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

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 di ...