In this episode, hosts Brent and Shari sit down with Tim Hardin, a CEO whose journey takes us from social work in rural Arkansas to the heights of corporate leadership.

Tim shares how his roots in social services taught him about empathy, authenticity, and the power of overlooked moments - lessons he’s carried through every phase of his career. You'll hear stories about strategic pivots, the humble art of “thinking smaller,” and why connecting with people - not just building business - matters most. The episode tackles what it means to operationalize mission-driven values within teams, why focusing on the “emotional supply chain” changes the way we lead, and how small, genuine moments build the kind of trust that enables both family bonds and business growth.

Get ready for a heartfelt, counterintuitive conversation threaded with humor, vulnerability, and wisdom. Whether you’re a CEO, a sales leader, or just someone craving more meaning in your work or life, this interview with Tim Hardin will inspire you to rethink performance, priorities, and what it truly means to connect.

👤 Connect with Tim Hardin:

✅ Website: http://www.decisiv.com/

✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtimhardin/

👤 Connect with Selling Isn’t Everything:

✅ Official: https://SellingIsntEverything.com 

✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SellingIsntEverything 

✅ LinkedIn (Shari): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharilevitin

✅ LinkedIn (Brent): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson 

✅ Brent’s Latest Book, The Framemaking Sale: https://www.theframemakingsale.com/ 

Selling Isn’t Everything is produced by Chris Stone at Cast Ahead:  https://CastAhead.net 

Over the years, I've had the pleasure of meeting some incredible sales leaders and also, of course, as we all have, and some incredible human beings. It's not often, but it does happen when you meet the same person who meets both those criteria at the same time, an incredible commercial leader and an incredible human being. And I wanted you to all have a chance to meet this person too. Tim Harden is an incredibly strategic-minded humanitarian, and you never think you'd find him in a CEO role, but there he is. And I think when you hear his story, Not only will you be impressed, you kind of want to go work for him. Enjoy the listen. Then I think that's pretty powerful. I want to talk about some of the more personal stuff.

I want to talk about Tim, but you know, in a lot of ways, this podcast is all about sort of stripping back the, the corporate veneer and thinking about sort of how we all work as human beings in this kind of environment. And just— and I can't think of anyone better in my mind I mean, than you. You and I go so far back. It's a long time. But the— there's a number of chapters in your story. I mean, like, you started out at— I don't know if you remember just— where you started? Was it ADP dealer? Is that where you started?

Well, I actually started out as a social worker in family services, if you go all the way back.

Yeah.

Before I got into technology. Yeah.

And then you decided to go on a corporate bender, I guess. Is that— is that what happened? How's that work? You're a social worker and you wake up one day and say, you know, I just need to be in the corporate world. Is that How does that work?

I wish it were that well thought out. I think what happened is I finished my undergraduate degree in Arkansas and went into social work simply because there weren't that many jobs in that small area of Arkansas where I graduated. I had enough sociology background to go into social services, and I thought, I want to make a difference in the world. So I went to work as a social worker in family services for a few years. During that time, I had a neighbor who said, hey, you know, one of, one of our companies coming to Arkansas Tech where I graduated to do some recruiting, and that was a technology company, said, we think you would be great. I'm like, okay. So I went and sat down with them and had an interview with— the name of the company was Axiom Corporation. They're in data services.

They were one of the original organizations that— they were the OG of taking phone books and digitizing and then creating something where you could do reverse phone lookup. And they had a number of financial services accounts, Citicorp, Chase, et cetera. And at that time they interviewed me to work on a kind of a pseudo-programming team building out relational databases and had a great interview. They offered me a position and I'd love to tell you that I had a real drive at that point to go into technology, but they just offered more money. more money. It's.

Well, I mean, you were in social work. Everyone was going to offer you more money.

So, so they, they came back. This, this will date us all a little bit, but they came back and said, we'll offer you $17,500 plus overtime because it's a production position. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's, that's $5,000 more than I'm making today. I was making $12,300 as a social worker. So, uh, I felt like I had just reached the end of the rainbow, and I started working for Axiom. I was about halfway through an MBA program at that time, and decided to go ahead and finish that even though I had found my dream job making all of that money. And from there it just took off and it accelerated from that point, continued to build on that career, and now here I am.

There's a number of different arcs to your story, Tim, that I find not only incredibly interesting but frankly, um, what's the word, inspiring. Because there's, first of all, is kind of to your point, starting in social work there's, there's an arc to your story which is all about humans, humanity, human connection, and people. And I want to kind of tease that out a little bit, and Sherry's going to help me do that because, um, Sherry's just getting to meet you, and I think, Sherry, you're in for a real treat meeting Tim. But the, uh, but there's also this other arc which is kind of the same at the same time, is everywhere you go, Tim, you seem to just rise to the top organically, not in the aggressive, you know, get out of my way, climbing over dead bodies, but you just, just by showing up who you are You wind up, you know, SVP, global vice president, CEO, president, now you're CEO. And it's just that the, and I just, I just, there's something very inspiring to your story to me personally of just being able to show up as who you are and that being enough to be incredibly successful. I don't know if you think about it that way, but that's kind of how I see it objectively from the outside. And I've always appreciated that about you.

Well, I think a couple of comments on that. The first one in, as a social worker, one of the things that, first of all, I wouldn't trade that time for anything in my life because what it taught me is there's a really fine line between one side of the desk and the other. And that's something that you just don't learn without experience. And what I mean by that is I was sitting on one side of the desk and somebody could come in with the same really background that I had and just a couple of different circumstances, a couple of bad breaks. Whatever the case may be, maybe two bad decisions and they were on the wrong side of the desk. So I took that with me and then I can tell you everything you want to learn about what motivates people and human behavior, you could learn in social work. It was a crash course in that. And then I think moving along into my career to flip the coin over, like you said, Brent, and think about coming into organizations and being able to achieve success with, with a lot of great people and having great teams around you, I think The one thing about that authenticity that, that comes through, and, you know, Michelle were here, she would, she would say this oftentimes.

She'll tell her friends, you know, Tim just doesn't care. What she means by that is I care about the people, but I don't necessarily get caught up in what they think. And that allows me, you know, not, not being too concerned about what people think one way or the other about who you are and just being that kind of person helps you connect with people because they, They understand that, oh well, to be my best self, I should be authentic. Uh, and, and I enable that in people because they see me do that.

Tell me, tell me when you say you don't care, because I know you do, but tease that out for him.

What do you mean? Well, for example, uh, yeah, I commit to the character. And what I mean by that is, let's say that, um, um, you know, we're having an event and the event is for President's Club that's coming up the next year, and it's in Germany. And it's— it would not be unusual for me to show up in a Lederhosen.

Of course. I mean, who wouldn't, right?

And, and to, and to do that in a very, you know, fun way. And, and not even— you know, a lot of people that get to a certain position in organizations, they're concerned about people making fun of them, or that, well, I don't know if they'll be seen that way, or maybe it's going to diminish me as a leader. And I found just the opposite. I've found that if you're willing to commit to the character of leadership in whatever setting that may be, not to be just irrational, but to be that kind of person in a way that people could connect with, those are the things that I meet. So I just don't care. Like I show up and I commit to that so people don't see me up there uncomfortable, whether it's being in a lederhosen or dressing up in a tree skirt on you know, a, an ugly sweater contest. Who can come up with the ugliest holiday outfit? Those kinds of things. You know, I really commit to those things so that people can see you just being normal.

To that point, Tim, there's something that you did in your career about 10 years ago that, that blew me away. And we talked about it a lot then. I think you know where I'm going with this. But when you left CDK Global and you were a global sales senior vice president and you went to PROS and you took a job effectively as a, as a first-line sales manager, you demoted yourself by about 3 levels in an organization. And you didn't do that because you were desperate for a job or needed to put, you you did it, it was actually very careful and conscious choice that, I mean, you and I both, and you, we have a lot of friends that we've, you know, been running together with heads of sales and CEOs and all that kind of stuff for years in these groups that we've been running. And I've never seen anyone do that before. I've never seen anyone literally, and you very consciously and personally took a, essentially a step, I don't know if it's back or down. Could you, could I was telling Sherry about this.

Could you maybe just share with Sherry just a little bit like what that was about and why you did that? Because I, It still boggles my mind. And of course, it certainly didn't hold you back. You're now CEO of a large company today. So tell us about that decision, could you?

So that was an area that was pretty well thought out. Uh, I go back to the move from, from Social Work to Axiom, and that was really just about I can make more money. In this particular case, there was there was a, a part of my skill set that I really felt was missing, and that was even though I had grown up through ADP, it was a very large organization. And, you know, I'd had the benefit of doing some startup activity within ADP and growing teams, but I always had a larger organization overseeing that. So you could fail, but you didn't fail big necessarily because you just had that support infrastructure with you. And with PROS, I really felt like it was an opportunity for me to get into an organization that was much smaller. To roll my sleeves up with a frontline team and really put into practice those things that we had developed with a larger organization. And in doing that, if I had not done that, it wouldn't have prepared me for the next couple of jobs and ultimately put me into the CEO role because what it gave me was portability in the marketplace.

And, and coming up through ADP, one of the things I recognized is most likely I wasn't going to be the CEO of ADP. I just, yeah, that wasn't on my roadmap. Look, and I totally get that and it's fair. But I did think that there was an opportunity maybe downstream for me to be a CEO for a smaller organization or a midsize organization. But to do that, I felt like PE firms, boards of directors, et cetera, were gonna look at me and go, he's a big company guy. And does he really have the ability to roll his sleeves up and understand what it means to implement a new compensation system, to write the compensation plans, to do whatever it takes to bootstrap some of these parts of the organization and make them real. And I think that, you know, Prose gave me a good taste of that for a couple of years. And then that equipped me to move on to a couple of other jobs, even one that was even smaller, so that I could eventually grow into the role that I'm in today.

But, you know, all of us around you, Tim, at the time were kind of like, what is he doing? And as I share, I want to get your thoughts on this because, I mean, have you ever seen anything like this where someone would— I haven't.

And I have so many questions on this. And this really did blow me away. And Brent hasn't been talking about you just for this podcast. He's been talking about you ever since I've known him, just so you know. And this story in particular and the way you tell it, and then I do have another couple of questions, Tim, is that it was a very strategic— I can tell you're very strategic— a very strategic decision for your career. That's the way you tell it. But I'm hearing something else. I'm hearing what you said at the very beginning is that we're very much alike.

Human beings are very much alike. And I need to know what it's like on the other side of the desk. Was there a component of that decision that said, I need to get on the other side of the desk here so that I can model this behavior for others? And so that I can win trust, or was it purely strategic for Tim's career?

Yeah, it was. That's a fair question, Shari, and a combination of the two. There certainly was an element, and I appreciate you picking up on that. There certainly was an element of you need to live in it to be able to coach it and teach it and perhaps lead an organization downstream where you're asked to do multiple things. So it was strategic, but it was also tactical from that perspective. And the other thing, look, I could have taken some time off at that point if I had wanted to, but I'm just not that kind of person. I'm not wired that way. I feel like I'm falling behind if I'm not active.

And so for me, I really wanted to stay in the game. And if I do that, I wanted to teach myself something new and come out of it better than I was before. So there certainly was an element of let's get on the other side of the desk. Let's understand what it's like to really operate there. And the learnings that you come away from are, I mean, they become force multipliers downstream, but it's much like when I was a little younger, one of my side gigs, for lack of a better term, as a songwriter years ago, I used to go to some songwriting workshops out in the Rockies. There were people that would come in and they they, were, they, and I understand they had these big dreams that they wanted to change the world with their music. And, and I, I applaud that nobility, but sometimes you just have to think smaller. Like there are things you can do to change yourself and to change people just operating in the smallest of venues without having to sell out an arena.

But it's very difficult when, when you have these bold idealistic things that you want to do, uh, sometimes, and you want to be a CEO you're like, well, how do I get to the next layer in the organization up as opposed to going back and get it? You know, it's almost like you're in traffic. Sometimes you have to move sideways or even back up a bit to get outside of the cars and, and go faster. So many times I encourage people, have you, have you thought about thinking smaller?

Which sounds so counterintuitive, right? But they also have to have those little successes. And I would imagine that I know many people, you're right, they shoot too high. In whatever endeavor, and then they burn out and they feel like a failure because they're not having those, those smaller wins. I wonder, though, Tim, what do you think prevents more CEOs and more leaders from doing that? Because there's a lot that could have gone wrong.

Some of it is probably mindset and maintaining a growth mindset as you go through life. And that's easy to say. And what I mean by that is My personality is, um, I'm a bit of an emotional skydiver. Uh, so, so for me, the risk many times— and I'm not reckless, uh, but, but the risk of not— the cost of not doing it to me is greater than the risk of doing it. Uh, now not everybody's wired that way, and the way that might manifest itself in, in my life as I'm growing up is I hated to lose games, but I didn't quit when I lost. I just wanted to play more and keep playing until I got better. So there were oftentimes my brothers or with my cousins, or even now, if I'm like, if I'm watching Jeopardy with Michelle, she's a savant. Like, she gets like 80% of the questions right.

And every now and then I'll throw— if you look, if it's in comic books or sports or something in business or something like that, I'm going to run the table on that, but the rest of it, not my swim lane. So some people would sit there and go, you know, this isn't any fun. Like, all I'm doing is applauding every time you get an answer right. Or you go like, this is going to challenge me to get better. So I think what I've, what I've done is I've just found that in these kinds of things, I'm willing to take the risk because I'm not afraid to lose. Because if I lose, I'm just going to keep playing. And I'd say that that's probably one of the biggest emotional hurdles for people to get over is their ego gets in the way. And that, that pride just keeps you from maybe taking some calculated risk.

Now, I had the benefit of knowing already, like I'm self-aware. I already knew that from, from my perspective, I didn't see a big public company like ADP ever making me the CEO, just based on understanding the landscape and being self-aware about that. So it almost was like a forcing function for me to take some of those risks, because if I was ever going to be there, then I was going to have to think differently about how I was going to get to that destination.

Do you think you're just born this way, Tim, with that sort of— is this something you've trained and coached yourself to, or is this kind of just the way you're wired? Is it— what's the nature-nurture on this?

Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, there's certainly some DNA at work. I think that, you know, you, you talk to enough people between the two of you that you understand that oftentimes there's just some hardwiring in place. But I think that the, the other thing that, that I would say is there, there was some self-development and even some development by others. And, you know, I'll give some credit to Bob Karp, who was the president at ADP. And I was in a job where I was leading probably $150 to $200 million worth of business for ADP, general manager role, doing really, really well. And, and Bob came to me and said, look, I want you to take a startup business for us. We only have about $500,000 of revenue, but we think it'd be a big hit for us.

And to do that, we're going to, you're going to give up the businesses that you have and it's going to be you, a couple of guys in a data center and a couple of customers. But we think it could be the next generation of things that we want to do. And I said, well, hang on a second. I'm doing great. I'm running $200 million worth of business and now you're asking me to get smaller. And he said, yeah, but I'm going to need you to trust me because I think this could be a hit and we think you're the guy to do it. So I did that. We built it out.

It became a huge success for ADP. And so I did have some experience, not, not from myself recognizing it, but from somebody else recognizing that in me and in an opportunity and putting me in a position where I could see thinking smaller would work. So some of it's my own DNA and then some of it's what I've seen in practice from really good leaders in my life.

It's literally the story of your career. I mean, it's like this weird sort of like up and then dip and up even further because we— this— that story is the same as your Epicor story, which is, you know, it's like put you in charge of this smaller division and you turned it into a much larger division, right? There's one other chapter that I think, Terry, you find really interesting, um, in this. There's, there's so many of them to them, but it's the Neon One story, right? So, so again, So you, you take this step down to first line sales manager effectively, and then, and naturally because you're Tim Harden, you, you wind up essentially, you know, much higher up. And then you move on to a company called Solera where you then take on a leadership job and then you move into nonprofit of all things. And again, I've known you for a long time, but this is one of those things like, what's Tim doing now? You know, and said, yet you, so you, you moved into a CR— so for those who don't know it, I don't even know if they're still around, uh, but the, uh, Neon One is CRM systems for nonprofits or a CRM system for nonprofits. Nonprofits, right? And so you left corporate America. I mean, you're still in a business role and you're still a leader and a GM and a head of sales and all that, a commercial leader. But you, you, you took this interesting sort of, I guess in some ways, turned back to social work or back towards the things that's really meaningful.

You keep coming back to these sort of life lessons, don't you?

Yeah, the, um, so I'm working at Solera and we're doing well, um, but the, the, um, the position again just straight down the middle, large company, corporate America, running the automotive division for, for Solera. And at that time, just coincidentally, I, I got to know the president of Neon One. Jeff was here in Chicago where, where where I'm, I sit with, with family. And he he was, was operating a business in digital fundraising. So a CRM platform for digital fundraising. And I got to know him and they were looking for someone to come in and help them build out their sales organization, comp plans. Like this was even smaller. This this was, was VC.

So this is all the way back to, we're rolling up 4 companies that together their total revenue was $15 million. That's 4 companies. So that gives you an idea of how small they were. And so I got to know Jeff and then they were bringing in a CEO, Michael Farb, who who I think it's Boatsetter now, but he's the CEO of a digital organization. It's almost like Airbnb for boats. And Michael's super cool. And so he and I got to know each other and he said, hey, look, maybe you could come work for us. And because of my social worker background, I'm like, oh my gosh, this could be an opportunity to take that idealistic kid who was going to go into social work and marry it with all the SaaS experience and bring them together and do something really cool.

And so I went to work for— and the other thing, so that all of that intrinsic stuff I'm talking about, absolutely true. But also it was an opportunity for me to come in and work with a startup CEO like Michael and really get a sense of what's that like. And so I really felt like, again, an opportunity for me to get in first of all, get out of automotive and make myself a bit more portable in the marketplace and, and work in a different segment altogether, but also to really sit with building an inside sales team, a totally different market, understand the dynamics there, et cetera. So, you know, I went to work and, and the value I got from that, all of the business value you can extract from it, I did. But when you're sitting with Habitat for Humanity, or you're sitting with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, or you're at St. Jude's, and, and you're working with organizations that are just truly trying to make a difference, and they're corporate just like everybody else, but they're really trying to make a difference in the world. You know, there are things there that really reset your perspective again in life. And, and, you know, you're at St.

Jude's and you're watching all these families walk around, you know why they're there. And it really gives you a lot of, you know, it makes you feel really good about what you're trying to accomplish as an organization. But the other thing that was really important for me to take away from that was try and develop a value proposition and connect with people that are doing nonprofit work, trying to change lives like at St. Jude. And then you're going to come in and say that's going to cost you about $2 million., and they're like, well, wait a second. Why wouldn't it cost us $1 million so we could take the other million and put it toward helping the families? Like, those are the kinds of things. So trying to operate in a nonprofit world with a for-profit company, super, super cool challenge to take on.

Something you said at the very beginning of the podcast, which I wanna go back to, first thing you said was that you were a social worker because you wanted to make an impact.

Yeah.

And then fast forward, you're with a nonprofit whose whole goal is to make impact. And by now you've got all this experience, you know, operationalizing teams, you know, growing revenue for various organizations. I'm curious, as a young man, take yourself back to the young Tim. What happened in your life? Or because most kids that age, I mean, maybe today's Gen Z have a little bit about that, but in our generation, I don't remember a lot of kids wanting to have impact and change the world. I'm just curious, where did that come from?

I had a friend group. Some of this goes back to the networks that you establish. So when, when I was, when I was coming through junior high, high school, you know, there, there are 4 or 5 friends that I connected with that they all had that same mindset. We were kind of going to change the world together, you know, but form a band, do our thing, right? So I think if I, if I think back to Keith and Tim and Mark and a couple of these guys are still really good friends of mine today that I still stay in very close contact with, that's really where it developed. Uh, it wasn't so much of a family upbringing as it was my, my peer group that I established growing up really instilled in me a want to do more. Each one of us shared that same kind of mindset and that kind of carried through. And so I think we've all watched each other grow through life in that way. And so it's a bit of a personal challenge with each one of them for staying in that mindset.

And they're very encouraging that way. So I'd say that most of all, it really came out of just that kind of mindset of a peer group.

And then how do you take that, being that mission-driven at your core, and then when you go into a larger organization where you do have to report to a board, you, you do have to show profit, how do you instill that mission in a team where a lot of people just don't have it? They're just there to make a ton of to, money, you know, get their stock options and leave. How do you operationalize that?

So I operationalize it through connecting people with everybody that's within the sphere of influence of an organization. And, and what I mean by that is, let's just take with Decisiv. So we have 120+ employees, and if you just take the basic math of 2.5 per family, etc., so we represent roughly, I don't know, maybe 250 to 350 people depending on the size of the families, et cetera. So in our first all hands, we don't talk about the business. We don't talk about our goals or our mission as an organization, et cetera. We talk about the mission of the people that are in the room and the people that are counting on them and the people that are counting on us as a leadership team to make the right decisions. So we think in terms of 300 people out there. If you take our leadership team of 10 people, uh, that are on our ELT, what I remind them of constantly is there are 300 people that are in this world that are waking up in the morning and they're counting on us to be right on the big stuff and wrong on the little stuff.

Uh, and so what we try to do is just connect all the way out to the person who doesn't know anything about Decisive at all but is counting on somebody that's connected with us being successful to do a good job. So that's really where we started. If you go back through every organization that I've been in, I don't think you'd find one person that's worked with me that would say that they didn't clearly understand from Tim that he takes the person at the farthest end of the influence chain very seriously and takes it all the way up to the top and sets that tone of performance because we're doing it for them, not for ourselves.

I kind of have goosebumps. I've never, I mean, I don't mean to be sort of— I don't want to pander because you're— but I've never heard anyone quite put it like that before. You know, you hear lots of CEOs talk about the number of employees and how everyone's important and we're a family. I've never heard anyone articulate it with that sort of much more expansive view of all the people counting on those people and sort of that whole collective. That was it just something that just kind of came to you over time? And have you seen others do this in roles like yours? I just— it's— I don't know. It's kind of blows me away.

You know, I can't say that I've seen— I can't say that I've observed it. There are certainly people who probably operationalize it. Maybe it's just semantics, Brent, you know, different ways to go about it. There are certainly a number of people that you and I both know, you know, Kevin Hendrick and others like that, that are, you know, Randy, other good friends of mine that they certainly connect with people that way. But I think for me, it kind of goes back to that. So I just said something that you would think On the surface is a big way to think, right?

Yeah.

But I'm actually thinking smaller. See, I'm going all the way down to the smallest part of the, of the emotional supply chain you can get to. And I'm saying, let's, let's perform for that. Because if you can think in terms of impacting that life, then that's gonna, that's gonna create a, like I said earlier, a force multiplier in the organization where everybody's rowing the same direction. Because then you're all in it together.

Did you just say emotional supply chain? Did I just hear you say that? Tell me what that means to you.

So that means connecting the dots. So there, there are data supply chains, there are supply chains for equipment, et cetera. But to me, the emotional supply chain is taking the tone at the top or the goals that you have for an organization and connecting that all the way down to the furthest end of the people that you're trying to impact with an organization's performance.

Now I have goosebumps.

That's, that's that's really, really the way that I think about it.

Is that— do you find your team, like, how do they— I, I can guess they respond positively, but is it— do you imagine if someone's like, oh God, here goes Harden again talking about that crazy family stuff? Or, or do they— I mean, does this get them to lean in? Are you— what's just a broad— I gotta imagine it's like, I'll run through walls for that. But that's just maybe me, I don't know.

So there's a couple of things that come along with it, you know. That's, that's really— so, so you, you think in terms of that. So yes, I guess to answer your question, Brent, I, I do find that that kind that kind of, of willingness to connect emotionally with people and to make it real for but, and, them, and, and really to earn their trust so that they understand that I really do care about the furthest point in the continuum on that. I do find that that gets them to lean in. Now they'll lean in and, okay, so that's all feel good. That's great. But how do we operationalize it? And that's really where the 3D culture comes in. Like, there has to be a way to operationalize things for performance.

So that you can get people to say, okay, now if we're going to do that and all of these people are going to come along with us, how do we operationalize it? We're going to be daring, we're going to be decisive, we're going to be developing at all times. So I think that's probably the way that I connected to like the operation of the, of the platform and the business, and then the emotional supply chain that it connects to.

So we just interviewed a guy named Fergus Connolly. I don't think you know who Fergus is, but so I should introduce you. You find him fascinating. He's a a coach to coaches, essentially, in both athletics and in business. And one of the things I've, I've heard Fergus say is you can talk— there's a certain ratio of people who essentially don't buy in to people who buy in. I think it's 1 to 15 or something like that. It's like you can have someone that doesn't buy in as long as the critical mass of people who do buy in is big enough that that essentially overwhelms that lack of buy-in. Is that— you see what I'm saying? So, so what you are putting on the table is a very specific, a very, I think, powerful and for me, very engaging kind of perspective.

But I got to imagine over the years and different organizations, there's gonna be people who just like, man, that just doesn't get me going. You know, maybe I don't have a family or maybe I just, you know, maybe I'm just more extrinsically motivated. I'm here for the money, whatever it is. And I'm not trying to cast stones. I'm just saying, how do you handle it as a leader who's got this very clear, very concrete vision of what you wanna do? And for whatever reason, good or bad, someone just like, that's not my thing. Do you try to win them over? Do you ignore them? Do you, is it a bad apple? We gotta get rid of like, I heard one head of sales, you never got to meet her. She was, she was intense. She said, you find someone, you hang them and you hang them high.

I mean, it's like, it like, was whoa, it's like, you know what I mean? It's like, so where, what do you, how do you handle that? Because there's going to be people don't buy into this, right? I would imagine. Is that fair?

Well, I'd say that, that I handle it decisively and mindfully. And what I mean by that is it's not for everybody. It's just not. I just had this conversation with, with the team probably in the last week. One of the things that as a leader, the tone that I've set is one of pace. Like, we demand pace. You have to move fast. So decisive, daring, developing.

We reinforce that culture on a regular basis. Now, there will be people, and I've had a few in the last, even the last year with Decisive that have been like, I'm not sure how to operate that way, or I can tell that they're just, they're not all the way bought in. And that typically results in, here's the way we're going to operate as a business. It's not for everybody. And if it's not for you, I understand. So either you're in or you're out. And if, if in the final analysis, it feels to me based on evidence, because facts don't lie, then then you're out. And just as recently as the, the last couple of weeks, we've had to make some changes in the organization just to make sure that we've got the right people with the right mindset, because otherwise the other 300 people that are out there are going to lose, and we can't afford that.

So we'll make changes.

Tim, if you don't mind, I do want to completely pivot, if it's okay with you all, because Brent told me something about you that also warmed my heart, being a mother of a son and watching my husband's relationship with our son. And that is the stint that you did with your son doing a podcast on Marvel Comics. So what I'd like to know is, was there a strategy or a thought behind that? And Were you really teaching him lessons on how to be a man? Or was that not the thought process when you started? Because there's so many lessons in a Marvel comic. And I'm just curious how that started. And was the way it started and the way it finished what you wanted to have happen very different?

So there are a couple of things that I've done with the two oldest kids, with with Josh and, and Ally. Um, and, you know, with, with Ally, it wasn't a podcast. So just for, for Ally, when she was in maybe 7th grade, um, we started going to Buffalo Wild Wings every day and playing gin every Saturday. We did that for probably 5 years, never missed. Uh, because, you know, And so many times life is— from the, from the, uh, the movie Any Given Sunday— life is a game of inches. Uh, and, and so you went on the margins, and she thought we were just playing cards. But over time, that became very, very much a part of our rhythm. And the relationship— I just talked to her last night, she's 26 now— the relationship that I have with, with Ally has It was transformative later in life.

At the time, we're just jacking around playing cards, but, but later in life, it's the reason that, that she will tell me just about anything, that we'll have really, really candid, deep conversations. So with Josh, it was very much the same kind of mindset, which was he and I both share a love for sports, but, you know, I have a very deep love for comic books. I still collect them, I still read them. I've got a stack of them over here on one of the counters. Uh, so, and with Josh, he, he very much knows the game of football and he keeps up with it. He's very deep into it, but he is also, like me, a fan of fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons and all the things like that. So as we, um, as we developed our relationship, we decided— I decided, hey, let's start up a podcast. And it would do a couple things.

One, it would teach him how to be comfortable speaking about subjects on, you know, in a world of digital media, etc. It's a good skill to have. But also it was a way for he and I to connect and just to talk about things in life and talk about football and comics, etc. But as much as anything, it was just an opportunity to be real with each other in an environment where, you Yeah, we were sharing it with other people, but for the most part, it was just shared between he and I. Uh, so it was, it was really not to teach him anything other than just to be comfortable and to create conversations that with, with ourselves that, um, that we could hold on to later in life. And every now and then, he and I will be in a, in, in a car, and we'll, uh, we'll pull up one of the old podcasts, and we'll be, oh my God, can you believe that was me like 3 or 4 years ago? Can you believe I said this about this particular comic or this particular movie or this particular football player, et cetera. Like it didn't work out that way. I was so stupid, you know, those kinds of things.

But we, we've really bonded over it. And again, that's the reason he, at 28 years old, will jump in a truck with me and drive 11 hours and we have the best time doing those things. So it's really all about just keeping those, those tethered lines between each other.

That's, that's just so interesting to me because I had thought when I heard that, that, you know, it was really that you were doing that to possibly teach him a because, lesson you know, the Marvel characters are flawed and they go on these adventures. But that's not what I'm hearing from you at all. I'm hearing a theme of just really having these micro moments that add up over time that turn into these very, very deep relationships unexpectedly because you have those moments. And I always found that some of the most important moments that I had with my son was I always wanted to be the one driving, even though I'm running a business and, you know, expected to do this. I want to be the one. I want to be the mom that picks up my son at the bus stop because that's when you hear stuff that is completely unscripted that you never expected. And those are those moments.

You hit on a really key point. So the word moments— and I, I say this, I've said this quite a bit in my life— if I ask you or Brent to tell me about your life, you're not going to give me one sweeping narrative across your life, no more than I've done with you today. So people don't define their life by the entire story arc. It's all about moments. But if I asked Brent to tell me about his life and he took out a whiteboard He would say 1980, 1986, 2003, this book, that book. And then with my kids, this one, this one, this one, this one. And then what he would do is he would draw a line from each one of those dots and create a story arc. That's the story.

It's the moments. That's really what makes the story. And so for me, you're right. There's no lesson in a podcast. There was no lesson that I was trying to teach Allie when just playing cards with her. What I was trying to do was just create moments that later in life, when they're connecting all of those dots, they're like, this is the story of my life. It's all those moments. That's really all I was trying to do.

Tim, I gotta wonder, I mean, none of us are getting any younger, but you've made it. I mean, you have— your kids are out on their own and you have incredibly healthy relationships with them. In a corporate world, you've climbed to the top and you're a CEO at a successful company and creating a culture that is enviable. I mean, do you kind of— and are you just as driven today as you were 20 years ago? Are you sort of like, I'm on the back nine, like, check that box, checked. I got one last one to check and I think I'm good. And— or are you like, I'm just gonna drive hard across the finish line, whatever that is, hopefully many years from now? Yeah. How do you think about sort of where you are now relative to, to your overarching arc? What are there many, many more moments that you're still looking to create? How do you think about that?

I do think that the best is still out there. That's really what drives me. And like, I want people— let's assume downstream someplace, maybe there's a memorial service or something. I don't want people sitting there going, you knew that was going to happen. I would rather than being like, God, he took such good care of himself, that he was always so driven and I'd rather people be thinking about that versus, well, you can see this one coming a mile away. So there's a part of that that drives me, Brent. But I think also, like, I just firmly believe— and it does get more difficult as you get older. I think we can all own that.

What gets more difficult is I really do believe that the best thing I can be at something is still out there, whether it's the best moment I can have as a dad, the best moment I can have as a stepfather, the, the best moment I can have as a leader, the best thing I can do as, you know, pick a role in life. But I, I still think that the best thing I could do as something is still out there. And to me, if you don't believe that, what are you doing? Like, if the best is behind you and that's what you've surrendered to, then just check out. Like, I don't know what else to do. So, so that's really what drives me, is I really fundamentally get up in the morning and think the best is still out there. And for me, being in this role for the last year, there's a lot more for me to do.

A lot professionally, personally, across the board. It's been so fun to watch your story, Sherry. I think you have a better sense now why I wanted you to meet Tim Harden.

Oh my goodness. It's just so delightful to talk to you, Tim. And there's so many takeaways. I have pages and pages of notes, and this is one podcast. That I'm going to go back and listen to. And you also had a lot of isms, a lot of Timisms that we'll bring out. Brent and I, what we do now is we're going to take 10 minutes and talk behind your back as to what some of our biggest takeaways are from this moment. But, and there's just so many takeaways, but what I really hear is a man who is very grounded, very humble, who wants to continually learn and grow, who wants to make an impact, and, uh, who's just now beginning the story of their life.

By the way, my mother is 91 years old. She's published 44 books. She is working on her 45th.

I love it.

Just written her 10-year business plan. And I think you're going to be that guy.

Yeah.

Well, you can, you know, you can still experience life to its fullest even if you're working really hard. Like, there's, there, there's plenty of time to do everything you want to do. It's, it's all about priorities. So I, I do think that I applaud your mom. My mom's 83. I just saw her. She texted me the other night. She was at center court of a Razorback basketball game.

She said, you see me on television? So, I mean, she's You know, I totally get that. That's— you want to know where some of the mindset comes from? That right there.

It's coming from our moms.

That's right.

Well, you know, and by the way, for our listeners, um, you know, if this conversation sounds at all familiar, Tim and I have a mutual friend from this group we used to run named Maria Bolden, who was also, of course, so— and Tim, you and Maria, just like, he's right. So you can see how this all kind of works together because, because it's, it's almost like it's like a parallel conversation is that, Tim, you know, obviously really, really well. And you guys are very similar in a lot of ways, aren't you?

We are for sure. I like Maria an awful lot. I've taken a lot of notes when she's been talking. I do want to just share— just give you a quick compliment because I did take one of the things from, from, you know, the things that you've said in your books, etc., in the marketplace. And one of the things that has stuck with me over the years that you said was it's better to be trusted than liked. And so you'll see on one of the slides, one of the quotes I use with my team is, nice folks finish liked, trusted folks finish first. And so, you know, that doesn't mean we're not nice to each other, but there is a— certainly in what we're trying to accomplish both in life and in, you know, in the world of business, people trust us to make the right decisions. That doesn't mean they always like us.

You know, you can, you can lay that across any relationship you have— your kids, your spouses, your clients, etc. They don't always like what you say, but if they trust what you say, that matters. And so I just wanted to give you a compliment for that because I've taken that with me. And if it's not mine, I'll own it. So I've taken that, I've taken that with me over the years.

Well, thank you, Tim, and I will be quoting you relentlessly. Would you like people to be able to get a hold of you, in touch with you? And if so, how, how would they do that?

They certainly can. I think in my bio, I've got my LinkedIn bio there that's got my, my link to my LinkedIn profile. And so I have had some questions as it's developed over the last 5 or 10 years for the 3D culture. You know, anything people want to know about that, how to implement that, how to operationalize it. Or, you know, any, any opportunities they want to have just to share or coach each other, I'm all in.

I think they're all going to want to come work for you is what's going to happen.

And can we, can we find the podcast on Spotify or not? No.

It'S probably on— not— it's not on Spotify. It's on another social, social media. It wasn't Spotify. And now I can't think of it all of a sudden.

That's okay. Well, I'll go spelunking for it. See if I can find it. Yeah.

I'll send you over one. I'll send you a link to it.

Awesome. Yeah. I want to hear it, but as always, my friend, it is so great to talk to you. You're so inspiring. You always have been, and I appreciate you. Thank you.

Thank you. And I appreciate the, I appreciate the opportunity and the invitation. I don't take any of this for granted. You guys have plenty of time to talk to other people. So it means an awful lot to me. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Tim.

Thank you, Tim.

All right, take care.

So, Sherry, you know, one of the— I think the coolest parts of this podcast is essentially being able to share our friends with each other, right? So these are, you know, Maria Bolden, Tim Harden. These are incredibly impressive, not only leaders but human beings that I've gotten to know over the years. And there's others too, but, um, just to give you a chance to— for you to meet someone and hopefully be as excited about knowing Tim now as, as I am to know Tim. He's just— he's a, he's a great friend and someone I really admire. It's a— he's a pretty impressive guy, isn't he?

I mean, on so many levels. I took pages of notes, and this is one, like I said, I'm really going to go back and listen to and really reflect on how to incorporate some of these lessons in my own life and in my own teachings. What are the 2 or 3 comments he made or ideas that he said that really resonated with you?

Well, there's one, because I've known him for— I've known Tim probably 15 years at least, so I've known him a long time. And so a lot of his story I knew, but I had never heard him really articulate this. When I mentioned I got goosebumps in the podcast was this moment where he's talking about, you know, if I've got 115 employees and an average of 2.5 people in their families, you know, he's kind of just doing the rough math, but he's basically saying we're here to build and, and bring joy and value and, and reward and all these things. You know, it's like we're solving for these 300 people, not for these 100 people. And that emotional supply chain comment, which really caught me off guard, only because I've never heard anyone express it that way before. And it's kind of— I think you joked like, I kind of want to come work for you. It's like, sign me up for that too, right? It's like, it's like you meet these people, you think, that's a leader. That's who, you know, like, I'm not looking for a job, but But, but, but if I were, that's who I'd want to go work for, someone like that.

That, that's me, someone who would go to the other side of the desk, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I completely forgotten, and this is completely on me because he and I have had these conversations before, but I completely forgotten the social work angle. It's not a lot of CEOs you meet, uh, in, in particularly with a sales background and operations background who also did start as a social worker.

Yeah, that's very cool. No, I, I, so many things that really got me to it. Made me think there was a TED Talk a long time ago about somebody who did the supply chain of where your coffee comes from. Did you ever hear about that? And they talked to every single person in that supply chain. You know, maybe we'll even put that in the show notes because it's pretty extraordinary. It's, you know, when you're drinking a cup of coffee, what are the 56 things that happened and all the people that were involved for you to have this beautiful cup of coffee that, we sometimes take for granted. But what really hit me, one of the comments he made that I'll really take with me is he was talking about that very often— that it was also interesting, he was a songwriter. I mean, what an eclectic, interesting guy.

And that people would think too big because you hear the opposite so often. Think big, have huge dreams. And he said sometimes You've just got to go smaller and take these little steps. And just really quick anecdote here I wanted to share. I remember when my father retired from corporate America, he was the number 2 guy, wasn't the number 1 guy, but he was CFO for Southern Cal Gas. And after he retired, he then went and taught mergers and acquisitions at USC, and he got to a point He became very religious and were Jewish, and he was studying Torah and teaching Torah. And he went to his rabbi and he says, you know, I think I'm going to stop teaching and I'm just going to devote myself to God and I'm going to devote myself to Torah and to study. And what the rabbi said is, well, you don't quit your job for that.

It's not like there's this big step that you take where you become a a man of God and you become this spiritual leader. He said, we create impact in the world by the little things we do every day for and with other people. And that brought all of that back that I think sometimes as humans, we think we've got to have this huge achievement. We've got you to, know, climb this mountain, be a CEO like Tim. But maybe after all, what makes us human is the little moments where we lift somebody up or we have an impact. And that, that really affected me.

I agree 100%. I, yes, totally. The little micro moments where it's like, how do you just bring a little bit of joy into someone else's life? How do you interact with someone in such a way that you leave them as a result of that interaction, just feel a little bit better? Not about you, but about themselves. And, and, and that just, you can just hear in his story about his kids how it just paid huge dividends down the road forever. Like, literally, it's one of these like everyone wins stories.

Yeah.

And that, that to me is, um, it's pretty proud. And it's not exactly what you'd expect to hear in a conversation with a CEO about, you know, in a business setting. But that's, this is why this podcast exists, isn't it? Since we keep coming back and what it's all about, every one of these sort of corporate stories or business stories is a human story. Uh, and that one was pretty cool.

That was great. Thank you for bringing him into our lives.

Absolutely.

Into my life.

You got it.