Episode 193 - Nabia Jenkins-Johnston - Leaders On Leadership

As a leader, you may find yourself standing alone, making tough decisions that require courage and conviction. This episode’s guest has shown that and more, effectively navigating the price of leadership. Join Nabia Jenkins-Johnston, Head of Content and Brand Strategy at The Expert Series' ETP Forum hosted by ETF Global, as she explores the profound challenges faced by leaders, including loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. She shares personal insights and practical strategies to overcome these obstacles. Discover how to maintain your identity, embrace vulnerability, and prioritize self-care while leading with compassion and authenticity. This episode offers valuable lessons for leaders at all levels, inspiring you to stay true to yourself and make a lasting impact.

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Nabia Jenkins-Johnston - Leaders on Leadership

Thank you so much for joining the show where we pull back the curtain on leadership and we talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am excited to introduce to you our newest guest. Her name is Nabia Jenkins-Johnston. Nabia, welcome. 

Thank you so much, Dr. Jones. This is quite a pleasure. I've been looking forward to it.

Thank you so much. for this interview, please call me Tracey. I so appreciate the honor of the doctor because I did earn itm but thank you. I really appreciate that.

You certainly did. I will call you Tracey, though. I just need to remind everyone, Dr. Jones. 

Now you see, everybody, why I love her so much but let me tell you about Nabia. She is the head of content and brand strategy, leading events at the expert series ETP Forum, which is hosted by ETF Global. She's going to unpack what those acronyms mean. Her work guides innovation, creating opportunities for financial service professionals to connect and grow within the ETP ecosystem. She is a storyteller, managing the delivery of concise, emotional, and thoughtful work, both strategically and creatively, bringing human stories to the stage in person, in print, and on screen. Nabia, I can’t wait to learn more about what you're doing and introduce you to our readers.

Thank you so much, Tracey. It's exciting. I'm excited to be here. I think that your message is incredible. Happy to jump in and answer any questions and just talk about my experience. 

Wonderful. I want to tell our readers, because they always wonder, “Tracey, how do you meet all these great people?” By going to tremendous events. In September 2024, I was in downtown Philly for an event with the American College of Financial Services. Our readers know I'm involved with them with the Center for Military and Veterans Affairs. They did a Soldier Citizen Award. We had one day of leadership speakers. Then we had an event in the evening. 

While we were listening to some of these tremendous speakers, I looked over at another table because this fascinating woman asked a question and I thought, “Huh,” and it was Nabia. Our eyes locked and we connected during one of the breaks and the rest was history. We connected at the event that evening. We exchanged cards. We chatted since then. I asked her to come and be a guest on the podcast. Nabia, before we get started, can you explain to our readers what ETP and ETF Global, what that is, and what that entails?

ETP Forum And ETF Global

I think that one of the things you highlight in your experience and mission is the importance of bringing people together, essentially. I also believe that we learn the most when we are connected, iron sharpening iron. The ETP forum has been running for about 12 years. This is going into its 13th year. The ETP forum is an opportunity for folks in the ETF ecosystem. 

ETP stands for Exchange Traded Products, not just ETFs, but the entire ecosystem, which I really believe is marked by essentially giving choice to our investors, the choice to make decisions on investing that are based on their highest interests, their thoughts about the future, where they feel there will be growth in technology, but doing that in a way that feels a bit safer, because essentially, ETPs and ETF products in general, allow you to make investments with a little bit of a cushion. You have a basket according to the interest that you have. 

Those interests may be what we've called ESG. They may be socially focused. They may mean that we're excluding items. I don't want to invest in items that would maybe highlight alcohol or maybe I think that crypto is the future, but it's been a little turbulent, so let's do something that spreads the risk out across crypto products. The forum essentially has been quality first, focused on incredible content, great speakers like yourself, and connecting the financial advisors with the producers of these products so that they're making qualified decisions. 

You told us what ETP stands for. What does ETF stand for? 

Exchange Traded Funds. A type of ETP.

For late people like me, because I'm not from this world, but I'm getting acquainted with it, all of us have wealth that we're trying to build and invest, so we can use and be good stewards of all the great gifts that we have been given. Really, this is in the financial, she said, hooking financial advisor with the producer of the products. I love the fact, especially nowadays, because I've had some people on the show that talk about value congruence for your money. 

You want your money to go to organizations and away from entities that you don't want to support. I think that it's so incredible today that investors are getting more savvy and the producers of products are aware of this and connecting the right people because I work a lot in the nonprofit space and it's all about dialing into the people that get excited about the mission that you're promoting. 

Mission first, principles first, priorities first. 

Loneliness

Nabia, my father wrote this speech, The Price of Leadership, many years ago, and it's probably one of the most downloaded events. We still sell the little booklet where he talks about what it really takes to pay the price of leadership. Leadership is not for the weak or the faint of heart. In it, he shares four distinct things that you are going to have to pay in order to truly be a leader and not, as I call them, a LINO, a Leader In Name Only because we know there are many of them out there. 

The first thing he talks about, Nabia, is loneliness. We've heard that it's lonely at the top and heavy is the head that wears the crown. Can you unpack what loneliness means to you as a leader, maybe a time when you've experienced it, how you got through it, and what you'd like to tell our readers about loneliness?

I appreciate the opportunity to speak about leadership from a non-fluffy Rose-colored lens perspective, and I think loneliness is absolutely the place to start. One of the things that you mentioned a bit earlier, Tracey, is the importance of perhaps a calling. The idea is that we are essentially doing our life's work, and maybe that starts very young. Maybe that's not something that is just about when we get into positions of leadership, but it has to do with a mindset that is really about being unique and unafraid. 

I think that from childhood, that can mean that you are a little lonely. You may not be the most, excuse me, Tracey. As you know, I am in London and my trip has caused a little bit of a frog in my throat. The loneliness may manifest as not being the most popular kid or being the most popular in a group when you're an adult. I am thankful to say that I have gone through seasons where I felt different. I felt unique. I am West African. I'm originally from Sierra Leone. We're back and forth in the United States. 

As I got older, we made the decision to make this permanent. I experienced quite a few things in my childhood that really set me apart. I was a Sierra Leonean kid who spoke English but was taught to say, sir and madam to all of my teachers. That was not something that was necessarily common in my third or fourth-grade classroom. I was marked by being an immigrant and by automatically being curious in the sense that everyone is curious about what is different. I am thankful for the times when I had to adjust to not having comfort in the form of being the popular vote. 

There are times when you will have to learn how to stand on what you believe in, even if you're standing all alone. I think that that's something where, as much as I have had the benefit of an incredible network as I've gotten older. In the beginning, I learned that lesson because of the opportunity to travel and stand and be a little bit different. Some of the techniques I learned from are things that I still use to this day when I'm called to speak at a meeting and present my work as we all are. 

There are times when you will have to learn how to stand on what you believe even if you're standing all alone.

When I am asked those questions, maybe you get asked when you're presenting a research paper and you're grilled or drilled. The memory of standing with myself and my higher power the entire time reminds me that that's still how I'm standing, and it's how we continue to stand. Regardless of who's around us now, it's you and your higher power.

I love it. In leadership literature, what you talk about is called personal agency. You are your own agent. People say, “Do you have an agent?” “Yeah, it's me.” Nobody's better than me because I know me. I've got all my skin in the game, literally, and figured out this. There's a beautiful term. I love that you talked about young people because now, you look at people, so many young people are in this stage of their lack of self-identity. They lack their self-competence. There are many, many root causes for that. 

I'm so thankful that you talked about your childhood and realizing different is good. Who wants to be like everybody else? We all talk about diversity and inclusion, and I want to be included, but I have always loved being typically the only woman in the room. I was like, this is cool because you hit the curiosity thing. If you walk in and think, everybody's against me because I don't look like them, that's what you're going to manifest back. I was always like, but why wouldn't they want to ask me because I'm the only one like me? I think that's a beautiful way. I also had parents, probably like you, that realized they were different. 

My father realized he was different educationally, upbringing, bloodline, everything. He was always like, “It's good to be different. You are different.” Don't have an issue with that. I love that you talk about loneliness and dealing with it because it comes to all of us. Look, we have people who are adored by millions committing suicide because of loneliness. You're in London, the UK. I just heard it has a ministry of loneliness. It's not good loneliness. It's depressing. It's hopelessness. I love that you talked about how you have to own yourself first as a leader because there will be times when no one will be there standing with you. 

There's a leader and I remember the quote before I remember the leader at certain times. I guess that's abuse that says that if we grow fat off of the praise of others, then we'll starve when it's removed. Actually TD Jakes. That's the quote. If we go fat off the praise of others, we'll starve. Exactly. We'll starve when it's removed. It's a diet. It's a diet, but it's worth it. 

Weariness

I love it. Now, we talked about loneliness. The next thing Charles talked about was weariness. It's tough. You have to be at the top of your game at all times, even when you're not feeling it because people are looking to you. He also talked about how, a lot of times, you may be the one doing the work of 10 people because not everybody is as self-motivated as you. Nabia, how do you deal with weariness and staying strong? 

I will first admit that I could use all the advice that I could get unweariness both from the audience and from yourself and anyone else who cares to share because I think that part of when we talk about the price of leadership, being tired is probably the number one most common in my opinion and that may be as a result of hitting high standards and not having a lot of forgiveness from the environment. Sometimes, the timelines. The deadlines don't allow you to be as balanced as we'd all like to be, stop when we need to, and take moments when we need to cancel things when we need to. 

I think that even in the midst of that weariness, which I absolutely experienced, especially when I'm trying to start something new, taking on a new goal, a new task, a new element of something I've done before, I am really fighting myself with the expectations I'm setting for how quickly I need to master a new task, a new skill. I have found that it's sometimes the cost that I'm paying to be whatever success looks like, whatever leadership looks like. One thing I can say that I am learning is that here goes another quote. 

This one's by Dr. Seuss. I believe the quote, if I remember it correctly, says, “Those who matter don't mind and those who mind don't matter.” Essentially, I take that to mean that if the folks around you, if the system around you, can’t allow you to be human, I'm going to bank on the fact that in a little while, you'll see that there's no amount of work, no amount of exchange in terms of weariness that will gain that approval. It's important to remember to choose carefully who you're reporting to, who you're being, and who's asking things of you because good leaders, we're good leaders, but the leaders that we're reporting to, we're all answering to someone, they need to prioritize your humanity. 

Leadership: If the folks and the system around you cannot allow you to be human, then no amount of work and amount of exchange in terms of weariness will gain that approval.

They need to care about you in a sense, sometimes more than you care about yourself, which is another thing I have learned from you, Tracey, that a leader needs to be more concerned about the success of those they are taking care of. I think that that's something I've learned: if you push yourself and do everything you can, that is all you can ask of yourself. Folks who are aware of your value will be happy with the output, even if it's not perfect. 

That's a hard pill. It's a hard lesson to say, “Sometimes I'm going to fail. Sometimes I'm going to be tired. Sometimes I'm going to get sick, but guess what? You will value who I am and the effort that I put forth.” To sum it all up, my baseline for success is that I have done everything I need to do, not that I have made someone else feel like I accomplished everything they thought I would.

I'm glad I have this recorded because I wrote down about ten unbelievable bullets. Nabia, thank you for that. You had asked about input. The first word out of your mouth is forgiveness. Weariness, there's good weary, like when I would go to war, go to bed, and go, “We did everything we could to get the bad guy.” Then there's that weariness, just like loneliness, there's good and bad loneliness, and there's good and bad weariness. You talked about forgiveness. I think for our leaders out there, Charles wrote a book called, Forgiveness is Tremendous because if there's somebody that had some things that he could have held onto his whole life. 

I tell people, “Charles, if he didn't find God, he could have gone become Jimmy Hoffa or he could have been totally tremendous. Honestly, because he had so many rotten things done to him. He wrote a book called Forgiveness is Tremendous. That I'm going to get you back or I'm going to create this enterprise of vengeance or manipulation, that cult of personality, it's a real thing. Forgiveness. For our readers out there, and that first word you said, a lot of our weariness, if we really unpack it, we haven't forgiven others or we haven't forgiven ourselves. 

You hold onto that, you dream about it, you have nightmares about it, and you wake up tired. You just got to relinquish that. If you want some tips for that, you can read Forgiveness is Tremendous because it's phenomenal. I love that you talked about deadlines, but we had a guest on our show and they said, “The root of all our heartbreak is expectation.” We need to get rid of expectations. You can have goals, but expectations set us up for failure every time. Goals are the outcome of what we want.

I can’t even control the outcome. You talked about it, but I can control the processes and I can control my performance. That's it. These expectations are the root of all disappointment. Disappointment is a self-imposed emotion. Somebody also told me that. They're like, “If you're disappointed, that's on you.” I'm like, “I'm not going to say that anymore.”I'm thankful cause I have to own that stuff. I love that you talked about getting rid of that. I love that. Who are you reporting to? 

The people who love us. I love that you see this at your youthful age because some people at my older age still struggle with, “Somebody says that I disappointed them or let them down.” None of us really care about one another. Disappointment is a jagged word that you cloak on somebody to try and diminish them. All we can do is the best that we can do to help me, but if you're going to critique me, you're not prioritizing me as a human being as a work in progress. 

This is amazing. Excellent thinking. I'm happy that I asked because I've gained a lot just from listening to you. Our lives are so much bigger than whatever project we're leading, whether that's an organization or being a leader at our jobs. It is important to remember that just because you are “failing” or not living up to someone's standard in one area or another doesn't mean that that's your whole being. That's your whole life. We're often tasked, especially as women, with being mothers, wives, and daughters. There were so many things other than our role. I think that's another thing listening to you that just came to mind. We have to ask ourselves what success looks like as a whole.

Our lives are so much bigger than whatever project we're leading.

I met Nabia and I'm going to say something else as far as weariness and the women juggling everything. If you're tired, put some concealer on. Do you know what I'm saying? When I met her, obviously, weariness comes from physical stamina, not just mental and spiritual, but we're still in this mortal coil. We're going back to dust. If we're distilled down, we're worth about 23 cents in minerals and stuff like that. We have infinite value in God's eyes, but basically, this mortal coil is nothing. 

We still have to take care of it because we have to run the race strong. Nabia, when I saw her, she presented well and looked healthy and clear of mind. I watched her ask questions, engaging, clear, sparkly eyes. I tell people, too, “I know you may be tired, but do everything you can to present well because she looked the part.” If we don't take care of our outward appearance, we're going to set ourselves back. It's going to be more difficult. Actually, in implicit leadership theory, where we have our idea of what an ideal leader looks like, attractiveness is one of the categories and I don't mean good looking. What I mean is how put together you are. 

Do you look like a leader? I grew up probably like you, with people who taught me manners, were well appointed, well healed, and just looked great and not in a like they looked masculine and feminine. They didn't look sexual. They looked together like good people. Sorry, I just stepped on my cat's tail. If we focus on this, a lot of times, my point is if you don't do it, you honestly, you're working against yourself. 

I know it takes extra effort to try on your outfits before you go before a meeting and make sure everything looks good. If you're sitting on a stage, make sure everything lays good, you know what I'm saying? It's really worth it because that's one of the things in addition to how you greeted me, your warmth, your persona, and your presence. I think a lot of times, even though we may be barely hanging on there, we still have to still have to present well. 

I really appreciate that. I've been thinking about this, Tracey, if it’s okay to say my side of meeting you quickly? I am honored to be part of the American College of Financial Planning from the perspective of both being a student. Currently enrolled in a wealth management certified professional course, but also engaging as an advisory board member for the Next Generation Task Force, which essentially seeks to, I like to say study, almost study what it takes to create retention for financial advisors, for finance leaders, how do we keep the great people that we hire? 

Obviously, the recruitment and each cohort in the advisory council works on their passion, whether that's retention, cultivation, or recruitment. I was asked just off the cuff, “Would you like to attend this event?” I said, “Sure.” Not having ever been part of a military summit before. I have said this to you before, but I'd like to say again that it was probably one of my most enjoyable days and nights because we also had a lovely dinner. I enjoyed all of the content, but I especially enjoyed being around great people. 

Meeting Tracey, she talks about you, gives great compliments, and I'm very appreciative, but she outshone me completely in her kindness and warmth. That makes such a difference to people. It makes a difference when they are maybe doing something for the first time, but it also says so much about her leadership because folks who are truly centered and strong and know who they are, are not afraid to give that away, to give that word away. I just wanted to say thank you for that, Tracey. 

Leadership: Folks who are truly centered, strong, and know who they are are not afraid to give kindness away.

Abandonment

Thank you. Thank you for that tremendous feedback, Nabia. I truly appreciate it. We talked about loneliness. We talked about weariness. The next thing Charles talked about is abandonment. Abandonment, again, there's good abandonment and there's bad abandonment, fear of abandonment, abandoning pets, abandoning your children, not good, but what Charles talked about in abandonment was he would say, “I spend more time in a day thinking about what I like and want to think about instead of what I ought and need to think about.” 

For him, abandonment is this pruning, the singularity, this hyper-focus. How do you, Nabia, with all the things that people probably see you and are like, “Let's get her involved in this thing.” How do you stay focused so you can pour into the roles and the organizations that are the highest and best use of your time?

I like to think on my past and to think about all of the lessons I've learned because, in certain moments, things seem so important. In retrospect, we know that hindsight is 20-20. In retrospect, we remember the things that are of true value to us. I worked for the AFL-CIO for a period of time, really learning incredible skills and learning incredible leadership skills.

One of the things that I will always take away from that amazing experience is that we are here to replicate positivity, essentially. If in someone that's on your team you see great qualities and a couple of things that may not be perfect, the idea is to emphasize what is positive and to give solutions for the things that perhaps are challenges. 

When I think about what is important every day, the connections I make with my team, with one-on-one conversations that maybe just happen as we all have meetings every day, you meet someone for the first time, I think about what it is that I'm investing because at the end of the day, that's what's going to really create added value, but it's also going to be what's going to grow. All of my weaknesses. All of the disappointing things. Those things are not necessarily going to bear any fruit. If I can make a connection and invest in something, plant a seed, that's what I want to focus on. For me, when we talk about focus, that's what I want to be doing. I want to be planting a seed.

I love that. I love that you talked about one of my favorite parables. I was reading John where Jesus talks about, “I'm the vine and you are the branches and we need to prune away things that are not of value or serving us or are dead, diseased, and dying.” Past experiences are a huge part of what we are. When you draw back to your previous jobs where you were just taught, it's almost like you talked about a beautiful mindfulness that every conversation I have with this individual, yes, we have all the results and we're here for a reason in the bottom line and the shareholders. 

Right now, you talked about it to replicate the positivity. A lot of times, we get too far. Our brains are everywhere rather than in being present with that person. We're not able to encourage growth because we're so scattered. You shared a really unique perspective on abandonment. I love that you take every moment and are mindful about pouring into that and investing in it. People say, “What if it doesn't grow?” As Ken Blanchard would say, “Then we help them to the competition.” 

Everybody has a pearl in them, but if you're not going to be open or grow, that's fine. That's your choice. Free will, baby. I think we lose the majority of people because we just don't spend the time tending and caring for them, which is really at the root of all leadership. Again, I was always told we don't grow our business, we grow people. People grow. A business is nothing. People say, “This church is bad, this religion is bad, this party is bad.” It's the name of something. We need to look at the individuals. It's all about one-on-one. That's how life is lived. Your comments just made me really think about that. Sister, on to the next one. Vision. Where there is no vision, the people perish. 

I would sit there like with these wealth planners growing up or these big motivational speakers like Norman Vincent Peale and Zig Ziglar, and no. I'm just like, “Obviously, these guys are successful because they're visionaries”. I'm just a little Tracey and I don't think I'm a visionary. I'm good at a lot of stuff. I didn't like the lack of self-esteem, but they think differently, like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. 

My dad's like, “Tracey, vision is just seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” I'm like, “I think I could do that.” It was very strategic, but also with a real tactical, pragmatic thing to it. Can you share, Nabia? You've obviously moved to different roles in your career, and what do you have next? How do you cultivate your own personal and professional vision? 

Personal And Professional Vision

As you were speaking, I thought about different ways to define vision. You mentioned where there is no vision that people perish. Write the vision and make it plain. Another great quote. The idea that perhaps vision is bigger than us is something that's comforting. When I mean that from the perspective, both of having a dream, something literally dropped into your mind, dropped into your soul, something maybe you feel almost like you can’t remember, not thinking that way, it was just always with you, whether it is a calling, something that's pulling you forward, and so it's bigger than you in that way, or it's something that is created with the people around you. 

It's one of the biggest joys in my life to see maybe the start of an idea be really developed by having input from those that are around you. When I think about vision and my process, you talk about your dad and how important it is to think about what needs to be done, know what needs to be done, and then do it. That's how we define vision in our everyday lives for projects. You also mentioned what it means to have your own personal vision. It's something I don't talk about a lot, but I'm going to talk about that here briefly. 

My hair, I was talking about Sinead O'Connor with some family and thinking about what it meant to be a woman and what it meant to be strong. There were times in my life when I really felt like how brave is it of Sinead O'Connor to cut her hair off or whatever it is. As silly and as simple as it is, I think about looking at who you have always wanted to be. We don't need to look around. That doesn't have to be something that is a group project to say, what is beautiful to you? What is strength to you? What does that look like? 

Who you always wanted to be doesn't have to be a group project.

What does happiness look like to you? I have made a large focus on thinking to myself, let's not just survive. Let's thrive by remembering what your favorite place in the world is and what your favorite experiences have been. Let's pack each day with value based on your assessment. It can feel indulgent, but it's like if you wanted to cut your hair, cut it. If you love apple pie, bake it. If you like those shoes within reason, buy them. I think taking the time to reassess outside of all of these distractions is what makes me truly happy and buzzing, and knowing that it's not selfish, it's not self-centered, it's focused. 

That helps me to make every decision align because it does go out of alignment and realign to my highest self, my highest and best self. As a person, I'm top of the charts. I am the highest authority in my own life. That's what I would say is like reassessing and writing that down. I love Italy. It's probably the place where I've always said that one day I would want to live in Italy. What are we doing towards that goal? 

I love that. I love that you said being you is not a group project. I love that. What makes you buzz? You know what, Nabia? Being you is not a group project, but doing you is. You know what I'm saying? I was listening to a podcast. The guy said there are two things that are involved in our life. I would say from a perspective, “What do you want and how do you get it?” What do you want, he calls it your mirror because a lot of people, I want to do this and they start getting ahead. 

You have to get in front of the mirror. This takes so much time, but this is 90% of the groundwork. As you said, you have to understand who you are, what you're gifted at genetically, experientially, and spiritually, and what are you, who are you. We have all these great people who have poured into us and given us our sense of identity that we've gotten through others, but who we are. Get in front of that mirror. Then the second thing he said was, “Then you look out the window.” That's where you pull the resources from the books, the connections, the means, the money, the training, and the mentorship. 

That's where you pour it in. It's this beautiful thing. Before you go, a lot of times, we want to look out the window. We think about vision. What am I going to do? Bring it back. As you said, who am I going to be? That's why people spend decade upon decade doing great stuff, but they still don't know what they really want to do or their highest calling of service. Now, that being said, sometimes that hits us like a bolt of thunder. 

A few of us that's happened to, not me. For most of us, it's like a gradual dawn. It's taken me 61 years to look in the mirror every day and go, I get you now, I get you more. I love you more than I did yesterday than I did yesterday. I know you better than I did. For most of us, it is like the sun's rising. It's a gradual illumination versus, but some people do know right away, “This is who you are and this is what you're going to do.” I love that you talked about what makes you buzz and doing or being you first versus doing you. 

That is vision, but so many times we run, we start looking at everything out there, what everybody else is doing. Will I have to be like them or I'm going to miss the bandwagon or I should have bought crypto because now it's $62,000? Stop. Are you really a girl? Are you just doing this because everybody else is doing it thing? I really appreciate that insight because you can’t see vision until you can look at yourself and know, “What does that mean? 

Perfect, Tracey. 

What does it mean? You just encouraged me. I just love that. I love that you said you take comfort that it's bigger than us. Yes, it's about who we are, but integrating that into the world because you just don't sit there. As kids, we had that little hymn, “This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.” I did under a bushel, no. We don't just sit there and say, “I got a vision. Nobody's going to know about it.” It's bigger than us. Your vision was given as you talked about and abandonment to encourage and share with as many people and synergize it with the rest of humanity to make the world a better place. That's all I have to say about that. 

Tracey, I love it. Love it. 

Sister, we did loneliness, we did weariness, abandonment, and vision. Nabia, is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers as far as your wealth of leadership that you would like to share with them?

I am reminded by so many others, including Tracey, that leadership is about servanthood. We talk about servant leadership. If I go out of alignment, I think literally every day is about getting back into alignment, waking up back into alignment. The one thought most helpful for me is that you are a servant. You are a servant and you are here to serve the needs of your team. You are here to serve the needs of whatever project you are leading. You're here essentially surrounded by leadership opportunities. Whether we are, as you said, hopefully not LINOs, correct me.

Leadership: Leadership is about servanthood.

Leaders In Name Only. Yeah, we're not LINOs. 

Leaders In Name Only. Hopefully, we're not LINOs, but even if we don't have the name, even if we don't have the title, which is never what's important anyway, even if we're classically not seen as the leader when we're doing the bake sale at church and we're putting together wonderful items for charity. The leadership opportunity is there to work on those skills by essentially, as you said, finding what needs to be done and doing it. That would be the last thing that I have to say is just we're sharpened daily.

I love that. You really tied that back nicely into vision. You're a pro, sister. Well done. Thank you. It is. I never thought about that quote as the ultimate servanthood. It is. Just find it and do it. Look in that mirror, look out that window, and call out to who you need to do it with. 

I've learned so much. 

So am I. I'm going to go down and start blogging because I got all this stuff. Where do I start? Where do I start? Nabia. I cannot thank you enough for sharing this with our readers, and I look forward to many more connections. I look forward to meeting you in person, either in Philly or New York City soon. Coming up here and visiting, but I just want to thank you for your heart for what you do and just your tremendous spirit. Your parents must be so proud of you. You're just amazing. 

That is so sweet. I can’t wait to go tell them that. 

Yes, you need to tell them that. They can come to talk to me because I'm a doctor and everybody has to listen to me.

Do you hear that, Mom and Dad?

I'm sure you did a good job on them too. To our readers out there, thank you so much for being a part of the tremendous tribe. Thank you for paying the price of leadership. I know you guys are out there doing it. You're reading great books. Remember, as Charles said, you will be the same person five years from now that you are today, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. 

You read us share some tremendous people, some tremendous resources, some tremendous books. Pick some up. If you like what you read, please hit the like or the subscribe button and share this with some of your friends out there who are leaders who would like a little boost of positivity and, information, and inspiration. Thanks so much for being a part of us, and have a tremendous rest of the day.

 Important Links

• Nabia Jenkins-Johnston

• Forgiveness is Tremendous

About Nabia Jenkins-JOHNSON

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Nabia Jenkins-Johnston is the Head of Content and Brand Strategy leading Events at The Expert Series' ETP Forum hosted by ETF Global.

Her work guides innovation, creating opportunities for financial service professionals to connect and grow within the ETP ecosystem.

She is a storyteller, managing the delivery of concise, emotional, and thoughtful work, both strategically and creatively-bringing human stories to the stage in person, in print, and on screen.

Episode 185 - Derek Kilgore - Leaders On Leadership

Leadership is all about embracing both the highs and the lows. This episode’s guest finds comfort in the impact a leader creates through it all. Dr. Tracey Jones engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Derek Kilgore, a grounded leader and financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual. Together, they pull back the curtain on the challenges and triumphs of leadership, discussing topics such as overcoming loneliness, navigating weariness, making strategic decisions about abandonment, and crafting a compelling vision for the future. Derek shares personal experiences and practical insights, emphasizing the importance of meaningful connections, intentional prioritization, and the relentless pursuit of a vision. Whether you're a seasoned leader or aspiring to be one, this episode offers valuable lessons and inspiration to help you on your leadership journey.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Derek Kilgore - Leaders On Leadership

I am very excited because my guest is Derek Kilgore. Let me tell you a little bit about Derek. Derek is a grounded leader with a heart-centered and results-focused approach. He and his wife, Amber, live in Littleton, Colorado with their two children, Addison who is 12, and Ethan who is 10. Derek is a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual and leads a team of 15 advisors in his office. Derek, welcome.

Tracy, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited about our conversation.

Thank you, Derek. As I read to the folks, he is an advisor with Northwestern Mutual and that is how we connected. I am with the Center for Military and Veterans Affairs at the American College of Financial Services. I teach their CLF designation, which is their chartered leadership fellows. Derek is taking this tremendous certification because he is very serious about leadership. In the course, I'm like, I would love to have you on my show and Derek graciously accepted, so thank you again.

You're so welcome. I was excited and I think we got a lot to talk about so I'm looking forward to it.

We do. Let's get right into it. My father gave a speech many decades ago, many times. Probably his most often given speech, he was a world-renowned motivator, but he also talked about leadership. very pragmatic, very real. He talked about the price of leadership in that if you are going to be wearing the crown or the mantle of leadership, there's a price you're going to have to pay. You need to be aware of it. In that, he listed four things, the first of which is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top, but can you unpack for the leaders tuning in, what does loneliness in leadership look like for you, maybe a time you went through it? Any words of wisdom or resources you can share with our audience?

I love the idea of being vulnerable in the conversation about these are the hard things around leadership and the things that we struggle with. I think it's so easy and tempting to write a beautiful book about all the amazing accomplishments that we've done and all the awesome trophies and look at all this stuff. That can be inspiring, but I think it often can be somewhat defeating. Let's talk about what it's like and let's build alongside each other. I love this idea.

Around loneliness, I am a very connected person and I feel very deeply. It's very important for me to have meaningful and deep relationships with the people around me. I've struggled quite a bit with the loneliness factor. People inside my immediate professional circle professional, they totally get what we're doing right. They're building something alongside, they're in another office in another state or another city and we're encouraging each other. That's amazing and helpful.

Outside of my professional world, people don't understand what I'm building and what we're doing and leading people on a large level. Especially being in the financial services world, I think people look at that as like, "Are you guys on Wall Street up there? What are you doing over there?" They don't understand. There is a little separation where the wins that I have, if we are hitting a recruiting goal or we're hitting a metric for our office or a sales target, we're so excited about that, and then I share that with people outside of my professional world and my church community or my friends. They're happy for me. They're like, "Yay, good job, Derek," but they don't understand what it took to do that and what the scale of that accomplishment is.

On the other side when I'm oh we had this amazing recruit, "He was coming in in April and then he decided to take another job and we were so bummed out because he was going to be a perfect fit for our team. It was an alignment." The curve ball, I share those heartaches and people are like, "That's a bummer. I'm sorry that happened," but they don't understand that it's a big deal. It's important to do that.

Loneliness outside of my professional world has been a challenge to fill. What I've done to mitigate that is surround myself with people who get what I'm doing. People who are building alongside, creating accountability metrics, and also encouraging relationships that say, "What are you working on? I know you were hunting that goal down. How's that working out for you?" They can do the same for me. To mitigate the loneliness as much as possible has been very helpful.

I love that you said building alongside because I would venture probably 80% of our audience are entrepreneurs or retired once, twice, or thrice from other entities and now are already served. It's so important. You talk about building your business, especially in the financial services sector. You need to be with people who are like that because otherwise, you get somebody who may be in a 9:00 to 5:00. They can be very discouraging because the world we live in where you can only eat what you kill, it's a whole different thing. I love that you talked about get people that get you. Sometimes even your family. I can remember my dad saying, "Honey, I got man of the year." She's like, "Where's the check?" She didn't get the fact that all these things are necessary.

I'm echoing that exact thought. Align yourself with people that get you. I've got a buddy, Scott, who we met at church and he's about 20 years ahead of me. We'll talk about mentorship here in a minute, which is crucially important. He totally gets my world. He's built businesses. He's taken them public before. For me to share and for me to feel heard reduces the loneliness factor.

Align yourself with people that really get you.

That's so important because you want to quit. We all want to quit. Especially entrepreneurs, why shouldn't we quit? Why shouldn't I go back to the easy secure way? You get people who have already gone through it and they understand what you're going through. I love that. We talked about loneliness. Next, we talk about weariness. Before you came on, I asked Derek how he was and he was talking about being busy. You talked about sleep, water, rest, and all that stuff. This plays onto weariness because even in times of abundance we can get stretched too thin. Can you talk to us with everything you have going on, you're a father, you're involved in a lot of different things, and building a business, how do you day energized at top form?

We could probably spend hours talking about this subject, about effort and rest at the same time. I've learned this phrase called equipoise, which means two things at the same time. Two things that are both true at the same time but could appear to be opposite. This idea that we can have full effort into our life and also a healthy amount of rest is the ultimate challenge. I think we could all work ourselves to death. Brene Brown says, "Some people wear overwhelmed like a badge." They're proud of how overwhelmed they are. It's like, no, I don't want that, but I do want a high amount of success and a high amount of accomplishment. I want to maximize the life that God's given me, but I also don't want to burn out, be exhausted all the time, not present with my family, and not loving my wife the way she deserves.

There is a tricky balance between the two. Maybe balance isn't even the right word. I like the word harmony quite a bit, meaning some things are louder at certain seasons of my life and some things are quieter in certain seasons of my life. Sometimes the percussion set is taking a solo and it's like this crazy moment. Sometimes it's this peaceful sauna that's playing. The harmony of the pieces of my life, I work hard to do that.

Practically, what that means for me, that's been so helpful. I modeled it after one of my mentors, Ben. The quiet time in the morning is the most important time of my day. I've heard it say, "If you win the morning, you win the day." I'm typically up around 5:00 or 5:30. I try to do 30 minutes, sometimes an hour in the Bible, I'm reading and praying. Sometimes I literally just sit in my chair and be quiet because I know starting at 6:30 or 7:00, it's to the gym and then in the shower and then meetings back to back all the way through. Full productive. We're rocking and rolling all the way through, and then it's home, then dinner, then the kids, then some fuss is going to happen, and then it's in my bed and I'm going to sleep.

I know if I don't carve out the first hour of my day, there also is a tide element I think into that, meaning giving the first of your day and the first of your money to God. If I don't do that, I feel like I'm out of sorts. I work hard to compartmentalize that part of my day. Also, I feel like it gives me more freedom to drive into my day harder because I know I've already rested and I feel renewed and I'm not going to get burned out. That cycle has been very helpful for me in order to stay grounded and stay rested while also producing at a high level.

"Win the morning, win the day." You talked about it being your first fruits, that is a biblical concept. You give your best. We're republishing Ben Franklin's way to wealth, early to bed, early to rise. It seems like it's one of those constants out there thinking of financial geniuses. I love that you talked about that. It's so important. When you say balance, it's not like at any given time we can walk away from something. Balance implies something is down, but I love the harmony or the synergy or something is louder, something is a little bit lower.

I would say 99% of our guests talk about that first hour and how important that is to get your spirit fed first because that's what fuels. When you get burned out and tired, it's not your body. I know we're mere human beings. Hopefully, we know enough to take care of ourselves and get rest and stuff, but your soul's tired. Something's not getting fed.

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World

I totally agree with that. Have you read the book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry?

No. Sounds tremendous.

It's awesome. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by a guy named John Mark Comer. It's exactly what you described is giving us space for our souls to rest. Left to our own devices, I think we would all, for a million miles an hour, everything's on fire, total chaos, always distracted, always on our phones, and there's a real effort to being restful and being settled. Check that out. It's a very interesting read. I think you'll like it.

I love the title. Thank you. You always recommend the best books. We've been recommending books since we met.

That's right.

We talked about loneliness. We talked about readiness. The next term my dad talks about is abandonment. For those of us in pet rescue or fear of abandonment, that's not the abandonment he's talking about. He's talking about the ruthless elimination of whatever it is that is sucking away the best and highest. Hurry, how do you abandon hurry? With everything that comes to you and you know you've got a million people, you're getting good ideas from, how do you stay tightly focused, singularly focused so you can channel your best into that vision that we will talk about next?

Abandonment, this is a beautiful concept. I think it comes down for me to having the courage to say no to things that are good so that I can say yes to the things that are great. I think that summarizes it. Let's break it down, but I think that's a good starting place because we all have good things in our life. We have relationships, opportunities, business stuff, coaching, "Can you be on this podcast?", and all this stuff. You're deciding, is this good or is this great? Sometimes we need to say no to something that could be awesome and very profitable and probably what God wants us to do in the end. It's not bad. It's pretty good. We need to say no to that and leave some space for something that we couldn't even think of or didn't see around the corner, comes around, and we're like, "That was amazing."

For me, practically what that means is every year, sometimes I'll do it twice or quarterly, but at least every year, I'll reprioritize the things in my life. I literally get a piece of paper out and write down, professional life, my leadership responsibilities, my family, my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with God, my responsibilities at church, this other side project I'm working on. I look at them and I ask myself introspectively, are those misaligned? Are we putting more time and energy towards the wrong thing? How much effort and energy we're putting toward each thing? Is it the right priority order?

For me, that priority is first my relationship with God, and then second my relationship with my wife, then my kids, then my professional world, and then all my church responsibilities. At times, those have turned upside down or mixed around and the reassessment helps line out what's most important. What that does for me is it allows me to go with so much more confidence to do the things I need to do because I know it's the best and highest priority. It's easier for me to say no because I know that I'm doing the thing that's the highest priority. What do you think about it?

I love when you say no to people and you have a reason for it because this is what I'm focusing on right now. People get that. I think sometimes we're like, "I don't want to let that person out." When you explain that to them with truth and say, "Listen, this is great, but right now my main focus is this. Can we reconnect in 3 or 6 months down the road?" I love that you talked about that because everybody in the CLF talks about this. When we lay out our refocus or recalibrating or are pruning away not the highest and best use of our time, we do talk about the different areas. Family, faith, financial, physical, relational, volunteer.

For the audience out there, don't try and throw it all onto one plate. Be very intentional about teasing it out and looking at specific goals. People are like, "It all links back up to the one thing." I think sometimes people try and take on too much and it's very good. Successful leaders like Derek sit down with a piece of paper and scrap up. We all do it. It's not like, "Haven't you figured it out yet?"

There is no amount of time during the year that it's not good to recalibrate your flight plan because remember, things are changing too. Doors are opening, doors are closing. There are unexpected things, an illness, a bonus, or an opportunity. Thank you so much for that. I love that you shared with the audience that you get the old-school piece of paper out and write that stuff down.

I love your comment about recalibrating your flight path. That is exactly it. You're in flight and you're like, "Let's make sure we're on track for where we're supposed to be going. Are we in the right seat? Do we have enough fuel?" Recalibrating is so helpful. I remember a time when I wasn't doing that and it didn't go good, so I thought I might share that story. It was the end of 2021 is when this happened. The business was going okay, but it wasn't really where we wanted it to be. I was turning the flywheel hard, like working a lot of hours and putting my effort and energy toward it, believing that this thing was going to take off and be amazing, but it wasn't amazing at the time. It just was okay. My wife's like, "I think you could do it. It's going to be great." I'm like, "This is hard." I'm working.

There are people ahead of me like, "He's there or she's there, it can be built." I was right in the thick of, someone had to graph around the valley of despair. You're excited about the thing, and then it's going great, and then you go to this valley of despair, and you're like, "I'm in over my head and I'm not making the money I wanted to." The failures are stacking up longer than the successes. I was right in that moment at the end of 2021.

I then did that exercise and I realized that part of the problem is I'm giving too much of my time away to my church responsibility. I was on the executive leadership team at the church and I was putting in a bunch of energy and effort. That wasn't producing a ton of fruit, but I felt like it's good work, obviously it's growing the church. I also had some other personal things that I was doing for fun that weren't filling my cup.

It's like good or great. I think it was that comparison. I did the sheet of paper and I was like, "This is a hard decision but this church responsibility has to go down a couple of notches. I got to put my business relationship higher up, my business adventure at a higher level of priority." I talked to Amber about it and she was like, "That makes total sense."

I had a hard conversation with my leadership team at the church and I said, "Obviously I'm still in this thing and love you guys. I just need to put my focus or turn my flashlight toward this business. We're at a crucial point where we need to get out of this dip." Like you said, they were so gracious, so kind to say, "We love you. Go crush it." I felt validated in that, and then we did. We had a great year in 2022. 2023 was even better. I want to share that story for our audience to say, it's okay if it's not going okay. It's okay if it's not going the way you thought there is a path forward.

It's okay if it's not going okay. It's okay if it's not going the way you thought. There is a path forward.

I thought that you said in the thick. You're talking about this and I don't know if I should laugh or cry because I remember those days. I still have them, but I'm laughing because we've all been there. When you talk about being in the thick, that is a great point for our audience out there. That's probably a great indication for you to say, "Stop. Let's lay it out on a paper and see exactly what's going on."

The second point that I love you talking about, you said to be fruitful, not be workful or be productive, but be fruitful. I'm all for kicking down doors and making it happen, but if you've been kicking on the same door for three years, it might be time and there's something not meant to happen. Like you said, you're a man of face, so you and I both know that we're being oriented towards, there are other circumstances, blessing, and things coming into our life. Again, if it's not bearing fruit, I don't want to say quit, but be honest about that and see what you need to do.

As you said, you went to your church leadership and you were honest with them. If you are out of whack or out of balance and you have to throttle back from something, don't just ghost people. Don't just leave them wondering, "I wonder why Derek isn't so engaged anymore. I wonder why Steve stopped coming to our board meetings." Be honest with them because otherwise, that person is like, "Did I do something wrong? Are they upset?" Everybody who loves you understands time is precious. We time tied. That's so wonderful that they would be fully supportive of you, but had you not had the courage to speak truth and love with that tough conversation, they might have been like, "Why is our brother dissing us?" That's never good.

Also, to echo that point, I felt more supported and more encouraged to go into this new season because they were like, "Let us know how it goes. We're rooting for you."

They're praying for you. They can support you from another facet of your life because they know it's all congruent. When you get this dialed in, then you can come back and touch on that again. Like I said a lot of times, like you said, when you're in the thick, we don't want to let people know we're in the thick, we tend to isolate ourselves. Worst possible thing we can do. We don't want to throw out our lifelines.

Loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. I can remember sitting around as a little girl listening to people like Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar, and Norman Vincent Peale thinking, "These guys are smart. How do they get so smart?" I'd hear people talk about vision. I'm like, I'm not sure if I was born with that. My father was always like, "Tracy, vision is simply seeing what needs to be done and then doing it. Otherwise, you're a dreamer or you're a doer." You don't know where you're going. Like we said, you're a busy little bee. Either/or you're dreaming but you're not putting anything to work. Your vision for your business and what's next? You are growing an agency so everybody's looking to you and you have all these different pieces. How do you own your vision for what's next?

We could spend lots of time talking through this subject because it's so powerful. I think I have struggled with vision early in my career. For me, what I struggled with was believing that big things were possible. That was hard for me. We came from a modest income and lifestyle. Both my parents worked their whole life. They were moderately successful. We didn't go without by any means. I paint that picture because in the financial services world, some of the people who've been here for 30 years and have built tremendous businesses, they're wildly successful. The amount of income that they're bringing in is a pretty big number.

When I say I struggled with believing for big things, that's what I mean. It took a lot of effort and a lot of faith for me to be like, "No, I am deserving and worthy of running a successful practice, earning a healthy income, making a big difference in people's lives, and being present for my kids and for my wife." Believing that took a lot of effort. I don’t want to start there because it's not easy. It's not like you roll out of bed and go like, "I'm going to be the next Disney. I'm going to make this humongous." That doesn't happen. It takes a lot of effort to build a vision. Do you have comments on that?

Leadership: I am deserving and worthy of running a successful practice, earning a healthy income, and making a big difference in people's lives.

No. It's funny because one of the things in the CLF was guys how to write your vision and how you're incorporating that, so no. Keep going.

Some practical things that helped me quite a bit. One, I had examples to follow. I had people that I could look up to, buy a cup of coffee, meet with, sit with, buy lunch, and visit with them. Just ask them about their life like, "How did you get there? What is your life like? What are you struggling with. What's going good?" That way, it's not this abstract idea. It's like, I don't want everything that Mike's life is like and I don't want everything like Rachel's life, but I want a little bit of that. That seems pretty good. Her life is pretty cool. It helps you believe more if you can see and meet people who are ahead of you. That takes some humility to go, "I'm not where I want to be but I'd like to be where you're at in 5 or 10 years. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? I'd love to hear."

They're always so honored. They're always like, "I'm still trying to figure it out and you think you want to be like me?" It's always a great connected moment, back to loneliness, helping mitigate that. You then get to use parts of their life as an example on how you want to build yours because if you've never seen what an amazing and tremendous life is like, it's easier to see it from someone else already having it been done, and then you can start to build it yourself.

I love that. To reverse engineer. I love that believing that big things are possible for you. Derek, I know you say your parents were moderately successful but they raised and had you.

I don't mean to downplay my parents. They're amazing.

I'm kidding. I'm just looking at like, "Your parents must be so proud of you." I'm so proud of you and I'm just your acquaintance.

I appreciate that. I had one other thought. Here's a practical idea. I have a vision document that I use typically once a year. I have almost all of my advisors use it on a regular basis. It has the categories of life. This isn't like a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking, the categories of someone's life, spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, relational, and professional as well. Those areas are pockets of someone's life. It's helpful to own this document, write out 2 or 3 sentences of what that part of your life looks like in 24 months. Sometimes 10 years is too far, and I think 6 months is good but you want to stretch it a little bit, so the 2 to 3-year mark works well.

The cool thing is you write it in first person. It sounds like, "I am a loving and present husband and I treat my wife with respect." All these amazing things that you are. "I'm running a successful business and earning this income and I'm impacting my clients in this way. I am a physical body is strong and I sleep well at night." The more detailed, the better, and then you have a literal document, you put it on your wall, you read it, and you're reading the picture that you've painted of the life that you're building.

It helps as a true north to go, "Why are we working so hard and why is it worth the fight?" You then read the document about what your life is going to look like in 2 or 3 years and you go, "Yeah, that's what we're doing. That's who we want to be. That's what we're building. That's what we're going to." That has been tremendously helpful.

We covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Anything else that you want to talk about on leadership, because then I want to talk a little bit about what you do?

Real quick, an advice I would give everybody across the board if they're willing to listen is have somebody who's pouring into you, walk alongside someone who's at your same stage, and always be pouring into someone else. If those three things in your life are happening at every stage, you're more better off than less. You're more doing it the best way than not.

Have somebody who's pouring into you, walk alongside someone who's at your same stage, and always be pouring into someone else.

It's so funny you said that because I can remember 6 years ago when I met my husband. Of course, I was coaching and like you, we pour a lot into people. I remember he looked at me and said, "I read books so I get it. I have my faith, I get it." He's like, "Who's pouring into you?" I remember thinking, I think we overlooked that. Most of our audience are probably like, "Really, Tracy? I didn't." I think it goes without saying be very intentional because that keeps you from getting stagnant. That's the way it's supposed to be to keep that regenerative cycle.

Exactly.

So important. Derek, you're talking about your job as a financial planner. I'll tell you out there for our audience, the more I interact with these people, if I had to do over again, listen to Derek talk about his vision. If I had to do over again, I would've signed up. I would've found Derek and been one of his advisors and helped him grow his business. For anybody out there looking, it's such a tremendous opportunity.

I know what it did for my father, Charles. He had no education, he had nothing, but it is an industry that you'll help people mitigate the risks in life, build for their dreams, and build to take care of those that they love. Like you said, you get to build whatever you want it to be. Yes, it's hard work, but what isn't? I marvel at what you're doing and the gift that you do for other people and helping them achieve financial wealth and most of all security.

I appreciate you saying that. I love that comment. You can build it however you want. I came from a culinary background, so years ago, I was a chef. I didn't even go to finance at college. I worked in the kitchens for almost ten years and have a culinary degree, and then realized that I want to do something more significant. It's been an uphill battle, no doubt, but I just share that story to say, this is not a well-educated Harvard grad that needs to have a finance degree. It's like, if you want to build something, help people, and make a difference in other people's lives, it's a tremendous career.

It is, and my dad didn't even have a high school diploma. I'll tell you what, the company you're working for, Northwestern Mutual, nobody trains better than that. They will not let you fail. That's what's a beautiful thing. Derek, what was the thing at culinary school? Had you heard about this? For our audience out there that may be at a point where they're like, "What's next?" I have a couple of friends midlife that I'm talking to and I'm like, "You need to look into this industry." What made you make that pivot?

I was running a catering business that was mildly minus is how I would describe it. That's not a word I know, but it's like less than mild. Again, I'm working my butt off doing this thing and it wasn't working. It was like not doing what we needed it to do.

Yeah, I know.

That was on its way in a folding fashion, and then my advisor tugged my sleeve and said, "Derek, I think you'd be good as a financial advisor." Honestly, my first thought was like, that's a nice compliment, but I don't know anything about financial planning. That is not in my wheelhouse. I'm not even understanding why you're asking me that question.

I then unpacked. It's not about how beautiful a portfolio you can make or how great at math you are or algorithms, it's about connecting with people and a lot of effort, but building relationships and wanting to build something yourself, wanting to be an entrepreneur, and wanting to grow something. You can learn the tools and the skills of financial planning. You can learn how to build an insurance tool. You can learn how to build a financial plan. You can understand how Roth taxation limits work. You can learn the skills, but the hard around building something and helping people was what drew me to the business.

Leadership: It's not about how beautiful a portfolio you can make or how great at math or algorithms you are. It's really about connecting with people.

Derek, now that we mention that, how do people get ahold of you? Is there a preferred manner?

Yeah, sure. You'll put my email and probably my website in the link. Best way is to click that and check out my website. I'd love to connect and always up to chat.

To our audience and Derek, thank you so much. I got a lot of great notes. The way you say things, you got me laughing and reminiscing about my own personal journey. What a joy to have you share with our audience about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. We wish you so much more success. I know you'll achieve it.

I appreciate that very much. It's been awesome hanging out with you. Thank you.

You're welcome. To our audience out there, thank you so much. If you like what you heard, please hit the subscribe or share button. If you do us the honor of a review, we would be so thankful. Share this with other people. Share this with your friends. I know your leaders, you hang out with a lot of leaders that are maybe looking at how to pay the price of leadership to encourage and inform them. Always remember, you're going to be the same person 5 years from now that you are now, except for 2 things, the people you meet and the books you read. Make sure they're both tremendous. Thanks so much everybody. Have a tremendous rest of your day. Bye.

Important Links

• Derek Kilgore

• The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

About Derek Kilgore

Derek Kilgore is a grounded leader with a heart-centered and results-focused approach. He and his wife, Amber, live in Littleton, Colorado, with their two children, Addison, 12, and Ethan, 10. Derek is a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual and leads a team of 15 advisors in his office.

Episode 161 - Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson - Leaders On Leadership

"I see this abandonment as something more pleasurable. It is connecting with your true voice and figuring the things that are important to me." - Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson.

Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson, an Amazon bestselling author, shares her thoughts about leaders on leadership and the price you have to pay for it. She shares how she lost many friends after she became a life coach because people think that change is contagious, and they're afraid that in a way that if you make a change in your lives that makes you happier and better, you are challenging them. Dr. Diely adds that when we are finally ready to start listening to our voice and not to the world, we already finish our milestones. Tune in to this episode and listen more about the price you must pay for leadership.

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Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson - Leaders On Leadership

In this episode, I am extremely excited to connect you with our guest. Her name is Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson. She is a former Hematologist-Oncologist. She's a life coach. She's also an Amazon bestselling author, but she prefers to describe herself as an oncologist who, after becoming a cancer survivor, decided that, “Life is too short. I don't want and make a living fighting death anymore. I'd rather make a living celebrating life.” She now specializes in helping professional women make romantic career transitions so that they can live the life they want. Diely, thank you so much for being our guest on the show.

Thank you for having me. You’ve said my name very well.

Thank you so much. A shout-out to our readers. For those of you that have read Dr. Madeline Frank before, she's the one that introduced me to Diely. I like to tee it up and let people know how our paths crossed. It's all about the people you meet and the books you read. Thank you again, Diely. I'm going to get started because I want to hear your perspective on The Price of Leadership.

Our readers know that my father talked about the four key tenets that you are going to have to be paying to truly call yourself a leader. The first to them is loneliness. We've all heard the saying, “It's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Could you unpack what loneliness as a leader looks like for you and share with us a time when you went through it in your life?

As a life coach, I love a saying that says that people would rather be unhappy than lose their identity. For me to become a leader as a life coach, and one of the populations I help also are physicians, I had to leave medicine behind. I had to decide I had enough. I want a better quality of life. I don't want to make a living fighting death. That made me lose many friends in a similar way as when I decided to be a happier person many years ago in divorce, someone who was making me very unhappy, I lost many friends.

People think that change is contagious, and they're afraid in a way that if you make a change in your lives that makes you happier and better, you are challenging them. They may want to pull you back. They may want to disappear and not be near you because you remind them of the unhappy life they have now. That has been my face with loneliness. When I left medicine and became a life coach, I started meeting wonderful people. I started making great connections and lost a huge amount of my former friends and colleagues.

I love that you said people fear that change is contagious because, in the world that we're in, even in your medical career before, if they're there seeing you, there's an issue. Typically, it means something has to change, either a medical issue or a lifestyle issue. It is interesting when people will look at you and say, “You've changed.” You're so right. That means that they don't want to, and they're afraid it will somehow leap on them.

I never realized that could be the spur of the sense of loneliness. It’s also good to hear that there's always somebody on the other side there to fill that gap with what you're looking for. Thank you for that, Diely. Now, weariness. How do you combat weariness? It must have been very exhausting in the medical profession, but how do you deal with weariness in your role?

We should normalize weariness in a way. We will have good days and bad days. We'll have phases when everything goes our way and see the fruit of our work. We will have phases where we are going to feel despair. The difference between the weariness that practically cost me career burnout and had me leave oncology and the weariness that you feel in a leadership role that you are committed to is, “Am I in the place where I want to be? Maybe things are not going my way right now. Maybe I'm second-guessing myself, but right at this moment, am I exactly where I want to be?” That is the way I've been combating weariness. If you can answer that question one day at a time, “Yes, I believe in this message. Yes, I still believe that what I am working for is worthy and is in alignment with my values,” then that's how you overcome the recurrent weariness of the leadership role.

I appreciate you saying we should normalize weariness because if you are in your purpose and you're pouring out into people, there is going to be an element of that. I love that you said that. If you're in the place, it's a good weary versus an exhausted, frustrated type of weary where you realize there's a difference when you're run down because you know you're in the wrong place and there's not a value congruence. As you said, there's a good weariness where you at least know you're in place, but there's a lot of work to do.

For people who work out, I compare it to when you are tired after a good workout at the gym. You feel tired and sore, but you feel good. It’s different from having spent your whole day working in a coal mine doing work that is exhausting and hurting your back lifting heavy things. That is a pain in a bad way.

He talked about loneliness and weariness. He talked about abandonment. When he talked about abandonment in The Price of Leadership, he referred to it as, “Stop doing the things that you shouldn't do.” It’s almost hyper-focus. You need to abandon all the things that aren't truly getting you to the place that you say you want to be in.

This is a tough one for us, especially as women because we like to be all things to all people. Can you share with us how you hone your sense of abandonment, especially since you abandoned past careers and past relationships and moved on to the next? Can you walk us through that or give us some advice on that?

Remember when you and I had the first talk, that's where I say, “I have a little objection to that,” but I see what you mean. In my case, change came from abandoning things that the world was telling me I was supposed to want but were not in connection with what I felt my mission in life was and what I wanted to do. I see this abandonment as something more pleasurable perhaps and is connecting with your true voice and figuring out, “What are the things that are important to me?”

You can prioritize and learn to say no. That is going to include recharging your batteries. That was the other tweak I have to that. It’s doing things that bring you happiness and expressing your creativity. Having a hobby that recharges you that is not connected with your cause of leadership is also very important because you cannot give what you don't have. In my case, I'm teaching people to be happier, to live life with passion, to love, to reinvent themselves, and find what they love. I have to be an example of that day by day.

Isn't it wonderful when you're working with people too? You talked about true voice. When you're listening to so much and for so much of our lives, we pretend. We pick up other masks, we drift, or we're not our authentic selves, but then when you truly abandon it, it's almost this huge relief because it's there all along. We only have to peel off all the other things that we have somehow put on ourselves and unfold that true voice that you said.

That difference between what I want versus what the world is telling me I'm supposed to want makes a big difference.

That's a secret to your unique purpose for being on this planet. The last point he talked about was the vision. For vision, he said that vision is nothing more than seeing what needs to be done, but then also going out and doing it and having a very practical, tactical aspect to it. Can you share with us how you craft your vision and how that drives you forward?

That is probably my favorite because the biggest transition I had to make from physician to life coach was to understand that I'm not here to prescribe. I'd come to the client-coach relationship with a vision of what I think would make this person happy and is worthless if it's not what they envision would make them happy. My biggest role as a leader and as a life coach is to help people find their own definition of their vision and what they want.

Sometimes, I help them raise the bar. Maybe they have a very low bar, and I remind them that there are other things. I help them elevate their mindset so they can see options that were previously invisible to their eyes and help them reconnect with that through voice and separating it from the noise. Ultimately, my leadership as a life coach is to help people figure out what their own vision is.

Do you have somebody help you figure out your vision too?

I have had coaches. Now, I have a coach that is helping me with my business vision. She's challenging me in many ways.

Can you unpack that for us? Tell us about what's next for what you're doing. It's great that you're pouring into other people, but we have to always realize we have to have somebody pouring into us too. Can you tell me some of your thoughts about what that looks like for what's next for you?

Precisely because I refuse to repeat the story of burnout in medicine, I have been until now very limited to a very exclusive one-on-one practice and refusing to visit. This coach is helping me break to the next level. Not only to see one-on-one clients but also to have groups and courses and expand my message. If I want to touch more people and grow regarding my income, I need to break that glass ceiling and start speaking to a larger audience.

Tell me, Diely. Where do you speak? Do you have anything coming up? Do you get out and speak?

Yes. I've spoken in the community a few times. The next time, a support group for female physicians is inviting me to speak in April 2023. The last time was a group of breast cancer survivors. I'm a breast cancer survivor. I have been exploring keynote speaking, but little by little. It is mostly a way to give back to the community.

We talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. I appreciate your input on that. Is there anything else regarding The Price of Leadership that we haven't touched on that you would like to share with the audience?

A couple of things come to mind, but I think the most important would be to be intentional. Every moment when you are going to speak to someone or take a step, know what your intention is and why you are doing it. In my case, that is very important for me to differentiate. “Am I here to help this person or to be liked? They may not like something I need to tell them, but I am not here to be liked right now.”

Leaders On Leadership: Every moment when you are going to speak to someone or take a step, know what your intention is and why you are doing it.

Usually, I'm a very loving coach who's very soft, but sometimes I have to push a little bit in that direction. Sometimes, “Am I connecting with this person? Do I have a message for this person, or do they have a message for me? Is my intention to learn from this person right now or to give to them and have them learn from me?” At every step, you ask the question, “What's my intention now?”

Tell me about your ideal client and if our readers are thinking about this. Also, I noticed in some of the books on Amazon that you talk about the romance aspect of it. Can you unpack that for our readers?

When I first started being a life coach, I was a little on strike against medicine. I did not want to call myself a life coach for physicians. Most of my clients were women transitioning after divorce and heartbreak. I have a very interesting story myself. I was a divorced mother of four kids, including a kid with special needs. I had never dated in my life and nobody thought I was ever going to find a husband.

I ended up finding my soulmate. We're happily married. We've been together now for many years. He's become a stepfather for my four children despite the fact that he never had biological kids himself. That success story was inspiring women that you can find love after divorce. Divorce could be something good that happens to you and not the end of your life. That's where my initial interest was and where my first clients came from.

Divorce could be something good that happens to you and not the end of your life.

However, because I'm a physician and they knew me that way, I started having more and more physician clients, and I now specialized also in helping physicians make either career transitions, job transitions, or to be happy where they are when it’s time to retire or to change. In summary, my ideal client is usually a woman. I call her a fully grown-up woman.

At that moment when we are finally ready to start listening to our voice and not to the world, we already finished our milestones. Maybe we already decided whether to have children or not. We finished our careers, but now it's time to listen to our true voice. That varies, but it usually starts as early as the mid to late '30s and as late as the mid to late '50s.

According to Jung, depending on whether your parents are alive for longer or not, our midlife decisions and changes can be anywhere in that age range. My ideal client is a woman in this age range. They are usually very smart and highly educated and are now, because of a life transition, divorced, burned out, has a breast cancer diagnosis, or empty nesting for the first time in a while asking, “What do I want? How do I want my life to look like?”

It is listening to her voice and not the voice of the world. Diely, that's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. What is the best way to connect with you? Is it LinkedIn, is it social media, or your website? How do you prefer to be contacted?

Nothing beats booking an appointment. My calendar link is there, face-to-face. There's so much more that can happen especially checking for feed, chemistry, common ideas, and common values. There's so much that is better done in a quick talk than trying to engage, but if there is someone who wants to check and exchange ideas before getting there, email is always better.

Diely, thank you so much for sharing your story on what it takes to pay the price of leadership, for your courage to find your true calling, for sharing all the things that you've gone through, and now for your desire to help other women walk along the way and give back to your community.

Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to share some ideas here.

To our tremendous readers out there, thank you so much for being a part of our tremendous tribe. Remember, if you like what you read, please be sure and hit the subscribe button, share this, and we'd be honored if you would leave us a five-star review. Be sure and reach out to Diely too. You're going to want to stay in touch with her. For our readers out there, have a tremendous rest of your day. Thank you so much for paying the price of leadership.

Important Links

• Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson

• Dr. Madeline Frank – Past Episode

• https://JoyfullySuccessful.com/seven-steps-to-freedom-and-passion/

• https://www.Amazon.com/Bouncing-Back-How-Minimal-Expenditure-ebook/dp/B094LJMG7K

• https://www.Amazon.com/stores/D-Pichardo-Johansson/author/B071G6VF64

• https://Calendly.com/joyfullysuccessful/clarity-session

About Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson

Dr. Pichardo-Johansson is a former Hematologist-Oncologist, a Life Coach, and Amazon bestselling author. But she prefers to describe herself as an oncologist who, after becoming a cancer survivor decided "Life it's too short. I don't want to make a living fighting death anymore, I'd rather make a living celebrating life." She specializes in helping professional women make romantic and career transitions so they can live the life they really want."

Episode 160 - James Carpenter Barnes - Leaders On Leadership

What does it take to pay the price of leadership? Leadership has one of the most challenging paths to track, but it is a beautiful calling. In today’s episode, James Carpenter Barnes, Ph.D., gives light into leaders on leadership to become more like the Creator. He explains how vision provides the ability to see amid loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. So, what fogs the clarity of your vision, and what fuels it? James is here to fulfill his mission to inspire everyone to become more like the Creator! Tune in to this inspiring episode and become a tremendous leader!

http://Life-Imagined.org

http://theyoubelongfoundation.org

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James Carpenter Barnes - Leaders On Leadership

In this episode, I am so excited to introduce my special guest, Dr. James H. Carpenter Barnes. He is a Christian American Author and Public Speaker. He writes supernatural fiction thrillers and nonfiction books on scriptural-based personal development. His mission is to inspire all of creation to become more like the Creator. We love that here. James, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. I'm so honored to be a part of what you're doing touching lives and changing lives. That's what it's all about. That is the ministry of reconciliation, bringing humanity in connection with the Creator for us to begin to imitate Him, to duplicate the part of Him that is within us, within other people. Nothing else matters in this life but duplicating the Spirit of God within us, within others and sharing it and enhancing lives.

For the readers out there, I met James in Santa Monica, California, when I was out there for the ETHOS Film Festival and got to see a documentary premiere that many of you that are our followers have heard about. I got to meet James and see a documentary he created, which hopefully, we're going to talk about a little bit at the end. It's been wild these past few weeks, James, and what a blessing how providential that we got to connect at that event.

That was a blessing. Between me, you and the gate post, as they used to say in the South, you were my favorite.

You're tremendous, James. Let's get started. The readers out there love learning all about what different leaders have gone through in their journeys. Leadership is one of the toughest things we're going to do, but it is such a beautiful calling and a triumph. My father gave a speech called The Price of Leadership. It’s probably the top speech that he ever gave. In it, he unpacks the four things that you are going to encounter as a leader if you're going to be paying the price of leadership and not just calling yourself a leader.

James, the first one he talked about was loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top or heavy is the head that wears the crown. Can you unpack for our readers what loneliness and leadership mean for you and maybe a season when you were in it? Are there any words of counsel that you would give to them?

First of all, loneliness is very different from being alone. Loneliness is an emotional state that you're in. Being alone is a physical condition and it's temporary. You can change it at any given time but loneliness is different. There is a separation between that person and those that are around them. The reason for that is for you to learn the importance of hearing the voice of the Creator.

If you're a spiritual leader, you have to be able to hear the voice of the Creator of the Spirit of God. You have to be able to hear clearly. That's one of the reasons a lot of leaders have difficulty in making crucial decisions because there are so many voices they're hearing. They're hearing so many different sounds. The scriptures say that there are many voices and none of them are without signification. Many of the voices that we hear are not the voice that we need to be listening for.

I learned it early on in my walk as a believer and as I began ministry back in 1982, which is many years ago. The first thing I learned was loneliness because I lived in a car on the lakefront of Chicago. I would sleep at the Field Museum. I slept in the Museum of Science and Industry parking lot and Shedd Aquarium’s parking lot.

Every night, I'd have to move around to three different locations before the sun came up because the police kept making me move. Some nights, I would be in the car. I used to read the Concordance in my Bible. One night, a police officer came up. He tapped on the window. It was raining. It was real heavy rain and my car is sitting over in the cut. He came over and tapped on the window. I had my Bible. He said, “Are you reading a Bible?” I said, “Yes, I am.”

He looked at the Bible and he looked at me. He said, “You can't stay here. You're going to have to move.” I said, “Okay, officer. I'll move on to my other location.” The thing about loneliness is that it's a mechanism that God uses in any person that is of any significance on Earth. The reason for that is that He wants us to understand the importance of our dependence on Him because when you don't go through that preparation, you're susceptible to external input that can discolor your spirit and your focus. It can fog the clarity of your vision, which we're going to talk about.

Loneliness is a mechanism God uses in everyone to understand the importance of our dependence on Him. Because when you don't go through that preparation, you're susceptible to external input that can fog the clarity of your vision.

The beginning point is loneliness. Once you adapt, loneliness is an excellent place to be because if you think about it, Jesus, in his walk on the Earth was lonely but He was never alone. He would go apart to be in solitude to be or to communicate with the Father. If you notice, the Bible never talks about what Jesus said when He would go apart to pray. He never talked about it. The scriptures didn't mention it. The disciples didn't write about it because they didn't know.

They wrote about everything else but they couldn't write about that. What that means is that your solitude is very personal. It's between you and the Creator. That mechanism of loneliness is part of the attrition because it hones away the desire for popularity. It hones away the desire to be seen and to be recognized. It hones you to a fine edge where when you go through that, you are a different person when you're done with that loneliness process.

James, unpack for me a little bit of back your background. How did the Bible wind up in your car with you? Were you raised in a church?

I used to be a drug dealer. I was a musician. I played in the band. First of all, I was a pre-med student at DePaul University. Ending my junior year, my brother had a band. I'm a musician as well. My brother needed a guitar player. I was supposed to go play tennis with Dr. Crozet at Midtown Tennis Club.

He was going to help me get into medical school. I was supposed to play tennis with him and a couple of judges. I was moving into a different world and I went back into music. When I went back into music, I got back into drugs because I wasn't a believer. I wound up moving into an apartment where there had been some type of ritual that took place there.

The people told me later after I went through my ordeal. They told me that a woman had been murdered in that apartment. While in that apartment, some evil forces got ahold of me and that was what the Creator used to get my attention and say, “You need to make a change and you need to make it now.” Many of us know that crisis is the catalyst for change. Until that crisis happens, many of us skip to my loo right along through life, thinking everything's okay, then we wind up in a bad spot.

At that point, I couldn't stay in that apartment. I wound up living in my car that entire summer of 1982. The Lord blessed me finally with another apartment in September of that same year. During that time, June, July, August into September, I lived in the car. I would go to this place called Soul Queen Restaurant. I would eat all I could hold in that one meeting because it was all you could eat. I'd go there once a day and I would get stuffed.

I didn't go back to my mom's house. I went there. I lived in the car. I ate a Soul Queen and I would go to my mom's to take a shower or whatever but I would leave. I spent my time fasting, praying, reading, and studying. I would fast Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and all-day Sunday. That's all I did but my growth was so rapid from 1982. I started traveling as an evangelist in 1984.

It was a couple of years that I began ministry but I had to because of what I came out of. Even in the apartment that I got, there would be spirits walking through the house. I had to learn to take dominion over these things. That's why I know that loneliness is to hone you to a fine edge where you become a weapon, not only spiritually but naturally as well. You're able to help other people because you've been there, you've done that, and you know how to deal with it.

I love that you called it the beginning point and that it's in a mechanism. As you said, loneliness is different from being alone but I have never heard it unpacked like that. Don't we all have to get that desire for popularity and to see it? That's what's driving all this mental illness and this narcissism going on now. Stop. I love that you drew to that. God got to get you alone, even if it's in a car. What better place than that?

The next thing my father talked about is weariness. He would joke and say, “Tracey, you're always going to have some people do way more than what they need to do as a leader and a lot of people that do way less. The buck stops with you, so you have to be able to make it all happen and be on your game.” How do you combat weariness and how do you stay strong, James?

Without going too far ahead because each one of these works in tandem. There's something in the scripture called compound conjunction. That's when you'll see the spirit of love, joy, and peace. What that means is that each component is linked by that conjunction but it needs that to rest upon the next adjective of interpretation. Each description rest upon the other.

Loneliness rest upon weariness, the next one, and so on. The scripture says, “Be not weary in well-doing.” The reason for that is that there are going to be challenges that come to dissuade you and discourage you. The reason Paul wrote that is that he'd experienced frustration. He'd experienced being tired in his body. His spirit is willing but his flesh is weak and we all experienced that.

We have to keep in the forefront of our minds that we have an assignment, a mission, and a vision. Be it in sales, as a writer, in television, movies, music, teaching, taking care of children or dealing with children with special needs or special circumstances. You're going to need that because there are going to be people that fail you that let you down.

We have to keep in the forefront of our minds that we have an assignment, a mission, and a vision.

There are going to be times you're going to have to do your part and theirs. You cannot allow the fatigue or the lexical disposition of another to dissuade your fire and your passion because passion is the fuel that enables you to keep going with your vision when the circumstances have gone against you. When the situation has turned sour, it's no longer sweet and its taste is no longer enjoyable. There are no more people saying, “That's awesome what you're doing. I wish I could do that.” None of that's happening.

You're in the dark now. You're in a dark place. You're dealing with loneliness. You're tired. You are weary. You cannot become weary if you are knowing that you're doing well. The scriptures also say, “Let patients have her perfect work.” The reason James wrote her is that women nurture and bring forth life. That was the reason he used that pronoun. He could have said it or him but he said her. The reason for that is that patience enables you to endure weariness and loneliness. Again, it's honing you, preparing you, and prepping you for that which is to come which we are going to talk about in a little bit.

Leaders On Leadership: Patience enables you to endure weariness and loneliness.

I love how you took weariness and put patience into it because a lot of times it's like, “You got to stay suited up and strong.” You do but a lot of times patience is put to work. I love that. Thank you so much. Loneliness, weariness and now the next term he used is abandonment. A lot of times people think about abandoning a marriage, a child, or a pet. It has a negative connotation but in the price of leadership context, my father talked about how you need to stop doing what you like and want to do in favor of what you ought and need to do.

I can remember looking at him and saying, “How'd you get so successful?” He would say to me, “Tracey, I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success.” He kept honing in. You have to be focused. There are all these other distractions. You talked about the voices and he talked about abandonment and that you have to stay hyper-focused on your purest calling. As you said, these are building on each other. James, you've been through a lot of different things. As an evangelist and a writer, you've done these different things, how do you abandon and stay on point and on focus?

The thing I remember about abandonment is this. It’s a twofold thing. There's withdrawing or shedding and there's also the abandonment of people leaving you. I always use Jesus as the example because He's so perfect. When we think about abandonment, a lot of times we hear scripture and we have seen it depicted in films. The night that Jesus was betrayed, Judas came with the 30 pieces of silver and betrayed him with a kiss on the cheek. Peter cut off the soldier's ear and then Jesus healed it.

He told him, “Don't you know I can call twelve legions of angels if I wanted to? My father would wipe out the planet if need be.” The thing was they abandoned Him at the most crucial point of God's plan for men of reconciliation, creating a system to propitiate men from sin and reconcile us back to the Creator. They scattered and ran. Why? It’s because they had to. If they'd hung around and fought, they would have impeded the sacrifice that needed to take place at Calvary.

If they had hung around, they would have been a hindrance rather than a help in God's plan for mankind. So it is with the things we have to shed in this life. When I became a believer, I love music. I was one of the best guitar players in Chicago based in my opinion. I gave all my equipment away. I gave my guitar away. I gave everything away to my younger brother and to other guys in the band I was playing with.

We were in the recording studio. We were recording with one guy that was the band leader who tour with Earth, Wind & Fire. We had the horn section from the commodore. We were in the studio recording. When I got saved, I said, “I'm done with this. I'm out.” My brother was devastated because I used to write a lot of the music for the band. It threw things in disarray. I'm sorry but I had to abandon them.

In a sense, they had to move away because I needed to launch out into a place where they couldn't go. There was nobody else in the boat with me but the Spirit of the Lord and His Word. It was on that sea of loneliness and weariness. I'm out there by myself and I had to let these things go. The reason you have to let them go is that they will be an anchor, a hindrance.

Paul wrote in the book of Hebrews to lay aside the weight and the sin. Now weights aren't necessarily a sin. He said weights and sin, which means they're two different things. The weights can be people, places, things, habits, or things that you enjoy. It could be your diet, your best friend, your parents, your job or a hobby that you have. It could even be something religious. You're tied to a religious organization but it's a hindrance to what you have been assigned to do.

You have to let be willing to abandon things and allow people to abandon you because in the long run, like the scripture says, “Be not weary in well-doing. You will reap if you faint not.” It’s just as Jesus told a rich young ruler, “You've done all these things up to this time.” The Scripture said, “Jesus looked on that rich young rule and he loved him.” He said, “There's one thing you lack. You need to sell all your wealth and riches. Give it to the poor. Take up your cross and follow me.” He said, “You asked a hard thing.”

In other words, in our vernacular, he was saying, “I understand what you're saying but do you know how much money I have? Do you know how rich I am? Do you know how much Bitcoin and gold I have? Do you realize what billions of dollars I have? Do you want me to give it up and go carry your cross? I'm sorry, I can't.” He wasn't willing to abandon the wealth.

Jesus told the disciples. The disciples were like, “If that's the case, who can be saved?“ Jesus said, “Anybody that gives up their mother, father, sister, brother, houses, or land in this life for my sake and the gospel will receive a hundredfold in this life.” When we allow ourselves to not only be abandoned because sometimes that abandonment opens the door for a replacement, it's like a spaceship.

Leaders On Leadership: Abandonment opens the door for a replacement.

A spaceship has 2 or 3 stages and that first stage falls off because it's no longer needed. It becomes a hindrance. Once it has expended its fuel capacity, it falls off. The second stage is the same thing. It served its purpose to launch that capsule into the ionosphere beyond the earth's atmosphere. Now it doesn't need as much fuel because there's no gravity.

You need more energy to break the barrier of the earth's atmosphere. It takes more energy and more power. It’s a different type of power, a different type of energy to lift a movement, a work, a business, a dream, or a vision from ground zero into lofty places. It doesn't get there overnight. You got to expend that level of passion and support and when it's done, it's served its purpose. It's nothing against who or what it was that carried you there. It served its purpose and then it goes forward. Eventually, you are going to fall off and someone going to take up. If it's a work of the Lord, if it's a work of the Kingdom of God, you're going to fall off because you will have served your purpose.

First of all, as an amateur astronomer and sci-fi fan, I love the spaceship analogy. Our readers know that but I love that you talked about that. I love the fact that when you talk about abandonment, I hope this gives our readers. I hope it gives you zah for your soul. A lot of us think, “Somebody who was in my life left or I had to leave somebody.”

You're right, it's not just us doing the shedding. Sometimes we get shed. When Jesus said to his disciples, “You can't come with me,” I'm sure that was not a fine conversation because they were like, “What do you mean we can't?” “I'm going to a place where you can't go.” “What do you mean, Rabbi teacher? You're supposed to be doing this.” I love that you talked about that.

For our readers out there, you can look back to the people that were in your life for a season and they're not there anymore. Sometimes it was a good separation. Other times like a rocket ship. It was a violent falling away or whatever but as you said, James, there's always a reason for it. Understand that reason and I love that you talked about and the trajectory. We'll have our place where we're helping lift other little rocket ships off and watching people, sending off all his stuff and then it's off for you to go do off to glory and for the next person to come up. I am going to read this session again and again. I could sit and listen to you for hours, James.

What's interesting and what's powerful is this. Dr. Tracey, once you break free of the Earthly realm, your dad's already done it, then you can accelerate into the immeasurable vastness that our Creator is still creating. Physicists have proven that the universe is growing at an accelerated rate. God is still creating. There's a reason for that. We have assignments. Once we leave this earth, there are other things.

Once you break free of the earthly realm, you can accelerate into the immeasurable vastness that our creator is still creating.

This physical body stops but we do not stop in him because we are connected to the life of God. This is a launching pad to take us to the higher heights and the deeper depths of the creation. When you stop and you think about that, the life we live here, even the way we handle our money, the way our discipline, our qualities, all of that goes with us.

What we're going to be doing in heaven? I tell people, “Do you want to be unemployed in heaven? No. You better get to work right now because what he's honing for you now is what you're going to be doing for all eternity. This is the proving ground. Do it down here in this age where it's not meant to be because we're going to be doing it for an eternity and perfection.”

We're being prepared, plain and simple.

Loneliness, weariness, abandonment which we could go on and on for that but the last one is vision. James, the vision that Jesus has or some of these people that think otherworldly. My father would always say, “Tracey, vision is nothing more than seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” Jesus said that too, “The harvest is full but the laborers are few.” There's so much out there to do. Vision is not just seeing it but there's this execution. It's putting it into action. Can you share with our readers how you continue to hone your vision and keep propelling to the next level?

Vision is crucial. Vision is what the seven streams of revenue that exist. There's wisdom, vision, and knowledge in this application, a good name, relationships, real estate in land and investments and silver and gold and money. Money is number 7 out of the 7. 1) Wisdom. 2) Vision. Vision is significant to acquiring and maintaining wealth. Why is that? To have vision enables you to see in the midst of the darkness of loneliness, in the midst of the darkness of weariness and in the midst of being abandoned.

To have vision enables you to see amid the darkness of loneliness, the darkness in weariness, and the midst of being abandoned.

Vision gives you a supernatural ability to see in the midst. You could be perfectly blinded. The reason vision is still able to see is that vision is within you. There's one thing to see but to have the vision, you can see it with your eyes closed or your eyes open. When you're going through dark places and through difficulty, it’s like what you were saying. Your dad would say, “You see something that needs to be done.”

Sometimes if you don't have a vision, you can't see what needs to be done because of the minutiae and noise you're surrounded by. You're so concerned about how lonely you are. You don't have any friends. You're so concerned about how tired you are. You're so concerned about who's left you, who's no longer working with you, or who's no longer supporting you. I had people, they were giving and now I don't have anybody. Yes, you do.

The scripture says plainly, “Casting all care upon Him for He cares for you.” That is what is our hope in enabling us to consistently maintain our vision, write the vision, and make it plain that see you fit can run with patience the race that is set before them. Who's going to see the vision? You're going to see it. Your angels see it. Who was working with you can see it with their eyes closed or eyes open. If they're blind in one eye and can't see out the other, they could still see that vision because it's inside. It's within you and nothing can get to it because it's protected by the girding of the loins of your mind.

It's protected. It can't be affected like I was saying earlier about being able to make a decision. If you've got a vision, you don't have a problem making a decision because you see clearly what needs to be done. Jesus did not see. He did not perceive with the natural eyes of man. He saw as God saw. Vision is essential. Vision is the rope that ties the other 3 qualities and the 4 legs of that table of leadership.

Leaders On Leadership: Vision is the rope, the tie that ties the other three qualities, the four legs of that leadership table.

Vision is in the right corner. It’s the cornerstone that ties the whole thing together because as long as you can see, as long as you can perceive, you don't have to worry about money. You don't have to worry about abandonment, loneliness, and weariness because you can see yourself. You can see the light where there isn't a light. You can see it because you're seeing God's plan for your life in your vision, in your mind's eye. That's what we have to look at. That's what I've always looked at.

I'm going to share something with you. Many years ago, in September of 1982, I was in the prayer room at our church. I thought, at that time, that it had been three months. Three months before, I was selling drugs. I'm ready to go forth now. I need $120,000 to fund my ministry. I had learned that much in those three months.

Do you know what the Lord told me? He said, “I'm going to teach you how to invest your money to get that amount of money.” I said, “Awesome.” That was 1982. 1992 came and 2002 came, so I got into real estate. I was buying and selling real estate. I had real estate that I didn't even see that I owned. I was buying and selling silver bullion coins. I had real estate with tennis. I had properties I was flipping. My head was this big. It was so big I could hardly get in a car. I had to slide into the car. My head had gotten so big and God allowed that.

He allowed me to have all of that and then lose it all. Now, fast forward to 1982, 1992, 2002, 2012 and then 2022, God revealed and gave me the opportunity. It was nothing I did. He put me in the spot. As I said, God will put you in that spot for something that he wants you to have when you're ready for it. He put me in a position where I will very soon have that money that he promised me. That's not going to do with anything else. This was a hunk of money I asked for.

He put me in a position where I will have that money. What's interesting, I did the math on it and $120,000 in 1982 is $340,000 in 2022 money, which is the exact amount that I have. I used to trade stocks. I did options and made money but I didn't make money like I didn't have to do anything. God did it. My point is that when you go through these things and you maintain your vision. I maintained my focus on serving. I've always been a servant. I've always sought to help. I was never called to be a pastor. I never tried to be a pastor. My function was to serve whoever needed it.

At my church, I played guitar. I was a soul-winner. I was a Sunday school teacher. I taught twelve-year-olds and teenagers. I took the garbage out at the church. I did some of everything. I never sought to be some great somebody. It wasn't in me. Even now, that's my nature. It’s to serve. When I met you, I was serving Dr. Dentley. I got two television shows on his network and he asked me to come out to be a part of what he was doing there because he knows how I am and the quality of work that I do.

When I'm committed to something, that's all I see. I don't worry about what someone else is doing or being weary. If I'm in a place of service, that is what I do. That's the reason I connected with you because you have that heart to serve. The scriptures say of all things in leadership, “If you desire to be a leader and you don't have the heart to serve, to be the last one fed, to be the one to turn the lights out, to be the one there to open the door when things open up, then you need to think again about being a leader.” The first prerequisite for being a leader, Jesus said, “Those who would be great among you, let him be the servant of all.”

James, we're wrapping it up with loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. What else have we not hit on? I love how you've tied it together. You called it the table of leadership. Each of these are one of the legs, and it’s beautiful. I had never thought about it like that. Is there anything else that we have not touched on that you would like to share with our readers?

There are people who've been designated to read this. I know that because of the calling I saw my life. My voice is for certain ears. When the ears hear it, they'll recognize and there will be an inner witness. Do not be discouraged and the good that you're doing. Do not be disheartened in the efforts that you put forth, the sacrifices that you've made, and the credit that you did not yet.

A monument has been set for you before the throne of the Creator. It’s a monument with your name on it that highlights the work that you've done. You will move into the place that God has ordained because God is raising up those who are last to be first in these end times. Don't be discouraged. Be of good cheer. As Paul said, “Be a good cheer.” Jesus said, “Be a good cheer. I'm coming aboard. We’re going to go to shore.” God is coming. He's going to meet you. He's going to visit you and you're going to see a sudden acceleration and change in your life. In 2023, this new coming year is a year of higher heights and maximum production.

Leaders On Leadership: God is raising those who are last to be first in these end times.

James, I love that. Thank you so much. You said you have a couple of shows going on. How do people get in touch with you, James? I know our readers are going to want to connect with you.

I have two shows on the JD3 Network and now, they're updating the network, so I don't know if they're taking it offline or what, but it will be our real cool. Also, I'm on YouTube. I'm also on Creative Motion Television, The NOW Network and ADtv. I have shows on there as well. You can go to our website, Life-Imagined.org. We also have a nonprofit, TheYouBelongFoundation.org.

The You Belong Foundation is a foundation where we serve the needs and we provide services and resources to members of the special needs community and their families. I have a special needs son, Christian. We endeavor to reach out to encourage the parents, especially a special needs child because many times they feel alone. They feel abandoned and isolated, and they need to know that they are not alone. That is our slogan, “You are not alone.” That's our focus.

I’ve got to tell you something, James. There are a couple of things you said that ignited my soul. I thank you for the wisdom, for your work, and for your using your talents to glorify God. You certainly achieved your goal of helping His creation want to be more like the Creator. I can't thank you enough for your wisdom. I know our readers are going to be very blessed, and I look forward too. It's only been weeks but if this is the pace it's going to be on, that's all right by me.

I'm looking forward to it.

Thank you. For our readers out there, thank you so much for being part of our Tremendous Tribe. If you enjoy this episode, please do us the honor of getting on to wherever you read. Give us a five-star review, hit the like button, subscribe, and also share so other leaders out there can understand what it takes to pay the price of leadership. Thank you again, James, for being a part of this discussion. To our tremendous leaders out there, you have a tremendous day, and keep on paying the price of leadership.

 Important Links

• James H. Carpenter Barnes

• TheYouBelongFoundation.org

• Life-Imagined.org

• YouTube – James Barnes

• Creative Motion Television

• The NOW Network

• ADtv

About James H. Carpenter Barnes

James H. Carpenter Barnes, Ph.D., is a Christian American author and public speaker. He writes supernatural fiction thrillers and non-fiction books on scriptural based personal development. His mission is to inspire all of creation to become more like the Creator.