To Lead Is Human – Episode #46
Leading Through Story (Sean Platt)
Sean Platt: The most important thing that I demand in all my relationships. I’m really, really easy to get along with. I’m super, super collaborative and I’m malleable in relationships and that I really want it to be great for the other person. But I do not tolerate dishonesty. And that includes when somebody is clearly dishonest with themselves.
Sharon Richmond: I’m Sharon Richmond and this is To Lead is Human. For more than 30 years, I’ve run a business called Leading Large. I help C level executives expand their impact, clarify their priorities, energize their organizations, and lead them with cultures of accountability and respect. In this podcast, we help you envision how to supercharge your leadership by introducing you to executives who lead with intention. These business leaders exemplify the principles of leading large. They know that as leaders, the positional power they have comes with an equal measure of personal responsibility. These leaders not only deliver stellar value to their customers, clients, and stakeholders, they also prioritize building organizations that provide purpose, meaning, and a healthy workplace for their employees. We learn from the challenges and successes they’ve experienced on their human journey.
My guest on the show today is Sean Platt. Sean has always been an entrepreneur, but knew from early on he’d rather tell stories. When his wife bought him a laptop for his 30th birthday in 2007, he thought he’d start writing immediately, but it actually took him two years before he did. Since making that leap, Sean has written, co-written, or ghostwritten hundreds of books, including the seminal write, publish, repeat, and dozens of screenplays.
In 2012, he co-founded a unique company, Sterling and Stone, which started out as a regular publishing company but morphed into what is essentially an intellectual property incubator, and today they call themselves the multimedia story studio. The company’s published more than 400 books across a variety of genres of including dozens of bestsellers with millions of copies sold worldwide. Most recently, Sean co-founded Invisible Ink Media, the new ghostwriting arm of Sterling and Stone, which collaborates with top tier clients such as business executives, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and thought leaders. Invisible, Inc. Draws from the expertise of dozens of award-winning writers who’ve collectively authored more than 1000 books, including many New York Times bestsellers, many of which you’ve probably seen.
Originally from Long Beach, California, Sean now lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and dog. As you listen to our conversation, immerse yourself in the joy that Sean exudes for his own work and for the work of both of his companies as he shares with us stories about his own leadership, from his childhood hero to why he writes every day. Sean it’s great to meet you, and welcome to the show.
Sean: Hello. I’m happy to be here.
Sharon: So it seems safe to say that based on your history, it’s pretty clear you were not okay with being the stereotypical starving artist. So how did you decide to commit to making a proper business, if you will, out of your creative interests?
Sean: Well, I’ve never had a job. I’m pretty unemployable. I dropped out of high school as a junior because my guidance counselor told me, without going to college, you’ll be a failure, which is a pretty shitty thing for any guidance counselor to say to anyone in their office ever. But then she capped it off by saying, and I’ll look you up in ten years to see how far you have fallen.
Sharon: No, no.
Sean: She did. So I got my transcripts and I never went back to school. And I bought a flower cart. I opened flower shops, and that’s where I met my wife. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. I was 20 years old, and she was a 31-year-old customer who came in and I was just like, a really dumb 20-year-old. I didn’t realize that she was flirting with me until she gave you her business card. And that was 27 years ago.
So it wasn’t until I was in my early thirties when I actually started writing. At that point, I had left the flower business. She left teaching, and we opened up a preschool because my son was one. Our daughter was two and a half. And life is just going, and we’re like, he’s going to be 18 and out of the house and we’re going to be like, where did the time go? So we opened a preschool just so we could hang out with them until they were both in kindergarten.
But that last year, while my son was still in the preschool, before he went to kindergarten, I just started writing. Like, I just. I wrote in secret at first. I had a site called Writer Dad where I didn’t use my real name. And so I was outed because I had a guest post on Copyblogger and they used my real name. And I gathered an audience really fast. I failed to monetize that audience. And so that’s when I went from making a penny award, writing SEO articles to making a dollar award, writing sales copy. And so I 100 x within the first year.
And the reason that I had never, ever written before is because I didn’t want to be a chooch, which is, in Mario Puzzio’s words, it’s like, a chooch is somebody who indulges their, like, fantasies at the expense of their family. And I never wanted to be that dude. And, yeah, like, writing was fun, but, like, I don’t want to, like, I have bread on the table, and so. But Cindy, my wife, is, like, impossibly encouraging and has this unbelievable faith in me, and she’s like, you can do it.
And so we closed the preschool. I started writing full time. Not close enough to save the house. I lost the house. But then this amazing copywriter saw something that I wrote and offered to give us a house to live in in Cincinnati if I wrote exclusively with her. So I did that for a few years, and then we moved to Austin once Kindle started to mainstream. And I’m like, I just want to tell stories. I don’t want clients. I don’t want consulting. I don’t want to ghost anymore. Although I’m full circle, and I go, but I’m like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want to tell stories.
And it was a hot time because it wasn’t like it is now, where Kindle is just saturated, and there’s, like, millions of authors putting their stuff. We were, like, not even the thousands yet. It was still the hundreds. Like, it was a small pool, and it was just fun, because all the stuff that I knew as a copywriter, like, great titles and compelling hooks and keeping people on a page. But I could just do it with stories that was such a gold in time.
So that’s why I gambled at all because I went from mid six figures to 100 and some dollars a month the next month, you know? And it took several years and several iterations, and I’ve eaten more shit than everyone I know put together. But at the end of the day, it’s all worth it, because I love what we build, and I love that now we’re up to 40 storytellers, and we’re a dream factory. Our job is to make each one of their dreams come true, because they all come to us with, like, a different set of goals, a different set of ambitions, and a different set of skills. And it’s our job to figure out how they fit into this bigger, beautiful engine that we’re building.
Sharon: So it’s such an interesting thing. I was reading about the newest part of the venture, and one of the things that I read that really struck me was the power of writers collaborating to deliver a superior product. So this is so common in so many other fields, but not so much writing. So I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about that brainchild and what it is that makes it work so well.
Sean: Yeah, absolutely. That’s our secret sauce. I really enjoy the collaborative nature of everything that we do. So whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, there’s no division there. It’s different, like who we work with on the team and how we go about the project, but the ethos is the same. So I’ll give an example. And this works for both nonfiction and fiction.
So I’m the idea guy. I love the big idea. That’s what I’m most drawn to. And my business partner and COO of Sterling and Stone and the co-founder of Invisible Inc is Nev. And she’s all about audience experience. So she is the nerdiest nerd in Nerdville when it comes to knowing why people are reading what they’re reading. So she’s the only person I ever met who reads books that are written specifically for librarians. And the reason is because when you go to a librarian and you’re asking, what book? It’s not about genre. It’s about emotional experience.
And so she understands the emotional experience that people want out of any kind of content. And I’ve never seen anyone like that. It’s wizardry. And then Bonnie is such a sought-after developmental editor, and Bonnie’s job is to make people care. So when you have the three of that, like, a big idea, like, great hook, great title, you know, and then you have, like, this is what somebody is going to take away from it. And then that third element is and this is what makes them care enough about it to share.
That’s how instead of having a business card book, you have a perennial seller. It’s how you, instead of just having a script that makes the rounds and doesn’t do anything, it gets attention on the same week it goes out. So we know how to sell our ideas, but it really is about the structure of those ideas, too, and the care and attention put into that. And that is like 15 years of iteration to get there because I only started out collaborating. Like, I literally did not go to school. We covered that. I never went to school to become a writer, so I never had to unlearn the things.
And most people do not collaborate with writing. It’s very messy, it’s very personal, and everyone’s approach and artistry is different. So when we have 40 storytellers in, we need to figure out what each of their zone genius is, because everyone collaborates differently. You do what you’re amazing at, I’ll do what I’m amazing at. And then the end product, whether it’s something in our IP library, something that we have a partner in Bollywood or a ghostwriting client, like, the end result is just exponentially better.
Sharon: That’s really fascinating. As you were talking, I was thinking it’s actually, oddly enough, not too different from executive coaching. So I’m going to just take a slight sideways step to say, you know, every executive is a different human. We all have different values, mix of values. We have different things that we consider to be the essence of who we are. And each leader should lead from their essence. And so, as a coach, the whole job is to help them identify and clarify their essence and then think about how to craft the art and science of leadership to be true to self, but also meet the needs of the organization. So I think there was a lot of similarity there. Did you hear it, too?
Sean: Oh, yeah.
Sharon: That’s fascinating.
Sean: Absolutely. Because you have to do a tremendous amount of observing and listening and connecting the dots and looking for intersections and course correcting, too. And I’m sure that you find this when talking to people all the time. They’ve got the story they’re telling themselves, so they’re really, really good at fulfilling a narrative that may not be true.
Sharon: You can be a leader from a lot of different core places, but you have to be true to self somehow, or it shows up. It’s, first of all, exhausting and not sustainable. And second of all, it doesn’t land because people sense that it’s not genuine or sense that it’s acting. So I am going to go back to the leadership, though, and the story I’m going to ask you to tell is the story of your leadership journey. What have you had to learn along the way? Things that surprised you about yourself?
Sean: Funny, I would say that I didn’t realize that I was a leader in the same way that I didn’t realize that I was an educator until kind of recently. So a story that I told recently was one of my oldest, oldest memories was reading within a McDonald’s Happy meal. They put up, like, illustrated Tom Sawyer. And I looked this up on Google because I like, what year was this? And I had to be less than three years old. So this is the memory. And I, reading this book, and I was identifying not with Tom, but specifically with Tom getting someone else to paint that fence for him.
And I’m like, that’s what I want to be when I grow up. And for my entire life, I have had people help me paint the fence, including last year when we lost all of our shit, and storytellers could have abandoned ship like crazy, and instead, everybody was like, you got any extra paintbrushes? And it was kind of the best thing ever. It was the literal best and worst of times.
Sharon: What you’re referring to is the Hollywood writers’ strike.
Sean: Yes, it was.
Sharon: Acting and writing.
Sean: So, yeah, 2022 was just a great year for the company. We had made kind of a migration from being a publishing company to, okay, we’re going to sell IP. And COVID had made that happen. It opened the door, it made our five-to-ten-year plan like a one-year plan, because all of a sudden, instead of being in LA traffic all day for two meetings, we could take Zooms all day. Like, Zoom became a way that Hollywood operated when it wasn’t that way before.
So we set up a dozen projects with partners which, like, it was just a phenomenal velocity. And then all of a sudden, it came to a crashing halt at the end of 2022. Not even in 2023, like, business just stopped because everyone knew that the strike was coming. So, I mean, this happens. It happens every 15 years. These are not surprises. The difference is everybody was braced for about a month-long strike. What happened is that it went from being a financial strike, which they always are, to an existential strike, which only happened once every millennia, and AI really rattled Hollywood hard.
So the strike became a six-month thing and it really crippled Hollywood. And even when they came back at the end of last year, they were scrambling and it was bad. It was rubble. So all of a sudden, a dozen projects are just, they’re not canceled, they’re just on pause. Although we did lose, like, ten of them. So there was a lot of fallout, but that was okay. We were kind of braced for that. What we were not braced for was our biggest ghost-writing client defaulting on, like, a substantial amount of money. And then all of a sudden, they’re bankrupt, have our rights tied up with all this work that we had done with them, that we had given them half our fee for shared right. And now, all of our rights are tangled up and contracted work is canceled.
And so we’re basically down within, like, a one-month period, down almost a billion dollars. And we’re not tiny, but we’re not big enough to weather that. Like, it was very, very devastating. And so we had to just decide what to do. And there was a lot of trust that we had put into this company because they kept telling us that they were going to make it right. And there was just a lot of fraud directly to us to where we were told things that were not true. And we held on so much longer than was reasonable. And then all of a sudden it was a meteor just hitting us and we had to decide what to do. And we rebuilt the company.
We were really, like, overdue on overhauling some things in the business because for ten years we had just been running, running, running, running, running, changing course when needed, pivoting. And all of a sudden, we have no choice but to rebuild it, and we got to rebuild it really, really strong.
Sharon: So you were a little kid, and you knew right off the bat that you would rather get people excited to do work on your behalf, which is not the same as telling people what to do, getting people excited to work on your behalf rather than doing that work yourself. That kind of sounds like a three-year old’s version of leadership.
Sean: Yeah. Yes, it is. And what we say around the company is one plus one equals eleven. You know, I just really believe that. I think that collaboration is such an accelerant and the amount of playgrounds that I get to play in because I have collaborators and I love writing scripts, I love writing business books, I love writing sales copy, I love writing fiction. And it’s all a good time. Like, I just like to tell stories.
And without that amount of collaboration, the only way to make good money really, with writing is to specialize. Like, you’re a great copywriter, you’re great at writing romance, you know, and you do your thing over and over, but it becomes golden handcuffs. So I think that collaboration has really helped me to find my own voice and to just play in more playgrounds and, like, that’s joyful.
Sharon: So one of the things that a lot of leaders find out about collaboration when they love collaboration is that it’s really, really good when things are critically important to get everybody lined up and sharing a vision and sharing a goal and sharing the metrics. But it can also sometimes lead people to be unwilling to make a tough call as a leader. So how do you balance that?
Sean: I’m pretty unafraid. I’m not a short-term thinker. I’m always thinking about five years, ten years, the end. And so with that in mind, it makes it a lot easier. I think that this is partly just because I’m such an innate storyteller, and then I’ve polished that for the last 15 years, and partly because I was raised in a family with a lot of dishonesty, and my father was just kind of a lying shitbag a lot of the time. I mean, he was a good dude in a lot of ways, too, and a lot of stuff that I’m really proud of as a human, I got from him, like, my work ethic and some very specific things, but also lying shitbag.
And so I’m just really intolerant of dishonesty, both the lies that we tell other people, but especially the lies that we tell ourselves, because I think that for him, what made those lies so permissive is the grand lie that he told to himself about who he was. And so, like, it’s my trope. If you look at, like, any random 40 books that I’ve written that are fiction, there’s going to be a character who spends most of the book lying to themselves about who they are until they, like, crash into an epiphany, because I think that once you really get in touch with who you are, you can do better in the world.
And I think that, like, that’s what helps me to be the best leader possible, is that, like, I’m not afraid to show up for who I am. So there was a big joke in the last year where, you know, oh, Sean’s going to cry again, because, like, I would just have these meetings, and, like, I was so raw, but I was showing up. So here’s a good example. So this happened on a Thursday. We had to tell the partners about it on a Friday, and then on Monday, we told everybody else in the company who was in any way affected monetarily because we got to put payroll on pause for a while and figure this out. They got to know on Monday, and then on Tuesday, the whole studio, like, okay, here’s our announcement.
And that was a vulnerable 45 minutes. I talked, and I’m sure you would not be surprised to hear this, but I talked 45 minutes without stopping and said everything. Like, I held nothing back because at that point, we had been keeping some things from them because it just, I didn’t even know how to say, like, we were owed all this money. And, you know, it was so relieving. And the overwhelming emotion I felt once everyone who needed to know knew was relief because I was no longer in business with someone who so strongly violated my extensive character.
And I could feel it on those calls towards the end. And it wasn’t good for me at all because I could tell something wrong was happening, and I couldn’t do anything about it. So the next morning, I was just checking in with everybody on Slack, and I said, how is everybody feeling today? And it blew me away, Sharon. I feel powerful. I feel motivated. I feel strong. I feel dedicated, like, all day. And then the next morning, I buy every day for the next, I don’t know how many, 250 days. All the way through to the end of the year, you’d give it whole stream of, this is how we’re feeling. And it kept everybody really bonded until the end of the year.
We have this thing called summer camp, where we celebrate our company birthday on July 17. And everybody came into Austin, and we had fun. We had a pinata, which represented the company, and we beat the shit out of it, ate the candy, and it was great. And it was like, okay, we’re good. We’re bought it. And, like, we really rebuilt the business in all the possible ways. And that allowed us to grow instead of shrink because we were 30 when it happened, and we closed out the air with 40 of us. And so, you know, like, without the devastation, we never would have had the fertile hardest.
Sharon: So that is the kind of crucible in an organization that bonds the company and especially the executive team. So how did it affect you all in the way that you lead the organization?
Sean: What it did, more than anything, is validate the road that we were on. So my business partner, Neve, I always knew she was a remarkable coo. She’s able to tell me no constantly, which is great. I’m a magnetic personality. At 47, that’s like acknowledging that I’m a leader. I can acknowledge that, but I was actually really naive to it for a while, for a long time. And we would fight in the company, that I would just say something that wasn’t necessarily a good idea, but I can persuade, like, nobody’s business and that we would just end up doing these things. And that’s not good. That’s not good for a company.
And so with Neve and the copilot seat, we did not have any sort of tension between us for this period of serious distress. It just made me feel like, man, we can do anything. And when this disaster happened last year, I wanted to reacquaint myself with some of the business classics. So I read Jim Collins Good to Great again. And I love that book. I remember, like, walking in my neighborhood, and I was just very weepy because there’s a lot happening.
But it was the description of a level five leader. And I remember having this sense of the last time that I was listening to that audiobook, to what a level five leader brought to their organization. And I remember thinking, that’s not who I am, but it’s who I aspire to be.
Sharon: For folks that don’t know the book, what are the qualities of that level five leader?
Sean: It’s like, you lead with pure humility. You put the company first. You’re not looking for any kind of ego stroking or gratification. This was a literal time where I had to put myself last. I cut myself off payroll on May 24 and went back on November 17. And so that’s a long time to go without money. And not only did I go without money, but Neve went without money. And I just felt so in lockstep that, like, not only do we have level five leadership that I’ve always wanted to survive, but my partner is bringing that, too.
And so we’re just really unified, and we’re really transparent with how we talk to the storytellers, because they all had faith at us, you know? And we’re like, look, we don’t have Hollywood projects right now. We don’t have ghosting projects right now, but we can rebuild the ghosting business, and we can rebuild the publishing business. And it was so overwhelming all of a sudden, because I had no money coming in, and for the last ten years, when I make a little bit of money, I put it into the business so the business can grow.
So when the business was suffering, I did not have a cushion to fall back on. And so what happens to the other 30 people who had a, holding a paintbrush in front of the fence? I needed to make sure that the studio could feed us all for a long time. And that meant, like, putting everything on pause and just building the thing.
Sharon: So you faced a really difficult period of time during which it sounds like you chose to be a leader over being a specialist.
Sean: Yes, absolutely.
Sharon: And so what was that like for you?
Sean: Natural. I never felt like there was any other choice. Like, it was pure instinct and unquestioned instinct. The only time that there was any issue about it was it was one-time, late summer, and it had been lingering for a while. The strike was still going on. Once we found Invisible Ink, we’re like, okay, now we’re in. And business books are a thing that I put off for a long, long time, because that is my network. I belong to a lot of masterminds. I have a lot of thought leader friends.
And it’s very natural for me to do the business book thing, but it would have been too commanding of my time. Ater this disaster, it would have been like going over to this corner while everyone over here was suffocating. And so we needed to give everybody something to do before I went and did that. And so it felt very natural to just pay attention to the studio and to build the studio.
Sharon: Well, and entrepreneurship, I think anyone who’s ever leaned into it can agree that it is very scary. It’s terrifying when you’re responsible for so many people, and that’s all on your back. So I’m going to ask you, how would you describe your, like, top five leadership principles? What do you believe is most important?
Sean: Honesty is super important. And I would even define that as having candor and manners.
Sharon: Honesty, candor plus manners.
Sean: Yes. That is how we communicate. That is the rule in the company. You can say anything. That is the. It is the simplest formula for communication, candor and manners, and nothing is off the table. And you have to, because creatives are precious. We love our ideas, and we have to tell people that their ideas are bad sometimes or that they can go forward or that they need improvement.
And, you know, which is another reason that I love working with Neve, because. So I submit ideas into our– we have a database called the garden. And every day, I put a new idea in there. And it’s my job to vet people’s ideas. It’s her job to vet the commercial potential of those ideas. And she’s always, like, making my, like, shitting on my ideas, do this, do this. It’s not good enough unless you do this or this. We can’t sell it unless you do this.
And so I think candor and manners is really important. I think that a sense of hope is really important. We call that Daisy on the sidewalk, that, like, no matter how gloomy a story is, it’s not a Sterling and Stone story if we leave the reader without a daisy on the sidewalk. There just has to be that sense of hope because otherwise, what’s the point? The tagline for our company is we change the world with story. And it’s a little cheesy, but we also totally mean it. That is what we stand behind. And we want to make sure that the work that we’re doing matters.
Follow through is really, really important. And that’s become more important to me as I get older because I’m a dreamer. So I say a lot of things that don’t necessarily bear fruit, but I’m kind of done with those days. And so I think it’s really important that at this point, I’m 47. If I say something, you can count on it happening. It may not happen next week, but it will. It will happen. And I think that the most important thing that I demand in all my relationships, I’m really, really easy to get along with. I’m super, super collaborative, and I’m malleable in relationships and that I really want it to be great for the other person. But I do not tolerate dishonesty, and that includes when somebody is clearly dishonest with themselves. Like, I find those relationships difficult.
Sharon: Yeah. So we’ve got some good principles here. You’ve been running a company that is primarily remote now for more than a decade, so a lot longer than most organizations that really just got familiar with this way of being over the course of the pandemic and the shutdown and then the subsequent adjustments that have been taking place. Two things that my clients often raise that they worry about with remote work is how do we keep people from feeling isolated, and how do we continue to foster the culture we need here, the culture of belonging and collaboration in order to achieve our goals. So how are you guys doing that?
Sean: Fun.
Sharon: Fun.
Sean: We have a lot of fun. Yeah, we have a lot of fun.
Sharon: Are we talking structured fun here or random fun?
Sean: Well, both. I mean, the nature of telling stories, it’s so much fun that, like, think about how our Slack works. So Nanny, she is, she lies about her age, so I’m not real sure, but I think she’s 78, and she’s amazing. She’s just, like, such a gifted storyteller, and she likes to murder people on her books. So she’ll just go in Slack and she’ll say, hey, I need some really nasty way to, like, have a death. And somebody will say, how about if he’s tied up at rats are eating him? Like that. Right? You can imagine where these conversations go.
Sharon: Yes.
Sean: And so there’s that. So we have weekly meetings, and we have, like, activities planned. So, like, yesterday, everybody had watched Die Hard because Die Hard is such a classically structured movie. Like, the structure of Die Hard is perfect. It just gets so many things right. So we had everybody watch Die Hard, and then we, like, break it down. So everybody’s engaged in this conversation. They’re having fun. They watched a movie. And I know that we’re a more playful organization by nature, but you can still dial that in.
So, for example, Lexicon is a huge thing in our company. We have so many words and phrases and stories. So, like, for example, when someone writes 10,000 words in a day, it’s called making cheese. And they’re like, I made cheese. And there’s all these cheese emojis. So we have hundreds of phrases like that. And it gives people this deep sense of belonging.
Sharon: I think what you’re highlighting, at least how I might frame it, is there’s a language, there’s symbols. There are shared experiences. There’s a playfulness about how you co create, but a seriousness about how you run the business. And that just what you said illustrated, I think, kind of both parts of that.
Sean: Yes. Yeah. I mean, we do have a serious business to run, and we do make sure that our storytellers know this isn’t like your writing group. This isn’t like, you know, a hobby. Like, this is serious business. But, like, I love laughing. And that’s another thing. It’s not just daisy on the sidewalk. There are very, very few Sterling and Stone books that don’t have currents of humor in them. Like, humor is very important to our ethic. It’s like the world can be a dark place. Like, you should laugh at it because if you can find the joy in even the darkness, then you can do more in the world.
Sharon: Yep. So we’ve learned from our listeners that they especially appreciate what I think we in the Silicon Valley call open kimono moments, where something you learned in a moment of vulnerability turns out to be something really profound that affected your skills at leading the company, managing the company, leading the people, partnering with your colleagues, whatever, something. So you’ve been pretty transparent already, but dig deep for us and tell us something that you learned something important from. This is, again, like, what are the lessons we have to all of us learn?
Sean: So I was at a master ride in 2018, and they did this exercise that I just thought was wonderful. It was called step up to the line. And one of the people at the event, their business was reducing the recidivism rate in prisons with entrepreneurial programs. And so there was 150 of us. And there were 75 on one side of the tape and 75 on the other tape. And we were asking questions like, step forward if you’re yes, and take a step backward if they’re no. And the questions were like I was read to as a child. I made my worst mistake before my 21st birthday, you know, on and on and on.
And basically it was, you know, like, what are your circumstances and how you became a criminal. Now, I was fascinated by this. And so there was an opportunity, like, a couple of months later to go to Kern County Correctional Facility in California, and so to go there for a day, and we did the line exercise again. And I realized even deeper than I had the first time doing this, how thin the line is between criminals and entrepreneurs, and that we think that the rules do not apply to us. We think that we are smarter than the average person. We think, like, we’re very business minded.
And, like, I had to really acknowledge. So, like, when I was 18 years old, I got pulled over by a cop in Irvine, and my mother’s side of the family is Ramos. But I look white enough, and I get pulled over. I had a lot of weed, like, that I should have gone to prison for, and I got a slap on the wrist, like, here you go, kid. And would that have happened to me if I looked different or if I was in a different neighborhood? And that just, like, really shifted things for me, like how honest. I need to be brutally honest with myself at all times, too.
And I end up dictating a 25,000-word letter to my father. And it was called the Secret of Life. And it was basically just like, dude, the secret of life, it’s telling the truth. That’s it. If you tell your own truth and you are harmonized with yourself, you don’t hurt the people around you. He was not happy to see this letter, but it went well for me, and it went well for other people in my family who felt like they had been given voice to this thing that hadn’t just festered for a long time.
And that was a changing moment for me. Like, from 2019 on, I’ve just not tolerated that dishonesty with myself or with anybody else. And it’s dramatically affected how I run the company. It’s dramatically affected what I expect from people, and I think that it’s dramatically affected how strong the company is and who it attracts now. I think it attracts a slightly different storyteller than it used to. And I think that that is, you know, going back to core values. I think a core value for me and for the company, I think it definitely filters down, is to give more than you take. And, you know, we really saw that when we had a disaster.
There were 30 of us at the time, and we only lost one storyteller. It was like, if there’s no money here, I’m out. But only one, you know, and everybody else was like, there’s nothing here for me now, but I’m still going to contribute. I’m still going to give, and that’s a remarkable place to be. And we wouldn’t have been there, I think, if we didn’t all believe that.
Sharon: What you’re describing is what I think of as, or what I’ve been trying to think of as adult to adult culture. What is it that makes an adult-to-adult culture in a company and this notion of telling the truth and telling your truth seems core to that to me. I just wonder, what practices might you have that you use in the organization that reinforce this?
Sean: We have regular touch points, and we have words of the year that kind of guide us, too. So our word of the year last year was communication, and we had onboarded a lot of new storytellers. So in 2022, the very end of 2022, we went from twelve of us to 30 of us. It was the big jump, and we had been twelve to 15 for, like, four years. Like, just there. And then we’re like, okay, we’re going to take this big jump. And we sent out an email to our older nonfiction list and ended up getting 140 applicants for a three-hour interview. It gets a really exhaustive where we asked people a lot of questions, both on culture and writing, and they were infused.
So, like, it wasn’t really the kind of thing you could fake. That’s like, you’re putting yourself on the page. And we took 20 people out of that group that are like, okay, these are the ones that, like, really feel like they ticked all the boxes, and they’re well rounded, and they make us a better company, filled with more perspective, because we were a little limited on the perspective side. Like, we started the company as three loudmouth dudes and my right and left hander, you know, both women now, you know, so it’s a different company, and we needed, we just needed more diversity of thought and perspective across the board. And so all of a sudden, we have 20 new storytellers, 20 new voices, 20 new personalities. And so communication really had to be a huge thing.
Sharon: So we carefully named this podcast To Lead is Human, and I wonder if you could tell me what that evokes for you. What does it mean to you as a leader?
Sean: I think that it means that all of us have leadership in us, and it’s about how it’s nurtured. So I think that I’ve been nurtured by circumstance, certainly. And Cindy, like, she was the first person in my life ever to actually see the me that I am now. And she’s like, I picked you like a flower. She saw something in me, and she nurtured it, and she nurtured that sense of leadership, and, you know, like, she’s just an educator, and I’m a dropout. And so, you know, she always kind of nurtured that.
So, like, I’m writing nonfiction and publicly for the first time now in 15 years, and, like, I really shied away from it for a while. And as I poked my head out in the last month, I’ve been on LinkedIn a lot, and just like, last week, somebody was like, oh, my God, it’s so great to see you here. And they told me about something that I wrote 15 years ago that dramatically changed their life. I am much more comfortable now with the word leader and with the role of leader and understanding that my language does have impact and being willing to put it out there and investing the time to put it out there. So I think that I like to lead as human because it feels like it’s permission.
Sharon: Yeah. Good. That’s part of what I like about it, too. And part of what felt so resonant was, hey, everybody out there who thinks, you know, if you’re not happy with the people leading your organization, like, think what you would do and try it in your role and see if it works in your role, and maybe somebody will notice and copy you. I mean, we spend so much time at work in our lives that we need those kinds of connections and relationships for that part of our life to feel valued and valuable.
It has been such a joy to talk with you today, truly. And as we finish up, I always like to give a guest a chance to offer one last pithy thought to our readers, something that could help them find their own core self, bring it out into their leadership world, or just build a workplace that’s more human. What do you got?
Sean: I don’t know how pithy this is, but I think this is an exercise that can help literally anyone who does it is to just think about three stories that you have that happened to you and pivotal stories where you were at some sort of a crossroads. But don’t overthink it. They don’t have to be like the most important things that ever happened to it all. But define those stories and then ask yourself, what is the commonality in all three of these stories? And it will tell you a lot about yourself.
And if you can learn who you are, you can be a better leader. And I think that’s the core of it. It’s one of the reasons that I write every day. I’m on like a 3000-day streak or something ridiculous. Like I just write every single day no matter what because it’s the best therapy ever. I know myself extremely well and that makes me better at decisions.
Sharon: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much, Sean, for coming on the show, for sharing your perspective on leadership and more than anything, for just bringing your whole full, charming, enthusiastic self. It’s such a joy to meet you.
Sean: You’re very welcome. My pleasure. Thank you.
Sharon: So how shall our listeners keep track of you and what you’re up to?
Sean: Well, I just started writing on a personal space and that’s just seanplatt.me. And if you want to see like a crazy cool email adventure, I have no idea where it’s going, but I’m writing like this really rad autoresponder that’s going to be choose your own adventure. And it’s a decade worth of fiction, know how that I’m just feeding into it and I’m just having so much fun. There’s nothing to sell on it. But basically the premise is everyone can be a better storyteller. I’m going to tell you stories and then you’re going to take little nuggets about them and tell better stories yourself so you can sign up for that. It’s called the Campfire Mystery Box.
Sharon: I’m on my way right now to go sign up for it the minute we get off. It sounds like a riot.
Sean: I hope you enjoy that. And yeah, that’s how people can find me. If you need a business book that’s more like the perennial seller, like our best talent, that’s invisibleink.media, and we get to care of you there.
Sharon: Super. Well, thank you so much for being here today and I hope you have a great rest of the week.
Sean: Hi, will, thank you so much. Hope you have a great week, too.
Sharon: Please stay with us for a moment and I’ll share some takeaways and a coaching tip to help you up level your own leadership, starting right away. Sean is, as you can probably tell, a master storyteller and a story enthusiast. So today, I offer you takeaways as the morals of Sean’s leadership story. So moral number one is, know your own story and be able to tell it well and authentically.
In Sean’s case, he anchored his story with an early memory of the famous Tom Sawyer story, where Tom leads his friends to whitewash the fence, he’s been asked to take care of himself. Sean calls this memory up and that gives us the ground of how he sees leadership in his own life. At the same time, he paints us a picture of the leadership he aspires to. He described Jim Collins level five leader as his aspirational vision. And what Jim Collins described from his research was leaders characterized by both humility and will. Will being ambition that is driven to move the organization forward, not to serve the ego of the leader. And humility because, well, we’re all human and we certainly can’t thrive alone. We actually need each other to be whole and complete.
So, as Sean says, leadership is in us all if it’s nurtured. And while Sean may not have intended to become the leader of two companies and to lead so many other writers, there’s a moment where he specifically chose leadership. Where he and his co-founder, Neve, when the business was really struggling and in dire straits, lived their values out loud, cutting their own pay when the company needed more cash flow and prioritizing others needs over their own exactly in the spirit of level five leaders.
And here’s the second powerful moral of Sean’s leadership story. Live your values out loud. Sean’s leadership values express his personal values. Honesty, which he defines as candor plus manners equals honesty. Also a sense of hope, the need for collaboration, commitment to follow through and keeping work playful. Those are the values Sean described for us. And this extends all the way throughout his leadership, through the colleagues laughing at the story that Sean’s going to cry again in our meeting today.
Sean knows he’s naturally emotionally expressive. He’s comfortable with it. He’s willing to be transparent about it, and he’s also willing to hold it lightly and let it be part of the joy and laughter in their organization. From embodying his values, Sean also shapes the company’s leadership along with the other leaders. They reinforce open, honest communication, even when it’s personally painful. He keeps focus on his long view of success, and they keep the fun of their work present on a daily basis, even while taking the business seriously.
Some examples of how their culture pushes their own business forward naturally, they play with language, they brainstorm story ideas together on Slack, they laugh over commonly use phrases, and they have their own secret language. All of this reinforces the culture and has Sean and his team feeling like one tight community. It’s living his values that actually led Sean to ask on slack one day when things felt really dark to him. How are you all feeling today? And this began his multi month practice of asking for feelings every day, which kept the team motivated during the really rough patch they had in their business in late ‘23.
Sean knows he can be himself. He can share the burdens and responsibilities of his role with and he can get the support from his team, his co-founders and those he works with, so he can use his leadership superpower, which is to keep planning ahead for the big wins that are surely headed their way.
I’m Sharon Richmond, and this has been To Lead is Human. You can find out more about me leadinglarge.com. That’s L-E-A-D-I-N-G large dot com. To Lead is Human is part of the Mirasee FM podcast Network, which also includes such shows as Making It and Once upon a Business. This episode was produced by Cynthia Lamb. Andrew Chapman assembled the episode. Danny Iny is our executive producer, and post production was provided by Marvin del Rosario.
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