Leadership Lingo (w/ Mateo Portelli)

0:00:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in KUNV Studios on Public Radio. KUNV 91.5. Ladies and gentlemen. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?

0:00:18
I'll brainstorm this later. We'll edit it later for now. Welcome to Leadership Lingo. My name is Matteo Portelli. Today we'll be hearing from a few folks and their experiences as leaders and find out the best principles and practices that make our community a better place. Welcome to Leadership Lingo. What's going on, folks? Welcome to Leadership Lingo. We've got here Hoffman Madzu in the studio. He is an assistant tax manager for H&R Block here in Las Vegas. He's also the president of the Colored Business Association at the Lee Business School here on campus. I've known Hoffman for about two years now.

0:00:49
Brother, how are you? I'm great, man. I haven't seen you in a long, long, long, long, long, long time. It's great to see that you're healthy, you're living happy, and you seem to be having a lot of fun.

0:01:01
I appreciate that. Well, not doing it. God gets the glory, but I mean, this is why leadership lingo brings people together, man.

0:01:05
Right. It has to.

0:01:07
Well, man, I mean, you've got a fascinating resume, really weird titles for a student, to be honest with you, mainly like a tax manager. Why don't you tell us what you do? Like what's your day-to-day look like when you're both an assistant tax manager and also president of an RSO?

0:01:21
So, you know, a typical day-to-day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'm focusing on my employees and kind of the team dynamics that's going on within my office. So really trying to see, you know, are we getting everything that needs to be done for our clients? Are we treating our clients the right way? Because outside of just the internal, oh taxes must be done, it's also how are you treating your clients? Because it's customer service. When I go Tuesday and Thursday, that's when I'm focused on school, but also focusing on my craft, which is being the president of an RSO, especially in the lead business, which is really helping push diversity through and through within the community, especially in the corporate community. There's many, many, many, many corporations that are out there currently that says, hey, we want diversity. Well, you know, who better than UNLV? We're the number one diverse school in I believe the nation still, right? We have a 33% Hispanic and Latino ratio. And so the question comes down to me, right? If and then that's the case, and if and then that's true, why shouldn't this have been built long ago? And when I went to New York, and I interned for JPMorgan Chase, I came back and I had that idea, and I said, I'm going to execute, and when I execute, I'm going to bring companies that people want to see. So of course I had to bring JPMorgan because that's kind of like my family-ish, you can say. I brought a couple of the big four accounting companies. They're not focused just on accounting this time, but they're focusing on consulting. They're focusing on their diversity programs. I brought an investment bank known as UBS. They're focusing on, once again, not just investment banking, but the fields within investment bank to give students that are first gen, minority, that ability to feel comfortable in these fields because that's what it's about, right? How can we truly have equity if it's not truly equitable for everyone? So doing this, this was just me thinking of like, this is going to help everyone out and we're going to see what happens. What are the outcomes? I looked at, of course, the negatives and side effects. Outcomes will be outcomes and side effects will be side effects. So there's no, I'm not too mad at how far we're going. I think we're going at a great pace currently right now.

0:03:34
That's a great attitude to have, man. Yeah. Let me ask you, how long have you, I guess two questions, how long have you been an assistant tax manager or just with H&R Block? And then how long have you been president of the CBA?

0:03:44
So CBA last semester and 2022 of fall and then H&R Block last semester as well. So both of them started almost at the same time. I started CBA the moment I came back. H&R Block, I started that job in September of 2022. When I got the job, the first thing they told me, they were like, oh, you're going to be the youngest assistant tax manager ever in like the Nevada County. And are you excited? I was like, I'm going to do my best. The first thing I look at is I always think of, you know, what are, what does a great leader do? And I'm a very big, huge, huge, huge fan of the book Art of War by Sun Tzu. And he always gives the greatest advice which is before you go into a new battlefield try to learn the battlefield. So I looked at the stats I looked at where our office ranked and so I said and me instead of me trying to micromanage these people I'm going to try to first understand these people because a great leader understands his team before he tries to put in policies. Once I started understanding my team that's when I started understanding what works and what doesn't work. Currently right now, out of the Nevada branch, we have 22 in total. Our team is currently ranked number three. Last year we ranked number three. So we're still on pace and we're on pace to finish second this year. Of course I'm happy for that, but I'm still looking at what can still be improved, which is am I understanding what it is they want and then at the same time my understanding that I work for them, right? I think one of the worst things I've seen myself is when I was an intern once and I got to see bad managerial from a certain firm, I won't say the name, but I didn't like the way it was done and so one thing I looked at is if I was ever manager I wouldn't do that. Micromanaging isn't the way it's, I learned the hard way which was you have to, you have to understand you are working for them, not the other way around. That yes, of course, if their numbers are great, you look good. That is true. But you are still working for them. You're the one that's scheduling. You're the one that's talking to the client. You're the one that's closing some returns. You're the one that's talking to so and so and so and so. And so it's those things that really make, I personally would think, make me a decent leader for my age and you know, I'm soon going to turn 22 So finally I can finally say I have a huge love for this song by Taylor Swift 22 So when I turn 22 I'm going to play that and that's gonna be the first song that I play because it's a song about turning 22 and I was like You know what? There's a song for every every single every single like Age, I'll take that one. I'll take that one for 22. In regards to CBA and my student org, once again, I'm working for the student. What is it that you and LV lead business students don't have here, right? We have an amazing accounting department. We have an amazing finance department. We have an amazing marketing. We have amazing economics. We have an amazing But what we don't see is the different fields of business. You might want to be a Lee business student that wants to absolutely do nothing within the realms of hotel, accounting, or logics. And that's just within the Nevada business realm or real estate. And you really, really want to do wealth management, or you really, really want to do investment banking, or you really, really want to do consulting well those are all the way in the East Coast so then how do we break that shift right there's like a small paradigm shift where all the East Coast students get to have everything in business and all the West Coast students get to have you know a small amount well how do we break that well you know if we're not if they're not gonna come to us why don't we try to go to them why don't we try to approach them?" And that's where I go from then, because it's working. We had a survey, and then once that survey was out, we asked the students, like, hey, what do you want to see? And a lot of people wanted to see wealth and consulting, so that's what I have to do, and my team, and the board has to do to really bring that in for students and give them those opportunities.

0:07:57
That's awesome. What would you say is kind of like a 30,000-foot view definition of leadership that you use in the various areas of responsibility that you have?

0:08:07
The greatest word I can tell you right there is I believe everything is my fault. And so I come in with the mindset that as long as it's my fault, I can still change it, right? So when something is like uncontrollable or like an independent variable, I can't do anything about it. Versus when it's a dependent variable, there has to be something with the independent that caused it to happen. So I view it as, if it's my fault, I'll do any and everything to fix it. So I play the game, really, of accountability.

0:08:40
Awesome, man. Now, you mentioned earlier that you had an experience with a managerial style that you didn't appreciate.

0:08:46
Yeah.

0:08:47
Can you give either an example or just, again, you could be another 30,000 foot view.

0:08:51
What does bad leadership look like to you? Bad leadership, what it looks like to me primarily is someone that comes in with individualism. If you are trying to be a leader and you think it's all about you, then you are in the wrong realm of field, wrong field. If you think it is all about you, play an individual sport, go to a field that is very individual focused. So sales, sales is very individual focused. But if you tell me you want to be an accountant, you have to learn how to be a team player. And then leadership skill wise, those are the greatest leaders, the people that understand where you have to sacrifice some things in have the great things. For me, I understand real quick, CBA is only as good as CBA will be because I'm understanding what the market and the client wants. H&R Block, I'm understanding what my employees want. It never comes down to what I want because the moment it comes down to what I want, it fails. And that's where it failed for what I saw with that bad manager. They believed in what they were saying was full on and they were understanding. Sometimes you have to take a look at different views. Awesome, man. So, let's imagine that we're talking to a freshman, you know, replace me with a student. Although I am a student at UNLV, I guess, you know. If someone wants to be in the position that you're in, right, let's say either they want to go into accounting and they want to reach a position of a manager with H&R Block or maybe they want to run for an RSO office or one day succeed you. What advice would you give them for these aspiring leaders? The greatest advice I can say is put everything on your shoulder and then realize that it's okay to fail. What I mean by that is people are scared to fail. I failed many times. That's okay. That's okay. You have to fail sometimes in order to see progress. And the failure that I mean is not, I have, I went to poker and I tried my luck 50 times and I didn't get it. The failure I mean is you went to war and you lost 50 times, but each time you're getting better. Each time you're getting more skilled. So, let's say a freshman student were to apply to a positional role, an internship, and they see an error somewhere. They fix that. They apply again, they see an error somewhere, they fix that. They apply again. And so, it's consistency, consistency, consistency, and understanding that you have to appreciate failure.

0:11:30
That's awesome, man. Yeah.

0:11:32
That's great.

0:11:33
Yeah. Well, man, I really appreciate you coming in. You got a lot of words of wisdom. Yeah. Yeah, like you said, man, it's great seeing you, dude.

0:11:41
Yeah, man, listen. It's always great to see you, Mateo. You're always doing big, big, big things. I'm happy to see what's in store for you in your future. I appreciate that. Hopefully, if we see each other, if it's in New York, probably, then that's where you'll probably see me. But if you see me, maybe later in the future, we can always grab coffee and just grab a bite and catch up and see what's going on in life.

0:12:07
I'm going to ask you the same question that I started off with, man. What are you doing day to day? Well, dude, thanks so much. Stay safe, stay hydrated, and we'll talk to you later. We have Peter Maderjik in the studio today. Peter is the lead engineer of Rebels at UNLV. It's a student organization here on campus. And they're going to be responsible for sending our state, the beautiful Silver State, Nevada, our first satellite into space by summer of 2024. I think that's a pretty cool title. Peter, how are you doing today?

0:12:35
Howdy. I'm doing good.

0:12:37
How are you doing? I'm doing all right, staying hydrated. Yeah. All right, Peter. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. You know, Lead Engineer for RebelSat, that's not a title that most students here on campus have. I'd love for you just to tell us briefly about what you do as the lead engineer and what that kind of looks like day to day.

0:12:53
Yeah, absolutely. So my official title is lead engineer, but my friends call me kind of like the CEO of the organization, because while there are obviously a bunch of technical responsibilities that go into, you know, managing a satellite program, there's also key factors that you need to be able to work with as well, such as selling your organization to people who want to potentially put in money for you guys, or other faculty folks who might want to chip in in terms of support, as well as continuously recruiting to maintain a workforce that is dedicated towards the development of the project in general. So it's a lot of engineering, it's a lot of being good with talking to people, and sometimes it's even sitting down with the other engineers and getting the work done alongside them as well. It's really cool. I try to put myself in the position of how would an executive in the private industry do that sort of thing. I put myself in that mindset and I just kind of go about it like that. So that's great. No, it seems like a lot of hand-holding too. It can be. Yeah, it definitely can be. This is a school that doesn't really have a program that focuses on anything about spacecraft or rockets, so I don't really expect people to come in to understand what's going on. So, you know, I'm pretty flexible on that aspect, and it's always good to be able to kind of communicate what's going on, because while you teach the other people what's happening, you kind of reinforce those topics within yourself, and thus you become a better teacher in a sense, as well, so, definitely.

0:14:46
That's great.

0:14:47
How long have you been a lead engineer?

0:14:48
So my journey has been kind of weird to be honest with you. When I started at RubbleSot, this was fall of 2020. As a member, I eventually became the first manufacturing lead of the manufacturing subsystem, which was in charge of the design assembly manufacturing of the spacecraft. And then the name of that subsystem turned into structures, which was more accurate. I was in that role for a couple of months, and then I went into the lead role for about a year and two months before I decided that it might've been a little bit too much for me, with everything else going on in my life at the time. So I stepped back down to structures, and then as of about a month ago, I stepped back up to project lead, and lead engineer status for this upcoming semester. So I've been involved for the past two and a half years almost now. Great, so over the last two and a half years,

0:15:43
I'm sure you've seen a lot of different types of leaders, I mean yourself as a leader. What's a good definition of leadership? What does leadership mean to you?

0:15:50
To me it means being able to hold accountability in other people as well as yourself. As a leader, I think one of the most important elements of driving a successful business or a product, or just an idea in general, is being able to have a vision. And you know, when it comes to engineering, things go wrong all the time. So, you know, when you have somebody who's in a leadership title who can't necessarily say that they've made a mistake I think is super detrimental versus somebody who is willing to take accountability within themselves and be able to say when they were wrong or when they messed up in a challenge but is also willing to kind of stand back up as a result of that and continue to push forward based on those learning experiences that they've gone through. Because I'm not going to be in charge of 500 people and lead everybody down the wrong path with me being conscious of that but not being willing to communicate that and be like, hey guys, I think we made a mistake somewhere going down this path. Let's back up for a second and try a different path instead, which would be the ideal way of going about it, which is how I try to go about things. So what's an example then? And it could be an experience that you had at Revelsat or just your experience

0:17:17
being at UNLV, what would bad leadership then look like?

0:17:20
Bad leadership.

0:17:21
That's a good question.

0:17:22
It could also be some things to avoid, right?

0:17:24
So, I like to believe that there's no good leaders and bad leaders. I think people are better and worse on different days. So what are some pitfalls that folks can avoid then? You know, I'm not gonna say any names, but just speaking from my past experiences of what I've seen with other people is that at an age like the one that I'm in right now, like I'm 21 years old, for many people our age right now, this is a new experience for some, if not many, it's the first time that they've ever held a leadership title. I've seen it get to their heads many times and when it gets to your head, you all of a sudden typically forget what the purpose of actually leading the group is as opposed to is it more so serving yourself, is it more so serving your resume, your ego, your image. Those are the things that I see as common pitfalls for people our age. Not even just people our age, people older who have more experience, too. What tends to happen is the people who work for those folks will start to realize that they're kind of in it for themselves and not for the advancement of the business or the product or whatever it is that they're working on. And then the team that you're leading loses morale and they're not as willing to even get the work done anymore and then all of a sudden you're in this position where not much, if anything, is happening anymore. Yes, being a leader can feel kind of cool sometimes. You get to talk to people that you never thought you would've been able to meet and stuff like that, but at the same time you've got to remember what the main point of you being in that position is. You have to keep going towards that vision and keep going at it until you get to that point. In my case, it's trying to get Nevada into space with our first small spacecraft.

0:19:34
That's outstanding to me. So obviously, it seems like there are some opportunities then to make a lot of mistakes. And I don't just mean, I don't mean from an engineering perspective. I'm sure that happens a lot. But what do you do when you're kind of struggling with either the ego aspect? I'm sure a lot of people look to you and so a lot of people rely on you.

0:19:53
So how do you kind of overcome some of those pitfalls that you just mentioned?

0:19:56
Definitely. I mean, I'm, yeah, yeah. It's not easy sometimes, oftentimes, but I always remind myself what the important goal is at the end of the day is to bring a positive change to the community. And what I've noticed is the more people that you meet, the more people know who you are. And it's probably something that I'm setting myself up for just by being on this podcast right now is you know you can't please everybody there are so many people that I can think of that probably don't look at me in the the best light at all for whatever reason it may be and I'm completely fine with that because you know I respect that they have their own emotions and their own takes are entitled to their own opinions but at the end of the day I'm here for a reason. I'm gonna continue pursuing my goals, whether people like it or not. I think that's another pitfall that I see a lot of people make, is that they're too concerned about what other people think about them. When you ignore what you're working on and instead focus on what other people's opinions of you are, you try to tailor yourself towards the minds of all those other people's, but there's so many other people, there's only one of you. In my case, I ask myself, which side am I going to take? Obviously, I'm going to take my side. But it works out, and it does you so much better mental health-wise, too. You don't have to worry about whether someone likes you or not. I can just walk into a room feeling like I'm here to do the thing I came to do, and I don't have to worry about anything else, and it's always going to be a good time. Trying really hard not to sound like an egoist or something like that right now, but it is true.

0:21:45
That's awesome. Well, let's say, imagine then, instead of me, imagine that you're speaking to a freshman or a sophomore here at UNLV. What advice would you give them if one day they want to do, it doesn't have to be the exact same thing, but maybe they want to take up a position of responsibility in a technical role or medical role. Yeah. For me, it's legal. But what advice would you give them to not only avoid those pitfalls, you just told us you know, keep your head on straight and keep looking at the mission, but how do they push out the noise?

0:22:13
What would you tell them? Yeah, I would say embrace failure, number one. Number two, absolutely have a vision. Absolutely have a vision. Because so many people go into these leadership roles without a vision and they know that they're in a leadership title but they can't answer the question of Where am I going to take this organization or a group of people into the next six months into the next 12 months? two years five years ten years and That that can be kind of concerning, you know Because if you're going to be leading people, you need to essentially understand where you want to take them. What's the end goal? If you don't have an end goal, then what are you doing? But if a freshman was sitting across from me right now, not you, I would pretty much just say, embrace failure, it's not going to be a perfect road. There are going to be instances where you run into things that you might not anticipate at first, and that's totally fun. You're going to meet people that will love you, you're going to meet people that will not love you at all, and that's completely fun. That's how life is and it's going to take time to realize that that's kind of like a normal thing and the more you encounter that, the more you'll recognize how much of a norm it is that it won't even phase you anymore. There will come a point where it will not phase you anymore and I think once you get to that point, you're potentially unstoppable mentally. So, yeah.

0:23:45
That's awesome. Well, for anybody listening, I mean, Peter's the guy. RebelSat's one of the coolest organizations I've ever known of. And I'm just gonna do a little plug for myself. I believe, and you told me if I'm wrong, Peter, I think I'm the first person in RebelSat history to buy their shirt. To buy the official RebelSat shirt.

0:23:59
That is a recorded fact. Outstanding. As a matter of fact. Love to hear it, love to see it, love to wear it. So folks, thanks so much for listening. Peter, I want to appreciate you for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, dude. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, man, stay hydrated, have a great day, man. You too, bro.

0:24:15
Thank you.

0:24:16
Appreciate it.

0:24:17
If you want to find out more information about the folks we interviewed here today or just learn more, you're more than welcome to follow us at Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn at Leadership Lingo. You can also shoot me an email at mateo at leadershiplingo.show. That's M-A-T-E-O at leadershiplingo.S-H-O-W.

0:24:33
We'll catch you next time. We'll catch you next time.

0:24:34
Stay safe, stay hydrated, have a great day.