Ep. 001 Intro to People-First Leadership

What's going on leaders? Welcome to Bread to Lead, the podcast where we will explore what it means to be a leader who puts people first. I'm your host, Dr.
Jake Taylor Jacobs, and I'm thrilled to walk this journey out with you. And to be honest with you, this podcast is not going to be the podcast of gimmicks and noises and theme songs.
We're going to talk about real things that can help take your business, your life, your organization to the next level. And it's going to be really great.
I'm excited about this podcast. Haven't done a podcast in maybe about three years, just trying to figure out what I wanted to talk about.
What did I want to reach out and connect with people on to continue to push the initiative forward. For those of you who may not be familiar with my background, allow me to reintroduce myself.
I currently serve as the chief operations officer at SIPS Healthcare Solutions, where I lead our efforts in operation strategy and performance to ensure our customer satisfaction and continue to increase our market share in the healthcare space. I'm a partner there too as well.
Additionally, I am the principal partner and founder of BizCo Capital, a global consulting firm dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs through comprehensive services in consulting, business development, marketing, and training. Some of the most notable clients that we worked with, the bigger clients were Amazon, Capital One, Coca-Cola, Delta.

Those are the bigger type of clients that we work with.

And honestly, when we first started working with Sips, Sips was a client at first until we got into the nitty gritty. I saw the opportunities that were there.
Donnie, as well as Karen, the owners and founders of the company. I believed in what they were doing.
And we went from a client consulting relationship to me coming on board full time and becoming a partner and helping lead the ship to the next level. My passion for helping businesses grow and succeed stems from my own entrepreneurial journey.
Over the past decade, I founded five multi-million dollar companies across diverse diverse sectors. Maybe I think now we're in our sixth sector.
I've had the privilege of sharing my insights on stages all across the country, including TEDx. I've been able to and blessed to receive all types of awards and nominations for Entrepreneur of the Year with the Chamber of Commerce.
Entrepreneur of the Year with Melanin Money I've been on Forbes

I'm aur of the Year with the Chamber of Commerce, Entrepreneur of the Year, Melanin Money, been on Forbes, I'm part of the Forbes Business Council, Entrepreneur Magazine, all the other cool stuff that only are amplifiers to what you are already doing. So I don't really put a lot of stock in that.
I just thank God so much for being able to be seen in some capacity by some people. I hold degrees from Harvest Christian University and Wiley College Harvest.
I have my MBA and my doctorate in business administration. And while in college, I got my undergrad degree in education.
So I still do training, educating, implementation, all those other cool things. I use all of my degrees.
So for those that say that college doesn't matter, it just depends on what your intentions are and the type of college that you went to to pull out the best of you. And I'm excited about that.
Even with Harvest Christian University, I'm now the newly appointed dean of School of Business with Harvest Christian University. I'm excited about that.
And the best part about this partnership is that Harvest Christian will be using all of my company's curriculums, books and support, supportive documents and supportive research studies for the entire school of business. So not only am I the dean there, my company is in partnership with creating the curriculum and pushing education forward in a new way.
So y'all, I'm excited. I am excited and I hate to kind of do this.
I feel like I'm just ragging on myself, but I think it's important to be able to set the tone so you guys know who I am and what qualifies me to be able to have this conversation on leadership with you all throughout my journey. I've had the opportunity to work with over 15,000 business professionals across 22 countries, helping them to amplify their performance and profitability.
Usually within the first six months, they see a 58% increase. It's just amazing.
And productivity, and in some cases, profit. Most cases, it's productivity, which increases profitability.
In some cases, the smaller companies see increase in profit a lot more aggressively than a larger company, just because it's easier to grow a company from 100,000 a year to a million than it is to grow a company from 10 million to 20 million. The steps are different.
And this experience has taught me that the key to success in business is not just about having the right strategy or resources, but about investing in and empowering the people who make it all possible.

This realization has been the driving force behind my leadership philosophy, which I call people first leadership.

It's an it's an approach that prioritizes the needs, well-being and growth of people we lead and recognizes that when we put our people first, the results will follow. So a lot of this podcast is based off of my newest book entitled People First, Result Second.
It's my ninth published book independently. I'm excited about that.
But this is the first book that doesn't focus on any specific industry. My first couple of books focused on finance and the insurance industry, which is where I cut my teeth.
And then the next couple of books were about buying and selling companies, which is where I cut my teeth. And my latest book is You're Not a CEO Yet prior to this one, which talks about growing founders into executives.
You know, I think a lot of people stay in that founders mindset. This is why our businesses don't typically grow to the capability that they can.
And this latest book, People First Results Second, it's more so just about the approach I take when transforming companies. And so after buying and selling a couple of companies and after growing a couple of companies from scratch to multi-millions of dollars, each one of my companies have crossed a million.
The biggest thing that I've noticed was that in turning around a company that we buy or growing a company intrinsically from the beginning, it all stops and starts with the people that are helping you take the company to the next level. Even when going into departments with a SIPS and health care facilities and as we transform health care facilities through sterile processing, it's literally the same thing.
I feel like a lot of people technically know what to do and intrins, a lot of people want to do the right thing. But that development piece of actually investing into the number one asset of any business, which is people taking the time to train and develop and getting the most out of them, finding their purpose.
Those are the things that completely transcend organizations. So even when coming on board with SIPs, my biggest focus was who are the people that I'm building with and how can I start pouring into them immediately to get them to buy in to a new system, into a new structure.
And all too often people typically when you go into new organizations, they immediately start talking about systems and technology and AI and sales and all of this. And they never connected with the very people that are going to be called to actually execute on the ideas that you have.
So getting people to buy in to that thought process and buy into a people first type of leadership style, you know, that's the hardest part. But once they buy in and you can transform any organization or any department, when you have people that are bought in that care about moving the company forward.
And I must admit, this wasn't always my philosophy. Early in my leadership journey, I fell into the trap of thinking that being a great leader meant being the smartest person in the room, having all of the answers and driving results at all costs.
I pushed my team hard and often at the expense of their well-being and morale, because I believe that was what it took to be successful. And to be honest, when you look at a lot of the organizations or companies that made it to the top, that was usually their MO.
It was a totalitarian type of leadership structure from top down. And ultimately, when you look at the health of that organization and the leaders that were there, they're all run down, beat up if they decided to stay.
But most people try to get out as fast as they can. And so when I started to really do research on these companies that I looked up to, but how bad they failed when things hit the fan, I began to start kind of looking at things a little bit differently.
And to be honest, there were two things that were kind of my wake up call. My first one, it was when I experienced a series of feedback from my team during the 360 degree review, the words unapproachable, arrogant, and only cares about results stung me really hard.
But it also forced me to confront the impact my leadership style was having on those around me. Were we making money? Yes.
Were they able to take care of their families? Yes. And to me, I'm like, man, forget everything else.
Like you're getting paid more than you ever got paid before. You're winning more than you ever won before.
But at the cost of what?

At the cost of what? And in the insurance finance world where I first started, you know, the retention, people were rolling in and rolling out. They just don't fit.
But in truth, my leadership style only fit a certain group of people. And those group of people are amongst the anomaly or the small group

The majority of people care about having a connection to the people that or the person that is leading them. And I think that's important.
And we miss that. We miss the heartbeat in corporate America.
We miss it's so cold and so unfriendly that people don't want to be there. And here's the funniest thing that I found out after talking to over 15,000 business professionals in 22 different countries, especially the business professionals that went and started their own companies.
Most of them never wanted to leave the company that they were with, but because of the mistreatment or because of the lack of accountability or because they're not being heard and their ideas even supported with data are not being considered. That's what made them leave and go to create something else.
And also, you saw a lot of good leaders that once they felt like there was nothing else that they could learn from that leadership and there were no ways for them to become a peer or to promote up. That's another reason why they left.
So creating an organization where you can always curate learning opportunities and promotions if possible, those are the things that keep top talent long-term. The second wake-up call is when I lost my grandfather who had been my leadership role model growing up.
He was tough. He was fair, though.
He poured into a lot of people. But when I began to start listening to his former colleagues and employees share their stories about his kindness and his mentorship and his ability to make people feel valued, I realized that his true leadership legacy wasn't about the deals that he closed or the company that he sold or the profits that he generated.
Although I thought that that's what it was about, but it was about the lives that he touched and the people that he lifted up. So I had a great example of that.
And then when I saw that, I'm looking at what people said my grandfather was versus what I thought he was. And then what my team is saying that I am.
And I'm looking at those comparatively and I'm like, wow, if I can find a way to do what my grandfather did in the hearts of people, but still drive results, what an amazing combination could it be? And these experiences set me on a journey of deep reflection and learning. I immersed myself in the study of leadership philosophies and sought out mentors and role models who embodied a people's first approach, at least I thought.
And slowly but surely, I began to experiment with new ways of leading that prioritize empathy, compassion, and servant leadership. And to be honest with you, I went to that Bible.
I opened up that book and I looked at the life of Jesus and I look at the life of who I'm supposed to be modeling myself after as a man that is chasing after Christ and chasing to be just like him. And I realized that although he pushed the needle and although he got people to do amazing things, although he drove results that are still being impacted to this day, he led with empathy, compassion and a servant leadership.
And then when it came to those that were trying to distract from there, that's when you saw how he cut off and he showed no mercy as it pertained to moving the mission forward. But when it came to how he connected with people, now he embodied that God like nature.
That is what I was missing. I was missing God in my leadership strategy.
And I'm sorry to be all God, God, this and Christian, Christian, that if you're not a follower, you can literally take the meat off the bone and leave whatever you do not like. But what I am telling you is that when I brought God into the mix of my business, I started actually caring about people and pushing them to their, to their potential, their greatness, not taking any crap, but showing a little bit more heart.
You wouldn't even imagine the type of transformation we were seeing with our clients, the transformation we were seeing amongst ourselves, and the transformation I was seeing amongst my own self. I was like the Grinch that had no heart.
And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm feeling again. Is that a heart? That's what I felt like.
And the results were transformative. I shifted my focus to supporting and empowering my team.
I saw engagement, creativity, and productivity soar past my imagination. I discovered that when people feel valued, heard, and cared for, they're willing to go above and beyond, run through a brick wall, jump off of a bridge with no parachute, not because they have to, but because they want to.
This journey ultimately inspired me to write my book, People First Result Second. And I started actually writing this book after my second book, but I couldn't find it in

me to launch the book because I didn't feel like I got it yet. And so this book, I've been honestly

working on the last eight or nine years, pulling stuff out, pulling stuff together. And it wasn't

until I got with Sips and I'm looking at the healthcare space and I'm looking at these

organizations with such good talent, but why are they not getting the best out of each other? Why are they not communicating with each other? Why does it seem like everyone knows the problem, but no one has the solution? And that's when it dawned on me, this book that I've been sitting on, it needs to be launching now. It needs to be launching today so I can have a conversation that can push and pull leadership specifically in health care gee whiz we want the people in health care to actually like each other love each other go to back for each other because we entrust our lives in the hands of these amazing professionals and so that's why the people first result second book came out a year or two earlier than it was supposed to, because I was supposed to, I felt like I was called to.
And in this book, I codified the principles and practices of people first leadership that I've learned through trial and error, and also that I've studied through case studies of exemplary executives and leaders that turned

around Fortune 500 companies and the likes of them. The book has resonated with so many readers.
I realized that there was a hunger for more honest conversations about what it really takes to lead in a way that brings out the best in people. I mean, so with the people that if you're listening into this right now, this is before June 21st, 2024 is currently May 6th.
And I have not launched my book yet, but the people that I have given the book to for them to read, it's been absolutely mind boggling and blowing the transformation that they've made. The enagnoresis, Shakespeare used the concept of enagnoresis, which is to come to the initial point of awareness, which is why am I doing this in the first place? And that's the key that I want to bring out.
Leadership development is so filling that people would yearn to come back to work because they love what they are becoming and who they are becoming. That's when you know that you have something.
And this is why I created this podcast, Bread to Lead, because a lot of people say that you're born to lead. Either you have it or you don't.
But I say bread to lead. You can breed leadership.
If I get somebody and I put them in an environment that allows for them to become the best Even if they don't become the leader that can lead an entire hospital or a company They can become a leader that can absolutely change the dynamics of their own life And dr. Miles Monroe had a saying Transforming leaders to be leaders of change Change agents and I feel calling to pick that up and to really push the narrative of leadership.
It doesn't matter if you're ready to be a manager. The first thing you have to lead is yourself.
The God like inside of you, that spirit, that purpose, that inside of you, that God gave you, that thing that makes you different. You lead that first.
And when you lead that, people want to follow your leadership because of how you first lead yourself. And those are the biggest reasons why this podcast was created to teach you that leadership is bred through exposure, through environment, through being put through the fire and coming out in a much better way.
So this is like my way of continuing the conversation and diving deeper into the art and the science of people first leadership. Each episode will explore a different facet of this approach from building trust and psychological safety to communicating with empathy and transparency to developing and empowering our own teams and so much more.
I'll share stories from my own leadership journey, the successes, the failures and the lessons learned. And I'll invite other leaders who embody these principles to share their insights and experiences.
My hope is that through these candid conversations, you and I, we can all learn and grow together and become the kind of leaders that our people and our organizations need us to be. Because here's the thing.
People first leadership isn't just a feel good philosophy. It's a competitive advantage.
In today's fast paced, ever changing business landscape, the organizations that will thrive are the ones that can attract, retain, retain and engage top talent. And the leaders who will rise to the top are the ones who know how to bring out the best in their people.
But people first leadership is also more than just a means to an end. It's a recognition of the fundamental humanity and potential in every person we lead.
It's a commitment to creating workplaces where people can thrive, not just survive. And it's a vision for a world where success is measured, not just in dollars and cents, but in the positive impact we have on the lives of others.
This is the kind of leadership that I believe we need more in the world today. It's the kind of leadership that I aspire to embody every day, even though I know I'll never achieve perfection.
And it's the kind of leadership that I invite you to explore with me on this podcast journey. So what can you expect from bread to lead? Each episode will dive deep into specific aspect of people first leadership, exploring the research, best practices, and real world examples that bring principles to life.
We'll cover topics like the neuroscience of trust and psychological safety and how to create an environment where people feel safe to take risks and speak up. The power of empathetic communication and how to have difficult conversations with care and compassion.
The art of giving and receiving feedback and how to use it as a tool for growth and development. The importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how to build teams that reflect the leverage that reflect and leverage the full spectrum of human potential.
When I say diversity, equity, and inclusion, I'm not talking about the colors of our skin. I'm talking about the backgrounds that we've had, the equity of mind that we bring to the table, the inclusion of experiences that can create a world, a workplace where we actually embrace the differences that each of us have that makes us better at connecting with each other.
We'll talk about the future of work and how to lead in an age of automation, globalization and constant change. Throughout these explorations, I'll be sharing my hard won lessons and failures, many more failures than wins and inviting other leaders to do the same.
You'll hear from CEOs, entrepreneurs, authors, and real thought leaders who are at the forefront of the People First leadership movement and who have powerful stories and insights to share. But this podcast isn't just about me sharing my expertise or showcasing other successful leaders.
It's about starting a conversation and building a community around these ideas because the truth is, none of us have all the answers. We're all on this leadership journey together, learning and growing each day.
That's why I wanna hear from you. After each episode, I'll be posing questions and challenges for you to reflect on and apply in your own leadership practice.

I invite you to share your thoughts, experiences and questions with me and with the Bread to Lead community.

You can reach out to me via email, social media, through the comment section of our websites.

However you can, you can reach out to us. We'll give you ways for you to reach out.
My commitment is that me and my team will be responsive as possible and engage with the community to learn from you as much as I hope that you learn from us. Because ultimately, that's what People First Leadership is about, creating a virtuous cycle of growth where we lift each other up and bring out the best in one another.

So whether you're a seasoned executive or a first-time manager,

whether you lead a team of five or an organization of 5,000,

I hope you'll join me on this quest to put people first and watch the results

follow.

If you're ready to take your leadership to the next level,

then I invite you to subscribe to the Bread to Lead podcast on any of your favorite podcast platforms. And it'll be so grateful.
And I'll be so grateful to have you on this journey with me. And I can't wait to see where it takes us together.
I believe we can change and create a world where every leader is equipped and inspired to bring out the best in their people and where every person has the opportunity to thrive and make their unique contribution. Guess what? This podcast, I'm not going to be perfect.
I'm not editing anything. I'm not making it look glamorous because leadership is not pretty.
It's ugly. It's full of mistakes.
It's full of ums and ifs and question marks and sad faces and bad days. But the beautiful thing about leadership is that when you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, you learn the lessons that were taught to you in whatever losses that you had, and you instill it into others so we can continue to move each other forward.

So let's get started. Our next episode, we'll be diving into the first key principle of people first leadership, redefining what leadership really means in the 21st century.
I'll be sharing some eye-opening research on how our conceptions of leadership are shifting.

And I'll give you a behind-the-scenes look how our conceptions of leadership are shifting.

And I'll give you a behind-the-scenes look at my own journey of redefining my leadership style. You guys, if you check out my YouTube or if you're on LinkedIn or any other platforms that I'm on, you'll also be able to see BTS behind the scenes of me actually leading and growing my organization in my team because I think that it's good for you to actually see what it takes, as well as hearing the conversations that you and I are going to have.
Until then, remember, leadership isn't about perfection. It's about progress.
It's about waking up each day and choosing to be a little bit better than you were the day before. It's about having the courage to be vulnerable, to admit when you don't have all the answers and keep learning and growing.
And most importantly, it's about recognizing that leadership isn't about you. Scripture says the greatest among us will be a servant of all.
If you want to do great things, learn how to serve many people. It's about the people you serve, the lives you touch, and the legacy you leave.
So here's my challenge to you as we embark on this journey together. Start each day by asking yourself, how can I put my people first today? How can I be of service to others and help them achieve their highest potential? If you can keep that question at the center of your leadership practice,

I have no doubt in my mind that you'll achieve extraordinary results,

not just for your organization, but for yourself and for the world.

Thank you for joining me on the first episode of Bread to Lead.

I am your host, Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs,

and I'm honored to be your guide on this leadership journey.

Let's go lead with our people first. Peace.