The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
Mastering Business and Mental Health with Steven Krane
Ever wonder how bouncing back from life's toughest challenges could transform your professional journey? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Steven Krane, president of Rilek Growth Partners and a serial entrepreneur. Steven takes us along his fascinating entrepreneurial path that began at just 16 with a coffee service business he launched in Montreal. From selling that first venture for $150,000 at the age of 22 to expanding Horizon Foods' frozen food home delivery service in the U.S., Steven's story is a testament to resilience, creativity, and the extraordinary power of a supportive network.
Steven's candid discussion about his long-term battle with depression and lithium use offers a rare glimpse into the emotional toll of entrepreneurial life. Learn how he navigated the side effects of his medication, which after 25 years led to kidney issues, and the impact of discontinuing it on his relationships—especially with his children. Beyond his personal journey, Steven dives into his innovative marketing strategies, including insights from Dan Sullivan's "Ask Who, Not How." Discover how he leverages connections with high-profile celebrities and CEOs to drive successful campaigns.
From launching a skincare line with supermodel Carol Alt to co-founding 800razors.com and partnering with Mike Tyson on a pain relief cream, Steven's ventures span multiple industries. He even shares insider stories about traveling with Tyson and the exciting twists that come with entrepreneurial life. Finally, Steven discusses his role at Rylick Growth Partners, where he uses his visionary skills to help fellow entrepreneurs unlock new opportunities and scale their businesses. This episode is a masterclass in entrepreneurial vision, resilience, and the power of thinking outside the box.
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and today's guest is Stephen Crane, president of Rilek Growth Partners and career entrepreneur with more than one dozen startups. As an aside, stephen has been in my life since 1991. He was an early member of the Entrepreneurs Organization when I was executive director there, and I had the fortune of joining a forum with Stephen Crane, in which I'm still a member, and he is still a member literally since 1991. In which I'm still a member, and he is still a member literally since 1991. Stephen has become one of my closest friends and one of those people that I've admired more than any of the thousands of entrepreneurs that I've met, and you're going to hear why in a minute, because he's got an incredible story. Stephen, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Mo. I'm really excited to talk with you and excited to be here podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Mo. I'm really excited to talk with you and excited to be here. Stephen, I'd love to start with just a little bit of your perspective on what has made our forum so special.
Speaker 2:You know, we were probably one of the earliest, if not the very first, forum in EO, and it's been going on over 33 years. I've made my closest personal relationships with the six members of our forum that have survived since day one. These are people, including yourself, that I've shared my most personal details. I love everyone like a brother, and they've been with me through thick and thin, um more so than even my family members and, um, as a result of being in this form, I just feel like I have, uh, six new brothers that, uh, we're not birth brothers, but are really my soulmates.
Speaker 1:Hmm, you know something that, um, a lot of people may not get, uh, that you just said as as Something that a lot of people may not get, and that you just said as a throwaway, so to speak. I think you said specifically closer than your family members, and somebody who doesn't know what this is all about may not understand how that possibly could be. Can you speak to what you think it takes to have a group that people can feel that way about the members that they're with?
Speaker 2:I have three older sisters that I'm very close with. I actually speak to them pretty much every day, but I wouldn't talk about the type of things that we talk about in form, just personal struggles, mental struggles, marital struggles, all of the things that we really get very deep into In addition to talking about business ups and downs. The form really goes deep and does a deep dive into what the current situation is, what the problem is, and sort of really talks from personal experiences on how to solve it. So the form has always been there for me through thick and thin. Sometimes we have to call an emergency form if something really traumatic happens in your life or business, and this group has always been there for me.
Speaker 1:Well, indeed, I could say the same, and you and the group have always been there for me and it's been a blessing and nothing short of a blessing, and, yeah, thank you, thank you. An incredible part of my life. Yes, yes, well said, well said. I want to talk about you and your incredible career, and I'd love to just if you could share with us how you started your first business and maybe what even inspired you to start that first business business and maybe what even inspired you to start that first business.
Speaker 2:So when I was growing up in Montreal, Canada, when I was 16, my dad had, after a really successful career, had some hardships and actually landed up succumbing to lung cancer. But during that time my mother said to me you know, if you want to have any money for going to movies or going out to eat or going out with your friends, you should get a job. And rather than getting a job I landed up. I was going to. I looked into putting maybe vending machines in a couple of my father's friends' businesses. Then I came about this concept of a coffee service Back. It's hard to believe, but maybe 40 years ago or 50 years ago. 40 years ago we would lend offices coffee machines and then service them. And I did that all throughout college and in the summers I would go get new clients and in the winters I would service them all. I would go to school like two or three days a week out of the five and service my clients. And then, when I graduated university at the age of 22, I landed up selling my business for $150,000. And in Canada we had a $500,000 capital gains tax exemption. So I landed up having all that money. I was 22 years old and I decided that for the next opportunity I would put ads in US papers, looking for companies that wanted to get involved in Canada. And I put an ad in the LA Times, the New York Times and, I think, the Chicago Tribune and it said it. It was very small, two sentences. If you have a product or service you're looking for introducing in Canada, I have the time and money needed to make it a success. And I got crazy offers. I remember the most vivid one was I wanted to open up a bedwetting camp, a camp just for bedwetters and I ended up getting involved with a company called horizon foods out of new york, and they had at that time, I think, two or three locations and they had heard about a competitor that had gone to canada and had been very successful. Um, they sold frozen foods uh, home delivery, door-to-door, sort of like the Schwann's company and I convinced them, after learning about their business, that why should they expand to Canada, where there's only like 25,000 people, whereas the United States is such a bigger market and they're really only in New York and Connecticut? Why not expand in the States, in Connecticut? Why not expand in the States. So I landed up becoming a partner with them, moving to Washington DC and opening up a location which was immediately successful. And we landed up opening about a dozen other locations and grew the company to over $60 million in sales.
Speaker 2:At that time. Having done direct-to-consumer door-to-door sales for about eight years, I was really bored of the concept. It was a very difficult sale. We had about 350 salespeople across the country and it was just a lot to keep them going. I found out about a company in Canada called Eminem Meat Shops that had 250 locations just in Canada and if you extrapolate that it means you could have like almost 2,500 or 3,000 locations in the US. At that time. I was involved in YEO at that time and a friend of mine in YEO introduced me to Georgeorge nadoff who was the founder of boston market, and this was around 1996, um, about six months after boston market had the largest ipo in us history and I became partners with george and 50, 50 partners with george. We landed up, uh, doing a deal with the company in canada, um, in which owned 90% and they owned 10%, and landed up bringing the concept to the US.
Speaker 2:And here's a situation in which I'd come off of two real successes and was really, really cocky. I was about 30 years old and I thought that I knew a lot better than the franchise company and what I did was I literally changed every single thing that they did the name of the stores, the quality they were sort of a midline quality. I went for an upscale new systems for recording inventory, locating in upscale neighborhoods. I changed every single aspect of their company and ultimately we landed up opening three stores and they failed. It was my first failure. It actually caused me to go into a depression. It was my very first depression and the lesson that I learned is that I was probably the worst person to be sort of a franchisee or to follow a franchise model. I just have always had big ideas, want to change things and didn't realize how important it is to sort of follow the successful path that that company had done. So it was my first failure and I think I learned a lot about it from from that.
Speaker 1:That's what makes you an entrepreneur, stephen. I'm just blown away. First of all, your ingenuity. Who takes out an ad and says you know, here to represent whomever? And I'm also realizing, without that ad we probably would not have met. I mean literally that ad changed everything. Yeah, it actually changed. Have met. I mean literally, that ad changed everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it actually changed my life. I moved to the States at 23 and have been here ever since.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing. And so let's talk about Horizon Foods for a minute and the lesson learned that you just shared with us. You know, to me again when I say you really are an entrepreneur, I think entrepreneurs might be more likely to create systems and they may not follow the very systems that they create. Is that kind of at the heart of what you noticed? In that? You know, when you changed everything in that franchise, you were basically breaking their process, their process.
Speaker 2:I think that entrepreneurs are great at building things, coming up with ideas, executing them, persevering but in this particular situation, there was a model that was successful and I changed all of the components of that model. I believe that, had my investors and myself wanted to persevere for five or six years, we would have been able to muscle through it and come to a different model that worked, but the people that were involved really thought that we would skyrocket this off the start and, after not having a great start, sort of wanted to end it. But I think that there are certain people that are entrepreneurial, that want to create their own path, and in this particular situation, I was given a concept that was already successful and I just felt that I knew better and I needed to change it.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the depression. Thank you for being honest and vulnerable, as always.
Speaker 2:The depression, thank you for being honest and vulnerable as always. So how did you come out of it? How did you notice it and you know it's one of those things that I'm sure was. You said it was your first time and so I would imagine it was hard to recognize it and even harder to get out of it. So, interestingly enough, um, I was just in a funk and I couldn't figure it out. At that time I was seeing a therapist and he recommended that I go for some testing and it came back that, um, I was in depression. As my therapist said, being in depression is like looking at the world through shit-stained glasses. Just everything is negative. And um, at that time, depression and mental health wasn't really talked about and I had to sort of learn about it through through my, through myself. Um, landed up going to a psycho pharmacologist who used certain medicine cocktail mix to figure out, you know, how to get me out of it.
Speaker 2:Back in the day, lithium was a really big drug used to sort of moderate you and it took a while for me to just figure out what the right cocktail mix was for me to get out of it. And, interestingly enough, it wasn't until about 25 years later that I realized that I had been on this regimen for 25 years, never, ever deviated from it because I was told at the time, if you ever get off your meds or miss your meds, the second depression could be 10 times worse than the first. So I was just scared straight and never got off my medicine. About 25 years later, when I was 54, 55, I noticed some issues with my kidneys and it turned out that being on lithium for 25 years really screwed up my kidneys. I'd lost about 40% of my kidney use and I got off of the lithium.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting is that once I was off it I sort of had a rebirth and I realized, sort of like how a car has a governor in which you can't go over 55 miles an hour, what the lithium does is sort of smooths out your mood, so you don't have the high highs and you don't have the low lows. It sort of smooths you out. And I realized that for an extended period of time I sort of had a governor and wasn't who I really was. In my early 20s, in my teens and 20s, I was a little bit. I was sort of missing my edge and when I got off it I just had a real big change.
Speaker 2:But I think that for me, what I realized was that perhaps the drugs that I was using maybe I shouldn't have stayed on them that long and they did have sort of a lasting effect, which sometimes I view the fact that I wasn't like high energy and as tough as I used to be, and the second aspect of it over those years. They were the formative years of my children growing up, and by having not being as tough or emotional, I was able to spend a lot more quality time with my kids and in that regard it was a blessing that I was able to sort of pepper myself down, because I was a maniac up until my 30s.
Speaker 1:Stephen, thank you for sharing that. You know I'm struck by your level of self-awareness. I'm struck by how much you're always at the leading edge of learning and studying. You're always recommending books than any other person I know, and some of them have been really incredibly impactful. I'm wondering what's your current favorite? What's got you interested?
Speaker 2:these days. Um, there's a book by I'm losing his name the coach out of Toronto. What's his name? Oh, Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan has a book called Ask who, Not how, and basically what the book tells you is don't ask somebody how to do it, because if you do that, you're going to land up making mistakes to learn. But if you ask somebody who's done it, who's been through that, you're going to be able to get there a lot faster. So it's Ask who, Not how, by Dan Sullivan.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you, a lesson that I keep forgetting. I appreciate it and I do need to read that book. So the other thing about you, stephen, that is absolutely incredible is just I'm going to call it your marketing genius. Absolutely incredible is just I'm going to call it your marketing genius and you've always had these incredibly creative ideas. But you've found incredibly creative, attractive celebrities to help you with launching products and getting product placement and getting visibility and growing a variety of businesses. You've worked with George Foreman, carol Ault, michael Phelps, mike Tyson, cesar Millan. I'd love to just dig into that a little bit. How did you first get the idea to find one of these people and how did you even get them to talk to you?
Speaker 2:One of the things that I found out is that I could be a little bit on the spectrum and I sort of miss out on social cues. But it's been a real opportunity for me because I will have no issue calling the CEO of even a billion dollar or five billion dollar company directly, figuring out how to get to them and getting in front of them and pitching them. I have no issue just really doing the research and getting to the right person. When I had my frozen food business, we were the exclusive representative of Omaha Steaks and I knew a lot about the steak business. In the early late 90s, early 2000s, the George Borman Grill was the most successful appliance in US history. They sold 96 million units. Having a background in steaks, I thought it would be a great idea to have a mail order steak business with George Borman so that we could leverage all of those grills and get involved in it. And I landed up just doing some research, finding his lawyer and landing up doing a deal with him where he was on QVC and we had that business. So that's how I got to that one.
Speaker 2:Interestingly enough, in 2008, I was watching the Celebrity Apprentice and Carol Ault, who is a supermodel three times on sports illustrated. Um was, uh, one of the participants in the show and I don't know how or where, but I knew that she was a raw foodist and raw foodists are people that believe if you, if you heat, uh, uh, if you heat the, in that the, the active ingredients in foods, you lose their, their vitamins, proteins and minerals. And I contacted her. I found out who her agent was. I contacted the agent and I landed up launching a line called Raw Essentials with Carol Alt.
Speaker 2:It was a skincare line that was very unique, the first in the country in which it incorporated beauty products that we didn't heat the ingredients. We launched it on Home Shopping Network, we got it into Ulta, we got into the shopping, into all of the major drugstores in Canada and it was a really great success Landed up selling that company to a manufacturer. And then, what's interesting is, in 2000 and after the Carol business in 2014, I, just out of the blue, had this idea that razors were really expensive and I came up with the idea of 800razorscom, based on 800 contacts being so successful, I landed up getting as an investor David, david John Scully, who was the CEO of Apple. He took over when, when Steve Jobs left. He took it from, I think, 800, 800 million in sales to 8 billion in sales and ultimately left when Jobs came back.
Speaker 2:I literally cold called him. I found him on LinkedIn, I got him to be a LinkedIn friend and then, as soon as that happened, I had all his contact information and just hit him from a cold call. He landed up being an investor in the company and we got Michael Phelps to be a spokesperson. Ironically, in the razor business at the time, there hadn't been a new razor launch in over 30 years. The last one was BIC, and the reason was is that both Schick and Gillette protected their assets and they were extremely litigious.
Speaker 2:No razor company was able to open up and I quickly realized that in order to do this business, I needed to align with either Gillette or Schick. Gillette wouldn't partner with me because they were just totally involved in their own brand, but Schick had some private label razors and I landed up doing a deal with Schick, got involved in Schick, found the CEO, convinced them to be our exclusive supplier for internet razors and the problem was, if you've ever dealt with a big company, it took me a little bit more than a year to solidify that deal with Schick Just the corporate nuance and dealing with attorneys. It took forever to solidify that deal. About a month before the deal was solidified Dollar. Shave Club, launched with that amazing video, landed up raising $165 million as a startup, and then Harry's, literally a month or two later, launched.
Speaker 2:These were guys from Warby Parker and they were sort of sweethearts of the VC community and they ended up raising, with pre-revenue, $250 million to launch the company. So while it was a great idea and I was the first I think that I didn't act on it quick enough and, as a result, it just became a very difficult business to be in. They were paying a ridiculous amount of money for keywords and to acquire customers. At that time it was a new world to me. I never imagined losing revenue in order to get a market share, which was their strategies and ultimately it didn't go as successfully as I wanted just because of the competition and how much resources they had.
Speaker 2:And I ended up selling that business to a competitor. But the lesson learned in that one was if there's any way, if you have an idea, try to get it to market as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing, amazing. What great stories you have, stephen. Let's talk about Mike Tyson. What did you do with Mike Tyson and what was that like?
Speaker 2:That was an interesting opportunity. One of my original partners in Horizon Foods moved out to California, opened up an office with us and I kind of lost touch with him when I got out of Horizon Foods in the early in the mid-90s and he was. He met Mike Tyson was looking at doing some deals with him was, uh, he met mike tyson was looking at doing some deals with him and we came up with the idea of coming up with a um, a pain relief cream called copper gel knock out the pain with copper gel. So I got involved with him in about 2016 2017. That led to um, the cannabis business with mike, in which um he launched.
Speaker 2:It was very interesting times for about three or four years and I was very actively involved with that business until about COVID came and I was traveling to California like twice a month and at this stage of the game, I'm just a shareholder in the company, but it was a really amazing experience. Mike was an amazing person to know. A lot of people don't realize how intelligent he is and how entrepreneurial he could be and it was just a really great experience.
Speaker 1:I saw an interview by Tony Robbins with Mike Tyson and it was quite impressive and he is very much intelligent. Interestingly enough, he's interesting enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting enough, tony Robbins says, of all the people he's interviewed and we're talking about presidents and literally business leaders and the biggest business he said that he's learned the most from Mike Tyson. And I was actually there at that interview and got to. It was it was at Tony Robbins house, which is a wild experience, but I was there that interview and it was. It was at Tony Robbins house, which is wild experience, but I was there that interview and it was really impactful.
Speaker 1:And how did you find yourself at Tony Robbins house?
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, not everybody can say that that was by merely by being associated with Mike when you're, when you're, when you're traveling with Mike Tyson, the most amazing things happen. I'll never forget there was one time where we were in a city where marijuana wasn't legal and he was smoking inside a private venue or inside a business, and the police landed up, showing up and as soon as they saw it was Mike, they just said hey, mike, we're happy to see you, and didn't give him a ticket or anything like that. When you travel with Mike, doors open up that are remarkable.
Speaker 1:That is amazing, stephen, amazing stuff. Let's shift gears and let's talk about what you're doing now. Give us a little bit of a highlight and then let's dive into that.
Speaker 2:So after Mike Tyson, I was very involved with a business that I started called Regine Tweezers. We was we were the exclusive distributor of tweezers from Switzerland. That normal tweezers cost about six or $7. Ours cost about $45. We landed up including manicure pedicure tools and, given COVID, it turned out to be a real big success.
Speaker 2:I landed up selling that company and was helping out a friend of mine named Tim Vogel who had a franchised dog grooming business and while I was helping him out, within a very brief period of time he went from like three locations 80, and he now has over 100, and grew his staff from about four or five people to over 40. And I was amazed by it. And he was using a business operating system similar to Scaling Up or EOS. That was very successful with him and one of the things that I learned while working with him was that these operating systems one of the principles is that in every business there's a visionary. One of the principles is that in every business there's a visionary, the person who 99 out of 100 times in entrepreneurial business, the visionary comes up with the great ideas. But they're also just idea people and every single time they go to a seminar or read a book, they want to interject it in the company and they take the company left and right and every day cause havoc because they have these great ideas. But typically they make the worst operating person because of this. And I realized at the age of 59 that I can be a visionary for my whole life and make a terrible operating person, just like that experience with Stockwell's, which was the frozen food stores. And it wasn't until being an entrepreneur for over 40 years that I realized I was the wrong person in the wrong seat and that I should have maintained myself of being a visionary because I've come up with these great ideas, I find the right people, I raise the right amount of money, but then I put myself in the operating role where I was not the right person and that was a huge aha for me, actually one of the biggest ahas in my life.
Speaker 2:And then I became a real fan of learning about these operating systems. And just coincidentally, my wife, who's been a veterinarian for over 20 years, owns a practice. They have about 70 employees, a very successful veterinary practice. But every night she'd come home complaining about the nurses and the receptionists and she'd have meetings with her partners and they'd go nowhere. So I said, cindy, why don't you get a coach and get involved in one of those operating systems? And she did it. This was last August and she came back and said you know what? This was really great, but you were meant for this. This is what you should be doing.
Speaker 2:And after being an entrepreneur my whole life, I always thought that consultants or coaches were people that couldn't do it. But they talked about it but they couldn't do it. And just about a year ago I started a consulting business using the principles of a business operating system and working with entrepreneurs and helping them scale their businesses. It's called Rylick Growth Partners and what I found that's so amazing about it is that most coaches pretty much help people with the processes and tools of these growth systems.
Speaker 2:But what my value has been and what I really enjoy is I've been able to go in there and bring in sort of off the box, out of the box ideas, introduce them for sales opportunities, introduce them to other businesses. Most of these people have been involved in their business for like 20 or 25 years and sort of have tunnel vision and they know their business extraordinary well, but they're not aware of all the other opportunities and by like having a dozen businesses and having a lot of experiences, I realized that I have so much experience to share with these people and that's been the most enjoyable part of this Literally. The companies that I've worked with I've given amazing ideas to. I helped them connect, I helped them build sales strategies, I helped them in pretty much every facet of their business and it's just been the most enjoyable thing that I've ever done in my entire life. And what's so great about it is I help them come up with these ideas, but they're responsible for the execution.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 2:That's the cherry on top of the cake.
Speaker 1:Leaning into your superpower. I love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my superpower is coming up with ideas, seeing opportunities and figuring out how to make them happen. What's interesting about that is that I didn't realize, like I said, that being a visionary or coming up with ideas is a totally different skill set than actually running them. And had I known about this 30 or 40 years ago, it really would have altered the course of my life. I've had literally two or three billion dollar ideas that I kind of butchered by not being aware and not knowing about this and sort of operating them myself, and what's interesting about that is, in hindsight, all of this information has really been powerful for me.
Speaker 1:I'm again grateful to your openness and vulnerability and humility in light of these incredibly huge opportunities and just seeing them for what they are and seeing how you could have been more aware. But look, coulda, shoulda, woulda right. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.
Speaker 2:There's no time. There's a quote that says you know, today, today on, forward is where your life begins. I also am fortunate to have a very, very, um, compassionate wife who's really been with me through thick and thin, and not having a partner like that would have made my journey a lot more difficult. And that's they always say behind every great man is a great woman, and that's been the case in my life amen.
Speaker 1:I know your wife cindy Cindy, and I could only ditto that a thousand times over. So, stephen, just on the theme of vulnerability, you mentioned a few things where you certainly have struggled and I appreciate all that. Is there a time where vulnerability in itself played a crucial role in a business decision or a business outcome that you've encountered?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to start by actually going back to our forum experience and something happened within our first year that has really resonated with me and has resulted in a change of behavior for my whole adult life. And, if you recall, within the first year of our forum we were sort of having difficulty. We weren't getting to that level of deep level they called it level 10 back in the day and we had trouble as a group just sort of really connecting.
Speaker 2:And we brought in a YPO friend of ours, Steve Ettridge, who passed away a while ago, who was an amazing guy and he'd been YPO for a number of years and he basically said that you're responsible for your own form experience and if you find that it's on a shallow level, then you need to dig deep, because if you dig deep, those around you will dig deep, and that what he said was being responsible for your own experience has made me in all my forms really been the person to go deep and also in my business ventures, just to be really honest and vulnerable and go into those situations, leading with vulnerability and leading with openness and calling out the elephant in the room. I think that that is aside from coming up with ideas and being the first in my direct to consumer business in the early 90s, like look what has happened with Blue Apron and all those direct to consumer businesses. I was about 15 years before my time the Razor business. I was before my time and I think that being vulnerable has really helped me in that regard.
Speaker 1:Amazing, Thank you. Last question, Stephen what fundamental values, principles have you lived by that have guided you through the years, through the decades.
Speaker 2:Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I've had a bunch of values and every single time in my life that something has gone awry, I have not used those values as a litmus test for what I was doing. And I have found in my life you know I've had ups and downs, both in family situations and business situations, and what I found is that when I if there's any time that I have an action or make a decision that I don't bounce off my values, I get into trouble. And it's only recently that I've really learned how important values are core values and how important it is to figure out what they are and literally use them as a litmus test for everything that you do. That's happened a lot, being involved in the coaching business, which I've really learned more about it, but I think the values are really immensely important, both in personal and business life and, like I said, I unfortunately swayed from my values a couple of times and in each and every instance it was because I didn't follow those that got me into trouble. So I couldn't speak more about working with people to help them build their values, especially companies.
Speaker 2:You want to work with companies and people that share your values, and when you don't, if you know that the company, the leadership or what they're doing is wrong, but you do that decision anyways. You make that decision anyways. It always comes back to bite you in the butt. Is it always come back to bite you?
Speaker 1:in the butt. I think that is so true.
Speaker 2:I have a personal philosophy that the unwritten rule is the rule you should always follow. There's so many unwritten rules in life that we all know, but sometimes we don't follow them and they land up hurting you. So my rule is that I follow the unwritten rules. Oh brilliant brilliant.
Speaker 1:Stephen, you are amazing. Thank you so much for being with us. How should people find you if they'd like to get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Best way is on LinkedIn. Stephen Crane, on LinkedIn, has all my information, my contact information, and best way to reach me is that.
Speaker 1:Thank you again, Stephen. Thank you all for listening. You can follow the Heart of Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility. So if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review to help others find the show. Finally, you can find all our episodes on our website at internationalfacilitatorsorganizationcom. Thank you for listening and have a great day.
