Latest / CEOs and ABCs / Rachel Wallis Andreasson (PepsiCo. & Wallis Companies) A Conversation on: Generational Business, A New Age of Leadership & The Sixth Level #033

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Rachel Wallis Andreasson (PepsiCo. & Wallis Companies) A Conversation on: Generational Business, A New Age of Leadership & The Sixth Level #033 · CEOs and ABCs

• 0:00
  Speaker A: People have to feel like they can trust the environment. You have to have your own happiness and your own fulfillment in order to fill somebody else's bucket.
• 0:07
  Speaker B: My guest today spent the majority of her career in leadership roles within Wallace Companies, a fuel and convenience business that her father started over 50 years ago, all while raising three children. Today, she's the author of the Sixth Level, a leadership approach that teaches connection, care, and trust over the outdated model of control and command. What I love most is that she didn't take the obvious route. Instead of stepping straight into her family's company, she took initiative and found a at Pepsi Learning Strategies and Management, then joined her family company and worked her way up from manager to eventually CEO. In this episode, we explore what it was like taking over from her father to run the business, the power of leadership frameworks, and what it takes to lead from a place of compassion instead of control, both at work and home.
• 0:51
  Speaker A: I just came to the realization that I could leave the position.
• 0:56
  Speaker B: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, Parenting wins and fails and everything in between. I'm your host, Kevin Rice. Here's today's episode. Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Rachel Wallace Andreessen. Rachel, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:13
  Speaker A: So happy to be here, Kevin. I have loved listening to your podcast and learning from it and happy to be on with you today.
• 1:21
  Speaker B: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It has been just quite a passion project for me and I. I get to learn so much from incredible guests, and I'm really excited to talk to you today. Maybe you could just start out by, you know, telling us what does life look like today? What? Tell us about your family and then we'll dive in from there.
• 1:39
  Speaker A: Okay, great. All right. Well, I am the proud mom of three adult children, and my oldest and his wife have given me my first grandchild. So it's super exciting new chapter to move into. And just thinking about your podcast too, of, you know, how leadership lessons that you learn at work, you know, can apply at home and that integration of those leadership lessons. So I'm excited to have a clean slate with my grandson and share wisdom that you learn over the years. But the short summary is I grew up in a family business. My dad founded it the year before I was born, the oldest of the second generation. And I have three younger brothers. And today we are working hard as a family to bring in the third generation. And so this family business started with one gas station on Route 66 in Cuba, Missouri. And this year, obviously, is America's 250th birthday, but it's also the hundredth anniversary of Route 66. And so in that first year, the one gas station did 100,000 in revenue, and last year, we did about one and a half billion dollars in revenue. So it's a tribute to my parents and my dad, who started this amazing family business. And a lot of my lessons that I've learned over the years came from my parents, came from my experience at working at Wallace Companies for 24 years. So, yeah. So I'm excited to share stories with you.
• 3:18
  Speaker B: I think it's really interesting because you didn't go straight into the family business, which, as an outsider, I just assume. That's what I mean. I probably watched too many episodes of succession, and I just assumed, like, you're automatically in the C. SU from, like, day one. But you went through a management program with Pepsi company. What did that time teach you that maybe you couldn't have learned at that early stage within the company?
• 3:42
  Speaker A: Oh, I think especially when you're part of a family business born into one. I knew what it was going to give me was the confidence that I could hold a job, that I could continue to rise up within another organization where nobody knew me, nobody knew my family, I was out of state, and also be able to experience the failures. You know, I remember I was working for pepsico, running taco bells in Miami. I had this fabulous district manager that was very concerned about creating this community environment. So he had hired a lot of college grads mixed in with a lot of tenured taco bell managers and wanted us all to be one team and support each other. So he did an excellent job of that. But I moved out of the training store and into a different training store while I was training new employees coming in. And I probably had about five, six trainees at the store. And I remember one day after work, the manager of this location pulled me aside, and he said, rachel, he's like, I'm noticing something that I didn't notice when you first got here. And I'm like, what is that? And he said, you're not mopping the floor. As much like, I don't see you in the bathroom, cleaning the bathroom. I don't see you doing the work alongside the trainees. And he's like, and that's really important. You know, it's really important that you never lose focus of what has to be done for this team to operate and it's those little lessons that when they don't come from your mom or your dad, when they come from somebody outside, like, I feel like you can really take some things to heart and really learn from others. I mean, like anybody, you can learn from the best bosses and the worst bosses and say, this is what I want to emulate and this is what I absolutely wanna make sure that I don't do to my own. And all of those outside work experiences are important before you get into a family business where a lot of people can perceive that the only reason you are in this position or this position is because you are part of the family.
• 5:53
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Did you feel like maybe people would assume that you're entitled to a certain position or status within the company because of your last name?
• 6:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that it made me work twice as hard. It made me probably go the opposite, like, I want to be an employee just like you. But, you know, it's hard because I was married. I really didn't have the last name, but everybody knew that I had grown up in the business. So I would say for anyone, I mean, it is about your own confidence in your leadership style. And I wanted to be a leader that served the people and really did provide a great environment because I always felt there were some things I found interesting. So, like, I think about the level of professional development that I know that we were focused on in giving every employee at Wallace companies. And then I'm thinking, okay, opposite wise, at my house, like, nobody is giving me the level of professional development as a parent, as a spouse, in a marriage. I mean, I am getting all of this at work and I have no platform to get this at home, you know, So I always thought that was an interesting dynamic. But at the end of the day, we know that people are going to think or say a lot of things that may be true or not true. And you have to hold it in yourself with the kind of leader you want to be and have that confidence that you are exemplifying, you know, exemplifying the best version of yourself that you want to be.
• 7:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I know you are the kind of leader that would never, like, ask somebody to do something you. That you aren't willing to do yourself. Right. And that was something that I prided myself on. And. And now I'm kind of tying that back to, like, did you learn that from that example you just shared of you need to be mopping with the rest of the team?
• 7:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I would say I Did I? I forgot. I think because my dad, we would do like Saturday morning store rides and I would watch him and we would park his truck not right in the front parking spot, but over on the side so he could walk into the store and pick up trash along the way. If he walked into that store and there was water on the floor, he would go grab the mop and mop up the water. And I think that's probably somewhere between those Saturday morning store rides and coming out of college and into my first job. I just, I forgot it, you know, and I think, isn't that true of a lot of leadership things? I just, you know, I ended up speaking to a group of like 200 managers and shared some just examples like this. And in the survey results were like, thank you for reminding me of why I enjoy being a leader. Thank you for reminding me of the little things that made it important for me to be motivated to want to contribute to the company. Because sometimes we all just, we. We've learned it at some point. Well, this is why I like the title of your podcast, CEOs and ABCs, because I think most of the stuff that we need to be a good leader, we probably lear learned in childhood. You know, say please, say thank you, be appreciative, listen when somebody else is talking. All of these things, the ABCs were blown very early. Just as CEOs, we have to constantly be reminded of what we learned when we were children.
• 9:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's that great book. It's like everything I needed to know in life, I learned in kindergarten.
• 9:28
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And I think that is so true and even becomes more true today. You know, just with the onset of technology and screens. I mean, I think that truly we have lost the art of the conversation and really taking time to, you know, learn from each other.
• 9:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, but you spent, gosh, over 20 years kind of going through a lot of different positions at the Walls company, from like territory manager to like, HR and training. Ultimately, you worked your way all the way up the ladder and became CEO in 2017. Yes, I just imagined it that for somebody who's, you know, the daughter of the founder, it'd be a lot quicker of a path. Did you aspire to be CEO from early on, and was this a planned path to get there?
• 10:26
  Speaker A: I would say that yes. I had an aspiration to be the leader of our organization. My dad and I would do long walks, whether it was when I was home from college or even in high school. We started walking like four or five miles, but. Or on vacation. When we went, I mean, every conversation was kind of like the dinner table came out to the pavement and we would have these conversations. And yeah, I think I was intrinsically motivated to want to continue on his legacy. You know, the foundation he laid for 30 years, he had such. His dad died when he was 13, and so he had more of a tragic childhood where his sister had died the year before, and then his dad died at work, which all led to him getting into a gas station, like working for somebody and falling in love with it. So, yeah, so I was intrinsically motivated to want to continue his legacy. He died from cancer in 2001. And we did have plans in place, and my mom stepped up and she was gonn run it for five years. And then we had a plan B where our COO is going to step up as our first non family member and become the CEO. But, you know, with life plans change and circumstances change. And when I went after. So our COO, who was supposed to become the CEO, he ended up also dying with melanoma at age 43. Totally unexpected and tragic in its own self. And ironic that he died from the same cancer that my dad did. But that kind of shifted things for me. We kind of got out of a period from my dad dying ultimately to Mark dying, and then we had a lot of business things going on at the same time that were financial strains, that were competitors, changes in the market. There were big strains for our company where we kind of had to reinvent the way we were doing things. And then I went and got my mba. I felt like I needed to step back and get a fresh perspective. And for me personally, I needed to take a new litmus test for how do I stack up with other executives. You know, since I have been at our company for 18, I think it was 18 years. But at the end of that MBA program, 65 teammates and I ended up receiving from my peers the leadership award. And I think that gave me the confidence to come back and have a succession discussion with my own family, which then led on this path to. We planned for three years to make lots of organizational changes to prepare for this succession. And yes, and then I did become CEO in 2017.
• 13:13
  Speaker B: I mean, it sounds like you put a lot of work into arriving in this role that, you know, maybe you saw yourself in from a much earlier age between, like, moving around the organization really, like, intimately understanding the business from all of the different functions and departments. And then when you got into the CEO role, was it all you had imagined it would be?
• 13:39
  Speaker A: I think it was yes and no. Yes. We had just closed on, you know, this other large acquisition, you know, where we just acquired 500 new team members. And this was, you know, at the closing, the founder said, you know, the reason we sold to you was because we trust that you will take care of our people. And so I took that to heart and that was my passion. And I wanted to merge these cultures. Not only because in my MBA program I learned, you know, one of the biggest reasons acquisitions fail is because the failure to merge a culture, but also because I truly cared about that responsibility to give their employees to a home and not feel like stepchildren when they came to our organization. So, like, if they had been with their organization for 10 years, they started at Wallace with 10 years of tenure, which meant that they didn't lose any benefits or any things that that tenure gave them with their company that sold, they had acquired with ours immediately. So there were just things like that. And that was very important to me on the family side. There were just things I could not anticipate. And kind of going back to our convers conversation before of emotional capacity and what everybody's willing, you know, how much they have in their own bucket to be fulfilled. I just came to the realization that I could leave the position. I knew I would still be a shareholder. I knew I would still be on the board, but I could leave. And probably from a holistic family standpoint, it would be better for the legacy of our company for me not to continue. And, you know, it was not easy to leave that position. But as I look back today of where we are in this conscious decision to really try to be multi generational and move this to the third generation is truly in my heart of hearts what I wanted anyway. And so if that gave the ability for that to happen, which I believe today, hindsight 20 20, it did, then that's the gift, you know, continuing. Because it's not just a continuation for our family. We are blessed to be part of this family business. We are blessed that, you know, my dad created such a strong culture for the 30 years he was there, that this is the legacy that we have. We're blessed that my mom continued on after my dad died, but we also have, you know, 1200 plus team members that we're responsible for, just like you did when you were selling your company. I mean, you have an obligation to those families and that's what's really important today.
• 16:19
  Speaker B: Yeah. No matter what any position we're in, we're kind of a steward for the company. Right. We're only going to be there for a short period of time. And for you, you've worked an incredibly long time to get into that CEO position, and then you were in it for like a year. But it sounds like you recognize that for the greater good of the organization and the long lastingness of your family's legacy, that it would be better for you not to be in that position. So that's a really powerful statement of self sacrifice for the greater good.
• 16:51
  Speaker A: And I like the word steward. I do believe, you know, that is how as leaders, we should all look at ourselves as stewards of helping people be successful, giving them the tools and resources so they can flourish. Because we are stewards of other people and we do have that connection and that responsibility, especially when we're in a leadership position or a parent position. I mean, that is our responsibility. Responsibility to be good stewards.
• 17:17
  Speaker B: Hi, Kevin here. If you're enjoying this conversation and you know someone else who's working to grow in their career while staying present at home, I'd really love it if you could share this episode with them. It's one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they're proud of without missing the moments that matter most for our audience. What's the big idea of the book, and what leadership problem were you trying to solve with this framework?
• 17:41
  Speaker A: Okay, well, that's a great question. And when I was working for the family business, always from the time I started to the time I ended, you know, overseeing people and development and organizational structures, and my dad had such a great innate sense about how to lead people. I mean, he had some basic philosophies about surrounding yourself with people smarter than him and giving people the tools and the reins to be able to take ownership and really, really have successes and failures and learn from those. And he was super good at listening, just talking to individual people, asking for their input, asking what the company could do better. So a lot of what the sixth level stands for, which there are four core principles, and I like to call them conditions. So if there's these four conditions within your team, within your organization, within your family, that you have set up, the conditions for a thriving culture, culture for success, for each person as an individual to be seen and also be able to contribute. So that's the essence of the sixth level. And I like it because in listening to your podcast, I've listened to, like, the last three and each one of your other guests, like Amanda Slavin, I was listening to her podcast. And I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, her levels of engagement are completely aligned with. With one of our principals, intrinsic motivation. And then I was listening to Shareece Hughes and all of her experience as CMO and these other organizations and how she brought ingenuity to the table. And then you had Tariq Hassan, and he talked a lot about psychological safety. But the third principle and the sixth level is justness, and it's a lot about what he was talking about. How do you set up the conditions where people feel psychologically safe? But we call it justness because it's a lot around accountability and transparency and clarity and everyone knowing the rules of the game that they're playing so they know how to participate and win. And I know that you have had a guest that has spoke to mutuality. Mutuality is the essence of the sixth level, where it is based on relationships, and it is about individuals, whether they're in the family or the organization, feeling cared for. So those are the four principles of the sixth level. I hear them a lot from your guest experiences and perspectives, and it's super cool that they can be shared at home. So I'll just tell you a quick story. When I was in the organization and I joined, my parents had just done an acquisition and bought 47 convenience store properties from Mobil Oil Corporation in 1993. And I joined three months before that acquisition closed. And when we closed, we doubled from 250 employees to 500 employees. And at that time, our turnover was like 250%. It was out the window. There were so many things that as a mom and pop operator, we didn't have in place, but the scale. And all of these 250 employees coming from mobile, working for a public company now into ours. We're moving from mom and pop to a professional organization. So every year we did a leadership retreat, and every year we read a book. And the book that stuck with me the most over my career at Wallace was Good to Great, because I felt like after we put these foundational systems in place, we really were a good company. We had a strong culture, and we were good, but we were still missing some pieces, and we weren't great. And. And Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, talked about a lot of cool concepts, but the one that I liked the most and the one that was most intriguing was the idea of this flywheel. And what Jim Collins really never told me was, how do I create this flywheel? What do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do. And when I Know, like this flywheel will start spinning and you can feel the energy of the organization moving together. And so that's the beauty of the sixth level. The sixth level is taken off not Jim Collins fifth level leader but really from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where the fifth level is self actualization and the sixth level is yourself in relation with others. So now I'm excited because the sixth level to me is the simple formula for how do you create that thriving culture that no one wants to leave.
• 22:35
  Speaker B: What's the difference between somebody who has embraced this framework or system of leadership and maybe somebody who is following more traditional leadership of like, you've got to make decisions, you got to be decisive, you got to be commanding. That's what I think of when I think of a traditional leader. So how would somebody carry themselves differently and how is that different from like a traditional leadership approach?
• 23:01
  Speaker A: It's such a fun to debate with current leaders. I was just at a Vistage group this week having the same conversation and it is a mind shift change. And so many of us have grown up experiencing different leadership styles that have worked for different time periods in our history. But there are so many tactics that need to go away in order for the organizations to thrive in the future. So exactly what you're saying, like the idea of command and control, that was really developed when manufacturing was the core industry and there were assembly lines and people were told what to do and what widgets to make and exactly how to make them and where burnout was like this badge of honor because the longer you stayed, the more dedicated people thought that you were or that title gives you some kind of authority. And so all of that to me is the old paradigm and it's what we have to move out of. And a lot of our tactics unknowingly support that mindset. But the new shift is about people in your organization first feeling cared for, that their voice matters. They are seen as a person. They feel that there is this alignment, that their contributions are aligned with the organization's mission and purpose and that is mutuality. And then there's this idea, and we call it justness. Just because these principles are larger concepts and conditions and there's many tactics to get to them. But justness is about having accountability and having transparency. So it's like, how do we expect organizations to operate differently when our team is our employees and if they're operating in the dark? And so all of those things are justness and intrinsic motivation is just when those conditions are in place that you feel connected and you feel that you're part of something that's bigger than yourself. I always relate it to like a crew rowing and everybody's in sync and they know what they're doing and they know how they're contributing to the overall success. And then when those conditions are in place, then the fourth one to me is like the flywheel spins and that's the ingenuity. And that is when everyone's contributing to help solve problems. And I feel like as we move forward, the problems only get more complex and you layer in AI and you need everyone's brain power. You need the human component to take over the human jobs. And that's the platform that the sixth level gives you, is how to elevate and unlock the human potential and really have everyone contributing to shape that future together. But these are the conditions that allow each organization to unlock that human potential.
• 26:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, first of all, I wanted to make a comment though. I really agree with the transparency and justness component. It. When we were considering selling our company, we were very open about that and we wanted to position it in a way that we're always going to be exploring opportunities and it's could be us acquiring other companies, it could be us getting acquired, it could be us taking funding. And this was something where we just really tried to normalize that discussion and that like topic across the organization so that in the like event, we did have an event happen, it wouldn't be a shock to the system. I bring it up because I was talking to somebody recently on another podcast and he was like, that's not something we talk about in the startup community. It's like, yes, if we're fundraising, we're going to tell the team about it. But when it comes to maybe being acquired, that's a topic that's very hush hush and only brought into the leadership team. But we felt like it was really important to just normalize this conversation around it because we felt like it falls into that bucket of justness. Is that a good example of like what you're talking about?
• 27:24
  Speaker A: It's yeah, a perfect example. I think that yes, what you are doing in that being transparent and having that open communication is that you are building the trust and that justness is the oil that makes the flywheel go round. You know, people have to feel like they can trust the environment and so your openness to share is a way to build that trust. Did you get the outcomes that you wanted? Did you feel like your strategy was helpful for those outcomes?
• 27:57
  Speaker B: I think so because we actually had A failed acquisition. And that wasn't a secret, but it was a pretty big hit when it fell through like the day before we were supposed to close. So thankfully we had already been having these conversations with the organization that like, hey, we're exploring all different options and this option didn't pan out. We're going to look at other options. And so when it did actually go through, there wasn't a abrasive reaction to it. It could actually be something that was celebrated. Oftentimes in the kind of agency consulting world, world, if you get acquired, people are pretty concerned. Thankfully, we found a really great partner that brought the entire company into the organization. There wasn't acquire and then immediately do a bunch of layoffs.
• 28:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that what you're speaking to is another level of justness. That's where you know your team has faith and trust in you. They are in good hands with your leadership. And that's why it's, it's so important. And you can weather the storms. And I think that that's really important too, is that when these four conditions are in place, there builds more resiliency in the organization. Because every organization is going to experience their black swan incidents. And it's not what is going to happen, it is when it's going to happen. And are the systems in place that have allowed your organizations to be resilient? Your example is a super great example of resilience.
• 29:31
  Speaker B: It seems like the leadership you're describing is really about connection and care and relational intelligence versus what I kind of grew up understanding about leadership was more around like control and hierarchy and individual achievement. And I think because you mentioned compensation, I think it's directly correlated to how people are incentivized. Right. You're incentivized for individual achievement. You're incentivized to rise up the ranks, ranks of the hierarchy. And you're incentivized to be in control. How can you kind of reset incentives in a way that supports the whole health of the organization and some of the aspects of, you know, kind of your leadership framework.
• 30:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a very important perspective that every company needs to do to not just look at the financial measurements on a balance sheet, but looking at the relational operating system and rewarding individuals for what you're saying. How do you reward someone for taking the time to listen to direct reports to their peers? How do you reward someone for caring and getting this feedback from your team and incorporating that into your actions and what you do as moving forward with the company at Wallace, he adopted the balanced scorecard methodology in 1999 because Mobile, who we had just done the acquisition with, was Harvard Business case study. And the balance scorecard was something they adopted. I like the balanced scorecard because there were four perspectives and one was learning and growth. And this learning and growth and this scorecard that everyone's compensation was tied to had KPIs that were focused on employees engagement or focused on reduced turnover. And I know I mentioned before that when we took over these stores, our turnover was 250%, which was about 150% higher than the industry average. But by putting these tools in place, the scorecard, more transparent tools, more foundational relational systems, we ended up getting our turnover down to 30%, which was best in class by 2009. And I do attribute that to having the focus be on incentives around caring for others, around building this culture that was important to us and to see people being able to grow personally and professionally while they were at our organization. So I think, I think what you're saying is hitting the nail on the head about where incentives and focus and reward systems need to be placed on and that is the human development. Especially today when Gallup reports that 80% of workers are not engaged. It's a tremendous problem.
• 32:40
  Speaker B: I think most people, a lot of people are just coasting right now because they're afraid to be in the job market it and so they're like not exactly happy with their current role, but they also do not want to be out looking for a new job right now.
• 32:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And you know, it's harder and harder to find organizations and leaders. You know, the leaders set the conditions for how the culture is going to operate based on their actions and behaviors. And I believe a culture is only constrained by the leaders own mindset and constraints, you know.
• 33:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, and it benefits the organization. Right. You mentioned flywheel. So I have to bring this up because I recently wrote a manuscript and hopefully I'll get it published someday. But part of it, the whole concept of the book is applying leadership frameworks to family life and parenting. And I wrote about a flywheel in here. Explain. The currency of corporations is revenue and profit, but the currency of the home is connection. So how do you create connection? Well, I like flywheels. I think that it's a great concept for building like self generating momentum. So created this acronym called SPARK and it's safety, presence, attunement, rituals and celebration. And say if you follow this flywheel, you're going to create connection in the home. Curious. Since we first talked, and you were thinking about coming on this podcast. Did you maybe start thinking about, like, oh, I wrote this framework for leadership. But have you thought of any sort of parallels of how this also could apply at home for parents?
• 34:16
  Speaker A: Yes, definitely. I said, I don't know if it's like a curse, because when I hear people speak or I hear problems at work, then I am putting them through the filter of the sixth level. So I don't know if that will happen to you once Spark gets published and people talk to you about the challenges they have at home, and then you come up with the solution based on Spark. But that is what happens to me. But I say, you know, just putting it in the perspective of the sixth level. The mutuality is about the presence that you have. And I've heard you talk about on the podcast the difference of spending quality time, quality time not on your phone. Quality time where your child knows that they have your undivided attention, where you're asking questions about how was their day and you're not also making dinner and they're feeling like you're not listening or really hearing them. But when all of those things are in place, that does build mutuality. I would say justness in parenting comes to having some boundaries and also having the consistency. I have three children, so I know every child, personality wise, is different. But when you can be clear on what the. The rules of our household are, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, when you do redirect behavior in a consistent way, no matter if somebody forgot to do their chores, but everyone knows what, you know the consequences are for doing that, or you're redirecting them to do the chore
• 35:53
  Speaker B: or, like, how you're. Or how you're feeling in that moment. That's one thing that I used to struggle with. I still do today, is like, a situation could happen. And if I'm really regulated, okay, you know, the consequence, this is. This is what we go through. This is how we repair. But if I'm already, like, stressed and tapped out and dysregulated, then all of a sudden I'm like, you're grounded for a week. And then I regret it two seconds later. Cause I'm like, no, that's not how we handle this. I'm just letting my own stress change. So all of a sudden, now it's not in that kind of category of justness because it's really dependent on, like, how I'm feeling in that moment. And that's not consistent for the kids.
• 36:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, Those are two very good points. I think, you know, as human beings, when we don't have the capacity, our own emotional capacity, it is very hard to give back to somebody else and be in control of a situation. And that's why I've heard the phrase before that your bucket needs to be filled up. You have to have your own happiness and your own fulfillment in order to fill somebody else's bucket. And that's so true. And also what you said about when those moments happen, when you don't have the capacity to be there for someone else in the way you want to show up, then the ability to come back in and say to your own children, oh my God, like, that is not how I wanted to show up. I am sorry. I apologize because I had a stressful day at work. It had nothing to do with you. I am feeling really tired and that is not how I wanted to react to you. So can we please start over? Will you forgive me? And I think that that's the language of justness. And the more vulnerable that we can be as parents that to show our kids that we are really just grown up children trying to figure it out every single day. Because I mean, that's life and circumstances change and you have to pivot with those circumstances and but again, the more transparent and vulnerable that you can be with your own children. I felt like in my experience that is the way I wanted to be treated as a child. You know, like appropriate information, but treating me like an adult like that I am somebody that can understand what's going on and making me feel a part of the solution and not just, you know, you're a child, you should be, you know, seen but not heard. I mean, that to me is an old mindset that doesn't serve anyone going forward.
• 38:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, also similar to kind of like the old leadership approach was very much around compliance. Well, that's very much how, how parenting was focused for many, many years was around do what I say, because I said so. And now really both in both categories, whether it's, you know, you're a leader in a corporate setting or you're just trying to raise your kids. Like it's more about empowerment and ultimately connection. And you know, though, that's kind of like the aligns with the new paradigm of leadership that you're. You're describing in your framework work.
• 39:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And I did like what you said about rituals too, because I'm thinking so our family is Jewish and we grew up in a town where we are pretty much the only Jewish Family. And so we would, you know, sometimes I would go to the classroom and share the Hanukkah ritual. But I like the idea of rituals because it's something that bonds your family together, like what your family rituals are. But it is also a way to, you know, be able to brainstorm as a family. How do we want to celebrate this ritual? Well, you know, what ideas do people have? And I know in our own, like, greater family or my Wallace company's siblings and mother and. And all the grandkids, we shifted from changing holiday gifts to creating a Hanukkah shark tank platform. So we all give $100 to the pot, and then each family gets to make presentations on which not for profit they're connected to and why they think profit should win the pot. And first of all, it's a lot of fun, and it's a lot of fun to teach giving back and how important it is. But it's also important, you know, that. That the families now become very competitive, so they go spend time at the not for profit so they have more stories to tell about how the money really helps this not for profit succeed. So I think a lot of ingenuity can be used as far as family rituals and making them your own. And then I think the biggest gift is once your kids are grown like mine are, and they go away to college and maybe they go away for jobs. My biggest gift is that two of my three kids have already moved back to this area, and the third one is anchoring to come home. So that level of is, to me, the intrinsic motivation, like, it's something beyond yourself that you want to be part of this. And. And so to me, yeah, it's a huge gift of parenting, is when you have that ongoing relationship with your own children, and, yeah. Get to be in your grandchildren's lives, and you have an opportunity to do it all over again.
• 41:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's what I hope for the most, is that when I'm older, my kids still want to hang out with me.
• 41:25
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. And I feel like so much of that is created when they're young and these conditions that you set. And I do feel like whatever age the kids were, if we're doing trips with young friends or birthday party sleepovers, and, you know, just at every age, it became a different type of relationship, but at the end of the day, we're all doing stuff together, which I do think is a change when I think back to with my grandparents or my parents, but my parents wouldn't constantly hang out with us or go to concerts or go to parties, you know, But I do think that's a shift today that's very rewarding is doing more activities with your own children and. And having that be a continued factor throughout your life.
• 42:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, speaking of which, like, I was curious in your time in your career, which I do want to get into, because I think there's a really interesting arc of not joining the family business first and then joining the family business and then eventually leaving after you became the CEO. So I want to talk about that, but before we do, like, how did you bring your kids into your career? Because you just talked about being more involved in vacation, but also curious, like, did you involve them in your career? How aware of your career were they?
• 42:47
  Speaker A: Yes, I felt that's what my parents did an excellent job of, was having. I said sometimes the company felt like our fifth child because we talked about that child so much around the dinner table. But I also walked away with that. It was kind of what I was mentioning earlier. Like, they included us and their business that was supporting our family and whether it was our family business or whether my dad, you know, would have just had a job that still was supporting our family, being included in those conversations, the struggles he faced at work. And so I emulated that with my own children. The dinner conversations were like, hey, I have this employee, and I've had these conversations, and now I feel like I'm at the point where I need to have. You know, if your heart's not in it, then maybe this really isn't the job you should continue to do because you don't seem happy here. And so asking how they would like to receive that information if they were that employee. And so just. It's just one example, but how old were you when.
• 43:57
  Speaker B: When you were introduced to these kind of topics?
• 43:59
  Speaker A: I say the earliest age I remember, you know, just with my own memory was probably around 7, 8. I do remember my dad at the time we had car washes, and he would empty the quarters out of the car wash, and then he would come and bring them home and dump them on the dining room table. So I said the dining room table for us served a lot of purposes. We counted quarters and put them in the little paper rol.
• 44:24
  Speaker B: Little sleeves.
• 44:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, the sleeves. So he could take it to work. And you had to count out the right amount of quarters, which I think was 40. 40 quarters for $10, if I'm remembering correctly. Then my mom would, you know, do business, pay, pay the bills, reconcile bank statements, all at the kitchen table, whether it was personal or for the business. But when we were all sitting around the table, my mom's an excellent cook and she would make us dinner and it would be conversations about the business. And it was just, I don't know, it definitely stuck with all four of us in the second generation because we all wanted eventually to come back and work for the company. So we all went to college, we all worked somewhere else because we wanted to bring value back to the company and not just come into the company or have that be an expectation. But I think it was important to us because of the way my parents. Parents talk to us around the dinner table.
• 45:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. Kind of bringing it back to the book of the sixth level of leadership. If somebody hears what we're saying and recognizes that maybe they've been in more of the traditional command and control type of mode, what's something small that they can do? Just something, a change they can make this week to start moving in the direction of being more caring, compassionate, more focusing on connection and the greater good for their team.
• 45:52
  Speaker A: Yes. I think one thing that everybody could do today is have a face to face conversation with one of their teammates or one of their direct reports or one of their children and really just say, just checking in. How, how are things going with your job? How are things going with your life? How are things going with school? Well, tell me more, you know, tell me more about the challenges you're facing. Tell me more about what you could see that we could do to improve. We talked about disconnected employees before. And when you think about the frontline employee and the employees dealing with the customers every day, you know, you know that those employees are getting feedback from the customers like, I can't believe this software doesn't work like I thought it would, or I can't believe you don't have this product, or I can't believe that I didn't get this on time, or this wasn't how the product description was supposed to read. All of those comments are coming and you really want to create the conditions where that employee wants to tell you what's going on, wants to share this information, because that's how we all learn and grow together. And so taking the time to have this one conversation and really listening and digging deeper into what this person is saying, what their perspective is, where they're coming from, and also acting on it, trying to take one thing that they said and actually trying to make an improvement. So if your kids say, gosh, mom, I really don't like the way that after dinner you just Start cleaning up the dishes and then, you know, expect us to go whatever, take showers on ourselves and go to bed. You know, like, I feel like I'm missing out on some connection before I go to sleep. Like, so making a change in the way that you behave and seeing how much improvement you get from that and also closing the communication loop, like, yes, I can do this and I want to do this. I heard you, I'm trying to do this. And being vulnerable about the change you're trying to make. And it was so hard because people aren't always conditioned to receive information, to give information. But if we really want a family, if we really want an organization and a team to thrive, we must put in the conditions that allow them to thrive. And when we run against a hurdle where we're not getting that feedback or we're not, people aren't behaving in the way that we, you know, that is helpful for the whole team. It's where we need to do the litmus test on the conditions. What condition could we improve? Is it mutuality? Is it justness? Is it ingenuity? Intrinsic motivation? What could we improve within the organization to allow people to rise to their best self, to their, to their fullest potential? But start with a conversation face to face.
• 48:44
  Speaker B: That's great advice and I would've needed you to literally beat me over the head with that advice five years ago. Cause just in passing, it wouldn't have penetrated. I was so busy and I was just trying to keep the wheels from flying off the bus that I would've told you, I don't, I don't have the space, I don't have the time for that. Like if I have a one hour, one on one meeting, I'm barely going to get through it in time with all of the things we have going on. How would you argue to somebody who's in that kind of mental place of scarcity that like, this is really important, you need to find the time.
• 49:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, because I feel like the opposite of not finding the time is like the hamster wheel. You're on this hamster wheel, you're on it by yourself and you're going as fast as you can and no one else is helping you move that hamster wheel. You're like in a dead sprint race and you're exhausted and you're burnt out yourself. But to be able to find the time, and I call them the big rocks, and I think I stole that from Stephen Covey a long time ago. When you put the big rocks in first, then all of the other things, the little rocks get filled up anyway with the hamster wheel stuff. But the big rocks help you move a step forward. And when you move a step forward, that burden of holding it all on your own shoulders, that can't sleep at night because I've got this problem, this problem, this problem, it all feels a little less lonely and it all feels a little more collective. And if we can all move forward steps to feel collective, that we have each other's backs, that we know the rules, that we are all running in alignment, putting those into place makes it better for everyone. It just raises the boat for the whole team.
• 50:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for being with us today. I loved hearing about your journey with your family company and how that experience translated into writing this book, which I can't wait to read. I could keep going for like another hour, but I can really see how much effort and passion you put into developing your skills, learning, learning the organization, and putting yourself in a position where you earned that CEO title. So thank you again. I just genuinely appreciate you for joining us today.
• 51:08
  Speaker A: I appreciate you having me on. It's been a joyful experience.
• 51:14
  Speaker B: Thank you so much. If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We've got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow, and stay tuned.