September 18, 2026 – #1 Sandler Globally Brian Kavicky and Cohere Leadership Julian Blair Baldwin

00:00 INTRO 1: In the AM, radio network, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:27 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day on the roller coaster life of being an entrepreneur. The ups, the downs twists and turns in the areas that go backwards. We are here to talk about all of them, I’m afraid. We’ve done some 2,700 shows at this and interviewed, what, five or six thousand entrepreneurs, and I’m trying to create a huge big picture of entrepreneurship, and each interview is a tiny little mosaic that when you add it all up together, you get a really pretty picture of really pretty people doing really amazing things.

01:06 JIM BEACH: And I try to cover everything that could be related to entrepreneurship or small business, no matter how tangential. I wanna talk about it. Today, an amazing pair of guests. First up, we have Brian Kavicky. He is the largest Sandler franchise owner in the world. So franchise, I’m sorry, Sandler is one of the sales and leadership systems that has 2 or 3 outlets or franchises in almost every big city around the world or maybe just the United States and some around the world. And anyway, Brian is the number one of all of them. They have or bought various franchises and put together multiple ones.

01:48 JIM BEACH: Plus, they are in ESOP, which is incredibly exciting and interesting. I don’t know if you know what an ESOP is, but it’s an employee owned structure when the employees own the business, and it’s an incredible way of having the business designed to stick around and self-promote for years. So anyway, I’m very impressed with what Brian is doing. After that, equally impressive and exciting is Julian Blair Baldwin, he is going to be talking about leadership and trust, what actions to take to make better values and better decisions, how to deal with pressure. And we talk about his two-year-old daughter.

02:28 JIM BEACH: So it’s a great interview as well. I’m really impressed with what Julian is doing. And he has a new book out that I’m excited to learn about as well. You know, I love the leadership sales books. Some of them have made my career in my life. So anyway, excited to meet Julian. Very appreciative that you are with us here today, and we’ll be right back. Tell your friends, buy my book, Real Environmentalist. It’s award finalist.

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03:34 JIM BEACH: Welcome back to the show again. Thank you so much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great entrepreneur to the show. Please welcome Brian Kavicky to the show. He’s the CEO of a company called Lushin, which is a really cool company. We’ve had tons of Sandler trainers on the show. Sandler is one of the very, very best corporate training companies they have, franchises all over the world, and the franchises in those various localities, teach training classes and sales classes, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And the Sandler people are about as well trained as anyone out there in the industry.

04:16 JIM BEACH: Their systems are well trained and analyzed over many, many decades, many thousands of locations. And Brian, my cat just fell and her face was so hysterical. Brian is the largest of all of that. So it is an amazing accomplishment. Brian, welcome to the show. How you doing today?

04:39 BRIAN KAVICKY: Great. Happy to be here, Jim.

04:41 JIM BEACH: I’m sorry I giggled while my cat was, or I was mid-introduction, but very impressive. I know Sandler, tell us about Sandler, how big it is. All of the stats.

04:54 BRIAN KAVICKY: I think, well, I think Sandler, as far as how big they’re international, so they’re almost in every major country, where there is a high business environment, like Israel, Saudi Arabia, all over the world, heavily focused in the United States. It is a franchise model. And I believe they have somewhere just shy of 300 franchises at this time. So pretty sizable, as you said, successful, and Sandler in general is focused on helping companies grow because typically companies need revenue help 1st and then they need help with all the things that get in the way of revenue 2nd and that’s where we specialize.

05:33 JIM BEACH: Okay, I love it. And congratulations on being so successful, Brian. What, why do you think that is? What do you attribute that to?

05:44 BRIAN KAVICKY: I think our success is that when you’re, when you’re in a model, like a franchise, uh, the 1st thing that you do is you typically lean on the franchisor and say things like, I need you, I need your support. I need to do things. So very early on and next year is our 30th year, we did not take that stance.

06:06 JIM BEACH: Only if you’re with Sandler.

06:07 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yes, our 30th year with Sandler is next year.

06:11 JIM BEACH: Okay, congratulations. That’s amazing. Alright, keep going.

06:14 BRIAN KAVICKY: So, so we did not rely on them. In fact, we we did things that were sort of outside of the box. We ran a test kitchen to some degree. The, the, the, the, Lushin name is Paul Lushin when he, when he started it, he said, I’m going to do things different. So we were on YouTube before the franchise allowed us to be on YouTube. We did things with the website that they said you couldn’t do because a lot of franchise things are rules. Here’s what you can do. Here’s what you can’t do. Here’s the rules you have to follow.

06:49 BRIAN KAVICKY: But we learned very quickly on our own how to stand out, what to do, to stay within the rules, yet stretch the boundaries. And that promoted a learning environment, that promoted better results for us. And over time, it produced success. And with that success, we had made the decision that we are not going to be hypocrites. We are not going to give advice to clients or ask them to do things that we wouldn’t do. So we have high quality onboarding. We recruit all the time. We hire top-notch talent.

07:21 BRIAN KAVICKY: We grow and acquire other franchises that want to be a part of something bigger. And if you think of all the regular recipes, like if we were just called a regular business and not a franchise, that sounds like the recipe, but a lot of times consultants get in this mode of, well, I’m going to tell you what to do, but I’m not going to do the things I’m telling you to do, and the cobbler’s kids don’t have shoes. We made a decision that that was never gonna be the case.

07:56 JIM BEACH: Excellent, excellent. So how many trainers do you have now?

07:59 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, we have 13 trainers on staff. Eleven of those are selling also. So they’re revenue producing, and that is one of the unusual things about us is that we have trainers that we develop only as trainers. They’re ex-managers or salespeople, but they have elected to not be revenue producing in order to be a resource to us internally. So we have set up our team with resources internally that they don’t have to pay for, that we’re not building a cost structure on to make more money. Um, and then another thing that happened with that is that 2 years ago, we became an ESOP.

08:36 BRIAN KAVICKY: So we’re also employee owned at the same time, and that is why we have people like that that say, well, here’s my role. This is what I want to do. I’m participating in a bigger picture. And I know that bigger picture is going to be good for me.

08:55 JIM BEACH: ESOP franchise.

08:57 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yes.

08:58 JIM BEACH: That must be a first.

08:59 BRIAN KAVICKY: Very rare. That very rare.

09:01 JIM BEACH: That’s got to be a 1st and a great idea.

09:04 BRIAN KAVICKY: Well, it’s a great idea for when, so the reason that we did an ESOP is that we got to the point where we had so much talents on our team, that there was always a risk that one of those people would leave. And so you get in this position where they’re asking for shares, they’re asking for ownership, they’re looking at the other side of the fence going. I think that grass is greener. And we went, we have to take this away because we’re going to lose these good people that are part of our culture now and our clients love.

09:39 BRIAN KAVICKY: And so the easiest way for Paul to leave, as well as the rest of us who owned it, was to transition that so that everybody benefited and got something that they wouldn’t have got. So there’s no longer this focus on, you know, how do I become an owner? Well, you are an owner and you’re going to get benefits based on how we do as a we mindset, not a me mindset. So that was another strategic thing that we did that accelerated us.

10:11 JIM BEACH: Very, very interesting. That was a great decision, Brian. And how did Sandler respond to that? Like the corporate guys in Whereverville?

10:18 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, well, the corporate guys end up being the attorneys because the attorneys are all going, wait a second. We have all these franchise rules. We have, you know, personal guarantees that are illegal for an ESOP to do. And so we had to teach them about the ESOP. We had to show them why it’s good and we had to make commitments to them as to how we were going to manage and where that responsibility would be. And we worked very closely with them on that so that they felt comfortable in doing that.

10:52 BRIAN KAVICKY: It also helps when you’re the largest franchise, because, you know, you’re the franchisor’s largest customer. So they did…

11:00 JIM BEACH: Yeah, so they want to say yes.

11:02 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yes. But yeah, it’s it’s hard because an ESOP, I mean, there’s not that many ESOP’s in the U.S. Yet. It’s, you know, it might be somewhere around 1500 or it’s, it’s not a lot of companies and it’s, it’s rare for a smaller company like us to do it because it takes a lot of cash and it takes a lot of forecast predictability. And we had all of that to be able to do it.

11:39 JIM BEACH: Yes, that is interesting. One of the local grocery chains is an ESOP. Either Kroger or Publix. Do you know which one that it is, Brian, off the top of your head?

11:50 BRIAN KAVICKY: I think it’s Publix.

11:51 JIM BEACH: Okay, that sounds right.

11:53 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yes. And they, uh, loved it. Absolutely loved it there.

11:56 JIM BEACH: [unclear brief interjection]

12:00 BRIAN KAVICKY: And as a customer you notice it. You notice how the employees are, you notice how they engage. Uh, it changes the culture to, we’re all rowing in the same direction because we all benefit from this. It’s no longer about, hey, how is the owner or shareholders making money. It’s, hey, this is going to benefit me in a way that I would not have without this opportunity.

12:26 JIM BEACH: Yes. So what are some of the things that you do in the marketplace to drive sales through the franchise? How do you get so many customers, more customers than the other franchisees?

12:38 BRIAN KAVICKY: So one of the ways we don’t do it is through marketing, for some reason, we have not been successful in marketing and marketing doesn’t tend to work with, no matter what we do, and we have a lot of clients who are marketing agencies, and they’ve said the same thing like, oh, your business is a little different. The good news is, with our commitment to not being hypocrites, and we’re telling our clients how to sell and how to get business and how to penetrate accounts, we do all the things that we teach in order to be a model for that.

13:13 BRIAN KAVICKY: And the marketplace sees us as, oh, you’re [unclear phrase], who know how to sell me, you’re treating me different than a normal salesperson. And that, the way that we show up on those sales calls, if we’re, if we’re targeting that is is different than most people. The 2nd reason is whether we’re doing speaking events or we’re working with our clients, that the experience that they’re getting from working with us is a results base. So if I have a client who has a goal for revenue or things that have to happen in their business, we are goal oriented.

13:47 BRIAN KAVICKY: That’s another thing that makes us different from a lot of Sandler franchises is that people structure, training, and development in the form of programs, and we do not do programs. We only teach them what they need to know to meet their goals, and we do it in a very prescriptive way. And we, we, we tend to stay on topics longer. We tend to help their people execute more because we get results. And with great results. You get a lot of introductions, referrals, companies, people change, companies, they bring you with them because they got promoted, they take you to different places.

14:27 BRIAN KAVICKY: So we get a lot of business organically, because of the lives that we’ve changed and the companies that we’ve changed because of what we do.

14:37 JIM BEACH: But LinkedIn ads haven’t helped. Doing podcasts hasn’t helped. Nothing else has helped except just being damn good at it.

14:44 BRIAN KAVICKY: So podcasts have helped, uh, because, uh, a podcast give us a platform for people to hear how they talk, and I actually share a podcast with one of my clients, uh, because of that, and business does come in there because people go, I like how you think, I like how you talk. I like how you solve problems on that podcast, that works. But an ad does not give experience because anytime somebody says, hey, you want to talk about sales training or sales stuff, people are like, uh, I know what that is. It’s pushy, it’s gross. I don’t want to do that.

15:25 BRIAN KAVICKY: There’s been a lot of bad experiences with sales training, and unfortunately, that creates a marketing barrier for us.

15:31 JIM BEACH: Well, get me some sales training. Give me 2 minutes of sales training, Brian. What, uh, starts off with, bye, bye, bye, right? I walk into their office and say that, correct?

15:42 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, no, that would be terrible because then you look like a salesperson. Um, so a strong salesperson starting out in a conversation should be in a qualifying mode. So it’s not, it’s not, hey, I want to sell you something. Do you even need what I have? So to be an ethical salesperson, it’s, do you even need what I have? Do you need the solution? And I’m not going to sell it to you until I know that you need it? Because that would be fair to you. So a good salesperson is focused on the other person.

16:18 BRIAN KAVICKY: They’re not worried about whether they win or lose the deal. They are just going, I want to do what’s right here. So they’re removing pressure, and you can do that by setting expectations of, hey, here’s the decision we’re going to make. It’s okay to tell me no, you don’t, you know, I’m not going to pressure you to say yes, if you don’t want to do it. That’s okay. Um, they’re more focused on you than themselves. They’re not presenting things unless ask for a presentation.

16:52 BRIAN KAVICKY: So if you think about all the things that you hate about a salesperson and you flip all those things around, that is actually what a strong salesperson looks like.

17:05 JIM BEACH: I love that. And I’ve been through the Sandler process. And so you, you know, it’s been a while, but you just really refreshed my memory, the idea of setting goals for this part of the conversation and then having everyone buy into it and agree. And it’s not like you’re going a far step. It’s like, okay, for the next 5 minutes, is it okay if we talk about the qualities of the car that you currently have? Something like that. Is that a good example, Brian?

17:37 BRIAN KAVICKY: That’s a great example because you use permission there instead of forcing your way. So instead of saying, let me tell you about this car, you said, is it okay if I tell you about this, is it okay if we talk about that? And if you ask permission and they say, no, you should not proceed. So that is the benefit of permission.

17:59 JIM BEACH: That is a great. Great advice. What else are we mixing there? There was more than just permission, wasn’t there?

18:05 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, so the way that you ask questions, uh, telling people why you’re asking the questions? Tell me about your car. I don’t want to hear about the car I’m selling. Tell me about the car you have now.

18:19 JIM BEACH: Yes.

18:20 BRIAN KAVICKY: Tell me about what you have now. So the other concept, uh, that a lot of people miss is that human beings do not make decisions intellectually. They make decisions emotionally and you’re not going to change or do anything until you’re an emotional state that says I have to. So you can, you have a lot of problems in your life right now that you could buy solutions for that you don’t because it’s not a big enough deal to you.

18:47 BRIAN KAVICKY: So most salespeople stop at, do you have a problem, I can solve, oh, you need a new car perfect instead of, why can’t you keep your car? Why can’t you? Why can’t you keep driving it? Why do you have to get rid of it? It’s all that qualification too. Is it bad enough or meaningful enough for you to do? Otherwise, I shouldn’t sell you a car. I should encourage you to keep the one you have because financially, that would be a better decision. Now we’re using cars, an example.

19:25 JIM BEACH: Accounting software.

19:26 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yeah, accounting software would be the same thing. What’s wrong with your system that requires you to change because if you’re not going to change, you don’t have a reason to not use your system, then there’s no reason to switch to us because that cost of change of going to a new system is more expensive than the price of having paying our price to get our system.

19:49 BRIAN KAVICKY: And so if I have a mindset of, I am here to protect the customer, tactically, all the things that you do in your life that are natural to you, like how you interact with your spouse, how you talk to your children, how you work with your friends, if that is mostly what we’re teaching people to do by putting a label on it, telling them why it works so that they can be a natural human being in a sales call and not a scripted, robotic, high pressure salesperson.

20:23 JIM BEACH: What do you do when you hit, they say no?

20:27 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, you would say, okay. Uh, so is this where the meeting ends?

20:32 JIM BEACH: Well, I don’t know. How do you overcome objections?

20:35 BRIAN KAVICKY: Well, over, overcoming an objection. So it’s important to know what the cause of most salespeople are the ones that cause objections. So they say things or do things that, like, you can’t object unless somebody does something. So you’re triggering that. So one of the things we work with clients on is to stop their behaviors that trigger the objections. But let’s say we get one anyway. Typically those objections toward the ends of the sales call are all about risk. It’s a, it’s a fear. It is a past problem I have. It’s something I don’t understand.

21:16 BRIAN KAVICKY: And so asking them about where that objection comes from, and why do they have it, instead of trying to get around it and handle it, as you said, is now a discussion on mitigating risk and figuring out if you can help them understand their risks or not, as opposed to fighting the objection and trying to get yes. Most salespeople try to get a yes, making sure that a no is off the table is the actual proper way.

21:44 JIM BEACH: It’s my boss’s decision.

21:45 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yeah, my question would be, why aren’t we talking to that person in the 1st place? So if somebody says it’s a boss’s decision, I would say, um, so I have a question. Um, why wasn’t your boss in these conversations? Like what, why weren’t they involved if there’s a, it’s their decision?

22:03 JIM BEACH: They asked me to take care of it and bring them some people.

22:07 BRIAN KAVICKY: Okay, so what are you going to tell your boss about our conversation today? Because your boss isn’t going to decide to do this unless you buy into it? Do you buy into what we’re offering in our solution or are you skeptical?

22:24 JIM BEACH: Yeah, my my poker buddy told me that he had used you and y’all have been great with them, so I’m bought in. I got poker buddy guarantees.

22:38 BRIAN KAVICKY: Okay, but is that going to be enough? Is your boss going to accept, “my poker buddy guarantees”?

22:44 JIM BEACH: Yeah, yeah, I’ll take you to the boss.

22:47 BRIAN KAVICKY: Okay, okay. Well, how do we get that scheduled?

22:50 JIM BEACH: What are the other objections that you have to overcome, Brian?

22:54 BRIAN KAVICKY: Budget.

22:55 JIM BEACH: This is more. Yeah, this is more than we expected. Why does it take so long?

22:59 BRIAN KAVICKY: A lot of overpresenting and pre-presenting salespeople do where they they rush to a demo or they rush to a presentation or quote, people tend to have questions because they weren’t ready. So if you think of a proposal. If I said there’s a movie called the proposal and there is, uh, typically, you know it’s a marriage movie. And so if I’m going to propose to somebody, I shouldn’t do that until I know they’re going to say yes, a lot of objections come from proposing too early. So people are reading it and they’re going, this isn’t what I wanted. You didn’t understand me.

23:36 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, this is this is higher than I expected. So, I need to slow that down quite a bit. And if they do object, I’ll say, okay, then maybe, maybe you shouldn’t do it, uh, it’s, it’s okay if you don’t want to, if this price is outside of your budget, you know, let’s, let’s be done, uh, as opposed to trying to get it.

24:04 JIM BEACH: Let’s switch a little bit to leadership. You also have great leadership stuff at Sandler. Can you give me a couple minutes on being a better leader?

24:14 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yes, but the core is still the same. So if I said, what makes a great leader? If you know what a great leader looks like, a great leader is someone who develops their people and gets the best out of their people. So it goes back to the, who am I doing this for? Am I doing this to grow my people? Am I am I giving them structure? Am I giving them clarity? Am I giving them good advice? Am I giving them resources to develop? Am I am I demanding a lot from them?

24:46 BRIAN KAVICKY: Because it turns out that setting higher expectations actually causes people to love their work as opposed to low expectations of we don’t expect much from you. And so we spend a lot of time giving leaders the strategy and the structure so that they can empower their staff. And then also as a, if we talk about leadership versus managers, managers have to have something to manage too.

25:10 BRIAN KAVICKY: So a lot of what we do is we give them a structure to manage to, a framework to manage to, so that they can reinforce and actually manage to something versus being a micromanager, which is asking, well, what did you do and how did you do it? You don’t have to do that.

25:30 JIM BEACH: Right. Very interesting. Good management style. What else, Brian? Got about a minute left. What else do you have to say?

25:39 BRIAN KAVICKY: Um, I would just say, we’ve talked about a lot of things here and kind of played popcorn with a lot of different topics and things, but I think if people just have this mindset of: as I look at the way that I sell, the way that I manage, or the way that my people do things, are they doing it with a perspective of protecting people, making sure that they’re only selling to the right people? Because most of their customer issues are clients they shouldn’t have taken. Are they focused on the needs of others instead of the needs of themselves?

26:18 BRIAN KAVICKY: And you can say, I really want that for my team, but if the team doesn’t know how to do that, that’s going to scare the life out of them because they’re going to go, but if I, if I make it easier to say no, or if I don’t try to get the sale or I don’t try to push, then I’ll get less, that’s not the case. And that whole fear thing of, hey, on the other side of this is something good, just because it’s different or counterintuitive doesn’t mean it won’t work. And so I just encourage people of look at the opposite.

27:01 BRIAN KAVICKY: Look at, you know, if things aren’t going well, maybe the opposite would go well and attempt to take that little leap to see what would happen.

27:13 JIM BEACH: You remember George Costanza opposite day?

27:15 BRIAN KAVICKY: Yes.

27:16 JIM BEACH: Opposite George, opposite George is that episode.

27:19 BRIAN KAVICKY: And it’s, we show that video in training all the time.

27:24 JIM BEACH: Oh, really? That’s hysterical. That’s great. That is great. Brian, great job, great interview, and congratulations on your Sandler’s success. I mean, to me, you take a multi-decade franchising. You become number one at it. That’s an amazing accomplishment. How do we find out more? [unclear phrase asking how to learn more about Sandler/Lushin].

27:49 BRIAN KAVICKY: Uh, so to do all those things, uh, you just go to www.lushin.com. There’s resources. You can sign up for our newsletter. You can investigate our videos and our blogs and all the stuff that we have to get a feel for free advice and and how we think. And if you want help. There’s a way to reach out to that if somebody wants to talk to us.

28:16 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. Brian, thank you so much, and we’d love to have you back and your Sandler friends as always. Thanks for being with us.

28:25 BRIAN KAVICKY: Thanks for having us, Jim.

28:27 JIM BEACH: And we will be right back.

28:29 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question.

28:30 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Well, I think it’s a great question.

28:32 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: It’s great.

28:33 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Great question.

28:34 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

28:35 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Okay, that’s a great question.

28:36 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Yeah, it’s a great question.

28:39 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Those are two great examples.

28:40 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, great, Jim.

28:41 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Um, Jim, I think that’s absolutely absolutely perfect.

28:43 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That is exactly it.

28:45 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: School for Startups Radio.

28:47 JIM BEACH: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great leader. Please welcome Julian Blair Baldwin to the show. He is the founder of Cohere Leadership Group and author of a new book, To Zuri, leadership that outlives us. He’s had a very impressive background. He worked at big companies like Optum, Walgreens, DaVita, Amwell, and has had very big success there. He has won awards like the Dean Patrick Harker leadership award and got his MBA at Wharton. You don’t get any more prestigious than that. Welcome to the show, Julian, how you doing?

29:23 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: I’m doing great, Jim. I’m glad to be here with you, to talk about, you know, the book, um, and, you know, let everybody know all the great things that are going on. So thank you for having me.

29:36 JIM BEACH: It is our pleasure. Tell me about your career before you left Fortune 50-ish. What were you doing and why was it not big enough for you?

29:46 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Yeah, so for me, um, you know, I started my career as a pharmacist. Um, I always wanted to take care of patients and I did that. And then, you know, I saw that I could have more impact, um, by doing more going into operations, uh, business development, and I had the opportunity, as you said, work for many different great companies, um, Fortune 500 companies, large startups that went public. And, um, you know, what the thing that drives me, Jim, is, number one, uh, being able to create, and you’re able to create a little bit in corporate, um, but there are some constraints.

30:22 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: And um, the other thing that I like to do is I like to, I like to build things. So for me, um, being able to solve problems, build things and create are the things that I really focused on. So, you know, I worked at uh, very big companies, um, small companies for over 20 years, and I just want to do something different. You know, one thing that, uh, you know, that I see in the marketplace today is there’s, you know, there are just challenges in in the space of leadership.

30:56 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, I worked a lot of different jobs, uh, rightfully and wrongfully, and I’ve had good leaders and I’ve had some leaders that weren’t so great. And the common denominator that I see is, it really comes down to trust. And the thing that erodes trust the quickest is when our values, decisions, and actions do not align, particularly in those tough moments. So, um, I became very curious about that. Like, how do you solve that problem?

31:25 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: And when you look at all of the different, um, you know, Gallup surveys and and Edelman, um, they all point to, you know, very similar things and that that trust is has eroded in the past several years. So how do we fix that? Because, you know, companies that have a high degree of trust. Uh, they’re 50% more productive and uh, their shareholder return is 3 times higher than those companies that uh, don’t have a whole lot of trust.

31:57 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: So, um, I partnered with some folks who, uh, um, you know, who are in behavioral science, understand psychology and leadership science, and we started putting together programs that help leaders, Um, you know, hold the line under pressure, um, and make sure that their values, decisions, and actions align. So it’s something that I’ve been very excited about and I’ve been building for for some time now and we’re seeing success.

32:23 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. What kind of services do you offer at Cohere?

32:26 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Yeah, so we provide consulting services. We work directly with leadership teams who are in high stakes for crisis moments. Um, such as, you know, you know, earnings misses or um, times when, you know, uh, leadership teams are going through a major transitions or mergers and acquisitions, things that really put teams under pressure and that’s when things really become costly and fall apart. So that’s that’s where teams bring us in.

32:54 JIM BEACH: Were you offered a race-based CEO job?

32:58 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Ah, so, uh, the answer is, I wasn’t offered it and I wasn’t offered it because I did not want to, I did not want to play. Um, so let me give you a little bit of background on that. So I, this is back in 2022. I am out to dinner with my wife and I receive a message on LinkedIn from a well-known healthcare organization. They were looking for a CEO to run one of their subsidiaries. Um, I became very excited about the opportunity. Um, you know, I’ve never been appointed CEO. I made it all the way to SVP.

33:34 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, so that was like the next stepping stone for me. But going through conversation, Jim, I found that uh, this particular leader wanted to build a medical group that targeted black people. Um, for your listeners, I’m a black man. Um, I deeply care about the health and wellness of black people. However, um, race-based medicine or, you know, a medical group that targets black people based on race is just something I couldn’t get behind. Um, and I shared that with this particular leader. I said, you know, black folks need evidence-based medicine, not black medicine.

34:16 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, and, you know, I understand some of the concern, we look at the the data of of black people where, you know, some of our, uh, you know, there are health disparities and other things that are going on. Um, but there are other ways to get at the problem, such as social determinants of health, taking a look at education, uh, food, deserts, poverty, things that really, um, that that really uh, correlate with poor health, health outcomes, um, and and race is just a poor proxy for that. And I didn’t think that was in the best interest of Black folks.

34:54 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: So I told them that and they decided to pass on me because I couldn’t get behind that particular vision. So that was perfectly fine with me. They still decided to press forward with the idea, right? They, they, they still decided to press forward. But, you know, that’s something I just couldn’t get behind.

35:14 JIM BEACH: Right. I have a problem with it too, obviously, but on the other hand, let’s play the devil’s advocate, Julian, should there be medical companies that focus on black issues? I would say yes to that, wouldn’t you?

35:28 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, so the answer is, yes, but, um, we we don’t need, um, we we need. Uh, practitioners who are culturally competent. Um, who understands the issues of black folks, but to create a medical group that specifically targets black people, um, that’s something that, number one, black folks, uh, will be be very suspicious about. If you look at the history of how, um, the medical system has treated us in the past when you talk about, you know, uh, Henrietta Lacks, the Tuskegee experiment.

36:06 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, there was a drug in the in the 2000s called BiDil that they developed to target black people, which was a flop because practitioners and patients were skeptical about it, rightfully so. So, um, we need culturally competent medicine uh, medicine. We need, um, uh, obviously physicians in, in, in black neighborhoods and, and to care about the things we care about, but to actually, uh, use, um, an algorithm or rubric to target black folks based on race when you look at race, it, it’s not, it doesn’t drive health outcomes or health issues, um, you, we’re just starting from the wrong premise, I think.

36:46 JIM BEACH: Okay. I certainly don’t want to. I don’t know. So I’m just going to move on and talk about the book. What? What do we owe the generations that come after us, Julian? I don’t owe my children anything except stop feeding them when they’re 18, right? I think we owe them a little bit more than that.

37:06 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, just, just so, just to give you a little bit of background on why I wrote the book. Um, I lost my father at 15. And I stumbled into manhood not knowing certain things and made some mistakes because I didn’t have my old man to ask certain questions of. And, um, I wish he was there. I wish I had his voice. I wish I had his perspective on things. And then a couple of years ago, I lost my mother. Who, um, who I was blessed to have with, uh, for over 40 years.

37:42 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, and she left me a house full of artifacts and, um, I learned a lot about my mother just from combing through decades of paperwork and photographs and obituaries and there’s a lot of stuff in there that I got the opportunity to piece her life together. But I didn’t I couldn’t tell you what was most important to her. Or what she wanted me to do with all this stuff. Um, so the book stem from those 2 issues. Number one, not having my father, when I move into adulthood, and number two, not having my mother’s interpretation of the inheritance that I received from her.

38:20 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: So the book was written to give my daughter that inheritance. Um, It, it, it starts with interrogating the inheritance that I received from my parents and my ancestors, and then translating the principles that I learned through the course of my life. And then what I hope to wish what I wish for my daughter in the future. So many of us, we live these [unclear adjective] lives, we have a lot of wisdom. We distill principles and values over time. But a lot of times we leave our kids money and other things, but we don’t leave our interpretation.

39:02 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: We don’t leave our principles, our wisdom in the hard lessons that we’ve learned. And I didn’t want my daughter to make the same mistakes that I made in my late teens and early 20s. So I wanted her to always have my voice. And I wanted, I wanted to encourage other leaders, other parents to do the same, to leave behind the lessons and the wisdom to the next generation, not just, artifacts and not just money.

39:32 JIM BEACH: Well, I’m sorry about your parents. I’ve lost both of my parents in the last 5 years. They went quickly one after the other as so frequently happens. And the stuff you end up with, like my, I have my mother’s college yearbook. What do you do with that? You know? Am I going to be interested in looking at it? No, not even me. Not even me wants to look at it. So why would I save it for one of my kids to want to look at? Not even double squared, not going to want to look at it, you know?

40:10 JIM BEACH: I mean, there’s just nothing interesting in it. Um, you know, and so, but I feel bad throwing it away because that throws away my mother. You know, it’s that she kept it for 50 years for some reason, but it’s important to her, you know?

40:27 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Right.

40:28 JIM BEACH: And now, do I throw away things that are important to my parents, it’s hard to do.

40:34 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: And that’s the, and that’s the decision that I think each generation has to make. I didn’t want my daughter to start with silence and start from scratch. I wanted to give her something to interrogate. Each generation, I think, has to determine what do you carry forward? What do you transform? What do you leave behind? Um, and for me, it was, I did exactly what you talk about. I had to go through a lot of stuff to figure out what do I what do we throw away?

41:09 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: And for me, what I wrote down was what I thought was the most important and what I wanted to carry forward to my daughter. It was literally taking 2,000 square feet of stuff and making it portable in a 9-by-6-inch book. Um, and and that was the whole purpose of writing it to make the meaning portable so that she didn’t have to go through. I didn’t have to keep 2,000 square feet of stuff that my mom kept over [unclear number] years.

41:42 JIM BEACH: The book is called To Zuri, leadership that outlives us. Who is Zuri, and why did she deserve the book?

41:50 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Well, Zuri’s my daughter. And she’s only 2 years old. Um, and for me, I lost my dad. He was in his 50s. I am in my 40s now. So there’s a little bit of a clock that’s running. I don’t know when I’m going to go, but I didn’t want to risk her ever having to go into adulthood without my voice and what I thought about the most important things in life, such as love, grief, disappointment, faith, generosity, all the things that human beings go through and move through in life. I wanted her to have my perspective on that.

42:29 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, And I also wanted her to know about Her ancestors and what I’ve inherited, many, many times the generation’s coming along. I know I did. I’m a millennial, I thought that the world started with me. Um, and I wanted her to understand that. Her good fortune is on the backs of many that have come before her, and I wanted her to understand that and not have the world tell her something different before she hears it from me.

43:02 JIM BEACH: What are some of the things that are covered? Obviously you just mentioned. Can you go through some of the chapters and give us a little bit more detail on some of the topics, Julian?

43:15 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Yeah, so the 1st chapter starts with my ancestry, um, one of my, my, my 1st cousin, one of my 1st cousins was a part of the Greensboro Four. These were four Black men back in 1960 who started the sit-ins down in Greensboro, North Carolina, which sparked the civil rights movement. Um, The, the, the principle there is that freedom is unfinished work. Many folks think that because the lunch counters are integrated, because we fought different wars that fought for our freedom, that the generations of today do not have any more work to do. And I think we do.

43:54 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Freedom can be taken away just like that if we’re not careful. And we all have the duty in each of our lives and how we uh, stand up for ourselves, speak up, vote, whatever it is that we we do to claim our freedoms every day, we have to be able to do that. Um, the 2nd thing is that I talked about is, um, Uh, you know, I was sent away to boarding school when I was a kid, was a very difficult thing for me to go through. Um, And I talked about, you know, sometimes we all want to protect our children.

44:30 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, from hard times and and painful experiences, uh, being sent away from, you know, being sent away to boarding school when I was 150 miles away from my parents at 11 years old was was difficult, but I learned discipline. And I learned how to control my emotions, and it took me out of the Philadelphia public school system, which meant my friends did not go to college or some of them became incarcerated. So sometimes painful experiences are good.

45:01 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: And that’s something that I wanted my daughter, Zuri, to understand: everything is not going to feel good in life, and character is built many times during those painful experiences. Um, so look, look, that’s just 2 of the things that I talked about in the book is that, again, freedom is unfinished work. Each generation has to, um, fight for freedom in different ways. Um and that, you know, children sometimes go through painful thing, but it’s how we learn as human beings is how we learn as people.

45:37 JIM BEACH: Have you had any leadership issues that you can remember that, taught you big lessons, either times where you failed or times where you were successful?

45:46 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Yeah. I’ll probably learn more from failure because failure hurts, and it hurts in such a way where the lessons get deeply embedded in you. Um in you. Um, yeah, I had a situation where, you know, one time, um, I I had a team that was, uh, going through, you know, uh, some some transitions, and I was asked to, um, lay off some folks that, in my opinion, didn’t deserve to be to be laid off. And, um, you know, the company was under pressure. We needed to make the numbers, but the team was doing a great job.

46:24 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: And I remained silent on the issue and some people lost their jobs because of my silence. And that’s something that, you know, that stays with me and, um, it’s a lesson that, you know, it’s part of being leaders, is to speak up and stand up for your team. So, um, that’s one of the mistakes that I made and, um, you know, it’s one of those regrets that I have.

46:54 JIM BEACH: And there’s nothing you can do about that now, is there?

46:59 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Uh, not today. [unclear brief phrase]. It’s water under the bridge at this point, but you learn from those lessons. Um, so that when you’re presented with those, uh, those cases of those opportunities. Again, you can make better decisions.

47:14 JIM BEACH: Yes. And as an African-American, uh, what do you do different to support the next generation? What are you? Is there anything special that you need to do to help, especially when you have a boy next? I don’t know if we’re going to have a boy next. I’m sure you will. I have a book and I’ll show you how to get a boy guaranteed.

47:40 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Okay. Um, I think for me, it’s, um, sharing my story. I think that’s the 1st thing. Um, I, I, I read a lot of books over the past several decades and, Um, there’s a lot of stories of, you know, trauma out there. And I, I wanted to write something that gives instruction on, How do you process pain into principle? And that’s something that I, I haven’t seen a lot in the marketplace and I wanted to share that. Um, so that’s that’s the 1st thing.

48:12 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Um, I think the 2nd thing that we can do is engaging with young folks, um, getting into into the communities, talking with them, making yourself available. Um, and I, I hope part of this book tour allows me to do that to actually get in front of young people, speak with them. Hopefully I can learn from them. They can learn from me. Um, so I think it’s about dialogue and one way to reach a lot of folks is through through writing and that’s why I did it.

48:44 JIM BEACH: I love it. Great answer. How do we find out more? Follow you online. Get a copy of the book.

48:50 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Yeah, I mean, the book is, it’s uh, you can pre-order it now. It is published on September 29th. Right now, even with the e-book and the audiobook, um, and the print will be available on the 29th. Uh, you can go to my website also at JulianBlairBaldwin.com. Uh, you can also find me on Instagram, uh, LinkedIn and Facebook.

49:11 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. Julian, thank you so much for being with us. Great story and congratulations on the book. I hope it sells really well for you.

49:20 JULIAN BLAIR BALDWIN: Thank you so much, Jim. Appreciate your time.

49:25 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Well, that’s a wonderful question, actually.

49:26 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this.

49:30 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Thank you, Jim.

49:31 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Wow, that’s awesome.

49:32 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great one.

49:33 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: You know, that is a phenomenal question.

49:35 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer.

49:39 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: That’s a great question.

49:40 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: Oh, that is such a loaded question.

49:43 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: And that’s actually a really good question.

49:45 GUEST MONTAGE VOICE: School for Startups Radio.

49:48 JIM BEACH: We are back and having another brave contestant willing to play the quick ten. Please welcome Dr. Jessica Gold to the show. She has two fantastic businesses. She does intimacy coaching and also has developed scheduling software for you, your business. You have 5 people who want to go on a trip together. This will help. Dr. Gold, welcome to the Quick 10. How are you doing?

50:12 DR. JESSICA GOLD: I’m great. Good to be here, Jim.

50:14 JIM BEACH: Excellent. Do you want to accept the standard wager?

50:17 DR. JESSICA GOLD: Well, I don’t know what that is, but if it’s standard, I suppose I should, huh?

50:23 JIM BEACH: That’s right. The one everyone else did. Peer pressure, peer pressure, peer pressure. All right.

50:30 DR. JESSICA GOLD: I’m here for it.

50:31 JIM BEACH: Great, number one, your favorite creativity hack.

50:33 DR. JESSICA GOLD: So I love dancing. I love, instead of thinking about something with my head more. I get out of my head and into my body.

50:42 JIM BEACH: Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick.

50:44 DR. JESSICA GOLD: Definitely get someone to pay you for your product before you build your product.

50:51 JIM BEACH: Number three, name your top passions.

50:52 DR. JESSICA GOLD: So my 1st passion is my marriage, creating an amazing relationship with my awesome husband. Um, I’m also really into dogs. I love everything about dogs, dance, and studying non-dual philosophy.

51:07 JIM BEACH: Number three, the 1st 3 steps in starting a business are…

51:10 DR. JESSICA GOLD: First, find a customer who is ready to pay you. Number two, build the product. And number three, choose a growth channel and nail it.

51:19 JIM BEACH: Number four, number five, the 1st or the best way to get your 1st real customer is.

51:24 DR. JESSICA GOLD: Have someone from your warm network, try out your product and then refer people to you.

51:32 JIM BEACH: Number six, your dreamiest technology is.

51:34 DR. JESSICA GOLD: Well, honestly, it’s the transporter from Star Trek, but since no one’s invented that yet, then I’m going to have to go with WonderCal, my scheduling product.

51:44 JIM BEACH: Number seven, best entrepreneur advice.

51:49 DR. JESSICA GOLD: So when something isn’t working, the standard answer that people give of like keep pushing, trying harder is not, that’s not always the right answer, you need to make sure you’re pushing harder at the right thing.

52:04 JIM BEACH: Number Eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake.

52:06 DR. JESSICA GOLD: Well, we built something that solved my own problem without also validating the market.

52:11 JIM BEACH: Number nine, favorite entrepreneur and why?

52:13 DR. JESSICA GOLD: I’m going to have to go with Rob Walling. He is the founder of MicroConf, which is a bootstrapped community, but I do not only love him for the businesses he has built and the amazing community he created. I also love how he prioritizes his family and an amazing relationship with his wife and he really puts that front and center alongside his entrepreneurship.

52:35 JIM BEACH: Number 10, favorite superhero.

52:36 DR. JESSICA GOLD: So I don’t normally follow superheroes, but one that’s intrigued me is Harley Quinn. Yeah, she’s a psychiatrist that left a very challenging marriage to go find out who she was. It’s relatable.

52:48 JIM BEACH: Okay, yes. Well, while we calculate the score, Dr. Gold, how do we find out more about you, get in touch?

52:55 DR. JESSICA GOLD: You can find out more about my software business at WonderCal.com, and you can find out more about my coaching business for founders and analytical minds at bliss-science.com.

53:06 JIM BEACH: All right, fantastic. I’m just kind of pausing. Oh, oh, oh, Jessica, I’m so sorry. You got a 94, which is an excellent score, but one of our judges today was a Star Wars fanatic, and that Star Trek answer really kind of upset them. So got a 94. It’s an excellent score, but it is unfortunately a losing score. And so you owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla. Any color, any model is fine.

53:32 DR. JESSICA GOLD: All right, yeah, I really went out on a limb with that Star Trek one.

53:36 JIM BEACH: Okay. Worked out poorly for you, but I’m looking forward to a new Tesla for me, so that’ll work out great.

53:42 DR. JESSICA GOLD: All right, I’ll get one over to you right away, Jim.

53:45 JIM BEACH: Excellent. Dr. Jessica Gold, thank you so much for being with us, and we will be right back. Oh, no, I am sorry. I lied. We’re out of time. We’ll be back. Thanks for being with us today. Have a great day, everyone. Take care. Bye now.