Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe (00:01.141)
Hello, this is Richard Lowe and you're on the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. Thank you for coming. I'm here with Rutherford Pascal and he is going to tell us all about himself.

Rutherford Pascal (00:12.686)
Okay. Hey, thanks, Richard. I appreciate it. So I, again, my name is Rutherford and I have a company now called Glass Walls Leadership. And we, we focus on getting good leaders to be great and great leaders to be better. So I spent 30 years in leadership in the pharmaceutical biotech space and, you know, started as a

representative and grew to a sales training, first line leader, second, third, fourth, and then head of sales position. So, bring 30, 32 years of experience and leadership to this company, Glass Walls Leadership, which I'm hoping to share with as many people that want to get better, want to grow, want to be better than good. Good is not good enough. You got to be great.

and greatness helps the most, helps many, many people. Good is fine, great is outstanding.

Richard Lowe (01:20.875)
Well especially in these days with everything changing so rapidly you better have a better game than anybody else.

Rutherford Pascal (01:27.15)
Yeah, you gotta differentiate yourself. In order to grow your culture, to grow revenues, to continue to achieve in the market, you just have to continue to evolve and get better and work on yourself. Continue to work on yourself and that's gonna get you those outsized results.

Richard Lowe (01:49.685)
Now you have a new book coming out, don't you?

Rutherford Pascal (01:52.834)
Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I'm excited. I'm really, really excited about the new book because in the last couple of years, and especially when I started the company, people would ask me what I did to grow my career, get promoted eight times. And while when I was coaching people one on one, I would I would ask them to do a couple of things after they told me what was getting in their way, what they wanted to do.

I would ask him to one or two things and the response I got back was always like, that's easy. That's good. I never heard about that. Things like that. Things like, like it was very shocking that some of the things that I did, in my career and I did for myself, people don't talk about it or people don't do it. And so I thought, you know, after I heard it five or six times, I said, you know,

Maybe there's, should write a book to tell more people about this. So really what the book is about is how to elevate yourself and how to separate yourself from everybody else in a really great way. And the reason I mean in a great way is if I add value to myself and I add value to the organization,

And I value to the customers all by doing one or two things, which is what I'm talking about, doing one or two things that I value to all three, me, the company, and the client customer. You are going to grow. You are going to get better. And we, I, it's been demonstrated time and time again, putting these little things in place will help you, will help make a difference dramatically to, to the outcome. Yeah.

Richard Lowe (03:32.203)
Mm-hmm.

Richard Lowe (03:49.781)
Well, it sounds like I want a copy of that book. When is it being released?

Rutherford Pascal (03:59.062)
I would tell you sometime in mid-April.

Richard Lowe (04:05.215)
Mid-April? same as my book.

Rutherford Pascal (04:08.194)
Yes. fantastic. Fantastic. We're going to compete against who gets more readers the first month or two. that what's going to happen?

Richard Lowe (04:18.283)
think it would be a great competition. Mine's called the ghost writing advantages about how to hire a ghost writer. I've never seen a book about that. And it's actually fairly large, it's almost 400 pages.

Rutherford Pascal (04:20.334)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Rutherford Pascal (04:32.942)
So Richard, mine is completely the opposite. the only, I think the advantage, excuse me, the thing we have in common is the four, right? Mine is like 43 to 45 pages, period. So the reason is I wanted people to, this is really more like a workbook. I started thinking about it as a workbook because I really wanna just have like people read it and go, oh, I'm gonna do this. Oh, I'm gonna do these two points.

Richard Lowe (04:47.124)
Okay.

Rutherford Pascal (05:02.094)
and go and go. It wasn't a literary exercise for me, which is your book is, know, with that much, how many pages you're telling stories, you're giving us. I'm giving you like, boom, to the point, here's what you do, here's what you and it's I want people to read it and then do.

Richard Lowe (05:26.421)
Well, I'm also writing a Cliff Notes version of about 40 or 50 pages. So you can have the shorter version and then the longer version. I have practical exams at the end of each chapter and stuff. yeah, writing a book is a fascinating project. I'm sure you found it interesting.

Rutherford Pascal (05:37.422)
You

Rutherford Pascal (05:44.558)
So I don't consider myself a writer, never have. was the... So for me, everybody talks about writing a book. takes like months or years, depending on things. it took me... I started thinking about it last year.

And it just kept, and I realized the importance of it and I really wanted to get it out in the world. I really wanted people, I really want people to see it. I really want people to experience it because I know it's going to help. I don't think it's going to help. I know it's going to help. So that kept pushing me, but it's if you're, so you have the gift, right? You have this gift. Yes. Yes. I don't, I have other gifts. That's not one of them. So.

Richard Lowe (06:27.807)
magic fingers.

Rutherford Pascal (06:34.414)
It kept, it's like back burner. Let me do these three things. And, know, and I had to spend weekends just, you know, focusing on it, um, you know, two, three, four hours, um, at a time, one hour, whatever they want, just to get, you know, get, and I rewrote the, I wrote it.

I rewrote it four or five times and I'm probably gonna, I'm after a slight revision later this week. I sent the manuscripts to five people to give me critical feedback. And because it's so short, not gonna, it wouldn't take them a long time. And the last person that I'm hearing from is tomorrow. And so after tomorrow, I should be able to go ahead and do all of the

the pertinent upgrades to it and then we'll see. We'll see it out in hopefully three weeks or so, three, four weeks.

Richard Lowe (07:39.101)
Interesting, interesting. I see you have a very, very diverse career in pharmaceuticals and stuff and pulmonology, gastroenterology and all that kind of thing. Of course, one thing I know about gastroenterology is they knock me out and stick tubes in places that I like.

Rutherford Pascal (07:56.686)
Yes, yes, yes. I should say, fortunately, our product, the where they would stick something would be down your throat. It wouldn't be anywhere else in your body. The better part, that's the better part.

Richard Lowe (08:01.269)
So let's.

Richard Lowe (08:12.895)
Right, Either one had the same, well, there was less prep for the one down the throat. Both of them were easy. had a place like it was really simple. mean, these, you go in, it's really streamlined and you get it done and you're gone. The only thing you have to somebody bring you home and that's it. so, and I was fine to drive, I thought, but I thought it'd be wise to not drive.

Rutherford Pascal (08:19.724)
Yes. Yes.

Rutherford Pascal (08:42.19)
Yes, think you are very wise in this decision.

Richard Lowe (08:47.027)
Yes, yes. Well, I've never drank or smoked or anything. So I decided, you know, I do not want to have the traffic stop unnecessarily and then have to explain why I was stupid enough to drive home against doctor's orders.

Rutherford Pascal (08:59.598)
That's a slightly embarrassing conversation with the police officer. Yes.

Richard Lowe (09:06.869)
slightly embarrassing and potentially disastrous depending on how it goes.

Yeah, I've watched the videos on TV, you know, on YouTube about people who get stopped and get all care-in-y and mad and stuff like that. It's not the way you talk to a cop.

Rutherford Pascal (09:24.428)
Not to, or any human, especially a police officer. Yes, yeah.

Richard Lowe (09:29.717)
Somebody who's armed and has a license to shoot.

Rutherford Pascal (09:35.596)
Yeah, it's probably not a good idea to get on the bad side. Yeah. My father was a police officer for years in a different country. And it's a tough and sometimes thankless occupation.

Richard Lowe (09:39.499)
Besides, I respect cops and respect military and stuff,

Richard Lowe (09:55.627)
Oh yeah, especially these days it tends to be very thankless. so, you know, I, I'm one of those guys who always just walks up and talks to him, shakes their hands, says, hi, I haven't started a conversation just because, and they seem to appreciate it.

Rutherford Pascal (10:09.998)
Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because you talk about that and my thing is leadership, right? So I always think about how we could do better in everything. the good thing and the bad thing about what I do is leadership is industry agnostic, right? Every industry rises and falls on leadership. If you think about, you know,

We're talking about police that are in a great place. I live in Scottsdale, but I'll tell you, Scottsdale police are phenomenal, fantastic. The statistics on what they've done, officer-involved shootings and things, it's tremendous. And how they interact with the communities is spectacular. And others are...

because of some of the leadership in some of those areas are not that way. So no matter where you go, you find great leadership and poor leadership. And that's the thing I think about. I don't know if you're a sports fan, but it's incredible that you see organizations who lose for 30 years.

and they don't sniff the playoffs. don't sniff. And you're like, why? It's the leader. Don't ask why. It's that. And the problem is everybody knows it except the leader.

Richard Lowe (11:41.25)
It's always the leaders. It's always the leaders.

Richard Lowe (11:51.765)
Well, they say that one rotten apple can ruin the basket, but truth is a rotten apple at the top ruins the entire orchid orchid or orchard, Huh? Yeah.

Rutherford Pascal (12:00.226)
That is, by the I love that, I like that. I like that, the entire orchard. I might steal that in a future. I will give you all the credit. I'll give you all the credit. But yeah, think that is correct. You just think you see companies going down, not evolving the way they should, not caring about the people.

Richard Lowe (12:08.203)
You may do so, but you have to send me royalties.

Rutherford Pascal (12:29.622)
It's always the leader. You saw it through the pandemic where organizations, was two organizations in the exact same field. One thrived, actually did better than they did before. And the other one failed. And it's just because of the leader, the leadership, the top. It's amazing. And people wonder why. You're like...

Richard Lowe (12:51.485)
always.

Rutherford Pascal (12:59.576)
We'll listen to what he or she says, listen to what he or she does, listen to what the people under that CEO, leader, manager, whatever, says and does, and you'll find the answer. That's always the answer.

Richard Lowe (13:17.451)
I read a book, one of my favorite books is written by a ghostwriter called, the other guy blinked. And it's about the CEO of Pepsi during the pep, the Coke Pepsi wars. Remember the, the new Coke and Michael Jackson and hair caught on fire, the whole thing. He's the guy who led Pepsi through all that. And the book is a quick read and it really goes into the story of true leadership. Of course, you know, he, he, his ghostwriter wrote the book to promote him. So there's that bias in there.

But it really goes into what leadership is, how they reacted, how quickly they reacted, how they were able to, there were people focused. know, when Michael Jackson had his accident with the hair, the first thing he does is walks up there and asks Michael Jackson if he needs help and offers whatever he can instead of worrying about lawsuits and things he didn't care. I mean, he cared, but you know, and Michael, you know, it went very well after that. They'd settled real fast and things were.

done because he was a leader, at least according to the book. you know, sometimes the books have a little bit of mythology built in, but that's fine. So he left a legacy, but I like reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's book, which is huge. I think that he's a pretty good leader. I like him. And, you know, there's, there's opposite books about non-leaders that are

I'm not going to get into politics or anything, that, you can just tell from the book, they're not leaders because they're, they're, their problems are always somebody else's problem. Somebody else did this, somebody else did this, somebody else did this. Whereas this book that I'm referring to, it was always on him. He was the one who, who, first of all, he's raising his people up and then any difficulties were his problem, his fault. And that's, that to me is a good leader is somebody who takes responsibility, but still builds up the troops.

Rutherford Pascal (15:18.446)
Yeah. So you were talking about Coke, Pepsi. So do you remember a new Coke? you could call it a fiasco, right? So you know why they did that, right? Because every single time they did a between Coke and Pepsi, the test, Pepsi won. that's so big. Pepsi is, the recipe is slightly sweeter.

Richard Lowe (15:40.671)
Right. Right.

Rutherford Pascal (15:47.726)
Right? But so they aimed at putting out a new Coke that was slightly sweeter. So they were trying to do this. And what was interesting and what some of the, sometimes in leadership, you don't understand what you have in inherently the value your product has and the build on it. And in a interesting way, the new Coke demonstrated to the company

Richard Lowe (15:56.213)
Right.

Rutherford Pascal (16:17.678)
to double down and never change and just understand what they have and then build from there, right? And so they had to, they tried, I mean, I was living through that and it was funny to me how people get so invested in something. You think just at Coca-Cola, you're just changing, it's not a big deal. It was to their customers, it was to their loyal customers.

Richard Lowe (16:42.091)
Right.

Rutherford Pascal (16:48.238)
And they didn't want to change. The taste palates of these individuals would change. And so what was the, and when I talk about leadership in this, that situation is some leaders would have kept pushed through and said, nah, this is, this is our future. Keep going. I don't care about your backlash. The good leadership was to, was sometimes you have to pull the cord and say, you know what? We misunderstood our

base customers. We misunderstood the difference and then we're going to pull back and we're going to go back to the original flavor. honestly, in that situation, there was a mistake made from a marketing perspective, a thought perspective, but the leadership to say we're wrong, which is amazing, right? People don't say they're wrong. They don't like to say they're wrong.

Coke said they were wrong and that made a huge difference because if you looked at, I don't know if you remember back then, their share actually went up after.

Richard Lowe (17:57.333)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's what he pointed out in the book. This, first of all, this is about soda. It's not really that important when you get down to it and it's, it's fun. made it fun. And then, he said, yeah. And now Coke's bounce back at the end, you know, and that's fine. That's just the way it goes. That's part of the game. You know, you have this and now they're, they're super huge companies and

Rutherford Pascal (18:22.456)
Yeah, they figured out that they could buy every other beverage category. then, well, Pepsi owns, what, Lay's and Frito Lay's, they own so many other food categories. It's important. they grew in another place. So Coke and Pepsi are like Republican and Democrat. They need each other.

Richard Lowe (18:34.687)
Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Lowe (18:52.075)
All right.

Rutherford Pascal (18:52.206)
They know it's an ecosystem that you can't just have one. If you had one, wouldn't be as, honestly, wouldn't be as impactful as having two. And now they really understand. If you think about this, think about the last time you ever heard them go after each other on an ad. We just don't do that.

They go after specific customers or they'll come up with a new flavor to grow the beverage market, but they don't go after each other.

Richard Lowe (19:25.013)
Right.

Richard Lowe (19:33.855)
Well, let me tell you a secret of good writing. And it's an important secret. The boring books versus the non boring books. The non boring books always have conflict. So in my book on ghost writing, for example, I present stories at start of each chapter and there's a conflict there. There's somebody who's not, who needs to succeed or there's a competition or whatever. So there's conflict in there. People want conflict. Now some of the modern movies.

Rutherford Pascal (20:01.112)
Yes.

Richard Lowe (20:03.999)
the writers don't get this and they put in weak conflict or stupid conflict, you know, because you got to have kind of the stories require a story arc and they require the hero or heroine be have some difficulties, you know, not be not be like Superman or superwoman. I found Superman boring because the the the obstacles are always what would you call it?

They were always something that was made up. Well, kryptonite, you know, or that now they found some kryptonite. my God. The guy can't be killed. He can't be hurt. He can't be anything. It's like Homelander in the new series of boys. Nothing can hurt him. So all the stuff around him is getting destroyed. But so the way they have to build up the conflict is they're hinting that there is something that can destroy him. So they have to have the conflict and they're trying to get you through all the series.

that's a series that has gone weird.

Rutherford Pascal (21:07.63)
So you have to educate me. I've never seen that and never heard that. I understand the Batman, you know, so you don't think the Penguin was good enough? You don't think the Penguin was enough conflict?

Richard Lowe (21:21.109)
Well, the Batman has some pretty good villains. And the reason is, Batman was not, he was a person. He didn't have any superpowers. So he was going against people who were also people. So he could die. But the boys is kind of a, well, if people did have super superpowers, what would really, what would it really be like? So you got somebody who is literally on par with Superman has beans coming out of his eyes and so forth.

and he's a little bit of a psychotic.

And then they have this, this media conglomerate that takes them and makes this, this media empire out of them. So they're trying to get views and things. It's the first, first couple seasons are pretty good. gets a little wonky after season three and four. They're coming out with five, I guess. but don't watch it if you don't like gore and not kind of, my God.

Rutherford Pascal (22:02.19)
to return.

Rutherford Pascal (22:19.531)
so it's gory?

Richard Lowe (22:20.652)
it's beyond gory.

Rutherford Pascal (22:24.546)
Really? So this is like a slasher type film type.

Richard Lowe (22:25.578)
Yeah.

Richard Lowe (22:29.055)
No, these are superheroes who don't care anymore. they just destroy people. They don't care. They can't be hurt.

Rutherford Pascal (22:38.702)
I'm not sure that's a superhero.

Richard Lowe (22:41.915)
Super people, people with super powers. Anyway, so whenever you write about a super power, a person's super power, you put box yourself into a corner because how can they be hurt? Captain Marvel is one of those. She can't be hurt. She's the most powerful being there is.

Rutherford Pascal (22:43.768)
Super people. Interesting. Super pop. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Richard Lowe (23:06.763)
Well, then you got to invent something to hurt her or you've got a really boring story. They just went with the boring story when they made her. has a, she has the most boring story of all. It's nothing because nothing can hurt her. So that even writing nonfiction, put the conflict in and you'll get a lot more people reading the story, reading your book. You have to have con now yours is the it's called story brand is one way to do it. There's other ways, but you just have this, this

Rutherford Pascal (23:17.806)
Hmm.

Richard Lowe (23:35.371)
hero villain kind of thing. And you have it built in where there's something to overcome. Um, I don't know why, um, um, you know, you're in a company and you don't know why your leadership isn't working. That's a problem. Now you got a problem. You got a little conflict. Then you've got somebody who is say a little arrogant and how come he's succeeding because he's, know, now you've got some conflict there and then the more con you don't have, you don't want to overdo it. Anyway, that's, um,

If you look at life, we get bored and degrade when we don't have conflict in our lives. We want some conflict. That's why we make games.

Rutherford Pascal (24:16.526)
So it's what's interesting. So let me say this to you about conflict and leadership. So there's never been a company, and I'm going to say this and I'm thinking, there's never been a company that doesn't go through different arcs. Nothing is linear. There's always some type of dip as far as belief, as far as uptake.

you know, what product. There's always a situation. So many companies have come on the brink of disaster, disaster in their mind, because you notice there's either they read the market wrong, or they were slightly early. They didn't understand the competitive. So the conflict is how do you, what,

strategy are you using to get out of that? And if you have a team, a board or whatever, there's always going to be differing opinions, right? About.

Richard Lowe (25:29.855)
Well, a big conflict that's, sorry, go ahead, sorry. A big conflict that's happens in most companies now with tech is called the hype cycle. And you saw it with the metaverse. Everybody's spending millions and billions and hundreds of billions of dollars to do the metaverse. So that's on the high end of the hype cycle. It's like a steep curve up where everybody thinks, my God, there's money here. You miss the top and then it crashes because everybody realizes there's not as much money here as they thought.

or it overbys or whatever the reason is. And then it comes down to a normal, to a new normal where, and more sanity and AI is going through that. Now it's at the top of the hype cycle real soon. It's going to go kaboom. And that's just the way it is.

Rutherford Pascal (26:14.082)
You should. So, so I will say when you say it's at the top of the hype cycle, I'm not positive it's reached it yet. Right. Yeah. yeah. Okay. That's, that's true because it, it's basically you can't, if you're a startup company and you don't say AI is involved in it some way, you're

Richard Lowe (26:23.529)
It has not reached it yet, but it will reach it this year.

Rutherford Pascal (26:43.662)
you are like, where's the AI? So AI is involved in everything and probably in not, it doesn't need to be in some of those things, right? So there's absolutely a hype cycle going on with AI, no question, no question, no question.

Richard Lowe (27:01.995)
And then it becomes commoditized. And then it becomes normal, like the cloud. The cloud went through a big hype cycle. Everybody's jumping on the cloud. You see all the cloud that ever. Now it's just normal. Everybody's in the cloud or going to cloud. They've all heard of it. It's just a commodity to sell. And you don't get the hype cycle anymore.

Rutherford Pascal (27:19.15)
But I will say the company, so Microsoft, so let me tell you, let's say a little bit about the cloud and Microsoft. So there's only been three CEOs of Microsoft. The company has been around for 48, I think 49 years, something like that. And they've had three CEOs, Gates, Steve Ballmer and Satana Della is the CEO now. Their market cap.

Richard Lowe (27:33.227)
you

Rutherford Pascal (27:49.262)
when Steve Ballmer left in 2014, their market cap was $400 billion, which is huge. Satya Nadella, when he put in place, one of the first things he did was he threw more of the company's assets and time into the cloud.

Richard Lowe (28:16.747)
I remember.

Rutherford Pascal (28:18.51)
He did all this. in from 2015 when he got 14, 15, when he got in to 2021, the market cap of the company went from 400 billion to 2.7 trillion. And so, I mean, so interesting you say the hype cycle. I think the hype was over, but there's almost people who take certain things and do it better. Right.

Richard Lowe (28:34.207)
No.

Rutherford Pascal (28:48.398)
It's what I call it, the football mentality, like it's blocking and tackling. You know, the greatest teams in football, you know what we're going to run, we're going to run it every third down and we're still going to beat you, right? With the fill that vehicles, have this tush push. Everybody knows they're going to run it on third or fourth and one. It doesn't matter. We're still going to execute better than you. And I think the execution

part of it is what people at the hype cycle, even if it's like this just happened in the social networking and all these different things that, you so if you look at Snapchat, right? Snapchat came, everyone thought this is a crazy company. Take a picture, it disappears. That makes any sense, right? And, what they understood

things differently and even though it was late, so this was after Instagram, after all this stuff, and they understood their customer better, they blocked and tackled better, and they became a bigger company than Instagram. And what's funny is some of the things that they did, Instagram copied, right?

Richard Lowe (29:54.165)
I know. I know.

Richard Lowe (30:13.899)
Of of course.

Rutherford Pascal (30:15.822)
And they were were they were late. You're not supposed to be that successful being fourth or fifth or sixth to market but that's what I'm telling you. So it's what's interesting about leadership and and understanding markets understanding customers is it's if you do these things really well if you and your team understand the market very well, right and then all this is leadership everything I'm talking about is leadership if you and then you just you you

set a path, you go forward and you do it and you iterate appropriately. It's not like you don't care about your competition, because you do, but you don't obsess about your competition. You obsess about the user's experience. You obsess about what they do. The reason Amazon is Amazon is because they obsess about customers. Whether you like them or not, this is not a...

Richard Lowe (31:01.035)
course.

Rutherford Pascal (31:13.378)
This is just because they've gotten so big because they obsess about their customers. They don't assess about their competition. They don't really, they care, but they don't care.

Richard Lowe (31:23.787)
Yep, yep. Well, we're nearing the end of our time. And if you have any final words you want to say to your listeners, feel free.

Rutherford Pascal (31:32.75)
No, so the one thing I will say about with leadership and growing is it's if one of the most important things you can do is investing in yourself, right? Invest in yourself to get better. If you invest in other things, you might get one or two times better. If you invest in yourself, you could get three to four, five, 10 times better.

If you get three or four or five, 10 times better, you'll get those types of outsized outcomes for yourself, for the company, and for your customers. So the thing that I want to do is talk to people about is, I want people to think about how can I get better? Because you can control that, right? You can control, and by the way, that doesn't matter your role. You might say, I'm Buffett, I'm not a leader. Why do I need to get better?

Every single time you get better, you add value. And that's really, really, really important. The more you add value to yourself, you add value to the company and you add value to others. That's the most important.

Richard Lowe (32:48.715)
Well, I would add to that just as a final note is if you say you're not a leader, actually you are. Are you the head of a family? Are you in a family? Are you part of a peer group to your friend group? You're probably a leader somewhere. So you're not just, it's not just business. All right. Well,

Rutherford Pascal (33:04.696)
That's it. 100%. 100%.

Richard Lowe (33:07.157)
This has been a fascinating talk. wish we could talk longer. It's been fun, but gotta be what it's gotta be. So I'm Richard Lowe. I'm the author, excuse me. I'm Richard Lowe. I'm the writing king and the ghost writing guru. You can hit me up at the writingking.com or ghostwriting.guru and you are.

Rutherford Pascal (33:15.16)
Have a good

Richard Lowe (33:33.501)
Where can people reach you? Sorry.

Rutherford Pascal (33:33.71)
So I'm Rutherford you can answer no problems. You can reach me at glass walls leadership.com Yeah, so glass walls leadership.com that's the easiest way to do it and I'm if you want to go on LinkedIn I'm the only Rutherford Pascal on LinkedIn as far as I know

Richard Lowe (33:53.685)
Well, we're going to validate that. Well, OK. That's the advantage of having a unique name, I suppose.

Rutherford Pascal (34:01.058)
Yes it is, yes it is.

Richard Lowe (34:02.559)
Well, it's been great having you on board. Thank you for coming.

Rutherford Pascal (34:05.484)
You gotta take care, have a great day.