Wedding Business Solutions

Andy Neillie - The silent leader!

• Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

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Are you making everything run smoothly without stepping into the spotlight? Are you letting your work speak for itself, or do you feel the need to get the credit? In this episode, I talk about the power and business impact of being a silent leader—how subtle direction, teamwork, and humility can elevate everyone’s experience (including the client’s) and strengthen your business relationships.

Listen to this new episode for insights on building trust, empowering your team, and making every event a seamless success—by leading from behind the scenes.


About Andy:

Best-selling leadership author Dr. Andy built a business from start-up to $5 million in annual sales. He recently sold the business to focus full-time on helping other leaders develop their teams. His leadership philosophy blends practical wisdom with a focus on humility and resilience.

Beyond business, Andy is active at his church; he is also a fitness enthusiast and pet owner, often finding leadership lessons in unexpected places—whether in the gym, managing a business, or observing the habits of the many dogs he and his family have rescued over the years. His ability to weave relatable, everyday experiences into powerful leadership insights makes Neillie a sought-after speaker and mentor.


Contact Andy:

NeillieLeadership.com

LeadershipMaterials.com


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. 

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: 

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com 

Are you being a silent leader? Listen to this episode, see where I'm going. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so excited to have my friend Andy Neely on to talk about the Silent Leader. Andy, how you doing today?

I'm doing great, and this is the highlight of my week. I've been looking forward to our meeting, Alan, for. Since you first invited me to log on and join you.

Well. Well, I appreciate it. And you and I hang out and talk, and we have a lot of fun together. But like a lot of my speaker friends and your speaker friends, I follow your LinkedIn and something pops up every once in a while. I just had Tim Richardson on Same Thing. Gonna have Robert Kennedy III on, you know, Same Thing. Something popped up. It's like, oh, that would be really cool for my audience.

So you wrote a. I don't know if it's a blog or a newsletter. I don't know what you describe it as about Seth, who is on the keyboard at your church, but in the background. But in the background, but really is really directing everything there. So tell us about that.

Well, Alan, having you on camera, I'm probably preaching to the choir because of your musical background, but, yeah, it was brand new to me. My wife and I go to one of these big boxes, churches that's got, like, a concert for their worship music. And the, you know, lights are dim, and there's probably eight people up on stage. There's a lead singer and a bass guitarist and a drummer and a couple of other guitarists. Somebody's on a 12 string. At times we have somebody on some type of woodwind. And then we've got the keyboardist in the back. And I was visiting with Seth because Alan, again, you probably already knew this, but it.

But I noticed Seth, who's become a friend of mine, periodically he would lean into the microphone when. When it wasn't singing. And so it's like Seth, the keyboardist, is out of rhythm with everybody else. They're all singing, and then there's an instrumental piece. But you see Seth lean into the microphone. And I asked him what that was about, and he said, well, I'm giving them direction based on what the lead singer and I are looking at coming up. And that led into this whole discussion around. Seth is kind of off the lights.

You don't really see him unless you look for him. He's in the dark in the back. And he's not the main play leader, if you would, Alan, but he's working with this lead female vocalist to make sure everybody knows she's going to do one more chorus or we're going to pick up on the 16th beat or we're letting that last a little bit longer. Things you would understand better than me, I don't even fully understand it, but he and she need to be on the same page. And in some respects, while she's up front, he's really directing everything from the back and he's doing it without any of us even knowing it. What a great illustration.

Right, right, right. Because there are people that need to be out front and need to know that. And you and I are on stage at times, right? That's fine. But that's just us, right? We're there, we're the focus. But then there are other times, and I actually have this coming up at our conference this summer where there's going to be a band and there's going to be three people standing up front singing. But I'm the musical director and I'm going to be on the keyboard. Just happens to be on the keyboard. Like I'm going to be there.

And we've already talked about the hand signals and things because we won't have the fancy system that you have at the church where I can talk into their ears. But it's, you know, it's one more time or, you know, it's stop or it's whatever. But how does this relate to business? So most of the people listening to are smaller businesses. There are some people work for larger companies, but most of them are smaller businesses. Many of them, it's just them. Many of them, it's just a handful of people. So how does this silent leadership come in and what is the advantage of that versus being that loud up front?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, my, my passionate area in the area that I speak into is the area of small business leadership. The, the, you know, Chuck in a truck, who today has 50 trucks. And you know, part of the reality of silent leadership is realizing that you can influence decisions with a gentle nudge. You can be at the bottom of the pyramid rather than at the top of the pyramid. In fact, there's times you need to be the quiet voice whispering in somebody's ear. And you know, as I think about particularly the, the clients you work with, they're working with clients where this is one of the scariest, most exciting, anxiety provoking highlights of their life. And your clients don't need to be the biggest person in the room at that point.

They need to be making sure that the bride and the groom, that the people at the front of the room are in the spotlight. But things happen seamlessly. They're framed in the picture correctly. And it's invisible. All of the work it took to make that picture work. The food is laid out beautifully and nobody has any idea what it took. It's just the bride and groom's choice of the condiments that they wanted to have. And in some respects, I mean, Alan, if your clients do well, what they really do well, their work looks invisible at times.

And I think that's a leadership principle. If Seth does a really good job leading the eight people on the band, none of us notice because they're always in full sync and we're just worshiping and singing together. So you can tell you kind of got me up on my soapbox here about the silent leader idea.

Well, when I was VP of sales at a company, I often said if I hired the right people, if I gave them the good training, if I gave them all the tools that they needed, if they gave them not just a, a responsibility, but authority with that responsibility, it should look like I'm doing nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah. And if it looks like I'm doing nothing, that means we have a well oiled machine.

Yeah.

If I'm putting out fires all day, that's my fault. Yeah, that's my fault. Because somebody doesn't have what they need. Somebody wasn't trained for what they need. Or I put the wrong person or the right person in the wrong seat or something like that. And I, I think that's a. The same thing with Seth in the background. Right.

If Seth hired the put the right musicians there and they do their practicing and they do all that stuff, Seth doesn't have to have a heavy hand.

Well, there's this great research study done a number of years ago. They ended up producing the book called the Work of Leaders by Juliet Straw and several co authors. But it's really a research piece. One of the things they identified that made an effective leader an effective leader is they enabled their people to execute. It's the very thing you're talking about. It's not about me. And most of my background comes out of sales leadership like you. It's not about me closing the sales anymore.

It's not about me being at the top of the leaderboard anymore. It's not about me being up on stage winning the salesperson of the year award. If I've done a really good job, I'm in the front row cheering my people on and making them More successful. That's the power of a silent leader. Now you know, part of the Challenge in the 2020s in a celebrity influence driven world where we all want to have 10,000 followers, is there is a certain level of egolessness involved in the silent leader, perhaps.

No, there's no egos in the wedding industry. What are you talking about?

Yeah, yeah, but that, but that's the

thing is, you know, a wedding and event, corporate event, wedding event, whatever, it's never about you. It's never about the caterer, the photographer, the venue, the, the seamstress, the, the, the, the, the dj, whatever. It's always about them. And there are people that cross that line. They want it, want it to be about them. I remember being in an event a long time ago and this photographer had a pretty big ego, right? He came in with the don't you know who I am? Kind of a thing and he would, he had his camera set to you know, shoot like multiple, like, you know, a lot of shots. But he was like walking around like just pointing the camera and doing that. I'm thinking you're not taking any time, right? You can't be that good that you can just like pick up your camera and press the button.

Well, because he's taking 50 shots. Well, yeah, one of them might be good. Well, heck, I don't need you for that. I can do that, I can do that. And then you see, you know, the best ones, your, your work will speak for itself. But what speaks for itself also is the way you interact with the other people. This is a team. And what you described is this silent leadership is also that the DJ or the band is coordinating with the caterer and they're coordinating with the photographer and the videographer.

So the, the, the cake cutting doesn't start until all those players are in place, right? And then you have other times. I, I just had one, this guy posted, I'm not going to mention names, was a DJ was posted about the owner of this venue who is apparently known to be pretty nasty, right? And they had a floor plan where he's supposed to set up and she says, no, you're going to set up over here. Which was completely bad line of sight and all this kind of stuff, complaining about the noise level right from the beginning. And you know, he said, I can't turn the bass off. Like you're not, people aren't going to dance. You know what it sounds like if you're playing dance music and there's no bass, right? You can't do that. And then she said, somebody's going to call the cops on them. And she did.

On her own venue.

Right.

And the cop shows up and he goes, I couldn't hear anything outside. I don't know what she's talking about until you walk inside.

And that's probably, you know, in, In. In the world that you live in and you speak into where there are oftentimes these multiple vendors and providers, they have to. They have to play well with one another. This, this egolessness. Yeah. You know, even if you're really good at what you do and you're dealing with somebody that's not as good as what it. What they do as you are, how do you work to make them look better than they deserve? Because once again, you want the bride and groom to have a seamless day. You want them to look back 35 years later and say, that was the best day of our lives, or whatever that is.

And part of that has to do with the photographer. Not, you know, when. Yeah. When the AV group didn't do the lighting the way it was supposed to be done or whatever. I, you know. Yeah. The complicated world.

Well, listen, the world is that we, We. We have to take the cards we're dealt, no matter what that means. And, you know, I used to show up at a wedding expo and I would show up early, set up my booth, and then go around and help other people.

Right.

That's how I got to meet them and, you know, give them a hand. And people, when you're, when you help people who didn't ask for help, they remember. Right? And just so many stories that I hear about, you know, like I was talking to this dj, said if I walk into the wedding and I see the photographer, and I know this photographer and I know how well we work together, it's like, this is going to be a good night.

Right?

And it said, sometimes you walk in and you see who is there and you're like, oh, no, this is going to be a problem. Well, who do you want to be known as? Right. That's what it is. A friend of mine just got downsized from her position and people have been reaching out to help her. And I said, yeah, because you've always been a giver, and people want to give when you don't ask. Right. They want to give you not because you're asking, but because you've always given to them. And the same thing happened to me when I got downsized 15 years ago.

Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, the principle there really goes beyond silent leadership. It really goes to kind of that, you know, that. That humility to recognize we're all in this together. Right? And that's. That's not a leadership principle. That's not a sales principle. That's a.

That's a. You know, that's a mind your manners principle that, you know, that book was it 40 years ago. Everything I needed to learn, I learned during kindergarten kind of lesson, right? But what it. What it does when it's executed well is it lets other people blossom, and it lets events go well, and it lets things appear seamless when that silent leader knows it's not really seamless. I got my fingers in 15 different holes in the dike right now, but nobody needs to know about it because that's not what it's about. There'll be a time afterwards for some debrief, and let's review, and let's not make the same mistakes next time. But for right now, the camera's on, the lights are up. Let's.

Let's make it a seamless experience.

Right? Right now, let's do what we have to do. I remember when I was a VP of sales, and there was something we were trying to get done, and I suggested something, and I got shot down. And then about three weeks later, my boss came up with this idea, and. And we got it. And my sales directors, who were right underneath me, one of them said, that's. That's what you suggested. I said, yeah, I know, I know. She said, well, aren't you going to say something? I said, no.

Yeah.

I said, my goal was to get that. My goal wasn't to get credit for that. My goal was to get that. And I think sometimes we have to think about that. What is. What is really important right now? What are we trying to accomplish? And do I need to be in the spotlight? Because, you know, if you're always needing to be in the spotlight, you're not focusing on the right things. Right?

Well, and let's flip that, because one of the horror stories I have in my past, that is one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about good leaders being good leaders, is I worked for a boss that no matter what the team did, he always took credit for it. He made himself look good. We would have those ideas you just talked about, and he would take credit for it in front of his seniors, in front of the client, and it just demoralized the team. Right. And, you know, none of us wanted to work for him. And turnover was high and customer service scores weren't as Strong as they could have been because we just didn't care after a while. And. And so the.

If we're going to continue to use this analogy, the flip side of silent leadership is leadership that has to put itself first. And after a while, nobody wants to follow that leader and nobody wants to be a part of that band, and nobody wants to be involved in those special events because it's just like, you know what? He just sucked the air out of the room. She just destroyed any motivation I had. Whatever it is, it's like, right, I don't want to do that again.

Yeah. When I go to a company and I have the sales team and I say, so how long have you been here? How long have you been here? And when I'm hearing 5 years, 8 years, 9 years, 12 years, whatever, it tells me right away what I need to know about the people above them. You're not going to stick around that long. And I remember in a previous job, I was driving into the office. I worked from home, but I was driving into the office one day, and on the radio that day, they Talked about the 10 top. The 10 best companies to work for. This were. These are the 10 best companies to work for.

And I'm jazzed. And I get into the CEO's office and I said, hey, what are we doing to get on this list next year?

Next year?

And he goes, absolutely nothing. I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, we're a new company, and we're that shiny object now, and people want to come work for us for a year, year and a half, put us on the resume, go someplace else. I said, you know, that might work for that kid out of college in editorial or whatever. I said, but in my sales team, I want them to be here a long time right now. You can churn your other department if you want, but I don't want that. And the very first person I hired ended up working for the company for 22 years.

Good for you.

Okay. And again. But you want your people to want to work for you. I empowered my people. I used to say, I treated. I treat my salespeople like I treat my children and people like, really? I said, yeah, I respect them. I don't do it for them. I teach them how to do it.

I don't do it for them. It's okay if they fail as long as they learn something right. Is the same things. Right. That's what we want for our kids. And I remember a sales rep came to me and she said, I'm having a Problem with the customer. I said, no, you're not. She said, I'm not.

I said, would you like to discuss your customer with me? She goes, yeah. I said, hey, what's going on? She told me what's going on. I said, all right. What do you think we should do? She said, you want to know what I think? I said, it's your customer. What do you think we should do? She said something. I said, do you think that'll make them happy? She said, I think so. I said, no. Will that make them happy? Because that's our goal here.

We want to make them happy. She goes, yeah, I think it'll make them happy. I said, okay, then go do it. Right. Because I. Again, responsibility with authority, right? And I can't fix every problem. Like I said, if I'm putting out all the fires, that's my fault because I'm making it go through me. Because I think it needs to be.

I need to be the fixer. No, I need to be the empowerer.

Well, and I. So I think that probably leads to one of the underlying principles of silent leadership. It takes a degree of maturity, right? Because, man, Seth, if, you know, he's been playing instruments all his life. He's a talented musician, he's been up on stages since he was in elementary school or middle school. And now he's in the back corner where there are no spotlights on the stage. And he's just fine with that because he knows it's not about him. And, you know, you and I have, we both know, bosses that invariably make it about them and nobody wants to be alongside them. After a while, your listeners wouldn't know this, but Alan, you know, for 15 years, I grew local retail businesses here in Central Texas, where I live, had as many as 175 hourly employees doing retail work.

And we owned our businesses for 16 years and we had retail workers with us for 15 of those 16 years. And I have learned since then that retail people never stay that long. Well, I don't know if I was ever a really good boss, but the fact that people came and stayed meant that they were finding something that fulfilled them. And part of it was I didn't want to take the limelight, man. I want you to go. I want the customers to think you're top of the pyramid. I don't even care if they know I exist. I'm not really that important.

And part of that sounds like humble pride thing, but part of it was really they knew how to do it better anyways. I Just needed to give them the tools so that they could go do their work. Right. And when Seth is leaning into that microphone, he probably doesn't know how to play that 12 string guitar as well as the 12 string guitar player does, but he knows how to help that 12 string guitar guy be in sync with where the lead singer is taking the next chorus or whatever they're doing. You would understand the rhythm of that better than me, my friend.

Well, it's the, the conductor of an orchestra.

Yeah, right.

Play some instruments and might play some of them well, but doesn't play all of them.

Right.

And all of these talented musicians can't make beautiful music together without the conductor. Right now the conductor is standing there and is there, but the conductor also has their back to the audience. They're facing the musicians there. I don't know if you're familiar with Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Kyle. So those of you that haven't read those, those books, you know, a charismatic.

Shame on you if you haven't read those books.

That's right. Shame on you.

All good small businesses in the western world in the 2020s.

Yeah. Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Collins. It talks about clock builders and time tellers. Right. A time teller like a Lee Iacocca. Chrysler was in trouble. Lee Iacocca was very charismatic leader and he had to be that charismatic guy. And Chrysler was Lee Iacocca.

One in the same. They were embodied there. And a time teller, when things are going well, looks in the mirror and says, yeah, I'm doing a good job. And when things are going badly, looks through the window at the team and says, what are you doing wrong? Right. A clock builder builds a foundation that is strong without them. And they use the example of 3M Corporation, which at the time had had five CEOs. In over a hundred years, they've only had five CEOs. And you can't name any one of them? No, because it was never about them.

And a, a, a clock builder says when things are going badly, they look in the mirror and say, what am I doing wrong? And when things are going well, they look through the window and say, you, you guys are doing a great job there. And that's the thing is I think maturity is a great thing. Ego, right. Does it have to be about you? With what we're doing with weddings and events, it shouldn't be right. You want to shine? Great. Go get up on a stage and make it about you. Add value for other people and have that you've probably had the same thing. Andy.

Sometimes people want to give me a level of celebrity because I'm the guy on stage and 15 books and all this.

Lowell speaking fellow Alan Global speaking.

Yeah, yeah, one of four, 46. Right. And. And I get it, I get it because I, I can, I've been in the audience and. And then you meet some of the people on stage and they're just, just a regular person. That's who I want to be. I just have to be good at something. But I don't need to be this influencer online.

You know, like some people just need to put themselves out there. And I was like, I don't need it. I'm so comfortable in who I am. So let's go to one more thing before we end. You have a lot of small businesses where it's just them, solopreneur. What can you suggest to them on how to be a better partner when they walk into an event and they have all these other vendors, some of whom they've never met. Right. What would you suggest?

Well, you know, because you've led sales teams, one of the key best practices for effective salespeople is pre call planning. Right. So do you go in to that sales call with the questions you're going to ask, with the objections you're going to anticipate? Do you know what your target A objective is? Do you have a fallback target B, all of that stuff that you've taught so many people over the years? Yeah, I, I think people that want to be part of teams and be viewed as a team player who is supportive need to kind of do their own pregame planning and go into that event not just saying, I've got my thing, but how can I make other people look good? What can I do? And so I call it the leaders hour. It's not necessarily 60 Minutes. And it's not just for leaders, but it's that self leadership. How do you start the day? With some personal disciplines that prepare you for the day. Reflection, prayer, scripture reading for some people, journaling. How do you make sure you're ready to bring your best self to this event that you're heading into, to the people you're going to be interacting with, to the anxious parents of the, of the couple that's getting married who are afraid they're not going to look good for the photos.

And how do you prepare yourself for a day that is just you giving to them? And you know, Alan, you and I, we live in this world where we're up on stages and we're in the front of rooms. And you and I both hang out with our industry enough to know there's also a lot of people who love that limelight. That's what it's really about. The people that have been around you and me for many years and have built successful speaking and training careers, they're not necessarily the most charismatic. They're not the one that needs to have the spotlight on them. They're the ones that just show up and serve. And, and they may have a communication skill or gift, so they happen to serve from the front of the room at times, but right at the end of the day, they, they just kind of want to get down off stage and go and meet with people to see that was this really helpful. And that's.

Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking if, if you took the time to find out who else is going to be part of that event, so find out from the couple who else is going to be part. And if you don't know, some of them reach out and say, hey, you know, we're going to be part of this event together. What can I do to make your job easier? Right.

To working with you?

And yeah, but how can I make your job easier? You know, and they'll say, you know what, the last guy, you know, what they did, the last person, this is what they did. You know, don't do that. And I was like, no, that, that's very great. You know, but what can I do to help you? Right? How can we coordinate together? I know it's going to take time, and I know when you're busy season, that's a thing. But think about how much smoother this will go. Plus you end up making allies instead of adversaries.

Yeah.

And that, and that's a big thing. You know, people are going to judge you by what you do, not by what you say. Yeah. And, you know, same like with your kids. Right. You can't be smoking a cigarette and telling your kids, don't smoke. It's just.

And you know, you and I are both committed to helping business people grow their businesses. If you're building allies instead of adversaries, you're. You're creating a referral pipeline at some point as well. And that, that's, it's, it's good for business. It's, it's still just the right thing to do, even if it wasn't good for business. But it's good for business.

Right. And you don't go wrong doing the right thing. Right. Isn't that that's what it is. So all right. We could keep talking for hours, which we will, but just not here on the podcast.

Okay, my friend.

So, Andy, if as people I'll put it in the show notes. But if people wanted to find out more about you, sign up for your newsletter or your books, where should they go?

Yeah, Neely, leadership.com will take them to my website. There's a, you know, a box on the top. They can sign up for 15 minutes. If they just want to pick each other's brain on leadership stuff, be glad to. And then, Alan, like you, I I've got some resources@leadershipmaterials.com anybody can go on and download a short little ebook on the three imperative leadership conversations that every leader needs to get good at. The leadershipmaterials.com is an easy download.

I'll put all this stuff into the show notes. Andy, thanks so much for joining me and for sharing your wisdom. Look forward to seeing you this summer. You bet.

Thanks.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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©2026 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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