IAM1066- CEO Builds C3 Innovative and Collaborative Teams

[00:00:25.60] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast. 

[00:00:53.39] - Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Mali Phonpadith of SOAR Community Network and SOAR Nebula. Mali, it's great to have you on the show.

[00:01:03.00] - Mali Phonpadith

Thank you so much for having me, Gresham. It's an honor to be here.

[00:01:06.50] - Gresham Harkless

The honor is all ours, and I'm super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Malia so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Malia is the CEO of SOAR Community Network and cofounder of SOAR Nebula. She is a TEDx speaker, number one international best-selling author, certified talent optimization leader, c three-community architect, and builder of compassionate, cohesive, and collaborative communities within growing companies and mission-driven organizations.

Her team helps to bring c three innovative and collaborative teams using proven proven science, technology, and ongoing training. Mali was chosen as a belief team partner through values partnership and the Oprah Winfrey Network and has been nominated for the Heroines of Washington DC award by the March of Dimes among many other awards throughout her career. Mali, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[00:01:54.90] - Mali Phonpadith

I am. Thank you so much.

[00:01:56.70] - Gresham Harkless

Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for all the awesome things that you're doing. And to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

[00:02:05.79] - Mali Phonpadith

Oh, how did I get started? Well, I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur way, way early on in my life. I came here from Laos, when I was four years old as a child refugee of war with my family crossing the Mekong River, living in the refugee camps, and then being sponsored by a local church here in the DC area. And growing up, I just knew looking around where we lived. We lived in DC, Southeast DC, which at the time in the early eighties, if you can recall, if you were even born then, was, the murder capital of the world.

So it was just not a very good healthy environment. And, I just looked around and I saw I thought to myself, how are we ever going to get out of poverty or fear or, just feeling like you don't have enough ever and so in my mind I knew that the only way out at least in this society through education and through, connections and relationships. So even at seven years old, I remember writing checks and doing bills for my parents. I knew that I needed to get educated, and I knew that I wanted to eventually own a business, and do something that can uplift my family out of our situation.

So that seed of entrepreneurship was planted very, very early on. And I just pretty much put my head down, studied hard, graduated top of my class in high school, ended up with three degrees speaking four languages, mostly driven by fear and driven by a desire to create change for my family. I don't regret it, but I did wanna be transparent about my motivations, which were based on fear when I was younger.

[00:03:45.90] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing that, and I'm a big believer. I always say, like, entrepreneurship equals hope. So it sounds like it provided that great opportunity. So I love hearing a little bit about that. But what did you mean by you were motivated by fear? Could you elaborate a little bit more on that? I would love to hear.

[00:04:01.19] - Mali Phonpadith

Absolutely. As an adult now the work that we do is helping what I call baby humans inside big people's bodies

[00:04:11.30] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah.

[00:04:11.59] - 'Mali Phonpadith

To help them explore the things that made them behave the way they did. Then, the things that nurtured us, not necessarily what came with us in our nature, but the things that nurtured us to behave a certain way, to believe certain things about ourselves about our environment, and when I say, operating from a place of fear and scarcity drove me and motivated me for that moment in time until beyond college. But then at some point in my life, I realized I didn't wanna live that way forever. I didn't wanna just constantly be worried and scared that I wouldn't have enough and my family would be okay.

So I started going through a personal development journey, a leadership development journey that elevated my thinking and my belief system, and challenged myself to start to work on traumas and fears so that I can operate from a place of abundance trust, and divine trust. Just knowing that everything that has led me here has provided me with so many lessons that I can now look at from a positive standpoint. And so that's what I meant by growing up. I was motivated by fear. Now as an adult, I've learned through a lot of personal development work that I wanna operate moving forward from a place of trust, belief, and abundance.

[00:05:30.60] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I appreciate you for going deeper on that because I think so many times we don't realize the effects that, you know, fear can have on our lives and and the draining, I guess, feeling you have sometimes by constantly feeling like there's not enough and having to work through that. And even if you're reaching and achieving success, sometimes it feels like it's not enough and it doesn't necessarily complete you.

So I appreciate you sharing that because I think so many times we're going through that, or we might feel that. And for one, I appreciate you talking about the work that you went through because I think so many times we think it's a light switch. So once you are in a space, you can get out of that space, but doing that work provides light at the end of the tunnel, it sounds.

[00:06:06.80] - Mali Phonpadith

Yes. The work continues.

[00:06:08.80] - Gresham Harkless

I wanted to hear, I guess, a little bit more about your skills, your talents, your tools, the things that you have in your tool kit, and what you do to make that impact and to help people and organizations grow.

[00:06:20.50] - Mali Phonpadith

Well, here at the SOAR Community Network, we're so committed to what we call building, c three communities within organizations. The three's are developing more compassionate leaders, so that's the first c, designing cohesive teams, second c, fostering collaborative cultures, and that's the third c. So it's compassion, cohesion, collaboration.

And it's a process. It's a framework that informs a practice. So when organizations reach out to us and hire us, it's not just one workshop that we're going for. It might be the step in the door to get the leaders to go through this journey of developing themselves from a transformational leader to a transcendent leader. And that's really where we design programs to, again, develop more compassionate, mindful, conscious leaders who look at the whole ecosystem and not just look at what's in it for me, but what's in it for us.

And then that framework informs, well, how do we take that information now that we have compassionate leaders who buy into the value set of building these types of ecosystems? And then from there, help them to design cohesive teams throughout the business units, throughout the entire organization, which then elevates productivity and engagement, a desire for human beings to come to work and contribute because they know that something greater than them through their roles and responsibilities, they can then also share their gifts and their superpowers.

And that makes for a collaborative culture. It doesn't happen overnight. This is a long-term investment and we have the tool sets using proven science, behavioral, insights, and assessments. We do ongoing training and we have multiple consultants and partners. So it's not just us. We operate as a consortium of experts who come in, and depending on what the clients need and what the challenges are at hand, we design the right programs to lend themselves to building first designing, then building, implementing, and then maintaining and calibrating the three cultures.

You don't become a c three culture and then that's it. People move, and new hires come in. You constantly have to be calibrating it. And we empower the internal teams to do that so that they're not relying on us as consultants to come in year in, year out. So over time, they save money on less turnover, more, more retention and engagement, and less money on consultants because we also empower the internal staff to do this work.

[00:08:51.70] - Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be, what I like to call your secret sauce? What I say sets you apart and makes you unique. It'd be yourself or the organizations, but what do you feel is your secret sauce? Is that ability to be able to see the forest for the trees and have that knowledge and ability to be able to translate that to so many different people?

[00:09:09.70] - Mali Phonpadith

I would say our secret sauce is that we put people first. Our core values at the SOAR Community Network are, one, do everything with love, and we are unapologetic about that. So one of our secret sauces is that everything is based on love and coming from a place of love. So even when we have our ideations or masterminds, we, share with our members that the code of conduct is, yes, you can offer suggestions and even critiques, but be mindful that it must come from a place of love.

So that's the first core value for us is to operate from a place of love always. Second, it must be a win for all involved. If you're joining our community or you're hiring us to engage, yes, we win. But how do you win? What are we offering to you that's gonna make sure that you drive those business results while taking care of your people and seeing them as a whole human? So it's not just about making people feel good. We still want you to drive your results, your business results, so you can be profitable, so can create a greater impact in society. So it has to be a win for all.

And the third is not just operating from a place of love, a win for all, but we have to create some type of positive impact in our communities and societies. So that's our secret sauce. Everything we do must map back to those nonnegotiable sets of core values. Are we operating from a place of love and challenging others to do the same? Is it a win for all involved? Do we create an impact in communities, organizations, or society?

[00:10:35.39] - Gresham Harkless

And so, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:10:46.50] - Mali Phonpadith

I have been meditating every day. Get up at 06:15 in the morning and meditate every single day. That has been helpful because we as humans carry so much with us. We're constantly having thoughts, thousands of them, roaming through our minds daily. And being able to reset daily has really, helped me to ground myself every morning.

[00:11:12.20] - Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call a CEO nugget, which is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice? It's something you might, you know, tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:11:23.10] - Mali Phonpadith

The nuggets that I have if I were to tell a client and also to tell myself is if I knew that everything is as it should be or it would be something else, I would have had a lot more peace in my journey. I would have a lot had a lot more self-compassion and kindness toward myself when I stumbled and made mistakes. Instead of blaming myself or playing the victim, I would have understood that everything was happening for me, not against me. Everything was a gift gifting me with more opportunities to flex my muscles, build my stamina, and learn how the heart can rebuild after it breaks.

So if I knew what I know now, having lived on this planet for four decades now, and I could go back in time, I would have been a lot more kind to myself. I would have made clear mistakes, and I would have operated more from a place of love and acceptance for myself, which then would spread to how I treated others in my life path. So that's a big nugget that I would like to share. Everything is as it should be or it would be something else.

[00:12:29.89] - Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. And, I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're open to different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Emily, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:12:42.00] - Mali Phonpadith

Being a CEO to me means learning how to, let everybody else in. A natural cultivator for me is actively listening, which can often be hard when you're a visionary and you have big goals and big dreams and you see the pieces and you just go after it. Well, what what I've learned about being a CEO is, yes, we must execute and we must make those big dreams happen, but we can't do it alone. And so being a CEO means actively listening to everybody's opinions and then also being courageous enough to make the final decision, but to pause for a moment and realize that you're not the smartest person in the room.

There are so many in fact, you should be behind people who are smarter than you. You are supposed to be the biggest ambassador for your organization or your brand, but you don't have to be the smartest person doing the work all the time. You wanna empower your superhuman, your superhumans within your organization to do the thing, to take ownership of what our ultimate impact is. So that's what it is for me, that's what I've learned, to build community and to know my role, which is to inspire and motivate and to let people do the stuff they love to do and that they do well.

[00:13:57.79] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Sometimes the best thing that we can do as leaders is getting the people, the right people in the right place and getting out of their way and providing that ambassadorship, as you said, so well in motivating and inspiring them is some of the things that we have to make sure that we juggle and do. So truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanna do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

[00:14:24.79] - Mali Phonpadith

I just wanna say one thing if you are a human being, you are a leader. You are impacting someone else's life just by your existence. So most of the time depending on what your role at work is, it doesn't matter. That doesn't define your leadership impact. So it doesn't matter what job you're doing. You are a leader. My father was a janitor and he was one of the most favorite people in his building because he always led from a place of love. So that motivation, that inspiration didn't matter that he was carrying, holding a mop.

He was a beautiful soul who looked at life from a positive standpoint, and he motivated and inspired folks who made ten times what he made. So I wanna make sure that people understand that they are leading and to own that leadership and to develop yourself as a leader, become that transcendent compassionate leader because you will create great impact and you will create great legacy. How do you reach me? You can Google my name. You can also Google SOAR community network, and you'll be able to find me on all those platforms as well as our company. You can find us on, all the social media platforms. The best one is SOAR, s o a r, community network dot com. That's our website.

[00:15:39.39] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Molly. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're doing. I love that last piece because I think so many times we can get so caught up in the amount of money that we're making or the amount of revenue that we generated or our titles in terms of how we're leading, but I think that we understand that we can create that ripple effect no matter what our title is, no matter who we are and what we're doing. We all have gifts.

We all have abilities that can create that positive impact in the world, and then it gives us a lot more ownership, not just of ourselves, but of the world that we live in. So I appreciate you so much for providing all these tools and leadership, you know, information for leaders to soar as they can. So thank you so much for taking some time out. I appreciate you, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:24 - Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.