REality

Fail Forward: Building Leaders Who Elevate Others

• Gary Scott

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Want the promotion without the pitfall? We sit down with leadership expert John Eades to unpack how a painful early failure turned into a calling to help managers become leaders who elevate others. The story starts with a shiny new title and all the wrong motives—and turns into a wake-up call about clarity, vision, and the responsibility to serve.

We draw a clear line between management and leadership: tasks versus transformation. John lays out a practical foundation—character that earns trust, vision that offers hope, and coaching that helps people grow—and then stacks advanced skills like competent humility, emotional mastery, and persuasive communication. For real estate teams and any high-performance culture, the message is simple: care authentically and demand consistently. Either one alone creates imbalance; together they unlock sustainable results.

We also go deep on application. Knowledge without action won’t move a market. You’ll hear how to turn inputs into outcomes, why “E + R = O” keeps your response from hijacking your results, and how belief transfers from leader to agent when stakes are highest. Then we challenge incrementalism: ditch the safe 10% target and set an impossible goal that forces new behavior—better systems, bold storytelling, sharper prospecting, and consistent follow-through. Whether you hit the exact number is secondary to who you become by aiming higher.

If you’re ready to replace shortcuts with standards, turn feedback into fuel, and build a culture where performance and people both thrive, this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a teammate who needs the nudge, and leave a review with your impossible goal for 2026—we’ll cheer you on.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to reality podcast. Today, I love my guest for two reasons. One is we share a passion for leadership in developing people. Number two, I think it's only my second home and home. So what do I mean by home and home? I was on John Ead's podcast, and now today I've got a home game, and we have a great, great, great guest. John, good morning. How are you?

SPEAKER_00:

I am excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01:

It is uh it is my pleasure. I know we've been trying to do this. Uh, I'm gonna share just a little bit from your bio. I like to kick it off, and I'm gonna uh share four words if that's all right.

SPEAKER_00:

That would be great.

SPEAKER_01:

Molding more effective leaders. And reality podcast, while oftentimes focused on the real estate industry, we also are blessed and fortunate to have great guests from college football coaches to national real estate speakers. And one of the things that we believe as an organization, John, is that whether I have a title of leadership or not, everybody every day leads people through impact and influence. As I said earlier, you and I share this really incredible passion for leadership. So I'm gonna start. Um where did that start for you? Like, when did you know that leadership was your calling, was your passion, was your energy? Help the listener understand kind of where it started, and then we're gonna take them down the path of where you are today, which I know you're doing great things for great companies. So, where did it all start?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it really isn't about me so much as to say when I realized that I wanted to help other people develop their leadership skills, I think from a young age I always uh was drawn to the idea of helping a team or other people achieve more than they could achieve on their own. I've always been drawn to that. But where I where the where the calling was born was when I failed as a leader. Uh I got a chance to lead a team early in my career, something that I really aspired for. I aspired for this title. It was called President of We Skill. That was the name of the title. And I and I thought about that title a lot before I had like a vision for it. And I got this chance to lead this department of our business at the time called WeSkill. And I got the title president. I was so excited to change my job description on LinkedIn and to change my signature in my email exchange to president of WeSkill. And I was excited because it came with more money, came with more authority, came for more opportunities potentially for my career. But then that's exactly how I led this small team that I was bust to have. It was about power and money and uh making sure my influence was felt, if you use that example. And as you might imagine, things didn't go so well, Gary. Uh, we struggled, the business was declining, uh, engagement was down, and I did what any young leader would do. I blame somebody else. I said, it can't be John's fault. John's good. So I took my most expensive team member, uh, called her in my office on a Thursday night, and I let her go. And at the end of that rambling of a mess that I made, letting her go, she said, John, I didn't know where we're going. I didn't know what we were doing, and I didn't know how it was helping us get there. And I realized in that moment that the problem was not her, the problem was me from a leadership perspective. It was a wake-up call. And she left my office that night, Gary, and I said, God, I don't know why that just happened, but I'm gonna do everything in my power to not let that happen to other people. Not just for me, but from the person that I failed, the team members that I failed by my lack of leadership. And so that's really where it was born out of struggle and out of pain. And pain either causes one of two things. It causes you to pause or it creates a purpose in your life. And for me, it created a purpose in my life to not let that happen to other people.

SPEAKER_01:

So I I love the story. I don't love that you failed, but uh, just shared with you before we went on the air that we've had a great week here, you know, uh really a commitment to leadership uh in our company, which we are 365 uh days a year, but sometimes you get a week where you get a couple events that really inspire us, right? And, you know, one of the things that I share with them is, you know, failure is success in disguise. And we as leaders, as you know, you know, as we hire our teams and we empower them to become great leaders, we also have to be okay with them failing because if they don't fail, they don't grow. And you just shared the prototypical story. Now, I have to ask a question. When you became president of We Skill, how old was John Eats?

SPEAKER_00:

I am 42 now. I was 28 or nine years old. 28 or nine years old, somewhere in that ballpark.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so you were a young man and you thought you knew everything. And uh, we're gonna talk a little bit uh about uh events in our lives that change us not incrementally but dramatically. Yeah, I think that's it's typically not a huge success, right? It's it's not the conquering of whatever, it's not the big sale, it's not salesperson of the year. It's to your point, uh, you know, I had the exact same experience at age 46, you know, when I was named president of Long and Foster Real Estate at the time, the number one independent family-owned company in America. And I had arrived until I got there and realized that I had not arrived. And boy, the the the lessons that we learn.

SPEAKER_00:

So uh anyhow, so let's let's look at it from a real estate perspective because I think an agent would can appreciate this. There's a saying, failure is not final, failure is feedback. And if you're an agent, you probably don't recall every single win and every single successful sale that you've had, but I can almost guarantee you you remember the customer that you lost, the deal that fell through, the deal that failed or that you didn't successfully achieve. And it's in those moments that those are the best opportunities to learn, to figure out what I don't want to do, what what kind of agent I don't want to become. Because when you're successful, it doesn't provide the best groundwork or framework to learn from. I don't like to fail. I don't like to lose. I hope your agents don't like to lose or fail either. But we must change our mindset around it that if you're doing something meaningful enough, if you're taking on a big enough challenge, selling a house in an area that you've never sold before, or hitting a price point that you've never gotten to before, number one, that is a mindset shift that has to take place. And it is possible that you fail. It is possible that you come up short. But if you're not exceeding the levels that you've been to before, you're not growing and getting better. So in many ways, if you never set yourself up to fail, you're not doing enough. You're not stretching yourself enough. You're not putting yourself out there to the level that you should be, because if you're not growing, you're dying. And in this world that you're in right now, the agents that continue to grow, that continue to push themselves, that continue to look for new opportunities to challenge their skill set, that those are the agents that I want on my team. Those are the agents I want selling my house or buying my next house. You tell me, who do you want? Someone that's complacent and just does the things that they've always done, or someone that's stretching themselves to go to another level.

SPEAKER_01:

One of our uh our uh emerging leaders this week said, remember, there's wins and learnings. There are not wins and losses, right? And we've all heard those things, but every once in a while, when you've heard it the third, fourth, or fifth time, in the setting that I was in, and and the person who shared that, it now will resonate with me much longer, even though I've I've been hearing that kind of thing. We've been hearing that kind of thing for decades. Uh, I love that you uh, and one of the things that I think have connected you and I is your ability to relate your leadership passion, your servant leadership, make people better with our industry. Uh, you've got an incredible awareness of our business. And I know when the first time we met, you asked a lot of thoughtful questions. You know, I measure often uh great leaders, not with the answers they provide, but with the questions they ask, right? That's you know, that's a part of the thought leader. But help so after we skill, after we have our life lesson at age 28 or 29, uh, you know, take us a little bit of a fast forward from there to now. You mentioned you're 42 today, uh, you run a great business, uh, you you travel the country to help people, help companies, help teams, help leaders become better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I knew I had a model from the the business I was working in originally was a sales performance improvement company. So I had I had an example of what really great professional education looked like. And as someone that didn't take their education as seriously as they should have when they were in college and at the University of Maryland, I'm sorry, Terps fans, but I didn't. It was it was not about the education. But when I saw what really great professional education looked like, that you could learn something and then immediately apply it. To me, that was the secret sauce. It wasn't some calculus that I would never use again. It was like, oh, I could learn how to sell and then I could apply it. I could learn how to lead and then I could apply it. There's a man named Dr. Miles Monroe who's since passed, but he had this great model. He said there's a big difference between knowledge, comprehension, and application. Knowledge, comprehension, application. And he said the best and the highest performing leaders, the highest performing teams, they don't focus on knowledge acquisition. They focus on application of the knowledge. And that's where the secret sauce was. So I wanted to get to a place where we could not only provide the knowledge to leaders for how to lead teams better, uh, call it a recipe or a methodology for how to lead a team, but I wanted to make sure that they could apply it because that's what I struggled to do. So that's really what that the last 11, 12, now 13 years has been creating programs and coaching and developing teams and creating frameworks and models that then they can go apply in the field of their everyday life. And uh it's been quite a journey, one that I'm not sure if I if I knew how hard it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it. But looking back on it now, the the personal growth that I've had to experience to get to this point and to help us get to this point, the failures, the ups and downs, uh it's shaped me as a man, shaped me as a human being. Uh create a real resiliency in me that uh I couldn't have paid for. There's only one way to learn it, and that's through experience.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. We we've heard the term many times, book book smart, street smart. And when I hear knowledge versus application, I draw that parallel. And that is if I can't apply what I know, I would call that the street smart piece. You know, I may be super book smart and I may know it all, but my inability, so I love the way you crafted that. As I think about our real estate professional who's listening today, you know, the question is, I know everything, but do I apply it all? Uh I have said time and again, John, I believe to my core that our 2,000 agents, for the most part, know what to do. Their challenge is doing it, doing it consistency, uh consistently, and being disciplined in that approach. And it goes back to the thing you said earlier, and that is you better reset from this past year and you better do some things differently, and you better step outside of your comfort zone if you want to achieve great levels of success in 2026. Um, let's uh let's talk about your company today. Just share with our listener the name of the company, kind of what you do, who you serve, and uh yeah, just uh let everybody know this a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00:

No need to have a commercial. Uh the company's called Learn Loft. Uh, we exist to help managers become leaders and create healthier places to work. Uh, we get the opportunity to work individually through one-on-one coaching programs, and then certainly partnering with HR departments and executive teams to help power their leadership development initiatives. Uh, and then we also have a company called the Sales Infrastructure that focuses solely on helping organizations improve their organic sales efforts through their people. And uh, so those are the two businesses that we run and and we write every single week to help improve the skill sets in those particular areas. And um been fortunate to write books and you know, write blogs and use ink.com and you know, just using this vehicle of thought leadership to help um inspire people to perform at a higher level.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh we're gonna come back to your book in a in a minute, but yeah, I I want you to to to take us down the manage manager versus leader conversation. You know, I I joke that you know there's 13,000 books out there about the difference and the strength. So as you have done all of your research and and created your curriculum to take knowledge to application, just share from your perspective the the difference in manager leader, but also the importance of both.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, a manager is a title. That's that's the most important thing you need to know. Uh, you you get a title of manager. You don't get title of leader. Leadership is earned. Management is a title given to you internally in a company. It doesn't mean the tasks associated with being a manager are not important. Setting a schedule, making sure people show up on time, uh, running the reports, looking at the CRM, all the things that would be are important that a manager does are still important. No one's saying they're not. But leadership is different. Uh, leadership is inspiring, empowering, and serving in order to get in order to elevate others. And that is a skill that is differentiated in today's market. And if you want to help someone get better, you're not gonna do it by managing them. You're gonna do it by leading them. That's the big difference.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And unfortunately, too many people today they lose sight of leading people to get someone to a higher level of performance and they focus on the management tactics of, well, you got to do this and you got to do this and you got to do this. Well, just because we know we need to do it doesn't mean we can do it at a higher level. So that's the real difference between management and leadership. It's not to knock a title of manager, but it is to say that leadership tends to happen when people look through a different lens. You have to think of yourself as a leader or believe that you can lead before you ever do, that you are good enough to take someone from where they are to where they want or need to be. Unfortunately, too many people just abdicate that responsibility to somebody else. And the impact is pretty immense because it doesn't just happen, it doesn't just lower the potential of a team, it also lowers the potential of that person because you also have to lead yourself. So if we don't think of ourselves as a leader in life, you're not going to reach your potential. And to me, that is an enormous cost because the world is filled with people that never meet their potential and it's sad.

SPEAKER_01:

I love what you just said. One characteristic of a great leader is that individual who has figured out a way to lead themselves. Because if I can't lead me, then I'm probably not going to be particularly effective leading others. I know when we met, I shared with you that I think one of uh the values of our company was, you know, we did this shift back in like 2002, where Pat Riley and I back and said, you know, we're gonna take our branch manager and they're we're gonna give them a different title, branch leader, and then we're gonna commit four times a year to leadership enrichment programs. Oh, I get it. And so I I believe from an industry perspective, John, we were way ahead of it. Uh, I know there are still companies that call their their branch managers, branch managers. And every time I see a competitor calling them that, I do a little side applause because I don't think they get it. Now, us just naming them branch leaders, I don't know. I know where you're going. Doesn't really mean that they are.

SPEAKER_00:

But it can give them a head start. And here's why I say that because in many ways, leadership is simply a transfer of belief. Let me say that again. Leadership starts as a transfer of belief. And that means that we often need somebody else to believe in us before we believe in ourselves. We have to borrow the belief, if you will. And and the fact that you're going ahead and saying, hey, this is not a branch manager position, it's a branch leadership position. To me, it's the beginning of a transfer of belief to someone that I'm not just called to manage, I'm called to lead. And now, uh whether I've thought of myself that way or not before, now I need to focus on it. I was with the I was do you mind if I share a quick personal story?

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, you guess what we do on reality podcasts? Real people, real time, real stories, real experiences. John, let's go.

SPEAKER_00:

Um I'm teaching a workshop this week to 85 organizational leaders in a facility. And we get to the end of this session, and uh an older African-American lady walked up to me and she said, John, uh, do you know what the global leadership summit is? And I was like, I do know what the global leadership summit is. And she says, You should be speaking on that stage. It's something I've thought about before, but I looked her right in the eye and I said, But you don't know what you just did for me is you transferred belief to me and you didn't even know I needed it today. And I gave her a hug and I said, Thank you. And I haven't stopped thinking about it for three days because what you did for your people and what Pat Riley did for his people in that moment was saying, hey, we think of you in this way, not like everybody else. And I think people need that today. The world we live and work in is hard. You got to make more money than you've ever had to make to provide. You got to work, you got to learn more things faster than at any point in history. Technology is changing so incredibly fast. You have new generations in the workforce coming in with a completely different mindset about work and work ethic, which makes leadership extremely difficult. It feels like almost everything is working against leaders today, which is why they matter so much. So I'm appreciative that you and Pat decided to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's interesting. I was at an event, gosh, 18 months ago, and they basically said that there is a leadership crisis in our country. They were talking more about young people and you know the mental health challenges that existed before COVID got magnified with COVID, and you know, that leadership, you know, uh, it's interesting. I'll tell a little personal story uh from this week. One of my very favorite movie clips on leadership is from the movie The American President. Uh, one of the great casts, right? Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, and Michael Douglas, and uh and Michael J. Fox is in the Oval Office, and he says, uh, Mr. President, uh, you know, the people demand leadership. And in the absence of true leadership, people will listen to anyone who picks up the microphone. And it is like the most compelling two minutes and 32 seconds. It is so powerful. And then the movie goes on, then Michael Douglas goes out and addresses the country, taking that as his lead. And if you watch those six minutes, it really uh tells a story, to your point.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, I think the other thing that's interesting, uh, you talked about I want to relate one other quick thing to your industry and your agents because you think of how hard it is to become a successful real estate agent today. Those young agents, they need someone to believe in them. Think about that. You're talking about a success rate that is not high. So if you have a branch leader that believes in you, that you can do it and you can make it and you can learn enough and call on enough people and build enough relationships and get through the ups and downs in those early five, six, seven years, even further into your career as you someone get in this as a second uh industry or second career. The fur if you don't have someone on your team in that first year and a half, two years, I think your failure rate goes down, goes up dramatically. So your branch leaders, this is not just about teaching them how to use the MLS or teaching them how to use a platform, or this is about having someone in their corner that is not going to allow them to mentally quit. And to me, that's where I think this is so relevant in your industry specifically. And if a branch leader does nothing else, believing that someone's good enough to do it is worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's uh it's a it's a powerful message. And I love that uh we all needed somebody to believe in us or us to believe in us, and you know, one could call that kind of the circle of leadership life. And you know, it's funny, I think back often to to uh as you and I have discussed before, you know, I'm a big, big fan of mentors. And uh I'm gonna share uh with you an exercise we did this week, and I'm gonna ask you to actually uh participate. Uh I started both days, John. I said uh my comments in the next uh couple of hours, uh both today and tomorrow are gonna be uh I'll call them chunked into threes. I'm gonna ask you a lot of things in threes. And the first thing I asked was, I said, and this is the one I'm gonna ask you is when you think of leadership, what are the three most significant key traits to a great leader from your eyes? And I'll share with you some results. But I'm interested, uh I'll come back to you in a minute and say, from John Eads, who is a student of it and a servant to it, you know, what are the three things? And then I'll share with you my three, which I probably did on the home at home. And then I said the following write down three people in your life that have had the most significant impact. I could be leaders you worked with, leaders you observed, could just be people. And then I said, in the next 48 hours, you know where I'm going.

SPEAKER_00:

Write them a thank you note.

SPEAKER_01:

Or I want you to reach out to them and thank them. I have done this four times in the last month, and to a time that I did it, somebody came up to me and said, I just sent my high school wrestling coach a text message, and you know what the response is? It's exactly what you said the other day. You have no idea the timing of your message. That is leadership. So I just wanted to share that with you because you and I talked about it, you know, the lost art of note writing and this and that. But really, it's about you know, people shape us. And and then I love where you take it is then we have an obligation to pay it forward. Like, like we have to then impact lives of others so that they impact lives of others. So I'm gonna ask you, yeah, three most from your perspective, three characteristics, great leaders are.

SPEAKER_00:

I look at it in two levels. The first level is the foundational level. Without these three qualities, attributes, uh, I think leadership success will be very challenging. Uh, the first is character, the mental and moral qualities distinctive to you as an individual. Are you going to do right from wrong regardless of the situation? Can people believe in your character? Very important in terms of building trust. Number two is vision. Do you have a vision of somewhere better than we are today? Because in many ways, people need hope and vision provides hope. And the third is coaching. Those are the foundations because if you're not helping someone get better than where they are today, then you're not really doing your job as a leader. So those to me are the three foundational things: character, vision, coaching. If we don't get those three right, your ability to have success as a leader is very low. Now, there's a few advanced skills that we've seen more and more come into play in the last few years. And I would like to just tell you what those three are. Would love it. The first one is um competent humility. And what that means is great leaders have this unbelievable ability to have strong opinions, but they hold them lightly. It's like an egg in your hand if you're playing a game of egg toss. You got to catch it lightly. And I think the best leaders are competent. They have wisdom to share. People feel good about where you're going from a strategy perspective. But then at the same time, they're humble enough to say that doesn't mean this is the only way. And I'm still open to hearing other ideas. Um, it's a little bit like, hey, I think this is correct, but I'm not gonna die on this hill either. And I think that's a very attractive leadership quality today. So competent humility. The second one, and the way I think about this is emotional mastery. Uh you can't let your emotions hijack your leadership. And they can if you're not careful. When when our when our emotions go up, most people struggle with their response in that space. And the very best leaders that we've studied, their their emotional mastery, the work that they've done on themselves to be able to respond beautifully in difficult or even in exciting situations, uh, is a major differentiator. There's an equation, I'm sure you've heard it, which is E plus R equals O, which is event. Plus response equals outcome. Comes from one of my favorite books, Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. And the idea behind this is that you don't get to choose the events that happen in your life, but we do get to choose is how you respond to that event. And the better your response to that event, the better the outcome will be. So that emotional mastery today, you've probably heard EQ a lot, emotional intelligence, getting your emotions to work for you instead of against you, that is an elite and important leadership quality today. And the last one is persuasive communication. If influential leaders, they don't push, they pull. And to pull, they use logic and emotion and credibility. And to do that, to do that, Gary, what we have to do is to persuasively communicate, to tell stories that draw people in versus feeling like I'm about to get the Heisman stiff arm. So uh those three to me are those next level leadership skills and particularly important in today's work environment.

SPEAKER_01:

So, first of all, I love all six and I love foundational and next level. I think that's uh you know one of the things that I love about uh these uh interviews is how much I learn, right? Iron sharpens uh iron, sharpening the saw. And so it's interesting is uh I would tell you that uh if there were 70 people in two days, I probably asked eight people to share theirs. And then I just asked you. None of them are the same. Which which really speaks, you know. I always like the question, is leadership an art or a science? You know, just interesting. So uh, and I've shared many times uh that you know, my three are trust, which would be your character, absolutely vulnerability, which is kind of owning it, you know. I think that's really important. There are a lot of leaders that don't own it because they deflect it. And then uh, you know, I my third one is courage.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh and being scared and deciding to do it anyways. What an important skill that is in leadership.

SPEAKER_01:

And now I love character, vision, coaching, right? Those are all super real. There's authenticity, there's you know, communication, but as a great listener, you know, I would say where I have moved on the leadership continuum is how critically important it is uh to ask great questions and be an Olympic listener. Like to me, that's that's the the third level when you can master truly seeking to understand uh and not just thinking that you're doing it. So so I love that. Let me come back. Let me ask you a question. I love E plus R equals O. I used it this week. Thank you. Um, it's funny, you got it from Victor Frankel. I got it from Greg Shiano, who uh the head coach at Rutgers, he probably got it from Victor Frankel.

SPEAKER_00:

But well, Victor Frankel's book, um it was it was really about stimulus and response in that space is our decision, our our space to choose. And it was it came out of his experience in the Holocaust. Yeah, maybe he didn't use E plus R equals O, but that was really the the foundation of it. And it's had a lot of iterations since then.

SPEAKER_01:

But I think I I'm sure that Greg did not create it, but I'm sure he used it with his team. Yeah, so uh let's come back. Leadership, art, or science, or both?

SPEAKER_00:

It's both. Like many things in leadership, it there's a dichotomy to it. There's a this for that. There's a there's a seesaw effect, if you will. Think of it uh when we did our research for building the best, and we were studying what the very best leaders did, and we we did 65,000 assessments of leaders. What we found was that there were two really critical elements at play, similar to you know, art versus science. There was there was caring on one axis and there was demanding on the other. Originally we called them love and discipline, but over time we started to see it more as how how caring can you be and at the same time be extremely demanding? And what the research found was that the very best leaders they they cared authentically and they demanded consistently. And they did it at high levels. Because if you only demand consistently and people don't know you care, you you fall into that rule style of leadership and it works initially, but eventually it burns people out. You either get results fast, but it but at what what end? Because eventually it's gonna come down. So that's that rule style of leadership. If you're if you're only caring and you have no demanding, you fall into that please style of leadership where you're not really getting any great results. People like you, but they like you more as like a friend versus a leader, not a whole lot of respect from a leadership perspective. Uh, and then if you fall right there in the in the middle, you use both pretty well, but not at an elite level. You have a leadership style right there, is what we call support. And then if you use both at really high levels, we call that the elevate style of leadership. So can you care authentically and can you demand consistently at really high levels? And that's what the best leaders do. So I would say both art and science to answer your question.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh so I I love all of the above. We're gonna come to your book in a minute. You know, one of the things that I would say is you just described one of what I call the challenges of leading a real estate branch. And that I think that there's a tendency to lean towards uh the authentic caring versus the consistent demanding. So uh I think I've shared with you on your podcast, you know, if not all of my leadership life lessons came from my father, uh, there's a drip from him. And he would have described what you just described as hard on the issue, soft on the people. And you know, I always joke, you know my dad went to Wharton, he was a pretty smart dude. And uh the Wharton in him uh you know just tried to bring it to his team in a way that everybody could understand. Hard on the issue, which would be consistently demanding, soft on the people, which would be authentically caring or caring authentically. So, you know, the question is it does you know the words matter, but it's really the content and the context that makes the biggest difference. All right, you 65,000 assessments in your book, which is sitting on my desk. Uh, my deck for those that might get a glimpse at the video, my desk is not looking particularly clear on this. Uh let's talk about your book. First of all, congratulations. I think thanks. I think you've written two books, right? Two?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well, I'm working on a second one right now. Uh talk about your book. Yeah, Building the Best came out with McGraw Hill almost five years ago now. So it came out during COVID. It write it. So it's been a great. Um, I just wanted to give managers a toolkit and a recipe to lead teams better. And I didn't have that when I was early. I think they say that you write books for yourself. That's what I did. Uh, so I wrote a book that would help a manager walk through the six key skills that are required to lead. Uh, it's broken into leading individuals and leading teams. We now call that a training program called Accelerate Leadership, but it's the same stuff that's in the book, Building the Best. And we studied some of the best and the worst leaders from sports, from coaches to NFL head coaches to college head coaches to CEOs at big companies like ServiceNow or Movement Mortgage to find out what the very best leaders did at every level of an organization. And we try to put that into a series of principles and tools that leaders could use. Um, and it's been great. Um, you know, the next one is much harder book. It's called The Leadership Lens. I'm 15 chapters finished, and so I'm not far from the end line, but it's the hardest book I've ever written. And uh, it's taught me a lot about myself in trying to write in a style that I'm not used to, more of a fable book.

SPEAKER_01:

And little Patrick Lencioni, baby.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Patrick Lencioni's been a great mentor to me. Can I share the best lesson I learned from Patrick? I would love you to. Pat Lencioni, a great, great man, been an incredible mentor to me. And I'll never forget in our in our time together. He said, John, people need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. And I have always remembered that because I think it's true. As much information that comes at us in a day, we might not always learn these brand new things, but we do need to be reminded of them because we're human. And uh so Pat taught me that. And I try to remind myself of that often when we're teaching a workshop or delivering it to an executive team or even to frontline managers. It's like they've probably heard some version of this in some way, but they need the reminder because they're not doing it at a high enough level right now. It's like never getting bored with the basics. And uh, so Pat's been a great mentor to me.

SPEAKER_01:

It's funny, after COVID, I I wrote a white paper to remind me of what transpired during that period of time. And my title was Learn, Confirm, Continue. And it was what did I learn during COVID? What did I confirm I already knew? And what will I continue to do that I learned or continue to do that I confirmed? So it had all kinds of self-check in there. And it really speaks to what you just said. Uh, and and as our as we had our leadership program this week, I I actually probably used your words. I don't believe there's anything going to be shared today that you haven't seen or heard. The question is, you may come out of this session, and the greatest value is confirmation that you're doing the right thing. Confirmation that what you may be questioned is is good and positive and impactful. Or you may learn something new, or you may confirm something you know that you're not going to continue to do because it's not going to work in 2026. So, you know, I think that I love that uh, you know, for first of all, Patrick Lencioni uh is one of our favorites. Uh I recently shared, actually, it's coming out Monday, John. Uh three uh must read authors, not the books, but the authors Lencioni, Admiral William H. McCraven, and Ryan Holliday. And uh in my in my uh blog on Monday morning, I gave the five books per author that are emailed. And I I've challenged everybody to read at least one of them next year from each author. Good. I like those are you know, they're very different, right?

SPEAKER_00:

They're very different. I'm actually I've read I've read all those. Uh I'm a big listener of books. It helps me get through them faster and to take notes. And I like all three of those authors. They're they're great thought leaders. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I I I love ego is the enemy only because uh that is the uh the the fall short. Let's go back to your book for a minute. You've talked about you answered character, vision, coaching, competent humility, emotional mastery, persuasive communication, push-pull. I love that. You know, one of the the goals of of reality is typically uh I say to our listeners, if we give you three things in the 45 or 50 minutes that can help you have a better quality of life or do more business or be better with your family or be better with your friends or be better with your clients, then we win. And uh I would just say, I you know, I've got, as you know, I've been taking notes. Uh albeit I will probably listen to this podcast. I laugh, I don't usually listen to them. I did listen to the one you did with me, and uh, you are a very, very thoughtful, thought-provoking host and asked some great questions. Uh let's go back to your book for a minute. We've talked about what makes leaders great, we've talked about the characteristics. Why do they fail?

SPEAKER_00:

This is hard because great leadership doesn't guarantee success, but in the absence of it, it guarantees failure. So you can do everything right as a leader and fail and it not get the results that you want or the organization needs or the department requires, and it could on the outside look like a colossal failure. And that's what makes leadership extremely difficult because you can do everything right and and the results might need not be what are required. So the obvious answer is leaders fail because they're not leading. I mean, that's the obvious answer that that they're that they're toxic, that they're ego driven, that they are my way or the highway, that they are too nice or too, you know, too demanding or too caring. Those would be the those would be the obvious answers for why someone fails at leadership, but I struggle more with the leaders that do it to the very best of their ability and they're intentional about what they're doing, and the rest results still aren't what are required. And I think um that's more of a wrestling match than someone that's worked for a toxic boss or a toxic manager or worked in a in a toxic culture. They know why that organization is failing. Um it goes back a little bit to what we were talking about earlier. There's a lot of things you can't control from a leadership perspective. Markets change, new technology comes in, new competition arises. So uh I would to me, that's where I would kind of land on it is that if you're doing everything that you possibly can to help lead a team to higher levels of success and the outcomes aren't what you want, I can live with that. I can act, I don't like it, but I can live with it. What I can't live with is leaders who don't do everything that they're supposed to do at a high enough level, and that they take shortcuts or they assume that they've arrived and they're not arriving, and then they get upset when the outcomes aren't what they are.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and then there's the other, there's the third bucket, which is one we've been discussing at great length here as we prepare for 2026, is sometimes high performance of a team can mask a toxic environment or a culture that's on decline. We always have to be careful. I've always said I try to measure 50% on performance and 50% on culture because I have seen more times than not a high, yep, I grew the revenue, I grew all this, I grew all that, but underneath the waterline, there's a toxic nature, there's a culture challenge, and so this performance is masking this. So, you know, you've shared great leader doing all the right things, they don't get the results, we can live with that, versus the person not doing all the right things, not and then externalizing, I go, I say I call it externalizing their plight in life, right? They've externalized their lack of success and blame others. And then this other one is also, I think, really an interesting dynamic in that there are teams that perform at a high level. The example I always give and goes back to my sports analogy, uh, is George Seaford. George Seaford won two Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers. George Seaford was named head football coach of the Carolina Panthers and was 1 in 15 and got fired. George Seaford didn't go from great coach to terrible coach. George Seaford probably was doing all the right things at Carolina, but there were things out of his control, like the players, like the front office. And I'm I'm not casting it. Yeah, no, you're fine. But my point is, you know, and and you know, the hardest thing in my career is letting people go who I know, like, and trust, even to the point of love. I think they're doing the best they can, and the needle just does not move.

SPEAKER_00:

It's very difficult. This is why the best, but I think this is why the best leaders they care deeply about the outcomes, but they don't tie themselves or that their identity to it. They know a significant part of their responsibility is to deliver great results. That there's no one's trying to run from that. Anybody that's running from that probably shouldn't be in a position of leadership, anyways. But this is why we we we must do our very best to not let the outcome dictate who we are as people or as leaders because of the things out of your control. Uh George Seaford didn't control the front office at the time. There was a GM. Uh, you know, there's there are lots of factors to it.

SPEAKER_01:

But I think his quarterback wasn't Steve Young, but I'll just go on record.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was Steve Berline, if I'm not mistaken. Uh but I think there's there's a there's a connection to that. I want people to care deeply about delivering great results. Because when you deliver great results, it builds confidence. And confidence comes from within and repetition. And so when you become more confident, you can then in turn, it's like a flywheel effect. So delivering great results does matter. And I don't want anybody to hear me say anything different than that, but you don't typically get them by focusing solely on them. You get them by focusing on the inputs that create the outcomes. And I think the best leaders can live with hey, we're gonna focus on our inputs, not the outputs. And if we focus on our inputs, I can live with the output, whatever it is. It doesn't mean I have to like it, but I can live with it. And I think that's where this dichotomy is tough.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'll I'll I'll share one other lesson from my father while I've got uh leadership on our minds today. And that is when you lead the top line, the bottom line takes care of itself. And the top line is servant leadership, and the bottom line is profitability. And if you lead by the bottom line at the expense of the top line, then you will find yourself in a challenging situation that you may not be able to get out of. So said a little bit differently, but exactly the same thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, your dad was a wise man. I wish I knew him.

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, well, you know, I'm I'm I'm putting a book together on his uh uh his uh 22 life and leadership lessons. And one of these days, you know, it's funny. Uh I commend you on your book. Uh what's the percentage of people that actually write a book that say they're gonna write a book like six, some crazy company? Oh, probably like one.

SPEAKER_00:

Probably like one.

SPEAKER_01:

I've been working on it from 2008, and that would be my vulnerability today uh in telling the truth to everybody. Uh, you know, you wrote your own book, you're writing leadership lens, which I love. Uh I love the fact that you're, you know, we talk about the more uncomfortable we get, the more discomfort we have, the more we grow. You've challenged yourself to write a book in a different voice than you're accustomed to. And what you said is this is the hardest book I've ever tried to write or written. So uh I I whether I'm reading it, whether I'm auto, audio book, uh, other than your book, do you have a recommendation for our listeners today? Is they prepare for 2026. I, you know, I think 26 is filled with opportunities that are going to be unique. Uh, I think uh you said it very early on, and that is I gotta try some, pardon me, some different things. Uh talk to me for a minute. Give me a book.

SPEAKER_00:

I just opened my audible because I I listen to a lot. Um I'm currently listening to Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday. There you go. I'm listening to Moral Ambition by Rucker Bregman. I'm risking, I'm listening to The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Uh, Benjamin Hardy, that book's an interesting one. I'm almost finished with it. Uh, if you're not familiar with the science of scaling, but he really challenges you to think about an impossible goal. And maybe that's where we land today for agents, is not just to I was on a plane this week and I look over and there's a CEO, COO of a company sitting right across my way, and he's writing out his goals for his leadership meeting, and and his goal was so clearly stated to grow by 10%. That was the goal in 2026. And I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and be like, sir, I don't know anything about your company, but that's not big enough. That's not an impossible goal. It's it's not gonna, his people's lives aren't gonna change, their behavior's not gonna dramatically shift to grow the business by 10%. That doesn't get people out of bed. It's not that it's not important, it's not that it's not a good objective. But if you have an impossible goal, you have to do some things differently than you're doing them today. And I think if I'm in my if I'm an agent today, if I'm a real estate agent or even a leader in the real estate industry, I'm really challenging myself and my people to think about what is your impossible goal for 2026 that would require you to do things dramatically different to achieve that goal. Not kind of different, not just turning up the dial a little bit and getting better results, but dramatically different. And what I've found in my work coaching people one-on-one and then working with teams is that we can accomplish so much more than we even think we can.

SPEAKER_01:

For sure.

SPEAKER_00:

You and I, you and I, when we get uncomfortable, if we're doing a wall sit or we're we're doing a workout or we're running a sprint at the end of football practice, when we think we're tired, we're really 40% tired. So that means you have 60% that we're leaving on the table. Now, what so that that's to me my challenge to you and your listeners today is don't just give me a 10% goal. Give me an impossible goal, something that at the end of this year, if and when you accomplish it, it will be so significant for you and your business that it dramatically changes the outcome of the company or your career. And here's the best part. You know, I like Jim Rohn, and I think you do as well. Jim Rohn had this unbelievable line. He said it's not the accomplishment of the goal that's most important, it's who you become working to achieve it. Now think about that. If I set an impossible goal and I'm gonna try to grow my real estate business from what does a good agent do?$25 million?

SPEAKER_01:

That would be that would be on the upper echelon for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay,$25 million. And it would be easy to set a goal to go to 30. I got it. No problem. 20% growth, we get to$30 million. I know that would be great. But how could we go to$50 million? What would I have to do differently? Because if I had to do some things different to go from 25 to 50, I might have to hire agents, I might have to develop new agents, I might have to learn how to use video in my everyday marketing efforts, all the things that I might have to do differently to get to 50, whether you get to 45 or 50 or 35 or 37 doesn't matter. You've become a new kind of agent. I don't run because I choose not to. But if I was gonna run a marathon, if I was, it's not whether I run the turkey half marathon next Thanksgiving. It's that I become the kind of person that runs every day. That's what I'm after for agents today, because that you can count on over time versus you know a short-term 5%, 10% increase in performance in 2026.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I love that. I love that. Uh, the science of scalability. Was that the title?

SPEAKER_00:

The science of scaling. Now, I have to admit one thing vulnerability. I'm not the biggest fan of Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Uh, he's in Orlando, he's similar age as me. Years ago, I asked him to come on the podcast, and his first response was, How what's the size of the listener? And I never liked that question. Uh, it didn't come off as a servant heart. I respect it. I've not met him, I'm not judging him, but I I do like just the idea of an impossible goal and how you would have to dramatically change your behavior or your efforts to achieve it. Uh and I I think there's some wisdom in that.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, you know, it's called a lot of things by a lot of different folks. And uh I'll I'm gonna share my closing remark, but I'm gonna let you close this out because you've been exceptional today, and and so much we appreciate you sharing your insight and some vulnerability and some personal stories. You know, as you talk about these big goals, um, I go back and I I thought I was gonna give you my last father's piece of wisdom, but I'm gonna I've made a decision that if I'm gonna finish this book, the more I talk about it while it's being recorded, the more opportunities I have to transfer it into writing. So the journey is the reward. You know, as I was growing up, it was always the journey, it's the journey, not the destination. We've all heard that, right? And right near the end of his life, he reminded me that the journey is the reward, which is exactly what you just said. If I don't get to 45, but I went from 25 to 45 because my impossible goal of 50, I fell short, you know, uh, then the journey was the the the journey is the reward, right? The growth. The the I love this impossible goal to something dramatically different. And I wrote the word down here. Then what we have accomplished together becomes transformational.

SPEAKER_00:

True.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, buddy. Close it out today, man. You've been unbelievable. What a treat for me and the and the listeners.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I don't know that there's anything to close out other than um. I don't pretend that the world that your people work in or the world that I work in is easy. I know everybody's going through something, whether they know it or not, at home or at work. And I would just ask that anybody listening today or anybody that um is working on getting better, that you don't do it alone and you help somebody else through it as well. And uh the world, if in many ways we need kinder people that are willing to help and get their hands dirty and and help the agent next to them, not just help themselves, and something incredible happens, is when you help somebody else get to a higher level of performance or a new level, you end up doing the same. I don't know, I I'm not a karma guy, I'm not a, but I just think what you will learn by helping somebody else get better will will ultimately help your actions and your behaviors as well. And I and I'm not saying this to say that the real estate game is easy right now. It is not. I know it's competitive, I know it can be cutthroat, I know that markets change. And so I would just say if you're in real estate right now, don't give up. Keep going. Uh, the world needs your expertise and your relationships. So um it's my hope that some of the ideas and tools and strategies that we shared today will help you and you're at home or at work. And uh I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you today, Gary.

SPEAKER_01:

John, awesome. Good friend. Have a great weekend. Uh you and I are big sports fans. I'm gonna enjoy a little high school football tonight, gonna go see the the Chargers in the semifinals.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh and uh it's a knife and a gun fight right now for the Chargers. They are and and if you're not familiar with them, they are the gun. And uh, and so good for them. I'm gonna go watch a little high school football as well. Well, Charlotte Catherine plays their second round game tonight. And uh, I hope you'll have a great uh weekend. Thanks again for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_01:

You got it, bud. Take care.

Contributor

Gary Scott

Host