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 189 - Curt Vincent - Leaders on Leadership

Have you ever felt like your life wasn't going according to plan? Curt Vincent's story is one of unexpected turns, leadership lessons, and finding the path to purpose. After being drafted out of high school, his initial plans were derailed, but with the help of a strong leader, he discovered a talent for leadership and a love of learning. Life threw him curveballs, like being called back to the Army after 9/11 and later having to choose between a high-paying job and his startup dream; through these challenges, his faith and openness to new opportunities guided him. In his third career, Curt is on a quest to discover his true calling. He emphasizes the importance of self-confidence in leadership, balanced with keeping the ego in check. Tune in to this episode because Curt's story is an inspiration for anyone who has ever felt lost or unsure of their path.

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watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Curt Vincent - Leaders on Leadership

It is time for our latest edition of the show, where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am tremendously excited because we have a very special guest. His name is Colonel Curt, or to us, lay people, civilians, Curt Vincent. I want to tell people briefly about Curt's subject matter expertise.

Curt is a cyber security consultant. He's a strategist and also a speaker. He has been a cyber security maverick in both the Army, respect, and Wall Street. He is the Founder and leader of the 400-person Morgan Stanley cybersecurity program. He's been a leader since becoming a sergeant at the age of nineteen. Curt has been in the cybersecurity world. He loves to say that he demystifies cybersecurity for senior leaders, C staff, and boards. It's not just technology. It's people and culture.

I love this Curt, because everybody's aware of this from yelling across the room at somebody saying, “What's this email?” “Don't open that.” Curt says insurance claim data shows that as much as 80% of cyber breaches occur because your employees unwittingly invite criminals into your company or home. Curt, we want to talk about all things leadership but especially about this great thing that you do with cybersecurity. Welcome, Curt.

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Give the audience a brief context of where we connected. Our first correspondence was Curt had come in with an order through our website so automatically, I see how tremendous he is. I then see he comes through with another order. When you order from our website, you get a discount code for the next one so he came in and ordered something else.

I went in and being the nice person that I am, I refunded his shipping because it was going to the same place. I get this email from Curt saying, “What's going on? You refunded the shipping.” Fast forward several weeks and here we are. Curt, you've been in the tremendous sphere for quite some time but we have only just connected. Would you share about that?

I'm thrilled to share about it. I'm going to embarrass you in the process because you have no idea what I'm going to say. The first thing that I want your audience to know is I knew very little about Charlie "Tremendous" Jones. However, I learned the quote, “You will be the same person in five years, except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I love that quote. I use it in my public speaking because it's so profound.

One of the things I do is when I go all the time, I'm always exploring somebody or something extremely deep. I had decided at this point in my career that I was going to dig into who was Charlie "Tremendous" Jones. I started to watch as many YouTubes as I could find. I started buying old CDs off of eBay. I discovered your website. From there, it's a short circuit, more data and input. I started to order these things. I noticed you had some videos and MP3s.

I'm going to tell your audience, I prejudged you. I've seen this many times. People are riding on the coattails of their mom or dad and they're not able to stand up for themselves. However, you told me the story later that your dad threw you out of the house and said, “Go earn your stripes,” which made me respect you. I dug into your LinkedIn and I was like, “This is an amazing lady.” I prejudged her incorrectly. I had to buy one of your books and went through it as quickly as I could. If I make a mistake, I admit it. I sent Tracey an email saying, “I judged you incorrectly. I apologized.” From there, we started to have a dialogue and I would say we became friends if I can call you that.

Thank you for that. Charles did. He pretty much was like, “You got to go earn your stripes.” I remember watching successful people that I sat under their tutelage since I was little and no one said, “I inherited this. My last name is this. My daddy was a general.” It was all, “I made my own way.” I thought, “To be standing in front of people and help them find their way, you have to have made your own way.” He emphasized that but that was something as a child, I understood. I appreciate that, Curt. It means a lot. Let's get right into talking about paying the price of leadership.

Loneliness

Curt, one of my father's known speeches was called The Price of Leadership. It's in one of the little booklets that we have, the life-changing classics. In it, he says, “If you are going to truly be an authentic leader, there's a price you're going to have to pay.” It isn't a corner office, million-dollar salaries, or everybody loves you. There are four things he talks about. The first is loneliness. We've heard the statement, “It's lonely at the top or heavy as the head that wears the crown.” Can you share with us in your leadership journey maybe a time when you went through a season of loneliness and some words of exhortation for our audience?

Unfortunately, Tracey, everything with me is a long answer. Let me dig in. You'll appreciate this though. I have to go back to when I was in high school. I was back in an era where things were very different than now. My father felt, rightly or wrongly, that I was very rebellious so he forced me to quit high school and join the Army on my seventeenth birthday. What happened here is that I joined the Army as a seventeen-year-old man-boy. As I like to say, pimple-faced kids are showing up in the 101st Airborne.

The first sergeant who was the top enlisted person for the company took a look at my education and entire profile and said, “Vincent, it says here that you're a high school dropout. You're not going to the airfield,” and that was supposed to be a helicopter mechanic and a co-pilot.” He says,” You're going to the education center. You don't come back until you get a GED.”

I have to make a very long story short. This guy was about 5'5", a Puerto Rican gentleman named First Sergeant Ortiz but because of the amount of leadership and his time in the Army, I thought he was 9 foot tall. I did exactly what he said, fear and trembling. I went to the education center and did everything I was supposed to do. That was my job, to get the GED. I brought it back and laid it at his feet. I said, “Can I go to the airfield?” He said, “Yes. However, you have to go back to the education center and sign up for college credit. I want you to show up in my office weekly and tell me how you're doing.” It took two courses.

I started to do this. I was getting extremely good grades, A's and B's at that point. I wasn't getting that kind of positive feedback at home. I started to learn that at the very beginning, we'll get to the loneliness but the whole thing is this man went out of his way for me. To make another extremely long story short, he had me take college courses up until it was about four months from when I was supposed to graduate high school, co-wrote a letter with me that I sent to my high school with my GED and my college transcripts, asking them if I could graduate with my class and they allowed me. I'm in the yearbook as Unavailable For Photo.

The reason I'm mentioning this is this was the first influence I got in terms of what leadership is about. It's about making sure you're doing the right thing for the other person. There's no loneliness there. However, because of this individual, I strove to do the very best I could in this environment and made the rank of Sergeant at a very young age, nineteen years old. This is where the loneliness comes in.

Leadership Is Servitude

The very first thing that happened was I was a part of a group and then I was picked to lead that group. I had a very senior NCO come to me and say, “You need to disassociate with those people. They're no longer your friends. They work for you.” The one thing I love saying is he taught me that leadership is servitude. It's not about you. You're there to make them successful. I learned that at a very young age.

Leadership is servitude. It's not about you. You're there to make others successful.

The second thing he taught me is, “Phrase in public, rebuke in private.” Never call anybody out in front of anyone, pull them on the side, and be able to explain but phrase them to the high moon in the same way that First Sergeant Ortiz had with me. At the age of nineteen, I had to learn that leadership is servitude but I also had to learn how lonely it is as you're trying to stumble through figuring out what's the right thing to do and how you can be a good leader. It's very lonely.

It’s the idea of perseverating over particular problems and going and asking senior NCOs. This was long before I became an officer. Also, to be able to ask, “What would you do?” I didn't realize it at the time but that's what mentorship is about. You can cure a bit of loneliness by getting one or more mentors, which I still have, to be able to help you sort things out but not violate the relationship between what you have with you and the people who work for you.

I love that you talked about the two big factors as a young person where you're in a collective with camaraderie in high school. You got stripped away from that. When you go into the military, as I did, you're in a troop or a barracks together. If somebody has to fall out, get separated, or gets held behind due to whatever physical or you had to get your GED, that's lonely too, because you come in together as a cohort and the goal is to come out on the other side as a cohort. Rather than be so angry about the fact that you didn't get to do the traditional route, say with your peers, you said, “I'm all in.”

Like Joseph, you landed on your feet. Curt is also a dear brother in Christ and we're going to talk about this. I was reading Oswald Chambers and he talks about how burdens are a fact of life but we learn to carry them with God who was our companion. When you talked about that and a mentor, Lena Horne has one of my favorite quotes, “It's not the burden that breaks you down. It's the way you carry it.”

When you have other people there to help you, back when we grew up, it was more like, “You got to tough it out and figure it out.” Now, the more people you know to assist, the higher you are as a leader because you're asking other people to shoulder that burden with you. Mentors are the cure for loneliness. Curt, the next thing we talked about is weariness. I know you know 1 thing or 2 about weariness and Charles as a leader.

Weariness

You're going to be doing all kinds of things physically, mentally, and spiritually. Charles always told me, “Tracey, it's not for people who are weak, even physically, because a lot of times, you're going to be doing things that somebody else should be doing. If everybody did what they were supposed to be doing, then we could be a collective. We wouldn't have to have a leader and a follower. It's tiring.” Curt, how do you stay in top fighting form? You're dealing with a nasty and cowardly enemy that can sneak up and wreak terrible havoc and even lead your troops. How do you combat weariness?

The story I would tell you there is we have to fast forward a number of years to where I had gotten out of the Army, went to college, Electrical Engineering, Master's, went back in through ROTC, worked my way up through the ranks, and ended up into cybersecurity. A part of what I like to joke about was that I had planned to get into the recording business and had planned to use my engineering degree to be able to do recording and touring, which I did in college to put myself through.

It's not in the Bible but I love this adage. It's man's plans and God laughs. At the end of college, I ended up back in the Army and cyber, which I didn't expect. You used Joseph as an example. It's like being thrown in a cistern but ending up as number two in Egypt later on but you can't see it at the time. After my Army career, I ended up getting picked up on Wall Street as a technologist. Back in the '90s, Wall Street was trying to figure out the latest technology as best it could.

I did some consulting and got picked up by Morgan Stanley. The guy I had done work for, the top technologist for 6,000 people who were all technologists, says, “This internet thing is going to be big.” Nobody had a vision of where it was going to go but this guy did. He said, “I want you to build a group. Here are six people. Keep hiring until I tell you to stop.”

This is where the weariness comes in. If I was going to take six people who I had to first convert to my way of thinking, that's job number one. Number two, start hiring like crazy and be able to put in place my philosophies, which are not mine. They're from reading books like your dad, Earl Nightingale, and all these greats. Why try and reinvent the wheel?

The thing is that you've got to have a team that can help you grow a larger team and get what I would call something equivalent to a movement going as opposed to fighting. Where it became weary is telling people, “The one thing that I put into place is that as we hire, if you hire anybody that is not smarter than you, I will fire you.” The reason I said that was I have twenty years in the government and I've seen the DMV and the post office. Usually, you hire people that you can control and you're better than.

I didn't want to grow a large organization of people who were trying to maintain control. I taught the initial team and as we grew, we would have leadership sessions for the people who showed leadership potential and grew them internally. We would explain how leadership works. The one thing I said to folks is, “There are two ways to get promoted. One, you can either stand on people's heads and climb over the wall and you are successful or they can lift you and make you successful.”

That's the way we tried to grow up. You want to talk about weariness to be able to try and convert people to a different way of thinking, especially on aggressive and abrasive Wall Street to be able to get people to understand that this is going to be our culture. We are not going to be like everyone else on Wall Street. We're going to be different and we were but you want to talk about being weary and lonely at the same time. That's the one because you can find very few mentors when you're trying to do something different.

You can find very few mentors when trying to do something different.

There are two books I'm reading. One has been around. It's sold millions and millions of copies. The Master Plan of Evangelism. It's all about Jesus picking the twelve, and that was it. It’s how he got their buy-in and loyalty. It wasn't about him going and healing people, although he never shunned mass ministry but it was all about that core. Leadership is about getting that 6 because then that 6 gets their 6 and that 6 gets their 6. That's how you grow a movement.

The other book is by Steven Sample. He was the tenth President of USC, The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership. In it, he says, “The problem with organizations and leadership is A people hire A minus, A minus hire C, C hire D.” I'm sorry. That's the way it is. That's not being mean. Look at any organization. His thing was, “You have to be incredibly intentional about hiring. You can't even hire yourself. You have to hire above you.”

Men say, “I married up.” You got to hire up if you want this thing to do it. I love that you said that. You don't have enough energy. You have to focus on your core. That's one of the biggest leadership pitfalls where we fall. We have to be everything to everybody and be there for everybody. Not even Jesus was that. Pour into the people that get it so they can go be an extension of you.

Jesus went off with Peter, James, and John.

Abandonment

Even after his twelve, he had a further level of intimacy. The three-legged stool, I tell people, “You got to have your trinity.” You have other layers but otherwise, you'll burn out. You'll never make it. I love that, Curt. Loneliness, weariness. The next thing my father talked about was abandonment. In this, he said, “Abandonment is necessary.” What he meant was you have to stop thinking about what you want and think about in favor of what you ought and need to think about.

He would tell me, “Tracey, on any given day, I do more to contribute to my failure than my success.” I'm like, “What are you talking about?” He's like, “I waste time. I have conversations that have nothing to do. I don't capture my thoughts.” His thing was abandoning everything that isn't the highest and purest form of your calling. Can you share with us about how you help people do that?

I'll give you the story first. In this particular case, I had also gotten called back out of retirement to be able to serve again after 911. The reason I'm telling that story is I thought I was going back to the Middle East but they said, “No, not this time. You're going to Fort Huachuca, Arizona.” I went out there and ended up buying a house and starting a business of wireless internet for the desert because you can do that by having satellite dishes.

The whole point is after I came back to New York City and Morgan, 2008 hit and nobody got bonuses. My boss came to me and said, “You did a good job this year. I want to do something for you. I can't give you any money but if you want, you can work from Arizona. You could go to your place in Arizona as opposed to the four-hour round trip commutes into New York.” I said, “That's worth more than money.” I went out there in 2008. I was able to work for a couple of years. The decision was made that all senior leaders had to come back to one of the four hubs, which was New York, London, Japan, and Hong Kong.

I was told, “You have to come back or we got to let you go. There are no exceptions here.” I had taken and put a lot of money into this business in a year and a half prior. I couldn't leave my business partner so I made the decision to take early retirement from Morgan and stay in Arizona. The feeling of abandonment was going from a Wall Street salary to a minimum wage job at a college. I was doing a startup. I felt abandoned. I'd lost complete hope like, “I'm doing the wrong things. I'm not doing what you want, God.”

You brought up Joseph. My wife and I are studying Daniel. It's the same thing. You don't know what God's plans are. Therefore, I didn't understand what God's plans were and here I am, as I'm trying to get this business off the ground, which is doing quite well but this is many years later. I couldn't see it at the time with that feeling of abandonment. Losing everything I've gained and it's all going to slip away was an awful feeling. I didn't dig myself out. I was led to being dug out.

Different opportunities present themselves. I was brought to the world's largest hedge fund in Connecticut. I was brought for six months. This was when I met Maria, my wife. I ended up staying in Connecticut. Life started to change. I ended back up on Wall Street again with different organizations like Bank of America and such. Life started to take on a different feel from what it had been.

The abandonment is the equivalent of Joseph being thrown in the cistern going, “All I got to do is wait for it to rain.” You're waiting for the other shoe to drop but there's a lack of faith, is my point. I'm confessing that I didn't do a good job of saying, “Lord, I don't know what you're doing but I'm in no matter what happens.” I'm working on my third career at this point.

I love that you said a different feel. For anybody out there, change is difficult, even though we have our faith and we know that God has already worked it out. He doesn't write checks and intends to cash in on and call you places. I love such a word of encouragement. We've had so many of our guests and you echoed the same thing. It is scary. We feel like you poured so much into it but remember, it is all God's. He's already seen this to the end. You're His child.

I love that you said it's a different feel. I feel the same way too. I'm not a big feelings person but I look at life now, even from what it was years ago. I'm like, “This is a good season.” Coming through all that, it's radically different than what I thought it was going to look like. It's different but it's good. There's a richness about it that you can reflect and go, “I see why I was dumped in the pit to become number two and everything in between.”

Daniel is being thrown in the lion's den. It's a different feeling from leading all of Babylon.

I'm going to see Daniel at Sight and Sound. You're outside of Philly, correct?

Yes, I am. My wife and I have tickets. We’re bringing a relatively new believer with us out to Sight and Sound to see Daniel in August 2024. That's why we're going through the book of Daniel at home in extreme detail.

That’s Ezekiel.

Ezekiel is my thing.

Vision

It is the time to make it your thing. The last thing that Charles talked about is vision. We've heard, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I don't know if you know this about my dad but he flunked out of school in the eighth grade. He went on to get his GED and become one of the most wise people out there or a guru. He had this hunger for leading. He had a few men in his life and women, my mother, one of them, who gave him the affirmation that he did not have growing up.

Path To Purpose: If there is no vision, the people perish.

He would tell me, “Tracey, vision is nothing more than Snally seeing what needs to be done.” We all can do that but then doing it, there's this very pragmatic action-oriented execution type step that he takes not just in theory but in reality. You're talking about you're on your third career. How do you set the stage for vision and what's next? A lot of our audience are like you on their third and fourth couple retirements but you show no signs of slowing down. How do you craft what's next?

I want to take you back to what my plan was during my undergraduate and when I was getting an Engineering degree. I had my vision but it wasn't God's vision. You wanted to talk about abandonment. It fits right in with that as well. I didn't put two and two together. This is like Monday morning quarterback. You look back over it and it's easier to see than in real-time. I've got a vision.

My first career was in the Army. My second career was in Wall Street. In my third career, I decided to strike out on my own and do cybersecurity and public speaking to be able to generate the leads for doing the cybersecurity consulting. I also want to be able to build an organization where I raise people who understand what I do so that you can become me if that makes any sense.

I don't want to get too much into detail, except to say I've been in five startups in my career. None of them made me rich but the main thing is that I do understand the startup mentality. You're waiting for the payoff in the future. You're not expecting it now. This is all part of the vision. You’re saying, “This is what I want to be able to see.” However, in this third career that I'm working on, I'm trying to leave my vision glasses, if you will, on a coffee table and saying, “Where's my God vision glasses?”

I'm trying to seek because I've got my ideas for what Curt Vincent wants. Yet, what am I supposed to do? I'm not quite sure of that. This is why I take you back to my first vision of working in the recording business. What I’m trying to do is to be able to be aware of when the Holy Spirit is moving. It’s when you're meeting somebody you didn't expect to meet. I didn't expect to meet you. I wanted to buy some books and material off your website for crying out loud.

Here, you've taught me humility as well. I'm gaining a lot about the knowledge of your dad. I want to make a digression here and say that your dad dropped out in the eighth grade. I know the story and also how he ended up at work. That's where that quote that he said about reading. I do a lot of audiobooks. You and I talked about that in an email but I do that because then I can do a lot of mowing the lawn and driving. I can consume a whole lot more. I do probably close to 24 books a year in that regard.

There's another person who is a little on the notorious side, Frank Zappa. I'm going to change the quote a little bit to make it PG but he says, “If you want to meet a girl, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” The whole point there is that you have to be focused on the vision of what it is you want to learn and then you consume a lot of books like your dad said and did to be able to use that as fodder so that you can be the vision that's designed for you can become more clear and you've got the tools so that you can affect that change in that vision.

If you want to meet a girl, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

I love that you talked about what's next. Vision has that future element. There's the past. We learn from the past. There's the present. We want to be mindful, enjoy, and be aware of where the spirit is leading us. It's why I wrote The Art of Tremendous. It's not my dad. It's if you do these things, then you get to be tremendous too. You can carry the moniker like tremendous Colonel Curt is carrying the moniker on. I love it. I'm interested to see what this next chapter is. It’s very exciting.

Thank you. I'll keep you posted on that. I have no clue.

I'm with you. Isn’t that beautiful though? The tendency is, “I'm going to go reach for my glasses again because I got to know what's going on.” God puts the glasses on you when He needs you to know. Until then, be present, be mindful, and fall deeper in love with Him. He'll make it clear when the time is right but it's hard for people like us.

I'll give you one more piece if I may and that is at the tender age of 68, I've learned the difference between praying and meditating. I shared with you on an email that there's a huge difference, and I'm not going to go into it, between presenting and public speaking. I didn't realize that until a few years ago. I want people to hear this. It was put to me in military terms by a friend who says praying is like transmitting. You're transmitting.

Anybody that's been around prayer knows that prayer is not supposed to change God. It's supposed to change us. Got that, but meditating is taking your finger off of the transmit button and listening. That's something I haven't spent a lot of time doing. I've spent a lot of time in prayer but I've not spent a lot of time in meditation trying to sit here quietly like Jodie Foster in Contact with a pair of headphones, trying to listen for what God is trying to tell me. There's a requirement for patience there. I want the answers now. I don't want to wait.

You said you're studying the book of Daniel. That's meditating. We get this idea that it has to be humming. That's good but anytime you're opening the word of God, His word is living and the Holy Spirit is speaking if you open your mind to that. You're meditating a whole lot more than you may think you are.

Thank you. I needed to hear that.

That's what I'm here to exhort you. Curt, we covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. It’s such a robust discussion. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. Is there anything else regarding leadership, because we're all things leadership here, that we haven't touched on that you would like to share with our audience?

Ego Vs Self-Confidence

The one thing we did not talk about is ego. There's a massive difference between ego and self-confidence. Ego is about you. Self-confidence is about the tools you've been given one way or another or in faith. Therefore, it’s the idea of relying on self-confidence, being open, having the receptors out, and being able to keep the ego in check. I'm no different than anybody else. My ego gets out of control. My wife slaps me around and gets me back in line, which I do appreciate.

I would say it’s the idea of being able to truly understand the difference between those two. In leadership, everybody wants to follow someone who is at least acting like they know what they're doing. Therefore, you don't want to be so humble. You stand there with your hat in your hands going, “What do you think?” No, that's not the way it works. Therefore, it’s being able to keep those two in balance so that you're presenting something that people want to follow and feel confident in following, and then the ego, which can get out of control. There are countless Bible stories of ego getting in the way.

Path To Purpose: Keep your ego and self-confidence balanced to present something people want to follow.

I was reading Clarence Larkin's book on Dispensational Truth written in the '20s. One of his points is the Bible has to be inspired by God because nobody would write a book so damning of their culture, race, and civilization. As the 44 authors of the Bible, we'd only put about the good stuff. Not that I have any doubt that it is the revelation of God but who else across the history of time would write about the Jews writing about their horrific failures, David, the gross moral sins, Moses, Esau, and Cain? It goes on and on.

The other thing about is Paul outside of crisis. The leadership of Paul in Romans 8 is saying, “In my spirit, I want to do right but my flesh, I can't help myself.” We have to struggle with that as leaders. We still are part of this earth, even though we're regenerated. We have victory but we still have that old sinful nature. What does he say? “It causes me to do everything I don't want to do.” We can't do a Flip Wilson, “The devil made me do it.” We still have control.

The other one is, “New levels, new devils.” As you continue to grow in your faith and knowledge, the devil has to get very crafty in finding new ways to seduce you, wear you down, or depress you. You've got to stay in fight and force as you know who's been fighting bad guys his whole life. I love the thing on ego. That's the root of everything. All bad things start with pride and ego. Curt, how can people get in touch with you? You're a speaker and you like talking to different groups. There's anybody out there in a corporation. Do you speak at events or trade shows?

Yes. I've been trying to focus more on senior leaders and boards only because boards are being held accountable. They can be fined and go to prison if they're not showing fiduciary responsibility to cybersecurity. I focus more on leaders. My big thing is I demystify. What do I mean by that? You get 50 cybersecurity people together and they want to talk all the geeky stuff. Therefore, it frightens CEOs and presidents. I boil it down to where this is not hard. We need to be able to talk about this and break that down. That's what I do. The easiest way is simple. It's CurtVincent.com. That's where my speaking site is with contact data.

Path To Purpose: The easiest way is really simple.

You also have an email of dry bones. Do you want to talk about that?

I do. Funny you should mention that too. Dry bones are important to me. It comes out of Ezekiel 37, a vision that Ezekiel had. For those who are not familiar with it, I'll tell you in 30 seconds, God gave a vision to Ezekiel and showed him a valley full of skeleton bones. They represented the people of Israel, who were no longer following God. God brought him to this valley in a vision and said, “Can these dry bones live again?” Ezekiel answered, “Only you know, God.” He says, “You're going to help. This is what you're going to do.”

The dry bones through the story come together, muscle sinew, and then become human beings again as they get watered through the word. The word dry bones is important to me because it represents a second chance. My wife and I bought this place in Pennsylvania. This is my 23rd move. I told Maria, “I'm not moving again. They're taking me out of here with a toe tag.”

That's what my husband says about this house. He says, “The only way I'm leaving here is that a body is in a casket.”

We're doing that but we named our place Dry Bones Farm. The only thing we grow here is old. The reason I mentioned that is on the property, we have a small barn but it's more of an outbuilding. I'm building a recording studio in there as a place where I can do music, recording, Bible studies, or whatever I want to do in that facility. That's why dry bones are important to me. The barn is the holy of holies.

For those of you not familiar with Ezekiel, there are a couple of different animated things on YouTube. I remember the first time I saw it. Ezekiel wasn't one of those you dwell on, not anymore. I was mesmerized by talking about regeneration through Christ, even before Christ had through the word and the beginning was the word. Curt, thank you. Get in touch with Curt. Curt, you got to write a book too.

I'm working on it.

I’m glad to hear it because we got to hear your word too. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with our audience. I’m so thankful that we connected. I’m glad to hear you're close by. I look forward to many more tremendous interactions with you.

Thank you so much for having me on. I hope the words were encouraging for some.

To our audience out there, if you like what you heard, please hit the like and subscribe button. If you would do us the honor of a five-star review, that would help other audiences looking to pay the price of leadership know that this is a great place to come for resources and advocacy. As Curt said, remember, you're going to 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 so keep them both tremendous. Thank you so much for paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of the day.

Important Links

• Curt Vincent

• The Master Plan of Evangelism

• The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership

• The Art of Tremendous

• Dispensational Truth

• LinkedIn

About Curt Vincent

Curt Vincent is a cybersecurity maverick in both the Army and Wall Street. Founder and leader of the 400-person Morgan Stanley Cyber program. Leader since becoming a Sergeant at the age of 19.

Curt demystifies cyber security for senior leaders, C-staff, and boards. It's not just the technology; it's the people and the culture. Insurance claims data shows that as many as 80% of cyber breaches occur because employees unwittingly invite criminals into their company. With Curt, you can feel confident and protected.

Episode 188 - Jennifer Sukalo - Leaders On Leadership

If you want to be a great leader to others, you should be an exceptional leader to yourself. Today’s guest is the award-winning author of Claim Your Swagger: Stop Surviving and Start Thriving. Jennifer Sukalo shares her secret of being an exceptional leader of self to be a great leader to others. Jennifer dives into the importance of self-awareness and self-care for leaders. She explains how feeling comfortable in your own skin fuels your ability to navigate leadership challenges. You'll also learn why filling your own cup is essential before pouring into others. Plus, Jennifer reveals how aligning with your inner joy fuels your career journey.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Jennifer Sukalo - Leaders On Leadership

I have a very special guest I want to introduce you to. Her name is Jennifer Sukalo. Jennifer, welcome.

Thank you so much for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be here.

Thanks, Jennifer. Let me tell you a little bit about this tremendous lady you're going to hear from. Jennifer is a TEDx speaker. She is an award-winning author of Claim Your Swagger, Stop Surviving and Start Thriving. She has over three decades of experience working with leaders of all levels, including CEOs and Fortune 500 companies.

Claim Your Swagger: Stop Surviving and Start Thriving

Jennifer's work is centered around helping people reshape the way they think, act, and behave. Her influence has positively impacted over 50,000 leaders globally. Jennifer's science-based educational foundation in behavioral change and wealth of practical knowledge set her apart as a distinguished expert in leadership and personal growth. She is a sought-after speaker, advisor, and she has a proven track record of delivering impactful presentations and workshops across 18 countries. Jennifer, we are honored to have you share your wisdom leadership with our audience today.

It is truly an honor to be here. I love being able to share my message with other people and plant seeds for future growth and development.

I love to give our listeners a little bit of a context to where we connected. Jennifer and I are recent sisters, we just found out. We got connected through Bill Forrester, the tremendous Bill Forrester. I’ve got to give Bill a great shout out. He connected us, we're both in a new platform called CEO Zones. When Bill connected with Jennifer, and Bill knows me from way back, he said, “You two ladies have to meet each other.” We connected on the phone, I think it was last week or the week prior. I said, “Jennifer, please come on my podcast.” She immediately jumped on the calendar. I can't thank you again, because you know, Jennifer, with busy people, if you don't act on it right away, a lot of times it slips off your radar.

What gets scheduled gets done. It's just the way it works.

The gentleman I had on in the previous episode said the exact same thing. That's a Tremendous Leadership lesson. I love it. Jennifer, let's talk about leadership. My father, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, one of his most downloaded and listened to speeches was called The Price of Leadership. We all want to be the leader, don't we? But there is a price to pay. In this speech, he talks about four things that you are going to have to be committed to be a true leader and not just a leader in name only. The first of those is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Jennifer, can you unpack for us, perhaps in your career or your decades of leadership experience, what does loneliness look like for you? Maybe some words of wisdom for some of our listeners if they are in that season of loneliness.

I Keep My Own Company

It's an interesting point when I think about loneliness, because it's funny, I was thinking about this just the other day. I have always been an introvert by the nature of how you define where you get your energy. I get my energy from the inside, not necessarily from being around other people. I love to do speaking events, and that is amazing, but I have to go recharge my batteries afterwards. All through my life, I've been very comfortable being by myself.

Even in, for example, high school, my younger sister was a freshman when I was a senior, and she used to be in tears because she'd see me walking alone around school. It wasn't that I didn't have acquaintances or friends. It was just that I was really good at keeping my own company. When you think about loneliness, I've just been one of those people that I don't really experience maybe the same aspect of loneliness that other people do. I think it's because I keep my own company well.

I also think there's an element of helping people get to that place as the better we know ourselves, the more we understand what we need if we're at times of loneliness or how we can better keep ourselves and be our own best friends in those times where you don't have a lot of other people around. It's maybe an interesting dynamic for me around this, because I'm not sure I've ever really felt extremely lonely. As I said, it's partly because of just really knowing myself. I've worked a lot. I've worked really hard to get to that place in my life. Just being really comfortable in my own skin and comfortable keeping my own company has enabled me to not necessarily suffer loneliness as much as maybe other people have.

The better we know ourselves, the more we understand what we need.

That's such a great perspective. Bill Keller, who I interviewed, he said the same thing. He flat out said, “I'm a loner. I had some friends.” I think that's really interesting because a lot of our audience are entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs emerging. That's a beautiful thought because you have to be okay. I love that. If you're going to throw a party, you should be your own first person on the list because when you're comfortable with yourself, and that is really what leadership is, that self-awareness. I love that you talked about really good at keeping your own company and comfortable with your own self, because there are going to be times when you have to walk alone. You better like the person looking at yourself in the mirror and say, “That's fabulous.”

I know you said that's by nature, but do you think is that something that we get more in touch with as we grow older? What are your thoughts on that for somebody that may be like, “Remember the younger versions of ourselves? Maybe we didn't always feel that way.” What do you think if there's somebody out there?

I think there's a couple aspects to this. One, yes, I think we can become more comfortable in our skin as we get older if we've chosen to do the work around the self-awareness. People who are really comfortable in their own skin and comfortable keeping their own company, I believe, have done the work to understand who they are, what they need, what they don't need. Really good at setting their own boundaries, adept at understanding what makes them happy, what brings them joy, what they can let go of, what they don't need, understanding and owning their own worth so they don't constantly need this external validation of other people.

There's a lot that can be done if you're willing to explore, do the work, and really find out who you are and what you're all about. When you do that, you can really be comfortable in your own skin and go, “I don't really need those other people right now.” It’s great to be around them at those times when it's a wonderful event or something that you want to spend time with family and friends. That's wonderful. There are also times where being by yourself is some of the best time you can spend.

I love that you teased out the difference between fellowship and fulfillment, because they are very uniquely distinct, and one shouldn't be contingent on. They should be mutually exclusive because there won't always be people there for you. There will be times in your life where you need them, or we’re not meant to be an island, but we still have to have that duality of we need to be around people, but we have to be okay on our own. Thank you so much for unpacking that. That's a beautiful way to look at loneliness and understanding it. I love it.

We talked about loneliness. The next you talked about is weariness. Leadership is not for the weak. You got to be strong. My dad would say, “Tracey, there are going to be some people pulling way more than their weight. There's going to be a lot pulling less. You have to be the strongest person in the pack. How do you, Jennifer, stay poured into so you can continue being at the top of your game and pouring out into others?

Pay Attention To Yourself

There's a story that came to my mind as you were talking about pulling your own weight that I just would love to share really briefly before I go into answering that question. My husband and I went dog sledding one time. It was an amazing experience. The person who was running the dog sled, the woman, she said, “Are you watching what's going on with the dogs right now?” We said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Do you see how the one line is a little slack with that dog and how all the other dogs are barking and yelling at that dog? It's because that dog wasn't pulling its own weight. The rest of the dogs were saying, hang on a second. We all have to do our part to make this work.” It was such an amazing story that translated so well into leadership that I love bringing it out. When you talked about the pack and being the strongest in the pack, it just made me think of that experience.

When I think of weariness, one of the things that is incredibly important, which I find so many people don't take the time to do, is to pause periodically and take note and take stock of where you are and how you're feeling. We are so busy. We're so overscheduled these days. It's almost a badge of honor, it seems like, to be the busiest person, “I'm so busy.” If you look at people's Christmas cards or Christmas letters and they rattle off all the things that we've done throughout the year and you're thinking, “Where were the pause moments? Where were the times for reflection?” It doesn't have to take a lot of time. If we don't periodically check in to see how we're doing, by the time it becomes a big issue, it's now something that's much harder to recover from. You're not performing at your best in those moments.

For me, one of the biggest things is really just paying attention and taking those moments and opportunities to check in with myself and think, “How am I doing?” This is a real-life example. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, couldn't go back to sleep, had to read, get my brain working on something else. When my alarm went off this morning, I said, “No, I have to go back to sleep.” I knew and was paying attention to what my body was telling me and opt out of a few things that I was going to do today and opt in to taking care of me because that's where I can be at my best. It's really paying attention to the signs and the signals that were sent, and then taking action on those to do what's right for us so that we don't get ourselves in a place where we become so weary we can't perform and do what we need to do.

Do you schedule anything? That's great to listen because your body will tell you your spirit and soul. Are there times when you do carve out specific times to reorient and recalibrate?

Absolutely. Next week, in fact, I'm heading to the barn. If you notice behind me, you'll see my horses behind me. These are my kids and I call them my four-legged therapy. I carve out and I literally look at my calendar and they're quite a ways away from me where I'm keeping them because of how well they're cared for. It's just the best place for them. Carving out and literally saying, “Next week, I'm taking three days and I will only be at the barn. That's it.” That's all I'm doing. That's my time to reflect. That's my time to check out from everything else that's going on. I literally don't do anything during that time except be. The horses have taught me so much about being present, being in the moment, letting go of stress, and what's going on with you. That is an example of things that I literally schedule into.

Can I give up three days? It's difficult, but it's so important. It makes the time when I come back into the office that much more effective. It's important to schedule these things. I usually schedule in my workouts. I will schedule in typically breaks throughout the day for me to just walk away from the computer. I tend to walk while I work. Sometimes it's just walking or changing scenery. For a lot of people, it might be getting outside for just a few minutes, just getting out of your environment and getting out in the nature. That's the other thing that being at the barn helps me do is reconnect with nature. It doesn't have to take a long time, but physically scheduling it in is absolutely critical. Just like you are setting a meeting with somebody else, thinking about it and knowing it is not the same as doing it.

Exceptional Leader Of Self: Thinking about it and knowing it is not the same as doing it.

Horses are one of my favorite things. You talking about the dog sledding thing, no wonder I love dogs so much. They're my ideal follower. I love the mentality of the pack. I love it. What kind of horses do you have and how many?

I have three Arabian horses. They are literally truly amazing. They're such intuitive and spiritual beings, really, that people don't understand. Yet each one has a very distinct personality. One would literally crawl in your lap if he could. He is such a love. The other one is super playful and mischievous. Then my mare is she is the diva of the barn because she's the only female in the entire barn, and she runs the whole place.

I love it. It should be. That's awesome. Loneliness, weariness. The next topic he talked about was abandonment. Having been around animals, the word abandonment typically has a negative connotation or fear of abandonment or you have abandonment issues. In leadership, my dad would always say abandonment is becoming incredibly hyper-focused and stop thinking about what you like and want to think about in favor of what you ought and need to. This is like hyper pruning. Jennifer, you do so many different things. We talked a little bit about the stage you're in right now. How do you continue to hone? No one to hold them. No one to fold them. No one to walk away. No one to go to the barn. How do you really stay hyper-focused on the best and highest use of your time right now?

Where Do I Get The Most Joy?

One of the things that I allow or encourage or focus on to help guide me is where I get the most joy. Where I get joy, where I get excited, those are the activities where I am truly leveraging not only my strengths and the talents and the gifts that I've been blessed with but also where I think I'm doing my best work. It’s probably the most valuable work that I can be doing. For me, that's one of the clues. I'm a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach as well. When you think about and look at some of Gallup's work around strengths and using our strengths, they talk about clues to where we're really tapping into them. One of them is this notion of flow. The time just goes by and you don't really need to think about the steps involved. You just naturally do them.

It's easy for you or you have glimpses of excellence and you go, “Wow, how the heck did I do that?” These are some of the clues. For me, it's also about, as I said, joy. Yes, there are activities that have to get done just because they need to be done and they have to be checked off the list. I work on focusing on those areas that bring me joy more often than not. I can always get the tedious things done. It's just a matter of where are we prioritizing our time? It's also okay to try something. Even if it doesn't work out, there's learning to be had in everything. The only time we fail is if we don't try or we stop or give up.

Even if it doesn't work out, there's learning to be had in everything. The only time we fail is if we don't try, we stop, or we give up.

I would rather deal with failure than regret. That regret is haunting to me. I love that. I love your focus on joy because joy is different than happiness. It's different. It's where you dial in your convictions and your highest purpose. When as little kids at the Vacation Bible School, we talk about the joy down in our hearts. That's where it originates from, and I love that that's what you dial in because that's, as you said, where you're doing your best and your most valuable work. The joy will let you know. Even amidst the circumstances, joy goes beyond all the externals. It’s wholly intrinsic.

I believe you and I spoke about this just recently when I just did a recent keynote. It's in those moments that they're almost out of body experiences because you are just the joy you're feeling, the energy surrounding that type of moment when you're truly doing what you're meant to do, when you're really leveraging the gifts and talents that you've been blessed with to your fullest capacity and touching people's lives and making a positive impact on the world. There's nothing like it. You can't even describe the emotions and the feeling surrounding it. Those are the moments that I think people really need to hone in on and seek out, and that's going to help you prioritize and really laser focus on where you should be spending your time.

To that point, for the listeners out there, I feel like I'm pulled different ways. To your point, when you hit that, you just know.

It is very, very apparent. It is not something like, “Did it just?” It hits you in the face. You know what's going on.

We talked about loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. The last thing he talked about was vision. We've all heard without vision, people perish. Vision is one of those things where we have all these tests now speaking about not so much Myers-Briggs or StrengthsFinder, but other things where it’s like, “Are you a visionary?” I remember growing up thinking, I'm not a visionary. My dad was a very pragmatic realist. He's like, “Tracey, vision is nothing more than, A) A thing that needs to be done, and then B) finding out a way to make it, to enact it, because otherwise, it's strategic thinking with planning but there's no execution. You just talked about your TEDx speaking, and I know you're moving full-time into your book and doing this. How do you continue to hone the vision of what's next?

Vision Can Be A Work-In-Progress

It's interesting, a lot of times people will ask me, “What is your vision? Where do you see this going?” For me right now, I'm in a state probably of continuing to evolve what that vision looks like. What I would love to say to people is it doesn't have to be fully formed at all times. It can be a work in progress, as mine is currently right now. You have a general idea, perhaps, of what you'd like it to be, but as you start on the journey, sometimes you realize, “Wait a minute. This is taking me in a slightly different direction that I didn't even know I was going to go in. Now, that's where I need to be.” Some of it is a little trial and error and to figure things out. You might misstep along the way and go, “That wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I don't really want to go down that path. I don't want it to go that direction.”

I think there's an element of allowing for you to continue to evolve what that vision looks like. Once you have those ideas, to your point, just thinking about them is not the same as doing them. You have to take steps to go, “What will it take for me to move forward in that direction to make that happen?” The other thing that I think is really important about is not to limit yourself when you're thinking about the vision. When I used to work with leaders around innovation and around influence, we would talk about a current state and desired state, and we'd always have them start with the desired state. Blue sky thinking of what is the art of the possible, and how do you go there and create something that might in your logical mind seem not realistic or seem unrealistic?

If we start by focusing on our current state, we tend to limit ourselves by what is instead of really reaching for what could be. What I do encourage people to think about when you're thinking about your vision is think bigger than you could ever imagine, because we are capable of so much more than we even know. If we don't put it out there, we don't actually reach for it, we'll never achieve it.

We are all work in progress. What's your goal? We all have to know. I'm one of those people as a middle child, I'm very much like, “It's all good. I get the whole we want to get to great.” I love that you talk about that because people get really hung up about that. I'm like, “Are you doing great work with excellence? Are you getting clarity every day? Yes. Then you're a visionary.” I think we make it sound like it's this thing that's beyond mere mortal men and women.

We think of personas like Steve Jobs or somebody like this. We can't possibly know. It's a learned skill, just like anything else. It's about creating ideas and having that perspective of where could we go? To your point, Tracey, it's then about what steps is it going to take for me to try and get there and break it down into, now what can I start today? What can I do today to move forward in that direction?

I hope that encourages some of our listeners out there. You're moving in the right direction by listening to this podcast. I guarantee you're moving in the right direction because you did one thing today that's going to unlock that stuff. Jennifer, I really appreciate you bringing that. We all are works in progress until our last breath. Charlie would say that production to perfection. You'll never get it completely 100% right this side of heaven. Isn't there joy in getting closer and closer every day? We covered loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Anything else, Jennifer, that we have not touched on as far as leadership that you would like to bring up? Then I want to get to talking about your book and your TEDx Talk.

Exceptional Leader Of Self: We all are works in progress until our last breath.

One of the things that I've always loved to help people understand is in order to be an exceptional leader of others, we first must be an exceptional leader of self. I think so many people forget about that aspect of it, that leadership truly begins with self. We are first and foremost the leaders of our lives. Unless we are stepping into that role completely and fully, we can't be the best leaders of others that we possibly could be.

To be an exceptional leader of others, we first must be an exceptional leader of self.

It begins with self. You've got to love yourself. You've got to understand yourself. How can you possibly understand other people if you don't even understand yourself?

It's also how you bring your best self to your leadership role, because it's not about being like some other leader. Don't try and mimic somebody else and their leadership. You have to figure out, “Based on who I am, how can I be the best leader I can possibly be?” How you and I, Tracey, might lead could be very, very different. We could both get exceptional results, but the approach and how we go about it is going to be different because of who we are and what we bring to the table.

That's where authentic leadership shows up. Then when you're authentic, then you resonate with your authentic followers. Leadership is so individualized. It's about individuals. It's not about groups. We come together, but there's that personal. Like you said, your different horses. Every follower in your organization is going to have a different relationship with the leader. It's really important to just be able to understand that. You can't just put one hat on for everybody. It's not going to work.

No one size fits all. It's got to be appreciating the uniqueness of each person, and how do I adapt and adjust my style to fit them w, to reach them here they are? How do I unlock their potential? You can't do any of those things if you haven't first figured out who you are and how you show up as a leader and how you want to show up as a leader.

Jennifer, talk about your book, Swagger, and your recent TED Talk. Is that out yet?

It just came out this week. My TEDx talk just came out this week. You can look it up on actually just typing into Google my name and TEDx Talk, but you can look up Who Stole Your SWAGGER? That's the title of the TEDx Talk. The subtitle is How To Step Into Your Most Important Leadership Role. It's literally hot off the presses, just got published this week. Super excited about that. It was certainly a milestone moment for me in my professional speaking career, and one that I hope to do at least another one at some point. We'll see about that part. Really excited to share that with everybody.

So far, the message has resonated so well with people. It really speaks to this point of what we just talked about, about you being the leader of your life. I close the talk with encouraging people to take their first step by asking two very simple questions. One is, “How satisfied am I with my life today?” Two, “What am I going to do about it?” Because as the leader of your life, you are the one who is in complete control of that. It is certainly up to you with where you go and where you take your journey and your life from this point forward. It's been really, really well-received so far. Super excited to see where it goes.

My book, Claim Your Swagger, is out and ready. It came out in May. It's won multiple awards already. Again, it’s been really well-received. I'm so excited about the various groups of people that it's been reaching and touching, from people who are maybe at university age, just getting started, figuring things out. I have also been a repeat guest on the Feisty Side of Fifty podcast the woman there, Mary Eileen Williams, she has said, “What you talk about resonates so well with people who are more mature in their lives and looking at their next chapter. Where do we go from here?” The skill sets that I teach and offer, there are activities, daily reinforcements, things for you to do the work.

Swagger, I always like to tell people, is an acronym. It's not just a word. It's not just a practice and a lifestyle. It's an acronym and it stands for Self-Worth, Appreciation for your strengths and limitations, Gratitude for how your life experiences have helped shape who you are, Grounded in your core values, Empowered to overcome your self-limiting beliefs, and Renewed through a greater focus on your passion and purpose. When you do that work, that's when you claim your swagger and you really become that person who is completely comfortable in their own skin, knows who they are, and can fully step into that leadership role as the leader of your life, but also as an exceptional leader of others.

Thank you. Jennifer, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

They can go to my website, SwaggerU.com. It's short for Swagger University. On the website, there's a contact form. They can reach out to me directly there. They can find me on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn with either my name and/or SwaggerU, and they'll be able to find me in any of those locations. I would love to hear from your listeners and have them reach out and ask questions, or let me know how I can best support them on their journey.

Jennifer, I want to thank you so much. I love it. You kept saying it, leader of your own life. That's the highest form of leadership. Everything else takes care of itself. You just know exactly what you're called for. Thank you.

Thank you so much for inviting me and allowing me to share this message with your listeners.

You're welcome, Jennifer. I look forward to many more and we can do a spark and swagger together. You know what I'm saying?

I love it.

Spark and swagger. There you have it. The SNS sisters. For our tremendous listeners, just remember, you're going to be the same person that you are today, five years from now, except for just two things: the people you meet and the books you read. You met the tremendous Jennifer. You're going to get her tremendous book, and you are going to swagger on to your next tremendous version of yourself.

If you like what you heard, please be sure and hit the subscribe button. Do us the honor of a five-star review and share this with some of your other tremendous members of your tribe that are working hard to pay the price of leadership. Speaking of which, thank you so much for paying the price of leadership. We wish you all the best. You have a tremendous rest of the day.

Important Links 

• Jennifer Sukalo

• Claim Your Swagger, Stop Surviving and Start Thriving

• The Price of Leadership

• Bill Keller – Past Episode

• Who Stole Your SWAGGER? – TEDx Talk

• Feisty Side of Fifty – Jennifer Sukalo’s Episode

• SwaggerU.com

• Contact Form – Swagger U

• Instagram – Jennifer Sukalo

• Facebook – Jennifer Sukalo

• LinkedIn – Jennifer Sukalo

• Hive SwaggerU

About Jennifer Sukalo

Jennifer is a TEDx Speaker and award-winning author of Claim Your SWAGGER: Stop Surviving and Start Thriving. She has over thirty years of experience working with leaders of all levels, including CEOs and Fortune 500 companies.

Her work is centered around helping people reshape how they think, act, and behave, and her influence has positively impacted over 50,000 leaders globally.

Jennifer’s science-based educational foundation in behavioral change and wealth of practical knowledge set her apart as a distinguished leadership and personal growth expert.

She is a sought-after speaker and advisor with a proven track record of delivering impactful presentations and workshops across 18 countries.

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 180 - Paget Keller Rhee - Leaders On Leadership

It’s not easy sitting at the top. As leaders, we must deal with many things to exact your vision and fight for your passion and purpose. Today, Paget Keller Rhee, the owner of six BeBalanced Centers, explains how to find your passion and surround yourself with people who remind you of your WHY. Her touching story with foster care reveals how she fought for her passion and purpose, but she learned when to step down from the battle. In this heartfelt conversation with Paget, she lightens the path of how self-care and mental health are important, and that is where BeBalanced Centers supports. Be inspired to climb to the top. Join Paget Keller Rhee in this inspiring episode today.

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WATCH THE EPISODE HERE

Listen to the podcast here

Paget Keller Rhee - Leaders On Leadership

In this episode, I am very excited because my guest is the tremendous Paget Rhee. Paget, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have this conversation. When we reconnected again, I was like, "Your energy is infectious. I need that."

Thank you, Paget. Right back at you. I want to tell our audience a little bit about you. Paget is the owner of six BeBalanced Centers. She is passionate about inspiring women to live their best lives at any age by understanding hormone balance and how it affects our physical and mental health.

We all need that support.

She's a South Central person like me. We connected at a women's conference where she was there representing what she's doing. We caught up after all these years of being entrepreneurs and working to do our calling. I thought, "I have to get her after hearing all the tremendous things she's doing and get her on this show." Paget, let's get right into it because I know you're going to unpack a lot of what you're doing and what your journey has been.

My father wrote a speech called The Price of Leadership decades ago. Leadership is always such a hot topic. In it, he talks about the four prices you're going to have to pay if you are going to be a truly authentic leader and not just a leader in title only. The first thing he talked about was loneliness. We have all heard that it's lonely at the top. Can you unpack for our audiences what loneliness has meant for you throughout your very career and maybe some advice you might give to our audiences if they're in a season of loneliness?

That is so interesting. He identified that so many years ago. Everybody sometimes exalts, "It must be so great to be in charge or be the leader." You get all the recognition but you also get a lot of other things. You have to be so intentional about surrounding yourself with people who can support you when you need but you also have to become very comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's important because it is sometimes lonely at the top.

I hate to use that but I've been in leadership. As I've been looking back on some things I'm dealing with in my situation, I have learned a few things or fortified my mind and spirit with some things that get me through these challenges but when I was much younger, it was hard. I founded a nonprofit in DC when I was much younger in 1994. I didn't expect that loneliness. I was so excited and passionate. I was ready to attack the world. It did hit me because I was alone.

Nobody had the vision that I had. Nobody had caught the vision that I had caught. Even my husband didn't know what to do with me because he was not in the same place. I was starting to explore my entrepreneurial leadership spirit that had grown through college and the different opportunities that came to me. When I was a child, my teachers used to say, "I hope she will be good at something." It wasn't that I always had this energy or confidence. These opportunities presented themselves.

One of the things that became apparent loneliness was back in 1992 when I went to work for the DC Department of Recreation. I was given an opportunity to run all of the recreational day camps throughout the city. I don't know if you would understand. This is a very dangerous neighborhood. I was a young White female from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I was the only Caucasian person on staff if I could. I was put in a very difficult situation being younger than most of the people who worked for me.

I learned so much about leadership, humility, building a team, and standing by the principles that I stood for. A lot of the people who worked under me were shocked by my expectations of them, which had not been the case in previous years. By the time we got through all of the time, we could celebrate together because they felt like they had accomplished something even though it wasn't how they had envisioned the leader of this organization being. They didn't envision a young White female coming in and trying to be in charge but I thought that we all came out with a common goal.

At the end of this period, we threw a huge community celebration throughout the city that recognized all of their hard work, which hadn't been done previously. I remember this sense of changing from me and them to, "We're together." For me, that was a life-changing moment where I felt like, "We can do hard things, bring different people together, and accomplish things together."

I felt lonely in those times. I was in neighborhoods I didn't recognize. I was pulled over by the police multiple times for being in that neighborhood because they thought I was buying drugs there. I had to keep telling them, "This is my office. I work here." That was probably the start of one of the loneliest periods and there have been many others. It is tough. You have to know your passion and find people who know your why and can remind you of that why when it gets to that tough time.

You should know your passion and find people who know your why and can remind you of that why when it gets to that tough time.

I love that you said you had caught the vision but not everybody, including your spouse or your former coworkers, caught it yet. That's such an important point for our audiences out there. It takes time. You may be lonely, and everybody has to go through a season of loneliness but if it lasts too long, then there might be a culture disconnect. It takes time for them to realize, "She is one of us. I can process where she's coming from because they don't know us. We don't know them." It is lonely. It's like making friends, "I don't have any friends. Now, I have friends because we got to know each other." I love that you said that. In the back of your mind, although you were young, did you think that eventually it would get to that? That's pretty evolved thinking as a young leader.

You're helping me unpack some of this. The idea that this could work happened in my household. My parents had adopted eight children. We had over 50-some foster kids in and out of my house. I always saw myself as not a leader of them but I wanted to expose them to new ideas that would give them the hope that they could do things differently in their lives than what they had experienced.

My parents adopted eight Vietnamese brothers and sisters. My family was always very mixed in cultures and circumstances. We didn't have a lot of money but the things that I took from that always helped me think that bringing people together is going to look strange at the beginning but wonderful in the end. When I got into that situation in DC, I knew this was going to work out and I knew they were going to love me once we figured it out. Maybe that was naive but they respected me.

It used to be that on rainy days, everybody would go home. On rainy days, we were all going to the offices to organize, prepare, plan, and work together. It wasn’t like, "Everybody is going home." It was a very different change in work culture as well for them but by the time they got done with it, they saw me there with them doing the same things with them. I do feel like it changed their perspective.

You said something important. I do agree that as leaders, we have to be prepared to allow people time to catch the vision but I also think we need to be prepared. It's such a fine balance to say when our vision isn't right. How do we judge that? There have been times when I've had to abort a mission where I was like, "I thought this was a path," but I had to be less emotional and more logical. I'm probably more emotional as you can see as I get into this. What you said is wise though. It's such a fine line. Where do you go? This path might not have been the right call and maybe I need to adjust it.

Leadership: We have to be prepared to allow people time to catch the vision.

I've done it too. You are going to see that the followers are 80% of the equation. If you get to a point where you realize, "I am not a good fit," that's very evolved as a leader to say, "I need to go someplace else." We come into these places and I've had that happen. Don't think you failed as a leader because it's a dance. If certain people are dancing to a different tune, you need to go like we expect them to leave if it's not a good fit. If there's not a value congruence or something like that, we need to go too.

That's why I tell people, "If the door is closed, kick it." I get it but you can only kick so far before you're going to break your legs off. You're meant to just knock on some doors, get the experience, and then go to another door. You were talking about foster care. No wonder you have such resilience as far as finding common ground and a way to identify. That's what true leadership is because unless they can identify with you, there's not going to be anybody in communication. I almost started crying. That's unbelievable that you got exposed to that.

I adopted my middle daughter from foster care. That's a story for later. You were talking about not kicking a door down. I had one of my best and worst experiences in DC after I left working for the Department of Recreation. I stepped down from that position. DC cut down 80% of its recreation budgets way back in the early 2000s, which created a major loss in the communities that we worked in, which were incredibly challenged communities.

There were no longer recreation centers for kids to go to and services for after school. I was passionate about finding ways to continue to provide those opportunities. First, I started volunteering at a homeless shelter. We created a program for teen homelessness. I worked with a young prostitute program in DC and spent all night in jail with young prostitutes. Those are some of my powerful memories of those opportunities.

My husband and I got married. We went to this church. My husband and I were taking turns choosing what church we would go to and trying them out as we were trying to find where we would fit. It was my husband's week to choose. He's like, "Here's one that says Lindberg Falk." I've never gone to a church with a woman pastor. This is back in 1994. I'm like, "We will try it."

We went to the church. It was a small Southern American Baptist-aligned church in the middle of Washington DC put exactly between the White House and the Capitol on Eight Street, and Eight Street at that point in time in '94 was very dangerous. There were lots of homelessness and drugs. It wasn't as it is in 2023 where it's like Disneyland. That was not like that then.

We went to the church. Afterward, the pastor invited us to lunch. My husband and I went with him and walked across the street to a little Chinese restaurant because it's right in Chinatown. I told him my vision, "My heart is to start a program for kids." I get emotional talking about it because I had this vision. I wanted to start a program that involved recreation, spiritual development, and education for kids in the community because of the loss of these recreational programs that I knew were out there.

He said to me, "Do you see this whole building?" At that time, we had a whole block-long building, four stories high. He said, "At one point in time, this building was a youth center in the '60s but we have lost funding. We don't have anyone to run it and nothing is going on." As I walked through this building, it was dilapidated. It had a full commercial kitchen and a whole dining room to seat 200 people and lots of things going on there. This is after a few conversations. He said, "We will give you that space and $5,000 of seed money. You see what you can do."

I took it. My office to start was a little broom closet. I had a desk and a phone. We didn't have computers at that point in time. I remember doing whatever I could. We grew that program, raising all of our funds. We built out a whole program called Urban Hands, which hosted mission teams from all over the country. It's another story to help them work in the city. I was able to grow fifteen sites across the city using the hands of mission teams. It grew very large.

During that time, I was in an old historic church that valued more that all of the chairs were lined up on Sunday morning for their Sunday school classes of 6 people rather than the 120 kids that I had there for a Christian concert the night before. It became difficult to continue to exact my vision there. At that point in time, across the street, they had built a very large building that housed a conservative political group. I'll not name it at this point. One day, a check arrived on my door from the president of that organization that said, "I see those kids coming in and out every day and you need to use this for your purposes." The church made me turn it around and give it back because they didn't approve of him.

Those kinds of things hurt my heart. I opened the doors and we had 120 kids within 6 days. Georgetown Law was sending volunteers. We were doing everything we could because I had to raise all the money to do everything. As it turned out in the end, we had about a $500,000 budget. What I learned from that experience is that where passion is, money will follow. I'm never worried about getting the money that I need if you're bringing passion to the project.

Where passion is, money will follow.

When you talked about knowing when to leave, that was probably one of the hardest decisions I ever made because we were successful. I was living in my purpose. We had won tons of awards in DC and were recognized in the Washington Post for all of that we were doing but I couldn't keep fighting that battle. Good things happened because when I stepped down, I found out I was pregnant with my second child.

I realized that having a two-year-old in the backseat of a car with gunshots outside of the car was probably not where I needed to be. The pastor who gave me that opportunity stepped down from the pastorate, started a separate nonprofit, and took it all over to a different place. It's all good. That is a separate nonprofit in DC. That was so hard to walk away from something that I loved.

That's going to resonate with a lot of people. I have a dear friend who called me and is stepping away from something that they did not want to do. If there's so much of a fight, we have to look at it. I can't control the outcome but all I can control is the processes, the vision, and what I am stewarding. Everything else is in God's hands. He already knew that church was going to do that to you at that date and he already had it planned for what's next.

We have to remember that as leaders. It is gut-wrenching but understand that it's going to happen once or twice. It's going to happen throughout your life. The more it happens, you realize, "That's not what I was hoping for but I know this is going to come back to me in a different form and in a more powerful way." As a leader, you get more comfortable with that.

I can't imagine at that young age having that but it's good to see too the nasty politics of infighting. We're all supposed to be in this together. When people call me brokenhearted, I'm like, "When did you ever think that people weren't self-oriented, selfish, and mean?" It's part of our nature. It's also good as a young leader to know that so you can be very balanced about the reality of humanity and what's out there and be prepared as a leader to have your heart broken but that's okay because God heals our heart and the vision takes us forward.

What I had to learn also from that situation and so many others is that I'm only responsible for showing up and being responsible for what I'm called to do. The results are in God's hands from my perspective.

People say, "Why did my husband do this?" That's between them and God. All you can do is do the best that you can do and keep moving forward. Thank you for unpacking that. You feel like you are in your home and then the season of loneliness comes again. You don't know. My friend called me and said, "I'm in a season of loneliness again where I have to go out." For the leaders out there, it happens. This is Paget and me retelling you to keep the faith because there's something unbelievable.

This is relevant. I walked away from that and stayed in touch with a lot of kids. They were teenagers. I still have relationships with a lot of the people that I worked with who were younger people at that point in time. I always have taught my mission teams that I've trained. I teach a poverty simulation course, helping people understand cycles of poverty and urban issues, and being aware that we're not that different and that we're all very similar in our experiences.

If I could share, sometimes you will get to know what you did, what you meant, and what that time you went through was worth later. It was a few years ago. As a leader, my job is to be one of the defensive linebackers where I'm giving people behind me the opportunity to live their passion as well. I do that with my staff at BeBalanced. I did that with several people in DC. There were young people who were coming a little younger than I was and saying, "I have this passion. This is what I want to do. I want to start this program. I want to do this or that."

One of those was a young gentleman from Howard University. He was supposed to become a lawyer. His mother is a judge and his father is an attorney. His purpose was to become a lawyer. He came to work in a volunteer capacity from us but had a real passion for the arts and kids in the community. He ended up wanting to start the first Christian go-go band club in DC. I don't know if you know what go-go is but go-go is a thing that's DC-related, which would be crazy if you know DC because it is dangerous. You don't want to ignite things but you also want to give people the opportunity to see how to enjoy the music that they enjoy in a safer and wholesome environment.

Leadership: Give people the opportunity to see how to enjoy a safer and more wholesome environment.

I acted like a linebacker and pushed away. I went to a lot of other African-American churches and said, "Do you want to partner with us on this?" They're like, "We don't want anything to do with it." As crazy as it might be, there was a young Christian go-go band that wanted to play. A lot of Howard University students came and led line dances and things. Everything was clean and fun but every night after 120 kids would leave on a Saturday night, I would breathe a sigh of relief that we had no issues and problems but it was challenging.

I could have walked away from that whole thing and said, "I don't want to have anything to do with that. It's too risky." Maybe that would have been the wiser thing to do but I didn't. It was successful. As it turned out, all the African-American churches started sending people. We were growing and people were loving what we were doing. We did it once a month. We ended all of that.

This gentleman turned out to marry one of the other girls who worked for us. He became a pastor. A few years ago, he received his church in Woodbridge, Virginia. I showed up to celebrate with him his opening Sunday. He wasn't expecting me. I saw his wife in the lobby and she took me to where they were praying in a circle in the sanctuary. I walked in. He embraced me and said to me, "She's the reason that I'm here." It was so honoring but what was bigger was he reached across to a very large African-American gentleman across the circle and said, "She's the reason you're here."

That gentleman came over to me and gave me the biggest bear hug. I still don't know who he is. I'm in shock. He says to me, "I was the young drummer in that go-go band that no one else would let play but you. You gave me that opportunity. I'm being ordained as a pastor in this church." That was so amazing that God would orchestrate. I know this isn't supposed to be a spiritual conversation. For me, that was so affirming to heal that wound of needing to walk away from something I felt so powerful about and to know that those seeds continued.

I would encourage anyone who is feeling that place, "Why did I have to leave this? What is next? Will what I did matter?" I've had multiple opportunities. I had a child reach out who's got a crisis in his life where his wife died unexpectedly. This was a seventeen-year-old who I felt was probably one of my first children before I had children. Those seeds were sown. Trust that what you did was the right thing and you are not responsible for the end game.

You said it's not supposed to be spiritual. Charles, my dad, always told me, "Ninety percent of growth is spiritual growth. If you don't lock in your spiritual foundation, forget it. You can build everything else up but your values, convictions, core, and what you're living for, none of it matters." I'm glad you went there because our audience knows exactly the importance of that.

The other 10% is probably the physical realm. I want to move on to the next one, weariness. My father would always say, "You get home. You're tired. There are people who should be doing what they're doing. They're not. You're picking up." As somebody who dealt with a chronic hormone imbalance where my adrenal gland was shot for about three years, I thought I was depressed. Our bodies are going back to dust. Our spirits are eternal but we still have to maintain this mortal coil. Can you talk to us about weariness, especially with the work you're doing? No matter how much you pray and all that stuff, we have to finish the race strong physically too. Unpack that for us.

Not to change from the spiritual, God has given us this body that works so well together. He never intended for us to run as we do. The Sabbath is not implemented where we're giving our bodies and our minds permission to rest. When I stepped away from the organization that I worked for in DC and moved back to Central Pennsylvania, my husband and I adopted our middle daughter from foster care. It's something I knew we were very passionate about. We had two biological children and adopted the middle one. I thought, "I worked with kids with guns, knives, and fights. I got this."

God has given us this body that works so well together, and he never intended for us to run like we do.

She took me down. She was seven at the time. I didn't understand all of her special needs as we got into it and grew. She took me to a place where physically, mentally, spiritually, and the whole thing, I didn't even myself anymore. Years ago, I was like, "I don't know who this person is." I was not sleeping. I was depressed, overweight, and all the things. I go to my doctor and say, "What's wrong?" My doctor says, "That's part of getting older. You need to relax."

Maybe the relaxing part of that was true but not explaining it to me in the way that resonated. I was like, "How am I going to relax? I have 3 kids and 2 jobs. I can't relax." I was getting up at 4:00 AM at the gym to try to do all the things. I felt terrible by myself. I felt like a failure in this realm of my world, "What is wrong with me?" I finally learned about this place called BeBalanced in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Somebody told me about it. I didn't even make an appointment. I just showed up. I was like, "I don't know what it is. I don't care what it is. I just need help."

I always said that what we did in DC was offer hope. Hope came in so many different packages like education, recreation, spiritual development, community resources, and all the things. I realize what we do at BeBalanced is offer hope. There are many women that come in a very vulnerable state as I was who don't understand that the most kind and loving thing they can do for everyone in their world, family, and kids who work for them or with them is to take care of them.

Many of us view that as selfish, "I shouldn't do that. I have a badge of honor because I've given everything that I have to everyone else." I love that but you're going to run out. You are a vessel. It's not never-ending or infinite. What I want to tell women is that BeBalanced changed my life. I lost 60 pounds in 3 months. That was not magic. That is by getting my body up and functioning. I have an amazing team. I have six centers of BeBalanced. I could not do what I do without building a team of women, empowering them, and giving them the resources to do what they do.

BeBalanced is about giving your body. God has given us a team of hormones that help with weight management, sleep, energy, depression, anxiety, stress, libido, hunger, and all the things. "I'm hungry. I'm full." Those are all hormones. We have a team inside of us. If we're not resourcing that team intentionally and not helping that team with what they need to be able to do their job, we are failing. A lot of women follow the traditional, "I'm going to work out harder and eat less."

That is not learning how to resource your body and this is a whole different episode about all of that. I learned all of that. A funny story is that I learned how to take care of myself differently. I say to mothers of daughters and mothers of sons, "Me learning to take care of myself differently also gave my daughter permission to draw boundaries around herself and realize that giving 100% of herself away to everyone around her probably is not a fair ask."

When we step back and say, "I'm going to go ahead and put this around myself," which is what I encourage our women to do in different capacities, it's okay. Everyone will still be supported. Everyone is still loved but saying, "I'm going to make this healthy meal. If you're not happy with what I'm making, I'm not making five meals. This is healthy. This is going to sustain your body. There's peanut butter and jelly over there if you need it," helps them to draw lines around themselves.

"I need twenty minutes of relaxation. I'm going to be headed to the room. When I come back, I will help with homework and do all of that but it's my time." We're always the ones that get put to the side, "The other emergencies are much more important." We are going to be an emergency soon if we don't deal with it. I was an emergency that was unable to deal with all that I had going on.

BeBalanced was something that empowered me. It also changed how my family eats. My son has always been an athlete. I learned through BeBalanced how to source an athlete and give him healthy foods. My son has cooked his food since he was in tenth grade. He is a senior at the Naval Academy. Your husband is from the Naval Academy. We have that. He's learned how to take care of his body as an athlete. He's played lacrosse at the high national level with Under Armour and the Naval Academy.

BeBalanced taught me things I didn't know about nutrition and how to source your body effectively with good supplementation, minerals, and vitamins because we have to be intentional. God has given us all that. He's made our bodies to need it and receive it. Being intentional about those things is important. Gummies are not intentional. It drives me nuts when women tell me they're taking a gummy vitamin. I'm like, "You're a big girl now." That's a whole other conversation as well.

How I got to BeBalanced though is that BeBalanced changed my life but there was only one BeBalanced in the country. At that time, my dad, my brother, and I had worked in a business together. My dad and brother owned it. It was about building log cabins all over the world, which is something a whole other story that I learned a lot of leadership from. I had to work in an all man's world. I was the only woman who designed and learned from going from working at a nonprofit in DC to learning how to manage building codes, snow loads, wind loads, and R-values. All of that was a whole change for me.

I was working in that business with my family when I came back to Central Pennsylvania. That time was 2010 when the housing bubble crumbled. We lost the business. We knew a business broker in Lancaster who was helping to franchise BeBalanced. I did this program. I didn't tell anyone I was doing it. I didn't tell my family because I was like, "Can it work? Can I do it?" I didn't know. At the same time that I was doing BeBalanced, this business broker went to my brother and my father who he knew, and said, "There's this new thing that they're franchising. You should buy it and Paget should run it."

Talk about providence. I told my parents I lost 25 pounds in the first month. They were like, "Isn't this a thing that we were introduced to?" It all came together. Long story short, we opened the first BeBalanced location and then I have six. My leadership at BeBalanced has changed from working with clients and empowering individual clients and women to empowering my team to do what they love.

Weariness was very real. I can't change the stress that's coming at me, none of us can, but what I can do is be intentional about fortifying my mind, body, and adrenals to manage it. Understand that that's a real thing. You can't expect water out of a stone. You have to infuse what your body needs to be able to give at that level. Many people say to me, "How do you run a company that has 7 Airbnbs and 6 BeBalanced, have kids, and do all these things? You must never sleep." I sleep well because I created a team internally that's doing what I need behind the scenes.

That reminds me of that Lena Horn quote, "It's not the load that breaks you down. It's the way you carry it." The one Facebook meme is we all have the same 24 hours a day as Beyoncé. How does she do it? It's because she has a team. I love that you said, "Resource your body." You hit on a very wonderful point about leadership as you're growing a business. It's no longer about you working in the business in the details but you're working on your team because that's where entrepreneurs get so burned out.

"I'm still doing everything," but you're not supposed to. Even if you're working at Walmart and you're a manager, you're no longer supposed to be doing the day-to-day stuff. You're supposed to be developing the people underneath you. That's awesome that you did that. I don't care how healthy you are or how well you're eating. You will still burn out because we're still limited physically in what we can take on.

I love that they feel good about what they're doing, that they feel empowered, and that they feel successful because that's what brings me joy. If I micromanage them and don't allow them to live into their spirit, it's not benefiting me in any way, shape, or form.

That's not leadership. Especially as an entrepreneur, you need people in line with the vision. I love that. Let's talk about abandonment. We're animal lovers. Abandonment has a very negative connotation. Fear of abandonment as a woman is a bad thing. My dad would always tell me this because I was like, "How did you get so successful?" He's like, "I have no idea. I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success."

He explained to me abandonment and how abandonment is to stop doing what you like and want to do in favor of what you ought and need to do. It's being very focused on what is going to get you forward, whether it's the people in your life, habits, or even what you're watching on TV in your spare time and what you're putting in your mind. With everything you have going on, how do you stay tightly bound or focused so you can pour your energies where they need to be?

I have to think about it because I've gotten pretty proficient at naturally being able to sift through priorities and what matters. It was so funny because I had this conversation with a staff person who is younger and was asking. For her, one of the things that holds a lot of mental energy is worry, "What about this or that? What are we going to do with this?" In my mind, the way I deal with it is I always have a plan B, C, and D for whatever could potentially happen.

Leadership: One of the things that holds a lot of mental energy is worrying.

I said to her, "I have learned, for example, with worry, not to allow that to enter energy in me and abandon worry because if I know that I can deal with the worst-case scenario in any particular situation that I'm thinking about, then I take it off the table and not give any mental energy to it. If that happens, anything from here to the worst-case scenario, I got it."

I've gotten good at being able to weed through it but I've also been able to give myself permission. We talk about what's on TV. Sometimes my husband says, "I can't believe you watch this. This is mindless." Sometimes I give myself permission to watch mindless things too because so many times, I feel, "I should be listening to this podcast or reading this book." Sometimes I have to give myself permission to abandon productivity for a minute and say, "Enjoy this for a minute."

Something else that came to me that is relevant is I have a lot of guilt sometimes when I should be working harder. For example, I took two weeks. I love going to Columbia. My brother lives in Columbia. We spend a lot of time in South America and Columbia. I was down there for two weeks in the summer. One day, I said to my brother, "I feel guilty. I should be going back to work."

He said to me, "That's the most ridiculous thing because you are feeling guilty for creating the life you wanted and living the life you created." I've also abandoned guilt in that too. Getting older, abandoning some of these things, and not apologizing for them, for me, became so important, "Why am I feeling guilty about this? Everything is fine. Everyone is doing what they need to do and I'm living the life I created." It was a real awakening for me.

I love that you brought up guilt because somebody called me on something once and said, "Guilt is a self-imposed emotion." It's up to me to stop putting that on myself. It's guilt, shame, anger, and all that. The fruits of the spirit are God-given but all the bad stuff is self-imposed like frustration and anger. I opt out of it. I'm so glad you said that. Remember, it all starts in the mind. This is where everything programs this beautiful thing that God gave us. We have the mind of Christ, and then it goes to our emotions, hands, behaviors, and habits.

Leadership: We have the mind of Christ. It goes to your emotions, hands, behaviors, and your habits.

I love that you said that because that's where everything begins and starts. You tell your mind, "I'm going to mute that." It always pops in but we're all going to be tempted. I was reading the book The Potential Principle by Edwin Louis Cole. It's one of my favorite books. It's an old-timey book. He says, "The only two ways the devil can attack children, brothers, and sisters in Christ are temptation and accusation." You have to be on guard for temptation and flee from that but an accusation is, "Shouldn't you be doing this?" It's like, "I'm going to mute that." That's negative self-talk or stinking thinking. We do it to ourselves way more than the world. Everybody is like, "The world is so awful." I'm like, "Do you know what's more awful?"

When we talk about hormone balance, we are doing life coaching and health coaching through this process. One day, I was so frustrated after meeting with multiple women. I did a video, put it out there, and felt like so many of us say the things to ourselves that we would not say to a stranger on the street and tell ourselves, "I never succeeded in that. I can never do that. I'm not good enough at that." I can't take it. I need women to start shifting that. "Maybe I can't do it now but I haven't learned it yet." We're still always in process. I was so sad one day feeling like so many of us talk to ourselves like we wouldn't talk to our worst enemy. It's sad.

We deny the blessing. Somebody will come from a doctor and be like, "The test came back good." They will say to me, "I still might have this." I'm like, "You killed the blessing. Stop. You got good words." Don't speak that stuff. Abandon that nonsense. What does the Bible say? Not one iota of worry can add one hour to your life. Stop it. We're post-COVID. What was more horrible than COVID? It's that negative and depressive fear and anxiety, which kills more than anything else in the world.

That's the biggest thing we need to abandon. Thank you for that. There's loneliness, awareness, and abandonment. You have unpacked the vision already. Vision is so important to you and you are so good at it. Share with us. How do you hone your vision? A lot of people are like, "I'm passionate about stuff," but passion is different than vision. Can you explain what vision means to you?

Thank you because sometimes I would say I'm not very good at that. I hope you take it anyway. I don't know if this is a conventional answer. One thing I'm good at is not being intimidated by people who are better than me and surrounding myself with an amazing team of women who have a similar passion, which helps us create a great vision. I see too many women feel threatened by their staff, "I need to keep her down here." I'll tell my clients, "You're lucky if you get to work with them. They're so much better than I am."

Surrounding myself with an amazing team of women with similar passion helps us create a great vision.

My vision comes from inspiration from my team with their ideas. All of it comes together like a puzzle to create the vision. I don't think that I'm the only one. I don't have the only vision. I'm surrounding myself with amazing women who have passion, words, ideas, and resources. That's how the vision grows. Maybe I'm not that good at vision but I'm good at surrounding myself with great people and resourcing them to a shared purpose.

A vision is shared. If it's not shared, it's just your dream. Leadership is all about everybody looking through the same lens. Sometimes it's like, "Leader, you pick the vision and then everybody else gets to see it." Your approach is the real approach. You put that beacon out and vibe with your tribe who coalesces around that. I can't put the vision in anybody. You already have your vision, passion, and intrinsic gifting from your skillset and how you grew up with the things that happened to you when you were younger but if you radiate that beacon, that's enough for the right people. That was a discerning unpacking of vision. Thank you.

Thank you. It has been fun.

We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Is there anything else that we haven't hit on that you would like to share with our tremendous leaders out there who are living the life, fighting the battles, and enjoying the triumphs and the heartaches too?

One thing that I've recognized is I am such a believer in servant leadership. When I was in DC, I would be down cooking meals, cleaning things, and doing whatever my staff was doing so that they could see that I was not asking them to do anything I was not willing to do. I feel that way. I've grown a little bit in a different capacity so I don't always have that ability. I am in the trenches. I'm taking appointments. There are certain times when I am taking client appointments if we're short-staffed. That's always good for me to stay in the know to understand what the staff is going through so that when I give feedback, they know that it's from a place of, "I've been there and done that." That's helpful.

I was in one of the centers. I gave two client appointments and came out with success on both of them. I was like, "What's so hard?" They laughed at me. I was joking with them. It's important though that I've had to move from servant leadership and being in the trenches with everyone to empowering those to do it. There's a book CEOs Are Stupid. We as CEOs have to learn how to know enough to be dangerous but not take on every minute detail of what our staff is doing. I have great staff who know how to do what they need to do. If I needed to do it, I would figure it out. I would probably be slower than them because I'm not doing it every day.

Leadership: As CEOs, we have to learn how to know enough to be dangerous but not take on every new detail of what our staff does.

We were having a leadership conference. One of my staff said to me, "Is that why you always ask me to do that?" I ask you to do it because number one, you could probably do it faster than I could. I'm traveling between centers and you're in front of a computer. I also don't have to know how to do everything because you all know how to do everything.

Too many leaders that I see use up too much mental capacity knowing the details of everything. I know who to call when I need certain things. I have watched and learned which of my staff are good at certain things and thrive in them, and then I ask them to do those things. I'm trying to be intentional in my team. I share my team between Dallas and Pennsylvania. Sometimes the Pennsylvania team is doing things for Dallas. We work as one organization but I know somebody loves making graphics and designs whereas someone else can do it but is drained by it. That's where I'm going.

My leadership has evolved. I'm old enough to say that because I'm recognizing how old I am as my staff is getting younger. I don't have to be in the trenches every day anymore. I just have to know that I've got great people around me who know how to pull it off when needed and they feel good about that. I praise them and catch them doing great things all the time.

Even when I'm in Dallas, people say, "How do you manage a Dallas team from Pennsylvania?" They always say, "You're always watching. I don't know how you always see." I always catch them doing great things and tell them right away that I saw it. That's how I make them feel like I'm not forever away because I care about what's happening to them, whether I'm onsite or not.

My job is to make their job easier. We have this saying among our teams that we have a team that has to be willing to tell me something I don't want to know and receive something they don't want to know. A lot of times, after we finish meetings or conversations, we will say, "Tell me something I don't want to know." I, as a leader, have to be willing and able to hear that and they, as my team, have to be willing to receive it.

That is powerful stuff. Brené Brown says that unclear is unkind. Clear is kind. We dance around stuff. I love that you talked about the evolution from servant leadership as you get older because you do realize it's about being in the trenches but then we are beyond that, not that we're better than that. There are other people who have to be at that level of servant leadership and we have to be up at this. That's part of the evolution of a leader and bringing your team up because they should be able to step into your shoes so you can go up to this transformative or transformational leadership, which is the next level up from it. What is the best way for our audiences to get ahold of you? I know they're going to want to get in touch with you.

BeBalancedCenters.com is our website. I have multiple locations in Harrisburg, Camp Hill, and York. If you're in Dallas, Frisco, and McKinney are good places to go as well. My information will be there. It's Paget.Rhee@BeBalancedCenters.com. I would love to hear from anyone. I always love to hear what people are doing, their successes, and challenges, and celebrate with them.

Speaking of vision, are there going to be more than six BeBalanced? What's on 2024 and 2025?

There are always those potentials. For me, it's about giving women the opportunity to change their lives and support their quality of life moving forward as they age. I did this when I was 45. I went through early menopause because of stress and all the things. Many women don't even know that these things are possible to be addressed naturally and strategy-wise. For me, it's about getting the word out there. We do it virtually or in person. You don't even have to be by one of our centers. We're helping you understand how to support your body. Sometimes it's mental shifts and physical strategies but it's not rocket science.

I've climbed Machu Picchu. In the last few years, I've mountain biked with my athletic son down Killington. We have done lots of fun things. I am so blessed. I wouldn't ever have done those things without BeBalanced. I do want women to check it out and understand that there are resources and even empower them so that when their doctor says, "You need another blood pressure medication. You need this or that," maybe ask the question, "What could I be doing that would eliminate the need for that?" The more medications we are on, the more our liver needs support.

Until I got to BeBalanced, I didn't think about all of these things and how they were impacting my body. We work with a lot of gut health because stress is impacting a lot of gut health. Forget about the shots. People don't understand these weight loss shots. We are a weight loss program but it's about getting your body up and functioning so it can act as it needs to with these shots. You're taking over your body's function so that when you stop doing it, your body doesn't know how to do it anymore on its own.

Take over your body's function so that when you stop doing it, your body doesn't know how to do it anymore on its own.

We are seeing more problems with people's gut health. We're very passionate about helping women. We see women whose lives are changed. Look at our reviews. Everybody is taking different things away. I had an Army vet with PTSD. When she came to us, her body was so depleted. She got back from a trip to Hawaii and came in glowing. She says, "I attribute this to changing my life." I can't even talk about how much it means to be. This is so much more than vitamins and weight loss. It is life-changing. Thank you for the opportunity.

As somebody who reclaimed their years ago, I am stronger, more active, and clearer in my thinking. Are gentlemen welcome too?

They have hormones as well, stress, and insulin. I would love to see them. We have good problems in that you're probably going to have to go off of some of the medications you're on. Your body is going to reclaim its ability and thyroid function. Do you know how many times I say to people who had hysterectomies, "Do you know why you had the hysterectomy?" "No one ever explained this to me."

This was a hormone imbalance you've been dealing with for years that could have been addressed naturally but instead, you've gone through this huge shift that has created more issues. We can't change that it happened. When I give them that a-ha moment and walk them through their story, they're like, "I wish I would have known that. I need to be more informed." That's where we get excited about women feeling empowered.

There's no amount of money in the world. The greatest wealth is health, and your spiritual health too. I am very pro-medicine once you do the hard work to get your body in check. With those three years of depression, I went through horrible sadness and gained 50 pounds. They're like, "You're getting older." I'm like, "I see women in their 70s who look hot and are on fire. Don't tell me this is part of life."

A funny story is a lot of our clients are doctors and nurses.

That's good for them because they need to represent most of all. The physician should be the one identifying that God made our bodies to be the most unbelievable things. There's something beyond that, something genetic, that triggers stress.

I'm not against Western medicine. That is not what I'm saying. There are a lot of ways that we could strategically and naturally support some of those functions. As needed, those things have to be done too. We were resourced with those options as well. I'm very interested in helping women, at least the low-hanging fruit.

Thank you again, Paget. What a beautiful, heartfelt, and top-shelf discussion on leadership. I learned so much from you. You're such an inspiration and a wealth of information. I'm truly blessed to be able to know you. Thank you for sharing with our audiences.

Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. Where would we be without our audiences? We would just be talking and nobody would be listening. To our tremendous tribe out there, thank you so much. If you like what you read, please hit the subscribe button. Do us the favor of a five-star review. That helps a lot when other people are looking for tips to pay the price of leadership and live a tremendous life. Please like or share, comment, reach out to Paget, and keep on paying the price of leadership. Thank you so much, everyone. You have a tremendous rest of the day.

Important Links

• BeBalanced Centers

• Urban Hands

• The Potential Principle

• Paget.Rhee@BeBalancedCenters.com

About Paget Keller Rhee

Paget Keller Rhee is the owner of 6 BeBalanced Centers, and she is passionate about inspiring women to live their best life at any age through understanding Hormone Balance and how it affects our physical and mental health!

Episode 173 - Dan Moore - Leaders On Leadership

Today’s guest has gone on the path to becoming a tremendous leader. Dan Moore, the Author of “Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict,” unpacks wisdom on how shaping your thoughts helps in becoming a tremendous leader. Learning to get excited about your work, talking yourself out of weariness, abandoning the idea that you can do everything, and setting your vision to become the best are the factors that make Dan a successful leader. He also touches on his book “Control, Influence, Accept (For Now).” Further in the conversation, we will also get a glimpse of Southwestern Company. Tune in to this episode with Dan Moore and be inspired by his leadership journey today.

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Dan Moore - Leaders On Leadership

I am tremendously excited to welcome my guest, Dan Moore. I want to tell you a little bit about Dan Moore. I have known Dan for decades. Dan has known the Joneses for even more decades. Dan has now retired as the President of the Southwestern Company, which has been building leaders out of young people for many years. For those of our readers out there who have been book boys or book girls, I was one of them, selling books door-to-door in between your summer breaks and colleges. You are going to love this. This is the man. He started with the company as a freshman at Harvard, and he never left. Dan, not many people get it right out the gate. I'm excited to hear all about it. Thank you for being here. Welcome, Dan.

It’s an honor to be here with you. As you said, your family means a great deal to me. This is a great privilege.

My dad loved the Book Kids. That's how I wanted it upselling. He would speak to your sales or conferences at whatever city. He'd host the Southwestern Kids. He and Gloria are at the house. You people out there, I know summer’s over but anytime a boy or girl knocks on your door, you be kind to them because they are out there learning some incredible things in life. As I understand, even with COVID now, Southwestern Company is bigger, stronger, and more profitable than it ever has been. Is that correct?

We certainly had a record year in 2022 and a very close year this year 2023, although it’s too early to call. I'm so grateful for the leadership that we have because it is all about leadership. You get through something like COVID, which for everyone was a huge issue. Many people lost family members and lost loved ones. For many businesses, it was a huge challenge. For our case, going door-to-door, what if we couldn't go door-to-door? That was a really important question, what you might call an existential crisis, but the leadership for our company came through in such a great way. I couldn't be more grateful for the young men and women who made it happen.

I can't wait to hear all about it. Let's get right into it. You knew my father and you knew the two things that he loved to talk about, in addition to God and Gloria, were motivation and leadership. His speech, the Price of Leadership, has been given thousands of times. In it, my father talks about four things that you are going to have to be committed to paying to truly be a leader and not just a leader in name only. The first of those is loneliness. We have all heard the saying, “It's lonely at the top. I used to have friends and then I got in leadership or management.” Can you unpack loneliness for us, maybe a time when you went through it? What counsel would you give to our audience?

I’m absolutely happy to do that. A little bit of background, my upbringing was in a small town in Northern New Mexico. A wonderful family, no real challenges to deal with, did well in school and sports, and was popular. When I got into Harvard, it was a different story. I felt as if I couldn't compete, which I could actually compete but I believed I couldn't. I developed a massive inferiority complex, which covered up some negative behaviors during my first year in college.

Southwestern Advantage came along, and a guy named Martin Fridson stopped his tray in front of mine in the dining hall and said, “Are you a freshman? I'm a senior. I want to chat a bit,” then introduced me to the program. I thought, “This is a chance for me to get back on the success trail.” I don't remember being homesick or lonely at all that first year in college, but once I got to San Antonio, Texas to sell books, your father is the one that got me through that first period of loneliness.

I was sitting on a street corner feeling sorry for myself because the night before, I'd been under the street lamp looking at my map. Some local guys came by drinking beer and throwing beer cans at me and thought it was funny. I sat there feeling sorry for myself, and I pulled out the book they gave us in sales school called Life is Tremendous.

Life is Tremendous

When your father wrote in that book, “The first Law of Leadership is learning to get excited about your work.” I remember thinking, “That's one thing, Charlie, but you got a really cool job. I'm sure. I'm a door-to-door salesman.” He said, “Not the job you wish you had. The job you have now. That's not the same as working because I know I work myself out into oblivion half a dozen times. It's getting excited about your work.”

There's a cartoon of a guy with a stack of paperwork on his desk this high. He was all excited. I jumped up at that moment. I said, “He's right. I have got to get excited about what I'm doing right now.” It's not being as lonely. Your father got me through that very first event. That was 1974. One of the most important things that I have upstairs in my library is his portrait that your father sent me about a month before he passed away.

He said, “My beloved Dan, Acts 20:24 Charles “Tremendous” Jones. Your father's counsel, advice, and guidance were essential to my younger times and getting through those lonely periods. One thing that I have been learning over the years is that each time we have an opportunity to move up, we don't get moved up before we are ready. We get moved up because people think we can do it. Even if you don't think you can do it, if we prepare ourselves along the way, we can be the effective leader that we want to be.

One of the things that your dad wrote about in the loneliness part is that at every level, you are going to be lonely if in fact you want to be a leader. By definition, the leader is ahead or stands out a little bit differently. Loneliness in the company is almost every different stage of this journey that we are all on. When he says, “The first price of leadership is loneliness,” I remember experiencing as a first-year leader, as a student leader, and as a sales manager going between campuses trying to talk to students about working with us.

Nobody wanted to work with me that summer. I remember crying and breaking down in front of my new wife. She said, “What are you so upset about?” I said, “I don’t think I can do that. I can't do this. I'm so lonely. I'm working so hard.” As a newlywed, she's the only one that got it, but the fact of the matter is loneliness means we are going to do something a little different. We are going to step away from other people, and hopefully lead in an effective way.

When I first became president of our company, it was a huge honor. The man that had it before me, you know well, Jerry Heffel. Jerry said to tell you hello as well. He and I spoke by phone. The very first thing I did was approach one of our top sales leaders. I said, “I sure need your help. I would love it if you take over the sales function.” He said, “Actually, I'm getting ready to resign.”

My very first blow was realizing, “This guy I thought I could partner with is not going to be part of the team now.” It was a real blow to my confidence, but that's when I realized this is what leaders do. It's okay to feel lonely. What we have to do at that moment is hug our mission so tightly and believe in it so strongly that the loneliness eventually dissipates to different levels. That's what's hit me about this issue of loneliness.

I don't know what to say, Dan. You are talking about how sometimes loneliness is self-imposed. When you went to Harvard the first year and then you think, “We are not good.” We have ostracized ourselves so that self-imposed loneliness, but then also talking about loneliness stepping out. What makes you a leader and not a follower is stepping out. I love that, hugging the mission. Charles would have loved that too as a big hugger.

Dad talked about that in Life is Tremendous. You are going to have some of your great years and next, you are going to have your worst year. The only thing we never talk about is productivity or getting back on track. Go back to your purpose and why. When you talk about hugging your mission, that's what always brings it back. Thank God you had a wife that didn't coddle you and tell you, “Come cry on my shoulder.” He talks about that too. He was like, “Gloria was like, ‘We have got kids. You have got to get back out there and get to work.’” He's like, “If you have a wife that says ‘Hey and clocks are ticking,’ be thankful.” I'm glad she was there for you to help be that sounding board for you.

Tell Jerry I said hi too. This is going way back. Thank you for sharing that Dad said that. He said that if you can't get excited about the job you are doing now, forget about the job you are going to have because it's easy to get excited about the things we like to do, but that doesn't happen that often in life. Most of the time, you are going to be doing things that you don't want to do, and if you can get excited about them, that's a secret to success. How many years were you with Southwestern before you took over as the President?

Let's see, I started in 1974. I became president in 2007, so whatever that would be. Quite a few years.

For our audience out there, timing. As you said, Dan, you will come into the spot when people think you are ready to come into the spot. I know some people want to get there, jump steps or jump the ladder, but sometimes it takes decades, and that's okay, just stay the course. That's phenomenal. I love it.

The next step my father talked about is weariness, and you have alluded to some of that. He's like, “You are going to be working with some people who are doing way more than they should, a lot that are doing way less than they should, and it's tiring.” A lot of people just tap out because I can't do it anymore. How do you deal with weariness and stay in your top form, Dan?

Most of it has to do with self-talk. In other words, we talk ourselves out of doing our very best much more often than we talk ourselves into doing our very best. I have learned over the years anytime I say, “I'm tired.” I need to put it in perspective and realize I'm really not. I got a nice home, air conditioning, and a fine car. There are people that have none of those things. They get up every day and do their job. They do the best they can for the family. They try everything they can to move forward. I'm really not that tired.

That's a breakthrough in the way we think about it ourselves. We can feel legitimately physically weary, emotionally and mentally. Sometimes even spiritually weary, but those are the times when the Lord said, “Lean into me. I will make sure I never forsake you. You will never be alone.” That weariness can go away because he said, “I will give you rest.” When we have that feeling in our hearts, we can breathe deeper. “One more demo, one more call, one more thing, one more memo, one more presentation.” We can do one more. Always we can do one more.

You talk about your faith, and I am aware of that. How do you dial that in? Do you start the morning with that? Do you do devotions? Do you Sabbath? How do you stay with the Creator who can give us the power that we need to do the things that we need to do?

I spent the first twenty years of my life not being aware of that at all. Not even knowing him. It was my fourth summer on the field that through the influence of the sales manager who shared his story with me that I finally realized this is what I need in my life and my eternity. At that moment, when I accepted Jesus into my life as my savior, things didn't become easier. I had my hardest year in the business ever after I made that decision.

As a young naive person, I thought, “Now that I'm a Christian, everything is going to be easy.” Wrong. He doubled down at that point. We know that for the first book of James, the trying of our faith makes patience, so we should count it all joy. I love the word joy. Every morning when I wake up, I have my first thought. It used to be my first thought was, “I wish I could sleep another hour.” My older brother passed away at 58. My baby sister passed away at 46. When my brother died, I woke up and said, “I'm now an orphan and an only child but I'm still here.”

The trying of our faith makes patience. We should count it all as joy.

Every day from that point until this point, my first thought of the morning is, “Thank you. I'm grateful I have got another day.” It's how I started my day, then I might say, “I wish I could sleep another hour.” Leaning into that thankfulness, gratitude, and sense of “I have got this opportunity. Let me use it as well as I can.” It's a big one. It helps overcome weariness too.

I love to use the word orphan. When I lost Gloria years ago, I didn't have children and both my parents were gone. I remember somebody telling me, “Now you are like an orphan.” I was like, “I can't believe you said that because now I can't get this out of my head.” That is what Christ said. He goes, “I'm going to leave you and you are going to be orphans but not for long because I'm going to send you the comforter and the advocate and the Holy Spirit.”

You lean into that, like you said, with your eternity. Now, I play my inheritance and I know I'm going to see my family on the other side and my brother Jerry who I lost. Otherwise, it is a little bit, when you finally hit that and go, “I'm alone,” then you are like, “No, you are not alone. That's what Satan wants you to think.” Thank you so much for sharing that. That tender memory. The next thing he talked about was abandonment. I'm a big pet rescue person so abandonment is a very bad word and fear of abandonment is a bad thing but Charles talked about abandonment in a sense of pruning and hyper-focus.

I can remember him telling me, “I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success. Every day, I have to abandon what I like and want to think about and do in favor of what I ought and need to.” You have touched on this before. I'm sure in your role so many new ideas and wonderful things. You are crafting the business for the future, so you always have to be open but you have to be very tightly focused on what your zone of gifting is and what you are calling is for the organization. How do you abandon all the stuff that you shouldn't stay focused on?

That's a difficult challenging question about which many books have been written, I'm sure. In my mind, the important thing is to realize that every single individual human being has limits. When we view ourselves as unlimited in our ability, we are not even telling the truth because we all have limits. We wouldn't have associates, colleagues, younger people, and people who want to move up and want to learn things, we limit them by having that belief. That sense, “I have got to do this. I'm the only one that can do this.” Even though that sounds contradictory the leader is only a person, the leader is always looking to the people around them and giving them opportunities to fail, chances to grow, and opportunities to fail.

Tremendous Leader: We're not even telling the truth when we view ourselves as unlimited in our ability because we all have limits. We wouldn't have associates, colleagues, and people who want to move up and learn things. We limit them by having that belief.

I had to abandon the sense that I had to do everything myself. I can remember when I hit that point. It was in the mid-'80s. I was trying to lead a team of people. Down the organization a bit. I was struggling with lots of things and I had this little plaque on my desk that said, “I will do it.” One of my alumni came in, he said, “That's a lot like my sign.” His sign was different. His sign said, “It can be done.” Now the difference between I will do it, which is very self-centered and it can be done is a huge difference.

I had to abandon the idea that I'm the only guy that has any brains. I'm the only guy who didn't get it done and give other people that chance to grow. As a leader, I suppose my main goal was always to help people have resources, which means listening ears and some guidance, but never trying to do their job for them. First of all, I wouldn't do it as well as they could do it. Every time I'd say, “This is what I want. That's how I want it done.” It was a huge mistake.

Instead, I said, “This is what I want done. How do you think you could do it?” They come up with the most brilliant, amazing, clever, and creative ideas in the universe. Abandonment to me was abandoning the idea that I'm some wonder boy. I'm going to get it done. It couldn't be farther from the truth. That was a big lesson and hopefully, I have been able to continue that throughout the whole course of my career.

Have you ever heard the poem The Indispensable Man?

I don't think I have.

I came across it. It came out many years ago The Indispensable Man. Every time I bring it up, people are like, “I have heard it.” Very much the same thing. It's all about keeping your ego in check because we do the best we can but do you know what? If you are gone, the world will continue spinning on its access. Do the best you can and it's about pouring into the lives of others. It's a very poignant thing that helps you remember and keep it.

Your comments reminded me of my favorite patent quote, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” I love what you talked about there, allowing them to bring the creative stuff and it can be none. Not all do it because that's how we do this. That's how we burn ourselves out. Nobody likes working for somebody if the boss is going to do everything.

Not only that. It causes people to lose their hope that they have a future here. It’s giving that chance to grow is so important.

Thank you for that. The last thing my father talked about was vision and growing up with all these visionaries. I was always like, “They have different blood coursing through their veins or they are wired differently.” He's like, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done. There's this visualization or attraction then doing it, the action piece.” I'm like, “I can do that.” It was always very encouraging to me. What does vision look like for you? How do you continually look to the future for the best possible version of what you and your enterprise can be?

To me, vision is often mistaken for financial goals. People would say, “This is our five-year vision to be an X million-dollar company or to be this size company.” Maybe that's a financial goal. It's not a vision. A vision is a state of future affairs that we'd like to be able to see and all the financial dimension is an important part of that. There's the people's illness so much more important. Years ago, sometime before I was born, the company developed a motto, “Building character and young people since 1868.”

Often, we mistake vision for financial goals. A vision is a state of future affairs that we'd like to see.

That's where I grew up under. That was a powerful mission statement. An important one. We found over the years students would become maybe a little more cynical, and a little bit more influenced by outside people. They said, “What's this character stuff all about anyway? I don't need character. I need a good resume.” We modified it and we decided that the whole key is can we be the best organization in the world? Not the biggest. Not the largest. Not even the fastest-growing.

It can be the best organization in the world at helping young people develop the skills and the character they need to achieve their goals in life. That vision has always been the core at least as long as I have been in leadership at the company. To me, vision means seeing something big, is your dad talked about SIBKIS, See It Big Keep It Simple. The keep it simple part was we'd always ask the question after we make some big decision or in the process make a big decision.

Is it going to help our young people achieve their goals in life or is it something we think is a shiny good idea? It won't help them achieve their goals in life. It doesn't fit our mission. If we don't fit our mission, our vision is never going to happen. The vision of being the best organization in the world is a tough one because there are some amazing organizations out there helping young people.

We are going to keep working, keep striving, and the team that's there after me. It's the best people we have ever had in the world. The new president of the company is a young man you know very well, named Dave Koser. Dave is somebody who's been in the business longer than I have been. What a blessing it was when he stepped up that leadership and said, “Yes, I will take that role.”

Thank you for sharing that on vision and I love that. It keeps you purpose-oriented in everything. Is it going to help our young people achieve their goals? I wrote that down because I'm on several college boards and stuff and that's a great thing to say. I know it may look good from our level, but if you are not helping the young people achieve their goals, that's a great qualifier.

That's a litmus test for any decision that you make if you are working with any organization like that.

The raising the future leaders. We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. I want to open it up now because you have laid some incredible truths and wisdom on us. Thank you so much. I got about a page and a half a note scribbled down. What else do you have going on? You have a new book coming out and I'd like to talk about your book. I'd like you to share with our readers about the Southwestern Company in case they want to get involved or anybody out there reading or has kids grandkids or great-grandkids. What's next for you now that you have retired? What does the next chapter look like for Dan? First of all, could you tell us about your new book coming out?

Happy to do that. The idea of a book is something that probably a lot of people think about over the course of their lives and somebody says, “You ought to write a book.” I got serious about it years ago. I remember what happened. The presentation I developed over the years for students primarily on how to prepare for a future that nobody can predict. What it had to do with is the rate of change so incredibly fast. Many students would start a subject as a freshman in college.

Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict

By the time they are senior, it's already obsolete. This rate of change created all kinds of scare and uncertainty. What am I going to do for a living someday? Everything's changing so fast. What hits me all the time is it's internal qualities to get us through anything. It's true in your background in the military as the internal qualities that get people through in business. The internal decision that keeps a marriage together. The internal factors to keep a family growing.

To me, the internal part was can I become more self-aware? Can become more effective in dealing with people? Can I be more resilient and be more emotionally flexible? I began to give this presentation on campuses. Students always enjoyed it. Occasionally, they’d invite their parents to come. At the University of Colorado Boulder, I gave a presentation. I still remember the evening. We were in the environmental science building and a young man came and said, “I want to meet my dad. My Dad's here.” The dad walked up, shook my hand, and said, “Have you written this into a book?” I said, “No.”

He didn't smile at all. He said, “You should,” and he walked out. That's planted the idea in my head. The next year, I said, “I will start writing it,” and I thought, “This can be easy.” Two years later, I have only written two pages. A colleague challenged me and said, “Dan, I want you to finish that book this year.” Maria and I went to her home. She grew up in the beautiful Azores Islands which are part of Portugal, in the middle of the Atlantic. We took a long break and I remembered taking out my laptop, sitting in a coffee shop, and started writing 80% of it.

The whole key to that is understanding that if we can develop these internal skills and internal characteristics, we are going to be better off in life. The name of the book deals very much with something we all learned when we started selling books. Do you remember the phrase control which you can control and don't worry about the results? I want to sell books so that we can control certain things. Control our effort and the number of demonstrations we make.

We can control only a few things truly in our lives. Even our attitude. We always think, “I can control my attitude.” If you can do that, you are a better person than I am because I have learned over the years things can throw me off my stride, left field, a curve ball comes in and knocks me in the head. We can influence our attitude. We can certainly influence other people. Most of the things that happen in the world are things that we can either control or influence.

As I looked at people hitting their heads against that wall over and over, it occurred to me if they'd spend some of that emotional energy maybe on some things they could control and more on things they could influence. The things they need to accept for now, put them on the side. That's the title of the book, Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict.

I’m very excited about it. I had tremendous feedback from various editors, advanced readers, and people who said, “This would be better, do this and this.” It’s a collaborative effort there. The book is due out on October 31st, 2023. It is available for pre-order through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I'm mostly excited because of some young people. I regard young people as anybody on this side of the Earth, by the way. I still think I'm a young person. It can continue to grow throughout our lives. Whatever those lives mean. This can be worth it to us. That's what the book is all about.

That's so important. I love that and that's what Southwestern taught me. It's about processes and habits. People have these wild outcome goals. Outcome goals of the hardest because there's so much beyond your control but the procedures and the processes, how many doors you knock on, how well you prepare, and all that stuff. That's the stuff that I can control. If you follow that then success. You will hit you will hit the outcome goals.

Very important because people are losing that. A lot of the divisiveness is, “They got it at the cost of you.” It's like, experience and opportunity are equitable but you are bringing these truths out there. These are immutable truths for people to understand. Charles will always say, “Nothing works unless you are working.” Teach them how to work in a manner that brings the goals that they are looking for. I can't wait. Very exciting. We will put the links out there for that too.

Thank you for that.

Now, talk about Southwestern Company.

I’m grateful that Marty Fridson and my student manager took the time to seek me out in the dining hall. A little bit of background again. At Harvard, the dining halls were closed for the freshmen on weekends. The weekends when we ate in the upper-class dining halls. Most freshmen did not feel very welcome by these upperclassmen. When Marty came across this tray and said, “You are freshmen. Mind if I join you?” I learned later that was his style of prospecting for team members that he wanted to have but there was something about Marty that hit me as unusual and a bit different.

As he told me about the program, I realized, “This could be something great for me.” The problem was, I didn't know how to sell. I talked about it and thought it was the dumbest thing that ever heard. Some of them said, “If you do that, you are a bigger idiot than I think you are.” I decided not to go but Marty was pleasantly persistent. Invited me over to the meeting and I met a man named Jim Calder. Jim became my district sales leader.

Less than ten minutes into the meeting, I knew that Jim had something I needed in my life. I met another young leader named Sam Wee. Sam became one of my most important friends and mentor my entire lifetime. That's the essence of the Southwestern program. Although, the product line has changed over the years. When the company started back in the 1850s, it was entirely a Bible publisher. Now while those do sell some Bible-related products, they are only about 3% or 4% of total sales. Everything else is educational products for famous kids.

The product line can change. We are very automated now. We have brilliant apps and brilliant websites that people can subscribe to continue to great educational input for their kids. The best books we have ever had in our history are in the line now. The essence of the program is still about a young person becoming everything they can be with mentorship, guidance, and stripping away all their background and experiences, their social media, and their image. It’s just me face-to-face with a person at their home. It's the most elemental form of communication and developing ourselves.

That program continues in a big way this year, last year, and every year in the future. Over the years, we have had many students from around the world participate. About half the students who have participated now come at their own expense from Europe to be here in the summertime and do this. It's just been tremendously gratifying to see the company change, adapt and grow while standing true to that whole mission. It's an amazing thing.

People can reach out even to host a student to come over to sell, correct for the summer?

Almost everybody stays with a host family in the summertime.

For the readers out there, if your kids are grown or already out on their own. Now, do all college campuses have this?

All college campuses could have but we don't have every presence. We are not present in every school. There are about three 3,000 colleges in the US alone. Not going to be at all of those schools because of online access. We get many applications from people all over the country. As colleges may not currently have a presence. When that student gets started, they can then build their presence.

That's the thing about it. They start you out then the next year you bring your team. As I said, you don't stay in your hometown. You go to a different area. If you are like, “My college doesn't have it for the kids.” Still check out Southwestern because you will go to a different area that does have a presence and a force, correct? Is that still the way it works?

That's right. The name of the company is now Southwestern Advantage. The reason for that is Southwestern itself is diversified into many different companies. It’s now called the Southwestern Family of Companies. Southwestern Advantage is the name of the student program to convey beautifully, what it's about, it gives students an advantage throughout the rest of their lives. The families that buy the products have an advantage for their families as well. SouthwesternAdvantage.com is where people can find out more about the program.

Everywhere I go, every book I publish including my one coming out, I always talk about Southwestern because Dad told me, “If you can go out there and cold call and not going to door and make a connection with somebody who goes, ‘That's one of the hardest things in life you are going to have or have to do.’ If you learn how to do that early on.” I'm like, “Good. Let's get that hard stuff out of the way.”

I remember like you said that mano to mano that one-on-one how to connect with somebody and stay persistent when you are getting door slam. I was so thankful that when I went into the military after Southwestern, people were like, “Aren't you scared or getting yelled at by the general?” I'm like, “I sold bookstore to door. I'm tough. They I got nothing on me. I can sell on heat and get chased by dogs and turkeys. You don't even worry about me. I got this.” What's next? You retired from Southwestern, what's next for you?

I’m still very active with the company in certain ways as an advisor and consultant. One of the companies we started in the UK in the year 2002 is called SBR Consulting. It's a sales enablement consulting company. I'm still involved with them. I have a training program coming up in New York, where I will deliver training to some clients. I hope to stay involved with that company as long as they will have me. They are doing tremendous work helping the corporate world develop many of the same principles, skills, and attitudes young people develop in this program.

We have also got another coaching company based here in Nashville called Southwestern Consulting. It says SBR Consulting is based in the UK. It used to be part of Europe. They got a big office in Prague in the Southwestern Consulting here. I try to give them advice and help whenever they seek it out. They are doing fantastic things. I'm no longer on the board of directors, but I'm very interested in what happens with our company. Henry Bedford, our CEO and Chairman, is a brilliant leader and close touch.

As much as I can support the students, I will continue to do that. In retirement, the whole goal for me and Maria is to focus, first of all, on our personal wellness physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally because again, my family didn't live very long. My siblings did not practice good health habits. As long as God has blessed me with a decent brain, I have an obligation to stay healthy enough to use it to try to help some people along the way.

We are prioritizing that. My wife is a yoga instructor. Yoga has helped both of us from a spiritual development level as well as a physical development level. Learning how to let go and let God is such an important aspect of all of that. Keep that going and keep my running going. My daughter talked me into doing my 25th half marathon. That's going to keep rolling as well. We are doing a different kind of travel. We’ll slow down a little bit and get more involved in the culture of a place. I plan to continue that. With any success at all with the book, hopefully, the message will continue to spread and grow as I have a chance to travel, speak, and share these ideas with people. In the meantime, I'm going to grow into every day, live into it, see what happens, and do the best we can to be responsive to what God wants us to do next.

I love that. For our readers out there, you can reach out to him or if you have a sales team, you have heard the wisdom that he has to offer in his years of experience. If you can motivate college kids to change their life, he can help motivate your sales team. I will make sure that gets out there. Dan, thank you so much for reaching out. You have always been a constant presence. You guys still support me. You buy our books, my books and Life is Tremendous. I'm so thankful that you keep doing and raising the bar on helping young people and for what you’ve meant to my father and to me over the years that I have been back.

I want to thank you for that. I wanted to share thoughts with everybody, first of all. Your dad had so many characteristics that were incredibly moving and powerful. You can distill a lot of his words in a couple of key lessons. One is the importance of humor. He used humor not only with people and groups, but in his own life. His ability to laugh at himself and laugh at his own troubles and his own mistakes and weaknesses was legendary.

It made all the rest of us feel like we could do something as well. He had a unique style of humor as you well know. I got to tell you about the very first time I met him in person. I'd read his book many times and they said, “Charlie Jones is coming to town. I’m going to have him speaking sales school.” I was so excited. I went to shake his hand. He gave me his big bear hug. Hugging me. Your father's a big man. He was probably 6’3” and hugging me, squeezing the life out of me.

I did what anybody did, I hugged him back. He whispered on my ear and said, “Don't hug back. Act like you are trying to get away. People are beginning to talk.” It was that tremendous sense of humor and that ability to help people just feel good about themselves. He was talking to one of my colleagues one time and he's like, “Charlie, let's get together for breakfast.” Charles said, “Okay. 8:00.” He said “Yes. If I'm not there, it means the rapture came and you weren't saved.”

The other thing he said to me about door-to-door before I went out my first summer in Princeton Bluefield West Virginia right on the border there, he said, “Tracey, if you see they are going to shut the door, put your head through the door, not your foot, because that way, when they go to slam the door, you can keep talking.” I'm telling you, when I would see they’re coming back, rather than cry, which happened from time to time, I would bust out a laugh and think about Dad saying, “No, just keep talking.” He did have a sense of humor.

He also had a tremendous love for music. He spoke about music therapy forgetting the difficult times in our lives. At the farm, outside Harrisburg, he had an entire little house dedicated to music, an old player piano, every kind of instrument under the sun. It didn't matter if you could play it or not. He said, “Pick this up and blow into it. Let's sing together. Let's sing some hymns.” He was amazing with the power of music. It can change our spirit and change our direction. It can move us in great ways. It's also been said that whenever we sing, we pray twice. God was the inventor of music. The best songwriter that ever lived was King David. When we sing, we pray twice. Your father was big in sharing that with all the rest of us.

The power of music can change our spirit and direction. It can move us in great ways.

Probably the third thing that I want everybody to remember about your father is that he was an imperfect human being, but he was a perfect example of being a human being. Imperfect because everybody's imperfect, but he was a perfect example of that. He inspired and developed so many people. He's a huge impact of my life and my son, Daniel. He and Charlie connected when Daniel was eight years old.

He mentored Daniel, tutored him, and helped him learn some things. Daniel rewrote Life is Tremendous for a younger reader and sent a copy to your dad. Your dad said the most glowing note. He sent him a $50 check out of nowhere. A cool connection that they had. Thank you, Tracey, for continuing that on, and Charles Tremendous, I know you are there.

Thank you so much. Dan, I can't thank you enough. My soul is full. I'm encouraged. You taught me so many wonderful things, and I'm excited for the book to come out. I'm excited we reconnected at this stage. Keep on doing what you are doing.

You do the same.

I sure will. To our audience out there, thank you so much for the honor of taking time out of your schedule to tune into the show. Please be sure to check the links, reach out to Dan, and stay in touch with him. Be sure and pick up his book. If you don't have a copy of Life is Tremendous, make sure you get a copy of that too.

We would love it if you would hit the like and subscribe button, and the honor of a review to share with other leaders who are going through how this message has blessed you. That would be absolutely tremendous. To all our readers out there, remember you will be the same person years from now that you are today except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read, so make them both tremendous. Have a tremendous rest of the day, everyone. Thanks again. Bye-bye.

Important Links

• Dan Moore

• Southwestern Company

• Southwestern Advantage

• Life is Tremendous

• Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict

• SBR Consulting

• Southwestern Consulting

About Dan Moore

Dan Moore recently retired as President of the Southwestern Company, which has been building leaders out of young people for 150 years. He started with the company as a freshman at Harvard and never left!

Episode 168 - Lacey Langford - Leaders On Leadership

Leadership presents four key challenges for those in the position. These four keys are loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Lacey Langford, founder and CEO of the Military Money Show, shares how she deals with loneliness by surrounding herself with uplifting people. She also shares how being in the military taught her to combat weariness. Lacey shares how putting a time limit on your pity party helps her to cope with to avoid draining her energy. Being in the military did provide a huge impact on how she deals with leadership. Tune in to this insightful conversation with Lacey and Tracey today!

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Lacey Langford - Leaders On Leadership

I'm tremendously excited because my guest is Lacy Langford. Let me tell you a little bit about Lacey. Lacey Langford, AFC®, is a financial coach. She's a veteran and a military spouse who changes people's mindsets from being fearful of money to having control and confidence with it. She's an accredited financial counselor with many years of financial planning, counseling, and coaching experience.

Lacey is the Founder and CEO of the Military Money Show, a podcast dedicated to helping the military community make, save, and invest money wisely, and MilMoneyCon, which is an annual conference for financial professionals United by military service. Lacey, thank you so much for being our guest. It's an honor to have you here.

It's an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

You are welcome and thank you for your service as well.

Thank you. You too.

You are welcome. I like to tell people because they are always like, “Tracey, how do you meet all these tremendous people on your show?” I am on, as you know, the American College of Financial Services. I'm the Chairperson for the Center for Military and Veterans Affairs. I have been on it for about a few years and I'm the Chairperson and Chief Master Sergeant Jim Roy. Retired chief master sergeant is on there with me and we had an opening on the advisory council. He had been at Lacey's MilMoney Conference. Connected me with her and now she's going to be on the advisory council too. After a meeting with her, I thought she has to be on my show as well. Lacey, it's tremendous to have you here.

Thank you. I'm excited about it. Everything works out the how it should, getting introduced, and meeting new tremendous people.

It sure does. Let's get right into it. The price of leadership, my father gave this speech many decades ago. It's the one speech he probably gave more in his life than any other speech. In it, he talks about four things that you are going to have to be faced if you are going to truly be a leader and not just a leader in name only. The first of those is loneliness and we have all heard that, loneliness is the head that wears the crown and it's lonely at the top. Can you share with our readers what loneliness looks like for you as a leader? Maybe a time in your career when you dealt with it and how you got through it?

First of all, I want to say thank you so much for sharing your father's speech with me. I had never heard that or read it before. I thought it was very powerful and resonated with me right out of the gate. I don't think people talk about loneliness enough as a leader, especially in business. It can be lonely at the top. That impacts me a lot. Not just in one situation, I don't think. I never intended to truly be a leader. I was trying to help people with their money.

It has evolved over time and grown out of me being focused on my mission and who I'm trying to help. Along the way, I have learned that sometimes it is very lonely because others don't know the full story. They don't know everything that's behind it. Being a leader means that you often are bearing the brunt of everything. You are trying to protect your people, your audience, your customers, or your consumers.

You are not trying to expose them to negative things or anything other than what you are trying to help them with or the service or product you are providing to them. That part is not necessarily a drawback. The loneliness part does make you a stronger leader. It makes you stronger in what you are doing. It makes you more resolute. Sometimes it can be perceived as a negative but I believe in trying to learn lessons and take the most out of it.

Being a leader means that you are often bearing the brunt of everything. The loneliness part does make you a stronger leader in what you're doing. It makes you more resolute.

When you are trying something new, like I have done my conference, doing my show, and coaching people. If things not working out, that's very lonely because a lot of people don't know the effort that you have put into it. I know everybody reading, I'm preaching to the choir here but your heart and soul have gone into that. You have sacrificed time with your family, your life, your health, and your wealth in order to reach your goal.

People see a failure or see something that is only the tip of the iceberg. Not everything underneath that is truly your heart and soul that you have put into it. That part can be very lonely. It's people to not understand what you were trying to do and the good that you were trying to do. That part is hard and also negative. Being in public or putting yourself out there.

For me, what I do is public. You expose yourself to people's thoughts and opinions. Again, they don't know everything that's gone into whatever they are seeing that one tweet, that one show episode, or that one conference. That part is hard but you can't be focused on that because you have to keep moving forward. Moving forward in your goal and what you are trying to accomplish and continuing to excel.

That part for me the loneliness. I try to cope with the things that people I surround myself with. Helping lift me up when I am lonely to realize, “This didn't pan out or you are worn out.” Those types of things. It's the people around you and the things you do to cope with that. Me, exercise is important and getting outside. A lot of the work I do is like this in front of a computer. It's important for me each day to get sunshine and be outside of my bubble to realize there are so much other things in life. This is one aspect of my life. I try not to let my identity get wrapped up in my business and that helps with the loneliness.

I love that you pulled in the protector aspect of loneliness. I never thought about that. Sometimes we as the shepherds, mama bears, or papa bears, I never thought about that but you are protective. As you said, not just your team but your audience and who are probably getting a lot of weird things. That's difficult when you hear people telling them falsities or things that are not going to pan out.

You are very pragmatic about it and I appreciate that. For our readers out there, if you haven't a candidate, or for leaders out there, if you are dealing with the negativity, you feel alone because you failed. It happens to the best of us and as Lacey said, it's par for the course. Be aware of it and surround yourself back with the people that are going to get you back on track because if you are not dealing with the negativity, the failure, and the protector role, then you are probably not truly leading.

If you are dealing with it like Lacey said, I love that she says it's part of the course. I love that you talked about when you put yourself out there. Here we are on the show and you are giving advice and stuff like that. There's always something that has to sit back there and critique you. It is not negativity but it is. It's isolating but you got to push through that. It's nothing that any other great person doesn't deal with when your voice is out there. There's always going to be the little dissenters or snipers and you got to press on from that.

I think of my business as my house, especially the community that I serve. I serve the military community as it relates to money. There are a lot of predators. I don't let anybody in my home around my family. I do feel protective, especially as it relates to money. That's important to me to be a good advocate. I can't police the world. I also have to come to terms with that I'm not superwoman but I do try to be mindful about what I'm doing and the messaging that I'm putting out and who I'm surrounding myself with.

I love that vigilance and it's never-ending. If you think every day something else will pop up, it's the world we live in and it's human nature. I love that you are always in the eye for that. I had never heard of that aspect when it comes to loneliness but that's a beautiful way to put it. You talked about getting outside, exercising your health, and stuff like that. How do you combat weariness? You do have a lot of responsibilities on you and leaders, we carry a lot of weight even though we have people that help us. How do you combat weariness?

This is something I picked up as a military child and as a military spouse. I can't always have a pity party for myself. I am the leader of my children and the leader of my business. I put a limit on my pity parties. The limit is 24 hours. When something negative happens to me, sad, lonely, or all those things, I put a time limit on it, which is helpful. It gives me time to process and cope with whatever has happened to me.

Military Money Show: Put a limit on my pity parties.

That gives me strength to be like, “I handled it. Now it's time to get back up and get back on task.” Having that mindset of trying to find the positive. Again, not trying to push down or smother what you are going through. It is exhausting. There's always a problem but to me that's life. It's not a question of if, it's, or when, how much it's going to cost you in time, money, your emotions, or those type of things. That's important that I do anticipate those things and being protective of the environment that I'm in.

My mind and my physical health help combat that weariness because if I'm not eating right or not taking care of myself physically, then it does wear me down very quickly. I don't have the energy to cope with challenges or opportunities because you could be getting great things happening to me but it's wearing you out. All the hard work is starting to pay off and you have these opportunities. It could be positive or negative.

Taking care of yourself and having a plan. Having systems in place of how are you going to handle whatever is thrown at you will help with the weariness. Also, too, knowing that I'm not special. I may be unique. There's only one Lacey but I'm not special. All of these things happen to other business owners and keeping things in perspective is important to me to handle the weariness.

That should be your book, The 24-Hour Pity Party. I love that because there's good weariness like deployments. You put everything but then there's bad weariness and that rumination, frustration, exhaustion, and self-doubt. Those are all self-imposed emotions. Your body will catch a disease of the mind quicker than anything else. I love that you brought it up. Deal with it. It hurts. We are human. We have emotions but then you got to draw that.

I love that you put that hard stop because too many times, people are still dealing with a failure from years or decades ago and it is they cannot lift their heads up and move forward. They can't run with a baton because they are dragging this anchor behind them. You talked about contingency planning. We learned that in the military too. If it goes wrong and it's probably going to go wrong, that's okay. We learned a lot of good things in the military. There's always something else. You don't end the battle because something went wrong. You go back, you figure it out, and you get right back in there.

That's important. Over the process too, that it's again, that you are not unique. I won't be the first person this happened to and I won't be the last person this happened to. That helps combat the weariness and the letting it go that this was something that happened. I'm going to take the lesson learned and move forward. That's how I try to deal with the weariness, as having a good mindset moving into it.

Military Money Show: To deal with the weariness is having a good mindset moving into it.

Since this is my dad's stuff, the price of leadership, I will give you the line he would always tell me. Every time, I will be like, “This happened or I'm upset about this or can you believe this did this?” He'd look at me and say, “Is it anything worse than what happened to Jesus?” I'm like, “Oh.” It’s somewhat to what you said.

I will put it in perspective.

I'm like, “You did not throw that card.” I didn't ever pity partied him because it's like there are people that have been through a gazillion time stuff worse than me. Let's move on. He would always throw that Jesus card in there and that would shut the pity party down pretty quick.

My grandma always says, “If we all got together and put our problems on the table and we saw everybody else's. We probably pick ours up and turn around and leave the room.”

No kidding, isn't that the truth? Think about that. That's very sound wisdom. Loneliness and weariness. The next price that he talked about was abandonment. Typically, abandonment has this negative connotation. You are abandoning your job, your marriage, your pets, and your fear of abandonment. My father's speech talked about abandonment as stopping what you like and want to think about and do in favor of what you ought and need to do.

It's more of this pruning away. Abandoning what is not your highest purpose and focusing on what you need to. With all these different things and you are an entrepreneur. You are in the creative space and wealth is always growing and looking at different things. It's a changing industry. How do you stay tightly focused on your message, your brand, and what you want to do for your audience?

Going back to the point that who I serve is very much like family. I grew up in the military. I served, my husband and my siblings. That is important to me. I am authentic in that. I do want to help people improve their financial lives. That is my compass. That's my North Star. Also, my morals and values are who I am. In business, it's been very helpful many times, the things I'm not going to do more than what I am going to do is that I'm not comfortable with that. That is not going to help my community. That's going to help you. Knowing that I am trying to help my community, that's very helpful, and not being tempted by money.

I say a prayer all the time to never get greedy. That when it's right, it will come but I need to stay with my values and what I'm trying to do to help people. I try not to look around at other people. That is also very helpful. I'm happy for my peers or people around me that have more success, more money, or whatever it is that's not the path for me.

I feel like cutting my losses. To me, that's what abandonment is. The things that are dragging me down, are helping me towards the path that I'm supposed to be on. That's helpful. Sometimes that's hard to let go of the things you have worked so hard on, whether that be my podcast or my coaching business. Those types of things but I feel like it naturally starts to work itself out the path that you are supposed to be on and where your zone of genius is.

That's how I try to look at that as abandonment. Things I have had to let go of that this has moved me forward in an area that I love. That I get excited about versus handling the things that maybe I'm not as passionate about those things. I always think this is not forever. This is for now. There are things that I wish I could do better or that I could give more attention to.

For now, I need to focus and knock this one thing out of the park, then I can leap to the next lily pad and handle that one. Knock it out of the park, then move to the next one. To me, staying focused that way is very helpful because I do want to do well. I want to deliver well and what I'm trying to do and that helps let go of some things.

I love that you talked about sunken costs. One of my favorite book titles is Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers. It's all about, there are times when you are going to have to look at something. Maybe for a season or you work so hard but throwing more money or time on it, it's not good. Knowing when to hold them and when to fold them.

I love that you talked about the parking lot mentality because we can juggle a lot of things so we have a lot of great ideas. I love it where you talked about, “No, I stay on this point. I finish this.” That other one, I always tell, “I'm going to put this in this parking lot here.” I have ten things I'm working on. The parking lot I'm in now, I have to finish this and I get calls all the time as I'm sure you do.

Have you thought about this? Yes, but I cannot spend any energy on this now because otherwise, I'm never going to get this one thing that I'm supposed to be getting done. I love that you talked about how you get focused on it. You are so grounded in who you are and who you want to serve. Your virtues and values keep you from getting pulled into areas of costly mistakes or even a six-month period looking at something or partnering with the wrong person. That will help you avoid a lot of the pitfalls that so many of us have made.

I try to think about it. In the military, I give no ground. All the things I have worked hard on, if I'm going to take on a new project, I give no ground on the things that are already built. That’s important. There needs to be systems and structures in place. Those run smoothly and I don't give any ground up while I'm working on this new thing. Where you put your energy is important. Again, it might not work out but if you are ready to move forward and give that thing a shot, give no ground in the other areas.

Can you unpack that a little bit more? I have never heard that before. Give no ground. Unpack that more because that's fascinating. I want to make sure I understand it.

For me, my business and my brand, are at the core of what I do, I help the military community with money but I do that in many different ways. I have found that to reach more people and to help more people, I have had to evolve my business in how I earn money. In the beginning, it was a coaching business then I started a show so I don't want to give ground on my coaching business.

That needs to have a good structure in place, so I have a system for every aspect of my business, which may seem not sexy but, to me, it is because those are the things that make you look good. It’s the systems that you have behind doors. I have a system to intake at this point all my business and my financial coaching clients then I could focus on my podcast. I had to create a system for my podcast because I don't want a very large team.

To me, that's more management. That's more leadership. Now, my goal is to help as many military people with money. I'm very mindful of that. Also, having the right people that I surround myself with and I give my energy to. Creating the podcast, I have to have a system for that. How am I going to intake clients or guests? How am I going to produce this and promote it? How am I going to make money off of this? I give no ground on my coaching that I could continue to do that while I built the podcast and then having the podcast.

More people doing outreach and speaking. I'm not giving ground on either my coaching business or my podcast but now I'm going to take on new opportunities because I have systems and structures in place. Those don't give any ground. Moving into creating MilMoneyCon, which may have seemed like something I shouldn't take on but to me, people kept coming for help. I wanted to provide a solution.

It ultimately helps service members with their money if there's a stronger financial force that serves them. Me, creating a conference, bringing those people together and continuing their education, networking, and empowering them leads to my main mission. I can't give ground on all those other things while I build the conference and so having systems and structures in place helps me give no ground.

I love that you said that this is what you are doing but you do it in many different ways. You had these tentacles coming down but everything is delineated. That's your second book, Give No Ground. I love that. The structure is sexy. I tell it because otherwise, the wing in it is just cavalier. It's like, “No, I'm in operations. I'm a project manager at heart.” I love processes because then you know what's going on. Our entrepreneurs or people that are transitioning into entrepreneurship. If you come from that background where you like structure and that right brain stuff or that left brain stuff, do what Lacey said. Make sure you are building stuff that fits nicely into it.

I love that you hit on that because a lot of times with entrepreneurs, people have different things that they are interested in. They all weave up into the same desire or purpose but they get very dichotomous about, “I can only focus on this.” I'm like, “Really?” Like you with the conference. I know you said, “Maybe I shouldn't have done this.” Yet in doing it, you created a synergy where your main goal was able to be multiplied and other speakers and resources were brought in. It amplified what you were trying to do. That's the true sweet spot.

Thank you. I learned a lot about building a business. When I started the conference, I was more prepared for failure, which made it a lot easier to take that leap because I'm not embarrassed by that anymore. Not that it's fun. Don't get me wrong. Going back to the 24-hour pity party. Knowing what my fallback position is and how I'm going to handle that and being smart about taking a calculated risk and then getting the mentorship. Also, very clear on that. If I want to do this, I need to align myself with people that have put on events and conferences that can support me and be a good sounding board.

I love to be prepared for failure. Charles, again, who wrote this speech was quite humorous. He was like, “I don't like to fail, but if you don't learn to laugh at your problems, you are never even going to be in the ring of the game,” because you have to be able to like, not self-deprecating but laugh, smile, own it, and move on and dust off the failure and get going on. Otherwise, if you are stepping out at anything because everybody is sitting back waiting for somebody else to do it. I love that you said that be prepared for failure and it doesn't hold you back at all.

My little brother always says to me, “If it was so easy, everybody would be doing it.” It's not. That is my mantra too, and I tell myself that I'm not the first. I won't be the last. Any negative things that happen but also the positive things. I don't want to wrap my identity around being a podcaster or financial coach. There are many aspects to me. I don't want to then lose that then impact me in a negative way. I do try to keep perspective about whatever is happening to me.

Loneliness, awareness, abandonment, and the last point my father talked about was vision. We have heard in the good book, Proverbs, where there is no vision that the people fail. Sometimes when I would hear vision as a young leader, I'm like, “I'm more practical. I'm more tactical. I'm not this big Nostradamus type of person.”

My father always taught me, “Tracey, vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it.” It was always this attraction plus action equals vision. Otherwise, you are in this blue sky land. Lacey, can you unpack what vision means for you? How do you hone it? Do you have a vision board? Do you go away for a retreat? Do you have strategic planning? How do you do it?

Vision is so important in entrepreneurship and that is the spark that ignites everything to why you are doing this thing. Again, it's not easy. Not everybody wants to do it. For many people, it's foreign. I didn't come from a family of big entrepreneurs. I come from a family of military service. Going into entrepreneurship was a foreign concept to me and a lot of learning. In hindsight, looking back, a business is like your imaginary friend. In the beginning, only you see it.

You are trying to describe this thing to the people that you love and your friends. You might be putting some money into your imaginary friend. It's so hard for other people to see your vision and that's the job of an entrepreneur is to get this out of your head and make it a reality. It's a real boy like Pinocchio. We have built this thing and now it is walking and talking. Now other people can see it. That's a good perspective to have.

It is like, “In the beginning, you are not going to get it. I don't need to try to explain it. I know what I need to do in order to make this thing happen. I have got to start creating the steps to make it happen or figuring out how to make it happen.” It is something you are seeing or feeling. You are motivated like this attraction that you mentioned. It's the driving force and it's these steps to make it a reality then people believe, and then people get behind you. I don't fault people for that because they didn't see it like I did and vice versa.

If somebody came to me and as like, “We are going to start this thing called Google.” I'd be like, “That's a crazy name. Why would we need that?” It's the beginning. Only you see your vision. That's a healthy perspective to have in that and it's so important to go after it. The way I deal with vision is I try to get out. All the things we talked about, systems, and structures are important. Most importantly, it leaves room for you to be creative and follow your passions or those sparks to be like, “I have some time. This system is working in this part of my business. Now, I can daydream.”

A lot of it comes to me when I'm running or I'm outside. I keep my phone on me. I will be running and coming up with something that's going to be part of a presentation. I will stop running and I will type that into my notes so I have that then I keep running. I let my mind go where it wants to go because that is the space that I have made for it to happen. If you max yourself out, stress yourself out, and don't have a plan for how you are going to cope in business, it’s stifling to your vision.

Vision is a future thing. As you said, I love that you called it daydreaming because that is something that we have to allow ourselves to think outside the box. I also love that you said a business is like your imaginary friend. Sometimes, we have to load money on our imaginary friends. To our readers out there, if you are making the leap, as I said, I like Lacey came from the military to Fortune 100, so bureaucracy, paycheck, and all of a sudden, you are like, “Whoa.” I can remember not everybody does want to do it but there are going to be times and I say this to the readers out there, if you are having to write a check to your imaginary friend, it's okay.

Please don't think you failed because hopefully, you have enough saved up. If you don't, there have been many times when I pulled out my checkbook and said, “We have to cover expenses.” It's what you do in the beginning because you are pouring everything of yours but it's your baby. That's what you do. I'm glad you brought that up because we don't talk about that. I'm not making ends meet. I have to go back and take a job again.

Maybe but let's look at this because very few people are in their first year out, what is it? The first year your business sleeps then it creeps then it leaps. It takes time to build that book of business, especially in coaching or financial planning. If you stick with it and build that with speaking, writing, podcasting, or with everything, it takes time.

It does. I didn't realize how much time it would take but now, I'm enjoying that climb. Everything that I'm doing, I'm not in a rush because I am enjoying what I'm doing. I am enjoying helping other people and having a positive impact. It goes back to leadership, which is that what I do has a positive impact on people. The stronger I am, the more work I do or more importantly, the more productive work that I do. Not just work for work's sake but what I accomplish can do more toward my mission and the people I'm serving. That's important.

Also, too, when you are building this thing that's your imaginary friends. Surround yourself with people that believe and those are fellow entrepreneurs. People that have been there. They are not going to laugh because they have a bunch of imaginary friends lined up in addition to the one that they already built. They have that mindset and so they understand. They are going to say, “It's okay. This thing didn't work out. Get up again. Do it again.” If that didn't work out, get up and do it again. They are going to be like, “Stay positive.” They understand the struggle and the mental capacity and fortitude it takes to build a business.

Understand the struggle and the mental capacity and fortitude it takes to build a business.

I appreciate you saying that. I love that you are in the thick of it because as you are coaching, I always think it's good. People would say to me, “Can you tell us how you got successful?” I always say, “When I do, I will come back and check it and let you know what it took.” How do you measure this? I thank God that I could do what I love, can pay my bills, have some leftovers to give away, and save and how do we measure this? I may not be wealthy but my life is rich. I love that you are still in this. When you are dealing with people because you get to a point where you are just so successful. It's like, “What if you would have been on the ground floor at Google? What if you would be worth $500 billion?”

There are people like that but the rest of us are in the thick of it that want to retire well. I love that you are still in it because they can look at you and you can tell them, “You will get there.” I may be one lap around ahead of you. I used to be sensitive about that. Am I successful enough to talk about this? If you are one step ahead, you need to share with people because they need to know. They may be wanting to quit on that step. You need to do and I love that you are authentic about that.

I can't even count the number of times I have wanted to quit but I'm so stubborn. When you look back and like, “All the work I have put in.” It's like, no. Again, I'm giving no ground.

Charles would say that too and he's like, “You can want to quit all you want, just don't do it.” He goes, “I thought about quitting Monday or Tuesday.” He goes, “On Wednesday, I thought of a reason I never even thought of before to quit but I don't do it.” Since then, he's made millions of dollars wanting to quit but he didn't do it. Lacey, thank you for that. We talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. This is the leadership show and anything else that we haven't touched on that you would like to share with our readers?

You never know as a leader the impact that you have. When I look back at some of the amazing leaders that have impacted my life, I always think I should look them up because they have no idea that one little thing that they did for me set an example that I'm now using as a leader myself. That's something to remember. All of the things you are doing to run your business and make an opportunity, make things happen are the people around you that you are impacting that see you trying. Seeing you not quit, get back up after failure, and not let it go to your head when you have a major opportunity to have a little bit of success. That's important to remember the positive impact you have on others.

Remember the positive impact you have on others.

How do people get in touch with you?

The best way is at LaceyLangford.com or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Either of those is wonderful or you could check out MilMoneyCon.com.

Tell us about your podcast.

The Military Money Show is to help the military community make, save, and invest money wisely, which is more focused on having guests talk about those topics. Also, I do solo shows but it's trying to help people get to where they want to be with money and have confidence in what they are doing.

Military Money Show: The military money show is to help the military community make, save and invest money wisely.

I know probably at least a third to maybe half of our audience is prior military, active duty military, or has a family member that's in the military. Can they reach out to you as far as if they are looking to make a transition or for some coaching advisement on not being afraid of money?

LaceyLangford.com has all the information about my coaching.

I can't thank you enough. It was so wonderful to know your thoughts. You inspired me. You made me laugh and jot down a whole bunch of scribbles. I thank you for all you are doing. I thank you that you saw a space that needed to be done that you are so committed to what you are doing and that you are fierce and you are not giving up. That is leadership in its purest form.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that and the kind words.

You are welcome. I look forward to serving with you on the committee too. Lots of great times ahead.

I'm looking forward to that.

To our readers out there, we want to thank you so much for tuning in. If you would do us the honor of a five-star review, we'd be so thankful. Be sure and hit the subscribe button and share this with somebody that you think may be interested in it. Also, be sure and connect with Lacey. Remember, my father always said that you are going to be the same person years from now that you are now, except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. You have a tremendous individual to connect with Ms. Lacey here. I want to thank you all for continuing to pay the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of your day. Bye-bye.

Important Links

• Military Money Show

• MilMoneyCon

• American College of Financial Services

• Center for Military and Veterans Affairs

• Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers

• LaceyLangford.com

• LinkedIn – Lacey Langford

About Lacey Langford

Lacey Langford, AFC®, is a financial coach, veteran, and military spouse who changes people’s mindset from being fearful of money to having control and confidence with it. She’s an Accredited Financial Counselor® with over 15 years of financial planning, counseling, and coaching experience. Lacey’s the founder and CEO of the Military Money Show, a podcast dedicated to helping the military community make, save, and invest money wisely, and MilMoneyCon, an annual conference for financial professionals united by military service.

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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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

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.

Episode 154 - Allen Joines - Leaders on Leadership

If there is one thing constant in this ever-changing world, it is that nothing is impossible with God. Today’s guest, Allen Joines, is proof of that. Despite life’s obstacles, he reinvented himself from being a dock worker and janitor to a Pastor and successful business owner in the telecommunication industry. All of his success, he owes to God’s grace. He joins Dr. Tracey Jones to share with us his journey and the price of leadership he had to pay. Allen gives insights about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. At the end of the day, he reminds us that no matter how tough being a leader is, our faith in God and our purpose will always be greater. And that God will see us through it all.

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Watch the episode here

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Allen Joines - Leaders on Leadership

I am so excited because my very special guest is Allen Joines. Allen has been a lifelong learner and follower of Christ for years. Despite life obstacles, he reinvented himself by God's grace from dock worker and janitor to regional HR Manager of a Fortune 500 company to a Pastor. He relocated a small congregation to a 46-acre campus to a successful business owner in the telecommunication industry. For many years, Allen has been a high-energy communicator sharing his belief that anything is possible with God. He lives in South Central PA with Diane, his wife of 43 years. They enjoy time with their 6 grown children and 11 grandchildren. Allen, it's such an honor to have you here.

Thank you so much, Tracey. It's a pleasure and a joy to be here.

For our readers out there, you've read Allen's background and he's going to unpack the Price of Leadership for us. Allen, you've been in the Jones family for many decades. Could you share a little bit about your interaction with my father?

It goes back a long way. First of all, my love for books brought him into the executive bookstore. I was discipling men at the time, so I was buying books for other men, and we were talking about books. That's how I started. Walking into that bookstore, you didn't walk out with one book. You walked out armfuls. Over the years, Tremendous and I developed a friendship there because of the love for books and reading. That's how it started.

It became my monthly journey to the bookstore to get my shot of enthusiasm and encouragement along the way. That's how my relationship with your dad grew. It was an amazing journey. I loved your father. He made you think. I love the way he phrased things and the way he presented things. You walked out of there encouraged and thinking differently than when you walked in. It was such a blessing to know your dad.

It's wonderful still to have you as a part of the Tremendous Family. We're going to talk a little bit about all the wonderful things God has going on in your life, but first of all, let us unpack the Price of Leadership, a speech my father gave years ago that still continues to be one of his most requested topics because everybody bemoans, "Where are the good leaders?" There's a price to pay. That could be why most people shy away from leadership, but let's unpack that.

The first thing he talks about in the Price of Leadership, he has that little booklet is he talks about loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top or heavy as the head that wears the crown, but can you talk to me about what loneliness means for you as a leader and perhaps some insights for our readers out there, if they might be in a season of loneliness?

The big thing about loneliness is realizing that you're never alone. You think you are, but you're not.

The big thing about loneliness is realizing that you're never alone. You think you are, but you're not. Our faith and our purpose must be greater than our feelings. With the different work I've done and jobs I've had, our emotions sometimes get in the way. We think we're alone, but we're not. I often asked God to help me. "Give me enough courage to keep moving but not too much to make me proud."

He's good at that. Sometimes we need that sense of downtime or loneliness in our life, so we can quiet ourselves and be in a place where he would want to take us or where he's leading us. The other thing about loneliness was different times in my experience, and it's in my book, whenever he would bring special people into my life to help me during a certain time to remind me, "You're not alone."

Elijah thought he was all by himself and God said, "What are you babying about?" There are 7,000 that had to bow a knee. You're not alone, but he didn't know and realized that. That's the one thing that we need. In our work world or spiritual journey, that is a key lesson to learn and realize that even though we feel lonely, we're not alone. That has helped me on my journey through whatever I've been journeying through.

We are never alone. People say, "Where is God?" No, it's where you are. He's right there. Stop pushing him away. We have the ultimate advocate and the Holy Spirit. Stop thumb sucking, as dad would say.

It's like you're here standing out in the rain getting rained on and the whole time there's an umbrella you can move under. Too many times, we allow our emotions to dictate circumstances.

I love that when you say faith and purpose have to be greater than feeling. “As a man thinketh, the mind of Christ,” Romans 12:2. Feelings follow the mind. Feelings long. Feelings fade. It's like happiness. It's such a weird thing, but joy is real. Thoughts are real. Feelings respond and manifest. I'm glad you said that because a lot of it is mental. You're going to want to thumb suck and feel like you're a little martyr. Nobody gets you.

Charles would say that too, that he'd never say to Gloria anything going wrong because she'd say, "I told you so. Why do you think you can start your own business?" He just suffered in silence. There's an element of truth to that. The other thing he would say is, "You want me to tell me your problems? I'm going to tell you my problems. You opened your big fat mouth." I truly appreciate that. Now, let me ask you this. When did you meet the Lord?

Faith In God: “Don't you know that if the pastor leaves, the problem stays, but if the pastor stays, the problems leave?”

I was fifteen years old through a bus ministry of a church. This is all in my book. My dad was on probation and my grandfather was in the Federal Penitentiary for bootlegging, and my mother was involved in sugar-gathering, the sugar for the alcohol making, and all of that. They got caught and that whole operation got shut down. What happened was my mom remarried. This is amazing. She married a guy twenty years older than her who was a World War II Vet. I was raised by World War II Vet. We talk about Memorial Day happening.

Life wasn't easy. One of the things was working on the farm and you had a choice. You either did a chore Sunday morning or you went to church. I had a problem, a dilemma. I hated going to church and I hated working. Sometimes I ended up being forced to go to church. These religious people around us, I didn't want anything to do with that. Finally, they moved again, and lo and behold, I'm fifteen years old, and a neighbor asked, "Would you guys like to go to Sunday school?" I can't get away from these religious fanatics. They're everywhere.

It was amazing because I had moved from one school district to another. For fifteen years, I went by my stepfather's last name illegally. They never had my name changed. They said, "We're going to call you this." When I went to the new school and they saw my birth certificate, I had to legally get adopted or go by my real name.

For the first fifteen years, I went by completely different names. When I went to the new school at age fifteen, my name changed. They forced me to go by Joines, which was on my birth certificate. It was simply three months later when their life literally changed. It was amazing because my friends from the old school would talk to friends in the new school and they say, "This guy, you'll have fun with him. He likes to party, and this and that."

The people were like, "There's nobody here like that. There's this guy only wants to talk about Jesus," it's completely different. My name and life changed, and all that changed at age fifteen. My changes, by the way, I was not perfect. I was a mess for years. I had to work through so many different things, but God was gracious, and that's how that started.

I asked that because you right away went to it. The numero uno point means you had to have been walking with the Lord for quite some time.

It's amazing. My book came out in my 50th anniversary month. I got saved in March of 1972 and my book came out in March of 2022. It took 50 years to live and a couple of years to write.

Our faith and our purpose must be greater than our feelings.

The next thing after loneliness, he talked about his weariness. There's a good weariness like, "Job well done." There's a weariness that's draining. He would always say, "My problem isn't motivating myself. It's keeping other people from de-motivating me." If you're a leader, you're always going to have some people that aren't pulling their weight. Yet we have to stay at the top. We have to take care of ourselves. How do you deal with weariness? What would you recommend to our readers?

A couple of things over the years with weariness, I learned to pace myself. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. You've got to pace yourself. I have to say the biggest failure of my biggest weakness has been in trying to rush ahead and do so many things. I could burn myself out, but you have to pace yourself and make sure your pace is good. Take regular breaks. Make sure that you recharge yourself. That's why we've been given the blessing of sleep. Sleep is to recharge your body and mind and all that. Not only with sleep, I think we need time off and vacations. Not a whole life of vacations, but a time to recharge. That helps.

The other thing about weariness, and this is two things, and it goes to my relationship with Charlie, is reading encouraging books because there are other people who have gone before you, and being around encouraging people. Find a handful of people that give you energy and will take energy from you. That type of thing is so important.

One of the biggest lessons I remember about your dad was when I was in the ministry. I went through a very hard time where there were some things that needed to be dealt with in the church, and I dealt with them, then it seemed like everything backfired on me. I went from this huge church, then it shrank. We were looking at buying land. It looked like all was lost. My board was divided. Everybody was telling me, "You shouldn't be a pastor. You need to move on. Forget it."

I contemplated. Maybe I need to give up. It says, "Don't be weary. Keep going because of the rewards at the end." Somehow, that information got leaked to your dad. Somebody told him. I didn't tell him. I remember walking into the store to get some books. He walked right up to me and he had a very firm and stern look on his face. He said, "What's this I hear you're leaving ministry? What's this I hear you're quitting?"

Your dad was a big guy. He grabbed me. He's known for his hugs, but that day, it wasn't a hug. It was a shakeup. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me like I was a little kid. I'm a grown man. He shook me like a little kid. He said, "Don't you know if the pastor leaves, the problem stays, but if the pastor stays, the problems leave? What are you doing?"

What your dad did there shook me to the core. When we talk about weariness, every now and then we need a wake-up call. That was my wake-up call and it's your dad. What happened was I didn't quit. I went back. That moment that happened, I was on a little mini-sabbatical trying to figure out what it was going to do. I went back and the church got healed. The land was bought. A new building was built. Now, there's a beautiful church on a 46-acre campus that is making an impact in the community. They designated 20 acres for a community park to outreach to the community, and the vision continues that we started there.

Faith In God: When it comes to weariness, too many of us give up too soon. We give up right before we get to the finish line. We give up right before it's going to happen.

Here's the thing. I almost gave up. It was that encouragement that your dad gave during that moment of weariness that inspired me to keep going, and I did. The rest is history. That's the thing with weariness. The Bible says, "Don't be weary because in due time, you'll reap the reward.” When it comes to weariness, many of us give up too soon. We give up right before we get to the finish line. We give up right before it's going to happen. To me, that was the big thing of weariness. Take moments of rest, but also be around people that can inspire and encourage you. Keep going and don't quit.

That reminds me of Russell Conwell's Acres of Diamonds. You could have gone to find another church, not realizing that the diamonds are right underneath your feet. I've been told that for a leader, the difference between a pat on the back and a kick in the rump is 18 inches. That did that. I would get calls from people. When I first came back and they were like, "Tracey, I came in there and your father grabbed and screamed at me. I started crying." I thought, "Here we go," because I have known that for a long time. They're like, "That was the best thing that ever happened to me," and I'm like, "Okay."

It's so beautiful that you share that because people are going to drag us down. Remember new levels, new devils. The devil is going to hit you hard. This is the other thing he'd say to me every time I'd be like, "This is it. I'm tired of dealing with these betrayers and naysayers. Is it anything worse than what Jesus went through?" He's like, "What is your problem?" You don't get to complain about it until you're the one that suffered. It was maddening, but he lived that. He knew what people would do to the people that tried the hardest. It is a sad thing, but again, look at Jesus. We don't worry about that. We thank God that he's gracious and go right back in there.

Along with that weariness, the other thing I have to give credit to is my stepfather, who I did not get along with. For 15 or 16 years of my life, it was nothing but a head-butting, struggles and all that, but the one thing I learned from my stepdad was this. Sometimes you've got to do things, whether you feel like it or not. You've got to have a bulldog tenacity.

As a young child, he made me do things work ethic-wise that I hated doing, but he forced me to do them. Looking back, it was the best character-developing thing that he could have done for me because what I went through in the work world and church world, all deals with that tenacity, not giving up and doing things whether you feel like it or not. Successful people will do things where they feel like it or not. Successful people go with the flow, but that's an important part there too.

A new common denominator of success. Between failure and success is that success has made a habit. Your habits have nothing to do with your feelings. Habits are, whether you feel it or not, you go do it. I'm glad that we can learn from people. Tenacity and grit, I watched Charles do that, and you too. You'll at least get an A on your report card if you don't quit. I'm like, "I'll take an A. That's fine." I totally appreciate your take on the weariness and what that took. I love that. Pastors leaves, problem stays. Pastor stays, problem leaves. That is a leader for anything.

That's a quote from your dad.

Take moments of rest, but also be around people that can inspire and encourage you. Keep going, and don't quit. 

I never heard him say that and I love it. That's beautiful. We talked about loneliness and weariness. Next, let's talk about abandonment. A lot of people think that abandonment is a negative thing, but in the context of leadership and for my father, that was focus. That was pruning away what you want and like to think about, like quitting, the thumb sucking, and how to mean everybody is to you in favor of what you want and need to think about. Can you talk to me about how you get all the distractions, all the enemies have created a way, and stay focused on what's next?

Here's the thing. When it comes to abandonment, we all have to be abandoned to something. We can't do everything. Sometimes the world tries to sell it. "You can have it all." If you try to have it all, it's going to kill you because you can't possibly do it. You've got to decide what you're going to be abandoned to. To me, that was a thing of abandonment. When I was working up in the work world, I was abandoned to a certain job, or in the ministry, I was abandoned to ministry. This one was what my focus going to be. In fact, when you look at scripture, as the Apostle Paul was abandoned to Christ and he said, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain," that was his focus.

I'll be honest with you in this day and age, we have too many focuses. We try to do too much. I'm guilty of that. You ask my wife and my children, they will you. We have to determine what's the main thing. What do we abandon to, is it really our time and our energy? When we're young and we go through the young stage where we're thinking about money, making money, surviving, and all that, and as we get older, we shift from wanting to make money to wanting to make an impact. Making an impact is so much more powerful than making the dollar.

Your dad was an example of that too. He impacted a lot of people. I thought about my interaction with him. Like the books, it was not about the money or the book sales. It was always about impacting people. Knowing that if he gave them a book or encouraged them, their life would be changed forever. This whole thing about abandonment is what we abandon or what we are doing and making this decision.

Here's the hard thing. I've reinvented myself three times now. Reinventing myself from a janitor work, in HR, in a corporate Fortune 500 company, then you go from that to a twenty-year ministry, then to a business owner in telecommunication, it's completely different fields altogether. The thing that I learned was that it was a stress point because I had to come to a point where I had to realize I had to give up one thing to gain another thing, that I could not keep both.

Too many times, we try to do that. We try to keep both things going and we end up stretching ourselves and getting to the point where we're going to stop, but we have to be willing to give up one thing to gain another. Even Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters." You're going to love one and hate the other. You're going to hold one and despise the other. That's the same way with our life purpose and things in our life. This might sound counterintuitive, but we can't have it all. We got to decide what we want and be abandoned to that. That's when the blessings will flow.

That is a lie that the world tells us. It is counter-cultural and it will burn you out. It will be disappointingly satisfying like sin. It’s like after they ate the apple, “This isn't so good anymore.” The other thing is we're all collectively all different parts of the body. When the nose tries to do what the stomach or the toe does, it's a no. Stay in your lane of anointing.

Faith In God: God gives us grace in the transition, but then it gets to the point where that transition now must happen.

Focus is not meant to be plural. You said, focus. Focus, one. There should be no such word as foci. I love that you talked about that too many focuses. We do have to be abandoned to something. That's what Good to Great, Jim Collins is all about. You can be good at a lot of things, but what is the one thing, that one thing.

I have five different careers like you. Charles would always say to me, "Tracey, you're leaving that," and I'm like, "Yes, dad. The calling is different.” Whenever I was in, I was all-in, but that made it clear, unlike dad, who built on what he did, he had a major life career change when he left Mutual New York and other insurances agency. He had three pivots. For some people, God has you only doing three layovers before you get to your final destination. For other people like us, it's 4, 5, or 6. We're just getting going.

Anybody out there reading, I like to encourage them. If you're restless in your spirit and you're struggling with what you're doing now, it's not a momentary thing but an ongoing thing. It could very well be you're being called in a completely different direction. When I made my transition from the corporate world to the ministry world, one thing I had done was, when I took over the church, I was part-time for a few years. God gave me grace for that time, but guess what happened at the end was that grace was removed. I had to make a decision.

I'm not going to kill myself trying to do a couple of things or am I going to let go of one or the other? That's what happens. God gives us grace in the transition, but then it gets to the point where that transition now must happen. It seems like he removes his hands. It makes it hard. You're in a corner. You now have to make a choice. You can't keep struggling with that.

I like that you called that out because I'm calling from and calling to. You'll always have a calling. God will call your heart to one thing that's different than quitting. It's important for the readers to know that quitting because you're irritated or having a spirit of discontent is a beautiful thing. It’s like loneliness, weariness, and abandonment. There's good and bad.

There's quitting because you're mad, but then there's also God will say, "You're done here and move on." You got to be discerning with the Holy Spirit. That's what I would tell my dad, "I'm not quitting this job, dad. It's very clear that this is the calling and it's over and it's time to move on to something else." As long as you know that and you're not quitting because you're mad or you're running away.

I appreciate you clarifying that because that is what we do. Sometimes people around you will misunderstand that.

If you see a problem, that means you must be the solution.

Only you know in your heart and God, and be honest with it. It may appear, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got and that's what leaders do. They listen to the calling. Loneliness, weirdness, abandonment, and the last of all is vision. I would hear all of these wonderful people growing up talking about vision. It always intimidated me because that's not my gig. That's not my gift. Dad explained vision as seeing what needs to be done and then doing it. It's so pragmatic. Many people say, "That needs to be done," and you're talking. It's a Post-It note. It's visual. Can you share with me what vision means to you and how you get clarity on your calling or anointing?

First of all, as a pastor, I'd have people come up to me all the time and say, "Pastor, you'll be doing this in the church. You need to do it." "No, I don't want to do it, but I know what needs to get done." If you see it, then that means God's calling you to do it.

You could've saved me a lot of heartaches, but that's okay. If you see it, that means God is calling you to do it.

Some people can see all kinds of problems, "God must have called you to do that." If you see a problem, that means you must be the solution. Too many people want to pass that solution off to somebody else. Here's the thing, faith and fear are exactly the same things. People often miss this. Fear is false evidence appearing real. You're thinking of a negative outcome. You're thinking of something bad happening. Where faith is fully anticipated, it will happen. They're both the same thing.

It's your response to it.

It's amazing, 365 times in the Bible, it says, "Fear not." One for each day of the year. Also, faith is believing. This is in the book. When I was eight years old, we lived on the farm and I was given the job of hoeing field corn. I was not using a tractor. “Here's a hoe. I'm going to work when I come that come home. I expect this field to be hoed.” While I'm out there in the hot sun hoeing this field corn, I started to dream.

I still remember it as if it was yesterday when I dreamed it. I dreamed that someday I would be in an air-conditioned corner office. I would be a personnel manager hiring and firing people. I'm eight years old and I had this vision. I'll be talking to people. Another vision I had was out of the woods. I stood there and I read about Abraham Lincoln and how he worked out in the woods and all that. Imagine talking to people and encouraging them.

Discovering the Good Father: How God's Love and Grace Transformed a Broken Life

Here's the thing. I was eight years old when I had that vision. When I was 30 years old, I was promoted to a personnel training supervisor in the trucking company where I was involved in all those things. It grew from there, but it started as a seed. God puts the seed in each of our hearts when we're young of something that he wants to fulfill in us. We have to believe it. Dream it and believe it, and hang on to that, and now there were a lot of curves and changes.

One pastor that mentored me said, "The Mississippi River runs north a lot of places. If you look at it, it runs north someplace. It doesn't all flow south. Sometimes you might think you're going in the wrong direction, but you might be flowing in the right direction because of everything you're learning and developing." All the different experiences I had all consummated into those different opportunities I was given in life. That happens to us too. Faith and fear are the same things. It's our response to the circumstance.

Even if you're going, you may be flowing. There are going to be some backtracks at times that life, even with the vision. Just stay on target.

You might think you're going in the wrong direction, but you might be floating in the right direction.

You should pay to read this. There's so much wisdom. We talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. Anything else while we have our readers that you would like to share about leadership that we have not touched on yet?

Here's a living token and this was a note of encouragement that your dad had sent me in one season of life. I'll never forget that. I'll never forget the friendship I had with him and the impact he made on my life. It still does. This is so true. This is a famous quote. I think you all know that. You're the same person today as you were yesterday, except for two things. The books you read and the people you meet. That is so true.

When I look back, I am where I am now of the full investment of thousands of people into my life. None of us are self-made. All of us have been invested in by different people. It'll start with our mom and our dad changing our diapers. It goes from there to reading and writing. It goes from there learning different skills. The value of relationships, you can even learn from people and situations that you don't like because there's something there to be learned.

Each of us is a combination of all the influences that come into our life.

Learning from all of those becomes like a funnel into our life. Each of us is a combination of all the influences that come into our life. Along with that are also the books that we read. I had an aunt who had the old encyclopedia, the Britannica. We'd go to visit her and I was always fascinated by all these books that she had. I made it my goal that I was going to read through the pretend Britannica encyclopedia set. Every time I went there, I started with A and then with B. I don't know how far I got, but every time I get it, I go through that.

Later when I came to faith, I started building a library and started reading books. I realized people from previous generations were impacting me. They were helping me think differently. I was one of the things that made your dad so unique. He knew that. That's why he promoted books so much. That's why he did book publishing and selling and all that because he knew the impact of that. I've literally read thousands of thousands over the years, but also the people that I met that made that. To me, when it comes to leadership, those two things can help take you to another whole level if you're going to apply them.

You're living proof of that. It's so interesting that you were like a little sponge, even early on. Clearly, God has his hand on you. He has it on all of us. You let him work his way. You haven’t talked a lot about your book. Can we talk a little bit about that? Where can people pick up your book?

They can pick that up at Amazon. Go to Amazon and type my name or type in Discovering the Good Father, and you can get a copy of that there. It's a combination of a little bit of my bio, but also some life lessons from business and my spiritual walk, and all that, and all the different things I've learned on that journey. I originally wrote it for my children and my grandchildren because I wanted to leave a legacy. I didn't want them to lose all my stories of the amazing things that the good father has done for me.

Why it's called Discovering the Good Father is I was raised by three fathers. Robert Kiyosaki has Rich Dad, Poor Dad. While I have a good father, I was raised by my stepfather. I was abandoned in my younger years by my biological father, but I had a Heavenly Father who was there the whole time. It took me a while to discover all that, but now that I've walked for years. I look back like, "It's amazing."

We're never alone. We might think we are, but we're never alone. He said, "I'll never leave you nor forsake you," but there are times when you feel like you're alone because it's a test of faith. Do you believe it? The thing is, we're never alone and we need to work through that. I gave the synopsis of the book.

What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

They can be in touch with me in a couple of different ways. I have LifeMessages.net. You can email me at Allen@LifeMessages.net or AllenJoines.org or DiscoveringTheGoodFather.org. Any of those will get you to me. I'd love to hear from people. If I can be an encouragement to you or your group, I'd love to do that. I've been communicating for years and I would do seminars and conferences and stuff like that. Also, many years of being a pastor. If I could be of any service encouragement, please let me know. The book came out a couple of months ago, and I'm already getting amazing reports of people who are encouraged and impacted. That blesses my heart.

To our readers out there, please make sure and connect with Allen. Get his book and give him a review on Amazon. We love that. Let him know how that's changing your life. Allen, it has been such a joy chatting with you, learning from you, sharing with you, getting caught up. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with our readers.

Thank you so much, Tracey, for this opportunity, and hope you have a blessed day.

To our readers out there, thank you so much for being a part of the show. If you like what you read, please be sure to hit the subscribe button. Sign up at Tremendous Leadership. We've got a few weeks of free eBooks, and you can pick up a copy of the Price of Leadership. Also, we'd love the honor of a five-star review. Drop us a note or share it with somebody that you think may be encouraged with paying the Price of Leadership. Thank you so much. Keep up the tremendous work and have a tremendous rest of the day.

 Important Links

• Allen Joines

• Price of Leadership

• Acres of Diamonds

• Good to Great

• Discovering the Good Father

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad

• LifeMessages.net

• Allen@LifeMessages.net

• DiscoveringTheGoodFather.org

About Allen Joines

Allen Joines has been a lifelong learner and follower of Christ for fifty years. Despite life obstacles, he reinvented himself by God's grace from dockworker and janitor to regional HR manager of a Fortune 500 company, to a pastor who relocated a small congregation to a forty-six-acre campus, to a successful business owner in the telecommunication industry.