The Future of Leadership: EQ, Innovation, and Conscious Capitalism with Steve Schwab

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
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)
Mike, do you want to finish your thought on holograms there, or should we just go into it?

**Mike Liwski** (0:21)
Absolutely. I was actually just thinking, you know, back in, I think it was 2019, was that Microsoft Inspire. And yep, just like Steve said, the speaker was speaking to us in perfect English on stage, and then the hologram was speaking perfect Japanese to a group of Japanese business people. It's amazing. So yeah, I'm in total agreement with Steve.

**Steve Schwab** (0:46)
I don't know if you know this, but at the Sphere in Las Vegas, they project sound in specific locations, so the same audience can hear the same, so watch the same video, but in different languages at the same time without earpods.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:01)
Yeah, that's amazing. Pretty cool. Yeah. Well, welcome back to The Bliss Business Podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Sakach, joined by Mike Liwski. Today, we're diving into a topic that's at the crossroads of emotional intelligence, innovation, capitalism reimagined, and that's how can a company do good and do well at the same time, and what kind of leadership does that actually take? And Mike and our guest, introduce our guest today that we're going to talk about this week.

**Mike Liwski** (1:32)
Absolutely, Stephen. I'm super excited to do that for our conversation today. So our guest today is another than Steve Schwab. He's the founder and CEO of Casago, a rapidly growing property management and vacation rental brand with a strong community focus, which we know we love to talk about community here on our show. So Steve's journey from a US. Army veteran to an industry leading entrepreneur is one inspired by grit, vision and a relentless commitment to values. He's taken Casago, the brand now, from a single property in Mexico to over 60 destinations, all while integrating conscious capitalism and high emotional intelligence into his leadership model, which we know our followers and listeners love those topics. So welcome to the show, Steve. We're so happy to have you with us today.

**Steve Schwab** (2:34)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's really great to be here, guys.

**Mike Liwski** (2:39)
Well, we like to start off with the usual softball question. So maybe we'll start us off with a little bit about your background. In the intro, we mentioned the military service, maybe some career highlights, and then how it all is bound within that idea of community values that has helped shape your leadership style.

**Steve Schwab** (3:04)
Yeah, sure. I'd love to. So originally, I got out of high school and was getting ready to go to college. My parents were unable to afford college for me, so I joined the military. And through that experience, I'd ended up trying out to become an army ranger, the 1st and 75th, which is a special operations unit, and got into Bravo Company in the 1st and 75th. Served as an airborne ranger for several years, and was getting out to go to college. And went to college and then decided to take a little break in Mexico, Puerto Pinosco, Mexico, just thinking I was going to get ready for my commission, head back to the States. And I was sitting at a bar and this gentleman was talking about how he was struggling to crawl up in a roof. And I said, well, I can help you with that. I did a little sheet metal work after school, you know, during high school. And so I followed him out to this beach house and crawled up on the roof and fixed the problems for him. And he offered to pay me. I said, no, no, no need to pay me. And went back to the bar and he found me there the next day and asked me to do a little bit more work. And pretty soon I was kind of helping him with maintenance work. He had me over for dinner and with his wife and come to find out one of the reasons why he was needing help and he was wasn't able to crawl up on the roofs is because Bruce had cancer and he passed away really fast. It took him pretty quickly. And so, you know, after he passed, it was a couple of months and I had gone on to do other things. And I get a call from his wife, Cindy. And Cindy said, hey, Bruce thought you'd be pretty good at this. Well, yeah, Cindy, I don't want to be a maintenance guy. She's like, no dummy, running the company. Like, well, I'm even less qualified for that. Well, she said, come on over and take a look and see what you think. And so it was all pieces. There's no computers. There was no software. There was, you know, nothing like that. There was all cash business. And she handed me, you know, these piles of paper and I went through it and did the math. And I was like, wow, you made $35,000 last year. She's like, yeah, it's like, man, I'd be rich. And so I ended up buying the company and finance through her. And she came and gave me four hours of the training and said she'd be back. And that was the last time I ever saw her. And she wanted out. She wanted to go to Alaska and be with her family. So got into the business and it became clear very early that it was a relationship business. And the ecosystem of relationships that were important to be able to make the company run was incredibly important. And I had to learn a lot of lessons coming from a leadership structure like Ranger Battalion in which everything is appointed authority.