In this recap, Erik distills the key leadership insights from his conversation with Dr. Ian Beaty, highlighting the gap between technical skill and leadership ability. He reflects on the all-too-common failure point: we promote people because they’re good at something, not because they’ve been trained to lead. Erik explores how this creates a cycle of unprepared leaders who are under-equipped and over-pressured—and why humility and rebellion are often the antidote.

🎯 Top Insights from the Interview

• Success ≠ Leadership Readiness: Being great at a skill doesn’t automatically translate into being great at leading others who do that skill.
• Training Is the Missing Piece: The military models this well—every promotion requires training. In contrast, most companies offer none.
• Rebellion Is a Leadership Virtue: Being a good leader often means being willing to challenge the system, not just follow it.
• Pressure Creates Ego: Newly promoted leaders often feel the need to have all the answers. This squashes collaboration and curiosity.
• Humility Fuels Growth: Ian’s unique journey—from enlisted mechanic to doctorate-holder—underscores how humility is the bridge between mistakes and mastery.

🧩 The Personal Layer

Erik relates deeply to the challenge of being promoted without preparation. He reflects on how easy it is to assume a title grants wisdom, and how hard it is to ask for help without feeling like a fraud. The conversation brought him back to key moments in his own leadership where he struggled with ego, pressure, and the desire to appear competent. That rawness created a resonance with Ian’s story—and a deeper respect for the discipline of leadership.

🧰 From Insight to Action

• Audit Your Promotions: Look at who you’ve elevated recently—did you train them to lead, or just hope they’d figure it out?
• Normalize Reps, Not Just Results: Like the military or pro sports, leadership should involve practice and feedback, not just real-time performance.
• Celebrate the Rebels: Identify the respectful disruptors on your team and find ways to empower, not suppress, their insights.
• Build Humility Habits: Create spaces for leaders to say “I don’t know” without losing credibility.
• Design Your Own Development Path: Don’t wait for your organization—seek the reps, feedback, and frameworks you need.

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• Visit Dr. Ian’s Website www.ianbeaty.com
• Connect with Dr. Ian on LinkedIn

Erik sits down with Dr. Ian Beaty—Major in the Oregon Army National Guard, military recruiter-turned-educational liaison, and founder of Maven Speaks. With 24 years of service and a doctorate in education, Ian’s insight cuts through the noise on what real leadership looks like, why bad leadership is so common, and how he’s bridging bureaucratic silos between the military and the education system. This conversation is a sharp, thoughtful look at systems, trust, and the future of developing people.

👤 About the Guest

Dr. Ian Beaty is a decorated military officer, organizational strategist, and the founder of Maven Speaks—a leadership and engagement consultancy. From generator mechanic to infantry officer to recruiting commander, Ian now serves as the Oregon National Guard’s first-ever educational liaison, a role he designed and pitched himself. With a master’s in organizational management and a doctorate in education, Ian blends field experience with academic rigor to shape better leaders and more connected systems.

🧭 Conversation Highlights

• How Ian built his own role to fix a gap in military recruitment
• Why adding value, not pitching, is the key to meaningful engagement
• The tension between long-term relationship-building and short-term quotas
• What makes veterans so uniquely qualified for leadership roles post-service
• How the military trains leadership differently—and what corporations can learn
• The pivotal moment Ian decided to study leadership after encountering a bad leader
• Why rebel thinkers are crucial for systems growth
• A candid breakdown of why most managers fail: no training and poor role fit

💡 Key Takeaways

• Leadership is a skill that must be trained, not assumed. Promotion without preparation leads to poor outcomes.
• Systemic gaps require entrepreneurial courage. Ian’s story is a blueprint for building roles that solve overlooked problems.
• Recruitment is more about trust and value than tactics. Meaningful relationships beat transactional checkboxes.
• Military leadership prepares people exceptionally well for civilian roles. Through succession training, pressure-tested accountability, and values-based culture.
• Being a disruptor isn’t a bug—it’s a leadership feature. Rebels with the right intent challenge broken systems for the better.

❓ Questions That Mattered

• “How did you convince your superior to hire you for a job that didn’t exist?”
• “Why do so many leaders get promoted without being trained to lead?”
• “How do you lead with empathy without becoming a pushover?”
• “What can civilian organizations learn from the military’s leadership pipeline?”
• “Why is practicing leadership like practicing free throws?”

🗣️ Notable Quotes

🔗 Links & Resources

• Visit Dr. Ian’s Website www.ianbeaty.com
• Connect with Dr. Ian on LinkedIn

In this reflective follow-up to his interview with Amanda Bedell, Erik gets honest about the uncomfortable truths business owners face when it comes to profit. Most of us think we’re “doing okay” because revenue is coming in—but Amanda forces a deeper look.

What stuck with Erik most wasn’t just Amanda’s strategic brilliance—it was how she translated financial complexity into real leadership decisions. She didn’t just talk P&Ls or pricing formulas. She talked about leadership responsibility, team clarity, and what it really takes to build something that lasts.

🎯 Top Insights from the Interview

• Profit isn’t passive—it’s a leadership choice. Amanda reframes profitability from a reporting outcome into a strategic driver, deeply embedded in your decisions.
• Most businesses are built on broken math. Pricing errors often happen because owners don’t fully calculate true unit economics—including overhead.
• You can’t outsource clarity. Bookkeepers, CPAs, and accountants are helpful—but they rarely help you lead a profitable business.
• Marketing changes the math. Your pricing isn’t just constrained by your costs and competitors—it can be elevated by how you position what you offer.
• Execution must go beyond strategy. Erik points out the crucial missing link: How do you lead your people to deliver on premium positioning?

🧩 The Personal Layer

Erik shares a behind-the-scenes window into how Amanda’s workshop challenged and shifted his own assumptions around pricing. He opens up about his own frustrations with the esoteric language of profit from financial professionals—and contrasts that with Amanda’s refreshingly direct, actionable style.

One standout reflection? The story of KFC’s pricing experiment: when they raised prices instead of lowering them, they sold more—not because of the product, but because of how pricing signaled value. That single story sparked a bigger idea about what it really means to lead with intention around price—and what most of us miss by pricing to fit in.

🧰 From Insight to Action

• Audit your pricing story. Not just the math—but how it connects to your marketing, your team’s ability to explain it, and the customer’s experience of it.
• Use price as a positioning tool. Where are you playing small because you’ve only considered the market’s ceiling—not your offering’s potential?
• Bring your team into the strategy. Great ideas in the office don’t matter if your frontline can’t deliver the promise (red carpet → red flags without clarity).
• Reflect on pricing as leadership. Erik challenges listeners to consider: Am I leading through my numbers—or hiding behind them?

🗣️ Notable Quotes