What if some of what we call good leadership is just creating dependence?

Josh: All right, well here we are.

Jenny: Here we are.

Josh: This was a long journey.

Jenny: This has been. Especially today.

Josh: That's true. That's true. We're figuring a lot of stuff out and hopefully it'll get easier and easier as we go, but it probably won't because we'll just discover more that we want to, you know, expand and whatever it takes.

Jenny: Whatever it takes.

Josh: Whatever it takes. But yeah, here we are. So probably before we get too far into this, we ought to maybe introduce ourselves and take a second to say why the two of us are sitting here.

Jenny: Good idea. Right. So I'm Jenny McIntosh. This is my brother, Josh Hoecherl. We work together at Pinpoint Management where we've spent the last few years developing Leaders Evolution and exploring Empowerment Design.

Josh: Empowerment Design.

Jenny: Empowerment Design.

Josh: Empowerment Design are the two most expensive words that I own. They're also the only two words that I technically own. So it's good enough, right? But I think that's become something that has kind of been a driving factor for both of us in our lives.

Jenny: Not just in business though, right? Like I see it showing up in so many different places, especially now with adult kids, which maybe is something we get into at some point here because we thought it was, I thought it was hard when they were little. It's way harder now.

Josh: Way harder. But yeah, I mean, it's really about determining how do we provide a way or a space maybe or a pathway for people to become more capable without us becoming the choke point or the place where everybody always has to come back and say, okay, what's next, right?

Jenny: Yeah. Which is really challenging for both of us because historically both of us have enjoyed being the person with the answers.

Josh: I still enjoy being the person with the answer. I still fight my tongue 15 times a day. I'm surprised it's still in my mouth because I'm always having to do that.

Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. So since both of us always tend to be fighting over the spot to be the one with the answers, it's probably fair that we have a podcast where we just duke it out.

Josh: We might as well.

Jenny: Yeah. But seriously, there's a lot of what we're going to be talking about that has come from what we've learned and things that we've gotten wrong and things that we're still working through and what we've seen happen in people as they've started to embrace a new way of thinking.

Josh: Yeah. And we've got to be clear throughout all of this. And I think you'll hear us say this a lot on this podcast, but we don't have everything figured out. Like I was talking to someone a couple of weeks ago and I realized I'm sitting here in a space like I am the person leading you to the promised land. And I realized I'm like literally in some things, two steps ahead of you and a lot of things, three steps behind you.

Jenny: Right. And it's just the journey, right? So a lot of what we want to talk about here is how leadership can be a shared journey while still being a very personal journey, how we can communicate better, why it's important in business, and really just how we relate to other people. And hopefully if anybody in our family ever watches these, we won't embarrass any of them too much.

Josh: But we probably will. That's okay though. We'll figure it out.

Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really what these conversations are going to be about. It's going to be some business. It's going to be some leadership, probably very likely some family.

Josh: Yeah. And, uh, you know, maybe a little bit of disagreement or at least push backs, right?

Jenny: Yeah. That's what it's all about is really, um, discovering.

Josh: Yeah. My goal is that we don't have too many tears.

Jenny: But I think most of the tears will probably be some of those. I think most of the tears will probably come from me anyway, so we'll figure that out. But we thought we'd start with this first one is people getting to know us with a pretty big question, right? So here's the question. What if some of the things that we've always considered good leadership are actually just creating dependence?

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, that's a, that is a, that is a big one. Yeah. Um, so let's kind of pick it apart.

Jenny: You know what I've thought about how I define leadership many, many times throughout my life is I've been in different, not just different jobs, but even different careers, took in some different paths. And all along the way, I've thought, okay, that's what a good leader is. Or that person is a good leader. Oh, I'm a good leader here. And they all kind of have different definitions. So it's something that's still evolving. And I think should, right?

Josh: Yeah. Well, it has to, I mean, if you're not, to me, one of the things that I've learned is leadership is really about being able to embrace change. Um, if you're not changing, you're not going away, going anywhere.

Jenny: Right.

Josh: I heard a story about a company just recently that, um, they had that the people in the company have kind of had kind of created some warning signs for when the leader was off the rails. Like they knew when they could ask them, when they couldn't ask questions. Um, and someone asked me like, so what should that leader do differently? Because the, from the leader's perspective, he doesn't know that they're keeping score on what he's doing. He thinks they're just, everything's working great as a team and everybody's functioning.

And I just said, you know, if you're in a leadership position, whether it's in a business or with a family or in your community and everything's going well, that's your first sign that you're missing something because not everything's going to go well. That's not what life is. Life is messy. Leadership is hard. And so if you're in a, in any kind of relationship, whether it's business or otherwise, you're like, yeah, we never have conflict. We never fight. Everything's great. You're probably not getting the whole story. There's probably some lack of transparency there.

Jenny: And that's hard because we think just like you were saying, if we're not constantly growing in leadership, then that's not painful. So we think, okay, great, this isn't hard, but life is hard. Leadership is hard. It's messy. And the more we avoid the mess, the less we move.

So what about the idea that a good leader has the answers? Because you and I both come from that way of thinking. And it's something that both of us have really wrestled with and still do. I have to make a conscious effort to remind myself of that. And when I don't make that conscious effort, you remind me of that, which I appreciate. So let's speak to that for a minute.

Josh: At its core, that's what the best, highest moments of my career has been, whether it's from how I feel about myself, the way my business is going, how much revenue there is, it's totally dependent upon how effective I can be at answering questions. So it's really hard to turn from that and say, maybe the best thing that I should be doing as a leader is asking more questions, not giving more answers, because it feels counterintuitive to what, maybe where I feel safest, but also where I feel the most accolade, right? Like people talk about, oh, that's such a great answer. Thank you so much.

But it's a big difference because, you know, I think back on times in my career where I would literally be sitting with my family somewhere where I should be present with them. And instead I'm building a spreadsheet or I'm building an agenda or I'm present there with them physically, but not in any way emotionally. And it's because I'm trying to answer the questions before they get asked. And that completely takes me out of the space of where I am. And think about leadership.

And I think there are a lot of people out there who say, I want to have the answers to the question. So I'm going to prep myself. There's nothing wrong with prepping yourself. Please don't think I'm saying that. But the more time you spend answering questions that haven't been asked yet, the less time you're in the space that you're actually in. And then when you get asked the question, then you're going back through your mental Rolodex. Okay. What was my answer? My predetermined answer of how I should answer that. Right?

Jenny: Okay. Wait, say that again. Well, you said something about spending time preparing answers to the questions that you haven't been asked yet. So expand on that.

Josh: Oh, that's so, I mean, that's been the vast majority of my life. And that, I mean, we could get into the whole psychological thing of that is of where we came from. Right? I mean, how many times have you gotten the impression from the home that we grew up in that we should hope for the best, but absolutely be prepared for the worst that could possibly happen. Here's the problem with praying for the worst. There is no one worst. There's 10 of them. 56 different scenarios. So you got to prepare for every single one of them. Right? Yeah.

So to definitely spend our time, you know, creating answers and focusing on answers to questions that haven't been asked, but potentially could be asked, we're going to take ourselves out of every situation. First off, we take ourselves out of the situation that we're in when we're preparing the answers. Right. And we may be sitting in our office by ourselves doing, and that's not a bad thing. I don't have a problem with that. But if when we get into the situation and we get asked a question by a leader and we're thinking, okay, I answered this question. I answered a question similar to this. Let me go back to that moment when I was sitting alone in my office. What did I write down? Pull up on my report, find out stuff. Now we're immediately pulling ourselves out of that situation.

So I found that the best way for me to keep myself in a situation is to answer almost every question with a question. And here's the interesting thing that I found. I was working with one specific client and I remember asking a question and the answer was just like so profound. And the business owner didn't realize that they were being profound. They were just answering a question. Right. But I'm like, that's the hinge of your entire culture. That's your entire business right there is what you answered. And I realized, man, the best answers always come from this person.

And then the next thought kind of floored me. The next thought was, if the best answers come from that person, aren't all answers the ones that should come from that person. And that just changed my whole mentality on the way that I approached it. That doesn't mean for me, like I'm not always searching for answers from other people. I've got to answer my own questions, but man, when you're leading someone, I think the more you can get them experiencing and talking, the better off you are as a leader.

Jenny: Yeah. I liked that approach of getting into a habit of answering a question with a question.

Josh: Right.

Jenny: I think that one of the big turning points for me, as far as realizing that I need to define leader in a different way, or at least expand my definition of leadership was in a role that I was in several years ago. I've worked in education for many, many years and spent part of that in middle school. Yeah, it was tough, but I learned a lot.

But in that, so I was a middle school educator, but I also had a role on the administrative side. And my actual, the name of my role was team leader. So I'm like, "Oh, I'm a leader now." Right. And I'm a label of leader, right? Yeah. And, but the way I approached that part of that job was by gathering all the information that I could, making sure I had all the facts so that I would have all the answers. And I could, you know, I figured that's going to be the most smooth way to run everything. Right? Someone comes with a question. Here's what you do. Go for it. And then we just don't have issues. Right?

Well, I mean, looking back now, I could have, I should have done it in a much different way, but it wasn't until I looked at my position as an educator in that same job, rather than the team leader part of it, that I realized how ineffective my approach was because that's the way that I was treated by my administrative leader, right? How we as a team were treated. And so it took, it took me realizing that those of us who really knew things the best because we were the ones in the trenches weren't given a voice in deciding the direction of the team as a whole. Yeah. That's just the way that our administrator had chosen to approach it.

And, but it took me being on that side of it to realize, wait, isn't that exactly what I'm doing as team leader? Just getting as much info as I can, making the decisions, laying it out, saying, here we go guys, go for it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that was a tough, that was a tough lesson to learn, but a valuable lesson because I think that was the first time that I really started considering my definition of leader in a different way.

Josh: It's interesting that you talk about that from the education perspective, right? Because for a long time, you probably identified yourself as an educator. And I think one of the most valuable descriptors of the word leader is actually educator, right? A leader has to be an educator. Empowerment Design is driven around the idea of education, but not education from the point where we say, okay, here's this, go read it. And once you've read this, now you'll understand the truth of all things, right? Because you know that that's not true.

It's providing a space where they can read it and then they can experience it. And then they can make mistakes with it in a safe space. Cause that's what education should really be, right? Education should be, here's the challenge. I want you to learn how to solve this problem with the tools that we have. And I'm going to be here with you so that you don't get too messed up. I might let you fall and scrape your knee, but I'm not going to let you lose your leg, right? And then it becomes a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And being able to embrace that role as a leader, I have to spend some time educating people. That's hugely valuable.

Jenny: Yeah. Another piece of my definition of leadership, I think has really impacted me, did impact me up until the point where I became more introspective about it, was the idea of confidence. Honestly, I have for most of my life, I have viewed you as a leader. I've seen you in different positions, in different roles, working in a variety of business fields, but I've always regarded you as a leader. And I really think part of that is because I see you as a very confident person. You come off as a very confident person to me. So I equate confidence also with leadership.

Josh: Sounds like the mask is working. I'm just kidding.

Jenny: Well, that's hard for me because inherently I am not a confident person. Once I get comfortable in a particular situation, good to go. But usually what it takes for me to get confident in a certain situation is having all the answers and the knowledge again, right? So it's this cycle. But I mean, speak to that a little bit. I think that's a common tie when people imagine, if we ask people, think of just some of the leaders in your life, the people that you really see as strong leaders. I would think that confidence would be one of those traits that is a commonality.

Josh: It's an interesting thing, right? Because confidence is just another word, right? It's a symbol that represents something for somebody, right? And it probably represents something a little bit different for everybody. And I think I spent a lot of my life being confident in my abilities, right? Like I knew for better or worse that I could probably pretty much talk my way out of almost anything. I've talked my way out of a few things or talk my way around a few things, right?

And I think for a long time I looked at it and thought, if I can just think as fast or faster than everybody else around me, that's what I can base my confidence on. Because I may not be right all the time, but I know I can get to a solution quickly. And some of the confidence just came from not wanting to accept or recognize what my limitations are. So I spent a lot of time just ignoring the limitations and leaning into the confidence. And there are positives and negatives to that. Obviously, some big negatives involved too, where it's just easy to create construct, right? That isn't reality.

But I think it really comes down to the intention behind the confidence, right? Like I can have confidence in my ability to help a business owner be successful, but not because of my experience or skill anymore. For a long time, that's what I relied on. But now I'm going to rely on their ability and their skill, right? And digging that out of somebody. And that changes the concept of confidence for me, because now my confidence doesn't come from some well or reservoir of knowledge or experience inside of me. It comes from what I've learned about how to help other people access that.

And I can have 100% confidence in every situation, because I don't have to rely upon my own strengths, which is powerful. Because when I have to rely on my own strengths, I can't do that without identifying my weaknesses at the same time, right? So being able to be in a space where someone else can access their confidence and their weakness, that gives me 100% confidence in that we're going to come to a solution. If I have to rely on it for myself, I'm less confident in that, but I can play my way through it. But that's what Empowerment Design at its core is, is how do we unlock other people's strengths and weaknesses? And that's where confidence transforms itself in a lot of ways.

Jenny: Well, and it's something that you can't really instill it in someone. They have to figure out, I guess I can only speak for me, I have to figure out how I can feel confident, right? In the past, it's been by knowing stuff. Then I feel confident. And so I've had to really shift that. How can I still be confident? How can I be confident working with a client? How can I be confident helping someone embrace Empowerment Design without having to feel like I know everything, that I am helping them find their way rather than saying this is the way. And that's a hard thing for me.

Josh: It is.

Jenny: That's a hard thing for me when I tie confidence and ability so closely together.

Josh: Well, and you actually helped me change a lot of my perspective on what confidence can be and should be. Because when you first started working with us and I just, I clearly remember those first few months where you wanted the answer for everything, right? Like, what do I do if this person has said, how do I handle this? What do I, you know, you've got these pillars.

Jenny: I wanted a book.

Josh: You wanted an SOP that was very clear.

Jenny: Yes, I did. And when I realized one didn't exist, I thought, well, I'm going to write. And so I took copious notes.

Josh: Right. And how much did that notes help you?

Jenny: Yeah. Well, I still haven't written that.

Josh: It's okay.

Jenny: Nor will I ever.

Josh: Right. Right. But like it opened my eyes to the idea. Like our first, when we, when I first started, when we first started to be developing Leaders Evolution, the very first core kernel of it was, we need to have a way to teach someone basic skills. So we'd have to teach it 45 times. We can just teach it once. Right. And that's where Impact Shift training series really was born from. And that was powerful.

But then I started to realize I can just make these videos forever. I mean, there's 4 million different scenarios that I could make a video about. Wouldn't it be better to make a series of videos that said, okay, let's identify what the principles in your life are and develop some skills internally, principally based so that instead of you having to come to me for answers, you can turn to yourself for answers. Yeah. And that's what it became for me.

And then like when the lid really blew off was when I realized if we can teach people how I shouldn't even say we teach people, if we can provide a way for people to teach themselves this, how powerful is it going to be when they can then turn around and teach their people the same process? That's the ripple effect, right? That's what I was looking for. And I couldn't define it until I, until I had to sit down with you. I like, I remember literally turning on my Zoom call and recording hour and a half long videos of how you go through a financial discussion. And I feel horrible that you had to watch those because that had to be so horrible, right? So incredibly boring.

Jenny: But that's what I needed at that time, you know, because at that time I was still of that mindset that knowledge is leadership, you know? And so I, and I wouldn't have gotten to the point where I am now where I'm haven't fully accepted, but I'm coming to accept that knowledge and leadership don't have to go hand in hand in that way. I wouldn't have come to that point had I not gone through that.

Josh: Yeah. Well, and that's, we have to have those experiences, right? I mean, at the end of the day, leadership is not something that you achieve. Leadership is something that you experience, right? It's about becoming and every step on the journey is another piece of it. If you get to the point where you, where you can say, okay, I'm the leader that I want to be, I'm done, I'm finished. You're doing yourself a disservice because it doesn't end, at least not in this lifetime.

Jenny: Sure. Can you think of an example that you've had maybe in the, maybe in the client setting, but I'm sure you've had, you've had the outside of that as well, where helping didn't really help. You know, like I can think of, I can think of many clear examples of that as a parent of, like you said earlier, of adult children and now grandchildren, right? I can look back now, you know, we have the benefit of history on our side now that our children are grown. And so, you know, we can go back and reflect on how we did certain things and what the result of that seems to have been.

And I can think of many times where I shouldn't have stepped in, at least not stepped in as heavily as I did and let them experience more of the challenges that I didn't want them to have to deal with, right? Yeah. And, and it's not that, you know, they're all kind and thoughtful and responsible adults now. So I'm not saying that it had this detrimental impact on them, but there are lessons that they could have learned more readily or more completely or more quickly had I let them experience it more. So it's hard for me, and it's very hard for me in that setting still. And I still do it with my kids and my grandkids to step back and let them experience when I know it's hard.

Josh: Yeah, it's super hard. You know, there are two just really quick instances of where I did it right and where I did it wrong. I had one client who wanted something very structured and clear when it came to a standard operating procedure. And they said, this is, this is what we're trying to accomplish. And of course I took that and said, okay, great, no problem. I can build that for you. So I built it and sent it. And I remember the second that I sent it over, I realized I just solved a very, very immediate problem and completely positioned myself as the only one who could keep solving it for them. I made myself useful in a way that would keep me stuck directly in the middle of the whole thing.

Other side of the coin, I had a client who came in, I mean, we were sitting right here in this office and he brought this stack of financials and he's like, I'm just missing something here. I don't know what it is. I got to figure it out. I need a second set of eyes. Can you look? And so immediately my response was absolutely give me those financials. I love them. I can tell you exactly what it is. But for some reason in that instance, I stopped and I asked him something along the lines of, what is it that you're actually looking for in these reports? He didn't like that question, right? He didn't like what I was saying.

And basically what I was trying to get to is, are you trying to get me to justify what you're seeing? Are you trying to find an answer that you can't find? Are you trying to find something that you haven't seen? But what he was looking for didn't matter. He didn't like the question, but then he started to talk it out himself. And what he started talking out was partly right about his financials and partly wrong about his financials. But him talking about it and asking about it actually got him back to the right question.

So there was space that he threw open where I could have easily jumped in and in the past clearly have. And instead I didn't fill that space. I just let that space be what it was. And he immediately felt a need to fill that space since I didn't. And he stepped in and he did. It wasn't the right answer 100%. But it was enough of an answer to get him to the next step, which is really all he needed anyway.

Jenny: How do you get yourself to a point where you let that happen all the time?

Josh: I'm not there. I'm not there yet. I still step in. My initial reaction is still the old way. Absolutely.

Jenny: But you've been trained that way. That's the habit that you've been trained into. So we're trying to change people, which means changing habits and that's hard.

So what if a client comes to you and this client is just kind of at the end of their ropes. They're tired, they're overworked, they're not where they want to be financially. And maybe even the business is struggling financially. They're dealing with staffing issues, just all of those that are just as common in the business world. And they come to you in their mind in the traditional consultant sense. And we're gearing them towards a new way of thinking. How do you help them embrace that when they're feeling so in need of, "I need a path that's going to be... I hesitate to say fast, but I'm going to say it because so many want that. I need a path that's going to get me back on track financially, allow me to keep all of my employees that I have, keep things running, but that's good to get me out of this rut." There's some urgency there. Empowerment Design is not fast. It's not a fast process. But many people in business owners, business leaders, they're living in a world of urgency. How do you balance that?

Josh: Well, that's interesting. So I'll try not to make this too long because this is a subject that I'm learning a lot about right now. Business does move fast. It is so quick. I mean, if you think about six months ago where everybody's favorite AI was ChatGPT, well now everybody's favorite AI is Claude. Well now ChatGPT just put out a new model and who knows what that does. And then Claude will put out a new model and then [unclear] model and then Gemini will come in. It moves so, so quickly. And because of that, we have to move quickly too. But it's not true.

We have to move at the speed and pace that not our business needs us to, but the people that are in our business. And that applies to someone who doesn't even have employees. That could be your vendors, your clients. You need to move at the speed that they need you to move, not at the speed that the rest of the world is moving with.

I remember one time, like I was fairly new in this practice of asking people questions instead of just giving them answers. And I remember finally there was one leader who finally said to me, "Why are you asking so many questions? Why can't you just give me the answer?" And I remember thinking, okay, I could easily give him the answer here and the answer would hold and it would be good. You know, at the very beginning of my career, I could build in a standard operating procedure and that standard operating procedure would hold for two, three years. Now it holds for two or three months, maybe, just because of the speed of everything. Technology changes, people changes, market changes. You can't control any of that. All you can control is what you do, right?

So when he asked me that question, I said, "Well, just let me ask you one more question. How do you make decisions at the end of the day?" And he said, "Well, I do this and I do that." I said, "Just stop. How do you make the decision?" I'm not talking about how you gather information. How do you make the decision? He said, "I go with my gut." And I said, "Cool. Does your team know that?" And just like this look of realization on his face, like I'm making decisions, but my team doesn't know where that is coming from at the end of the day. It changed things for him.

And he started to realize, "Okay, I still need to make decisions as a business owner, but I need to bring my team into those decisions, how those decisions are made, what it looks like for them. Because if I make a decision on an SOP and then hand it to someone and 90% of that SOP is I go by my gut, what is that SOP telling my people? Tell my people, come back and check with my gut. I need to transfer that ownership in a deep way, which is what questions are all about."

So you ask the question, "How do I deal with urgency when someone wants it fast?" I'm just pretty blunt. They say, "You can have a fast answer and your fast answer is going to hold for a very limited amount of time. You can have a real answer that creates real change and it's going to be messy and difficult and hard. And you're going to be sitting in the mud by yourself and with your partner and with your team and with everybody over and over and over again. But sitting in the mud is where change happens. So what do you want most? Do you want the fast answer? If you want the fast answer, I can give you the name of 35 people who you can go contact tomorrow who will gladly give you the fast answer. Do you want to change? That's different." It's different, always different.

Jenny: I want to share with our listeners a little bit about watching you sit in the mud. We started off by stating this and I think we've not only alluded to it, but demonstrated that we are very much a work in process.

Josh: Absolutely.

Jenny: And that we've embraced that and probably always will be, should be, right? We should always be evolving.

Josh: Absolutely.

Jenny: But there had to have been a starting point for all of this.

Josh: For sure.

Jenny: And so I just want to share for a couple minutes from my perspective what I have seen in you, Josh, over the last few years. I started noticing some shifts when a few years ago when you were in a really challenging time with a business partner and where some big decisions needed to be made as far as where does the business go, where does the partnership go and so on. And that was a hard time. And I have always, I've known you my whole entire life.

Josh: Certainly my entire life because just for those who don't know, she might be a little bit older than me.

Jenny: You're right. My earliest recollection, though, it does not precede the time of year.

Josh: Fair enough.

Jenny: But I've always seen you as pretty tough and certainly resilient. And I've been around for to see some of the challenges. Certainly not all, but some of the challenges. And I've seen you come out on top and in my eyes you for a long time have just been pretty invincible. And so when I saw you sitting in the mud, it kind of took me back a little bit. No, a lot of it.

But what I did see was someone who just decided I need to let myself sit here and I just need to listen for a bit. And not only not be the one who's always seeking the answers, but also be the one who just lets things happen the way they need to happen. And embracing that idea that you maybe don't get to be the only person who shapes all of that. And so as I watched you step back and allow yourself to reflect on where you were, who you were, where you wanted to be, who you wanted to be, I started to see a shift in you. And that's where my initial passion for what we now have started to. There was the little spark right there is when I started to see in you how it was affecting you.

And I share that because first of all, I want all of you to know that again we're experiencing all of this along with you. We're not there. We never will be there. There isn't a there. But also to just remind you that that's part of the process. Be introspective. Just be okay with hanging out in that mud for a bit. And enjoy the mud. It's good for your skin. It's okay. Don't be digging out of it.

Josh: I have the best skin in the world because I spent so much time in mud.

Jenny: Just be. And that's something that I really admire of you. You have learned how to just be.

Josh: I appreciate that. And it's one of those things that I hear you saying that. I'm super grateful for you to say that. And that my initial response is great that I can take that and use that to build my ego and feed my ego. But I also have to take it with what reality is. It's interesting because it becomes easier to sit in the mud when you've sat in the mud. And I've made a lot of choices where I didn't have to be in the mud and ended up in the mud. And that's okay.

But one of the things I get asked a lot, especially as we're trying to get this new concept and this new idea of business leadership and development out there, one of the questions I get all the time is what was that one moment? Where's that one moment where all this shifted for you? And there just isn't one. You talked about a challenge with a partner. I've had that. That was a big catalyst in Empowerment Design. My grandson Joseph, who we're going to talk about at some point throughout the course of this podcast series, is a huge catalyst for me. But I mean, my wife, Megan, my children, those experiences, clients that I've worked with, there are so many pieces.

And I think maybe that's what leadership, growth and development, which really at the end of the day is just human development. I've avoided going too far into that because I don't want to come across as, let me be a life coach guru to change your life. And that's not what I'm trying to do. But the recognition that there are so many different threads to our lives and the goal is not to keep them separate. The goal is not to keep them clean. The goal is to let them weave themselves into a tapestry that is life changing. And that's leadership at the end of the day, whether you're talking about the threads being people or processes or experiences or just your own strengths and weaknesses again, letting that weave into something greater than what we are yesterday. That's what it's all about.

Jenny: I do want to ask you, and this may end up being a completely podcast all on its own. So maybe something we just kind of touch on and think about a little bit. But you are ahead of where I am in the level of confidence. I don't want to say this the wrong way. I don't want to say the level of confidence in Leaders Evolution and Empowerment Design, because it's not that I lack confidence in it.

Josh: Say it how you need to say it and we'll sit in the mud together.

Jenny: Okay. All right. Your passion for it is deeper than life, is more unwavering than life. That's the word I want. What have you done or what has happened or what experiences have you had or thoughts have you had or introspections have you had that have gotten you to a point where you believe so strongly in Empowerment Design and its potential to its potential impact on people's lives that you don't let doubt creep in or at least creep into a point where it stifles you? Maybe it's that overconfidence thing that we're talking about before, right?

Josh: That's a good question. There's a lot of answers to it and some are less valuable than others. So I'm going to skip all the less valuable ones and just tell you the one that is most valuable because it's probably most personal and it will probably be the hardest for some people to accept. It's because it didn't come from me.

As a company, as a business owner, we were in a decent place. Like I could have continued in the pathway that we were on. I could have kept the partnership intact that we ended up losing. I could have continued to do things the way that we were doing. I had gotten pretty close to a point where I had helped you get to a place where you could handle a whole bunch of engagements. And then I unilaterally made the decision to blow the entire thing up, right? And that would have been a much easier path for all of us probably. But it wouldn't have fulfilled what I believe I'm expected to be doing in this life.

And that's not to take away from anything that I've done to get me to this point because I think everything that I've experienced, all the coaching, all the consulting that I've done has informed Leaders Evolution and Empowerment Design completely. So I don't regret any of that experience at all. And I would never downplay any of the results that my clients achieved, any of the results that I helped my clients achieve, any of those results that I helped I achieved without my clients help for them, right? Not downplaying any of that. That was all valuable and important part of the journey.

But my experiences with Joseph, the experiences that Megan and I have had together. So we've made decisions about what we do next and where the business goes and what kind of level of patience we have to have to get where we need to go. None of those answers, now I'm going to sound like I'm contradicting myself so stick with me. None of those answers came from me, but they came through me. And to me, that's a big difference.

My personal belief system is that a God above whatever people want to call that, that's their own choice. And I have specific phrases for that, but I believe that a set of heavenly parents above has guided my life, maybe more in the moments when I haven't wanted them to, but they have guided my life to this point. And so when I have doubt, which I have, sure, right? There are moments where I think, boy, if I was doing it this way, I could be doing this, right? But there in those moments where I turn to that source of where all real truth comes from, the answer is very clear. I need the world. This isn't me speaking source that I listen to tells me I need the world to be better. Your solution is not going to solve all the problems in the world. It's going to solve some. And if you can start solving some, and then someone else can start solving some, and then someone else can start solving some, that's the ripple effect.

Jenny, I don't know if what we've built will go out and change 10 lives or a thousand lives or a hundred thousand lives or a million lives or 40 million lives. And for the first time in my life, I don't care. All I care is that it's there and it's accessible and it allows people to recognize the inherent divine worth that they have, because I believe that everybody has it. And everybody has the seeds of leadership inside of themselves, no matter what that disability or challenge or choice that they've made tries to bury those. They're all there.

And so you ask, where does the confidence come from? The confidence comes in knowing that Empowerment Design isn't mine. It's come from another source. And that other source is way more powerful and way more qualified than I can ever be. And for whatever reason, for this period of my life, I've asked to be a steward of that. And so my confidence just comes in my ability to be a steward of it, not of the person who's responsible for it at the end of the day. Does that make sense?

Jenny: Yeah. Thank you. I think we should issue a challenge to all of you out there.

Josh: Good. I like it.

Jenny: Throw out the window, whatever assumptions you have about leadership. Just let yourself be open. We talked a little bit over the last 30 minutes or so about the way you and I have traditionally looked at leadership and what is that becoming for us now. But we all need to do that, right? And maybe the way you have seen leadership is different. Certainly it is from mine or from Josh's. So think about that this week. Think about it and throw some of those assumptions out. Just allow yourself to be open to seeing leadership in a new way or in an evolved way.

Josh: Yeah. I love that. It's a good challenge. I need to do that too. Because I'm still in there, right? I'm still in the middle. I'm inside of this. I still ask myself a question. Can the business that sells help be built so that it's better when its customers need less? That sounds counterintuitive, right? But I know what the other version looks like. It was good. In some cases, it was probably better, but it's not best. Let's get to best. That's what we built Leaders Evolution from the perspective of, how do you be your best and how do you help others be their best?

Jenny: I love that. And that may even be as simple as stopping yourself when someone comes to you for the answer and just pausing, thinking, "Well, is the answer that I'm going to give them really what's... Is that what they really need?" Or could this be an opportunity to help them develop their own?

Josh: Absolutely. Love it.

Jenny: Well, this is going to be fun.

Josh: I think so. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. It'll be interesting to see where this hits. Yeah. I mean, I give a caution to everybody who's listening, especially if our children are listening. You're a fair game and we will have fun with you. And if our brothers and sisters are listening, we don't know you better than the people that you currently are with right now. But when you were children, we knew you better than everybody else.

Jenny: Oh, we've got some business.

Josh: Some of those stories may come through. And remember, we're the ones with the microphones.

Jenny: So there you go. There's the one.

Josh: There's the one. Now none of them are going to watch it ever.

Jenny: All right. Well, thanks. Thanks for coming with us, everybody. Until next time.

Josh: Until next time. Thanks.