Hey, I’m Daniel, one of the co-hosts of The Modern People Leader podcast.

You’re probably wondering a couple of things:

One: Who are these Modern People Leader guys?
Two: Are they brothers?

Let’s clear that up.

This is Daniel by the way.

We aren’t brothers. Stephen is flattered when people ask, but we’re actually first cousins once removed—which is just a fancy way of saying he’s my dad’s first cousin.

And as for the first question, let’s get into the Modern People Leader origin story.

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The beginning

Summer 2015. I was between my junior and senior year at The University of Texas at Austin, studying advertising, trying to figure out my next move.

That’s when Stephen reached out.

At this point, I had maybe met him two or three times in my life. But he heard I was looking for an internship and invited me to dinner at Trudy’s, a Mexican spot in Austin.

Over queso and margaritas, he pitched me a four-week trial run at his HR tech startup, Workify.

I was employee #3. I did a bit of everything—customer success, QA, sales—you name it. Eventually, I became a one-man marketing team for the next four years.

The Big Takeaways:

• I loved HR tech.
• HR professionals? Some of the kindest, most genuine people I’ve ever met.

From Workify, I moved to Udacity, a learning tech company. Two months in—COVID hit. That’s when it clicked: HR leaders were about to be leaned on more than ever before.

I needed to learn everything I could about HR.

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The Pivot

At first, I thought I’d start an HR tech company. So, I set up 15-20 minute chats with HR leaders, looking for a compelling problem to solve. But something unexpected happened.

I loved these conversations.

I was already a longtime podcast listener, so I thought:

What if I start a podcast?

A fun marketing experiment.

A chance to talk to brilliant HR minds.

A way to learn as much as possible.

I pitched Stephen. He shut it down immediately— "I don’t even listen to podcasts."
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But after some convincing, he was in.

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Our Mission: Improve the lives of 100 million employees by 2030.

Originally I wrote 10 million, but Stephen—sneakily added a zero because we "weren’t thinking big enough."

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How do we get there?

By interviewing as many HR leaders as possible and sharing their knowledge with as many HR leaders as possible.

Imagine 100,000 HR professionals listening to our episodes and applying insights to their organizations. That’s real impact.