Passion Struck with John R. Miles - The Key to Finding Passion in Retirement w/Giles Stewart EP 12

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

You have a fulfilling career and now step into your next chapter. But, What is the key to finding passion in retirement. In this episode, John R. Miles interviews Giles Stewart about his career, it's biggest moments, and how he is leading his best life as he enjoys retirement. Ever wondered how giant companies like Dell and Lowe’s face and overcome some of their biggest challenges? On today’s show, we interview Giles Stewart, a former Fortune 500 Executive who shares with us his wisdom on culture, empowerment, passion, retirement, and how future leaders can bring about positive change. Giles first came in touch with John when they joined forces to help Lowe’s recover from the worst cybersecurity attack in the history of the retail industry. You will learn how John, Giles, and the entire IT department at Lowe’s worked in a collaborative manner to create a new state-of-the-art command center. In this segment of the show, you will get some important lessons in execution, empowerment, and creating a long-term vision.  In 2013, Giles moved on to another iconic company, Dell. Here, Giles shares how working at Dell was a totally different experience compared to the more structured operations at Lowe’s.  While Giles was employed at Dell, the company grew at a blistering pace via the acquisitions route as it evolved from a hardware company to a software and services company. You will get a peek into the acquisition’s playbook used by large organizations and learn how they overcome their cultural differences upon assimilation. Feeling the need to make a bigger impact, Giles left Dell to work in a smaller organization, Acelity. When Giles joined, his team was in complete shambles, and morale was at an all-time low. You will learn how Giles helped create his team’s new identity using an honest, no-bullshit, and refreshingly fresh approach. Having retired from professional life, Giles has found his passion once again as he spends his day’s rowing and blogging. Questions That I Ask In This Show Could you share your experience at Lowe’s and how you helped deal with the largest cybersecurity hack in the history of the retail industry? What were some of the cultural differences between Lowe’s and Dell? Why did you decide to leave Dell to work for Acelity? How did you turnaround the reputation of your team at Acelity? What is your advice for smaller companies that are being acquired by a larger company? After retirement, what was the key turning point that re-ignited your fire?   What You Will Learn In This Show Opening up the acquisition’s playbook Understanding the cultural differences that exist between large organizations Finding a hobby that aligns with your interest How to shed stress and cultivate mindfulness  Follow Giles Stewart Here: https://www.instagram.com/stewdaddyg/ Website: https://giles-stewart.com/ https://linktr.ee/GilesStewart Follow John R. Miles Here: Website - https://passionstruck.com/ ​Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_life ​ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Johnrmiles.c0m ​ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr ​ Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles John's Website: https://johnrmiles.com/  John's New eBook - The Passion Struck Framework https://passionstruck.com/coaching/

As far as being a leader, I had a guy work for me at Dell who also came to work for me at Acelity and You know when when I was interviewing for my job at Acelity, I actually went to him and said, you know tell me something about me, right? You know and he said to me he goes, you're the best boss I ever had. And I said, well, what makes me the best boss you ever had? Right? And here's what he told me. He says, you're honest. Trustworthy.

You're a no bullshit guy. He said, and no subject is off limits. So for him to have someone who would be honest with him, could have battened, right? You know, and who he could talk to about anything for him to have someone who would be honest with him, could have battened, right? And who he could talk to about anything or any topic and not be put off was important to him. So those were, I mean, those were some of the qualities

that I had as a leader. And for people who are starting up companies and playing the halvedem police, those are the things I think that should be important to them as well. Welcome to the PassionStruck podcast. My name is John Miles, a former combat veteran and multi- helps you unlock your hidden potential and unleash your creativity and leadership abilities. Thank you for spending time with me today and let's get igniting! Thank you for joining me today on the Passion Strike podcast. Today I am thrilled to have with us, my friend and long-term work colleague, Giles Stewart, who is going to talk to us about

what it was like to turn around the operations department at Lowe's Home Improvement to then going to Dell and being one of the first members of the Mergers and Acquisition team there during a highly turbulent time and his advice for both small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to sell their company to someone like Dell. And for those of you who may be an employee in a large company about the lessons he learned looking at this from the other direction, to then exploring, you know, what was it like for him to find his passion again after 65, and his journey to using, rowing as his mechanism, not only to ignite his passion there, but all the other things that it helps him, and still in his life. For background, Giles is a native New Yorker, born in the Bronx and raised in NIAQ, New York.

He's a graduate of the State University of New York, a retired IT leader with over 40 years of experience, having worked with some notable companies, including NBC, General Electric, Lowe's, and Dell Technologies. In 2018, Giles retired and found his passion including NBC, General Electric, Lowe's, and Dell Technologies. In 2018, Giles retired and found his passion for indoor rowing. He currently resides in Houston, Texas with his wife of 44 years Ann Marie,

and they are the proud parents and grandparents of four adult children and seven grandchildren. And I wanna kick this episode off with a quote from the American Roer Olympian in Rowan Quote, Jim Deats, where he said, Rowan is a sport for dreamers. As long as you put in the work, you can own the dream. When the work stops, the dream disappears. And this is such a great setup for today. And the passion such a great setup for today. And the passion behind Giles love for Rowan and how owning our own dreams starts with doing

the work. Hey, welcome to today's episode. I am so glad to have with me, Giles Stewart. Welcome to the show, Giles. How are you today? I'm doing great, John. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm so excited that you're here because you and I have known each other for 14 or 15 years now, I think. And it goes back to our time when we work together at Lowe's. And, you know, for the listeners, I kind of wanted to give them a backdrop of what lows was like at that time. I was fairly new to my job. I'd probably been there. I

don't know, it's between six months to a year. And I inherited a group that had come off experiencing the worst cyber security hack that had ever occurred to a retailer at that point in time. And when I took the job, I went through three, four rounds of interviews, but one of the things that they never showed me was the actual place where I was going to work. So when I arrived in North Wilkesboro at that time and went to my first day at Lowe's, it was in what used to be their original distribution center for the company, which they had turned into the first company headquarters. And at this point, the only people who worked in this whole facility were members of the IT organization.

And I remember walking into the data center for the first time, and the gentleman who was running it said, we have to be very careful, because if we put in one more server, we don't have enough power. And it could cause the entire thing to go down and the same thing with data. And so I remember as I started to transform the organization, one of the most important things I was trying to do was to get

the right members of the team on the bus, so to speak. And I had hired a new leader, Chuck Hobbs, and I told him, you know, one of the most critical functions that we're gonna have is this new command center that we were building that was going to control all aspects of what was happening on from an operational standpoint to the systems, but also the security because we were building a new state of the arts security Operations Command Center. And most of the leaders of this group were already just, you know, long-term employees. And I told Chuck, we've got to get the right person on board because he or she is going to have to ignite the fire that all the other watch commanders are going to follow and they're going to have to buy into what we're doing.

So, you know, Chuck ended up interviewing a lot of people and then ended up interviewing you and said, I think I've got the guy. And I, but my side of the story is at that point, I'm like, well, Chuck, this is so important. I wanna interview the guy to make sure he really is. And so that, you know, that led us to our first interview and meeting,

but I'd like to hear about it from your perspective. Yeah, I was at a point in my career where I wanted to expand my responsibilities and work for a larger company. And I found loads to be a very interesting place to potentially work. I had been through a couple of rounds of interviews with Chuck and some of the members of the leadership team.

And then I thought everything was going really well. And they said, well, we think you've got to come back one more time to speak to the vice president, you know. And truthfully, at that point, I had been interviewing a lot and I had taken a lot of time off of work and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I could take any of my time off, right? I said, well, but you know, it's important and I think I really want this job. So I'm going to go and speak with John, right? So we've met and my recollection is our interview was for about an hour.

And, you know, you asked me a few questions and then I asked you one question. I said, what is your vision for the department? And you proceeded to talk for about a half an hour or 40 minutes, and just completely laid it out for me, including, you know, drawn pictures and different components of the department and where you wanted to go with it. And then when the interview was done

and I went back to my hotel, my wife was waiting for me there and I said to her, I said, that is the guy I want to work for. I was impressed by your passion for your vision and how you were going to execute it. And I really, really wanted to be a part of that. Well, well, thank you for that.

And, you know, what you didn't get to experience is prior to that interview, we had spent months and months and months myself and my leadership team kind of analyzing, you know, what was the true state of the organization and more importantly, where was it that we needed to go at that point in time to take lows from, you know, it's, you know, I almost thought at that time it was like a family, still felt like a family owned company to the true Fortune 50 company it was. And so, you know, we set out on embarking on this 3 to 4 year journey.

And it eventually was going to go beyond that. But, you know, the most first phase was had to transition the data center and we had to rate this new state of the art command center where we would, you know, I guess give more responsibility to the operators in it to actually do their job and take tasks away from engineering and software developers so that they could concentrate on doing what they were doing. And again, you were instrumental to that. But, you know, I think when you joined, it was at a point where when I was interviewing with you, we hadn't yet kind of unleashed this strategy to ignite, you know, everyone in the room and the organization

to get on board with it. So I think you came when we were starting to do those how-and-halls with the entire organization. halls with the entire organization. Yeah, my very, very first day on the job, you held a leadership meeting for your entire leadership team. And as I recall, pretty much, you kind of went through what we had talked about a little bit in our interview, but at a much greater scale and in depth about where we were going to go in the next year, in our interview, but at a much greater scale and in depth

about where we're going to go in the next year, three years, five years, 10 years, you know. And, you know, sitting there during that meeting, I knew I had made the right choice, you know, in joining close, you know. And I, as the days after that, as I started getting into my job, I remember working in the command center As the days after that, as I started getting into my job, I remember working in the command center and working towards improving the monitoring

that we were doing, improving the team as well. You know, then one day, probably a couple of months after I started, you came into the command center and you and I were started talking and I started pointing out to you different things that we were doing and you know here's where we're monitoring in this and here's where we're improving that and there's what we're trying to do you know and I said to you you know this is all in line with your vision for the department you know and you looked at me and said the most curious thing to me,

you looked at me and said, you know, Jeff, it's fine that I have my vision for the command center, but what's your vision for the command center? And John, in my whole career up to that, and I had a pretty long one at that point, no one ever asked me that question. No one ever empowered me to make a difference based on my vision. So I sat down and I created what my vision would be. And for the time

that we worked together there, and for the time that I worked here. I tried to carry out that vision. It empowered me and it empowered my employees. And we made great strides. And then after I left Lowe's and went to Dell, I tried to carry that same energy with me. And'm that day to the day I retired, I carried that energy with me and that passion and that vision to make something in my own mind. I'm thankful that you asked me that question that day. Well, thank you so much for that. It's great to hear. And one of the things I had learned specifically when I was in the military, and if you ever read his books,

General Stan McRistle talks about it, this philosophy that you need to be eyes on and hands off, and that's what I always felt that a leader needed to do, meaning you had to be eyes on knowing that, you were giving those around you the knowledge and the vision of what needs to be accomplished, but hands off, because the command center ran seven by 24 365 days a year and there's no way you could be there every moment of it. So I had to believe that you and your peers

who were leading that were not only capable, but had it within you to make decisions that were gonna be far better than the decisions I could make because you were actually living them. And I don't know if you remember, but probably when you first joined, we were still going through the period where we were having out, you know, major outages, fairly frequently. And I just remember, you know, for me, at this point, it was two, three, sometimes four times a week. I was getting woken up in the middle of the night and then having to stay up three, four hours a night. And I remember talking to you about, you know, I had this like vision of, we had to create this thing that I referred to as a service for you. I don't know if you remember

that, but I wanted, you know, if low, you know, so if lows.com is operating, you know, what the consumer sees is lows.com, what they don't see are the 200 subsystems that sit below it, that if any one of those is down, it can affect what the experience is. And that's what we were trying to perfect is to build these trees that would come up to it. And you know, it's a lot more complicated than it seems. So what did you find as you were leaving lows and going to Dell?

What was that transition like for you? And what did you think of the different cultures between the two companies? That's an interesting question because the cultures between those two companies is really, really, really different. I left Dell because the things that I accomplished that lows I thought were now kind of becoming

standard operating procedure, more of a pretty well oiled machine. And I was looking for, you know, a new challenge, you know. And so, you know, I talked with you about the position at Dell and was lucky to join and work for Tim Dixon. And it was the cultures, well, here's what I'll say, you know, low is for as big a company as it is, Dell was a gigantic company, you know,

global company with 100,000 employees, you know, people you had to interact with all over the world on a daily basis, you know, so that was the first difference. The other difference is that for a large company as Dell is, I found that organizationally it was ever changing. And I do remember you actually warned me of that before I even started there, you know, that organizationally they changed a lot. And boy they did, you know. And in the five years that I was there, Tim Dixon was always my executive director, which people found to be amazing, you know, when I would tell them, yeah, I worked for 10 for five years, they would be like shocked because

none of them had the same manager for more than a couple of years before things changed again. You know, the other thing I'll say, you know, it was, Dell was, I was in the IT department working for an IT company. So I found that your quote unquote customers

within the business were equally a smarter, smarter than the IT people who were serving them. So that was a challenge as opposed to other companies. I worked at that that were either retail or financial or service oriented, that the user community was not as technically savvy as the IT department. But Adele, you had engineers and people who were extremely smart. And I thought that it was always a challenge for the IT department to satisfy their user base.

Yeah, I always looked at it like when you were the CIO at Dell, you had 107,000 or however many we had, with not they could do the job better. And most of them had the education to do it. So it was challenging. I'm not sure you ever knew this, but you talk about having to change jobs a lot. I was originally hired to be the CIO of the consumer business, which at that time was probably about 15 to 18 billion other revenue. And I was going to work for this guy named Ron Gehrig's, who had been there to kind of revamp the entire consumer image. He had come from Motorola where he had created the Razer.

And literally, I go through, if I thought I interviewed a lot at Lowe's, I must have gone through eight rounds of interviews at Delve. And every time I would interview with Michael, he kept telling me, I want to bring you on because I need people like you who are going to change, be changed catalyst to change the way we operate because those needs do. So I join the company and within three weeks Ron Garrick is terminated. And so I'm like, now what do I do? So they announced that this, you know, they were in title SVPs, but they carried the title president. His name was Steve Felice, and I will never forget this because I was told

I'm taking over consumer and small-medium businesses as a CIO, which made up about 30 billion of the company's revenue. But Steve was based at Singapore at the time and his entire staff was. So I remember getting on one of the first calls and thinking, well, this is going to be a great you know, an opportunity. And he invited me to his team meeting and then he said, you realize you're interviewing for the job. He goes, I can literally have anyone I want to do this job.

I could recruit it from anywhere, but you were Ron Garrick's guys, not mine. And I need to make me and my team are going to make an independent assessment. So a few days, about a week later, I forward a plane to Singapore to meet, to go to a week-long leadership meeting with a group of people I had never met before, where I would come out of it either keeping my job or losing it. And let's just say I kept it, but from that point on, in a period of two years, I probably had six or seven different bosses. So you're absolutely right So when you when you Got to Dell you were in a very different job, but exciting one I would think you your role

At that point of time we had hired a guy by the name of Dave Johnson. For those of you who don't know who Dave Johnson is, he worked for IBM for about 20, 25 years and was responsible for doing the acquisition of Pricewaterhouse and most of their software acquisitions. He came into Dell with the, he was the head of strategy and corporate development with the charged turn Dell from being a hardware manufacturer to a services and software company. And so to give you a sense of what was going on at that time, we literally per year were

looking at thousands of companies to acquire. And we do do diligence on a couple hundred of them. And in a period of about two years, we'd end up acquiring about 18 of them. Some of them being as large as pro systems, which was about a $5 billion acquisition to others being $10, $15 million acquisitions. But you were in the middle of it because you were on that

team that maybe you can talk about what your role was. Yeah, I went from my role at Lois was obviously IT operations, you know, booth on the ground kind of role, you know, to being a program manager in the IT mergers and acquisitions team. So it was a huge change for me. At the time that Tim was forming his team, he had a lot of people on the team that were application driven, had experience in those areas, but didn't have a lot of people on the team that were application driven, you know, had experience in those areas, but didn't have a lot of people that were experienced on the infrastructure side, you know.

So, I fit the team pretty well from that perspective, but had zero experience with mergers and acquisitions, you know. So, I think the interesting part was because the team was just forming. I was able to get in when the team was still, you know, there were more people at it after me. And Tim was creating the structure of how that team would operate in. And I think one of the great things that we did was to create a playbook, an IT M&A playbook, which any of the program managers could take with them when they were doing their due diligence or all the way through the transition and integration that they could follow that and we would all be doing

it by with a standard. So I was part of helping build that playbook, which was exciting. And then I actually was able to take that with me, take that process with me when I did my very first acquisition lead. It was interesting because the first one that I was assigned to was a small company called Insight One that was based in Mollinkford, Connecticut. And when I showed up there, I found that there, well, when I say showed up there, when we

were doing the due diligence and we were doing some of the pre-closing activities, showed up and there were some guys there from the Dell Services Group, you know, and so there was like this disconnect about who was actually going to be leading the acquisition and the integration, you know. It all got settled out, but for as many acquisitions that the Dill Services guys had done, they had never seen a playbook like ours, you know. They were totally impressed by how prepared we were and how ready we were. We had like a couple hundred questions to ask in our due diligence and it was all ready to go. So they were pretty impressed by the work that we had done around that area. So I did quite a few of, or led quite a few of the IT integrations with,

insight, one, 410 networks, wise, smart terminals. So it was, it was actually a very fun job, you know, it was, you got to meet a lot of different people, go to a lot of different places and see how other companies worked and just a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm not sure if that was a, you're right, that was a absolutely fascinating time to be with the company and that playbook he worked on emulated a lot of the same things that that I had brought into those such as you had to analyze first then you kind of had to get both sides of the parties on and get them ignited to a common goal and then force them into action and then

measure what the results were but I I'm not sure if you remember, or what your thoughts are on this point or not. But to me, everyone would always point to, you know, the technology systems are the most critical things to getting right in these acquisitions. And the more I would look at it, it was the cultural differences I often thought that were the biggest hurdle. And, you know, I'll give you a great example of that is when we hired or when we acquired

Perot, you know, Dell is a very flat, although it's big, it tends to be a very flat organization in the way decisions are made. And Perot, on the other hand, was like a military institution, very command and control with everything going up to Peter Altabeth. Did you find that to be true when you were working on these or did you find other factors? Yes, I agree with you. I think, you know, technically everybody, you know, technology wise, infrastructure wise, everybody was kind of doing the same thing on a different scale, you know, technology wise, infrastructure wise, everybody was kind of doing the same thing on a different scale, you know.

From my experience, I wasn't working at Dell when they acquired Perot, but, you know, from the other perspective, I remember specifically when Dell acquired wise technology, you know, they were a company of only about 6000 people, you know. And they would, they would, because they were a small company, they would do things very quickly, make decisions very fast.

Now, and whereas Dell was a much larger company, you know, they, I think the employees there would get frustrated sometimes when things took longer than they would, than they would do, right? You know, they, you know, just for one example, you know, they, they wanted, they all want to do laptops, right? You know, so, you know, in their culture, they would just go by, however laptops they needed. But at Dell, it was a process where you had to budget and you had to have approval, and there was a wait time, and they would get frustrated that. I guess you could understand that, but for as big a company as Dell was, I think they moved rather quickly

for a large company. You know, why, why is it like, if they had to make a change, it was like turning the speedboat and with Dell, if you had to make a change, it was like turning the battleship. You know, it just took longer, you know. Did you know that Forbes Magazine recently cited that over 70% of individuals who did personal development courses, masterminds, or one-on-one coaching, benefited from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills.

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slash coaching right now to get started. Many of our listeners are entrepreneurs or small business owners who someday either want to go public or get acquired. If you were going to give the listener some advice on, you know, if you're that smaller company being acquired by, you know, a large behemoth like that, what would some of those, what would some of that advice be? I think if your plan was for your employees to become part of that larger organization that it's a two-way street, culture-wise, right?

You may be going from a small company where you make changes to your technology just by yelling over to the next desk to somebody and say, Hey, I'm going to change this now and they change it and they go, you know, so we're a larger company where there's a lot of structure, you know. So I think I think for the entrepreneur that's considering joining or having his company be acquired by a larger company and thinking about his employees about to examine the culture of the bigger company and see if that is going to be really a good fit for them. I know sometimes when you read about acquisitions and things like that, you know, you know, people who read about them see dollar signs flying

around, you know, but at the end of the day, it's about the people and the culture and what's left behind. Yeah, that's a great answer. One other thing I, you know, and I want you to talk about Lowe's Dell and then after you left Dell, what did you think about the pace and the different environments? Comparatively. Well, for me, they were quite different jobs. I mean, at Los, I felt like the pace was very steady, very measured, and then at my job

at Del, things could change right away instantly. You know what I mean? My boss might tell me, hey, you're getting on a plane tomorrow and you're flying to California because someone's coming up, you know, where at Dell, that wasn't going to happen in the role that I was in. So I found the culture it loathes for me to be very structured and very reliable and something I could count on. And then I went to Dell where, as we talked about,

the structure changed quite a bit. Things could happen on a moment. Notice something, and we talked about acquisitions. There were many potential targets that I worked on that we didn't execute on. I might have put in months and months of work, and then I get worried that, yeah, no, we're not going to do that one. And it's frustrating because you know you work hard. You boss knows you work hard, but the people throughout the company kind of looked at it

like, what have you been doing for the last couple months, right? It was different in that perspective for sure. Well, and also given the fact that what you were doing, you couldn't talk about because all these things were highly, highly confidential, especially given the public nature of Dell. Right. So, so then you end up leaving Dell and then walk me through that and then kind of bring me up to speed from leaving there to today. And then we'll get into your new passion. All right, okay.

So I left Dell in January of 15 and frankly, not of my own accord. So there was a big organizational change after 80 cariboulas left as CIO. Michael Dell merged the IT and what they called the edel at the time and merge those two departments. And that caused some organizational changes. And my department was eliminated. So I left, I left Del at the end of January 15. So, you know, I searched for, I searched for work. You know, I focused on, I focused on finding an opportunity where I could really make a difference culturally. After we had talked about earlier today about

empowerment and empowerment, I was looking for an opportunity where I would be empowered and have the ability to make changes, right? And so I went to work for a smaller company in San Antonio called Facility. And Facility is one of their subsidiaries, a company called KCI, that makes medical, post-op Boone restoration devices. So I went to work there and it really was a great opportunity because the team, the team that I was taking on was pretty much in the shambles.

They didn't have a very good reputation throughout the department or throughout the company. And it was an opportunity to really make a difference. So I was the director of infrastructure there. So I had the IT engineering group for both windows and Linux space systems. Didn't have responsibility for the data center until a little bit before I left, but I had the engineering team. So the first thing I did was I started going around to,

as many executives that would meet with me, as many to the other department managers that would meet with me. And I wanted to get their assessment of what my team was like, you know? And boy, I really got a lot of different answers, you know? Well, you know, what they thought my team did.

And in fact, the team had such a terrible reputation. One guy actually told me that the nickname for my team was server, and I'll say witches, because it's after it rhymes and witches, right? So the team did not have a very good reputation at all. So I knew that there had to be a couple of things. And the very first thing I needed to do was to create the team's identity.

So as a team, we defined our mission statement and our objective for the team. And then I created a plan on how to start executing that within the VUX 3060 90 days. And then I went back to all those executives and it said, okay, here's who we are, here's what we're going to do, and here's how we're going to do it. So, and it's funny, this kind of funny story, but in order to emphasize that the team needed an identity, I used a slide that had Superman, or Clark Kent, opened up his shirt and have him Superman on there. And I actually posted that thing up,

I posted that thing up in the front of our area in the office. So that people could read and know what we did, right? So, well, don't you know that the next thing, you know, the group next to us throws up a thing of Iron Man, and the group down the road throws up the hawk, and next thing, you know, you get Spider-Man, Batman, everybody has identified this group with a super hero. You know, there's almost the Avengers.

So now, I guess the point of the story is that we created a cultural change within the whole department by helping teams create an identity for themselves, you know? And, you know, to keep a long story short, you know, my team did a complete turnaround. I mean, it was painful and you know that it can be painful, that some hard decisions had to be made about personnel

and you had to hire better people and you had to get people training. But, you know, with my experience at that point, I was able to do it and very successful and I was really happy about it. That's great. And so as a result, what was the impact? Your team went from having this terrible reputation to, you know, when you ended up retiring, what was the turnaround like? Well, here, I can tell you that at the entrance to our area,

we had a giant whiteboard that we would, you know, write on and, you know, and bring storm with and everything. And one day I came into the office and somebody had written on the whiteboard and they wrote awesome team and they pointed an arrow down the alley towards where we sit, right? And to this day, I don't know who did it. It wasn't anybody from our team, but somebody was declaring that we were an awesome team. So from the standpoint of culturally going from having

a terrible reputation to at least one other person in that department thought that we were awesome. And besides some of the infrastructure improvements that we made technology wise, you know, the culture part was always a big part to me. And we turned that around completely. That's fantastic. And, you know, if you're, if you're a listener out there and they're an employee, you know, a department, manager, director, you know, wanting to make change, what were some of the biggest pieces advice that you would summarize from this experience?

Well, you know, as far as being a leader, I had a guy work for me at Dell who also came to work for me at a facility. And when I was interviewing for my job at a facility, I actually went to him and said, you know, tell me something about me, right? And he said to me, he goes, you're the best boss I ever had, you know, and I said, well, what what makes me the best boss you ever have, right? And here's what he told me he says you're honest. Trustworthy because you're a no bullshit guy. He said and no no subject is off limits. So for him, to have someone who would be honest with him could have batted, right? And who he could talk to about anything or any topic and not be put off was important to him. So those were, I mean, those were some of the qualities that I had as a leader. And for people who are, you know,

starting companies from playing the half of employees, those are the things I think that should be important to them as well. That's great, that's great advice. Now, let's now talk about your in retirement and your, you know, because one of the things that, you know, I try to focus on with passion struck is part of this formula to me is for people who their growth-minded individuals and they're in the beginning portions

of their career or maybe mid-part career, but to me you can be passion struck at any age. And I think more and more we go through several reinventions of ourselves over time and it's becoming more dynamic. So you end up going into retirement and finding a passion that before this time you never knew even existed. That's right, yeah. Yeah, you know, I could.

And no, I was gonna say say so how how did that, you know, what what was life like at that point for you and what was that key turning point that kind of turned or ignited your fire to go pursue this? Yeah. So I retired in 2018 and admittedly, I retired pretty suddenly and probably earlier than I really planned to. There had been a lot of changes within the company that I was working for and didn't really want to work in an environment anymore. So I knew I was close enough. So I said, you know, I'm going to retire and move on. But I think for me, you know, it was, you know,

at that point, you know, you know, every day Saturday for a little while, right? You know, you don't have to think about deadlines or projects or people or anything like that anymore. You just have to, you know, worry about yourself, you know? And for me, I was never really a guy with big hobbies. You know, I didn't fish, I didn't work on cars. My passion was always my work.

I just got into my job and that's kind of where I was for many years. So here I was, you know, basically sitting around and join life and maybe enjoying it a little bit too much, you know, so I kind of let myself go. And I gained a lot of weight. My health started going a different way or struggling with high blood pressure.

And I got to a point where I said, I gotta do something about this, right? And I just can't be doing this every day. So I started doing normal things that people might do. I started walking, I started running. I really running, I really hate running, right? I just, I, you know, I know that there's, you know, the runners out there and the marathoners out there, you know, but for me, I just could never, I could never get into it. You know, I played sports, I played sports my whole life up to a year in college.

And of course running, I was a football player and of course is running part of that, right? But it's the game that I loved, you know. So it's like, I just looked and getting it, you know? And then my wife had gone to Florida to visit her parents and her brother lives there too. And her brother had taken up indoor rowing, you know, because he had some of the same issues as being.

And so when my wife got home, she says, you know, Joe bought a roller, you know, and I'm like, I never really thought about rowing before, you know. And truthfully, this is the truth. I used to watch house carts, right? And in house carts, Kevin Specy rode on a water roller, right? So I said, you know, I'm, I'm going to buy a water roller because I just because I thought, just because I thought it looked cool, you know?

And then John, when I John when I got the water and I said on that thing for the first time, it was like I was hit by lightning, right? I just felt the connection with that thing and fell in love with it. You know, I sat down on the rower, and I just fell in love with the whole motion of it, and the sound of it, and the movement of it. And then I found I started doing everything to make myself a better rower. So I knew I had to eat better, because I had a pretty large belly and I was not comfortable rowing so I knew I had to eat better. I knew I had to sleep better. I knew I had to

the days I didn't row still take care of myself so still go for long walks. I get into, I got into weight lifting a little bit, thought myself some dumbbells started building up my strength so I could row better, you know. And I've just, I've just over the past year and a half have just created, you know, I just have a love for this thing that I, it's something I look forward to every single day. And the days that, that maybe I can't do it, really, I really miss it and want to get on that thing. Well, that's a great story. And there's a few things here I want to unpack. So the first thing is, I think people when they're searching for new hobbies or activities, it's difficult to figure out where to start. And one of the things I like to say is you need to kind of do it

in a similar way to what you did it. And what I sometimes tell people is, you know, why don't you take a couple of weekends a month and just go try out a new activity. Play Tennessee if you like it. Play you know, go cycling. You know, take a bootcamp class and eventually you're gonna find an activity that aligns with what you feel good about. Whether that's you know a sports activity like Rowan, you know, whether that's shooting golf, shooting guns, whatever it is, you're eventually going to find it, but it's going to take some experimentation, but through that you'll find what you like and what you don't like. And I think the second thing is you didn't tell me about at that point in time what your fears

were, but I know, I could some eyes that part of it had to do with with your health and trying to get your arms around feeling better. But it's a it's a journey and you know, having spent a heck of a lot of time in Orange Theory gyms where we do a lot of rowing, you're absolutely right. If rowing is much more physically demanding than you would think at first, but definitely if you're trying to get as close as you can when you're in your tight ball position, you know, absolutely having a flat chest is going to matter a lot more than not. And it also gives you that cardiovascular boost.

So, you know, you going down that path of identifying, you know, I got to eat better. I've got to, you know, incorporate other things. I've got to sleep. Did you find you started to change your routines at all? I did. I found that, you know, that I started getting up earlier, you know, I started doing some intermittent fasting so that I was doing my activities on an empty stomach so that I was burning more fat than sugar. So I started changing some of my eating habits in order to incorporate that and improve my growing and improve my fitness.

Yeah, I did. And to your point about experimenting with things, in my retirement, I mean, that was, Rowling wasn't the first thing I tried. I tried my hand at some woodworking, which I wasn't a great at, some gardening, which if you want to kill a plant, let me know. Oh, you know. I tried, I did, I experimented with a few things to kind of deal with activity and stress-related type of things.

Yeah, and I remember along that way, you and I had, I can't remember if it was a phone discussion or a text discussion, but I told you that I had started writing. And so I don't know if I helped you down that path at all, but now you've become a blogger as well. And your articles are quite good. So I think you had a hidden talent there. Thanks. Well, you know, and John, it kind of goes with my passion for rowing, you know, I never

really thought about writing. Yeah, and you and I did have a text conversation about writing. And I sat back and I said, well, what can I start writing about? Well, I wanted to write about rowing and how important it is to me and the benefits that I've experienced from it. One of my recent blogs, I actually talked about the correlation between rowing and mindfulness, where you would think that they were completely opposite

in nature, whereas mindfulness, you think about meditation and being quiet, and with rowing, your heart is getting up the max rate at times, you know. But when you're in that rowing stroke, you know, it's not like walking on a treadmill where you can just walk along and you're watching TV or something like that. When you're in that rowing stroke and you are pushing hard, you know, your mind has to be there now, right then. And I love that, you know, and I find that I need to focus on every single stroke that I take. And I find that that helps me forget all my other

worries or concerns, you know, that I enter that state of mindfulness right then and there, you know, and I find it to be, you know, both a great cardio vascular thing, but also a great stress reliever at the same time. Yeah, I kind of agree more. And, you know, for me, I do that in the gym. I do that cycling. And one of my favorite activities I haven't been able to do as much recently as yoga as well. And I would find sometimes yoga classes that are an hour long feel like they're five or 10 minutes because you're just so caught up in letting

go of all the stresses and everything and being in tune with yourself and kind of going through priorities, which we don't often get a lot of time to think about. So, let me, let's end this portion with, let's talk about the aftermath. So now you're rowing all the time so much so that you can't go on vacation without taking your rower with you. What's life like now that you've been doing this for a while and how are things different? One of the things I say, one of the things that's different is I've looked at it now and I've

set certain goals for myself. You know, I set daily goals, I set weekly goals, I set monthly goals and I set yearly goals. All right, so as far as either my weight loss or the amount of exercise I wanna do or how much writing I wanna do, how much reading I wanna get accomplished, how much cooking I want to do, how much reading I want to get accomplished, how much cooking I want to accomplish because I like the cook as well.

So, I've set goals for myself to do that. So, one, I have daily goals, so that helps me with my routine. I start every morning with about 10 to 15 minutes worth of meditation. I'll have some coffee, a read for a little while, then I'll write for a little while, and then I'll get on the roller. And then after that's done, whatever jobs the warden has for me after that, I do that. So it's helped me create that routine for myself that I can grow with a purpose. These are my goals and this is what I want to accomplish. Well, it's interesting to pry all that up because after we're done here today,

I've got to record my, I call them momentum Fridays. So on, for those of you who are a new listener on Tuesday, I download an interview like this one and on Fridays, I can give an inspirational message. And this week's is actually on the importance of habits and more specifically why you have to have an impenetrable morning routine and why it's so important to have that because it sets up your day, week, months, years by getting in that habit. So that's great. I mean, I could have paid you for that, Charles. Thank you very much. Well, well, I'm gonna Take you now to my favorite part of the episode and I'm gonna go through

What I call the rapid round of questions And I just want you to answer You know first thing that comes to your mind and don't overthink it and You know shoot these out as I ask them. So you're ready for this? All right, let's go. Okay, first one, if you could meet anyone alive or dead who you haven't met before, who would it be and why? Oh boy, wow, I don't overthink it. I'm president candidate. I think I would want to meet president Kimmy. I think he had a very interesting life.

You know, would want to hear about his journey from the Navy, to politics, to getting elected. The views he had on both civil rights and the space program were very innovative and progressive at the time. So I think I think if I chose anybody to meet or talk to I think it would be him. Okay great. If you could win any award what would it be in wine? I think the award I would want to win is Father of the Year. You know, I think when we talk about passions, I think the greatest job is being a dad. I got four beautiful grown children and seven grandchildren and I love them to death and my my favorite job

my whole life has been being a father and being there for my kids. Well today is a big day for me as a father as well because my my youngest turns 17 today so Wow happy birthday Olivia. Happy birthday Olivia Olivia. Happy birthday, Olivia. What is the most important life lesson for someone to learn? I think the most important life lesson for someone to learn is to, is to do what you love. My dad, my dad always used to tell me, growing up, you say, Jiles, do what you love and the money will follow.

Right. And, and what he meant by that was if you love doing what you do, then you'll always be happy. You'll always have enough money because you love doing what you're doing. You know, my four kids have wide-ranging different jobs. One's a business analyst, one's an IT architect, and the other one is a high school football coach, and my daughter is a stay-at-home mom. And I truly believe that they all love what they do. You know, from a school teacher salary,

you know, to a one- teacher salary, you know to a one income family, you know Sometimes money can be tough, you know, but but from my standpoint They're the happiest people. They're the happiest people in the world, you know, and when you're happy You'll always have enough That's great. Who is your favorite superhero in Y? That's great. Who is your favorite superhero and why? I don't know if it's Superman, but... Well, it was growing, growing up, Superman was always my favorite. When I was a kid, I had quite a comic book collection, and Superman was the staple of that. I think, you know, I think as much as for his superpowers, you know, I think

that his patriotism and purity and nature, you know, I mean, those are the things that I always admire about Superman. That's great. You're gonna like this one. If you were to colonize Mars, and as the person who colonized it, you could establish one law, what would that be? If I, one law would be, would be, treat everybody else the way that you want to be treated.

Okay, good one. Okay, and since you've now spent a number of years living in Texas, I've got to end on this one. What are three words that describe living in Texas? Three words describe living in Texas. Patriotism, guns, and land. Ha, ha, ha. You know, from my time there, as I was thinking about that question, and those are the three good ones, I was going to say, football, pick up trucks, and happily boots. Yeah, absolutely, for sure.

There's a lot of words that describe Texas. You know, I'm a New Yorker by an age, you know, a native New Yorker. And then moving to Texas, I tell Texans and sometimes they don't like to hear this, but I tell Texans that they're very much like New Yorkers, and they may not want to hear that, but Texans are very loyal to their state,

and New Yorkers are very loyal to New York. They're insanely crazy drivers in New York and they're insanely crazy drivers in Texas as well, you know, and they're just passionate about their regions. And so I find the nature of those two states to be very similar even though they're widely different as far as culture and politics me go. That's great. Well, Charles, we'll leave it there. I love my time. My two times I lived in Texas as well. I did the reverse kind of a view.

I started in Houston, then moved to Austin. You started in Austin, San Antonio, and now you're outside of Houston. So, I'm an opposite cycles there. But thank you so much for joining the show. And so much wisdom you have for the listeners to unpack and Oh, I wanted to end with this if they wanted to read your blogs and learn more about your passion for rowing. Where should they go? It's giles hyphen steward.com

so Don't forget the hyphen between my first and last name, but there you can find my home page and the link to my blogs and some pictures and things about my story and my journey for really. Great. Well, thank you so much again, Charles. Great to have you on the show. All right. Thanks, John. Thanks very much for having me. It was great talking with you. What a great episode with Giles Stewart today. Boy did he have a lot to cover. Everything from you know how he got into our relationship at Lowe's to what he learned from that and took with him to Dell, then how he used all that information in his last role before retirement to completely turn an organization around and explain his words of wisdom for growth seekers out there to learn from that

and use it and apply it in their own lives. And then he went into finding your passion after 65 and how he went on this journey of his health declining, not really having a purpose and experimenting and finding that ruin ended up being his purpose and has made such a difference not only for him physically, but in the routines and other things that he set up. So happy to have him on today and hope you enjoyed this episode so much

and glad we could bring it to you. Thank you so much for listening to Passion Struck and please listen to us again every Tuesday and Friday. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us. A purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral.

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