An international study by the Centre for Creative Leadership discovered that 42% of leaders get six or fewer hours of sleep a night. That’s a high number of performance-driven professionals getting less than their fair share of shut-eye.

So, how important is sleep?

Experts will tell you that it is the backbone of health and that sleeping for at least 7 to 9 hours each night enables you to think and lead better. Many successful professionals across the globe agree. Several famous entrepreneurs have revealed that they get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. Facebook COO and Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg says she makes an effort to sleep 7 to 8 a night while Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos has been logging in 8 hours for the past 18 years.

Are you getting enough sleep?

Studies show that to perform optimally, think critically, and have emotional balance, we should be getting at least 7 hours of sleep for the body to perform its restorative functions.

Without enough sleep, your brain and body cannot function properly. This is because during sleep, your body cycles through 5 different sleep stages, in which your body performs essential restorative functions to recharge your systems, rebuild tissue, mend muscles, and boost your immune system. If you don’t get enough sleep or sleep poorly, you are more than likely not cycling through all five sleep stages. This can affect your concentration, memory retention, problem-solving abilities, and physical performance.

Let’s take a look at why getting more sleep should be top of your agenda.

1. Sleep and critical thinking

There’s a direct link between sleeping and critical thinking. When you don’t get enough quality sleep, your attention span shortens, and your reflexes become slower. You don’t respond well to cues in your environment, potentially misreading situations, miscommunication, or missing out on opportunities.

Arianna Huffington said it best: “The science is clear. And what it tells us is that there’s simply no way you can make good decisions and achieve your world-changing ambitions while running on empty.”

2. Sleep and creativity

Science shows that sleep is necessary for producing creative ideas and problem-solving. To fuel your innovative thinking abilities, sleep can activate your memories, create powerful links between brain cells, and transfer information.

The phase of rapid eye movement (REM) in the sleep cycle is where creativity is supported through dreams. This happens as delta waves are slowly released in the brain. These waves produce a state of healing and restoration so your brain cells can restore themselves, enhancing creativity.

The more you dream, the more you’re able to connect with your creativity. So if you’re looking to find a unique, creative idea, sleep is where you’ll tap into an unlimited well of ideas. 

3. Sleep and good relationships

When you don’t get enough sleep, your relationships can start to suffer. This is because sleeping well and positive moods go hand in hand. Sleep deprivation can heighten feelings of anger and frustration. You’re more likely to snap at your family or colleagues, straining relationships. It can also lead to you feeling tired and unmotivated.

When you sleep well, you lead well. By leveraging the benefits of good sleep, you can foster a team spirit of positivity, friendliness, and kindness in your team, contributing to overall growth.

4. Sleep and physical performance

To perform at your best, you need good quality sleep. When you sleep, your body and brain undergo a host of restorative functions, including repairing muscles and cells. After a night of uninterrupted sleep, you’ll wake up feeling re-fuelled, energetic, and motivated to tackle the day’s challenges.

5. Sleep and general health

Working late nights, early mornings, and clocking in overtime on the weekend can lead to fatigue and eventually culminate in sleep deprivation. Becoming sleep deprived is a slow process, similar to burnout. The effects are the same: excessive sleepiness, lack of focus, a weak immune system, and mood swings.

Leaders know that to leave a lasting legacy, you need to put your health first. One of the easiest ways to do so is by simply spending more time getting high-quality sleep. Always remember: to be the best, get some rest.

The daily focus of many business owners has gone from business as usual to doing everything to keep their heads above water. It’s not an easy task to run a business during times of covid, especially when you happen to be in an industry where you rely on offline customers.

Mike Jordan, CEO of Summit Defence, has put together ten tips to ensure your retail business is COVID-proof.

1. Sticker roadmap

Covid prevention often starts with social distancing. This isn’t always as easily achieved in an indoor space. One of the methods you can ensure customers will keep their distance from both your staff and each other is setting out a route with a one-way system to guide customers safely through your business. Use stickers, tape, and barricades to prevent people from crossing paths.

2. After hours

Covid-proofing your business doesn’t stop at closing time. Once all customers have left the premises, you are given the time and space to properly sanitize your building, furniture, and products to start fresh the next day. Once it’s time to head home, also have your staff thoroughly clean their hands and attire if applicable.

3. Follow the rules

Clear and open communication is always important, but even more so when it comes to our health and safety. Ensure your staff is fully informed about the rules in place and ensure visitors are aware of them even before entering your premises by keeping them informed on social media and notices at the entrance. If someone doesn’t follow the rules, don’t be afraid to call them out and correct them. Keep in mind that they probably aren’t offending on purpose as the rules can be confusing with government advice changing daily. Be nice about it and help each other!

4. Limit group sizes

No matter how many rules or measures you put in place, they won’t have the same effect if too many people are present. Therefore, it is essential to limit the number of people you allow into your business according to the amount of space you have. For restaurants, this is easy to enforce by not allowing more guests than seats available and have guests book a time slot beforehand. You could hand out shopping baskets or other tokens for the available “shopping spots” in a retail environment. If there are no more baskets, there’s no more space.

5. No more cash

Communicate with your customers that you prefer them to pay by card where possible. This is a lot faster and removes extra steps involved, which means less physical contact. Cash is also known to be one of the biggest carriers of germs and other woes. A bonus tip for restaurants is to set up an app for customers to put their orders through. This allows your staff to keep their distance even more.

6. Through a window

Another way of keeping customers apart and making it less likely for them to infect each other in case they burst out sneezing is to install perspex shields. They’re often lightweight, flexible, and thanks to their see-through characteristics, you won’t lose that personal touch with your customers while at the same time keeping yourself and your staff protected.

7. Sparkly clean

Pandemic or not, people like touching things. While you can ask your customers to only touch those things they need or intend on buying, this isn’t easy to enforce. To limit the number of germs that potentially get spread, you could install a cleaning station at the entrance where visitors can sanitize their hands and shopping cart or basket if available. For a maximum effect, place multiple sanitizer dispensers throughout your business.

8. Stay up to date

Setting up measures and rules begins with staying up to date with the current situation and government regulations. Research what industry-specific restrictions apply to your business and what advice is applicable. Keep in mind that as the situation is unpredictable and things can change overnight, it’s important to stay in the loop and adapt.

9. Keep your staff safe

It’s not all about keeping your customers safe, but also you and your staff. An excellent way to ensure they stay healthy is to appoint everyone their own workspace. This way, they don’t have to cross paths too much with other employees and customers. Everyone has their task with the fitting work area. Mark their spots with tape on the floor and other surfaces to remind them.

10. Rethink delivery

The best way of avoiding contamination is to prevent people from coming into your business in the first place. Think about ways to deliver your products and services to your customers at home by setting up an online store or partnering with food delivery services.o This protects your customers and staff and makes your business more sustainable in the event of another lockdown.

The U.S. is seven months into the coronavirus crisis and yet a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) remains.

As fall and the cold and flu season approach, which will increase demand on health systems, many doctors and nurses continue to reuse single use N-95s. A recent survey of 20,000 nurses conducted by the ANA cited that  “1 in 3 nurses say they are ‘out’ or ‘short’ of N95 masks” and “68% of nurses say the practice of reusing single-use PPE, like N95 masks, is required.” An FDA report of medical device shortages on August 20, corroborated these shortages.  Politico has reported that the problem is exacerbated at “smaller and poorer hospitals” and that “a clear disparity has emerged and persisted” as “larger and richer hospitals and practices outbid their smaller peers.”

Schools are also scrambling to secure sufficient supplies of masks and hand sanitizer to enable safe reopening. With FEMA’s recent decision to not fund school safety measures, schools and families are assuming the cost of protecting students and teachers. A shortage of PPE presents a significant risk to older teachers and staff and to multigenerational families if children bring the virus home with them. It has been widely reported that risks for both children and adults are more pronounced in Black and Latinx households. 

Business steps up

How will we know when the PPE crisis has passed? According to research by Stop the Spread (STS), a coalition of 1,300+ CEOs and executives working to catalyze the private sector response to COVID-19, we can be confident that the PPE crisis has passed once key areas are addressed: stable and transparent pricing for PPE; robust and resilient supply chains; ability to track fraudulent PPE; widely available, accurate data on PPE availability to help forecast shortages.

To help attain success in the PPE market, STS has collaborated with partners such as C19 Coalition, Project N95, and the World Supply Chain Federation to push critical PPE to the most essential areas at fair prices, helping stabilize the market. The organization also worked with non-medical mask suppliers and manufacturers who pivoted operations to provide PPE, including Brooks Brothers, Rent the Runway, Eagle Fabrics , Lucky Brand and VIDA. All told, STS spurred the manufacturing of more than 20 million units of personal protective equipment, including N95 face masks, face shields, and more.

Impact to fight COVID-19

Impact investors are also jumping into the fray. Through a partnership with STS and several other funding initiatives, ImpactAssets clients have invested and granted $213 million in three COVID-related critical needs areas, including supporting “front line heroes”; preserving the progress made towards climate change and social justice; and supporting individuals and small businesses who have been hit hardest by the economic crisis, particularly the unbanked, low-income communities and communities of color. The Global Impact Investing Network has also organized around the R3 Coalition to accelerate impact investments in response to COVID-19.

Here are three examples of impact investments in PPE:

Roots Studio

Roots Studio digitizes last-generation art from rural communities into an online library for licensing. The Heritage PPE Collections features art from tribal communities in India, Jordan, Ethiopia, China, and Panama, amongst others. Tribal communities have been severely affected during COVID-19. Roots Studio aims to provide these communities with steady income and protective wear. Thirty percent of the profits from each purchase are returned to the community and every artist receives protective wear featuring their artwork.

To the Market

Startup TO THE MARKET helps corporations source and purchase from ethical suppliers around the world. The company promotes transparent supply chains and provides overlooked suppliers, such as women-owned and operated factories and artisan groups, with access to the global supply chain. Through an investment from ImpactAssets Stop the Spread Fund, TO THE MARKET will expand services to hospital systems that have immediate procurement needs but are challenged to work with many suppliers’ pandemic-driven payment terms. TO THE MARKET has already vetted and approved more that 200 suppliers to see whether they could help meet unfulfilled demand for PPE and shipped more than 10 million units to hospitals throughout the U.S. 

The Community Purchasing Alliance 

The Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA) leverages the buying power of community institutions to accelerate progress towards sustainability, equity, and justice. Its 121 member-owners and 160 total participating organizations include schools, faith-based organizations, unions, child-care and senior-care centers, and other local non-profits. CPA is organizing up to $1M of PPE purchases each month, directing at least 40% to businesses owned by people of color across all geographies and helping members save 10-40% on purchases. An investment through the ImpactAssets Stop the Spread Fund will enable CPA to expand, helping roughly 250 additional organizations purchase PPE.

“It is precisely in times like this that impact investors and philanthropists can make their greatest impact,” said ImpactAssets CEO Margret Trilli. “We all have more work to do to overcome the coronavirus pandemic, but investments in innovative social enterprises and partnerships with STS and business leaders are helping to fill the gap and drive innovation.”

Amy Bennett is the Chief Marketing Officer at ImpactAssets; Sharon Knight is Executive Director, Stop the Spread.

While deeply fulfilling, establishing and growing a business poses grave dangers for your mental health as an entrepreneurial executive.

During the expansion stage, a founder will often face brutally long workweeks, pressure from different sources to manage the startup while raising funding, and the stress of having to make many decisions — all at the same time. It isn’t surprising that many entrepreneur executives find themselves developing mental health challenges if they don’t prevent them. 

Unfortunately, mental health challenges still face serious stigma in entrepreneurial circles and are often not discussed and addressed. Sometimes, these issues are discussed implicitly under the framework of founder burnout or work-life balance. The key is to identify when you are on the verge of burnout and address it immediately.

Case Study: Mental Health Challenges for Entrepreneurial Executives

Mike founded a fast-growing direct-to-consumer startup in the mid-stage of expansion, and valued at just under $7 million when he hired me as a coach. He had already gone through a couple of rounds of fundraising. His Board of Directors consisted mainly of investors from those early rounds; Mike retained about 32% of the equity, and those on the Board had over 57%.

He brought me in because he wanted to figure out what to do next. Mike wanted to shift from the rapid growth stage of burning cash to seizing market share, focusing instead on more gradual growth funded by revenue rather than investment capital to become profitable. His board of directors overwhelmingly wanted him to rapidly keep growing the company.

While either position might have merit, the underlying challenge that Mike experienced was a sense of growing anxiety — even dread — about asking more investors for money. An introvert, he always felt fear in doing this and struggled over asking the early investors who now sat on his board. While there’s extensive advice for entrepreneurs over asking people for money and addressing fears of rejection, such advice generally doesn’t address the clinical anxiety and depression that might develop from repeatedly overcoming your intuitions.

Signs of Mental Health Challenges That Shouldn’t Be Ignored

The stressful period that Mike was going through wasn’t something that should be taken lightly. Often, the kind of pressure he was experiencing posed a severe threat to the mental health and potential for executives and employees’ burnout. It’s not only extensive and multiple studies that bear out this claim, but my own on-the-ground experience as a coach to business leaders.

Mike eventually started going to therapy and taking psychiatric medications. However, while I strongly urged him to reveal his mental health condition to the board, he refused to do so. He expressed high confidence that the board wouldn’t support him. Mike shared with me several instances when he saw other startup founders in different situations hide their mental health challenges from fear of an adverse reaction by board members.

He even told me he thought they might question his competence to continue to lead the company if he revealed his weakness. As someone struggling with anxiety myself, I empathized with his concerns but thought he was taking it too far. His fears fit with his broader pessimism bias, an excessive perception of potential threats common for those with anxiety or depression.

Pessimism bias is one of the many dangerous judgment errors that result from how our brains are wired, what scholars in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases. Fortunately, recent research in these fields shows how you can use pragmatic strategies to address these mental blind-spots.

His pessimism did not serve him well. The board continued to pressure him. Despite his wise decision to seek professional help, his anxiety and stress undercut his fundraising capacity. Since we did not yet have a close relationship, Mike had trouble accepting the uncomfortable information that his gut reactions were failing him.

Turning Point: Timing Matters on Mental Health Challenges

Pretty soon, Mike was close to burnout. At that point – when he told me that he considered quitting – I finally convinced him to reveal his condition to the board by asking him what he had to lose by revealing his mental health condition.

Well, guess what? The board expressed a great deal of support. Several of the board members, who had pressured him, revealed that they had done so because of their own anxieties. Namely, they felt fearful of larger competitors who might try to catch up to the startup’s early mover advantage. As veteran investors, they saw such scenarios happen way too often, and that’s why they were pushing for rapid growth fueled by investor capital. 

These board members suffered from pessimism themselves, and took it out on Mike, pushing him to breaking point. A couple of members even revealed their own mental health issues. The board agreed to step back from its fundraising goals, focusing instead on gradual growth.

Nevertheless, the story did not have a happy ending. Badly burned out, Mike couldn’t go on to achieve the gradual goals. He lost his passion for the company and started hating going to work. Eventually, he resigned.

The company launched an extensive search for Mike’s replacement. Unfortunately, this person did not work out very well, as he lacked Mike’s credibility — a characteristic crucial in direct-to-consumer offerings. It didn’t help that many startup employees felt discontented with Mike’s resignation, and blamed the board. Many of them left after Mike resigned, further crippling the startup. 

In the end, without Mike’s drive and guidance, the company floundered. A larger company that wanted to enter the space bought the startup for less than $2.5 million, a fraction of its earlier valuation.

Mental Health Challenges in Hindsight

Part of the blame lies with me. Looking back, I believe I could have done a better job supporting Mike in sharing his mental health challenges with the board. The whole fiasco could have been prevented with a timelier revelation. An earlier strategic shift to gradual growth would have solved the need for some fundraising efforts, thereby letting Mike focus on his passion for satisfying customers and building the brand, instead of forcing him to deal with his most hated task of soliciting investor cash. 

He would have had more mental resources and wouldn’t have burned out. The startup would have continued to do well.

I share this story, for which I acknowledge a degree of blame, in the hope that startup founders will take it to heart and influence key stakeholders to be more aware of, and attentive to, mental health issues. This story also serves as a cautionary tale for startup executives wary of disclosing their mental health struggles to significant investors and board members, for fear of their competence being questioned. Mike is one of many brilliant startup founder executives pushed past their breaking point by such stakeholders, and I hope you will never travel in Mike’s shoes. It should also serve as a warning to major investors and board members to support founders and to take care of mental health as a priority.

The Fight to Address Mental Health Challenges

In an increasingly disrupted and uncertain future, which will only breed more stress and anxiety, we cannot afford to lose such talented entrepreneurial executives by ignoring the dangers that mental health pose. Startup executives and employees need to encourage and model transparency around mental wellness and training to spot and support colleagues in times of trouble while fighting the stigma around mental illness.

PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

“I think that if you do the right thing, you never have to worry about making your profit numbers or your top line revenue numbers. That is oftentimes a byproduct of doing the right thing year after year.“

Bryon Merade is the CEO of Caldera Medical, a women‘s health medical device company dedicated to improving the quality of life for women. Caldera Medical is named among the Real Leaders 100 Top Impact Companies of 2020.

The following is a summary of Episode 57 of the Real Leaders Podcast, a conversation with Caldera Medical CEO, Bryon Merade. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

Women’s Health Initiative

Bryon explains Caldera Medical’s active goal, to improve the way of life for one million women by 2025. This Women’s Health Initiative has put the company’s charitable dollars towards helping women in marginal communities around the world who would otherwise not have access to proper medical treatment.

Caldera Medical partners with US medical experts and sends them across the globe where they train local physicians to properly address women’s health. As a result, these physicians can take their knowledge back to their communities. The outcome is a ripple effect of impact. Local physicians learn the skills necessary to treat women’s health themselves. Consequently, they are able to help exponentially more women. This successful impact has attracted renowned physicians from all over the world to the Caldera Medical mission.

“We don’t do this from a marketing perspective. In fact, we really don’t market this aspect of the organization commercially at all. But I will tell you that many customers, surgeons and hospitals come to us at conferences and say, “We want to do business with you because of the humanitarian work that you’re doing.” And I think it’s great that it resonates with people and they gravitate towards us because of that. But that’s not the reason we do it. We do it because it is the right thing to do. We have the capability to do it.”

A Mission-Driven Mindset

Caldera Medical’s successful impact on women’s health is a testament to the company upholding its mission above all else. The Women’s Health Campaign was the collective idea of Caldera Medical employees who wanted to turn their core values into action. Accordingly, the 4 Cs, Care, Create, Collaborate, and Challenge, continue to influence the company’s humanitarian work.

“We’re a business that is designed to do good, as a mission of improving the quality of life for women. That’s what we’re focused on each and every day. We happen to make different surgical products to treat women with these conditions on the commercial side. But really, it’s the mission that drives us and. I think anyone who gets involved with our organization at any position in our company, it’s really about people who have this shared vision of really helping women.”

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Despite our difficult life experiences, we keep hoping, even expecting, that everything will be positive from now on. We make a tradition of greeting each other with best wishes on holidays and special occasions and meaning it as if we can wish away that life has its own plans and always has two sides. The truth is, we live in a dual world in which we can’t appreciate the brightness of a day without experiencing the darkness of the night.

No matter how hard we try to protect ourselves and do everything right, we’ll never avoid setbacks and disappointments. Every life is full of unpredictable challenges, regardless of how perfect it might look from the outside.

A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Ford et al. 2017) made the fascinating discovery that, to quote senior author Iris Mauss, associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, “People who habitually accept their negative emotions experience fewer negative emotions, which adds up to better psychological health.” In other words, we intensify our emotional distress when, on a bad day, we tell ourselves to cheer up and snap out of it, which, by the way, we would never say to a close friend when they’re having a bad day.

Remember, you are not your emotions. You’re just the one who experiences them. In our day-to-day lives, we can become distracted by and absorbed in our thoughts and feelings and often allow them to obscure our essence, the nature of who we truly are, in much the same way that clouds can obscure the sun on a cloudy day. Let the clouds pass; they need time to fulfill their purpose, too. The sun will always be there, just as your true nature will always be there, shining no matter what. You have to be aware of your inner light, which gives life and warmth and energy to you and everything around you.

For those times, when the clouds are still in the sky, and you’re experiencing moments of sorrow, hug yourself. Write the same compassionate letter to yourself that you’d write to a friend in the same situation. Comfort yourself, and notice how even your own soft, warm touch is calming and reassuring.

There’s a hormone called oxytocin secreted by the pituitary gland and released when we make a significant social bond or snuggle with a loved one, a pet, and even ourselves. It’s sometimes known as the “love hormone.” Tell yourself, with a hug, I know it’s a hard time, darling, but your heart is still full of love and kindness, and trigger your own “love hormone” while riding out your negative emotions. Your pain won’t vanish instantly, but it will begin to dissipate, especially when you keep reminding yourself that you’ve survived this darkness before and know it’s only temporary.

And you don’t have to feel alone and isolated. Remember, everyone suffers. Everyone faces challenges. That’s how we grow. If you doubt that for a moment, ask yourself this question: What have I learned when times were good? I’ll bet you learned less than when you look back at your “post-traumatic” times.

Pain has the power to change us, the invaluable potential to bring us to another level. In moments of sorrow, when we’re wandering through dark periods, we have to remember that everything has its beginning and its end. The darkness will pass, and the sunshine will brighten our lives again; we have to be patient.

One of the most challenging and most valuable lessons we can learn and embrace is that everything is temporary for better or worse. Impermanence is inevitable; it is as intrinsic to life as the air we breathe. This can seem like bad news on our best days and great news on our worst. But in the biggest possible picture, when we embrace the reality of impermanence and stop being blindsided by it, we can give ourselves the priceless gift of learning to let go.

Letting go willingly, gracefully, and without resentment to address our lives and the world around us leads to profound internal changes. It brings us peace, acceptance, gratitude, flexibility, and a significant decrease in anxiety and fear. Rather than being afraid of change, failure, and loss, mastering the art of letting go allows us to know that we’ll be facing all those things sooner or later and that they’re impermanent, too. So whatever happens, we’ll have the faith and strength to get through it.

PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

“That’s a big part in behavioral health care or Social Capitalism or social consciousness—with businesses, we can’t forget about the people aspect of it. Yes, the balance sheet’s important. But you and me are what make the balance sheet. It’s not balance sheet run or profit loss run. We have to put our people, the planet, our responsibilities, and then we get profit. It’s a result of doing the right thing.” 

Josh Lannon is the founder and CEO of Warriors Heart, an in-patient recovery center for first responders and veterans, with a vision to bring one million warriors home from addiction and PTSD. Warriors Heart is named among the Real Leaders 100 Top Impact Companies of 2020.

The following is a summary of Episode 66 of the Real Leaders Podcast, a conversation with Warriors Heart CEO and founder, Josh Lannon. Read or listen to the full conversation below.

A Holistic Journey

Josh shares his own personal battle with addiction and recovery, and how it took visiting a few treatment centers to find the right approach to address his needs.

“I went to a place that was different. It was from a holistic standpoint. Mind, body, spirit, integrative medicine. They looked at me as a whole person. So I actually then was able to put down my guard and accept some of the information that was coming in, because the environment was so inviting. The environment wasn’t fighting against me, it really supported healing.”

Building on this positive holistic experience, Josh and his wife Lisa founded a series of behavioral health centers that incorporate a holistic integrative approach to treatment. This approach adapts recovery programs according to individual patients’ needs, rather than adapting patients to an over-arching philosophy.

“Integrative medicine, or an integrative approach to treatment, looks at it from the whole point of view. What’s the best way that you learn? And how do we adapt our philosophy or our modalities to share it with you the best thing you can absorb.”

Warriors Heart Modalities

Warriors Heart is the Lannons’ in-patient treatment center specifically for veterans, first responders, and the warriors actively protecting and serving the US, which addresses chemical dependencies and co-occurring psychological disorders relating to PTSD and/or the psychological effects of MTBI. Josh explains that these warriors enter a program to start rebuilding their lives through a training modality that represents the academies or basic training they understand from their warrior background.

“It’s like a training course. And we’re training them to survive and thrive in life. So we start rebuilding them with the training model, and it’s something that these guys get, they relate to, and we build upon it. Warriors, we succeed if we’re aggressive, but we teach them subtle ways to survive under pressure.”

Jiu jitsu is a key component of the Warriors Heart training program, because it teaches warriors how to leverage the difficult situations that will inevitably arise on the road to recovery by requiring them to address more immediately difficult positions in the dojo.

“One of the tools in jiu jitsu we use is we work from a bad position. Let a guy get on her back or put you in a choke hold or something. It’s like, “Okay, I’m already in a bad position. I screwed up, but I’m here. Let me work from this position and try to get out.” So where jujitsu applies in life, in business is like, “Hey, I’m here. I’m in this bad position. It is what it is. How do I get out of it now? Relax, breathe, let me think. Because there’s always a way to solve the problem. I take accountability for me, and I start trying to figure a way out.”

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PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary of the Real Leaders Podcast

“I think it really came through my personal journey. And I realized, I want to help people, I want to help people make the right choices, and I want to help millions of people that maybe just don’t know better like me. I didn’t know better, and I educated myself, and I’m still educating myself on all the various things in how nutrition plays a role.”

Michael Kuech is the co-founder and CEO of Your Super, which creates superfood mixes for extra energy, immunity, antioxidants and vegan protein. Your Super is a certified B corp committed to improving people’s health with the power of plants.

The following is a summary of Episode 113 of the Real Leaders Podcast, a conversation with Your Super CEO, Michael Kuech. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

Superfoods to Recovery

After overcoming cancer at age 24, Kuech turned to superfoods. They helped rebuild his immune system and forever changed his view on nutrition. Your Super became a way to share the benefits of healthy eating with others.

“I realized I can’t control everything in my life, but I can control what I eat. And the more I researched about why people are getting sick, and why people are experiencing diseases, is to a certain extent about lifestyle choices and what you eat. It’s not everything, there’s a puzzle, a big puzzle. But one big piece of the puzzle, how I can prevent from getting ever sick again, is the way I eat.”

Bootstrapping to Big Business

Without a budget for marketing, Your Super took a nontraditional route and focused solely on influencer marketing through social media.

“That was our earliest marketing strategy. Can we get big on Instagram and Facebook and get our audience engaged that way? And that really propelled our international brand exposure. Because social media is not bound by boundaries from any country.”

Kuech’s role has changed as the company continues to grow along with demand:

“I have to remind myself every day still to not do everything by myself. We did every job in the beginning. I packed boxes, for years I packed boxes, and called the customers. I’m making that step also now as a leader to let people do their own thing. I think that’s a huge learning call for any CEO. It’s not easy to let go.”

Impact on All Sides

Your Super is dedicated to a responsibility to its supply chain, paying fair wages and maintaining an income for farmers who are now living better lives with a stable revenue.

“I think impact for me is leaving something more positively, or having a positive influence on something. So having an impact on the way we source means we are having a positive influence on communities where we source.”

The end product superfood mixes are also created with impact in mind:

“We really are transforming people’s lives with our products. We have a massive impact there because people who have not had the chance and didn’t know anything about healthy food, they can come to us and we can actually teach them.”

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PODCAST PEOPLE: A Summary from the Real Leaders Podcast

“This is a business that is not only about bringing about all of those things inside of us that are gifts that we can recognize, but growing a culture in our company that recognizes the gifts in one another.”

David Kahl is the founder and CEO of Fully. Fully creates and sells workplace furniture designed to inspire a positive business mindset and a healthy, supportive workplace where everyone can feel and do their best.

The following is a summary of Episode 109 of the Real Leaders Podcast, a conversation with Fully founder and CEO, David Kahl. Watch, read, or listen to the full conversation below.

Transitioning from Big Business

After a successful career as a Wall Street accountant, and witnessing the events of 9/11, David was presented with a personal and professional wake-up call:

“I want to know that I’ve done something that makes this world that we’re in a little bit better, helps us to love one another a little bit better, invites more empathy, transparency, leaning into who we are as people and connecting with one another. And I hadn’t been doing that for the first 30 years of my life. But I had a lot of my life left to do.”

Emotional awareness has given David a more holistic view of the workplace and revolutionized his business mindset:

“Leading with that emotional awareness is, I think, really important for leaders, especially in the kinds of times that we find ourselves in. There’s waves I think of when we need to practice a lot of emotional intelligence. This is one of those times when having the skills and the experience to do that really pays off as a CEO and leader.”

B Corp Benefits

Fully is the result of a re-worked business mindset and holds strongly to its values as a dedicated B Corporation:

“We practice a lot of empathy. We practice a lot of mindfulness. And we certainly love to be able to lead with vulnerability and transparency and all that we do. But at the same time, recognizing that we have an opportunity and a responsibility to take care of all of the stakeholders around us as well, [we] believe really strongly in this idea that businesses have a responsibility to make the world better.”

David asserts that the transparency and collaboration built into Fully’s company culture is the reason for Fully’s success, both internally and externally:

“I think it’s really important in our culture to realize when we’re in meetings or when we’re in a group, one of the big gifts we have is a big diversity of perspectives, a big diversity of life experiences. We’re going to be able to find out some great things as a company, when people feel the refuge of being together and that they can speak their mind, disagree with respect and compassion. And if we’re in a room of people, there’s nobody in that room smarter than all of us together.”

Transcript

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Find out more about Fully here: https://www.fully.com/

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