November 6, 2024 • 54 mins
In this episode of Protea Conversations, host Zane Stevens engages with Dr. Eugene Dilán, a clinical psychologist and leadership expert.
They explore Eugene's journey from a challenging upbringing in Brooklyn to becoming a successful consultant. The conversation delves into the importance of human connection in business, the transformative power of leadership, and the mission behind Dilan Consulting Group. Eugene shares insights on overcoming personal doubt, the significance of inclusion in leadership, and his aspirations for the future, including a new nonprofit initiative aimed at fostering community dialogue.
Takeaways
- Leadership is about understanding and connecting with people.
- Personal experiences shape our professional paths.
- Inclusion in decision-making fosters ownership and commitment.
- Transformative leadership requires empathy and understanding.
- Business should prioritize stakeholders over shareholders.
- Perseverance is key to overcoming challenges in entrepreneurship.
- Creating a safe space for dialogue is essential for growth.
- Self-awareness is crucial for effective leadership.
- Community engagement enhances personal and professional fulfillment.
- Every moment is an opportunity for co-creation.
Sound Bites
"Business is Human."
"You always have a choice."
"The difference between successful entrepreneurs is perseverance."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Psychology
02:42 Eugene's Journey to Psychology
10:21 Growing Up in Brooklyn: A Personal Narrative
19:41 Career Path: From Nonprofits to Consulting
27:32 Transformative Leadership: The Importance of Inclusion
30:56 Founding Delon Consulting Group
38:55 The Mission of Delon Consulting
42:18 Daily Operations and Community Engagement
47:42 Short-Term Goals and Future Aspirations
51:25 Overcoming Personal Doubt
53:25 Advice for Aspiring Leaders
56:30 Personal Insights and Rapid Fire Questions
Connect with Eugene: LinkedIn personal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenedilan/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Pretty Conversations, the podcast where leadership in business and accounting
(00:08):
isn't just discussed, it's explored.
I'm your host, Desane Stevens, and thank you for joining me as we delve into the mind
of some of the most influential leaders in the industry.
Our journey is one of discovery, from unraveling the unique stories that shaped our guest's
careers to the invaluable advice that fueled this success.
We are here to provide you with simple, actionable advice to accelerate your career and personal
growth.
(00:29):
Whether you're a budding professional or a seasoned executive, these conversations
are designed to offer insight and perspectives that resonate with everyone.
So tune in, engage, and be inspired as we build better leaders together.
Welcome to Pretty Conversations.
I guess today is Dr. Eugene Dilan, a clinical psychologist and leadership expert who founded
Dilan Consulting Group.
(00:51):
With over 30 years of experience, Eugene has dedicated his career to fostering organizational
transformation by integrating psychology with leadership development.
These methods have significantly impacted diverse sectors from Fortune 500 companies
to startups in the technology and biotech.
Today we explore how his business is human philosophy and expertise in conflict management
(01:11):
and strategic planning, drive success in dynamic environments.
Join us for insightful discussion on navigating the complexity of modern business with compassionate
science-backed approach.
Eugene, welcome to Pretty Conversations.
Hello, Zayn, and thank you for having me here today, and very excited.
Yeah, I'm pretty excited for this as well.
(01:32):
We've got to know each other quite well over the last couple of years and been very thankful
that you've been able to help myself and my team become better leaders through providing
us with some exceptional training.
And I know there's a lot of my team members that are very thankful for the insight that
you've provided because they feel like what they've learned from you and what's been identified
(01:54):
through the processes that you put in place has really opened their eyes to how they can
be better leaders.
And I've seen them all make very positive changes for the benefit of the greater team.
And I'm very thankful for that.
And I know that most people who work with you feel the same way.
Thank you.
I love my work.
(02:15):
I have to say that it's very gratifying to see people in that moment when something clicks.
Ultimately, when people make those connections, I think that's what becomes transformative.
Yeah, you know, this whole leadership space is an interesting space.
And I'd love to know how you sort of got into that realm of the industry.
But I do want to start off first figuring out how did you come upon the decision to
(02:38):
become a clinical psychologist?
Okay, wow.
That's a long story.
I'm glad we have time.
I started at the beginning.
So four scores seven years ago.
So as you know, I'm born and raised in Brooklyn.
My parents moved from Puerto Rico to New York.
So I grew up in a bilingual household, two cultures.
(03:00):
And you also know that I identify as a gay person.
And so right from the beginning, there was an element of I'm different and grew up in
a tough neighborhood.
There were gangs and very early on I got involved with facilitating.
In my high school, there was a program called Encampment the Citizenship and they would
send us away every summer for a week and train us on how to facilitate.
(03:24):
Facilitators that trained us were actors, musicians, some were therapists, but it really
imprinted on me because it wasn't your normal, you know, just sit down and talk.
They use all these experiential methods and building things and acting out and role plays.
And honestly, it was really transformative for me and that combined with my early life
(03:47):
experiences of, you know, bring up in a tough neighborhood, you know, having some challenges
at home.
My dad struggled with alcoholism, struggled with gambling, and that sometimes led to an
unstable household, you know.
So all of those things kind of began to me create a curiosity around understanding myself.
And believe it or not, the first path was I wanted to be an actor.
(04:12):
And so I finagled my way into acting classes and music and dance.
But I found that I was not tall, blonde and blue.
I was the quirky guy.
And so the roles that I always got were these little roles.
So I went into undergraduate school and I'm like, what should I study?
(04:32):
And it shows psychology and was it really sure?
But somebody says something to me that kind of connected the acting with the psychology.
As an actor, there are many schools of thought, but one of the schools of thought that I was
being kind of taught method acting was that somehow you had to understand what might have
happened in this character's life that actually drove the character to behave in the way that
(04:58):
they're behaving.
And so I was able to make that connection.
But honestly, when I went into my master's program, I again hesitated.
And I was thinking, okay, I could go to Circle in the Square and NYU do acting.
But having grown up so humbly and I was already waiting tables in New York City and everybody
(05:19):
else that I was waiting tables with was an actor.
And I'm like, so many sacrifices have been made for me to get an education.
And do I really want to have a master's in acting and be waiting tables?
And so given that I had made the connection between psychology and acting and the desire
to have a more stable life than what I grew up in, I decided to pursue psychology.
(05:44):
But I have to be honest with you and tell you that I did not even know what a dissertation
was at that point because I didn't grow up in an environment where people had a lot of
education other than my school teachers.
You know, everybody else was blue collar working class.
My dad was a handyman.
My mother did childcare.
I wasn't really exposed to a lot of options.
(06:07):
And you know, so I pursued the master's, a friend of mine introduced me to someone
that helped me to get into a master's program.
And a lot of that was covered because I worked as a counselor on campus and then later a
counselor as well as a resident hall director for the undergraduate students.
So most of that was paid.
But I very quickly, you know, in my early teens, early teens, in my, I guess late teens,
(06:32):
I went to therapy.
And you know, I spent a lot of time talking about my family and relationships.
And you know, I went to adult children of alcoholics because I realized that sometimes
I was being a little codependent or I wasn't setting boundaries with people in the way
that would have been helpful to me.
(06:54):
So a lot of stuff.
And I just fell in love with the work that I was doing and the people that I worked with.
One person I worked with here for a very long time, Dr. Saul Rosenberg in San Francisco,
I kind of came to be like a father figure for me.
And a lot of ways I would say he reparented me or helped to reparent me in ways that were
(07:15):
instrumental to my being able to move forward with more confidence, move forward with a
belief that I too could be successful and find a career in this path.
It's interesting, Zayn, because I went from couch, I went from sitting in a chair like
I'm talking to you to at one point I went to his office on Sacramento Street and he had
(07:35):
brought in a couch.
And I'm like, oh my God, I want to get in the couch.
He's like, hold on.
So it turned out that he was going for his analytic certification.
He was already a psychologist.
He was an elder, but he had gone one step further.
And so for a time there, I was actually doing couch work.
And that to me was some of the most creative work I have ever done because here I can see
(07:56):
the cues from you.
I can see your eyes, your head nodding.
When you're sitting in the couch, it's you in the ceiling.
I would see him only when he opened the door.
I could hear his pen taking notes.
I would get an occasional question.
But what that did for me was I think it helped me to understand the things that I was projecting
and how much of my own stuff was getting in the way versus anything that anybody else
(08:21):
could do.
So that was really transformative.
And I remember when we finally finished our work, he gave me a lot of advice.
He showed me a book he had written.
It was like we had gone from patient or client and doctor to that last session or two, I
felt like it was more collegial.
(08:42):
And again, even that move, I think, I feel a little emotional talking about it.
Even that move in a lot of ways was affirming in that a lot of people think that therapy,
you get paid and that's why you're here.
But for me, his moving to more a personal approach in those last couple of sessions really showed
(09:03):
me that he actually cared.
So anyway, yeah.
So long story short, it's literally what I've done.
I can tell you more about how my career progressed, but we'll go to that if you want that information.
Yeah, a lot of time back there.
That was fantastic.
You know, summarizes like trauma led led you to wanting to help people reduce their own
(09:26):
trauma.
Effectively, a couple of things though, dissertation, I still don't really know what that is.
So don't feel bad for not knowing about it when you got into it.
I think that's pretty normal.
I went to go study accounting with no idea what studying accounting even meant.
So also pretty, pretty normal, I think.
You mentioned like feeling different and obviously being a new immigrant, I'm sure it did feel
(09:48):
that way.
But I always thought of Brooklyn as a very diverse environment and maybe something like,
I guess for part of me, like trying to think back and now obviously the dynamics have probably
changed over the years and maybe a little bit different back then when you first got
there.
But I always felt like Brooklyn was a pretty welcoming place whenever I go there.
I, you know, I think of like the hipster community, very diverse, very different, a real melting
(10:11):
part of the New York area, but clearly it wasn't like that when you first got there
or you didn't feel that way.
So can you sort of like just sort of touch on that a little bit more just to understand
what it was like when you first arrived?
Yeah.
So I was actually born and raised in Brooklyn.
My parents arrived and I was so.
Well, you sort of arrived just in a different from a different, not off a boat rather out
(10:34):
of a birth canal.
Right, right.
So when my parents, when I was first born, I was born in a neighborhood called Flushing,
which is very Hasidic now.
Then it was very, I think, Puerto Rican, African American.
There's always been an element of the Jewish community as well because they were the business
owners of my people worked for their people.
(10:57):
But probably by the time I was three or four, my parents scraped up enough money to buy
a home.
Then we moved to a different neighborhood called East New York, Brooklyn, which is literally
one of the last neighborhoods in Brooklyn on the A train, Shepard or Cleveland on the
J train, Howard Beach being the neighborhood next to it.
When we first moved there, it was mostly an Italian neighborhood.
(11:21):
We were called or I was called a spick.
I was called a fag.
I was chased.
I, you know, I'm my little sister and my brother both intervening on my behalf to protect
me and my mom even, but I wasn't the only one getting it.
So initially, again, we were the outsiders for that reason because we were a different
culture, but eventually the neighborhood transformed and it, there was, I would call it white
(11:43):
fright and a few Italians remain, maybe a few Jewish families, but for the most part,
it became Latino and African American.
And I can tell you that my high school bused in the white kids and from the, from the better
neighborhoods, which is why there were racial riots in the high school.
I got involved in that program, but even when the neighborhood transformed, I know that
you can tell that my phenotype is that I'm fairly light skinned.
(12:08):
And so even compared to my siblings and my mom, I'm fairly light skinned and I was always
a very studious kid.
My parents were very protective.
You know, we were not kids who were out playing in the street unless my parents were watching
from the stoop.
So even that was an element of difference in terms of growing up.
So I'll tell you that by the time I was in college, I would come home and bottles would
(12:31):
be thrown from across the street because of the way that I looked.
I did not fit in.
My parents eventually moved upstate because I have a sister who, who moved, but so all
through my life, the bulk of it, I lived in neighborhoods that weren't welcoming.
The Brooklyn that you're describing is a prospect park and all these other neighborhoods
that are closer to New York city.
(12:52):
And even then, those neighborhoods were not what they are today.
Even now, you know, Flatbush and Williamsburg have become trendy, but when I was there,
it was not trendy.
I remember my little sister was born like in 1970 and there was a blackout.
And during that blackout, which lasted for a few days, a lot of the neighborhoods that
(13:15):
were already struggling were decimated.
There was looting and bashing and fires and a lot of the neighborhoods never really recovered
after that.
And so there were places where you walked and it kind of looked a little bit like a warzone.
And so, you know, I'll also add one more thing about feeling difference in.
(13:37):
I probably knew that I was gay from very, very early on.
You know, I remember I had a neighbor and I thought he was the cutest man ever.
You know, just from the time that I was a child, you know, I was very well aware and
growing up partially Catholic and Latino, that was forbidden.
(13:58):
That was not something that was acceptable that you could talk about or that you could
expect people to be kind about.
You know, the truth is that my father rejected me and we didn't talk for like 10 years.
Fortunately, my mom and siblings were open and my mother said she always knew and did
I think that she would not love me?
You know, so I had them, but my father was particularly difficult for him to have his
(14:21):
son be gay.
Yeah, it's so hard to like remember that the whole New York area used to be so different
than what it is right now, right?
You know, I've read Freakonomics where they talk about the changes and they made in New
York to sort of make it a livable place, right?
It hasn't always been this like, perangere place that people want to visit all the time.
I've always had its intrigue, but it wasn't what it is today and sometimes it's just,
(14:46):
you know, I guess my age, I'm young enough, which is scary because I'm pretty old myself.
But a lot of change happened over a very short period of time and there was a lot that had
to occur from the 70s through to the mid 90s to make it the place it is today.
And if you take that into consideration, you can quickly see it was like an environment
(15:08):
of groups, right?
Everybody had their tribes and if you weren't part of it, you just weren't, you were second
class citizen and that's just the way it operated.
So it's hard to sort of recognize that.
And I must, you know, I try not to get this, especially, you know, I grew up in South Africa
where, you know, originally in apartheid.
So you never saw people of color even though the white population only make up 7%.
(15:32):
And then, you know, you get thrust into schools where I, you know, at a time I was one of
five white kids in my class out of 90 and I saw the other side of it.
And I can get that like never quite fitting in, you know, the friends that I had was like,
great, but I didn't understand, you know, like what they were doing, like what is halal
or what is it being a Muslim and why do they have extra holidays and all those different
(15:54):
things.
And, you know, sometimes it's going to take a moment how privileged we are to live in
California where it is so diverse, where people are way more open to whatever lifestyle
you're willing to have and how welcoming that can be.
And that is a true privilege that we get to live within California.
It absolutely is.
I have to say I've been in Sonoma now about two years and I chose well.
(16:17):
I landed in Sebasta Pole and everyone has been really welcoming neighbors have stopped
in to say hello and bring cookies and one elder neighbor, you know, like I'm trying to
do something.
He's like, hold on, I'll go get tools and he's on the floor with me and he's in his
70s.
I'm going to fix something and people have just genuinely been like that here and I'm
(16:37):
really pleased that this is where I landed because it's probably where I'm going to die
and it's nice to be someplace where people are kind, you know.
I do want to add something about two or three years ago, CBS or ABC did a drama called East
New York, a police drama because it's so bad and I don't think I think it failed.
(16:57):
I think they did one season and that was it.
But I was like, oh my God, you're doing a show about where I grew up.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is crazy.
And Sebasta Pole is a great place.
I've been to Eugene's home, which is beautiful.
It's a great place if that is where he wants his final recent place to be.
Great place to live.
I've been in that office that we can all see on the video right now and it is.
(17:19):
It is an amazing space and definitely chose well and, you know, the selfish reasons for
me and my team.
I think that was a great place for you to end up.
Thank you.
So let's push back into your career a little bit and just give us a quick run through of,
you know, you became a psychologist, you got into that space.
What did your career?
(17:39):
So I'm going to start off the short way and just say that I spent many, many years in
the nonprofit sector, you know, everything from, you know, working with children, running
AIDS residential program for homeless addicts who were dying of AIDS during the height of
the pandemic here in San Francisco.
(17:59):
That was through Catholic charities.
I ran one of their residential programs.
I helped to found an AIDS prevention program for Latino men who have sex with men who don't
even identify as gay.
I was on the board of Stop AIDS.
I West Side Community Services, which traditionally has served the African American community.
I ran their nurse case management program for people who were dying of AIDS.
(18:22):
Their substance abuse program, their methadone clinic worked at Instituto Familiar de la
Raza, which is a mental health clinic in the mission, which I think about 50 years old
now, one of the first mental health clinics that was specifically for the Latino community.
I started there running two programs, psychotherapy and AIDS case management.
(18:43):
I left and eventually was pulled back where I became the director of finance, human resources
and IT.
I had a subject expert managing the actual functions, but I managed the team.
I ran a geriatric facility in Hayes Valley for a couple of Persian brothers.
One of them a psychologist.
(19:04):
One of them, I think, was a finance guy.
Really, really, really nice guys.
Beautiful facility.
Again, most of my life has been serving other people.
In high school, again, I had jobs that were in service in college, summer camp, day camp,
waiting tables.
(19:25):
It's just in my DNA, I guess, in some ways.
It makes me happy when I see other people get happy, when I see other people work through
something.
It really is moving to be lucky enough to be present and witness somebody make peace with
something.
I realized there were.
(19:46):
Now, the challenge for me was that nonprofits were not going to pay my $170,000 worth of
student loans.
There's definitely no money that was going to come when my parents died.
Eventually I realized that I really loved going into an organization where processes
(20:08):
and systems and teams were not working.
I had a series of positions, every year or two I would hop in.
Zane, today, if you stay someplace for more than three or four years, people look at you
like you're crazy, like your skills have gone stale.
But in those days, they would look at me like, what's wrong with you?
I was like, well, what's wrong with me is that I was offered more money and more responsibility.
(20:32):
That's what's wrong with me.
Again, I love the challenge.
I'll give you an example.
When I ran Peter Claver House to Catholic Charities, the building itself was in a little
bit of a shambles.
The residents would steal each other or steal things from the facility to go sell to use
drugs.
People were literally dying, 24-hour staff because we had nurse and nurse case management.
(20:53):
Some of them were afraid.
It was barely a kitchen.
The food that was being served was not good.
Somehow I met a woman who was doing harm reduction work, which is an approach to substance abuse.
I worked with the powers that be in HUD because it was Section 8.
We were able to change the philosophy of the housing to harm reduction because kicking
(21:17):
people who are dying to the street because of their use, my mind just didn't make sense.
My approach was very unique in that rather than me and the team sitting down to make
all these decisions, what we did was that we held community meetings between team and
staff.
We rewrote the agreements for living there.
(21:39):
We rewrote the agreements around what we expected from each other.
We were able to find some monies to do some rehabilitation.
There was a group called Philanthropy by Design.
They would find free paint and donated furniture and fabrics.
We were able to revamp the community room, found some money to really put in a professional
(21:59):
kitchen.
But even like people who were dying in wheelchairs were picking up a brush to help paint, there
was a shift in the community in terms of ownership.
I can remember some of the staff worrying that moving to harm reduction because some
of them were going through their own recovery.
There were a lot of moments like that where just getting into some deep conversations but
(22:22):
they were transformative.
At one point, we realized that the shifts that we had were not going to work in terms
of really optimizing what we could offer.
We had several unions and I can remember sitting with the employees and the union leaders.
I remember I sat on the floor and I didn't do that on purpose but in retrospect, it worked
(22:45):
beautifully because they didn't feel threatened.
I opened it up and I said, okay, you tell me what schedule you want.
The union leader picked that up and worked with them, gave them three options and in
the end, they had to choose one.
It wasn't a top-down approach.
What I'm getting at in a couple of different ways is that when people help to build something,
(23:09):
they have ownership.
But just thinking about the work that I do now in terms of transformation and change,
I really try and take a more of a user design approach and client-centered.
Again, I think that when you include people, they feel valued and respected.
When they help to build something, they own it.
They want to see it be successful.
(23:30):
All of the things that I learned in managing these nonprofits and learning how to manage
budgets and write proposals and hold people accountable, there were a lot of lessons and
some mistakes made along the way.
Because again, I do have a tendency that I've gotten better at but sometimes I judge people
(23:51):
by their potential rather than by what's going on in the moment.
I had a professor once say to me, Donald Greg Eugene, sometimes you have to act based on
what's happening in the moment, not based on the potential that you see in someone because
the situation has to be addressed.
That was a very important message for me in terms of the way that I manage and in terms
(24:15):
of the way that I treat people.
To me, those nonprofits were a training ground for the work that I do now.
Yeah, that's incredible.
On that point, I'm a big believer in using people's potential to set their goals but
then reviewing what their current life and situation looks like in terms of managing
(24:36):
them.
I think it's very important and I tell my team all the time is look for changes in
behavior and figure out what's creating those changes to be good or bad.
It's important to find out what happened, did something in the change in their life,
whether they're not well, is there somebody in the family that's not well, and how do
we then give them the tools or the opportunities to improve their situation by taking into
(25:01):
account what's happening in their life right now.
On the other point, I love the idea of building teams by providing them with the opportunity
to take ownership of the project itself.
It's really important to give teams the opportunity to talk up, be heard, and make sure that they
(25:23):
can see that they've been heard and that their opinions are being taken into consideration
when decisions are being made.
Even if you don't go with their decision, having that conversation, making sure they
understand why you're going a different direction makes a big difference because people feel
like they are part of the process and they can get behind the process because it's not
just being shoved down the threads.
(25:44):
I'll say two things.
One of the things I valued about working with you is that it's clear that you really care
about your people.
My trademark is business is human and that can be interpreted in so many ways.
But in one way is that this is a human being in front of you.
Sometimes business doesn't have the luxury of time and so you have to make a decision
(26:05):
to cut something.
But if business does have the luxury of time and you have someone who's a willing participant
who wants to learn, then I think you're probably going to get better returns on that because
the person has seen that you've invested in them.
But again, I sense that you really care.
In terms of the idea, again, of including people in creating what the future looks like,
I have seen many people, I consulted a lot in the nuclear defense and aerospace industry.
(26:28):
I worked for a British consulting firm for 10 years.
Big mergers and acquisitions in the defense industry during the Iraq war.
A lot of these companies ballooned because they just kept acquiring.
I saw people being passive aggressive, like, this is the flavor of the day.
If I just sit back and wait long enough, there'll be another flavor and this too shall pass.
(26:55):
So long as it's your decision, guess what?
It's your failure.
And so if you can get people to buy in, to see themselves reflected in the decisions
that are made.
And I promise you that more often than not, they're really going to invest in seeing that
through and seeing it be successful.
Yeah, couldn't agree more.
You just mentioned there that we work together and that is important.
(27:18):
And we did that together through the line consulting group, which you founded in February
2011.
Tell me about the decision to sort of go your own start this consulting group and build
something that has clearly been successful because we're going on 14 years now and it's
still in business.
I want to tell you a pre-story.
So I was working in the nonprofit sector and I had this aha moment that, wow, I could really
(27:43):
move into the consulting world and I would be able to use my psychology, my management
skills, my financial skills, all of that stuff.
And by this point, I was probably in my mid to late 20s or something like that, maybe
even early 30s.
And I applied for some jobs that there was an economic downturn and it was hard to get
(28:05):
a job and then fast forward to 10 years before 2011.
So that's 2001.
So in the year 2000, there was a newspaper that I get, the APA Monitor, which is a newspaper
for psychologists.
And I got around to reading it in January and I saw that there was a little ad in the
(28:27):
back that said, looking for clinical psychologists with management experience to join consulting
firm will train.
Deadline December, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, oh my God, this was the job for me.
And I didn't open the newspaper during the holidays, but a little voice in my head said,
send your resume anyway.
(28:48):
And within a few days, I spent a few hours being interviewed by a woman who had become
my boss.
And on February 14th, St. Valentine's Day, I got my offer letter.
I had been flown to D.C. and for a day I had to present workshops to them and they took
us out for dinner and gave us a few glasses of wine because when you're a consultant,
(29:12):
sometimes you have dinner and fast forward, but there were a few people who didn't make
that cut because of their ability.
But so then I joined this firm and I traveled all over the U.S., many places all over Europe,
Baghdad, Kabul, Kandahar, four or five times during the Iraq war.
Working with defense contractors, everything from executive coaching, there was one guy
(29:32):
that I was flying around with him on his private jet around the Middle East.
Working with teams, staying in these fortresses with double iron walls, people in towers with
guns.
And I learned a lot from this consulting firm of everything.
I mean, I learned a lot more of my own, but they really gave me the foundation to move
forward.
(29:53):
So around 10 years in, I felt that only the British people would be promoted.
There were some internal issues.
There was someone who, an admin, who I thought had been treated unfairly, especially given
some of the personal sacrifices she had made to support some of the leaders.
And when I saw that happening, I came home and I said to my spouse, I'm leaving.
(30:15):
Sometime in the next two months, we're going to figure something out and I'm leaving.
For me, values are really important and they really drive most everything that I do zane.
And I know immediately when I haven't been congruent and it's not easy for me to live
with that.
And they genuinely weren't living the values.
An organization that I thought was doing great work in a lot of ways, but I felt they had
(30:38):
become political and I felt that they weren't living their values.
And I made the right choice.
And I'm going to tell you why I made the right choice.
One, because I've been here 14 years and we're still going strong, but two, a year later,
the company rewrote the contracts for the remaining psychologist on the team and the
psychologist decided that they were not going to sign it.
(31:01):
So kind of like almost like a union activity, but there was no union.
And they were summarily immediately fired.
And so when I left, I had a garden duty for three months, which is the typical British
thing.
They paid me for three months while I sat at home building a website, getting my articles
(31:22):
of a corporation and everybody else didn't get that.
Because and so I made the right decision.
And literally I came home and I said, that's how they treat this person.
How are they going to treat me?
And to me, that's important.
You know, Zane, I sometimes have made decisions in terms of my company that somebody else
wouldn't have made.
(31:43):
For instance, during COVID, you know, I kept people employed.
I borrowed money that was not PPP money.
I had some of that too, but I kept people employed.
They had families, mortgages.
You know, to me, it's like you make a commitment and a loyal to me.
I'm going to do the same for you and we'll figure it out.
I really do have a belief and I get that belief from my mom.
(32:04):
Very humble beginnings.
My mother would always say, have faith in Spanish, think of faith.
But I really do believe that when there's a will, there's a way.
And I do believe that when you do right by people, they do right by you.
It's just it would call it karma, call it whatever you want to call it.
But to me, it was important that in the midst of this storm, people looked at their employers.
(32:26):
And so I was going to do everything I could to make sure that people had some stability
in their lives.
I went all over the map there, by the way.
Yeah, that's fine.
But a lot of what you touch on there is sort of why I think we've worked so well together.
I enjoy being in your company as well because our values do align.
During COVID, I had the same thought.
It wasn't how quickly do I get rid of people.
(32:49):
It was more how many months can I go without having to take any salary and protect as much
cash we have as possible to make sure these people are paid.
It wasn't about how much work do you need to get done to keep our clients going?
Well, that was important.
But it was also taking care of yourself.
We put in place processes to make sure that people who are now disappearing into their
home, a lot of them are individuals with nobody else living in the same space.
(33:13):
How do we make sure we give them enough contact, enough interaction so that they don't feel
lonely, that they don't go into a dark place?
Our first thoughts were how do we look after our people?
Then how do we look after our clients?
Understanding that our people are very important, especially during a difficult time like COVID.
Yeah, absolutely.
(33:34):
So, can I answer your question?
You did not at all.
You enter a lot of things and I'm taking it after you decided to move away from the consulting
firm, you decided that was a good time to start your firm.
Yeah, absolutely.
All of that was to lead that.
I just had this thought that, hey, I can do this.
And I think having a supportive spouse goes a long way.
It was the first few months, six months a year was touching go.
(33:58):
Every time consulting has these peaks and valleys, but it always comes back just in time.
You plan for these moments.
So what is the goal behind starting the consulting company?
I read your permission to assist you, your team and your organization to thrive by unleashing
(34:18):
the human potential within each team member to change, innovate and grow.
Was that always the plan?
Was that the goal?
Just to uplift people, give them leadership training, help them succeed as business owners?
So, I think that that's the primary goal of why we exist is to help organizations to do
just that.
Again, as I said, business is human.
I think it's about opening the aperture a little bit.
(34:41):
Zane, a lot of companies have traditionally just thought about the stockholder.
And I want people to think about the stakeholder, whether it's the employee, your vendors, your
partners, your clients.
Some people have a mindset of scarcity, and I actually believe there is nothing in the
world for everybody.
(35:02):
And if you can just slow down a little bit sometimes to think about how can you get to
a win-win.
I think we can do better in the world.
I do think that to some degree, businesses have a responsibility to society.
The definition of society in my mind is a place where people take care of each other.
And I'm a capitalist like anybody else, but I also believe that I exist within a society
(35:26):
and that I have a responsibility.
Whether it be to my immediate neighbor or my neighbor down the street, you cannot move
through the world just thinking about me.
And so, our business is about that.
It's really about helping organizations to thrive from a mindset that says we can all
get lifted together.
(35:46):
Yeah, that is fascinating.
I mean, there is a lot of selfishness in the world.
I know that I spend a lot of time, for a long period of time, on my social media, pushing
the message of be kind.
I try to do that on a regular basis.
It's one of the values that I try.
It's right behind you.
Right behind me.
I try telling my kids about it all the time as well.
I just have an example.
(36:07):
As yesterday, I jumped on a call to a potential client.
I'm a very mature lady.
I heard my kid's voice in the background.
I could see she was smiling and I called my kid over, put him into the picture.
Her smile was magnificent.
She was so happy to see a young kid who was polite, which was very thankful that I went
(36:28):
that direction and he wasn't just being a bit of a nail on the day.
But I could see it made her day.
And all it did is taking me two seconds.
He's like, yeah, he can come say hello.
And it made a difference in somebody else's life.
And this is a person as well who I effectively said, you don't quite need my services.
(36:48):
I'm happy to put you in front of some people that will be better for you, but I will help
you make a plan to get there.
It's not always just about selling the service, shoving it down somebody's throat, trying
to get their money.
It's sometimes about just making life better.
She had told me I was the first person who had responded timeously and the first person
willing to listen to her and give her a plan of action to go for it.
(37:09):
And for me, that was the biggest one of my week, maybe my year, that I was able to help
this person who clearly desperately needed help.
Even though I'm not the service you need to do, I can at least put her in front of the
people and give her a plan to solve her problems.
So what do you do on a day-to-day basis?
What is this consulting firm?
(37:30):
What do you do towards it?
How do you keep yourself busy?
So busy is everything from reading books, creating social network content, which I was
saying to you beforehand is not something that I absolutely love, but I realize it's
a part of the work.
Coaching clients virtually, like I'm doing right now, to you sometimes I coach clients,
(37:53):
team offsites, whether it's a day or two.
So crafting those offsites, we don't really say it's a one size fits all.
Every team is different.
So you have to, my processes, I might interview people and try and find out what's going on
in terms of the team dynamics.
And then based on that, all those conversations, I'll craft a two day off site where we actually
address some of those issues and some of the business issues as well.
(38:15):
Writing contracts, writing proposals, but I also throw the ball for the dog in the middle
of the day because I can.
I'm working on newsletters, blogs, leadership offsites, which are some of my favorite things
to do because you're working with people who want to learn skills.
And that requires a lot of creativity because adults don't learn by being talked at.
(38:37):
They usually learn by doing.
And so you have to craft activities over a course of two or three days, depending on
what they agree that they want to do.
And so there goes a lot of effort into keeping it fresh.
If I have some clients that I've worked with for 10, 10 years, I have some clients that
bring me to different, every time they hop, they bring me with them.
(38:58):
So, so I have to keep it fresh for them and keep it fresh for me because I don't want
to do the same thing, you know, every single time.
So there's a lot of, out of that that goes into kind of creating the content.
I also spend a lot of time talking to people, you know, a lot of networking.
I mean, I've always been an outgoing chatty, Cathy, I'll talk to anybody on the bus stop
(39:19):
in the restaurant table next to me, but I'm currently helping to start an LGBTQ Chamber
of Commerce for Sonoma.
Our launch party is next week at Little Saint.
We are open to having allies join us.
We are for all of Sonoma County.
There's eight of us.
CJ that, that you know, who's in Provisors with us is another one of the founders.
(39:41):
I'm on the board of a nonprofit that works with Black and Brown children.
It's based in Oakland and they do technology camps teaching kids about STEM, science, technology,
engineering and math.
We've just had a two day camp.
There's science days where we go to the South Bay and some of the companies open up their
doors and bring some of their staff so they can do experiments with the kids.
(40:01):
And then I have a new venture, which I haven't told many people about.
And I've filed papers for articles of incorporation for a nonprofit.
And it's called the open, it's called open source piece.
And so that hasn't launched yet.
I was sitting around one day kind of watching the news and honestly feeling really sad.
(40:26):
There's so much suffering in the world.
And I feel like every day Zane, I know people on the every side of every issue who are friends
who somehow find a way to live together.
You know, I have a father law, a brother law who are different political mindset than I
am, but I love them.
That's my family.
And I feel like sometimes we're not creating spaces where people can come together to, I
(40:53):
think even when we're different come together to create community.
So the idea behind open source piece is to democratize creating peace in the world.
We wait for the pundits, the politicians, you know, the ambassadors, but you and I
have the power to build relationships as well.
And so the idea is to create an open source platform, meaning that other people will help
(41:16):
to build it that's safe where people create a profile where you can hop into a room and
dialogue with people who may have a different point of view.
What's operative here is that we need to know who you are and how to find you and that it's
safe.
So maybe there'll be a little bit of free asynchronous workshops that you have to complete
before you can enter.
But I hope that sometime in the next few years that I can launch this with the help of whomever
(41:40):
wants to participate in open source piece to create a platform.
Again, you just have to look around and you see it's happening naturally, but there's
not a critical mass.
I want to create a place that helps to create critical mass.
So that's one of the other things that's on my plate that I'm kind of slowly working
on.
That was a lot.
That's a lot going on in Eugene's life.
(42:01):
I mean, I'm a little scared to ask this question because I think you probably got a lot of them,
but what are the short term goals right now?
What are those key things that you're working on that you're trying to achieve in the short
term?
So short term, I'm reevaluating my approach to marketing and I have a friend who's a
professional marketer who's helping me with that.
So that's one thing.
(42:23):
Moving to this area is different than living in San Francisco and closer to Silicon Valley.
So I'm thinking that I need to repackage what I'm offering a little bit differently.
Traditionally, I've been B2B and I'm thinking of creating a series of workshops where a
company can send one person or one person can sign themselves up.
(42:43):
Kind of a thing.
I'm working on launching this chamber.
I'm working on doing a big fundraiser for the children's nonprofit in Oakland that's
going to be in March.
For the business, I would say that I have as a goal for myself to write a book.
I want to do it in the near future because I've been pushing it and pushing it and pushing
(43:04):
it.
I have difficulty landing on a topic zane because every topic that I love, I go and
I look, has it been written?
It's been written.
So I have a couple of ideas I'm playing with.
One of them is the concept of co-creation.
I say to every team that I work with, it's very easy to point your finger and say, you
did this, but the reality is that every moment we are co-creating, you and I are co-creating
(43:26):
this moment, right?
And there are choices that you make around what you say.
You might ask a question.
You might say, no, I'm not going to ask that.
That was a choice that influenced the outcome here.
And so the book is about co-creating in a work environment and how every day we have moments
or maybe we forget that we contributed.
And the book is intended to remind people that you always have a choice.
(43:48):
Some of them may be uncomfortable.
Some of them maybe have consequences, but you always have a choice.
Being consciously to creation, I think is something that would be a good thing that
could be helpful.
Maybe help to eliminate a little bit of victimhood that sometimes people can get into.
The other concept is, and there's many books on facilitation, but this one might have a
(44:09):
little bit more of a personal slant, how facilitation saved my life.
Yes and no in terms of the title.
But the idea is that I've learned a lot about facilitation from personal experiences.
There are many textbooks on it, but at the end of the day, you have to create a safe
space.
You have to give people permission to speak up and have some charity if it comes out wrong
(44:31):
because nobody gets it perfect.
So I'm looking at that.
So those are two ideas in terms of in some time the next few weeks, I really need to just
land on something and start spending some time right here at this desk, beginning to
pull it together.
And I do think that there's a lot that I have to say that it's not all coherent at the moment,
(44:55):
but I think a book will help me to make it coherent.
That's all incredible.
When you're writing that book, I would vote for co-creation.
I think that is a super interesting topic and I'd love to read about it.
And I would be in front of the line to buy those books when they hit the shelf.
So it might not mean anything, but that's where I would lean.
(45:16):
Okay, thank you.
Eugene, can you share with us what has been your biggest challenge in your career?
What is that challenge that really you felt held you back at times?
I think the answer to that is a personal point, Shane.
I think that personal doubt.
You know, again, I didn't grow up in an environment that inspired a lot of self-confidence.
(45:37):
And I didn't grow up in a world told me that I'm okay.
And so, you know, there are moments when I'm kind of like, get out of the way because
I got this and there are moments when I'm not that and I have to remind myself, you
know, one of the transformative things in my life has been hearing other people's stories.
Because when you hear other people's stories and you see parts of yourself in them, it
(45:59):
is a permission force for me that, you know, because people can get caught up in their
heads and I'm like everybody else can get caught up in my head.
Like, you know, I have a lot more tools now, but every once in a while I have to remind
myself, nope, that's old stuff.
That's old stories.
That's not your narrative.
(46:20):
And you need to let go of that and focus on this instead.
Yeah.
I mean, that's why we started Prodigy Conversations, right?
To be able to talk to professionals, share their stories, to let people see that, you
know, not everything is one big linear path.
Not everybody starts at point A and moves to point C. There's a bunch of twists and
turns and ups and downs and self-doubt and judgment and bad mistakes along the way.
(46:45):
It's never going to be a perfect route.
It's never going to be a straight line.
But it is part of your story.
It is who you are.
You learn from the difficult times and the good times.
And you try and just make the best decision with tools in front of you every single day
as a hope for better days ahead.
Absolutely.
(47:05):
Eugene.
What's the best piece of advice you ever received?
The best piece of advice was the difference between successful entrepreneurs and ones
that aren't successful is that the ones who are successful keep trying.
Again, I know a lot of people who give it a shot and get demoralized and they immediately
quit when actually they're very talented human beings that had they just persevered
(47:27):
a little bit.
I think they would have gotten to the other side.
Yeah.
I think that's such a great piece of advice.
And I've clearly had a busy week because I was just looking at an article yesterday,
maybe two days ago.
And I'm always looking at my YouTube channel going, a protea academy going to school.
We ever take or we ever take off.
(47:48):
And this guy is like for seven years, basically went nowhere, but he kept at it.
And now it's like a million subscriber type channel.
And it was just keep putting the work, the hard work in showing up, doing the right
things, sticking to their values, doing the things that they believed in and eventually
a contraction.
And with every story year, year there are overnight success, there's no such thing.
(48:14):
There's a ton of hard work, a lot of effort and a lot of planning that went in the background
to get them to the point to be overnight successes.
So keep persevering is just fantastic advice.
You're the leadership coach.
You're the consultant teaching us how to be better leaders.
So give us one piece of advice that we could all implement today to help us be better leaders
(48:37):
tomorrow.
The first thing that popped into my mind was physician heal thyself.
And what I mean by that is that this is your instrument, who you are physically, psychologically,
emotionally is how you show up.
And so the more that you understand what's going on here, the better you're going to
be able to manage it in terms of bringing the right things forth when somebody needs
(49:00):
them.
Because if you don't know that, it's really you're shooting in the dark.
Yeah, you got to understand who you are, be aware of those areas of improvement that we
like to put it.
Make sure you're putting scaffolding in place to deal with the situation, especially under
the very strenuous ones when the worst of us tends to come out.
(49:23):
And it will make a big difference.
People around you will appreciate the changes if you put them in place.
People will acknowledge them, and it will create relationships and trust which are necessary
to build strong teams.
Absolutely.
Eugene, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation so far, and you've shared a tonne
of personal stories with us.
(49:43):
It would be great if you could share just a little bit more personal insight into who
you are as a person.
Tell us something about you that will give us insight into who Eugene is on a day to day.
I would say that two things.
One of them is that I really am an extrovert.
I love people, and it doesn't matter what language you speak because I'm going to try.
(50:04):
The other day I was at a dinner and there were Italians sitting next to me, and in my
broken Italian, I was talking.
I went to Japan, I learned the basics.
What?
Dashi no namayo ai eugiendes, and you know, Greece, Yasas, and where I go.
I just love people.
I love cultures.
So I would say that that's certainly something that feeds me.
Honestly, it nurtures me to connect with people.
(50:26):
The other thing that I would say is that, and it's kind of the opposite in some ways
in that I can be a little bit of an empath, and I can sometimes pick up on things that
other people wouldn't pick up on.
However, there is a downside to that.
Sometimes it's a lot.
Sometimes I need to put up a little bit of a wall to protect myself because I can walk
(50:52):
into a room and immediately sense if something just happened.
That probably comes from survival, things that happened to me.
When I was young, those dandas are out there sensing right away.
But so again, I love people.
I love connecting with people.
I sense things, and then sometimes I have to pull back to take care of myself.
(51:14):
Incredible.
Well, the product conversations, we like to end with some rapid fire questions to get
a sense of what's going in your brain.
So I have five questions for you.
Are you ready for some rapid fire?
Yes.
Great.
Question number one, what is your dream vacation?
Reaser Italy on a beach somewhere.
Beach is going to have a beach.
(51:35):
Great option.
Question number two, do you prefer audiobooks or paper books?
Paper.
I like to write, turn the pages.
I have a relationship with books.
I wish I still had that relationship with books.
I'm audiobook all the way at this point.
I've got books on my nights there that just are gathering just at this point.
I really got a fine type to open up again.
If you only had 20 minutes to exercise, what would that exercise be?
(51:59):
It tends to be Peloton.
If I had my druthers, I would run because I love being out in nature, but my knees can't
tolerate that.
So it's the Peloton.
Always a good option.
What is your favorite piece of technology that you're using at the moment to make your
life better?
I use AI all the time now.
(52:20):
Every day, four or five times a day, I'm having conversations with AI, using it in my work,
using it in my personal life.
Even from, here's what's in my refrigerator, what can I make for dinner?
I need to talk about this.
What are some things I have to make sure I include?
It can be used in so many ways.
(52:40):
Very nice and personal coach to myself.
Hey, what should I do?
There's so many ways that you can use it that it really is a game changer.
Saves a lot of time.
It has an efficiency tool and ability to get started.
It really is a great use.
My one concern is the amount of water that's being used.
At some point, we have to reconcile how we're going to manage that, but that's a whole other
(53:02):
subject.
It's a totally different subject.
The people who are making the cells in the background are making a lot of money for it
as well.
Last question, what was your favorite childhood meal?
My favorite childhood meal?
Wow, that's a hard one.
My mother would make me grilled cheese and tomato soup and to this day, I still enjoy
(53:24):
grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Good grilled cheese and tomato soup is always a wonder.
Yeah, absolutely.
And with that, we end another party of conversations.
Thank you for joining us in the journey of learning and inspiration.
Today, we've gained insights from our guests and taken another step to understanding their
diverse chemistry of leadership and business and accounting.
(53:46):
Remember, each conversation is a step towards the positive transformation of business leaders.
We hope our discussion has given you valuable takeaways to apply in your own career and
life.
Don't forget to subscribe to our new conversations on YouTube and Spotify, so you never miss an
episode.
We'd also love to hear your thoughts and experiences, so connect with me on social media channels.
I'm most active on LinkedIn and would love you to join the conversation.
(54:09):
Join us next time for more engaging stories, advice and conversations that matter.
Until then, keep striving for excellence and embracing growth.
Thank you for listening, be kind and goodbye for proteo conversations.
Welcome to Pretty Conversations, the podcast where leadership in business and accounting
(00:08):
isn't just discussed, it's explored.
I'm your host, Desane Stevens, and thank you for joining me as we delve into the mind
of some of the most influential leaders in the industry.
Our journey is one of discovery, from unraveling the unique stories that shaped our guest's
careers to the invaluable advice that fueled this success.
We are here to provide you with simple, actionable advice to accelerate your career and personal
growth.
(00:29):
Whether you're a budding professional or a seasoned executive, these conversations
are designed to offer insight and perspectives that resonate with everyone.
So tune in, engage, and be inspired as we build better leaders together.
Welcome to Pretty Conversations.
I guess today is Dr. Eugene Dilan, a clinical psychologist and leadership expert who founded
Dilan Consulting Group.
(00:51):
With over 30 years of experience, Eugene has dedicated his career to fostering organizational
transformation by integrating psychology with leadership development.
These methods have significantly impacted diverse sectors from Fortune 500 companies
to startups in the technology and biotech.
Today we explore how his business is human philosophy and expertise in conflict management
(01:11):
and strategic planning, drive success in dynamic environments.
Join us for insightful discussion on navigating the complexity of modern business with compassionate
science-backed approach.
Eugene, welcome to Pretty Conversations.
Hello, Zayn, and thank you for having me here today, and very excited.
Yeah, I'm pretty excited for this as well.
(01:32):
We've got to know each other quite well over the last couple of years and been very thankful
that you've been able to help myself and my team become better leaders through providing
us with some exceptional training.
And I know there's a lot of my team members that are very thankful for the insight that
you've provided because they feel like what they've learned from you and what's been identified
(01:54):
through the processes that you put in place has really opened their eyes to how they can
be better leaders.
And I've seen them all make very positive changes for the benefit of the greater team.
And I'm very thankful for that.
And I know that most people who work with you feel the same way.
Thank you.
I love my work.
(02:15):
I have to say that it's very gratifying to see people in that moment when something clicks.
Ultimately, when people make those connections, I think that's what becomes transformative.
Yeah, you know, this whole leadership space is an interesting space.
And I'd love to know how you sort of got into that realm of the industry.
But I do want to start off first figuring out how did you come upon the decision to
(02:38):
become a clinical psychologist?
Okay, wow.
That's a long story.
I'm glad we have time.
I started at the beginning.
So four scores seven years ago.
So as you know, I'm born and raised in Brooklyn.
My parents moved from Puerto Rico to New York.
So I grew up in a bilingual household, two cultures.
(03:00):
And you also know that I identify as a gay person.
And so right from the beginning, there was an element of I'm different and grew up in
a tough neighborhood.
There were gangs and very early on I got involved with facilitating.
In my high school, there was a program called Encampment the Citizenship and they would
send us away every summer for a week and train us on how to facilitate.
(03:24):
Facilitators that trained us were actors, musicians, some were therapists, but it really
imprinted on me because it wasn't your normal, you know, just sit down and talk.
They use all these experiential methods and building things and acting out and role plays.
And honestly, it was really transformative for me and that combined with my early life
(03:47):
experiences of, you know, bring up in a tough neighborhood, you know, having some challenges
at home.
My dad struggled with alcoholism, struggled with gambling, and that sometimes led to an
unstable household, you know.
So all of those things kind of began to me create a curiosity around understanding myself.
And believe it or not, the first path was I wanted to be an actor.
(04:12):
And so I finagled my way into acting classes and music and dance.
But I found that I was not tall, blonde and blue.
I was the quirky guy.
And so the roles that I always got were these little roles.
So I went into undergraduate school and I'm like, what should I study?
(04:32):
And it shows psychology and was it really sure?
But somebody says something to me that kind of connected the acting with the psychology.
As an actor, there are many schools of thought, but one of the schools of thought that I was
being kind of taught method acting was that somehow you had to understand what might have
happened in this character's life that actually drove the character to behave in the way that
(04:58):
they're behaving.
And so I was able to make that connection.
But honestly, when I went into my master's program, I again hesitated.
And I was thinking, okay, I could go to Circle in the Square and NYU do acting.
But having grown up so humbly and I was already waiting tables in New York City and everybody
(05:19):
else that I was waiting tables with was an actor.
And I'm like, so many sacrifices have been made for me to get an education.
And do I really want to have a master's in acting and be waiting tables?
And so given that I had made the connection between psychology and acting and the desire
to have a more stable life than what I grew up in, I decided to pursue psychology.
(05:44):
But I have to be honest with you and tell you that I did not even know what a dissertation
was at that point because I didn't grow up in an environment where people had a lot of
education other than my school teachers.
You know, everybody else was blue collar working class.
My dad was a handyman.
My mother did childcare.
I wasn't really exposed to a lot of options.
(06:07):
And you know, so I pursued the master's, a friend of mine introduced me to someone
that helped me to get into a master's program.
And a lot of that was covered because I worked as a counselor on campus and then later a
counselor as well as a resident hall director for the undergraduate students.
So most of that was paid.
But I very quickly, you know, in my early teens, early teens, in my, I guess late teens,
(06:32):
I went to therapy.
And you know, I spent a lot of time talking about my family and relationships.
And you know, I went to adult children of alcoholics because I realized that sometimes
I was being a little codependent or I wasn't setting boundaries with people in the way
that would have been helpful to me.
(06:54):
So a lot of stuff.
And I just fell in love with the work that I was doing and the people that I worked with.
One person I worked with here for a very long time, Dr. Saul Rosenberg in San Francisco,
I kind of came to be like a father figure for me.
And a lot of ways I would say he reparented me or helped to reparent me in ways that were
(07:15):
instrumental to my being able to move forward with more confidence, move forward with a
belief that I too could be successful and find a career in this path.
It's interesting, Zayn, because I went from couch, I went from sitting in a chair like
I'm talking to you to at one point I went to his office on Sacramento Street and he had
(07:35):
brought in a couch.
And I'm like, oh my God, I want to get in the couch.
He's like, hold on.
So it turned out that he was going for his analytic certification.
He was already a psychologist.
He was an elder, but he had gone one step further.
And so for a time there, I was actually doing couch work.
And that to me was some of the most creative work I have ever done because here I can see
(07:56):
the cues from you.
I can see your eyes, your head nodding.
When you're sitting in the couch, it's you in the ceiling.
I would see him only when he opened the door.
I could hear his pen taking notes.
I would get an occasional question.
But what that did for me was I think it helped me to understand the things that I was projecting
and how much of my own stuff was getting in the way versus anything that anybody else
(08:21):
could do.
So that was really transformative.
And I remember when we finally finished our work, he gave me a lot of advice.
He showed me a book he had written.
It was like we had gone from patient or client and doctor to that last session or two, I
felt like it was more collegial.
(08:42):
And again, even that move, I think, I feel a little emotional talking about it.
Even that move in a lot of ways was affirming in that a lot of people think that therapy,
you get paid and that's why you're here.
But for me, his moving to more a personal approach in those last couple of sessions really showed
(09:03):
me that he actually cared.
So anyway, yeah.
So long story short, it's literally what I've done.
I can tell you more about how my career progressed, but we'll go to that if you want that information.
Yeah, a lot of time back there.
That was fantastic.
You know, summarizes like trauma led led you to wanting to help people reduce their own
(09:26):
trauma.
Effectively, a couple of things though, dissertation, I still don't really know what that is.
So don't feel bad for not knowing about it when you got into it.
I think that's pretty normal.
I went to go study accounting with no idea what studying accounting even meant.
So also pretty, pretty normal, I think.
You mentioned like feeling different and obviously being a new immigrant, I'm sure it did feel
(09:48):
that way.
But I always thought of Brooklyn as a very diverse environment and maybe something like,
I guess for part of me, like trying to think back and now obviously the dynamics have probably
changed over the years and maybe a little bit different back then when you first got
there.
But I always felt like Brooklyn was a pretty welcoming place whenever I go there.
I, you know, I think of like the hipster community, very diverse, very different, a real melting
(10:11):
part of the New York area, but clearly it wasn't like that when you first got there
or you didn't feel that way.
So can you sort of like just sort of touch on that a little bit more just to understand
what it was like when you first arrived?
Yeah.
So I was actually born and raised in Brooklyn.
My parents arrived and I was so.
Well, you sort of arrived just in a different from a different, not off a boat rather out
(10:34):
of a birth canal.
Right, right.
So when my parents, when I was first born, I was born in a neighborhood called Flushing,
which is very Hasidic now.
Then it was very, I think, Puerto Rican, African American.
There's always been an element of the Jewish community as well because they were the business
owners of my people worked for their people.
(10:57):
But probably by the time I was three or four, my parents scraped up enough money to buy
a home.
Then we moved to a different neighborhood called East New York, Brooklyn, which is literally
one of the last neighborhoods in Brooklyn on the A train, Shepard or Cleveland on the
J train, Howard Beach being the neighborhood next to it.
When we first moved there, it was mostly an Italian neighborhood.
(11:21):
We were called or I was called a spick.
I was called a fag.
I was chased.
I, you know, I'm my little sister and my brother both intervening on my behalf to protect
me and my mom even, but I wasn't the only one getting it.
So initially, again, we were the outsiders for that reason because we were a different
culture, but eventually the neighborhood transformed and it, there was, I would call it white
(11:43):
fright and a few Italians remain, maybe a few Jewish families, but for the most part,
it became Latino and African American.
And I can tell you that my high school bused in the white kids and from the, from the better
neighborhoods, which is why there were racial riots in the high school.
I got involved in that program, but even when the neighborhood transformed, I know that
you can tell that my phenotype is that I'm fairly light skinned.
(12:08):
And so even compared to my siblings and my mom, I'm fairly light skinned and I was always
a very studious kid.
My parents were very protective.
You know, we were not kids who were out playing in the street unless my parents were watching
from the stoop.
So even that was an element of difference in terms of growing up.
So I'll tell you that by the time I was in college, I would come home and bottles would
(12:31):
be thrown from across the street because of the way that I looked.
I did not fit in.
My parents eventually moved upstate because I have a sister who, who moved, but so all
through my life, the bulk of it, I lived in neighborhoods that weren't welcoming.
The Brooklyn that you're describing is a prospect park and all these other neighborhoods
that are closer to New York city.
(12:52):
And even then, those neighborhoods were not what they are today.
Even now, you know, Flatbush and Williamsburg have become trendy, but when I was there,
it was not trendy.
I remember my little sister was born like in 1970 and there was a blackout.
And during that blackout, which lasted for a few days, a lot of the neighborhoods that
(13:15):
were already struggling were decimated.
There was looting and bashing and fires and a lot of the neighborhoods never really recovered
after that.
And so there were places where you walked and it kind of looked a little bit like a warzone.
And so, you know, I'll also add one more thing about feeling difference in.
(13:37):
I probably knew that I was gay from very, very early on.
You know, I remember I had a neighbor and I thought he was the cutest man ever.
You know, just from the time that I was a child, you know, I was very well aware and
growing up partially Catholic and Latino, that was forbidden.
(13:58):
That was not something that was acceptable that you could talk about or that you could
expect people to be kind about.
You know, the truth is that my father rejected me and we didn't talk for like 10 years.
Fortunately, my mom and siblings were open and my mother said she always knew and did
I think that she would not love me?
You know, so I had them, but my father was particularly difficult for him to have his
(14:21):
son be gay.
Yeah, it's so hard to like remember that the whole New York area used to be so different
than what it is right now, right?
You know, I've read Freakonomics where they talk about the changes and they made in New
York to sort of make it a livable place, right?
It hasn't always been this like, perangere place that people want to visit all the time.
I've always had its intrigue, but it wasn't what it is today and sometimes it's just,
(14:46):
you know, I guess my age, I'm young enough, which is scary because I'm pretty old myself.
But a lot of change happened over a very short period of time and there was a lot that had
to occur from the 70s through to the mid 90s to make it the place it is today.
And if you take that into consideration, you can quickly see it was like an environment
(15:08):
of groups, right?
Everybody had their tribes and if you weren't part of it, you just weren't, you were second
class citizen and that's just the way it operated.
So it's hard to sort of recognize that.
And I must, you know, I try not to get this, especially, you know, I grew up in South Africa
where, you know, originally in apartheid.
So you never saw people of color even though the white population only make up 7%.
(15:32):
And then, you know, you get thrust into schools where I, you know, at a time I was one of
five white kids in my class out of 90 and I saw the other side of it.
And I can get that like never quite fitting in, you know, the friends that I had was like,
great, but I didn't understand, you know, like what they were doing, like what is halal
or what is it being a Muslim and why do they have extra holidays and all those different
(15:54):
things.
And, you know, sometimes it's going to take a moment how privileged we are to live in
California where it is so diverse, where people are way more open to whatever lifestyle
you're willing to have and how welcoming that can be.
And that is a true privilege that we get to live within California.
It absolutely is.
I have to say I've been in Sonoma now about two years and I chose well.
(16:17):
I landed in Sebasta Pole and everyone has been really welcoming neighbors have stopped
in to say hello and bring cookies and one elder neighbor, you know, like I'm trying to
do something.
He's like, hold on, I'll go get tools and he's on the floor with me and he's in his
70s.
I'm going to fix something and people have just genuinely been like that here and I'm
(16:37):
really pleased that this is where I landed because it's probably where I'm going to die
and it's nice to be someplace where people are kind, you know.
I do want to add something about two or three years ago, CBS or ABC did a drama called East
New York, a police drama because it's so bad and I don't think I think it failed.
(16:57):
I think they did one season and that was it.
But I was like, oh my God, you're doing a show about where I grew up.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is crazy.
And Sebasta Pole is a great place.
I've been to Eugene's home, which is beautiful.
It's a great place if that is where he wants his final recent place to be.
Great place to live.
I've been in that office that we can all see on the video right now and it is.
(17:19):
It is an amazing space and definitely chose well and, you know, the selfish reasons for
me and my team.
I think that was a great place for you to end up.
Thank you.
So let's push back into your career a little bit and just give us a quick run through of,
you know, you became a psychologist, you got into that space.
What did your career?
(17:39):
So I'm going to start off the short way and just say that I spent many, many years in
the nonprofit sector, you know, everything from, you know, working with children, running
AIDS residential program for homeless addicts who were dying of AIDS during the height of
the pandemic here in San Francisco.
(17:59):
That was through Catholic charities.
I ran one of their residential programs.
I helped to found an AIDS prevention program for Latino men who have sex with men who don't
even identify as gay.
I was on the board of Stop AIDS.
I West Side Community Services, which traditionally has served the African American community.
I ran their nurse case management program for people who were dying of AIDS.
(18:22):
Their substance abuse program, their methadone clinic worked at Instituto Familiar de la
Raza, which is a mental health clinic in the mission, which I think about 50 years old
now, one of the first mental health clinics that was specifically for the Latino community.
I started there running two programs, psychotherapy and AIDS case management.
(18:43):
I left and eventually was pulled back where I became the director of finance, human resources
and IT.
I had a subject expert managing the actual functions, but I managed the team.
I ran a geriatric facility in Hayes Valley for a couple of Persian brothers.
One of them a psychologist.
(19:04):
One of them, I think, was a finance guy.
Really, really, really nice guys.
Beautiful facility.
Again, most of my life has been serving other people.
In high school, again, I had jobs that were in service in college, summer camp, day camp,
waiting tables.
(19:25):
It's just in my DNA, I guess, in some ways.
It makes me happy when I see other people get happy, when I see other people work through
something.
It really is moving to be lucky enough to be present and witness somebody make peace with
something.
I realized there were.
(19:46):
Now, the challenge for me was that nonprofits were not going to pay my $170,000 worth of
student loans.
There's definitely no money that was going to come when my parents died.
Eventually I realized that I really loved going into an organization where processes
(20:08):
and systems and teams were not working.
I had a series of positions, every year or two I would hop in.
Zane, today, if you stay someplace for more than three or four years, people look at you
like you're crazy, like your skills have gone stale.
But in those days, they would look at me like, what's wrong with you?
I was like, well, what's wrong with me is that I was offered more money and more responsibility.
(20:32):
That's what's wrong with me.
Again, I love the challenge.
I'll give you an example.
When I ran Peter Claver House to Catholic Charities, the building itself was in a little
bit of a shambles.
The residents would steal each other or steal things from the facility to go sell to use
drugs.
People were literally dying, 24-hour staff because we had nurse and nurse case management.
(20:53):
Some of them were afraid.
It was barely a kitchen.
The food that was being served was not good.
Somehow I met a woman who was doing harm reduction work, which is an approach to substance abuse.
I worked with the powers that be in HUD because it was Section 8.
We were able to change the philosophy of the housing to harm reduction because kicking
(21:17):
people who are dying to the street because of their use, my mind just didn't make sense.
My approach was very unique in that rather than me and the team sitting down to make
all these decisions, what we did was that we held community meetings between team and
staff.
We rewrote the agreements for living there.
(21:39):
We rewrote the agreements around what we expected from each other.
We were able to find some monies to do some rehabilitation.
There was a group called Philanthropy by Design.
They would find free paint and donated furniture and fabrics.
We were able to revamp the community room, found some money to really put in a professional
(21:59):
kitchen.
But even like people who were dying in wheelchairs were picking up a brush to help paint, there
was a shift in the community in terms of ownership.
I can remember some of the staff worrying that moving to harm reduction because some
of them were going through their own recovery.
There were a lot of moments like that where just getting into some deep conversations but
(22:22):
they were transformative.
At one point, we realized that the shifts that we had were not going to work in terms
of really optimizing what we could offer.
We had several unions and I can remember sitting with the employees and the union leaders.
I remember I sat on the floor and I didn't do that on purpose but in retrospect, it worked
(22:45):
beautifully because they didn't feel threatened.
I opened it up and I said, okay, you tell me what schedule you want.
The union leader picked that up and worked with them, gave them three options and in
the end, they had to choose one.
It wasn't a top-down approach.
What I'm getting at in a couple of different ways is that when people help to build something,
(23:09):
they have ownership.
But just thinking about the work that I do now in terms of transformation and change,
I really try and take a more of a user design approach and client-centered.
Again, I think that when you include people, they feel valued and respected.
When they help to build something, they own it.
They want to see it be successful.
(23:30):
All of the things that I learned in managing these nonprofits and learning how to manage
budgets and write proposals and hold people accountable, there were a lot of lessons and
some mistakes made along the way.
Because again, I do have a tendency that I've gotten better at but sometimes I judge people
(23:51):
by their potential rather than by what's going on in the moment.
I had a professor once say to me, Donald Greg Eugene, sometimes you have to act based on
what's happening in the moment, not based on the potential that you see in someone because
the situation has to be addressed.
That was a very important message for me in terms of the way that I manage and in terms
(24:15):
of the way that I treat people.
To me, those nonprofits were a training ground for the work that I do now.
Yeah, that's incredible.
On that point, I'm a big believer in using people's potential to set their goals but
then reviewing what their current life and situation looks like in terms of managing
(24:36):
them.
I think it's very important and I tell my team all the time is look for changes in
behavior and figure out what's creating those changes to be good or bad.
It's important to find out what happened, did something in the change in their life,
whether they're not well, is there somebody in the family that's not well, and how do
we then give them the tools or the opportunities to improve their situation by taking into
(25:01):
account what's happening in their life right now.
On the other point, I love the idea of building teams by providing them with the opportunity
to take ownership of the project itself.
It's really important to give teams the opportunity to talk up, be heard, and make sure that they
(25:23):
can see that they've been heard and that their opinions are being taken into consideration
when decisions are being made.
Even if you don't go with their decision, having that conversation, making sure they
understand why you're going a different direction makes a big difference because people feel
like they are part of the process and they can get behind the process because it's not
just being shoved down the threads.
(25:44):
I'll say two things.
One of the things I valued about working with you is that it's clear that you really care
about your people.
My trademark is business is human and that can be interpreted in so many ways.
But in one way is that this is a human being in front of you.
Sometimes business doesn't have the luxury of time and so you have to make a decision
(26:05):
to cut something.
But if business does have the luxury of time and you have someone who's a willing participant
who wants to learn, then I think you're probably going to get better returns on that because
the person has seen that you've invested in them.
But again, I sense that you really care.
In terms of the idea, again, of including people in creating what the future looks like,
I have seen many people, I consulted a lot in the nuclear defense and aerospace industry.
(26:28):
I worked for a British consulting firm for 10 years.
Big mergers and acquisitions in the defense industry during the Iraq war.
A lot of these companies ballooned because they just kept acquiring.
I saw people being passive aggressive, like, this is the flavor of the day.
If I just sit back and wait long enough, there'll be another flavor and this too shall pass.
(26:55):
So long as it's your decision, guess what?
It's your failure.
And so if you can get people to buy in, to see themselves reflected in the decisions
that are made.
And I promise you that more often than not, they're really going to invest in seeing that
through and seeing it be successful.
Yeah, couldn't agree more.
You just mentioned there that we work together and that is important.
(27:18):
And we did that together through the line consulting group, which you founded in February
2011.
Tell me about the decision to sort of go your own start this consulting group and build
something that has clearly been successful because we're going on 14 years now and it's
still in business.
I want to tell you a pre-story.
So I was working in the nonprofit sector and I had this aha moment that, wow, I could really
(27:43):
move into the consulting world and I would be able to use my psychology, my management
skills, my financial skills, all of that stuff.
And by this point, I was probably in my mid to late 20s or something like that, maybe
even early 30s.
And I applied for some jobs that there was an economic downturn and it was hard to get
(28:05):
a job and then fast forward to 10 years before 2011.
So that's 2001.
So in the year 2000, there was a newspaper that I get, the APA Monitor, which is a newspaper
for psychologists.
And I got around to reading it in January and I saw that there was a little ad in the
(28:27):
back that said, looking for clinical psychologists with management experience to join consulting
firm will train.
Deadline December, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, oh my God, this was the job for me.
And I didn't open the newspaper during the holidays, but a little voice in my head said,
send your resume anyway.
(28:48):
And within a few days, I spent a few hours being interviewed by a woman who had become
my boss.
And on February 14th, St. Valentine's Day, I got my offer letter.
I had been flown to D.C. and for a day I had to present workshops to them and they took
us out for dinner and gave us a few glasses of wine because when you're a consultant,
(29:12):
sometimes you have dinner and fast forward, but there were a few people who didn't make
that cut because of their ability.
But so then I joined this firm and I traveled all over the U.S., many places all over Europe,
Baghdad, Kabul, Kandahar, four or five times during the Iraq war.
Working with defense contractors, everything from executive coaching, there was one guy
(29:32):
that I was flying around with him on his private jet around the Middle East.
Working with teams, staying in these fortresses with double iron walls, people in towers with
guns.
And I learned a lot from this consulting firm of everything.
I mean, I learned a lot more of my own, but they really gave me the foundation to move
forward.
(29:53):
So around 10 years in, I felt that only the British people would be promoted.
There were some internal issues.
There was someone who, an admin, who I thought had been treated unfairly, especially given
some of the personal sacrifices she had made to support some of the leaders.
And when I saw that happening, I came home and I said to my spouse, I'm leaving.
(30:15):
Sometime in the next two months, we're going to figure something out and I'm leaving.
For me, values are really important and they really drive most everything that I do zane.
And I know immediately when I haven't been congruent and it's not easy for me to live
with that.
And they genuinely weren't living the values.
An organization that I thought was doing great work in a lot of ways, but I felt they had
(30:38):
become political and I felt that they weren't living their values.
And I made the right choice.
And I'm going to tell you why I made the right choice.
One, because I've been here 14 years and we're still going strong, but two, a year later,
the company rewrote the contracts for the remaining psychologist on the team and the
psychologist decided that they were not going to sign it.
(31:01):
So kind of like almost like a union activity, but there was no union.
And they were summarily immediately fired.
And so when I left, I had a garden duty for three months, which is the typical British
thing.
They paid me for three months while I sat at home building a website, getting my articles
(31:22):
of a corporation and everybody else didn't get that.
Because and so I made the right decision.
And literally I came home and I said, that's how they treat this person.
How are they going to treat me?
And to me, that's important.
You know, Zane, I sometimes have made decisions in terms of my company that somebody else
wouldn't have made.
(31:43):
For instance, during COVID, you know, I kept people employed.
I borrowed money that was not PPP money.
I had some of that too, but I kept people employed.
They had families, mortgages.
You know, to me, it's like you make a commitment and a loyal to me.
I'm going to do the same for you and we'll figure it out.
I really do have a belief and I get that belief from my mom.
(32:04):
Very humble beginnings.
My mother would always say, have faith in Spanish, think of faith.
But I really do believe that when there's a will, there's a way.
And I do believe that when you do right by people, they do right by you.
It's just it would call it karma, call it whatever you want to call it.
But to me, it was important that in the midst of this storm, people looked at their employers.
(32:26):
And so I was going to do everything I could to make sure that people had some stability
in their lives.
I went all over the map there, by the way.
Yeah, that's fine.
But a lot of what you touch on there is sort of why I think we've worked so well together.
I enjoy being in your company as well because our values do align.
During COVID, I had the same thought.
It wasn't how quickly do I get rid of people.
(32:49):
It was more how many months can I go without having to take any salary and protect as much
cash we have as possible to make sure these people are paid.
It wasn't about how much work do you need to get done to keep our clients going?
Well, that was important.
But it was also taking care of yourself.
We put in place processes to make sure that people who are now disappearing into their
home, a lot of them are individuals with nobody else living in the same space.
(33:13):
How do we make sure we give them enough contact, enough interaction so that they don't feel
lonely, that they don't go into a dark place?
Our first thoughts were how do we look after our people?
Then how do we look after our clients?
Understanding that our people are very important, especially during a difficult time like COVID.
Yeah, absolutely.
(33:34):
So, can I answer your question?
You did not at all.
You enter a lot of things and I'm taking it after you decided to move away from the consulting
firm, you decided that was a good time to start your firm.
Yeah, absolutely.
All of that was to lead that.
I just had this thought that, hey, I can do this.
And I think having a supportive spouse goes a long way.
It was the first few months, six months a year was touching go.
(33:58):
Every time consulting has these peaks and valleys, but it always comes back just in time.
You plan for these moments.
So what is the goal behind starting the consulting company?
I read your permission to assist you, your team and your organization to thrive by unleashing
(34:18):
the human potential within each team member to change, innovate and grow.
Was that always the plan?
Was that the goal?
Just to uplift people, give them leadership training, help them succeed as business owners?
So, I think that that's the primary goal of why we exist is to help organizations to do
just that.
Again, as I said, business is human.
I think it's about opening the aperture a little bit.
(34:41):
Zane, a lot of companies have traditionally just thought about the stockholder.
And I want people to think about the stakeholder, whether it's the employee, your vendors, your
partners, your clients.
Some people have a mindset of scarcity, and I actually believe there is nothing in the
world for everybody.
(35:02):
And if you can just slow down a little bit sometimes to think about how can you get to
a win-win.
I think we can do better in the world.
I do think that to some degree, businesses have a responsibility to society.
The definition of society in my mind is a place where people take care of each other.
And I'm a capitalist like anybody else, but I also believe that I exist within a society
(35:26):
and that I have a responsibility.
Whether it be to my immediate neighbor or my neighbor down the street, you cannot move
through the world just thinking about me.
And so, our business is about that.
It's really about helping organizations to thrive from a mindset that says we can all
get lifted together.
(35:46):
Yeah, that is fascinating.
I mean, there is a lot of selfishness in the world.
I know that I spend a lot of time, for a long period of time, on my social media, pushing
the message of be kind.
I try to do that on a regular basis.
It's one of the values that I try.
It's right behind you.
Right behind me.
I try telling my kids about it all the time as well.
I just have an example.
(36:07):
As yesterday, I jumped on a call to a potential client.
I'm a very mature lady.
I heard my kid's voice in the background.
I could see she was smiling and I called my kid over, put him into the picture.
Her smile was magnificent.
She was so happy to see a young kid who was polite, which was very thankful that I went
(36:28):
that direction and he wasn't just being a bit of a nail on the day.
But I could see it made her day.
And all it did is taking me two seconds.
He's like, yeah, he can come say hello.
And it made a difference in somebody else's life.
And this is a person as well who I effectively said, you don't quite need my services.
(36:48):
I'm happy to put you in front of some people that will be better for you, but I will help
you make a plan to get there.
It's not always just about selling the service, shoving it down somebody's throat, trying
to get their money.
It's sometimes about just making life better.
She had told me I was the first person who had responded timeously and the first person
willing to listen to her and give her a plan of action to go for it.
(37:09):
And for me, that was the biggest one of my week, maybe my year, that I was able to help
this person who clearly desperately needed help.
Even though I'm not the service you need to do, I can at least put her in front of the
people and give her a plan to solve her problems.
So what do you do on a day-to-day basis?
What is this consulting firm?
(37:30):
What do you do towards it?
How do you keep yourself busy?
So busy is everything from reading books, creating social network content, which I was
saying to you beforehand is not something that I absolutely love, but I realize it's
a part of the work.
Coaching clients virtually, like I'm doing right now, to you sometimes I coach clients,
(37:53):
team offsites, whether it's a day or two.
So crafting those offsites, we don't really say it's a one size fits all.
Every team is different.
So you have to, my processes, I might interview people and try and find out what's going on
in terms of the team dynamics.
And then based on that, all those conversations, I'll craft a two day off site where we actually
address some of those issues and some of the business issues as well.
(38:15):
Writing contracts, writing proposals, but I also throw the ball for the dog in the middle
of the day because I can.
I'm working on newsletters, blogs, leadership offsites, which are some of my favorite things
to do because you're working with people who want to learn skills.
And that requires a lot of creativity because adults don't learn by being talked at.
(38:37):
They usually learn by doing.
And so you have to craft activities over a course of two or three days, depending on
what they agree that they want to do.
And so there goes a lot of effort into keeping it fresh.
If I have some clients that I've worked with for 10, 10 years, I have some clients that
bring me to different, every time they hop, they bring me with them.
(38:58):
So, so I have to keep it fresh for them and keep it fresh for me because I don't want
to do the same thing, you know, every single time.
So there's a lot of, out of that that goes into kind of creating the content.
I also spend a lot of time talking to people, you know, a lot of networking.
I mean, I've always been an outgoing chatty, Cathy, I'll talk to anybody on the bus stop
(39:19):
in the restaurant table next to me, but I'm currently helping to start an LGBTQ Chamber
of Commerce for Sonoma.
Our launch party is next week at Little Saint.
We are open to having allies join us.
We are for all of Sonoma County.
There's eight of us.
CJ that, that you know, who's in Provisors with us is another one of the founders.
(39:41):
I'm on the board of a nonprofit that works with Black and Brown children.
It's based in Oakland and they do technology camps teaching kids about STEM, science, technology,
engineering and math.
We've just had a two day camp.
There's science days where we go to the South Bay and some of the companies open up their
doors and bring some of their staff so they can do experiments with the kids.
(40:01):
And then I have a new venture, which I haven't told many people about.
And I've filed papers for articles of incorporation for a nonprofit.
And it's called the open, it's called open source piece.
And so that hasn't launched yet.
I was sitting around one day kind of watching the news and honestly feeling really sad.
(40:26):
There's so much suffering in the world.
And I feel like every day Zane, I know people on the every side of every issue who are friends
who somehow find a way to live together.
You know, I have a father law, a brother law who are different political mindset than I
am, but I love them.
That's my family.
And I feel like sometimes we're not creating spaces where people can come together to, I
(40:53):
think even when we're different come together to create community.
So the idea behind open source piece is to democratize creating peace in the world.
We wait for the pundits, the politicians, you know, the ambassadors, but you and I
have the power to build relationships as well.
And so the idea is to create an open source platform, meaning that other people will help
(41:16):
to build it that's safe where people create a profile where you can hop into a room and
dialogue with people who may have a different point of view.
What's operative here is that we need to know who you are and how to find you and that it's
safe.
So maybe there'll be a little bit of free asynchronous workshops that you have to complete
before you can enter.
But I hope that sometime in the next few years that I can launch this with the help of whomever
(41:40):
wants to participate in open source piece to create a platform.
Again, you just have to look around and you see it's happening naturally, but there's
not a critical mass.
I want to create a place that helps to create critical mass.
So that's one of the other things that's on my plate that I'm kind of slowly working
on.
That was a lot.
That's a lot going on in Eugene's life.
(42:01):
I mean, I'm a little scared to ask this question because I think you probably got a lot of them,
but what are the short term goals right now?
What are those key things that you're working on that you're trying to achieve in the short
term?
So short term, I'm reevaluating my approach to marketing and I have a friend who's a
professional marketer who's helping me with that.
So that's one thing.
(42:23):
Moving to this area is different than living in San Francisco and closer to Silicon Valley.
So I'm thinking that I need to repackage what I'm offering a little bit differently.
Traditionally, I've been B2B and I'm thinking of creating a series of workshops where a
company can send one person or one person can sign themselves up.
(42:43):
Kind of a thing.
I'm working on launching this chamber.
I'm working on doing a big fundraiser for the children's nonprofit in Oakland that's
going to be in March.
For the business, I would say that I have as a goal for myself to write a book.
I want to do it in the near future because I've been pushing it and pushing it and pushing
(43:04):
it.
I have difficulty landing on a topic zane because every topic that I love, I go and
I look, has it been written?
It's been written.
So I have a couple of ideas I'm playing with.
One of them is the concept of co-creation.
I say to every team that I work with, it's very easy to point your finger and say, you
did this, but the reality is that every moment we are co-creating, you and I are co-creating
(43:26):
this moment, right?
And there are choices that you make around what you say.
You might ask a question.
You might say, no, I'm not going to ask that.
That was a choice that influenced the outcome here.
And so the book is about co-creating in a work environment and how every day we have moments
or maybe we forget that we contributed.
And the book is intended to remind people that you always have a choice.
(43:48):
Some of them may be uncomfortable.
Some of them maybe have consequences, but you always have a choice.
Being consciously to creation, I think is something that would be a good thing that
could be helpful.
Maybe help to eliminate a little bit of victimhood that sometimes people can get into.
The other concept is, and there's many books on facilitation, but this one might have a
(44:09):
little bit more of a personal slant, how facilitation saved my life.
Yes and no in terms of the title.
But the idea is that I've learned a lot about facilitation from personal experiences.
There are many textbooks on it, but at the end of the day, you have to create a safe
space.
You have to give people permission to speak up and have some charity if it comes out wrong
(44:31):
because nobody gets it perfect.
So I'm looking at that.
So those are two ideas in terms of in some time the next few weeks, I really need to just
land on something and start spending some time right here at this desk, beginning to
pull it together.
And I do think that there's a lot that I have to say that it's not all coherent at the moment,
(44:55):
but I think a book will help me to make it coherent.
That's all incredible.
When you're writing that book, I would vote for co-creation.
I think that is a super interesting topic and I'd love to read about it.
And I would be in front of the line to buy those books when they hit the shelf.
So it might not mean anything, but that's where I would lean.
(45:16):
Okay, thank you.
Eugene, can you share with us what has been your biggest challenge in your career?
What is that challenge that really you felt held you back at times?
I think the answer to that is a personal point, Shane.
I think that personal doubt.
You know, again, I didn't grow up in an environment that inspired a lot of self-confidence.
(45:37):
And I didn't grow up in a world told me that I'm okay.
And so, you know, there are moments when I'm kind of like, get out of the way because
I got this and there are moments when I'm not that and I have to remind myself, you
know, one of the transformative things in my life has been hearing other people's stories.
Because when you hear other people's stories and you see parts of yourself in them, it
(45:59):
is a permission force for me that, you know, because people can get caught up in their
heads and I'm like everybody else can get caught up in my head.
Like, you know, I have a lot more tools now, but every once in a while I have to remind
myself, nope, that's old stuff.
That's old stories.
That's not your narrative.
(46:20):
And you need to let go of that and focus on this instead.
Yeah.
I mean, that's why we started Prodigy Conversations, right?
To be able to talk to professionals, share their stories, to let people see that, you
know, not everything is one big linear path.
Not everybody starts at point A and moves to point C. There's a bunch of twists and
turns and ups and downs and self-doubt and judgment and bad mistakes along the way.
(46:45):
It's never going to be a perfect route.
It's never going to be a straight line.
But it is part of your story.
It is who you are.
You learn from the difficult times and the good times.
And you try and just make the best decision with tools in front of you every single day
as a hope for better days ahead.
Absolutely.
(47:05):
Eugene.
What's the best piece of advice you ever received?
The best piece of advice was the difference between successful entrepreneurs and ones
that aren't successful is that the ones who are successful keep trying.
Again, I know a lot of people who give it a shot and get demoralized and they immediately
quit when actually they're very talented human beings that had they just persevered
(47:27):
a little bit.
I think they would have gotten to the other side.
Yeah.
I think that's such a great piece of advice.
And I've clearly had a busy week because I was just looking at an article yesterday,
maybe two days ago.
And I'm always looking at my YouTube channel going, a protea academy going to school.
We ever take or we ever take off.
(47:48):
And this guy is like for seven years, basically went nowhere, but he kept at it.
And now it's like a million subscriber type channel.
And it was just keep putting the work, the hard work in showing up, doing the right
things, sticking to their values, doing the things that they believed in and eventually
a contraction.
And with every story year, year there are overnight success, there's no such thing.
(48:14):
There's a ton of hard work, a lot of effort and a lot of planning that went in the background
to get them to the point to be overnight successes.
So keep persevering is just fantastic advice.
You're the leadership coach.
You're the consultant teaching us how to be better leaders.
So give us one piece of advice that we could all implement today to help us be better leaders
(48:37):
tomorrow.
The first thing that popped into my mind was physician heal thyself.
And what I mean by that is that this is your instrument, who you are physically, psychologically,
emotionally is how you show up.
And so the more that you understand what's going on here, the better you're going to
be able to manage it in terms of bringing the right things forth when somebody needs
(49:00):
them.
Because if you don't know that, it's really you're shooting in the dark.
Yeah, you got to understand who you are, be aware of those areas of improvement that we
like to put it.
Make sure you're putting scaffolding in place to deal with the situation, especially under
the very strenuous ones when the worst of us tends to come out.
(49:23):
And it will make a big difference.
People around you will appreciate the changes if you put them in place.
People will acknowledge them, and it will create relationships and trust which are necessary
to build strong teams.
Absolutely.
Eugene, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation so far, and you've shared a tonne
of personal stories with us.
(49:43):
It would be great if you could share just a little bit more personal insight into who
you are as a person.
Tell us something about you that will give us insight into who Eugene is on a day to day.
I would say that two things.
One of them is that I really am an extrovert.
I love people, and it doesn't matter what language you speak because I'm going to try.
(50:04):
The other day I was at a dinner and there were Italians sitting next to me, and in my
broken Italian, I was talking.
I went to Japan, I learned the basics.
What?
Dashi no namayo ai eugiendes, and you know, Greece, Yasas, and where I go.
I just love people.
I love cultures.
So I would say that that's certainly something that feeds me.
Honestly, it nurtures me to connect with people.
(50:26):
The other thing that I would say is that, and it's kind of the opposite in some ways
in that I can be a little bit of an empath, and I can sometimes pick up on things that
other people wouldn't pick up on.
However, there is a downside to that.
Sometimes it's a lot.
Sometimes I need to put up a little bit of a wall to protect myself because I can walk
(50:52):
into a room and immediately sense if something just happened.
That probably comes from survival, things that happened to me.
When I was young, those dandas are out there sensing right away.
But so again, I love people.
I love connecting with people.
I sense things, and then sometimes I have to pull back to take care of myself.
(51:14):
Incredible.
Well, the product conversations, we like to end with some rapid fire questions to get
a sense of what's going in your brain.
So I have five questions for you.
Are you ready for some rapid fire?
Yes.
Great.
Question number one, what is your dream vacation?
Reaser Italy on a beach somewhere.
Beach is going to have a beach.
(51:35):
Great option.
Question number two, do you prefer audiobooks or paper books?
Paper.
I like to write, turn the pages.
I have a relationship with books.
I wish I still had that relationship with books.
I'm audiobook all the way at this point.
I've got books on my nights there that just are gathering just at this point.
I really got a fine type to open up again.
If you only had 20 minutes to exercise, what would that exercise be?
(51:59):
It tends to be Peloton.
If I had my druthers, I would run because I love being out in nature, but my knees can't
tolerate that.
So it's the Peloton.
Always a good option.
What is your favorite piece of technology that you're using at the moment to make your
life better?
I use AI all the time now.
(52:20):
Every day, four or five times a day, I'm having conversations with AI, using it in my work,
using it in my personal life.
Even from, here's what's in my refrigerator, what can I make for dinner?
I need to talk about this.
What are some things I have to make sure I include?
It can be used in so many ways.
(52:40):
Very nice and personal coach to myself.
Hey, what should I do?
There's so many ways that you can use it that it really is a game changer.
Saves a lot of time.
It has an efficiency tool and ability to get started.
It really is a great use.
My one concern is the amount of water that's being used.
At some point, we have to reconcile how we're going to manage that, but that's a whole other
(53:02):
subject.
It's a totally different subject.
The people who are making the cells in the background are making a lot of money for it
as well.
Last question, what was your favorite childhood meal?
My favorite childhood meal?
Wow, that's a hard one.
My mother would make me grilled cheese and tomato soup and to this day, I still enjoy
(53:24):
grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Good grilled cheese and tomato soup is always a wonder.
Yeah, absolutely.
And with that, we end another party of conversations.
Thank you for joining us in the journey of learning and inspiration.
Today, we've gained insights from our guests and taken another step to understanding their
diverse chemistry of leadership and business and accounting.
(53:46):
Remember, each conversation is a step towards the positive transformation of business leaders.
We hope our discussion has given you valuable takeaways to apply in your own career and
life.
Don't forget to subscribe to our new conversations on YouTube and Spotify, so you never miss an
episode.
We'd also love to hear your thoughts and experiences, so connect with me on social media channels.
I'm most active on LinkedIn and would love you to join the conversation.
(54:09):
Join us next time for more engaging stories, advice and conversations that matter.
Until then, keep striving for excellence and embracing growth.
Thank you for listening, be kind and goodbye for proteo conversations.
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