Welcome to another insightful episode of The Last 10%! Today, Dallas delves deep into leadership with expert guest Jodi Hume, a seasoned coach with a background in engineering and architecture. Together, they explore vital lessons from Jodi's entrepreneurial upbringing, the critical role of discernment, and strategies to empower emerging leaders within organizations. The conversation spans key topics like transparency in leadership, the distinction between revenue and real profit, the importance of emotional regulation, and combating isolation. Listeners will learn how to foster an ownership mindset among their teams, manage personal and organizational stress effectively, and embrace self-care for enduring leadership success. Tune in for a transformative discussion that will help unlock the final 10% of your leadership potential.

Connect with Jodi - https://atthecore.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Hey everybody, we're talking to Jodi Hume today.

What an amazing woman.

She is a leadership coach and an expert on decision making and clarity.

She has some incredible stories about helping leaders navigate tough choices

and stay centered in the middle of chaos.

She's a great new friend of mine.

You don't want to miss.

This incredible conversation.

Welcome to the last 10 percent your host, Dallas Burnett into incredible

conversations that will inspire you to finish well finish strong.

Listen, as guests share their journeys and valuable advice on living in the last 10%.

are a leader, a coach, a business owner, or someone looking to level

up, you are in the right place.

Remember, you can give 90 percent effort and make it a long way, but it's

finding out how to unlock the last 10%.

makes all the difference in your life, your relationships, your work.

Now, Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I am Dallas Burnett, in my 1905 Coke Brothers barber chair the

new and improved Drive Studios.

But more importantly, we have a great guest today, Jodi Hume.

She has years of experience in coaching and helping leaders find clarity and build

confidence in the decision making process.

So we're just excited.

We got a whole lot of stuff to get through

Thank you for having me.

So I'm the first person in your new studio.

you're number one.

And we're excited to have you here.

We've been remodeling this for quite some time , makes it a

lot easier for us to produce

content now in the new studio,

so, um,

I'd known I brought like champagne or something.

Kick you off with

celebrate.

Yes, I know.

I should've had some bubbly to celebrate the new studios.

. So tell the listeners what your background is and now what you're

into.

Yeah.

I will jump in with where I used to jump in about how I got into this

work, like through college or whatever, but on a podcast about a year ago, I

made a connection that I had not made previously, which has a huge part.

To do with what I do now, which is that I'm a third generation entrepreneur.

So my mom was an entrepreneur.

Not only was her dad an entrepreneur, but so is her mom, which is pretty remarkable,

given that this was like the forties, the fifties, women, I, and someone has pointed

out to me since then, I'm quite certain because of the way the laws work, the

business was probably in my grandfather's name, but by all accounts, it was.

Her business and it was separate from his business.

And she passed away a couple of years ago.

and, which is remarkable cause I'm 51.

I had a grandparent until I was like 49.

And, and to the day, the last time I saw her, one of the first questions

she would ask me is how's business like that was like, not questions.

Not how are the kids?

Not like, how are you?

How's business?

all

She was all business.

So it is actually something, I don't know why that didn't, probably because

it was right there in front of me.

sometimes something's so on the end of your nose, you just don't even notice it.

But my childhood, like my Thanksgiving dinner tables, my, breakfasts, were

all like, there were discussions about business and and not directly, but I

would hear, conversations that were going on around me were about the

decisions that were being made and, not just the decisions, but then the

like fixing of decisions, because, once you made last week, that didn't turn

out the way you thought they would.

And so that fabric was woven all around me, my childhood that did not.

Make me set a course for this work that like, as I said, that's something

I just realized in retrospect.

I actually, went to school for engineering and I'm switching to psychology.

Like a lot of people, I didn't exactly what I wanted to do,

but, both of those things though, they're not really that different.

They're both about trying to figure out why something works the way it

does and how to make it work better.

thing in my brain.

but I was going to go back to grad school for psychology and I was

working at an architecture firm, thought I would stay there six

months and ended up staying 16 years

Wow.

as we, yeah.

And it was, I loved the world of architecture.

It has a lot of right brain and left brain, which is.

Yeah.

very satisfying to me.

I get a little bit bored with either one

on its own.

or not always bored.

I get unsatisfied without both.

So that was super interesting.

And I just happened to hit into that experience at just such an opportune time.

We were about eight people when I started, they just wanted to be

architects and just, I'm a designer.

I do architecture.

And what I learned about myself is I am really good at making things better.

I also learned about myself.

I'm not your girl to keep it going once it's made better.

but that was perfect.

And that's okay.

And that's actually one of my leadership, like fundamental, Principles of leadership

is like you don't have to get better at.

There's some things you can grow.

There's a, there's like personal growth and leadership growth as a

leader that absolutely exists, but it is very distinct from trying to

make the things that you are not wired for become part of your fabric.

And that I will never be that girl who was like, check the

box every Monday or the exact

yes, yes.

because I'm really good at these other things.

And so make a very long story short, I ended up being the COO and I just

took care of everything that wasn't

architecture

as we grew from eight to close to 50 people by the time that I left.

So we started off a little under a million dollars in revenue.

We were about 10 or 12 when I left.

and throughout that entire time, I sat in on the well, sat in on and then

facilitated the Monday leadership team meetings, which every single Monday we

met for sometimes up to three hours.

It was like anywhere between three hours.

And that is where all of the decisions were made.

And so again,

my every single week I participated in and cordon facilitated the conversations

where we decided all the things that helped us grow from eight To 50

people and I couldn't have, designed a better MBA program for myself

absolutely.

yeah, cause we hit on all the topics and then all the

topics keep coming back as you grow.

You know, you can have a conversation about X when you're eight people

and then have a conversation about X again when you're 15 and then 20

and it's a different conversation

It really is.

And, we can get into that because one of the, I think one of the most difficult

things for business leaders or business owners is navigating and changing as

the world and your business changes.

Because if you're successful, I think a lot, I was actually having

this conversation not too long ago with a business owner and he

said, we're doing the same things now with a team of a hundred that

we were doing with a team of 10.

And it worked really well with a team of 10 and it works really

bad with a team of a hundred.

It's yes,

that's exactly how

that works.

Yes.

Bigger is not always

no,

really isn't.

The word that I feel like, since I have left that firm and now I just advise

owners for a living, I do one on one work.

And then I also facilitate leadership team conversations.

So that's the breadth of my practice.

Now,

the word that I use Constantly is discernment, like the discernment of

what is working, what is not working.

You absolutely have to go gather information and advice and guidance and

wisdom from people, you know, and books you've read and things you see on the

internet, what you can look out there.

But then the art is in discerning which of these things apply to me, which

of these things apply to my business.

Because for most of us doing, unless you have like a franchise creating and growing

a business is a path that no one else has done that exact same path before.

So you're not looking for a map.

You need like orienting skills to find your way.

If you're an entrepreneur and you start a business and you grow

the business and you're successful and you make it to the other side of the

chasm where you're, generating positive income and you've met, you've made it

and you have this blood, sweat and tears journey, At the other side, you feel

like you've birthed, I literally had somebody said, we've been doing this

for 30 years and this I've got one, I've got my oldest child, I've got my

second child and then this is my other, my third child, you know, and I think

problem is that it's okay if that is what it is, like it's what you're saying.

You adjust to that.

you have to make and be discerning over it.

Just like your other kids.

I think when founders sometimes get into trouble is when they

don't realize that they actually.

Are treating it that way.

Right.

so it's like

a lack of awareness.

And so they make some weird decisions.

I would love to ask you a question, as you've experienced growing your,

originally growing the architect business going from eight to 50 people,

was there anything as you worked with leaders at the various stages

in their career, did you feel like there were some habits that you saw

successful leaders in your organization?

pull in that helped them sustain personal growth or, achieve that

Their own personal cause I hear two things about

their own personal or that of the

both, both, I will say both.

And, whichever one you want

to take on that one.

Cause they're both interesting

Yeah, I'm going to start with the people in general, because

that's what I, that's where I thought your question was going at first,

the first things that pop to mind, but then I'll pop to the other side.

And these two things are not mutually exclusive, actually,

they're, they overlap together.

so when I see teams that are really great teams or teams that

are growing in that direction.

and certainly that is one thing, I think one of the keys to our success

at the architecture firm was we were very good at the growing people side of

really?

Okay.

And a couple of the things that I think most contributed to

that, and these two are very related.

One has to do with the right amount of transparency.

you don't, What this doesn't mean again, I come back to that word discernment.

Like I often feel like everything I want to say, I feel like there's

also like a little caveat to that.

It's and I don't mean this, but this it's transparency does not mean

that everybody in the company sees every single thing all the time.

there are things that need to stay private or confidential.

that's a given.

so don't get, I don't want anyone getting hung up on that perspective.

However, you.

Often when I have heard leaders frustrated that either their people aren't thinking

like owners or that people are making what they are venting are dumb decisions

or short sighted decisions or whatever, I asked the question, and it is always

a curious question because sometimes the answer is yes, they do know that it's do

they have any line of sight to that thing?

Do they have they seen how that works out?

to take a very quickly.

Tactical example, because the others would be too specific from

a, from a particular company.

right.

If someone works in a service company as a, like a

pretty entry level person, they know what they make as a wage rate.

And if they see a proposal where they see what you were charging for them

on that proposal, they are often up in arms because they're like, what?

You're charging three times as much as I make.

That's not fair.

And as an owner or as a leader, like people get frustrated by that.

But my question is, Have you shown them how business works?

have you laid out that this is a wage rate and then here are all this overhead costs

and then profit allows us to do this.

And this is like

how the numbers work, because if you haven't done that, you can't be frustrated

that they don't see what you see and, and that's a very tactical, sort of

demonstration of how that shows up, but this is also true in the bigger picture.

Like you have this vision and.

And this is the personal growth side of it.

You have this vision for what you want to create and how

all these things tie together.

And your mind is usually moving.

Most entrepreneurs minds are moving in this like very fast movie.

And part of the personal growth is to slow it down and figure out which frames of

that movie does someone need to see, like still snapshots of or little snippets.

What's the 32nd soundbite they need.

So that they can see what in some capacity, otherwise they don't

have the information to be able to act in the way you want them to.

So that is a balance of, Of making sure people are seeing, learning, hearing

about exposed to the things and the part that has to do with personal,

but people growth too, is finding ways to do that way before those people

are responsible for those things.

And so

at the architecture firm, they, they would, they had yearly

retreats and they would bring, we were the emerging leader set.

We had been there since we were eight, we were the kind of, we were the

first ones to be named associates and.

They would bring us out to the retreats and after they had their couple days of

these are the principles, talking things through and they would always have like

a little project for us to do, And not only did it make us feel important, but

it was, they were in with great intention.

They were training us to think like leaders.

So one year it was, if we have this much for bonuses, how would

you guys spread it out amongst the staff, including yourselves?

Oh, wow.

Ah,

very good.

Very

So, you know, so of course we grapple with, there's that tiny

part of us who like, we've worked so hard and we had no years, no bonuses.

And now there's finally money for bonuses.

So we're owed like, there's that tiny part of you on snap, but then you're like, but.

These people on our team have also worked really hard in this last year, and that's

why we have money for bonuses, and it's like all that happens very quickly.

and it was also really, here's the thing.

It's also, it wasn't just for our benefit.

It was so good for the principals because they were sometimes

surprised at who we picked.

To give a bigger bonus to or something, because they didn't realize that

person was super valuable or whatever, or they'd be surprised that someone

they thought was super valuable.

Wasn't on our list for like a high, but so it was also a conversation starter.

another year we had a process of, who is.

if we had to, if things were tough, who were the five or 10 people that

we would fight to the death to keep?

And who would we consider going that?

That sounds a little mercenary, not mercenary, but

No, that's real life.

Yeah.

Not great.

But it wasn't about, deciding who are the bottom five.

It was just a useful conversation to be like, are those bottom five

or 10 really like, is that fat?

Or is that muscle?

Because we had to pick five or 10.

Again, that's a useful conversation.

It's not about picking out who's the bottom

Right.

Right.

weird favoritism, but it's just processing and thinking like that.

So those are some of the things of finding ways for people to be practicing

with bigger leadership conversations before they actually have to be making

I love that example on a lot of different levels.

I think that when leaders hear the word transparency, they have this knee jerk,

negative reaction a lot of times but to your point, I think, what I love

about that is, is what can you share?

Because whatever you can share, then you can make, you can train against

and you can help them learn against.

And so that they get, like you said, that snapshot of they see and feel.

Cause all owners are like, yeah, I want people to be, make

this, have an ownership mindset.

It's yeah.

But what are you seeing and doing and what's your movie

that you're playing, that you're watching, that they have no idea.

And if they don't, then how, I, there was one company I was with, they were

really upset that, that they're, these, managers were not being, performing

at a certain level and I was like, Well, did they, how do they know?

Like they don't even know what their office is.

How do you

hold them and say, you need to make, you're not doing well when they

don't even have any idea of how well they're doing and how to make it more.

And so there's some things like

that.

So I think it.

shared that with

Yeah.

And I they're open for it.

other symptom of how I know that there needs to be more shared

vision is when people are hesitant to make their own decisions, because

leaders will often say Oh, I want you to make autonomous decisions.

Like you just decide.

But if you have not communicated what you want and therefore what will get praise

and what will get like what's going to move you closer to the thing, it's like

you have punched into two ways or GPS the destination and but you then you're

holding the phone and you're saying, just decide whether to go left or right.

You're like, you never, we don't, we have to look.

So the symptom shows up is where people like look to you to decide

whether to go left or right.

And sometimes that's a confidence thing or something that can

be like with certain people.

But if everyone's doing it, it's because you're holding the GPS in

your hand and they can't see it.

And so they have to move to you because they don't know.

They don't have an internal GPS because you haven't shared it with them.

And so that's the other

I love that is the best analogy.

I love that analogy.

And it's so true.

And there's a certain amount of value.

And I think that a lot of leaders.

personal value and being the problem solver.

And a lot of times you get put into a leadership position because you are

the chief problem solver and people come to you for solving problems.

But it's like you're saying, if the company, if you are the vision, the

values and the mission of the company, and you're holding that phone and

you're not giving that direction to everybody else and disseminating that

information, which I think, values alignment, mission alignment, vision

alignment is where a lot of times people say, Oh yeah, we got values.

no.

I'm not talking about the things you put on the wall that nobody looks at

that you, you haven't cleaned lately.

I'm talking about how people make decisions in your organization,

but what it is it really goes even transparency at that level to that

example really is hindering and creating a bottleneck because if you're holding

the phone, you're not disseminating it.

Not only are you not being transparent, but you're literally

creating a bottleneck with yourself.

And having a lot of issues with delegation and people not knowing what to do.

And then, all,

these things.

So

yeah.

feel like they make a decision and they get their fingers

slapped, even in a lightweight, like it doesn't mean they get yelled at.

It just means that you're like, Oh no, that, that's not what we wanted.

And you're like, how was I supposed to know what you want?

that doesn't

feel good.

Your central nervous system doesn't know the difference between my value feels

threatened and a bear walked into the room because people want to do a good job.

And You can so easily kick someone into that not full out fight or flight, but

you from a neuroscience standpoint, it sucks all the glucose out of the nuanced

critical thinking part of your brain and it puts it back into this like protective

space, which is not your smartest thing.

And that's where that can be really tricky.

But I do want to back up to one thing.

Part of being an owner is putting some intentional conscious thought into

what you want out of the business.

Because there's actually nothing wrong with wanting a business

that scratches your itch of being Grand Poobah problem solver.

or being what, or having a, what people will derogatorily

call a lifestyle business.

There's nothing wrong with that, but where people get into trouble is

riding two horses at the same time.

if what you want is to grow and scale, then you have to be able to.

Share your vision in a way.

And here's the key part that people get it because I often when I have

this conversation we're having with someone, they're like, but I've told

them, I told them we want to build the biggest whatever in the world.

I'm like, okay, I believe you.

I'm not going to argue with you about that.

But however you have said it.

It either wasn't enough times or not in enough different ways.

Like maybe you needed like whatever it is, there's some gap in between what the way

you have said it or how often you've said it, and them getting it in a way that they

have internalized it so they can use it.

And but if you want to be the problem solver, that's okay.

But that is, that's a different kind of business and you just need

to be okay with that and then stop.

You're like, you're not going to like,

just, I know you see this, and this is, it's fascinating.

When you start looking at, organizations and businesses and their lifecycle

and the growth, you start seeing these plateaus, a $1 million business, that

lifestyle business, a $5 million business, and then it gets chaotic, and it's if

you're not gonna make it to 10 or 20, and what the leader doesn't understand is.

They're pushing on the wall.

Like I gotta, I've got to make it to the next level.

And it's say, but they're not trying to give, they don't want to

give up the things they had at the last level at the last plateau.

And it's yeah, that's not how this works.

Right.

So you see, it's amazing that you see the, the business.

The business growth, how directly it's related to the leader's ability to

grow and change with the organization.

And so if you've got to work like it right, like it, whatever that

lifestyle business is, and that's like where you get your happy space and

yeah, I love being the problems over the guy that we're going to come to.

Great.

It's it's just like you said, just be great with that.

but if it, but if you're wanting to move through that, whatever it looks like now

is not what it's going to be looked like.

And it was, it's not going to be what it looks like at one X,

two X, five X, whatever.

absolutely two things pop into my mind with that one is

I call those stages, like those plateaus, like business puberty.

There are places where all of a sudden I will have, you know, founders or

entrepreneurs thinking that like their business is a mess or that

they're dying or that something is like completely run amok.

And I'm like, no, this is just what happens.

there's absolutely something, especially in service based businesses.

It's a little bit different in like SAS companies or whatever.

Or retail where something around like 18 to 24 people is one of these very,

there's definitely something around eight to 12 people, like eight, it's not always

right up cusping the like 10, 20, 30, but like those two are very distinctive

in just things that start to like things that worked that just don't work anymore.

and you either have to, decide to, I think of it.

Metaphor.

I always think of it as this might not, I'm like, 54.

So I don't know if this is true for taller people, but if I'm walking out

into the ocean right at the place where the waves crashed the hardest, where

they're just breaking right there, it hits me like right at, like right

in a place that I will topple over.

Like I cannot stop.

stand right where it hits.

It's that center of gravity place where I'm like, I can't stand there.

So I either have to back up where it's hitting me more like my knees or thighs

or something, and so that's fine.

Cause I can stand there and get hit with the little crashing waves or I have to

push through to the big jumpy waves.

Either one of those options is fine, but I cannot stand right there and get.

Eat your shreds.

that doesn't work.

but to your almost one of the first points you made early on about the

hundred people, 10 people, I, I run a round table for, run a couple different

kinds of round tables for CEOs.

And we had a company was a construction based company that, had been 8 million.

I forget how many people they had, but they pushed up through to 12 million,

had a lot more people, a lot more trucks, a lot more like logistics, just.

So much more stuff.

And we were doing a, he was sitting there talking about how they're just not.

As happy, he's we're not even actually making more money because,

growth and profitability are two very different things often.

And that is often mistaken.

he's so we've grown, but we're not making any more money, way more

hassle, way more stress, way more worry about keeping all of this going.

And it's just, and the things that we have to do, the people we have to

be, the skillset that we have to use on a daily basis at 12 is not as fun

as the skillset that we got to use.

At eight.

And so they actually had a, we, the group encouraged him to have a conversation

with his partners around that.

do they all feel that way?

Turns out they did.

And so they just made a very intentional, like they couldn't find any good

reason unless they wanted to push up through to whatever, 16, 18, 20.

because of their age, because of their energy, because of a million things that

are very personal decisions., I don't think they went all the way back down

to eight, but they did decide okay, there's this whole part, whatever it

was, a division or a part of a division.

I don't remember the exact pieces, but they're like, let's just not do that.

And that means we will lose some revenue.

But then we jettison that entire complicated.

Right.

Department or vertical or whatever it was that got rid of a whole

thing that was just a big hassle and required a bunch more people and a bunch

more logistics and there's so much happier and they're actually making more money.

That's the other thing too.

It's do not conflate greater revenue with more joy, more

profit, more money in your pocket.

Like sometimes it is, but not always.

I love that.

I think that's, I think that's wise as well as discerning as it goes

back to your original statement.

I think that's a, I think that's a really great point.

And I think that's really hard for leaders because, a lot of times you're an achiever

and you want to win and you feel like, The next thing is you've got to, grow

in monetization or some type of level.

And a lot of times that's, you're playing the wrong game.

And I think that to your point, you can, win yourself into a heart

attack or high blood pressure or, stressed out anxiety, whatever.

And that's not winning.

so yeah, that's well, well done for them.

I'm glad they were able to, to see that and make the right decision for them.

I want to talk about that because making decisions is so important.

We've got a lot of.

Coaches and we say coaches.

So we have a one on one coaching system that we provide organizations

so they can drive coaching further down the organization and their

managers, we say are leader coaches.

And so they're coaching their teams every month.

And so they, they are also listeners of the last 10%.

And so I love talking about things that are relative for

that, Those listeners as well.

And decision making is a huge thing because when we engage with people,

especially as coaches, we're engaging on that level, whether it's talking

to an owner, business leader, or somebody that works directly

for us, we're always engaging in decision making and problem solving.

So I'd love to unpack some, you help leaders find that

clarity in decision making.

What do you think are key components in your opinion to make strong, confident

decisions, especially like under pressure?

I almost think of it as Like facilitation and then coaching

and then like mentorship and advising.

they almost sort of make a continuum and one of the most important things

is to discern what is needed in this moment because there are absolutely

places where someone needs some sort of guidance or mentorship or direction.

They need to see something that they can't see if it's like watching

someone else parallel park a car like they need that sort of thing.

But I re when it comes to decision making, I lean far more.

even not even into coach land, like far more into facilitation, which is

one more step removed from imagining that you have any answer that they

don't like facilitation to me is like pulling out some Harry Potter movie I

saw where they like use this one and like the stuff like came out of your

ear pulling out these, the things that they don't even necessarily hear or see.

and helping and listening for where they are confident.

Like I, I break it into these, I break a lot of decisions into three things.

And then there's a fourth thing.

It bugs me that my categories for these ended up all starting with C

because I do have this, this like irritation with the, with either

things that go into an acronym or all start with C or the four Cs, whatever.

but it just so happens that's what they are.

So.

Clarity is the thing that everyone is looking for.

And if we can grab it somehow, that's fantastic.

In my world, clarity means like there is information there and it's just

like you're looking for an answer.

There's and the answer is there to be found.

And it's somewhat, I wouldn't go all the way into certainty.

people are often, they say clarity.

What they really want is certainty, which doesn't exist.

And if what you are reaching for is certainty, maybe you shouldn't

be an entrepreneur because very rarely is it about the right answer.

very rarely it's more about, is it just like making sure it's not the wildly

wrong answer because you can't know.

So like sometimes there's clarity of Oh, I just didn't realize a thing.

Or I just, we look for that first.

That's great, but it is the rarest of the things that you could

just be like, Oh, here's the

Right, exactly.

the next thing I'm listening for is whether or not they have

an internal confidence around it.

And maybe they just can't hear it.

Like someone will be telling me about their two decisions, the two options

that they have for something, although rarely is it only two, but, and there'll

be one part of it where their energy is and then we'd like blah, blah, blah.

And then there's and I could do this and dah.

And then they'll be like, or we could just, blah, blah, blah.

Start this thing and do that all of a sudden it's like

Yeah.

Yeah,

they know somewhere in there.

And so the other thing I'm list in that situation, I'm listening for whether

down deep, they know somewhere in there, there's a confidence that it is the wrong

decision and they just need to have that.

mirrored back to them so they can hear it.

Sometimes it's the confidence that it's the right decision, but it's just scary.

then they need to hear that and acknowledge that's what they have

to draw from to take that next step.

Cause they know somewhere in there, they know.

And so that's the confidence like connecting to their own

grounded confidence piece.

The third category, I just name as courage because That's when

there's not a lot of certainty.

There's not a lot of clarity.

You can't really know, and you don't know either.

And so you have to find what is any step I can take.

Knowing that I will course correct on the other side of that decision based on what

new information I get by taking the step.

that just is almost like a blindfolded leap into the oblivion.

And you just want to find the safest step you can take.

And like, All action of

yeah, mmm,

there is one more thing that I listened for that does not fall into those

sort of C's and that is sometimes they are indecisive because they're exhausted

and either temporarily exhausted or longer term exhausted and their decision making

capacity is degraded and that is Something that I don't think a lot of people realize

about executive functioning, which is all the things that you want as a leader.

it's prioritizing and strategy and problem solving like that all

happens in this prefrontal cortex.

But underneath of that, or like a precursor, whatever metaphor you want to

use is emotional and energetic regulation.

If you are emotionally hijacked, If you are tired, if you were run down, if you

were just, there's a bunch of different kinds of rest, like they have nothing

to do with lying down and sleeping.

They're just like creative, recharging, social, recharging,

like all that kind of stuff.

If you are not at capacity or if you're at low capacity, I should say, you don't

always have to be at full capacity.

But if you are chunked down in your capacity, it's going

to show up in your decisions.

And I have literally said to people like, Go take a nap and let's talk tomorrow.

Get a good night's sleep or go walk in the forest.

Like different people.

I have one client who I can tell the minute we get on a call, if

he has stopped doing his daily,

like really hard workouts.

Because he is someone who needs every day to do really intensive

workouts or he starts to fray around the edges and he's just like all

the things don't work as well.

So that's the other thing that I'm listening for.

That's the hardest thing I think for people to see themselves because they

don't know they're getting run down.

it where it helps to have someone else listening.

I love all of this, by the way.

this is great.

and I think that, there's so many things that pops out.

the idea of, when you said that about exhausted and depletion,

I kind of the word decision

fatigue.

Yeah.

Yes.

I definitely think that, you can get into a place of exhaustion

where decisions are actually fatiguing.

And it goes back to all three of the things that you mentioned.

It affects clarity.

If we're exhausted, we're in a fog and it's hard to it's hard

to even see what's really clear.

It's very easy to have a negative, visor on.

Cause it's like, I can't deal with this.

And you may be saying it cause you don't have the energy.

It may be because you're just exhausted.

and then again, with the courage and taking the next step, I love

how you talked about really focusing and paying attention on yourself.

If you're leading others, then you really should, if you don't have

awareness of your state, you're handicapping your ability to

lead effectively, in my opinion,

Yeah.

And I wish I, I feel like my life's work right now is finding strong

enough words for that because

it's so easily gets sort of thrown into this bucket of some sort of like

mushy, soft self care kind of a thing.

And I'm like, no, this is science.

This is strategy.

This is.

I spent a, I've not, I did not live an athlete life like I was a theater kid,

but I, for about 10 or 15 years, I did some pretty intensive weight training

and I actually did like a strong woman.

I did two strong woman competitions

Yes.

will not be news, but the week before a competition,

you do not work out hard.

You actually do very little.

Which I was shocked by.

I was like, wait, we have five more days that I could be like upping my PR.

No, that is not how you perform at your highest, violinists, like the most premier

violinists take a lot of naps, like people who actually perform at really

high elite levels know these things.

And yet the rest of us somehow think that we're like, Oh, but no,

I'm just going to power through until I'm absolutely obliterated.

I don't.

And also this conversation ends up often looking like we're talking

about just like the long term or like we're just talking about sleep.

I have a very concrete example of how this works in the brain.

So that prefrontal cortex is not just in charge of like decision making and

prioritizing and those kinds of things.

It is also in charge of impulse control.

And so if just in a given day, You are.

Our brains are not wired for marathons.

Our brains are wired to sprint.

And so the I'm sure most people have heard the recommendations like you're

not really supposed to plow through for hours without taking a break that if

you do 20 60 at most 90 minutes and then pause even for five or 10 minutes and

walk around your house or walk around the do something different and then come

back again like that kind of pausing.

Ideally taking a little nap in the middle of the day, like that's not

possible for everybody, but these kinds of things that put like punctuation

marks in your day, sustain that glucose.

Later into the day.

So you don't run out.

And here is what every human on the planet I think has examples of

what happens when your glucose runs out for that part of your brain.

So I don't know about you, but the number of times that I wake up of

a day and I'm like, today's the day that I'm going to drink all the water.

and eat the salad and I'm going to do this thing and I'm going

to do that thing and whatever.

And then what feels like some sort of like magic witching hour come

four or five or three, four or five, six, seven, eight o'clock, whatever.

By the time evening comes, you're eating a sleeve of girl scout cookies and

wear yourself a bourbon or whatever.

It happens to most people that suddenly in that second part of

the day, all of a sudden just everything gets turned upside down.

That is not magic.

It is not a mystery.

It is what happens when this prefrontal cortex, which is the

like hungry hippo of your brain, like it uses up glucose really fast.

And if you don't replenish it with pauses and breaks and like all these

things that we know through sleep.

science help your, that part of your brain sustain that glucose.

then, cause it's going to happen anyway.

You're always going to struggle in the evenings cause

that's like towards the end.

But if you plow through in the morning, it's going to start hitting at two

instead of five.

And that is just what happens because when this part doesn't

have that, it can't think.

In as much nuance, it can't prioritize and strategize.

It cannot control the impulses to snarf the Girl Scout cookies.

And so it, There's such a lived reality to this.

And yet we still are holding a grip of refusing to believe that the

Earth's not flat kind of a thing.

it's like the science is there, and we're just for some reason,

not willing to like, believe it.

We believe in a culture and we believe that leadership has

to be like, lonely and hard.

And it's actually, the science is there.

Yes.

And I think that as leaders, whether you're a business

owner or just leading a team, the reason it's so important, and I

like the fact that you're trying to find really strong language for it.

Let us know when you do.

we'll have another conversation.

I think you've, I think you've got a good start to it.

But, I think that the reason is that your, You're in the position of leadership.

And so you have a huge ripple on those around you, especially the

ones and the people that in the team members that you're leading.

And so when you come in and your impulse is not in control,

well, then you not only have.

The ability to eat a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies.

You also have the ability to lose control on one of your team members when they

don't turn in something on time or they don't do it in the way you want it.

And I think that ripple is not what you're wanting to create when you're

wanting to create a high performance team.

So I think that's another reason why it's so important.

To be aware of your state, what works for you, what routines you need.

Like you said, one, one of the people you work with needs to go intensive workout.

I have a morning routine that if I know I'm off, if I don't get through

the whole thing and I'm just like walking through, the morning, just

like in a fog and so know yourself, know what you need to do to get to that

place of high performance and then be disciplined about it and be consistent.

I think as it relates to your three C's, if you're coaching, If you're

coaching someone, and I agree that you have to wear different hats and

the facilitation is pulling that, that information out of a hundred percent.

I think that's true.

And we do a lot in our system is more about asking questions and providing

that, that moment, that space for people to reflect and hopefully pull some of

those ideas out, because there's a lot of times the leader, one of the things,

when we get busy, the first thing that goes is Taking time with our team

members to say, Hey, how you doing today?

Hey, what's important right now?

do you have anything that I can do to help you, take out some obstacles

that, you know, what's the next development goal you want to set?

How can I partner with you on that?

And I think that helping people gain clarity helps them make decisions.

and as a leader and as a coach, you're.

Any time that you can spend on alignment, getting in alignment with their work,

getting in alignment with your leadership, in alignment with the company's mission,

vision, values is less time you're gonna have to spend cleaning up the mess later.

I think with confidence, people that you're coaching, that you see

something in them that they don't see in themselves, and you can help them

move and make decisions if you inspire confidence in them and then encourage

them to have courage to step out and do something they haven't done.

Yeah.

And what you model as a leader is so much louder than anything

you say in, with your words.

and emotional contagion is one of the most unfortunate toxicities

that a leader can create.

and I have such compassion for it because they're not, they're not bad people.

They're not, they are at the limits of what they learned about how to control

and regulate their own emotions.

Virtually nothing is as, talk about one step forward, eight steps back.

if you want, To do the opposite of what we were talking about in the

beginning of creating transparency, where people will make autonomous

decisions and things like that.

If you explode, emotionally on people when you're frustrated and cannot

control your own emotional reactions.

There is little else you can do that will bring out their best stuff because

as humans, we are basically lab rats.

And if we push a lever and get cheese, we will keep pushing the lever.

If we push a lever and get shocked, we will stop pushing that lever.

Real

fast and it makes it, the word safe has been has a lot of baggage with it these

days, but like it or not, we have to use it in this context because human

brains literally evolved to keep us safe.

that is what they do.

So when your brain's Mer, if you've ever walked up to raging water or

like a high thing, like a really high, your body will react like your

brain's not Oh, I'm going to step back.

I just did.

I've just did a big travel.

I was in the Azores,

Oh, wow.

canyoning thing where at the very end we jumped off this,

like they said it was six meters.

It's 18, 18, 20 feet kind of

Oh, wow.

was like, I'm just going to do it.

I'm just going to do it.

I'm not like, and I knew that if I stood there for a long

time, that I would not do it.

So in my brain, I was like, I'm just going to walk up there.

I'm going to take the breath, like he said, and jump.

But do you know what?

That's what I was going to do.

And my body actually had a different, I did end up jumping, but at first I had an

involuntary reaction where my body's Nope,

Oh, wow.

a wall hit me.

It was wild.

Your brain is programmed at the deepest, most intractable levels to keep you safe.

And we cannot ignore that.

I am not saying that you have to make, your workspace, like a kindergarten floor

time where we're singing like Kumbaya.

That's

not it.

But we all know that if you've ever had a friend who like, freaks out about

something like this is a very human experience and we shouldn't even have to

be convincing about why this is a problem, especially because at work getting in

trouble or not being good enough or not doing the right thing can actually affect

you at a survival level of your income.

So people have a heightened need to get the thumbs up.

Um, so that is one of the biggest personal growth.

if you are a leader who struggles with Your own emotional reactions and usually

they know it they, cause I've heard them say, I know I didn't handle that.

I know I, I overreacted or whatever.

So 2 things.

1.

repair, like being able to go to people and say, I did not handle that.

that was unfair.

That wasn't your fault or or maybe it was your fault, but I was frustrated and

I had an outsized reaction, whatever.

You can't keep doing that.

Cause that's like the abusive

Yeah.

Like, yes, I can't give you here since hours.

Yeah, that can't be the solution, but it can be part of the solution

while you are also working on it.

and it's one of those things, it's going to help you in every aspect

of your life, but most of it, most people weren't taught or modeled.

How to handle bigger emotions and leadership running a company, especially

going to bring out your bigger image.

It is.

It is some of the hardest

personal development work that there is.

And so you need better skills to keep that stuff in check.

It's very true.

Actually, I just want to say this really quick.

This is really important.

That is actually part of why I created this, the work that I do,

which, which isn't really coaching.

It isn't really.

So it's, I've jokingly call it like on call decision support.

It's almost a little bit like business therapy.

It's just for this place where all the things, whether it's a

question or a problem or a rant or, or, just I have one client who.

Who we also have meetings where we're talking about strategy

and whiteboarding stuff out.

But there's a fair number of times where she says, she's I call you when I need to

burn off some of the emotion of a thing so that I can get recentered and then go back

to my team and be a good leader about it.

And I'm not coming in just like

Yeah.

also like sometimes they need to sulk about something.

I don't know where we got it twisted.

That business doesn't elicit huge emotional reactions in us.

also though, pair that with what we were talking about in the beginning,

like, Oh, we want people really invested and treating it like owners of them

completely emotionally detached.

What is that?

That

are you as the owner emotionally detached

when you come in the red Yeah,

like why I wanted to, I call it on call decision support

because I want people just like calling whenever they have an issue.

But I so badly want to also be weaving in and I don't think it's

something people seek out directly.

So it has to be embedded in other services.

It is okay.

And it is normal to have these, what feel like outsized emotions.

I had a client a couple months ago.

favorite employee, who honestly he was like, we joked, he was like, I think

I thought we were going to get like business married and have business

babies and build this like big, but like they're just, he was attached,

like we've all had that person who's Oh my gosh, now that I have this person,

I can build this and it's so exciting.

And that person left.

And

since then, he was like, I think I have abandonment issues

because he's overreacting, someone comes in a nice outfit and he's

Oh my God, are they interviewing?

Are they going to leave me?

We can laugh about that, but it's very real.

And I think a lot of us have had that, but we don't talk about it.

And so everyone thinks it's just them and that they're weird and that is not useful.

I think that if you hear the word leader, many times

you associate that with, uh, If if you're looking at leaders, you

think, wow, this person's got it all.

Then when you get to that point, you're like, wow, this feels very isolated and

very lonely or it can feel that way.

and you have also imagined.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we also usually have imagined that like somehow those people know or or

have more information, but the number of times where I'm listening to something.

where someone from the general populace is reacting to a

large scale issue of any kind.

like we had a really bad storm come through here and a bunch of other states,

not like you have had, this was years ago.

it was just a derecho.

Yeah.

but a bunch of other states sent, like trucks in and

they were just like sitting.

On at this one place for half a day and everyone was like up in arms, but

like, why are they putting them to work?

And all I can think of is have you ever tried to coordinate?

like, if someone just sent you at your office, 12 more people

to help, which would be great.

in theory, that'd be great to have 12 more people.

But you have to figure out what those 12 people are going to, like,

where they go, how you coordinate them, and oh, they don't use the same

system, so we can't, there's just so many ways that leadership from a not

yet their place gets misunderstood, which is problematic There's so

many layers to why this matters.

as a leader, that's frustrating because you're often like if they

knew what I knew, like they thought that option we picked was bad.

They should have seen the other four options we had.

Like they were way worse than this one.

so there's that frustration and just be always feeling misunderstood.

But it's also a problem because If that's what you're imagining, it's

like a kid imagining that adulthood is this like amazing thing you arrive at,

my son's I can't wait to be an adult.

I was like, Mean, it definitely comes with a few perks, but mostly

it just comes with a lot of stuff that you're not going to love.

So enjoy kidhood while you got it.

There's a little bit of that.

So if you're imagining that leadership is this like thing,

because leaders aren't talking about what it's really then you get there.

And not only is it less fun, but you imagine that's because

you're not cut out for it.

Not because that's just what it is.

mm

And that is when I, I mostly work with owners, but when I

do work with emerging leaders, people just coming in almost 100 percent of

the time, the first conversations are like, I've been talking about puberty.

It's almost if no one told you about puberty, especially as a

woman, and it just happened, you might think you were dying, right?

You'd be like, this is not good.

This is very bad.

You're like, no, that's what happens.

just life.

That's normal.

yeah.

it goes.

And but I even saw this with a new CEO who hired me one time.

And his discomfort was indescribable.

And because partly he was like, Jodi, all I do is talk to people all day long.

Like I'm not like getting anything done.

And I was like, dude.

That is your job now, like your job.

Leadership is not an individual contributor position.

is.

It is about coordinating other people's help and whatever.

So you have to be able to ask for help as a leader.

So when it's isolating, I do say it should never be lonely at the top.

I absolutely acknowledge that there are fewer people to talk to and there are

things you have to keep to yourself.

You can't tell everybody everything.

there will be fewer people who understand you.

There will be fewer people who understand what you are balancing.

I hear that a lot with like tech startup founders who like none of their friends

understand what they're grappling with.

so all those things are true, but I still stand by.

It should never be lonely at the top because those things are true and

therefore you must Find the people and places that you can talk things

through with and hear and normalize what this position is really like.

because isolation, Or loneliness, but isolation, the breadth of study on

what isolation does to the brain is nothing you want as an entrepreneur.

Like I will not bore you with the neuroscience details, but it does

nothing for your brain that you want happening to your brain in terms of

being a really effective and maximizing your cognition as an entrepreneur,

I think that's, I think that's the key takeaway.

And that is that if it's not that there's not challenges to leadership that make

it unique and it doesn't necessarily feel the same because maybe you're viewed

different by your peers and they're not, you're not getting the calls to

go to happy hour or whatever, because now you're the boss or whatever, and so

that might feel lonely, but what you're saying is that, even though you might

feel lonely, if you're feeling that you're probably what you're feeling is

isolation and you can find other people that whether it's calling you on your

direct, the, what, what did you say?

On

Yeah, on call Yeah.

If you want to call.

Jody on call, you call Jody on call, but if, or if it's getting into some group

or a mastermind or an executive round table, whatever, whatever it is, you just

have to be more intentional about that so that you are, you're not isolated.

I think it's not loneliness.

It's the

It just creates a new problem.

It's what's that say?

every problem comes with, every solution comes with a

Yes.

Yes.

So you have risen to this place and yes, now you have this new problem of

isolation, but that doesn't mean you just put a period at the end of the sentence

and be like, if it's isolating as a leader, no, you have to solve for that.

You have to have ways.

I tiny caveat to this.

Not everyone.

There are people who are internal.

I still think you need people to talk to invent to insult to and so that

you can hear that your experiences are normal and you're not just

bad at your job.

You're like, No, this is it's hard.

It's going to.

It's always going to be hard.

but also there are some people who are internal processors who do not

need as much To have someone to talk through their decisions or their

ideas or to have a scratch paper placed to talk things through it.

However, if you are a verbal processor, like which I am, good number of my

clients are, you must if you are a verbal processor, And you allow yourself to stay

in a stratosphere where you are isolated, I will say with enormous confidence

your business will suffer because verbal processors quite literally need to talk.

And as they talk, their brain goes to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to,

and it will all come back though.

That's when they can get to their best decision making.

So just think of it as a need, as a must.

I love that.

I think that's great.

Again, just goes back to being intentional about not being isolated.

no matter what part of the leadership journey you're on, you're just,

you're constantly going back.

And every time you get that to the next level and next solution, you've

got these next challenges, you got to step out and be a little uncomfortable.

because whatever the uncomfortable situation is, that is presents itself

that you'll need to do to not be isolated is nowhere near what you will

face in, in uncomfort in isolation.

I think this has been a, Fantastic conversation.

I think that you have given a lot of people some insights on your three C's of

decision making and also some great topics on leadership and, and really self care

and being self aware about your state.

And we've talked about all kinds of stuff, not being isolated.

So I think this is, I think it's just been fascinating.

Now we ask

Number one, where, can people find you, if they want to connect?

And number two, we usually ask, we ask the guests of the last 10%,

if there's someone that they would like to hear on the last 10%,

So, um, the best place if actually, so specifically for

listeners to these podcasts that I do, I have a special page on my site.

So the site is at the core.

com.

So you can read a bunch of stuff there in general, but if you go to at the core.

com forward slash gift without an S at the end, which I was doing one of

these interviews and I said gifts.

And I was like, Oh wait, no, but I didn't think of it till later.

So it's just gift with no S.

not, I keep adding a bunch of different things there, but there's actually

a little download for, that's based on the seven kinds of rest, which

is more like a recharge document.

And I.

randomly scan that because I'm like, I know I'm run down.

and I don't think I can rest because entrepreneurs are

terrible at resting in general.

so it's what do I need to recharge?

There's a little like workbook there for that.

you can also get 50 percent off any of the individual sessions that I do there.

So there's codes for that.

And then I randomly add like other little random gifts and

like giveaways and things there.

So

That's great.

We'll put that in the show notes then too.

We'll get that in the show notes

you can connect with me on all the socials there and whatnot because I do

randomly do like little calls and stuff.

that's there.

And then, who would I like to see on your show?

Oh my goodness.

I, so actually I will give you, I will give you two people, if that's okay.

one is, one is Emily Arcus, who is a woman that I've met here in, in town.

And she has some just really wonderful, insights on like

how you grow people teams.

And things, I, she knows a lot on the organizational development

side of things, and I've learned a bunch of cool things from her.

So I really like that.

on the other side, I, if I had a daydream, so there's a woman, an author.

Tara Schwart actually.

she's a person out of M.

I.

T.

Who studies like neuroscience and leadership and motivation and whatnot.

And she is, she's definitely on my like if she's probably one of the few

celebrities that if I saw in the wild, I would actually go talk to because I

have substantive things to say to her.

I will not go up to someone just simply to say, I really love your work and then have

Sure.

Sure.

Afterwards, I find that really awkward and weird.

but her, I have a list.

I know exactly what I'd ask

Uh,

For

excuse me for a second.

Can I take just the next 30

minutes of your time and

a

it's just one question, can I ask you one question that I have for you?

awesome.

that's awesome.

Thank you for both of those, those names.

We'll have to, we'll have to reach out to, we'll reach out to both of those

and see if we can get them on the show.

And, and, we thank you for, thank you for sharing and thank you for your time, Jody.

This has been a fantastic conversation.

I know everybody's enjoyed it.

We appreciate you being on the last

10%.

thanks for having me.