Cal Riley on Leadership, Loss, and a Better Way to Work

About this episode

Cal Riley discusses his journey from combat to compassionate leadership and the importance of mental health in business.

What if leadership wasn’t about grinding yourself down to nothing, but about building something greater—with others—through compassion? In this powerful episode, we sit down with Cal Riley, a combat-tested U.S. Army officer turned entrepreneur, EOS Implementer, and author of Entrepreneurial Compassion: An Entrepreneur’s Journey Through Suicide, Combat, and the Discovery of Compassionate Leadership. Cal shares his deeply personal and professional journey—one that moves from war zones to boardrooms, from burnout to breakthrough, and from unbearable grief to a renewed mission to lead with heart. We talk candidly about Cal’s return from deployment, the weight of inheriting a struggling family business, and what it looked like to work 90+ hour weeks while feeling like everything was crumbling. But it was also during this time that Cal discovered the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and with it, a framework that helped him install a leadership team, reclaim his time, and rebuild the business—and himself—from the inside out. Cal opens up about the loss of his brother to suicide, and how that trauma became a turning point—not only in his life, but in how he leads, coaches, and…

People in this episode

Host: Unbound Performance

Guest: Cal Riley

Topics covered

• leadership
• compassion
• mental health
• entrepreneurship
• personal growth

Keywords

• leadership
• compassionate leadership
• mental health
• entrepreneurship
• suicide prevention

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U.S. Army, EOS

Books & works: Entrepreneurial Compassion: An Entrepreneur’s Journey Through Suicide, Combat, and the Discovery of Compassionate Leadership

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