Description

🔥 Excerpt
"Don't fall in love with your product. Fall in love with your team—and build a culture that moves faster than the market."

⚡ TL;DR
Advisor, investor, and author Ethan Mayers joins me to unpack how founders actually scale: servant leadership, momentum over perfection, and the discipline to fire fast when the fit is wrong. We talk "train has left the station" fundraising, creating an environment where creatives thrive, and carving out CEO time to think about the future so your company doesn't get outpaced by it.

📄 Show NotesFounders love to build. But scale requires a different muscle: leadership that creates velocity without wreckage. In this conversation, Ethan Mayers—global advisor, former corporate innovation leader, and author of The Agile Shepherd—breaks down what that looks like.

We dig into the traps of falling in love with your product instead of your team, the loneliness at the top that every CEO faces, and the role of intentionality in building cultures that can adapt faster than markets shift. Ethan shares what he learned from leading corporate innovation centers across 40+ countries, why servant leadership is not soft but strategic, and how to know when it's time to let someone go.

If you're a founder stuck in the weeds—or worse, protecting the wrong people—you'll want to hear this blueprint for leading in the age of ideas.

✅ Key Takeaways
 • Don't wait for funding—get the train moving. Momentum attracts investors.
 • Servant leadership isn't soft. It distributes decision-making to move faster.
 • Leaders must spend at least 5% of their time thinking about the future—or risk irrelevance.
 • Fall in love with your team, not your product. Culture builds companies.
 • Fire fast, but do it with respect and fairness. People watch how you lead in exits.
 • Business death happens when you stop adapting. Curiosity and planning are survival skills.

👤 Bio
Ethan Mayers is an advisor, investor, and global mentor who has worked in 40+ countries helping companies accelerate growth and innovation. A former television producer turned entrepreneur, he has led two corporate innovation centers worldwide, founded and sold companies, and now focuses on spreading "wisdom diffusion"—helping leaders access knowledge faster so they can build sustainable organizations. He is the author of The Agile Shepherd: Leading in the Age of Ideas.

🧭 Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Enthusiasm for Success
03:41 Ethan's Background & Why He Does What He Does
06:44 The Agile Shepherd: Origins of the Book
09:16 Creating a Winning Culture
12:45 Servant Leadership vs. Command and Control
18:09 Maximizing Creativity & Putting People in the Right Roles
21:43 Why Businesses Fail: Cashflow and Adaptability
24:50 Future-Minded Leadership & The Role of Planning
26:43 The Importance of Planning
29:16 Delegation, CEO Priorities & The Shepherd Role
33:10 Firing Fast, Firing Fair: Hard Lessons from the Top
36:59 Building a Culture of Fairness & Respect
39:45 RPOW Clip Outro Mobile.mp4
39:55 NEWCHAPTER