In this episode of the Leadership Student podcast, host MK Palmore interviews Corey Thomas, CEO and Chairman of Rapid7, about his journey in leadership and the lessons he's learned along the way.
Guest: Corey Thomas, Chairman & CEO, Rapid7
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreythomas/
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Host: MK Palmore, Host of The Leadership Student Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/mk-palmore
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Episode Description
Corey reflects on the influence of his grandfather, the importance of work ethic, and the ever-changing nature of leadership. He also discusses the challenges of being a person of color in the cybersecurity industry and the need for diversity in leadership. Corey emphasizes the value of mentorship and personal wellness in maintaining success. Don't miss this insightful conversation with a luminary figure in cybersecurity leadership.
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Resources
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Leadership and Diversity in Cybersecurity | A Conversation with Corey Thomas | The Leadership Student Podcast with MK Palmore
0:00:02 MK Palmore: Okay, folks, here we go. This is MK Palmore with another edition of the Leadership Student podcast. I have in a virtual studio today, Corey Thomas, the CEO, chairman of the board of directors for Rapid Seven, and quite frankly, a luminary figure in the cybersecurity field, especially for folks like myself who look up to Corey as a leader in the industry. I was very interested in getting Corey into the, into the studio and having a conversation about my favorite topic, leadership.
0:00:31 MK Palmore: And, Corey, I appreciate you coming into the studio, joining us on the leadership student. Thank you for making the time.
0:00:36 Corey Thomas: Okay. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
0:00:39 MK Palmore: Corey, let’s go back a little bit. We’ll get to the CEO of Rapid Seven here in a couple of minutes. But let’s go back maybe to your childhood first impressions of a leader in your life or someone who you took guidance from that really made an impact on you. Who was that person for you?
0:00:58 Corey Thomas: For me, it’s probably, it’s hard because you got to go back in time. And as we get older, we forget a whole bunch of stuff. But when you ask the figure that stands out to me as my grandfather, my grandfather was, oh, my maternal grandfather was like a classical family patriarch in some ways. And so he was an entrepreneur, he was a minister. He built his own church from scratch. He was always dispensing what we should and should not do, or my grandmother was telling. So my grandfather stands out to me is like the, a leadership model and ideal, not one that I kept, oddly enough, over the years, but it is the first memory of it.
0:01:40 MK Palmore: Interesting you noted that you didn’t keep the lessons necessarily. Why is that? And what was it about your grandfather’s leadership style that maybe well coincide with what developed to be your own?
0:01:53 Corey Thomas: So I think a couple different things. One is, just to be clear, and my own kids will probably hear this at some point in time. It’s just that we all learn that our parents and grandparents are human. I keep trying to remind my 21 year old daughter that I am, like, human and just, I can’t believe you were wrong about that. I’m like, of course I was wrong. But. So I would say I kept lots of stuff from my grandfather and my father and my mother and my parents. They had some wonderful things, and then they had some things that just didn’t actually, didn’t actually age well. Look, my grandfather was a black man who grew up in the south.
0:02:25 Corey Thomas: The thing that I kept and kept with me was his sense of how to actually have your own agency in life. And when things aren’t going well. Not to be brought down by the things you don’t control, but to actually really focus on the things you can, which I would just say has been, like, critical in my life about focus on the things you can actually do to make progress and not be dragged down by the things you actually can’t control or injustice or unfairness.
0:02:55 Corey Thomas: So I would say I kept that as like a ke thing. What I did not keep so much. And my grandfather was incredibly charismatic, man, as you can imagine, as a minister who buil own church and south. What I didn’t keep is necessarily his view of leadership, which was much more patriarchal. And there is a voice that has the answers and that is, that knows what to do and the fact that if I’m in a leadership position, I know all the answers and therefore I have it.
0:03:24 Corey Thomas: And maybe he didn’t actually really believe that because I knew as a child, not as an adult, but that was definitely the lesson that was actually taught, even if that’s not the way he actually believed.
0:03:33 MK Palmore: Early impressions, certainly from the family. What about outside of the family? Did you play sports or anything in high schoolah college?
0:03:40 Corey Thomas: I still. So I played football and basketball, and I was a mediocre athlete at both of them. And I learned a couple things. One, I still remember coach Tyler with my high school, my first, my middle school football coach, and, and what position? Running back at widet receiver and then cornerback. But I remember him telling me something that I think he meant as both a bit of inspiration, but also trying to make sure that I kept my expectations, like, in check.
0:04:10 Corey Thomas: And what he said to me is, he’s just you. He’s just, you work hard and you have okay talent, but you’re never, you just don’t have the raw speed, the, you just don’t have that raw thing to be exceptional, but you could be solid. But what he said was just like, hey, you have the work ethic and the tenacity. And, like, she’s like, he, that can take you a lot further than you actually think. And for me, that actually stuck with me because the thing that he was actually pushing was, we all have natural things that we’re actually good at or not good at. We all have natural, like, barriers, but we can actually go a lot further with, like, focused, like, work ethic, learning, tenacity.
0:04:52 Corey Thomas: And his point was, is that for where you are right now, your barrier is not like the gifts you’ve been to dow with. It’s your ability to actually hone them. And that actually has a mentality actually stuck with me throughout life, where it’s easier to think that I’m not good at something. I have this discussion with my kids, and there’s lots of people that have natural gifts that actually get out, outplayed, out, exceeded with people who have lesser talents and lesser gifts, but the people just work at it much more focused and much more tenaciously.
0:05:24 Corey Thomas: And so that’s one of the lessons I got from sports.
0:05:26 MK Palmore: I wonder if this. If I use this generation as an example, because I spend a lot of time, as you well know, talking to folks about getting into the cybersecurity arena and what you’re talking about there, the work ethic portion, that the actual work that’s required to transcend maybe the skills that others have and then ultimately be able to distinguish yourself, I think, is something that gets lost often. So I appreciate you mentioning that.
0:05:50 MK Palmore: I’ve been talking to my own middle son about the idea of needing to distinguish yourself among your peers. Do you remember the first time that you recognize that you could, through your actions, distinguish yourself and separate yourself from the pack? Because I found that folks like yourself that end up in leadership positions, like chief executive officer of companies, it probably has been a thread through your life that at some point, someone identified in you that this person could lead or could be a voice or could stand out in a crowd. Do you remember the first time that happened for you and maybe at what level that was at?
0:06:27 Corey Thomas: You know, I don’t remember the first time. There’s severalle different things that actually. That actually come to mind is one was that at our church, we were all expected to do different leadership like roles. I don’t remember being separated out. In fact, much of my childhood, I was, like, striving hard to actually be, like, in the top, like, 20%. But I was never actually the best at anything. So I would put in a lot of effort, but I was never actually the best. Like, I was a good student, but not like an extraordinary student. I was a good athlete, but not an extraordinary athlete.
0:07:03 Corey Thomas: And so it was always, like, never quite there, and I would have to work hard for everything. But what I do remember, though, was being given lots of responsibility, and my dad really have, and both of my parents had this mentality is that you can actually figure it out. And my dad used to be a janitor for a bunch of churches in the area, and he was just like, hey, you own cleaning up this floor and manage it, and I would manage my friends to actually do it. But you own, like, this and quality is your responsibility.
0:07:35 Corey Thomas: And he would pay me and then I would pay my friends. And it was like a trust about the responsibility and the pride doing things. So I remember that. I also remember the bitterness of having to wake up at 05:00 a.m. On a Saturday morning to go clean up. But the but I remember the responsibility around that. I would say the first time that I can at least remember back and get a older is that I actually won something was my in high school, I got long story. I got moved to this magnet school, but we won the science competition for the state, and we actually got to go to DC for the state finals.
0:08:10 Corey Thomas: It was my first time I had ever gone on an airplane in my life. We didn’t have lots of money. And that stood out to me as I remembered that, because that was a big deal that we got to travel to a state competition.
0:08:21 MK Palmore: Okay, outstanding. Vanderbilt undergrad MBA at Harvard Business School. Talk to us a little bit about your first opportunity to work in corporate America and what that was like for you.
0:08:34 Corey Thomas: I got really look, so I had two opportunities. One, my, in high school, my mother got me a job in the mailroom of her job in her office in school district, which was actually a great opportunity. My first real big corporate job, though I had the benefit of doing this program, I think it’s still here today, called inroads, which helped people of color find jobs in corporate America. And when inroad, you went on thes to actually get, like, corporate America skills and business skills and and my first job was interning, which was just a fantastic sort of, like, introduction. I groww up dreaming of working at bell Labs and working around that.
0:09:15 Corey Thomas: And so I thought all my dreams had actually come true when I got that experience. And it was a rude awakening in lots of ways because I had to learn how to navigate. I got lots of coaching about, like, how to be in the workforce, and that’sr when we had to release, there was lots of pressure on, like, how you assimilated, how you act, and how you actually did certain things. But I also got to be at and t in a time when I was in utter distress in the nineties, and you saw it, like, breaking up, falling apart.
0:09:41 Corey Thomas: And it triggered something in me because I had this company that had idolized all of my life. And to see it struggle was a shock for, like, my sort of, like, 18 year old brain, which really catalyzed, I think, my career in many ways into entrepreneurship and other things, because I ended up with this question is, like, how do all these brilliant people fail? And it’s one of the things that’s always catalyzed me about, well, if it’s not the smartest people that makes the organization successful and it’s not the best technology, what the heck makes something work and works makes something successful.
0:10:12 Corey Thomas: But that was the first experience that I actually had in corporate America, and it was a big learning experience.
0:10:17 MK Palmore: Have you taken that thread that you just described throughout your experience?
0:10:20 Corey Thomas: All throughout my life. It, it’s, look, it’s the reason that after at and t, I went to Deloitte consulting because one of the things was, is consultants must know how, like why businesses are successful or not, which I found out wasn’t true. Then I went to business school and be like, all right, this sort of must be what it is where I’m.
0:10:40 MK Palmore: Going to get all the answers’s where.
0:10:41 Corey Thomas: I’m going to get the answers. And you don’t get the answers. And then from, because I originally thought that, listen, the best technology, the best people, the best talent win. And so seeing a lot of places where that wasn’t always the case. So after business school, and again, I grew up in a world that was different. And so, like, we were a little bit, and I love Microsoft to this day, but if you grew up in a Unix world, you were condescending to Microsoft technologies.
0:11:05 Corey Thomas: And after business go, I went to go work at Microsoft. I’m like, it must be marketing that actually, like, makes things great. And along the way, and then in Microsoft, ups and downs. Then I went to startups. But along the way, this question about what makes organizations thrive, it’s always a, it’s an evergreen question that doesn’t have an answer. But it has lots of learnings, too, that I’ve actually learned along the way that really involves both the science but also the art of actually being in groups and being in communities and being in organizations together. But that’s one of my things that’s always interested me.
0:11:40 MK Palmore: So, like, what do you draw away from those experiences as learning lessons? What’s the most important thing? Is it the people on the bus? Is it the culture? Is it the, the technology? Like, as you begin to rank stack the importance of these.
0:11:54 Corey Thomas: Yeah.
0:11:55 MK Palmore: What’s the, what’s you’re learning from?
0:11:57 Corey Thomas: Yeah. My learning is that it’s an interplay of a lot of different things. One, like relevance matters. You can have the best people in the world, but if they’re in something that’s actually dying. The team at Kodak was geniuses, but there’s no, you could double the capacity and the intelligence of the team. And that’s just a hard problem to solve, is like, how do you actually transform an industry that’s actually not. So what you’re doing matters. And so that’s the first thing. Like the space you actually live in, play in, really matters. That’s part of why I love cyberecurity. It’s relevant and it’s going to be relevant it there.
0:12:28 Corey Thomas: The other one is that the is I put a lot of stock into the attitude, aptitude and culture of an organization and a team. Having a group of people that want to build excellence together, as long as they have enough aptitude, they don’t even have to be the smartest. But like, this desire to actually build excellence together, it’s so hard to actually keep a set of people, especially as the organization grows, that actually are concerned about doing excellent work and doing it together.
0:13:02 Corey Thomas: That as long as you, as much as you can actually keep the mentality of excellence and the vitality of creating something like great together, that ends up mattering a lot. And then I do think you actually need, like, the right skill sets for the dynamic. Last s one I would just say is one personal learning is that leadership is situational, is the leader that you actually need, and the leadership skills you need is, has a lot to do with what challenges or opportunities you actually have in front of you.
0:13:29 Corey Thomas: And not all leaders are good for certain opportunities. So I could be great in one space, but I could be the same exact person and I could be utter failure in another place. So you have to make sure that you actually have the right thing.
0:13:42 MK Palmore: How hard is it to pull together the team of the right people with the right skill sets that you need for a particular.
0:13:48 Corey Thomas: That’s what’s hard. We’re hard because we’re human. Look, there’s been times in my life when I’m like, I would say 80% of my life, I’m focused on excellence and the intensity of actually doing great work. But when my son was born and we had challenges and he had a rough sort of like, first couple years, that was not my biggest focus area concern. And so what I would just say is that it’s hard because you’re never going to have perfect alignment and focus and intensity on the excellence piece because we’re human. And that’s okay. That’s not the, that’s not the goal, but navigating that such that you actually have a team and a group of people that are focused on doing extraordinarily good work and pushing the boundaries. And it’s not a job, it’s about creating and building like great things together is, it’s meaningful and it’s actually important.
0:14:38 Corey Thomas: But that requires like a getting people that have the right sort of like general mindset, distribution attitude, people that really want to learn, that people really want to evolve. You meet some people and they are like, I actually know how the world works and if people just did what I said, everything will be fine. And that to me is the most like, I’m like, keep those people away from me. I want to be around people that are actually deeply curious about the way the world walks and know that we’re living in a flow and that things change and they want to understand how things change.
0:15:05 Corey Thomas: And finding those people creating the space where they actually work together, that’s just hard work.
0:15:12 MK Palmore: Yeah, I call that mentality the student mindset, hence the name of the, the name of the podcast. Because I feel like there’s just always another lesson to be learned in the leadership. There’s just no way you’Renna, you’re go goingna come to the table. I don’t care how many deep experiences you’ve had, there’s no way you’re going to come to the table and be ready for everything under the sun, because like you indicated, there are humans involved and humans just naturally have this infinite ability to bring a different set of circumstances to the table that will be unique and new to any particular situation.
0:15:43 Corey Thomas: It is. And also it’s wonder that we’re in a flow of change. Like things are always changing, sometimes they’re changing faster, sometimes they’re changing slower, but like the world is changing, and so that’s an opportunity, but it also makes it like hard where no one should feel comfortable resting on their laurels.
0:15:59 MK Palmore: So with the idea of the fluidity of situational affairs and business and leadership, how do you maintain accountability? There’s the certainly a belief system that you want to allow people space to fail, to miss and learn from those experiences and then be able to move forward. How do you ensure that you’re allowing folks the space to do that, but at the same time holding people accountable for missing on parts where they should have been able to do better?
0:16:25 Corey Thomas: So I think that. So you hit on an excellent question. So one, I just say we have to separate two things. You have to have a tolerance for failure, but you have to have an intolerance for sloppiness. And those are two really big things. Failures that are the result of sloppiness are unacceptable and they should actually not be tolerated at all. So things where you actually didn’t do your homework, you didn’t prepare, you didn’t do the work. Like any reasonable preparedness that could have prevented it wasn’t done.
0:16:55 Corey Thomas: There’s a different set of failure that’s completely acceptable. Is that sometimes, in fact, I would say the harder thing we’re going, the whole economy is going through this. There’s lots of organizations that find in a zero interest rate environment, there were actually, and a lot of people who did fine, that actually didn’t do good work. And so you can actually have good results and not have done good work.
0:17:16 Corey Thomas: The other side is true. You can actually done excellent work, the right work, and you actually had like a failure, because you know what? You did really good work. You did your homework, you had to actually take a bet on imperfect information, and the bet didn’play out. That’s fine. That’s a healthy far, you should learn from that. You should evolve from that. And so the, if the type of failure really matters, like the type of failures that I respect and I learned from, is that we took a bet that was a clear bet, well executed, and it didn’t work out. And that’s a learning that’s great, that builds the strength, the knowledge, the capacity of the organization.
0:17:53 Corey Thomas: Sloppiness is a completely separate thing, and that should actually, that should not be tolerated and accepted. The other piece of it that I just, I tell my leadership team is that in general, even when we take good bets, we’re going toa have some failures. We just can’t have repeated failures. And so you have to win more than you lose. So the way that I think about it is your losses need to count for less and your wins need to count for more.
0:18:17 Corey Thomas: But there’s no such thing as success over long term. If you don’t win in general, you have to win. And so you have to just make sure that you’re, you know, if you’re well managing. When you have failures, you actually catch them, you learn from them and they actually lead up. And when you actually have wins, you scale them and you leverage them.
0:18:34 MK Palmore: Anything from, from your leadership background that I hate using the term failure, because you, you actually learn from, from y, fine. Yeah, you learn from those things. Anything stick out in your mind is just something that you carry with you. I could have done a better job in any one particular situation that just sticks in your craw for the long term.
0:18:55 Corey Thomas: Oh, there’s a, I have a lot of, the issue is I have so many of them that they crowd out. They crowd out spaces. One of them was, I was at Microsoft. I was responsible for this product launch and, and I did a poor job because I did not want to ask for help. And luckily I had a good boss and a good friend, Margt, who actually forced me to actually get help, but I almost led it to failure because I did not want to ask for help. And that was more about my ego.
0:19:22 Corey Thomas: And I was given a job. I was so concerned about the fact that I wanted to know that I could do a good job that I refused to actually acknowledge where I actually needed help. So that’s one, that’s one’s learning. Another big one that I’ll never forget is it was early, like shortly after I became CEO, we had an issue and we had to make some changes. It didn’t work out. It wasn’t working out. And I was a little bit paralyzed.
0:19:50 Corey Thomas: And as I talked to my friends, I realized sort of two things. Is one, under stress, I was isolating myself, and embarrassment was leading me to actually become more self contained. And when you’re under pressure, that’s when you need your friends, that’s when you need collaboration, that’s when you actually need engagement the most. And I was a pretty miserable person. And luckily I had a good friend and a good colleague who actually really pushed me that, like, self isolation is not what you actually need when you’re under extreme duress and extreme pressure. And it was actually leading me to actually do a poor job.
0:20:23 Corey Thomas: So those two things are like just two early things that actually just stand out in my mind.
0:20:28 MK Palmore: Amazing. Your ascent at rapid seven, were you part of the founding team?
0:20:33 Corey Thomas: I was not part of the founding team. I was hired, I came in. I think I was like, when the company, 50 people or so o and it was like a couple million dollars in revenue. Like six $7 million in revenue.
0:20:44 MK Palmore: What do you think was the, the critical factor that leads you from an executive position in the company to being designated the CEO? Anything, any one particular critical situation or were you just able to show over a period of time your ability to leadave?
0:21:02 Corey Thomas: I just, yeah, look, I think it’s an intersectionah yeah, it was an intersection lot. So one, it was half a, it was not the plan. It was not my plan. It was not rapid seven’plan. I was supposed to come in and help scale it for a few years and help mature it and then go do something else. I actually wanted to start my own business. And so what I’ll just say is that even today I think you have to hold on, you have to have aspirations, but there’s an art to actually having strong aspirations but not hold them too tightly.
0:21:27 Corey Thomas: And so I had planned to actually build a company. I had not planned on actually sub being CEO of rapid seven. And so that wasn’t the case at the time. Now what happened along the way was I drove some bold bets at the time. I did the acquisition of Metasoit early on and got partner with HD Moore, who was actually brilliant. We had some business success along the way. We had a couple crises that, like, were unplanned, but I stepped into them. And for lots of people, by the way, that’s a very common thing, is how do you perform under duress? Ends up being an opportunity.
0:22:01 Corey Thomas: And so I certainly had some of those. I had some failures, but had some good team members and some grace around that. But those things set up a dynamic where when there was an opportunity and the company had to actually look at, like hiring a CEO from the outside or taking a risk of someone who had never done it before, it was a risk, to be clear at the time, like, I was not qualified to actually do the job.
0:22:23 Corey Thomas: I built enough credibility where I remember the board conversation was like, hey, let’s give it a year and see how it goes. Like, that’s. It was not like a, it was a confidence. We believed, you can do it, but let’s just see how it actually goes. And so there was credibility, but it’s something that we had to prove out that it was actually liken to work out. And I wasn’t sure at the time really either. Right.
0:22:42 MK Palmore: How, how have you grown both as a leader and a person just from the time that you step into the, the shoes as a CEO? Right. You’ve now been the CEO for how many years?
0:22:55 Corey Thomas: Oh, good lord, it is now going on? I would just say eleven years now. Yeah.
0:23:02 MK Palmore: Eleven years is a C corporation and an industry that has been one of the most dynamic industries, I think, that we can account for in the past decade. Surely there’s been just an immense amount of growth expectation experiences. When you look back at the young Corey Thomas, who agrees to take on the reins of this responsibility to the successful CEO that you are now, what do you think about the growth that you’ve experienced during the course of that decade plus time?
0:23:32 Corey Thomas: Oh, it’s a lot. The thing with cybersecurity companies is you have to be a different company every three to five years if you’re going to be relevant and you’re going to stay relevant. So I’ve gone through that twice. We’re going through another sort of, like, version of that right now and that. And I would love to. Actually, my hope was I could be the same person. In some ways I was and bring it to the table.
0:23:51 Corey Thomas: But it’s a different organization, different world, different circumstance. And the thing I always tell young entrepreneurs is the same thing out to face is the job you want to do doesn’t matter. Your desires don’t matter. You always have to look and say, what’s the job that needs to be done? And at different phases of the company. The job as CEO that I needed to do has actually been different. And sometimes it’s been harder. Sometimes it’s been natural.
0:24:16 Corey Thomas: And so if you look at a couple different things, when you think about what’s the job that needs to be done, not the job that you actually. I am a very good product manager. I love, like, products. I love building them. I love time. Like, I love to actually go. I love engaging with customers. I love technology, and I love building technology. It’s the passion. I’m good at it when I spend time on it. Like, it’s fun. I love teaching, like, the discipline of product management and some of the other stuff to teams.
0:24:42 Corey Thomas: But what I found out over time is the thing that I’m actually good of is not the most important thing for the company to have. I love it when those moments come up. The most important thing for me to actually do today is to actually build great teams. The most important thing that, like, I, when we went through the pandemic, one of my big lessons learned that got neglected is that when you send everyone home and you’re doing everything, remote social cohesion, just like growth can cover up for a lot.
0:25:10 Corey Thomas: I have to actually be really good at saying, like, how do we actually scale and how do we have documented processes and how do we actually make sure that we actually have a consistent experience? Like, that is not something I wake up every morning and say, I have to make sure that my customers getting a consistent, high quality experience and how do we have the right processes? Like, that was not, like, my idea of fun.
0:25:30 Corey Thomas: Not on your bingo card, but that’s the job. That’s the job that needed to actually be done. So I had to immerse myself and talk to people and learn and say, okay, is if you don’t have this sort of, like, social cohesion where, like, your, your support team and your engineers are sitting next to each other and they’re talking, you have all that dynamicism is how do we actually create a high quality, consistent experience?
0:25:52 Corey Thomas: I have to become like a process like designer and engineer and around that. And to answer your question is, I’ve had to change lots. There’s been some things that I’ve changed as a person about, like my outlook and how do I think about life. That probably has more to do with my kids and being a husband and a father than anything else. But in work, I’ve also had to actually change this because the job required different things, and I’ve had to step up to do the job that need to be done versus the job that was easy for me.
0:26:19 MK Palmore: You’ve probably experienced being what I like to describe as one of one in many rooms. You are a CEO of a major cybersecurity company. There are not many people of color in leadership positions in the cybersecurity industry, nor operate as the CEO chairman of the board of directors for a large scale cybersecurity company in the industry. Has that experience of being an executive leader, african american and today’s society, has that experience been unique?
0:26:54 MK Palmore: What have you noticed in terms of how you navigate the space and navigate rooms as a leader in the industry? What’s that experience been like for you?
0:27:03 Corey Thomas: It’s an interesting one because I didn’t know what to expect. So a couple things. One, when I was in high school, I went to a school that had wonderful people, but it was in a challenge school district, and my mother, through lots of work and tenacity, got me tested into a magnet school. And so I got bust to school. I had the experience of being one of a few black people at this magnet school. Luckily, I wrote the bus with people that looked like me. But then I was one of the few people in the honors and AP classes in high school.
0:27:38 Corey Thomas: And the reason that’s actually a little bit important because the same thing happened to Vanderbilt. The same thing happened at and t the same thing happened is I think that it’s really hard. And I told my mom this. In retrospect, it was incredibly difficult my sophomore year in high school, where I went through this sort of, like, shocking transition. But every ten years, it got a little bit easier because I’ve been doing it for so long. So it was not a new experience. And so that’s one.
0:28:06 Corey Thomas: The second one is to your question about, like, me and one of the few soT, like Black CEO’s and black executives. One thing that stands out, like, I talked to so, like, one of my mentors, Ken Chanel, and he’ll tell you like it is. We always thought it would grow, but that was a strong crop of people in the nineties and two thousands that looked like they were. If you look at public company CEO’s and you actually see less now that looks like we have another strong set of people that are like stepping leadership roles.
0:28:30 Corey Thomas: But it is a little bit disheartening that we don’t have more diverse leaders like running companies. The personal experience that I actually have runs the gamut. And so let me just talk a little bit about what that means. Yes, I’ve had experiences where I walked into the room and someone dles the eight in an investor room and I got treated like the eight. I also had wonderful experiences of coaching and mentoring around.
0:28:55 Corey Thomas: I’ve had experiences where people actually presume that they know me based on stereotypes and they actually didn’t actually know me. And so I would just say it’s, I’ve had good experiences and I’ve had bad experiences and I think that’s human at some level. This is a little bit of where I do take my grandfather’s early wisdom. Like in the play, it’s sort two things that actually stand out is one is look at life as a blessing and think about what you can actually do with what you’ve given, not the adversity that’s actually in front of you. And again, I talked earlier about like that mindset that actually brought to the table.
0:29:34 Corey Thomas: And so even when I’m in some of those experiences, that’s their issue. That’s not my issue because I’ve been blessed and blessed mightily. And so that’s one like thing that actually stands out and actually comes to mind. The other one that I frankly feel more than anything else is how do I actually mentor, network and build connections amongst other people at different, other sort of people of color across different layers of management to create more of a pipeline. So it’s not like that in the future.
0:30:05 Corey Thomas: So those are like the two things that I actually think about. And so like some of my role models, I look at people like Jim Cash, who’s actually done a phenomenal job of actually bringing diverse leaders through corporate american ranks. And I think we all have to be carriers of that legacy.
0:30:19 MK Palmore: How you touched on the mentoring piece a couple of times. How important is it for you to make time to mentor others? And what’s the experience been like? I’m sure you have. I call it like my personal board of advisors, the folks that I turn to for those conversations that have been there, done that, talk about that in both directions. Mentor down. And also who you turn to for those moments of salient conversations that you might need to have.
0:30:44 Corey Thomas: Yeah. Like, I am. I am blessed to actually have lots of people that actually can turn to both friends, people that are retired and with lots of experience. And I spend a lot of time with, as you, the personal board of advisors. And, look, I think the most important thing you actually get out of it is when you’re candid. And when I’m talking to them, I’m just talking about what’s working. When I’m excited about life struggles, they’re often helping me actually think about how to balance, like, work and family and civic obligations.
0:31:12 Corey Thomas: And so I think you have to bring your whole self to those discussions. I find I get more out of my quote, unquote large circle of personaloid of advisors when I’m authentic and honest about what’s really happening with me. And that requires a little bit of work to actually be. For me to be honest about what’s happening with myself. But when I am, I get really good counsel when I’m not, and it’s. I. It’s easy to fall to. Everything’s fine. Like, that’s one of my issues. My son says it. That’s how I know I’m bad at it. So, hey, everything’s fine when I’m in everything’s fine mode, when I get the worst out of it, because that’s not sort of, like, authentic and everything’s not fine.
0:31:47 Corey Thomas: And so that’s. So that’s one. When I mentored, the one thing I actually tell people when I mentor, because you nailed it with a personal board of my, you know, I’ve had to pull people out of this Yoda mindset, and this is more of a geek Star wars thing, but sometimes people are looking for one mentor to actually got them. And, like, that’s not. That doesn’t really work in effectively. And you also don’t want that. It’s not a healthy thing.
0:32:06 Corey Thomas: I think you want to be part of a community and a network where people are giving you advice and perspective, and you’re giving other people advice and perspective. And so when I mentor people, what I tell them is that we’re part of a community together. But it’it’s. Not my job to actually teach them how to live life. It’s my job to actually be in community with them and to actually share my experiences and for them to process that and process other people’s experiences and for them to share their experiences with me.
0:32:33 Corey Thomas: And so those are the two things that I think about. So, like, mentorship, and I do think access is a powerful thing. And so as much as I can, I try to, like, when it’s the right, when it’s the right situation, provide introductions and connections so other people are mutually enhanced.
0:32:49 MK Palmore: So I touched on the subject before we got started on personal wellness. I have to imagine that you are, I like to call folks like yourself, busiest people on the planet, like you. You have a lot of things pulling at you from the corporate side of the house, your family life, your, your mentorship, your entrepreneurial spirit. I know you serve on several boards. You lead a company. What do you do for personal wellness? How do you detach? How do you make sure that you are functioning at the highest, optimal level that you can as an individual?
0:33:21 Corey Thomas: Yeah. So it’s a great question, and I think it’s one that always demands attention. So to me, there’s three things that I, it’s probably more, but three stand out and come to mind. One of them. The first one is that I am a, my energy has to be expended, so I have to work out every day and I walk as much as I can. But, like, the physical exp of energy is important for me to actually feel good. And I work in, I’m a CEO of a technology company, so, like, the power of the chair to be sedentary is strong.
0:33:52 Corey Thomas: And people know I like to do walk in meetings, like, when I can, I think I drive my assistant crazy with the, you gotta give me five minutes just to take a walk in between things. But I work out every day and I move around as much as I can. Any I can walk to, I walk to. But, like, mobility and the ability to actually, like, move and express energy that way is a big one. The second one is, it’s, my wife has actually been very good at this and pushing me for this cause. I am very like, that sense of intense focus on excellence and want to be, like, good and want to be able to do.
0:34:26 Corey Thomas: And the sense of duty is I am naturally strong. And my wife’s view is to, hey, that’s good, but you actually have to play some too. You gotta have a little bit of, like, play, and you gotta have a little. And that is important for the creative cycle and the creative energy. And I spend time, like, both with the family and my wife and the kids looking at how we actually build that sense of play and that sense of engagement around. Whether it’s my son who’s learning how to play golf, us learning how to play golf together as a family, whether it’s like having dinner or drinks with a friends and catching up, I will try. I told you, I’m like a good, general, mediocre athlete. I do a bunch of stuff. I go skiing with friends.
0:35:06 Corey Thomas: I’ll play tennis. I do everything. Okay. If it’s with my family members, we’ll play spades together. But finding time to actually have that sense of time with family and friends is important. I’m in New York today. I’m having dinner with a dinner with a friend this evening. So I think that’s the second one that I need to do. And the third one is, I am. I am an introvert. I’m a borderline introvert.
0:35:30 Corey Thomas: And so. And that just means I have a long fuse. But I have to have some time for myself. This is partially why I take walks sometimes. But I’ve learned that I need time for myself that does not have people around to sit, read, think, and ponder. And I’m a better person. I’m a better husband. I’m a better colleague. I a better friend when I actually have that.
0:35:56 MK Palmore: Corey, I know that you are busy. I want to thank you for spending time having this conversation with me here today in the virtual studio. Sir, I want to tell you, you are an absolute beacon. There are those of us in the industry who certainly look up to you. Keep being excellent, keep striving for excellence, keep doing what you do, because we recognize it and we see it as an opportunity for all of us to level up our game. So we certainly appreciate what you’ve been doing in the industry, and we want to continue to continue to see you thrive.
0:36:26 MK Palmore: So I appreciate the time, and I appreciate the conversation.
0:36:29 Corey Thomas: Thank you. And I have to say thank you not just for having me. Thank you both for the pocast, but also thank you for the work that you’re doing in the community, because you’ve actually found a way with the work that you’re doing in the community to actually really scale mentorship leadership. And so thank you for that. It really does matter.
0:36:45 MK Palmore: I appreciate it. I appreciate it. That’s it for this episode of the Leadership Student podcast. Thank you, Corey Thomas. And thank you to the team at rapid Seven for making sure he could carve out time to speak with us today. We appreciate the gems that we got from the conversation, and we will see you guys next time on the Leadership student podcast. Thanks again.