What defines a great leader?
That's a really great question.
And when I think about a leader, right,
it's not someone who has this glossy perfect image
of what they saw on Forbes.com
or the last Ted Talk they were trying to jump on.
It's the idea of somebody who's willing to walk their walk
and talk their talk and demonstrate
and provide the tools and the resources
so they can get their people not just where they're at,
but above and beyond.
Because I don't know about you,
but I think you're gonna die one day.
I think you will too, right?
And so we're not gonna get like messages from the grave.
I don't think Charlie Chaplin's talking to us right now,
right, as an example, right?
Howard Hughes is not talking to us.
So we have to have tools that enable other people
to carry on in their absence.
I think that's what a great leader does.
Oh, I see, Javonka.
You're basically asking me,
how do I deal with ball busters?
Yeah.
I like it.
Well, let's just get straight to it.
You're used to running things left, right and center.
Your mind is spinning through ideas.
People have even got like, I'm already on step M.
You all are mining on B and C, right?
So how are you telling me to slow my role?
When I've got a 10 year vision planned out
and you barely have a one month,
you having a barrel like figure out
when you're not have cookies or tacos for lunch.
And I'm already, I'm on it.
I mean, reinventing tacos.
So what do you do when you're dealing
with someone like that, right?
Who feels like they've got the answers, has the idea.
And yet still someone's saying,
I think you smoke too much coke.
I think I'm tired of seeing you on the cover of TMZ.
I think you shouldn't urinate in public anymore
after a drug render.
Maybe it's time to come to Jesus, right?
Like have that conversation.
How do you deal with that?
And really, Jamon, it really depends on the leader.
Say that, right?
It literally is about how low can you go
before you realize I think it's time
to re-examine some things.
And I only work with people who've come to the point
where you know what?
I think I'm tired of being disinvited parties.
I think I'm spending my payroll for my employees
other than on hookers.
I think something has to shift.
And I'm giving extreme examples
to rattle people off the cases and say,
oh, it's not that bad, sweetheart.
It probably was that bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so it's the process of knowing
that that's the life that they live.
Like that's literally their life.
And healing is not usually accompanied
by all those extra things that they do.
And so I find it very interesting
that that is the level of individuals that you serve
because I tell you, I can only imagine
what that conversation is like.
Yeah, I mean, we could talk about
how we're going to lead your next meeting
and then we're talking about smoke and dope.
But I think people just don't get that, right?
Because you're thinking, wait,
you've got it all together, right?
You shouldn't have these kind of vices,
but think about it.
If you do extraordinary things
in your professional capacity,
the pedal doesn't get off of the metal
when the whistle blows.
In fact, we're going above and beyond after the clock.
Yeah, yeah.
It's the life that we don't know,
but it's the life that you get an opportunity, Denise,
to dive into.
And if you wouldn't mind,
is there a story or transformation of someone
or a client that you've had
that you wouldn't mind sharing?
We're going to make a lot of these stuff with fake names
because I don't really want to out people for sure, for sure.
I'm thinking about one particular person.
He's executive in a government agency,
and he was in charge of health and wellness,
and he had a little grow up at home.
And he was spending money, when I say grow up,
I'm not talking about tomatoes.
He was an amateur, off-label,
a pharmaceutical provider to himself.
Okay.
Yes.
And during the day,
he was leading teams of thousands of people.
And at night, he was consuming his product
and streaming for the guitar
and extremely self-loathing on the demise
of his to-be-fourth marriage.
That doesn't make sense, right?
You're leading thousands of people,
and then you're going at home self-loathing.
And so what do we do, right?
We first had to dismantle with his ideas of who he was
versus the reality of what he was doing to himself.
Because high-performing leaders always work all the time
to not just amplify the organization,
but amplify the image of what they think
will receive praise from others.
It takes questioning whether or not
what he was doing was really helpful or harmful.
When you're in the middle of a pity party,
you've got all your friends.
You got Despair.
You've got the twins, Bitterness and Envy.
You've got Retribution,
who's always wanting to take an ax on someone.
So you've got all these gladiators of vengeance,
warfare around.
It kind of doesn't really open the door
to have feelings of hope,
feelings of forgiveness, forgiveness of compassion.
Because when you're revving up high on stress
because you didn't deal with those issues,
you don't have it in that room.
So going back to the example
of my pharmaceutical person,
we had to really analyze,
if we continue going this path, what does that look like?
You're putting up a really great charade for yourself,
but clearly you're not sleeping well.
You're not having good relationships
with your adult children.
You're not feeling satisfaction
about what you want your life to look like.
In fact, I could see you under a bridge the next 10 years.
Do you wanna be under a bridge?
I don't have many quarters to give out.
We're going electronics these days,
not many quarters, okay?
And I think people asking for donations
via like a GoFundMe, I don't do that either.
So you're gonna have to figure out a plan
that looks different than that.
So we had to marry those ideas of what's reality,
what do you wanna do,
and come up with a game plan that worked well for him.
There's no such thing as a one size fit all healing stuff,
despite what Instagram reels tell you.
And you know what's funny is I was thinking
the one size fits all, not, not, not in this area,
not in many things does it.
And it's so interesting that you have this group
or this clientele that you work with.
I'm gonna now start asking, how did you get started
with high performing individuals?
Oh, cause I'm a recovering drunk and sex addict.
So you kind of work with your own client base
when you know yourself a little better,
like I know what that looks like.
I've woken up in my own vomit, have you too?
When you have the conversations with people,
when you're talking about things that you understand,
it opens up the door for more understanding.
And I just truly believe for me,
in order for me to get well,
in order for me to graduate emotionally
from my own stunted behaviors,
I had to lean into the things that helped me personally.
Yeah, just ended therapy, threw on my coat, my blazer,
and then talked about emotional intelligence.
Yes.
Right?
Or I could be honest and say that my life
was really sloppy and messy by my own terrible decision,
by my own unhealed hurts and wounds.
Yeah, yeah.
And as you mentioned, thank you for sharing
such personal information.
As you mentioned that, it's interesting
because I was just speaking with a group of people,
podcasters, how we were informed or realized
that it's the experience that we have
that develops the person we are
that allows us to actually move forward
to help individuals.
And so once you, if I could say, got it together,
what was that starting point that said,
hey, now I wanna go and move towards other individuals
who I can relate with and help them?
I don't think there was really a moment.
I think there was resistance.
Like with everything in life, right?
There's resistance.
I resisted having my hair in an afro state.
I'm like, it's natural, it's coming out,
it's flowing out of me.
But why am I resisting nature?
It's because I fear judgment.
And so for me, what happened was I was doing business,
I was doing pretty well doing business coaching.
I would work with my coach.
And he's like, you know what, Denise,
your marketing material seems like a life coaching ad.
What's up with this?
Oh no, let me re-edit it.
Wait, this sounds more like life coaching.
No, no, no, let me re-edit this a little bit more.
I was creating and growing out what was coming into me.
I was sweating the stuff.
Yeah.
And I could not contain it because it was what was helping,
it was nurturing me.
And I just couldn't help but speak to it,
share it and really dive in deeper.
And that's happened over a course of a couple of years.
It wasn't like a one time I woke up,
yeah, I wanna be a Leukemia and Leukemia
but that sounds weird to me.
Like I didn't wake up feeling that way.
It was like, oh no, I wanna be one of those
all the cliche things people like drag on Reddit blog.
Oh, I don't wanna do it.
But that's what happened for me.
Yeah, and it's almost feels like it was divine.
It's like, you know what?
I'm gonna take you through this experience
and then I'm gonna stress you out
and put you in a space and place
that you don't necessarily wanna be.
And I love that for you because it pushed you
into an area not many people touch,
healing and leadership.
And again, as we mentioned at the beginning,
that doesn't often go together at all.
No, no, and who wants to talk about your resentment?
Who wants to talk about the fact that you are...
I mean, I tell people all the time,
I'm a recovering asshole, here's how.
I don't want to portray that as if I had a great time
in corporate America and I just decided
to be entrepreneurial on a whim.
It was because I made a lot of crappy mistakes
but I didn't know why.
Yeah, yeah.
And when you say you've made a lot of crappy mistakes,
could you name a few of those?
Oh yeah, I remember one particular meeting I had
when I was in corporate America
was having an argument with somebody.
I said, let's you and me take off our ears
and go to get out of the parking lot.
I said that in front of our supervisor,
had no problems with that.
Yeah, no problems with that.
It was unhinged when I think about it.
But at the time, it seemed totally okay.
When you are in the midst of dealing with symptoms
of unhealed trauma, suspicion, paranoia, aggression,
resentment, pity, you think that everybody else
thinks that way and then you go home
and watch episode of Red Table Talk
or The Young and the Restless and then you amplify it
and then all your friends say, girl,
you know he was wrong with that
and then you go back to work and you start feuding
and then it was perpetuate and perpetuate and perpetuate.
I think we all have a friend that seems like
they have a permanent rain cloud, a fix over their head.
I believe I do and I'm sure everyone else watching this does.
And as you move through this and as you continue to grow
as a leader yourself, tell me about your vision.
I don't wanna sit here and say,
Jamonka like cliche things.
I wanna inspire, motivate,
like come on now, that's like a rain
that you see on one of those motivational videos
or whatever.
For me, let's just get to brass tacks.
I want to equip you with practical tools
that can get you from where you are
to where you want to be that is easy,
replicable and transmittable to everyone around you.
I want you to like ooze out.
I want the people around me to ooze out healing.
I want the people to ooze out peace.
I want the people to ooze out waking up
and feeling like, hey, I got this.
That you don't have to run through
and look through 5,000 books
or look scrolling, doing scrolling on Instagram,
looking for that one right thing to make you feel right.
Like you've got the tools right there inside of you.
That's my vision, equipped and empowered leaders
who understand themselves and how they want
to positively transform the people around them.
And that right there is in a nutshell,
something that would drive someone
to actually focus on that.
The way the world has changed
and things are so different now,
how long have you been in business, Matt asked?
Like altogether, I've been entrepreneur for 13 years, right?
And there's a lot of stuff that went down in 13 years.
And I'll tell you this,
when everyone says the world has changed,
technology is ever evolving, right?
The way we communicate and relate to people has been like,
now I can have like a package sent to me in two hours.
Like that's fricking amazing.
Like we have seen so many different things
evolving at rapid fire,
but we as humans haven't really changed.
We wanna be connected.
We wanna feel understood.
We wanna be appreciated.
We wanna have a sense of value
not just for ourselves and others.
That gets lost when we're driven by fear, greed and anxieties.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's, as I think about all of this,
I think it just reminds me of therapy
and truly digging down and peeling the onion
just to be a better person for yourself.
But now you're on a scale of a leader being a better person
for the people that they lead.
And it's still this thought process of the pushback
and the common things.
What are the common barriers that you see
in higher performing individuals?
Jermana, that's a really good question.
The number one thing that comes to my mind is denial.
It's not just a river in Africa.
Yeah, yeah.
And one of the things I see
so many times with high performing leaders
is that they have an army of people
that cover up their crap.
They have an army of people
that are constantly gaslighting them
because they fear their wrath, their anger,
their irrational behavior.
And so they're being around the smoke screens and gaslight.
I think about like the analogy of like,
the king has no clothes, right?
The king is buck naked, holding the Slim Jim,
walking down the street.
And he's pretending like he's got like a child.
No, you got Slim Jim on your hand, okay?
If somebody's gonna tell this dude that he looks crazy,
no, because he's paying our bills
and we don't want to rock that boat.
Absolutely.
Yeah. That's hard.
Yeah. Yeah.
And when people are covering up what you do,
it makes an individual less aware of what they are doing
because no one sees it.
But it's such a powerful thing for a leader
to actually want to even dive into healing
and just doing better and being a better person,
not only for themselves, but the people they lead.
And as I do not want to take up any more of your time,
but I have my most favorite question.
What are the greatest joys of what you do?
Oh, wow.
I, this is a lot.
For me, I love seeing people telling me
I wake up after a well-night sleep.
I love hearing people say,
I'm reconnecting better with my people.
And I say people,
I'm not just talking about their employees.
They're about their family members.
I love hearing people say, you know what?
I need to redesign my business so I can serve,
not just my organization, but I can serve myself.
Hearing people retool their lives
to be more in alignment with their mental,
physical and emotional health,
it's just, I can't explain it more.
So that gives me a lot of joy.
Because I know I needed that 15 years ago desperately,
and I didn't know anybody who could approach it
the way that I do.
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 gonna 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 Vision Pro yourself.