What changes when the person running the company can actually lose?

Most conversations about leadership incentives stop at the upside: bonuses, options, equity grants. Haren Bhakta argues the real difference shows up on the downside. Leaders who buy shares with their own money feel their mistakes, and that changes how they think about strategy, risk, and innovation.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Haren, founder and CEO of the Inside Ownership Index, the first stock market index built to track companies where insiders hold meaningful stakes. He built it by working through roughly 20,000 proxy filings by hand.

In this conversation, we cover:

• The Berkshire Hathaway meeting moment that sparked the Inside Ownership Index
• Why leaders without meaningful ownership drift toward quarterly thinking
• What Silicon Valley Bank's proxy filing revealed about leaders with nothing at risk
• The zoo animal versus wild lion: two very different kinds of CEO
• Why you can't innovate by committee, and why small failures matter
• The one pattern Haren found behind nearly every hundred-bagger stock since 2000

Whether you're a senior executive, a board member, or a rising leader learning to think like an owner, this conversation will change how you look at accountability.

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice.

Connect with Haren Bhakta:

insideownership.com

Listen on your favorite platform:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | n3ed.com/podcast

#Leadership #ExecutiveLeadership #Strategy #CorporateGovernance #Innovation #OwnershipMindset #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #PodcastForLeaders

Are you investing in technology faster than you're investing in your people?

Most organizations I work with aren't short on tools. They're short on leaders who show up. AI, automation, and virtual meetings have made it easy to manage from a distance, and that distance shows up in turnover, lost accounts, and customers yelling "Agent!" into the phone.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Emery Geositz, a 30-year IT industry leader, executive coach, and partner at GeoLark Partners. Emery started out planning to become a priest, did a stint in stand-up comedy, and built a career in technology leadership by focusing on people first.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why Emery treats employees as his first customers and aims for 100% satisfaction
• The 65 to 70% rule for how much attention leaders should give their people
• How people-first leadership helps smaller firms compete with big tech for talent
• Why cutting travel and training in a budget crunch often backfires
• What cameras-off culture signals in virtual meetings and sales calls
• Where AI customer service falls short, and the case for onshore call centers
• Why community is the new water cooler for distributed businesses

Whether you're a CIO, a startup founder, or a manager stepping into your first executive role, this one is a reminder that the human side of leadership is still the competitive advantage.

Listen on your favorite platform:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

#Leadership #ITLeadership #ExecutiveCoaching #PeopleFirst #CustomerService #AI #Toledo #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #LeadershipDevelopment #PodcastForLeaders

Are you investing in training and still not seeing people change how they work?

Most organizations don't have a content problem. They have a follow-through problem. The course gets built, the completions get logged, and then people drift back into their old habits because nothing in their daily work holds the new behavior in place.

In this episode of The Perfect Route, I sit down with Stephanie Crowe: career chief learning officer, learning technology CEO, and leadership transformation advisor with 10x Leader. Steph has shifted culture for tens of thousands of people at a time, and her focus is closing the gap between what people know and what they actually do.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why the learning function needs a seat at the strategy table, ideally on the executive team
• How a one-minute daily challenge helped bank tellers save customers more than $1 million from fraud in six months
• The "long tail" of reinforcement that most L&D teams aren't structured to deliver
• A balanced scorecard of leading, adoption, and trailing indicators that goes beyond completions and hours
• Why motivation fails at scale and how to "hook" habits into daily behavior
• Reframing mandatory training so the learner is the hero and compliance isn't the dragon
• Why the future of L&D flips the learning triangle, and what Steph would do if she could blow up corporate training

Whether you lead an L&D team, run an HR function, or manage a team that needs to change how it works, this episode gives you a practical lens for making learning stick.

Listen on your favorite platform:

YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | n3ed.com/podcast

#LearningAndDevelopment #CorporateTraining #ChiefLearningOfficer #BehaviorChange #Microlearning #LeadershipDevelopment #ThePerfectRoute #BillSodeman #PodcastForLeaders