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The Lift

The Lift

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Welcome to The Lift, the show about leadership, growth, and getting what we want. On The Lift, we pull up to see the bigger picture from accomplished leaders who know how to get things done in a rapidly changing world. Host Ben Brooks dives deep into a relevant leadership topic each episode and connects the dots to leave you with powerful distinctions that you can use as a leader.

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Episodes
  • Clarity over cool: Éva Goicochea on building maude and a category-defining brand

    Clarity over cool: Éva Goicochea on building maude and a category-defining brand
    Apr 7 2026

    Most brands don’t fail because they’re ugly. They fail because they’re unclear about the most fundamental question: what is our purpose?

    Éva Goicochea has built a category-defining company, maude, in one of the most taboo industries in business: sexual wellness. She did that by stripping the “brand” down to one thing: clarity.

    Simply put, if you can’t say what you are in one sentence, you don’t have a brand. You have noise.

    Topic Highlights

    – Why aiming for “cool” is a trap, and what offers the real competitive edge in branding instead

    – The difference between a brand, a product, and a commodity

    – What maude did right to make sexual wellness feel…ordinary

    – The right (and wrong) way to partner with a celebrity

    – Why saying “no” might be your most valuable growth lever

    Guest Bio

    Éva Goicochea is the founder and CEO of Maude, the modern intimacy brand that brought sexual wellness into mainstream retail, including Sephora.

    Episode Links

    maude

    Our Bodies, Ourselves

    Forever and Everlane, Amen

    A Century of Flight (Delta documentary)

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    37 mins
  • Managing Yourself First: Margaret Andrews on Self-Awareness and Leadership

    Managing Yourself First: Margaret Andrews on Self-Awareness and Leadership
    Mar 31 2026
    In this episode of The Lift, Ben is joined by Margaret Andrews, Harvard and MIT professor of executive education programs on leadership, emotional intelligence, and self-management, founder of The MYLO Center, and author of Managing Yourself to Lead Others.Key takeaways: Self-awareness is the foundation of great leadershipEmotional intelligence matters more than many leaders realize, particularly when it comes to communication, trust, and feedbackThe best bosses stand out for their interpersonal skills, not just IQ or technical expertiseFeedback and emotions are data, and leaders who learn to interpret both can make better decisions and build stronger relationships at workIf you want to change how people think, you have to change how they feelLeadership growth starts with self-reflection: understanding your values, your definition of success, and the people and experiences that shaped you What makes someone a truly effective leader? According to Margaret Andrews, it starts with a skill that many business schools and workplaces still undervalue: self-awareness.The core idea of this conversation is simple but powerful: before you can lead other people well, you have to understand how you think, feel, behave, and impact others. That sounds obvious, but in practice, many leaders skip this step. They focus on strategy, process, execution, and technical skill while overlooking the emotional and interpersonal habits that shape every meeting, every relationship, and every decision.Margaret’s own path into this work started with difficult feedback. Early in her career, a boss told her she lacked self-awareness. It was painful to hear, but it became a turning point. Instead of dismissing the comment, she began asking deeper questions about why she showed up the way she did, how others experienced her, and what she needed to change in order to become a more effective leader. That journey led her to develop a framework for managing yourself before leading others.In the conversation, Margaret shares six essential questions leaders can use to better understand themselves:Who and what ideas shaped you?What life events changed you?How do you define success?What are your core values?How well do you understand your emotions?What feedback have you received over the course of your life?These questions get at the heart of leadership development because they force people to examine the beliefs, experiences, and emotional patterns they bring into the workplace every day. Margaret makes the case that leadership is not just about getting results through others. It is also about understanding the forces inside yourself that affect how you listen, react, communicate, and influence.Margaret asserts that people are not nearly as rational as we like to think. If you want to change the way people think, she says, you first have to change the way they feel. That insight has huge implications for managers, executives, and founders. You can have the smartest strategy in the room, but if you do not understand the emotional reality of the people around you, your message may never land.Margaret also shares a practical exercise she uses in executive programs: think about the best boss you ever had, then identify the top reasons they were effective. Across years of teaching, she has found that most people’s answers do not focus on IQ or technical brilliance. Rather, they focus on interpersonal skills: things like listening, trust, empathy, communication, calm under pressure, and the ability to make others better. In other words, the qualities that make someone memorable as a leader are often the very ones organizations treat as secondary.This episode is especially valuable for leaders who have relied on competence, speed, achievement, or hard-driving standards to succeed and are now realizing those strengths may not be enough. Margaret offers a more sustainable model – one rooted in emotional intelligence, reflection, and behavioral change. She also draws an important distinction between personality and behavior. You do not have to become a different person to grow as a leader, but you may need to change how you behave.For anyone trying to become a better manager, a more grounded executive, or a more thoughtful human being at work, this conversation is both practical and deeply personal. It is about more than leadership theory. It is about how your inner life shapes your outer impact.If you want to lead others more effectively, start here: know yourself better, manage yourself more honestly, and build from there.Links: Margaret AndrewsThe MYLO Center Managing Yourself to Lead Others (Margaret’s book Harvard Executive Education programsInternational House at UC Berkeley The Lift is hosted by Ben Brooks. Find out more about Ben Brooks and his company, PILOT, here. The show is made by editaudio. Follow Ben on LinkedIn and Instagram.For even more fun, follow along on Ben’s adventures with his puppy, Jetson.See Privacy Policy at...
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    35 mins
  • The High Line and Beyond: Robbie Hammond on Building The Impossible with Tenacity, Timing, and Vision

    The High Line and Beyond: Robbie Hammond on Building The Impossible with Tenacity, Timing, and Vision
    Mar 24 2026
    In this episode of The Lift, Ben is joined by Robbie Hammond – Co-Founder of The High Line, a beloved elevated park and greenway in NYC – and the global president of Therme Group, a company centered on urban wellbeing.Key takeaways: Break big, long-term visions into small, self-contained projects that show progress and keep you motivatedTenacity matters more than perfect conditions, especially when politics and timing are outside your controlKnowing your own strengths (and limits) makes it easier to find partners who complement your skillsExternal success doesn’t automatically create internal well-being; therapy, meditation, and sometimes medication can be part of the leadership toolkitPhilanthropy and nonprofit structures can “hold the vision” while you wait for the right political and economic climateThis week on The Lift, Ben chats with Robbie about what it really takes to stick with a big idea for decades and actually make it happen.Robbie never set out to be “the High Line Guy.” In fact, he describes himself as someone with a short attention span who came from dot-com startups, not urban planning. He was working in tech when he read a 1999 article about an old elevated freight rail line that the city planned to demolish. Curious, he went to a community board meeting, sat down next to a stranger (who turned out to be his future High Line Co-Founder, Joshua David), and realized they were the only two people in the room who didn’t want the structure torn down.Neither of them had money, power, or relevant credentials. The mayor wanted it gone. Nearby property owners wanted it gone. Most neighbors wanted it gone. Robbie estimates the odds of success at the time were maybe one in a hundred. So why bother?Robbie’s answer: It was a passion project. He still had a day job, but the High Line gave him a chance to work with architects, designers, and community members he never would’ve met otherwise. Even if the park never got built, he felt like the smaller projects along the way – a design competition, an education program, a street fair, early branding – were all meaningful in their own right.That’s the core concept behind Robbie’s approach is “micro-dosing the vision.” When a project might take 10–20 years, you can’t wait for the grand opening to feel like you’re making progress. Instead, he advises, you break the journey into bite-sized, shippable milestones: a brochure here, a website there, a new partnership, a public event, a feasibility study. Each micro-project becomes proof that the idea is moving, even if the finish line is far away.Ben and Robbie also explore the invisible emotional cost behind high-profile success. Robbie shares candidly that, even as the High Line became one of the most famous parks in the world and helped dramatically reshape Manhattan’s West Side and neighboring Hudson Yards, he didn’t actually enjoy his life for a long time. Like many founders, he was driven by fear of failure and chronic self-doubt.What finally shifted? A mix of therapy, years of experimenting with different kinds of meditation, and eventually medication in his mid-40s. Those tools helped him regulate anxiety, sustain a healthy relationship, and build a family. They also gave him the internal stability to appreciate what he had already created instead of immediately chasing the next big thing.On the strategy side, Robbie talks about the value of selling different versions of the same vision to very different audiences. For city government, the pitch was an economic-development story: invest public dollars to generate future tax revenue through higher property values and new development. For neighbors, it was about public space and quality of life. For partners and donors, it was about civic legacy and design innovation.He describes how he and Joshua deliberately hired the kinds of experts developers usually use against community groups, like seasoned land-use lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists,so they could meet powerful stakeholders on equal footing.Robbie also reflects on his work with Little Island and its founder, media executive Barry Diller. Initially, he was skeptical of the project and worried about yet another billionaire-backed park in an already amenity-rich neighborhood. But he’s come to respect Barry’s sheer tenacity and willingness to keep funding both its construction and ongoing maintenance, which is something many wealthy patrons don’t stick around for.Today, Robbie is channeling his long-game muscles into Therme Group, which builds massive, urban wellbeing campuses inspired by ancient Roman baths. For him, Therme is a way to democratize wellness: not luxury spas for the few, but a social infrastructure for the many.Because those projects move slowly, he’s still micro-dosing the vision through smaller, related creative experiments: hosting pop-up sauna villages, writing his “Culture of Bathe-ing” Substack, and collaborating with a ...
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    29 mins
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