Leading with Purpose and Empathy with Stephen Sakach

**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.

**Michael Liwski** (0:17)
Welcome back, everyone. Today we have a special episode. We're going to be talking about leading with purpose and empathy, and we're going to be interviewing our very own, regular host, Stephen Sakach. As you know, he's the founder of our agency, Zero Company Performance Marketing, as well as the founder of AI CMO. And so today, we're going to answer this question. What happens when leadership shifts from a command and control to a purpose and empathy-led organization? So to kick us off, let me just real quickly give you a little bit of background on Stephen. So welcome once again. So as you know, Stephen is our founder. But he's not just a leader, right? He really is a visionary. As the creator of the Bliss concept that we know stands for building love into scalable systems, he's really been redefining how businesses operate by fostering empathy and connection and sustainable growth. Under Stephen's leadership, our agency, Zero Company, has really transitioned from a traditional command and control model to one of self-management and decentralized authority, right? This transformation has really empowered our team, boosted engagement within the organization and with our clients and cultivated a culture of transparency and a shared vision. Further, Stephen is also breaking new ground, as we mentioned with AICMO in the AI space. This being an empathy driven purpose led marketing platform that is really designed to help organizations be more human centric and build stronger, genuine connections with those audiences that they're looking to reach and build a relationship with. So with all of that in mind, let's dive right in and hear firsthand from Stephen about his leadership philosophy and his purpose driven approach on shaping the future of how we work.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:19)
Welcome, Stephen.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:21)
Welcome, Stephen. Before we dive right in to this, how does it feel to be on the other side of this for a change?

**Stephen Sakach** (2:30)
Yeah, it feels a little awkward. I was almost going to say those things when you're saying all those nice things about me, Mike. Yeah, I paid Mike to say that and I'm like, wait a minute.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:40)
You do pay Mike to say that.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:41)
It's you.

**Tullio Siragusa** (2:46)
All right, in all seriousness, the real big question is who came up with the name podcast?

**Stephen Sakach** (2:52)
Yeah, so that's I was this many days old before I learned that it's a combination of broadcast and iPod.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:03)
I thought it was POD, People on Drugs, who came up with the name. But anyway, all right, so Stephen.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:10)
That's probably true.

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:12)
Both of those are probably true. There was some trip happening. Anyway, so Stephen, you've led an incredible transformation at Zero Company, and today I'm excited to highlight it and let you showcase that for the rest of the world here. But the biggest thing you've done is champion empathy and a shared authority model within the company. Can you share a little bit the story behind this shift, especially as a co-founder and owner of an agency? What inspired you to move from what's traditionally a command and control model to a self-managed model?

**Stephen Sakach** (3:51)
Yeah, so I'm glad that we're talking about this at this stage of our development, because this is a fairly new thing for us. So it's going to be interesting a year from now, where we are along this process. But being able to download some of those early thoughts, I think would be useful for other owners, CEOs that go through this process. But for me, I've always said, anything that goes wrong in our company was my fault. I mean, that was always my radical approach to it. So it was, and by that, I mean, I didn't give someone enough training, or we weren't prepared in some other way, or we didn't have the right equipment, whatever.
So I've always had that attitude of, I'm in service to everyone there to do their jobs. So I think that's a mindset you have to shift to in some way, is going from that command and control where, hey, do this, do that, do whatever, the typical boss language, to more of just how can I help you be better at your job? You shift that hierarchy structure from top down to now bottom up, how can I help all of you be better at your job? And so I think that is the mindset that has to shift first, before you can kind of let go of some other reins as well.