No, that was that was her audio on her phone and her computer, right?
Interacting kind of like when you join a Zoom call and you're on the phone and
that's like, but the redundancy, you know, it's, it's so great to have great team
members and to be able to know they're going to show up and get things done and
help each other out.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
We're so where are you based in Charlottesville?
I'm just north like 10 miles north, but it's considered the greater
Charlottesville area.
Yes.
Okay.
Very good.
And you've got this awesome event coming up.
It's on October 18th, which is my grandpa's birthday, the day after mine.
So, Live to Lead, tell me about it.
Live to Lead is a leadership conference that John Maxwell does every year.
And he pulls together amazing leaders from across the country.
If you go to my website, you can see the speakers that I'm going to probably
include, including Malcolm Gladwell and John Gordon.
And of course, John Maxwell, I've got a local speaker coming in.
It's for me locally, it's a one day conference that gives you the opportunity
to network with other leaders in your area, that gives you the opportunity to
learn from world-class leaders that you'll see there.
I have Ashley Reynolds Marshall, who is the deputy chair or the deputy director
of inclusion and representation here in the Charlottesville city.
And it's just the speakers that we have to choose from are just too big.
So we have virtual speakers and we have live speakers, but we do have.
Malcolm Gladwell, that is so awesome.
Yes.
And he like geeks out on the detail, he like geeks out on some stats and stuff
about how diversity in areas other than just what we look like.
He called me a holy fool in his book, talking with strangers.
I was like, Oh, that's me.
So that's a live thing.
And if you wanted to go to live to lead.com, you could see if there's something in
your area, because there's over 350 of these sites across the world.
Quite frankly, we have some Kenya and Australia and all over the United States.
So there's always something for you.
This is some pictures from our last one that we did in January and we'll update
them again this year with new stuff.
If I'm looking for sponsors, if you want to be a sponsor and it's just right here
in the Charlottesville area, it's a nice little place to hold about a hundred of us.
And I'm excited to see what kind of leadership we come out with and the
takeaways that we have this year.
But there is an online version if you just want the leader pass.
So if you're not in the Charlottesville area, you can just let me know.
And I can get you a leader pass, point you in that direction as well.
And it'll give you even last year's and maybe even the year before.
I don't remember who all, but last year included like Marcus Buckingham.
I mean, some really, really good names.
Absolutely.
Now we talked about maybe relabeling you as the international optimist.
And at the same time, I think we both hold very sacred the word.
Intentional, right?
Your intentionality as an optimist.
That means a lot to me.
We, we had a fun connection.
What was it like three months ago?
Yeah.
It's crazy how fast time flies.
So today we're going to be talking about defining our own principles.
You audience, when I say you, I'm talking to literally like, this is your
opportunity to find your own principles for impactful and another important
word to us, sustainable leadership with Andrea Johnson.
So, um, if you go to firstclassbusiness.io, you scroll to the bottom, you'll
see that our tagline is sustainable revenue growth.
Um, that's a tagline that most people find quite boring.
Um, but it's in fact, as a business owner, I don't find that boring at all.
That's because you've been in business for more than three years.
Yeah.
And that's why it's a great way to put bro marketers to sleep.
And it's a great way to help those who actually want to succeed and win and
stop pretending they're making it go, Oh, somebody actually knows how to do that.
Um, yeah.
And so you're, you're talking about impactful, sustainable leadership,
and then defining these own principles.
Let's give the audience some, uh, like some direct insight.
We usually hold this till later, but what does it mean to define your own principles?
You know, we grow up imitating.
It's just normal.
That's how we start.
Babies start that way.
We imitate.
The words, the actions, you know, even my son who's adopted it.
There are times I think could grief, how is he, how is he not genetically related
to me or my husband because he'll parrot things back to us and he's going to be 16
this year, right?
So it never stops.
We are used to saying that when I went trick or treating and I was like.
Trick or treat.
Thank you.
And they gave me extra candy.
I knew what I was doing.
I was just kind of imitating something that would give me more.
Yeah, we all did it guys.
We still do it as adults.
So go ahead.
Well, and as children too, we learn the things that get us the really good job
pat on the back and the things that don't.
And so we, as we grow, we, we do that in school.
We regurgitate things for tests.
We go to college.
If we go to college or we go into the workforce, either way, we're learning
other people's principles and priorities for how we should succeed.
And you just mentioned bro marketers, right?
It's like, this is a good example as well.
When we do that.
It's really good starting place, right?
We have to start somewhere.
Very few of us can like pop out at like five years old or 10 years old and say,
this is who I am.
I mean, I admire those people and they, those unicorns show up every once in a while,
but most of us Jackson can't do that.
Most of us need somebody else because we have our own strengths and weaknesses
and our own proclivities and, and then the environment.
So what happens is we get into the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
the workforce or we get into leadership positions.
And I saw this a lot in the university system.
And I understand this happens in other industries, but somebody who's really
good at their job then gets promoted to the manager of that job or then decides
to create their own company and they don't have the skills, the leadership skills
they need because they've been imitating somebody else.
And so what happens is we end up feeling very disempowered.
We, we feel like we don't have control.
Like this is, I had responsibility without authority, right?
I mean, that's one of the reasons why I don't work for somebody else anymore.
It's like, no, if I'm going to have responsibility for it,
I want the authority to change it.
But a lot of times the clients I work with and the people that I talk to,
they feel like they're constantly consistently compromising their own
non-negotiables, they feel unbalanced if it's a work life balance, if it's a
balance of what's important. I mean, I can't tell you how many
conversations I had with even just administrative assistants.
How do I talk to all these professors and tell them, I can't do your thing today
in 30 minutes because I have 10 other things in front of you.
I'm like, well, you just tell them.
But because they had no authority,
they felt disempowered to even do those simple, simple things.
And so when we are imitating other people's principles and priorities,
we are disempowered.
So it is not until we can let go of those things and move away from that,
like you said, to to create and define, not create, actually define,
uncover and define our own principles and priorities.
That's when it becomes sustainable.
You've got the water project, right?
I mean, it's like when you can find a really good well or if you can find
a really good underground stream, that's sustainable.
Right.
Trying to pump it in from someplace else is not sustainable.
What if electricity goes out?
What if you mean, it's just like all these great examples.
And we just don't think about our own ability to lead being something that could
be renewable on a daily basis.
We don't think about our energy being or our batteries being rechargeable on our own.
This is a big reason why the rich get richer.
Right. It's not necessarily because they're bad people.
There's good and bad of all walks of life.
And if you have something that is sustainable,
if you have what I call a virtuous cycle, you know, psychology calls it a virtuous
cycle, then you end up with something that can continue to produce results
and exponential growth can occur.
So it may start with us with our principles initially.
But if you stay at it long enough and you
work towards what's called a law of the harvest, feel free to Google or YouTube
that then you end up in a position to where you are cultivating continuous
results of different kinds and different magnitudes.
So I love that you talked about that.
One thing you said that shook me because I work with entrepreneurs and there's a
massive difference between entrepreneurs and.
People who have jobs, right, career driven individuals, a massive we talk differently,
we see things differently, there's a massive difference between
entrepreneurs at my level and sports stars like LeBron James,
you know, superstar athletes who are crushing it day in and day out and almost
everything they do, my hat's off to him, man, he works harder than I do.
I don't know how, but he does.
And I have a reverence for that.
You said some people
feel like they're compromising their non-negotiables.
And my hard nose entrepreneur leader says that's an oxymoron.
Like if it's truly a non-negotiable, you literally will not compromise it.
So you have this you have this soft cadence about you, your ability to nurture
and help people capture the reality that, you know, maybe you're again,
you're more diplomatic with these matters than I am.
My my entrepreneurs, they will die
without somebody helping being more direct to them and saying that's bull crap.
We can make your non-negotiables
non-negotiable and stick to it, otherwise stop calling it a non-negotiable.
Why is 96 percent of businesses lose within 10 years and four percent?
Talk to the four percent who've survived.
Ask them about their finances.
I dare you, those of you listening in, you'll find out that they're not actually
crushing it, they're still getting crushed, too.
They just carry debt better than the rest of us.
Very few of them have learned how to turn it into something sustainable and profound
and and profitable.
So those those are passions that are important to me for the protection of
those that I serve, but leadership and impact comes in many different forms.
And that's something that the show has given me a great opportunity to to calm
down, appreciate a little bit more, realize that, man, we we need people like Andrea
who are going to show up and meet people where they're at.
And we also need people who are also able to be the holy fool.
Again, thank you, Malcolm Gladwell.
And sound the alarm and be like, if we don't change this,
everybody's going to fall off this cliff at the end.
So how is leaders?
How do we make space for different types of leadership?
Because I see a lot of coaches who they either feel like they have to be Grant
Cardone controlling everybody or they have to be ultra soft and babysit and coddle
people to to victory.
Is there a balance?
Is there a happy medium?
Is there a harmony that can exist?
And what does that look like to you?
Well, I'm going to start with an example from Caesar Milan because I love me the dog
whisperer and he has a show out now called Better Human, Better Dog.
And one of the things that he talks about is you have to be the leader.
I mean, it's easy to think about this with animals, right?
It's like you have to be the pack leader or the dog feels like they need to protect
you or is afraid of you.
I mean, it just just watching it with my son.
It's like this is such good leadership advice, you know, and to watch even a small
child can lead a dog really, really well and be the leader the dog needs.
What we don't realize is that we don't I don't know that there is a harmony of
leadership. I don't know that there is a we don't want to be Grant Cardone,
but we also don't want to be swishy.
I mean, it's like the whole point is to be you.
You were created with a specific set of
non-negotiables, a specific set of strengths, a specific set of weaknesses,
quite frankly, that you blind spots that you have.
And when you if you do the work to figure out you,
then you have the ability to show up with authority and humility and integrity and
say, all right, this is not a thing that I can handle.
I got to pull in somebody over here.
Like we just we started this live having a conversation in the middle of a
conversation about your team that has redundancies in it because you know you
need that. And that's a perfect example.
So it goes back to I don't need to imitate Grant Cardone.
I don't need to imitate John Maxwell.
And I love that you tied Discord to Harmony just now because that's a part of making
great music. So it's a beautiful way of helping people realize like, well,
it doesn't always have to feel perfect.
You know, we don't just want one note.
We want multiple. And I wrote this quote down for us.
The whole point is to be you on Andrea Johnson on leadership.
Right. And there's so there's one other thing
that people get triggered by that I notice.
And most of the time, it's soft people and they they they they don't like
comparisons. A lot of soft people don't.
They're like, no, don't comparing is bad.
Don't compare your children. That's bull crap.
I'm sorry. It's bull crap.
And here's why.
If I want to learn how to do a layup,
I need to watch what LeBron James does and Stephen Curry does and Kyrie Irving.
Does that mean I'm replacing my identity with them?
No, it doesn't.
It means I'm willing to pick up and learn
the technical component or the skill set from these individuals who have mastered
a certain law of physics and what they do.
And so there's there's another discord opportunity there.
Right. Well, wait a second.
OK, when somebody says they are trying not to be like so and so or they want to be
like somebody and emulate, there's a progressive path
where people start to find their own self.
But then there's still that opportunity to recognize, OK,
what are the other virtues and values I'm
going to pick up from watching said leader on stage and are watching said leader
engage with some individual in a very difficult situation saying, OK,
how can I use utilize that with my own identity?
So I love that you talk about we shouldn't be replacing our our true identity of self.
We should be cultivating it.
And yes, I'm also saying and make sure that you are doing using healthy comparisons
to see how these principles are implemented in the world.
So you turn the harmony thing into a discord that was beautiful.
And I got to learn the seventh and ninth chords, man.
That's leadership to do.
Yeah. Jazz is my favorite music.
So you got to have the discord in there to make it so make sense.
It's like you want to have that depth. Right.
But the other thing, too, is this goes back to how we learn.
And you start off imitating LeBron James or Kyrie Irving.
But you have to get to a place where you
understand your body works in a different way, partially because it's not shaped like
LeBron James and so you have to adapt what LeBron James does or Larry Bird or
anybody else, right, or Kevin McHale.
I'm going back to my glory glory basketball.
But you have to adapt how your body functions in that law of physics and
understand what works for you and what doesn't.
The only way to do that is through experience, is through finally deciding.
I'm going to do this myself.
I know the principles I gained from that person and I'm actually make it mine.
And everybody does that.
Everybody like if you watch a good chef, they'll do the same thing.
They'll take it. They'll tweak it.
They'll figure out what works for them.
And when you're a leader, you have to grow as a leader on a daily basis.
I just got off a call earlier with a Core Values coaching and she's a CEO with
several restaurants and it's a family owned business.
So she's not even she's sort of that mix between she didn't start the business,
but she also isn't an employee, right?
She's the CEO.
And even she said, Andrea, I am amazed at how responsible I am for not
allowing my core values to be honored.
And when you show up in a way that honors you and honors others,
it removes the defensiveness from how you lead.
It removes the need for
what's that word I hate competition.
It eliminates that word.
And I don't know that I would consider myself a non-competitive person.
But for me, competition is all about making me better.
It's not about beating someone.
And so for her to be able to say, now I'm showing up in a way that means
I don't automatically assume that when somebody pushes back, it's about me.
They've got something going on.
It just changes.
So that's where the harmony piece comes back in.
It's like when you can do that, then you can actually meet others where they are.
And it's it happens consistently every day.
I have to wake up and do this every single day because I, too, have the same
struggle because we're all human and we just need to give once we understand
where we're coming from, when I know what my non-negotiables are.
And I love circle back.
You said if they're not negotiables, they're not negotiable.
You're one of those unicorn strong people.
I am for me.
My non-negotiables were and I've run into a lot of women who deal with this,
especially women from the South or an evangelical culture,
who have run into this idea that in order to be accepted, in order to not be called
certain names, in order to advance in certain ways, we've had to
put layers on and soften or or even compromise our own core values for the
good of whatever. And I know it happens to men.
I just specialize in how it happens to women.
And because that's my experience.
And the more we take those layers off, what's so fascinating.
And my client said this to me this morning was, oh, it turns out all that.
That was all in my head.
Oh, shocker.
And as entrepreneurs, we do this.
We assume somebody doesn't want to buy from us.
We assume somebody doesn't have enough money.
And those are the bad ways.
But we could also assume that everybody needs our idea when we haven't really vetted it.
Right. So there's a lot of breaking those
things down that will give you not just the discord, but the harmony in leadership
that will allow you to show up in a way that is sustainable because you don't need
to be drained every day doing leadership.
Right. Exactly.
There's so much wisdom in all the things that you said.
I want to just keep going on these veins.
I will say one of the unique
aspects that helped me shape into the unicorn, right, the strength of
non-negotiables as I was raised by my mom and five other sisters.
And so I got to see one when there were six women who were super strong.
My mom's first husband died in a plane crash.
That changes your paradigm.
Right. And then when my dad left at her command, of course,
to know this is not healthy for the family,
you know, there was a resilience that existed.
But there's still that there's that passion, there's that empathy that I feel
towards my sisters and my mom of like, oh, man, I wish I could have helped.
And such and such situations.
And so it it does.
It's it's one that because I have the resilience I have for my dedication to my
own non-negotiables, I tend to be very outspoken with others.
And like, wait, you know, protect your
non-negotiables, you know, don't don't let this happen to you the way I've seen
it happen to my family members and etc.
It's something that's I'm really passionate about.
And so I'm glad that you again, you brought this up because it's one of those
realities that when we're truly strong as leaders, visionaries, when you're working
with your team members, somebody who is strong, actually strong,
is not scared to talk about non-negotiables because you're not you're not
penetrable, right, you're you're you're set and what you know.
And if you can find team members who will honor that about you and they bring their
own non-negotiables to the table and you can honor their non-negotiables,
you can create an amazing environment to work in.
So, well, we're going to switch gears real fast.
One, you've given one great resource, and that's this Live to Lead Conference.
What are two more resources that you'd recommend to visionary leaders out there?
Well, I am an atomic habits junkie and I've read it.
I got it like on my desk.
And so James Clear is just he just breaks
it all down and makes it so simple.
And even if you just use one, whatever habit you need.
And like I'm an ADHD advocate, my son has ADHD.
And I realize their brains don't always create habits.
But even if it's he, James Clear talks
about even just setting triggers that will get you to do something.
And so that's a piece that I'm like, I recommend it to everybody.
And if you're an entrepreneur, I'm also going to recommend Profit First.
But but those are the those are the books I would recommend.
And conferences like Live to Lead are fabulous.
Yeah, I love it.
Dr. Todd Snyder is my first 50 50 business partner here at First Class Business.
He's now a silent investor.
And he was really, really big on and is really, really big on Profit First.
And he is one of the best peak performance coaches in the world.
No matter how much money we have coming in, if you have it allocated appropriately,
like the first time I did my taxes as an entrepreneur, I'm like, I have money to
pay my taxes. It's so amazing.
You know, I mean, it's just like you don't get into the the really hard stuff
that a lot of entrepreneurs deal with.
Great book. Great minds recommending it from Andrea Johnson and Dr.
Todd Snyder. And we will be right back.
We'll take a short break.
We're going to get back in and hear about Andrea's vision.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum.
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, everybody?
Welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And we are on fire today.
We have got the intentional optimist on the show, Andrea Johnson.
And she has just come out of the gates like a rocket ship.
And I've absolutely enjoyed it.
We're going to bring her back on stage.
We're going to talk about defining our own
principles for impactful, sustainable leadership and growth.
Before we bring Andrea back on stage,
I always want to spread the wealth of resources that exist, one of them in the
form of a military resource.
This is the Hard2Kill.org organization, Hard2Kill.org by Dave Morrow.
Dave's helping one hundred thousand veterans lose two million pounds collectively.
If you know a veteran, definitely send them over our way to the
community, Hard2Kill community, and check out his podcast.
He's got one of the best military podcasts there is out there.
Now, why is this important?
A lot of military personnel lose track
of their routines when they get out of the military.
Others have been dedicated to a rigorous workout that's
not necessarily sustainable long term for their health.
He helps them get reacclimated.
The military personnel on our lives, you know, they're facing depression.
A lot of them are facing their suicide rates have gone up a lot.
So getting them in a community that helps them focus on looking good,
feeling good and doing good, I would recommend that is one of the best
options and opportunities for them.
So tag your friends, come and join us as and join us as civilians as well.
I'm also in the group. It's done a lot for me.
I'm doing a hundred pushups a day now.
I wasn't doing hardly anything for almost eight years previous.
So I highly recommend checking out how Dave motivates.
Then there's opportunities for work for Latinos.
This is our own in-house program.
I highly recommend checking it out if you're in a position where you're
thinking of hiring a virtual assistant, they can then consider some of the
Latinos who work with us, they go through a 90 day certification program
to help them understand how being a virtual assistant works, how to be a
digital ambassador, as we call it now.
You can always use Upwork five or anything else, too.
But if you know, Latino leaders, what we're looking for right now is Latino leaders
who would want to be on our Latino driven Spanish speaking podcast
because they're in the process of building their own channel.
They just hosted Keekang Lace, who has nine hundred thousand subscribers.
They also hosted LaTeacher Alma.
It's saying her name is right.
I'm losing my English here a little bit,
but they've they've been they've been interviewing YouTube influencers
and people who have been able to do dynamic things for their life.
And what are we what are we doing?
Well, we're spreading hope and nations that don't typically have access to a job.
If they don't go down a specific career path in school,
we have the opportunity to dramatically affect economies globally with this process.
And Opportunities for Latinos has recently launched as well as opportunities
for Filipinos and opportunities for India.
Thanks to Ange Castro in the Philippines and Harry Vasisht from India.
We're grateful for them.
So we can always do more.
And speaking of the water project, the water project is a cause that I'm not
affiliated with, I just really love what they do.
I love their transparency.
When you donate to the water project,
you actually get to choose which community you're going to help.
And when you do that, they will send you
picture evidence and the story of what are they doing, how are they doing it,
how are they bringing a water well or a sand dam to this community and how are
they creating sustainability for them now?
We're talking about affecting more than 500 lives at a time.
These are moms and dads who have to leave work in order to just get water for their
kids. These are kids who have to leave school in order to fetch water for the
community and the generational impact that we can make just by being involved in this
by donating or spreading the word is amazing.
So if you're not in a financial position to help out, my hope is that you just take
a little bit of time to meditate or pray and think through who can I share this
initiative with and talk to them or talk about it, open a conversation over lunch
or over this. You never know the ripple effect of the good that could be done
simply by opening your mouth. Don't take that for granted.
I definitely don't.
So without further ado, we're going to bring Andrea on stage.
We're going to talk about her vision.
And Andrea, thanks so much for joining me on Vision Pros Live.
Thank you again. It is my privilege.
I love these conversations.
Oh, it's going to be it's going to be fun.
Feel free to redirect me at any time, by the way, as we go through this.
So I don't think we're going to have time to get through everything we want to.
But we're going to start with the vision.
So there's you're welcome to start with where people are at.
But I'm really curious.
What is your vision ahead?
What does it look like for those people that you're serving?
So the world, I think the reason why I do
what I do in the vision that I have is I envision a world with more curious,
welcoming and wise leaders, leaders who stand and stand by and understand
their core values, they recognize their strengths and then they have a clear set
of life principles, whether they're my intentional optimism
timets or the ones that they've developed on their own after they've started
practicing and figuring out how to live those things out.
But understanding the difference between
those means that we have leaders who can lead with integrity, humility and authority.
That's what I shared a little bit earlier and to mentor the next generation.
So to create the cycle of leaders who mentor the next one as they come along.
That's my vision.
I don't normally do this, but
I align with the principles that you share.
It's very easy to see the tenacity, the passion and the light and the love that you
use to curate. So you said it really fast.
I'm going to slow it back down and say it again.
You said leaders who are curious,
leaders who can welcome others and leaders who are wise.
How did you get centered around these principles?
Well, some of them are my own core values.
So, yeah, so knowing what my non-negotiables are has informed how what my vision is
and how I lead other people and how I train other people.
And one of my top three core values is belonging.
And in order to define a core value, it's an internal principle.
It's not something that's external.
It's reciprocal.
It's something that brings you joy or just really upsets you when it's dishonored.
And so for me to be able to say I am
welcoming because I want to foster belonging not just for me, but also for you.
Right. I want you to feel like you belong whenever you're in my presence.
And therefore, I think as leaders, you talked about having soft leaders or harder
leaders, I think we can all be welcoming,
whether we're soft or hard by anybody's definition.
And as long as we do that, then the conversations about diversity are.
Oh, and the curiosity.
I call myself I say I have terminal curiosity.
I am one of those people.
And whenever I put that out there, like I put that on a social media post, it goes
like because people just think it's hysterical.
It is.
But when we are curious, we are much more welcoming when we can say, well,
I'm just asking questions and it's clearly there's something behind that.
Clearly, there's some kind of agenda.
But when we're curious, the agenda is to understand.
And so when we do that and we can become
more curious about ourselves and about others, we're more likely to have to
cultivate wisdom. Right.
And so all those things go hand in hand and they are kind of a part of
just a piece of my core values that I can live out for other people.
My top core value is thinking for myself.
That's not a vision that I mean, I would love for everybody to be able to do that.
And I want people to do that.
But my real vision is how does it get played out in our leadership, in our
mentorship, in the way we interact with our communities and our clients?
Wow.
There's a lot of depth.
One of my favorite books is a book called Feelings Buried Alive Never Die.
And I'm writing it down.
There's another great one called The Child Whisper.
And the challenge with those two books is they're just so deep that it takes a long
time to like, you got to really sit with it to really get the whole maximum value.
And I'm feeling the same thing with you, Andrea.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's so many
rabbit holes I want to dive down with.
So I want to go back to.
I want to tie your concept to one of my
own personal challenges, and I think a lot of visionaries, especially the stubborn or
the self-assured ones, will benefit a lot from this.
So you said we can all be more welcoming.
And I, too, am a big fan of the idea and the sense of belonging.
Yet one of the challenges that I face as a leader is, for instance, wouldn't it be
nice if everybody came on his stage right on Vision Pros Live?
You know, that's welcome everybody onto it.
However, the challenge we run into is we end up having leaders.
Let's say that I put some guy on stage
and he says he has some non-invasive heart surgery that's going to change the world.
And it turns out he's an absolute crook and criminal and has no desire to help.
But is and maybe his intention is to do good, but he's struggling financially.
So he's kind of just fudging the numbers and kind of fudging things to move us.
Well, we run into that
with people who want on our stage to promote their book or to promote something
else, and I am certainly curious until I'm not.
Well, right until it's until it's been satisfied.
Yeah, like this is manipulative.
And then the worst I watched a movie last night, Alpenheimer,
and his wife in the movie says something that like that I was like, oh,
that's a really great line.
So I took a picture of the screen of the movie and she said the fastest way to get
it, she said, you know, the truly vindictive are patient as saints.
Hmm.
And I was like, so true.
Why don't people realize that?
All right.
So I have a reality of like, I want to be welcoming and I want to let people in.
But there's so many people who also take advantage, manipulate or aren't doing
things for the right reasons, not everybody, but a lot.
So how do you balance that with wise?
What is with wisdom?
So, OK, with wise and discernment.
And so another tool that I have discovered that I really like is called
Working Genius, and it helps you figure out where you fall on the project line.
Like
one of the reframing my question, OK, do you welcome everybody into your circle or
do you have healthy boundaries as well?
And when you come across somebody who is like that, do you burn them at the stake
or do you show like I prefer to use the term shields up.
Uh huh.
OK, so one of the things that I talk about with core values is that it does help you.
And you and you kind of hinted at this.
It helps you define your own space.
It helps you define your own boundaries.
It's like this is my house or my primary core values and outside my house is my
secondary. Nobody walks in my front door without my permission unless it's, you know,
if they do, that's bad. Right.
So it's the same way with our when.
And that's how I describe if if somebody like if my door is open,
people are more likely to walk in.
And so it's kind of my fault that I left my door open.
Like if somebody steals my car because I left it unlocked, I don't have a lot of
recourse there, you know.
So being able to define your boundaries.
And you talked about with your team when you all have your own boundaries, you'd
think that the boundaries would be something that repels other people.
But what's interesting is when you know where you end and they begin, it is
amazing how much closer you can get.
And so when when we talk about being welcoming to everyone, I'm
I am very welcoming and I am people have called me naive and give people too many
chances, but I'll give you a chance or two.
But as soon as I see what's really there, right, if if you say don't look behind
the curtain and then you open the curtain and I see there what's what's there,
I'm like, oh, no, no, no, we're we're done.
And it's OK to do that because that's where wisdom and discernment comes in as
a leader. You have to be the one that can make those choices.
You have to be the one that says, all right, these are our main principles.
But we also have some non-negotiables
on how we're going to protect those main principles.
Right. And so I don't think that's bad at all.
I just don't I don't burn them at the stake.
I just I might let them know that, yeah,
this is not something that we're going to pursue any further.
And I've had to like not air interviews.
I've had to or I've had to chop them down from an hour to 20 minutes because of
things that were shared.
And I'm like, this is not appropriate to share on a podcast.
And so those kinds of things are that's one of the reasons why I say all of those
three together, the curious, the welcoming and the wise.
And if you don't have if you don't have
that discernment yourself, if you've got a team around you is where I was going
with that widget thing.
If you have a team around you that helps you discern, I have a podcast producer
who's like, yeah, I don't think so, because she's like super like dialed in.
And so I think having again that good team, even if you're a solopreneur,
there's people that you have in your life that are in your orbit that are helping.
I'm going to say right now, Vision Pros,
if you're a solopreneur, this is not the show for you.
I have never, ever met a solopreneur who's actually winning.
They're either stepping on all of the
people in their path and not giving any credit to anybody or there.
It's a complete lie.
So I've there's probably the unicorn out there who's actually done it.
But I have literally never met one.
So I'm going to shoot it down.
I mean, the definition because I call
myself a solopreneur because I don't have paid team members.
But I have people that support me
because they believe in my vision that I hope to pay in the future.
But they're not a solopreneur.
So I'm not so by your definition, I'm not a solopreneur.
I have an amazing team.
And like for Live2Lead, I have a whole whole volunteer team that is just
phenomenal, but these are people that have proven themselves to me.
These are people that I know.
Well, I think what we do is we set up a false pretense for the rest of the world
to follow when we when we speak without that intentionality.
It's like, OK, I get that everybody's
drawn to this idea of solopreneurship, and it sounds like, oh, cool.
I can be an entrepreneur without paying people.
True.
No, no.
You have the kingdom somehow.
And so those the words end up, you know, when people see that.
And the same thing with another entrepreneur, like if you're an entrepreneur
and you have a spouse who has their own income, right?
A lot of boss babes out there, I'm going to call them out.
But I'm specifically talking about the boss babes that hide that reality.
You own and you talk about it.
But I'm talking about the ones who say they're self-made.
They say that, you know, I was able to do this and I was able to do it fast.
And what they're not admitting is six
figure hubby salary or six figure wife's salary is actually sustaining all
of their mistakes while they're they're convincing single moms like mine
to think that they have the same chance and the same variables.
And that's completely unethical.
In my opinion, I agree.
That's something that we have to address
as as leaders and say, well, wait a second, we're literally leading people off
the cliff due to our privileged statuses rather than recognizing that we as a
responsibility as leaders have to be as responsible as a doctor is and saying,
you know, before I give you this medicine, what other medicines are you taking?
Before I give you this medicine, what other conditions do you have?
Too many leaders are able to just fly off
the cuff and blab about anything because there is no malpractice for us as leaders.
There is no checks and balances for the coaches in the world.
So we break the law.
Right. Unless what? Unless you break the law.
You know, but I mean, but that's why Jackson, I talk about the whole point of all
of this is to lead with integrity, is to lead with humility, but to still have
the authority that you need to do what you need to do.
People, you know, Maxwell and other people say people don't care how much you know
until they know how much you care. Right.
So that that functions in your team, whether it's a paid or unpaid team.
That is your clients.
That is your audience.
Everything that you do, you you cannot.
I mean, I'm not one of those you have to be a servant leader because I don't think
that truly is the perfect picture.
So because I like to have authority in there
and a servant leader does not feel like they have authority to me.
That's like a semantic.
Christ said, no, and I'll be the first to say that.
But we're so but we're not Jesus and we, you know, we're human and we have things
that are, you know, but that but I think it resonates differently with different
people. So I'm with you.
It's kind of like that word, so you're welcome to keep your definition on it.
And what you do.
But I think we're all different how we see that.
So I see servant leadership as the most as the strongest form of leadership because
it's something that I'm choosing to do.
Right. It's it's my own active of giving a service because I chose to do it, not
because I'm subservient or forced to.
Yeah. And a lot of people don't use that.
Right. That to me is a brilliant definition.
And if you and there's plenty of places
in the world where you if you hold up Jesus as the example of the servant
leadership, it goes right over people's heads or they shut you down.
So, you know, it's like I am looking for ways to describe that without necessarily
not that I would hide from that.
I used to be in that I used to be in that bucket.
And I and I it's a it's an I shouldn't say bucket.
Right. You got Peter and Paul.
They had different missions, different types of audiences that they needed.
And so I spent a long time where I was
leading and knew that I wasn't supposed to mention Christianity at all.
And that was that was my platform and how I ran things.
And it's funny, a man sent me a voice clip one day and he said, hey, Jackson,
I got to give you credit. I just got baptized.
Thank you for your influence.
And I'm thinking I've never once said the word Jesus, God, Bible, nothing back then.
And it's like, this is so neat and validating.
And then as I started work with
Carolyn Thompson Twaddle, a great author, by the way, she wrote this book
Living in Sync with Your God Given Design.
It's not because I converted to Carolyn.
It's not because of some massive transition that everybody has to go through.
For me and myself, I was I finished a meeting with her.
I was showering and I got this this voice came that said, hey,
that said, hey, it's time to be unapologetically Christian.
And I was like, whoa, that's a huge shift from how I do things.
Like, you know, really?
I mean, it was yes, that was my new call for for this phase of life.
But there's a difference for me still.
And this is levels of intentionality, right.
And purpose and thinking through, you know, I've always been really, really
good at helping atheists and agnostics feel welcome and feel accepted in my
presence and know that I'm not here.
I want to learn from you that curiosity aspect just as much as if you want to
learn something for me, fine, you know, but I'm trying to learn so much.
So it's there's different there's different styles related to it.
There's different opportunities.
You know, it's it's helpful to know our audiences as well.
And and you and I both do a good job of knowing what the audience looks like.
But what you've done for me today in terms of exploring this,
this the depths of the well of being welcoming and understanding of the
boundaries and how those exist and tying the wisdom to it.
There's a couple of key key components that I get to play with now.
One of them, you said, is we are when we are curious, we are more welcoming and
we're constantly going to be refining that process for the people that we're
meeting with. So I'm curious, Andrea, you could you could probably hang it all up
and stop tomorrow and go golf or go watch basketball games.
But what's your vision for you?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
You know, this whole idea of it's a daily thing, you know, when we talk about why
did you get started doing what you're doing?
Well, it's because I went have gone through and am going through.
Right. So my vision for others is very closely tied to my vision for myself.
As a coach, as a trainer, as a speaker, as a podcaster, I always they tell you you
only have to be like 10 steps ahead.
Well, I want to be at least 10 steps ahead.
But sometimes, you know, I learn from like I love that you said you learn from me.
That's a very high compliment.
And to to say, like I learn from every single one of my clients.
But my vision for myself is to get to a place where I no longer fear living in my
core values and being my own non-negotiable self.
In order to prove to people, I am living proof, I am living proof because I can be
I can look confident with the best of them and I can say the best things, but
you're not hearing what's going on in my head or when the camera turns off or laying
up in the middle of the night thinking about, you know, whatever.
And so for me, the vision is to get to that place where I really just no longer worry
about it, where I really do trust the process, trust God bringing me through
the journey, because our journeys are a little similar.
I started with a little, you know, kind of being very Christian and then going
through a full almost deconstruction period and then it was like, no, we don't
talk about that at all. And now it's like, it's very clear.
It's like coming back in.
And my my clients that want to stick around or they keep coming to me are all
from church. It's like, OK.
And, you know, it for so the vision for myself would be that I would actually be
the one that could live out these principles in a way that other people was
just very clear and that they could see that.
And if I can make that one thing that's one of my favorite things about you as a
leader is your focus as you've talked to us has been about making sure that we
become right. The person your your form submission, actually, I'm going to I'm
going to go back to that because you said some profound things in it that I like to
make a little space for if you're if you're willing to.
Andrea, I'd love to have you come back on the show.
Make sure that we talk about the the worst leadership experience ever, the best
leadership experience ever. I know you've got amazing.
I've got some worse ones, man.
Exactly. And and those are things that we get to learn from.
So history doesn't repeat itself for those of us who get to learn from it.
So you said in your form, my vision is it's not what you do that makes you an
impactful leader, but who you are.
And by understanding and respecting your
core values, you can move from imitating other people's principles and priorities
to defining your own for impactful, sustainable leadership.
That process of focusing on who you are
is something that was life changing for me to come on to come to first understand.
I heard a couple of times and I understood it.
And then when I understood it, I was like, oh, man,
this is like learning about oxygen for the first time.
There's so much more to learn about how this stuff works.
And so you've you've got this depth, depth of wisdom where you've been playing
with that concept and implementing, I mentioned the book
Feelings Buried Alive Never Die.
It opens your eyes to all these feelings
and principles that that I maybe took for granted, you know how to implement.
Right. And so you have these these core values, thinking for myself as one
belonging as another belonging, being one that hit me.
I'm like, that's definitely up there for mine.
But I haven't been as intentional about finding the full list of potential
principles and values. You seem to have a depth of a list
considering thinking for myself as one. What does it look like?
How do you where's the exercise for this?
How did you get to where you've centered yourself so well around principles
and and what they mean?
Well, I started this was just one of those pieces when you're a coach and you get
coach training. One of the things they talk about is like helping people figure
out their core values. And there's people who do this.
Like Brene Brown is really good at it.
But when I started looking at how I was
supposed to walk other people through this, I thought, oh, I need to do this for myself.
And so I just really dove in.
And if you scroll all the way back up to the top, there's a couple of buttons on my
website there, and one of them is that get connected will do.
My scroller speaks Spanish, so they might make it.
I've forgotten my Spanish.
I'm actually in Duolingo studying Korean right now.
And so it's like, I pay so much.
But if you all the way to the top, there's a button and it says free core values
exercise, it's a downloadable PDF that will kind of walk you through the steps.
And for some people, that's enough.
For somebody like you, that might be enough.
If for some reason that's not enough, there is a core values exercise.
Excuse me, a core values digital course.
And that's under tools.
You're looking at different tools that are coming across the website here.
And and I also have and it's not out on my website yet, but you can contact me.
I'm in beta testing of core values coaching.
So you go through the course and you meet
with me for six different sessions to actually push back and walk through and
help you figure them all out. Some people just depends on how you're
wired, how you need that kind of thing. So, well, I love it.
And I'm I'm excited about I'm excited from where you came from that, because I think
all of us have come across certain assessments with that.
Right. And as it's kind of like having different math teachers.
Right. And you can see every math teacher and you were like obsessive math.
Right. And then you look at the front.
The the formulas that they're all drawing on the chalkboards.
You can learn from all of them, different techniques and different realities.
So
I'm I'm glad to know that you I'm going to be diving into the resource.
I'm going to take that assessment myself
to take a look and see what I learned from it, just like positive intelligence.
Barbara and Gardner, Hiram Mills is real big fan and
advocate ambassador for that program.
And I love Strengths Finder 2.0.
Another fantastic tool for or they got the disk.
You got the Myers Briggs.
I designed it.
I do it all.
Org is one that most people aren't aware of.
And then the one I the one I would say I started with was actually part of a book
called Preach My Gospel, and that was our missionary training guide
in the Church of Jesus Christ.
And then there's a chapter dedicated to Christlike attributes.
And the Christlike attributes is an assessment at the end for attributes that,
you know, how are you doing with your patience, your kindness, your love,
your charity, your service and beyond.
And the more we the more we dig in and realize that there's opportunities to
develop, there's actually opportunities to cultivate this in our life.
For me, the better life becomes.
So I'm really excited to take the assessment,
see where that takes me on the journey.
And those of you who want to get connected with Andrea Johnson,
we're going to have the action steps below this episode, too.
So you can dive in and and follow around all the different social platforms.
And we'll have the assessment on there, too, so you can take it.
And then down below that, we'll have all of the resources.
Lastly, on that page, we'll have a button in the top right corner.
And that button says, be our guest.
If you also want to come share your vision of how you're helping the world
and how you're bringing light to others and come and share, you can be,
you know, people we talked about, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, come and join us.
We'd love to have you on the show if you'd love to be here.
And you might be a I'm looking forward
to the day that a stay at home mom or stay at home dad decides to come and want
to share their vision on this platform.
It's not about the wealth and the money.
It's not about the politics.
It's not about being the most known person.
It's about being dedicated to principles
and visions that are holistic and help the rest of us level up in all that we're
doing. So as we close today, Andrea, we've got a couple of minutes left.
I don't want to go over on your time, but I'm going to give the mic to you.
Feel free to close us out today.
If there's one thing that I could leave
every single person listening with, it would be this.
Think for yourself.
You can you have the ability, you have the authority.
Get curious about why you think certain
things, get curious about what I call your ABCs, your assumptions,
your beliefs and conditioning. Why are those there?
Where did they come from?
When you're willing to think for yourself, it is amazing what will open up for you.
You have a vision, even if, like Jackson said, you're a stay at home parent.
You might you might even think you don't have a vision, but you do.
And just like you have core values that you may not recognize.
So be willing to think for yourself.
You can do this.
And we need to hear what you can bring to the table, because if you're at a good
holiday meal and somebody forgets the main course or somebody forgets that one
side that everybody loves, we miss out.
So when you don't show up as you at the table, we all miss out.
And we look forward to hearing exactly what you are.
I love that you heard it from Andrea Johnson.
Think for yourself.
You're all visionaries and we'll see in the next episode.
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 and becoming a.