Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and GOLAJV. This
Speaker 1: is the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fellavledo.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 1: It's episode six seventy eight. Today's episode is different. Today
Speaker 1: we mark something. I honestly was not sure whatever happened
Speaker 1: when I started this thing ten years ten years of
Speaker 1: a microphone, an idea, and a belief that leadership lessons
Speaker 1: could be shared in seven minutes. April eighteenth, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: episode number one. I remember sitting there wondering if this
Speaker 1: was a terrible idea. I had never hosted a podcast before.
Speaker 1: I had no audience, no sponsors, no roadmap, no clue
Speaker 1: if anyone would even care. All I knew was this.
Speaker 1: I had spent decades in environments where leadership decisions mattered
Speaker 1: immediately on the ambulance, in command posts, in disaster deployments,
Speaker 1: in rooms where the stakes were real and mistakes had consequences,
Speaker 1: And I kept thinking something. Leadership education had become bloated
Speaker 1: with corporate buzzwords and PowerPoint slide decks that sounded impressive,
Speaker 1: but did not survive contact with the real world. I
Speaker 1: kept thinking, leadership should be simpler than this. It should
Speaker 1: be direct, honest, short, tactical seven minutes. That was the experiment.
Speaker 1: Could someone become a better leader if they spent seven
Speaker 1: intentional minutes a day thinking about leadership? That question started
Speaker 1: this entire journey. Episode one went out into the world,
Speaker 1: and then something interesting happened. People started listening. Not thousands
Speaker 1: at first, Sometimes it felt like maybe five people were listening,
Speaker 1: maybe ten. I remember refreshing the download numbers and thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: someone somewhere actually heard this. Then the email started. A
Speaker 1: supervisor from Texas, a business owner in Canada, a firefighter
Speaker 1: in Australia, a nurse in Ireland, people saying the same thing.
Speaker 1: I listened to your podcast on my drive to work.
Speaker 1: I played your episode for my team. That seven minutes
Speaker 1: helped me handle a tough situation today. That was when
Speaker 1: I realized something powerful. Leadership lessons do not need to
Speaker 1: be complicated to be valuable. They need to be honest,
Speaker 1: and they need to come from experience. Over the next
Speaker 1: ten years, the podcast kept growing. Episodes turned into hundreds, hundreds,
Speaker 1: turned into more than six hundred and fifty and somewhere
Speaker 1: along the way, the podcast began reaching leaders in one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty four countries. That part still blows my mind.
Speaker 1: Think about that for a moment, a microphone in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: seven minute leadership lessons and leaders around the world listening.
Speaker 1: That never gets old. But let me also tell you
Speaker 1: the part people don't see, the messy part, because this
Speaker 1: journey was not polished. There were nights when I recorded
Speaker 1: episodes late because the day had been completely consumed by
Speaker 1: running an EMS organization. There were weeks when I wondered
Speaker 1: if I had run out of things to say. There
Speaker 1: were episodes that did not land the way I had hoped.
Speaker 1: There were critics, There was hate mail, There were people
Speaker 1: who said leadership podcasts were a waste of time. And
Speaker 1: there were days when life hit hard, real hard. During
Speaker 1: those ten years, there were moments of personal loss, moments
Speaker 1: of exhaust question, moments when the weight of leadership felt heavy.
Speaker 1: But something interesting kept happening every time I hit record
Speaker 1: the mission reset seven minutes, seven minutes to share something
Speaker 1: honest with leaders who were facing their own battles. Somewhere
Speaker 1: along the way, the podcast became something bigger than I expected.
Speaker 1: It turned into books. Four leadership books came out of
Speaker 1: these conversations. It turned into new friendships with leaders all
Speaker 1: over the world. It turned into coaching conversations, speaking engagements
Speaker 1: in leadership academy classes, and maybe most importantly, it turned
Speaker 1: into a community, a community of leaders who care about
Speaker 1: doing this job the right way. Now, let me share
Speaker 1: something personal. When I started this podcast, I did not
Speaker 1: think of myself as a podcaster. I thought of myself
Speaker 1: as someone with experience who had something to say, and
Speaker 1: that is still how I see it today. I'm not
Speaker 1: here to impress you. I'm here to share lessons that
Speaker 1: come from real environments where leadership matters. The cockpit, the ambulance,
Speaker 1: the command post, the classroom, the hard conversations, the failures,
Speaker 1: the lessons learned the hard way. Because leadership is not clean,
Speaker 1: Leadership is not neat, leadership is not perfect. Leadership is human.
Speaker 1: And if there's one thing this podcast has proven over
Speaker 1: ten years, it's this leaders everywhere are looking for something real,
Speaker 1: not corporate jargon, not motivational posters, real leadership, and that
Speaker 1: is what this show has always tried to deliver seven
Speaker 1: minutes at a time. Now, let me say thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you to the listeners who have been here since
Speaker 1: the early days. Thank you to the new listeners who
Speaker 1: discovered this show last week. Thank you to the leaders
Speaker 1: who share the episodes with their teams. Thank you to
Speaker 1: the critics who pushed me to be sharper, and thank
Speaker 1: you to the people around the world who remind me
Speaker 1: every day that leadership is a universal language. Ten years,
Speaker 1: over six hundred and seventy five episodes, four books, and
Speaker 1: leaders in one hundred and forty four countries tuning in.
Speaker 1: That's not something I ever predicted when episode one went live.
Speaker 1: But here's the part that matters most. We are not done.
Speaker 1: Leadership still needs voices that cut through the noise. Leadership
Speaker 1: still needs honesty. Leadership still needs people willing to stand
Speaker 1: up and say what actually works. And that mission continues tomorrow,
Speaker 1: because tomorrow there will be another seven minutes. So here
Speaker 1: we are, ten years later, still talking about leadership, still learning,
Speaker 1: still growing, still sharing seven minutes that might help someone
Speaker 1: make one better decision today, and sometimes that is all
Speaker 1: leadership really is, one better decision. So thank you for
Speaker 1: being part of this journey, and thank you for helping
Speaker 1: me build this amazing leadership community. Around the world. This
Speaker 1: has been the seven minute leadership podcast and I thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts,
Speaker 1: visit paulfellowalito dot com.