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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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. God's Plan for 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

• God's Plan for 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 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 184 - Vicki Glogg - Leaders On Leadership

Finding your inner circles and cultivating those is essential so you don’t have to face the changes or problems alone, and instead, you have a team that supports you. Today on the Tremendous Leadership Podcast, Vicki Glogg, a Licensed Therapist and owner of the NEED Company, expresses the value of building and cultivating the people around you. She reveals that her higher power lifts her and giving herself the grace to find herself, snuffs out the flames of burnout. Vicki also discusses the importance of providing care for those around her. In this inspirational episode, Vicki highlights how Nine Eight Eight Design Company makes a difference. So, tune in to this episode now.

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Watch the episode here

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Vicki Glogg - Leaders On Leadership

Welcome to 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. In this episode, I am tremendously excited because my guest is Vikki Glogg. I want to tell you a little bit about Vikki. Vikki is a licensed therapist working at Penn State Health and Hershey, but she is also the small business owner of Nine Eight Eight Designs Company. If you're dialing that, it's NEED company. She has taken her love and passion for designing and making apparel and merchandise. She has combined it with her profession of mental health and suicide prevention awareness to sell products that help our community and the stigma. Vikki, thank you so much for agreeing to be my guest on the show.

Thank you for having me.

I'd like to tell our audience, because they're always like, "How do you meet all these tremendous people?" This past October, I was at the Tanya Nabis Women's Conference, the Be Extraordinary Conference. I was there with my table connecting and networking with people and the tremendous Miss Vikki came by. We shared some words and she shared a transition she was going through in her life. She got a copy of SPARK. Fast forward to about a week and a half ago, I got a note from her on LinkedIn. We immediately connected like you're supposed to. I got a note from her about this tremendous new chapter in her life. I'm like, "I got to have you on the show to share with it." I'm sure she's going to talk about that at the end of our show. Vikki, welcome again.

Thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here and I'm honored that you had me on the show.

You're so welcome. Vikki, we're here to talk about the price of leadership. My father, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones wrote a book or gave a speech, I put it in a book format, many years ago. It was one of his keynote speeches and he called it the Price of Leadership. In it, he said that if you are truly going to be a leader, there are four things that you are going to have to deal with, all of us. No matter how successful or the worst leader in the world.

The first of them is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Can you share with us a time in your life maybe where you went through a season of loneliness? If we have any of our audience out there who are in that season, maybe a resource or a word of advice that you would give to them?

It is and it can be very lonely at the top. I couldn't agree with your father more than that. Before I transitioned to the therapist role at Penn State, I was the clinical director of a rehab facility. I had to oversee a lot of staff. It was challenging at times because you would know the ins and outs of what's going on behind the scenes that you couldn't tell your staff yet. It was hard because you want to be such a transparent leader and inform them of what's going on. At the same time, you have to wait for the right moment to present that to your team and you want to present it to all of them at the same time. It's not whisper down the lane.

The most powerful thing that I've learned along the way is to utilize the other leaders that are in your army. I've always found that to be the most beneficial, whether it was having a clinical supervisor working underneath me, discussing these transitions, getting those feelings out like, "I can't believe we're doing this," processing behind closed doors, and processing those feelings because change isn't the greatest for everybody. How is each person going to respond? Also, look at the personalities of every member of your team.

Utilize the other leaders in your army.

By having those conversations with the director of nursing or the executive director or the chief clinical officer, all those other leaders who are in this army with you taking on that role and know what the processes are that are going on behind the scenes that the rest of the staff don't know, that's the most imperative thing to utilize. Those members that you can rely on and that you can process these things.

For me, it was always imperative that whenever we were having a meeting in regards to something changing, I would look at who was invited to that meeting and say, "These are people I can talk to about this." It's because I'm keeping it confidential until it's ready to roll out, but at the same time, these are the people who are going through this change with me. Even though I would work with a director of nursing, something may be changing with her in the medical field versus me in the clinical field. At the same time, as both leaders, we’re able to utilize each other. At the same time, there is that moment of loneliness in how she can't relate to me in regard to clinical.

It's like, who do I look at to support me in that element? It seems like being able to be aware of who is around me. For me, it was the chief clinical officer and the executive director, individuals like those that you can process those, and start looking and saying, "I looked at this process that we're about to change. Here are the pros. Here are the cons. Here's where I think we're going to have hiccups." The most important thing is processing and bouncing ideas back and forth on how to present this effectively, appropriately, and in a healthy manner to the team.

I know leaders like myself are like, "I dream of a team like that." If you are tuning in and you're blessed with a team like that, then you know how imperative what Vikki is talking about. Great wisdom. Vikki, how many people would you say were in this inner circle of yours that you could go to and help? I think there are a lot of misconceptions maybe about what that inner circle looks like.

For me, in the direct facility that I was working at, there were about five leaders. There were five of us, all of different backgrounds, all having different departments. Above us, we had our corporate leadership team that was very heavily involved. They were brilliant servant leaders. That's another little niche I will put in there that when people are asking, "What's your leadership style?" Servant leadership is the most profound, unique, and beautiful type of leadership style anyone can possess.

In corporate leadership, I had about three individuals that I would go to who knew what was going on. That was our chief clinical officer, our CEO, and our chief marketing officer. Those three people threw out the ideas, and then how are we going to work as a team to build that? The five of us would then develop those things amongst us.

That's so important for leadership. You have this tight inner circle, and then you have your other early adopters, and then it goes out from there, so there are ripples. For leaders out there, you will encounter loneliness. It's what it is. There's only one of you and you're the only one getting paid to do what you do. By the nature of what it is, you're going to be alone. Loneliness, like you said, I love that you talked about that. It's imperative as leaders, whether you've been in the job for 30 years or 3 minutes. Find those people in your in-group or your inner circle and make sure you cultivate that relationship because you're going to need them. I also like the waves. Rather than blast it all, get the ones who need to know the closest, the ones who can give you some whys before you broadcast it out to the masses or everybody else.

Leadership: Find those people in your inner circle and ensure you cultivate that relationship because you will need them.

That's one thing that I learned that skillset most recently in my previous position. Our executive director was amazing. He was outstanding and he had this process of his own for new processes that developed. He's like, "We have the introduction. We have the thought process of the pros, the cons, the hiccups, and the bumps in the roads that we may face. How are we going to present this to the team? Let's develop it." We would then have an early launch date. "We're going to pilot this new thing first."

We would then pilot it for about a month and it's like, "Here are the hiccups. Here are the changes. Here's this, that, and the third. Now, here's our official launch date." That's something that I took away from his leadership. Don't just gun it. Take those baby steps. Take it one small bite at a time. Don't gobble the whole cake. If you want your cake and eat it too, you have to take it piece by piece.

The next topic we're going to talk about is weariness. I'm sure in your role, especially in your new role, it's tiring. You have to be strong and mentally, physically, spiritually, everything to be a leader. My father would talk about weariness. A lot of times you have brilliant people on your team who fill you up or the wind beneath your wings. A lot of times, you also have people that aren't doing what they need to do and are fighting against you. They don't want to see you no matter what you're doing. No matter how much of a servant you are, they're not going to follow.

How do you deal with weariness? You are dealing with people in distress before. You have that empathy and you have that drain as you're pouring into them. How do you stay strong? Who pours into you and how do you stay at your top form so you can be this blessing that so many other people need?

In my last role, I didn't do as much of this as I do now. The one who lifts me up the most is my higher power. It took me a while to figure that out truly because I poured everything into my work, into my passion, into my drive, and into the facility I worked at. It was a 24/7 facility. I led everyone to believe that if the facility is 24/7, Vikki's 24/7. I burnt out. I literally killed myself and it wasn't healthy. When this previous position ended, I had to sit and reflect with myself on what happened. What happened in my life?

As you and I discussed when we first met, it was eye-opening to me that I needed to find myself again because the last thing any leader wants to do is be a hypocrite. That's how I truly felt when I look back on it because I was pushing so hard for my staff and my team to engage in self-care, to have boundaries with work, and to spend time with their families. I wasn't doing that but I was telling others to do that.

For me, when I got to this place of complete burnout, I said, "If I'm going to continue to do my passion and have that secondary drainage, I would always feel that emotional drainage from providing therapy to others, I need to look at myself first.” Through some self-awareness and some guidance and prayer with my higher power, I realized that I needed to take a step back.

I thought it was interesting that your dad talked about it a little bit in his speech and you as well in the book about taking that step back for a minute of being a leader and realizing, "I know down the road I'm going to be a leader again. I'm a born leader." At the same token, sometimes we need to find ourselves again in order to get to that place. For me, I took it as God's way of saying, "You need to reestablish your boundaries. You need to reestablish your self-care. You need to find your passion again." I had lost all of that because I had given so much to everything except for myself.

Take a step back for a minute from being a leader.

For me, the weariness, we can give so much to others, but eventually, our cup will empty. If we pour every single drop that we have into everybody else's cup and there's nothing left for us, then we will have nothing left to give. It took a turning point in my career to realize that, but it was the most powerful life event that could have happened for me.

I want to chime in here because I met you at that point. I don't know if it was that day or that moment, but I love that you said you're going to step away from being a leader, but it's going to happen again. God knows when. Remember, he's already seen this through all eternity. The fact when I met you, you were so raw. Thank you for sharing.

We've all hit burnout. My dad hit chronic fatigue. It happens to us because you've got to be very intentional about who pours into you. We work ourselves almost to death. You were so vulnerable in what you shared with me. You were so hurt in a tender way, not in an angry way. You owned it and you said, "I have to make a change, I don't know what it is," but then you took the time for self-reflection. For anybody tuning in out there where you're on the edge of the bottom have fallen out. Vikki, I would say when I met you, the bottom had fallen out, correct?

It did.

Everything you loved professionally, your identity because of pouring out too much, they said, "This is it." They gave you honest feedback and you took it. You were open to receiving it and then we connected and you were open to share with me. You didn't know me from anybody, but you were so up. I think God already was working that he already knew we were going to meet on October 16th or whatever it was even if you're broken. That's the time when you stay open because that mess got put away.

You give yourself grace. We all try so hard. We rely on God. We have great friends, but we still mess up. You gave yourself the grace to heal and reflect and not hide. I meet a lot of leaders when they go through burnout or the loss of something, they hide, they're embarrassed, and they're shamed. That's a self-imposed emotion that we don't want. I'm sure you're going to talk a lot about suicide. That's when people get so tired and they're like, "I can't do this anymore. Literally, I can't do this anymore." We want to fight that. Thank you for sharing that because we all go through it. If you're pouring out, sooner or later, it's going to hit you. It's a very delicate balance.

Based on what you said, how many times did Albert Einstein fail trying to figure out E = mc2? He didn't give up. He just said, "This one didn't work, so now we try again." That's so important that it's okay for leaders to fail. We are allowed to fail. For the longest time in my career, as a young leader, I thought failure was not an option. I'm not allowed to fail. For the first time, failing to the point where the bottom fell out, I realized I failed. That's okay because by failing I realized what I needed to fix. It couldn't have been more powerful than that.

Leadership: It's for leaders to fail. We are allowed to fail.

I had my family, my friends, and everyone supporting me, but when your entire passion, drive, and dedication to something completely goes out the window, you do get to a place of, "What do I do next? Where do I go from here?" That's where it's so important that you need to look at yourself and what happened because even if we want to blame others, we still have a part in it. It's a piece of accountability that we have to take grasp of that I don't think we always want to when we fail.

Also, you run and jump back into something else because it's a hot market. You don't take the time to realize because otherwise, you're going to repeat the cycle. It's about us and what's going on with us. Vikki, thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that. We did loneliness and weariness. The next thing you talked about was abandonment. It's not abandonment in a term of abandoning a pet or fear of abandonment that a lot of people deal with. I'm sure you know a lot about that in the field you work with.

My father would always tell me, "Tracy, I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than I do my success." He was talking about abandonment as being very hyper-focused. Abandoning the habits, the conversations, the time sucks. The habits that don't contribute to us becoming the most brilliant version of ourselves. Even if we think of carrying the weight of the world and being everybody's savior, is something you need to abandon, that savior complex. Can you share with us how you pruned away all the things? I'm sure when you work with people in rehab, you have to prune off a lot of self-doubt, "I can't do this," and people telling you this. How do you abandon the crap so you can stay highly focused on what's next?

What I realized is that in my last role, I was doing a lot of abandonment, but it was abandonment to my team. As I always have and always will be, I'm a transparent soul. I always have been. Truth is the best medicine. What happened was I lost my position as a clinical director due to an unhealthy and unsupportive environment. That's the gist of what I got.

I had to sit with them and think, "What does that even mean?" I thought I was supportive. I was making sure that the facility ran while we were waiting for our next executive director to come on board. I was making sure things were going smoothly, plans were going in place, data was being done, and budgets were being figured out. I was doing all these things but the number one thing I was abandoning was my team, the support that they needed, the care that they needed, and the time that they needed.

I thought in my mind I was providing those things but in reality, I wasn't taking the time to sit with them and say, "How are you doing today? What do you need help with? What can I do for you?" That's so important that when we start to abandon the needs that we have because of fear of failure, we then abandon everyone else who works beneath us. Always remember this quote. "It's not the clients that we need to take care of, it's the staff. If we take care of our staff or our team, they will take care of the rest." It's so important to remember that and I lost sight of it.

If we take care of our team, they will take care of the rest.

For me, it was imperative to realize that if I ever get into leadership again, I need to remember that my team has to come first. That budget can wait. That data report can wait. If my team comes to my door and says, "I need to talk to you. I need help with something," whatever I'm doing that is for administrative purposes at that moment can wait. I can't abandon my team because, without my team, I have no services to provide to the population we serve. That's the number one thing I took from abandonment in my role as a leader.

Again, you're not a leader if you don't have any followers. Followers are not clients, customers, and shareholders. It's the people in your professional home. That is the essence of all leadership theory and why people struggle with leadership because they think it's about doing things. It's about your immediate team. You take care of them. That's the whole reason you're getting paid for. Yes, budgets and all that other stuff, but your number one priority is them. Thank you for sharing and articulating that so beautifully.

It's also so important that when we're doing or creating job descriptions, those first five points are your five crucial job duties. As leaders, we get lost in the other 50 bullet points instead of remembering those first five. If I would've been more mindful and not abandoned my job description and taken on all these other things, I would've realized within the first five points to provide supervision and guidance to the clinical team.

We've all been there and done this. Even my friends who are generals, even my friends who are administrators, even my friends who are salespeople, this is something we deal with. Thank you for sharing that wisdom. That’s great for our audience to hear. Last of all, but certainly not least, vision. I'm excited to hear how you craft your vision. My father always told me that you don't have to be an Elon Musk or a Nostradamus. Vision is about seeing what needs to be done and doing it. It’s the Law of Attraction plus action. How do you hone your vision, Vikki?

My vision has always been about care and providing care to those around me. When I first started in the field, I started as a therapist. My care was focused on my clients. As I became a supervisor and a director, my care changed to my team who worked under me that I supervised. Also, as a director of rehab, my vision is focused on the care of a facility, a team, and all of that. I did lose that vision.

After meeting you, going to the women's conference, and reading your book, I was able to have that reignition of a vision because my flame had burnt out. When I decided to take on the venture of a new role, completely different. I went from working in substance use for seven years. I switched over to a chronic illness therapist, working with individuals with chronic illness and their mental health needs, and looking more at a mental health basis. I said, "We're going to hit every single type of disorder here."

Also then, the vision of my company that I decided to create that I was terrified to even consider starting. I didn't tell anyone that I was doing it because I was afraid of failure. I said, "No, this has to happen. I need to make this happen because this vision is so important." I have about 3 or 4 different visions within my company that I hope continue to grow so that more people can see that vision, that power of support, community, unity, and ending a stigma. There's such a hateful stigma toward mental health, substance use, and suicide. If we got rid of the stigma from it, more people would be open to the help that we all need so that at the end of the day, we all can be cared for and care for others.

I love that you talked about providing care. Kevin McCarthy did his book Tough Shift and he has this, on purpose, whole genre. He says, "Your purpose in life is a verb and a noun." Yours is providing care. Anything else that orients back up to that will always keep you down. As you grow your new thing, look at different apparel, speaking, and all this other stuff, writing a book I'm sure, all those things orient back to that because that's what keeps you grounded and keeps your identity and your singularity focused on that spark. Vikki, can you tell us a little bit about this Nine Eight Eight Designs company? We wrapped up the price of leadership and I want to thank you for that, but I want people to hear about what's next for you.

Leadership: Your purpose in life is a verb and a noun.

I'm still a therapist. I love to practice. I'm still doing that at Penn State as my full-time job. When I was looking at what I wanted to do for my self-care, because when I lost my last position, I said, "You're going to engage in more self-care. You're going to take care of yourself. You could have a stressful day at work talking to eight different patients, come home, and be completely emotionally drained. What are you going to do for yourself?" I had to find that because I had never had so much free time on my hands in my life. I had a Cricut that I purchased a year and a half ago. It was still sitting in the box that it shipped in. I hadn't even opened the box. I was like, "Let's give this a try." My sister-in-law helped me learn how to use it and things like that.

Tell our audience what Cricut is.

Cricut is a machine that creates decals and designs. You cut it out and you have to make the design whole and then you can put them on tumblers, shirts, hoodies, bags, everything. That's how people get decals for their cars on the back of their cars that say, "Dog mom" or "Cat mom." For me, I started out by doing the decals that I would throw on my own mug. I was like, "That came out weird," so I'll throw that on my own mug. One day I said, "I'm going to try doing shirts." I made two shirts, one for me and one for my mother-in-law. My significant other looked at me and he said, "You should start your own company." I said, "Honey, that's very sweet of you, but no." He's like, "No, really, those turned out beautiful. I love what you did with them."

Both of them were in regard to mental health and suicide prevention awareness. I sat more with it the more he talked about it because he is an entrepreneur, he has a couple of businesses of his own. I said, "I don't know." I thought more, long, and hard about it." I was like, "Let me make a couple of other shirts." I made some more shirts and they kept getting better and better. I made different designs focused on mental health awareness and suicide prevention awareness. I said, "All right, God, I see you. You're telling me that I need to do my own line of mental health and suicide prevention awareness apparel and merchandise, but you can't start a business without a name. You need a name before you go somewhere."

I was driving home from work one day. As we all know, our electronic devices like to listen to what we're talking about. On my Pandora, there was this advertisement that came on the commercial and it was about, "If someone you love is at risk of harming themselves or suicide or anything like that, call our hotline at 988." As I'm driving, I'm thinking, "Nine Eight Eight Design. Nine is an N, Eight, Eight, EED.” We all need to be here on this earth because we all have a purpose that God gave us. I'm not going to go with an LLC. We need to do company because the company we keep is so important to help us continue our story and not end our lives.

It all came together. I'm not going to lie, I had a flood of emotions and I started crying. I was like, "I hear you. Loud and clear, I can hear you." I was emotional. I came home and I told my partner, I was like, "I came up with a company name." He is like, "What?" I was like, "NEED Co. We need company. We are needed on this earth. NEED is Nine Eight Eight Design." He was like, "Get moving, get started. You got the name, now go with it." That's where it took off. There are a lot of crafters, designers, and vendors out there who make everything and anything like, "I make funny mom things on shirts and stuff."

I wanted mine to be specific. I wanted it to be powerful and impactful to society. For me, it was imperative to be about mental health. I knew at that moment that it was my passion and my vision of what my education is based on, but what my love, passion, and hobby are. Combining those two things together to make such a beautiful line of clothing and bags and tumblers. I have more ideas down the pipeline, but I'm slowly trickling things in to gain individuals to help me and the stigma of mental health and suicide prevention.

For our audience, we will have the website. We will have all of Vikki's contact information out there. You can get in touch with her and check out and support her new organization because it’s such a crisis right now. It always has been since the dawn of time. It's wonderful that you got the call and are responding to that call. It's so great to see you come through this. You're so strong. You're so resilient. Well done.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Vikki, anything else before we wrap up that you want to share with our audience on all things leadership?

I want to add that I do have Facebook. My NEED, Nine Eight Eight Design Company is on Facebook and Instagram. Finally, earlier this week, I launched my Etsy page. I'm going to be at a bunch of crashes in Dauphin County, York County, Lancaster County, Berks County, even going back to my hometown of Schuylkill County. My goal is to get the word out to everyone. Even if I only have $100 in sales that month, as long as people are liking and sharing my pages, my posts, and my pictures. It's just getting the word out about the stigma and ending that. That's what's more important to me than anything.

For me or any leader, no matter if you're a brand new leader in your early 30s or have been in leadership for 30 to 40 years, the number one thing that I've taken away over the past 5 months is it's okay to fail. Failure only leads to success. Just remember, if everybody else in your corner walks away, you still have God by your side because God is always greater than the highs and the lows.

Beautiful. Thank you, Vikki. I love what you said. Whether you make $100, I always remember the verse that I think Paul said, "One of us plants the seed, and one of us waters, but God causes it to grow." You're planting the seeds. I pray this show gets out to people and they share it and they can help you water this vision. May God grant you tremendous growth in this new calling of yours. Thank you again, Vikki.

Thank you everyone for tuning in. I appreciate it.

To our tremendous audience out there, we would be nothing without you. We are so thankful you tuned in. If you like this episode, if you would do us the honor of subscribing, maybe even a five-star review, that would be tremendous. Please make sure you share this with other people because as Charlie "Tremendous" Jones said, "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. Let's make them both tremendous." Thank you for paying the price of leadership and have a tremendous rest of your day. Bye-Bye.

Important Links

• SPARK

• Vikki Glogg

• Tough Shift

• Facebook - Nine Eight Eight Designs Co

• Instagram - NineEightEightDesignsCo

• Etsy - Nine Eight Eight Design

About Vicki Glogg

Vikki is a Licensed Therapist working at Penn State Health Hershey, but also a small business owner of Nine Eight Eight Designs Co (Need Co.). She has taken her love and passion for designing and making apparel and merchandise and combined it with her profession of mental health and suicide prevention awareness to sell products that help our community end the stigma!

Episode 178 - Lt.Gen. (Ret.) Michelle Johnson - Leaders On Leadership

Leadership isn't just about the stars on your shoulders; it's about having the courage to step into the unknown, where you might just learn how to fly. In this inspiring episode, we have Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson to share her journey of breaking barriers in leadership. As the first woman to ever become a Cadet Wing Commander in the U.S. Air Force Academy, she paved the way for future generations of leaders. Today, she dives into the core principles of leadership such as the importance of courage, vision, and managing up. She shares her experiences in managing complex international relationships, navigating the political landscape, and persuading those who hold power. Lt. Gen. Johnson's leadership journey shows how having faith in yourself and your ability to adapt can lead you to new heights. Tune in now!

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Lt.Gen. (Ret.) Michelle Johnson - Leaders on Leadership

I am so excited. My guest is Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson. General, welcome.

Thanks so much for having me, Tracey. It's been so good to know someone from my decade at the Air Force Academy.

Let me tell you a little bit about Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson. She was in the class of ‘81 at the United States Air Force Academy. It’s my alma mater, so you know how tremendous she is. ‘81 was the second class of women that graduated. She was also the first female cadet to be named Cadet Wing Commander, which is quite the deal, and she later went on to become the first female officer to serve as the Air Force Academy Superintendent.

She was our 19th sup. Currently, she is the one and only female who has been appointed to be the superintendent of one of the service academies. Talk about a trailblazer, Michelle. Not only that, she was also inducted into the inaugural class of the United States Air Force Academy Athletic Hall of Fame and a Rhodes scholar.

While in uniform, she served as the Air Force Aide to the President, an Air Force Squadron, and Group and Wing Commander. Let me tell you. She was in C-141s, KC-10s, KC-135s, C-5s, and C-17s, and she also worked at the NATO/SHAPE, where she was a Deputy Chief of Staff Intel and operations. She also served with the NBA as the senior vice president and head of referee operations. She is married to the tremendous John Hargreaves. She’s a retired pilot and the happy parent of two sons. Michelle, I wish you would have focused and done something with your life. I salute you. I’m starstruck.

This is how I connected with Michelle. This is the tremendous people you meet in the book you read. In September 2023, I was in Philly. Many of you know, I talk about the American College of Financial Services often and I have the blessing of serving on their Center for Military and Veterans Affairs. Every year, they do a Soldier Citizen Clambake Award and we gave the award to Admiral Mullen from the Navy this past September. While I was there, I had the amazing honor of connecting and sitting at the table with Michelle. That's where we met. Michelle, do you want to tell them about your connection with the American College of Financial Services?

It's been a wonderful association. I was a friend and colleague in the Air Force with the Provost when I was on faculty at the Air Force Academy. Gwen Hall was as well, and she introduced me to the new CEO of the American College, George Nichols, who was a transformational leader. You could talk with him sometime.

I was born in Iowa without a lot of means. He was born in Kentucky without a lot of means, but he made his way through New York Life Insurance and he's come back to give back and to take this college. That had been a designated correspondent school for people in the financial industry to take it to the next level.

To not only help make it a robust educational opportunity for people and financial services but to help apply practical financial knowledge to people who need it in underrepresented communities like veterans. I’m trying to be a great supporter of the Veterans Center that you're an advisor for, but he's also in the Centers for African-Americans, members of the financial community, and families with people who suffer disabilities. They have special financial planning challenges.

To try to attend to the realities that human beings are still within life but maybe haven't been touched by knowledge of financial practices and how things work. The whole atmosphere of service reminds me a little bit about the service you and I tried to provide to our country but in a different way to serve others to build community. That's what drew me. I’m so honored to be one of the trustees on the board of trustees for the college.

Thank you for sharing that and I love that you said come back to give back. As we transition through a lot of our readers, they're on their second, third, and fourth careers and they keep coming back to continue to give back. Michelle, my father, wrote a speech called The Price of Leadership many years ago. It's one of the ones that has been most downloaded because it's very raw, authentic, and practical.

In it, he talks about the things that you are going to have to be paying as a price to be a leader and not just a leader in name only. I can't wait to hear your take on this, especially the first one, loneliness. There were few women in my class ’88. There was ‘97 in the first class of females at the Air Force Academy, so you're already a small group but tend to be the first, the one, the only. Can you unpack what loneliness looks like for you at a time in your career as leadership and what you would share with our audience if they're going through a season of it?

There are different angles of it, as you point out, to go and suddenly become a minority. I’m from Northwest Iowa, so I was not in a minority there. As a woman, we're half part of the humanity but also as a wide-angle Saxon Protestant. I went to the Air Force Academy and suddenly, from being a woman and a lot of other factors, I was a minority.

It was a new idea to people. They didn't study the history. We could talk about this more later, but what was happening when I graduated from high school in 1977, all volunteer forces needed everybody. All hands on deck. We can't draft people now and it can't be one certain group of people. We need everybody in an all-volunteer military force. I didn't know that at that time.

I thought it was an opportunity for education. I was a basketball player but also to serve for a while. It was lonely and shocking. It was aggressive. It’s like, “In your face, you don't belong here,” kind of lonely. You have to cleave to what you believe, what you're striving for, and what's the shared purpose. Some officers, cadets, men, and women did as well.

You don't belong here, but for every one of those, there were 5 or 10 great educators and mentors who'd say, “You're capable of this. Why don't you try it? Why don't you try for a scholarship? Make sure you're in the flying program.” I didn't know it. It says the Air Force Academy. I know that, but my family was farmers. They didn’t even think about that. That's part of it, but the structural loneliness thing is part of some things.

I found as I got more senior, I was in uniform for 40 years, basically if you include the four years from the Academy. At the end of my career, I was more senior and I’d be put in different organizations to help solve problems. I was a stranger because I hadn't been in their community or their tribe for a long time. It was professional loneliness. You haven't done what we've done. It was a very interesting skillset, but I think there were similarities.

Part of being a leader, if you wish to do that, is to be out of your comfort zone and move other people out of their comfort zone. You may have read Marty Linsky's work, Adaptive Leadership. This isn't a military thing. This is modern leadership. Leadership isn't always conforming, following the rules, and checking the box.

Part of being a leader is to be out of your comfort zone and move other people out of their comfort zone.

That's management. What do you need to do? Management is super important. You got to do that. If you don't, keep the books or you're in trouble. If you want to adapt to new things, new demands, or new missions, you need to move an organization and yourself out of your comfort zone. That's lonely and it's in your new territory. You're not where you want to be yet, but you're pretty far from shore. You need to find a way to move forward and to understand it.

Understanding the history of how you got there to prepare and say, “How do we get here? Where we're trying to go?” and then communicate that to help you see the loneliness. It's a real thing. I deployed one time when I was in KC-10s in the ‘90s. We spent a lot of time deployed in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. I could give tours of Abu Dhabi.

During the First Gulf War, we called that Show Air Force Base or Show Abu Dhabi.

It's very elaborate now, evidently, but we were still intense and then the rocks out there. We would deploy from our Squadron. Our Squadron was in California, Travis Air Force Base, between Sacramento and San Francisco. Usually, when you are deployed, you take on the next level of responsibilities. My captains and majors had to take roles as schedulers and flight commanders at a greater level than they would have had at home. I ran into one of our majors. We're standing outside at 135 degrees, which was something I should admit was a bad idea. He stopped me. I was a lieutenant colonel and he said, “I get it now. It's lonely being in charge of people or being responsible.” He was feeling it.

He said, “When you walk in the room, people stop talking because now you're them. It's us and them and now you're them.” If you can prove that you care about them at the shared mission more than yourself, everybody benefits. However, if you try to act remotely and act like you're the warlord and you're the strong person leader, “Do what I say. I’m the boss,” the divide is worse and it's terrible for everybody.

If you can prove that you care about them at the shared mission more than yourself, everybody benefits.

Unfortunately, when I ran into people in the private sector, sometimes they think that's what leadership is. You're the boss and you tell people what to do. What I learned, on the contrary, is how did we get here and where are we going? Communicate that. Be consistent and fair and people will come along with you and help accomplish tremendous things despite there being tremendous in this thing.

We've had a lot of people in the military. I know they get to the colonel level and then they go into these staff positions. They're in more civilian sectors outside of their tribe and you have to show you care and share. Otherwise, I’ve seen some bad culture clashes and it chewed up some great people and spent them out.

When you come out of wearing the uniform after 40 years, we have people in our tremendous tribe who are leaving entrepreneurship or life insurance to go and do the next chapter. When you came out of uniform, I know, like me, it is different because it's such a collective. It's such camaraderie. It's so much fun. It's so crazy and scary. I think of that loneliness. It’s like, “I was a chiropractor for 30 years and now I’m not.” Where are you at right now in that transition because I know it hasn't been all that long.

I retired in 2017 from the Air Force and I left the NBA in 2019. I’m going to touch on some of the other points you're going to bring up because I think what your dad hit on applies. A part of it is an executive leadership. I became a generalist, by the way. Executive leadership is being a generalist because the main thing you are an expert at, perhaps for a long time, is one of many things you're in charge of.

Your confidence as a professional may have been based on that competence in a particular flying that plane, so all the plans had different cultures too. Each crew, the way you pronounce the checklist, there’s a different culture. There’s the way you did the bag drag. I flew cargo around the world in C-141 on the ground.

It’s the next thing up from a C-130. You’re in the dirt working. You’re considered knucklebusters. You dragged your own bag, helped each other, and helped with maintenance. KC-10s were like Gucci. These are fancy planes. We wear headsets and park at different places. It’s a different way to communicate and maneuver.

I had a pretty collective career in the Air Force, even operationally, but when I would talk with the senior officials, even civilians in the DoD, let alone, as you said, in the private sector, you can be a specialist for about so long and then when you go into management or leadership, you're responsible for a varied spectrum of skillsets.

I found people whose confidence was based on the specific. In their competence, they lost their confidence because now I’m managing people who know more about many things than I do. I was going to talk about the letting go part or my angle on abandonment. Part of it is letting go of, “I know what I know, but I’m going to let go of my ego and let go of my fear that I don't know everything. My fear of I can't control everything.”

Let go and empower the ones next to you. That was the last sixteen years of my career in the Air Force. I went from a flying wing to being in charge of personnel, air mobility command, and public affairs for the Air Force. What do I know about that? I know about bringing people together in their expertise and doing their homework.

We visited USAA and the senior vice president for corporate communication. How do you communicate in a big enterprise to try to get better? I had my public affairs experts learn. They knew more about setting up a press conference than I did and that's okay. I had to let go. I had a lot of people who are in the military or support people like the Navy Supply Corps.

The logo on their collar looks like a pork chop, so other people operators call them pork chops, which is terrible. That’s a terrible thing. Not because it’s not respectful but because the people who work for me who are in Navy Supply went to Harvard Business School. They are smart about supply chains, big logistics, and the national power source, so I tried to assemble teams who could solve problems.

That’s what I became. I was a change agent because we would have to do things differently. It would take a few months to earn people’s trust that I do care more about the mission and myself. I’m going to be okay. I was blessed that John was home taking care of me and the boys. He said that was his mission. The home was not relaxing because we had twin babies. When they were toddlers, they pinned on my Brigadier General Stars. The home was incredibly not restful but empowering and full of love. It was safe and recharging, so I didn’t have anything to lose. I want to do my best.

When people realize that whether they were at Fort Meade with cyber, when we did cyber command, or when I wound up at NATO/SHAPE in the Southern part of Belgium with generals from other countries who had never been around a woman General officer because other countries haven’t done that yet, they had to deal with me.

Sometimes, I had to be tough to get their attention because I’m 5’8” on a good day or used to be. My voice isn't baritone. Sometimes, if I say things nicely and quietly the first 2 or 3 times, they don't hear it. I learned something. I don't know if Armand Hammer said this. Somebody else besides me said this, but I liked it and I used to repeat it.

When you come up with a new idea or a new thing with a new group of people who don't know you, the first 50 times you say the thing we need to do together, they don't even hear you. It doesn't even register. The second 50 times, they don't understand you. I heard you, but what? The third 50 times, they don't believe you. At 151, they'll go, “Is that what you meant?” Sometimes our spouses do that, so this isn't just at work. However many times it is, it's a lot on that 151st time. I have a memento from an old job that they put on a fake magazine cover 151 times. On 151st time, they go, “That's what you meant.”

When people start owning it for them, I say no. What do I know about cyber? I know about policy, people working together, strategic opportunities, operational requirements, and how to think operationally. That's why I endured in service so long. There wasn't a path for women and women weren't allowed in fighters or bombers when I went to pilot training.

We did heavies, but when I got out of that tribe, other tribes realized I had something to offer to their tribe. It was communication and consistency. I did my homework. They'd say, “Johnson, it's a good thing you were right.” Sometimes, you are the voice in the wilderness and you have to double-check and have someone.

The last thing I’ll say is it's great to have an ally, companion, a mentor, maybe someone not exactly in your chain of command, but it's a sanity check to say, “I know in the voice in the wilderness. I genuinely don't want to be crazy. It sounds crazy to people when it's new.” I do have another anecdote about that from the NBA. What do you think? Give me a sanity check.

My late sister worked as a manager in a big insurance company. She was my voice of reason on management types of things. My husband loves me too much to be a great critic of speeches but in terms of practical operational matters, he's a crudogue as we used to say. He's a very pragmatic electrical engineer dude who graduated from VMI, so he could give me the straight scoop, but sometimes I needed somebody else from the world that I was in to say sanity check.

You're not alone. Leadership is a team sport. Even though you feel alone, you're not alone because the whole point of leadership is being with other people. The last thing I’ll mention from the NBA is brilliant. A chief of NBA referee operations is still there, Monty McCutchen. He used to be my partner. I tried to codify what he knew in process, resources, and training, but he's wise. One time he said to me, “Michelle did this brilliant thing.” I said, “What brilliant thing?”

Cadet Wing Commander: Leadership is a team sport. Even though you feel alone, you're not alone because the whole point of leadership is being with other people.

He said, “To bring when the referees rotate through New York, Brooklyn, and New Jersey during the season, have a small group in-season training sessions and go over video and talk about the position as they do.” I said, “Monty, what's brilliant about that? That's practical training. That's continuing training from the intense stuff you do in the summer to do it throughout the season.” He said, “It's brilliant to me because I never would have thought of that.”

That's from a different world. That brought it from being a pilot in the Air Force. No matter what field you're in, the Air Force or any service or trade, you have resources and you’re committed to training. You have criteria and standards for performance and you evaluate people on that. That's easy. It's not easy for other people who don't know. It was a new idea to him. I wasn't alone, but for a while, I was lonely because I had to say that 151 times.

There's this duality of it and they're going to be times and sometimes you need to get alone because you're getting prepped or purified or we did something or we need to own it. It's not a bad thing. I’ve heard people say, “You’re only lonely because you did something wrong.” There are reasons for everything. You can be accused of something.

There are all bad things that happen to good people to put you in a lonely place, but I love that you talked about having somebody outside of your chain of command to be an ally or a voice of reason to sit there. That's so important because otherwise, we're too much in the same arena. We can often get what we need to hear and people tell us what they think or see it through the same ones we do. I love that you brought that aspect up.

Even at the Academy, it's an institution of higher education. It's a commissioning source. It's in a beautiful place. It's a good gig to be in Colorado Springs at 7,000 feet altitude, on the side of the mountains on the front range, and be with all these wonderful young people from across the world and our country. Obviously, we have cadets from 70 countries across the world that come through. Even that place could become inward-looking and I would say, “See ourselves as others see us.”

You may do something and it's motivated by every pure thought, but externally, it's perceived differently because they don't have the context. They haven't lived in that group. That's sometimes the fresh eyes. The fresh eyes can be lonely eyes, but you need them, as you said, to go off and reflect. Think about how we get here, what we are trying to do, and how we get there together.

Cadet Wing Commander: The fresh eyes can be lonely eyes, but you need them to go off and reflect. Think about how we get here, what we are trying to do, and how we get there together.

We calibrate and reorient how we're going to make the end goals. You talked about having to support your family. It’s the next topic and again, he talked about weariness. I love that you talked about you had the great thing. People always say that when you have two alphas married, how do you guys do it? Do you kill each other? I’m like, “No. Two alphas means double the resources, double the tenacity, we're not quitting, and we're not giving up.” It's almost this complementary thing.

I love to combat the work-life balance because here you are pinning on your store and you have little ones at home. Every woman out there, heck every man out there, has to deal with juggling fortune, family, and growing that. You had that to help you be strong and safe, especially you had to stay rested to fly, rested to command, and make decisions when you're going to hostile or the fog and friction war. How do you combat weariness, Michelle?

Sometimes, it isn't possible to do it on your own. One of these things is when I was a squadron commander and my husband was in Okinawa for three years. It was our longest separation. We only had cats then, so we’re waiting for kids. We were older parents. We didn't live together very often initially. I remember it was coming up on Christmas.

Our flight sergeant for our Squadron and first sergeant was hovering around my office. I worked long hours and it was KC-10 Squadron. I fly all the time and it was only about 250 people. People take time. If you listen to them, care about them, do the documentation, and everything, it takes a lot of time. I know this one evening as Christmas was approaching, these two guys, the flight surgeon, and the first sergeant, were in my office talking with me and it hit me.

I looked at them and I said, “You're taking care of me, aren't you right now? Your first sergeanting me. You're checking on me.” They said, “Yes, ma'am.” In terms of letting go, let people help you. It's so hard to ask for help to even know you need help. At a student level for cadets, they get themselves in a hole and grades. All they needed to do was raise their hand and ask for help.

Everybody wants you to succeed there. If you're in an organization, unless you're a hateful, loathsome human being, which hopefully none of us are, people want you and the organization to succeed. If you've been giving to everybody else, they want to help you and you need to let them. That's super hard, but that was a real blessing to have people like that around me.

Did I always take their advice? No. I was probably horrible about that, but you do need to take care of yourself. I don't have musical talents, but some people do. That feels like their tank of joy. Don't forget to find your joy. If the boys were running around, John would leave. I was a brigadier general at the Pentagon and we lived near the Pentagon, so I could walk over and at least be home to maybe see him at bath time and go to bedtime and stuff.

He'd say, “Look at the wall.” It’s the big crayon drawing all over the wall that we would have to repaint, but he said, “I left it for you because I knew you'd get a kick out of it,” or the big pile of chairs and pillows and stuff in the living room because that was there for filled my tank and that was terrific. Even that said, it has driven type A as I am and you take different roles at home. I was playing a type B at home. He both can at the same time, but he was a leader at home and obviously at work in different settings and back and forth.

I read Viktor Frankl’s book and when I’m having a bad day, I’ll think, “He survived the Holocaust and he lost his whole family. He was a psychologist and he chose to stay with his family when he could have gotten out.” His writings were helpful about the meaning of life. You’re doing something you love with people you love. When you’re faced with adversity or have the attitude to face adversity in a way, that’s an achievement. Getting yourself out of a predicament is an achievement and it doesn’t come across as a Rhodes scholarship, a medal, a lot of money, fame, or anything.

When you're faced with adversity or have the attitude to face adversity in a way, that's an achievement.

If you have the grit to overcome the challenge, that’s empowering. Even my friend Monty, the head of referees at the NBA, is a philosopher and ref. He’s not published it, but he’s got a manuscript. He was written about sports. People do sports because they want to be challenged against the standard. It’s like, “Let me see how good am I at this. I want to know. I’m going to do my best and then if I’m not the best, dog on it. I’m not, but I’m going to give it my shot.” Sometimes, some aspects of public service are like that. Flying a plane is hard. You don’t pop out of high school and know how to fly a jet, manage a mission and every fuel, do the kinds of things we did, or be a Thunderbird like Nicole Malachowski.

I think a lot of people want to be challenged and say, “How good would I be? Fair and square, but I gave it my best shot. That’s how well I could do it.” Attitude is helpful and it doesn’t matter if you’re short or tall or they’re small. I’ll bring back the loneliness a little bit. People see me show up and flying Squadron, saying, “I don’t know anybody like you. My mother is not like you. My sister is not like you. How can you possibly be doing this thing?”

If your attitude is we want to do this thing and everybody helps, then you can get over that pretty fast. I’ll leave the last thing. Kansas is the home state of the McConnell Air Force Base, where I was a wing commander when I had the boys. I was up all night anyway. There's no sleeping for me as a wing commander. It is between the calls from the command post and the boys.

That's how it was, but on a cold winter night in Kansas when it was zero temperatures and high winds, we're trying to launch a bunch of planes, like twenty planes. Everyone on the flight line wore Gore-Tex gloves. We had no idea who anybody was because we were blobs of waterproof material, pushing pallets and trying to refuel things. When everything was said and done and the planes were all launched, I went around, as the commander does, to talk with people, thank them, and check on them, having no idea what they looked like.

As they pulled off their balaclavas, hoods, and everything, you could start to see their ranks, faces, ethnicity, men and women, tall and short, everything, and I was so moved. I was moved daily, but I was moved in moments like that to say, “Isn't it wonderful that we were who we were? We went out and did what we had to do and we value each other.” To me, that's exciting. That fills my tank. I tell people now I’m a mom. You should get your sleep. Make sure you eat right. Take care of your joints and stuff like that. There's this other feeling that's inspiring and hopefully, you can foster that in others.

You said, “Fill the tank,” and you're right. There was nothing like the military as far as we were all in it together and none of it mattered. As you said, it’s not the rank or anything all bundled up or you're in Kenmore Fair. You can't even tell, but we were the collective. It’s a diverse group but the ultimate unified mission. Michelle, you brought up probably one of my top five books, Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. If you want to learn about resiliency and adaptive capacity, I tell people who are complaining, read that book and then you come back and talk to me. They never come back and complain. It’s so profound.

That's a heavy, dark topic. If you read it, it's full of joy. It’s not to trivialize anything.

He didn't trivialize it, but that's profound. You covered abandonment and I love that. Primarily, as you're climbing up, you got to let go of the ego. You got to be okay with abandoning some of these things that may have worked for you as an individual contributor or a commander at a flight level where you had a smaller group. Remember, it’s less and less of the outcome.

The only outcome of you as a commander is what the individual troops do. You have to start managing the troops versus managing the processes, the sorties, the non-mission capable rates, or all that other stuff. Is there anything else on abandonment you want to talk about? I thought that was so rich to share with our audience.

It was a one-on-one level when I was a co-pilot in C-141. I was a little older than other co-pilots. I was a little more senior. I was the first lieutenant. Now I’m a second lieutenant because I’ve gone to graduate school at Oxford and then was fine. We had Lieutenant Colonels who've flown in Vietnam. He’s a gruff guy. Some who had flown the plane so long, even though we were supposed to be dutiful students of the tech orders, they'd quit reading the tech orders because they knew how to fly it and the co-pilots would do the knob work for them.

There's this one gruff lieutenant colonel. He's a wonderful person. We respect the heck out of him, but he scared all the co-pilots. My husband had flown with him too. He said to me once, “Johnson, I make the co-pilots cry and that's the guys, but I don't mess with you.” I didn't know what that meant exactly. One time, he and I were on a check ride. The flight examiner was sitting right behind the console, watching everything we did.

For our audience, a check ride is an evaluation ride. She's getting graded on proficiency.

Also, how we ran the checklist and how we ran the mission. He and I were on it. It’s an evaluation like you're driving in high school, but times 1,000. I noticed that in the left seats where the aircraft commander sits, his navigation select panel wasn't right with the checklist. Safety first, but also contending with culture. You don't touch each other switches as a cultural thing about reaching across somebody, especially somebody imposing like him. I reached my hand over in front of the switch that needed to be corrected and said, “I’ll set your knob select panel up for the takeoff check,” then I waited.

I didn't touch it, but I waited. I wanted to show respect. I didn't know what he'd do and he said, “Thanks, Co.” I hit the button, we did the flight, and everything went on. I’ve actually said that at a commencement speech at Niagara University a couple of years ago, “I know it seems weird to say something like that. Thanks, Co. So what?” What he did was courageous in a way. He let me help him. It not only helped us do the mission safely and get to see the check right and everything, but it also modeled for me to let go.

Later, when I was on missions and was tired in the middle of the night in Bahrain or someplace, I did the before-takeoff checklist. I say to the crew, “We've all been awake for 36 hours now, so we need to help each other. If you see something, you speak up because we're all tired and we've got to get this right. If you help me succeed, I’ll help you succeed.” I said that attitude. Part of what helped me do that. It’s letting go of my ego or letting go of the fear of although things she's weak.

Michelle, you were telling the story about when you got with your check pilot and you had the courage to let him know, “I’m going to touch the switches,” and then you were referring to some things that happen when people don't feel in other cultures that they are free to express what's going on.

Sometimes, it's grouped dynamics, leadership, and culture. We used to talk about crew resource management because, on a big airplane, you have teams of 4 to 20 people. The C-5 fighter crews are big and 141. We had to have at least four people, but when you're working in a work environment, being able to collaborate means listening to each other and letting go of your own protectiveness or personal power. It's important in a plane. Someone is going to get hurt if the chief pilot, the aircraft Commander, or the pilot in charge doesn't listen or take input. As I’ve said, there have been accidents and some came from national cultures of hierarchy.

Being able to collaborate means listening to each other and letting go of your own protectiveness or personal power.

The leading person is like, “I’m the boss. I don't have to listen to you.” It's literally dangerous, but even if it's not in an airplane, in general, you're not hearing the totality of what’s going on. You're not being informed if you're not listening and taking input from people around you. Ultimately, a leader has to decide and may not follow exactly what those inputs are. That's part of the aloneness. Someone’s got to decide, but listening empowers a team to know that they'll be heard. You may not agree, but they'll be heard and it's an important lesson.

You hit on the importance of being courageous enough to manage up. A lot of times, here you are managing down or managing lateral but to help your boss or your leader to become the best that they can. As you said, unless it's illegal, immoral, unethical, or unsafe, you are being heard. For the leaders out there, you have to be courageous enough to make the call and say, “I know, but we need to look at this.” The last thing my dad talked about was vision.

We hear about these visionaries. Michelle, we have our heroes in the military who were sheer, brilliant tacticians, motivators, and all the greats. My dad would always tell me, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it.” It’s this blue-sky thing but also this very tactical strategic thing. How do you hone your vision, especially now that you're in the next stage of your life? I know the military would often feed you your vision, but how do you inspire that in other people?

It's an important notion. You don't have to be a genius philosopher to have a vision. It's what needs to be done, as you said. Maybe even asking the question of, “We're doing this thing. So what?” What's going to happen on the other side of this? Some of it is strategic planning. What are the opportunities and what are the risks? That is not a military function. It's a business function, I would think. Even the American College of Financial Services Board talked to us about financial risk, what are the risks with personnel, and what's going to happen next. To my point, we caught it with the head of referees for the NBA when I suggested in-season training, not just in the summer. That seemed brilliant and visionary to him.

It seemed obvious to me. If I thought of that, what do we miss that someone else might think of it? To your point of managing up, as a senior officer or a general officer, I wasn't always the most senior. I was a 2 or 3-star, but there are always four stars and civilian leaders. To be brave enough to challenge the status quo or tell them the truth or the bad news sometimes is eye-opening. Do it privately and give them some grace, a way out, or a graceful exit. We can fix it if you make this phone call or this is what needs to be done, but to see ahead and assess, that's part of a vision as well. It has to do with listening and learning. In this day and age, people don't always want hard-copy books. My husband and I are still of a generation that values the tactile feel of a book.

I’m aggressive with books. I deface them out of love. I write in them and I tear their pages, but I’m willing to learn. To my earlier point about how we get here as an organization or as a group and what we need to do next, the best part of a vision is a narrative. What's our story? Maybe that's a more palatable way for us to think about what's our narrative. For me, a lot of veterans and other people are at a point in life where you have more discretion about your time. What brings meaning? Not as profound as Viktor Frankl with that sense of that meaning, but in the sense of what do I know that might help another group, whether it's with corporate memory or another perspective as a board member now.

Board members are not supposed to partake in the everyday operations of an enterprise, but I always think, “Have I asked a challenging question? Have I thought of another angle that they might not have thought of?” You're on the advisory board for the Veteran Center, so you may think of that as well. It’s like, “If I asked a good question that they might not have thought of or another angle and to be supportive in a way that's constructive.” It isn't always positive cheerleading. It's sometimes saying, “There may be some pitfalls on that one. You might want to consider what could happen from practical experience and also from studying.”

You brought that up earlier. We always have something to offer, no matter if it’s taking off the uniform but the way we think. What I like about people in the military is we always are a worst-case scenario. We're always contingency planners and we're also after-actions people. That's the other thing where you talked about we train it in-season and out of season and that's not intuitively obvious. It's interesting that you said that because I can remember sitting on some boards, when something would go wrong, not military things, they're like, “What's next?”

I’m like, “What happened here? After the access report, no behaviors change until a lesson has been learned,” and we tweak something. I love that you said that in a constructive way. That's the point of leadership. Not an echo chamber but to ask the tough questions or the great critical thinking skills because we have seen a lot and blended a lot about what could possibly go right. You can't go into war thing and everything is going to go right. You think everything is going to go wrong and reverse engineer from that.

Tell that story. It is what it is and don't be afraid. Too many people use the word fear and I’m afraid. I was always thankful. I didn't have to worry in the main about our boys going to the shopping center and being bombed. We live in a violent world and things can happen randomly but we live in a pretty safe environment.

We don't have the day-to-day risk like a lot of people have or the food insecurity that a lot of people have and those things so I count my blessings. What are we afraid of? What do we have to be afraid of to say it is what it is and try to persuade people? That's the other thing. With vision, you want to do that thing that you see something that is different. I go back to what I said before.

They may not even hear you when you say, “I disagree with that.” They may not hear you literally the first couple of times. I really think this is a thing and try to be persuasive that way. After working at the White House for two years, I carried the nuclear codes for President Bush and President Clinton. If you do a lot of advance work, you have to plan ahead.

Here's what will happen in the worst case that maintains connectivity with the Commander in Chief in the command authority. You had to think of every possible contingency: medical, communication, physical, other 25th amendment, and nuclear things. Mostly, bad things didn't happen, but in order to get senior civilians to do what I needed to do, I had to persuade them.

I had no power over them. I was a major, but you have to persuade people to get things done. People have written about political powers. It’s a power of persuasion. You're moving people. I did that to the extent that when I went back to Travis Air Force Base after that assignment, one of the sergeants said, “You could tell us what to do. You don't have to persuade.” I said, “Okay. Point well taken.” I'll tell you on those few transactional things, but it’s inspiring things and trying to do new things for an enterprise to have a vision of what happens next. You need to say why and what will be in it for you. What will your role be in it?

The vision isn't, “We're going to get to that mountain,” it's, “How are you going to help us get to the mountain? How am I going to help you get to the mountain? How are we going to do that together?” We are obviously great communicators, but that's not a value thing in military service. If you look at Myers-Briggs personalities, I’m an ENTJ, so I think I can do the math. I was an Operations Research undergrad. It's like an Engineering minor at the Service Academy. Both of us were, but I tend to be an extrovert who thinks intuitively, which isn't softer. It's in macro and I’m a thinker and dredger. We can go do that, but not everybody can see it if they're a linear thinker or more sensory or an engineer. They want to know what happens and what step is next.

Understanding myself and how I’m thinking, I’m open that way and engineer like my husband. He is a linear engineer. There are times we bump. There are many reasons why spouses bump. One of the reasons we do is that we're wired differently. It's very complementary and it's great overall. When you're working with people who are literal, this idea of a vision might seem a little too open-ended and you need to help them understand what happens next, what's in it for them, and what our role is together. They may not automatically see their role in the group and laying it out in a narrative again is helpful.

I love that you described the vision as persuasion and moving people because otherwise, it's your thing. Vision is shared with them. You hit on all the books I’ve read. Say the number one question anybody has on their mind is What’s In It For Me? Why too? We have to set the why, but in the how, as far as practical, the management, or the 30,000, what's in it for me? I get the why, but that’s the reason why expectation is a success. I have to see value in it, which means, what's in it for me? I love that you talked about it. Some people are like, “You don't have to woo-woo me.” I put my task hat on as you do and go, “Here are the orders.” “Okay, fine.”

I literally did that in the Squadron because they thought I was too nice sometimes. I had a black hat. I would put a black build cap on. I don't smoke, but I had a cigar and I get out and say, “This is me being directive,” and we'd laugh about it. That was also part of building the collegiality of what we're doing. I haven’t read Daniel Pink's works, but he has a book called Drive, which is the most realistic about not what's in it for me but calling it as it is about understanding the politics of a dynamic. Politics are human beings together.

It's not like political parties. It's Aristotle. We're political animals because we live with other people. Understanding who the informal leaders are, who the formal leaders are, and how to navigate that is part of persuasion, leading, and pursuing a vision because those can be helpers, so they can be obstacles. The informal leaders may have more power than the formal leaders, weirdly. You can harness into that but you can't pretend it doesn't exist. It's only your own idea. Again, this is a team sport.

Cadet Wing Commander: Understanding who the informal leaders are, who the formal leaders are, and how to navigate that is part of persuasion, leading, and pursuing a vision.

You hit the nail on the head when you talk about politicking well. For those of you who are tuning in and want to get your CLF, we have a whole class on one of our modules about networking and managing in politicking well. As you said, anybody that has survived in one of the biggest bureaucracies of all time, I eat the military as long as you have, you're a great politicker. We have this politics and it's sucking up. It's kissing butt. It's hard as it is. It's networking. It's coming together because there's a certain amount of resources and it's a win-win, so we have this negative notation. I love that you could not have done what you did without getting fed up.

There are a million other pasts you could have taken, Michelle, but you stayed on the one because you knew how to be politicking well and not in a derogatory, sell-your-soul, or cronyism-type sense. I’m glad you brought that up because we may have some audience out there that are like, “I don't know. Should I stay or should I go?” I always tell them, “Do you want to fall into your sword or do you need to open up your mind and spirit about politicking well?”

We're all in this together and we have to find a way forward together. Is this a nuisance or an idiosyncrasy or is this a point of order that is against your conviction? Most of the time, it's something that annoys us. I’m like, “Do you want to throw it all away for that or do you want to learn to politic well?”

To your point, you're going to have, in a career, a good boss, bad bosses, good teams, or bad teams. The moments when it's clicking when you're on that championship team and it feels right, those don't last forever because somebody leaves or something changes, but those are great moments. One of the reasons I endured this eclectic journey was that I could see the patterns. It was eclectic enough that you start seeing the patterns across organizations. That's why people write all those management leadership books because human beings and organizations act about the same.

Cadet Wing Commander: That's why people write all those management leadership books because human beings and organizations act about the same.

It's different language, uniforms, and hierarchies in a way, but politicking to me was saying if we need to bring some people together or say the Pentagon with different entities with different equities to defend, try to understand the equities of the others at the table. Plan ahead. Not only have allies at the table but try to think 2 or 3 steps out.

This literally happened to me. There was a senior civilian who had been military and there's some baggage with that. It was a real obstacle working when I was on the joint staff at the Pentagon on cyber policy and I set up to him and said, “This is the equity I need to represent right now respectfully because this is the truth. I have to hold that.” I immediately went back. I was a one-star general and I talked to my three-star general.

I said, “You may get a phone call from somebody because I had to stand up to them and they are far senior to me.” He goes, “He already called me. You were doing the right thing. You were doing what you had to do.” That's one thing, but to have a successful policy, a lot of times, I would try to anticipate that when this person wants to work against me, they're going to go to the next level.

If I’ve already greased the works to the next level by informing them, not paying them off or nothing underhanded but saying, “This is part of the story for you to know. When the other person came with their side, I’d wind up getting support, usually because I did my homework. I was prepared and pretty factually correct and be able to move forward.”

It became winning and it worked in NATO across 28 allies then. Now we're up to 31 in NATO, but at that time, it was 28 plus 22 partner Nations for Afghanistan. There are 50 nations around. It’s understanding the organization around you and not your own narrow slice of it. Where do I fit in? People do social mapping for other reasons to think who would be on board, who would be antis in this initiative, and understand that. Who are you going to have to persuade to come forward? Who are you going to have to come on board? Not in an underhanded way, but with persuasion, facts and research, and persistence. I will say persistence helps.

That’s why you pay the price of leadership because everybody would be doing it if it was easy. Coming across against these naysayers, your example is managing up well and politicking well. It’s excellent. Thank you for sharing that. I was hoping you get into that and you said why you endured. I love it because everybody has their own reasons for it. That’s fascinating, Michelle. We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. While I got you on the line, is there anything else, from a leadership perspective, that you would like to share with our audience about how to triumphantly and tenaciously pay the price of leadership?

I’ll share a vignette. I’m not sure exactly who it’s attributed to. I’m told Iyanla Vanzant has said it and other people, but it’s something that I’ve used in remarks. Also, it’s a reminder for me. Its rich alludes to fear. The saying is, “When we come to the end of all the light that we know and are about to step off into the darkness, faith is knowing that 1 of 2 things is going to happen. They’ll either be something solid in the darkness for us to stand on or we’ll learn how to fly.”

To me, this is like not being afraid to explore something different. It’s 1977 and 18-year-old me left Spencer, Iowa, to want to see what the big world was like. I have no clue, no videos on a website, no internet, no family experience in the military or with higher ed, except for my brother, who went to medical school, but he's far older than me.

It was a different time when all the money we had, which wasn't much, went for him, and my sister and I were on our own to try it, go out, step into the darkness, and go, “Solid. It’s not as scary as I thought it was going to be.” I need to learn something new to survive in this way and try something new. It may be more fulfilling.

In my case, it was in the big world. There were lows. They don't write that in your bio. Nobody writes in your bio the rough days and the things when you met with someone who was a curmudgeon or worse, who tried to undermine you or things didn't go well. They don't write that down in your bio. It's part of the journey and makes you appreciate when things click, when you do move a policy through, or when you can communicate with somebody.

I almost said it in SACEUR, the Supreme Allied Commander Forces Europe, when I was at NATO. He promised the Russians, who had a bigger contingent in Brussels, that NATO did because they were very suspicious of NATO because NATO was formed to defend against them. He wanted to keep them informed during the conflict in Afghanistan because of their fear of opium, the drug trade, and terrorism coming over the border. Meanwhile, they gave us over-flight and train track access or railroad access from the Baltics all the way to Kazakhstan over Russian airspace and ground space.

We wanted to communicate with them and he sent me to Moscow one summer with a team with the German Lieutenant Colonel, a British Colonel, and a US colonel. A Norwegian Admiral was in Moscow to brief the device director, the vice chairman of their general staff, and their four-star. They were going to have me talk to a two-star, but when I showed up, the four-star showed up, so I had to adapt. Over a long briefing table, standing over a map and a long lunch, we went and did our work and went back. To me, that was a capstone professional experience to represent the equities of my nation in the halls of the Kremlin.

They’ve been our foe in so many ways and so many episodes and to know my business enough to be able to come through and to keep my team together. It was a very emotional experience for the German officer. Can you imagine in paintings in the Kremlin of General Zuckoff, who's the Russian General Montgomery from Britain and Eisenhower from the US? Obviously, Germany was the enemy then and my German colleague felt it. It was a lonely, moving time for him. That was a real capstone experience. In the life journey, you pick up along the way.

I didn't know this when I was a lieutenant. I don't know if I could have done it when I was a lieutenant, but you learn along the way. To be willing to step into the darkness with faith or confidence or whatever your belief system is that supports you. To be able to go out alone in the dark with people who may never want to be leaders. Not everybody wants to and that's okay too, but we need to be good teammates because we're going and we need you to come with us.  

Not everybody wants to be a four-star general. Some people want to launch and recover and be a crew dog or whatever, but I love that. Michelle, you have certainly paid the price of leadership and continue to do so. Thank you for sharing all this wisdom. I can't wait to listen. If I have no scribbled everywhere, I have to get it organized. Michelle, if people want to connect with you or learn more about you, what's the best way that they can reach out to you?

I have a very small footprint on LinkedIn. I’m there, but I’m at the point in life where if you Google Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson, you could see my official Air Force bio in there. People have found speeches have done. I talked at the National Press Club when I was superintendent. I’ve had some hard interviews. I’ve had some fun ones where you can tell all the good news. I’ve had a tough one too. I exist out there. There are a lot of Michelle Johnson, but not as many Lieutenant Michelle Johnson.

Michelle Johnson sends her farewell. Please be sure and check out Lieutenant General Retired Michelle Johnson, a Trailblazer. I hope you enjoyed everything she shared with you about what it takes to paying the price of leadership. Remember, you will be the same person in the future that you are now, except for two things. The people you meet and the books you read. I hope you heard us talk about a lot of tremendous books.

You met a tremendous person and I want to thank you for paying the price of leadership. If you like what you read, please hit the subscribe button, leave us the honor of a five-star review, and share with your friends who are trying to live a triumphantly tremendous life as well. Thanks so much to all of you for paying the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of your day.

Important Links

• Retired Lieutenant General Michelle Johnson – LinkedIn

• Man’s Search For Meaning

• Adaptive Leadership

• Drive

About Michelle Johnson

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Michelle Johnson class of ‘81 USAFA was the first female cadet to be named Cadet Wing commander and later became the first female officer to serve as Air Force Academy superintendent (#19).

She was also inducted into the inaugural class of the Air Force Academy Athletic Hall of Fame and a Rhodes Scholar. While in uniform she served as the AF Aide to the President, an Air Force Squadron, Group & Wing Commander; NATO/SHAPE Deputy Chief of Staff Intel & Operations; NBA Senior VP head of Referee Operations. Her husband is John Hargreaves, a retired USAF pilot; happy parents of 20-year-old twin sons.

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 163 - Mike Ettore - Leaders On Leadership

Leadership is lifelong learning. No one becomes a leader on day one; you have to grow into it. If you want to be a great one, then you’ll know that the process is never-ending. Diving deep into leadership in this episode, Dr. Tracey Jones sits down with Mike Ettore. Mike is the founder of Fidelis Leadership Group, where he has devoted himself to his passion for helping others develop into world-class leaders. Bringing that experience as well as his military background to the show, he offers fresh insights into the different prices of leadership he encountered along the way. Mike is also the author of Trust-Based Leader, and he gives us a peek into the book by sharing why trust plays an important role in leading. He also emphasizes the need to build the right company culture and why character should be non-negotiable. Full of great wisdom to add to your leadership resource, this conversation is a must-read! Tune in to not miss out.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Mike Ettore - Leaders On Leadership

In this episode, our guest is the one, the only, the tremendous Mike Ettore. Mike, welcome.

Thank you so much for the invitation, Dr. Tracey. I'm pleased and thrilled to be here.

Thanks, Mike. Mike and I only just connected. I got an email from his site when I was in Israel, requesting that I be on his podcast. We're going to talk about Mike, his message, his podcast, and what he's doing for leaders at the end of the show. Of course, I agreed and after I heard all about his leadership chops, I knew I had to have him on our show.

Let me tell you a little bit about Mike. He has served in leadership roles for many years. He's earned a reputation for being an exceptionally effective leader and is known for achieving superior results in a wide range of challenging environments. In addition to having retired as a Marine Corps infantry officer and decorated combat leader, he also served successfully as the C-Suite executive in Kforce Inc. It’s a publicly traded professional services firm with annual revenue in excess of $1 billion. You’re going to get some military leadership and some C-Suite leadership.

Over the course of his Marine Corps and business careers, Mike was highly regarded for being an exceptionally effective mentor and developer of leaders. After retiring from Kforce in 2013, Mike founded Fidelis Leadership Group and has devoted himself to his greatest passion, helping others develop into world-class leaders. He has successfully coached and mentored executives and senior leaders from a wide range of industries and is sought after for his expertise in all aspects of leadership development and the creation of leadership training programs.

In addition to being a lifelong student of leadership, Mike has earned Master's degrees in Business Administration and Management. He's also the author of four books devoted to the topics of leadership and leadership development. I can't wait for our guest to hear more about this. Mike, I am truly honored.

Thank you so much. I am as well. I think you mentioned it already. This is my passion. I'm still learning, but I love leadership and I do this for the rest of my life. I help leaders develop and maximize their potential. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Leaders who say they're done and they know it all, I tell them, “You have to relinquish your leadership crown because leadership is lifelong learning,” and you absolutely know that. That's why our guests are tuning in here. Let's get right into this, Mike. My father gave a speech called The Price of Leadership many decades ago. I'm sure you as a speaker, the number one topic people are craving for training and development on is leadership.

The first price that he said that a leader has to pay is Loneliness. We've all heard the saying, “Lonely is the head that wears the crown,” but loneliness means different things to different people. Could you unpack what loneliness means for you as a leader and perhaps sometimes where you dealt with it throughout your career in the military or in the civilian sector, and some words of advisement you would give to our readers?

I've read your dad's speech, which he turned into a book and you've turned into a book. I love it. I’m a big fan of your dad. That's how I reached out to you, Dr. Tracey. I'm like, “It's got to be his daughter.” Thanks for that connection. Leadership can be lonely. How I interpret that personally and what my experience has been, if you're an effective leader, you are going to have to make decisions that not everybody is going to agree with or even see the wisdom behind your decision at first. That's when it can get lonely.

A leader at every level of experience has to hold fast to his or her courage of their convictions and to know, “I've sought your input. I've made a decision. We're going this way,” and stand firm. I'm not talking about being a dictator, but to stand firm even in the face of criticism and rolling of the eyes and all that. We've all had that and we've all done that. We've all been the follower that didn't understand the decision a leader made until later and sometimes years later. You are like, “I appreciate that gal more now than ten years ago when she was my boss.”

The courage of convictions. If you're leading well in a challenging environment, there are going to be challenges, sometimes volatile challenges, that options A, B, and C are all pretty close to each other. They all might work, but for various reasons, you as the leader decide to go a certain way and you got to stand fast. I tell people to follow their moral compass as a leader. Leaders who follow their moral compass often feel lonely, but they never feel lost. They know.

It’s that true north. I'm big on metaphors, analogies, and examples. As you know, the true north, the Earth turns, and the stars change but the true north remains in the same position. We have to have a true north and if you stick to your true north, at times, it's going to be a lonely endeavor. You have to have the courage of your convictions and hold fast because you know you're doing the right thing. It’s not necessarily the correct thing, which the HR manual says, “The right thing.” That's why we get paid the big bucks.

I was at a conference in Boeing and they said, “Decision-making is such a mark of leadership and we get paid the big bucks to make those decisions.” Somebody said, “What if there are several decisions that are all very close?” I love that you put that. I would say your mission, your North Star or your convictions do it but I love that you put, “You can be lonely, but you're not lost,” because sometimes, all you have is your convictions. I know sometimes people think, “You're in the military. You're following everybody and you're in this thing.” It even gets lonely in the military at times, does it not?

It absolutely does. They are unlike in the business world where profit is at stake and sales statistics and all that. In the military, even in a training environment, lives are at stake. In combat, nobody argues with that. Everybody knows lives are at stake. In my 24 years as a Marine, enlisted, and officer, I always found that the need to exercise moral courage, which is associated often with periods of loneliness, is more in peacetime.

It's driving my Marines hard in training. It’s so hard that they often wonder, “Why does it have to be this hard?” They never truly understand it until we get in combat and they say, “In some ways, this was easier than the training.” However, when you're pushing people hard and they're at peace and all of that, even the Marines are often like, “Do we have to run this far? Do we have to stay this hot and tired all the time?” The answer is yes, you do.

I've had times in the Marines where my first sergeant or enlisted leaders would come to me or junior officers and say, “Sir, we know you're all about combat readiness and training. We might want to let up. We're going awful hard.” Sometimes they were right and I eased up and other times, I had a different set of experiences and I'd say, “I hear you. We're going to go a little bit further.” That's where you have to be right and have the courage of your convictions.

To your point, Tracey, I wanted to go back and cover the person that asked you the thing. Sometimes, there are several different options and they all seem right. A little tidbit that I would offer on that is you have to make decisions, but whenever your team leaders or your teammates offer a suggestion that is at least as good as yours go with theirs. When in doubt, go with their solution. If your solution is A, you favor A, but they come up with B. If B will work, go with B every time. Everybody loves being listened to and our advice and recommendations acted upon. It's a golden opportunity for leaders. I couldn't pass up that opportunity to express my views on that.

I loved being listened to and even in the military but what a way to make sure that you are lonely because nobody wants to be around you. As I said, the buck stops with us. By virtue of that, when heads are on the chopping block, it's only us. That's when we stand alone but I love that at other times. You're so right about peacetime and that training for when the balloon goes up, it’s the same thing in Corporate America. I know you know this. Your reputation is built one decision at a time.

You have to always be on point and hyper-attentive too. If I have to stand and do the right thing and not the popular thing, what the profitable thing is even sometimes. I love that you put that loneliness is going to hit you every day, but when you say that, you're going to say that because in the end, there is going to be a payoff and you're going to stand firm.

I agree with that. One of the most recent examples that we both know about is COVID hit and literally, the country shut down. We're not coming to work. The remote workforce was thrust upon a whole lot of non-believers and I knew many of them. I was fortunate I embraced it early on. I believed and knew that this could work and so did many others. I'm not anything unique in that regard. I have a large following on LinkedIn. I posted almost every day. I saw people saying, “Now that we're in COVID, we're all remote. It's a great opportunity to build a company's culture.”

I opined. Ladies and gentlemen, this is just Mike Ettore's opinion. It's too late. You are entering COVID with the culture that you've already created. If you're saying, “Now we're going to go remote and we got to be good. We got to be organized. We have to have the character of accuracy and reporting.” It's too late. Can you catch up? Sure, but the old adage, “You go to war with the unit you have, not the unit you would love to have, the equipment, the training, the integrity, the SOPs, and all of that.”

“You go to war with the unit you have and not the unit you would love to have.”

Early on when you were introducing me, I'll make this editorial comment. Marine leadership and C-Suite leadership are no different. I maintained that I led civilians exactly like I led Marines with minuscule adaptation. You have that experience with the military to the business world. People are people. Many do buy off on the stereotypical Rambo and full metal jacket. They think that's how I led them. It's not like that.

In boot camp, there's a whole lot of yelling going on there. I was a drill instructor when I was enlisted. You wouldn't want to know. I called that my savage phase. Aside from that, I have never seen anything in the corporate world even close to the amount of love and compassion from leader to lead that I witnessed in the Marine Corps. I know the other services are no different. I love the Marines. I punish them and I train the hell out of them.

That is love. Rebuke is part of tough love.

I loved them and that leads to my next statement. To be a good leader, you at least have to like people and know that they're going to be bringing you problems. To be an exceptional leader, you have to love people to the point where the biggest thrill you ever get is seeing them do well and greatly eclipse your own accomplishments, which I've experienced so much now.

Develop Leaders: To be an exceptional leader, you have to love people to the point where the biggest thrill you ever get is seeing them do well and greatly eclipse your own accomplishments.

You talked about a basic premise as a leader is to know they're going to be bringing you problems. That dovetails nicely into the next Price of Leadership after loneliness which is Weariness. You not only have the responsibilities of being a leader, but you've got different people's responsibilities. You've got regulations. You're a publicly traded company, so you have global transparency in your reputation, but you then have people bringing you problems. How do you deal with weariness as a leader when you have this responsibility put on you?

I'll back up and preface it with this. I teach that there are two types of friction. External friction like COVID. We couldn't do anything about it. COVID was stressed upon us. Also, there is internal friction. Internal is often called self-imposed friction. Where I'm going with this, Tracey, is a leader who is going to get very weary very quickly if he or she has not trained and delegated to their people.

If that leader is doing 8 pounds of the 10 pounds of that unit's work, they're going to get tired very quickly. If they've learned to develop their teams and subordinate leaders, then they're maybe doing 2 pounds of it, supervising the rest of it through their leaders. It’s the classic officer, NCO delegation technique, and all of that. I'd say the first piece of advice for a leader, especially new ones, is the quicker you realize that nobody expects you to know everything. Nobody expects you to know it all. Nobody certainly expects you to do it all. The quicker you realize that and deputize your people.

I go this way. This is how I've avoided it. I develop subordinate leaders by asking the three big questions. I maintain that they produce the answers to almost all of the organization's ills. I tell my people when I first get there, “Here's the deal. You have to trust me. I trust you. We have a culture of trust here. I'll never shoot the messenger, but I'm going to ask you three questions. What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? What should we do differently?”

If they trust you, you can sit back and they will list 99% of the issues and friction points in that organization at every level. I tell them if you're going to bring problems, you have to bring proposed solutions as well. As a C-level executive, I used to tell my leaders, and it's going to sound harsh but I'll explain it, “Bring me problems, but don't bring me your problems.”

They would look and I'd say, “Let me explain. I'm here for you. I'm here to help you. My main duty is to feed you and make you prosperous and successful. Remove challenges, give you the best equipment, and clear roadblocks. I'm here to help you solve problems. I'm not here to give you directions and advice on problems and issues that are well within your pay grade. You have to do that.”

They come to my office and I say, “I got to be honest with you. I know the answer to this or I at least have an answer for you, but this is not something that you're supposed to be coming to me for. I want you to go back and reflect. Come back to me tomorrow and bring me the proposed solutions. I'll give you my opinion on the solution, but if you're coming to me for, ‘Mike, this happened. What should I do?’”

I'm never going to do that unless you come to me and say, “Mike, I've got this situation going on. I don't know what to do. I need your advice.” My immediate response would be, “Susan, I hear you. Have you consulted your colleagues?” In other words, before you come to me, have you leveraged the knowledge, experience, insights, and recommendations within your team and across the organization with your colleagues because all of them are exponentially smarter and wiser than me?

It's a little bit of tough love. Don't darken my doorstep with a problem that is yours to solve. You have to stand firm. Getting back to the original question, it preserved my ability to develop them. It's like with you're mom and dad. Your dad, I'm sure at one point, said, “Tracey, get back out there and solve it. This is yours to solve.” I'm not dealing with children in the business world, the concept is the same.

Don't darken my doorstep with a problem that is yours to solve.

Coming into the military, we know a lot of who you are assigned. The beauty of the military is every couple of years, you get transferred so you're constantly getting a flux of new people. In Kforce, which is a bigger resource to pull from, how are you doing this as an entrepreneur with your business? The old decision-making or critical thinking is never to make a decision that you can delegate to your lieutenants… provided you have excellent lieutenants. How do you do that because a huge portion of our listenership, including law, is an entrepreneur now? I don't have a big talent full of people. Tell me how you do that with Fidelis Leadership Group.

To your point, I teach that. Don't bring me your problems and all of that. That assumes that there's a level of infrastructure there and that you have somebody to delegate to. I'll use the Kforce analogy. I was there for almost fifteen years as a C-Suite executive. My direct reports, I generally had 3 to 5 direct reports. Most of them reported to me for over ten years. Early on in the first few years, it was a lot of hands-on mentoring by Mike because they didn't know how to solve some problems.

When a problem surfaced with Don and his department, I would get Don, Dustin, Susie, and Fred all together and say, “Don has got this problem.” I turn it into a teachable moment. Over the years, they got good. I'll be honest with you, Tracey. Probably for the last 5 years of my 15 years, my biggest challenge was staying out of their way. At that point, I make a joke. My biggest value-add was getting them coffee and getting their offer early and turning the lights on. They were super good and even better. It wasn’t that they were good for me.

When I left, they all moved on to bigger and better things operating at levels greater than I've ever operated on. I'm just so thrilled for them. Early on though, I had to train them up. Entrepreneurs often don't have that full staff. It's a monetary or a budget thing and I would say, “Get enough. Get the critical stuff as soon as you can but your job as an entrepreneur is the things that you're doing in year one that are necessary. You're bootstrapping it.” If you're still doing those things with 3 employees or when you've got 33 employees, something is wrong.

That's brilliant because sometimes, we grow at different rates where we don't have 30. I love to delegate. I dream of delegation until you have the profitability that you can hire the best to start offloading this. I appreciate you saying that because I get a lot as an entrepreneur, “If you're busy, you should just hire people.” Trust me. I understand leadership and contracting government state and private. It's different when you're bootstrapping. I appreciate you sharing that because a lot of our readers are out there wondering, “How do I manage this workload?”

I love that you said if you're doing the same stuff when you had 3 as you do at 30 because that's a wonderful way to quantify it and say something is amiss. It frustrates entrepreneurs to go, “Stop doing what you're doing.” Who's going to do it? Especially if you're a solopreneur, like a lot of our readers.

If you're solo, it intends to get wider. What I say is this. Let's say the entrepreneur understands that. I'm going to hire some people and delegate. I know you'll agree with this. I tell people, “Leadership is all about humans. It’s human nature.” The minute that one person adds one other person to the equation, it now becomes a leadership situation. Entrepreneurs are usually very smart and they've got a good product. They're whip-smart in some cases. Sometimes, they boil your brain smart but I would encourage them to sit back and realize that nobody all of a sudden hit them on the head with the leadership stick and made them competent leaders.

Hiring leaders and wanting to delegate to them is noble. Being competent at it is a skill that the entrepreneur must learn and I see entrepreneurs failing to recognize that. They do the right thing. Their staff grows. They want to grow but they're terrible and inefficient leaders. That's why you see so many companies getting acquired and the first big move is the entrepreneur is gone. You can't scale leadership.

Develop Leaders: Hiring leaders and wanting to delegate to them is noble. Being competent at it is a skill that the entrepreneur must learn.

As you said at the beginning, just because you're a leader, it is different than leadership. I can be a great leader of myself, but leading others is completely different. Thank you for unpacking that. For people like me and yo, and a huge portion of our listenership is transitioning with the goal of taking all the wonderful leadership lessons they've learned. Now you're doing this. I got a gentleman and it’s his last day of working for somebody else. Now he's going off to do his own thing. He's a Marine too. I know he is going to love this.

Entrepreneurs all know that as they grow their businesses. They got to learn contracting and accounts payable. The best advice I can give you is leadership is a learned skill and you have to learn it. Mike Ettore was formally trained as a leader. As a young teenage Marine, I was first in charge of people when I was eighteen years old. I'm 66 years old now in 2023, I retired as a C-level executive at 57. I got to tell you, what I've learned from 57 to 66, I sit there every week and I'm like, “How did I not know this? How did I not see this?” The journey is never over. They have to be at least cognizant that they have to start the journey. It's a conscious decision to start their leadership journey.

Loneliness, weariness, the next topic my father talked about was Abandonment. He talked about abandonment as what you need and ought to focus on rather than what you like and want to think about. I can remember him telling me when I was a young lady. He said, “Tracey, I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success.”  I'm looking at him like, “Are you kidding me? You're the most successful person I know.”

He's like, “No. There's so much extra stuff, non-value-added stuff in my life. Every day, you have to abandon and prune.” Can you unpack how you stay hyper-focused? In the military, we got our orders, even in the corporate world. Now, how do you abandon this stuff because you're also growing and transitioning? You're relearning and unlearning. How's this work for you, Mike?

That is a learned skill as well. I love that you are using the word prune. I use that quite a bit. When I teach executives and leaders, I say, “You have to prune the meeting tree every six months or meetings grow. You have to prune the reports tree. You have to prune.” Like a tree and a real bush, it grows and sometimes the leaves start obscure in the path.

You got to get out there with your clippers and shear them off and all of that. I would say one of the first things that a leader, especially an entrepreneur needs to know is self-awareness. Where are you spending your time? As an executive coach, Tracey, I know you do the same thing. When I go in and I coach senior executives, these are successful people by anybody's standards. I say this publicly. The first thing I do with all clients is, “Show me your schedule.” They print out the weekly schedule and they're usually very proud, “Do you see how busy I am?”

I'm like, “You are a C-level guy. That's not a C-level schedule.” They're like, “What do you mean? I am in meetings from 7:30 AM to 6:00 PM. I have some at 8:00 PM.” I said, “Right, but you and 4 or 5 other C-level guys are the only people formally tasked with looking beyond this year.” The guy in the shipping dock, the IT guy, nobody else is charged formally with looking over the horizon. What's the equipment you're going to use three years from now?

Show me on the schedule where are your feet on the desk contemplating and reflecting time. Where is that? You know where I'm going next. I put them through an exercise. I want you to go through and identify which meetings you don't need to be at and which meetings you could go to every other week. I tell people to be cognizant of every single thing they do. Now I'm talking at the executive level. These guys and gals are making a lot of money and they're not paying you to do PowerPoint presentations. They're paying you for your mind, brain, influence, and presence.

It’s the same thing with entrepreneurs. I would track everything I do and can somebody else do it? If you're an entrepreneur or somebody else isn't there, you'll know that there's a certain point in time when it is time to hire that person. I coach small ascending companies that are doing well. I tell them, “It's time for you to make your two most important hires of this phase in your life cycle.”

They're all like, “What is that Mike?” I say, “You need a bonafide, full-grown bear finance person. Right now, you've got an accountant who's admirable and doing a good job, but she doesn't have the CFO-level acumen skill. You're making money. She doesn't know where to leverage the money and all. She stays beyond our skillset so you got to get a bonafide finance person.” This shocks them. “You need to get an executive assistant.” They are like, “What?” I said, “Executive assistant/ops assistant.”

From this point forward, shame on you if you and any of your leaders are banging out PowerPoint presentations, making plane reservations, or ordering lunch. These are all important tasks that need to be done and you're too good to do them. I'll describe what I'm saying so your readers truly know it. Computers were new in the Marine Corps. I only had a computer at my last duty station. I typed emails in all caps. That shift key was too much for a grunt. At Kforce, we had computers and all that.

As I joined the business world in '99, I never learned PowerPoint. I went through a fifteen-year by some people's standards highly successful C-level career, I never ever knew how to make a PowerPoint presentation. Now, I caused hundreds of them to be made, and here's what I did. I would get computer printer paper, and I would say slide one on the left. I'd draw, “I want these words. Number two, these words and these words.”

On my way into a meeting, Jessica, my executive assistant would be there. I say, “Jess, PowerPoint presentation.” This is a presentation on IT to the CEO of IT proposals. She would take it, “I got it, Mike.” She had the templates and all of that. I'd go into an hour meeting and on the way out, she'd have the first draft and it's a PowerPoint presentation printed out. I would go back to my desk, answer some emails, look at them, and say, “Change this and do that.”

On my way to the next meeting, I'd hand it back. Over the course of the day, I went from nothing to scribbling on pieces of paper to a PowerPoint presentation that was probably 90% done. Now, I could send that presentation to other people. To hold that thought, I used to tell my subordinate leaders at the highest level, “Better not let me catch you bend in keys.”

I'm okay if you go in and change happy to glad but if you're starting and creating it, and I'm seeing you traumatized over, “I can't get this font size right,” I'm going to be all over you. That's not what the corporation is paying you for. A finance guy, executive assistant, ops assistant, or whatever you want to call that person is worth their weight and gold as you know.

Develop Leaders: A finance guy, executive assistant, ops assistant, or whatever you call that person is worth their weight in gold.

The beauty for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs is they have a lot of fabulous virtual assistants now.

I was going there. Fidelis is just me and I have a VP of Ops, Nancy. She makes me look good continuously. She was a former Marine as well. She was one of my students at one point. I hired her husband into Kforce. He’s a great person. The rest of it, graphics, modules, PDFs, and bending electrons are all from Upwork. I found good people. I do a lot of book summaries for my clients.

I'm finding a book. This is a good book but I can't get executives to read a 400-page book. I especially can't ask them to do it before next week's session. What I do is I have good writers. I say, “That book right there, a 10,000-word executive summary.” They know my format. We've talked. Sure enough, a week later, it's to Mike Ettore. I pay them when I got it. I probably put four hours into it Ettore-sizing it. I send it to Nancy. I can write well, but colon and semicolon, that’s Nancy. I'm not good at that.

Nancy blesses it. She says, “It's good to go, Mike.” I go over to Upwork and format it in a PDF module. The next thing you know, we have a world-class book summary. I've outsourced everything except me looking at it and saying, “I would say it this way. I would say it that way.” I got to tell you, I have found talent on Upwork that is incredible. I'm doing well financially with the business, but it doesn't make sense for me to hire a full-time person that I'm only going to use for 3 or 4 hours a week.

I couldn't agree more and I'm so glad you brought that up because you can find wonderful people. Upwork is one that I use and Fiverr for some of my more creative stuff. Upwork is definitely on there. Loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and the last one is Vision, which Charles said, “It is nothing more than seeing what needs to be done and doing it because otherwise, you're only writing stuff down.” Talk to me about how you hone and craft your vision. How do you ignite your vision? How do you position the cast?

That's a big one for me. I trained as a Marine. There is something that goes all the way back to Clausewitz and Napoleon. The US Military has used something called The Principles of War for over 100 years and they're pretty standard among the services. If you follow these principles, the operation usually has a good chance of going well. If you violate them, you probably are not going to do all that. The very first principle of war, which I now call The Principle of Business is objective. What are you trying to accomplish? If you don't have that, you're punching in the dark. You're not going to hit anything. On a personal level and if you check my website, it has Mike Ettore. It's got my picture there and it says, “My purpose.”

If you read those 2 or 3 paragraphs, you'll know what the purpose of my life is. It's to train leaders while I'm alive and after I'm gone. Your dad is still training leaders. He is still impacting people because he left things behind. In that aspect, I am emulating your dad and other old-timers, so to speak. I'm sure he was emulating.

We all emulate Socrates, the Stoics, and the ancient guys that wrote things down because when it comes to the human condition, I find that these guys had it figured out 2,000 years ago. Probably the first leadership ever written was the Bible. If you look at it, there is not a heck of a lot of leadership situations that are not covered in that book if you apply to it. They're talking about humans back then and human nature. Hopefully, I gave you something.

The objective was what are you trying to accomplish? I love that you said the what word. We get a lot of this. “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?” If you don't know why you're showing up or why you're putting the uniform, you shouldn't have said, “What are you trying to accomplish,” because it's like a flight plan. If you can't tell me what you want to do, and you know this as a coach, I can't help you get there. Most people struggle with that because that takes a lot of introspection. That was the first principle of war. What were the other two?

There are several of them but what I'd like to reinforce is this. You're exactly right. We have something in the military called Commander's Intent. The intent is the what. To your point, nobody in a business, a company, a family, or whatever should ever wonder what the objective is. Objectives must be stated and unless you absolutely have to, a leader should refrain from stating how. Let your people come up creatively and do it.

You must state the objectives unless you have to. A leader should refrain from stating how. Let your people come up creatively and do it.

The analogy that I use in my book is it's been mandated from above that the goal for the sales force is to include top-line growth and gross profit. Go out and get us deals where there's more gross profit. The regional manager is on vacation, the office manager is sick, and the salesperson is out on a client and has a deal right in front of her. It's like, “You got to tell me if you're taking this deal right now.” She can't call her office manager. The regional guy is out but she knows the intent is to get deals that increase gross profit so she commits to the company.

When those two people come back from being sick or on vacation, they are like, “Yes.” What they don't want to do is come back and hear her say, “I had this deal, but you weren't there to give me permission.” They'd be like, “No, Sarah. Go for it.” I ask in the book and I put a little guilt trip on people, “Are your leaders, sales and non-sales, equipped or empowered to accomplish the what? Have you empowered them or are they sitting there waiting for explicit directions?”

Open the milk. Pour it into a glass. Drink it. Go wash your glass. You're not going anywhere quickly at all. I know you deal a lot with entrepreneurs. I find a lot of entrepreneurs who haven't learned leadership and the importance of delegation that when they delegate, they often delegate and dictate. They think they are training well, but what they are training is they're training robots that will respond to commands. That's bad. You want people to say, “I know what the intent or the vision.”

We're saying vision and intent. For the purpose of our discussion, it is the same thing. People should never wonder, “What is it that they want my team, my department, my region, my company? What's our goal? What's the mission? We agreed that we're going to do it this way, but that way is now on the ground level out in the sales force and the business arena. It seems like the bridge is out. We can't do it but we can still accomplish the intent by going around and skirting the issue.”

Never skirt ethics, character, or laws, but get creative. Entrepreneurs, I find, are the most creative people in figuring out needs and developing products, systems, and services, but they're often not all that attuned to engaging the creativity of their people and accomplishing the vision. It all goes back to leadership as a learned skill and everybody needs to accept the fact that they have to learn that skill.

It reminds me of my favorite Patton quote. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

Patton had it.

He was a tough man but the expectation was, “Message Garcia.” Whenever I ask people to do something and then they ask me 50 questions, I hand him a little Message to Garcia and I'm like, “Read this and you know what to do.”

To your earlier point, it was a great quote but what that implies is that the leader that he's talking to has teammates that are competent.

That's why it keeps going back to you. I think it was Patton too or one of them said, “Always delegate to lieutenants… provided you have excellent lieutenants.” I got to tell you and I'm sure everybody here who is reading, I don't want to have to write a process for, “Open the milk, get a glass, and pour it in,” yet a lot of people in the workforce now are like, “Well, well.” You have to get people with initiative too.

We can set the intent, but then we're adults. We're thinking. We have this frontal cortex. We have Google and everything. You got to have people with the initiative because if I spend every day writing down policies, I'm not too big to fail. I am not going to be in business. You got to be quick, especially for entrepreneurs. My lieutenants have to have that industriousness and enterprising. I can figure it out. Mike, this isn't rocket science. Anybody can figure this out but not if you're waiting to be told something.

I agree. The quality that you're describing as I label it is called Bias For Action. It s a big Marine Corps warfighting term. We say from the corporal all the way through the senior officer ranks, “You have to have a bias for action.” When we train for combat, we simulate real combat conditions. Real combat conditions mean, “The captain is not going to give you any instruction because the captain is dead. By the way, the radios don't work. The bridge that we are going to go across is not there.”

Those situations in combat always happen. There's a mandate. I think it might have been Patton. Somebody said, “No battle plan survives the first shot,” and it's true. You don't want a military leader out there facing that kind of uncertainty for the very first time in combat. We trained to it heavy. For example, going on nighttime raids and helicopters. It wasn't uncommon for our battalion commander to be there and surreptitiously kidnap a captain, “You come with me.”

Nobody knew the captain wasn't there. The helicopters fly away. They land, “Where the hell is the captain?” I saw that happen one time and the unit stayed there paralyzed. The captain was back in the COC. He wanted to see what the XO would say, “No, captain. I got it.” Another time, he put a unit out there. He gave us missions, but then he gave them a mission to do something. Block this bridge or something, knowing full well the bridge wasn't there.

They kept calling back for instructions and he wouldn't answer them so they just stayed there. Two other units had similar nebulous impossible missions. Despite the fact that they couldn't talk and received no instructions, they took action and did it right. He didn't chew anybody's throat out after that. He got us together. Tracey, it was continuous in that unit. I was a lieutenant. He would always throw stuff in the game to the point where I was involved in the liberation of Grenada.

I'm flying in now. It’s combat experience and flying at a low level over the ocean pre-dawn. I was the lead helicopter. I’m going to be the lead helicopter for my company. I was expecting to land in a large field, about four football fields large. I was supposed to land and go secure the Northeast corner. The rest of the company would come and then another company and we're going to start the operation. I'm ready to go. We got this plan. We got no maps because there were no maps of it. There was no real communication.

They fly us in treetops and I'm looking out of the window. It’s like an apocalypse now. I'm flying in and I see palm trees coming up. We pop over the palm trees. It starts landing and putting myself and my Marines on the side of a fenced-in soccer stadium. I'm like, “No.” It's like a shooting gallery. I go up to the crew chief and I was like, “No.” The squadron commander is a very experienced guy. I knew who he was. He turned around and said, “Go.” My first thought was, “Common on, Colonel. Not here. You're still playing with us.” My captain landed minutes later and said, “Mike, do you have any idea where you're at?”

I said, “I have no idea, sir. I don't know whether we're on the East side, the West side, the North side, or whatever.” We figured it out. We did not sit there and say, “Who's that?” That's a dramatic example but I would ask the people reading this, “Are your people sitting out there because you're at lunch and they can't talk? Are they sitting there paralyzed in that soccer stadium awaiting instruction?”

There were no instructions. I couldn't talk to anybody. The communications were out. People like us face these decisions all the time. I'm sure you had similar stuff in the military where you are tasked to do something. You generally agree that we're going to go down this route and then that route is not tenable anymore. It's up to Major Tracey and Captain Smith to figure it out.

I love that bias for action. It happens when I was out of the office for two days in St. Louis. I'm not here. My day is maxed up. I've got things going on and I love that everybody on the team has to have a bias for action. If I have to get involved, I don't want to get involved. Something is not right. We’ve been working together for years. I love that you put it. That's a great way.

For one final qualifier, we say in the Marines, “You have to have a bias for action, but that doesn't mean you run to your death. We've trained you. You know what the vision and the intent are. Use your judgment. We risk Marines’ lives. We don't gamble with Marines because gamble means they either live or they die. Risk means we might take some casualties.” Bias for action does not mean the entrepreneur just lets us people do whatever. They use judgment and they behave in a manner that still will accomplish the entrepreneurs' overall intent in their mission.

Develop Leaders: Bias for action does not mean the entrepreneur just lets people do whatever. They use judgment and behave in a manner that will still accomplish the entrepreneurs' overall intent in their mission.

I've heard it said, “You stay on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge.” We're in peacetime now. I'm an entrepreneur. Nobody should be falling on their sword. We talked about loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. We're going to open this up more. Any other leadership topics we have not hit on that you want to share? That's the first thing and number two, I want to talk about these four books that you wrote. I want you to unpack them. Is there anything else from a leadership perspective that you would like to share?

I would always go back to the very first chapters of my book. It’s the very first thing that I learned as a Marine leader and a listed officer. That is the absolute non-negotiable requirement for the character. I have a famous quote on the wall of my gym here. It's by Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher. It says, “A man's character is his fate.” If you think about it, some people skate through life and they get caught cheating way at the end. Some people never do, but not most.

Most people do succumb to what their character is. Good or bad, it’s how it ends up. I tell people, “As a leader, you do not want an organization that has a zero defects mentality with one exception, character. Within character, the subset of integrity.” I was taught as a Marine leader, “We know you're going to make mistakes. You're young. However, we will tolerate no lapses of integrity. If you get caught lying, cheating, or stealing, you will be out of this outfit probably within 30 days.”

I saw it happen. Some people say, “You can't do that in the business world.” I disagree. In my company, it was a highly ethical company and that'll be a bold statement to some of the military folks out there. Kforce was led by a CEO and a team of executives that had an identical emphasis on character, integrity, honesty, accuracy, and reporting in the Marine Corps. I saw this a few times during my tenure at Kforce senior executive or the leading salesperson. This guy himself is making seven figures.

He's bringing in tons of revenue but they did something that violated our core values. The company adopted some Marine terms. We'd be in an executive team meeting and someone would say, “I have an announcement. Charlie Smith is no longer with the firm. He was proven to be guilty of a lapse of special trust and confidence and breach of integrity.”

We may never find out what exactly happened if they got caught stealing or whatever the case may be. As I always say, as goes the leader, so goes the unit always. As you know, in a publicly traded company, the auditors come in every quarter. It's the dentist thing. It used to piss me off. When I first got out there, Tracey, it is like, “The auditors are coming in. We have to bring them in. It's this SEC regulation. They have to come in to make sure that we're not lying about what the business is doing.”

It's like, “Yes, that's exactly right, Mike.” Unfortunately, in the past, people did lie. To protect the shareholders, you have to spend all this money bringing in Ernst & Young. I'm like, “I get it. I understand.” They always come in about twice a year to do a high-level audit. One of the things that they ask is about tone from the top. They ask me, “Mike, you're a senior executive. To the best of your knowledge, would the senior executives or any leader in this company tolerate cheating, stealing, obfuscation of the truth, or whatever?” I'd say, “No. I don't even suspect that going on.”

They didn't stop there. They went all the way down the chain of command, the mail room, and the shipping dock. They would cherry-pick people like Wells Fargo, “Just sign these people up.” Volkswagen, “Make the emission stats work and all that.” In those companies that are found guilty of those things, it came from the top. They either encouraged or tolerated fudging. That’s the Enron. It’s collusion.

The honor code in the military academies was, “We will not lie, cheat or steal nor tolerate those who do.” I don't know if it's still there or not but the character is shared like leadership is. One of my favorite books is by John Maxwell and it's called, There's No Such Thing as "Business" Ethics. His point is ethics is ethics, be it spiritual or financial. Character is character. It's your core conviction. You can't separate it.

If your character has a malformation, it's coming out. As you said, it has no place in the organization because if the leaders at the top tolerate it, look at all this stuff going on. I can't look at what anybody else is doing. All we know is that we hold ourselves to a high level of integrity but I love the zero defect in character.

It has to be that way, especially with the entrepreneurs reading right now. I tell people, whether they realize it or not in any organization, the minute there's another person, it's a leadership environment. Whether they are consciously doing it or not, a culture is being formed. The leader has to lead by example in everything that she says, does, encourages, and tolerates. Those things produce standards. It’s like, “We can get away with this here. She tolerates that.”

Those standards become the culture. One way or the other, a company or an organization has a culture. It just may not be what the leader would hope it to be. Cultures do grow automatically, unlike a lot of people. “It won't grow around trees,” I say cultures do grow on trees. In bad cultures, the vacuum will be failed. If you don't create, groom, and cultivate a good culture, a less-than-good culture is sure to surface. It’s human nature.

In bad cultures, the vacuum will fail. A less-than-good culture will surface if you don't create, groom, and cultivate a good culture. It's human nature.

The organization is neither good nor bad. It's amoral. It's the individuals in the entity. As you said, that's all characters. That's what becomes the culture because if it's not something living or breathing, which is us, a program doesn't have a culture. Money doesn't have a culture but as individuals. I love that you unpacked that and tied culture to the character because everybody likes to say, “My culture is this and that. How's your character?”

That gets personal. That's where we get into morals, ethics, and decision-making. I can remember one time I went in, “Have you ever broken the law?” I'm a rule abider. I'm like, “Of course not.” They're like, “You never went over the speed limit or ran a stop sign?” I'm like, “Those laws.” They're like, “Yeah.” I'm like, “Okay. Yeah.” It's the little white things and I’ll go back into that character bucket. Mike, tell me and our readers about your books.

My main book is called Trust-Based Leadership: Marine Corps Leadership Concepts for Today's Business Leaders. It's a big book. It’s 574 pages. I wrote that as a textbook for my leadership and executive coaching. I do a lot of leadership training for executive teams and leaders at all levels. My earlier statement is I joined the business world in '99. I joined a publicly traded company. I didn't know what a publicly traded company was.

Trust-Based Leadership: Marine Corps Leadership Concepts for Today's Business Leaders

At one point they said, “Mike, we're going to put AP. You're going to take over AP.” I'm like, “What's AP?” I didn't know what accounts payable was. Two years in, I became the CIO. It was a 174-person technology group with a $45 million budget. It’s a failing group. I had no formal skills in tech, but I knew it was going to work because they didn't need tech skills. They needed leadership and organization. The whole premise of the book is leadership is leadership. I was new to the business world but I was not new to leadership.

I looked to my left and right very quickly and realized I've had much more formal leadership training than anybody here. There are some good executives and leaders here that are very good leaders. There are also some, through no fault of their own, that don't know the fundamentals. That's a different issue. That's a training issue but I realized I could apologize for my lack. For 4 or 5 years, I was in charge of human resources, marketing, and internet operations. I ordered cash. We are a big group. We processed $20 million a day and payables and all of that.

Most of the non-sales organization's units in a $1.3 billion company, I had training and experience in none of them. We did well because they didn't need me to be a marketer. We had people down there that had the expertise. What I was able to do was lead, synergize, make them cohesive, make sure the vision was stated, and they all were aware of it. I just lead. It’s the executive mindset versus the person turning the wrench.

My job was to make sure everybody had the right wrenches. We are turning the wrenches on the right things in every department and we were going to end up with the car we ordered at the end of the process. By the way, what kind of wrenches are we going to be using three years from now? The mechanics are too busy turning wrenches. They don't have time to do that. I'm very big on that and entrepreneurs have to be very careful about this because they don't have the bandwidth. They don't have the infrastructure.

That's the big book. If people want it, it's on Amazon. It’s Trust-Based Leadership. They can Google me. I'm all over the leadership presence. It's not meant to be read from cover to cover. You can go through and skip around and all that but it has served me admirably in my training and coaching. I also wrote one called Principles of War for Corporate America. Here's why this military operation worked or failed, and here's why GE blew it, Netflix, Blockbuster, and things like that. I make the connection.

I tell them, “If you follow these principles, you have a real good chance of being successful.” Because you're human and if you're successful, before you know it, you might fall victim to the next book, Victory Disease: How Great Nations, Armies and Companies Fail. When was the last time you saw a Sears store? You haven't. They're gone. Also, Kmart. There are so many good ones that are gone. GE is off of the Dow. You get my point. If you read the book, you got a chance to spiff up your leadership.

If you lead well and follow the principles of business, you have a chance of your operations going well but then you might get arrogant, complacent, and catch the Victory Disease. Read them all and triangulate. The fourth book, I alluded to it. I'm a huge fan of the Stoics, the ancient philosophers. They did have it figured out thousands of years ago.

I sent an eBlast out for my father. Somebody is like, “You and your father were both stoics.” I'm like, “I love that.” For the readers, what the stoic is?

There was a group of philosophers, mostly Greeks, some Romans, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, and all that. They go back from 2,500 years ago, a couple older than that to 200 or 300 AD. These are the old wise men and they figured it out. I became a fan. I was a young Marine and I saw an article on Admiral Stockdale. Admiral Stockdale had been a POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for seven years. He was in solitary confinement for almost seven years. They physically broke him, but they never mentally broke him.

Prior to going to Vietnam, he was a very learned guy and he became a fan of the Stoics. He said, “It was on my nightstand. I used to read it. I embraced it.” He gets shot down on the way down in his parachute. He's wounded. He's in the injection sheet going down. I'm paraphrasing, Tracey. He says something like, “Into the world of Marcus Aurelius, for at least five years. He knew I am going to get tortured.” This is not going to be fun because he’s ejected from North Vietnam. “This is going to be hell and I'm going to get through this through the teachings and the wisdom of these guys.”

He survived and I read about this. He got interviewed by a famous leadership author. He said, “Tell me Admiral, who survived the Hanoi Hilton.” He goes, “That's a little bit complicated. I can tell you who didn't survive. It’s the optimists.” The guy was like, “I expected you to say the optimist would survive.” He said, “Let me tell you why they didn't survive. We were getting brutally tortured. They broke my arms. He still couldn't walk right when he was released. They tortured the heck out of these guys. They hung them up by their arms backwards. It was brutal and inhuman. The guys that said, ‘We're going to be home by Christmas,’” and then Christmas came and went.

They are like, “Easter.” He said, “After a couple of years of that, some of them were so brokenhearted that they died.” Here's what became known as the Stockdale principle. He said, “I took a different view and I taught others this view. I would tell myself, ‘You're going to get out of this. You're going to see your wife and children again. You're going to be free again one day, but not today. Today and tomorrow, you're probably going to get tortured, starved, beaten, or whatever.’ It's there, but I'm under no illusion that it's going to happen soon.”

He said, “I had faith it was going to happen, but I also knew I got work to do. I have to live. My mission is to live to reach that. That became the Stockdale principle. I read that as a young guy and fell in love with it. I read his books and all that. The book that I wrote is called Ancient Wisdom. I have a large following on LinkedIn. For 100 days in a row, I posted a stoic quote and for what it's worth, Mike Ettore’s insights on it.

Ancient Wisdom

After 100 days, I took them. I packaged them in a book. I say in the preface of it, “I wrote this book for my children and my great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren.” My point is, I told my kids, “If you read this book and what I say about these things, you get an inside look at how my old man's mind works. Maybe some of the things I did said caused you to do hard on yourself as children. It makes sense one day.” I'll leave it at this with the stoics.

My advice to leaders at every level with the stoics and everything is, I maintain that as an old guy now, every mistake that I've made personally, professionally, and every mistake that anybody could make as a person and as a leader has already been made countless times by millions of people, sometimes for thousands of years. All we have to do is read and talk to others and mind their experiences.

We can avoid repeating easily avoidable mistakes because when I read the Stoics, I'm like, “I wished I knew that twenty years ago in relationships, business, life, or whatever.” They've got it figured out. There's a saying, a quote, or some guidance for everything, which tells me what they went through as human beings is no different than what I'm going through. The world is much different but when you deal with people, life's problems, and getting disillusioned, they've got all the answers right there. That's pretty much it.

Now, a lot of people are like, “It's your adversity quotient.” The importance now of resiliency. One of my top ten books is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning, which is very similar to, “We're in the hell of a concentration camp. You will find a way to live, otherwise, you won't make it.” Why did he make it? A lot didn't when they were under that stuff.

It’s all about perspective. I would encourage people to do hard things personally and professionally. Get used to dealing with adversity and/or challenges because eventually, you're going to have them for real. As I said about the combat Marine, the first time he gets tired, sore, scared, or whatever should not be for real. He should have felt that in training and all of that. I'm a big advocate of people pushing themselves and physically working out. I'd be curious if you're experience is the same way, Tracey. I deal with high-level executives and I don't think I've ever met one that was grossly overweight or was an alcoholic.

You got to be in fighting form in all aspects.

My executive team is all state college grads. Nobody is from a pedigree school. They are very accomplished people. They are different age groups but every single one of them exercised. Most of them, in the morning before the day started. They were disciplined at what they ate and in life. There are common denominators here that I tell people. I think your dad said it and other people said it. People that are not disciplined in their personal lives are rarely disciplined and successful in their professional lives. They go hand-in-hand.

This brings me to another one of my favorite quotes from our contrails in the Air Force. It may have been Patton again. “If you can't get them to salute when you tell them to salute or wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?” If you can't control physically something like your appetite, how are you going to be able when the pressure is on to make those big decisions? The devil is in the details.

Yes and that goes back to what I'm saying. A leader leads by example in everything she says, does, encourages, or tolerates. For example, we hit hard times during the dot-com crash in Kforce. We used to have our executive meetings on Friday and it was an all-day meeting so they would bring in lunch. It wasn't a catered lunch that GE executives probably had, but it was a catered lunch. There would be chicken, tacos, or whatever. We cut back big time in the whole company. We were telling people, “Use the back of your paper like scratch paper.” As executives, we had to lead the way. We stopped those lunches.

A leader leads by example in everything she says, does, encourages, or tolerates.

When we started again, they were just sandwiches. People asked. They would come up and ask, “Are the executives eating lunch? “They eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That's what they're eating now.” I have a thing in my book where I wanted to lead by example. We were so tight on money that I used to use these pens. The pen, if we bought them in bulk might've cost $0.87 a piece, but I made a big deal out of it for about three years.

I didn't buy new pens. I'd made Jessica buy me refills for the pens. I saved $0.25 and I told everybody that would listen. I've had this pen for three years. I've refilled it eight times. I'm leading by example. When people see the leaders, when you say, “Tighten your belts,” they damn sure better see the leader tighten your belt as well or you've set up hypocrisy and all is lost.

Mike, what's the best way for people to reach out and stay connected with you?

My website has all my contact info. I have a large following on LinkedIn. For those that don't know this, LinkedIn has turned into a world-class social media platform. There are world-class people like you in their daily sharing of insights. I have pissed that when I was young, LinkedIn and YouTube didn't exist because, between LinkedIn and YouTube, the knowledge of the world is at your fingertips.

Come find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me or follow me. You'll get every post that I make. I usually make it every day. I have the Fidelis Leadership Podcast once a week where I introduce and interviewed you, and other notables. If they Google Mike Ettore, I'm a leadership guy. I've been out there for years. They have every right to say, “I don't know if this guy is any good, but he’s been around a long time.”

You have your books and courses. Let’s say I'm not a C-Suite person, but who's your ideal client out there? We have a lot of people. Do you coach individually? Can they do online stuff? What if they're not with a bigger organization? Can they reach out to you for your services?

They can. I have a couple of executive coaching engagements right now where it's one executive from a company and another executive from another company. Those are usually six weeks at a time. Most of them sign up for another six weeks. I am doing leadership training with two leadership teams with 6 people in one company and 12 people from another. That is a ten-week leadership course using trust-based leadership.

Both of those groups are the second group from their respective companies. I did their executives first. They said, “We want you to do the next level.” One company said, “You're going to do another third level for us.” That answers the question. I train executives. I train leaders at every level and I like to get the young ones. It’s because I tell people, “If I can get to you in your 20s and 30s, you won't need an executive coach in a remedial sense when you're in your 50s and 60s. You'll need one that can help you get better, but you won't need one to save your job.” That's me being a bit of a smart ass, but reach out to me.

Right now, I don't do the online stuff yet. I'm going there. What I'm going to start doing is start opening up a quarterly class where if you want to get this trust-based leadership ten-week course, here's when it is. I'll put it on LinkedIn. I'll probably cap it at 10 or 12 people. Have the website and all that. You come, you find out, and you sign up for it. It’s like, “Here's a Zoom invitation. Let's go,” and we'll go.

I'm saying for online courses, I do online courses because everybody says, “Do online courses,” but people still want the interactive portion. You can still have the recurring stuff or study ahead, but they want that connection, especially with somebody like you. I'm not saying, “Go do it,” but I look forward to those quarterly classes. I think that would be brilliant. I need to talk to you about a couple of upcoming military gigs I got coming with you on panels and stuff like that too. Mike, is there anything else? Any parting words of wisdom?

No, I can't think of any. We talked about it a lot and love it. We've been going for a long time. You said a half hour but we've been going a lot more than a half hour but I think you love it.

I got so much written. I've got events coming up. I'm speaking and I'm like, “I'm lifting that.” I know our leaders out there will be so thankful for this. You are just a wealth of knowledge, Mike. Thank you so much.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Usually, in that ten-week course, and I've done many of them now, in the fourth session towards the end, I get all excited. I'll stop and I’ll say, “Let me ask you something.” They're all looking at me on Zoom, “Can you folks tell how much I love doing this?” “Yes.” I'm like, “I feel bad about charging you. I love this so much.”

I would do it for free. It's not free but thank you. I love doing this. This is my whole reason for being on Earth at this point in my life. Thank you for giving me another opportunity. My great-grandchildren's grandchildren are going to see this episode. Whatever the internet looks like 100 years from now, they're going to see us.

I'm so thankful because I know you are going to be a tremendous resource to our readers out there. Let me wrap it up real quick, Mike. To our readers out there, thank you for being a part of our Tremendous Tribe. If you like what you learned, please be sure and hit the subscribe button. We'd love it if you'd share.

Connect with Mike, get his books, and also the honor of a five-star review would be tremendous. I want to thank you all out there for paying the price of leadership. I think you got some insights and information here that we're in there in the battle with you. Keep up the tremendous fight and thank you all for being a part of our lives. Have a tremendous rest of the day.

Important Links

• Mike Ettore - LinkedIn

• Fidelis Leadership Group

• Upwork

• Trust-Based Leadership: Marine Corps Leadership Concepts for Today's Business Leaders

• Principles of War

• Victory Disease: How Great Nations, Armies and Companies Fail

• Ancient Wisdom

• Man's Search For Meaning

• Fidelis Leadership Podcast

• https://Amzn.to/3qmEoSq

About Mike Ettore

Mike has served in leadership roles for over 45 years. He’s earned a reputation for being an exceptionally effective leader and is known for achieving superior results in a wide range of challenging environments. In addition to having retired as a Marine Corps Infantry officer and decorated combat leader, he also served successfully as a C-level executive in Kforce, Inc. (NASDAQ: KFRC), a publicly traded professional services firm with annual revenue in excess of $1 Billion.

While serving as Chief Services Officer, Mike was responsible for the majority of Kforce’s corporate support departments and functions, including Human Resources, Information Technology, the Program Management Office, Marketing and Social Media, Procurement, Corporate Real Estate, and the domestic and Manila-based Financial Shared Services teams. He also served as the executive sponsor for strategic planning and most of the logistical activities associated with the integration of acquired companies and the divestiture of organic business units.

Over the course of his Marine Corps and business careers, Mike was highly regarded for being an exceptionally effective mentor and developer of leaders. After retiring from Kforce in 2013, Mike founded Fidelis Leadership Group and has devoted himself to his greatest passion, helping others develop into World Class Leaders. He has successfully coached and mentored executives and senior leaders from a wide range of industries and is sought after for his expertise in all aspects of leadership development and the creation of leadership training programs.

In addition to being a lifelong student of leadership, Mike has earned Master’s degrees in Business Administration and Management. He is also the author of four books devoted to the topics of leadership and leadership development.

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

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

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

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson - Leaders On Leadership

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Important Links

• Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson

• Dr. Madeline Frank – Past Episode

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

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

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

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

About Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson

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

Episode 160 - James Carpenter Barnes - Leaders On Leadership

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

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James Carpenter Barnes - Leaders On Leadership

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're being prepared, plain and simple.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm looking forward to it.

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

 Important Links

• James H. Carpenter Barnes

• TheYouBelongFoundation.org

• Life-Imagined.org

• YouTube – James Barnes

• Creative Motion Television

• The NOW Network

• ADtv

About James H. Carpenter Barnes

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

Episode 159 - Dianna Booher - Leaders On Leadership

In this episode, Dianna Booher shares what it takes to be a real leader—which is to expand influence through communicating exemplarily and building confident trust! Dianna is a hall-of-fame speaker, a bestselling author of 49 books, a leadership communication & executive presence expert, a book writing & publishing coach, among the Global Gurus Top 30 Communication Experts, and among Marshall Goldsmith's Top 100 Coaches. Tune in to learn all about Dianna’s insights about paying the price of leadership, her passion for writing, and how effective communication is still the key to being a great leader!

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Dianna Booher - Leaders on Leadership

I am truly excited because my guest is Dianna Booher. Dianna, welcome.

Thank you. It's great to be with you.

Thank you so much. She goes way back with The Joneses. She knew my mom and dad for many decades. She’s a veteran speaker and author. I'm going to tell you all about her before we dive right into this. She helps organizations communicate clearly, and she helps leaders expand their influence through a strong executive presence, occasionally by her own published book, which we are going to unpack here too.

She's the bestselling author of 49 books, some from Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and McGraw Hill, and these have been published in 62 Foreign Languages. Her latest books include Faster, Fewer, Better Emails, Communicate Like a Leader, Creating Personal Presence, What More Can I Say? and Communicate With Confidence. Her clients include more than 1/3 of Fortune 100 companies. Dianna, I cannot wait to hear what you have to share about paying the price of leadership. Welcome again.

Thank you.

You knew my father. He was a very pragmatic and jubilant man, but he also knew what it takes to pay the price of leadership. One of his speeches was called Just That, and he did this many years ago, and it's still one of our bestsellers. In it, he unpacks the four tenets of what leaders are going to have to be paying in order to be paying the price of leadership. The first of those is loneliness, and we have all heard, “It's lonely at the top. Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” but can you unpack for us what loneliness has meant to you throughout your life and maybe share some tools for any of our readers out there that may be in a season of loneliness?

I had a company, a training firm until 2017 when I sold it, but loneliness there encompassed a lot of angst around cashflow. When you are a small firm, and we were about fifteen employees at max, every time there is a dot-com boat when we went through that, there's an energy crisis. We had mostly Fortune 500 organizations. We had about eight major oil companies. When they went through a big crunch as happens over and over, there's always a cashflow problem. That's something you can't talk to your employees about because you don't want them to go, “I’ve got to go look for another job,” so you swept that out.

There's usually a lot of travel involved with most organizations. With mine certainly as a consultant and as a professional speaker and even going on or off the tours, I would be on the road 3 or 4 weeks, sometimes 10 days in a row, not even having the weekend off. That was part of the loneliest time. If you are setting up partnerships from executive to executive, you want to show up in their office.

Now, people do more of that via Zoom because of COVID, but traveling was always a huge thing. Probably the third area that was the loneliest was when you had a poor performer and you had to do something about it. You can't talk to other people in the organization to say, “I'm thinking about letting Jim, Tom, Harry, Carol, or whatever go.” Those are lonely decisions that you have to make.

Thank you for sharing that because sometimes people look at great leaders and think, “Surely they were able to motivate everybody.” It's like we got the good, bad, and ugly. Like everybody else, we got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. I love that you talked about cashflow, you have to keep that quiet.

I'm working with a client right now and that's one of the things that their boss does constantly vent on. “We are rich. We are poor,” and that's exhausting. You want to be transparent but I love that you share that, as leaders, there are certain things that we have to burden alone. If we need to get expert advisement, we get expert advisement.

This was another big energy crunch and the high-tech IBM was a big client of ours. HP was a big client. We had a lot of people that are in the industry. They're well-known and written up in the media. We are going through tough times and we are going to cancel any unusual or unnecessary activity like a speech, consulting, coaching, and training. During those times, I finally got to the point where I'm going to open the books. I'm going to show employees the profit level here and how it's dropped during this crunch and that helps, but they do not bear being responsible for everybody's salary.

That's a great point. You don't want them to know the details of that. Talk to me about when you sold the company in 2017. Did you feel a sense of loneliness after that? I know you reshaped yourself and we'll talk about that with your vision, but did you feel lonely then?

Not really because I was ready to turn loose of that company. Not loneliness after that happened, but up to the point of discussing it, yes. Not having a peer. In the past, I have been part of mastermind groups and CEO executive groups, but at that particular time, I was not. This was a heavy decision to turn over your life's work to somebody else.

Charlie was turning it over to you and that was great. That was an ongoing feeling. He had a feel for you, your character, and your faith, and knowing the integrity would be maintained. You don't have that when you are selling an outside, your family outside, a good friend, or a best friend. That was a huge decision to decide to turn over my reputation to my training clients and my work and all my books. I have kept the rights too. We have taken those books and we have created more than 200 other products. You are turning over the integrity and the reputation for those other products and those trainings for with somebody else that you don't know. That was a lonely decision for sure.

I love that you brought up the mastermind groups and for our leaders out there, every leader we have been on here talks to it. I have mine. I have my coach that I pay. I have my mastermind groups that are so important because they are going to be some things you have to discuss cohort to cohort outside the company and familial bonds, and get some advisement and counsel. Thank you for that, Dianna.

First of all, we talked about loneliness, and then he says weariness. Charles would say in his funny way, “My problem isn't staying motivated. It's keeping other people from demotivating me.” That's worked with people. We get it, but he was always like, “You are going to encounter people that are always doing more than what they need to do, and then you are going to have people that are not carrying their weight.” As a leader, it stops with us, so we got to pick it up. We can't let anything fall. How do you combat and deal with weariness?

That's probably the weakest part of my life as a leader because I traveled, doing research for the books, doing author tours, and then traveling to do speeches and training. I was often on the road. I have already mentioned how often and that is very lonely, even though you have 40 other people that have flown in executives.

For example, IBM would fly in executives from all over the world and put them in this week-long program. There are people all around you but they are temporary people. They are not people whom you've built a connection and relationship with. They don't know about your business. It's a very surface interaction every night over dinner for five nights. The awareness comes from not having that support group, but it also comes from long hours.

Weariness as a businessperson comes not only from not having that support group but also from long hours of work.

I never managed to work just 40 or 45 hours a week. As a business owner, I was always working 55 to 60 hours. Sometimes on occasion, it would be 80 hours, but most of the time 55 to 60 hours a week. That wears you down after a while. You get physically exhausted and that's when I would practically sleep all day Saturday to catch up and that's not true. Physically, you can't catch up by sleeping it all in one day, but you trick your mind to think, “I can do that.” That's a weird time because of the long hours.

When you are chasing your passion or honing in your vision, there are times when you have to will your body to say, “We got this much downtime and we are going to keep going.” I think of Charles and the pace that he kept. It was relentless up until his last breath. He may not have been physically moving but spiritually and mentally, he wanted to finish that race strong. I love that you talked about being conscious.

I was going to mention also as an author that weariness sets in. I write a book in about three weeks, and most people go, “What?” I have a process that I used to use in course development that I intuitively transferred to books and I do write quickly. That means locking myself away, clearing the calendar for 2 to 3 weeks, and writing 12 to 14 hours a day. There's no rest period in a meeting or talking to somebody. There's no mental downtime. My dad used to talk to me about working so hard and working so long. When I was growing up, he would always say about homework, “You can't go out and play.”

I was a big basketball player, “You can't play basketball until you get your homework done. You always have to have your homework done.” Now when I have grown a company and I'm working long hours, my dad's always saying, “Slow down. Don't work so hard.” I said, “My work is never done. Remember how you told me to do my homework before I could play? I'm a writer. It's never done. You continue to go, rewrite, perfect, and polish.” Even when you send it off to the publisher, you think, “It's still not done. I could still have improved that.” There's that mental drive and that mental stress that being the best that you can be is wearing on your mind.

Leadership Communication: As a writer, the work is never done. You just continue to go and rewrite and perfect and polish. Even when you send it off to the publisher, it's still not done.

I know some people take a month off. How do you recharge?

Getting through the book is recharging. When I'm working on a long book, I drive fourteen hours a day until I get it done. Doing everything else is relaxation to me. What most people would consider play, I don't necessarily spend a lot of time on a hobby. My hobby is reading for my grandkids, but I love my job so much. I'm so passionate about writing that doing anything that's not that is a mental rest, like cooking a meal.

I don't normally cook. My husband does most of the cooking. If I decide I need a rest, then I go into the kitchen and bake something or cook, and I consider that's off. People might think that's work. For me, it's not work. I like visiting with my parents. That's a relief because I know I'm doing something for them. I'm helping them. That's a downtime.

Loneliness and weariness. The next term he used is abandonment. We think that abandonment gets a negative stereotype for those of us in pet rescue, abandoned as a child, or fear of abandonment. He would say abandonment is stopping doing what you like and want to think about and do in favor of what you ought and need to.

I remember saying, “Dad, you are so successful.” He's like, “I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success.” I'm like, “What?” He kept saying, “You got to abandon. You've got to hone it in.” Your books and products, you probably got 100 million people. Can you talk about this? Can you do this? Can you do a book on this? How do you stay so tightly focused?

That is tough. When I brought in a general manager, one of his first comments is, “You are doing 1,000 things. How can you stop doing 1,000 things? We need to focus.” I finally got aboard with that, but it took me a while to do that. I always felt like I was called and I know I was called. I know God called me to write. I had a very unusual experience when that came through very strongly and clear.

Anytime I was on the road speaking or doing training, I felt like I was abandoning what God had called me to do. The logistics, even like you say a show, there's a lot of preparation for that. You've got to send information or here's a description. Tune in to some past episodes so you get the feel of the show. Any little thing like that is logistics. Publishing and training have the same logistics. They are a “waste of time” because I'm not writing another book. I know they are essential. I agree with your dad about feeling like you are abandoning your calling.

As you said, the calling is intrinsic but then you have to have where the rubber meets the road. You have to have the resources. Jesus had His anointing but He still needed His disciples out doing their thing because otherwise, the word is written down and shared. You go here. I love that. It is essential. For leaders, that's a great point.

Even the management task or the task that I liked the least. I was one of those, “Here's the project, here's the goal, go do it and let me know when it's done.” That's probably not the best management philosophy in life, but one thing I did not enjoy is telling people how to do something. I say, “Here's the goal, and here's the end product. Here are your resources, budget, and deadline. Please go do it,” and that gave me less sense of I'm wasting time.

I love that you linked abandonment to delegation. General Patton said, “Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” It’s exactly what you said. If you have the right follower, you got to have a follower that says, “Boss, give me the big picture and I will take it over the goal line.” Not somebody that says, “You have to tell me every day what to do.” Your bench has to be full of self-starters, and I would think of the creative space it would be. You did a pretty good job. Perhaps abandonment, you need to look at your delegation and see what you can offload to other people.

Our tendency is to offload things we don't like to do and that's good when we can do that. We probably should be offloading things that we don't do well. We might enjoy it but we don't do well.

We have the tendency to offload things. It’s good when you can do what you don’t like, but we probably should be offloading things that we just don't do.

Loneliness, awareness, abandonment, and last of all is vision. I can remember sitting under people like you and everybody else growing up. I'm like, “This is like Nostradamus with these people. They’re visionary.” My dad was like, “No. It's just seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” I'm like, “I'm an operations girl. I can get my head wrapped around this.” Talk to me about what vision means to you, and also, I want to go back to something you said earlier about how you got the calling to write because clearly, that was a vision given to you.

As I said, when I started out being multi-focused, people would call and say, “Do you want to do an online course?” “I can do that.” “Do you want to create this big webinar series?” “I can do that.” “Do you want to do public seminars on publishing around the country?” “Yes, I can do that.” I was so scattered that it was so frustrating.

Once I got focused to say, “It's okay. God called me to do this. What I do well is write in communication coaching, coaching presenters, and things like that, but that's the umbrella.” Even the book writing is under the umbrella of communication because I'm helping other people communicate their vision, their management philosophy, or their idea of life balance. It's still under that umbrella of communication, but focusing tightly on what I do well which is right. That's a skill that God has given me. I feel better about that, and I feel like that is my vision for where my influence is and where I can most impact other people.

I love that you talked about it being under the umbrella because a lot of people scattered singularity, but then there are people that are multi-gifted. They are not going to want to do, “Dianna, you got to be a speaker. You can't write books.” That's not going to happen. I love how you link it all up to the one overarching vision. What's next? Talk to me about after selling your company and what you are doing now with the book camps.

I have a folder that is thick, so I could be writing ideas. I love to help other people get their idea and meet their dream. So many people call and they are so excited. “I have wanted to write this book for fifteen years, and now that I'm retired or I'm in my second career, I want to do that.” I love helping them as well. I have been doing Booher Book Camps. It's a three-day event where people come and they bring their idea. Keep a very small and it's virtual, so there are only six of us at max online.

We can help you outline your book, do your book proposal, and query the whole thing in three days, and that's real exciting. I'm very passionate about that because it's allowing me to deal with writing and publishing in that whole industry and staying up to date. Some people say that they like to work at this and that or the other. I always say, “I'd rather write than eat,” and I love to eat. I do love to eat but I love to write and help people write their books.

I love that at this stage of your life that you got it all back down to your true original love and calling. I love that you did all those other things because I know you love writing, but you still are a phenomenal leader, and other leaders need to learn from you. As a communication expert, if you are not a good communicator, you can forget about being a leader type thing.

How leaders get their job done is to communicate with other people. If they cannot communicate and motivate other people, they can't lead. It's essential.

If they cannot communicate and motivate other people, they can't lead.

Now we covered vision. For our readers out there that I'm sure are hanging on this every word, are there any other leadership tidbits or nuggets that you would like to leave them with?

No, other than empowering your people. I know that's a catchphrase. Everybody is saying that, but in these last few years, I have run into so many organizations who have let people work at home, and now they don't quite trust them because they can't see them. They have usurped power back where they could make a decision, call somebody back, and to give a discount if a customer had a hard time.

I'm seeing leaders not do that so much anymore. The lower-ranking person who may be interacting online with the customer or on the phone does not have that power. As strong leaders, they have to go back to trusting their employees, building trust, and building that connection so that they do feel empowered to take care of the customer.

Leadership Communication: A strong leader goes back to trusting their employees, building that connection, so they feel empowered to take care of the customer.

Thank you for that. It does take a secured and evolved leader for that. Where can people get in touch with you?

On my website. I'm on social media everywhere, but BooherResearch.com. If you want to go directly to the Book Camp, I have also that domain, BooherBookCamp.com.

Dianna, thank you so much. It was so great to connect with you again as a sister. You are my idol. I hope I can grow up and be half as tremendous as you. You've been a dear friend of my family. I go back and look at some old pictures. I had everything digitized, and you are in many of them with my mother and father.

I love them. They are precious people and role models for me. Your dad specifically because we were in a mastermind group, but he was particularly a role model for me.

Thank you, Dianna. For our readers out there, thank you so much for tuning in to the show. If you like what you read, please be sure and hit the subscribe button. Share it with somebody else, and we would be honored if you would give us a five-star review. Until then, I want you to reach out to Dianna. Also, if you have a book inside of you, I want you to reach out to Dianna. Check out her books on Amazon. To our leaders out there, I want to thank you all for continuing to pay the price of leadership. Have a tremendous rest of the day.

 Important Links

• Dianna Booher

• Faster, Fewer, Better Emails

• Communicate Like a Leader

• Creating Personal Presence

• What More Can I Say?

• Communicate With Confidence

• Booher Book Camps

• www.LinkedIn.com/In/DiannaBooher

• Amazon – Dianne Booher Books

About Dianna Booher

Dianna Booher helps organizations communicate clearly and leaders to expand their influence by a strong executive presence—and occasionally by their own published book. She’s the bestselling author of 49 books (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill), published in 62 foreign-language editions. Her latest books include Faster, Fewer, Better Emails; Communicate Like a Leader; Creating Personal Presence; What More Can I Say? and Communicate With Confidence. Clients include more than one-third of Fortune 500 companies.

Episode 155 - Sylvia K. Kalyebara - Leaders Of Leadership

Even as we’re progressing as a society, there are still societal stigmas that need to be broken. Our guest in this episode took leadership in fighting the stigma attached to people with disability. Sylvia K. Kalyebara is the founder of Stars Ministries Uganda, where she serves alongside families taking care of people with disabilities, especially children. Here, she sits down with Dr. Tracey Jones to share how she found her mission and started her ministry and how she continues to share the word of God to help show love and encouragement. Join Sylvia as she tells us the challenges she faced as a leader and how she deals with them and continues to inspire.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Sylvia K. Kalyebara - Leaders Of Leadership

I cannot be more excited because my guest is very special. This is her first-ever show. She's coming directly from you all the way from Uganda. She’s a beautiful sister in Christ that I met a few years ago because I was a cohort with her husband, Nicholas Kalyebara, at Lancaster Bible College in our doctoral program. They were out for where he got to walk the stage and a few years ago, I got to meet Nicholas's fabulous wife, Sylvia. Sylvia, welcome.

Thank you, Tracey.

Sylvia is a wife, a mother of three, and an unbelievable leader. She's also going to share with you about her Stars Ministry in Uganda, where she takes in and cares for disabled children. You're going to be so blessed by hearing what she has seen in her heart and is doing for that. Sylvia, it's great to see you again.

Thank you, Tracey. It's good to see you too.

Thank you, sister. Let's get right into it. The folks are anxious to learn about your perspective on leadership. My father gave a speech many decades ago called The Price of Leadership. We have it in a little booklet form if you want to check it out on our website, Tremendous Leadership. He said, "If you're going to be a leader, you're going to have to pay a price like anything in life."

The first price he said that you're going to have to encounter and pay as a leader is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. As with all leaders, even Jesus, the ultimate leader, encountered a season of loneliness. Can you unpack for us what loneliness looks like for you as a leader and maybe a time in your life where you encountered it and maybe some words of advisement for our leaders that are reading?

Thank you, Tracey. Loneliness in leadership. I have been serving the Stars for years now. It's a unique ministry. In our Ugandan context, there are no ministries that are for children who have disabilities, especially in the church. That in itself is so lonely because I don't have people that I would share the challenges with that I am finding in the community.

The people that I learned from are from the ministry in America. It's in a different context. The context here has its own challenges. We deal with things like stigma for children or even just the families that have people with disabilities, which causes loneliness. When you need to talk to someone, need to be encouraged, and let out what you are feeling in your heart at that moment, there is no one you can talk to. You feel no one is going to understand what you are going through. That's one of the moments of loneliness I go through as I lead a ministry for children with disabilities.

I love that you brought that up because, for the readers in countries where there are assets and resources, either through the government, church, or nonprofits, to help this, you truly encounter loneliness that is different. Sometimes we feel lonely because we're the only ones with this idea, but you are lonely in carrying out the work God has laid on your heart. I know you come to the states and gather support, but how else do you get through that time of loneliness?

In dealing with loneliness, use opportunities to talk to anyone that comes in contact with you.

I get through that time of loneliness through prayer and talking to my husband. I do talk to my husband quite a lot. I also use opportunities to talk to anyone that comes in contact with me. My staff will tell you that I talk about what I do quite often. My husband, at one time, mentioned, "Sometimes I also have things I need to tell you. You keep telling me about Stars Ministry all the time. I also need to be listened to because I am lonely. I need to hear what other people have to say. I need to hear their advice.” It just comes out. I keep talking about it to get out of it.

I love that you're saying that because for the other readers out there that may be in resource constraints area, this is not a dig or anything, but in Uganda, what it is with what you're doing and how you're the first at this? We think about children with disabilities and that's such a rich area in the United States where there are so many telethons, drives, ministries, and stuff like that. There is so much support. Can you set the context? You've told me about it and even I was like, "I did not realize that you were so alone in that thing for now." Everybody starts out alone, but you are a cutting edge and how you approach the whole care and ministry to disabled children.

I'm going to tell a story of how this ministry journey started. In 2008, I got an opportunity to be with my husband in the States while he was doing school. He was doing his Master's. He got his Billy Graham Scholarship in Wheaton, Illinois. While he was doing his Master’s, I joined a church, the Wheaton College Church. It had a ministry and the ministry is still there. They have a ministry for people with disabilities and that touched my heart.

I saw how we saved them, how we visited their homes, and how we sang and taught them the word of God. That didn’t leave me and it led me to think, “What is the church doing in Uganda? I have never seen children or even people being ministered to in such a way. Does that mean we don’t have people that have disabilities?”

When we came back to Uganda, that was one thing that was on my heart to do, to look out for them. When the time was right, I talked to my pastor. At first, there were some challenges of, “No, we can’t do this. This is very expensive,” but then God moved us to another community where the pastor of the church that we went to allowed me to start a ministry for people with disabilities.

How I started out is shade in the church congregation. In the congregation, we found that two people had children that had disabilities. Due to this stigma and the shame that is attached to having someone with a disability, people don't easily come out to say, "I have a child that needs special care." In our community, it's looked at as you are cursed or someone has bewitched you, or you are a wronged person. That's why you have such a child.

The families carry the shame of having a child with a disability. My goal was to reach out to these families and teach them the word of God. Show love, show encouragement, and get encouragement through the word of God because when I was in Wheaton, as we served the special needs children there, I got to know that having a disability is not a free ticket to heaven. We don't pity them or keep them away but bring them out. Share the word of God with them, and encourage them because the soul in them is there. It doesn't matter whether someone can't talk back to you. Inside of them is a soul that can be nurtured to grow, love God, and accept him.

Disability Ministry: Having a disability is not a free ticket to heaven. Don't pity them nor keep them away. But instead, bring them out and share the word of God with them.

When I came back, that was my desire. That's what I wanted to do. When I started to do it, I realized that the need was bigger than I thought because there are no places and schools that accept them. Most homes have no cars, so accessibility is very hard, especially for the parents that live in the slum areas. They have no access.

You can imagine a child that has cerebral palsy. They can't move, but they are alive. They are human beings. They need to live a life, but because of the need in the community and the shame around having a disabled child, they tend to hide out the children. They lock them in the house or tie them on a chair as other siblings go to school and the parents go to work until the family returns in the evening. That's when the child will have a meal and get cleaned up because they need to ease themselves as they sit there.

All that is the burden God put on my heart as I reached out to share the gospel, but I realized that the need was bigger. I ended up going into physiotherapy and speech therapy and having a place where we can meet and get all the needs met. The challenge is big here in Uganda. At the center where we are at, because we now have a center, we started out with two, but now we have 48 children that we serve, they are flourishing. They are enjoying themselves. Some are learning. Those who can are being taught how to walk. Those who need to learn self-care are being taught self-care. It's been a journey.

You went to the kids that were alone and ministered to their loneliness because they were the outcast. As you said, we're not talking anybody down. You do what you can do with the resources that you have. You saw that they were alone and then you came in. I love the loneliness aspect but the weariness. Here you are on the cutting edge. You're growing. You went from 2 to 48 and went to all these other schools. How do you deal with weariness? How do you stay at your top physical form? You want to help everybody, but we're physical beings.

For weariness, I get a day off. I now have a team of sixteen staff. Those ones help because we have divided the work and given people different assignments. I have an administrative assistant. That helps me to take a break and have time to reflect, pray, think and to rejuvenate. That gives me a time of rest. I also get out of weariness through prayer because sometimes it's overwhelming to see all these needs.

I get to a time of God of, "Why did you choose me to do this?" The need is big. I see the need and there are no resources enough to meet the need and it gets overwhelming. As you said, I get weary. Sometimes I talk to people, but sometimes it becomes a heavy burden on my hands. Still, I take it back to God in prayer and that's where I find refreshment.

I love that you have a Sabbath and a team there to serve you because we can't do it on our own. The next thing my dad talked about was abandonment. That is staying focused. I know when you talked to me, when you started this ministry, all these people started coming to you saying, "Can you do this and that?" How do you stay hyperfocused, Sylvia?

I have gone through moments where people come to me and they're like, "Can you turn this into where you take children and never get to go back to their homes, keep them here, and have a boarding section for the children?" That's not what God has placed on my heart to do. I tell them because we have that as our strategy that children will be taken care of during the day and taken back home in the evenings. We are not wavering from that. Sometimes when I think of ideas from what our vision is, that's when I share them with the board. We have a board and it keeps me in check.

Because of the stigma attached to people with disability, they are afraid to come out.

That's what the board is supposed to do.

The temptation sometimes goes, "So and so has a very good idea. Can we do this so that we meet this need?" They are like, "No, stay focused. This is what we set out to do." The board helps me stay in check.

You've got abandonment. For leaders, people always come when you start being successful. Other people are going to say, "Can you do this and that?" I love it that you said, "We got to stay focused on what God has placed on our heart." Otherwise, good is the enemy of great and the devil loves to see a distracted because then you come off.

The last point my father talked about was vision. My dad came from some difficult situations, but he said, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done and then doing it.” You epitomize that. You saw the need and then you're doing it. You have your board and your wonderful staff. You have people. God is blessing you, but how do you craft your vision for what's next for Stars?

Still through prayer. I pray. I believe that Stars Ministry is not about me as Sylvia. It's God’s. He is using me as a vessel. When I was starting out, God spoke to me. I was at my kitchen sink washing dishes and I had these thoughts of, "Start Stars Ministry for children with disabilities." All of a sudden, I started weeping and God was putting it on my heart. "You are a vessel." I knew that it was related to serving the Stars.

Over the years, I can testify that I am a vessel that God is using to reach all the children that we are reaching. I always take it back to him because there are times when I have desires. For example, now I would love us to have a place for the Stars of our own. That's the vision that I have that we can have a place that will model children that have disabilities in a community. I don't have the resources, but the Bible tells us he owns the cattle and 1,000 hills. He has the gold and silver that we need. He's the anchor. He is where I run to. I have seen God work.

I love that you tied the vision to being a vessel. That's that servant heart and that servant leadership. If we could do it on our own, then what do we need God for? What a blessing. Tell me a little bit about your vision for where you would like the school to be. Tell the readers what you shared with us, where you are right now, and what your hope, Lord willing, and as he provides, what your vision is for the footprint of the ministry going forward.

We are in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, in a suburb called Luzira. We are renting premises that can take care of about 50 children. That's where we are at right now. We are renting, but my desire is that we would have a property where we will put structures that will solve the needs, a place where the children are accepted, loved, cared for, and valued so that the community will see these too are people.

Disability Ministry: We have to stay focused on what God has placed in our hearts.

Over the years, I have seen some change and acceptance. As we go on, many are getting to trust the ministry with their children, but also the community looks and says, "That's the place where they accept children that have special needs." My desire is that we would get a place where we will not be kicked out.

That's the thing about owning your space. We deal with that too in the states when you're a renter. I have links to Sylvia's Ministry for the readers, so you can see the beautiful pictures of what she's doing there and how you can be a part of her vision going forward. Sylvia, we covered the loneliness, the weariness, the abandonment, and the vision. You certainly have an incredible perspective on that with your Stars Ministry in Uganda and how the Lord is taking you through this. Anything else for our readers regarding leadership that you would like to share with them?

I would like to encourage the readers to join hands with us to see the work of God move, to serve the Stars with us, and to show the love of Christ to these children. We serve children with disabilities and I can't do it alone, but together we can do this. We can show Christ's love to the community. Maybe we can even multiply to enlarge and meet other needs in other communities. I would like to encourage the people that follow this show to join in. They can encourage us. They can support us financially. We are registered as a C3 nonprofit with Faith and Learning International.

I can attest that your donations go through this, just as it would in the States and you can get all the documentation for that. Sylvia, I so appreciate your perspective on leadership. I appreciate you with the bold ass because that's what we tell leaders. You are out there. You're here with other people, the people that you meet, the books that you read, and that's what you're here.

Thank you for letting people know how they can partner with you as part of this. I'm tremendously excited. I knew Nicholas and what you were doing, but until you came and spent time in my home, I had no idea the difference you were making and how big the challenge was. I look at your website in those pictures and it makes my heart sing. I thank you so much. Don't listen to what's going on in the world. Remember, unbelievable leaders like Sylvia are out there making a difference, looking for other leaders like you to partner with. Sylvia, thank you again for sharing this.

Thank you, Tracey, for the opportunity and the love.

We'll see you soon or you get back over here. Hopefully, we'll be getting back over there. We saw you, but what a blessing. To our readers out there, we want to thank you so much for your support of the show. If you liked what you read, please be sure and hit the subscribe button and share it with somebody else who could read some wonderful, uplifting leadership on what it takes to pay the price of leadership. We're all in this together and we're here to support one another.

Also, if you do us the honor of a five-star rating, we’d appreciate that. Come on over to Tremendous Leadership and sign up for two free weeks of eBooks and get some unbelievable reading material for you to listen to and get connected with Sylvia too, so you can stay informed on her ministry and what's going on. To our Tremendous Leadership tribe out there, we couldn't do it without you. Have a tremendous rest of the day.

 Important Links

• Stars Ministry 

• The Price of Leadership

• https://www.Facebook.com/STARSUg/

About Sylvia K. Kalyebara

Sylvia K. Kalyebara is a wife and mother of three children. She is also the founder of Stars Ministries in Uganda where she serves alongside families taking care of people with disabilities, especially children. She has seen her work blossom from taking care of 2 children to 48 and currently has a staff of 16. She formed this ministry after witnessing the work of Christian men and women at Wheaton College, where her husband was a student. Sylvia is called to help others see how God loves them.

Episode 139 - Lisa Marie Platske - Leaders On Leadership

The price of leadership can be steep. Every leader has to be ready to pay that price if they want to be great. In this episode, Dr. Tracey Jones gets coach and entrepreneur Lisa Marie Platske to discuss the principles of leadership. Lisa and Tracey discuss the how-tos of leadership and the price of leadership as seen from Lisa’s point of view. Lisa also shares her pillars of leadership and how these lead into a leader’s wellbeing. Tune in and learn more on the principles of leadership from Lisa and Tracey.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Lisa Marie Platske - Leaders On Leadership

I am excited because we have our guest, Lisa Marie Platske. She is an award-winning leadership expert in human behavior and has received accolades from the United States Small Business Administration and The International Alliance for Women. She's also recognized as one of the top 100 women making a difference in the world. She left her Federal law enforcement career after 9/11 to build Upside Thinking, Inc. She's a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and has trained or coached over 100,000 leaders around the globe. Lisa, I'm excited to have you on the show.

I'm excited to be here, Dr. Tracey. This has been something I've been looking forward to spending some time with you.

Thank you. For our readers out there, you want to get your notepads out because Lisa has talked to hundreds of thousands of leaders, as well as her own journey. I am excited to know what you think about The Price of Leadership.

I have been a raving fan of Tremendous' work for what has been decades. Speaking about The Price of Leadership, I did not realize that leadership had a cost. When I first took my journey, I thought that being the leader, you get to the top. It's where you want to be and you get to be number one. I did not recognize all of the things that come with that journey that gets packed in your backpack.

That's a beautiful way to put it. Thank you. A lot of times, our readers want to know the context of how Lisa found the Tremendous universe. She was telling me before we started that her grandparents knew our Founder, my father, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. She's a PA girl too. That's exciting. With that intro, I want to unpack the four tenets or the four costs, as you beautifully put that leadership has a cost.

My dad talked about that in one of the speeches that he gave, and that is probably the speech he gave the most. That was called The Price of Leadership. His premise is that if you're going to be doing true leadership, there are going to be three things that you're going to have to pay the price of. The first one is loneliness and we've heard it. I'm sure you've coached many leaders. It's lonely at the top. “Why am I the only one out there thinking this?” Can you unpack what loneliness in leadership looks like? Maybe share a time when you went through for our readers out there.

My background is in Federal law enforcement. There was its own loneliness in that journey as I rose through the ranks in supervision because of being a woman in law enforcement. I thought that especially being in law enforcement where guys have your back, you're in uniform, and you're working together, that there would be this camaraderie that happened when you rose through the ranks.

There wasn't. There was a bit more of, “What did you get that I didn't get? How did you get that? It must've been because you slept with somebody. It must have been because you did something that we didn't see.” That was incredible. You'd think that when I opened my business, I would have remembered some of those things. However, I didn't.

I thought, “I'm going to be my own boss. I get to call the shots.” The reality is opening a business left me feeling many times that I was on this island someplace with this great idea and God-given purpose to make a difference in the world. Yet, I had to do it by myself. I had a lot more surprises. The word loneliness is not something I would have used. It's more surprises on the journey.

How long did that last? I appreciate your authenticity because many of our readers out there are like me and you. We're entrepreneurs, maybe they're solopreneurs. We know God put us and what we're supposed to be doing but it's like, “Where's my part in this? Where are the resources?” How long did it take you before you started to jell? I know it's all in God's timing. I get it but can you unpack how long that took? Maybe somebody is out there dealing with this now.

It's been waves. I've been in business for many years and there are still waves of loneliness. I have a huge circle of friends, colleagues, peers, mastermind groups, and coaches that I could call. There are times when I'm in my office and I could call my assistant or other coaches on my team and yet I'm going, “I can feel the weight of responsibility.” It'll move me to tears because the why feels so big. I sometimes feel like I'm traveling alone.

Principles Of Leadership: You get to the top and it's where you want to be and you get to be number one. And you do not recognize all of the things that come with that journey that get packed in your backpack.  

I appreciate your authenticity because there is this thing that after 10,000 hours, you ought to have this dialed in. No, it isn't. My dad would always say that there's the pendulum. You're going to have to walk alone sometimes. You're going to be alone because you make mistakes. It's par for the course. I appreciate you sharing that. I would echo that too. Loneliness ebbs and flows but you said it. It's the weight of responsibility. Although you have a great team, there are only two shoulders that that fall on. We have to remember as leaders, that heavy is the head that wears the crown.

That's the part where I don't know that I truly understood that. I don't know that I got that. It was just, “I'm going to go do what it is that I'm called to do. We're going to have fun.” It was like, “It's resting on my shoulders. I'm the one that received the scrolls.”

Along with loneliness is weariness. My dad was very pragmatic, snarky, and funny because he had worked with people. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade so he was very real. Whenever people would be talking about, “Everybody's great. Let him be great and then they will be great.” He's like, “How many people do you work with?”

He was always like, “Weariness. You're going to have people that do more than their fair share and you're going to have a huge swath of people that do less than their fair share. You'd have 80/20. Eighty percent of the work is done by 20% of the people. It's draining for us as leaders. How do you stay refreshed and replenished? Do you celebrate Shabbat? How do you stay on point and strong spiritually, mentally and physically?

I have seven areas of wellbeing that I examine and look at every single day. Those seven areas of wellbeing are ones where I look to see if there's anything out of balance. From physical wellbeing, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, financial, relational, and in my work it's, “What do I need? What's missing?” There's a SNAP technique that I use over and over again during the day. SNAP means stop, notice, ask questions, and then pause, pivot, pray. This is not something I do once a day. It's not something that I do two times a day. It's understanding when something is off.

Sometimes, I'm working on a project. I am committed to it, and something's not right. It could be that I need water or I need to be quiet and say a prayer. It could be that there's something that is nudging me in the back of my head around a relationship with a client, friend or loved one. Whatever that is, it's going to pull you from whatever you're to do because there is such responsibility. Those are my two, ensuring that I stay within those seven areas of wellbeing, and then also using the SNAP technique.

What a great little mental hack. I love that your soul will let you know if something's not right. You know when it is well with your soul. You know when your little spiritual radar or something doesn't compute. SNAP is a great thing, stop, notice, ask, pause, pray and pivot.

Pivot if you need to. Maybe you need to do something else.

There's loneliness, weariness and abandonment. Abandonment typically gets a negative rap. There's a fear of abandonment. I'm in pet rescue so that has a bad term. My dad looked at abandonment as a good thing. We need to focus on what we need and ought to think about and not what we'd like to want to think about.

For him, abandonment was hyper-focused so you can stay singularly focused on everything else. I'm sure you get that as an entrepreneur, all the new things. A hundred new ideas come to us a day. All these people are calling us to do these partnerships and let's do this. How do you stay on point and focused?

Just like I have seven areas of wellbeing, my business is built on seven pillars of leadership. In those seven pillars of leadership, pillar number six is the one that I use all the time. It's to evaluate your progress. Sometimes people go, “In my company, we do an annual review.” Some people say, “I do a quarterly review or even weekly.” I say, “I evaluate every single day, whether or not it's efficient or effective.”

Principles Of Leadership: Staying hyper-focused on what matters most means you have to say no to some things, even if they seem like great ideas, because they are distractions and pull you from what it is that you're called to do.  

Is this a task that's I'm just looking to get checked off? Is this a task that allows me to be a force for good on the planet? Is this something that's actually effective and moving me towards what it is that I want and what I'm called to do on the planet? Is this the thing that somebody told me that needs to get done? What is it and which bucket does it fall in? With 24 hours a day, staying that hyper-focused on what matters most means some things I've got to say no to, even if they seem like great ideas because they still are distractions and pull me from what it is that I'm called to do.

That's good for your team. Working for somebody like us, I know when I worked for my dad it can be a little maddening because there's so much going on, and if you're a more linear thinker, you need a little bit more, “Bring it all down.” You clearly outline your roles and responsibilities but I'm all about the results. Everybody's telling me, “We should be doing this and this will do this.” I'm like, “What are the results?” We're supposed to be good stewards of our time and resources. You do that every day. Is it at the end of the day?

Every single day I look in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. Where is it?

Readers, how freeing would that be if you decluttered, pruned, and cut off the non-value-added stuff? I'm telling you whenever my soul feels awry, stressed or I'm spinning, it's because I have not put up boundaries. I love Henry Cloud's book Boundaries. It's because I have let something weasel in or scope creep. They're all good things but I'm supposed to be focused on this and not that. I appreciate you talking about that this is a daily struggle.

I appreciate you using the term scope creep. I did a board retreat for an organization and they had seventeen things that they wanted to accomplish for the end of the year. I said, “This is great. However, you've got to pick two,” and they couldn't do it. By the end of the retreat, they said, “We're going to keep all seventeen.” At the end of the year, they ended up doing none. What you said is also that you have this idea and it's so easy to think that you can get more done or let something creep. I think that this one is really important if you're going to make an impact on the planet.

This is the one thing that people struggle with the most. Number one, getting the clarity as to what is that one great purpose. Number two, staying focused because it takes time to work your purpose out. You're going to be, “I'm looking over here. I should be doing this or that,” but the leadership literature even says one thing at a time. I know we like to think, “If you're Elon Musk, you can probably think one thing at a time.”

Prioritize it. Pick the big things and knock them out. I appreciate you bringing that up. When I came back to run the business, they're like, “What do you want to focus on?” I'm like, “All of it. I love all of it. I want to do it all." They're like, “You're so young and naive.” I'm like, “What?” They were right. You need to hone it down.

There's loneliness, weariness and abandonment. The last term my dad talked about was vision. For him, vision was seeing what needs to be done, which everybody can. Number two is doing it, which very few people do. There are the executors, integrators and pontificators. He said, “If you're not able to execute or draw the right people, you can't call it a vision. You can call it an idea or hope, but that's no strategy for growing a business.” How do you keep your vision going, getting honed, moving forward and cast?

Vision is one of my three elements of courageous leadership. I agree so much with your dad. You don't have a vision, you live a vision. It's action-oriented. It's not something you write down on a piece of paper. It's having that courage to do that. I believe that the practical part of this, I'm going to bring in my law enforcement, is that you're a detective. That's how you get to live your vision. It’s to be a detective. I ask questions about the who, what, where, when, how and why of a situation. Whatever it is that I want and that allows me to stay.

This is my vision. My vision is to be somebody who makes everyone feel valued, appreciated and loved when I'm around. I'm moving towards creating a world where everyone wins. All of my actions have got to be taken in order for that vision. Who is it that I'm seeking to do that with? Where, when, how and why for everything that comes my way on my desk. Whether it's being here with you on this show, choosing to get up and go for a walk, whatever I put in my body, everything is about me becoming that vision. Not me only speaking about it. It's truly the embodiment of it. It's about who you are, not what you do.

A world where everyone wins. You should have a book with that title. You embody that. I can tell that. That's difficult because a lot of people are like, “Yeah,” because we're self-oriented. There's that element of you're not here for yourself. You're here to bring out the other things and create for other people or lead in other ways.

I find that I want to be a bridge-builder and not a divider. Just because you have an idea and it's very different from mine doesn't mean that you can't win and I can't win at the same time.

Principles Of Leadership: The world needs your brilliance and it needs all of you, not a part of you, not a segment of you, not a part that somebody told you is acceptable – all of you.

A Bridgett, a bridger. Not a burner, a Burnett. That was my latest book. Burnett or Bridgett. Do you want to burn or bridge it? We need bridgers and you were that. What else would you share with our readers? As you've coached all these people in leadership, what are the pearls of wisdom would you share with them?

The world is hurting for great leadership. You're here on this planet for a reason. The world needs you, your brilliance, and all of you. Not a part of you, not a segment of you, not a part that somebody told you is acceptable, but all of you. If every single person did that, stepped up and fully allowed themselves to be seen and to do whatever they're called to do, the world would be a very different place. It would be so purposeful and so much lighter. My call-to-action is the world needs you and your brilliance now more than ever. Go shine your light and go do whatever it is you're called to do to be a force for good on the planet.

Amen, sister. I think you are my sister.

I think so too.

There's so much congruence here. How can people get ahold of you?

My website is UpsideThinking.com. That's the best way to find me. I have an annual event that is Upside Summit, which is my Design Your Destiny Live event every January. I host that. You'll get some information on the website about that and my blueprint as well.

You were talking about working with coaches. Do you train coaches or do you work with leaders who need a coach? What's your area of focus?

I work with leaders, influencers and world-changers. They're people who understand they've got something big burning inside of them and they aren't sure how they're going to live it out and position themselves. For some people, it's internally companies. They'll come to me and say, “I want to start a business.” I'm like, “You're actually called to be in this company.” For some people, it's for them to have businesses. For some people, it's to sell their business. It's leaders, influencers and world-changers.

For our readers out there, make sure and check out Lisa's website. Lisa, thank you so much. You fueled my spirit, and I know our readers out there. Thank you for your transparency and the difference you're making in the world. You're offering so much and it's so needed. For readers out there, don't waste any more time wandering in the desert. Hook up with somebody like Lisa who can help you. The big burn. You got it. No more grousing. Get that big burn and turn it into a beautiful flame that lights the world. Thank you, Lisa.

Thanks so much, Dr. Tracey. I appreciate being here. It's an honor.

You're welcome and welcome back to Pennsylvania. I hope to see you soon at the summit. I would love that. I'm going to check that out. To our guests out there, we couldn't do this without our Tremendous tribe. If you like what you read, please be sure to hit the subscribe button. Do us the honor of a five-star review. Also, thank you so much. Leave us a comment. We answer all our comments. Share this with somebody else that you think may need a little bit of uplifting or tremendousness in their life. Remember to never stop paying the price of leadership. We're so thankful for you. There are many leaders out there in name only but you're the real deal. Thanks so much.

Important Links:

• https://www.Facebook.com/UpsideThinking/

• https://www.Facebook.com/lisa.marie.platske

• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/lisamarieplatske

• Upside Thinking, Inc.

• Boundaries

• Burnett or Bridgett

• The Price of Leadership

About Lisa Marie Platske

An award-winning leadership expert in human behavior, Lisa Marie Platske has received accolades from the United States Small Business Administration, and The International Alliance for Women, recognized as one of the top 100 women making a difference in the world. She left her Federal law enforcement career after 9/11 to build Upside Thinking, Inc. A member of the Forbes Coaches Council, she has trained or coached over 100,000 leaders around the globe.