Today we are going to talk with Joanna Cooper, who is the General Manager of Daimler Truck North America at their Mount Holly plant. I first met Joanna when she was a keynote speaker with me at the Shingo Institute’s 36th annual conference and she is a pretty amazing person.

She has been featured in Forbes, Chief, and Authority magazines, and is a sought-after keynote speaker in many companies and organizations.

In our discussion today, Joanna and I reflect back on her career where she learned that saying “Yes” to every opportunity that came to her gave her the ability to grow into the role she is in now. We discuss the difficulties she has faced in her career as a woman in a mostly male dominated industry, and how tough feedback can often be one of the most compassionate things a leader can give their employees.

You can connect with Joanna here

Today we are going to talk with Jon Layton, CEO of Layton Consulting. Layton Consulting is a specialty engineering firm that focuses on glass and cladding on buildings, and you can see their work literally around the world. Now, I have to tell you that as I was doing my interview with Jon, there was a sticker on his computer that was a quote from Peter Pan that absolutely typifies this guy. The quote is “To live would be an awfully big adventure”.

Jon’s story is pretty incredible. In his early 30s he is put into a position that would overwhelm the best of us. I’m not going to spoil the story, but through these experiences, Jon learned what it truly means to fail forward. His raw emotion, humility, and humour is on full display as he shares these lessons and as he teaches us all how to recognize our limits, and the power of pizza and pasta when you are feeling alone in the journey.

In this episode, we talk with Myles Gift, Vice President of Operations at GSR group, the largest franchise group for Wing Stop in the US about his journey from the early days buying a pizza franchise to where he is today. Myles shares some of the challenges he is facing in his role with staffing, development, and engagement, and how making “pitstops” along the way has helped him to create an environment where he can delegate and create great things in the lives of his employees.