Speaking and Communicating Podcast

there was a director I worked with, the CEO of Google and the CFO of Google would call him up and listen to him when he gave him advice. And he went home at 6pm. He's like, I work on the most important thing first. If I don't get to the next thing, that's okay. It's not as important. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.
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Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. Whether you're about to speak in public, make a presentation at work, pitch to investors, or an entrepreneur looking to showcase your brilliance to a wider audience, you'll be glad you joined us. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a rating and a review in what you'd like for us to discuss on this show.
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Now let's get communicating. Now let's get communicating with Eric Nehrlich. Did I say that right? Yes. With Eric from Silicon Valley. He has 20 years experience in the tech industry, including Google. And he is now an executive leadership coach who helps leaders make a greater impact.
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And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Eric. Hi Roberta, thanks for having me on the show. Thank you for being here. Welcome. Please tell us what's going on in Silicon Valley right now. Oh, that's a tough question. Silicon Valley is an interesting place right now because for most of my career here, it's been always up and to the right. Everything's getting better. It's amazing.
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And this year has been a very different because there were a lot of layoffs over the past year, especially in the tech industry and especially in Silicon Valley. So there's a lot more uncertainty in people's heads. They're like, Ooh, what's going to happen? Like people used to believe no matter what happens, I'll get another job. There's always another job. And now there's like people on the street looking for jobs. And people are a little nervous, I guess I'll say that's kind of just what the whole country feels like these days. And I don't know if it's fair for me to ask you this question, but.
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The ones who get laid off, is there a particular functional role that they keep? And then if you're not at that level of the company hierarchy, then they let you go? Or is it random? Is there a criteria? It depends. Every company does things differently. Sometimes there's a particular department let go, or sometimes it's particular function. Sometimes it does seem completely random. And like, even if, even people.
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I know this, I used to work at Google and Google laid off 12,000 people in January. And I looked at the people they laid off. I'm like, I've worked with that person. Like I don't know why they wouldn't pick that person. So it's sometimes it's just confusing. It's done based on maybe spreadsheets and they don't actually think about the actual people, but it's hard to know. That's interesting. Okay. So you are a chief of staff. You are the second person in the history of the show to have that role. And before we used to associate it with the White House.
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So how did you become a chief of staff? Yeah, I mean, chief of staff is relatively new in the tech world. I became a chief of staff in 2012 when almost nobody knew what it was, including me. One of the VPs I've been working with, I'd been a finance analyst before that. He said he was looking for a chief of staff and he was like, hey, do you wanna be my chief of staff? I'm like, what's a chief of staff? What is that job? He was like, I don't know, I'm kind of figuring it out but I need somebody that can help me with my business. And because you were our finance analyst, you know the business.
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I know you and I trust you. So come help me. Sure. Okay. And we'll get more into this later, but, uh, part of the reason I was so eager to say yes, was I just burned out to my previous job at Google and had a bad experience doing that. So I was ready for a new job. Speaking of burnout, how did you come to realize, wait a minute, my body can't handle it anymore. And what did you do afterwards when you realized that you burned out?
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Yeah, well, I mean, my body was very clear. I woke up on Christmas day with 103 degree fever and I couldn't get out of bed for a week. So I was sick in bed for a week. That was a pretty clear signal that my body was not taking it anymore. But in my body's defense, I'd been working 100 plus hour work weeks for almost three years at that point. Just kept on driving myself and like, I just need to get to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. And I had been told by my manager at the time,
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that was what was required to get promoted. And I really, really wanted to get promoted. So I just kept pushing myself until my body collapsed and I planned to see my family and I couldn't even get out of bed to see my family. And I was like, what am I doing? Like, why is this promotion so important that I've sacrificed my family, my friends, any life outside of work, even now my health for this promotion? Lying in the bed, I was like, maybe I could do something different. Maybe I could make a different choice.
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So when I came back to work in January, I went to my manager and I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. Not working that hard anymore. My manager was very supportive. She said, if you can't handle the work, I'll find somebody that can. I was like, ouch, okay. And if you can't- Did that mean you got fired with somebody you can? I did not get fired. I had a team reporting me and she took away half the team and gave it to somebody else. Basically she took my workload and cut it in half. That was kind of what I, I guess I should have expected that. I mean-
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in her defense, I think she was trying to be helpful. She was like, if you can't handle the work, I will give the work away to somebody else that wants to do it. And so she did. She gave away half my team and my performance rating got, went from strongly exceeds expectation to barely meeting expectation because I wasn't exceeding expectations anymore. Quick question. Did the half also come in terms of your package? No, it did not. It wasn't effective? Nope. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. Yeah, well, I mean, it was affected in a way
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In Silicon Valley, like your base salary is only part of your compensation. A large part is from your bonus. A large part is from stock grants. So my bonus was affected by my performance rating being slashed and as was my stock grant. Okay. So, but my, my week to week salary was not affected. You know, from my perspective, like the worst possible outcome that I had feared had happened. I lost part of my team. I lost my performance rating. I'd been working so hard for.
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And the weird thing for me was I had feared it so much. I said, this can't happen. I will not let this happen. I'm going to work myself to sickness to avoid it happening. And then it happened. I'm like, Oh, I'm still here. Like nothing, nothing. You were struck by lightning. I wasn't struck by lightning. I did instantly like, you know, walk down the street and have people pointing like Eric, you loser, you can't do anything. You know, that's kind of what I imagine would happen. And none of that happened. It's like, I just kept doing my job, just less of it and working 40 or 50 hours a week instead of a hundred hours a week. And I'm like,
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actually, this is kind of nice. I can get used to this. So you were happier? I was actually happier. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So it was a really interesting moment for me. And I realized there were all these things I had never questioned of, yeah, I have to do this. I need to do this. I can't do that. I can never talk back to my manager, was one I had in my head. I was like, well, I just tested this one and didn't. It was not a law of nature. It's not like breaking the speed of life. It's just something that was in my head.
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It was just a rule I'd made up and was enforcing. And I was like, wait, what are some other rules I have been enforcing on me that I didn't know? Yeah, let's test this out in another era of life. Exactly. So I actually went on and did that whole year, 2012, I was doing that. I said, I can't do anything new. So I tried something new. I learned to snowboard that spring. I learned something new. Then that fall, I had always told myself, oh, traveling internationally by myself is too scary. Like,
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I could never do that. And I was like, well, let me just try it. So I planned a trip to India and ended up traveling around India for three weeks by myself. And I had an amazing time and I was like, oh, wait, I can do so much more than I think I can. So why am I boxing myself in this way? So many stories that you told yourself over the years that you had to question. Absolutely. I think a lot of us should continue to do that. Yeah. So to bring this back around to communicating, so many of these stories I told myself were
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affected how I communicated with others. I thought that everybody thought the way that I did, and I realized like, no, some of this stuff is in my head. And when I learned to understand what rules other people were playing by, what games they were playing, what was making up their world and their constraints, I found I could make much more influential and much more effective at communicating because I was speaking, learned to speak their language instead of just telling my story from my perspective. Wow, that's a really big one.
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So before you questioned what you used to tell yourself, you used to think people thought the same. When you look back at those interactions and then when you changed, what differences did you notice? Oh, that's a very big question. I guess I would say for myself, the difference I noticed was I had more freedom to do things. I had been boxing myself in, I'd been like making a cage. If you have to do this, you have to do that, can't do that.
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You know, like the one of like, I have to do everything my manager tells me to do. It was a rule I had. And I did until I realized the rule was incomplete. I have to do everything. My manager tells me, unless I accept the consequences of not doing so, which in the case after burning out was like, okay, I lose half my team and I get the worst performance rating, that's it. That's what a change. So I've spent the last 10 years kind of expanding my, my limits of what I think I can do, and that eventually led me to become the executive coach that I am now.
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helping other leaders figure out what boxes they're keeping themselves in that are limiting the impact they can have as leaders because they don't realize they're the ones stopping themselves, not anybody else, just them. The stories they tell themselves as well, just like you did. Absolutely. And I help them see those stories and figure out how to let go of them a little bit. When you talk about impact, what exactly do you mean you say you want to help leaders make an impact?
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It depends. You'll find I say that a lot. It depends. Everybody, it's a different thing. Different people being different things by impact. For some, it's like impact means I want to get promoted. For some, it's like, I want to have more people reporting to me. For some, it's I want to help more people. It could mean any of these things. I deliberately leave it open because it's not up to me to decide what's important to the person in front of me. So when somebody comes to me and says, I want to have more impact, I'm like, what does that mean to you? What would that look like?
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How would you know you're having more impact? How would you measure success? Then we go from there. So they have the answers, you just help guide them or put up a mirror to their face, basically. I think that's what most coaches do. They say, my client already has the answers that needed to just put a mirror to their face and say, hey, do you realize that this is what you're doing? And then is this what you want to be doing? Yes, absolutely. And sometimes we need to ask a few questions to kind of dig out, to get things into the mirror,
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Yeah, that's essentially what I'm doing. It's like, how will you know? How will you know what success is? It's like, what does success look like? And it's funny, people often are like, oh, nobody asked me that question. Right. That's why you had those discoveries yourself. And when you ended up making your book, you have a, writing your book, you have a choice. When you are leading your team, what would you say made it high performing? What were the criteria when you...
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we'd look back and say, ha, this is when we were high performing because this and this happened. So I guess what I'll say is, not just from my own experience, but from, as you can tell, I read a lot of books. The answer I would give is, what makes a team high performing is alignment. Everybody's lined up together, working towards the same goals. So that question I was asking of my clients, what does impact look like? What does success look like? The same question needs to be asked whenever you're a team. What are we trying to build here?
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What does success look like? What are we trying to make happen? And if they all can agree on what's important, what does success look like? Then they all, their brains are working together, pushing in the same direction and they have so much more impact because in most companies that I've been part of, they don't have that kind of alignment. They're not pointed in the same direction. Somebody's going that way, somebody's going that way, somebody's going that way or that way. And all this energy is being wasted going in all directions. If you take all that same energy and...
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brainpower and put it in the same direction. So they're all pushing together. You have so much higher performance. When everybody's just doing their own thing, whose responsibility is it to say, hey, wait a minute, aren't we supposed to work together? Or are they even aware that that's what's going on? Hopefully the leader is aware of it. And hopefully the leader is the one setting the vision and convincing people this is where we're gonna go together. But a lot of leaders are not very good at that. And that's one of the things I often work with my clients on is like,
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What are you telling your team in terms of where you're going? What's important? What are the priorities? What are the trade-offs? I mean, part of this comes from my own experience as you mentioned, I was a chief of staff and as chief of staff, that was kind of my job was to like rally the troops and get them all pointed in the same direction. So my VP would say, we're gonna go that way. And I would run off and figure out, okay, going that way. That means this team has to do that and that team has to do that and this team has to do that. And we should make sure their quarterly goals are all aligned.
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So they're all pointed and working together. So part of my job was to create that unity of purpose, that alignment across the organization, which is actually back to the political example. Like that's where the political chief of staff does too. It's like the president says something and the chief of staff goes and makes sure everybody lines up and makes it happen. So that's kind of the inspiration for the job, even in tech. Because the reason I ask is if you're a junior, let's say you're just a college graduate, this is your first job at Google.
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to you, you just think whatever my boss assigns me to do, let me just do it. I don't think you have a bigger vision or a bigger picture of where we're going. So if everybody's working in all kinds of directions, as you said, so is it constantly the leader's responsibility to say, hey, just remember what you're doing on your computer, this is how it fits into the whole. Yeah, I mean, if you're a junior person straight out of college, you don't necessarily have the perspective to.
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put these pieces together in that way. So I would say it's more on the leader's job and in their case, their manager's job because their manager should be the one translating the leader's vision into what their team should be doing. Again, some managers are better or worse at that than others. So there's a little bit of a dependency there. I mean, I think for, I would say if I was offering advice to junior people, it would be more in the sense of like getting clear for yourself on what you're trying to do and what's important. I often suggest to junior people like the question
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How much am I making? Because careers are long. You're going to have lots of opportunity to optimize for money. But early in your career, optimize for learning. What skills am I building? And what am I learning to do that other people don't know how to do? Because that's what's going to eventually translate into compensation, into promotions, and things like that. So play the long game. Don't just look at it as, what am I doing now? Yes, absolutely. When talking about.
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Being clear, you say that one of the things you focus on is clear communication. What does that constitute? Part of it is unpacking all these stories in our head and being able to say what we want. What does success look like? A common mistake a lot of leaders make is they're like, hey, I want my team to do X. They say like, go make this thing happen. And the team says, okay, and they go run off and do the thing and they bring back the result and it's not what the leader wanted. So who's to blame there?
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The team, they said, well, you said, make this thing. And they put their own stories, what making that thing entailed. Their own interpretation. They put their own interpretation on. And they went and built it. And they spent a lot of effort. And it's not what was wanted. So I would say that, in that case, it's the leader not having taken the time to communicate clearly. Now, once you build this thing, this is what it needs to do. This is why we're building it. This is the parameters it needs to satisfy.
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taking the effort upfront to really specify what does the output need to look like would be what I would consider clear communication in that sense of saying, this is what I'm actually asking for and breaking it down to be very specific and observable. Well, this is how I will measure success. This is what I'm gonna look at and tell you if this is what I want. Because you were clear in what the end goal is and how to get there. And then the leader is more likely to get what they want and the team's effort is less likely to be wasted. So that's a big win in my opinion.
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Hmm. Less waste of time as well. When it comes to clear communication, again, some leaders have been accused of not giving good feedback. Mm hmm. How can they improve on that skill? Because if they don't give good feedback, that means like you're talking about your performance rating as well. Is that then team members don't know how to improve for the next quarter so that their performance is better? You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah.
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I think it makes such a difference to talk about what, with feedback in particular, talk about what is observable or measurable. And I'll say observable. A lot of my clients come to me and say like, I'm told I need to have more executive presence. I'm like, what does that mean? In detail? What does that mean? Yeah. What does that mean? Like, how will you know you have more executive presence? And that's funny because
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everybody I talk to has a different answer. So it's like, okay, that term is terrible, you know, cause everybody, some people say like, oh, I would be more confident in speaking up in front of a crowd. Okay, well, how would I tell if I'm a video camera watching you, how would I tell you're more confident? I would speak up more or I would stand up straighter or I would be louder in the conversation. I'm like, okay, that, that we can work with. So you have specifics. Yeah, then we can practice being louder, practice speaking up more, practice standing up. Like whatever it is, once it's...
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to the point of like, what would a video camera see? Then we can say, that's what we can measure. That's what we can look at and say, that's what we're trying to do differently because otherwise it's just too fuzzy. It's like, what does that even mean? I don't know what that means. And then you can go do something. You're like, I'm improving my executive presence by learning to use longer words. And the leader is like, that's what I want to do. Anybody gonna understand what you said? Exactly, that's not what I wanted. I wanted you to be shorter words and clearer. But if you don't have that conversation.
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If you don't talk like, what does that look like? Then it's really hard for feedback to land because people just don't know. That's true. And were you ever involved in making presentations to people outside the tech industry or you only presented to tech audiences? That's a good question. Certainly as part of my job, I was only doing internal presentations to other people at Google, other leaders at Google.
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Since I left Google, I've done a bunch of talks and presentations to a few audiences, more on these questions of leadership and things like that. So I have a few talks I've done in that area. Because the question we usually ask is, how do you come from Google, go to non-tech audiences who need your Google product, and you speak to them in a language they're going to understand while being a techie yourself? The clear communication aspect kicks in as well.
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Absolutely. That I can answer because even within Google, there's a lot of non-tech audiences. So one of my jobs as chief of staff was to coordinate between the tech team, the engineering team, and the sales team, and the finance team, and the communications team, and all in the legal team. And all these people have very different skill sets that are not related to technology. Early in my career, I would get frustrated because I'd be like, here's the technology, and here's how cool it is. And they'd be like, yeah, we don't care.
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But look at the cool technology, like, how does it help me do my job? And that's all we want to know. Exactly. But I didn't realize that until I kind of had this change of perspective where I realized it's not all about me and what I want. I said, okay, so what did they care about? The example I will always use is salespeople. If you're talking to salespeople, they don't care about technology. And in working with salespeople, I figured out the number one most important thing to any salesperson is.
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How do I beat my quota? Because if they beat their quota- Yeah, I've been given a target, just let me, help me do that. I don't care about how ticky you are. Exactly. Because their compensation depends on beating their quota. Their promotion depends on beating their quota. Everything depends on beating their quota. So as soon as I started saying, here's the feature we're building, and this is how it's gonna help you beat your quota, the salespeople really listened to me. Now you got the attention. Now you're talking my language. And-
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The same thing applies to any other non-tech audience. You figure out what they care about. So with the finance team, they want predictability. They want to know like, are we going to hit our numbers? Cause the CFO is going to yell at us if we don't hit our numbers. Like, great, I can help you hit your numbers. The legal team wants to know how do we minimize risk? Cause if we get sued, that's going to be my fault. So we've changed it to match that. So once I learned what different people cared about and put it in terms of like, this is how I'm going to help you reach what you care about. People listen to me.
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We say that every time we speak, we talk about public speaking that as soon as you make you whatever presentation you have, as soon as you make it about the people you're presenting to, that's how you're gonna get their attention. They don't care how smart you are. And I know we fall for the trap because like you went to MIT, you want people to recognize that you went to MIT. You know what I mean? That's not small fit, but.
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Sometimes we get caught up in there to say, hey, I wanna prove to you that I'm really the person for this job, cause this is how good I am. Like I'm from MIT. Nobody cares. Like, just nobody cares. Cause it doesn't help them get what they want. It doesn't matter. So yeah, I think with public speaking, with any kind of communication, your job is to like understand where your audience is at, what they care about, and then paint a picture of what it could be if they listen to you, if they do the thing you want them to do.
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And I'm going to take you from here to there. And if you can first show that you understand where they are today, you understand their situation, you understand what they care about. And then you paint a picture and like, and here's what we could do together. This is where we could go. This is what life could look like. They're like, Ooh, I want that. If you can get those two elements, you'll have an audience. That's it. They're going to call you back for sure. Did you say you have two kids? I do have two kids. I have a almost five year old boy and a two and a half year old daughter.
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Do you find that with your five-year-old son, if you also use that strategy of, if you want him to do something and he doesn't want to, and if you show him the benefit of why he does this to you. Oh my God, that's the hard question. Well, because in his case, sometimes he won't do it just because I'm the one telling him. Like if I tell him to do it, he's like, no, no, I'm never gonna do it. And then my wife tells him, he's like, okay. Oh.
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Good cop, bad cop. Okay. For his age right now, I think, because I've had guests who are parents of teenagers and some of the strategies that are applied and they actually do work sometimes. Yeah. It works sometimes. I mean, my son loves reading. So it's like, hey, if you keep this up, we're not going to be reading stories tonight. It's like, okay, fine. Show him how to get to where he wants to be. Yeah. Exactly. There you go. Right. Exactly.
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Your website, you titled it too many trees. Is there a reason for that? Yeah, when I was thinking about starting my coaching business, I tried to think about what may be different as a coach. And one of my strengths has always been seeing the big picture, like seeing the whole universe. And there's an American saying something like, you can't see the forest for the trees, as in there's so many trees, you can't see that you're in a forest. And so that was kind of the idea. It's like I help people.
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stop looking at the trees in front of them and look at the bigger picture, the forest, and guide themselves out of the maze that they're caught in. Was that part of the experience you gathered when you were part of the Google business strategy? No, I think it's the other way around. It's something I've always done. I've always thought in terms of big picture, I like understanding how everything fits together. And that meant that I was good at business strategy because that's a lot of what strategy is, is looking at the big picture and trying to figure out like...
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If the world has this situation, what can we do within it to achieve our goals as an organization? Okay. And you say you help your clients define what success means to them. What does success mean to you then? Ah, great question. I spent a lot of time thinking about that, but for me, success is, I guess, two things. One, I really like helping people get unstuck and figure out their way forward. I think people are our most valuable resource or capability.
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I can help people be more effective and impactful. That is huge. It makes me very happy. That's how I measure impact, when my clients have more impact themselves. And then secondly, from a selfish perspective, I wanna control my time. I wanna be able to do what I want during the day, spend my time the way I want, spend time with my kids when I want to. And on that measure, being a self-employed coach is wonderful, cause I set my own hours and I don't wanna work, I just don't work.
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that I need to worry about money, but that's a different problem. That's the trade-off I have to choose. Like the more I work, the more money, the less I work, the more time. And I can choose where I want to be on that balance. And you certainly live by that because I mean, the fact that in your job, you did ask for less time and had to suffer the consequences shows that you do live by those principles that you define success for yourself. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that was the hard part for me about leaving Google
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as you might imagine, Google pays a lot of money. I can't imagine. And so I left Google just after I became a father. So just after my son was born, it was really hard to walk away because I'm a father. I have responsibilities. I have to take care of my kid. And to be clear, we're fine. Like, we make enough money to get by. And my wife has a good job. That's good, yeah. But yeah, I was really debating. Like, can I afford to leave Google? Like, we need the money.
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I was like, actually, we don't need the money. The money is nice, but I actually had a coach myself at the time and the coach asked me, so is that the example you want to set for your son? That you should stay in a job that stresses you out and makes you miserable just for the money. Is that the example you wanna give your son? I was like, oh, that's a mean question. I'm glad my question's not as mean. I'm like, oh, that's rough. But.
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she was effectively asked me like, is that how you want to measure your life just by the money? And I'm like, no, I don't. I want to show my son that I can live a more complete life where it includes time for family, time for myself, time for my community, and not just optimize for making as much money as possible. And so that's what I try to do now. Yes. And not only do you live by those principles as well, you do pro bono coaching, would you like to just give us a 30 second run through of what that is about? Yeah, I mean,
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One of the challenges with being an executive or leadership coach is that the people that are in leadership positions today tend to be from certain privileged backgrounds, by which I mean they're mostly white dudes. And I don't think that's because they are the most talented or the most intelligent or the most capable. It's just they've had a lot of advantages along the way. And so I want to make sure that I'm not just reinforcing the existing system by only helping the people that have already succeeded. So I do pro bono coaching.
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I try to aim for 10% of my hours as per bono coaching to people from other populations, people for women, for people of color, for black people, so that I can help them with what I've learned along the way so they can be more successful and navigate these systems of power more effectively. And that is how we define impact. That is one way I define impact, for sure. One of the ways for sure. Eric, any last words for leaders who want to make an impact? What would you say to them?
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You can't do it all. And what I mean by that is if you try to do 10 things, you're not gonna be very impactful. If you try to do a little of this and a little of that and a little of that and a little of that, it just not gonna make much progress. It's far more effective to figure out what is the most important thing and put your attention there and do that and let go. I'm trying to do other things. If it's okay, I'd love to tell a story here. Oh, please, we love stories, yes. Early on when I was working too hard at Google,
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There was a director I worked with who was incredibly impactful. And the way I measured his impact was that the CEO of Google and the CFO of Google would call him up and ask him to do things and listen to him when he gave him advice. And unlike everybody else I knew, he went home at 6 PM. Despite being that high up in the hierarchy? Absolutely. Yeah. I was like, at the time I was working 8 AM to midnight every day, even weekends. And I was not having one 10th of the impact this guy was.
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I went to him, I'm like, how do you do it? Like, how do you have that impact and leave? He's like, I work on the most important thing first. If I don't get to the next thing, that's okay. It's not as important. It seems simple and it's so hard to do because what I was doing at the time was I would come in at 8 a.m. I'd spend two hours on email and I'd start going to meetings and I'd be in meetings until 5 p.m. And I'd do another round of email. And then at 6 p.m. I would finally start on the one thing I had to get done that day.
30:05
And I can work till midnight. And... Meetings from 10 to 5, what did they think? When were you supposed to be doing your work if you have meetings from 10 to 5? Well, the problem was I just said yes to all the meetings. Because people would ask like, hey, can you meet with me? I'm like, sure, sure, I can meet with you. And the difference between me and that director was he didn't go to meetings. He didn't respond to email. He would just do the work. That meant people got pissed off at him. They got annoyed at them. They're like, why aren't you responding to my emails? It's like...
30:34
I don't know. It's unimportant. But he was home by six. Yeah. People didn't like that answer, but he knew who mattered to him most. In that case, it was the CEO and CFO. He's like, I'm going to do the work they care about. And if that means that some random analyst doesn't get the answer they want, I can live with that. But it's really hard to say no to people. Maybe for some people, it's easy. For me, it's hard. So that was something I had to learn. It's like, yeah, I just got to say no to all these people so I can focus on having the impact I want.
31:02
So to go back to your question of like, what would I tell leaders? It's like, yeah, don't try to do it all. Do one thing, do it really well, and say no to the rest until this one thing is done. That's how you have more impact. Words of wisdom from Eric Nehrlich, the executive coach for leaders and a former Google exec, chief of staff. Eric, this has been really awesome. Thank you very much. I had so much fun during our conversation. I really had fun too. Thanks Roberta. I really appreciate you inviting me on the show.
31:30
My pleasure. Thank you for being here. And before you go, where can we find you on the web? Easiest place is too many trees.com. That way you don't have to try to spell my name, which nobody can spell. Otherwise you can look me up on LinkedIn. And I guess the last thing I'll say is you kind of alluded to it, but I am publishing a book later this year. It's called You Have a Choice Beyond Hard Work to Meaningful Impact. And it echoes many of the themes I've talked about today. So keep an eye out for that on Amazon.
31:59
Yes, and on your website because I think that's where I saw the book that is going to be published on your website as well. So on twominutries.com and on Amazon will be the book. We're going to keep an eye out for it indeed. Thank you very much, Eric, for being here today. Thanks, Roberta. My pleasure. Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating podcast once again. The Speaking and Communicating podcast is part of the Be Podcast Network. Where there are many other podcasts that support you.
32:28
in being a better leader and becoming the change you want to see. To learn more about the Bee Podcast Network, go to bepodcastnetwork.com. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.