What does skydiving have to do with leadership?

In this powerful episode of Spirits and Stories, Donald Dunn sits down with leadership coach and engineering executive Joe to explore how stepping outside your comfort zone transforms the way you lead, think, and grow.

With over 650 skydives and years of experience building high-performance teams in mission-critical environments, Joe shares practical leadership lessons on:

1. How to overcome fear and take calculated risks
2. Why growth mindset beats achievement mindset
3. How to reduce risk without becoming paralyzed
4. The importance of defining your “why” in leadership
5. How young leaders today are reshaping the future
6. Why awareness and perspective matter more than ever

Whether you're a business owner, executive, veteran transitioning to civilian life, or someone feeling stuck in your professional growth, this episode offers actionable insights you can apply immediately.

Leadership isn’t about titles. It’s about courage, clarity, and consistency.

If you’re ready to level up your leadership skills, navigate uncertainty with confidence, and push beyond self-imposed limits, this conversation is for you.

If you like podcasts that help improve peoples lives and filled with story telling, Check out https://barracksmedia.com/network

Links referenced in this episode:

1. wyserwithjoe.com
2. linkedin.com/in/wyserwithjoe
3. instagram.com/wyserwithjoe
4. https://barracksmedia.com
5. https://barracksmedia.com/network

Welcome to Spirits and Stories, a place where we slow things down and talk about the moments that shaped us.

The stories behind the scars, the victories, the lessons.

Every guest brings a journey, so settle in.

This one's meant to be felt.

How's it going, Joe?

I'm doing great.

How are you today, Donald?

I am good, man.

Let me, let me go ahead and give you a quick introduction and let everybody know what we're looking at today.

So today's guest brings a rare mix of real world leadership, technology, high pressure decision making.

From building leadership programs for students who didn't see themselves as natural leaders to leading complex engineering teams in mission critical environments.

His work centers on clarity, culture, and confidence.

He's also a coach, speaker and licensed skydiver with more than 650 jumps, giving him a unique perspective on fear, risk, and performance under pressure.

This is a conversation packed with practical insights for anyone navigating leadership growth.

Let's welcome Joe to the show.

How's it going, Joe?

I'm doing great.

Love to be on the show with you today.

Yeah, man.

So why don't we dive into a little bit of a background.

Where'd you grow up and what kind of brought you into the leadership world?

And then where did skydiving come from?

Sure.

So I hail from Baltimore, Maryland.

Been Maryland born and raised entire life.

My dad's actually retired army and Fort Meade was his last station.

So he retired and then, hey, we're living in Maryland to this day.

My leadership story.

I always start with my high school experience where I got to be a part of a 10 day leadership development program.

And it was the first time that I really saw myself as more than just the like, smart, quiet kid that wanted to get stuff done.

It really unlocked and uncovered this part of me that I knew sort of deep down was there, but wasn't sure how to really bring it about.

And since then, that's really been the foundation of what I do and what I care about and how I really approach other people.

Fast forward I had a great opportunity at the University of Maryland to create leadership development programs for other undergrad students on campus.

We did a three day conference called the Maryland Leadership Conference where we did a four day immersion experience.

We created one day seminars and it was the first time that I got to flip the script and help others grow, to give them the tools, the resources, the skills to unlock their own potential.

Fast forward since then, I've been in the tech world supporting Department of Defense and intelligence community efforts for the US federal government for nearly 15 years.

Now with that, there is a whole story of ups and downs, growth and maybe some failures along the way.

I've been with my current company, Anthem engineering, for almost 13 years now, or sorry, 11 years now.

And it's been this great experience to help them grow from only a handful to an eight figure company to build a culture where over 40 people really doing meaningful work.

And then a parallel.

I love giving back, I love continuing to make sure that others have that chance to grow.

And so for 13 years, I've been volunteering with a high school leadership development nonprofit, creating programs for them, running programs, doing keynotes, being a facilitator to again create that environment for young leaders, for young students to see something in themselves that they might not have had that opportunity before.

And so that's a little bit about my journey.

I know we're going to dive right in.

Yeah, man, that's, you know, one that's awesome that you're doing young leadership courses because I think that is something that is truly missing from our school system now.

You know, things like clubs and debate classes and stuff like that I thought really did well.

And it, it with the way everything has changed so much, especially since post Covid, you know, I think it's been hard to get back into that kind of curriculum.

So that's awesome that what you're doing there.

I spent a little time in Maryland as well.

I, I spent some time there at good old Aberdeen.

All right.

Yeah, I went to BNOC up there and so I spent a short amount of time up there.

Great food didn't make me a Ravens fan, but it's still great food.

But yeah, so it's kind of exciting to hear.

I love what you're doing with your, your leadership programs and, and everything else.

What is it that you do?

What is, what is fun for you?

What is the, the one thing that you do away from after creating America's leadership programs?

Well, as you mentioned, I love throwing myself out of airplanes.

I'm a licensed skydiver.

I've done it over 650 times.

And so that's definitely been a journey the past four and a half years for me where it's helped me continue to overcome my own fears.

And that's really been a through line across so many years, not only with skydiving and heights, but just putting myself out there, pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

And so that's something I love talking about as well.

Yeah.

You know, I think you're going to relate to a lot of the good old audience that we have a lot of them come from airborne backgrounds and.

And that's a niche in the military.

There's small group of people that like to present themselves as.

As a little bit better than the average person, but I think it's well deserved and the work that they do.

So my hat's off to them.

I'm eager to dive into it.

I'm sure there's some comparisons between leadership and teaching somebody how to skydive.

There's a lot of risk that goes into it.

There's a lot of risk that goes into companies, so we'll dive right into it.

What are some of the comparisons that you can make from your hobby to leadership?

Yeah, so many.

And feel free to jump in if I'm going on too much of a dive with some of those comparisons.

I think one of the big ones is really creating this perception and perspective that we can do things sometimes so far out of our reality.

For me, a typical Saturday now is jumping out of nine airplanes, doing 10 skydives, doing 11 of them.

And when I take a step back from skydiving, I look at things like public speaking or running a meeting or giving feedback to an employee for the first time.

And particularly for the leaders out there who have been in those trenches, have been doing those things for a while.

I challenge those people to maybe take a step back and think about the first time you did it.

And then for the people that haven't had that opportunity to.

Haven't stepped up and done it yet, think about, wow, that's.

That's scary.

Maybe that's not something I can do.

But for what skydiving has taught me is we have these things again outside of reality, and if we find the right coach, we find the right person to push us a little bit, and we take that first step, we try it the first time, we might fail.

It might not go well.

I might get feedback that doesn't hit home.

But when you start doing it repeatedly, you start overcoming that large fear that you didn't think was possible to overcome.

And then you get to a point where it becomes that daily practice that you're in that board meeting, talking to other executives on a daily basis.

You're pulling in people in your company and giving them feedback on a daily basis.

You're standing up on that stage, giving a presentation, giving that keynote.

And when we recognize that we can shift our lives, we can shift the things we do into sometimes a thing that was so far outside of reality.

That's the message.

I always love to start with that Again, you don't need to throw yourself out of planes, let alone 11 times in one day.

But there's things that I would challenge everyone listening right now.

There's at least one thing that you've thought about, you've considered that you just haven't taken that first step.

And so that's my first challenge to your audience.

What is that one thing?

And then again, find a coach.

Find someone that can push you along the way.

For me, the second big thing is I got into skydiving because of a friend.

She and I went on a road trip up to Chicago, and.

And she's like, hey, you want to go skydiving for the first time while we're up there?

I'm like, sure, why not?

It's sort of been on the bucket list.

And then afterwards, a year later, she's like, you want to go again?

And I'm like, why not one more time?

And so I did it a couple of times.

And it was because of her thought process, her willingness to push herself, that created this new goal for myself.

There's a concept called goal contagion, where we see people sometimes directly within our sphere of life and then sometimes very far out there, and we see a goal that we're like, ooh, ooh, maybe that would be kind of cool to try out.

Maybe that is.

Is possible.

And so, because of her willingness to push herself, because of her goal contagion around skydiving, that has now led to where I am now.

And so that's another thing I really learned, not only just from skydiving, but from the experiences of friendship and experiences of coaching.

If you find those people that maybe they don't want to jump out of a plane, but they're willing to be your support system, they'll go to that drop zone with you.

They're going to stay on the ground thinking you're crazy, but they're there to give you that little extra boost of confidence.

And so that's another big lesson that I've learned.

And then another one.

And again, Donald, feel free to jump in at any time.

You're good.

You're good.

Another one I really learned, and you alluded to this, is risk, and understanding what situations we might be in that can be risky.

And particularly as leaders, particularly as business owners, we encounter risk on a daily basis.

And it's, how do you take a step back and align both some of that gut feeling where you know deep down it's risky, and then some of that mental processing of, okay, I also can calculate that risk and align it where you don't get stuck in that fear, that analysis paralysis, where you don't move as today's life and world, it changes on a daily basis, particularly because of AI.

And what I'm seeing as I work with other companies and leaders is if you get stuck in that analysis paralysis, if you're so afraid of risk and you're not willing to take calculated risks, then you're going to be left behind, you're going to be stuck on the ground, you're never going to get in that plane, and you might never take that first jump because you're so worried about putting yourself out there.

And so for me, for skydiving, there's always going to be risk, there's always going to be a chance of getting injured or even death.

But it's what are we doing on a daily basis and on a jump by jump basis that minimizes that risk as much as possible?

It doesn't go away.

It's never going to go away.

But are we doing things like safety checks?

Am I actually looking at my equipment before every jump, checking the things that could potentially go wrong, having a friend, another buddy do a check as well, and then talking through the potentially challenging and risky parts of the skydive?

And when we do those consistent habits, again, the risk doesn't go down all the way, it doesn't disappear, but we can at least reduce it.

And again, same thing with leadership, with personal development and running businesses.

What are the challenges?

Okay, I'm going to go spend money on a new marketing campaign, I'm going to go hire that new employee.

I'm going to put myself in for a new promotion.

All those things can have risk, all of those things can have failure.

And it's actually critically thinking, where's my gut and where's that emotional part of my brain?

Where's the logical part of the brain?

And how can I meet those in the middle to decide is this risk worth it in the end?

And so that's been a big thing as I've journeyed out into starting my own business and continuing in executive leadership roles.

How do we move forward, keep the effort going but not worry.

And so that's been quite the lesson.

And back to skydiving.

One of the things we do is there's so many things that can happen that you can't plan for everything.

You can't plan for every situation.

And so what we do is we think of the key critical pieces that we always want to know.

One of those is, how are we actually leaving the plane?

What's the order?

Am I holding on to you?

Are you holding on to me?

Are we all diving out separately?

And so the initial plan, we need to know where we're starting at, what is point A?

And how does that get us into the skydive?

And so for every skydive, we always talk about what that initial setup is, because then again, that reduces risk.

We know where we're starting.

I won't be trying to get out of the plane while you're trying to hold on to me when I didn't know you were going to do that type of thing.

Yeah.

Then on the other end of the spectrum.

So start skydive.

End the skydive.

So what happens every time that you end?

You want to get separation between every person in the air.

So when you deploy your parachute, there's not a chance of entanglements or flying into each other.

And so we always decide what is the altitude that we're going to actually start making separation.

And so that is a key component of every skydive.

What is our breakoff altitude?

And a lot of times where I see failures, not in skydiving, although there can be some tricky situations when it hasn't been communicated clearly.

But with a business opportunity, what is our breakoff point where we should sell or we should stop investing in this opportunity, or we need to take a step back and maybe fire someone.

And those are challenging conversations to have.

Those are things that we really want to just, like, hope they don't actually happen.

And so just with skydiving, when you up front talk about some of those end scenarios and you plan for them, it reduces the risk when you do eventually get there.

And then the last piece is, well, you plan a skydive.

Depending on the expertise, you might have a very intricate plan.

You might be all over the place with, well, we're just going to do some simple stuff.

But you really try to balance it based on the people that are in the skydive.

So if I'm hopping out of a plane with nine other people and there's 10 of us, and they're all about my experience level or better.

Well, I'd say, okay, I'm the worst skydiver right now out of 10 of us.

I know that I'm pretty proficient.

I'm not exceptional to any degree.

But we can go out there with a very minimal plan.

And I know the risk is going to be low because of the skills, the expertise, the awareness.

Now, if I do the same jump with 10 new, licensed, brand new jumpers, I'm going to spend many, many minutes talking through what that skydive looks like.

We're going to actually practice it on the ground.

We're going to talk about positioning, we're going to walk through all of those steps and talk through potential failure scenario areas of what we do.

And so the most important thing in a skydive, in a business and leadership is understanding your people, understanding their strengths, understanding their weaknesses, and understanding what level of detail and planning they need to be successful.

And not every skydive goes anywhere close to plan.

But again, when we think through who's with us on that skydive, we can reduce risk, increase fun, and ideally increase the success of, of whatever plan we're going for.

So, so those are a couple of the lessons I've learned so far.

I know I threw a lot at you, Donald.

No, that's fine.

We'll unpack it.

So, you know, I love where you started with this.

You know, it starts with getting out of your comfort zone.

And I think that's the beginning.

Challenges with leadership in general, people are afraid to one, give up a little bit of control and get out of their own comfort zone and kind of look at bigger picture scenarios which can also hinder growth in the company.

It can hinder growth internally as the individual.

So both of those are important aspects and it goes right side by side with, on the outside world.

You know, personal growth involves getting out of that comfort zone as well.

Hence doing something that you are not comfortable with.

Jumping out of a plane for the first time.

I had a guest on here once a year.

She goes and signs up to perform on stage as a guitarist in a, in a, like a mic day or something like that.

You know, she doesn't do it all the time, but not about money, not about anything other than it takes her out of her, her legal expertise.

That's what she does.

She's a lawyer.

And puts her in a zone that she's not comfortable with.

And just to prove that she can still do it, she can still get out of that comfort zone.

And it's a lesson, you know, at that point, it helps her make those decisions when she has to get out of her comfort zone on the professional level and make those decisions.

So I love where you started there.

I love how you incorporated the plans that, that have to reduce risk there's risk in everything that we do.

Some has small, some has larger risk.

And.

And you've got to spend more time reducing that risk to make the plan make sense.

So that is day to day in business as well as everyday life.

So, yeah, I love how you put it there.

The way you tied things together.

That is.

That is absolutely perfect.

What would you say that, that some of the people do wrong when, when it comes to making that decision to get out of their comfort zone?

Obviously, you said it at the beginning.

The first time you do something and you're outside your comfort zone doesn't necessarily mean that just because you did it, it's going to go perfect.

There's going to be mistakes.

Do you feel that that's, you know, not acknowledging that prior to doing it can hinder the fact that you go back and try again and succeed?

I mean, if you had had a bad experience skydiving, would you have gone to where you are now today?

You know, would there have been a second and third jump and then potentially getting licenses and so forth?

Yeah, that's a great question.

As a quick anecdote, actually, on my third student jump, I literally went spinning out of control and the instructor had to fly in and save me.

And then on my fourth jump, same type of jump, I was so petrified of doing that again that I'm like, I froze.

And I was like, oh, I didn't do anything I was supposed to.

And so luckily for me, it was the third and fourth jump.

But to your question, so many times we go in to anything with an achievement mindset that we have to accomplish, we have to do the thing, we have to get, get the thing.

And when we can shift that to a growth mindset that I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone a little bit.

And no matter how horribly or maybe even how well it goes, the goal isn't that I did the thing just to say I achieved, but instead I became a little bit more of something.

And so I think that's the big reframe that.

Anytime I'm coaching someone and they're talking about trying to hit a new goal, it's perfectly great.

It's amazing to set goals.

But what happens when you fail when you don't hit that goal?

When if I went spinning out of control on that first jump, would that have shifted my perspective?

And for me, what I really recognized was, hey, it actually takes a time and effort to get good at skydiving.

There are a couple naturals out there, but most people don't have the genetics to be free falling at 120 miles to naturally figure that out.

And so because luckily I had that growth minded, this is going to push me out of my comfort zone and I'm probably going to fail or at least not perform any close to the level I want along the way.

That's why I stuck with it.

That's where I let the fear be overcome by each little push out of the comfort zone.

And so that's really the shift that I always encourage people to take that.

Are you really only in there to say I achieved?

And a lot of times we also get pressure from family, from friends, from coworkers that say, well, you should do this thing, you have to do this thing.

I expect you to do this thing.

And that starts becoming more of that achievement mindset.

And, and so particularly if you have a friend saying, hey, we're never going to be friends again if you don't jump out of that plane.

Well, let me call them up.

Like everyone doesn't have to jump out of a plane, but it's, it's that balance that really is important.

Yeah.

And I, I love how we're talking about, you know, personal hobbies that relate to work because I do believe that our leadership skills truly crosses over into our personal life.

You know, if, if you're, it's unlikely that if you're a bad person personally and you're just disgruntled about everything that goes on in your life that as soon as you walk through your, your employment that you're magically going to turn into this amazing leader and you know, it carries over.

And so I think a lot of young leaders don't recognize how important that leadership skills is not just a learned lesson, it's a life lesson.

It goes along with what you're going to do on a day to day basis and you don't have to be that person that's leading a group and then you shut it off and think that it doesn't apply to anything else you do.

That's just not the way it works and you have to have that balance.

So I love how you're incorporating a hobby that, that's off work, but it still applies to your day to day decision making.

What are some of the things that, that you would recommend to, to somebody that is, is one trying to improve leadership skills and how would you recommend that they find that same kind of hobby like you did that can still be applied and actually complement each other like your hobby does?

Sure.

So I loved your example from Your previous guest, where they do that thing once a year to push themselves out of their comfort zone.

But it's something they probably enjoy, and maybe they enjoy it a little bit more when they're not in front of a lot of people.

And so it's find one of those passions that you can do in more of a public setting that push you a little bit more or might be a little bit more interactive.

And so it might not be getting on a stage, but it might be, hey, I hate networking and I hate meeting new people.

Well, if you want to be a good leader, you need to be able to interact with all types and walks of life, and you need to sometimes take that first step.

So why not go to a networking event once a month?

Might not be your cup of tea, but maybe find a networking event that revolves around something you enjoy.

Oh, it's at a winery.

I love wine.

Oh, it's a tech type networking event.

I love software and tech.

And so when you can align a little bit of a challenge with a little bit of a passion, it starts again, expanding that comfort zone a little bit and reinforces those skills that really go a long way.

And there's both the tactical skills.

Hey, as a leader, I need to be able to talk to someone.

As a leader, I need to be able to strategically think through a plan.

As a leader, I need to create a budget.

But then there's also, for me, foundational concepts and foundational skills that really, to me, are the heart of leadership.

And so for that, I always encourage people to find a book or find a framework that aligns with who you want to be and how you learn.

One of the ones I love talking about is called the Five Exemplary Practices of Leadership.

I always butcher the author's names.

I think it's Kuzner and Posner.

And they basically went out and surveyed thousands and thousands of people across the world and said, what are the practices of leadership that you've seen that make a good leader?

And they distilled it down into five concepts.

And I won't get into all of them.

I'll probably forget what if I try to.

But the concepts are foundational to how I lead and how I encourage and train other, particularly young leaders and young managers to lead.

And some of those things are, such as model the way, show through your actions, and how a leader should be, how you want them to be an employee, and how we can accomplish things as the person we expect.

And so modeling the way is one of those easy concepts in theory.

But then we have to take that step back, look at the actions that we do on a daily basis.

Do we get frustrated when someone asks us the same question five times, but then we realize we ask our boss the same question five times?

Or, oh, I don't send update status reports to my employees.

Why am I getting annoyed that they don't keep me in the loop?

And so when we model the way through our actions, we set that foundation for what we expect as not only leaders, but as people that are working with us.

And so I love that framework, and there's so many other frameworks out there that you can just use those as your guidepost, your guiding light for.

How are my behaviors, how are my actions?

How are the things I focus on actually impacting the people around me and making me a good leader for others?

Yeah.

You know, one of the things I was sitting here thinking about, I remember early in my podcast and career that I had this guest, and he was prior military, and he decided to step out of his comfort zone and become a comedian.

And I just happened to look at his profile the other day, and I was just astonished.

You know, he's up to almost 200,000 followers.

He's now touring and not just performing locally at the little VFWs and stuff like he was doing when I first met him.

And I sent him a quick message and said, hey, you know, I just wanted to say congratulations, you know, you have really taken this to the next step.

But I think where it started for him was just that he needed a way.

He needed an escape from the PTSD and the stuff that he was dealing with.

And there was a lot of things I think he learned from getting on that stage.

You know, how to control a room, how to talk in front of people, how to resonate with the audience that he was talking to.

And I think a lot of those types of things crosses over into exactly what you're saying.

Now, I'm not telling everybody to rush out there and become a comedian.

You know, especially if you don't have a sense of humor, it's probably not going to work out good for you.

But I do think speaking events and, you know, getting in front of your church, you, you know, and.

And talking, find those opportunities to test out these leadership skills and, and.

And to learn how to control the room, the conversation, and, and those are going to be able to cross over as well into your professional job.

You know, controlling meetings like we talked about earlier, maybe mergers and negotiations, whatever's going on in that company.

It's going to help you when you get out of that comfort zone again, be able to have a life lesson that you can fall back on and reach from.

Yeah, definitely.

I want to dig a little bit into the nonprofit work that you're doing with young leaders, because I really do believe our youth is our future.

There's no way around that.

And if we're not passing the lessons learned that we have learned down to them, we start that cycle all over again and make them have to relearn the same mistakes that we've made and.

And growth becomes stunted.

What are some of the things that you're seeing from the.

The young leaders today that that either shocks you or didn't you didn't expect?

I think the number one thing is they're so far ahead of where at least my generation was.

They are so culturally aware, so world aware, so wanting and willing to actually make a difference.

And the one.

One of the lessons I love really trying to share with them is it doesn't matter how young you are to start making an impact, because a lot of times they'll come in, they'll talk about their passions, they'll talk about the stuff they're doing at school, but they'll also share that they feel like they can't make that impact because of their age.

And that's the number one lesson that I really try to hope that they can achieve through a lot of the work I do, which is if you're willing to step up, if you're willing to learn, if you're willing to fail sometimes and you're willing to grow, even those small little impacts start adding up.

And so I think as older generations, we need to do a better job of creating space for them and not thinking, wait, why are they so confident?

They don't deserve that yet.

Why are they trying to tell me what to do?

They're only in high school or college or even middle school.

And I think removing our ego, removing some of that ageism, and recognizing that there are some talented, capable kids out there doing some great work, I've talked to a lot that already have started their own nonprofits, have run food drives and fundraising drives and clothing drives for thousands of people, and it's what can we do to support them?

And so tactically, what that looks like in my mind and what the work we do is creating environments for them to learn, to.

To learn skills that will help enhance what they're already doing, and then creating partnerships both with the work we're doing as well as across their community, to help them recognize you don't have to also do it alone.

You, a lot of times don't even need to start something because there's so many great organizations already out there doing great work.

And so really shifting that mindset, too, which, where I'll fully admit I was a terrible leader in high school because I thought it was all about positionality.

I thought I had to achieve and get there, and when I did, that's what I just coasted.

And so helping them also really shift that mindset, giving them those skills to recognize, okay, when is it important for me to step up and stand out?

And when is it also leadership to actually lead from the middle or from behind?

And so that's a lot of the coaching work we do, the facilitation work, and our actual leadership development programs, really shaping that narrative as a quick, like, specific.

What we do is focus on three parts.

One, personal development, really understanding who you are, how you operate, how you think and feel, then shifting that to the group.

Okay, how does that all play into how you operate with others, how you communicate with others, how you build collaboration with others, and then finally taking it to that next step.

What are we doing with this?

What is the impact we're trying to achieve?

What are the community groups out there?

What is the resources we can build off of or with to again, make that large impact?

Yeah, you know, I asked that question because I was really curious.

I have lost touch with, you know, the younger generation, so I really didn't know where they were at.

But the one thing that I can relate to was I remember growing up and, and my family making me get a job to.

To get a car and, and learn those responsibilities and, and work and.

And I do credit some of the, you know, leadership skills that I have from learning how to do jobs and follow orders and, and learn how to follow before I learned how to lead.

And you don't see that as much anymore.

And so it does kind of surprise me that where you said that they're further along than.

Than what we were growing up, what are some of the things that, that you think is contributing to that?

I think the Internet, obviously, is the number one where they're just so connected.

And I think where we get that misperception, and of course, it's a law of averages, so there are definitely people out there on all ages that don't care, aren't doing anything, have no sense of ownership or commitment.

But I think because there's this easy awareness of what's going on in our communities across the country, across the world through the connectedness we have.

That awareness is really what's driving them, what's really motivating the younger generation to try to step up and make a difference.

And maybe it's skewed because that awareness also pushes the narrative much more in the face of people.

But typically we really try to focus on, hey, what are you doing in your local community?

And not just, hey, I posted on social media TikTok video.

What's the actual impact?

And where I have a very positive view of a lot of the.

The students I volunteer and work with is because I get to hear about the stuff they're doing, the volunteer work they're doing, the things they're passionate about.

And so I believe that if we focus on the strengths that we focus on the good, we can build off of that much more easily than trying to cover up or fix all what's broken in the world.

And so I think that's the perspective shift that I've really adopted over the years.

How do we focus on what you all are doing well, and how do we support you to continue to do even better?

Yeah, you know, that makes perfect sense.

I never thought about that, but, you know, growing up, that was one of the things that, you know, my dad would always tell me, you know, you need to read the newspaper.

You need to.

You need to know what's going on in the world.

And if you take that same concept with what you said, that makes perfect sense that they would be so much further ahead of us because I would have to wait 24 hours to find out what's happened today waiting for that newspaper to come back out.

And, you know, the media there was just not near as fast as what it is today.

And so, yeah, that makes perfect.

I never thought about that, but that makes perfect sense.

And that makes sense that that would contribute to leadership, because awareness is a huge part of being a good leader.

You know, understanding what's going on, what causes what happened and ways to fix it.

So that's awesome with what you're seeing.

It's.

It's really, it's reassuring, you know, to see stuff like that.

Yeah.

And I think you hit it on the head.

The awareness piece, which unfortunately, as we particularly see in social media, our awareness is actually shrinking down to what the media channels, what social media channels are pushing to us.

And ideally, the hope is really trying to expand.

And I think when we have that awareness of what are we consuming and what are we really letting impact our opinions and beliefs and philosophies, that's really, the important part, I actually enjoy my social media feed because I've had friends of all walks of life, and so I see this huge wide spectrum.

Do I agree with a lot of what's on both ends?

No.

But I use that awareness piece to really shape my understanding of what people care about, what they're really passionate about, and then trying to understand where they're coming from.

And that's what I encourage particularly young leaders to do.

Hey, just because it showed up on your social media feed, your friend talked about it.

There's probably a different opinion too, and challenging them to actually think about that as well.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things when I'm working with somebody with social media, you know, social media has been given a bad rep.

They think that they're only out there to push narratives, and it's because they don't understand how the algorithms work.

And the narrative that you're seeing really comes from what are you seeking out?

That is the whole model behind the business is, I'm going to give you what you want to keep you here as long as I can.

And if you want to know how bad politics are and you want to search out the.

The negative of what the other side's doing, it's going to give you that.

And if you want to change that, you have to seek out the positive things that make you happy, not the things that get you fired up and angry.

And your whole feed will change, and it will start showing you those things.

If you go on my feed, you see a lot of nonprofit stuff, you see a lot of indie bands and music stuff, veteran related podcasting type stuff, because that's what I'm seeking out, just not just for entertainment, but professionally.

That's what my industry is, you know, so I like to stay in contact with seeing what other people are podcasting about, how they're running their shows and, and how they're doing things, how is the searches working for those shows?

And that's the stuff that makes me interested and that's the stuff that I seeked out.

So it does make sense that you want to see a wider spectrum of the things in your industry at the same time, keeping it positive so that you don't get this negative narrative about what's going on around the world.

You said it the best.

You know, most of the time you got the media that's trying to give you this.

I want you to only see this much of what's really going on, and you find out that what you're focused on is the Minority, not the majority, you know, and.

And, you know, I don't.

I'm not a big politics guy, but that's really what the big thing that goes on in the politics world is, is everybody wants to give you their little narrative and make you believe it's this, you know, and it's hard to think outside that box.

But I think when you go back to skydiving and, and talking, you know, you know, those lessons that you learned forces you to think outside that box, you know, because you have to be able to see the big picture of what's going on, where everybody is at, so that, you know, hey, this ain't part of the plan.

That person's either in trouble.

Lost, lost.

Course we need to adjust.

And you're now thinking outside that box on that fly to fix that scenario, fix that situation.

So, yeah, it makes perfect sense.

And the crossover, when you really think about it, is just huge between your personal life and your professional life.

And I think skydiving has just became a really good example that I'm sure I'm going to use later in other shows.

What are some of the things that, as a coach, when you take on new clients, what are some of the things that you like to start with and kind of test where they're at and learn what it is that they need to really work on and focus on?

The number one thing that I always start with is your why.

What's your why?

What's your purpose?

Why are we even talking?

Because we can get lost in the weeds a lot of times.

There again, that achievement based.

We want to be the best leader.

I want to make a lot of money as a business owner.

I want to have that positionality, et cetera, et cetera.

All great to really want to achieve and have those goals.

But it's, what are your foundational beliefs?

What are your foundational things that you care about, you're passionate about that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning and actually do something.

And so that's always the set of questions that I always start with.

What's your why?

What, what.

What do you want to really develop into?

Who do you want to be?

And it's not just, hey, they give me an answer.

It's tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.

And the best thing I love about that is sometimes we get to this point where I'm coaching someone and they say, I didn't even think of, why did this even come up?

Like, what just happened?

And it's cool, let's Take a step back and look at the narrative, look at how we got there.

And.

And maybe that's the thing that's important.

For me personally, one of the things that I really care about is community and creating space for other people to grow.

And so that's what I've recognized when I ask myself, what's my why.

Why do I get into leadership development?

Why do I care about personal growth for others?

And it's because I want to make sure that I help others create community for either their employees, for their friends, for their family.

Because we only have so many days and hours and weeks on this earth, and can we create community that really supports each other?

And so for me, that's the number one thing, starting with why.

And then, of course, we want to transition into.

Well, where do we want to go from here?

We know where our starting point is.

Are there specific skills you want to develop?

Are there things that challenges you're encountering?

Okay, I just failed at giving another presentation.

Okay.

Tactically, we can figure that out.

Oh, I just started a new business.

I'm racked with fear about the decisions I need to make.

Okay, let's start building a foundation of belief in our minds.

And so really taking that next step and diving into that tactical piece and then that holistic piece of.

And then really then checking in.

So we're never a one and done.

We're not a linear path to growth.

It's always this up and down.

And so why I love coaching particularly is it doesn't have to be once a week, doesn't have to be a once a month process.

It's a what is the tempo, the process that you feel like you're continuing to grow and you're pushing yourself.

And it's all about asking those questions that really set the foundation for growth, both at that personal level as well as that leadership level.

Yeah, I think that's perfect because at the end of the day, I think people come to you in their comfort zone wanting to know how to grow, and then you help them make that step out of the comfort zone in a pace that's comfortable for them that is achievable.

I like to think about it as.

As a healthy stock.

You know, if you purchase a healthy stock, what you're going to see is it's going to climb, it's going to drop, it's going to level out, it's going to come back up, and.

And that is what a healthy stock will do.

You know, anything that becomes straight from bottom to top is not sustainable.

And, and if you don't do it strategically, like you said, it can create more problems and give you a bad taste in your mouth and hinder you going back and trying to fix what actually went wrong so you can continue to grow.

So I like how you, you said that because it makes perfect sense.

Joe, can.

Can you go and tell everybody where is it?

If they wanted to reach out to you and be a part of your, your coaching program, where can they reach out and find you?

Sure.

Three places.

One, hit me up on LinkedIn.

I love to connect with people there.

I actually post leadership content stories and frameworks three times a week.

So if you're looking to learn a little bit, definitely connect with me on LinkedIn to my website wiserwithjoe.com and that's wiser with a Y, because again, the why is the most important.

You can find out about my coaching and the other services that I offer, including keynotes.

And then finally, because obviously we were talking about skydiving.

If you follow me on Instagram, wiser with Joe, again, wiser with a Y, you can see a lot of my skydiving experiences.

I love to create montages of all the fun stuff.

You can see some of the night jumps I've done.

One time we hopped out of a plane with a hula hoop.

That was quite the experience.

And so you can check me out on Instagram too.

You know, it's funny that you said that in the army we say that every jump is a night jump because everybody jumps with their eyes closed, you know, but yeah, absolutely, Joe.

We'll make sure that we get those links down there in the, the bottom for everybody to, to be able to click on and, and follow you as well and hopefully even reach out.

You're.

You're filled full of amazing knowledge.

So I think anybody that is out there that is looking to grow professionally, especially if you're, if you found success early and you found yourself now stagnant, you know, and you don't know where to go next, reaching out to a coach is, is not a sign of weakness or, or it's not a gimmick.

You know, everybody that is, realizes that they're smart has realized that they are smart enough to know they're not the smartest person in the room and they surround themselves with, with people that can help guide them and, and put together a great team.

And that's exactly what a coach can do for you.

So go check out his, his website, make sure that you reach out to him, have a conversation and see if it's a good fit for you.

For all my airborne guys out there that enjoyed hearing about the skydiving and everything else, just take note that, you know, if you're still in the military and you're transitioning, a lot of stuff that Joe said is perfect, and it's great stepping stones and advice for you.

When you're getting out of the military and starting your new career, you're going to see that life is different and having a coach that can help you navigate a new career and a new learning style or a new leadership style, because the leadership in the civilian world is completely different than what it is in the military.

And don't be afraid to take that time to reach out a coach and get a lesson and learn.

It's how we learned in the military doesn't change in the civilian world.

So I hope everybody got a little bit out of this.

Joe, I appreciate you coming on the show.

I had a great time.

I know all the gold that's been put into this episode is going to pay dividends to my listeners.

So again, I thank you, everybody.

You guys have a great time.

Be safe.

Don't forget, don't let the day kick your ass.

Kick the day's ass.