If the leader cannot determine his or her clear destination, members will most likely refuse to follow or be everything but inspired. Therefore, those in leadership must never neglect the most important factor of team building – determining their own “north star” and committing fully to achieving it. Dr. Tracey Jones is joined by TV personality and motivational speaker Dr. Willie Jolley in discussing how dedicating yourself to a specific purpose or mission in life will eventually open the door to success. Dr. Jolley also shares how important it is to pursue personal goals without compromising your individual values and how his strong urge for creativity fuels his life for the better.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Dr. Willie Jolley – Leaders On Leadership

We are going to have a wonderful time sharing with Author, Speaker, Singer, Syndicated Sirius XM Radio Host, and incredible personality, Dr. Willie Jolley. We're excited to know what he has to share.

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I am tremendously excited to welcome my special guest, the President and CEO of Willie Jolley Worldwide Syndicated Sirius XM Radio Host and TV Personality, the tremendous Dr. Willie Jolley, who has been described simultaneously as a world-class award-winning motivational speaker. Willie achieved remarkable heights in the speaking industry having come from humble beginnings as a fired singer who was replaced by a karaoke machine. He has gone on to be named one of the outstanding five speakers in the world by the 175,000 members of Toastmasters International. Inducted into the speaker's Hall of Fame and achieved the distinction of Certified Speaker Professional by the National Speakers Association. He’s also an unbelievably wonderful spirit and dear friend. Thank you, Willie, for being here.

My dear friend, Dr. Jones congratulations. It’s a joy to be here with you and I'm grateful to be able to be on with you. Those who know me know I start the same way. I have only 60 seconds in it forced upon me. I can't refuse it. I didn't seek it or choose it but it's up to me to use it. I must suffer. If I lose it, give account if I abuse it, a tiny little minute but our eternities are wrapped up in it. I take a moment to get that minute done and I take a minute, a moment to thank God. Give God glory for life and strength and health and for the opportunity to be here in the land of the living still able to do what we love to do. Even in changing and challenging. In a new way and a new day, I am grateful to be here. Thank you, Dr. Tracey Jones. I am excited about having a tremendous time with you.

People who don't know that we both use that word tremendous because of the impact of your father, Charlie Tremendous Jones on you because without him you wouldn't be here. He was your mentor and he was your teacher beyond being your father. I would say that I was not born by Charlie Tremendous Jones and your beautiful mother, but he was one of my mentors and dear friends. He taught me so much about so many things. We had the honor and opportunity to be at an event together at the Crystal Cathedral Garden Grove, California, The Men's Conference. It was me, your dad and Mark Victor Hansen from Chicken Soup for the Soul and a number of other great speakers.

After we did the event at the Crystal Cathedral, it was so well received by the audience and all the people who come from all over the country who said it was so tremendous the lineup in the way it flowed was so powerful that these people, not the Crystal Cathedral, organized a men's tour to take this same tour on the road because they said more people needed to hear it. We went on a road and that's when I got time to have dinner with your dad every night while we were on the road. We'd sit, me, him, and Mark. I learned about investing, books, life, and so many things. I am always indebted and I came up and spent time with him up there in Pennsylvania. We saw your incredible business. We stayed at your home and that library of his. Can I tell you a story before we get started?

Please.

I don't know if I've ever told you this story but I've used it and shared it. Your father didn't only teach me how to live, he taught me how to die. As many people would know, Charlie Tremendous Jones was diagnosed with cancer and the doctors gave him a diagnosis of about six months. He lived for eight more years or so. He lived for a long time. His pain started breaking down. He had an eyepatch on and things, but we would go and visit him and you would say to him, “Charlie, I'm praying for you.” He’s like, “Don't pray for me. What are you trying to do? Keep me out of heaven and keep me away from Jesus?” Went to dinner that night, had a great time.

A couple of years later, I called when I heard he wasn't doing well. I called your house phone and your mother answered. She said, “Willie, it’s so good to hear from you. Charlie's bedridden and he's not doing well but he would love to hear you. Call him on his cell phone.” I called his cell phone and he answered the phone. I said, “Charlie, this is Willie.” He said, “Willie, my dear friend. I'm so glad to hear from you. Beloved, I love you. Beloved, I'll see you on the other side. I'm going home and I will see you when you get there. Goodbye,” and he hung up the phone. The next two days he died.

I learned from there what we talked about as people of faith that one day we're going to go to heaven. We are hopeful. We thought about it and talked about it but he was confident that there is a heaven. He was confident that he was going to heaven. That's what taught me something. Many people talk about, “I want to go to heaven,” but they're not confident. They are scared. He never showed one bit of fear about leaving here because he was confident he was going. I had to share that story. I loved Charlie Tremendous Jones. He was not my friend, but he was my teacher, mentor, and confidant. God bless him.

North Star: Leaders are going to do the right thing, even if it's uncomfortable and challenging.

I'm so glad you said that. Being with him when he passed, and if you have the blessing of being with someone, a believer that when they transition, there's no greater blessing than that. He didn't even express one iota all those times about, “I sure hope on what I believe in. I'm pretty sure it's right. I hope it is.” Because nobody knows. He knew and it was such a joy. As we dive into the price of leadership, and that's why he wrote The Price of Leadership book, which was gut-wrenching. It's about the hard aspects of leadership, the loneliness, the weariness, the abandonment, and vision. Part of that was because he knew he never walked alone in the leadership thing. He was triumphant and competent in that lonely, but never alone.

Willie, let's talk about that first point that he brought up and he was like, “We've all heard that it's lonely at the top.” There are times when a leader has to step out. A leader has to have followers but there are going to be times when the leader is anointed, gets a word from the spirit, and gets a calling sooner than everybody else. How have you dealt with loneliness in your career? You've been blazing a lot of trails and somebody's got to be the first one out of the chalks. How do you handle that as a leader? What would you share with our readers?

If you're going to be a leader, you must be confident in your north star. That’s where I think you should get started. You’ve got to be confident of what is your purpose, mission, and message. That's why people who are great leadership teachers will teach you about the power of being mission-focused and purpose-driven. I think about so many stories of examples and places where I was challenged. What should I do here? I'll give you one story. I've been speaking now for many years. In the first five years of my speaking industry business or career, I spoke only to youth. I had become a speaker after being a drug prevention coordinator with the Washington DC Public School System. When I left my job, I became a speaker. I did only drug prevention, violence prevention, alcohol prevention, and scholastic achievement messaging to young people. I spoke to over a million kids in five years. I was all over. I was doing 3 or 4 schools a day. I was busy.

One day, I got a call at about 5:00 in the evening because my assistant said, “I was going to leave when the phone rang.” She answered and she said, “There's a person here on the phone from St. Louis Headquarters of Budweiser who says it's an important call. The vice president with the last name Green.” I take the call and this vice president gets on as a senior VP of marketing and brand imaging for Budweiser Anheuser Busch.

She said, “We've done market research around the country and we were looking to do an under eighteen Don't Drink Until Eighteen campaign. We've done market research and your name came up in every segment of the country as the best and the most influential speaker for young people in the country consistently. We would like to make you an offer. We'd like you to be our spokesperson for underage drinking campaigns to tell kids not to drink before eighteen. We are willing and prepared to make you a nice offer to be our spokesperson.”

I said, “Wow.” At that point, I was making $500 a speech for probably speaking in schools. She said, “We were prepared to triple that per speech. You'll be speaking every day a lot all over the country promoting our brand.” I said, “Let me think about it. Let me pray on it and I'll call you in the morning. Give me your number.” I thought about it and I prayed on it. I called it in the morning and I said, “Thank you for your offer but I'm not your guy. I must turn it down because I speak to young people and tell them not to drink at 8, 18, 20, 88, or 188.”

The doorway in America is wide open for opportunities for those who are willing to work but many people are too drunk to discover their way through that. I said, “I'm sorry. I'm not your guy. I could not and I cannot compromise that messaging but I will not leave you in the lurch. There's a guy who's a friend of mine who I've already called.” I gave the name. I said, “He doesn't speak about drugs or alcohol. He speaks about self-esteem. He's good.” I gave her name and he said, “I did see his name.” I said, “I would highly recommend him.” She called him, he got the contract and became their spokesman for ten years. Here's the key. When you trust your instincts, you know you're a north star, clearly purpose-driven, and mission-focused, he took that and got triple on what I was making per speech. I told you he was there for ten years. His market has never went up in ten years.

In ten years, I was making $15,000 a speech. I say that to say that God prospered me in those ten years. In those ten years, I was named one of the top five speakers in the world, I had a bestselling book, I had syndicated radio and I was starting to do national tours because I was willing to be committed to doing the right thing. Leaders are going to do the thing, even if it's uncomfortable and challenging. I'll give you one more thing. When did I learn that? We are at a time now of graded adversity. We are at a time where we've had a pandemic, economic downturn, and we're in the midst of racial strife that's nothing like I've seen in my lifetime. I think about when I was a little boy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got killed and there were riots. There was looting and people were upset. They were unfocused in how they expressed the anger so they did right.

North Star: By putting your commitment into something, you are going to make a difference.

I can always tell that when there's a riot or protest, there are three types of people that show up. There are protesters who are sincerely protesting. There are the rioters who are mad and want to burn down, tear down, and do something. There are looters. The looters couldn't care less about the protests. All they’re there for is economic opportunity. They are thieves and all they want to do is steal, rummage, and pillage. With my dad, the riots ablaze so that Thursday, to see from my home the plumes of smoke in the air. My dad said, “Let's take a walk, boys,” my brother and I. We walked down 14th Street in Washington DC and we got to a giant grocery and it was being looted.

We threw up our hands. The police have said, “Have at it.” Once I saw the police who said, “Have at it,” I said to my dad, “Dad, can we go and get some groceries? Can we go get some goodies? Can we get cookies?” He said, “No.” I said, “They're giving it.” He said, “No.” I said, “No one will know.” He said, “Your integrity and character are never for sale. There's no price on that. I don't care what. If you did not buy it, it's not yours because of your character and your integrity, never compromise it. It's not for sale.” I've never forgotten that lesson, that's been over 50 years.

This is the first leader I've heard saying this. Loneliness, when you focus on your north star and integrity, by worldly standards, you are not going to march with the crowd of chasing the almighty dollar or everybody's doing it. You are going to stand alone as a leader and not follow the mass behavior because everybody else is doing it.

It's about doing the right thing and it’s about your principles. Your principles are not compromised. I believe it's important that people make money. I believe people may need to make money and I believe as a person of faith that our giving is what supports the church or mission so we've got to have income. Where does it come in my priorities? That's the key. I was on a call and someone said something about money. I said, “The Bible said, ‘Money make all things well,’” that's good, but it must be in its priority. God is first in my life. My family is second. My dear friends are third. My business, making money, economic survival, and security is fourth. I don't take it out of priority or my life gets out of balance. A leader must be committed to doing the right thing, even when you're wrong.

Let's go back to Dr. King. He said that you must be willing to be excellent and make a commitment. He said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets like Michelangelo painted, like Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.” He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven will say, “There lives a great street sweeper who does his job well.” I encourage you as a leader, wherever you are, that you make a commitment that you are going to make a difference. You're going to do what you do so well that the host of heaven will say, “Look at the commitment. Look at that person leading the band and field by being the one to take the mountain.” Somebody’s got to take them out.

That dovetails into the next point that my dad talked about and that was weariness. He said, “Anytime that you're going to be doing anything worthwhile, you're going to be surrounded by those people that do way more than their share and those that do way less.” To your point about excellence and all we do, it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing. We have the Holy Spirit in us, we read the Bible and we have wonderful people around us, but it gets tiring sometimes. People are our greatest asset but they also drag us down at times. How do you as a leader stay recharged and how do you handle the weariness? You've been speaking a long time and doing it.

Einstein said, “The greatest visions will always meet opposition and that opposition will always be mediocre minds who want you to lower your standard.” Weariness is a couple of things. First, a couple of things I do is one I have some routines. The first routine is that every day when I wake up, I'm grateful. I open my eyes and I get another shot. I say, “I’ve got another one. This is good.” I think about what God has taught me and I'm trying to learn more every day by reading the scripture, but I always make a point of doing some exercise every day to get my endorphins going, moving, and popping.

I go back to my goals and dreams. Why am I doing what I do? What are the goals that I set to do? I reread them and revisit them so I'll make sure I stay focused on what I'm supposed to do with my life. Once I know that I'm not weary and I always take a day per week to rest. I take Sunday off. It's my family day. I don’t work. I don't come to my office. My friends and all my business friends know when they are working on Sundays and they send out emails they know that you will not hear from Willie on Sunday. He's going to go to church and lunch. We're not going to church during a pandemic, but we have church time, and my wife and I might take a ride. It's our day to regenerate, renew, refresh, and I'm ready to go.

North Star: Don't let God regret creating you.

There's another thing I don't do. I don't take work in my bedroom. I have places and I've made boundaries. I work down here. I'll sometimes work my flow on my living room and family and all of that but I don't take it up to my bedroom because that's my getaway. When I go in there, I don't work. I don't take my computer. I don't do that and I realize it keeps me fresh. I'm excited about working every day and about what I'm doing.

The Bible talks about weariness, “Don't grow weary in well-doing.” I have made up my mind that I'm going to keep doing well. I'm going to keep pursuing this and going after this. I want God to be able to say, “Well done. You did good. You did what I told you to do.” Here's what I don't want him to say, “I am upset with myself for making you. I regret making you.” That’s the worst thing you could hear that God would say. I don't want to do that.

You hit on it. I started Saturday about a few years ago, believe it or not. I didn't do it before then in truth and honesty. It's remarkable when you bound off and say, “No. This is the time when I recharge.” How much more productive because you get clear on it. Take us to the next point, which is abandonment. That's about staying tightly focused on what you need and ought to be thinking about and doing rather than what you want to or think you need to. How do you maintain focus? You talked a little bit about the initial thing and this is a hard thing.

First of all, here are my books. It Only Takes a Minute to Change Your Life, A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback, Turn Setbacks into Greenbacks, An Attitude of Excellence, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul is back here somewhere and Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last! with my wife. If you go to my WinWithWillie.com site, you'll see so many websites. I'm always creating. That's why I'm saying. I’ve got 2 or 3 more books. I've got piles of folders of the next three books I'm working on. I'm ADD, “A squirrel.” “A bird.” That's creativity.

I’ve learned that many creative people tend to have other issues like ADD, HDSD, or whatever. I’ve got them all. I’ve got them. It's okay. How do I stay focused? It’s the fact that I have to make a goal list. I write my goals. I have them on my phone and I remember why I'm here. I have to remember every day. People call all the time and say, “I’ve got a great deal for you.” I will tell them, “I like the idea. You got a great idea. It's a great thought but I have learned that he who chases after two rabbits ends up eating or catching neither.”

I've got to say no to that because I've learned over the years how to say no even to myself because I get great ideas. What do I do? I read them on idea books. I’ve got an idea pad. I’ve got ideas all the time and the natural disposition of preconditioning would be, “That's a great idea,” and ran after the shiny object. I had to learn how to say, “Let me write the shiny object on a piece of paper. I'll get back to you after I finish this.” I’ve got a lot of stuff going on up here. We’re in a pandemic. I have not, for all intents and purposes, been anywhere significant for many weeks. Other than grocery stores and my daily exercise bike ride, for the first time, we went to visit some friends and we socially distanced ourselves across a parking area so we can at least say hello, other than that.

Here's what happened. My creativity is popping. Monday night, I do Happily Married Monday with the Jolleys. My wife and I do a Facebook Live every Monday night at 9:00 PM. Monday through Friday, I have a syndicated radio program that I do from here on up in my studio. Weekly, I have my Sirius XM show, which I do from here. That’s an hour so I’ve got the short form radio, a long-form radio, I’ve got Monday night and every Thursday, we put out a video newsletter where I have to record a small, almost like a TED Talk about 15 or 18 minutes of content for our video messaging, what I've learned that week, what I've experienced that week and what people need to know.

Saturday morning, I started doing a new faith-based TV program called the Jolley Good News Report. The Jolley Good News Report is like a television news show. The difference is that on television news, the first thing you hear is bad news, sad news, and depressing news but for Jolley Good News, you don't get any of that. You get nothing but good news. I do that every week. I've got more than enough plus I'm doing online events for people like yourself. Corporations are calling now. I got booked to do an event with me and Les Brown in Sydney, Australia via livestream.

I've got corporations companies calling all day saying, “Can you do an event for my people?” I'm doing events. I’ve got radio, television, and all of these. I'm happy as can be because my ADD is kicking in but I have to remember every day to focus. I'm staying focused on what God has sent me to do. I’m looking at my mission statement, “To inspire a generation to rise above the circumstances and maximize a God-given ability.” That's what I'm supposed to do. If I do that, I’m alright.

I love it and a lot of us if we're not busy, we were borderline depressed. Like you, this is the thing I struggle with the most. It’s the focus. Somebody told me, “Busy is burdening under Satan's yoke.” Not all work is what you're supposed to be focused on. Get clear, no mission drift and you don't want to get into the weariness category. Thank you for sharing that with me.

When I finish, I go to bed. I am done. I have given it all. There’s nothing left on the field. I've stayed in, I know what I'm doing and I have fun doing.

Lastly, my dad said the last price of leadership you have to pay for his vision. We probably grew up thinking, you’ve got Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, or Albert Einstein, but my dad said, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” How do you hone or grow in wisdom and vision?

I thank you for that question because it’s two questions in one. Wisdom is the primary thing and I pray for wisdom. When I was raising my children and it was challenging, I prayed for wisdom. When I was building my company and I didn't know how we're going to go from that $100 speech to even get to the $500 that I talked about earlier, I prayed for wisdom. In that situation when Anheuser Busch, I thought, “What should I do here?” I totally had to pray on it. I prayed for wisdom.

First of all, wisdom is the primary thing. How do you get wisdom? It’s when you read the wisdom book, which is the Bible, but specifically Proverbs. I read that daily. Next, get around wise people. The great will walk with great. They talk with the great. That’s why I have friends like Charlie Tremendous Jones, Nido Qubein, and Les Brown because I want to spend time with them, learn from them, and grow from them. I talked about vision as if it’s four types of vision. There’s eyesight. It’s good to have eyesight, but I love what Helen Keller said she was an infant when lost her hearing and her sight, yet became one of the greatest women of all time. She was asked in an interview, “Miss Keller, is anything worse than blindness?” She said, “Yes. Having sight but no vision.”

Eyesight must not be the end of all but she didn't have a vision. She said that you need vision. What's the next to eyesight? There's hindsight. What happened in the past? Learning from the past. What can I learn from the past that I won’t repeat the mistakes of the past? The past is good to check out every now and then but the problem is, when people start dealing with the past, they get stuck. What somebody did to me 30 years ago, how somebody talked to me at a time, or someone I did me wrong. They get stuck and all they talk about what somebody did to them. The past is supposed to be a place of reference not a place of residence. You're not supposed to stay there.

Eyesight, no, hindsight, no and there are insights that still have a small voice within us that gives us direction, reflection, introspection, and tells us what to do. Have you ever had a time when you’re riding out the street and something says, “Turn here?” You turn only to find out later there was a big accident that you would have been stuck in. That’s insight. We need to listen to that small voice within and listen to that voice because it gives a good insight off.

North Star: The past is supposed to be a place of reference, not a place of residence. You're not supposed to stay there.

You’ve got eyesight that's absolutely necessary for you to change your world because Helen Keller, Stevie Wonder, José Feliciano, and Ray Charles did without eyesight. Hindsight, it was good to know what happened in the past but don't dwell on it. There's insight. You need to turn up that value but you mix that insight with foresight. It’s calling forth those things that be not as though they are. Speaking into the future, “Here's where I'm going and what I'm planning to do.” When you take that insight and foresight and put them together that is what Helen Keller was talking about. It’s not the lack of sight, it’s having sight but having no vision, insight and foresight.

I have never heard vision broke down like that. That's absolutely beautiful. Thank you, Willie. Wrapping this up, anything else, that you want to share with our readers?

I want to tell all your readers, first of all, that Charlie Tremendous Jones was a giver. I've got a book by Oswald Chambers here. Where would I have gotten that book? I've got leadership books. I’ve got Charlie Tremendous Jones books all over my mind. His leg up in the air. Charlie was my dear friend. For anybody who reads this and says, “I was a friend of Charlie's.” If you send me an email, I'll send you a book. If you send me an email and say, “I'm a friend of Charlie Tremendous or Tracey Jones,” I've got a book Only the Best on Success. It’s my gift to you. I sent a digital version of that book that I'm one of the coauthors of. It's a lot of great motivation because many of them you'll know. If you send it to Info@WillieJolley.com.

The second thing I want to give you is to go to WinWithWillie.com and listen to the song I put called, We’ll Get Through This. It will bless you, encourage you, and it will uplift you. I did an event for one of the biggest corporations in America online because the CEO heard the song. He said, “That’s a song that my folks have to hear.” He booked me to come to sing a song and speak a little bit. Shared it with people who are going through a tough time. That's why I released it to encourage people.

It’s Info@WillieJolley.com to get the free book. Put in the title I’m a Friend of Tracey Jones. Go to WinWithWillie.com and get free music. Anything else on there you see that will bless you, go at it. If you want some of my books, you can get them at WJSpeaks.com/success. You can get any of my books in physical or digital form, as well as my big old box and my other stuff. We're grateful. I'm glad that I get to do what I do and I'm thankful for my friend, Charlie Tremendous Jones, who was wise enough to raise a beautiful and fantastic daughter named Dr. Tracey Jones. I’m proud of her.

You're on YouTube, and I'm subscribed to his channel and all that stuff. Thank you, Willie, for your wisdom, blessing, outlook, sincerity, and faith. I'm thankful for you. For the readers out there, Willie is the real deal and he is a big deal. The minute I reach out to him, he’s right back. Even before I reached out, he got my e-blasts when I was getting my PhD. He's such an encourager and we need people like that in our lives. That's all we need in our lives. Willie, thank you for being such a tremendous advocate to me. Thank you for the love you gave to my father and mother and for what you continue to do to make the world a more tremendous place.

God bless you. I love you and God bless you.

Thanks to our tremendous readers. Have a tremendous day.

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About WillieJolley

There are many motivational speakers, and then there is the one, the only, the incomparable Dr. Willie Jolley. He has been described simultaneously as a world-class, Hall of Fame speaker, singer, best-selling author and media personality.
Dr. Willie Jolley has achieved remarkable heights in the speaking industry, having come from humble beginnings as a fired singer, who was replaced by a karaoke machine! He has gone on to be named “One of the Outstanding Five Speakers in the World” by the 175,000 members of Toastmasters International, inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame and achieved the distinction of Certified Speaker Professional by the National Speakers Association. He’s the recipient of the Ron Brown Distinguished Leadership Award, named “One of the Top 5 Leadership Speakers” by Speaking.com and Business Leader of The Year by The African American Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Jolley uses his public platform to pursue his mission of empowering and encouraging people to rise above their circumstances and maximize their God-given potential! Many know him as the speaker Ford Motor Company called on when they were on the brink of bankruptcy. His work helped Ford reject a government bailout and go on to Billion Dollar profits!

Dr. Jolley has built a reputation of being captivating, compelling and life changing! No matter the venue, from his Dr. Willie Jolley's Wealthy Ways podcast on iHeartRadio to his SiriusXM Radio show, to his audiences like Walmart, Comcast, Verizon, Marriott or The Million Dollar Round Table, Dr. Jolley keeps it moving with high energy, high content and great enthusiasm. He delivers memorable nuggets and usable strategies on how every person can live a better life, one day at a time!

Dr. Willie Jolley is the author of several international best-selling books including It Only Takes A Minute To Change Your Life, A Setback Is A Setup For A Comeback, Turn Setbacks Into Greenbacks and An Attitude of Excellence, which was endorsed by Dr. Stephen Covey and Alan Mulally (former CEO of Ford Motors). He is also featured on the front of the top-selling book, Chicken Soup For The Christian Soul II.
He has also written a popular new marriage book, co-authored with his wife of over 33 years, Dee Taylor-Jolley. The book is entitled, Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last!
Dr. Jolley holds a Doctor of Ministry degree in Faith-Driven Achievement from the California Graduate School of Theology, a master’s degree in Theology from Wesley Theological Seminary and a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from The American University. Dr. Jolley resides with his family in Washington, DC.