What city in my great state of Texas?
I'm in Houston, the Houston area.
That Houston area.
Okay, I was gonna be real sad if you said,
no, I'm not in Texas, Jackson was like,
no, I know you're in my state.
You got too cool of a background to not be in my state.
All right, so retired Colonel Joe Franke III.
I am not well equipped to dive into decades of
how the heck did you get to where you are?
I know people love to read these bios and all that
on these podcasts.
I'd rather skip that.
People can go look at your LinkedIn and see your background.
I wanna know from your perspective,
what would people overlook about your background
and how does it relate to leadership in general?
Because I think you got a gold mine of leadership to give
based on our previous conversation.
So tell me what are we overlooking, Joe?
Well, I think the main point is,
I spent a full career in the army four years
at the military academy and then 30 years on active duty.
And I split my career as a war fighter.
I was in the airborne infantry, mechanized infantry,
air assault infantry and special operations.
And then the second half of my career,
I spent solving all the problems of the war fighter
in logistics.
And so it was really, the army was a beautiful place
to be able to pivot and change sectors
and learn how to lead women, for example,
because during my time, the women weren't in the combat arms
like they were today.
And so I wanted this opportunity to experience women
in units and solve the challenges
and learn the leadership necessary to be able to do that.
And so at the end of my career, 30 years in the army,
I'm 52 years old, so I'm entering the private sector.
And boy, that was like being born again.
You know what you know, but it's still a big change.
And I tell that to all the transitioning military people,
whether you spent a career in or your time,
because the army or the armed services has its own culture
and everything else.
And if that's what you came into when you were young,
then that's what you know.
And when you go out, everything changes.
And the most important thing that I remind
the transitioning people is, let somebody help you
because as you try to explain what you did in the military,
you need to be able to do that.
And so I think that's the key to being able to explain
what you did in the military.
You need to explain it in hiring manager vernacular.
In other words, you can say, I did this and this and this,
and that doesn't mean anything to anybody.
And so you need somebody that's been in the private sector
that knows the military to kind of help you lay that out.
And you can't do that to help them,
but you really have to make that effort to, okay,
what did you do that's a transferable skill
that the hiring manager can really understand?
And that's really, you're having a cogent conversation now.
Huge.
I'm gonna dive into one of the controversial ugly truths
related to that.
And on my side, on our side is, again, I'm a civilian
and here I was talking to a couple of business partners
and we were talking about an individual,
it's fairly close to me, that was in the process
of recruitment still with the armed forces.
And this person did exceptionally well
on their entry exams.
And dumber than dirt, Joe, I'm so sorry,
but this person is about as brainless as they come.
And so I'm talking to these, and that's not everybody,
but that's this one individual.
And so I'm talking to these business leaders
how is it that this person ranked so high
on this entrance exam, yet they just,
I'm an inner type person that will turn the wrong way
into traffic, oncoming traffic.
And we were talking about it
and one of my business partners said,
Jackson, some of these strength assessments
for the military are designed around
how willing is this person willing to conform and comply?
Not necessarily how willing are they to think on their feet?
And this is just about one simple assessment,
but my point with that, the greater realization
that I hope great leaders come out of the military
and realize is corporate doesn't always see
our armed forces as heroes who are coming back
that are, and give them the benefit of the doubt of,
well, you must be the best thing since sliced bread.
And if we don't come into any work environment,
whether it's me who has a 0.33 GPA,
I don't do well in corporate environments.
They don't like the guy who doesn't have a degree,
or somebody coming in from the armed forces,
forces acting like they're the know-it-all
who's had it all and is the best leader in the world.
We don't come in with the type of humility
you're talking about.
We can quickly get overlooked and kicked to the curb.
We can quickly fall into a situation
where our perception confuses us
and makes us disregard the reality of what it's like
to actually get hired at a company
where they don't necessarily have the same mindset
as what leadership was like in armed forces.
So I know I just cracked a massive can of worms open up,
and I probably look like a disaster doing that,
but I'm putting myself out there
because I think military personnel benefit
from understanding that you just exercise extreme humility
and recognizing it's different,
but it doesn't make one better than the other.
Can you talk to that point?
Well, yeah, I sure can.
I have run across brilliant people, okay,
that couldn't follow instructions to go to the latrine.
And common sense is not all that common.
Right, no, it's not.
The interesting thing in the military is,
even if you're a little less adept at conforming,
as long as you're able to conform,
I mean, I'll give you an example.
This is what my younger brother,
he was going in the army and this was the advice I gave him.
I said, look, you need to be where they tell you to be,
five minutes early.
And if you're not five minutes early, you're late.
And you need to be in the clothes
that they told you to be in.
Yeah.
Okay, that's your responsibility.
And then after that, it all belongs
to a non-commissioned officer, a sergeant.
You know, and so what a lot of the training occurs one-on-one
with the sergeant directly with the soldier.
So a lot can happen with the one-on-one exposure.
And you can get people along depending on how they process
or everything like that.
But you're right, there have to be some
level of conformity because if you're going to lead,
I don't know how one can lead if you can't follow.
Yeah, I love that.
I learned that way too late in life, Joe.
If I'm a leader, right?
And I'm leading a group of people,
then some leaders is giving me a little bit of a
then some leaders is giving me directions to follow.
And I'm translating that into kind of a mission
or a requirement that we've got to perform
in order to achieve what the goal was.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so I think the basic element of any leader
or learning leadership is, you know, if you can't follow,
how in the world can you lead?
Yes, 100%.
It's something that dawned on me late in life.
I was in my 30s probably, probably 30, 31.
And I realized, I never heard it said before,
but I thought the best leaders are the best followers.
You know, you've got to be willing to follow
somebody who's great.
You know, whether it's Jesus or Gandhi, you know,
or somebody else, you got to be able and willing
to follow somebody in order to learn how to become better
as a leader yourself.
So wise words.
I'm gonna dive into the other controversial statement here.
Now we're gonna have some fun with this.
So I say, and since they controversial, you hit it well.
What's sad to me is that there's so many people
who point fingers at large entities as being the problem.
Right, you know, all military have screwed up
how they've led leaders for women for years.
I don't think that's fair.
I think the military is one of the entities
that first started to address this in the world.
You know, and so because you're the first
and you got to make the mistakes
and figure it out along the way,
there's gonna be people who don't have perfect experiences.
So you talked about that fondly as an opportunity
to understand women better and to understand leadership
and how it relates to women better.
And you've had 30 years of, you know,
seeing how the world has transitioned
in relation to my minorities,
in relation to developing countries,
in relation to women and beyond.
So I'd love to know what things have you learned
about women in leadership that also can help
those of us visionaries out there who also work with women?
Well, I don't pretend to be an expert.
Nor do I, I'm glad you said that.
Neither one of us are, but what have we learned?
What I've learned and what I've experienced
and what I've observed over time
is that leading an organization with women in it
really depends on the number of women in it.
Okay, so if you have an organization,
say a military organization that's, you know,
roughly the population of women in the army,
which would probably be somewhere, you know,
15 to 17%, right?
You can lead the organization
just like the army would have taught you, okay?
What I saw in the first Gulf War
was you're gonna get units like from the National Guard
and the reserve where women might be 50%
of the population of that particular unit.
So consequently, it's gonna require
a slightly different style.
And a little bit more sensitivity, you know,
to what's going on and, you know, what they need.
And it was my experience that if you were sensitive
and could, you know, support women as best you could
in the environment, that with the units I saw,
you know, women generally worked harder than men.
And, but, you know, one of the things I learned
in my particular situation was, you know,
water was gonna be a big thing for, you know, cleaning up.
And in a desert situation, a wartime environment,
you know, that's hard work in trying to make that available.
But if you could have a situation where you could get,
women could clean up and take care of themselves
hygienically, you know, so what are we saying there?
Trying to make an effort that, you know,
you can get a two minute shower
and somebody can wash their hair and their body.
Yep.
That makes a big difference in, you know,
how hard people are gonna lean into stuff.
Yep, absolutely.
There's so many challenges we're ever facing.
There's so many challenges we ever look.
I mean, Disney could have decided not to do the movie
based on Mulan, right?
Because they could have been worried about,
how's this gonna be perceived and how does this, you know,
how do people take these situations into consideration?
And I'm not one to lean away from subjects.
I'm also not one to pretend I'm an expert
on any subject for that matter.
So Joseph and I are looking at, ladies, bell us out.
Help us know what we need to know, right?
In order to appreciate what still needs to be done
in today's world relation to leadership.
And I hope some of you point out,
this is not just women or gender specific.
The world has changed.
Now you got kids that play, you know,
they use their phones to learn more things
than we did in my generation.
But they also are less athletically inclined
to dribble basketball, at least across the board.
Some of them are way better at it than us
because they're superstars and they focus on it.
Others have never touched a basketball in their life.
So if we don't as leaders, whether it's women, men,
Gen Z or baby boomers, if we don't all come together
to talk about this stuff and figure out how we see things,
then there's just gonna be more and more divide.
And that's my goal with this segment.
So come and tell us where we're divided
and what we can learn.
That was awesome.
So Joe, thank you for that.
We're gonna dive into an easier subject,
more close to home, I think.
What are, based on your experience,
what are three resources that you recommend
to other visionary leaders out there
that they should lean into?
Three resources?
Those can be books, movies, programs, your call.
I'd say one of the resources I always suggest,
and this all started out with my grandfather.
He said, the good Lord gave you two ears and one mouth.
And at a minimum, you ought to be listening
as twice as much as you're talking.
And the second thing that he showed me was,
we would see somebody, we would be around
and there's somebody that's really kind of an expert
at doing something.
And my grandfather would force me to go introduce myself
to that person and ask him a question.
And so the whole idea was,
look for the experts around you,
go use your good manners and learn something.
And in one particular case, we were at a cotton gin
and this man was using two claws
and he'd back up to a bale of cotton
and stick it in the cotton.
And that cotton was probably a 500,
600 pound bale of cotton.
And he got that on his back and walked over
and loaded it onto a truck that was backed up against,
evenly with the wall.
And my grandfather said, go over there
and learn how to do that.
And so I went over there and asked him,
when the guy took some time and showed me that really,
it wasn't his back, it was all about his legs
and making his back very static.
Cause if I'd went and tried to do that myself,
I'd probably hurt myself.
But the whole point of showing me how to resource things
throughout my life was,
hey, you've got to take it upon yourself
to introduce yourself and be inquisitive.
And most people desire to help
and or share with you.
I mean, if you, you know, we'll take the time.
I love that.
All right, number one, use these ears.
Two, go up to experts,
introduce yourself and ask good questions.
What's number three?
Number three is, you know, the way I look at high school,
high school is a preparation
for you to learn how to learn.
And so if you can read well,
then you are armed in today's world to educate yourself
in anything that you want to educate yourself into.
Because now you don't, you know, used to,
you'd have to go to the library.
You'd end up having to buy a book or, you know,
but almost anything and courses and free academies
and everything else is basically online.
So if you have the gumption, the desire,
the internal gut desire to improve yourself,
I mean, the ways and means are available.
So that's the third thing I would say.
High school and read well, hand in hand.
And I love that you focus on high school for that.
Reminds me of two things.
One, Zig Ziglar's story of David Locke.
It's one of my favorite stories to listen to.
I listened to my kids a couple of weeks ago.
And it says, man who had cerebral palsy.
And the doctor said, do not allow him in a room
with other people who have cerebral palsy.
So you've got to help him understand
that he is not to be withheld or held back
based on the limitations that he sees in others.
But that was really interesting.
It's a very hard story to listen to by the way.
It's not very 2024 friendly.
But in addition to that, when I was in Uruguay,
Shubert was 23 years old and could hardly read.
His eight-year-old sister was also
from a small underdeveloped town.
She could read better than he could
and she couldn't read at her level as an eight-year-old.
And so next thing you know, within a matter of weeks,
Shubert's reading faster than her
and he's got a fire underneath him to move his life forward
because of some fantastic elements of purpose
that he found through training with us
and learning with us.
It doesn't matter if you're in high school
or you're 40 years old and or you're 23 or you're 10,
we all have the ability to start practicing more tenacity,
more diligence.
And so I really appreciate you highlighting
that ability to read and specifically at an age group
when you might have already written yourself off.
Don't do that to yourself.
You gotta believe in yourself.
You gotta keep going, recognize there's so much more.
Had we got decades of opportunity.
So listen more, two ears, ask great questions of experts,
read well and get an amazing grandpa.
Certainly could use some help.
If you don't have one, borrow one.
There's plenty out there who will jump in
and try to help make sure that you get mentored.
I speak for Joe and myself on that too.
Happy to play the grandpa role if you'll let me.
Joe's probably better fit for that than I am.
He's got decades of wisdom.
That's why I'm excited to have him on the show.
We're gonna come right back after break.
We'll be diving into Joe's vision,
talking about again, everything that we can
to just expand your own visions
and inspire you to keep building.
We'll see you on the other side, everybody.
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.
Hey, what's up everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have Joe Franke III.
In fact, that's retired Colonel Joe Franke III.
We're gonna be talking about his decades of wisdom.
And if you're like, well, he's older,
he's senior, he's tenured, well, shut up and listen.
Like I'm gonna do the same with Joe.
That's the point.
There's a very good story, sociology story
on the young rhinos.
I highly recommend looking it up.
I heard it at 17 years old when I was in college
and it talked about how if the young rhinos
run the environment, they end up destroying it.
And the value and need to have those who have
the decades of wisdom ahead of us,
like they've got so much knowledge for us.
So I'm gonna shut my trap soon enough.
We'll bring Joe back on.
We'll dive into everything we can about his vision.
Before we do a couple of resources for you,
number one that aligns well with Joe
is Dave Morrow of hardtokill.org.
Dave's helping 100,000 veterans lose two million pounds
collectively.
Now, a lot of these veterans, they come home from war
and they lose sight of their basic training routines
or they realize that their routines were a little bit
hard on their bodies and they need to make an adjustment
in order to look good, feel good,
and then go be able to do good.
And Dave helps them with just that.
He's got a great podcast.
I highly recommend checking the podcast out
and joining the free fitness community
and seeing what Dave offers above and beyond that
as well, he's been a delight to work with.
And we have opportunities for work for Latinos.
That's one of our homegrown programs.
It's a free program to help Latinos throughout the world
learn how to become what you and I know as virtual assistants
or what we call digital ambassadors, how to promote brands,
how to help build with some of the tools behind the scenes
that really hold entrepreneurs back.
They shouldn't be messing with their websites.
Guys, you shouldn't be messing with all the technical
know-hows unless that's your expertise.
Get somebody to help you with those processes.
Well, we provide the free training program for 90 days
to help them get certified and qualified.
And then we get them connected with brands who actually
treat them like human beings.
Too many people are participating
in what I call virtual abuse.
We can do better than that, entrepreneurs, visionaries.
We can hire people and actually take
an interest in their lives.
And the byproduct of doing so means that they actually show up
and want to work with you.
And they get excited to dive in every day.
I've seen that with my own team.
So definitely check out what we're building.
Feel free to contribute to that.
And the best way you can do so, just give them a call.
Reach out to them directly and see
how they might be able to help you build your vision out.
Then there's the water project.
The water project is not something we're affiliated with,
but it is near and dear to my heart
because I choose for it to be.
I have never been thirsty in my life.
Every once, I've always had access to get access to water.
And I took that for granted for a long time.
When I found out about the water project
and that there's millions of people who don't even
have access to that, I don't know.
I just let it shake me, I guess.
I started to realize that there's these ways
to get involved in the water project.
They allow you to actually choose the community
that you want to give to.
And if you give even $5 to $10 to that community,
you get to see the results come forward for that community.
They document the process.
You can see that that borehole well or that sand dam
came to fruition.
And these kids, they celebrate water like my kids
celebrate Christmas Day.
So I'll continue to rock the mic about it.
If you've got another cause that you'd like to see us promote,
don't hesitate to drop that in the comments.
And if financially you're so restricted right now
that you can't contribute to one of these,
then my hope is that you'll just dig into your heart
and think, who do I know that I could share this with?
You might end up sharing it with somebody who ends up,
I don't know, paying $100,000 and funding more than 20
of these projects.
And the generational impact that even one of these projects
coming to fruition means for our world
is absolutely phenomenal.
It's worth meditating on.
I'll let you do that.
I want to continue to talk about it, but I won't.
Joe Franke, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Thanks for joining me on stage today.
Hey, glad to be here.
Absolutely.
All right, so the question, you're
able to help a lot of people, Joe.
So what is your vision for those that you serve?
What do you hope to see for them?
Well, the most important thing is, what is it
that they want to achieve?
What is it that they want to achieve?
And I'm a big believer is if they know where they want to go
and can define it, most people know where they are.
And so if we can define those two points,
then we can build a bridge to get them from where they are
now to where they want to go.
I'm going to stick with Joe.
I'm going to dive in on that, man.
Because I already say, and I love the idea of it,
but I do not give my kids what they want.
Those I serve, too.
Don't get me wrong.
If I've got to negotiate with them on the ice cream
and taking a bite of ice cream before they finish
their vegetables, we'll do some negotiating.
But if they got what they wanted,
we'd be at Disneyland every single day, all day long.
And they might not get what they need out of life.
So how do we balance that as providers,
giving people what they want, but also recognizing that how
do we protect them from ruining their lives by overindulging?
Oh, I understand that.
What I was basing it on is somebody
is trying to better themselves.
They are trying to get somewhere,
but they're not able to do it themselves.
Or something is in the way.
And so in other words, most people
are either looking for employment.
They're out of work looking for employment.
Or they're in employment that they don't particularly like,
and they want something different.
They want, they're seeking change.
Or they want to pivot.
Or they want to even change sectors.
Or better yet, they're tired of the corporate hustle
and bustle, and they've got this idea on entrepreneurship.
And they want to follow that.
So I didn't mean that as it applied to youngsters.
But with adults, if you kind of know what you want
and you're not able to get it, in other words,
you've tried something that's not working,
then what I've been able to do is
help people get from where they are to where they want to go.
Now, in that help, in one case, the person said,
this is what I really want to do.
And I said, well, you're going to need two years of college.
And he said, well, I don't want to do that.
And I said, OK, well, I do executive search.
I'm out here in the search business.
And I'm never going to call you.
And I'm never going to put you forward, because I can always
find somebody better, or the client that's paying me
to find the best and the brightest to bring them
to solve their problem.
And we had to go back and forth on that.
And I said, if this is something you're looking for.
That's what my audience needs is that back and forth.
Because even, I know you said youngsters,
but my entrepreneurs, man, they'd all
be broker than dirt if we focus on giving them what they want.
Well, if you're an entrepreneur, you got to have a plan.
The idea that you can be an entrepreneur.
I didn't mean to derail you.
I just meant to dive in deeper with you
on this story, though, this executive.
He didn't want the school.
Now you help him realize you gave him the tough love,
which really sounds like you delivered it quite kindly.
Hey, you're not going to get the role if you don't put this in.
Where did that lead to?
Well, this was about five or six years ago.
And he eventually went back and did it
and got the certifications, right?
Because it's all about, OK, all these other people
have all this other stuff.
They're in front of you.
And I said, do you want to make a choice
to be at the back of the bus forever?
Because by going for two years of college,
we can put you in the front of the bus.
And when we take people off the bus,
we take them off the front of the bus.
It's your option.
So in that particular case, he chose to make that effort.
And as far as I know, he's doing great.
But the important thing is somebody has to give you
the God's honest truth.
Yes.
That's why I pushed you out of the want thing.
That's why I did.
I know you're doing more than just giving people
what they want to hear.
I already know that about you.
Because LinkedIn, if you go to LinkedIn.com right now
and you're not signed in, their massive promise
is find the right job or internship for you.
We've heard this bull crap for decades
that that's going to be easy.
And you're just going to give us everything that we want.
I think people are my odd.
And they're sick of that.
They want to know the real truth behind the matter.
The real truth is everything involves work.
If you want success, it involves work.
Music to my ears, Joe.
Keep going.
Bottom line up front, there's no free lunch.
And so you've got to be competitive.
The world is competitive.
And how competitive are you compared to the peer
that you're competing with?
And what I find is we have a lot of people
that are truly competitive.
But they don't articulate it in a way
that it's seen on a LinkedIn profile.
So why would you give up that space since you earned it
and not take advantage of it?
Yeah.
So you and I are having a back and forth really
good discussion.
So what happens every day on LinkedIn with my profile
and your profile is our profiles are our avatars.
They're showing up for us.
And they're having coffee with somebody else.
And so you have to ask yourself, is your LinkedIn profile
representing you in such a way that you're
having a positive experience on this other interaction?
You know?
So that's just like, OK.
Since-
Is that how we connected?
Did we connect through LinkedIn or did we
connect through PodMatch?
We connected through LinkedIn.
OK, that's what I thought.
I was like, is that?
I mean, it's a great example.
This is a real world example of we would not
have targeted and asked Joe to be on our show
had it not been for the quality profile that he has set up.
Everything from the 22,894 followers
that he's built over time and master time there
to the clarity with which his value is,
it's all very clear right here.
In fact, I'm going to go check and look at our conversation
back and forth while you-
So what else can people do related to these profiles
to make sure that their coffee exp-
Because what you're saying is my profile says your profile,
my assistant sees your profile, I see it,
and that's my first interview.
It's paying attention to what you have on there.
What are some things people overlook?
What they overlook, I think, is LinkedIn started out
as a basic thing.
Back when I got on it, you put who you are, what you do,
and it was a little bitty resume.
Well, that was 19 years ago, or 20 years ago now.
But my point is LinkedIn gives you all the ability
to lay out everything that you bring to the table.
For example, if you are using your resume,
and your resume should be submitted
against a job specification or job description,
you're answering the mail for that.
Well, your LinkedIn profile should
be everything else about you.
The resume is a one-shot, one-sniper shot
against that one job.
It's uniquely created for that one shot.
Your LinkedIn profile is your warehouse of everything
you be, know, do, everything.
And so consequently, on your LinkedIn profile,
what you have the opportunity to market and merchandise
is your emotional intelligence.
And you have a lot of emotional intelligence,
and you're really into that.
I mean, you're talking about water.
Absolutely.
I'm the best at it.
No, I'm just kidding.
But I do understand the value of it.
We both do.
We appreciate it tremendously.
Yeah, so I mean, so all your volunteer stuff,
all this other stuff that you do or you
would do for the community, believe it or not,
other people would like to take that into account.
But they can't take it into account if they can't see it.
That's right.
Everybody says, well, Joe, I don't
want to put all that stuff out there.
I was working with a guy, and we got all this stuff out there.
I mean, he was a wizard in his area.
And he says, Joe, I've thought about this.
And I'm just not going to put that out there.
And I said, OK, no problem.
I mean, you're the client, and I'm working for you.
And he said, let's take everything
and put it in a folder.
And I said, well, I said, no, I mean,
a folder that you can export.
And he said, well, why would I want to export that folder?
And I said, well, you need to market obituary
and give it to your wife.
And he said, I said, why would you
wait till the end for somebody to talk about all
the great things you did?
Why don't you talk about it now and let somebody find you
for what you bring to the table?
Because there's people out there searching for people like me.
So I've coached in 16 different countries.
I've never advertised.
So that means they found me, much like you found me.
We got to talk about that.
That's funny.
You found me, actually.
So I'm excited to have ended this.
We're going to both learn a lot and up level here.
If we want to argue, we'll argue, too.
Joe, I really like you.
And you know that from our past conversation.
We got to go to lunch with you someday.
I hope you come down to New Braunfels at some point,
because I don't go to Houston.
Yeah, I like New Braunfels.
I'll be there.
I got to go to the Astros game, though.
I got to take my son.
So when we go, I'm going to let you know,
because I want to get together with you.
We are going to wrestle.
We're going to wrestle over LinkedIn right now,
because we had some back and forth that just makes me laugh.
And I hope it makes you laugh, too,
because we're going to destroy both of the things
that we did along the way that could have very much
hurt our relationship and made us not like each other at all.
So this is going to be a raw and real opportunity for all
of us to learn from.
I'm going to pull it up.
And I'm going to show you guys that I did not
see Joe's message at all when he first reached out to me.
And he did not see mine.
Our automations were pretty much going head to head.
All right, so let's take a look.
Here's Joe.
And I get this message back in 2021.
That's like 10 decades ago.
So that's three years ago.
And welcome aboard, Jackson.
Thanks for reaching out.
I have no idea what message I sent him
to trigger this type of thing.
I did not read this at all, guaranteed.
I didn't read it when it hit.
Sure enough, July 20th.
What is that?
Three days later, my automation or my assistant
hits you up with a message.
That's great, Joe.
We work with coaches.
And I'm doing this thing where we're
trying to promote this program.
And I'm not listening to you.
And now you're not listening to me, right?
You're like, hey, thanks for the note.
But here's what I'm doing.
And I'm like, OK, well, I didn't see any of this.
My assistant would have seen it.
But neither one of us wanted to touch this conversation
with a 10-foot pole because they're both just pitching
each other.
So here comes my birthday.
And I get a zillion messages on my birthday.
Most of them are people trying to pitch me stuff.
Here comes Joe.
Happy birthday, Jackson.
I just want to do the honor.
Let me pitch you two things real fast.
I remember seeing that from somebody and going,
team, don't ever do this.
Don't ever automate my stuff to where I'm spamming people
on their birthday.
So then I get spammed the next birthday as well.
And I get it.
We're all trying to make our stuff important.
But here I come back, Joe.
And I spam you again.
I still haven't learned.
We're both trying to figure out how are we
getting people to connect with our stuff.
And we want people to value what we have.
And then again, I've got my automation set up.
And it hits you again.
And you know better than to mess with that.
And then you hit me with more birthday news about you
instead of something about us.
And once again, May 23, I've subscribed to Power Brand Tips.
Are you seeking podcast guests?
And then there's something there.
Well, eventually, my assistant comes in on May 24.
And Angie's like, you know what?
You guys are both really screwing this up.
Let me just meet you both in the middle and pull this together.
And Angie's a godsend who makes amazing things happen.
And we finally got booked.
Now, that awkward story right there of what transpired
was not two men at our best showing our best,
but it was two men trying to figure out the world of marketing
and trying to figure out how to help each other
and how to help each other catch each other's value.
And we ended up on that call.
That was the very first time I even knew I interacted with you
was you coming onto that pre-podcast.
And I met a human being who is a wonderful man.
And I think you felt something similar for me
because I want to talk about the messages.
We just picked up right where we were.
I see so many leaders, Joe, that go through an experience
like that.
And they want to judge and crucify the individual.
They want to point out all the flaws and the challenges.
They want to act like the spilled milk matters.
When you and I, we focused on the cows.
We focused on the fact that we can make mountains
move with each other and get past all that nonsense.
I love that.
So those of you on LinkedIn, Joe's
got superpowers when it comes to making sure you build
your profiles the right way.
I don't have any doubt about that.
Making sure you get the fundamental basics stated
about who you are, what you do, and how you help.
And we both learned some things throughout time
on all this marketing and automation stuff.
But I hope you all learn from each of those scenarios.
And I'm going to hard shift us over to what's
your vision for you, Joe?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Because I can tell you got more in the tank, man.
Well, I'm going to continue helping people.
I don't know if we went into this story the last time.
But how I got here is an interesting story.
So I'll share that with you very briefly.
Anyway, so I was doing partner, one of my friends
said, hey, let's get together.
This big search firm wants to start a Houston office.
And you handle the engineering, I handle the oil and gas.
And so we did that.
And we told them, I said, look, don't come to Houston
unless you're willing to ride it out for four years.
Because there's a sign way that goes around here, oil and gas.
Anyway, they said, yeah, yeah, we're in.
We're in.
And so sure enough, we got into it doing real well.
And then the first downturn comes and, oh, we
can't handle it anymore.
So they wanted to get out.
But when they trained us, training was really good.
But you couldn't talk to any job seekers.
Because, hey, the company wanted you
to just be working on clients.
And so what happens is when you become an executive search
consultant, somebody finds out.
Then everybody calls you and says, hey,
can you take a look at my resume?
Can you take a look at my LinkedIn profile?
And I said, well, I can.
But I've got to follow the company's rules.
So I do it before breakfast, at lunch, or afterwards.
So anyway, for the first batch of people
that I went through that with, they all
seemed to got interviews.
And they got jobs.
So then they told all their friends and family.
So then I was getting calls at 5 o'clock in the morning,
11 o'clock at night.
And my wife says, hey, you need to go back to your day job.
Or let's make a business out of this.
And I said, well, why do you think
this would be a good business?
And my wife said, well, Joe, I'm listening.
You talk to these people.
And you sound like you're developing army officers.
So then it was like a big blinding flash
of the obvious that really all I'd
done for almost 40 years was develop people.
Because when you're in the army and you're a leader,
you're trying to help your subordinate get
to their next school.
You're trying to get them ready for their next promotion.
You're trying to get them ready for their next assignment.
Because that's how you progress in the military.
It's a competitive environment.
You've got to do your part.
You've got to apply.
So this was just a natural thing for me.
And so I was fortunate enough that I found my gift.
So it's my gift.
So my vision is I'm going to continue to do this and help
people.
And so we say with LinkedIn, but when you start helping a person,
you're doing some personal coaching.
You're doing some blind coaching.
It's huge.
It's huge because you do what you
need to do in order to get them to move along.
Right.
I love that.
And that's what I've seen about you as well is too many people
are trying to box professionals into a specific service
or a specific niche.
They want people to juggle with the rest.
Can you juggle with your right hand
and tie your left hand behind your back?
Why?
I have a left arm.
Why can't I use both to help you?
Well, I need to see that you can do it with one hand only.
Why?
Where is this practical?
We do that to people in the professional space.
But that is so neat that the natural progression
of the 40 years is that you realize
that there's a universal applicability to this.
And it's about helping the person get the end result,
not just the theatrics or the reality of the mechanisms that
have to be adjusted or that get to be adjusted along the way,
depending on how somebody wants to look at that.
So you have to have those hard conversations because of them.
It's just like, OK, if somebody says,
well, I want to be chief of staff of the army.
And I said, well, OK, I can map out what
it looks like for 35 years.
These are the things that you need to do.
These are the orders you need to do them in.
And oh, by the way, you've got to be the top person
on that track.
But I mean, there is a path.
And so with people, when they decide
that's what they want to do, I said, look, OK,
this is what's involved.
And if you want to do it, it's not a problem.
But I'm not the one doing it.
Yeah.
I can tell you what you've got to do in order
to be competitive.
Exactly.
We're going to postpone the worst leadership experience
ever and the best leadership.
I am dying to get to those.
But today, we're not going to have time.
I hope you come back.
I'd be happy to dive into those.
I do want to skip to a powerful lesson, though.
So if this was the last chance that you have to speak, Joe,
what powerful lesson can other visionary leaders
learn from your experience?
I always go back.
The thing that has benefited me the most
is I always tried to listen two to three times more
than I spoke about something.
And I don't know if it's my personality
or the way I'm wired.
That just in a group setting that disarmed people
and we were able to get to working
on what the real issues are.
That's really hard for me to do as a podcast host.
I'm supposed to be the one listening, my friend.
I like that, though.
I like it.
That's a powerful lesson for all of us.
Listen two to three times more than I speak about something.
And you've been playing with that wisdom
for a number of decades.
So I can see the value in following suit with that.
Well, we're going to wrap up a little bit on that today.
We'll talk a little bit more just open-endedly
since I don't want to go into the worst leadership
and the best leadership.
But we've got a couple extra minutes.
Joe, what are some other powerful lessons
of leadership that we can just pick up from you
in a couple of minutes?
You don't have to give me every fortune cookie in the book.
But I just so inspired to give you some time to share with us.
Well, I think young people that are
learning to lead in the hardest transitions that I saw
was in the private sector, where a person has
been kind of an expert.
They've worked on this particular niche.
And now the promotion system in the company
is now going to put them in a supervisory role of a couple
of people.
And they are just completely unarmed to do that.
And so I encourage people out there to take advantage of,
hey, you might be in a social group.
Learn to lead.
In other words, take on a task with a couple of other people.
It might be in your church.
It might be in your volunteer organization.
It might be volunteering down at the local pantry
where you give out food.
I mean, everybody will show you the basics.
And then they'll put you kind of in charge of stuff.
So there is all kinds of ways to learn
to interact with people before you actually have to do it
where you're on the job.
And it sounds trite, but believe me, it's a big deal.
No, no, no.
I think there's extreme wisdom in that.
I'll back you up on it.
One of the first articles I wrote on LinkedIn
talks about why we should hire from the hospitality industry.
I wrote it years ago.
Found phenomenal workers.
And when somebody comes in with a service-oriented attitude
that's willing to ultimately be subservient to somebody who's
mean or yelling or aggressive and your job
is to help them have a phenomenal experience,
there's a lot of humility that gets exercised there.
And two, I think there's a lot of wisdom.
I don't have as many decades as you.
I don't have 40 years to look at on this.
But I've got a couple of decades.
And you saying the hardest transition is basically
a private sector promotion, you have no idea how many times
I just broke my heart and hurt from my own experiences
as well as friends, family members, acquaintances,
the stories that I've heard and seen along the same path.
When we get put into leadership without any training
and without a good guide of, well, who the heck
do I hire then as a coach or as a mentor
to help me if nobody else is going to help me,
that is a very painful reality.
And then you tied that right into, well,
where can we figure this out on our own too?
There's a ton of wisdom in what you just shared.
So those of you who, again, visionary leaders,
feel like you're gravitating towards Joe, by all means,
reach out.
We'll have in the action steps below this episode ways
that you can connect with Joe.
We'll also have the resources that we
shared listed below that.
That way anybody can quickly grab and consume the value
that Joe's thrown down today.
In addition to that, though, if you know somebody,
if you've got somebody who's difficult to deal
with on your staff, or you've got somebody
who's looking for a job out there and needs some help,
then you might recommend they take
a look at what Joe Frankie's up to and how he's helping.
You might be the person who guides that person
to an opportunity of a lifetime.
It's amazing how fast our life can change
when we're put in the position to have the right job
or the right identity from a career standpoint.
And yeah, I'm excited to hear the stories of people
who end up connecting with you because of this experience,
Joe.
Joe, I'll let you close out today.
You wrap up for us.
Well, after the first 300 people I coached,
everybody was saying, hey, Joe, where's your PDF?
Where's your pamphlet?
Where's your e-book?
So Lori Ruff, another thought leader on LinkedIn
and good friend of mine, she and I got together
and we wrote a book called LinkedIn,
the five minute drill for executive networking success.
And it was the hardest thing I've ever done
because the book is one hour in length.
In other words, it's a one hour read.
But it's designed to arm you with all the knowledge.
And if you need more knowledge, there's
a bunch of reference stuff in the back
to take the deeper dive if that's what you want.
I saw that.
I saw that it's got 47 reviews too on Amazon, which
is not easy to obtain.
You got to have people who you got to really promote that
to get it out there.
And I hope you continue to launch the 2.0 versions of it
and build upon the foundation that you've laid.
Again, there's so much wisdom and value
that's overlooked here or that could be,
both in terms of our show too.
We're at 21,000 downloads today.
And in total, a lot of people would say, oh my gosh,
that's not a drop in the bucket compared to the football
games this weekend.
And so we got a long ways to go in terms
of helping people catch the quick value of what we do.
But we'll do that with all you visionaries out there too,
diving in, sharing these resources with others.
And we look forward to helping all of you
on building out your visions.
We'll see you guys on the next episode.
Joe, thanks for being here today.
Oh, thanks for having me.
Been a pleasure.
See you guys.
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 time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision.