IAM1187- Founder Leads a B2B Networking Community

Lee Eisenstaedt is the founder of Leading With Courage Networking, an all-virtual, B2B networking community for trusted advisors with 10 or more years of experience. He designed LWCN based on his 40+ years of experience as a senior finance and operations executive in the US and Europe and as a member of countless networking groups. Lee has addressed some of the larger opportunities he feels are being overlooked by most networking groups and has designed a community for who are today and the world we're evolving into.

• CEO Hack: Not being afraid to ask ‘How am I doing and how can I do better?' (ii) Listening
• CEO Nugget: (i)Think twice before you say something (ii) Don't suppose
• CEO Defined: Making the tough decisions and aligning the organization with a vision and a strategy

Website: http://www.lwcnetworking.com/

Flyer about Leading With Courage Networking: https://lwcnetworking.wildapricot.org/resources/Documents/About%20LWCN%2072621.pdf

Board member profile: https://96c07272-296e-4a09-b87f-e7ffc6dabd5f.usrfiles.com/ugd/96c072_02a3728cded748dc9913297e956d8e4e.pdf

Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE

Transcription

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.

00:19 – 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.

00:47 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lee Eisensted of Leading with Courage Networking. Lee, it's great to have you on the show.

00:57 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Thanks for having me Gresh. Looking forward to this.

00:58 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on as well too and have you back on, might I say? Lee is the founder of Leading with Courage Networking a virtual B2B networking community for trusted advisors with 10 or more years of experience. He designed LWCN, which is Leading with Courage Networking, on his 40-plus years of experience as a senior finance and operations executive in the US and Europe, and as a member of countless networking groups.

Lee has addressed some of the larger opportunities he feels are being overlooked by most networking groups and has designed a community for who we are today and the world we're evolving into. You can check out even more about Lee in episode number 357. I'm super excited to be a member of this networking group as well. Lee, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

01:44 – Lee Eisenstaedt

I am. I'm looking forward to it, Gresh.

01:46 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on what I call your CEO story. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing there.

01:55 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Yeah, my CEO story happened after 25 years with SC Johnson, where I was a finance and operation executive and I took an early retirement program and reinvented myself with the package that I was able to get as the chief operating officer of a top 5 and a top 50 accounting firm, 2 separate opportunities. That was a big change, bigger than I thought it would be. Here I was well-suited as a chief financial officer, and now I was trying to become the chief operating officer, but I did that.

Based on what I learned there, I formed the predecessor to Leading with Courage Networking, which was Leading with Courage Academy, which was a leadership development consultancy that helped people with self-awareness and just making a bigger impact sooner, which really then was the launching pad for what I'm doing now.

02:54 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate you sharing that. I, and you know, the journey as well too, I think so many times we never hear about the journey and especially all the experience and, and expertise that you have, but I love how I say so often, like, it's so important that we don't get attached to the how, get attached to the how as much as the why. If we understand why we're doing what we're doing, sometimes the how will manifest itself, it'll grow, it'll change, as we're seeing in times like this. But I love that you, it sounds like you've been able to have those strong foundational points. It's now manifested itself into everything you're doing now.

03:25 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Yeah, I think that's true. What I've seen, and sometimes I'm jealous of people like this who, have such a clear vision of what they want to do. Oh, I want to be the CFO of a Fortune 500 company. I never had that. I never had either clarity of vision or ability to stick with it. I ended up going like on a random walk, some would say in my career, but I had experiences that if I'd been very fixed on what I wanted to achieve, and I saw these people, they achieve those things, but they get divorced along the way, they don't seem as happy.

Whereas I kind of had a general understanding and I ended up spending 5 years in France, working in the family office of an ultra-high net worth family, starting a fine dining restaurant. I mean, you name it. I mean, there were things I've done in my career that if I'd been just fixed on an objective, I would never have seen these things, never done these things. Those are the things that really help me do what I'm doing now even better. They enable everything. So it was like a liberal arts education. You know, it's good to see a lot of different things.

04:33 – Gresham Harkless

I know you touched on the websites and everything you're doing there. So I wanted to drill down more about the Leading with Courage networking. Here is a little bit more on what you're doing, how you're making an impact, and what you feel kind of even sets you apart and is your secret sauce.

04:46 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Yeah, I think this happened, I've been doing work with leading Courage Academy and employee stock ownership plan companies and spending a lot of my time really focused on this narrow niche of companies. Then about 6 months ago, the pandemic is really taking hold. It doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon. So I start looking out at it and saying, you know, there's got to be an opportunity in all of this.

And I was saying, well, how can I take what I've got today and leverage it even more? How do I take it to the next level? I just started thinking about it more and more. I go on a walk for 2 hours every day. If I'm not listening to a podcast like yours, I'm thinking about Why is this so? So I hit on the idea of business networking and how we network. So I decided, what if you just had an all-virtual, all-the-time, you know, networking community?

Most of the networking groups I know are going back to face-to-face. They're trying to. The members are anxious about it, but these networking groups and their brands are all based and their infrastructure is all designed around face-to-face. I said, well, I don't have to do that. I can be all virtual. The biggest obstacle in the past to all virtual is no.1 knew how to use Zoom. First, they didn't know what it was. Second, I got to pay for it. But that's all changed. That barrier disappeared.

Now it enables me to offer an all-virtual experience for trusted advisors with more than 10 years of experience. So I really narrowed in on who I want to focus on. The CEOs, they're more than welcome to join, but I'm afraid they may feel like a crumb at a picnic with a bunch of ants. Because if you've got a bunch of advisors, they're gonna be just crawling all over the CEOs. Now We can do things to minimize that, but this has really been designed for advisors with more than 10 years of experience.

06:53 – Gresham Harkless

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

07:05 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Oh, I think it's just asking people, how am I doing? What can I do better? That question threatens a lot of CEOs. They don't, I'm familiar with the case right now where the CEO is a micromanager. He doesn't solicit feedback and he doesn't welcome feedback. My prediction is he won't last too much longer. You can't get along. You can't be successful if you don't know how you're doing from the perspective of the people that you lead and that you're supporting. So My CEO hack is to other CEOs, don't be afraid to ask, how am I doing? What can I do better? Then listen to what you're being told.

08:00 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business.

08:10 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Well, if I looked at a time machine and had to tell my younger business off and I don't have to go back that far, I mean, it could be just 2 weeks ago. Think twice before you say something. I have a habit of just, you know, speaking in my mind. Now some people will call that direct and, you know, honest, sometimes those just stupid. You say things that, yeah, they were right. But the question I have to keep asking myself is now the right time is now the right place? Am I the right person to say it? The problem is that I usually end up saying, yeah, I'm the right person, but no one else is stepping up to it. That's a problem.

But I think really thinking twice, especially if it's going to be critical or could be perceived as critical. I did learn a hack from Ben Franklin. I read this somewhere. He never argued with people, this story was saying. He'd always start out by saying, I could be wrong, but, and then he'd say what he was thinking. So that if it turned out that what he was saying was wrong, he said, see, I told you, I could be wrong. He had left himself this exit from there, but I could be wrong. Then you say, but I would mandate vaccines.

I could be wrong, I would mandate vaccines. You just have a way, so yeah, maybe I was wrong. The other one I have that goes along with that is, I don't suppose when you wanna get someone to do something, now you can't play this card too often or you get, they start to read it pretty, but I don't suppose you'd consider getting a vaccine or getting vaccinated. I just chose that one because it's just top of my mind right now. But, you know, I'll use it with my wife who does not like Chinese food. So whenever I ask her, Oh, can we order in tonight? I'll say, what do you want? She'll always, you know, say Italian or something.

But if she asks me, can we order in tonight? I'll say, Yeah, yeah, that's fine. I don't suppose you'd consider Chinese. If I don't do it too often, she usually agrees. But if I had just started out by saying, how about if we order in and we get Chinese? No, no, we're not doing it. I don't suppose is another CEO hack, I guess is that what you're nugget? Yeah, nugget, yeah. How to soften maybe the ask. Yeah. You've thought about it. So it's the, I could be wrong and I don't suppose. Those are 2 that come to my mind.

10:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Lee, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:07 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Someone has to come up with a vision for the organization. It'll be crafted or formed with others, but As the CEO, it's up to you to lead the formation and the communication. It's all about aligning the organization with a vision and a strategy for achieving it. That's why I think the CEO is not there to tell them how to do things. The CEO is there to tell them what to do.

Again, after getting buy-in and passing it by, being an inclusive kind of strategy developer, you don't want to develop it all by yourself. The other thing that I think the CEO has to do is make tough decisions. They can't keep kicking the can down the road. At some point, someone has to stand up. Do we launch this brand or don't we? Do we withdraw this product from the market? Do we terminate this employee?

Do we put out a statement about employee activism or what's going on in the broader environment and whether we support it or we don't support it? That's the job of the CEO. There's no one else in the organization that can do some of those things. So that to me is, you know, vision, strategy, and then making decisions for the organization that are consistent with those 2. That's what I think the CEO does.

12:47 – Gresham Harkless

Well, awesome. Well, Lee, truly appreciate you for that definition and that perspective. I appreciate you, of course, for your time. What I wanted to do was 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. Of course, how best they can get a hold of you, find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

13:04 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Yeah, I mean, the best place to find out about leading with courage networking is going to our website, lwcnetworking.com. There you can read about our differences, our benefits, and who the subject matter experts are like you, Gresh. If so inclined, you can apply. We'd love that our goal. We filled our first group of 20 in 3 weeks. My goal is to have another 9 groups of 20 formed in the next 6 months. I haven't decided yet if that's just a, you know, too easy a goal or if it's a stretch because the first group was pretty easy, which tells me there's a need in the market.

So I go to, You know, lwcnetworking.com and you can learn a lot more. I regularly post on LinkedIn, but I think going to the website really is the best place to learn more. There is one thing and I didn't even think about it. So now I gotta go look for it here. But if anyone in the audience wants a flyer and you've seen our flyer, I think. But if you want the flyer, There is a, we're trying to say, you just have to text the word flyer, F-L-Y-E-R, just text that to this address, to this phone number, 262-383-4770, 262-383-4770, the word flyer. You will immediately get back the link to our flyer, and you can download it right then and there. So it isn't like you got to send me something and then I send you back. No, This happens immediately. It's really a nice little piece of technology we found.

14:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I was gonna say technology is definitely a beautiful thing. To make it even easier, we'll have that information in the show notes as well, as far as the links and the number as well too so that everybody can follow up with you.

15:06 – Lee Eisenstaedt

You know the business a bit. I mean, am I forgetting anything?

15:10 – Gresham Harkless

No, I mean, I think you have your website. We'll have that in the show notes and we have everything as far as the flyer as well too for people to get hold of with you. But we can always add more information if you have anything that you see fit. So definitely make sure to check out the show notes.

15:25 – Lee Eisenstaedt

Okay. Yeah. That's everything I've got.

15:33 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Lee. Truly appreciate all the awesome things you're doing the reminders that you gave to us today and all the phenomenal nuggets and hacks that we can kind of implement right here right now, whether we're trying to get Chinese food, we're trying to figure out the best food and the best products that we should have within our business. So truly appreciate you, my friend. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:52 – 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.

[/restrict]