We’re excited to introduce People Leading People: the podcast where we talk to leaders and founders about the people stuff. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts!

Join us this season as me, Jillian Gora, Director of Customer Experience at Soapbox, and Brennan McEachran, CEO of Spinach AI, get actionable management tips from visionaries at Wealthsimple, Flight Network, Ratehub.ca and more. 

Why we started a podcast

Two reasons.

To start with, Brennan’s a first-time founder and I’m a first-time manager. We have a lot of questions about leading people. We were asking our questions to the people we admire most (over a coffee or beer) and we were learning the coolest stuff!

Instead of hoarding away all this information, we wanted to share it with as many people as possible. So, we’re bringing our network to your ears. You get all the insights – without having to buy all the coffees and beers!

The second reason we made the podcast is because of what we’re up to every day.  Spinach AI helps managers have better one-on-ones, team meetings and company-wide discussions. So we talk to a lot of managers (first-timers and seasoned) about how to manage people. If we’re going to help them, we need to keep learning! This podcast is one of the ways we’re doing that.

Who you’ll hear from in season one

Paul Teshima

Paul Teshima is the co-founder and CEO at Nudge, a relationship intelligence platform that helps you find and grow the right relationships that drive sales. We’re talking with Paul about how he builds and coaches high performing teams at giant companies – and small startups.

Alyssa Furtado

Alyssa Furtado is the co-founder of Ratehub Inc. and CEO of Ratehub.ca, the leading Canadian financial comparison site for mortgage rates, credit card deals, deposit rates and insurance. We’re talking to Alyssa about EOS (entrepreneurial operating system), a framework for setting and communicating goals across the company.

Derek Marshall

Derek Marshall is the CTO at Flight Network, the largest travel agency that is both owned and operated in Canada. Before landing at Flight Network, Derek spent time at various startups and enterprises, from Bitstrips to Rogers. We’re talking with Derek about inheriting teams and “hacking the bureaucracy.”

Mike Katchen

Mike Katchen is the co-founder and CEO at Wealthsimple, a global digital investment service that’s turning the wealth management model on its head. We’re getting actionable advice from Mike about building high performing teams at extremely fast-growing companies.

Melissa and Johnathan Nightingale

Melissa and Johnathan Nightingale are the co-founders of Raw Signal Group and the best-selling authors of How F*cked Up Is Your Management? An Uncomfortable Conversation About Modern Leadership. We’re talking to Melissa and Johnathan about avoiding the pitfalls of going from peer to manager, and how to know if you’re a results-oriented or relationship-oriented manager. 

We want to hear from you!

Are you excited about this season? Got a question you’d like us to answer, or someone you’d love us to interview? Subscribe and review us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen (and we’d love for you to give us a⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating!). And, of course, share the podcast with managers in need 😀

Check out the episode below. And stay tuned for more launches here on our blog (or bookmark the People Leading People page!). We’ll include our favourite parts of each interview, and full podcast transcripts. (Speaking of which, the full transcript for our introduction episode can be found below!)

Happy listening!

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People Leading People episode 1 | Introducing People Leading People (transcript)

People Leading People is a podcast about the stuff that pops up when you lead people at work. Join Brennan McEachran, CEO of SoapBox and me, Jillian Gora, Customer Experience at SoapBox, as we interview the people leaders that inspire us most.

Brennan: Hello, I’m Brennan McEachran of SoapBox and I’m going to be your host for People Leading People along with Jillian.

Jillian: Hello, I’m Jillian from SoapBox as well.

Brennan: “Episode Zero,” I think, is the title of what we’re trying to do here. I figured what would be interesting is just talking about who we are to begin with and what we’re trying to do here. Maybe, to start, Jillian, who are you? What do you do?

Jillian: I’m Jillian, I work at SoapBox. I’m the Director of Customer Experience here. I talk to our customers, I look into the data, I try to understand how people are using our app, why they love it, and then, create content and other kinds of tools to help them get more value out of our app.

Brennan: I’m founder and CEO. You mentioned app. I feel one of the things that makes me nervous as a listener or as a, I don’t know, subscriber to content is when the motivations are hidden. What is SoapBox and how does it relate to this podcast?

Jillian: SoapBox is an app for managers and employees, but primarily targeted toward managers to help make managers life a little easier. It’s a place for them to manage their one-on-one and team meeting conversations. Then, there’s a couple other features and functionalities as well, but that’s the core of our product.

Brennan: That part is also free and the way we make money is, eventually, by charging the enterprise for some of the other stuff, like the townhall functionality and some of the brainstorming tools. For managers, it’s really all about, “How do you make one-on-one’s and team meetings better?” and for the enterprise is, “How do you make your culture and engagement better?” I guess, with that out of the way, my main question for you, Jillian, is why are we even doing this?

Jillian: I think there’s two reasons. Selfishly, I think, for ourselves, I’m a first-time manager, you’re a first-time founder, so we just get tons of questions about leading people, the do’s and don’ts, best practices, like, how do you handle these sticky situations that managers inevitably find themselves in? Like, you have to have a difficult conversation with somebody, you have to put somebody on a performance improvement plan or you’ve got to do some weird stuff. How do you actually handle that? How do you have that conversation, initiate it? There’s a lot of intricacies there.

Brennan: I think what we want to get into is more than the Harvard Business Review blog post or whatever, where they say, “Okay, this is what a performance review plan is and you should do them,” and more about, “Okay, how do you get the person into the room and how do you sit them down? What is the first sentence out of your mouth and what do you say?” So that we can make sure that these things, which we know are helpful and valuable, they can actually, I think, start happening.

Jillian: Then, the other reason, I would say, is for – we’ve got a lot of managers who do use our app but we also know that, just by talking to them, we know that people have tons and tons of questions. We want to just do the information interview for you, so that it’s just, you can get all this insight sitting on your couch, walking to work, whatever. You don’t have to go out and interview a million people to get this insight.

We have access to a lot of the questions and anxieties that managers are dealing with. What we’d really like to do is just provide a place where those questions are answered by people who’ve been through these experiences before, because we know that – Brennan and I obviously have our own experiences to share based on what we’ve gone through so far, but we want to tap into those people who’ve scaled companies or grown teams at really fast-growing companies and who have some really, really great experience to share with everyone.

Brennan: On that a little bit more, what do we want – We’re going to do season one, see how it goes. What do we want season one to be? What do we want people to get out of it? Who do we want to interview?

Jillian: I think, in terms of what we want people to get out of it, for me, it would be actionable stuff. I don’t know how else to say it. I want people to be able to come away from each episode and say, “Okay, I’m going to do that tomorrow at work and see how it goes.”

Brennan: Exactly. I’m the same way. I listen to podcasts on the way in to work. If I could put my earbuds in and 10 minutes later go, “You know, I’m going to try that in my next team meeting,” or “I’m going to try that the next time I talk to this person who’s whatever,” I think that, to me, is the ultimate success for us, is, we’ve gotten some really great person, who, otherwise, not everyone has access to, and we can share that actionable, tangible thing.

Jillian: Then, in terms of who we’re going to interview, kind of a secret. I’m kidding. We’ve already done a couple of interviews and we’re just – Full disclosure, Brennan and I are podcast newbies, so just wrapping our minds around how to release all our episodes and things like that. I don’t know which episodes are going to be airing first or last or whatever.

We’ve got some great guests lined up. We’ve got Mike Katchen from Wealthsimple, CEO of Wealthsimple. That’s pretty exciting, that was a great, great interview. Paul Teshima from Nudge.ai, and then we’ve got a bunch of other great ones lined up as well. We haven’t recorded all of them yet, but I can tell you already we’ve got some pretty concrete takeaways coming out of the first two episodes that we’ve done.

Brennan: Okay. They’ll probably be tuning in and seeing the titles of the future ones so they’ll know how successful we were–

Jillian: That’s what I mean about being a newbie.

Brennan: –at getting the good folks in. We are pretty excited about some of the ones we have booked. I’m curious to hear, what do you think our learnings are going to be at the end of this experience, or at the end of season one? What do you think we’re going to go like, “We did that well” or “We can do a better job with this”?

Jillian: I think we are going to get better at being succinct, at really going into each episode and saying, “This is the insight we want to draw away,” before we record the episode, so that we can really cut to the point in our podcast. I think season two is going to have shorter, snappier episodes. Season one, you’re going to really get to know us. You’re going to really follow along on our journey, so get ready for that. Snappier in season two. I think that’s going to be the main thing, to be honest. I think we’re going to keep with the actionable – trying to really grab those actionable insights.

Brennan: We’re going to figure out the behind-the-scenes work that lets us go faster.

Jillian: We’ve already been learning a little bit about audio engineering, but we’re going to do it throughout season one.

Brennan: Okay. Last question for me is, listeners who are starting with “Episode Zero” because they want to follow along or it’s the only episode out.

Jillian: They just stumbled along.

Brennan: One of the things we’ve talked a lot about is community and having people follow along our journey. What can these listeners do, maybe, differently than someone who’s just jumped into episode 13 and wants to listen to whoever that person is?

Jillian: I think, good on you for jumping on the bandwagon early. That’s always nice, thank you. I think if you’re one of the early listeners, what’s great is, we’d love to get your feedback. The faster we get your feedback, the faster we can action it for season two. We’re going to be looking for, “Are the insights that we’re getting out of these episodes, are they useful for you? What questions do you want to have answered? Who would you love to hear from?”

If enough people in the community tell us that they want to hear from a certain leader, that gives us a lot of ammo to go after that person and try to get them on the show. I think you guys have a unique opportunity to really influence season two and how our conversations go.

Brennan: With that said, I think both of us are out of time. We’ve got to jump to our next meeting and you guys are probably, maybe at work. Subscribe, give us a rating, whatever you think it is. Hopefully, it’s five stars.

Jillian: Hopefully.

Brennan: Follow along and we’ll catch you at episode one.

Jillian: See you later.

People Leading People is produced by SoapBox, an app that helps managers and employees work better together by giving them a place to manage their one-on-ones, team meetings and company-wide discussions. Download it for free at hypercontext.com/free. Special thanks to our editor Joel North. If you liked what you heard today, do us a favour and give us five stars in the reviews. If you’re really feeling the love, leave a comment with a secret question you’d like us to ask in an upcoming episode.

What you should do now

Now that you've read this article, here are some things you should do:

1. Check out our YouTube channel for more tips on management skills and team building.
2. Learn more about Spinach and how it can help you run a high performing org.
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