In this episode, Bart speaks with entrepreneur Phil Neil, who shares his extraordinary story of building his company from $200K in revenue to $70 million and the gauntlet of challenges he faced along the way. Phil opens up about the painful realities behind the headlines: a $5M scam during the pandemic, a devastating warehouse fire, and the collapse of major contracts.
Phil Neil: So we were at the crossroad. It's the failure crossroad that I often refer back to where you have to either. Transform or fail, and you have that same crossroad in a leadership standpoint where you either transform as a leader and you change your conception of success in in relation to your new role, or you become a spiteful person angry at reality because failure destroys you.
Bart Egnal: Welcome to the Inspire podcast. Where we examine what it takes to intentionally inspire. I'm your host, Bart Egnal president and CEO of the Humphrey Group, and if you've ever asked yourself, how can you develop an authentic leadership presence, or how can you tell stories that have people hanging off every word?
Well then this podcast is for you. And it's not just for executives. This is a podcast for anyone who wants to influence and inspire others in their work, but also in their life.
So my guest on today's episode of the Inspire Podcast is Phil Neil. And Phil, uh, like me, I think we, we've connected, you're, you're an entrepreneur, but you're really into what we call your third act. And I'll just, for people listening, uh, talk, you know, say you've had three acts. The first you've built a company and we'll, you'll share the story from 200,000 to 70 million and had an exit, and then that wasn't enough.
So you went back, you became a serial entrepreneur, you became an investor, and, and you know, maybe realize. Some of the unique challenges that entrepreneurs face, some of the, the, uh, mental health challenges. And now you're in your third act, which is you, you've started this company, the Courage Compass Company, which is designed to help entrepreneurs.
And so I'm really excited to have you on the pod as a fellow entrepreneur who's interested in this topic, and as someone who I think can really provide guidance to anyone, uh, who is taking entrepreneurship or leadership. So Phil, welcome to the podcast.
Phil Neil: Thank you so much for writing me.
Bart Egnal: Let's start with this journey.
I mean, it's an incredible story from 200,000 to 70 million and a whole lot of wild stories along the way. So, uh, let's go in that foundational chapter of your experience. Mm-hmm.
Phil Neil: Sounds good. So for me, entrepreneurship has always kind of been a hero journey of self-discovery. And it, it, it was always driven by, of course, material, uh, aspiration, but mostly becoming the kind of person I aspired to become.
And originally when I went to university, I wanted to be a high school teacher. Hmm. Uh, I didn't think about. I think didn't, didn't think I liked business. Uh, but then through sales, I got into real estate investing and I felt like I had something to learn from that side of, of, of, uh, the world of, uh, the marketplace.
And so I went into the corporate side and that's kind of the narrative that followed me alongside my whole journey. Okay. Is stumbling into discovering. Pathways of personal growth that led to, you know, spreading myself some, sometimes too thin, uh, and learning from it and, uh, always exploring, um, where I should go.
And my beginnings in entrepreneurship came after a realization. What? That I just didn't like forming. Uh, from a corporate standpoint, I like the initial being. The underdog achieving the goals. And then I got bored. I went another challenge, and so I thought, Hey, maybe I'm an entrepreneur. And it wasn't as popular, uh, in 2010s.
Right, right. It became more known afterwards. So I decided to partner with, um, people within my network. Uh, I was working in pharmaceutical sales at the time, one of the physician that was a customer of mine, like business. So we partnered with a physiotherapist, um, an accountant, and later on, uh, someone from, with a management background, and we started to act as a purchasing department for local health centers.
That worked well. I, my job was to make the sales and, and. Figure out the model, which happened and we were scaling up. But when COVID hit, the model didn't work out anymore because we weren't importing directly. We were buying from other sellers and then giving savings to small hill centers with no purchasing, uh, people, and k keeping a cut up the savings.
So we had to scale down, uh, our efforts. We were restricted in our purchasing power, so we were at the crossroad. It's the failure crossroad that I often refer back to where you have to either. Transform or fail. And you have that same crossroad in a leadership standpoint where you either transform as a leader and you change your conception of success in, in relation to your new role, or you become a spiteful person, right?
And forget reality because failure destroys you.
Bart Egnal: So you reach this moment very early, you know, you aspire to be an entrepreneur, you're trying and suddenly really your first kind of entrepreneurial venture, boom, like it's, it must have felt. Very difficult to kind of be confronted with this failure.
Phil Neil: It was stressful and I mean, at that point we already had the seeds of founder conflict being planted in our company where there was frustration, uh, had it had COVID happen or the pivot had been a couple months later, I think we would not have had the escalation of conflict because we were bound to address the disparity of, uh
Bart Egnal: mm-hmm.
Phil Neil: Fairness within the company. Uh, but, but the pivot happened too fast, and that eventually led to, uh, a huge problem that became a pivotal moment, uh, in my Hmm. That led me to my third act or something, you know? Right. However you phrased it, right. Uh, yeah. So,
Bart Egnal: but at the time, you, you made it through the failure and then suddenly your company took off.
How, tell me about that. What happened?
Phil Neil: So I saw, I felt that. The NI gloves were a product that would lean me towards the right pivot. These are the gloves
Bart Egnal: that you use in medical facilities that Exactly.
Phil Neil: They're, you know,
Bart Egnal: for sanitary reasons,
Phil Neil: right? Mm-hmm. Exactly. And it's harder to copy and mask.
Everybody was just making money with mask, right? I, we bootstrapped the business. We didn't have any cash. Uh, we couldn't gamble on importing mask or rebuying mask at a huge price. And so what I did in a nutshell is I decided, hey, the natural gloves are not as easy to copy. Uh, they're important. They're mm-hmm.
Large consumable. Let me see if I can go all in there. Hmm. And so I negotiated with the government of Quebec here. Uh, and they were more flexible. So I, I was, I benefited from the crisis. I was able to negotiate a full down payment and that brought me the first 1.6 million was the first contract that led to a $17 million Wow.
Uh, contract. And I expanded and eventually got a $35 million contract and a bunch of smaller deals when then one Sacramento County held pro spending in the US States, Mexico.
Bart Egnal: So suddenly in a couple years you'd gone from this failure to, you were like a glove. You and your partners have built a glove empire.
Phil Neil: A glove empire, yeah. With our own brand. Right. To this day, we still see our, our gloves, which assume, what's the
Bart Egnal: name? What's the name?
Phil Neil: Uh, it's a neo bags, but it started as EMD two. Okay. And we had to change, 'cause the concept of the logo was a AMI three. Right. But then it looked like. A Deads call No. From the Punisher, so,
Bart Egnal: right.
Great idea. In theory, right?
Phil Neil: Yeah. And so with the new model, we had a new, we decided to have a new branding and Okay. Yeah. That became neo bags and it still works to this day, even after I exited the company. Uh, they're, that's amazing. All sorts of supplies.
Bart Egnal: And I think what's so interesting about your.
This, this act, you know, your, your first huge entrepreneurship success is that, you know, the story's easy. Oh yeah. We saw this opportunity and then suddenly we got this, and then we had a 70 million business, and then I had an exit. But when you and I delved into the journey, there were some real painful setbacks in there.
Tell me a bit about, like, there's, there's two stories I want you to share with, with our listeners. One is about. The scam and the other is about the fire. Yeah. So tell, tell us about those stories. 'cause I was just like, to me those encapsulated, like don't just look at the success, look at look beneath the surface.
Phil Neil: Well, and that's the whole point, that's the whole idea I'm trying to champion to is being more open as entrepreneurs. 'cause I could easily spin off my. A story as, Hey, I'm a big shot. Let me film myself in my garage. You know? Right. Like all the other influencers out there. But that's not the reality of entrepreneurship.
And even before the, the $5 million scan, which happened quite quickly, uh, so we had a $70 million scale up in eight months. I was stressed out of my mind. I had Zona at 31 years old. You know, it was very hard. I took 30 pounds, I think. Yeah. Just working on two different zone, just the stress. It's stressful.
I was the only one that. I knew what was happening in the whole team, right? So I was sourcing and selling, and so. What led to the scam, um, is once we went through these eight months Hmm. Immediately, uh, one of the founders started campaigning against me. Wow. 'cause the way we were fixing the disparity, it was through a commission agreement.
Hmm. And, uh, a commission agreement when, uh, you know, you're getting a business bill for pennies is good, you know, but when you have to. Pay commission on a $35 million gross profit margin. Mm-hmm. Or something. Mm-hmm. Then it becomes, um. A matter of, do you really agree with the principle of it, right? Mm-hmm.
And they didn't, the, the one of them really champion and he had a huge pool with two other partners. And so we, uh, we had to, um, we were fighting internally. And so because, uh, and you know, I was trying to compromise and I tried and eventually mm-hmm. I, I, I made my partial exit because of that. Um, but still it wasn't enough.
And so that led me to move away a year later.
Bart Egnal: Hmm.
Phil Neil: Uh, but. All that to say that this founder conflict that emerged and it emerged because we weren't all stressed out, I guess, you know? Right. We weren't at our best, so, you know.
Bart Egnal: Hmm.
Phil Neil: Uh, not pointing fingers here. Were we more aware of our state? Uh, we could have probably deescalated that.
Yeah. But
Bart Egnal: you're in the thick of it. Yeah. You're new to this. You, you're dealing with unprecedented growth and stress. You've got the pandemic on top of it. Yeah. And dating even the best surprise in January.
Phil Neil: Yeah. Yeah. My third, my daughter was born January, 2020. So yeah, everybody was, uh, all, all in that state and, and you know.
I just wanna point out that when we read the latest Harvard business, uh, review on why entrepreneur fail and they say 65% fail Yeah. Because of founder conflict. Well, yeah. But the founder conflict usually escalates because we mismanaged our internal state. Right. Right. Which, which is what happened to me.
And so at that point, we couldn't make any good decision. The leadership was spread all over the place, and so that led us to making mistakes. Mm-hmm. Which led to a $5 million scam.
Bart Egnal: Yeah. Tell me about that. Because,
Phil Neil: yeah,
Bart Egnal: I mean, I think again. You know, people think, oh, you know, it's a. This business, you know, there's, people are operating with integrity, but it's not always the case, right?
So tell us this. No, this wild story.
Phil Neil: Yeah. So we had reached a point where we couldn't buy anymore from, uh, China at the time, and we were importing from China. So we, I was looking outside of China, uh, in Thailand, Indonesia, and some, you know, even in Malaysia, people, it was a crazy market, right? Mm-hmm. And, and we found, and the way I was doing it because I had never done it before, is I was using relationships.
I was. Okay. Before COVID, I knew this guy who worked for Midcom, that knew this agent, that did that for a living before the cr, the crisis, and that person as this other person that was doing that before the crisis, right? So everybody was legit. We worked through sourcing agents. Uh, they had a distributor in, in Indonesia that had gloves.
We had done third party inspection. We had sent people there to verify the stock. And, you know, we were coordinating all of that. But what we didn't realize is we were being scammed and so. To this day, the only conclusion that we arrived at was that it was, um, organized crime. Oh my gosh. You know, like a sophisticated
Bart Egnal: operation.
It was
Phil Neil: sophisticated. Yeah. Yeah.
Bart Egnal: So here you are, you're in con founder conflict. You've scaled and now like normal business is hard enough. And now you're getting scammed.
Phil Neil: Yeah. And it took a year before we really knew it. 'cause it happens in stages, right? The first one was we had four charter planes, but then, uh, I, they changed the contract in between two revision, uh, you know, for E right.
And so they, they, we couldn't do it anything illegally. The company was in, uh, Turkey, uh, and then they were arguing, Hey, no, you didn't give me the bills of lading. Well, no. So I can. Passed the gate to ship to the, the plane. And then it was hard to know who was really the bad guy there. Right, right. And a year later, when we finally received the containers by sea, they, we didn't get, we didn't ourself get the bills of lading.
So they were stuck at the port, uh, I think it was 25,000 a day or something, uh, or a week. We were paying a crazy amount. It took, it took hundreds of thousands before we could really go there and actually, and figure it out. Take them out. Yeah. And they were empty. Wow. And so that was, they're empty. Empty.
That must
Bart Egnal: have been the moment. So, okay. Yeah. So then, so, so business is tough and then. Let's, let's the final nail in the coffin, maybe. Literally. Yeah. The fire. Tell us about the fire.
Phil Neil: So, so in between that, I added one or 200 million contract that we lost for many reasons. Oh yeah. Yeah.
Bart Egnal: We live after like there's so many crises.
Right. We came, there's so many crazy story.
Phil Neil: Yeah. But, but I'm pointing it out because that led to, uh, some overstock. Mm. So we were able to, you know. Save the company, uh, through a long story. But we did that overstock. So when I made my exit, part of it was a couple million upfront, and then the rest was, Hey, we need to just liquidate that.
Mm-hmm. Stock the market is back to normal. Had enough, I had to get out of the, that, uh, ecosystem of people. Mm-hmm. And so I left then my thing, and then two years later. I guess there's another story I need to point out just to make it make more sense. Uh, I had spent most of that time investing in a nanotechnology company called Protium.
And just after we had to pivot again, uh, to find product market fit, and then we got ledger of intense from hundreds of millions we were about to break through, well, we had mismanaged the internal state of some of the technical partner that burnt out and quit at that finish line. And so. I was already drained, you know, had been three rough years.
Um, and, and then I restructured the company to a point where we could, we thought we were kind of out of that mm-hmm. Mess. We could replace them. And just as I was done doing that in 2023, around November, I think I got a call from my, uh, last partner saying, Hey, we, the inventory we had, which was 500,000 boxes of, uh, gloves.
Burnt out and, uh, it was insured so that he
Bart Egnal: forgot to pay the insurance bill.
Phil Neil: Yeah. And so that was a huge, uh, slap to the face. Right. But I was. That was the awakening I needed to understand what I'm now preaching. Right? Yeah.
Bart Egnal: So let's fast forward. So I think, you know, just to sum up, I think it's a wonderful story because, and I appreciate your vulnerability.
It would be very easy to tell the story of 200 K to 70 million exits on a high, you know, and you know, I'm a rock star. You know, underneath that story, you're paying blood. You've been through these terrible ups and downs. You've had a fallout with your founders. And I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, and I know many entrepreneurs, your story is far more the norm.
I think the only difference with your story is that despite all those things, you were ultimately successful, you know? Yeah. Whereas a lot of entrepreneurs go through, you know, true, true. Like. Go the zero failure. So I think, you know, it's, it's wonderful that you've normalized talking about that. And now that you've fast forward to today, you've created a company designed to really change the culture of entrepreneurship.
Tell us about the company, and then I wanna talk about your, you know, your courage compass, because I think that's, that's the tool right at the heart of it. And I think, look, e even if you're listening and you're not an entrepreneur, as a leader, you know, people listen to this podcast, they wanna be more inspirational and be more effective leaders.
I think it'll be a compelling tool. So tell me about the company and then let's talk about the tool.
Phil Neil: Perfect. So the company's called the Courage Compass Company because, um, intramural courage is at the center of it. The, the thing that we are trying to fight is. The current, what I think is right now, uh, if you look at the failure rate of entrepreneurship, it will vary from one source of the other and the one simple to the other and whatever criterias you use.
But it's typically that a majority, a vast majority of fund, uh, entrepreneurs fail.
Bart Egnal: Yeah.
Phil Neil: Yeah. I think there were 5 million new businesses filed in 2024 in the us, and 1.5 million of them were out of business by the end of the year. Mm-hmm. It doesn't surprise
Bart Egnal: me. Yeah.
Phil Neil: Yeah. And some stats shows that 98% of founders fail on their first business.
Wow. The, the 10%, you know, the, all the business out there are basically there because someone failed and tried again. So the failure is the norm. Another alarming fact is that mental health issues are up to five times more pri prison, uh, in, uh, entrepreneurial people than the regular population. So not only are people failing, but they're suffering because of it.
Right? And it also fuels failure. So my take on it, if I look back at my life. I'm, I have very strong skills in growth scaling strategy. Mm-hmm. I'm a strong visionary. I, I am very creative at finding win-win solutions and, you know, I have technical and strategic skills and people focus on that. Um, but what really derailed me was the mismanagement of the internal journey, and I think we should approach leadership and entrepreneurship in reverse.
Mm-hmm. We tend to focus on. The skills stack fits in Operation Knowledge, and then we try to, we approach entrepreneurship like a business person. Yes, totally. Okay, this is a problem. What's your broad market fit?
Bart Egnal: What, what are you gonna build? Oh, go on Shark Tank and you know, get, get funding instead of how do we as entrepreneurs and as people.
And I'll tell you, you know, so much of my, I mean I've been an entrepreneur, you know, I bought, I bought my first company when I was. Let's see, I'm 45 now, so I was, it was 2012, I think. So 33 second company, you know, when I was about 41, 40. And, you know, every year the mental game is the most challenging part.
You know, it's not running the business, it's not doing the work with clients, it's self-management. Yeah. Uh, and so I, it totally, it totally resonates.
Phil Neil: And I think if we, if we took the time to really prepare ourself, and I'm working on a entrepreneur readiness tool to really benchmark yourself and see, okay, where, where's my gap?
Because what ends up happening is we focus on the external, then we go to strategic that, you know, okay, I need a new strategy. But really what we do is we self-sabotage when the. Internal pressure is too much. So it affects, and it starts with bad decisions. Right, right. So you, you mismanage your state, you do bad decision that Yeah.
May. So maybe that's
Bart Egnal: a good segue. Like what are some signs We'll come to the solution in the moment, in the courage compass, but. What are some signs if you're an entrepreneur and also if you're a leader, because look, I know it's different. Entrepreneurs do face unique challenges. Not only the op, but, but I know from working with very senior executives, they face incredible pressure Yes.
As well. So whether you're, and people actually, I would say in recent years. The pressure on executives intensified, but it's also drifted lower. I find, you know, you have directors in large companies who are saying it is unrelenting. So what are some signs that you should look for, whether you're an executive or an entrepreneur that indicate, you know, your self management may not be at optimal levels.
Phil Neil: Yes. So what I see and what I look for in readiness, for example, is first of all is emotional mastery. Okay? Decision mastery and intuition mastery. I think these are core areas that if we were or to transform into the leader, we can be into look into, and there's three stages seeing it. Navigating it and learning from it.
Okay, well take me through those stages. Yeah, so emotional mastery, the first one, and I think it's the most destructive one for me, I call it the shadow of entrepreneurship or leadership. You can say.
Bart Egnal: Yeah.
Phil Neil: And it, it's because as when you're outside your comfort zone, trying to bridge two realities as entrepreneurs do and empowered leaders do in companies with, with entrepreneurial, you know, leeway, uh, you.
Have your idea. Mm-hmm. Based on data or, or whatever, know you'll prepare. You have your business plan, but then when you rub it against reality. There's always something that's you had not figured out before. Right? So that brings uncertainty inevitably, and there's no exoneration from uncertainty. No.
You're always gonna feel it, but if you don't know how to name it and and see it, then you don't know how to navigate it. And it can take over and spiral down into the second stage, which is fear. And fear brings you into failure zone, which can trigger the last stage, which is unworthiness, which we usually call.
Imposter syndrome or whatever else, but it's a, it's the sense that maybe I'm failing 'cause I never deserve to win in the first place. And I think, uh, and I think, I think this phase you can fix it, uh, 'cause I was able to get out of it, but the fear and the, uh, uncertainty and I think may probably ultimately unaware, you just have to learn to navigate it.
Yeah. Well I,
Bart Egnal: and I would say whether, you know, speaking personally as an entrepreneur. As a business owner, that uncertainty has just exploded in the last five years. I mean, in the first 10 years as an owner, I, I knew what game I was playing. You know, the game changed slowly and it wasn't necessarily easy to win in terms of building a business or delivering great, but I knew what had to be done.
Now in the last five years, I mean, just a short list of some of the things in my, you know, leadership development companies we face, you know, COVID, right? Yeah. Transformation from in-person training. To remote work, you know, the rise of DEI, the move to, you know, work from home. Then it was returned to office, then it was like omicron, then it was, you know, changing, you know, then we had a recession, then we had rising interest rates.
You know, it's just nonstop, you know, now it's like trade. You know this every, every year, every month there is uncertainty. And so I think the na, the level of uncertainty to your point. You're absolutely right, and I think it's afflicts entrepreneurs, but also executives and leaders. You can't predict what's coming at you and that can, I totally see how that can lead to fear and then the feeling that you don't know what you're doing.
So I totally feel that. Sometimes I'll say like, I don't even know what I'm doing here anymore because you know, I used to know I haven't run this business. People say, no, no, you're doing great. I'm like, okay, you gotta tell me that. So, okay. So when you have those three, now, I, I know you've. You're, you're a real proponent of the way to move outta shadow is to lean into intuition and you've, you've created this tool you call the Courage Compass.
Tell us about how did you come up with this and what is it?
Phil Neil: So, and, and bring me back if I get to last weaving like Donald Trump, right? Because I might not, same IQ gonna come back to do the weave,
Bart Egnal: as you said.
Phil Neil: Yeah. So I just wanna point out, 'cause when you're in the failure zone and you're strapped in ins uncertainty, one thing that was a big shift for me and just in perspective is shifting from, and it's maybe a bit conceptual thinking, but it's, there's practical application from hope to courage.
And I think one, one. So when you start, you have your vision. You, you, you master the game, right? Uncertainty arrives. And then when you lose track, when COVID happens, when, and so if you don't make that switch, what you're gonna do is you're gonna say, okay, which target am I, should I go after now? Mm-hmm.
What, what, what should I, uh, be looking for? What should I be looking for? But if I look back at my pivot and my leadership transformation, they happen when I let go, when I, my eyes let go, when I let go of hope in the form of growth. Okay. Because, you know, 'cause, 'cause hope is driven by growth. Growth mm-hmm.
Is driven by targets. So it's something we see. So it's within your head, but intuition is a feeling in your gut. And that disconnect between head and body makes for a disconnection between, uh, with intuition. And not only is it. Empowering to reconnect with your intuition, but it is also, uh, destructive if you don't shut your head.
Okay. So, so give
Bart Egnal: me some coaching here. I would say as an entrepreneur, I'm much more in the, in the head space. Yes. I, I consume a huge amount of information. I'm looking, you know, what are the risks? What's our p and l, what's the future? How can we grow, you know, what's the investment? And, you know, every piece of data kinda can move me up emotionally or down emotionally.
Yes. Um, and it's really, I would say. It's a way for me to manage the business and the, and the uncertainty that's inevitable. So, but I recognize I'm not in the intuition space, so how would you advise me to begin to tap into my intuition more?
Phil Neil: That's a good segue to the courage compass. Mm-hmm. Okay. So the Courage Compass is a tool to help you create that gap between your head and your body.
Okay? And so, if you think about it, luck plays a huge role in any venture, and it does misfortune as well, right? Yes. Yeah. And so the quality of a decision cannot always be based on, on result. And you can have a different approach to what is a, uh, mm-hmm. Qu decision with the ask quality, uh, value, whatever.
Mm-hmm. The French is coming out now,
Bart Egnal: sorry. Uh.
Phil Neil: What you just mentioned is a very analytical, blue quadrant driven mm-hmm. Decision process to decide what decision is a quality one In the courage compass. I like to break it down with the four traditional colors. Uh, so analytical, blue, green, structural red, uh, relational, and then, uh, yellow conceptual.
Okay, so the problem with blue tinkerers when they make decision is they think that data drives logic, right? And it is true, but it also is imperfect because you cannot get all the data by just looking at the data. You have to step in often in your red quadrant and have conversations with people. 'cause then you generate the data you need to really make the right decision.
So sometimes. You might want to make a blue decision because you're comfortable mm-hmm. In doing more research and using deep search with CHE and everything else. But if you took the time to map out how that decision would play out, if you didn't have the blue mindset, but you had the red or the yellow or the green mindset, then you would see that different leaders that have the same IQ values and and worthless, you could have a very different answer.
And if you let yourself. A, a time to let the world burn for a while and reconnect with what you feel is the right thing to do. Now, you might step into a different quadrant, get that data that you didn't have before, and then go back to your default courage zone of decision making.
Bart Egnal: So the courage is really first, I mean, I guess first there's knowing.
Your kind of strengths and areas like, and I think it's, you were saying an blue is analytical, green is organized and systemic, red is relational, and yellow is kind of conceptual. Yeah. So it's, no, you really have to recognize that you probably have a dominant quadrant. And then so is the idea that the courage is the courage to step beyond that quad?
Phil Neil: The courage is the so, so the, the see it, navigate it and, and then learn from it. Right? So see it is to see your patterns. Okay. So you have decision making patterns and, uh, the way I I think about it is your courage, comfort zone. Hmm. So for me. So I have a, so I used image genetics to understand my default current, um, the default, uh, cocktail preference.
Right. And
Bart Egnal: which are you?
Phil Neil: I'm a trimodal divergent, so I have a, I'm like 95th, uh, creative and, and relational and logic, but I'm very weak at green. Okay. Uh, structural. And so I'm using it. I'm basing, I'm basing, I'm using, uh, immersion for now. I wanna build my home tool eventually, but I think it's good enough so.
Emergings shows me that I naturally tend towards these three zone. Mm-hmm. Maybe, you know, so for me it's a bit more complex, but when I'm under the shadows, it might seem very courageous of me to come up with a billion different ideas, uh, if you're green. But for me, it's my comfort zone. Hmm. It's not a real, it's not outside my realm of possibility.
And so my pattern was, and I could see it after many failures. When I'm stressed, I overthink many pathways. So I'm pulling all of my right yellow and it's creative so people are mind blown and okay, let's do that. Right. But then I'm, I'm in the shadow, so the way I do, I go to my red quadrant. I ask around, I ask around, and eventually when you ask around, you have a contrarian, I view.
Mm-hmm. And so you doubt yourself and you go back to yellow and then go to blue and try to Right. You spiral down. And then you go to failure 'cause your decision sucks. Uh, so the, the, that's the, that's, that's what I mean by the current comfort zone. So in the eyes of someone from the other quadrant, you're doing something.
I should, I should be doing that. Right. I It's so good. Right. But it's your, it's your pattern. So you, you need to see it. Okay, so
Bart Egnal: see what your pattern is.
Phil Neil: Yeah. And then learning to navigate it by creating that gap. And the courage compass is just one of the ways where you can use strategic empathy.
Empathy. Mm-hmm. Em, empathy to really approach, uh, use your brain
Bart Egnal: basically to create the gap, which is easier, and it's the gap. When you see the gap, you mean the gap from the traditional pattern that you follow? Exactly. When you're under pressure, when you're in the, the shadows you described
Phil Neil: Yes. And then, and then you need to feel it because you're, mm-hmm.
And, you know, I think the image of the head and the body is, uh, useful. You know, if you want to convince yourself that this is the right quadrant, you're gonna convince yourself, right? So that's, that's why you need to decide with your intuition.
Bart Egnal: It makes so much sense. I mean, I can think in my. History and, you know, because of the twin stresses of entrepreneurship, where you have the stress of running a business, but also the ownership pressures, right.
You know, payroll, the, the enterprise value. Like, you know, as an entrepreneur you can almost never leave your company right? Unless you have the the exit. Um. And even that comes with its own pressures. So you do get caught in these repetitive patterns, and I think executives and leaders do too. I think it really does apply.
And so I think your advice to know, do some reflection on what is the pattern, what are your strengths, and then what do you default to in times of pressure. Yes. And then I love your idea of using empathy. Empathy for an appreciation for other patterns. Other strengths,
Phil Neil: exactly.
Bart Egnal: And build a team I'd imagine that allows you to break beyond.
That pattern.
Phil Neil: A hundred percent. And that's what true diversity and alignment is in my team as the cognitive preference. Diversity. Because if you look at yourself, right? For me, 'cause I, I'm so bad structural, I can force myself to go there, but I'll hate it. Right. And even as a sales rep, when I was working for big companies,
Bart Egnal: yeah.
Phil Neil: I won. Because I'm a big risk taker. Right. And I get them to stay in a conceptual and relational zone. But
Bart Egnal: you wouldn't follow the process. But I was at risk of
Phil Neil: failing. Yeah. Because I wasn't able to follow the process. Well, you make
Bart Egnal: these big sales, why don't you just follow the, follow the CRM? It's a high risk.
Phil Neil: Yeah, exactly. But logic that's, you know, there would've been time. You know, I, I should have forced myself more in the structural and, and also as an entrepreneur, it's a pattern that I, you know, sometimes you don't have the luxury to hire an integrator. Right. You know, and, and there's a known lens of EOS of visionary integrator.
Yeah. I think it's partially complete. You know, there's the two others that you need to factor in, but, um. But, uh, you don't not always have the luxury. So the courage SA way to do it for yourself, kind of.
Bart Egnal: And I think, you know, people in teams, you know, look, maybe you're lucky enough in that if you're in a company or in, you know, government and you, you have the luxury to cultivate the team you want.
But yes, probably not. You know, you probably inherit some of it. You probably, and so doing this mapping of yourself and having your colleagues doing the mapping, I think is, is really powerful. And then I think the self-management, you know what, everyone goes through stress, everything goes through pressure.
And I think to your point, uncertainty. Drives fear, drives self-doubt. You know, we're in the time of deep uncertainty, so. Look, Phil, this is, this is hugely helpful, and I know now that you're launching your company, you, you've got a book coming out. You've got a Ted Talk. Tell people listening, like, what's, what's coming?
How can people connect with you?
Phil Neil: Yeah, thank you. Well, so I just, uh, decided, uh, I don't know when this is gonna air, but, uh, on the 28th of, uh, may I officially named my company. That's great. Well,
Bart Egnal: this'll, this'll be It's happened.
Phil Neil: It's happened. Yeah. That's exciting. So one thing we realized is that I realized even just lately in one of my pattern is 'cause I was, I knew my why.
I, you kind of knew my what. Mm-hmm. But I was confused with my what and my how. So now what we're working on is the differentiating the how and the what. Mm-hmm. And so. I know what I do, I know the process, the tools. Mm-hmm. The how is going to be built as I go. So if you wanna follow around, uh, phil Neil.com, P-H-I-L-N-E-I l.com is my website.
I'm very active on you. LinkedIn as well. You're on LinkedIn. I know that's where we met. Yes. And so for now, we, we do. A clarity sprint. Mm-hmm. That is more of a personalized approach, but the, the how that we're working towards is we're, uh, building this tool of, uh, entrepreneurial readiness score that will, uh, be able to give it the diagnostic and then you can measure, uh, improvement.
And, uh, at the end of the day, that's gonna lead to real transformation. Yeah.
Bart Egnal: Well, we can put links to your LinkedIn profile and your website in the show notes. And, and will the tool, the diagnostic be available on your website? As soon as
Phil Neil: possible. So right now we're testing it out with a, a first, uh, test group.
Yeah. Mid June. Then, uh, we're going to make it so that we have a strong enough database. That we can benchmark correctly and we're gonna release it as, as we're ready for it.
Bart Egnal: Well, hopefully by the time you're listening to this, it's available. And you have a book coming out too, right?
Phil Neil: Yes. I don't, I'm not sure I have the title yet.
So what will it be about? It's gonna be about this discovery of the impact of the shadow of, of, uh, yeah. Leadership and entrepreneurship and, and kind of changing that culture of, um. Um, looking at the internal be just when it's too late and really looking at your at, at the new approach to leadership and transformation.
And it's gonna be around the same subject of my TED Talk, which I'll be doing at Harvard in November. That's official. I don't have the Congrat. That's
Bart Egnal: wonderful. And look, I think it's such an important topic. I mean, yeah, I wanna thank you for coming on as an entrepreneur. I mean, entrepreneurs, no matter how successful they are or not.
I do think there's a heavy mental load, uh, and huge ups and downs and as you cited some of the statistics, but I also think leaders outside entrepreneurship are beginning to experience the same. Things and it's brought on by the uncertainty, the heightened, you know, the short term changes that to our world that happen.
And so I think you're doing really important work and humanizing and being authentic about the realities and also coming up with some ways to, you know, build some resilience. So I really appreciate you, Phil, and I appreciate you coming on the show.
Phil Neil: Thank you. And one thing maybe that's worth mentioning for emerging leaders mm-hmm.
I think there's a similar transformation between when you're the rockstar sales guy mm-hmm. And you become now, uh, the leader in the managerial role, which is you need to transform if, um, it is the same information then from the seed stage, right. The growth stage where you are the lone wolf. Right now you have a leadership and a team.
It's, it's a mistake. At least I've discovered for myself to. Aim at growth at this point. Because if you just think about growth, you're always going to look at the same KPIs and metrics to prove your self worth and your, your yeah. Your value. So it's really about transforming, uh, and changing how you value yourself and changing all of that.
And so that's issue and developing that self-awareness. Yes.
Bart Egnal: Developing that ability is self-managed because you're gonna need that in when times are, are down.
Phil Neil: Yes. And yeah. Aiming internally. Yeah. Well, thank you. Uh, well, thanks for coming and thanks for working and
Bart Egnal: I'm so pleased for you that you're.
Your path has led you to this and, uh, I think you can make a real impact. So thanks again for coming off.
Phil Neil: Thank you. I appreciate it so much.
Bart Egnal: I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Inspire Podcast and the conversation that I had, uh, with our guests. And hopefully you left with some really practical, tangible tools and tips that you can use to be more consistently inspirational if you're enjoying the pod. I'll ask you a favor. Please rate and review it.
I love the comments, appreciate the reviews and the visibility allows others to discover the pod. It's really how word of mouth has spread The Inspired podcast to so many listeners and helped us keep making this great content. Stay tuned. We'll be back in two weeks with another inspiring conversation.
Thanks so much for listening. Go forth and inspire.