Transcript: Ethical Leadership with Andrew Stotz (EP79)

 

Intro (with music): Welcome to The Culture of Things podcast with Brendan Rogers. This is a podcast where we talk all things, culture, leadership and teamwork across business and sport.

Voiceover: To all of our loyal listeners, The Culture of Things podcast will now also have specific episodes produced for Youtube. To ensure you don’t miss out on this exclusive Youtube content, head on over to Youtube, click the subscribe button and hit the notification bell. Now, let’s get into the episode…

Brendan: As a person, and as a leader, do you know what you stand for?

My next guest definitely does! Ethical leadership is something he considers a unique point of difference. As he says, ethics is rare, and rare is valuable!

Andrew Stotz is an impressive person with an impressive background. He’s a former president of the Chartered Financial Analyst Society of Thailand, and is one of Thailand’s award-winning equity analysts. He’s also the founder and CEO of A.Stotz Investment Research. He's authored 4 books, been a University lecturer in finance for more than 2 decades and is co-founder of CoffeeWORKS, Thailand’s specialty coffee roaster.

He’s host of his own fantastic podcast called ‘My Worst Investment Ever, where he’s released 555 episodes and counting. And hot off the press, he’s now the new host of the Deming Institute podcast called, In Their Own Words.

If you’re watching on YouTube, I’d love you to watch the whole interview. I also understand you may want to check out a specific part. If that’s the case, go to the chapters in the description below and choose the part you want to see.

In the first half of the interview, Andrew explains the 5 key values that underpin how he interacts with people.

In the second half, he explains the 5 key values that underpin how he does his work. He even links his last value, ‘reveal conflicts’ to how it can be used to reduce corruption.

These 10 values, his ethics, are what guide him every day. As a leader, if you have this level of clarity in what you stand for, the right people will come into your world, and the wrong one’s won’t come near you!

How many books have you read? I wonder if you’ve read as many as Andrew. He reveals the staggering amount during the interview and he also touches on how his drug and alcohol addiction during his teenage years helped shape him and how he lives his values.

After the interview, I share my three key takeaways. Share your takeaways with me via email or you can put them in the YouTube comments.

I hope you enjoy the interview. Let’s get into it.

Hello and welcome to the Culture of Things podcast. I'm your host, Brendan Rogers, and this is episode 79. Today, I got to talk to Andrew Stotz. Andrew, how are you, mate?

Andrew: I'm good. How are you, Brendan?

Brendan: Very well, mate, very well. You're coming to us all the way from Bangkok today. Is that right?

Andrew: Yeah, that's right. As we talked earlier, it's always hot and steamy here in Bangkok.

Brendan: Isn't it? I was fortunate enough to spend a few weeks in Bangkok many, many years ago working for a shipping company. I spent a fair bit of that time sweating, I have to say.

Andrew: Yeah, I've got used to it. I used to be in a dry climate back in the US. I've really gotten used to that, and the way your skin feels, and all that. I'm used to the humidity.

Brendan: You've acclimatized?

Andrew: Absolutely.

Brendan: Good on your body. Mate, let's dive in. Tell us a bit about Andrew. You have this financial background, an unbelievable background, actually. Don't get with your teenage side of things. That sort of started. We'll get into that a little bit later. I'll just frame it up for the audience about a bit of your background. What are you into from a business perspective, mate?

Andrew: Yup. My name is Andrew Stotz. I'm, first of all, the host of My Worst Investment Ever podcast, where I interview people about the mistakes that they've made in their worst investments. I have four basic things that I do. First one is I have a coffee business that I'm co-invested in and a co-founder. That's been around for almost three decades here in Thailand.

The second thing I do is develop investment strategies and help people manage their money. The third thing that I do is about valuation. I value companies. I've been doing that all my career. As a side note, I have the Valuation Master Class that I teach young people how to value companies.

The final thing is I have a service called Outsource CFO. What I found is that a lot of small medium-sized companies particularly struggle, because they're so focused on getting revenue and building their business that they put the accounting and finance aspect aside. What I help companies do is get on-time and accurate monthly financial statements consistently. Then start to use those statements as a feedback mechanism to check their performance.

As I say, finance is a mirror. I help get that mirror up and show it in front of not only them, but for me and my own businesses in what we do. We use that as a mirror. I think that the main thing that goes throughout my whole life is my passion for finance. That's the thing that I've devoted my life to.

Brendan: Yeah, mate. You're certainly well-entrenched in that space and an absolute leader in the financial area, particularly in Asia. I have to plug the podcast as well. I'm always a guest on the podcast, I think, back in 360 on episode or somewhere, 366, I think it might.

Andrew: 366.

Brendan: Did you remember that or did you check it before we came on?

Andrew: Yeah, 366.

Brendan: Mate, you are definitely an analyst. You remember numbers.

Andrew: Yup.

Brendan: It is a fantastic podcast, absolutely. I love the structure of it and understanding people's worst investment. The diversity of people you get on the podcast is fantastic. Culture of Things listeners, check out Andrew's My Worst Investment Ever podcast. It's well worth the listen.

I guess going back to you being a leader in that financial area, one of the things that, I guess, in researching for this interview, there are some things that have been paramount to you as a person. This is what we want to unpack. You've got all sorts of experience, not just in the financial sector that you've just explained, and even coffee and service, and delivery and valuation, but in life, generally. You've had some ups and downs, like a lot of people, maybe in early life.

Your trajectory in life could have gone different ways. What we're really interested in unpacking today is these 10 things that you've molded, that make you up as a person—what you stand for, how you live your life, and how you make decisions. I found that super fascinating.

I want to start there. You've broken it up into two parts. There were five that really focused on interactions with others and there are five that focus on how you do your work. Can I start with the first part of how you interact with others? It's super important. I know you value relationships. One of those first ones that came up was loyal. Tell us about loyalty and what that means for you.

Andrew: Maybe I'll just explain the backstory of where this whole thing came from. I had been teaching ethics and I had been trying to live ethically. I always felt like ethics is taught negatively. Here's a story of somebody that did something, broke trust, broke loyalty, did insider trading, and this is what happened to them. I think that for a young person, they just may not be able to relate to that. Therefore, they're going to think, oh, that's not going to happen to me or whatever.

I decided, why don't I flip it around and say that ethics can add value to you? Even in the area of CFA, where I'm involved in for Chartered Financial Analysts, I was teaching ethics. I taught that way from a negative. That's when I decided to turn it around, because I also saw that students didn't pay attention to ethics until the last minute.

They want to learn how to value a company or whatever. I tried to say that actually, if you look at finance, accounting, and all of these areas, it's very hard to build a competitive advantage in Excel spreadsheet skills, coding skills, accounting skills, or understanding of financial statements. Anybody can learn that.

What I try to teach people is that very few people build ethics into their life in a way that it can really add value. The first part of that is I talk about how we can apply ethics in our interactions. A lot of this comes from the CFA guidelines on ethics, and then trying to bring that into my own lives.

The first one is to be loyal. What that means is that you always put your client's interests first. If you do that one thing regularly and consistently, you're already adding value, because a lot of people aren't loyal. That's my first one out of the five. Should I go into the second one?

Brendan: I just want to unpack that loyal, because I think it's really relevant to attach, where there are relevant stories to that loyal. These things that we value and the ethics, and you talk about where you've come up, they're generally based on experiences in our lives. What have you attached back to that experience of loyalty, and why being loyal is important?

Andrew: What I see is that people get confused sometimes about where their loyalties lie. For instance, as an example, I was a sell-side analyst for many, many years. I'm visiting companies on behalf of fund managers around the world who want to know what's happening with these companies.

Here, I have a CEO that I'm talking to at company XYZ here in Thailand, and I got a fund manager back in New York that's trying to make a decision whether he's going to buy or sell. I have an interest in trying to make sure that the CEO and I get along so that he's a long-term resource for me and all that. But sometimes, I've seen people get caught up where they lose the aspect of their loyalty. Ultimately, in that situation, as a sell-side analyst, my loyalty is to my client, and my client is the fund manager back in the US.

As I work with young analysts and as I work with many people, I always ask, who is your client and what is your obligation of loyalty to them? Once you recalibrate to that, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, right. But sometimes when we have a lot of different things going on, we can get lost in that. I think once you do that, it's also gratifying for the client when you say, my objective is to get the best information or the best deal for you, you are my client.

Brendan: How do you live that in your personal life outside of the work that you do?

Andrew: I think that a good example is taking care of my mother, who is 84 and lives with me here in Thailand. Ultimately, I'm the primary caregiver. I can sit there and listen to a different doctor, a different nurse, and all that, and get mesmerized by what they're talking about.

The fact is that, if it's not the right thing for my mom, for instance, a doctor may say, oh, well, you shouldn't move a lot because you have a wound on your foot, as an example, basically, that doctor is only looking at a small area. My loyalty is to my mother's total health. I can say if she stops moving, that's going to cause other problems related to blood flow, related to the GI system, and all of that.

Ultimately, I have to stand up for her rights and stand up for her situations. Hey, doctor, have you thought of this and that? It's uncomfortable. I don't want to be confrontational with these guys. That doctor and that nurse is not where my loyalty lies. It is with my mother as being the primary caregiver. That's an example in my personal life, where I had to apply that.

Brendan: You do post on your Instagram account, which has a reasonable amount of followers, I have to say. Lots of photos with you and your mom out lunching all the time and stuff like that. You seem to be enjoying yourselves together.

Andrew: We had a good time together. That's part of the reason why I keep trying to convince her to keep moving, because that's a luxury—getting out to have a nice meal and all that. Imagine how my mom would feel if she started thinking that my loyalty wasn't to her. Wow, that would just be awful to think of how she would feel being here in Bangkok with me, me being the primary caregiver, and then I'm messing around and I'm not putting her interest first ahead of others.

Brendan: Nice lead into the next one, trustworthy. Explain that a bit and what you just shared—if trustworthiness is not there and understanding what you've just said about loyalty. What's the impact of those two?

Andrew: The way that I think about trustworthiness is that people have no doubt that they can rely on your character, your ability, and your honesty. Think about trustworthiness for just a minute and ask the listeners, the viewers out there, and for yourself, Brendan. The question is, how many people do you truly trust in your life? What would you say?

Brendan: If I had to count, I would probably say true trust would come on one hand, maybe venture into the other one slightly.

Andrew: Yeah. I think that when I ask this question all over, whenever I teach about ethics, the answer is probably on average, three, the high-end is 5-7, and the lowest I've heard from some people in the audience is zero. Let's just take three.

The first lesson I learned, there was a great book I read many years ago called Reality Therapy. He talks about mental illness is really just the body and the emotional reaction to the fact that you don't have anybody you can trust. When you lose the ability to trust anybody around you, your body puts up a lot of defense mechanisms. We really need to have at least one person that we trust to have full emotional development.

His theory about that, I took to heart. I thought that was very insightful. Let's just take three for a moment. If there are only three people that you trust, how many people do you know? People that you know, that are acquaintances, maybe 100.

Maybe there's a lot of people in your social network. But generally, you could say, maybe there are 20 or 30 people that are close to you, and there are only three on average that you trust. That means that trust is rare. Right there is evidence of it.

The next question I always ask, for the people listening and viewing this, is the idea that if I was to ask a friend of yours, how many people do you trust? They say, one, two, three, four, or whatever, are you one of those people? Rather than think about it, who do I trust, you try to think about, how do I make sure that I'm building into my character, trustworthiness?

One example is my business partner, Dale. We've been business partners for three decades. We were friends from when we were 14. Not once in all of those years has Dale betrayed my trust, like I heard him talking bad about me or someone says something, just anything. I can say that I had the same experience with my family.

My dad, when he was towards the end of his life, I asked him, what was his proudest moment? He said, I built a trusting family. Trust is rare. Loyalty is rare. Trustworthiness is rare. If you just have those traits that you build in your character, you are valuable.

Brendan: How do I become a person in your trusted circle, to use an example of a relationship with you and I?

Andrew: One of the things in this world of instant gratification, we have hacks, we have cheat sheets, and we have shortcuts. What's interesting about trust is it can really only be built over time. First there's a basic trust, where we start to get to know each other and we like each other, but then the trust really comes in when times get tough. Those times don't always come up that often, but trust is built over time.

I would say that because I've had a good experience in my life with trust with my family and close friends, I'm pretty willing to trust other people pretty easily. But I also know that the minute I get any signal of nonsense or untrustworthiness, then I'm not interested in continuing. Really, for me, it's just about interactions. Having more and more interaction, getting to know each other, and then trying to see what it's like.

I am really, really tough on trust. If somebody was to break my trust in one way or another, particularly in the beginning of a relationship, meh. That's why I think it's also hard.

I had a guy that I got to know here in Bangkok. It was about 10 years ago that we started spending more time together and talking. I realized I could trust him and we've had a good relationship. But I thought to myself, wow, it's been a long time since I've made a new friend. That's because as we get older, we have some reality about the rare nature of trust. That's my answer.

Brendan: On that point, do you think that, over time, if we're not meeting and making new friends that we can lose the ability to build the level of trust you're talking about?

Andrew: One good thing, to me, trust is cumulative. I had some friends that we built trust over many years. Maybe we didn't talk for five years, and then we connected right back. The trust is right at the level that it was before. The good news is when you invest in trust, you're investing in an asset that holds its value. That's the best part I would say about it.

I guess from my perspective, once I've identified the people around me that I can trust, I just go all in with those people. I share how I feel. I know I can. Just last night, I was facing some difficulties in my day and dealing with a lot of different stuff. I just called Dale, my best friend and basically said, look, this is what's going on. It's that kind of conversation I may not have with someone else, but with someone like Dale that I trust, I feel comfortable to have that conversation.

The takeaway for the listeners is to become a trustworthy person. One of the easiest ways to do that is not speak about another person, ever. Even to say, oh, yeah, that guy knows that guy. He's my friend or we talked about this or that. Nope. Be very tight-lipped with the information.

I was the president of CFA Society in Thailand, which meant that people came to me with problems, also some ethical violations, and other issues. What I prided myself in was that when they talked to me about what was going on, I was able to be confidential in my communication. Of course, that's another one that we'll talk about in a bit. But trustworthiness is key.

Brendan: Yeah. Well said, mate. Let's go on to the third element of ethics and who Andrew Stotz is. What underpins him?

Andrew: The third one is the way we interact with people to be fair. In fact, if you think about it, if you're ever called unfair, like you're an unfair person, oh, just cuts to the heart. That is not what I want to be seen as and say, yeah, Brendan, you're really unfair in the way you treat the people around you. Whoa, that's like a knockout punch.

Brendan: Absolutely.

Andrew: I want to be fair. What it means is that you deal fairly and objectively with all your friends, your clients, the people around you, based upon their needs. In the world of finance, this is particularly important, because I may have found a great stock that I've done a lot of research on. I think this stock is going to fly. I may have 100 clients that want to buy that stock, but if I basically went to the ones I liked the most, and I brought that idea to them first, and then I brought it later to the other ones, that's not fair.

What I learned about fairness is that we have to treat each person in a fair way. We have a saying in the CFA world, which is fair is not always equal. If a particular stock is not for the style of a particular client, I may think about, okay, I don't need to disclose that. But I also feel like trying to think about the interests of the people around you and treating them fairly. Let's say you have a small client, and then they feel like you're treating them just as fairly as you're treating a bigger client, you're going to have a client for life.

Brendan: I guess this is why you've been so successful in your time and continue to create success around you, because you're in this financial space as a very well-known financial analyst. You're talking about loyalty, trustworthiness, and fairness. You must come up against some pretty challenging situations, where those values for you are challenged often.

Andrew: One thing about building these ethical behaviors into your life and ethical actions is that unethical people don't talk to me. They know right from upfront, don't bring me any bullshit. Am I stopping bad behavior in the world? As a supervisor of people, if I see it, and I can get involved and stop it, I will. You could say, well, you're just pushing those people to another place. If we all did that, you know, those people wouldn't have a place to go.

I think that what you find is that developing a code of ethics and clearly communicating it. Let's just say that recently I have a new partner for a particular part of our business, that firm I just went to meet with, seven of them and one of me to go through the beginning of the relationship. I just said, look, let's just start off with the fact that I was president of CFA society and I've never had an ethical violation in my career. The last thing I want to do is do something that would harm that.

Let's start from that point, that I believe you also want that too. They're like, absolutely. Good, that's our starting point. Then that always allows us to have any conversation if something was to come up that seemed like it may be borderline or something to consider.

Brendan: Andrew, I just want to sum that up a little bit. What's going through my head at the moment is that what I understand you're saying to me, in slightly different words, is that if you're very clear on what you stand for, that's always put out in the world. Not necessarily, hey, here's my poster, but the actions that you portray each and every single day, then the right people will attract themselves to you. But more importantly, the wrong people won't even try and interact with you.

Andrew: They'll see right off the bat. There's not an opportunity here.

Brendan: It makes life easier.

Andrew: Yeah, it makes life easier. I had a chance or a mantra that I've said over the years, and that is I want to be attractive. What does that mean to be attractive? It means I attract good things and good people. That really is my definition of attractiveness. I have mapped out some of the steps that if I was an attractive person, what would I be doing each day?

One of the things I said is, all my words are positive. That's my mantra, all my words are positive, all my words are positive, all my words are positive. Negative people don't have a chance around me. I'll never engage in negative gossip or other things. It's not to say that I'm a Pollyanna or saying everything's amazing and it's great. No, I'm willing to deal with any trouble that comes into my life, but I am going to speak in a positive way and use positive words.

I remember many years ago, I was talking with them, and I was telling them about that, and they said, ah, that's why I never heard you gossip about other people and complain. I said, yeah, all my words are positive. As I'm speaking about it right now, I'm thinking about that this morning, I was complaining about something.

I'm just thinking that it doesn't fit, so I'm trying to get my mind to catch myself. I'm just thinking about it as we speak. I was complaining about something related to my mom and what's happening with her health care. Ultimately, does that type of negative talk help? Probably not.

Brendan: I guess you're good, mate, but you're not perfect. We haven't found a perfect person yet, have we?

Andrew: I think that that's not what the goal is anyways. I think being in the financial world also, it's such a brutal world because you see right in front of you. If you're running a business and you're making bad decisions, you could potentially run that business for another five years, or three years, or one year, whatever. But if you're making bad decisions in your investment decisions in the stock market, the reality comes very quickly, very hard, and very strong.

You can't ignore reality in the financial world. That's what I like about it. It could even be one of the last places where consequences are very real. If you develop a social opinion about society, or the way a certain type of people should be treated, or whatever your idea is, it could be just awful and cause awful consequences. But the reality is that in this world, you could go on for years with a flawed thought process, but the stock market will wake you up to that very quickly.

Any listener out there that has lost money in the stock market knows exactly what I mean. I love Tesla, I'm buying Tesla. Yeah, you may be very wrong in buying a Tesla right now or you may be very right. We'll know.

Brendan: What are your thoughts on Bitcoin and some of these cryptocurrencies?

Andrew: Parts of my business is outsourced CFO, so I am actually a CFO of a cryptocurrency exchange, where we've done a lot of the work on the back office in the finance and accounting to make sure that that's done and that the company is in compliance. My standard answer is 0%-3% of your total wealth or total portfolio in crypto. If you don't feel comfortable with crypto, then 0%. If you feel like I really want to bet on crypto, 3%. Maybe up to 5%, if you really think that you really know it.

It's not an asset class that has a cash flow to it. It's a speculative asset class that you're hoping that there's a value there. I know as a person who spent all my career trying to value things, there's a lot of different ways that people try to claim that there's value to Bitcoin or to other cryptocurrencies.

In most cases, I think they can break down when you really analyze it and say that, really, the value is ultimately that someone else sees something in it that causes the share price or the value to go up, and then you sell in that momentum, and you capture some value of another person feeling like there's value, but it's very, very hard to measure.

Brendan: I understand, mate. We won't go down that path, because I don't wanna have to put any disclaimers on this interview. This is not financial advice or anything like that. We'll leave that to your episodes. Let's go into the next element of your five ethics around interacting with people, and that's confidential.

Andrew: Yeah. The point is that in your interaction with clients, you want to protect the privacy of your clients. What that means is nothing ever leaks out about your clients from you. Basically, it's happening all the time. People are showing off that they've got this big client or they're saying something of what that client disclosed to them.

In the world of finance, if on the sell side where I was a broker, basically, the client may have a huge amount of shares in a particular company that they want to dump on to the market, but it's going to take them four weeks to do it because they got a lot of shares. They don't want the share price to go racing up, because somebody leaks out to the market that there's this huge amount of shares.

They want to be able to bring out piecemeal if they can, and then they'll go out and they'll test different brokers, and they're doing this all the time, where they're testing to see if something leaks from that broker. I always say that, ultimately, if you can keep it confidential, and as I say to people, particularly the finance world, the best way to think about it is that everything is confidential.

People ask me, what is and what is not? Everything is confidential. Where trustworthiness really builds is when you're a truly confidential person. The last part I would say about that is that the only thing that's not confidential is if a client, for instance, discloses that they've broken a law, then you have some obligation to society to deal with that report that talks to the client, that type of thing.

The only other time is if you are required by the government, where the government may say that you have to submit information. There's not a lot you can do about that. You're required to do that. You could try to push back and say, please give me the exact authority that you have to demand this information. How about a warrant or something like? Then that's the only other time.

There are other times when clients will voluntarily give up their confidentiality. For instance, when we sign a credit card to get a credit card, we are saying that we are allowing that credit card company to release our financial records from the credit card company into, for instance, a country's database on that, but otherwise, generally keep everything confidential. If you're loyal, you're trustworthy, you're fair, and you're confidential, wow. Right there, just those four things will make you rare.

Brendan: Yeah, absolutely. What you just explained about where it's okay to break confidentiality, I guess that leads into the fifth element of what you stand for in your ethics. You want to explain that one?

Andrew: Yeah. This reveals conflicts of interest, that you always disclose conflicts of interest before your clients make decisions. I'll give an example, here in Thailand, my Thai students have said, imagine that the cabinet of the government is meeting. They're trying to decide on a new building that they're going to build for Parliament, as an example. They're looking at all these different land plots.

One of the members of the Cabinet has a big piece of land, and it's being considered as one of the land plots that they may build this on. I asked them, is that allowed under ethics? They always say, no, that's definitely not allowed. The answer to that question is, absolutely, it's allowed. However, that Cabinet member has to reveal the conflict of interest.

If they don't reveal it or they don't say, oh, yeah, what's in my wife's name, but it's still mine, and then they would need to recuse themselves. They have to stay out of the vote, basically.

Brendan: Yeah, exclude themselves.

Andrew: Yeah. The point that I'm making is that a lot of people get confused. They think that our objective in society is to reduce conflicts of interest, but that's impossible. Every salesperson is making a commission. Everything out there has conflicts. What the objective is is to reveal conflicts of interest before people make a decision.

If I'm being compensated by two different companies, for instance, for a particular mutual fund, they have mutual funds, and these guys pay me 20% commission, and these guys pay me 10%. commission, it's important that I disclose that to the client. Once I've disclosed that to the client, even if I say that I like the one that's paying a higher commission to me, the client has the information then to be able to make a decision. Nobody expects that conflicts of interest don't exist.

I had a case where I had not revealed the conflicts of interest in a particular case. What I did is I went to the client after thinking about it and I just said, look, I didn't reveal this. What I'm just going to tell you also is that I'm not going to take any fee on this particular transaction because I didn't reveal it to you in the beginning. The point is, revealing conflicts of interest puts them out on the table. It simplifies everything.

There's always going to be conflicts of interest, so don't try to focus on eliminating conflicts of interest. If every conflict of interest was revealed, it's also something I've thought about corruption in Asia, which is so prevalent. In some cases, it's really seen as a legitimate cost of doing business.

We fight so hard to say, okay, get rid of corruption and all that. Sometimes I feel like maybe it's better that corruption is allowed to be legal, but it must be disclosed. If two companies are bidding and a company wins, and then they show, okay, we paid the guy at this particular company X amount and all that, and we paid this and that, and then they list it out. It's legal, do it, go ahead, but it's got to be public. That would be enough for society to be able to control it, and the opposing forces of competition would also try to control it.

It's a weird idea for a guy that, we would say, I'm an ethical guy to say that we should make corruption legal, but after 30 years in Asia, I would say it's a little bit like the war on drugs in America. The more they spent, the more they cracked down, the less that they actually solved the problem. They incentivize so many other things. Now, we're 40, 50 years into the war on drugs in America, and still no significant result. In fact, the whole problem is very serious.

There it is. Basically, if you're loyal, you're trustworthy, you're fair, you're confidential, and you reveal conflicts of interest in your interactions with others, you're going to be very, very rare. The point is, rare is valuable. In the world of finance, we know that for sure.

If you build those things into your life, the point that I would make is that your ethics is adding value to you. You're seeing the positive side of how we can apply ethics rather than a case study of all the ethical mistakes that people made.

Brendan: Andrew, you speak about this with a huge level of clarity. Can you just explain to us some of the journey that you've been on to get to this unbelievable level of clarity around what you stand for in your interactions with others?

Andrew: My story is about getting clean and sober at a young age. I was forced to kind of deal with reality. I was forced to communicate directly and honestly, through drug rehab, basically. That was kind of the beginning that got me realizing that putting my cards on the table, I had to do it, or else, I was going to go back to drinking, drugging, and all of that.

I was kind of pushed to do it, and then I started to see the benefit of it. Then I started teaching ethics many, many years ago. I had to study ethics. I had to do it when I was working as an analyst. I had to do it when I was taking my CFA exam. But then I started to see this challenge.

In fact, I saw the statistics of students in Thailand, and they were struggling with ethics in the CFA exam. I always ask them, why do you think that you scored poorly? They said, well, ethics on the CFA exams have a lot of tricky English language stuff. I was like, yeah, but you're not the only non-native speakers who are taking the exam. There could be Spanish, there could be Chinese.

We went through a lot of different things. But I think the point is that most people just don't build a lot of clarity in that area. I think, ultimately, it comes down to society, our parents in particular. I would say that helping people understand that there's a line and helping people understand that ethics is not as ambiguous as people want to make it sound and seem.

A lot of times, people are like, yeah, well, what would you do in this case? What would you do in that case? Once you build ethical principles into your life, many of those cases don't even come into your life, first of all. I went into a job, for instance, in this particular company. The research team writes research, and when it's done, they release it to the world.

As a sales team that sells that research, the sales team is not supposed to know what that research is, until the same time the rest of the world knows. That is fair disclosure. But what happened when I came in as a head of research, the salespeople asked me, hey, what are you going to publish next week? I said, well, I can't discuss that. They said, well, we used to be able to discuss that with the head of research before. I said, look, that's an ethical violation and I'm telling you right now, I will not do it, and it's going to stop right there.

I talked to my boss and just said, look, this is what came up. I can't control what happened in the past, but I can tell you that is an ethical violation, and therefore, I won't do it. He said, thank you so much, and it stopped right there. I would say that ethics is not as gray as it appears.

The problem that you face is that some people get up on a high horse and like, no, I don't want to allow anything. You need to discuss it. Bring it out, just like revealing conflicts. Discuss it with your boss, discuss it with other people, and then try to come up with a black and white.

Brendan: I know you've just mentioned the story. Again, not so much the story about how you got into drugs, alcohol, and all that sort of stuff. I know from learning about you, your parents were a big part of helping you through that. That connection with your parents and then even what you're doing now in the caring of your dad previously, before he passed away with your mother, how much has that experience alone shaped you, those ethics, your unbelievable passion, and so much commitment to what you're about?

Andrew: I think it's the key. I didn't realize how valuable it was, but I think now, I've come to realize that there's a lot of people out there that don't have a north star. I don't think my parents ever talked to me about ethics, or about my character, or anything. It's just that they demonstrated through their behavior, what's right and wrong, and what to do and what not to do.

I knew when I was doing wrong, I knew it was wrong. I would say that it was just by example, really. They never really pushed me in any one way or another. I think even if we take away the drug and alcohol use, plenty of the listeners and viewers are struggling. They're struggling in their lives on different issues.

What I learned is that if you can face an issue head on, try to identify it, talk to people, get help with it, and then try to get through it, I think the only way through problems in our lives is through them. When you go through them, you come out the other side, a better, stronger person. The main thing is just when you're facing situations, just talk about it, and find those people that you trust and talk about it.

I would say that in my family, we were always open. Brendan, here's a funny story. When I was in LA, I was surrounded by Cambodian families, Asian families, and all of us guys. Certainly, a Midwest guy from Ohio living in California thought, wow, these families in Asia are really close. I'd seen them dropping off each other, sharing the car, and helping each other. Then I moved to Asia and I found out I was wrong. Asian families are not as close as I thought.

What I learned was that they're physically close, but not emotionally close. They're definitely helping each other in many different ways. In general, it's hard for the young kids to talk to their parents, particularly their fathers. They just can't share a lot of stuff with their mom and dads, because their mom and dads don't understand it or won't take the time to listen to it.

That just was a real revelation to me. Then I realized how valuable my relationship with my parents was, because no matter what bad thing that happened in my life, I shared it with them. I lost a job at one point in my life. It was a little bit of my problem. Some people were coming down on me pretty hard. It was a tough time.

Somebody asked me when they talked about it later, like, what did you do? I said, I called my mom and dad. I said, it was really one of the harder calls I had to tell them, because of what happened. They were just shocked that I would even talk to my mom and dad about it. I would just say, from a parent perspective, listen to your kids, talk to your kids, and ask them how they feel.

From a child perspective, do your best to try to talk to your mom and dad about your feelings. Hopefully that works. But if it doesn't work, then look for other people that you can talk to about the things that you feel.

Brendan: I love that, mate. It's certainly something my wife and I have tried to live with every day with our own children. They're 22 and 19 now. I don't think there's any subject that they don't talk to us about. We have a very open communication line and the challenges they have as young people. Vice versa, we talk to them a lot about learning from younger people, experiences, and what works. I couldn't agree more.

On that point of ethics and differences in cultures, more so, because you have trained and have interacted, even through your lectures and stuff, so many thousands of people and particularly young people as well across the divide of the world, let's just focus on east versus west to some extent. Maybe you've shared a little bit. What's the key challenge or the key challenges you've seen in those different Eastern-Western cultures related to ethics, those variations that may come up?

Andrew: It's a challenge. I would say that there are a lot of people in Asia that are brought up to think that corruption is just a natural thing. That's where I also feel like one of the successes that I've had living in Asia is try to take off the hat that I have of the way I was brought up in what I think is right and wrong, and try to put yourself into the shoes of these other people who were brought up with something very different.

That is really the biggest challenge, because someone may look at China and say, that's not good, that's not right just as much as China could say the same thing about that's not good, that's not right about America, Australia, or any other country. One of the hardest things is to break your mental model or the framework that you have.

I think the first thing is to understand that we come from different angles. You can also say that what is ethical versus unethical for different cultures could be different. The good thing about ethics in relation to CFA is that CFA is trying to standardize ethics in the world of finance. When I'm teaching ethics in the world of finance, I can say, look, you sign up for this code of ethics as a candidate to become a CFA charter holder. Let's understand what they are and let's understand your obligations to find them.

I found that what I say to some of my students when they say, I see corruption or other things happening, I basically say that, now you have your excuse. You can say, oh, I signed an agreement that I wouldn't violate ethical principles of CFA Institute. Therefore, I just can't do anything about what you guys are talking about, and then separate yourself from that.

That's where I think there are some ethics principles and all that can be very helpful, particularly for young people. I do get calls from my students who bring ethical dilemmas, and then we talk about what they could do. Sometimes they get really worked up. It may not actually be as big of a violation as they're thinking, but they're so convinced. There's always a discussion there.

Brendan: That's really the great thing, isn't it? As you said earlier, being able to come to someone that they've got a level of trust or a group of people that got a level of trust, and put these things out on the table, and have a really adult type conversation around. Maybe that's something that should happen around the world more so, generally, and we wouldn't have the problems that we seem to have.

Andrew: Yeah. Requiring people to talk is making it happen. Right now, we have the beginnings of World War Three happening. It can be stopped right now. It could be stopped right now, particularly if the US, which has 10 times the military might of Russia, says, let's sit down and talk. But they're refusing to have any communication. Therefore, we're heading into an awful situation that could be stopped today by sitting down and talking.

Brendan: Yeah, absolutely, mate. Conversation is the key in anything, the ability to communicate. Not charge, but be curious and understand, I think, is what you're saying. Let's go on to the next five, which round out the 10 that you have around your values and ethics. These are around more on how you do your work. You want to start with your first one?

Andrew: Yeah. The first one is diligence. You want your client to know that you persevere in the application of your knowledge and skills. You are diligent. I remember I had two analysts that I had hired, and they were working with me, and we went to the US from Thailand to market our latest research.

One of those analysts was a very diligent guy. Every question that the client asked, he had an additional slide or he had thought about it. The other one didn't have anything. He said, I'll get back to you. When I get back to Thailand, I'll get you an answer and all that. Which one would you rather rely on?

I think it's pretty clear. I want to know that this guy has thought this thing through. He's thought about the different aspects of this. Again, diligence is an important ethical principle. If you are diligent in your work, people will appreciate that. They will see value in that.

Brendan: It's maybe appropriate to quickly link that back to the first ones about your interaction with others, because that also, straightaway, I'm thinking, well, I wouldn't trust the second guy as much I would trust the first guy.

Andrew: Exactly. I think that a lot of times, people look for shortcuts, they're tired or they don't have enough time, so they may skimp on diligence. But if you're really good at diligence, you're going to be rare, for sure, because many people will just take shortcuts. Again, looking at ethics from a positive perspective, if you don't take shortcuts and you're diligent, that's going to show and you're going to stand out.

Brendan: Yeah, absolutely. As you say, all of these add up to rare people, because they're not as common as maybe what we'd like them to be.

Andrew: Yeah, for sure.

Brendan: Independent is the next one.

Andrew: The next one is being independent. I find this really fascinating one. The point is that you're not subject to the control of others. You don't look to others for your opinions or for guidance in your conduct. In other words, you make your own independent decisions.

In order to make independent decisions, we need tools. CFA and things like my valuation course that I try to do, I tell the students that what I'm trying to do is bring you tools, then you have to apply those tools. If you don't have those tools, it's hard to make independent decisions.

For instance, I have the ability to analyze academic research. When COVID started happening, I started getting as much academic research about the medical aspect of it as I could. From that, I was able to form independent ideas. Not everybody has that skill or even the time or the desire for that.

If you have those skills, and if you have the time and desire, then you owe it to society to try to make an independent judgment, because many people just can't make independent judgments on many things for various reasons. I don't make independent judgments on things that don't interest me also. But where I can make an independent judgment, then that's critical.

Also, I tell my students that just because you're independent, doesn't mean you have to oppose what others say. It means that you have done your own research to analyze it and have come up with your own independent decision. I always tell young people in the finance world, I said, mostly in Asia, people are very dependent on their peers and on their seniors.

If you think about it, let's say Western cultures try to teach to be more independent. In Asian cultures, it's less of a valued trait. So I say consider this your independence day. Ultimately, it's the independence of your mind that we're talking about. Once you reach that, where you have the tools and you have the desire to independently analyze things, then you open yourself up to a whole other world, in my opinion. That's true independence.

Again, independence doesn't mean that you oppose. Independent means that you come up with your own opinion based upon your own research or work. That's why what I love about being an analyst is I tell my students all the time in the Valuation Master Class, that the thing about an analyst is we are idea originators. We're trying to originate ideas and we're trying to think about things independently. That's the concept of independence.

Brendan: Being independent in the type of work that you're doing and that you're teaching, there does seem to be maybe the opportunity for some more black and white stuff, some clear lines in the sand. But is there really true independence in life? Particularly with someone like you who has a very high value on the quality of relationships that you have, how can true independence come in when there's a strong relationship and others, and maybe the information coming from those strong relationships and others?

Andrew: I think the influences that we have in our life, I would say, life is constantly trying to persuade us. There's a billboard out there that's saying buy an Android phone, not an iPhone. There's another one that says buy an iPhone on an Android phone. That is persuasion. It's trying to persuade us to go on one side or the other.

Everybody has their agenda. Everybody has their angle. Everybody has their narrative. The challenge—it's a difficult challenge—is to search out other opinions, because you can't make an independent decision if you've only listened to one side of the story.

My mom listens to a certain number of podcasts, and they're genuinely all in the same narrative. They repeat the narrative over and over. It's hard for her to even imagine that there's another narrative. I would say that she's comfortable with that. She doesn't want to explore that other narrative for whatever reasons.

I think that most people don't really want to explore other narratives. That's why most people aren't analysts, most people aren't independent, most people aren't striving for that. But if you want to be a great analyst, you have to keep in mind that if you're following the crowd in the stock market, you're going to get burned eventually.

If you're the analyst that's calling to fund managers, and you're talking about the latest thing, the latest news, the latest movements in the markets, and what everybody's saying, what value are you? You're just repeating the news. I can get that from the internet or whatever.

If you're someone that calls to the client and says, hey, I've been thinking about something. For instance, to give an example, I've been thinking about heading into World War III, and we're going to stumble into it. What's going to happen is that countries are going to start falling, whether it's Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tunisia, Kenya, and Nigeria. These countries are going to run out of food, their currencies are devaluing, and inflation is running rampant.

All of a sudden, we're going to find ourselves in a very hostile environment. Then that's going to be escalated by what's happening between the US. Therefore, the position that we're holding in commodities right now, which is about 25% of our overall portfolio, which we've held for about a year since the Fed chairman said they thought that inflation was transitory, we took a different view. I took a different view and said, no, I see enough evidence out there that I'm willing to say that's not transitory. We took a heavy weighting position in that.

Now I'm taking into consideration that it just could be that we've got 3, to 6, to 12 more months of further rises in commodity prices. These are some of my ideas about why some of the evidence, and that's the type of thing that a fund manager, an investor, or high net worth client wants to hear. Again, independent analysis is rare, and rare is valuable.

Brendan: It also sounds a bit like, to me, how you explained that independence can come through in the My Worst Investment podcasts and the thinking around that you're not just looking at the rose colored glasses side of investing. You're getting the opportunity to attach yourself to people and share real stories. Look at the other side of what you're saying.

Andrew: Exactly. We need all the tools we can get in this life. I had a transaction with a particular property a while ago. My assistant who works with me said, we can do the legal paperwork ourselves. It's pretty straightforward. I said, nope, hire a lawyer.

Hire the lawyer that we've used before that's really good at this. She's like, no, but it's expensive. I said, look, after interviewing all these people, I know that you think it's expensive upfront to hire a proper professional to help you do something. But in the long run, you're going to be saving yourself a lot of trouble.

Basically, I was able to go to the seller and say, communicate with this lawyer. Basically what happened was that the lawyer had so many different things and went through the seller. The seller eventually kind of ran away. Particularly in that case, the buyer ran away. The end result was the deal didn't go through. But if we had dealt with it, who knows how long we would have messed around with that.

I just love the fact that I'm learning through the mistakes of others. Otto von Bismarck says, "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others."

Brendan: Yes. Hopefully we learn from the mistakes of others before we've made those mistakes.

Andrew: Correct.

Brendan: Let's move on to objective.

Andrew: Yeah. Objective basically means that you deal with facts or conditions as you see them without allowing some distortions that are happening from your own feelings about something, your prejudices, your interpretations, or your clients.

It's interesting that just before the presidential election, about six months before, I wrote a research report and went out to my institutional clients. I said, there's a 60% chance that Biden is going to win the election in the US. That's my calculation based upon. Now let me walk through the way I came to them. But the first thing he says, so you support Biden? I said, it doesn't matter who I support.

We're trying to predict the market. We're trying to predict outcomes. Therefore, I've got to separate my feelings from whether I'm pro or con in this. This is very, very difficult. I was just talking with my students in the Valuation Master Class boot camp. They said, what if I don't like this company right from the start? I said, then you're not doing real research, because real research is, you don't make your buy or sell decision until after you've done your research.

Being objective means stepping back and trying to gather information. I think one of the best ways to be objective is to talk to both sides of the story. I really liked that. Some people don't like Twitter, because it's just a lot of banter. But the fact is that it's a great source to find the other side of the story. I have to think about it very carefully.

Let's just say that I'm 25% weighted in commodities. I'm missing the story like, no, no, no, inflation is going to start to fall. That commodity position is going to fall significantly. If I'm not thinking of that, and testing that, and all that, I'm not ultimately loyal to my client. That objectiveness is really, because we want to be loyal to ourselves and to our client.

Brendan: Before we go on to the last two, mate, I just want to circle back around, actually, before we started recording and asked you about the master classes as you said that there can be about a 30% drop off of people going through the master class in the six-week boot camp. Really intense stuff. How much of that drop off can be contributed to one or several of these ethics that people don't have?

Andrew: I would say that diligence is one. Independent thinking is another because what's happening is that many people say, I can't come up with a story. I don't know how to analyze this. It's like, I know how to use Excel. I actually have lessons. I have lessons about how to come up with a story.

In the case of a company, I try to give them some framework such as, well, the story is probably going to be revenue, costs, or capital. If we look at revenue, you can break it down by price times quantity. If we look at Tesla as an example, it's really a quantity story. They're not going to be able to increase the price of their cars, but they want to grow the number of cars that they're selling by 10 times in five years. It's a revenue story and it's a volume story.

Facebook, on the other hand, my calculation is almost an 80% market share of all the eligible people in the world. It's unbelievable how much quantity that they've achieved, but the price that they're getting from the average user is very low. That's a story of how we get more price increases out of the current user base.

A lot of what I tried to do is say, no, no, you can come up with your own analysis, but you've just got to take it kind of step by step. I would say that independence is part of what you're trying to do. A framework can help a lot with independence.

Brendan: Let's go on to the fourth note, thorough. Just reminding people, this is related to things in how you do your work, this part of what Andrew Stotz stands for.

Andrew: Yup. We said diligent, independent, objective, and thorough. Basically, that means that you aren't careful about details, and you complete your work in all respects. Diligence means that you're working hard to try to uncover this, but thorough means that you really have done your homework.

I would say, this one really will make you rare, because most people don't do the job completely. The result of that is that you can see it, you can feel it. It's not something that clients want to rely on. Think about it. If you think about a friend of yours that you know is a really thorough guy, when that person, man or woman comes to you and says, hey, I've recently been looking at something and this is my conclusion on it, you know that's pretty reliable. I don't have to analyze everything.

If I have a friend of mine that's really thorough in the way they look at nutrition. I don't have to become an expert in nutrition if I can find someone I know who's thorough in what they're doing. If you combine in that they're diligent, they're independent, they're objective, then that is a very rare person.

Of course, the capstone of all of it is the fifth one, which is continually improving. I find that the majority of people hit a plateau, and then they stop learning. Why not? Hey, come on, life's hard. I've worked hard to get to where I am. I don't want to have to keep working hard. I want to just live a simple, steady life on what I have learned, but I don't want to keep learning. I want to get the benefit of my prior learning.

I think it is very understandable that people don't want to necessarily continually improve. Why not be in an environment where you're not under that pressure? But if you're in an environment where you're under that pressure, then continually improving to me is fascinating.

My estimate now is that I've read 5000 books in my life. I've got 700 books right here in my library at home in my office. People ask me, young people say, have you read any of these books? I've read all of them.

Brendan: Maybe now's the right time. Just so that people can see that they are real books, just lean back and grab one, so it's not a fake background that we've spoken about. Yes, it's real.

Andrew: That's real. Yeah.

Brendan: And you didn't even grab your own books?

Andrew: No. My books are good, but there's just so much great stuff out there.

Brendan: Isn't there?

Andrew: Yeah. Continually improve is the final one. To sum it up, if you're loyal in your interactions with others, you're trustworthy, you're fair, you're confidential, and you reveal conflicts of interest, your interactions with others are going to be awesome. If you are diligent in the way that you work, you're independent in the way that you work, you're objective and thorough, and you continually improve, you are a super rare person. 

That level of focus or investment in ethics is going to make you very rare, and rare is very valuable. You don't have to worry about marketing and all that, because people want to come and talk to you. People want to recommend you to other people. That really summarizes the 10 ways that ethics adds value in my life. I believe it can add value in any way in this life.

I would say it's probably the simplest, easiest way to differentiate yourself in this highly competitive world. Someone may say, oh, I don't know how to program and I don't like numbers. Fine. This is the way to differentiate yourself that anybody could do it.

Brendan: Yeah, absolutely. I'll even say to people that if you have never thought about articulating your own value sets and some of your experiences you've had, then this is almost—I'm never a big fan of these plug and play things. You have to attach them to yourself. But if you wanted to try and be a better person, and in your words, rare in whatever you do, then I have to say, this is a pretty damn good model to understand what you've said today through listening to this episode, and then apply it in the context of your own life or your own industry. You'll be rare in whatever you do, absolutely.

Andrew: Yeah. Let's give credit where credit's due. I was introduced to this code of conduct and standards of practice 20 years ago from CFA. Someone may also be an architect and into the world of architecture. I'm sure they have a Code of Ethics there. Look at what's around you and try to find that code of ethics and you can use that. That may be even more applicable.

In my case, this one was really applicable. When I started teaching it, I started coming up with a positive framework. That positive framework really helped me to reinforce it in my life.

Brendan: When I look at the two sides of the equation, I suppose, the interaction with others and how you do your work, and sort of the interaction with others, to me, it fits more with the character of the person and how you do your work fits a bit more into competence. That then, to me, equals a level of trust, character, and competence or the key elements of trust.

I'm probably answering my question I'm putting out there. Can you have one side of the coin and the other and have a level of trust in the quality of relationships that you need to have to be successful in business?

Andrew: Yeah. I guess, as a formula, I wanted to be as valuable as I could. Practicing all 10 of them was valuable to me. I think that if I had to choose one side, I would choose the interactions with others. I would say that build those into your characters, because not everybody is independent. Not everybody wants to be independent and objective.

People can exist in their lives without being independent and objective. Not everybody wants to be thorough or diligent. It's just too much work. I think that, in a sense, you could say that there's a place for everybody. You could still focus on your interactions and you could still build great relationships through the interactions.

I think when it comes to the way that we work or our competence, that's really the challenge of a lifetime for some people. But for others, they're like, no, I know enough. I've learned enough. I'm okay with that. But for me, those five elements of diligence, independence, objectivity, thoroughness, and continually improving are something that I've embraced. I challenge anybody else that wants to build that to embrace it, too.

One of my first jobs when I got out of high school, my father called a friend of his and said, hey, my son's looking for a job, you got a job at your factory. This was in Ohio. I went to the factory and there were four other guys. We were all applying at the same time. They said, well, the boss came in and he said, the way this works is you're going to work temporarily for 30 days. If we like it, we're going to offer you a full-time job if we like you and you like it.

This one guy and I got to know each other. The night before the decision date, he said to me, what do you think? I was like, man, I hope they don't offer me a job. This job is boring as hell. I'm just sitting there working on a production line and I'm thinking all the time. I just want so much more out of my life than this.

I said, what about you? I never even really thought that he would think differently than that. He says, I really hope I get this job. I was like, why? I want to be free of this. He said, look, I like it. I know what I'm doing every day. I've learned my job. I go home to my wife and kids, and I don't have to think about work, and this is what I want. Sure enough, the next day, they let me go and they kept him.

What I learned from that interaction is that there's a place for everybody, and everybody has different goals. Just because someone's made that choice to say, no, I'm not striving for this or that, no, I want it this way, it gave me a new respect. Then later, I became a supervisor at Pepsi when I graduated from university. I could see the workers in the factory and I remembered what I had experienced with that guy. I respected them for that choice.

I didn't expect that they're going to be continually improving. Of course, they have to do a certain amount of stuff to keep themselves doing a good job at work. But generally, I had respect for them. I think that made me a better manager, because I didn't expect that everybody was going to do it the way I was doing it.

Brendan: Yeah, beautiful story, mate. It just reinforces the fact we're all people, we're all unique, and we have different motivators and different value sets. What it doesn't do and say is that a person is good or a person's bad. They're all good, just different values and different motivations. Mate, let's lead that into the final question of our episode. Who or what has had the greatest impact on your own leadership journey?

Andrew: There was a man that I don't remember his name, but he was an Economics 101 professor at Kent State, where I first started going to university back in Ohio. There was a classroom and there were 200 students. I'd never been in such a big classroom in my life. There were 200 students and I was sitting in the back.

I arrived, and he walked in, and everybody got quiet. He said, there are 200 people in this room. I'm going to draw a line down the middle and half of you will be gone by the end of this term. Of the remaining 100, 10 of you will get As. Let's get started. That one little statement set a fire under me to say, I'm going to get an A. I'm going to be part of that 10.

Later, that carried throughout my life. I didn't feel that way when I walked into that room, but that man said something that really fired me up. I'll never forget it. I just think that from a leadership perspective, just keep in mind to challenge people.

In the boot camp, I challenge people. As I always say, the Valuation Master Class boot camp is about transformation, not information. This can be a life changing event in your life. You can make friends for life in this boot camp. This can be a time that you turn yourself around.

That inspirational message or that challenge is just what some people need. I think that's one of the things that I would say, from a leadership perspective, challenge people to be better, to be stronger, to be faster, to be smarter, to be kinder, whatever, and then don't be afraid to put that challenge out there.

Brendan: Andrew Stotz, you are a man who loves a challenge by the sounds of it. After today, I knew before today, but our listeners are going to know after listening and watching this episode today, that you my friend are truly a rare breed. Thank you for being a fantastic guest on the Culture of Things podcast.

Andrew: Thank you for having me on, Brendan. I really appreciate it. Thanks to all the listeners and viewers.

Brendan: Andrew believes ethics are rare, and rare is valuable!

I have to say, I agree with him completely.

Andrew is a rare breed! He lives and breathes his ethics every day. Which is why he’s valued so much by his clients, his students, and his Mum.

His words gave me inspiration in relation to leadership. The fact is great leaders are rare. Which means, great leaders are valuable.

Do you want to be a valuable person?

These were my 3 key takeaways from my conversation with Andrew:

My first key takeaway: Leaders are ethical in their interaction with others. Being loyal, trustworthy, fair, confidential and revealing conflicts, all speak to a person's character. If you’re clear on the character traits of the leader you want to be. And apply these in your daily life, personal and business. You will be a leader who is ethical in your interaction with others.

My second key takeaway: Leaders are ethical in how they do their work. Being diligent, independent, objective, and thorough, with a focus on continuous improvement, all speak to a person's competence. If you’re clear on the traits you want to follow to demonstrate a high level of competence. And apply these in your daily life, personal and business. You’ll be a leader who is ethical in how you do your work.

My third key takeaway: Leaders know ethics is their competitive advantage. Almost every Leader I’ve worked with over the years. Has not yet articulated what they stand for. They don’t know how they want to lead, or the ethics they want to lead by. Getting clear on your ethics as a leader is rare, and rare is valuable. That’s why leaders know that ethics is their competitive advantage.

So in summary, my three key takeaways were: Leaders are ethical in their interaction with others, Leaders are ethical in how they do their work, Leaders know ethics is their competitive advantage.

If you want to talk culture, leadership or teamwork, or have any questions or feedback about the episode, contact me at thecultureofthings.com or via our socials.

Thanks for joining me. 

And remember, the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation!

 

Outtro (music): Thank you for listening to The Culture of Things podcast with Brendan Rogers. Please visit thecultureofleadership.com to access the show notes. If you love The Culture of Things podcast, please subscribe, rate and give a review on Apple podcasts and remember a healthy culture is your competitive advantage.