Thriving In A Changing Environment With Eric Hoplin

 

Eric Hoplin is the CEO of the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors (NAW). He joins Adam Markel in this conversation about what it takes to deal with and thrive in a changing environment. Inspired by his experiences as a father and a leader in turbulent markets, he explores the importance of fostering integrity, resiliency, and flexibility. Eric emphasizes patience in decision-making processes, especially when faced when uncertainty, unpredictable trends and pressures from Wall Street. He also discusses how to handle cultural shifts within an organization to achieve transformation, excellence, collaboration, and maximum impact.

 

Show Notes:

• 01:08 – Eric Hoplin, CEO of NAW
• 05:33 – Understanding The Why
• 10:58 – Influence Of Wall Street Over The Market
• 16:11- Developing Resilience In Leadership
• 20:29 – Four Aspects Of Cultural Change And Transformation
• 26:41 – Eric’s Rituals For Resilience
• 30:38 – Why Integrity And Character Are Important
• 32:37 – Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

—

Get the newest Change Proof Podcast episode delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here.

How do we leverage continuous uncertainty to thrive in this unprecedented new world? 
The answer is to build the resilience we need to power us through the challenges we face so that we become “Change Proof.” Prepare to tackle the future with confidence by reading Adam’s latest book Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience.

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Thriving In A Changing Environment With Eric Hoplin

I’m so thrilled to be here with all of you. I’m also thrilled for the guest that I’ve got, and I’m going to share a little bit about him, read his bio, and then get right into it. His name is Eric Hoplin. He is the CEO of NAW, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. Its affiliated trade associations represent nearly 30,000 companies that account for 1/3 of the American economy. The distribution industry stands at the center of America’s supply chain, distributing goods and services across nearly every sector of commerce.

Eric is a seasoned executive and communicator who has worked at the highest levels of government and business. He was previously the Head of External Relations for Wells Fargo, where he led a team focused on improving the company’s reputation and advancing pro-growth policy objectives in concert with third-party organizations across the political spectrum. I know you’re going to love this conversation, so sit back, relax, and enjoy.

‐‐‐

Eric Hoplin, CEO of NAW

Eric, I’m going to hit you with the question. The first question is my standard first question. You probably know what question is coming at you. Based on your bio, your introduction, your work history, and your life history, what is one thing that’s not a part of what I shared with folks or what I read? What’s one thing that you would love for people to know about you at the beginning of our conversation?

I share a common thing with a lot of people, and that is I’m a dad. I’ve got three boys aged fifteen, fourteen, and thirteen. Before I had kids, if you had told me that being a father was going to be one of the great parts of life, I would’ve had no idea. What I found over the last couple of years is that you get to relive your childhood. You’re playing with Legos, hanging out in the backyard, and doing all that stuff.

It’s more than the fun and the enjoyment. It is taking these three young minds and helping to mold their character, form them, and prepare them to go into the world and hopefully contribute something positive. Being a dad is the second half of my life. It is a work-life balance. I try to make sure that as the leader of my team, for whatever it is, whether you’re a parent or whether you’re a health nut, whether you love to travel, or whether you love to read, whatever it is in your life, I find that if you’ve got time to do that piece, too, you’re so much better at work. I try and lead by example.

There’s so much there. The people who are reading this, not everybody’s a parent, and not everybody wants to be a parent. There’s a whole lot of stuff there, but there are plenty of parents out there. I sometimes joke with folks, “You have kids?” They’re like, “No.” I’m like, “Were you once a child? Do you ever see any children?” We can all relate to it on some level.

I am a dad as well, and it is a big part of my identity, for sure. We have four kids. What we all can relate to is the idea of the influence and the potential impact that we have on other people. Clearly, when you get to mold or be involved in the process of molding a mind from the time that they’re at such a young age, that’s a profound responsibility.

It’s fun along the way, where there are little moments in life where you realize you’ve had an impact. I had one. My fifteen-year-old is a golfer. He is on his varsity golf team. He’s in ninth grade, competing with the seniors. He wants time to play. When you’re in a tournament, getting that low score is important to decide whether the coach is going to play you the next day.

He came upon a ball that he thought was his, and he hit that ball. When he got to the green, he realized that it wasn’t his ball. No one would’ve ever known that he hit a ball that wasn’t his, but he called a two-stroke penalty on himself. That’s one of those moments where I thought, “That’s the right call.” That’s what you’re hoping was ingrained somewhere. You’ve raised a person of integrity.

I don’t know if other people are feeling this. I got full-body chills right there. I’m a golf nut. I don’t know how that happened, but I ended up that way. Sahith Theegala, a PGA professional and one of the best players in the world, I am thinking about his dad and his family. They’re a very close Indian family.

Anytime Sahith is in the running, they’re going to have his family involved. This guy exudes a certain joy in watching his son, as does the whole family, it seems. Some years ago, Sahith was in the running. I’m trying to remember the name of the tournament. He could have won the tournament, but he called a two-stroke penalty on himself. He thought perhaps that his club touched the sand when he took it away from the ball. He’s in a sand trap. The people that don’t know what we’re talking about, we’re going to get past this, I promise. The big picture here is that nobody saw it. His dad didn’t see it. Nobody, not the commentators. There was a camera on him. Nobody saw this thing.

I remember this. This cost him about $2 million.

It cost him a couple of million bucks at the time.

The respect that he gained from his fellow PGA professionals and from the fans all around the world was worth more than the prize money at the end of the day.

Understanding The Why

We’re even talking about it. I want to create a bit of a bridge here from the personal. I want to come back to the personal, but I also want to talk about what’s happening in the marketplace. I said to you before we even hit the record button that I don’t expect you to have a crystal ball or be a prognosticator, but you’re an experienced business person. You are working with other seasoned business people.

If you can understand the why, you can have a bit of a longer trajectory view of where things are headed. Share on X

The market, at the time that we’re in, is pretty tumultuous. There’s a lot of uncertainty. A lot of people are pretty nervous about it, frankly. I can’t tell you how many organizations WorkWell serves and wants to serve that we cannot serve at the moment because there’s a complete lockdown inside those organizations on spending when it comes to certain things like leadership development or any kind of training from the outside might offer support for well-being and resiliency.

There’s no money for it because people are so nervous about the future and not being able to make heads or tails of where the market’s going to be. Can you share any of your thoughts both on the situation and having been around the block, as I have, a time or two? Should people be wigging, or is there something more going on here that we could observe?

I represented the trade association. My members account for about 1/3 of the GDP in the country. I’m talking to CEOs of multibillion-dollar revenue companies and CEOs of $5 million to $10 million. Everybody in business likes one thing. They like certainty. They like to know where things are going. It can be predictive. When you don’t have certainty, you start to see the pullback in spending on some of the other things you were referencing, so they can prepare for the uncertain times.

We spend a lot of time in Washington. I work closely with both sides of the aisle. The advice that I give business leaders is to try and understand the why. Why is something happening? Oftentimes, people are reading the headlines and they’re reacting to the what. If you can understand the why, you can have a bit of a longer trajectory view of where things are headed.

This is not meant to be partisan, but to try and understand Donald Trump and understand what he’s trying to do and where he is going. You can agree with it or you can disagree with it. You can be agnostic towards it, but the more you understand, the better you can prepare your business. For example, the tariffs that we’re expecting on April 2nd, 2025, might be applied all around the world or to certain countries. We’re not entirely sure how they’re going to be applied. It looks like they’re going to be applied across all businesses.

If you try and understand the why, what Donald Trump is trying to do is reset fairness in America’s trade relationships. There are a couple of different outcomes. One outcome is as a result, we get a trade war. Inflation goes up, and the stock market goes crazy. Things get more expensive here. That’s a potential outcome. Some businesses are preparing for that.

Another outcome is that it forces a renegotiation of some of the imbalances in the relationship. Instead of there being a trade war, these other countries come to the table and they say, “Maybe we can reduce our VAT tax,” or, “Maybe we can reduce this cost and this import to Americans.” In that scenario, there’s some short-term pain. Maybe it’s 3 months or maybe it’s 6 months.

We’re all going to feel it in the next couple of months, but after that, there’s a potential that things are going to be better. I don’t think Donald Trump is trying to destroy the economy. He’s not trying to make everybody’s lives terrible. He is not trying to be a bad president. You understand the why. Whether you think he’s right or not, that’s what he’s going for.

What I’m counseling businesses to do is to watch 4 to 6 months before we react too much, before we make a fundamental change, before we start slashing budgets, or this or that. Let’s give the president a little time to see if he’s right. If he’s wrong, the markets are going to tell him he is wrong. Inflation is going to tell him he’s wrong.

The electoral consequences are going to tell him that he is wrong, and my guess is he’ll self-correct. A little patience here is what I’m counseling leaders. If you’ve got a good business plan, put your head down, stay the course, and do what you were going to do before all of this. Hopefully, on the other end, the economy is moving, and it’s even in a stronger position than it was before.

We’re back to square one when it comes to being a parent. You used the P word, Patience. It is so ridiculously important in every area of one’s life. You can’t even overstate how important patience can be in various situations, and being reactive, and having knee-jerk reactions to certain things, which Wall Street is famous for.

It almost makes me want to ask this follow-up question around when business leaders do react in the way they do, especially the ones that are involved in publicly traded companies, in part, it’s because there is such an intense requirement. I’m not going to even say responsibility. That’s maybe a debatable question. There’s a requirement that you satisfy the demands of the stakeholders.

The stakeholders in a publicly traded company are public shareholders. Twenty-five percent of all public companies are owned by a fund of some kind, whether it be a mutual fund or an index. There’s a massive amount of the marketplace that’s owned and, in many ways, being directed by institutional money or shareholders in general.

Influence Of Wall Street Over The Market

I want to ask this question. Do you think that Wall Street has too much influence over public companies in the marketplace? Maybe that’s an unfair question because it’s nuanced. I see that oftentimes in our work, in the organizational development side, the time when you would backstop your workforce, to me, that’s the greatest risk in any business. That, to me, is not even a debatable thing.

What’s ironic is that the workforce is the least on the radar when it comes to what could create a risk to strategy in an organization, often considered the workforce to be that kind of risk. Marketplace, tariffs, the president, and the administration are on the high-priority list of risks, but the workforce is different. When things change, there’s uncertainty, layoffs occur, and restructurings occur, it’s a rinse and repeat that we’ve seen over and over again.

Years later, we’re in a different part of that cycle. I get leaders that’ll say, “Why is our culture hurting? Why don’t people have psychological safety here?” You go, “Why don’t they trust? Is that what you’re asking when every time there’s a hiccup or your visibility changes, or Wall Street isn’t happy with your numbers, you start laying off hundreds or thousands of people?” Having been around the block a minute, I don’t understand how that cycle continues to repeat itself. I don’t even know if there’s an actual question there. Those are my thoughts.

 

I’ll give you a couple of reactions. I’ve worked at a publicly traded company, and we represent many of them. What I find is that sometimes, the pressure from Wall Street is good. When they are pressing companies to reduce expenses, those companies may have been operating in a bloated fashion for too long and aren’t going to survive and aren’t going to thrive. Sometimes, it’s good.

Sometimes, the pressure is bad. I’ve seen it where there are some goals that they want somebody to accomplish, and that they’re contrary maybe to the core business reasons. Beyond Wall Street, there are a lot of other stakeholders. The employees have a lot to say about where things are headed. Sometimes, the union has a lot to say. There are outside activist groups and other stakeholders. There is a board of directors. You’ve got voices that have different agendas on all sides surrounding the leadership team.

This is where I bring it to. I don’t think that Wall Street is an outdo influence. It comes down to the leader and the leadership team defining who they are, who that company is, what their value is, what customers they’re serving, what their mission is, and what they’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes, that outside pressure is helpful to give them a gauge of what’s happening in the market, or for their employees, a gauge of how the team is reacting.

You want to listen, but you don’t want to blindly follow. The best leaders are able to navigate all of those stakeholders well, and, hopefully, ultimately, lead their companies to the right place. It’s those shortsighted leaders who only listen to one side and allow them to drive them and push them to make decisions that aren’t ultimately in the best interest of the company.

To me, it’s a shout-out to a great leader, what you’re talking about here. It is somebody that I’ve come to know. It’s a gentleman who ran WD-40 for about 30 years, Gary Ridge. I’m not sure if you know Gary Ridge.

I don’t know him.

It is a very successful publicly traded company. They didn’t have to have layoffs, in part because of his philosophy around leadership and being able to still create exponential growth and satisfy the myriad of stakeholders, but at the same time, not give up on the workforce and the talent that takes so much time and care, like a parent that cares for a child that goes through all that stuff. Your son is fifteen.

Fifteen, fourteen, and ten.

To be on the course and make that decision to call that two-stroke penalty against himself is integral. That’s a moment of integrity that didn’t happen by accident. There’s a reason. Gary was running WD-40, which was ultimately headquartered in San Diego. That’s how I know him. He had difficult conversations with his board of directors at times, I believe is the case, and when it was necessary.

Executive leadership and senior leadership felt the pain along with the workforce. Everybody felt the pain in some equal measure, and then they didn’t have to have layoffs. That was another way to approach that situation. There are plenty of people who tune in to this show who are in leadership roles. It’s good that we had this conversation. That cycle that repeats itself, where there’s perpetual reorganization where it’s the 6th reorganization in 10 years you would think would tell people that that doesn’t create sustainable success. To me, it feels like a recipe in the cookbook that people know and maybe go to a little too much by default in any event. We’ll leave it at that.

Developing Resilience In Leadership

I’d love to get your sense in terms of your role. Have you developed resilience within your organization? What have you seen in and around the folks that you all serve that would suggest that there’s a recipe, to play on that theme again for a moment, for resiliency? By resiliency, I mean organizations, teams, and individuals that are able to move forward and bounce forward, if you will, that learn valuable lessons from mistakes, and then ultimately thrive despite the market conditions, political wins, or any of those kinds of things. I mean that resilience.

When I came into NAW as the CEO, it was the middle of the pandemic. Everyone’s got resiliency stories for the middle of the pandemic. We had a couple of different dynamics going on. First of all, the economy overnight was completely turned over on its head. There was a shortage of some chicken, some toilet paper, and a few other things, but if you think of it, while most people went home, distributors went to work.

The things don’t show up at your house through Amazon delivery or wherever else magically. You need somebody who is at the warehouse driving the forklift and who’s putting something in a box that’s getting it to FedEx or one of their own trucking companies to move it all over the country. Before the vaccine and before we even knew what this was, distributors were doing what they could to make sure that their people were safe, but they were keeping the supply chain moving.

I learned a lot from my leaders as I came in about the resilience that they had shown and their teams had shown. There was one CEO whose family member had some underlying health conditions, but he had to be with his team at the distribution center. For six months, he slept in his office because he couldn’t possibly bring anything home, but they were supplying critical things for families across the country. He had to stay and make sure that the shipments were going out every day.

When I came in, I learned a lot from these leaders. I inherited an organization that is an incredible trade association, but had rested on its laurels for maybe 5 or 10 years. It was in need of a cultural change. The second dynamic that I was dealing with is how do you take an organization that had always seemed to do something one way, but for it to succeed, it had to undergo a radical transformation. It had to do it quickly because the moment our industry needed us, it was happening right then. It was unfolding.

I would propose ideas, and the team would look at me like I had three heads. They’re like, “We’ve never done anything like that before.” A great example is when the vaccine came out, our distributors are experts at getting things to the far corners of America, the most rural places, and the most urban places. We wanted to be part of the vaccine distribution to make sure that it could move quickly. We were inserting ourselves into those conversations.

Invest in yourself so you can do all other things really well. Share on X

That was a tricky time because the Trump administration had a whole plan for it. They left, and the Biden people came in and said, “Everything Trump did was junk, so we’re starting over. Here comes the vaccine. Who’s going to do what?” We had to step into the void, put politics aside, and say, “We’re going to help save lives.”

We were creative with partnerships. We partnered with the NFL. They were opening up their stadiums to do mass vaccination sites. They expected FEMA to back up with a truck of all the materials and supplies they would need to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of people. FEMA had nothing, so distributors stepped up. We donated millions of dollars.

Everything you needed, the people wearing the vests to direct traffic outside, the tables where all of the supplies were sitting, little rubber bands that you put when you’re getting a vaccine, and people’s rubber gloves, all of that was donated by distributors all across the country. That was something we’d never done before, which is come together as an industry to help with a large national crisis.

To be changing an organization and transforming it in the midst of chaos is a difficult challenge. Fast forward, our team is so much better because if we can confront a pandemic and the economy changing on its head overnight, it seems like nothing can stop us. That has given us a lot of confidence moving forward.

Four Aspects Of Cultural Change

That must have, feeling like there’s a blueprint there. People understand, “If we could have done that or been involved in that, we could pretty much step into anything or be agile in any situation.” As we wind down the show, I want to start with what you said about cultural change. There are two things. This is self-serving, but I wrote a book called Pivot. You came in with a pivot, which, oftentimes, a lot of early pivots are rejected. People are not ready to embrace change.

I wrote Change Proof. It’s the same thing. We ultimately have to understand that transformation, and that’s a big word that sometimes may be overused, is the nature of the universe. Let’s go back to being a child. The first mission that we’ve got is to grow. An organization made up of people and systems must grow. That’s its mandate. We know in nature, things grow or they die. They’re either growing or dying.

To your earlier point about how you go about doing that, the culture is, in many ways, overlooked. You came in and thought, “There’s got to be a cultural shift here because of the status quo bias or the idea that we play it safe instead of being on our growth edge and creating transformation through change and through difficult and uncomfortable change.”

That’s not something that a lot of people will embrace because there’s a lot of fear around it. From you coming in and saying, “We’re going to do it differently here,” I want to get a sense of what your playbook was there and a little bit of your game plan. You already said it was met with some resistance, but you persevered. Give us a little bit of that if you could.

I took a look at the culture. It had become stagnant. They were great and hardworking people, but in a fixed mindset of, “Here’s how we do things. Here’s how we’ve always done things.” Over time, the quality of what they did was sliding. They would do things because they’d always done it, not because the members needed it, or because it was something great.

The first cultural element I introduced was excellence. I said, “If we’re going to do something, it’s got to be excellent. If it’s not, we’re not going to do it. We’re going to figure out how to make it great, or we’re not going to do it.” You apply that to every single product, program, or service that you offer. We did a rating scale. “What’s excellent? If it’s not, how do we fix it? If we can’t fix it and we don’t have the resources, it’s out.”

We did some great things, but if you list the 100 things that we were doing for our members, and 50 or 60 of them were okay, members interacting with those 50 or 60 thought we were okay. We weren’t excellent. We weren’t great. I wanted to get to that excellent mindset. That mindset was number one. Number two is because we were in the way of doing things the way we always did it, as a membership service organization, we were serving ourselves well.

They were like, “This is the process that we’ve always used that makes it easy in our team to do X, Y, and Z.” It might be arduous for the member. It would make it hard for them to engage with us to realize all that we’re able to offer them. The second cultural shift was a shift in membership service. You first ask the question, “How is this going to impact them? How is this going to affect them? How is this going to help them engage with us?” We tried to change that mindset.

The next thing is sometimes, organizations do things to do things, but it doesn’t have an impact. That was the third cultural element that I introduced. You always had to ask yourself, “This thing I’m doing today, whether it’s a small project or something that’s going to take me 6 months or 1 year, is this going to have a real impact for our members and for our industry? If the answer is yes, let’s do more of it. If the answer is no and we’re trying to demonstrate that we’re important but we’re not moving the needle, let’s stop that.” It is a focus on impact.

The fourth and final element for me was collaboration. The team I came into was relatively small. We’re much larger now. I couldn’t believe how siloed it was across a very small organization. It shocked me. The left side of the group didn’t know what the right side was doing or anything else. We brought in this element of collaboration and cooperation. We said, “Let’s help all of us to succeed. When we do, we can make that impact in an excellent way that’s focused on the members.”

Those are the cultural elements that I brought. They’re not earth-shattering. They may not apply to every organization or every moment in time, but at that moment where we needed the transformation, those were the four things that I felt the organization needed to fix. We did a lot to ingrain that in the culture, and we’ve had a lot of success since we introduced that.

I want to call out to our community as well, the people who are consuming this at this moment. You might think that was a planned question, that Eric and I had perhaps rehearsed that, or that that was set ahead of time. It was not. What I love about that is that I asked you an important question, and you, as a leader, were able to immediately articulate what was going on. I don’t see that frequently.

 

Leadership is difficult on a good day, like parenting. It’s like, “It’s like a baby. We’re going to keep this thing going to the end, for sure.” It cries in the middle of the night. You’ve got to have a lot of patience. You get up at 3:00 in the morning to feed that baby, especially when you’re tired, you’re not at your best, and all that good stuff. Honestly, a leader has to be able to communicate. It’s essential. Communication is another topic and another episode for another day, but communication is in need of help in many organizations.

If that’s for another day, I’ll say one thing about communication that I’ve learned over the years. People tend to communicate in the way they like to be communicated to. What I’ve learned to do is to try and understand, “How does your team like to be communicated with?” Some people want a one-on-one meeting. Some people want to read what you have to say. Some people need to have a conversation and be able to give input. Some people are visual learners, so they need to see the graphic of what all of this means.

There are 100 different things we can talk about with communication, but the first piece of advice I always give to a new leader is, “You want to listen, and you want to understand how your team communicates best. If you try to communicate the way you receive information, you know, there are 2/3 of your audience that’s tuning you out and not understanding you. Start with that.” You’ve got to use multiple modes of communication to be effective.

Eric’s Rituals For Resilience

That’s the right level of sensitivity, so that you don’t leave people behind. My last question is around your personal rituals for resilience. From a standpoint of your own well-being, mentally, emotionally, physically, or even spiritually speaking, how do you maintain well-being? What’s something that you could share with us that you do that’s a constant for you?

I took my health for granted for a long time. To be honest, I was young and I was unstoppable, but I had a problem with my hip. I became less active over time, and I started gaining weight. We talked about my kids at the top of the episode. Since it hurt to move my hip, I would be sitting on the porch watching them play soccer instead of being out there kicking the ball.

Finally, one of my kids was at a soccer tournament, and it was up on a hill. I physically could not walk up the hill. I had to get on my hands and knees and crawl up this hill. My wife looks down at me. She said, “I know you have not wanted to get a hip replacement or do something about your health because you think you’re too young, but look at you. You can’t even get up this hill.” That was the moment that crystallized for me of, “I’m not going to be healthy, vigorous, and energetic, and be able to do all the things I want to do unless I also invest in myself.”

This is more radical than most people need, but I got a hip transplant, and it changed my life. All of a sudden, it didn’t hurt to move my leg. I got a health regimen. I hired a physical trainer, not because I didn’t know how to do the workout, but because she disciplines me to be in the gym every Monday morning and every Friday morning. I found a partner, my wife, to do this with me and make sure that I get down there.

You start doctoring in a way that you’re focused on longevity. You start eating in a way that you’re focused on fueling your body. It’s incredible. I lost 50 pounds. I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. As you get older, you can lean into health. If you do, it’s going to pay big dividends. It was something I didn’t know until I was crawling up a hill to try and see my kid’s soccer game.

It’s interesting. We take ourselves for granted. That’s uniformly the case, to one degree or another, until there’s a reason not to. It’s like we’re not thinking about the gas in the tank until we’re on the side of the road with a gas can in our hands.

I was focused on being a great CEO. I was focused on leading, I was focused on making an impact, and all those things. I wasn’t focused on myself. You realize you’ve got to invest in yourself as well to be able to do all of those other things well.

It serves the mission, ultimately. I had that conversation with my late father-in-law, whom I miss every day. I’m happy to even speak about him for a moment. We would have that debate. His family was the most important to him, as many of us also feel. He put himself second so often, or a distant third, fourth, fifth, or whatever it might be, and that’s why he’s not around. I debated that with him. I said, “Dad, if you take better care of yourself, we’ll have you, and you’ll have us for longer.” It goes back to that whole idea of if there is a fixed mindset here that needs a shift.

I love the fact that I personally, on behalf of work, will get to speak to organizations like yours because I talk about those things in an audience of people who often either haven’t thought about them or it’s a reminder of something, but then there’s also this element of, “Maybe we have permission here. Maybe there’s permission being given to us. That’s the reason why this guy’s on stage having this conversation with us, because somehow or another, the leadership here is open to the idea that we will take care of ourselves better. It’s not just on a mission statement, some vision statement, etc.”

Your audience knows this, but you set the room on fire. Between those 40 minutes when you came out and you left, you changed people’s lives. I would encourage any of your readers. If you haven’t brought Adam to your stage to meet with your teams, you’re missing out. I thought it was an incredible presentation.

Why Integrity And Character Are Important

You are making me blush on my bald head here. I don’t know that we could end it any better. Personally speaking, that’s a perfect place to conclude. I look forward to talking to you again. Our audience would love to get more from you. I would love to leave you with the last word, too. If there is a leader who’s either seasoned, whatever that word means, or somebody that’s brand new, and there’s leadership advice, not 101 advice, but something that maybe your earlier self, your 20-something or 30-something self, would love to say, what would that be?

There are a lot of different traits of leaders that are important, but it all starts with integrity and character. If you’re a leader who leads with integrity and with character, so many things come from that. You make wise decisions. You are careful in the choices that you make. Your team can trust your word and wants to follow you. People are proud to follow you. They know that you care about them, and you know that they care about the business or the organization you’re leading. That’s what I always say. There are lots of different traits that you can develop and lean into, but at the core is integrity and character.

This is the reason why you have a fifteen-year-old call out that mistake.

If leaders lead with integrity with character, they can make wise decisions. Share on X

I hope so.

None of this is rehearsed, and the perfection of it all. The advice that you would give is evidenced by the fact that that’s exactly what your son chose to do. I love that. Thank you so much for your time. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate both the kind words to me and, more importantly, all the sage advice that I know people have taken away from your words. Thank you again.

It’s my pleasure. It’s wonderful to be with you on the show.

‐‐‐

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

I loved that conversation with Eric Hoplin. He is the CEO of NAW. About 1/3 of the entire GDP of the United States is represented. His membership, distributors, wholesalers, and every product that you can think of are probably included in that grouping, as well as companies that we’ve all heard of, that we all use, etc.

He came into that role as CEO knowing that there was a change that was required. In fact, I didn’t ask him this, but I’d imagine that the reason he was hired in the first place was because there was something that wasn’t working any longer. Maybe some people had been resting on their laurels or were playing it safe. Maybe there was a fixed mindset around certain things.

He identified the ways in which change had to occur. He was definitive in his articulation of it. You could tell that he believed in all of these things. It’s not the only recipe. It’s not the only ingredient that could be included to create a recipe. This is very much a personal take on leadership, but also on how it is that you craft and curate culture. How do people feel at the places where they work? How do we feel doing the work that we do for the organizations that we do the work for?

Eric was very intentional. I thought how wonderful it was that he, at the beginning, started out with a story about his son and a moment of integrity by choice. It was not something that was forced, but something voluntary. It was something that was optional, if you will, and yet, not optional. In the world that this young person is living in, having parents, and in a family culture where integrity is so valued, why should it be a surprise that this young person or this kid would call a two-stroke penalty on himself when nobody would’ve known the difference? Nobody would’ve known that that penalty was required.

I loved that conversation. I loved how we got to talk through even some of the market forces that are happening. We were discussing stakeholder expectations on Wall Street and the role of the leader, CEO, and others in that context, as well as what’s happening in our markets globally and here at home, if home for you is the United States. Many of you are tuning in to this from outside the US. We did talk about that global perspective as well as what’s going on in that politically charged environment in the United States.

I loved the conversation. Eric is a solid guy. You could tell why he’s in the role of leadership that he is in. He is a guy with a heart, but also a tremendous thinking head for business, and a process that is different. We have to be different. Resiliency is about adaptability to a changing environment. That’s what resiliency is. You could call it anything you want or say anything about it. There are a lot of ways to describe it. Bouncing back and taking on adversity, uncertainty, or ambiguity, all that is true. Ultimately, we are either adapting to a changing environment and then thriving in that new environment because of our ability to be agile and adaptable, or we are not.

For any institution, any organization, any team, and any individual to be thriving in the future, that’s what has to happen from a mindset standpoint and from all the ways in which we develop that resiliency mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually as well. I loved all that as well as the conversation around well-being and the rituals for that recovery and that resiliency.

We’ve got to be intentional. We can’t take ourselves for granted because when we do, we know exactly what happens. We run out of gas. We end up burned out. We end up depleted. We end up impatient. We end up angry, disappointed, frustrated, etc. These are emotions that we’re all familiar with. Anxiety is rampant. The way that people are feeling is a result of not being taught or not feeling as though it was acceptable even to put themselves first and to think in terms of, “How am I taking care of myself?”

As though you were an Olympic athlete and you are preparing yourself for the event of a lifetime, on behalf of your country, what would you be doing? How would you be taking care of yourself? What would your thought process be around your intake, your food, your water, your sleep, your mental health, your emotional well-being, etc.?

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share it with a friend, a colleague, or a family member. Share it with somebody who might benefit. Also, as always, I thank you so much for the reviews. When you leave a review, it helps the algorithm help us. It expands our reach. It expands the size of the community, the people who are having conversations around these meaningful topics, because you have taken that moment.

Maybe it’s even more than a moment to leave that rating. Five stars is great. That helps, but whatever makes sense for you. If you want to leave me a personal comment or share your thoughts on this episode, go to AdamMarkel.com/podcast. You can do that there. Thank you again for your time and for being a part of this community, whether you’re new to it or not-so-new to it. Thanks again. Ciao for now.

 

Important Links

• National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors
• Eric Hoplin on LinkedIn
• Eric Hoplin on X
• Pivot
• Change Proof

 

About Eric Hoplin

Eric Hoplin is the CEO of NAW, the National Association of Wholesaler Distributors.  NAW and its affiliated trade associations represent nearly 30,000 companies that account for one-third of the American economy.

A seasoned executive and communicator who has worked at the highest levels of government and business, Hoplin was previously the Head of External Relations for Wells Fargo, where he led a team focused on improving the company’s reputation and advancing pro-growth policy objectives in concert with third-party organizations across the political spectrum.