or to get to career and mission growth?
We were, if I think about entry point, junior data analyst.
You know, most people, what the heck is that?
It would have been a very good role to have right now
with all what's going on with AI.
So the data analyst was where I came out of college.
I had no idea what I was gonna do.
So I think having a bedrock,
working in a boutique consultancy
with people who'd seen a bit of life,
20, 25 year veterans made a massive difference
to my growth curve.
So within a couple of years, I was able to join, you know,
one of the largest professional information services
companies in the world.
And that made a huge difference too,
because not only are they good at information services,
they were really good at career growth,
but they're really good at leadership.
So they taught me all kinds of things,
which I now think have been their foundation
for everything I've done.
But the big shifts have just been,
take everything you learn, absorb what works with you,
pair it with your unique abilities
and discard everything else.
It's complete noise for you and get that implemented.
And they probably happened in, you know,
three to four year cycles
where you're ready for the next level.
And so that would be what I would say to anybody is,
somewhere between two and four years,
your job is done, move on.
Don't stay where you are.
Yeah, absolutely.
So that three to four year cycle reminds me
of one of my favorite quotes.
One of my great friends when I was going through
an extremely hard time in life said that-
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
What's up?
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
This is Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have James Hilliard on board.
We're gonna be talking,
today's kind of a career day.
We got two episodes today on career.
So you know somebody who's on the hunt
for greater work opportunities.
You know, somebody who needs help with that guidance
and also who wants to level up
and really build an extraordinary career,
then today's gonna be an exciting day.
So with James Hilliard as an expert coach
on helping people do just that.
I love his vibe, I love his energy.
We both have guitars in the background.
We might even pull those things out and play today.
So before we get into James and what he does
in a deeper level and dive into his vision
for those that he serves,
always I'm gonna guide you to some of the resources
that I love, support and appreciate.
So ColdClick, ColdClick is what we use
at First Class Business, our brand for LinkedIn automation.
And when I say LinkedIn automation,
I mean I can think of people
that are searching for a career.
What if you had a system that could connect you
to a hundred career opportunities per day
automatically with a message.
You get to choose the message.
You can really sort through career potential opportunities
quite fast and put yourself in high demand
for that position.
I've never really thought to,
I shouldn't say I haven't thought to use it that way,
but it's been a long time since I thought that way.
Yeah, I spend a couple hundred bucks
on that system per month.
And that allows me to do just that,
to get connected with in my case,
all the people that I host in the show,
I would say 50% of them come through that means
of communication and connection.
So it's a great system, I recommend it.
You can also use other systems.
I mean, I'm a big component, I'm being a proponent
of making sure to do your research.
I've used U-Link, I really like it.
It's actually layered with ColdClick.
I used Buzz.ai, pretty good system.
We use this thing called Octopus
as part of that process as well.
I want you to have as much information as possible
so that you can make informed, educated decisions
about how you move forward and what you do as a visionary.
That doesn't help when we're blinded by others
or blinded by our own lack of knowledge.
TapMental, somebody else I highly recommend,
especially if you're in the general contracting space,
if you're a good old boy and you need somebody
a little rougher on the edges,
but still a great nurturer who can really communicate well
with all types of people than David Goodall
has become a great friend of mine.
He's got a great system and process.
One of the things that I really respect about Dave
is not only does he have some really great testimonials
and case studies built on his website
and the talent to create assets like that
and even help guide you,
he does stay in his own lane though
of making sure that he stays
at a very good executive level with you
and he helps you bridge your psychology gaps.
So I don't think a whole lot of blue collar people
listen into this, but I think their family members do.
I think other types of entrepreneurs
are friends with them and do.
They're more the types of people that might
in the evening sit on the porch and drink a beer.
They might be watching the game
instead of being on a podcast like this.
And maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe they'll listen to the podcast while they're working.
But here's my point with that.
You have the ability to help somebody tremendously
by guiding them to a mastermind type individual like Dave,
and then it gives them the opportunity to assess
what works, what doesn't, how to move things forward.
Every situation I've thrown at Dave,
even ones that I didn't quite know what to do in business,
the dude is on point with hitting it, hitting it, hitting it.
So he's become a lifelong resource for me
that I'm excited for anybody again,
in the general contracting, construction, style, space,
oil and gas, solar, et cetera, those types of industries.
He seems really on point with the same thing with IT.
Now the water project,
the water project is something that I'm super passionate about.
This is an opportunity to help people get access
to clean drinking water that don't have that.
When I talk about clean, not just talking about dirty,
but think about it.
If you were to go outside to a puddle
and pick up some water and then drink it,
you know, the potential harm that could do to you,
there are people all over the world
who do not have access to water that is safe.
And they're often walking miles and miles
in order to just get the unsafe water
for their family's essential needs.
I love that this particular program shows you
the communities that you can actually help out.
You give a dollar to it, you give 20,
you give $20,000 to whatever you wanna do,
that's up to you.
Or just share it with a friend
if you don't have the ability to do that,
share it with somebody because what's happening
is you're making a generational change
in the lives of these individuals who, if you imagine it,
if their kids are leaving school
to go get water for the school community,
that's one, two, maybe four hours of lost time
that they could be being educated.
And so over a 10 year, 20 year period
of having that new ecosystem of water,
it saves people's lives,
it helps people with their sanitation,
improves the quality of their life,
and allows them to improve the quality of their education,
which will have a direct impact on their economies as well.
I'm a huge fan of the Water Project.
If you have another cause, you'd like to see a sponsor,
please don't hesitate to drop that in the comments.
We would love to see it.
We will pay attention.
And if it's something that aligns with what we're doing,
then we'll be happy to put it on the show as well and say,
hey, this is another cool thing
that you can contribute to.
We're all about that.
So without further ado, let's bring James Hilliard on.
James, thank you so much for being on Vision Pros Live.
Never a chore, as they say, yeah.
And now you've run through some of your mission.
I think that's why we connected.
One of the things that we talked about
when we first spoke was clean water.
You have this water project that you contribute to.
And one of my missions in life is
to provide 3,000 years of clean drinking water.
And it's in similar projects just like that.
So I wholeheartedly endorse what you're doing there.
So let's start with that.
Hello, Jackson, how are you doing?
Oh, man, I love that.
That's awesome.
I'm doing awesome.
I'm happy to be here.
This is one of my happy places in life.
I've collected a number, thank goodness.
But this is one of those, getting to talk to amazing minds
that are out there doing great things.
And I'm going to be asking you afterwards
what some of these additional water projects
are that you're doing.
I got a great friend who's a world leader on water,
as well as a great newsletter on it.
So we'll talk about that.
I think we'll talk about that.
Just most importantly, it's amazing
when I talk to a scientist how quickly you
can put a beaker of water into a pristine operation lab.
And that water will contaminate just that there.
Well said.
This is why it's so important.
It's so important that we understand.
We actually don't know a lot about water.
If we were an expert on it, we actually don't know very much.
But yeah, let's talk about that.
True.
So James, today, who should be listening?
And why specifically should they be listening to you?
Yeah, I always think the best people to be listening to me
are kind of younger versions of myself.
And why?
I think we all go through our career and our working life,
sometimes banging our head and not understanding
where is our frustration coming from?
Why are we not getting the reward, the recognition
that we deserve, when I believe all of you
deserve a fantastic career?
And so I think we're talking to people who are on the climb,
but making sure you're on the right climb
and you're doing the things that are going
to make the biggest amount of impact and contribution
for you.
Because if you can do that, you'll always be fulfilled.
And your work will never actually feel like work.
Most of the time, you'll just feel like you get to go to play.
And that's a great thing.
So if you can connect to that, and it
doesn't feel like a chore or arduous, perfect.
This is an ideal conversation for you to listen to.
I love it.
And let's put some range and perspective on this.
All work, by the way, I'm going to frame this a little bit.
All work is virtuous.
That is ethical.
And that is in service to others.
So is what we're going to be talking about
applicable to everybody from worksmiths, blacksmiths?
Wow, I'm going way back.
I guess this exists.
To janitor career paths, to restaurant franchises,
to corporate executives?
Or is there a specific niche that we're
going to be honing in on today?
I think about, if you think about a niche,
a niche, as you say.
A niche is probably right.
Sounds better.
I just call that career executives.
And that could equally be a global workforce.
So I don't think it does matter.
If you have ambition, you have aspiration.
And you are virtuous in the way that you go about that.
This applies to you.
I think if there's one thing that I would say,
it's really talking to people who've already
had their career and not realized that they feel
like they've got a long way to go.
But actually, you've probably already
done your apprenticeship.
You've done your internship.
You did your apprenticeship.
You've probably served 5, 10, 15 years
in a particular industry.
It's those people who've got to the point
where maybe you've become disconnected
from that aspiration.
And if we can help you just get reconnected
to what your dream is, you can make the course
corrections that's going to get you
to that world of having a lot of fun and more play, less work.
That makes sense.
Even in my short bursts as an entrepreneur,
and really behind the stage entrepreneur,
I found that over a short period,
even in times of less than a year,
I sometimes found myself forgetting my dream.
And I can't imagine.
And when I say forgetting my dream,
you may not think you have a dream.
And if you watch a movie like Hook with Peter Pan,
Robin Williams style, he had forgotten everything
about his dreams completely.
There wasn't even on the radar.
So if that feels like you too, then I
think that this could be an interesting conversation for you
to consider opening back up, trying to find what?
Maybe you don't call it a dream.
Maybe it's just a little bit higher purpose, et cetera.
But I want to dive into the exact question we normally
hit first, which is, what's your vision, James,
for those that you serve?
Perfect.
Are you reckoning that they should have
a good vision for themselves?
Yes, and that they should be connected to their faith
or spirituality, their universal creator,
whatever it is for them.
I don't want this to be necessarily tied to religion,
whether you're into God or you're not into God.
But I do think you being connected
to your own personal aspiration and dream for yourself
is vital.
So my dream and my vision for them
is to dramatically reduce the amount of drama and tension
that is going on in your working life,
because that is pervasive to your entire life.
I never see work-life balance as a scale.
If we have a balance, one thing's down and one thing's up.
And I would love for you to be thinking about your career
as your life, and that it is integrated.
It's part of your life.
So if you're not having a great time at work,
there's a really good chance that life isn't great for you.
So drama and tension, can we dramatically reduce that?
If we can do that, let's get you less distracted.
And that's difficult in this crazy and chaotic world.
But if you're less distracted, the chances
of you having days upon days of mixed emotion,
or pessimism, or even really feeling discouraged about what
it is that you do, you're going to be feeling much more
like a role model for other people.
And if you do feel helpless, I love that phrase,
if you feel helpless, be helpful.
Look at your role models and answer your difficulties
with what they would do.
Put yourselves in their shoes and say,
with all the difficulty and tension
that I'm experiencing right now, what would my role model be?
And there's a really good chance you'll find your answers there.
But it comes to, what do I want people
to be connected to more than anything else?
So that is their own personal discipline,
which is their standard.
Don't let somebody else's standard of discipline
dictate how you run your life.
This is your life.
You get one shot.
So do it your way.
But you do need to have a willingness to do it your way.
And a lot of people are out there people pleasing.
And so that's what's getting you back into tension and drama.
If you're people pleasing, I call it a fast track to misery.
Yeah.
Man, you got it.
You got that keynote speaker vibe and balance down.
You can rock a stage.
I've been so busy writing notes.
I'm not looking at you for that next question.
Because I'm like, oh, oh, oh, that's awesome.
So we got drama and tension to come back to later.
If you've got a tough time at work,
it's probably because you have a tough time at life.
I want to circle back to that eventually.
If you feel helpless, be helpful.
And key in on what would your role model do in a situation?
Those are the only ones that could grasp.
I'm going to probably go back and watch this.
Because those are some really great points.
Let's shift gears quite a bit for a little bit.
What's your vision for you?
And you can do this over the next 100 years,
over the next five minutes.
It's your vision.
So what is that like, James?
I like it.
I could die trying.
So there are professional goals, personal goals.
Let's start with the personal stuff,
because I think that's what drives me.
I have a beautiful wife.
And I have a loving son.
And so for me, it's making sure that they
are able to experience a wonderful life,
that we do that as the unit together.
So that's kind of personally for me.
But I tie to this water project.
I have the ambition to do the 3,000 years
of clean drinking water.
I do want to feed 1 million people.
There's a billion people who may or may not eat today.
But we have the food.
And that's changed the system to get them the food.
And I also want to put some work into education,
into housing, to protect these underprivileged or underserved
environments.
So personally, that drives me.
Every single month on the 1st, which was yesterday,
I can contribute to those projects.
Yesterday, we did something like 15,000 impacts
around water and grain, feeding people
in Kenya and Malawi and other places.
And I love that you did that in the beginning,
because that's personally what's driving me behind this.
Professionally, the stuff I'll die trying
is to make sure everybody has the career they deserve
and they enjoy what they do.
How do I do that?
I do that through coaching programs, online courses,
public speaking, and just every day making sure
that I do what you're doing right now, Jackson.
Is that just we can go out and share something.
And if one point we make impacts one person, we did our job.
And I think if you can go to work every day with the idea
that if I do one thing today that changes one person's
perspective for the better so that they tell you,
because there's nothing more heartwarming than someone
saying to me, that thing you did, that changed my life.
I need you to know that.
That's much more rewarding than anything.
We all get wrapped up in job titles and cash
and how much money we're making.
Excuse my language.
It's a pissing contest.
That's a testosterone battle.
It's an estrogen battle.
It's rooted in ego and power and all of that.
It's really quite ugly when you think
the thing that we love more than anything else is helping people.
But what I want people to do is actually help someone.
And you're doing that today is a good evidence.
And I'll let you ask another question.
You're actually helping me.
And you're actually helping people by having a platform
where we can have a conversation.
So some people say I like helping people.
But this is it.
This is how you help people.
So people, wait, start a podcast.
Come and guest on this podcast.
Come and guest on my podcast.
Yeah.
That's how you change the world.
It's making sure that somebody hears your message for one
minute or one second in one day.
And you just do that on repeat.
And if you look at everything that you're consuming right
now, whether it's a social media site, or it's an electric car,
or it's an online bookstore, if you want money,
that's what drives you, then yeah, serve more people.
Find a million or a billion people.
And if you can help a billion people, guess what?
You'll be a billionaire.
Right.
But it really depends what drives you.
But there's my long-winded answer to what you're saying.
I love it.
Hey, man, it's your vision.
You're passionate about it.
I love it.
I see you said you do what I'm doing right now.
And I was thinking, die trying?
I was like, well, anybody who knows
has been listening for a while.
I got bronchitis.
And people are like, Jackson, what are you doing on the microphone?
What are you doing on this call?
I'm loving life.
And I was like, I am giving myself to this.
I love what I do.
This is going to hold me back from doing it.
And it is so rewarding to be able to help.
And I want to hit on that, James, a little bit.
Growing up an extremely athletic individual, usually service
came in the form of hard labor.
And I hated it.
I didn't enjoy it.
I did not find service fun.
And some people, you may feel like that.
But I also never really considered
that the time I spent talking to people, nurturing people,
listening to people was service.
That kind of got downplayed, maybe because of gender,
maybe because of the project going on,
and me talking to somebody who's there, who's just kind of being
there for them.
But it wasn't until having a back surgery,
where now I had that athletic frame,
and I'm trying to go to these types of events,
like a flood, where we're having to help people get mud out
of their home and water out of their home and stuff
to get back into it, where I was put in a coordinating position.
And as such, there was always these awkward moments
and self-doubts.
And then, of course, the external ones, too.
Why aren't you moving stuff?
You're a young man.
Why aren't you in here breaking your back for all this?
And I said, well, I already broke my back.
I'm sorry I can't.
It was an interesting transition.
But it was also really cool to see
that God kind of forced me into a new role of thinking
more administrative, thinking more of, OK,
I have coordinating skills that I
need to be tapping into and utilizing
for these types of efforts.
I have people skills, diplomacy skills,
in those types of situations, where
I can help gather and coordinate more people
to be able to do 15 times the work
that I could do on my own.
And I also need to work on making sure
that I keep my back in as good a position as possible
so that I can help physically and not just shirk the work
and say, oh, you know what?
I don't have to do this anymore.
But I just want to acknowledge that you acknowledge that.
And if you out there, you're listening
and you've thought about putting a podcast out there,
my greatest invitation to you is go live
on your platform of choice, call it a podcast, and talk.
Ask questions.
Bring a friend in to do it.
That's exactly how I started, was just doing that for years.
People love the setup that we have now.
I have more than 1,000 lame episodes
that I had been doing, trying to get going.
And I start one day, I just said, you know what?
I just need to call this a podcast.
And next thing you know, it's like step after step after step.
It kind of turned into that.
So go rock the mic.
If you've got something of value to give to others,
there's 8 billion people in this world who need guidance.
And a lot of us are very blessed to have it
if we are educating ourselves through this medium.
So anyway, go ahead, James.
I'll let you take back over for a little bit.
You nudged me about a couple of things.
I do want to talk about your leadership,
because I hear it's flowing out of you.
And I kind of want to make a point.
It's not my point that's actually stolen from someone else.
I'll share that.
Sure.
Yeah, I believe everything's underserved.
You know, most people are thinking about,
could I go and be a podcast host?
Could I write a book?
Could I launch an online SaaS business
in a particular marketplace?
But the reason why we don't is because, one,
we're fear of the responsibility and fear of failure
and all those things.
But actually, we have this belief
that the market is already served.
And it really isn't.
If you think about podcasts, I don't even know.
Oh, I know.
I love that.
I love that thought.
Sorry, I'm just thinking, I'm like, yes, James, go.
Go, James, go.
We've got 8 billion people.
Most people don't understand what 8 billion is.
No, it's impossible to quantify.
We're going to be underserved in population.
To do the things we need to do on this planet
around climate change and other things,
we're not going to have enough people.
We don't have enough people to do what we need to do to fix
some of the problems we've created.
And some people think we've got too many people,
that's what's the drain on resources.
It's not.
It's the behavior.
It's a different thing.
But I think we're underserved in podcast hosts.
There's 8 billion people.
And there are only 60 million podcasts, most of which
are of the lame variety.
There are very few podcasts that are impacting the world.
So we call upon you to go and do that, just as Jackson said,
is because you're the one.
You're the one to find the million, 2 million, 5 million
people so you can make a change.
That's right.
If we just had that level of kindness,
we could make huge amounts of change.
Anyway, let me talk about your leadership.
No, it's good.
I mean, ask yourselves this question right now.
Are there too many math teachers on Earth right now?
No, there's not enough.
There's tons of kids out there.
There's adults who don't know how to do math.
And if that's the case with one of the subjects that
is kind of core to the world, then every other niche
as well of virtue or value, just because there's
and even if there were too many math teachers,
you help each other build up too.
You're not competitors with each other.
You're building upon each other's formulas.
The same is true of everything else.
So James, I love it.
You and I are in the same industry.
But I've never seen it as competition.
I've always seen it as co-opetition.
And how can I help Jackson?
Can Jackson help me?
What could we do together?
Could we collaborate on something?
And I think that's vital.
And I think that about my clients too.
I'm always trying to find out with my clients
if one of them is going to set a business up,
I want to be in the business.
I want to be able to help them in the business.
If they want me to.
If they don't, then I know it's going
to be a longer, slower road for them
because they're choosing to go it alone.
And they're making some assumptions.
But in the career path, same thing.
You do need to buddy up with people
who are doing the things that you want to do.
And I just kind of think about relationship.
Now you've said that is leadership's not a rank.
This is the Simon Sinek, I think said this,
maybe John Maxwell, one of the two
kind of leadership folks out there.
The twins, it's all good.
The twins, yeah, they're saying similar things.
Yeah, it's not a rank.
You don't start being a leader once you're in rank.
It's a choice.
And that's why I wanted to kind of compliment you
on stepping into leadership.
You choose to do it.
And then embrace all the things that that involves.
Do hard things.
You did 1,000 lame episodes.
That's a hard thing to do.
Yeah, it was.
To realize I did 1,000 of these things
before it actually got any good.
And that's common, actually.
Sometimes we might have to do 500 reps, 700 reps
in the gym to actually get good at that thing.
Oh yeah.
And so it makes perfect sense that you did 100 to 1,000.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
The 10,000 prerecords outside of that,
the ones you don't post, are also, it is.
It's a labor of love for sure.
So let's dive into one more of those things
that you can do to really help this audience.
And it says, what's your worst business experience ever?
But we're going to shift this question a little bit.
Today we're going to be talking about career.
So what's your worst career experience ever?
The one that comes to mind is being accused of something
that never happened.
And understanding my reaction to that wasn't healthy.
So that was all about me.
So I always equate this story to,
it was like all the kids had lined up around the pool,
pulled their pants down, but nobody had peed in the pool
yet.
The crime hadn't been committed, but there
was going to be a crime if somebody didn't jump in and stop.
And so my manager at the time had said,
I'm going to take control of this,
and you must watch from the sidelines.
I had to watch this pantomime play out,
and it was extremely painful.
So this was also my worst business,
my worst kind of business and career experience
because I felt accused of something I hadn't done
and because the lesson was you still let the kids take
their pants down.
So your own bad behavior could have been replicated
and created a ongoing issue for the business,
for the company, for the industry.
And so I had to kind of eat crow on that.
It didn't taste good, but I had to suck it up and say,
no, there is a clear point here.
When you're in the leadership position,
as I was at the time, you have to take
extreme personal accountability and responsibility for things.
And that one event, as ugly as it was, taught me that.
And a lot of people haven't been through that
or they're just going through it right now,
and they're still blaming everybody else.
But when you blame everybody else,
here's what's happening really.
You're not taking accountability for your own reality
and what's going on inside of you.
Because if you're feeling emotional,
like we talked about drama and tension earlier,
you are the drama.
You are the tension.
You are the creator of that.
Nobody else is feeling the same way you are,
even though my manager was freaking out
and throwing things around the room
and having to sit in front of very senior executives
and explain, how did we end up here?
Well, you know, and she took extreme personal accountability
for my bad behavior.
So that was a terrible career experience
that taught me so much about learn
to take accountability for your actions,
know that you are the creator of all of your drama,
know that leadership is a choice and so you
have to be the role model.
Learn how to speak last and not jump in and make
some assumptions.
And one of the things that that really did
was take me down a path of disrupting myself.
And so for the feedback of people who've said to me,
I never like working with you.
And that's like painful to hear or somebody say to me,
James, you listening, but you're not hearing.
And when you hear that feedback, it cuts.
You know, it's like a little tiny dagger in the heart.
And they're the things that got me to disrupt myself.
And I think about where I am now,
which is not the person I was 10 years, five years ago,
but it's that you do need to have that terrible career
experience and then look back and go, well, without it,
I never would have learned the lesson.
Because I don't think you learn any lessons in success.
I think you learn all your lessons in your failures.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Now, I will say that was one of the most profound answers
we've probably had on the show.
And here's why.
Here's why.
I'll prove it with a principle.
I think you're one of the first people, if not the first,
to focus the worst experience on what you could have done
and taking accountability in that.
And I don't know.
Honestly, I don't know what I would have done had I
been posed the same question.
I don't know if I would have had the self-awareness
to tie that directly to, how do I own this?
How do I appreciate my own value?
Which you obviously have that going for you.
You at least understand the value
that you put out into the world.
I'm sure there's an element of self-love,
if not a whole degree.
I hope you have a whole unconditional degree of it.
I sometimes struggle with that personally.
So I don't out-paint people from the outside.
But your ability to own that situation and say,
you know what, I do have responsibility for this
entirely, while, yes, other people have responsibility
for their interactions in the same scene.
You had so much you could learn from it.
Yeah.
You touched on something.
By not just pointing fingers.
Yeah, I know you want to move on.
But I think what I'm about to say
is really going to help a lot of people
because it really helped me.
When we think about self-love, self-esteem, self-respect,
self-worth, we go on the Insta experts or the Instagram
experts, right?
And we take a look at what's being driven at us.
And they'll tell you, oh, you just
need to take better self-care.
You just need to think about making sure
that you hear validation when it comes your way.
So if somebody says, good job, acknowledge it.
Say thank you and receive with gratitude.
Say, yeah, thank you.
I did do a good job.
So that's what people are telling you to do on Instagram.
And they're also kind of giving you down the line of,
you need to have affirmations.
You need to be talking to yourself in the mirror
every five minutes, every morning.
All of that, I'm not dismissing it as the only thing.
But I'll express to you, that worst experience,
why was I able to overcome it?
Because I think self-worth, self-love, self-esteem
all comes from the quality of our relational experience.
If you have amazing relationships,
I will tell you, you'll love yourself so much more.
So I've been spending most of my time in the last 18 months
focusing on who's in my group.
And I've been removing people who are draining my energy.
And literally, I saw Jen Gottlieb today.
I love Jen Gottlieb.
She's awesome.
If you know who she is, she's just launched her book,
Be Seen.
Grab a copy.
And I have no affiliation with Jen.
But one of the things she said was
she felt sometimes that she'd be in conversations
with people she worked with.
And she'd come away and feel like she
needed to take a shower to wash off the filth.
And I'd felt like that a little bit.
So I think if you have a self-worth issue, self-esteem,
you worry about other people's judgment,
you're always thinking in your head, am I good enough?
Am I smart enough?
Am I intelligent enough?
Am I a math teacher enough?
Am I a good health care provider enough?
You're all of those things.
You're absolutely delicious.
You're absolutely awesome.
But the reason why you may be having those thoughts
is because your relationships aren't where they need to be.
I'm a firm believer in that.
And I think just changing my relationships
has had a massive impact.
And some of the people who make it to see this will not.
Oh, I love it.
I love it.
And I'll add to it.
Different level of connection.
So one formula I'll add to it.
I'll add one more verb.
And James said have relationships that are healthy.
I'm going to say create relationships.
That's not an either or.
There's an opportunity for both because we
can't force great relationships.
That person has to want to have the relationship too.
And so I love the idea of setting aside relationships,
creating space with people who pull your energy down.
It's an important, healthy process
that usually serves both individuals in the process.
And yeah, everything you talked about was just awesome.
So let's go into your best career experience.
What does that look like?
Yeah, I could easily talk about entrepreneurship.
Because in entrepreneurship, you talked about your journey.
And in my journey, the same thing.
The big wins come rarely.
That's what I say to people.
Don't quit your job and become an entrepreneur
because you don't realize you're already doing hard things.
But when you become an entrepreneur,
it's going to be harder and harder and harder.
So let me think about something within career.
I think the experience of being hand-picked,
that external validation of you are good enough,
is always great.
And so that happened a couple of times in my career
when unexpectedly the hand of God came and said, it's you.
And that's very enjoyable.
But when I think about the true best career experiences,
for me, is always about team and other people
and developing other people and letting them develop you.
So in the process of leadership, you
as a leader and anybody else watching this,
if you think about that you want to be more of a leader,
yeah, just spend more time developing other people
and allowing them to develop who you are.
And that means deepening and broadening
those relationships, seeking more data points,
learning how to speak last.
And I was not good at this.
And for those people who didn't like working with me,
yeah, I was railroading conversations and interrupting
and jumping all over their thoughts and ideas
and their brilliance.
So if you can do those things, yeah, I
think that's my best career experience.
I built two what I would describe as world class teams
that you could have drop shifted into any organization
in the world and they would have transformed the business.
And that is a great experience.
And it really has nothing to do with me.
It has everything to do with the commitment
and the willingness and the discipline, the role model
behavior of all the people in the group.
And yeah, what would I give to keep doing that?
So my goal, it should be for you,
and I think you're already doing some of this,
is to have a wonderful team around you
and make them be world class.
Yeah, allow them to be world class.
Allow them to be.
I like that.
Good shift.
A great word choice.
That's empowering that, cultivating that,
influencing that.
And that starts, that can start at the bottom,
meaning at our entry point as well.
So if you're looking to experience
that extraordinary career, I'm going
to be a little haphazard because I'm not a pro in this.
That's not my expertise.
That's James's.
And allow him to take it from here.
We've had so many powerful lessons.
I'm going to skip that question because you're just
full of them.
So you keep leading with them every time you talk.
We don't even need to go into the one question.
Instead, we're going to shift to driving those extraordinary
career results.
And we're going to start with my bad example.
When I was much younger and I was a missionary,
I had one mission.
And that was to go out there and help everybody in Uruguay
that I could.
Get out of my way.
Here I go to do that.
And any missionary who wasn't bought into that fully,
they were serving because dad or mom wanted them to.
They were serving, but they still didn't quite know why.
Get out of my way was my attitude.
I was not a good leader.
I was not a good coworker.
I just knew that I had this mission.
I wish I had understood the greater influence I could have
had coming into that opportunity,
looking at the ones I was working with on a regular basis,
and just thinking of subtle ways,
how can I make his life better?
How can I make his life better?
In small ways, how can I make her life better?
How can I serve the group while also serving
my purpose and mission?
Doesn't cost me time.
It's part of the natural process.
It's just a matter of opening my mindset.
The ability to integrate better with that workforce
would have dramatically changed what I had learned.
But I had to learn a very powerful, difficult lesson
about leadership.
And I'm so glad I got to.
I needed it.
I would not be coming in without it.
So James, is there any validation to that reality?
Am I steering people off point?
No.
I'm saying, hey, come into that workforce
ready to give and meaningful words.
It's excellent.
And I'm going to quote a friend of mine.
I'm doubt she'll see this.
Her name's Peg Smith.
She was a phenomenal executive for one of the companies
I worked with and gave me the device.
But your story resonates with me.
Because, yeah, I did that same thing.
Get out of my way.
I left people bruised and bloodied
at the side of the road, moving at breakneck speed
in the quest of that power of prestige
and running craziness, egoic behavior.
And I watch people do this all over the place.
And they are thoroughly miserable people.
And that's OK.
I just let people be.
If you want to do that, do that.
But here's Peg's advice.
Wonderful person.
I think retired now, but clearly a valuable member of.
She spent decades investing her life into what she did.
But she sat down with me once.
And we were having a conversation
about the difference makers of how
you shift from being a taker, seeing
what you can get, titles and cash and promotions
and what can I get and be ahead of everybody else and compete.
And I'm not saying you don't have to compete in life.
I think you do.
But inside organizations, that's not necessarily
a good healthy behavior.
And Linda, I said, if you were to give me
one piece of advice for how somebody can move into a service
mindset faster, what would that be?
And she said this.
And I'll expand on it a little bit.
I've said this before elsewhere.
She said, James, the quality of your questions
are the quality of your career.
And then she elaborated by saying,
if you don't understand what everybody else needs or wants
or what problems they have or what they're challenged with,
you'll never be able to be the servant leader that you want
to be.
And you'll never be able to rise to the top
because you'll always be dealing with your problems
and your challenges and your internal mess.
So start focusing on them and find out
what's in it for them.
Figure out, if they have challenges, what could you do?
What skills can you develop?
What can you upskill to answer that
and start solving that problem?
And I think I've done more of that in the last maybe eight
years than when Peg gave me the advice.
If you go back into my earlier career,
I would have been the complete opposite.
I would have been a great missionary with you
to help me out.
We would have run out of the way.
And I love Peg already.
Yeah, awesome.
She's awesome.
She's going to shift the way I shop.
You just take something like that, you write it down,
you remember it, and you start to implement it,
that is going to have a dramatic shift
on how I show up for people.
Thank you for sharing that.
That was so awesome.
So we've got four minutes or so left.
And I want to dive in as much as we can through your ideas
on experiencing that extraordinary career
and the results with it.
James, throw down.
What questions should I be asking?
Or how do you want to dive into this?
It's your call.
I really have a couple of things maybe that come to mind
that I don't know if I shared yet.
Maybe I did in another way.
And this is not to get trapped in our own minds.
So the first piece of advice I would say to anybody
in a career, and you want to maximize your results
so that you have this incredible life
and you deserve this incredible life,
the first thing is to start to understand your,
it's not even accountability ratio.
It's more about the integrity ratio you operate in.
What I mean by that is, for all the things that
come out of your mouth that you say, do them.
But more than that, I want you to also,
for all the things that you think about,
that are your dreams and your wishes and desires,
that stay in your head and sometimes you don't verbalize,
do them.
The virtues.
And that's like this boom, boom, boom test.
If your heart isn't pounding in your chest,
because it should be giving you that fear, nervous,
excitedness, it's all the same emotion,
that's the thing you need to double down on.
And most of the time it comes when we think something
and our heart starts booming and then we get scared
and we run the other way and then suddenly decide,
I'm not going to do that.
So that would be the first thing.
And the accompaniment to that is kind of the second thing.
And maybe a great way to wrap this up is,
it doesn't matter who you are.
I'm not a big advocate of the phrase of just do the hard work.
Just do it.
Well, true, I do think put some effort in, put some sweat in.
But make sure that at least a fifth, maybe 20%
of the activity that you're involved with
is hard things that you know get results.
Because your bosses, your managers, your leadership
are telling you the 80%.
That's results for them, that's other people's agenda,
it's not your results.
So if you want to move the needle for you,
20% of your day, of your hour, think about it that way,
has to be focused on what you want to do,
what you love doing.
Otherwise you will find misery because the work
will just keep coming.
And so I want you to do hard things, yes,
but I want you to think about them as the hard things I do
are the things that change my life and the lives of others.
That's awesome.
For those of you who may not have caught it,
or maybe you're just catching into the episode right now,
James also talked about tough work and tough work
environments often are a reflection of the tough life
that we have.
And so if you want that career upgrade,
I think it's also important to assess what's
going on personally in my life, or in my environment at home,
or outside of work, or maybe it's environments
I go to after work, bars.
There's different things you might
choose to do that could be disrupting
the rest of your life.
Now, if you're not a parent, you are a parent,
you're going to get this.
But those of you who aren't parents, what you may not
realize is how often as parents we show up
awful for our kids.
With a bad attitude, we end up hurting their feelings.
And on self-reflection afterwards, we realize, dang it,
I just took my day out on my child.
I wasn't actually mad at them for not picking up
that blanket.
I wasn't actually mad at them for leaving the wrapper
on the ground.
It was Halloween for crying out loud.
I wasn't actually upset about that.
But I let the emotions of my day and my own selfish needs
come out on that person.
Well, that can happen in work as well,
where if you're reacting at people at work
and you're not experiencing wholesome relationships,
it could likely be something you're
bringing to work with you and aren't creating space on.
And if you're at the beginning, just know that you're a tree,
that you are.
If you're planning it today, you won't see the results tomorrow.
That's OK.
Trust in the processes.
Trust in these amazing principles that James gave.
So James, you did an excellent job.
What's the best way for people to connect with you?
So I don't know what platform anyone's watching this on.
The easiest way to connect with me is like Twitter, Facebook.
Instagram.
Yes.
So you can connect with me on all those channels
and find me there just by searching my name.
But I think if you just want to message me,
and this is a career conversation, which
is your life conversation, I'm all
about personal and professional development,
getting you to the next level, certainly moving you
from one zip code to another one.
Let's just get you out of the ugly zip code
and the one you want to live in.
Then go to LinkedIn and just hit me up there on a message.
Awesome.
James, it's been a pleasure and honor
to have you on Vision Pros Live.
Vision Pros, you guys have a fantastic day.
We'll see you in the next episode in a few hours, actually.
And James, we'd love to have you back in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you for the invite.
I would love to come.
Absolutely.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these
episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your support.