LeaderImpact Podcast
LeaderImpact Podcast
Ep. 43 - Jason Jaggard - Pursuing a Noble Life
What does it really mean to pursue nobility, and how can this pursuit shape our success? Jason unpacks the essence of nobility, encapsulated by the principles of prosperity, community, creativity, and generosity. He also unveils critical insights from his new book, Beyond High Performance, about circumventing burnout while continuously pushing our boundaries.
Our conversation will take you through Jason's own transformative journey, from leading a faith community at an early age to venturing into the world of entrepreneurship. Jason candidly shares the hurdles he's faced and how community played a critical role in his growth. He also reveals his keen insights on the significance of a growth mindset and the potential pitfalls of feigning one. Our discussion also brings to light the inevitable struggles of business-building and how failures can morph into lessons of great value.
Jason also shares his distinctive practice of interpreting Proverbs into his own words and the role of faith and scriptures in our lives. So come along for an enriching exploration of leadership, wisdom, and growth.
Thanks for listening!
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Speaker 2:I'm your host, lisa Peters, and our guest today is Jason Jagard. Jason is an entrepreneur, coach and author dedicated to inspiring the world to pursue nobility. His work has been translated in over 50 languages and featured in Forbes, fast Company Entrepreneur, weight Watch Under 30 CEO, the Global Leadership Network and Chief Executive Magazine. He is the founder and CEO of Novus Global, a community of elite executive coaches serving the world's best leaders and teams to go beyond high performance. Jason is also the co-founder of the Metaproformance Institute, a non-traditional incubator for world-class coaching, leadership and management. He is the executive producer and primary host for the award-winning Beyond High Performance podcast featuring interviews with world-class executive coaches, billionaires, new York Time bestselling authors, business leaders, professional athletes, activists and award-winning entertainers. Jason has recently released a new book titled Beyond High Performance what Great Coaches Know About how the Best Get Better. In his book, he shares insights that help leaders and teams avoid burning out while simultaneously working to burn brighter than ever before. Welcome to the show, jason. It is great to finally meet you.
Speaker 1:Lisa, it's nice to meet you too. Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:Oh, I loved reading your bio. My first question. I'm going right to your bio because I've never heard anyone say inspiring the world to pursue nobility. I kind of like that.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Can you give me a little bit on that, just because I got a little help.
Speaker 1:Thank you. It's always a little vulnerable to talk about what you want to dedicate your life to, especially if there's something that has in some ways like a moral component to it, because you always set yourself up to be a hypocrite. But when I was a kid, there was a play that I was a part of, and part of the play was memorizing ancient proverbs. So it was a really awesome play, and anyway, one of the ancient proverbs was a noble man makes noble plans and by noble DEC stands. And I probably memorized lots of stuff when I was a kid. I don't know why I forgot everything else, but that stuck to my ribcage. And so, since I was little, I was really interested in this idea of what does it mean to be noble and not like nobility, like a class system or anything, but what does it mean to be a good and an extraordinary way?
Speaker 1:And so at our firm, we actually break nobility down into four things. We break it down into prosperity, which like being successful, not only just in finances, but certainly including finances. Community, so not just being successful by yourself, but being successful with others. Creativity, which is being successful with others in a way that's allowing you to be unique and to find your unique expression in the world. And the last piece is generosity. So nobility for us is finding a way of being prosperous financially with other people in a healthy way, in a way that's natural to you and your giftedness, and then giving that away to others. And if you can really lean into those four things, we think that creates a really beautiful life and extraordinary life and we would say a noble life.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is fantastic. I find that amazing. I am doing a study of Proverbs this summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking your scripture came from like King James, because my new English, my new language, does not sound like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't sound like that. Well, and those four values now you mentioned Proverbs those four values I ripped off from Proverbs 31. I ripped off. Yeah, Like that, yeah, you can rip it off, yeah. I think when Solomon collected that stuff, he doesn't mind if we steal it and use it and so, yeah, so if you read Proverbs 31, you'll see other things certainly, but you'll see those four ideas embedded in that particular chapter and I just love it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I got it. I'm on, I think, 24 right now, so I'm going to skip ahead. Nice, that is great.
Speaker 1:And not to go too much into this, but also just to geek out on the Proverbs for a second. I'm actually this is weird to say, but every morning I wake up and I take a proverb and I put it in my own words and then I actually text it to over 200 people. And so, if you know I don't know if this is interesting to your listeners, but if you want to get a daily text from me, we can put that information in the show notes or whatever, and I love it. I did the whole Psalms already, so I've already put the Psalms into my own words and I took about two years and now I'm doing the Proverbs and I'll take another two years and about halfway done.
Speaker 2:Wow, I love that because I read it and I put it in my own words, and those are the notes that I just write myself because we have to understand it as we understand it like today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a long time ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he writes it to his son, the letters, but it's really to all of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he mail mail.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, it was cool.
Speaker 1:It was fun, yeah, thanks this was meant to happen All right, come on, we're doing it.
Speaker 2:All right. So we've changed our questions to a little well. We went with the summer series, but it's really been going really well, and we talk about leadership, questions on pivotal turning points, principles of success and more and again. It's been so successful. We're going to ask you similar questions because the content has been so different and so good. So are you ready?
Speaker 1:I'm ready, ann. I've listened to a few of your episodes, in some ways to prepare for this, but also just invest in myself. Yeah, and I've loved it, so I'm excited to play Wow.
Speaker 2:Coming from a leadership guru, I am excited. All right, so we're looking for a bit of your own professional story and how you got to where you are today. Can you give us a couple of snapshots that were pivotal turning points along that journey?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean I was raised no-transcript, and maybe you probably cut this out because you mentioned the mention talking about God at the end. But the problem was is I was like raised in church and it was a huge part of my formative experience.
Speaker 2:You go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry, so, yeah. So I wish I could have a more interesting backstory, but I was raised in a fairly healthy spiritual community and which had a huge emphasis. I talked about this in the introduction of my book, you know. It had a huge emphasis on just Striving to be an extraordinary person and so in my mind, you know, you look for role models, you look for heroes and things like that. So in my mind, the people who were leading that faith community were like the people I looked up to and so I was like, hey, that's what I want to do for living.
Speaker 1:And so I went to school and studied, you know, spiritual leadership and things like that, and I really enjoyed it. But then I had this moment this is kind of pivot number one. I had this moment when I was taking and this is this is gonna sound like a dig, but I was taking all these leadership classes from full-time academic professors and and you know they were great and they're really kind and really loving, but also they weren't in the trenches in leadership and I knew that you don't learn about leadership from taking a class on it. You don't learn about leadership from, you know, going to college if that sometimes you learn the opposite of leadership from going to college. You learn about leadership from leading, and so I Wrote letters to three leaders that I really admired saying hey, look like, if I can get out of college early, if I can do college in three years, can I just come shadow you?
Speaker 1:You don't have to pay me, I'll take care of everything. I just want to learn, be as being the trenches. You know, give me assignments whatever, I'll do whatever. And one of them Said yes, and his name was Reggie Epps, and he actually passed away from cancer about a week ago. But he changed my life and he offered me a job, even though I was just some punk kid, and I and I got in, I got way into the trenches, and so I'm 21 years old, with a huge budget, my own office, I got a secretary leading this big you know thing and way bigger than anything I'd ever led before, and so it wasn't like shadowing, it was like you just threw me into the deep end and, and that was challenging, but but that was formative for me. And then then I moved to Los Angeles to be part of this other faith community called mosaic, which is incredible.
Speaker 1:We used to meet in a Latino nightclub in downtown LA, so it was really well designed for people who are are searching spiritually and maybe have had negative experiences with with more traditional religious structures and, and so that was like oh wow, they meet in a nightclub, they can't be all bad, you know, kind of a thing, and it's funny, christians felt really uncomfortable in the nightclub, but but, but new people to faith or people who are exploring faith, they loved it and that's really who we were creating it for, so that was really fun. Then I did that for so as a pastor, essentially for most of my 20s, and then I transitioned out of ministry and started doing consulting and speaking and and and training and really fell in love with that and then. So then I was a coach for about 10 years and so now the really what that there was a defining moment when I realized that, like coaching is, most coaches are solipriners, most coaches do it by themselves as first and last name, comms and, and that was fine. But my whole vocational career was in community, like you know, on teams and staff and things like that, and, and so I had this theory and this one you know, one of the core values of nobility is community, that you win faster when you do with others.
Speaker 1:And so I looked to my right, my left, and I had a lot of friends who've been trying to coach at the same time and we're like, well, why don't we do this together? And so we started a coaching firm that's novice, global and and it's almost almost 10 years old. Now it's coming up on our 10 year anniversary and it's just been a blast. And now my these days I don't coach very often. I have a few clients, but most of my time has spent leaving the executive teams of two different companies and and being more forward-facing and, of course, promoting the book and All those types of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you obviously are doing it right, because you weren't the person that contacted us for an interview. It was someone that works with you. It's like you need to talk to Jason, and so that that's who you have surrounded you, surrounded yourself with. It's really great people.
Speaker 1:Thank you for saying that. I do. We have a very fantastic team and it's really great because one of the fun things about the reciprocity of that is I come on this show as like a delegate, you know. So it's not really like the Jason Jagger story. In many ways it's like the novice global story, and I'm just one of many coaches in our firm across the country who work with you, know professional athletes and some of those famous people on earth and, and I like, I like. So hopefully people are listening to this. If they're interested, they will check us out and and and people know that when they get me on a podcast I'm gonna rep them versus just rep myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I loved you. So going to your pivotal turning point and you know you leave school and it's like I will work for you for free.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was my first. When I started my event management, I called someone and we had the first woman astronaut coming to my city and I called him and said I will do anything to work for you for this event, because I wanted to start an event company. I do anything and At the event I, I just did everything, and later they hired me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:You know, and, and from that I got more contracts, because I just right do it, just step out. But I think too many times people want to get. It's like what are you gonna pay me? Yeah, yeah just it's, it's an opportunity.
Speaker 1:It's an opportunity and look, you know we can empathize a little bit like if it's. You know I wouldn't necessarily work at McDonald's for free, but you know you do want to. If you yeah, if you're a young, look, especially if you're a younger leader, although this is probably true for any age, but especially if you're trying to do something new. But if you're a younger leader, you don't want the job that everybody else can get. You don't want the job that anyone else will pay you for. What's the job? That would be way out of your league and then offer to do it for free and that you know you're getting an internship.
Speaker 1:That is so much beyond and that's in some ways I was really fortunate, you know. So the guy that wrote the letter to he gave me a job and that was cool. But then, you know, when I was working at mosaic, you know the lead guy there is got in Earl McManus and he was awesome and I got to like travel the world with him and and and watch him interact, and every now Then he'd throw me in the deep end. And so I suppose, like fine people who are way, way, way more talented than you do it, get paid whatever, take the job, no matter what. Yeah, make yourself as valuable as you can and and learn as much as you can from those people, and that's probably the best way anybody could ever spend their 20s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that was a great answer to a pivotal turning point. Great places, thank you, we're doing it. All right. So second question give us your best principle of success and tell us a story that illustrates this. Oh, man.
Speaker 1:well, you know, um, when I read that question in the prep time, the first thought that came is like, the best principle for success is to do whatever you can to grow in wisdom. And I know that's a little bit of a cliche for some folks, and especially people who come from like a spiritual background, but I will say this like, if you can grow in wisdom, you will win faster, you will win bigger and you'll win better, and you know so. You'll win faster. Wisdom speeds up success. You'll win bigger.
Speaker 1:Part of wisdom is imaginative and dreaming and seeing yourself the way you've actually been designed versus the way that you currently see yourself, which is almost always bigger than how you currently see yourself, and then better. Like you know, wisdom helps you focus on the things that really matter, and that doesn't necessarily mean not money or not profit, you know. I think that that's that is important. But also, how do you do that in a way that enhances your relationships versus erode them or whatever? So wisdom is really really important, and I think you know, by the way, I would use nobility as the word to describe wisdom applied.
Speaker 1:So whenever you apply wisdom, that's you being noble, and I talked about that in our book, in the last chapter, which no one is ever going to read. No one ever reads. I like talking with the last chapter of the book because I know no one's ever going to get that far into the book. I think it's like 10% of all books are read, even like the first five chapters. But anyhow, we talk about nobility and how wisdom is no, or nobility is wisdom applied, and so I guess one story from that would be. Well, man, I guess I'll tell you what. So there's four, the four pillars prosperity, community creativity and generosity. I'll let you pick which one, which one of those values won't tell the story about.
Speaker 2:What are they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, prosperity, community creativity or generosity?
Speaker 2:Community.
Speaker 1:Community, excellent, well, you know. So that's the firm, the. In fact, almost every time we go on this is an exception to the rule, lisa. Almost every podcast I go on and I think we asked you too and you put the gabbash on it but every podcast we go on we say, hey, can I bring somebody else from the firm with me on the podcast? And it's totally fine, like it's your show, you do what you want, and there's lots of, there are lots of podcasts. Who've been like, no, that's not what we do here, you know, or whatever, that's no problem.
Speaker 1:But again, so many coaches are frankly narcissistic and they're just into building their own lives and their own careers and their own deal. And at the firm we are so committed to team and to helping each other and to advocate for each other and, like you know, in biking, like with the first biker is kind of drafting and everyone else is drafting off of their wake and I know that in our communities I'm creating not sometimes the biggest wake, sometimes not. There are other coaches in the firm, like Dan LaFollare, who's the head of Nova School of Sport. I mean, he works with all these professional athletes, he creates a huge wake and but I know I also create a huge wake and so it's like what am I doing to take people with me? And so I'm doing this podcast in a couple of days and there's a.
Speaker 1:It was a young woman in our, our firm, I guess I don't actually know how old she is. She's new in our firm. There's a woman in our firm and very talented coach, but newer to our firm, but she was the one who set up the interview. And so I said, hey, do you want to come on? And she was like what? Like you're going to?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, and so on Friday her and I even though her and I don't know each other that well, but she's a part of our community and she was the one who set up the podcast gig Her and I are going to go on and and we're going to do our best to represent what we're up to and what we're doing. And what I would say is me having her on the podcast one maybe the only thing people remember from the podcast, because you know what you do oftentimes speaks louder than your words, and so you really try hard. Even when I go public speak, 50% of the time if I'm public speaking I'm taking another coach with me, we're on stage together and we're doing the thing together and there's all sorts of benefits to that, but mostly it's because we disvalue community around here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great answer. In your book on growth you talk about most people know what a growth mindset is, but you talk about a false growth, growth, growth mindset.
Speaker 1:Also gross. It can also be gross.
Speaker 2:Josh, what is that? What is a false growth mindset?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I learned this from Carol Dweck who wrote the book, like the book on growth mindset, and her research is interesting. Her research was originally designed for children and so actually some of our other colleagues have taken it and applied it more to adults. But in the Atlantic, an article in the Atlantic a few years ago she I read this article which she wrote, where it said she was angry, she was like ticked because, like anything that becomes popular, like growth mindset or emotional intelligence, is another one that's been, you know, really popular and now people don't really know what it means. And if you think you know what it means, you probably don't know what it means. The like, all these zeitgeist ideas like good to great, all these kinds of things that come and go, even like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like Maslow never put those in a hierarchy, he didn't want them to be a hierarchy, but we come along and we kind of structure it to make it like a food pyramid or whatever Is it. That's the way that people grow and it's not how people grow anyhow.
Speaker 1:So Carol is irritated that people were using the idea of a growth mindset to articulate if people have grown. You know, like if you've grown, then you have a growth mindset, which is ridiculous. That means you had a growth mindset at some point, but that doesn't mean you have one now. And so she was talking about we talked about this in the book how you know that you have a growth mindset, not when you have grown, but when you are intentionally growing in some way, and it's a way of perceiving your own capacity for growth.
Speaker 1:And what she discovered and she coined the term what she discovered was most people walk around thinking they have a growth mindset, but they really have a false growth mindset. It's oriented in the past, it's not oriented towards the future. And so, if you're listening to this, a question to be asking is if you have a growth, a growth mindset. The proof of that is how are you intentionally trying to grow right now? So show me in your calendar the things that you're doing and how you're trying to grow, and the things that you're doing on your calendar. And if you can't answer that question, no problem. It's just you don't have a growth mindset and that's a solvable problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe you had a growth mindset. That was last week's. Oh, you filled up last week's calendar. Good for you. That was last week's growth.
Speaker 1:That was last, that's right.
Speaker 2:That is great. Which kind of well? Not? That leads me into my third question. But we learn more from our failures and mistakes, from our failures, mistakes and successes. So maybe we learned more from last week's failures and mistakes in our calendars. Would you share with us one of your greatest failures or mistakes and what you learned from it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So there's little ones and big ones, and I'll do two quick a little, one big one and then a more of a philosophy around failure. Little ones are where you know, we care. One of the chapters in the book. We talk about integrity and we care a lot about integrity and we define integrity as doing what you say you're going to do. And so, minutes before this conversation started, I got a WhatsApp message from one of our graphic designers in South Africa and she was just doing a friendly follow up because or maybe it was another one we have graphic designers in South Africa and Iran, a few other places. Anyway, one of our graphic designers reached out saying hey, remember that thing that I asked you to do on Friday that you said you do, which is like a really sweet way of saying you didn't do that thing that you said you're going to do and that's you know. I know that that's silly and it's smaller or whatever, but in our world that's a failure, that's a. We have a high value for doing what we say we're going to do. So I immediately had a conversation with my assistant and I said I messed up, like they when they WhatsApp me. I should have immediately said, hey, can you loop Shannon in so she can put that on my calendar? And it never got on my calendar. So I thought that I was going to like an idiot. I thought I was going to remember that request and then you know all the things and, like your mind, by the way, is the worst possible place to store things you're going to do, and but that's where everyone stores things. So that didn't work out. That's a little failure, but we take that seriously. And so I'm going to have to Reach back out to them and say, hey, you know I broke my word and and let me know if there's any impact, and of course I'll take the picture. They want me to take a picture. Me sign the book, for you know, social media or whatever does, it takes two seconds, but I just forgot, or other other things were more important to me than remembering. So there's that. Then. A bigger one was I don't talk about this much, you're gonna get an exclusive when I, when I transitioned off the staff at mosaic, I started a company called spark good and and.
Speaker 1:Spark good in many ways was a precursor, kind of an embryonic phase one of what became Novus Global and I think the website still after somewhere. But you know, the dream was to create this small team of people who would go coach and speak and consult for universities Mostly. And I talked to my friends Danielle and and Johan and and Dr Goodie Goodlaw all these people who I've been friends with for years and I put up with their faces on the internet and we're gonna do this thing. And and then I took a lot of the startup capital that I'd saved to start the company and this is the big failure. I I spent most of it on building these kits, so like. We had this product called spark groups and this is what my first book was about and we had this product called spark groups, where people get together every week and they practice taking risks the same way that you practice playing the piano or like, or anything else you do in your life, because risk-taking requires practice.
Speaker 1:And so I built like a book and I built this magazine and then I built these like these whole kits, and I built them myself. I went to the factories and like, negotiated the price on the boxes and everything and I wanted a certain color, blah, blah, blah, and I made like a ton of these kits and I think we sold. I did no market research. I never asked anyone that they wanted a kit and I think we sold. Maybe I mean I made hundreds of these things and maybe sold 10. I still have friends that are like heads. I still have this like box and the box is it was a little black box and it was cardboard, but they painted it for me, even though they said not to, and so when you handle it you get like black on your fingers and so, like it would, the paint would rub off and it was just and I did. I remember doing a gig at this in the small town in Illinois and like a year later they're like hey, we still have these kits can, can you buy them back from us? And I didn't.
Speaker 1:The company was ultimately a failure at spark. Good was a failure. I didn't have the money at the time, so I couldn't buy them back and it was just. It was. That was so embarrassing and I think what I learned from that is do market research before you build really expensive tools for people and don't spend all. Don't spend 50% of your startup capital on. Don't spend as little as your. If you're starting a company, spend as little as your startup capital as possible, unless you have investors. Another thing that I spent all my money going going to conferences that I wasn't asked to speak at, to quote network, but I'm a massive introvert, I hate networking. That was horrible. Yeah, so yeah, networking and kits, and that company, needless to say, did not, did not survive.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is funny. I think I did exactly the same thing invested a lot of money in Event planning videos.
Speaker 1:Yes, and well yes and then COVID hit. The one to punch. We know, you know it's funny with, with, with videos during COVID. You could think, well, that would work out Totally fine. But I know, I know so many people we have even coaches in our firm right now that are like putting a lot of energy and attention into making like videos for promotion and they don't get traction. They're not, they don't build and it's a. It's just a fascinating all the things we try that don't work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, me I didn't look into that. Well, you know what you can produce the product. You have to market the product.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:I put all my money in the video. And what I read?
Speaker 1:and that's even with books, right. Like, yeah, writing a book is the easy part. If you're listening to this, you want to write a book and you want it to sell. Well, that Writing, it is the, that's the easy part. Lots of people write books, thousands and thousands of thousands of people. Ever you write books, hardly any of them break through, and it's because if you don't put ten times more energy into marketing, promoting and the relationship side of publishing, no one's gonna read your book and with rare exception, and no one ever looks at. I find that fascinating.
Speaker 1:By the way, we at the Institute, the, so so two companies, that the, the firm, and then the Institute, the Meta Performance Institute, and we have this process called the navigate process, and in it we talk about, like, the architecture of success for building your own practice or being an entrepreneur or whatever, and In it we talk about ability, authority and accessibility. So abilities Are you good at something? Uh, authority is do other people think that you're good at something? And then accessibility is Uh, do you have, do you have, relationships of people who would hire you or refer you? And if you don't have those three things, you're not going to build a business. And it's crazy to me how so many people over index On ability and under index on authority and accessibility. It's one of the easiest things to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we get caught up in. Oh, we can go to another conference, we can get the training, we can, you know whatever, we could go to school for four years, but we get up and go. Huh, I wonder where the job is. Yeah, you got to put ten times the effort now to getting the job.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right, and I you know, and so the you know the. The MPI, the Meta Performance Institute, is a coaching certification Program and it's the only certification program I'm aware of that teaches people how to build a practice While you're getting good at being a coach. Almost all certification programs only care about helping you be a coach once you get somebody in front of you. Coaching someone in front of you is the easy part. Getting someone in front of you, that's the hard part. Getting someone to give you money, you know that's, that's the hard part, and so we put a lot of energy into helping people with all those facets, not just, you know, being a really good coach that no one's ever heard of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right, well, I got. I got one more question. We're going to keep continuing on um A leader impact. We want to grow Professionally, personally and spiritually for increasing impact. Would you be willing to share an example of how the spiritual Makes a practical difference in your life as a leader?
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, so one of the key. So I was raised in like a Christian faith and that I'll use that term broadly just because so many people have negative experiences with that but it was. It was overwhelmingly positive for me, and not perfect, but positive. And you know, there's a, there's a verse Um, and before I ever say verses that it sounds so trite, but this stuff is brilliant and helpful and useful. Uh, just about the bible specifically, I was listening to a guy that created an MBA program I think I forget what his name is like Jeff sander, for something like that.
Speaker 1:He created an MBA program that rivals Harvard and Stanford and Yale and won all these awards, and he's a person of profound faith. And you know, at Harvard, if you go to Harvard's uh business school, the whole thing is just case studies. Not just case studies, but the whole thing is case studies. You read like thousands of case studies and uh, and then you wrestle with them with really smart, smart people, and the reason why you do that is because it, it uh, develops your Intuition for business. You know. So, like my fiance, she uh, she has her Uh degree from a really fancy school and her, her intuition for business is so good Because she's wrestled with all these case studies.
Speaker 1:And then so, jeff, I'm listening to this podcast and jeff's talking and he says the scripture is the bible is a series of moral case studies and I have never heard someone describe it that way where it's like it's not, you know, it's not prescriptive, like there's, you know, stories in the hebrew scripture is the old testament where, like people are killing each other and stuff like that. It's like, yeah, it's not like prescription, prescriptive of how to behave. A lot of the time, um, but it is a like let's read this story and wrestle with it together and go well, I don't really like that and that doesn't really resonate with me. And why would god do? And it's the questioning and the wrestling that really produces your moral intuition to how you can then be a better father or husband or or, or wife, or, or, uh, employee or ceo or whatever. So I think I say this a, the scriptures are really fun to wrestle with.
Speaker 1:And uh, in john 10 10 and some some people listening this may have heard this before, but john 10 10, this is jesus talking. You know who has had a profound impact on humanity, and he said, um, uh, I came that you may have a better life and a light, a better life than you could even dream of. And I think about that a lot like because I can dream, I can dream pretty big, and to know that to wonder, is there a God who dreams bigger dreams for me than I dream for myself, is a really romantic and beautiful thing, and so much of coaching is believing more in people than maybe they even have the courage to believe in themselves, and so it's not a coincidence that I was raised in an environment where I was taught that God believes in me and and and loves me and has given me gifts and talents to use and even like this stuff that I don't like about myself. It's all resource to use to do something beautiful in the world, and then taking that, and then when I'm meeting, you know, not all my clients believe in God.
Speaker 1:Not all my clients, you know a lot of our coaches come from that background, but we all do. Whether we believe in God or not, we all do believe that human beings have been created with an incredible capacity, and then it's up to us to choose whether to use that in a way that is honoring or dishonoring of our lives, and so that's just a small. I could go on forever. It's a small example of a verse that's really shaped how I see other people, how I see myself, how I see the world, how I see God, how God sees me, and it affects. It affects how I treat people, affects how I treat people in the subway here in New York City. It affects everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jason, that was a fantastic answer. See, I love these questions, ha they're good, so so. Questions are fabulous or that answers what gross mindset, gross mindset. So, as earlier we talked about Proverbs and you're doing the, the study of that, and I was doing it this morning I texted my friend Proverbs 2410. If you fail under pressure. Your strength is too small. Living translation I'm not sure what doesn't King James, but there's, yeah, but that just grabbed me this morning. Yeah you just. You fail under pressure, your strength is too small.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and somebody listening that may be like yeah, duh, yeah, but but also it's worth thinking about, listen, and I'd be curious what the proverb before and after is, because oftentimes they're putting like couplets, you know. So then there's there's there's wrestling there, but it is. It is, you know, if you're listening to this, to be reflecting on what are you trying to do? Are you strong enough to do it? And if not, how can you get stronger? Like, what are you doing to get stronger? This is a wonderful question and that's, you know. That's just my kind of take on that verse. As you're bench-pressing that verse, it's like man, I want to be as strong as I can be. How can I, how can I? What we're going to put myself? How do I need to grow in order to lift the things that maybe God has called me to lift?
Speaker 2:Wow, as I bench-press that verse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know a lot of people think that, like the verse, like the Bible, is like a pill you swallow to be right, and I really believe that it's more like a gym, like a gym for you to go into and bench press so that you can become strong, and so it's a fundamentally different way looking at Something that's been weaponized to oppress so many people right.
Speaker 2:Oh, good answer. All right, I always. Those are my four questions that I've asked everybody, but there's always these two questions that I've. Since the inception of this, I asked these two questions of all my guests. So leader impact is dedicated to leaders having a lasting impact. And as you continue to move through your own journey, have you considered what you want your faith legacy to be when you leave this world?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot. I think about this every day. Actually, it's one of my favorite questions to ask other people. I was, I was in. I was in because like it's like legacy, it's like purpose. You know, I was in Eastern Europe and we were on this trip with a bunch of very Successful business people I was one of the least successful people in the room and we were meeting with American diplomats in Germany and things like that and I was sitting down with this guy and he was talking, he was reading the sports section, but he's talking about this basketball team and he knew all these things about this basketball team that you cannot, you cannot know from reading the newspaper. And I was like, are you like a super fan? And he was like his friend who's sitting at the table was like, yeah, he kind of he owns the team, I don't know. Oh, so like you know what's what small talk like over breakfast with someone owns basketball team? And so I was like so I said like two questions what's your purpose and what's your legacy? And he looked at me kind of like dude, I'm just trying to. It's like 8 am you know like would you just calm down? But I do like I do, like asking people that question. So I think about it all the time and Two things about that come up for me.
Speaker 1:One is I, I think a lot of people when they think about their legacy. You know, I split my time between New York and LA, and in New York you have these big buildings and these people starting these massive companies oftentimes they name the companies after themselves and and then you have in LA you have, you know, stars and celebrities and who want to be remembered, and they want people to remember their name, and you know whether they want to be a Walt Disney or a Steve Jobs or whatever. And and I don't really care about whether or not people remember me so much in terms of legacy, I don't necessarily care whether people remember my name, but I care a lot about how my life is going to positively impact the choices that people make a thousand years from now. You know so. So how can I live my life in a way where, generations from now, people are making really noble, courageous, wise choices and they have no idea where they got it from? Maybe they think they got it from their grandparents or their great grandparents or whatever. But what they don't know. What they'll never know is that, you know, 900 years earlier I bumped into somebody, you know, a married couple, at a party or we worked together or they heard me speak or read a book or something and we have to have a conversation and maybe they changed my life a little bit and then, hopefully, I changed their life a little bit and that changed that permanently changed the trajectory of their lives to where the ripple effect was. You know, kids living on Mars are, you know, loving their spouses and being good parents and and Seeking to give more than they take and seeking to be honest and and brave and those types of things and so on. That really excites me and Brings a lot of me. That's what I love about coaching is you get to.
Speaker 1:I recently spoke Conference in Vegas with one of our first clients, so we worked with them 10 years ago and then they brought me back kind of celebrate the book and so many people came up to me and said, oh, tell a man. I said hi. Tell Dan. I say hi. Tell David, tell Janet. I say hi because they coached me for three months and it changed my life and they would have notes and they would have quotes and things and, man, I just love coming home to our offices and saying, hey, I was in Vegas and people who you haven't talked to and probably forgot about you know, five, six, seven years ago, are telling me that you changed their lives forever. And that's fun, that's, that's worth doing this work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they didn't forget about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it. That's a nice thing to share with those people is To go back to your staff and you know people you work with and say, hey, that guy said something you know. Nice, I do that to parents. When parents have great kids, I'll say, you know, if I'll run into their, their child, at the store and they were great service, wherever it was I would go to, I will out of my way to call that parents a like your son today and Right. Yes they made a difference to me today.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's so good, I love that. I love that and you know, and if you're listening to that, be like that, be like Lisa, you know, like seriously, that's really worth emulating when you see people who are going above and beyond not only to praise them but to find out where that came from and say, hey, it's working, it's work. I know that you like, you know, especially parenting it's so. It's such a thankless job in some ways, and to know this thing that that you taught them, they listened, they remembered or maybe you didn't teach them, they just picked it up from you. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm only one month away from empty nesting as my, so it's like I've done my job. I hope that I have raised them and let them go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, the problems talk about that. The problems talk about. I love the problems. It talks about kids.
Speaker 1:Hey, make choices in a way that just obviously there's limits to this, but, like, make choices in a way that really make your parents proud. And I don't think kids realize that they have such such power to Make the day of their parents a million times brighter just by them going out in the world and being decent human beings. And then, you know, parents is fun to say like to you, lisa. You know I'm excited for your kids Because your, your days of being proud of them are only beginning. You know, like my parents are so sweet, they, they. My mom makes a Christmas for every book I write. She makes a little Christmas ornament of the book and I can hang it on my tree and they're so there's. My parents are so proud of me and it feels so good To not that I'm doing it to make them proud, but it does feel good that when I do what's most in my heart, that that also makes them proud. Yeah, and that's. I think everybody wins that way everybody wins.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's awesome. So my last question is what brings you the greatest joy?
Speaker 1:Oh man. So I gave a talk one time. Maybe we can put it in the show notes. It's one of my favorite talks and it was. It was a sermon actually. So I speak at churches sometimes and my buddy, joseph Barkley, who now is the president of our Institute and he's one of our best coaches he's awesome. At the time he was also leaving this, this faith community, and he would let me play as what he'd let me play. He let me speak and he's such a great leader. Not, the evidence of that is that you know, most speakers want this show for themselves and he was really generous and an evidence of that was he would allow me to speak Sometimes. So I gave this talk at rate at the church was called radius.
Speaker 1:At the time I gave a talk called the gospel according to oceans 11 and and it's one of my favorite talks I've ever given there's it's a two-fer. There's the talk before that was something about Willy Wonka, I can't, I can't remember. But then the second one was the gospel according oceans 11, and I Talk about, how you know, in oceans 11. I love heist movies, you know. I don't if you're listening to this, like the sting, the Italian job. You know, all the mission impossible movies are kind of heist movies. And then oceans 11, of course, is kind of quintessential heist movies. And you think about, like what? Why do people love those so much and why I love it so much? And it's because it's a group of uniquely gifted individuals coming together to pull off the impossible and have a ball doing it. And that brings me the greatest joy, my, I'm having the most fun when I'm partnering together with people who are different than me and we're and we're trying to do something really hard but but fun, you know, like, like Create an amazing coaching company, or to go into a company and help to fibulate them and help them light up on fire. So, like you know, coming together to do something and having a ball doing it.
Speaker 1:Every year, our annual retreat I just pinched myself, you know, this past year or two years ago, we were at, like Tahoe, the Ritz Carlton, and there's a you know 50 coaches from all over the world and and I'm just like man, I just can't believe we get to do this. This is so much fun, and that's true, by the way, and work, that's true, you know like, when we meet me and my fiance, when we are serving other people together, when we're, you know, volunteering, or when we're focused on Either on double dates or whatever like just focused on making other people's lives better. That just makes me so, so, so happy and and, by the way, it's a drug. I highly if you're listening to this and you've never been able to to To be on a team where you're just having a ball with other people. I highly recommend it and do what you do, what you got to do, even if it means doing it for free. Do what you got to do to get on a team and have a ball doing it.
Speaker 2:Oh well, jason, it has been the best 40 minutes ever spending this time with you. I just want to thank you for taking the time out of your day. You're I'm sure you're a busy guy and I am just thankful to have spent time with you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, lisa, I appreciate you and and thanks for doing what you do with with leader cast, but it's like 300 and some 350 cities around the world. That's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and I think, being part of it and I mean, I'm part of many groups we meet every week and and we talk about that in the ending but Sharing, sharing the stories of leadership we you know, you get together and sometimes you you don't understand a book. We do, we do leadership books and you get to talk about it because you think you know it all and you're reading.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or even yeah proverbs.
Speaker 2:doing a study, you're like, yeah, I know what that means, and then you don't. Yeah, there's so much more, and so being part of it, it's been a blessing in my life.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well leadership. Thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for getting leaders to get together and talk about how how hard it is, because it is hard and how we can grow and do better and how we can support each other. It's very, really important. So thanks for doing what you do.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. So if anyone wants to engage with you or find you, what is the best whale? Whale, oh boy. It's a whale. What's the best way to do that?
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm on Instagram and the socials and things, but also you can go to novusglobal that's our company website. You can go to MP Institute that's our Institute site. And then I'm very proud of our podcast too. It's you know, um, we have three different shows in our podcast called the beyond high performance channel, and then the. We have a podcast on coaching, which is coaches talking about coaching. We have a podcast called the meta performance show, which is me usually talking to really impressive people like ed catmull, the former Uh president of pixar. And then we have one called your finest hour, which is where we actually have a client and a coach talk about their relationship. We go behind the curtain of a client coach relationship and so all those if that's helpful to your audience, uh, please check those out and and we'd love to hear from you- All right.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you again. It has been a pleasure Jason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you All right.
Speaker 2:Well, if you are part of leader impact, you can always discuss or share this podcast with your group. And if you are not yet part of leader impact and would like to find out more and grow your leadership, find our podcast page on our website at leaderimpactca and check out our free leadership assessment. You will also find on our webpage chapter one of braden douglas's new book becoming a leader of impact. It is amazing leadership book. You can also check out groups available in canada at leaderimpactca or, if you're listening from anywhere else in the world, check out leaderimpactcom or get in touch with us by email info at leaderimpactca and we will connect you. And if you like this podcast, please leave us a comment, give us a rating or review. This will help other global leaders find our podcast. Thank you for engaging with us and remember impact starts with you.
