the world. So
how do you guide leaders to that? What? What is
that process like? So? I think one of the things
(13:44):
that we try to help and we do this in
our own organization as well, is to distinguish between leadership
and management. So leadership is about influencing and supporting people
toward a common purpose. Management is really the blocking and
tackling and the skills around how you actually lead a
(14:07):
team or the organization data day and so one of
the things we try to help people understand is you
can be a leader no matter what right and don't
let anyone define you as an individual contributor only if
you have if you want to be a leader, that
doesn't require you to be a manager. So first we
try to help people understand the right mindset and then secondly,
(14:32):
um we help really connect them to uh the set
of programs and experiences that are going to be helpful
to their leadership journey right in their leadership. And it's
gonna be different for individuals based on the industry you're in,
the type of role you have. There's no one size
fits all approach. But then the other thing we do
(14:53):
at the organizational level, and this is really about the
equity piece that I mentioned earlier, is we push for
in as stations to think about how they're distributing opportunity
and whether they're distributing that opportunity affortably, and we think
about We've created a concept called development Effort that is
designed to do that. So think about the pay equity
(15:13):
movement that has made such progress, still a lot of
progress to make when you think about gender pay gaps
over the last ten or fifteen years, they've been um,
we've made progress in closing it because we defined it
as an issue pay equity, and then we've measured it.
And I'm a big believer that you don't manage what
you don't measure, and so we push organizations to measure
(15:36):
their distribution of leadership development opportunity, who's getting the opportunity
And then once you understand that, how do you inflect
it and change it. So it's got to be institutional,
it's got to be individual, and often what you see
is a lot of talk of, you know, pull yourself
up by your bootstraps. It's all about the individual. If
you want to succeed, you can disease. And that's an
important mindset to have. But you've also got to attack
(15:57):
the systematic inequality that exists the organization asians and hold
organizations accountable for creating that opportunity as well. So that
sort of leads me to this next question. In this
rough and tough world of corporate America, we all know
there's a lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that
(16:17):
sometimes can make African Americans and people of color sort
of second guess their potential. How do you get them
over that hump? So the first thing I when I
talked to particularly young leaders or young aspiring leaders that
are earlier in their careers, about you know what advice
(16:37):
I have and how do you get over that hump?
The biggest piece advice I give is don't allow anyone
else to define it. Doesn't matter who that is. To
be your parents, be your friends, be your boss. But
in life. It's really important to go on a journey
of self discovery and self definition that ultimately connect you
(17:01):
to your passion and your purpose. We're a very purpose
driven organization. I'm a purpose driven leader. As you mentioned, Louis.
Our mission is to connect all leaders to their future potential.
When I stand up in front of our organization. That's
the first thing I talked about before. I talk about
numbers and sales and revenue and growth and all these
things which are extremely important front of business. But why
(17:21):
are we all here? What brought us together? We could
have chosen to do many things in life. Why do
we choose to do this? What's our common purpose? And
I think it's very important at the individual level as well.
I experienced that firsthand in building a company. As you know, Um,
I've raised about ninety million dollars of venture capital. They're
not very many black people who have done that. And
(17:43):
the challenges you know, you're in these networks that are
often exclusionary. You've got to know someone to get in
front of the right people who can write checks. And
even when you get in front of these people, they
often wanted to find Oh, you're a black entrepreneur, you
must know something about the urban market, tell us you
know something interesting us as white males don't know. And
I can tell you a lot of interesting things that
(18:06):
you might not know as a white male in Benjamerica.
But it doesn't just have to be about the urban market.
It can be about leadership development and leading institutions and
how to build a B two B sales organization. So
you know, those sorts of things I think are probably
the biggest piece of vice providers that that self definition. Uh,
it's interesting Stephen. There there's a video on i G
(18:29):
of Beyonces and the problem is people are always trying
to define you and put you in a box. And
she said, I'm just not gonna have that exactly, It's
not gonna happen. Happen. So we we've been in two
pandemics over the last couple of months, you know, one COVID, uh,
(18:53):
the other one social injustice has been brought to the
forefront of society. How has your company whoe there that
storm over the last one months. Well, you know, I'll
start with COVID. We're very fortunate and I think a
lot of CEOs whose businesses have drive through COVID often
(19:15):
like to ascribe it to their own genius. You know,
we were just we figured out how to an advocate,
and you know, we obviously did a lot. Actually, most
of my are real challenges around COVID were human challenges.
How do you meet your employees where they are, how
do you understand what's going on in their lives? How
do you help individuals and teams managed through it is
a very challenging personal circumstance. Um, we'll take some credit
(19:37):
for that, and our culture really helped us manage through.
But we're also we're very fortunate to be in a
space where Covid created a tail wind for us in
terms of accelerating the whole thesis behind our business, which
is leadership development. It's going to move online over time,
and when it does, we want to be to go
(19:58):
to company to provide that leadership development within corporation. So
that piece for us was the tail wind, and then
we had to we had to really think about our
business not just as a PowerPoint presentation with market dynamics
and size and all that, but a collage of humans
that we need to all get to that common purpose
(20:18):
as it relates to social justice. I think what I'm
most proud of is. You know, we were talking about
these issues and we were really driving this mission of
equity and corporate America long before the murders of George
Floyd and Brianna Taylor. This was court of who we were,
and we started in for anyone's talking about this gender
(20:41):
benchmarking our program. So we went to companies proactively and said,
we're going to tell you, whether you want to know
or not, when you distribute leadership development opportunity organization, how
does it break down along gender lines. And we also
started to push our organizations to provide other data, which
is much tricky to capture around race and other areas
of identity. And so that's been a huge portion of
(21:02):
what we've done and we've seen the effects of investing
in that. So when about of the leaders in our
program to women you've asked forward to today, it's in
the load of mid forties, and that's because we measured
and moved the metrics, and so we're now pioneering a
lot of other data collection to to do the same. So,
(21:23):
you know, for us, it's almost been kind of surreal
because we've been saying these things for years, and frankly,
a lot of organizations were sort of like, you know,
everyone is polite, no one says I don't care about it,
but they weren't putting their dollars right where their statements were.
And we've now seen that shift um as well. And
our goal is how do we make it sustainable and
(21:46):
not just something that's flash in the pan and then
people move on to something. We'll be right back with
more of my interview after this quick break. Yeah, have
(22:07):
any of your clients, Stephen started to see the benefits
of improving d E and I over time, do any
of them sort of you know, want to raise it.
I want to make a testimony. I want to have
a statement because it really has improved my bottom line absolutely. So.
I think organizations, though, there are set of organizations that
(22:31):
are committed to this because it's the right thing to do.
Their organizations at the far end dispetrum, and I think
are fewer and fewer fortunately that don't care even still today.
And then you have a lot of organizations that a
largely in the middle that believe that this can help
them improve their bottom line and that's why they're committed
to it, and and they're overlaps between those populations it's
(22:52):
not all mutual exclusive, but we've got a Development Equity
Council over for the organizations, and I mentioned development equity
is about, you know, how do you provide equitable access
to leadership development opportunity. These forty companies have co created
this with us. They've helped us understand how do you
set the right measurements and metrics, how do you put
(23:12):
the right processes in place. How do you bring development
equity to life so it's not just a tagline. How
do you live by it in an organization. We have
a lot of our organizations who have now branded themselves
development reorganizations, and that's what they talk about internally, and
a number of those organizations have come to us and
sort of shared, yes, this is having a huge impact,
(23:33):
particularly in the moment we're in now where you've got
a very tight labor mark and recruiting top talent. If
you're just recruiting from analog set of pipelines, you're you're
not going to be a successful company to future. You've
got to broaden your pipelines. And that's about gender, that's
about raised, that's about first generation college students, geographic diversity.
(23:55):
You've got to broaden out and organizations who understand how
to be inclusive and distribute opportunity effortably can hire from anywhere,
and they can retain the people that they hire. And
that's the big difference we're seeing from a business impact perspective.
Got it, Stephen, The waymaker community believes that every successful person,
(24:16):
I don't care who they are, where they came from,
has had a way maker. Can you tell us about
some of the people who have been a waymaker for
Stephen Baker? So it's pretty straightforward for me, and I'm
very fortunate I had the ultimate waymakers from a very
early age. My parents, um, you know, just big believers
in the value of education. I mentioned both my parents
(24:37):
are doctors, my dad's and then as from our psychiatrists
didn't love the fact that I was thinking about becoming
a lawyer because not as a lawyers typically don't get
along that well. But they accepted it. But but in
all seriousness, you know, they always pushed me two be great,
to invest in my own education, but also to invest
in self discovery. And even though they had some idea
(25:00):
is about what I should do, they never imposed those
ideas in ways that stifled my creativity and self actualization.
And I remember very clearly, you know, after my parents
had gotten over the fact that I was going to
be a lawyer, they were proudly, you know, great law firm,
went to Yale Law School, and I came to them
less than two years later and said, actually, I'm leaving
(25:22):
to go start a company at my dining room table
right with two other people. And they didn't really understand why.
You could tell there was so like, why would anyone
in their right mind do this? But they were supported
and at every step along the way, they've been cheerleaders,
they've been supporters, and they've recognized how their role is
(25:43):
a way they for evolved from when I was a
kid and it was about telling me what to do
and making sure I ate my vegetables and went to
school and all of that to being true friends now
and being supportive and cheerleaders from the sidelines even through
all the twist and terms of life. That's great. So
tell us about some of the things you hope to
accomplish an executiveline, hope to accomplish in two. Well, I'll
(26:09):
go a little beyond, and I would say two is
a you know, kind of a good marker, because it's
great to mark annual progress, but we think more broadly,
for us, it's about changing the face of leadership. When
we say connect all leaders to their future potential, what
we really mean is when you look up at corporate
(26:29):
America at the end of two or the end of
or the end of does the leadership level of those
organizations and then the culture that flows from that look
different than it did before it? Dack online, are you
seeing more people of color and leadership? You see more
women in leadership, You've seeing more first generation college graduates
(26:51):
and leadership um that laud Range University we believe is
great for organizations, but we also think that it is
what the society moment that we're in demands. It's always
been that way, you know, as as Martin Luther King said,
you know, the more lark of the universe is long,
but it bends toward justice. And so for us, it's
(27:12):
about how do we use this moment to bend it
faster um and contribute to changing the face of leadership,
not just in a country, but so as we are
in this new year, give us five things, Stephen, in
order for us to grow our lives so that we
(27:33):
may have the possibility to change the world. Well, Louis,
if you talk to my team, they would tell you
that everything I do is in three, everything in threes
and believer in three. I had three goals, three metrics.
It's just something about I know a lot of people.
(27:55):
I give you three. I give you three. Maybe maybe
five to do is worth of wisdom, but compressed into three,
that would be the goal. So, uh, First is define
your purpose, so understand why are you on this earth.
(28:15):
I think it's an empowering idea. I think we're all
on this earth for a reason, but I don't think
we often reflect on why we're on this earth and
really what can drive you there? If people sort to say,
that's kind of cliche, how do I know? What are
you passionate about? If you enter as a new Year's resolution,
defining your passion is a really powerful resolution because it
(28:37):
helps set the guiding purpose for not just your year,
but potentially for your life going for it. I think
we're great when we pursue that things were passionate about,
because that's what we're gonna be best. Secondly, surround yourself
with people who share your passion. If you find yourself
(28:57):
in a place right now where when you define your passion,
you look around and saying, none of these people share
what I'm passionate about, why are you there? That can
mean a job change, that can mean broadening your friendship circle.
There are variety of ways to surround That can be
joining different organizations, but really affirmatively surrounding yourself people who
share the passion. And then the third piece is unleash
(29:20):
you're inner leader and recognizing that you have the ability
once you surround yourself with people with the shared purpose,
to actually influence those people, not to be their manager,
be the friend, but you can influence people towards that
shared purpose emission. And so if you define your passion,
surround yourself with the right people and unleash you're in
(29:42):
a leader is going to be great, but the years
after will be even better. Wow. I love those three Stephen,
Define your purpose, surround yourself with people who share your
purpose and believe in your passion, and unleash the inter leader.
I love that, man, I appreciate it. This has been
(30:03):
an amazing interview. Thank you so much. I clearly understand
why you decided not to be a lawyer, and I
don't know this has been amazing, and uh, thank you
(30:25):
for sharing this. I'm sure our audience will get a
lot of it, a lot out of it because I
have and uh, I believe in this space of purpose,
of passion of education in order to change things and
and be about growing things. So thank you so much
for sharing this with our audience and wishing you a
(30:50):
great twenty two same to you. Hope you're hope you're
bringing the new year in style. All Right, thank you
so much man. All right s
Host
Louis Carr
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