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Leadership and Mental Toughness Lessons from a Gulf War Veteran
Wade Myers is a decorated veteran and Harvard MBA alumnus who has been directly involved in 35 different business ventures. In this episode, he shared his deep wisdom and experience in leading businesses with a purpose.
Out of necessity and with the support of his entrepreneurial parents, he learned to sell items like light bulbs and medical supplies when he was just 9 years old. This foretold his bright future in the business world.
Immediately after graduating from college, he went on active duty and signed up for the toughest training available. He lost 49 pounds in the process, even though he “did not have 49 pounds to lose” in the first place.
As an Airborne Ranger in the US Army, Wade gained valuable leadership skills and developed incredible mental fortitude. These became his strengths in starting and growing all his businesses over the years.
According to Wade, as the business owner, everyone is looking to you as the founder, the CEO, and the leader. You are going to have a lot of bad days, but you have to be eternally optimistic.
The military experience also ingrained in him the habit of completing each mission.
If I've committed to a deadline, I'll easily skip sleep and do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission. Wade MyersWade shared a story wherein he was told by a subordinate, "Nobody likes you." How's that for brutally honest feedback? That incident triggered the transformation of his leadership style from "simply barking orders" to "true leadership".
Running a small business is incredibly hard, but small businesses in the US create two-thirds of all new jobs. This is one of the reasons why Wade's advisory firm focuses on surrounding business owners with a good set of information and some dashboards that tell them exactly what's going on, quantifies the issue, and tells them what to do about it.
Wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from making mistakes. - Wade Myers
What You'll Learn:
- The top 3 takeaways from Wade's military special operations training
- The 2 types of leadership and which of the 2 is better
- How to make it easier to influence employees to do the work
- Wade's greatly humbling realization after starting a small business
- A heartwarming story of how Wade lived out his faith and the good things that came out unexpectedly
- The 2 "book ends"; the common challenges that entrepreneurs face
- The $10 trillion problem and how to address it
- How Wade's advisory firm helps entrepreneurs maximize everything they do
Resources:
- Book of Nehemiah
- The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
- Boldmore Growth Partners
Bio 
Wade Myers is an entrepreneur, advisor, investor, and speaker. He is the founder and managing director of Boldmore Growth Partners, a firm that manages an investment fund, oversees a portfolio of early-stage to middle-market companies, and provides business advisory services. He has founded or co-founded, invested in, and been a director of over 35 companies and has completed 68 financing and M&A transactions. He has had the role of CEO in 5 of those ventures, including firms that grew into a global IT services company and an Inc. 5000 nationwide tech-enabled services company.
Wade is also a founding partner in a global venture capital fund and a founding partner in a U.S. multifamily real estate investment fund. He has also been a partner in an investment bank.
His other work experience includes the Boston Consulting Group and Mobil Corporation. Wade also served as an Airborne Ranger in the US Army where he was a decorated veteran of the Gulf War. He is a Baker Scholar graduate of Harvard’s MBA program and is married with five children. He is a contributor to Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Huffington Post, and Apple News.
