America's Career Coach - Ken Coleman, Author & Radio Host at Ramsey Solutions

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Ken Coleman, America's career coach and author of the book Paycheck to Purpose. And they discuss how to retain talent in today's competitive labor market, how to achieve your goals for the right reasons, and how to tell the difference between a dream and mirage. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:29) This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Ken Coleman at 00:00:40) Hey. Hey. What's up, Ken? Dude, we're doing it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) I was super excited to get to talk to you because you've written some pretty great material, and you host your show. And I just kind of wanted to introduce you to our audience. Can you give me a quick overview of what it is that you do?

(Ken Coleman at 00:00:57) Yeah. I coach people to get the competitive edge they need to win in their work and win in their life because I don't separate work life from life. You know? We spend more time at work than we do anything else in our lives. And I also believe that we were created to work. And so, you know, I'm writing books, doing daily shows, broadcast interviews, creating digital tools and assessments and products, all for the purpose of giving people the competitive edge to make more money and make more impact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) Did you do this before Ramsey Solutions, or is this something you've done since joining Ramsey?

(Ken Coleman at 00:01:35) I did a version of it on the very first installment of the Ken Coleman show that was on talk radio. I did a version of it. I wasn't as focused, but largely, no. This was something that I wanted to do, but needed the platform and the resources to be able to do it. So very, very hard to do this kind of thing to the scale that I get to do it by yourself. It's very, very hard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:59) Oh, yeah. I know. We've got like ten, twelve people here that help make this show happen as a whole. The research, the structure, the guest, the scheduling, rescheduling. It's a big production. And I got to go see when you walk into your building or the Ramsey Building, you can actually see you through the glass recording your show in the studio, and you can also see the production team. And are they taking live calls? Do you do live calls on your show?

(Ken Coleman at 00:02:27) Yeah. So my show's live. I do not record. Okay. We record the show, but it is a live show. I'm on SiriusXM and radio, and we're live on YouTube. And then we take that broadcast and we put it out via podcast. So slight distinction there to some listeners, but it's a big difference. We don't—everything's live. There is no, I record this. Let's take a break and then come back and record this. All the calls are live. I'm not talking to the callers until they get on the air. We have a call screener, and she's talking to them, and then she's putting them on live. So that's the training I come from is live radio and live television. And just personally, I don't like to do a lot of recorded stuff. It's the nature of the game for a lot of folks, and I get that, and I have to record things. But live is my jam.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:15) Yeah.

(Ken Coleman at 00:03:16) It's when I'm at my best in that my energy is where it needs to be. The pressure is something that I crave. I perform better with that added pressure of it's live.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:34) 100% agree. When the pandemic happened, you know, everybody was lined up for conferences, and I was going around before the pandemic doing, you know, speaking on different conference stages and, you know, the feel of being live and with an audience and all of that. Then they were asking us to record our talk sitting in front of the camera and send it in, and they would play it for a digital conference. I'm like, that is not the same feel. You cannot read the crowd. You cannot understand the energy that's going on. It's just a completely different animal.

(Ken Coleman at 00:03:57) Yeah. I've had people ask me to record talks before, and I just say no. Yeah. No. You can make me go live. I'll go live for five people, and you all can record on that end, but I'm not gonna just speak to a screen. I just—

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:11) Oh, yeah.

(Ken Coleman at 00:04:11) Look, man. I come—I'm a preacher's kid, and so that's the environment I grew up in. The idea of preparing some thoughts and know where you're going and why you're going there, but then just get up and speak to people, you know, not perform.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:26) Yeah. You have to work on your character a lot, at least I did, to be comfortable enough to—because when you're up there, it's sort of just free flowing out of you based off of, you know, your experience. So you have to have a really good solid core, make sure that the right things are coming out.

(Ken Coleman at 00:04:41) Well, let me tell you the secret to that. You gotta have something in the well to pull something out of it. And so, you know, anybody could get up there and speak and just throw a bunch of words at you, but if it sounds like word salad or it's like biting hard into some cotton candy, then there's a pretty good indicator that that person doesn't have much in their well. And so you mentioned the word character. I think that's right, but I would also say that there needs to be some content that I'm talking—content that comes from a place of conviction is first and foremost because then you don't have as many problems with words. You know? It's like when I believe something deeply, then I have no problem communicating that because I know what I believe, and I know why I believe it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:33) Absolutely. Yeah. That's—you know, when I started this show, I was pretty quiet and only had a handful of relationships. And one of the reasons why I started the show was to get more relationships and get to know more people. But people will say, okay, you know, you've done the show for five years, 500 episodes. And I was like, well, yeah. But I mean, I built software and grew software teams for seventeen years before that. So it's not like I just decided to do a podcast, did some quick reading and joined a software team and then made a podcast about technology leadership. It's like I just lived through it and all the pain of doing the wrong things and then figuring out how to get it right. And then you never always get it right, but it's a work in progress.

(Ken Coleman at 00:06:16) Yeah. I mean, you know, it's every experience that you have has something that you can take from it and apply it to something new. And I think that, obviously, you've done that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:26) So we have a pretty large audience, mostly tech leaders. And I figured I'd just bring you on and ask you, what knowledge do you have, or what do you speak to that you think in this brief interaction that we're having with the audience that would bring them the most value possible? Because you have great talks in multiple different areas, but what do you feel—what's on your heart right now?

(Ken Coleman at 00:06:49) Well, I'll answer that two ways. The first is you need to tell me what your audience wants and what your audience's challenges are, and I'll address that. But what I am excited about for any leader, and you are obviously a technology leader, so I'm really locked in right now. I'm really fired up about engagement. The great resignation is something that your entire audience is aware of. We just saw the March job numbers. I haven't seen April, but in March, we had another 4,500,000 people leave their jobs. So now we're close to 30,000,000 people have changed jobs since August 2021. And people are chasing a paycheck. People are chasing meaning. They're chasing a lot of things. And so the great crisis for American businesses right now is I can't keep people, or I'm having a hard time finding people. And so what we've got right now is really a function of a healthy capitalistic economy. And that is, in a healthy capitalistic economy, you're always gonna have more jobs available than you do people who are unemployed. So but it gets reported like, oh, the great wage—the great jobs gap and all this other stuff. And it's like, these morons in the media, they don't know anything. They just really don't. They have no idea because they're all socialists. And it says, like, if you're a capitalist, you go, wait a second. In a capitalist society, you're always going to have an entrepreneurial spirit, people creating jobs all the time. If you look every year at the amount of businesses that are opened and started, this is the nature of, again, capitalism. So prior to the pandemic, February 2020, I was talking about on my show, and we were looking at the numbers, and we had historically low unemployment. We're now a little bit below that. So we're in a new historic low, and there were more jobs available than there were people that are unemployed due to a variety of factors. So all that said, in an environment like this, you're gonna have people that are leveling up for whatever reason. And so engagement as it relates to performance and profit has always been the number one issue for leaders and always will be. What's changed and what's—why I'm so fired up about this issue now is that now engagement and retention of people—so performance engagement for performance and profits is still important, but now it's engagement for retention. Because people have so many more options now, and they will leave you in three months. I mean, there's an article we're gonna share on the show next week. I believe it's in the Wall Street Journal. In fact, Fox News wants me to talk about it Friday, and that's where it's coming in. So I'm going on Fox News to talk about this article on Friday. They asked me to come on. And it's this idea of people are accepting jobs, and then they don't show up on their start date. Wow. And so Fox wants me to comment on it. Well, so one of the reasons that this is happening is the job market is so hot, people have so many options, that they're saying yes to you, CTO, listener, viewer. Okay? And then if their start date is three weeks, thirty days, whatever, forty-five days from now, they've got other options. They're either looking for something better even though they said yes. They took a good offer from you, but they're still roving. They're still looking. They're not ready to get married to you. Or a recruiter has reached out to them, and so they said yes to you, but then come wedding day, we got a runaway bride. And so all that is where we sit. And so I've been doing a lot of research on the largest engagement study ever done by Gallup. I've developed a talk that I'm giving in two weeks to 3,000 leaders, and it's called the six rules of engagement. And so what I'm fired up about is that there are three primary needs leaders—that every employee has because they're human. So we first have to understand these three primary needs. They are, number one, we desire—we need to see meaning and purpose in our work. So like, we see that this matters to me. I see a greater purpose beyond just my job and my paycheck. Number two, we need to be recognized for our unique contribution. That is—you know, Samantha, my amazing publicist right here. Like, Samantha and I and you need to hear, hey, Samantha. Like, your enthusiasm and how you come up with an idea and how you pitch it, and you're pushing me—I gotta tell you, it's really valuable, and it's making me better. Like, she needs to hear that. It's not, Sam, you're doing a good job. She needs to hear there's something unique about her and her contribution. So that's a human need. The third human need is we need a relationship with our leader. And it's usually in that coach or mentor. You could kind of parse that out if you want. But it's either that coach or mentor type relationship. People desire that. So this is from the largest research study Gallup's ever done on engagement. And so I looked at the study, and those were the three primary needs. And so I'm not gonna unpack all this now, but I've developed six rules of engagement. I'm gonna debut it in two weeks. And these are rules that leaders have to have in place if they want to have high levels of engagement and high levels of retention. And here's the big takeaway that I'm gonna give leaders. I'll give this part away, and we can dive into this. Leaders, listen to me. If you take care of the people you have now, you understand and meet those three primary needs that I just listed out. If you take care of the people you have, you'll never have to worry about getting the people you need. Now I'm gonna say that again because that is a mouthful. If you take care of the people you have, you won't have to worry about getting the people you need. They will become your greatest recruiting tool. They will stay with you longer. They will drive greater results. Leaders, you need to understand this. In taking care of those needs, you are giving them through the job you have given them. You are giving them a path to a better life. So no worker's gonna come to you and say, I want a better life, but they want better jobs. Well, what they really want is a better life. And when we, as leaders, can understand those three primary needs and go, wait a second. If I just help a person find a seat on my bus that gives them meaning and purpose, if I recognize them on a regular basis for their unique contribution, if I have a relationship with them, like real relationship, to where they trust me, not as their boss, but as a coach that's helping them win and grow in their personal and professional life, you're telling me that I won't have to worry about finding and getting and keeping good people? That's what I'm telling you. So that's what I'm fired up about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:06) Dude, that is awesome. I love it. I was taking notes. I hope you don't mind when I'm looking down on my keyboard. I was just taking notes, because it's great. It's really good stuff, and it's so incredibly true. One of the things that pops in my mind is, you know, I find some of the best leadership qualities, they're sort of hard to train. Right? I tell people, you know, become a better person. Right? And if you need a management book, just do everything Jesus did. You're not gonna have to worry about anything. No bias. Nothing like that. But I'm curious. Have you seen in practice people attempt to systemize these three things, or is it just more of a some leaders do it better than others? How do you see it actually play out?

(Ken Coleman at 00:14:55) Well, you know, I've talked to over 5,000 callers on the Ken Coleman show, and it's a mix of people leaving leaders and a mix of people wanting to join leaders. So I have a really unique vantage point. I know what people are—I know why people are leaving, and I know what people are looking for. And from that standpoint, I don't see a lot of leaders doing those three things well. I don't see them meeting needs. I think there certainly are a lot of great organizations who meet those three primary human needs. I think there are leaders who are very conscious of those needs and are very intentional to meet those needs. I certainly believe that's there. But by and large, I mean, you just gotta look at the data. You know, over 50% of workers start looking for a new job within three months. It's been said, I don't know who said it first, but it's true, people don't leave companies, they leave leaders. And keep in mind, leaders, don't get defensive on what I just said because many times they leave you not because of what you did to them but what you didn't do for them. So let me say that again because that's a very distinct difference. When people leave you, it's not always because something you did to them, like something bad or something you allowed to happen to them that's bad. It's many times what you didn't do for them. And again, back to those three primary needs. You didn't help them get in a seat on the bus that is meaningful and purposeful to them. You didn't recognize them enough or ever for their unique contribution. And you didn't really develop a coach-mentor relationship with them. If those needs aren't met, guess what? They're looking. We humans are needy people. And so, you know, that's the deal. So, yeah, I'm sure there's organizations that have systemized that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:49) Have you seen it firsthand? Or

(Ken Coleman at 00:16:51) Yeah. I mean, certainly, we do it at Ramsey Solutions on some level. I think we need to be better at it. I think we need to be better at it. I've seen great companies.

(Ken Coleman at 00:16:58) Chick-fil-A does it well. I'm sure Chick-fil-A can be better at it. But no, I've not—because this is new content and I'm kind of diving into this research and I've, you know, come at this—I mean, I haven't been looking for it to be able to where I could say to you, this company, I give an A-plus on this, this, and this. You know, I mean, there are a lot of companies that do it well. And by the way, a lot of companies that do it instinctively because you could take those three primary needs and you could just go, you know, look.

(Ken Coleman at 00:17:26) If you're a servant leader, there's a good chance you're going to meet those needs. But a lot of servant leaders don't know how to get people in the right seat of the bus. They just know something's off, and so I'm going to recognize them and be good to them, pay them well, develop a coach relation with them. But if you get two out of those three right, you're still susceptible to losing somebody. So you know what I teach: talent, passion, mission. When they're in alignment, the inner threads are allowing that person to experience meaning and purpose because they go, I was born for this. Do you understand what I'm saying?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:03) I do. And what's running through my head right now is my roster of my company and how much of those three—it's like their gradients. Right? About how much I do with each person of those three. And some I know way more about, like, one thing, and I'm not doing the other two. And some I'm kind of doing all of them, like, halfway. So it's really going to be an interesting exercise for me to sit down and do like a one to ten on, like, each one of them. And then also see how it bakes into our culture. Like, I'm just curious to take a sample from, like, two of my executives and ask them, you know, like, what do you think your scale is for the team and what you're providing across these three areas? I think that'd be interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:44) Yeah. I've also seen, like, a lot of one-on-one and team management softwares, things like that. I was like, that would probably be a good place where you could integrate some of this for companies that have that type of workflow.

(Ken Coleman at 00:18:55) Yeah. You know, I would say in technology companies, it's almost more important to really understand that third and final need in that list, and that's that coach-mentor relationship. Because the nature of technology work and then the workers that do technology work, these are very smart women and men. I mean, like, crazy smart. And this is no secret. I mean, this bears out in much data. And I've talked to people that are in technology training, Bethel Tech. I endorse Bethel Tech. You know, I mean, they're teaching soft skills like crazy to a lot of these tech people because tech people, a lot of them—not all of them—tend to be a little bit weak in the area of soft skills and people skills. The good news is you can develop those.

(Ken Coleman at 00:19:37) And I just think it's really important that there is a—and, again, this is to your direct report. So I wouldn't expect you as the CEO to have this with everybody in your company. I would expect you to meet those three needs of your direct reports. And then your direct reports need to meet the needs, those three needs, of their direct reports. But I will say because of the nature of the isolation and the quiet work or the deep focused work that happens in a lot of technology companies and technology work, even if a person is an extreme introvert and just wants to watch Star Wars during their lunch break, you've got to reach out to them, and you've got to find a connection to them and develop some type of coaching-mentor relationship with them to where they feel like, my leader really wants me to win. It's not about his wins or her wins. It's not about the company wins. They want me to win because they realize when I win, the rest of it takes care of itself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:36) How do you think about people who don't know what they want? One of the things I ask in my interviews when I'm bringing on new employees, like a job interview type stuff. I'll try to figure out through the conversation what their, you know, purpose is and what's driving them. You know, do they have a family? And, like, right now, it's family mode. Are they trying to really grow their career? Like, where is their attention, and what are they going after, and what do we need, and how do those line up? But I do find, and it's kind of a turnoff, when people have—like they're really, like, lost, and you can tell that they have no idea, like, what they want or what's driving them, and they're just kind of, like, floating through. What do you think about that?

(Ken Coleman at 00:21:17) Well, from my experience, again, talking to over 5,000 people on the air and probably several hundred more in live events where they're just asking me a question in front of thousands of people, and I'm just—boom—right there. I don't believe that they don't have any idea. I don't believe it. When somebody tells me I have no idea what I want, I don't believe them because I know they have ideas. The way the brain works, like, the brain can't help but come up with pictures.

(Ken Coleman at 00:21:43) So what they're really saying, they're not being dishonest. What they're really saying is, I don't know how to say it, or I don't know how to describe it in a way that's confident or coherent, or I'm a little ashamed of it, or this is what I want, but I don't know if it's realistic. Those are the emotions or the actual negative thought that is underneath the expression of, I don't know what I want. And, I mean, I've tested it. I've done it live on the air when people are super nervous. I'll just say, yeah, you do. Let me just ask you again. Let me throw it this way. What would you do if you knew it wouldn't go wrong, but you also didn't have to commit to it the rest of your life? Right? And there was no risk at all, no risk of criticism, no risk of failure, no risk of whatever. And I said, and here's what I know. You've already come up with one or two things. While I was setting you up, I was giving your brain the actual freedom to formulate a thought.

(Ken Coleman at 00:22:44) And while I've been setting it up, and even now while I'm talking, you have the idea. Now say it. Go. Every time I do that, they spit it out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:52) That's amazing.

(Ken Coleman at 00:22:54) Yeah. So it's psychology, dude. It's—they have an idea. In fact, the issue isn't that they don't have the idea. It's that they don't have confidence in the idea.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:04) Yep. What if it changes? Does it—like, people, they go throughout their life and they all want different things. And do you think that they'll have something that they want, they won't pursue it, and it'll go away, and then something new will come along? Or do you think it's just like that one static thing they're wanting?

(Ken Coleman at 00:23:20) I think our wants change all the time. But I will tell you this, that I think that there's not much change in the foundation of the want. So the specifics of the want might change, but the foundation behind the want doesn't change very much at all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:39) Dude, Ken, you are brilliant, man.

(Ken Coleman at 00:23:41) Well, I don't know about that. Can I play that tonight with my high schoolers? Yeah. I got teenagers that think I have zero sense at all.

(Ken Coleman at 00:23:48) Do you understand what I mean when I say that? The want? Yes. The foundation of the want. So for instance, let's say you want a certain car. You want a classic car or sports car or whatever like that, and so you want it for a long time, and then you don't get it or whatever, whatever. And then you're like, okay, I don't want that car, but I want—and now I want this car. And it seems like totally different cars, and they are totally different cars. So your want has changed.

(Ken Coleman at 00:24:16) You wanted this car, now you want a Harley. And I'm making up a silly example to make sure people understand what I just said. So the specific want changed, but what was underneath that want hasn't changed. What they want is they want a status symbol. They want some freedom. They want a fun toy. You know, that's what I'm getting at. Specifics change, that foundational thing behind the desire, I don't see that changing much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:44) You're a pastor's kid. Does the Bible talk about these things, like status and other core needs of the person?

(Ken Coleman at 00:24:51) Sure. I mean, I can't think of a scripture that just pops in the top of mind about status, but, you know, certainly, we long for fleshly desires. You know? There's no question about that. And let's also point out here that we were created to desire. You know? Like, when it all started out, it's Adam in the Garden of Eden, and everything's perfect. Biggest apples you've ever seen in your life. You know, like, everything's perfect. It's beautiful, and God created Adam to enjoy creation.

(Ken Coleman at 00:25:19) So, you know, God created us to enjoy him in relationship but also in his creation. You know? So it's like, when we believe the Bible, then it's all going to be restored again, a new earth, where everything's perfect, there's no pain, and, boy, that sounds like a big giant freaking enjoyment to me. So we are created to desire and to have those desires met, but the desires were supposed to be whole and wholesome and pure, not fleshly and carnal. So it's okay to dream. God is a God of dreams. He's the dream giver. You know? And so we've got to be okay with that. What we always have to check ourself with is what's the foundation? What's the source of the vision? The source of the desire? All right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:05) So I'm just going to, like, run stuff by you now because you're, like, great at this. All right. So this is something that happened to me a couple—probably about two or three years ago. And I feel like I figured it out all right, but I want you to tell me what you think when you hear it. So the show started to get popular.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:24) And I started getting, like, all these cool guests that I wanted to have on, and these people that, like, I never in a million years thought would talk to me. Like, you know, the creator of the Internet and all of this. And then the show started making money, and it became my, like, full-time job. And so now I'm doing this thing that was, like, crazy. And all of a sudden—talk to—I couldn't think of a bigger name of a person I wanted to talk to than the creator of the Internet. So after that interview, I just noticed, like, I kind of started to get depressed because, like, I had this vision, this dream that I thought would take me a lifetime to achieve. And it took me, like, two or three years to achieve. And then it took me a while to find, like, another—another goal to sort of, like, pull me out of that. What are your thoughts on that experience?

(Ken Coleman at 00:27:08) You were achieving for the wrong reasons. You were achieving the interview of the creator of the Internet as this massive thing that you would be recognized for. And then once you did the interview, you closed the MacBook or whatever. You stopped recording or whatever, and it was over. And then you were like, oh, that was so amazing.

(Ken Coleman at 00:27:31) And you had all this buildup to the interview. You were so excited. You told everybody, hey, I can't believe this. I got the creator of the Internet. It's great. And you were all excited. You're so geeked. You do the interview. You have this moment of reflection right after the interview is on. You're like, that's amazing. I can't believe I did that. And then you're like, oh, I've got to take the garbage out tonight. Your life didn't change. And when your life didn't change because of that really significant thing, and it is a significant thing. And you realize that your life hadn't changed, that you hadn't changed.

(Ken Coleman at 00:28:01) You did accomplish something really cool, but it didn't change anything. And that's where that depression came in because you're like, well, what—like, oh, I—now I was living for that high. I achieved the high. The high wore off. Now what? And so what I mean by you were chasing achievement for the wrong reason—and I'm not criticizing you. You asked me to analyze this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23) No. Please.

(Ken Coleman at 00:28:23) I think what's happening is you were—what was behind that achievement was recognition. Some for yourself. Hey, I pulled this off. This is a big deal. Recognition from others, whatever. Instead of going after that interview, getting that interview, conducting that interview, delivering that interview for the significance of influencing others, which I think is something you want to do. But I think you were so focused on the achievement part and the recognition part that it just is a natural—it's kind of falling off the sugar high. That's my take. That's my analysis based on what you've just presented to me.

(Ken Coleman at 00:29:07) You can tell me if that's right or wrong.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:08) Yeah.

(Ken Coleman at 00:29:08) But, I mean, you know, that's what I see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:10) No. I think it's pretty spot on. Yeah. You said it in a surprisingly accurate way. Like, you know, it was the buildup of doing the different interviews, getting bigger and bigger people, and then sort of crushing doing it. And shortly after that, I, you know, was doing like a lot of reflection and things. And I ended up at that point in time, when I was doing those interviews, I was working twelve, sixteen hours a day, going crazy. Had been doing that for two years. I started my business right when I had my first child. So I basically was, like, abandoning my wife and kids. I mean, you know, I just wasn't spending time with them while I was building this business. And after that interview, I realized, like, you know, business was stable and growing and I had done everything. And so I bought a family car so I could drive my kids to school. So, like, within, like, a couple weeks of that, I just completely changed everything about, like, my marriage and my kids and just spending more time and, like, no longer working weekends and stopping my work day at five. And this past two years or so since that, stopping my work day at five.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:08) And this past two years or so since that moment have been the best. Like, my wife and I are just, like, crazy best friends. Like, everything changed. So it was, like, an interesting moment for me. But I think you're right. I think what happened was I realized some way—I didn't—I don't think I was super conscious of it, but I realized that, like, that was not the fulfillment, and I was chasing that for a while.

(Ken Coleman at 00:30:31) Here's what it is. You ready? I just got the thought. You are all about the get and not the give. And when we're all about getting something from our profession or from our relationships, it's always going to be hollow and empty because you can't satiate. We humans are almost impossible to satiate. So when our mindset and our focus is on getting, getting, getting, getting, getting, getting, getting, getting, it's just like you can't stop. When your focus is on giving, you're so fulfilled. And so in some ways, you started giving more of yourself to your family, and you saw happiness increase and everything else. So I think you were just about—and by the way, welcome to the race. This is the human race.

(Ken Coleman at 00:31:18) But I think you were more about the get and not the give. And then when you focus this show and anything you do on what we're giving to our audience, to our customer, boy, it sure does feel better.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:33) Yeah. That's a lot to think about.

(Ken Coleman at 00:31:37) Hey, man. You did—boy, I tell you, you put yourself on the hot seat, man, asking me to analyze you, but that's what I see. And, I mean, I think that that's, by the way, that's very normal. But do you see the difference? Yeah. It's a massive shift.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:49) Yeah. I mean, I will push a little bit back that, like, one of the things that excited me about the get was that, you know, what I do is I bring the leaders on and, like, try to extract their best information, right, for the audience. But at the same time—

(Ken Coleman at 00:32:03) That's all I'm talking about. When I say the get, it was all about how great the guests are, how big the audience is. And my point is it's just a slight shift. You know what I mean? Between me—like, for instance, if I'm not careful, I have to be careful that I'm not, like, am I getting enough attention?

(Ken Coleman at 00:32:19) Am I getting enough immediate requests? Am I getting enough likes? Am I getting—and I start to measure success based on that if I'm not careful, certainly in my world. And so I've gotta—I have to always be on guard for that to where it's like, okay, are we giving?

(Ken Coleman at 00:32:33) Are we giving? Remember, Ken, all of this ancillary praise and all of this validation is nothing more than validation that what you're giving is working. But don't get hung up in the validation. You see what I mean?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:50) Yeah.

(Ken Coleman at 00:32:50) And so I'm preaching to myself on that. So I totally understand what you're saying. You were getting good conversations. You were getting good answers and all that stuff. That's great.

(Ken Coleman at 00:33:00) But it's what you personally are getting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:02) Yeah. I was not giving where I needed to be giving in my life, which was to my family. Right? And I was so focused on getting all this information for the audience and doing all this stuff. I wasn't focused at all on those relationships.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:18) And so that happened, got depressed for a couple weeks, started talking about it with guests, like, you know, hey, I'm experiencing this. What do you think? And so when you say hot seat, I've lived like my past five years—like, I'm fine with it. But making that change with my family was a huge deal, and I had heard at the time that someone had said something along the lines of, like, you can't be famous to the world until you're famous to your city. You can't be popular at your city level until you're popular within your community.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:50) You can't do that until you're popular within your family, and you can't do that until you're popular within your household. And so I said, alright, I was trying to just go up there, you know, create something really big and great, and I realized that there was no foundation to it. Like, step one, I had to go build my relationship with my wife and my kids. Step two, I had to start mixing in my brothers and my sisters and all of that good stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:15) And step three, I got involved with my church more and started serving there and having community there. And then to be honest with you, just focusing on those and the other things sort of—just through the past two years, two to three years of just focusing on those—I mean, we've doubled, tripled the show, and I haven't even been paying attention to those.

(Ken Coleman at 00:34:35) That's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:36) Let's plug your book. You've got a couple books, right?

(Ken Coleman at 00:34:39) Yeah. The latest is From Paycheck to Purpose, where I unveil the seven stages for anybody who's trying to figure out what is my unique role in work. Is there purpose in work? How do I answer the age-old question, what should I do with my life? Well, this book is written for that person to help them answer the question or help them verify the answer that they've thought for a long time and maybe others have pooh-poohed it.

(Ken Coleman at 00:35:02) So that's the book in a nutshell. There's seven stages: get clear, get qualified, get connected, get started, get promoted, get the dream job, give yourself away. So this idea of true actualization of our purpose is where we get to a place in our dream job, which the dream job is defined where I'm spending most of my day doing what I'm really good at, doing what I really enjoy, and producing results that matter really deeply to me. That's the definition of a dream job. So when I'm there and I've been there for a while, I found that, yeah, there's no income issues there.

(Ken Coleman at 00:35:37) And so then it's all focused on impact. So that's the latest book, From Paycheck to Purpose, and we've got a great assessment called the Get Clear Career Assessment. I would say to leaders, we've got a B2B version of that assessment, which will allow a person to know what their top talents are, their top passions, which is work they enjoy, and then their primary mission, which is what motivates them. What result do you want to put out there in the world? And I would mention that assessment is a great engagement tool for small business owners, companies, large companies, where we use this as an awareness and an engagement tool.

(Ken Coleman at 00:36:12) So these are some of the fun resources that we're developing from that methodology that everybody's got that sweet spot where they use what they do best—talent—to do work they love—passion—to produce results that matter to them—mission. Those are the three threads that we all have within us. And when those are all in sync and tightly woven together, that's what God intended for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) Is this assessment publicly accessible?

(Ken Coleman at 00:36:38) Yeah. Kencoleman.com. Please go, please go publicly access it, please. My kids need shoes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:44) Yeah. Do you have to be an entrepreneur to do this, or can you do this within nine-to-five work?

(Ken Coleman at 00:36:52) No. That book is written really for anybody who is, again, not where they want to be in their work. Could be a leader. You know, I mean, this methodology works for leaders. You know, are you in your leadership sweet spot?

(Ken Coleman at 00:37:04) So here's the question for leaders. How many of you leaders that are watching or listening to this conversation are spending at least 75% of your day using what you do best, doing work you love, producing results that matter to you? If you aren't, you aren't in your leadership sweet spot. It's time for you to hire for it, delegate it, or remove it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:25) It creeps up on you too.

(Ken Coleman at 00:37:26) Oh, let me tell you something. You want to know the single big—I believe this is the single biggest factor to you as a leader maximizing yourself for the growth of your company—because you as the leader are always the lid. If you aren't in your leadership sweet spot, you are limiting your company's growth. And I'm just going to tell you, rule of thumb, 75% of your day, week, month, year, you ought to be spending—minimum 75% of your time—doing stuff you're really good at, doing stuff you really love to do, and producing results that matter deeply to you. As the leader, that—and if you do that, then you're going to start demanding your other leaders do that.

(Ken Coleman at 00:38:10) This is the true measurement of efficiency and excellence. And watch your company just skyrocket. But leaders are walking around with all these blind spots. And by the way, the leader's the last person to know this.

(Ken Coleman at 00:38:24) Every person on your team knows if you're not in your sweet spot. They could tell you if you had the guts to ask. By the way, so when you figure it out and announce it to them, they're like, oh, yeah. Well, we kind of knew.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:36) Yeah. I'd say I'm pretty good. I wasn't for a while, but sort of an investor mentor of mine had stepped in and saw me sort of—like, he met me and I was in my sweet spot, and then he saw me fall out of my sweet spot. And I didn't have awareness of the sweet spot at this point in time. And he pulled me aside and he said, hey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:55) We need to put a recurring event in your calendar, every three months, for you to ask yourself the question, is there anything you should be delegating? Are you doing what you love? That's literally what the title of the event says. It's like, are you doing what you love and what you're good at? And so every quarter, that little alarm goes off.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:13) So if I—you know, we're human, right? If I mess up or I get over that threshold of the 25% of doing things I don't want to do, then we have to reevaluate. And little things will creep up. Like, right now, we're, you know, looking for someone—a role, a need popped up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:33) It rose up, but you don't know if it's going to be a permanent need. So I took that, and then it started to grow. And I'm like, okay, this is a thing, and now we're hiring for it. And so, you know, it's not perfect all the time, but I don't want it to be where I get hammered down to where I'm only doing what I love 20% of the time, and I start to fall out of love with the company and it starts to die.

(Ken Coleman at 00:39:52) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You cover up that flame. But, again, the good news is like a pilot light.

(Ken Coleman at 00:39:58) It never goes out. Yeah. You can certainly cover it up. But, again, you retreat back to clarity. And that simple formula that I just gave is a wonderful tool.

(Ken Coleman at 00:40:07) So that assessment will help leaders individually who, if they feel like something's off for me, they'll get a purpose statement out of that based on their top three talents. It'll show where they score on the 12 universal talents. It'll show them their top three passions, the type of work they love, and it'll show them where they score on the rest of the 15. And then there's six primary missional drivers, so this speaks to motivation, which by the way, you can never motivate yourself nor can you motivate anybody else.

(Ken Coleman at 00:40:33) But when you know what motivates you, which they call intrinsic motivation, means that you're not forced to do it. You're not rewarded to do it. You just do it because you want to. That's what we show you in this assessment. Your primary mission is the results that you most want to put into the world.

(Ken Coleman at 00:40:51) And so it's a wonderful little assessment. It's 20 minutes. If you got any leaders that aren't quite sure, am I in my leadership sweet spot? That'll tell you. And you'll get a purpose statement that reads out with those top three, and you can sit down with your assistant or yourself, your close leaders that are serving with you.

(Ken Coleman at 00:41:10) And you can look at that purpose statement and go, oh, okay. Here's where I need to make some adjustments.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:14) Yes. So the link to that, everybody, is in the description.

(Ken Coleman at 00:41:17) Kencoleman.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:19) Yep. Kencoleman.com.

(Ken Coleman at 00:41:20) Yeah. It'll be in the store, and it's called the Get Clear Career Assessment. And, again, for leaders, they know what career they want to be in. So, you know, you can ignore the professional possibilities that we give for the general consumer who's trying to figure out what does a career path look like. But what you're really getting it for is that purpose statement and a detailed look at talent, passion, and mission.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:42) Nice. And I wish I could just convey my entire experience of, you know, hanging out with Brandon and touring the whole Ramsey facilities and all the great people you have there. And I got to see—you guys were building the event that you and Brandon were doing—was being built on this wall. And there's all these brilliant people with these topics, and it all was organized. I was like, man, the operation here is—rarely do I find places where I say if I wasn't an entrepreneur, I would work there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:13) This is—that is—Ramsey is one of them.

(Ken Coleman at 00:42:16) Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, Dave Ramsey is a unicorn, and as a result, we are, in many ways, a unicorn type company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:24) Last question here. Stood out to me a lot. How do you tell the difference between a dream and a mirage?

(Ken Coleman at 00:42:31) Yeah. So we unpack this in detail in the book. The short answer is, you know, if you remember the old classic cartoon, Saturday morning cartoon, Daffy Duck, and he's dragging his tongue along the desert floor. He's seemingly, you know, stuck in this endless desert, and he looks up ahead and he sees this unbelievable oasis.

(Ken Coleman at 00:42:54) And his little duck feet turn into fast spinning wheels, and he runs. And he gets up to it, and he jumps up in the air in this swan dive, and he thinks he's about to land in this beautiful little pond in the middle of the desert. You know, it's like his beak hits the ground, and he realizes it's a mirage. And so we need to make sure that coming back to that simple formula, again, I unpack it much deeper and more of a process in the book. So I'll leave you to dive into that.

(Ken Coleman at 00:43:23) But the dream is something that we can verify easily by going back and saying, does this allow me to spend the majority of my time using what I do best, my talents as premium tools, to do stuff that makes me come alive? It—my heart soars. It swells. Time passes quickly. That's passion, and it is allowing me to produce results that I believe are legacy.

(Ken Coleman at 00:43:49) If not, it's probably a mirage that it looks really shiny, it looks really awesome, but when you actually get there, it's just another part of the desert. And that's that analogy there, whereas the dream is a manifestation of that vision of who I want to be, what I want to do, and where I want to do it. And it is when you run it through the test of talent, passion, mission, and if it's not checkmark, checkmark, checkmark, then it's not a dream. It's a mirage. That's the short answer.

(Ken Coleman at 00:44:23) We go into much deeper classification in the book, but for sake of time—

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:26) Yeah.

(Ken Coleman at 00:44:27) I want to give the analogy there, but that's how we know because a mirage is nothing more than an illusion. It's an illusion. We think it's what we want, but it's not. And how do we discover that it's not a mirage? We get closer to it.

(Ken Coleman at 00:44:41) And the closer we get to it, we see, oh, that was literally an optical illusion. It actually happens. But how do we do it? Close examination. That's the answer.

(Ken Coleman at 00:44:51) And I showed you just a smidge of how to closely examine that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:55) Yes. I think there's a lot of people out there that see the mirage, and they walk around it constantly looking at it and never actually try to walk up to it.

(Ken Coleman at 00:45:02) Don't go jumping in like Daffy Duck.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:07) I think that's a good way to end it. That's my favorite leadership advice ever. Don't jump in like Daffy Duck.

(Ken Coleman at 00:45:11) There it is. That's it. Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, I love what you're doing because you're talking directly to leaders. You're equipping leaders, and I certainly have a passion for that.

(Ken Coleman at 00:45:22) If I or Ramsey Solutions in any way can help you or your company, I come and speak to companies. We can take that assessment and bring it to you, turn it into an engagement tool, and consult or guide leaders on that. So we need leaders, and we need really good leaders. There's not a whole lot of them. And so to the extent that we can help and we can help, hopefully this conversation has encouraged you.

(Ken Coleman at 00:45:44) So thank you all for what you all do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:47) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.