Ep. 105 - Supporting NextGen Leaders: Winning At Business & Life on Your Terms - with Justin Lafazan & Dylan Gambardella

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Justin Lafazan and Dylan Gambardella are Co-Founders and CEOs of NextGen HQ, a mentorship platform dedicated to helping Next Generation Leaders succeed at work and life. And when I first heard about this platform, I knew I had to talk to the people who created it.

For a while now, there has been a need for a platform to educate, inspire, and really help accelerate the learning of the younger generations. Because times have changed and the existing resources, tools, content, and even approaches don’t seem to align with what the younger generations are looking for.

When they talk about their goals, they talk about pursuing happiness and fulfillment, rather than money or title or power.

Part of this is comes from their innate understanding that they want and need to be to be constantly growing. In fact, they’ve only ever known a world that’s rapidly changing. And at the end of the day, it's about reaching one’s growth potential.

I had the benefit of wonderful mentors and friends who supported me along my career development journey, and I really don’t think I would have gotten here without that support. So I feel compelled to pay it forward — and it has been really fulfilling talking to Justin and Dylan and working with the Next Gen HQ team thus far.

For other leaders out there, I hope these two are inspiring for you as they were to me — and for the younger listeners, I hope you’re able to find the same kind of support I had in learning to “win” at work and life, as Dylan and Justin say.

An Entrepreneurial Jump Start

Justin and Dylan launched NextGen HQ in 2014 — when they were only 18 years old!

Both of them realized at an early age that work and life are completely integrated, which means work has to be in line with one’s mission and values because we all spend so much time, energy, and resources doing it. They were seeking fulfillment, desire, personal growth, achievement, and actualization, driven by a need to be the best they could be. And it was all about exploring and sampling various interests and letting those desires guide them.

They started their journey looking to understand who was happy and who had a purpose. Ultimately, who was enjoying life to the fullest. And they found it was those who were entrepreneurial in nature that reflected these values.

Starting a business wasn’t necessarily the plan when they started, but pursuing personal growth and purpose eventually turned into a platform to help other young people do the same.

Redefining Success at NextGen HQ

As personal growth junkies, success for Justin and Dylan is building a “really, really big, meaningful, valuable enterprise that helps a lot of people, and enjoying the experience of that endeavor because the pursuit each day is so fulfilling, fun, challenging, and exciting.”

It's about winning at business and life on their terms. Winning means the pursuit of their potential and also helping other people win. Success is not a zero-sum game.

To succeed at their mission to build the top learning and development ecosystem and help the “Next Generation” achieve success at work and life, they want to partner with schools and organizations to better serve their students and employees.

The foundation of their ecosystem — which encompasses learning, development and career acceleration — is built around the entrepreneurial mindset because that is the first and most important building block.

At NextGen HQ, they define the entrepreneurial mindset as a way of thinking that enables you to design the life of your dreams. And they break your life into three categories: you, your relationships, and your work. Happiness and fulfillment comes from understanding the interconnectivity between them.

And once these young people can think like an entrepreneur, they can acquire the skills to activate, accelerate and excel in their career, whether or not they choose to pursue starting their own business.

Understanding & Supporting the Next Generation

In the 21st century, our work and personal lives are not siloed and separate — they are deeply interconnected.

“It's one entity,” Dylan says. “And you have to think about how the harmony comes to life, how you, in your own way, want things to fit. But long gone are the days where they check in at nine and then check out at five.”

And although there’s a lot of opportunity in this fluid world of work, it can also be challenging for individuals to navigate it, especially alone. Dylan and Justin say the biggest challenges are lack of awareness and exposure.

Without role models or diverse experiences to provide that perspective, many won’t even be aware of what’s possible. Justin and Dylan realized that, if they really want to achieve that mission of helping the next generation of leaders succeed at work and life, they have to reach kids early in their education, as early as primary school.

Problem solving, communication, leadership — the core of NextGen’s entrepreneurial mindset — are skills that anyone can benefit from, skills that everyone will need to succeed in the future of work, but our schools aren’t currently set up to provide that education. And that’s where NextGen HQ can help these institutions and students.

Our Responsibility is to Support the Next Generation

We all have a different definition of progress. We all have a different approach.

When I look at progress, I’m always seeking to understand it through the lens of these younger generations. When you understand where they're coming from, why they believe what they believe, how they want to pursue life differently, and the environment that they grew up in, inevitably, it helps you progress as a leader, too.

And that’s why a platform like NextGen HQ is so important, both for the mentors and the mentees. There's always an opportunity to learn and gain a different kind of knowledge. That's when you can create progress for everyone.

What worked for us may not work for other people, and learning what modes of operation work best for others helps you actually think about different ways for you to do what you're doing even better.

It’s critical for every leader to understand how the workforce is evolving, it’s important for us to be open to reframing the way we think of careers and success. Because our experiences are not always reflective of the target audiences that we’re looking to hire and cultivate and our organizations depend on how well we support the next generation of leaders.

Career Advice

“Just get started.”
“If you're in the game, you're on your way; you’re winning at business and life.”

Key Takeaways

Go all-in on your strengths and delegate your weaknesses. Of course, you have to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, first.
Success is about playing where you fit best so that you can be your best self.
You are doing yourself a disservice if you’re not “info sponging,” or taking what you learn in one area of your life and applying that to other areas of your life. Learning to connect these dots, even when things may not seem related, has a compounding effect.
You have to think about your life. If you're not taking that intentional approach, then what are you doing?
Entrepreneurial mindset involves a holistic view of not just yourself but also your work and your relationships. Again, think about connecting the dots.
Just get in the game. Put yourself out there. You're going to learn and get better.
Reframe failure as learning. If you approach life with that mentality, you’ll be more resilient and adaptable.
If you have a long-game mindset, there is no finite destination. But that doesn’t mean there’s no success — it’s this mindset that allows you to say, “I'm winning today,” every single day.