Innovative Work Models for the Future with Jose Leal

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Welcome back to the show. We've got a good one today. We're discussing innovative work models of the future and why they're starting to emerge now as our collective consciousness has continued this journey forward.
I'm Stephen Sakach here once again with Tullio Siragusa. Tullio, introduce our guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:37)
Yes, very excited to have Jose with us. I've known him for a long time. We've co-founded some of the stuff we're gonna talk about today. So Jose started and actually was the founder of six traditional company. We'll talk about why we mentioned traditional in just a little bit. One of the company was AutoNet, which was his third startup. And that was acquired by Canadian media conglomerate then where he became the vice president and GM of the English Online Division. And during that time, he was also the vice chair of the Canadian Interactive Advertising Bureau and was highly involved in that industry.
After 13 years of working in a dysfunctional organization and industry, Jose realized that he could no longer live or contribute to the dysfunction brought on by the system of force.
He has spent the last seven years researching human motivation and organizational environments leading to the radical purpose dynamic, collaborative canvas and collaborative agreement and co-authoring Radical Companies. Jose is the co-founder of Radical World, which is an organization that helps people shift from collaborative ways that meet their needs. His primary focus is on exposing the realities of the dominant system of force in which people not work.
Now, we have invited Jose to be featured on the Bliss Business Podcast because he has made his, he has made it his life mission to improving the lives of people, especially in the workplace where we spend most of our time. And he embodies a lot of the principles of bliss, which is empathy and love, which are sorely needed today. So welcome to the show, Jose.
I'm excited to have you. He's also one of the co-founders of Radical Purpose. So I'm very excited for this conversation.

**Jose Leal** (2:27)
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Pleasure meeting you, Stephen.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:33)
Jose, so you've had an interesting journey.
I'd be curious to understand what prompted you to step back and question the system and move toward this idea of radical companies. Is it one thing, or is it just years and years just building up until you just kind of like, you know, saw it?

**Jose Leal** (2:54)
It's two things. So the one thing was flying back from Edmonton, Alberta after laying off another group of people that hadn't actually directly reported to me that I had never met. I'm walking in early in the morning to a boardroom and having everybody be excited. Oh, finally we get to meet you. We're all excited to meet you. We've heard so much about you. And then being told that they're all let go.
And having not even being able to stay with them for a little longer because I had to jump onto another plane, go to another city and do the same thing.
And on that flight, I actually broke down and started crying and couldn't stop crying. And the thing that I kept asking myself, how the fuck did I get here? How is it that this is what I'm doing?
Because I could, as much as I knew I was hurting those folks, I knew I was just killing myself. Like it was two weeks of torture before each and every one of those things, I did six rounds of that. With every round being multiple offices, multiple locations doing this kind of stuff. That was the day that I got home after three cities and told my wife at the time, I got to stop this. I can't do this anymore. This is not something that I can keep doing. It's not possible. It took me a year to extract myself out of the organization because they still had equity in the original company that I sold to them. I still had equity, I should say.
And so that was the flipping point. That was brutal.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:47)
I mean, that's just like this hired hitman almost. And you're just like, what am I doing? How did I get here?

**Jose Leal** (4:53)
Absolutely.

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:54)
You brought back some traumatic moments because I've done that too and I didn't sleep for weeks. And till this day, it still pains me.