For me, that's what with intention is.
How do you start your day?
How do you win the day?
it is, maybe it sounds selfish, but no, it's fill yourself up, spend time on yourself so that you can serve others.
It's both, it's a growth mindset and a service mindset.
For me, it's non-negotiable.
They're very symbiotic.
Welcome back to the necessary entrepreneur.
ah I'm pumped about the conversation that we're going to have today.
So today on this here, we're joined by someone who understands what it means to live life in the fast lane and what it takes to slow down, refocus and lead with intention.
John Gigante is a seasoned executive keynote speaker and the author of the powerful book with intention that I have sitting here beside me.
He currently leads intentional growth partners and previously spent two decades.
climbing the ranks in corporate America while quietly fighting the same challenges so many of us face, burnout, overwhelmed, and lack of clarity.
In his book and on his podcast, John's real hard earned wisdom about how to shift from reactive to intentional living, how to master your time, protect your energy, and create
lasting success that doesn't come at the cost of your health, family, or purpose.
He's a former college soccer player, a family man, and today,
ah He's going to talk about how high performers could build businesses and live lives that actually work.
Welcome to the party, Thanks, man.
Yeah, man.
Thank you.
I can tell that when you say a beautiful place, I don't usually say this to another very capable man, but what a beautiful human.
Thank you.
Yeah, man.
We had some good conversation for half hour before we got started.
It's very cool.
And I think we're going to go really deep here.
And we had family conversation.
We had business conversation.
We had the travels conversation.
And so I'm pumped about going deep today.
Well, I have this book sitting here beside us.
You wrote it three years ago, but now it's really coming into its own because your new journey and what you're starting to build.
it's with intention, a proven path to uncommon results, unleashed influence and ultimate fulfillment.
I key on the first part of that, a proven path to uncommon results.
What's that mean?
What have you learned about that path to uncommon results through this life and this journey of being an executive and being in corporate America and now this?
What have you learned about that part of the statement?
Yeah, well look, it's all personalized results, success, put it in quotations, it's all different for everybody, I think.
But at the end of the day, there is a scoreboard, right?
We wanna get results.
So I come from a sales background, come from a sports background, so there is a scoreboard.
And I knew when I was in sales, if I had the scoreboard in front of me, ah that was the vision, that was the target, or in soccer.
If we knew, we're trying to get to the NCAA tournament or win the national championship, whatever it was.
Now the question becomes, how do you get there?
I think that's the nuanced approach that I've changed through the years.
Cause I used to be very focused on just give me the end result, man.
And I'm going to go and rally the troops and go get it.
That comes at a cost sometimes.
And I learned the hard way, but the good way.
wouldn't change a thing on the journey, but it's a, yeah.
mean, but at the end of the day, this is something I think
Some people mistake today that results still matter.
You still want to win.
You still want to close the deal.
You still want to grow the business.
Capitalism still matters.
It's a good thing if you do it the right way.
So sometimes there's these big questions and I don't want to be so generic and so cliche, but if the journey was important, even though was really hard, but you'd like to help
people do it maybe in a, better way or more efficient way.
Um, and it's still essential.
you, if you went back and told your 25 and 30 and 35 year old self along the journey, that's how these are written, right?
These books are written.
These stories are told in podcasts, how we could do it better, but what would you have done better?
Like not about regret and all that, but what would you have done?
better because I think the outcome here in your forties, it's a pretty good outcome, man.
If we're talking about scoreboard, right?
And you're a guy who's going to be probably, you you're humble, you're nice, you have a lot more you're going to accomplish, but the journey has been important.
So what would you have really done different?
Because isn't the outcome good?
That's the crazy thing in all this.
I don't know if I would change a thing of the journey even though it's been hard.
And we talked before this about some personal things as well in my family.
And I don't know if I'd change that journey too.
Our kids have to go through hard stuff.
We uh struggle sometimes as parents where we wanna sugarcoat everything and not let our kids fail.
Well, that's where they learn.
That's where they get better.
So it's the same thing.
I honestly, I wouldn't change a thing.
uh
So what's important though is, this is what's funny.
We don't want to be operating our lives.
This is the new argument.
We don't want to be operating our lives based upon the results or the outcome or the scoreboard.
at the end of the day, I'm going to make a statement and you're not a guy who's argumentative, but I want some pushback.
want some conversation, but isn't that what matters?
Because I just heard you talk about your family right here.
And so
Everyone has struggle coming up and there's no person or individual or family that's perfect.
The struggle is acceptable and necessary to develop resilience as long as the outcome is okay.
Yeah, Yeah, no, there's no pushback.
You want a beautiful family.
You want to fulfill.
That's why the third piece of with intention is fulfillment, right?
So it's results, influence, and fulfillment.
But you got to do it the right way or else it comes at a deep, deep cost.
So I had a ton of success as a youth athlete, a ton of success.
I was very fortunate.
I had loving parents.
very academically, did really well, a lot of hard work.
There was a big bogey.
I got paid for good grades, right?
My grandpa would give me 10 or 20 bucks and it was always great job, John.
I didn't know any different then.
It was almost actually this affirmation thing where was like, you start to crave that.
And actually as a kid when I was super fortunate to get a Division I scholarship to Bowling Green, played on some great teams there and all amazing players.
I was one of many.
But as you can imagine growing up, you're pretty much the best player on
every field you play on and everybody tells you how great you are.
So from the time of like three years old on, I was being told, my gosh, you're so gifted.
You're so amazing.
And you start, start to crave that a bit.
And where the challenge becomes is when you get into an environment where everybody's great and you're no longer the alpha male.
That was hard for me to be honest.
It was really hard because it's like, my gosh, I got it.
I got to fight for everything.
And I was good.
played a lot my freshman year, earned a starting job my sophomore year, but I got very inconsistent.
And there's a, we're happy to go into the backstory because there's a backstory to it.
Then we'll come back to this thing in the business world.
Let's do it.
I think it's important.
And we talked a little bit about this when we first met, which by the way, you and your team, the experience, I think about like a Ritz-Carlton experience.
know, their whole thing is when we first meet you and when we leave here, we're going to wow you.
Thank you.
You guys were amazing.
Okay, so dad comes over at six years old from Sicily, Italy with his family.
Late 40s, moves into an attic in Cleveland, Ohio with two other families.
He lives in an unfinished attic, him and his two brothers and parents.
My grandpa is the elevator operator at the terminal tower.
You come over, it's the American dream, you make ends meet.
It's this very blue collar mindset.
It's a beautiful thing in a lot of ways.
Dad was the first person to go to college in the 60s.
I actually went to Bowling Green where I wrestled there.
Mom actually went there as well.
I think they met somewhere else, but my mom was a few years behind.
Also the first person to go to college.
And so I'm the youngest.
I've got two older brothers.
Both my brothers were college athletes.
My oldest brother, all American at Walsh University, soccer player.
My middle brother played football at Baldwin Walls.
So my dad was a college wrestling coach growing up.
So sports were like...
part of, I mean on Sundays my dad would take us to his college to go run the mile at the track at the college.
Everything, like we're getting timed, I'm seven, eight years old getting timed in the mile.
It's so funny because my dad would go to make long distance phone calls because it was free back in the 80s, right?
That's to date a little bit.
uh Loving family but very high performing.
My dad, he also owned a grocery store, an Italian imported food
grocery store called a Leshe's up in Cleveland with his brother.
And so he was around for all my games.
really was.
My mom stayed at home.
She was a school teacher as well, two educators.
uh But I came home from school one time in fifth grade and my mom sat me down and said, John, your dad is in the hospital.
He's had a nervous breakdown and he's gonna be gone for a little bit.
And I don't know what that means.
I'm in fifth grade again, living this idyllic childhood.
uh
So we go to visit him, we come home.
I remember going into the guidance counselor's office in school in fifth grade and she says, John, how you doing?
heard about what's going on with your family.
I didn't know, I just swept out.
I'm like, I'm great.
What are you talking about?
Straight A's, soccer, I played every sport growing up.
Everything was good.
And it really was.
I didn't think anything of it.
It didn't register for me at 12 years old.
Dad comes home a couple of weeks later.
Family pretty much sweeps it.
We really didn't talk about it, at least to my recollection.
didn't talk about it much.
No, not at all.
so, uh parent, Italian, know, hard driving family, parents fought a lot.
And money was always a concern in the family.
was always a thing.
But uh I go away to college, again, at Bowling Green.
I come home in between my freshman, sophomore year.
My brothers are out doing their own thing.
So I'm staying at home.
uh
My parents get in a big fight and their, again, relationship wasn't in a great place.
My dad comes home from work.
There was something around food was, my mom, I was working a landscaping job training for soccer.
I think I ate all the chicken tenders or something.
So my dad came home and he was pissed off.
They get in this big fight.
I'll never forget.
My mom rips off up a $20 bill.
That was kind of her allowance, whatever for the day or the week, I forget.
But my dad goes out.
into the garage and he grabs a baseball bat and he comes back in and we never swore in our family.
It was not the thing we would do and I remember for the first time.
I had some choice words for him.
Put the bat down, I, you know, maybe an F word in there too.
Like it screamed at the top of my lungs.
was the first I get a little emotional talking about it.
um Thankfully I was there and I grabbed the bat.
I got my mom out of the house and my dad put the bats down.
He hugs me and he's crying.
First time I ever saw my dad cry.
And I just said, it's going to be okay.
Mom leaves, never comes back.
I mean, they got divorced after that.
It was a long time coming.
And um so the summer goes on, I go back to college and I remember thinking, my parents are grieving.
I don't have the right to grieve.
And I remember going back to school, you you just grind it out.
I'm getting in shape.
didn't, I was doing fine.
I actually won a starting job, was MVP of one of our
early tournaments, I was doing well.
Sophomore all started well.
But there was a moment in preseason, we had to do this thing called the Cooper Test, which is you have to run two miles in 12 minutes.
So back to back six minute miles.
No joke.
It's miserable.
It's crazy.
Even in great shape, great cardio shape.
That's no joke.
The first mile, you can get it done.
You can get it done.
But then, man, that's second mile.
Because you overextended yourself to make sure you hit under six minutes.
And then it gets really hard.
I mean, first lap, your legs are burned.
And it's all in the head.
You just gotta grind through it for 12 minutes.
But for the first, I used to run in about 11 minutes.
So I was a midfielder, I could run all day.
So five and a half minute miles back to back.
And now, by the way, these kids do it in like 10 minutes.
It's crazy how great a shape they're.
Anyway, for the first time, I didn't make it.
I I bonked out my head.
just couldn't keep up.
couldn't push away the resistance a little bit.
So it was the first time I felt myself cracking.
But here's the lesson here, the messages.
never went to my teammates, I never went to my coaches and said, guys, I'm struggling.
I didn't feel like I could grieve.
And I became a very inconsistent player on the field.
So what happens when, least in my experience, was how I handled all that was I numb the pain in the game, training.
drinking too much, a little bit of drug use, girls, all this stuff.
You figure out these outlets to just get away from it.
And because my identity was in a soccer ball, man, I dreamt to play pro ball.
And it was there for the taking.
I mean, I had probably 10 of my teammates that played professionally, either MLS or it was called the A-League at the time.
So anyway, the next three years, I was up and down.
If I had a good touch,
to start a game, I may have a great game.
And if I had a bad touch, I'm in my head going, you suck, you can't, you don't belong, all this.
And it just became this inconsistency to the point where I could barely cross a soccer ball.
got into a game in the Sweet 16, my senior year, were playing at Indiana, which it's
UNC Indiana, right?
Is UNC up there?
is good.
They've won a couple titles.
the tradition of Indiana.
Indiana is like the Ohio State or Alabama of...
Yeah, exactly.
So you play at Indiana.
It's like playing at the horseshoe at Ohio.
I mean, it's pretty intimidating.
You almost lose the game before you get in there.
But we've beaten them a couple of times.
We were top 15 in the country.
Actually, your coach down here, Pat Noonan, is an Indiana guy.
And Caleb Porter in New England's an Indian.
So these guys are all over the place.
So it was, it's the, it's it.
It's the top of the pyramid.
So I get into the game uh late in the game, so I lost my starting job at this point.
We're down one nothing.
And we got a shot though.
We're in it.
And I get the ball pretty soon after I get in.
And I was a left midfielder, so my job was to cross the ball over.
I've done this 25,000 times.
That's how I got recruited, because I could do this in my sleep.
and put it right on somebody's foot.
I mean, right.
Right where it's supposed to
because you don't even think about it.
But I got to be such a head case that I literally got to the point where I could barely execute a cross.
And so I get the ball, I cross it, and the thing floats up and no chance to get to my teammate.
And the goalkeeper gets it.
They come down and score within a minute.
And they put two more in us.
They beat us 4-0.
That was the end of my college soccer career.
And I had a couple of pro tryouts.
But at that point in time, I didn't have the.
the mindset to make it at that level.
So you go through that journey and you realize that, all right, I'm a failure.
At least that's how I thought of myself.
uh But look through, and this is another important point of the story, and I just wanna be very upfront.
And as I told you, I'd like to think of myself as an open book, but on my 21st birthday before my senior year, I'd sought some counseling.
So I went to a school counselor, got some help.
Still, I was in hiding.
didn't want to tell.
I was too afraid to show weakness.
I didn't want to tell any of my teammates, and I just put on a happy face, whatever.
But on my 21st birthday, I was in a psychiatrist's office, because it got that bad.
I was just struggling that bad.
And my dad came over for the visit with the psychiatrist.
And the psychiatrist, within 20 minutes, diagnosed me bipolar.
And that's what my dad had.
And man.
Great, back to
grade, back to fifth grade and mom's calling dad, and look, my dad wasn't a saint.
So there were reasons they would fight, but you know, when you fight, you go to like the lowest common denominator and she would always.
$20 bills, out and getting a bad.
mean, that's right.
How can I harm this person in the moment?
Hurt people hurt people, right?
So at that moment, it was a death sentence.
Are you kidding me?
Like you're giving me this diagnosis.
So I took some medication, got on some medication and I lied to everybody.
said, I'm just getting in shape for my senior year.
So I'd go out and drink Diet Cokes at the bars and whatever.
I did get in great shape.
I did actually earned a starting job my senior year.
I just couldn't keep it up.
But that was the start of this hiding of like,
actually having the awareness to it, but not doing anything about it.
And it took me a long time.
took me many, 17 therapists later actually to figure this out.
And it's still a work in progress, but I, and I don't always share that.
So what's here's I appreciate you sharing it.
because here's my question is is that you going through this journey you spent a lot of time with it What percentage of people let's just take our country 350 million people Plus
or minus a couple How many of those?
Do you think struggle whether it's diagnosed bipolar whether it's anxiety its depression when I'm not smart enough to know the different categories of those I put them all
together
Yeah, I probably shouldn't, but I do.
um How many people do you believe struggle?
Some form of the.
yeah, I think there are the diagnosed stuff that's, that's, you know, whatever level it is, and that's all arbitrary.
Who knows if it was the right diagnosis or anybody like, you never know these guys, doctors, they know a lot, but they're all experimenting, right?
But I'd say probably 25 to 30 % have something very substantial.
I wouldn't be surprised by that number.
I was wondering if it was going to be little bit higher.
I think it's higher, actually.
think there's probably 50 to 60 that deal with some type of trauma or deep levels of anxiety.
So we're gonna get into a ton of the like the business stuff and write the book.
We're gonna talk about this, but what was the unlock for you to get to this moment today?
Yeah, well, okay, so a little bit more of the story is I get into the business world.
I'm really good at putting on a happy face.
I'm a connector, man.
People like I love locker rooms.
I love teammates.
first 15 minutes we had today was a great interaction.
And I'm like, yeah, that's who John is in the world.
Yeah.
And that guy, that, that a person who is the form of you that you are, it's not about selling anything.
You interact with other human beings and whatever you're selling, they will buy.
It's just human connection.
Right.
but maybe that's been created out of the struggle of this thing.
Maybe so.
Maybe you poured into other people.
Yeah, probably something to that, Yes, because, I think part of it being the youngest in that family environment, I always got very good at defusing the conflict.
I was very good at if there's a fight going on.
My dad, my middle brother, my dad used to fight all the time.
And I got pretty good at cracking the joke at the right time or whispering in someone's ear or pulling someone or whatever.
And I was the same way as a teammate.
I became the same thing in business with client, whatever.
So I said, Hey, was, what's the unlock for doing?
You were getting ready to go.
we jump into business.
so about 10 years into my career, I got promoted early, somewhat labeled the rising star.
I thought I had all my stuff together and realized pretty quickly I didn't.
I started having panic attacks speaking.
So for a salesperson, not a good thing.
And by the way, freshman year, St.
Ed's in Cleveland, I was the speech champion freshman year.
you, I got the skills.
the charisma, you've got the skills, you have the intelligence.
You are created and you have built yourself to be very successful in that arena and you and you wake up and even at 32 years old, you're going through it again.
Yeah.
so part of the story is I didn't work that hard at it.
When you're identified in ninth grade, I remember I had an English teacher say, yeah, I think you can be the first four time champion we ever have.
And by the way, that freshman year, I would wake up with my mom every morning, 5.30 to rep out the speech, tonality, inflection, pause.
I mean, I crushed it and it was, that's why I won it.
My sophomore year, I finished third, I didn't work as hard.
So I kind of had this mindset of like, I'm a great speaker, man.
I don't need to really work at this.
Even I remember taking a college class and kind of showing up with my chest out a little bit and like, I got this, I'm a speech champion.
It's funny how this works, right?
And so fast forward 10 years and I can't get up and give a presentation.
So I am literally in the back of rooms.
If I go into a business meeting, I'm trying to find a place to hide.
That's not, that's not a good place to be.
So I give a talk.
uh
not a talk, we had to give a presentation in Chicago at our sales kickoff meeting.
Very simple presentation about uh your book of business.
You already, you understood the content.
Yeah.
Completely from beginning to.
I'm an individual contributing rep at this point and it's easy.
And I had a therapist at the time I was seeing, again, not open about this with anybody, maybe my wife, but no one else.
Therapist said, look, if you have one of these, just fake a headache.
And so that's what I did.
Like I'm literally presenting and I've had it a couple other times where I was able to get through it in recent years, but at this time I faked a headache.
go upstairs to my hotel room.
Very embarrassing.
go to, I ended up.
sleeping for a couple hours.
go to the sales kickoff dinner.
Obviously, everybody's concerned.
I still never share like, guys, I had a panic attack.
It was, you know, had.
Take us through the best you can articulate it.
What is it?
Yeah.
So for me, uh I feel my arms start to tingle a little bit and it gets, I get hot and my neck kind of gets a little, it almost feels swollen.
And then it's almost like an outer, out of body experience where I'm, I'm almost thinking about my thoughts, if that makes sense.
Like I'm watching it and I'm sitting there going, don't lose it.
Don't lose it.
Don't lose.
Like it's a fire signal going.
And then all of sudden you're overthinking so much and then not that you black out, at least for me, but it becomes this pressure point where you just, I mean, I couldn't talk.
Yes, it's overthinking.
It's, it's in the body too.
mean, there's, and here's my, my learning through all of it is, and there's an incredible book called the body keeps a score, which is all about trauma.
And all those years I, I,
correlated to this, you we take out the trash today's trash day up in Columbus for my family.
So we got to take the trash out.
And if you don't do that, it gets all stinky and smelly.
It's the same thing as humans.
If we don't take out our trash.
So for many, starting in fifth grade, all the way to this point, I never really, I mean, I did a little bit to go see some therapists and maybe a little medication, but I was, as I
said, I was running from this diagnosis and I was, I was scared.
And so, um, it eventually got to the point where I couldn't, I couldn't fake it anymore, but
the best thing that ever happened to me.
Because you know what I did?
It's so funny because this is the way this works.
You brought up Toastmasters before we started recording.
So you've seen Top Gun.
So the first Top Gun, Goose dies, and Maverick doesn't want to fly anymore.
And the guys come in and say, we got to get him back up in the air again.
As soon as possible.
We got to get him flying.
For some reason, I had that in my head.
I got to get back.
I got to go.
I got to figure this out.
And so I started going to Toastmasters every Thursday morning for two, I went for two years straight.
I remember the first one, very nervous, got through it and just eventually rebuilt my speaking skills with intention.
No, no pun intended because that's really the books book talks about that story and that pride.
I've built this framework about how do you go from current state to future state?
uh So a lot of blood, sweat and tears figuring it out and
Frankly, doing it scared.
I started with anybody that would ask me to speak, whether it was a high school sports team or I worked on a charity board where they asked me to MC a golf event.
And I would just say, yes, let's do it.
And I just would figure it out.
And I prepare a lot differently than I used to, by the way, because I know that I've got this.
And there's still a little bit of scar tissue.
I I speak on some pretty big stages now.
And there's moments of, crap, could this happen again?
But I feel once I get up there, I'm good.
And again, I do.
Do the prep to.
think this ties back to...
very high level of expectation about performance of life back to your dad taking you to running track and preparing that to make sure that you're enough and the worry and the
concern like what if I'm not good what if I'm not enough sure what if today I show up and it doesn't hit is that where this
well check this out.
here's, here's, this is a beautiful thing, but also a crazy thing.
My family moved my junior year of high school just for me to play soccer at a different high school.
So the top high school team in the country or in the state, Brexville high school, uh after my sophomore year, I played club ball with some of the other players.
And my dad said, here's how much I think of, we're going to move so you can go, we won two state championships.
So I moved to.
I had to live with my aunt for six months because we couldn't sell her house.
My mom and I live with my aunt.
Got investigated by the athletics, so everything, because everybody's pissed off in Cleveland.
Like, wait a second.
How's the world's he playing over here?
The team you left is pissed.
They're all, everybody's pissed.
right.
And so we go and win state title my junior year and again my senior year.
And then I go to college with three of my teammates.
So massive, your dad looks at you and says, we're moving our family because we believe in you so much.
So there is massive expectation tied to that.
which comes from a good play, course.
But yes, so for me as a kid, yes, absolutely.
So all of a sudden you're struggling in college to even get on the field.
I mean, my mom didn't even show up for my last game of my senior year, because she was so pissed off that I wasn't playing.
She didn't know what I was dealing with.
And so here I am like, I'm not even good enough where my parents want to come to the game.
So yes, there was...
And I wouldn't say bad expectations.
They came from a good spot.
And again, immigrant family, you've got to figure it out, make ends meet.
again, that's why I'm so passionate about this now.
At what cost do we chase the results?
but you wouldn't change it.
That's so fascinating, isn't it?
because the only way we'd change it if you could still arrive here without the pain.
But through our experience...
need the pain.
You need the pain.
You've got to...
The pain is where the resilience and the grit is built.
So can we help?
that pain if it's still necessary to go through it?
I don't know you've gone down this path or not, but can we help people as leaders?
Coaches on soccer teams in high schools, in colleges, what can those leaders do to help ease that without removing the pressure of the moment, without removing the expectation,
without removing the scoreboard?
Is it even possible?
Am I asking something too big?
Yeah, no, I don't think so.
I think it is a conversation and a dialogue in an environment that's built that anticipates the pain.
You know the pain's coming.
Let's preload it.
Let's know it's coming so we can do something about it.
Is this some?
The book I'm 46.
The movie, the field of dreams was one of those movies when I was growing up as a kid, like Rudy was, field of dreams and
There was an author that wrote a book and Kevin Costner has these dreams and they speak to him.
But I believe that one of the statements that he kept hearing was, ease his pain.
And the whole premise of the whole movie was the relationship that Kevin or Kevin Costner had or didn't have with his dad.
was the whole premise of the movie.
That he actually got to play catch with him at the end.
It said, build it and he will come.
He didn't even know what, who it was that was going to come.
But I've never had completely this thought, but he kept hearing ease his pain.
So they were probably easing each other's pain of some unmet expectation, conversations that didn't happen between each other to whatever the problems are in life.
It's like, Hey, we can get through this.
Hey man, like it's okay.
Sometimes the decisions we make, the outcomes, we don't have the intent to, but it's okay.
Keep going.
Don't, don't try Wes hard, but
It's okay.
But what they had to come together, and don't think he ever got to know his dad.
And so they had to come together to have some conversation that probably his entire life he had missed out on.
And I don't think that that's too much different than these unmet expectations that we're placing on ourselves to look at the scoreboard every day.
And so I'm wondering is ease his pain.
Cause that's what we're talking about doing.
How can we do that for John growing up?
Because here's what's wild.
Your parents.
I bet they probably fought because of similar things, They probably had pain that came from places that you didn't know.
That most likely they didn't ever sit down with someone and have this open dialogue about the pain of life, about maybe how their parents are treated to, about how they had come
up, about the expectations and the pressures of life.
And I agree with you, man, that what I try to do
In my early years of leadership, thought it was my job to fix the problems.
My understanding now is it's not my job to fix the problem.
It's actually my job to sit down and have a conversation with the person to not give them advice necessarily, but to sit down and talk about the thing.
Let's think this out.
Let's, let's project what's going to happen if we continue down this path.
Now, the good thing is you get to decide.
And at the end of the day, we all have these fairs, have these losses, but what can we do to make this experience a little less painful, but you still know you're going to have to
go through the.
That's where all that came from.
like, hey, you still got to go through the process.
So I'm just wondering if.
Can we ease this?
Because it's painful as hell.
You still feel it.
You do feel it.
Yeah, but I think by acknowledging that there's gonna be pain in the process, doesn't that ease the process?
Yeah, I think then you're voluntarily accepting the process.
That's what I'm trying to do.
And my role is leadership and the companies operate and the people I engage with.
I've arrived at this place.
I don't know if it's going to be a continued thought, but I've arrived at the place where I'm just trying to help people to get to a decision.
That's all I'm trying to do.
Like, let's just deal with the transparent, honest truth of whatever the scenario is.
Not saying I like it, not saying you love it, but you raised your hand and you wanted to do something.
You wanted to play soccer.
You want to be a college athlete.
You wanted this job.
You wanted to accept this promotion.
Let's talk about what the reality of that situation is so you can accept it.
Let's go ahead and make the decision now that we're going to see it through.
But let's talk about these pain points that are going to happen.
So when they do happen, there's not anxiety, there's not depression, and you don't have decisions to make in the moment.
Because I do think that usually in my life, the only big problems I have is when I have, it's all around these expectations.
Any moment in my business life that I am not happy,
and I'm not satisfied and I feel like I want to break things.
It's when expectations haven't been met.
My expectation of others or the expectations of myself.
And if I would have had a conversation with myself in the beginning with it or with those people.
We probably wouldn't have had an issue.
It's the standard, right?
So you think about, for me, that's what leadership is.
You set the standard.
And it's funny because I've had to, uh although I'm not a conflict-driven guy, I've had to learn in business to embrace conflict.
When done the right way, and I believe if you have the love of the team and the trust and respect, then you have every right to have these truth and love conversations, right?
So whatever the, I had a sales rep that,
was struggling at one point a couple years ago, I remember talking to him, said, Joe, you're just not meeting the standard.
Do we least agree on what the standard is?
And once we had that conversation, he respected it, then he knew every other conversation was either I'm meeting the standard or I'm not.
It became much easier conversation.
And it's like, at some point it becomes their decision.
It's a choice.
It's a choice, the team.
So when you say, I think the word that kept coming to me when you're talking about the conversations with your team is you're a catalyst.
You're an advisor.
You're there to help guide because you've seen probably so much too.
But you also want them to go through.
That's how they're going to learn.
And they've got to fail.
It's not going to be a perfect process.
how we're all going to get what want.
That's it.
And so I just know in the beginning, if we can set out to your point, standard, clear expectations of what that is, we all make a choice.
And if at any moment I'm getting, uh I'm getting way better at this and it's evolving really fast, I'm getting way better at saying, Hey, you don't have to, but this is our
standard and this is what we're going to do.
You don't have to do it for me or for you, but I'm just telling you like for you to do it here with us, this is what we expect.
Yeah.
And so every day when you come to work and you show up in your buildings, just know like this is the expectation that we're building towards.
And if at any moment we see the reason why we don't need to have conflict at any moment, you just need to raise your hand and say, I don't feel like living up to that anymore.
And I'm accepting that more in my life ah all the time from people.
used to be, no, we need to do more.
No, you need to do this.
Nope.
It's like, Hey, listen, I just need you to raise your hand and say, I don't want to participate in this standard or expectation anymore.
And then.
We all can have amazing relationships with each other.
So that's what I'm trying to work towards personally more and more.
I'm, this is your pod.
No, I love it.
It reminds me of, think it's Zappos.
I don't know if they still have it, but they used to have something.
You go through a training program and they would actually pay you to leave, teach you the standard.
And if you didn't want to live by it, fine.
uh
Do you think that's the same idea with having uh unlimited vacation and PTO time?
What's the leader in you think about that?
They actually find that more people don't even.
Terrible.
Because I lived it.
had no, I had in the last 10 years of my career, no vacation and PTO.
You're working all the time.
You're on call 24-7.
Now, it's part of the job to a point.
But I used to laugh because I would see leaders that they'd go on vacation, but then they would be still connected and texting and whatever.
And I get it too.
Like, is business, right?
You got to, if there's an emergency.
But I would try to, if I took
time off, I would tell my team, look, if it's an emergency, reach out.
But I want to model the way for you guys, because when you go on vacation with your families, I want you to disconnect.
But have a plan.
You got to have a backup plan.
Hey, I'm out.
Put your autoresponder on email, whatever else, voicemail.
Hey, contact this person if you need something.
We get a business to run.
But yeah, I think it's a terrible thing.
uh seems cool on paper.
Do you guys have that?
Well.
I'm going to say something that people aren't supposed to.
Yes and no.
elite performers earn the right to do different.
Yeah, good point.
And maybe I'm saying terrible and that's too demonstrative.
In the right environment, it's fine for the right person and the right team, it's okay.
This is the thing where we could go a bunch of different places, but I'm going to stay on track for you today to make sure, know, we, but, um, there aren't the same rules for
everyone.
I used to struggle with that, by the way, but you're spot on.
Yes.
Go there.
Everybody on a team's got different mentality, different skill set.
It's like a sports team.
A business team's like a sports team.
The more I do this work, the more I realize how similar they are.
So you look at a soccer team or basketball, any sport, I was a left midfielder, a very different position than a center midfielder or a center back or a goalie.
Are you kidding me?
The goalies are the craziest people on a soccer
Nor on island earth.
Yell they're so mad at
Argolli in college used to yell at everything to the point where you tuned him out.
It was so terrible.
I've never even played soccer, but I was like, yell at everyone.
can tell everything's everyone else's fault.
Never theirs.
don't know.
I can tell you many stories.
But yes, so you have to treat everybody differently.
Some people have, and you have different levels of performers and people that get results, and yeah, of course.
the challenge around that because I've heard these things at different through my growth cycle of a leader it's been like well you're sending me mixed messages and it's like well
I'm not trying to but they might have heard me say something different to someone else in a different environment well that didn't apply to you
I think it's about the connection.
And I think it's an individual connection.
The best leaders I see have the trust built on a one-to-one basis, where they earn the right to treat everybody a little bit differently.
But in the best situations, the individuals know that and understand, okay, coach or leader is gonna treat me a little bit differently.
I spent some time last week with a pro soccer team, New England Revolution.
It was fascinating for two days.
I got to spend time with the coaching staff, players, front office, uh medical staff.
And it was such an interesting interaction of communication to me.
It was so basic in a lot of ways.
And this is a high performance organization.
These guys too have won nine straight or nine game on beaten streak.
So they're running on a high, but they want to keep it going.
And they're 10th in the table.
So you talk about results.
They're trying to continue to go.
So just seeing the interaction between
players and coaches, coaches and coaches.
And there was a situation that happened where a player was injured and they were disappointed because uh the players had an injury history.
And just to see, I observed one of the coaches talking to one person one way and someone else the other way.
It was really fascinating to me, but it was, it's human behavior.
It's just the way we are.
So I think is for any leader, as you run, you set the standard and the tone for the team.
As long as everybody knows.
I get the challenge with it, because if there's some people, maybe with a scarcity mindset, that would say, oh, you're treating me different than Johnny.
He's your golden child, whatever.
But that's where you have to go have the conversation with that person and say, let me tell you why.
it.
And here's the why in which top performers and elite performers accept they've earned that.
person that's so-called the golden child for some reason, some situation, some scenario, they earned it.
And so what the person that's asking the question, why are they being treated better and different?
It's like, well, let's talk about the standard because not only have they probably lived up to it, they have exceeded it.
And this is the game all of us are playing.
And so this is a standard for our team.
And at any moment that you decide and you choose to do the things that are necessary to meet that standard.
Yeah.
then you get to make the decision if you want to keep going.
Now you don't have to, you meet the standard.
It's acceptable for you to be on this team.
But if you want to be the person that is the brand that gets the interviews, that gets a little bit more leeway in the way they live their life, that we don't put as much pressure
that it's, we're not having the more, if you want to be that person that has more power and more perceived control, you have to exceed the standard.
And
Usually the issue is, see, they're professionals.
They're already elite.
They know that.
Sure.
What I found, and you can push back here.
What I found in just the direct leader that I am, you know, what the standard already is.
You're just not willing to go up to it currently.
So is there a conversation we need to have on why you don't want to go up to this?
You can, can, you can be nicer about it if you want, but that individual, the way that they were able to achieve being at that level on a professional team at the top tier in
our country.
They already understood what it took and what the assignment was.
For some reason, they're not wanting to maintain and keep up with that.
Am I wrong?
but you'd be surprised at even at that level how much you have to communicate the standard.
I mean, it's such a consistent thing.
You've gotta come and you've gotta, and I'm not saying it's gotta be on every whiteboard and everything in every office, and that's not a bad thing, it's, what's the old saying?
Things are caught, not taught.
So it's how you operate on a daily basis, every conversation.
I actually have a sales rep that I led for quite a few years, struggled with emotional intelligence.
But I noticed right away, he had a couple of the teams he was on, the leaders were done with him.
And so they gave him to me and said, hey, let's see if you can develop it.
And I did a bunch of work assessment work, 360 work.
I sat in some meetings with him and I saw right away the guy was brilliant.
He was fricking brilliant.
He knew our products better than anybody else.
He could have been a product manager.
mean, brilliant guy.
No one strategy, negotiation, everything.
No one ever told him that.
So here he is thinking he sucked and he's got, his problem was he would get promoted up the chain and then he'd crap on everybody below him, right?
So it was a duality.
was, hey, let's, your emotional intelligence, we're gonna work on that.
We gotta bring that up.
That's a blind spot right now.
But you're a genius here, so let's live into that.
So it was just, how do we build this up and then how we live into this more?
And this guy's been on an unbelievable trajectory in the last 10 years.
close to getting a pretty big leadership job even.
But here's, I treated him differently.
He still struggled at times with EQ.
There were things he would say and do that he could get away with, but I would pull him aside and say, look, man, that, you know, what's up level there that I saw that, where
maybe someone else couldn't get away with it.
And there were some times some of the lower, this guy was a very high performer at the time.
Some lower performing reps would come to me and say, ah, I feel like you give him the best accounts or whatever else.
And I'm like, look, I know he's-
to close them.
There you go.
trust them, but you can get there too.
Here's how you get there.
And so it's that communication piece.
Yeah, I think, and that's the moment where they're deciding not to do the work and I'm okay with it.
Now the communication is important.
What's so funny about his story.
I'm sitting here and you're talking about his strength.
Yeah.
But you talked about his weaknesses.
That's why so often I'll sit across from people and we'll talk about this e-wheat sales trainer, this guru influencer.
This is their two or three key drivers or key indicators about what it takes to be successful in life.
You'll hear people that say focus on
Focus on your great attributes and your skills and don't focus on your deficiencies.
But with him, if he didn't focus on his deficiencies, he wasn't going to be able to maximize what his potential was.
Yep, that's it, yeah, and I'm a strengths finder guy, love it, I love it, but their whole thing is don't focus on weakness, or they do say contain your weaknesses, which I'll
respectfully disagree, I think if that guy didn't up-level his weakness, he was screwed, he was not gonna.
more of the question is what's the vision you have for your life?
What do you want to be?
Because if he didn't want to be a director, an EVP, if he didn't want to truly be elite and completely change his life and be one of the high, if he didn't want to be that, it's
okay.
Right?
Isn't it?
If he just wants to continue to be this guy and piss people off and not be great for the culture, he's always going to make a lot of money.
He's going to make an impact for an organization.
But the argument is, that you got to get rid of your toxic people.
And usually they're the top performers.
Yeah.
Like a Gary Gaynor Vaynerchuk talks about this.
said, Hey, usually your most toxic people to the culture are the most elite and top salespeople, you better fire them immediately.
Wow.
I haven't heard him say that I love his stuff, but wow
And then so, but if you would have done that.
Why?
Why does he say that?
um I think he believes that they don't change.
I'm putting words in his mouth, but that's where I go to, Because why wouldn't you work on the individual?
Yeah.
Probably hard to lead that person.
Yeah.
thankfully they were open.
But guess why?
Because I invested in him early on.
He trusted me.
He lives in...
I'm going to see him after this, by the way.
This is this...
I don't work for the company anymore.
I'm going to go have lunch with this guy.
Because I cared.
He knew I cared.
And that's it.
It comes down to do people know you care about
If people know that, my guess is in your company, if people know you care, they're gonna frickin' move mountains for you.
If they don't, they're gonna backstab you, they're not gonna give their best effort.
They've gotta feel that empowerment and that encouragement.
To me, that's leadership.
That's how, that's what, you can, if you can get, and then you get out of the way and let them do the job.
Let them fail some.
my gosh.
I mean, it's insane.
I gotta tell you the story real quick.
My son,
He plays for a small Christian school in Columbus, Junoah Christian.
And he's been, funny enough, he's got some of the same head case things that his dad has as far as self-limiting beliefs and different things.
He's played basketball and soccer his whole life.
Decided to not play basketball last year and go all in on soccer.
Realized quickly, won't go into the story that he probably didn't have the level to play at the top level.
So.
We were able to get him back on the basketball team.
It's a very small school, so were, maybe Dad was able to make some calls and crease the skids a little bit.
But so he got back on the team.
uh They just had, so he's going into his senior year and they've got a couple really good younger kids that are fantastic.
They're getting invited into showcases and all this stuff now.
So he goes, they had camped last two days in University of Findlay up north of here.
And uh his problem is, and we all know it,
And I've talked to him a million times as coaches.
His name's Gabe.
Gabe, you've got to play free.
You're at your best when you play free.
Well, he's been stuck in this whole thing of, don't, dad, I don't know if I'm going to start.
So if I'm not going to start, I don't want to play.
And this team's legit, Division 7.
They're going to have a chance to make a pretty good run next year.
And I'm like, Gabe, especially with my experience in sports, I wish I could go, because I used to be so dejected when I didn't start.
And I'm like, look, buddy.
Be the best guy to come off the bench or go earn your spot.
We have all these conversations.
So uh he goes to Finley.
They play nine games in two days.
I drove up there yesterday to watch.
He ends up starting.
He's not the best player on the team, but they're playing in the semi-finals and in the second half, third and fourth quarter, I kid you not, he's the best player on the court.
Plays relentless defense.
He's
Little taller than me.
I'm 5'8".
He's about 5'10", but for basketball, not very tall.
So he's a guard.
A pass first, good defender, guard.
Ends up icing the game with four clutch free throws in the last minute.
Gets on the ground to get to a loose ball to clinch the game.
they actually lost one game.
They were eight and one.
This team had beaten them in the first game the day before.
And so they went on to win the title.
And so I'm sitting there, I drive home with him and his buddy and had a conversation with him when we got home and I'm just like, do you see what's possible?
What you're capable of?
And I think that's when we can get people to play free, employees, teammates, whatever, that's where the magic is.
That's what our job as leaders are.
mean, parenting is leadership.
So how do I, yes, it's not perfect.
You're going to make mistakes.
You're going to screw things up.
free yourself from the result a little bit too of trusting the process.
That mindset has shifted a lot for me.
Reading guys like James Clear, Tom McHavits has been amazing and seeing his journey, but he was the first person to talk about process over outcome.
And that's where it's okay.
If you want to write the book, show up and write 500 words today and then do it again tomorrow.
If you want to record 150 episodes of a podcast.
Show up and do episode one and get the best team to do it and then do two and three.
And I think you even shared with me before, you see it evolve over time, you get better.
You have do it in a compact enough amount of time.
If not, you lose track of any progress and you probably don't have progress then.
What do you think?
was, you know, making the connection of sales guys, right?
We're always trying to connect with the other human and how can we weave stories?
I have a good friend of mine who I've met through real estate and he's an English guy.
So he happens to be a soccer player, but he was an elite one at a young age.
And he played for, I think it was called Ipswich.
Okay, sure.
And at 16 or 17, he was one level below.
Primarily.
So you know what that is.
Um, he was able to dress for the big team.
I believe 17 or 18 years.
Gosh.
Right.
Yeah.
He quit.
Really?
Why?
It wasn't starting.
So we made it to the top level, didn't start, and decided to opt out.
came to U.S.
to play college.
Really?
How does he feel about that now?
He doesn't talk about it too much.
He talks a little bit about it and they don't listen to the podcast.
I don't think they're those type of people so I can talk about it.
He came here and I believe he had a full ride to one of the top.
You would see something like that, but they found out.
They had played pro ball.
He had to go to like an N.A.I.
or something like that.
But then he came here to Northern or Northern Kentucky University.
Okay.
And he doesn't, you can always tell when people know they have some, some regret or some doubt.
His name is all over that place when it comes to soccer.
It's just Northern.
It's just NKU, but
I just listen to this and I'm like, man, we have to help people.
You were there to coach your son.
When he was going through that moment, right?
Right.
And it's so sad when you see people that have significant talent, they're living what most people would believe is a dream.
Here comes the pressure.
Yeah.
Right.
They're not living up to some preconceived notion of expectation in that moment.
And it's like, Hey, it's supposed to be hard.
Yeah.
This thing is hard to do great things.
It's really hard.
Let's work through that.
Let's be intentional.
Let's to your book, right?
Let's be intentional about the necessary tactics and things because you're already very capable and you're so good.
So it goes, what I find is most people that I interact with, they do not comprehend what they're capable of.
out.
The reason why I'm in a position where I know it is I know where I came from and what the world tells us, how we used to be graded in life.
You're not supposed to come where I came from to be sitting here today.
And
It can be done.
Everybody wants to do it fast these days.
I don't love it, but it could be done faster.
I could have done it faster.
Um, and I'm, it's almost as if everybody is living the life.
that almost they're living the life of today.
So we're sitting here on June 12th.
So they're living just June 12th and what they're experiencing.
It's what I talked about about the studio.
If they can comprehend and look around and see greatness, if you can see greatness and you know what that is, you most likely can become it.
The understanding of saying that performance, that outcome, that action is great.
If you truly have an accurate understanding of it, you know what it is.
You just need to have someone there, some process, some system that says, hey, here's where you are.
Here's the things that have been designed that have been learned previously.
If you get on the bike, if you get on the road and do this thing, you will get there.
So I don't know what your thought is about it, but it's intentionality.
Okay, can I ask you a question?
So I was listening to some of your prior work and you talk about I think 2007 2008 financial crisis.
Oh Right.
You're on your last
three weeks from complete.
Here's what I was looking at.
And see, when you have success, then you're comfortable talking about all the failures.
Isn't it funny how works?
Yeah, it's how it works.
You don't want to talk about it in the moment because you don't feel like you're succeeding.
It hurts.
you're living the life that you believe other people are perceiving as well, which is completely irrelevant.
So whatever the quote.
yeah, it was.
And when I say three weeks, personally, my personal commitments, which are mortgages,
You have leases for an office.
started this real estate company.
I have a couple of employees.
It's still really small, but I went all in.
When people are truly entrepreneurial and they have a dream, you go all in.
You just do and you risk everything.
And if you don't risk everything, you're most likely not going to succeed.
If you're not willing to risk everything, if you're an entrepreneur, because it's going to be so much harder, the plan isn't going to work out exactly like the way you've laid it
out.
If you're not willing to risk it all,
there's a good chance that you're probably gonna fail.
And the reason why you're gonna fail is because you're gonna quit too soon.
Because you weren't willing to push it more and risk more.
And I understand when people have families and all that.
if I go back, my brain told me, I think I had three weeks of revenue and funds left.
But think about that in the personal and business cycle.
Think about what three weeks is.
Worst, mean, at least we operate on a monthly scale.
Mortgages and rents are paid monthly.
Bills are paid monthly.
So if I had three weeks left, it means you're on empty.
I can't make the next cycle.
Um, so yeah, it was.
the most difficult thing and moment in my life to overcome.
And so, yeah, so you're right.
I don't know what you want to ask about.
Like what, I think to go back to vision, what got you through that?
Couldn't imagine.
what I tell, um, I didn't have the understanding and the comprehension to have so many conversations I have with elite folks.
Now I didn't have it then I just had work ethic, but I said something on a podcast.
I don't go on too many podcasts.
If people invite me, I'll go on some of them, but I said something to a guy a year and half ago on a podcast.
And I said, he's like, man, explain the success.
And I said, well, hold on.
We need to establish a check.
Cause don't feel like I've succeeded yet.
People who have less than think I have.
They see the thing I've built.
Listen, I'm the first quarter baby.
I got you.
Of what I want to build.
but the outside world looks like success.
And I said, well, I've had all the struggle and the heartache that people could even comprehend and perceive and think about around a long journey of 17 years of
entrepreneurship.
But I said, it's very simple.
just committed when I started.
He said, what do mean?
I said, committed to the outcome.
So that's why I struggle with people talking about this, trying to achieve results.
Me actually committing when I started to the outcome, regardless of all the danger and all the pitfalls and all the disaster that I had no idea that I was going to have to go
through on my path to learn.
At the moments that I would face, I wasn't good enough to overcome it.
The only way you keep going is if you just believe and you commit to this idea of what you wanted to do, because it's so hard.
It's so painful.
So just my own personal experiences, there was no indicator.
that I was going to be able to.
I didn't have a mentor sitting beside me.
I just knew I was...
It was either success or death.
And I don't know if I actually mean literal death, but financial death, uh reputation death.
uh
Self-belief, ego, death of everything a human knows on the physical part.
I wasn't going to stop until literally someone or something or some system was like, you're Game over.
Can't do it.
Can't get back into your office.
Don't have the licenses to do the thing.
We're throwing away the key.
And so because of that, what I did in that moment when I was, we literally couldn't sell homes.
We couldn't get home as appraised.
Right.
was, it a disaster and
since I made such a commitment to the outcome of building the idea of what I believe the company needed to be because the industry needed to pivot.
I said, okay, what is the baseline fundamental thing I have to do to survive?
To stay on the journey.
I said, I got to go sell a house.
It's that simple.
I have got to go sell a house knew how to do it really well.
And houses weren't selling.
It said, doesn't matter.
Go have one more conversation.
Go get one more listing.
Find one more interested buyer.
Go sell a house.
And it was survival.
And then for the next two to three years, man, it was, it was literal survival.
um, I've been in a relationship with my significant other with her for 17 years.
We'd only been together about a year.
when just financial crisis showed up.
And she said something to me.
She's awesome.
You can't achieve what I've achieved in life.
Like she didn't get all the credit.
I did the work, but I wouldn't have had the mental capacity.
If a relationship drains and takes things away from you, it's tough for you to become the total human that you can become, right?
So she's never been someone that's, she's always helped fill me up.
She's never been a drain.
Wow, that's amazing.
ever.
Fortunate.
You don't know when you meet people that that's who they're going to become.
But she said something to me seven or eight years ago and she said,
You know, it's as if you weren't even here for two years.
Wow.
Okay.
And that's how hard it was.
That's how deep.
That's how dark.
And I wasn't depressed that I know.
But every day when I woke up, these 16 and 18 legit hours, a lot of people say it.
Without making a profit, just driving revenue enough to survive to keep the dream and the hope alive for the future.
There wasn't any skill inside of me that said this guy's more capable or something about him has higher business intelligence or he's the chosen one to succeed in this arena.
I just wanted it more, man.
And so, yeah.
And so I think that I go back then it was really, really painful, but the only thing I did in every moment was put my head down, go find a deal, go make a connection.
talk to a human being about selling the thing that I sell and get up and do it every day, every moment, and spend every amount of time.
And so since it's that simple, everything that I get to lead now, everything, we're sitting here, everything I get to lead came from that.
That's why know that almost every other human being that I look at every day, it's in there.
They are capable.
So, and the person I am today.
is because of all the pain, all the hardship.
and all those really, really tough times I had to go through.
And to your point about life, I wouldn't change a thing.
But the bad part is most people quit and it doesn't make me special.
It just makes me a guy who didn't quit.
Right.
So I don't know what we do with that.
I don't know what we do with it.
Hey, thanks for tuning in.
If you like these types of conversations, be sure to follow the necessary entrepreneur on your favorite platform.
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For me, it's the hero's journey.
So what's the hero's journey?
The Hero's Journey, this guy Joseph Campbell, popularized it, wrote a book about it, I don't know, 100 years ago, something like that.
But pretty much every Hollywood movie is based on this framework, and here's what it is, essentially.
Someone goes on some adventure, and usually they experience some extreme adversity.
Usually a guide comes along and helps them back on the path, and then they come back to save the day.
So you think about Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, or any most famous movies have this path, and I think it's the human journey.
You just said it.
mean, this is you're on this path.
Financial crisis hits.
For me, what I go to, sounds like your significant other became your guide, your support system a little bit, even though you weren't there.
I don't know.
know, so yeah, so I think that what I know is, is that in that moment, see, that's what's so important about surrounding ourselves with quality people is you don't know when the
tough times are going to come.
I don't need her to be awesome and great and supportive most of the time.
But when you need them, it's essential that they show up, right?
And if they aren't that capable quality individual, they're not going to have the infrastructure and be able to show
and allowing you the freedom to go do your thing.
So you were gone for two years, but that's maybe she was a guide there without even being a true guide is my point.
I didn't hear one ounce of criticism in those two years.
Yeah, mean, support.
I'm on this adventure now.
I just left 25-year corporate career.
Guess who my biggest cheerleader is?
Your wife.
My wife.
Every day.
She's been telling me to do this work for five years.
John, I believe in you.
Go.
You're going to crush it.
Right?
And sometimes a little thing, eh, I got the stock options and the cushy salary and health benefits and everything else.
It's really nice.
But she's been saying, now, you know you want more of an impact.
And I could not be doing this without her support.
It's been incredible.
It is.
Um, and I think what we, we hear less Brown and all these folks say, your wife is the outcome of the five people you spend the most time around.
I don't know if it has to be five.
It's just your wife reflects and looks like the people that you spend the majority of your time.
It just does.
And so I, this is one of the biggest struggles that people that I am close to have.
It's tough for us to break the mold of where we came from.
It's tough for us to break the mold of these have been 20 year friends.
It's tough to break the mold of, um, A very negative family member.
It's tough for them to understand what to do with that.
And I'm not here to give any advice on how much they distance themselves, what they should do with it.
I just know if you spend, is, this is
I have this factual.
I don't care.
This is not opinion.
I've seen it.
If you spend even a consistent small time weekly, a few hours, if you spend even a few hours weekly around inherently negative people, your wife is going to be less than it just
is.
There's so much energy that has taken up being in that space around those people because you don't instantly recover when you leave them.
sure.
It is hard.
And if you spend two or three or four hours with them, you're going to have 10 hours.
That's kind of like, right.
The, and so I think, so the challenge is, is that we, in these emergency situations, that's when we're looking almost for the healing, but what we should be doing properly
with intentionality is building the infrastructure of life.
You actually, you work out in the gym, not necessarily for your health today.
So you can have a full life of health.
Right.
If we're only reacting, looking people to save us when we're in the moment of trauma, well, you better have lived a life and impacted folks that when you're going through the
struggle, they show up.
Yeah.
That's good.
Yeah, it's relationship capital.
You've got to, it's been amazing for me to see, I've gotten a lot of offers for jobs and consulting gigs and all this stuff, because I spent 25 years in this insure tech space and
I've had people say what, what's been your secret to developing relationships and it's
Don't burn any bridges, treat everybody with respect, add value in every situation.
And by the way, I didn't always think this way.
There was a moment, my first half of my career, I was a pretty selfish, egotistical sales rep and had some success.
But realized I got taken off a couple of accounts and realized, yeah, I could make friends with somebody, but I better be really delivering value to them in a big way to really make
it a true partnership.
I I kind of had this vendor, I'm your buddy and I'm gonna take you out to golf and dinner and whatever else.
But I think that changes everything.
When you focus on planting the right seeds, the relationship capital piece.
There's an old book we used to read to our kids that says, how full is your bucket?
And you think about, I think, I want to say it's Tom Wrath.
may have the name wrong.
I hear people talk about this.
But it's basically every person has a bucket of water on their head.
I have one, you have one, everybody in the room has a bucket of water.
And your job, my job for you is not to take any of your water out.
It's I want to fill your bucket so it overflows.
Hopefully you do the same.
And then that's where the magic is because we're when you're a bucket filler.
How do you work through this?
Um, I believe life is this balance of figuring out this balance of selflessness and selfishness.
And it, it's weighted differently throughout our lives.
What I know is true is the more selfless that we are, the more impacts that we're going to make.
You're going to be able to be more selfish in the future.
I said something to somebody a couple of weeks ago.
Hey, I'm not looking to be the martyr.
I actually want to live an incredible life, but I know that I need to put other people first to be able to live that incredible life that comes with delayed gratification.
That comes with delaying the life that I want to have that delaying my selfishness to pour into others so that when the time comes, have so many, that's the analogy of the bucket.
So how do we mentally operate that it needs to be about other people?
oh
Yeah.
So I think people miss this and this is I, I two buckets in the book for the with intention process is self intention and others intention.
I've got five steps for both self intention.
People usually think, Hey, I just want to focus on others.
I'm going to be a servant leader.
It's all about them, but no, no, no.
It's about you first.
You have to build into yourself first so that you can serve others in a big way.
So what do they tell you when you bought?
to issue when you board a plane.
Yeah.
If the oxygen goes out, what do do first?
You put it on first so then you can help others.
That's right, it's the same thing.
for example, let's make this very practical.
You wake up and are you investing in yourself?
So for me, the first 90 minutes of my day, I have my set rituals that I do.
For me, I read the Bible, I read another book, I work out, and then I plan my day.
I used to be, no I'm gonna...
wake up and grind and make calls and emails.
And I realized, I did a bunch of research back when I was going through this process of rebuilding my career and my speaking skills.
I called it success habits, ironically, but I interviewed about 40 top performers about how they went about their work, their days, personally, professionally, everything, asking
them very tactical questions.
What time do go to bed?
What time do you wake up?
What do you eat?
All this stuff.
How do you manage your energy?
How do you keep a to-do list on paper or electronically?
All this.
Fascinating to see the different
you know, the disparity between and some very top performers that sleep in a little bit and they think the afternoon is their best time.
Some that on paper, they're crushing it and guess what?
They're stressed out and they're getting three hours of sleep and they're all, you know, they're struggling.
So ah for me, it's how that's what with intention is.
How do you start your day?
How do you win the day?
And it's, is, maybe it sounds selfish, but no, it's fill yourself up, spend time on yourself so that you can serve others.
It's both, it's a growth mindset and a service mindset.
For me, it's non-negotiable.
They're very symbiotic.
uh
about the service mindset, though.
How does that show up?
So if the first 90 minutes is for you, but then tell us what the other time is.
Yeah.
How are you showing up to pour into others?
What's that?
What's that look like throughout your professional career?
Yeah, okay, so for me and my either sales team or clients, but let's talk about sales team.
I was big on, didn't, there were times I had one-on-one calls, and we're all spread out throughout the country calling, we're flying across the country meeting with insurance
companies, whatever else.
But there were many times I would be on a call with one of my reps for 90 minutes.
I didn't really have an end time.
It was let's collaborate.
I wanted to provide the safe container where we can talk through stuff.
go a little deeper, a couple of layers deeper.
If I had a nickel for every leader that I talked to, that it felt so transactional.
They're calling to check in, but they want to get off the phone.
You can feel it.
mean, our CEO would call once in a while and sometimes wouldn't even say bye.
He would get what he wanted from you and hang up.
And it just became, you lose trust in that environment.
And what a leader doesn't realize is that when you show up that way, you're
your team is not gonna perform at their best when they're not, that's why I said this empowered and encouraged mindset.
So.
Don't care.
talked about that in the beginning.
Yeah.
They feel like you care.
They'll get a war with you.
So tactically again, it's spending, being with is not transactional.
I'm going to be with you as much time as you need.
If there's an emergency and you got to talk to me at night, fine, let's do it.
Let's, you know, you got to figure out family stuff or whatever, but be, your team's got to know you love them.
And if they do, they'll, they'll run through the wall for you.
So does that mean I'm here for you in any way I have to be at any time, any amount of time commitment, any conversation, any necessary growth moment?
I'm here to travel this journey with you without limitation.
but you also have to set the standard, because you can't have some super needy person that then takes advantage of it.
it's, yeah, right.
So you gotta, I mean, it's hard.
This stuff's hard.
This leadership is not easy, man.
It's like, it's a dance.
It's an art to it.
um...
and everyone thinks they want it.
Yeah, it is, it's not for everybody.
Gosh, my gosh.
Yeah, I've had plenty reps that said, hey, I want your job.
it's, you're doing less in some ways.
The pressure's so different.
The decision making, right?
I imagine you're making a lot less decisions than probably when you were, and I don't know your journey, if you were a real estate agent initially.
That's where it started.
That's how you start, right?
I was a sales rep.
Things started from there.
Yeah, so uh as you get into leadership, found a lot less decisions, but way more importance to those decisions.
decisions that you make have way more impact.
Every single one them.
They're critical.
And so I, this is what I coach people on now.
If you, if I see a lot of people that are struggling, they got to make a big decision and what do you do?
You grind it out.
You're sitting at the desk and I'm like, no, that's bullshit.
Go for, go get your running shoes on and go for a, you can go for a walk if you're a walker, but go for a run and break a sweat.
I've solved more problems just breaking a 30 minute sweat.
How do you solve a big problem?
I'll sleep there.
would use some.
How do you solve a big problem?
Other than going on a run.
Yeah.
So no, I'm an instinctual guy.
um, but I also, I'm a, I was a finance major, so I'm, I'm an analyst at heart too, but, but I know, so it's a both and proposition, but for sure instinctual, but I, I, I'm a big
brainstormer writer too.
So I like to just think and write things out and just, it's always for me about what, what do want the end result to be?
And if you
first in general machine.
if you know what the end result is, because you can reverse engineer and probably take a thousand different paths to get there.
And one may not be better than the other.
One may be harder.
Just take one.
Yeah, just take one and go.
Yeah, it's what I mean, it's essentially what you said earlier about the financial crisis, right?
You just, know what the end result is going to be.
That's how, as I left corporate now and I'm building my own thing, I know where I'm going.
I know I'm going to get there and I know it's going to be messy.
It already is.
I'm okay with that.
It's less messy with the greater knowledge you have.
Yeah.
All right.
The commitment needs to be there, but sure.
I would be way more prepared to handle and deal with that now than the kids 17 years ago.
Right.
Um, but the most important thing is the commitment, all the things.
so I sat with a couple of people last night and I was sitting in an office and said, you know, all these departments, all these different leaders, all the metrics were wanting
growth and year every year, just all the things.
whether it's me building commercial real estate empires, building real estate companies, whatever it is, bunch of things happening, whether it's content piece.
And I said, I said, you know, we talk about a lot of things.
So this is the transparent moment of people getting in an office with two of my critical people that some days are looking at me like I have 18 heads some days, not in a negative
way, but they're like,
Who is this guy?
We're misunderstood at times.
And I said, I'm going to try to break this down to the foundation, to the core of the beginning and the end of every thing that I've achieved in my life.
Everyone, usually everyone wants to know how do I do better?
How do I make more money so it can improve my life in this business world?
How do I become more successful?
How do I get a promotion?
How do I make more money?
That's what
At the end of the day, so many people, there's most, most people aren't already independently wealthy and they're on this business journey for altruism to just prove
something to themselves.
oh You're trying to be successful.
You're paying the bills and you sure would like to be a little bit more comfortable paying the bills and you would like to have a few finer things in life.
Because what I know is money just highlights the thing you have going on.
The person you are.
know I'm not going to be disingenuous to anybody.
I know that flying first class.
is way more comfortable than coach.
The experience is way more comfortable.
If you have a luxury car and you buy that luxury car from a local luxury car dealership, that service experience at that luxury dealership is different than one of the dealerships
that are one of the normal ones that I was raised growing up and driving.
It's a different experience.
That life is a little bit better.
And without having success that then more financial independence comes with it.
Usually you don't have the extra income to live that life.
Right.
Because sitting in coach or sitting in first class, you're still going to get there.
Just the experience is a little bit better.
What I told them, I said, is the foundation of everything that I've built, everything I've become is this simple.
And everyone wants to know how to make their life better.
I did this when I was 14 years old.
Whatever thing I've always done, everything after we finish with this today, there's many things I'm going to do.
have a book club bookstay.
I try to do it the absolute best I can.
Yeah.
everything else in my life everything happens from that moment
All the other attributes we talk about, hard work, work ethic, emotional intelligence, high functioning executive skills, all these things develop and grow and evolve and
improve and happen from the beginning of everything that we choose to do.
There are still times, you know, you're supposed to, the leaders boot was supposed to, they're willing to do anything they ask him about to pick up the trash, sweep a floor and
all that.
Well, I don't think we should be doing it every day because there's other, but I'm willing to.
Sure.
If I see it, I will stop.
And if it needs to happen.
don't just grab a broom to just make the floor look a little bit better.
I'm sweeping the floor with the expectation that there is going to be no debris left, none remaining, not in the corner.
And if I put a push broom over it and there's debris left over, I'm going to go back over it again.
I am not leaving that job undone.
any less than I perceive it's a job well done I can't tell you
I don't know.
Have you always had it?
um
I've always been competitive.
think they kind of go hand in hand a little bit, right?
But my competition was never against other people.
I knew when I didn't do well.
I knew when I could do better.
And so I always wanted to do it again.
I lost.
I want to play again.
You beat me.
I'm mad.
I'm not happy with the outcome.
It goes all the way back to a monopoly board at seven years old.
Ah, okay.
And I'm learning, and then all of I know the value of a house on a monopoly board, then I know the value of a condo on a monopoly board, and then you lose, you understand the
metric.
I just know if I don't get the outcome I want for my life, I didn't do it well enough.
So go back and do it again.
And I think what's happening is with life being hard,
Mm-hmm.
A lot of us think the thing we're doing, feels hard at every level.
Level up.
It's going to feel hard again because I developed the skill to conquer that thing.
So what I know is that set out to do it, do it really well.
So then what we do is we try to add when it doesn't go well, we add systems, complexity, CRMs.
We stack all these things.
It's like, no, the problem you have is you're not making connections with humans.
Your CRM is not going to fix that.
More weeds isn't going to fix that.
The volume of the attempts of connecting with the human being and trying to know, like, and trust and have them know you care.
That's the thing that's going to fix it.
So the foundation of everything we're doing, why the podcast wasn't good in the beginning, why it's better now, right?
Why you're in 20 more keynotes.
The keynote's going to be just a little bit more refined every time.
If you care about doing the absolute best job, so push back, come up with a better analogy.
You've, you've been highly successful in the athletic space that I wasn't right.
So you've learned some things there.
You've been successful in the business world.
I've had massive success that most people would think in the entrepreneurial world.
Sure.
I just believe that the foundation to everything is take that thing you're currently doing and care about doing it and doing it well.
Yeah.
Can I add to it?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
think it's uh a hundred percent agree.
It's this culture of excellence, right?
Where it's yes, if I'm to do it, I'm going to do it right.
But I think there's a piece of it also do the work, but then look back and if you don't get it right, go back and figure out what it was.
But there's this element of, of not overthinking and not being too hard.
If you, if you feel good about the work you put in, awesome.
Maybe you don't get the result, right?
But you can go back and tweak.
I think what a lot of people do is have, and I was this, I had this, I wanted to be perfect.
I wanted to have the perfect touch.
I wanted to make the perfect presentation, whatever it is.
The thing that's either speaking coach tell me a couple years ago, Michael Port, he said, look, John, be helpful, not good.
Be helpful, not good.
And that, I was overthinking myself.
I want to be great.
I want to be perfect.
I want to get every word right.
and he's like, no, no, no, it's just how can you focus and serve the audience?
You talked about it earlier.
How do you connect with an audience?
That one person, that one eye contact, that one word you can say or I can say can change that person's life, right?
So, uh yes, but it is, I wanna be clear here, prepare your ass off, yes.
Put your best foot forward.
There's a soccer term, play on your front foot.
Yes, always, put your best out there.
but also be, if you don't meet the 100 % mark, if you're confident you put your best foot, okay.
We can come back to fight another day even if we didn't win.
That's your Monopoly game.
And I love that tenacity, right?
So it's a little bit of a delicate line, because you want to make sure you're finding the joy in the process as long as you have that.
Awesome.
So another conversation.
Yeah, all the moments haven't been joyous.
Yeah, but that's okay.
It's finding the joy and the struggle too.
That's what I've learned.
I know hard stuff does not bother me.
I actually appreciate it and I expect it.
And it's a bit exhilarating for me now that it's cause when you go through stuff as you have, know, you just have a different perspective and you go and you talk to your 25 year
old self or a new up and comer and you're like, and they're all smiling and getting like, look, dude, it's going to get a little hard.
just want you to.
be aware, but it's okay.
This is good.
You're going to learn from that.
agree with them.
So when you said, can I add to it?
I agree.
There's additions to the idea, but they come after.
think the clarity comes in.
This is how I function.
And if people go on from the grow, but I don't need to worry or be concerned with anything else.
Just do that job.
Well, if your job on the soccer field was send the cross, like that's why that's why you
That's what you were really good at.
Yeah.
Make sure when that ball was on your foot, when you're on the left side of the field, when you send that cross, put it on their foot.
Right.
Like if you did that, you probably come off the field and coach is like, good job way to connect today.
You participate in the assist of that becoming the goal.
You'd have to worry about what that guy was going to do with it.
Right.
You'd have, I'm assuming you'd have.
job.
Right.
Yes.
But I was blocked too.
So this is the other piece of this because sometimes we miss this where we think it's all about the effort and it is.
Yes.
Given level 10 effort all day long.
But I found for me, I had so much blockage that it didn't matter how hard I worked.
I was out in training trying to figure this out all day long, but I had this blind spot, this mess that I was dealing with that I didn't didn't frankly have the awareness to and
the courage to talk about it.
as well.
completely was it?
We've talked about it.
What was the blind spot?
The blind spot honestly was that I was too afraid to express that I was weak, right?
That I was struggling.
I didn't want anybody to know.
Because I always was the guy, right?
And so again, funny guy, connector, no one would ever think John's struggling.
And so to go back to that diagnosis, for me to go to my teammates or my coaches and say, guys, I'm really struggling, which I look back, our team was top 20 in the country for my
last three years.
played two sweet 16s, NCAA tournaments.
I wonder sometimes if I had the courage to go and approach this the right way and go get the help I need.
Who knows?
Maybe I would have left the team or taken a sabbatical.
I have no idea what would have happened.
I'm pretty sure my coaches would have been, and my teammates would have been very supportive.
That may have connected our team even deeper.
Right?
Now it's 25, 30 years ago.
It's a little, much easier to have these conversations today, I think.
um Yeah, there's an element there that I think that could have helped push the team to the next level too, to know somebody was struggling.
What's cool is having these conversations now.
I get to talk to my teammates and they hear me on podcasts and different things.
They're my gosh, we had no idea.
We had no idea you were going through this.
And I'm like, yeah, man, I was pretty good at hiding it.
You know, think the problem is what you said was it could have helped.
I think that's the issue in our mind.
Like, it?
And then that cause of causes indecisive indecision.
This lacks of a lack of.
and yes.
And so this is why I'm able to show up on your podcast, just meeting all you guys for the first time.
I don't know a lot of your audience and I'm willing to share a pretty intimate detail because I've learned that that's where the magic is too.
And there's this doesn't matter what faith anybody has.
There's a Bible verse that changed, changed my world about 10 years ago.
And I was going through this.
read the Bible for the first time and there's in second Corinthians.
Paul has this thorn in his side and he has Jesus to remove it and Jesus says, no, my power is made perfect in your weakness.
And when you are weak, then you are strong.
And that freaking blew my mind, because I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been running from this for all my life.
I've got to lean into this.
And it's been layers.
It's not that I've been perfect with it, but the more, I I go on a stage now and I share the story.
You know what's waiting for me at the end, every speech?
Here's what they say.
going through this thing.
went through the same thing.
It's the same way I feel.
It's just a mis-
Especially men our age around our age like they need an outlet and so and that's my mission is to get whether it's sports or business to free people up.
Not everybody's got a diagnosis or having a really a mental health thing but a lot of people are struggling a lot of people need a community and an outlet and a trusted
environment to to be at their best.
I don't think this is just current times.
Yeah.
I think it's probably what your dad was going through.
100%.
Yeah.
My dad was very similar to me.
Connector was a fraternity guy.
Again, like the guy with all his buddies getting everybody together.
You'd never know it, but still there was still a stigma.
That's probably why he didn't talk much about it, at least to my knowledge.
And so that's, you know, for me, I feel like this is an ode to him and my mom that I'm going to, I want to, and I see my kids struggling with stuff.
I want to do away with the stigma.
There's too many people hurting.
You know, there's 800,000 people that take their own lives every year throughout the world.
I didn't until I,
was doing my research on the book, I didn't realize that.
And so as we're talking today, that's probably a couple people have taken their lives.
So that's obviously the extreme.
It's extremely sad.
But there's a lot of other people that are hurting.
Think about that.
Think about that the experience in this life could be improved.
Yeah.
What are you finding when you were able to go to talk with the New England Revolution that you talked about?
Yeah.
um
What do you feel?
What'd feel while you were there?
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because I have some connections to the team.
So their coach, Caleb Porter, and I played together growing up.
And then he played on that Indiana team I played against.
And then he became the Columbus crew coach in 19.
We lost track of each other for a while.
We ran into each other at a swim meet.
Our kids were in the same swim club.
And so we've become very close friends since then.
um Their assistant coach, Pablo Marrera, went to my high school in Cleveland.
But guess what?
He was 10 years younger than me.
I didn't even know him.
Actually, last week was the first time I spent time with him.
And this is how it comes full circle.
One of my old teammates, Steve Klein, who played for the Revolution in 97, his son just got signed with the first team two weeks ago, Eric Klein, so he's 18, playing on the first
team, unbelievable.
I got to have lunch with him last week.
So there's all these little connections, and I don't believe in coincidences, I believe this is a uh divine thing.
What?
I felt in the organization, I've had a lot of talks with Caleb about leadership philosophy and just culture building and all this stuff.
The connection piece is everywhere.
I'm sure you see it in your company, everybody that's listening.
The human connection, that's how the best organizations are run.
You said it earlier too, the X's and O's matter, they really do.
But the trust that's built, I felt a joy in the building between everybody.
see how it works with Yes, yeah.
The joy, that's every great organization, and frankly I saw or,
our organization lose that.
You go public, you have COVID hits, you're not around people as much anymore, you start to lose that.
Cultures, it can turn on a dime.
You lose one key leader.
I saw that happen too.
That was the glue.
All of a sudden, everything gets a little bit more edgy and you don't put the right people in place and it changes things.
So yeah, it was fascinating to see.
And here's the other thing I'll tell you too.
This is one of the things Caleb said to me last week was uh slow is smooth.
and smooth as fast.
And I love that because it's this because I was I got to see behind the scenes and see in, you know, the whiteboard what they do and they've got the the field and how they organize
stuff and the whole calendar is on the wall, actually training this day game this and so and he's got a set process.
He meets with the medical team at eight thirty every more, whatever it is, and the assistant coaching team and the set piece guy.
And then they have training and then they have stuff.
I mean, it's a very methodical process.
that he just does, and this guy's won two MLS cups.
This would be his third one if he can figure out how to win it.
he's, yeah, so there was a lot of learnings, would say.
Why is slow smooth and smooth fast?
I forget if we were on air, you talking about the tortoise and the hare with the podcast.
Because you, when you go slow and smooth, you learn as you go and you can make these micro adjustments as you go.
So you're not, we were big and at CCC, I'm not waiting for the performance review to give feedback.
It's constant.
You want to always be in performance review mode and invite, like tell me what I can be doing better.
Right?
So it's, Hey, I saw this awesome or Hey, there's one thing.
Maybe we tweak that.
And so then you get to the end of the year and there's no surprises.
The standard's already there and it's like a river that's constantly flowing.
Ray Dalio calls this idea meritocracy.
The principles that was a dense book.
yes.
I have it and I'm not gonna pretend I've read the whole thing, but it's incredible.
Man, it's so he talks about idea meritocracy.
the one thing I took away from from that book is how he operated his company, Bridgewater.
think that the way he operated it was there was idea meritocracy.
Now meritocracy is coming to our purview now because of society and performance and but he talks about idea meritocracy.
The best idea wins.
And the way he ran meetings.
I added to what I took away from the book.
I believe that the right way to go into a meeting, into a relationship, into an event,
a weekend coaching session, session, any conversation between an employee and an employer.
I am going in wanting to be wrong.
Ah.
Because if I'm wrong, somebody showed me a better way.
Yeah.
Their idea of idea meritocracy is you have to be willing to be wrong.
When you come into the room, we're going to share ideas and there ends up being one person who needs to be the decisive person who figures out which one of these ideas, that's the
leader, which one of these ideas is best, but you can't feel precious about your individual idea.
So there's a willingness to be wrong.
And so I said, okay, how can I take that to the next level for me?
Yeah.
I go in with the best I've got.
But I wanna be wrong.
and you want to give your team the freedom to bring their best.
I see it in your interactions.
Yeah.
So there's no, hey, I'm here and you're here.
Yeah, of course there's a uh pecking order, but I want you to be freed up to bring your best.
That's where the best teams can perform.
100 % and we are going to be accountable the best teams everyone's accountable individually and then collectively both So but what he said was he only hires the elite
But he still finds that 30 % of people are capable of operating in that
That's what they found.
So tied to ego, so tied to whatever they're trying to protect.
And so, so he said, you have to have a willingness to be wrong.
think I'm paraphrasing, but then I'm like, okay, next level is I want to be wrong.
I'm willing to participate.
I'm willing to share, but I want to be wrong, man.
If that can be the approach, right.
And you can come back.
so I, you know, I think that, um, you know, this idea of meritocracy and growth and stuff.
So you had a big moment.
Do you think you grew?
You're going to say yes, but do you you grew in, will you reflect on this time with them?
Like, wow, this is a defining moment.
Does it feel like that yet?
Three days with those with it.
As you spoke to them, like this was a big.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a dream for me to work with pro teams.
So, um, to ha yes, that's incredible.
Cause it's, it's, it, what was fun for me is not just about the team and the players.
That's one thing to see the back office and the way that actually the sporting director and the head coach communicated and had each other's backs.
And here's what I got to tell this story real quick.
This is so cool.
So when I'm observing practice last Tuesday, they brought out, there's a 77 year old woman with a revs jersey.
says team mom in the back and Caleb comes up to me and he says, Hey, you see that woman?
says, she's a battle cancer for three different times.
She's our locker room attendant at Gillette stadium.
That's where they play, where the Patriots play.
So she opens and closes the locker room for the team.
And so they invited her out to training and they did a whole piece on her a couple of weeks ago.
uh
I'll talk to anybody.
So she's walking off the field after training.
And I said, Hey, I'm John.
want to introduce myself to you.
think your name is Deb Ross.
And, uh, we ended up talking for about two hours and she, had lunch with her and the coach and some other folks that came.
did a tour together, but to see the connections that are built at that level to a knit a 77 year old woman, who's your locker room attendant.
You make her a part of your culture.
You know, the sign that sends to your team and the
The players are coming up to her, Hey, Deb, how are you?
All this stuff.
was.
We're all in it together.
Everybody matters.
Everybody in your company, everybody matters.
Cause everybody can vote.
The least person can turn into the biggest cancer if you don't handle them the right way.
Right?
So if you get everybody on the boat together, that's why the vision piece is so important and communicate, Hey, here's the standard.
Here's my expectation.
But I also, I love you guys.
Let's do it.
as you said it, let's, yes, individualized, but also the collective.
If you get that, I've seen both sides of this.
When you're rowing in the right direction, you, I mean, you crush everything.
It's unbelievable.
And you've got everybody's back and your customers feel it.
my, they feel it.
When you're not, they feel that.
Isn't it wild the same group of people could become either?
Yeah, and no, I mean, that's why leadership is so important.
What do think leadership is?
it just John Maxwell says leadership is just influence.
influence.
I mean, your book club is how to win friends and influence people, right?
I love a big Maxwell guy.
Yes, leadership is influence.
Sales is, everybody's in sales.
Everybody's in leadership.
I don't care about your title, by the way.
We all influence.
And so it's how do I get somebody to come alongside me and do something?
And again, that's trust.
That's intention.
That's why I named this book.
think I've heard you talk about Wayne Dyer, his work, which was very instrumental to me.
I mean, he was so brilliant at articulating this, the power of intention.
PBS, man.
Tell you what, I had no money and I was going through that.
I had to cancel and shut off my cable.
I had no money and I would, he just happened to be on PBS.
That was the station.
I would still get him and Charlie Rose.
I'd watch those two guys.
You watch an elite interviewer, conversationalist about anything and just starting to listen to Wayne Dyer.
That was just the beginning.
All you have to do is you have to just start thinking.
Yeah.
So thinking like a better wife, a better way to do things.
more in control of the outcomes.
I'm responsible for just, you know, and then in its incremental growth, then I don't know a fast way to get there.
I don't, I know a quicker and faster, but I don't know a fast way.
I don't know.
Would you do it?
Would you do it better now and faster now?
Yeah.
than when you started, you probably...
I think we'd be naive to think we wouldn't with the knowledge we have now and the wisdom to do things differently.
But again, there's so much learning along the way of doing those incremental iterations.
I think going look back in 10 years and think of the same thing.
I'm going to be like, man, I would have done it so much faster.
it's this mindset of continuous improvement and growth that if we show up every day with this beginner mindset, I'm a student.
Did Toyota do that?
is right.
Just continual growth and improvement with everything all the time.
That's right.
It's just incremental.
you show up?
James Clear talks about 1 % better every day.
I a lot of people have talked about that concept.
yes, it's...
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's all.
Yep.
um What do you think, what's the book that's waiting to be written?
There's been so many.
Is there something about society?
Is there something, is there a book that's waiting to be written that you can think of?
I didn't have that question written down, but.
Yeah.
Can I share my second book?
No, I'm okay sharing it.
No.
uh I think it's starting with who.
So I love Simon Sinek's Start With Why.
It's amazing.
But I actually think it starts with our identity first and who we're showing up as.
So you talk about the process and that daily incremental growth.
I believe if we show up each day and
and we focus on, who am I showing up as today?
Am I showing up as someone who's courageous?
Am I willing to be courageous?
Am I willing to be uh stress-free?
Am I willing to take a risk?
Am I willing to grow today?
It just seems so basic, but I see so many people that get in reactive mode.
I get there too.
I'm staying shoulder to shoulder with everybody.
I actually have to intentionally write this stuff down.
I think um at least that's my working thesis for my next book is this idea of starting.
with who.
Yeah.
Yeah, willing.
I read that.
I think it's Gary John Bishop.
It's a book called Unfuck Yourself.
It's got the I don't know if I can say that on here, but that's.
way worse things.
I've seen way worse things on here.
Yeah, he talks about that.
Are you willing or are you unwilling?
And I've actually, I've written that down because it's a powerful thing.
So for me, it's, am I willing to be courageous and keep building this business?
For example, who's the best coach you've ever.
and why.
When I say best, it could be just a great one.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say it's a leader.
uh Yeah, talking about business.
I think they're all the same.
could be a high school coach when you were 15 years older.
It could have been a VP difference maker at 33.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's easy for me.
Barrett Callahan is his name.
He was an executive at CCC, not there anymore.
But um he had this amazing way of kicking you in the ass and also loving you.
And so I worked for him for a couple of years.
Actually interesting, during the financial crisis, I worked for him.
My account was AIG.
Imagine that, right?
They weren't buying anything at that point.
These guys couldn't even wear their logo on their shirt.
That's how bad it was.
But uh I moved to a different team.
Barrett got the head roll of all of our insurance sales division.
I lost this account.
uh had another account that was threatening to leave that I thought I was really close with, and I'm in a bad place, right?
I'm $10 million book of business.
I'm about to have $8 million wiped away, and I probably should have been fired.
He calls me on a Saturday morning.
I'm getting ready to go take my son.
was coaching.
He was little at the time.
And Barrett said, look, we're not letting you go.
because I believe in you, but I want you to reinvent yourself.
And then he pauses and he says, no, no, no, I want you to invent yourself.
And it was the right encouragement at the right time I needed because I was at a dark place, man.
I was low.
And just to know that a guy had my back and believed in me because that belief is super powerful.
And then it freed me up to then build what I ended up.
building, was resurrected my career, rebuilding my speaking skills, that's whole spiritual journey, rebuilding my marriage, honestly, because there was a lot of hard stuff with that
when I was going through all this stuff.
And then, you know, I pinch myself.
The fact that I went from almost getting fired to four years later, getting promoted to lead a team was an unbelievable story.
And now I get to do this at scale.
Like I got to the point where, yeah, it was great.
And I had an impact with my team and the company.
But now I get to scale this work and impact a lot of people and a lot of companies, a lot of teams.
and power of a moment.
really is.
It puts weight on me.
Right?
And it's not, I don't get upset about it, but...
Yeah.
because you gotta make sure in those moments as a leader.
You got to show up and you have to see them and you have to know the individual.
And you need to know that it's not that it's your responsibility.
The John still had to take action, but the power that you have.
Help someone completely change their life in a moment.
Yeah.
without playing collegiate sports, two coaches always significantly stand out.
then sometimes a third, John Wooden, Nick Saban.
It's like he's reinvented himself from the, cause when you're the coach of a big team, you're either loved or hated.
But now since you're not coaching the team, I think some of those people can love you more.
has, there's brilliance coming out of that guy.
I'm hearing every day.
You watch on Saturdays for the college football show.
It's unbelievable.
ah
I'm seeing all these clips and I'm like, just brilliance that you can apply throughout life.
But there's one guy that I think might be the best.
might be old Gino or Emma coaching.
can't women's talk about this at times.
He 13 championships or something.
So he says, I'm always about human performance.
I want to help people achieve their best if they want to.
And I think he said the most critical and brilliant and intelligent thing that I've heard a coach say.
And this probably came from him wrestling with performance and why players didn't.
And he started out saying, Hey, just so you know, we get the elite of the elite.
So when they come to us for them to be able to come play basketball at Yukon, they already have to be the best.
And he said, even at times the best struggle.
But he said, I found there's only two reasons why people don't do something.
It's funny when somebody just whittles it down.
only two reasons.
So I'm like, so my whole life, all my leadership, all my performance, there's only two reasons why people don't do something.
And he said, one, either you don't know how or two, you just don't feel like.
And as I wrestle and think about that, everything pretty much fits into it.
Because as a coach, I didn't hear where we went further, but which of those does a coach want the player to have either?
I don't know how, or I don't feel like it.
Which one does the coach hope that their mindset is?
I don't know how, because what's the coach do?
What's the coach doing?
You can teach them how to do it.
But if you don't feel like it, and that's where it comes back to the effort.
You can't coach.
Yeah, it's so true.
But the player has to have the capacity to get there.
They are, yes, got it.
So that's what he said.
So I'm saying this in the context of everyone here is already illegal.
Yes.
So, and I've heard him talk about the effort, he can't coach effort.
Yep.
And at that level.
He talks about their, he talks body language, He said, if I see you that you didn't get the shot, that anything, if I see you over here on the bench, not cheering for your
teammates, he said, you will never pull.
Yeah, there's the standard.
Everybody knows when they come in.
Now probably every player that gets recruited knows that better show up, right?
That's so good.
So either they don't know how, or they don't feel like it.
And I think what he's probably broken it down to, I have the solution for every lack of performance that doesn't look up to the standard.
And I bet since he believes it, how many times do you think those players and those coaches and everybody in the organization, when he's not getting the outcome he wants,
he's like, which one is it?
You don't know how, or you don't feel like it.
huh.
Wow.
Think about, see I'm thinking about that as a leader.
Think about, you have massive action in all those moments.
Yep.
And do you know, do you think he knows or do you know as a leader, just innately, what the answer is?
Yeah, yeah.
And providing the safe environment, to be honest.
That's it.
Yeah.
Yep.
But I think the part that you don't feel safe about is if you do speak up and say, don't feel like it, that's probably not going to go well with a coach like that.
Right.
So I don't know if you feel good about that or not, but you want them be honest if they don't know how, because the only, the only option that this is okay, because you know, the
standard is, is you don't know how and they are leaving the opening that they're willing to help you grow.
See that that's the positive about it.
Right.
If you raise your hands, I don't know.
Well, we're going to get busy really quick.
Yeah.
on helping you develop the skills and the understanding on how to execute the thing.
But cause what's he already know that they've gotten there?
What does he see?
What does he already know?
For the most part, they know how.
So what's he really talking?
But don't you think there is an element a coach or a leader can get out of effort?
Just someone given an eight or nine effort.
You think you can get them to a 10?
Yeah.
You know what?
I think we can all improve because I my wife.
So I don't know how long it's going to take.
I know the higher we get, the longer it takes to achieve the smaller anchor.
Cause it's just, once you get to an eight or nine, you're outpacing almost everyone.
Right.
And there's no marker almost for the 10.
Yeah.
Like the 10 is probably perfection.
And it's very rare that I have perfection.
It is rare.
And when I have it, usually I don't reproduce it every single exact time.
I perform above standard.
So it's acceptable.
We make money.
The outcome's good.
We have 20 and 30 % year over year gross.
These things are like, you're Perfection.
I love it.
I'm trying for it.
These people say that, listen, know, anxiety and stress, no, I'm trying.
Yeah, I want it right.
When I fall short though, I'm not going to beat myself up tremendously, but I'm gonna hold myself accountable, do a little better.
But I think that he believes
that once you become a Yukon women's basketball player, I think he believes they know how.
So I think what he believes probably, and when you hear him talk and I'm putting words in his mouth, I don't know what he would say sitting across, but I actually believe that
every moment that they don't live up to the standard, 99 % of the time for the most part, they don't feel like it.
Right.
Now that's different if they haven't achieved that level of success.
But what's the standard we're always working towards?
Um, what do you see yourself?
You had, as we wrap up here, where I could talk to you forever, man.
You're just, yeah, you're, you're all, yeah, I love it, man.
think you're, you have an ability to impact people.
You're, you're a tremendous, this is supposed to be your tremendous listener.
You take it in your process.
You're very thoughtful.
People were very lucky to be led by you and to be on the same team.
hundred percent.
Yep.
So do you think you, you left anything with the revolution when you were there?
You took so many things away.
Do you think you left something?
We'll see.
I had some great conversations.
I actually have a call tomorrow with one of their medical staff guys to talk through some potential stuff.
I don't know what it's going to be yet.
I didn't speak to the team and you normally I would go in and do like a little mini keynote, but this was a pretty informal engagement and it's just, they opened the doors to
me for two days to go and hang out, which is even actually kind of cooler to be able to have these conversations.
I'm sitting at lunch.
you're in this professional sports organization.
They've got a catered lunch coming in.
The players are coming in and out.
I'm talking with Pablo, who's the assistant coach.
And we had an incredible conversation.
both played for the same high school coach.
And this guy passed away from cancer about 10 years ago.
I think what I left with them, hopefully, is the listening, what you picked up on.
That's where I'm learning as the older I get.
That's my...
That's my superpower, this ability to build trust quickly and connect with people.
so uh believe me, I would love to do a big engagement with them, but I also want to trust the process and show up ready to serve and let that happen how it needs to happen, if that
makes sense.
hopefully I left just love and care and some trust and had some great, uh the head coach called his son was trying out for a team.
and put it on speaker, him and I are in his office and he asked me to give his son some advice.
was overthinking the day before at tryouts, he's trying, you know, back for the second day.
So being able to actually talk to the guy's son and say, Jake, man, just show up free, do the best you can, focus on your teammates.
That's the unlock.
I actually share, be helpful, not good.
I say, this is what helps me speaking.
I think about what I want the audience to feel.
It takes the pressure off myself.
Think about what you want people to feel.
Um, so hopefully, you know, spread a little love and care with that.
So we'll see.
think some seed, good seeds were planted.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe.
don't know.
That look, the ideal state for me is to be a trusted advisor for a few or not a few, hopefully more than that organizations, either companies and sports teams, some early
stages.
I've got some consulting clients and some coaching clients now doing the speaking, but yeah, that's the ideal state where I go deep.
I've got an assessment tool that I'm building that's coming out here pretty soon.
Being able to give someone awareness, know what your strengths are, know what your weaknesses are, those sorts of things.
that, yeah, that's the vision of this thing.
And then, willing, I scale this where I have other coaches, because I'm not going to be able to scale myself over time.
So having other people that know the with intention framework and model and can help build into people too.
as you're building your company and of course you want people to go to your website and buy the book and engage.
um Did I say it right?
Giganti?
Giganti.
heard so many through the years, believe me, that's really good.
uh
sure they get that right.
um What's the best way to engage with you?
Just go to your website.
You can just access all the social medias and buy the book.
Yeah, I've got everything on there.
I'm on LinkedIn.
I publish pretty much every day.
I've got some stuff on Instagram too, but yeah, everything on my website is there.
Is this social media world, um, was it new to you?
Yeah, it's interesting, right?
This idea of putting content out.
I've always been on Facebook and Instagram, but more personal stuff.
now that I'm promoting myself and my services, that's very different than working for a company and selling software.
uh But I've been pretty consistent with it.
It's been fun.
And you've got to surround it.
I've got a great team that helps me produce content, much like you guys here.
You've got to invest in that, I think, to put it out the right way.
It's been fun.
been good to do.
it fun?
Of course.
And you got to get out of your own way, right?
It's like you show up for a podcast interview and you got some nerves and butterflies and it's this whole thing of how do you change the nerves into excitement?
And so every time I do a shoot, these guys come over usually to my house for three hours and we shoot eight reels and we do these carousels and whatnot.
And it always goes well, but there are always moments of like,
Is this the right content?
What's going to resonate with people?
Because you really want to make a difference.
mean, you're doing this not just to grow your brand.
You want to make a difference in people's lives.
I know that can feel that.
I wish I had conversations, whether they're elite or not, they're conversations about life and about experience and about growth.
I learned the most in life through reading biographies of others.
Whether it's Steve Jobs, whether it's Elon Musk, whether it's Theodore Roosevelt, could be John Adams.
That's what I learned the most.
It feels like you're living the experience and I'm learning good and bad.
Yeah.
from those individuals and you can learn.
And I'm hoping that that's what these conversations are and not people of the past.
What's happening right now.
And I think it could help the learning curve a little bit more.
just, if there's one thing I could leave with people all the time in my life, I say this to the people I lead.
said, Hey,
In the beginning, when you start on new journeys and starting to achieve what you believe is an outcome you want for your life or some other, I don't know, metric that we feel
successful and that life was good enough.
I just wish I could give you a shot.
confidence.
That's it.
Because with that, you will keep going.
And that is what I have seen.
Try to do well, but just keep going.
If you really want it, don't quit and keep going.
Regardless of all the other things.
I think that's all the stuff we get caught up on.
Just the confidence part is like, can do this.
I can.
Regardless of all that, I can do this.
know I can.
Look, I want to give you a quick praise here because you show up with confidence and I'd actually call it belief.
what I actually believe belief is confidence with humility intertwined in there.
Right.
You need both.
And I've seen I've watched enough of your stuff.
I've seen you interact with the team.
I appreciate that out of you.
You just I mean, you're a strong personality, right?
But it's a caring personality, too.
So that thank you for saying that.
And I just want us to go out here and just make our lives just a little bit better.
And I know we can.
All of us can.
keep doing what you're doing because your content's great.
Obviously, you're making an impact.
can't Yeah, right.
That's what I'm pumped for.
I'm going to look back and be like, thank goodness he was willing to go on that journey.
And the team was because without that, we wouldn't have learned to be able to become this thing.
Thanks for coming along for the ride on a wonderful, and you get to come down here and spend time with a guy that's really good.
You'll probably go to a late lunch and hang out and do our stuff.
Go back to Columbus, the big capital city of Ohio that doesn't have much culture.
Cleveland and Sensei are the cultural hubs of the state of Ohio.
Okay, I know I'm not supposed to say mean things.
was OHIO people.
But what is, is there something good about Columbus as we wrap up?
there, there something good?
Cause I don't really know of any.
There is, there is.
It is a great place to raise a family.
uh It's interesting, it's a very transient place.
So especially, I'm in a town called New Albany, so you get a lot of people that come in and out, and we've met some incredible friends, just good people, and high performers.
I mean, you get some high executives and different folks, a lot of good people.
Great place to raise a family.
It's easy to get around, very easy.
getting a little harder at times during rush hour.
And there's enough culture.
It just doesn't have the history, right?
You come down 71, you see Cincinnati, it's beautiful.
You go to Cleveland.
I take my family to Cleveland and they're like, why would you do such a thing?
What, Cleveland?
Yeah, right.
No, they say it's so old, dad, why are we there?
I mean, but there's so much history to it and ethnicity.
It's beautiful place.
All right.
Thanks for coming to Sensei.
love and kudos on what you've done so far.
uh hope the future is everything that you want it be.
Thank you