Joel Ojeda is the Chief Operating Officer for the West region of an infrastructure consulting company, where he's helped scale the organization from roughly 1,000 to 6,500 employees.

In this episode of Forge The Man, Joel — a USC engineering grad and Yale MBA — gets refreshingly practical about what it actually takes to lead well and grow a career: how he protects his focus from constant digital noise, what he looks for when hiring (and firing), how he handles team conflict, and why owning your mistakes builds more trust than trying to look perfect. The conversation also goes deeper into Joel's own struggle with overwork and perfectionism, his decision (with his wife) to become a single-income family, and how he's learned to turn a hard day's work into prayer instead of a search for recognition. It's a grounded, tactical episode for any yo ...