What If The Real Measure Of Success Is Who Listens?

Time is the one thing even the richest people can’t buy more of, and that truth changes how we think about leadership. Greg and I dig into why “more valuable than gold” isn’t a slogan, it’s a real compass for your career, your family, and the choices you make when nobody is watching. If you’ve ever felt the middle of life speeding up while you’re just trying to keep up, this conversation is for you.

We walk through a simple approach to career planning that starts with priorities and turns into a five-year plan you can actually use. We talk about why communication is the connector for everything that matters, how telling the right people your goals creates support and accountability, and why your plan should be revisited every few years instead of parked in a drawer. We also share how Management By Responsibility (MBR) from Dr. Durst ties purpose, focus, and leadership responsibility back to the moment you’re living right now.

Then we get practical about setbacks. John shares what it feels like to be unemployed after decades of work and the mindset shift that finally helped, including a job search move that goes beyond sending resumes into the void. Greg adds the HR perspective on what organizations notice when you interact with front desk staff and how your “personal culture” shows up before the interview even starts.

If you want to use time better, lead with more intention, and build a career plan that fits your real life, listen now. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s at a crossroads, and leave a review so more leaders can find the show.

Transcript

Why Time Matters In Leadership

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Well, hello, and welcome to our podcast, Success, Secrets, and Stories. I'm your host, John Wondolowski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, Greg Powell. Greg? Hey everybody. And when we put together this podcast, we wanted to put out a helping hand and help that next generation and help answer the question of what does it mean to be a leader? Today we want to talk about a subject that I think supports that concept. So the title of this podcast that I really like was More Valuable Than Gold. How you spend your time. And the most valuable commodity you'll ever have is time. We all get a defined, finite element of a timeline to be productive and to have an impact, whether it be on our families or in our communities. It's could be anywhere from a matter of seconds in a life or 103 years on a planet. It's still a finite period of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

So as John has said, we're talking about time today. How we think about it, how we plan around it, and how it ties into leadership and responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah, and this subject shows up everywhere in your life. And it absolutely is part of what is important in terms of work and leadership, that concept of time.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

So think about when a child is born. That element of time starts a clock. And the influence of a human life begins at the first breath. Parents' lives evolve around their children, as it should be.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah. And at the same vein, retirement is that other element, a gift that you earned over time. It's something that you've earned through hard work. And it's an effort to prepare for that retirement.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

And what hits me is that most of us live right in the middle of that timeline. We're busy, we're working, we're building a family, we're building a career. And it's so easy to forget how fast that middle part goes.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

And your life as an adult, it affects the people that are around you. It sits right in the middle of that timeline. Your life affects everyone, whether you realize it or not. And it's not an aha moment if you've ever had that opportunity to plan and contemplate your life and really make a decision on where do you want to take it.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

As a young adult, you're making decisions about what you want to do with your life. And it's not easy to create direction when you're trying to sit back and steer the ship yourself. But you're not alone. We naturally engage with the people around us. And how successful you become as a communicator is in effect how many people are listening. That how many people are listening line is such a leadership truth. How do you connect that to this podcast, John?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, and when we started this podcast four years ago, we were basically highlighting the concept of MBR by Dr. Durst.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

And the reason we keep coming back to it is because it's practical. Listeners can take it into work the same day, whether they're on a new job or leading a team.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

And our point is if you're listening to this podcast, you're looking for ways to be an effective leader. And it really doesn't matter what level of job you're talking about, you're looking to improve. Being conscious of how you communicate to the people around you is the essence of MBR.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

The phrase, time is more valuable than gold, is actually an understatement. If the Carnegie and the Rockefellers of the world could extend their time on Earth, they certainly would have tried. That period between adolescence and retirement is where you need to point your arrow toward where you want to be at the end of the ride.

The Middle Of Life Moves Fast

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Life is a moment in time. It is oftentimes more like a roller coaster. The highs can be unbelievable and the lows can hit you right in the heart. The time is now. Today is this moment. When you think back about management by responsibility or MBR, talking about focus on the moment.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

And that's a great point. Let's just say that you've never developed a five-year plan before in your career. Well, we're asking you to do that today, now. And if not today, at least don't let months pass before the thought of redefining your direction is something that you find important. You don't want to wake up 30 years down the road saying, How did I get here? Don't leave it the chance. Communicate that goal to the people that are closest to you. They can help you in terms of what makes sense and how the how do you communicate and how well your goals that you have in mind were really set in terms of your abilities and your skills and your experience.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

You know, as John is saying, surround yourself with people who want you to win. That's big. People can't support what they don't know. If you keep your plan in your head, you're carrying it by yourself.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, and the basic requirements that I share with people is to start with three high-level priorities. First, for me is God. My second priority is family. And whether they share your last name or there are people in your community or their family or friends, they all are part of what I consider family. The third priority is obtaining and keeping a living wage kind of job, understanding the impact that that job has in terms of the community and your goals and where your personal development as a human being starts to become more apparent.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

I like that framing priorities aren't just ideas. They're where your time actually goes. And communication is really the connector that keeps those priorities.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah. And as you grow your skills, your abilities to communicate improve until you can see that growth in yourself as you step through and start your adult life. Whether you pick a profession when you finish

Build A Five-Year Plan

SPEAKER_01 6:50

your college or university studies, it's more or less a helpful guide to a direction, but it's not the goal. It's to help you try to start that process. You're basically beginning to point your ship to a horizon that you want to reach.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

You know, it's not an easy time, but it's valuable time. It's a season of self-reflection and research. Figuring out what directions are actually available to you. You take inventory of what you've accomplished and you pay attention to the things you generally enjoy doing.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

You know, there's an old line that I found that's kind of funny. If you do what you love for a living, you'll never work a day of your life. And, you know, it does make sense when people have the interest in terms of the ocean or just being associated with the sea and they end up in scuba diving instructors or working in marine biology, whatever it is that they found that satisfaction of being near the ocean. That's that's the key. But in a lot of cases, especially early on, you're you're trying to make choices that make some sense. You have to take a pause, take an inventory, see what you've accomplished, see what matters to you, and then decide where you want to try to point that ship. Think about it. Five years into the job, and you're doing well and you're earning a living wage, and the question is, are you still in terms of a direction of a career, what you want to do, or is that a time to pivot? When you finish high school, you step back and ask that basic question. And that is really a valuable point in time.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

And John, you've lived a lot of this firsthand. Can you walk folks through how your own path started and how it shifted over time?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, I started off in trucking and I was a diesel truck mechanic, and I went through the apprentice program, the technician, the foreman in the trucking industry. And it was interesting because my dad was in the same industry and he made a comment as I was finishing my community college. He said, I've spent the majority of my life working in a trucking industry, whether it be on a dock, loading trailers, being a mechanic. And it's the work that I can do because I have the skills. But my son, what you should try to do is work with your mind and not just your hands, and make a difference. His recommendation was basically find an office job. That was that was what he was trying to gear me towards. It wasn't the define career plan, but it was more like what he could see as that next level to give me an advantage. And the company my dad worked for was actually important because he had found a way to combine a job with family because he worked with his brother. And it didn't dawn on me until I was working on this podcast that I found that my dad had found a way to make a living wage and connect with his family while he was on the job. He was working with his only other immediate family member, his brother, on a regular basis. And the wisdom of that career and how he worked with family and how he worked on that job were totally connected. Working on the docks or in the trucking industry wasn't easy at any level, but he shared the positives and the negatives of the job with his brother. And it was my uncle when he passed, is when my dad lost his sense of direction and felt lost. He had been blessed with the rare occasion of combining

John’s Career Path And Priorities

SPEAKER_01 10:40

both family and work in the same solution. And it was an elegant way of having a career and a life and a job all combined together.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Because it shows planning isn't just about titles and pay. It's also about how your work supports the life you're trying to live.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah. And I'm encouraging you to write a five-year plan if you haven't deciphered that by now. And just don't write it for what you want to be when you grow up. Start with a list of priorities. Really, if you hit the opportunity, try to pick up the book on MBR because it will help you with that process. But you want to challenge yourself in terms of a career plan for every five years. Don't just do it once and park it in a drawer. For me, I did it as a goal career planning for retirement. I actually had the goal of writing books and working in this podcast. And it was really something that I took the time in order to try to create so that I could achieve it. At the midpoint of my career, I decided to go into leadership. I wanted to improve the work environment for the people who are in support services. And if you don't know what support services is, it's things like facilities and maintenance and housekeeping, food surface, carpentry, welding, machinist. What they all talk about is, you know, support service teams or soft skills. That really is the essence of where I began to make that five-year plan.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

You know, John, that's a great example of values turning into direction. Your priorities weren't just personal. They shaped the kind of leader you wanted to be.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Yeah, and I really got a lot of satisfaction of helping people in that leadership role and how they improved their positions in the organization. That gave me a lot of satisfaction. But now I've actually earned my retirement. And my goals are now different. I'm trying to do that reconnection with my brothers' families and my wife's family. The goal isn't to subtract from their lives, but to share their lives and to be as supportive as I can whenever they ask. Doing this podcast actually has been the most fun for that plan. And it has the effect of still helping my work family because these lessons that I've learned from MBR has really been something that I have seen benefits coming from the responses I've gotten from people who have sent us comments on the podcast. It reinforces the ideas of what we've been talking about.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

The key is that Dr. Durst did a great job of talking about how to prioritize those moments, those moments where you step back and actually plan. It took him two days in a business seminar setting to express the idea for a responsible life. First as an individual and then as a business leader. It's not as important that you follow the concept word for word as it is that you understand how limited your time is on this earth. Do whatever you can to live with purpose in the direction you choose to follow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

And follow that direction with conviction, I guess, is the essence of this podcast. Whether you're you're following your heart or whether you're following your head or you're following your family's input, it's an opportunity to try to take a

Job Search Moves That Work

SPEAKER_01 14:15

measurement of where you are in a point in time and put energy to that direction that you've picked. That I think is the message we want to leave you with.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

And it's worth saying, and saying it out loud, having a plan doesn't mean life won't hit you. It just means you're not drifting when it does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And life is just not cupcakes and lollipops. I went through periods of times where I'd been laid off and I couldn't find another job. And if you've ever been unemployed after working for 30 years or 20 years straight, you know how much that can affect you in terms of the sting of being unemployed. And I think nothing really made a difference until I actually went back to my science days and thought about Newton's law of energy. I had sent out all kinds of paperwork for resumes and hoping that I could have some kind of impact. And I was working with a counselor that was actually a service that my employer had given me to help me with my job search. And at a certain point in time, after six months, I realized that my three-page resume was nothing more than lining waste paper baskets. So to use Newton's law, I had to take an action. And something that I found was that I decided to go in and hand my resume in to meet with the receptionist, but I would dress as if it was a business meeting. And I had that conversation with the receptionist to ask if she could help send this resume to the HR department. It was engaging that person, respecting that person. And the part that I found interesting later is that it's not something that's new. I never knew about that trick. But Greg, you've been in the HR world and you've heard of this technique that I think you've even used yourself, correct?

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Absolutely, John. Whether you call them guards at the front desk or receptionists, you're still part of our organization. We care what they think about when people might come work for us. And so if you were cordial to those individuals, if you followed instructions, that's good. And that goes a long way. If you were flustered and not very polite, that comes out as well. It's a great way to show your personality and your kind of personal culture to your prospective new employer.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

And that Newton's law that you did something, you took it from paper to being present in order to talk to the person, I think is the part that really dawned on me after time. And I want to throw in one other one other thought in terms of getting another job that my brother Ray had brought up about creating your next job. And he said to think out of the box and write your own resume and your own job description that companies may not have, but they need. And if you have the opportunity to talk to some individuals in organizations, sell yourself, sell the position. It's just another mindset to help you understand career planning and careers are dynamic. They're always changing. You have to keep up because it isn't make one plan fits all. It is a dynamically changing environment. And that brings me probably a little bit more into

Sounding Boards And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 17:45

what we are actually doing in this podcast. I started this concept with a friend, Greg. And uh, Greg and I were entry-level supervisors back in the 80s. And over the years, we had done something in terms of being a sounding board. And that's the other magic dust of helping you understand how to create a plan is having people that you would actually use as sounding boards to help you and help them. And that's what good friends do. They share and they challenge each other and they celebrate the things that happen in each other's lives.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

One of the things I hearken back to, and I'll add to this, John and I go way back, as you mentioned, we've been in each other's lives with our families, with our advanced education, with jobs, where we were living. And it was great having him as a sounding board for all those things, not just the job things, but those lifestyles kind of changes. It was a career advantage for me having John as a partner. And you just don't have to figure all this stuff out by yourself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

And I mean, you're living in Florida now. I'm living in Illinois, and we make this podcast that basically eliminates that distance between us. We we have a wonderful time. And we have an audience that we have had at least some wonderful input that we have helped them and we have made changes in some of their careers. And that is such a wonderful blessing.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Now, if you're listening to this podcast, let us know how else we can help, whether it's guests that you'd like us to do interviews with, but people that can bring another point of view, if that would help, or other subjects or topics challenging you personally in the work environment as you try to conduct yourself as a leader. Just let us know.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And to Greg's earlier point, now is when you write your career plan. Now is when you set time aside to find out what you want to put your time and your effort behind so that you don't wake up 10 years down the road and say, What happened? Use this podcast to be that motivation. And I hope this helps. That's the reason that we do the podcast. And if you like what you've heard, I've written a book called Building Your Leadership Toolbox, and we talk about tools like this. And it's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and other sites. The podcast is what you've been listening to. Thank you so much. It's also available on Apple, Google, and Spotify. A lot of what we talk about is from Dr. Durst and his MBR program. If you'd like to know more about Dr. Durst, you can find out on SuccessGrowthAcademy.com. And if you'd like to contact us, please send me a line. That's Wanto75 periodjw at gmail.com. And the music has been brought to you by my grandson. So we want to hear from you. Drop me a line. Tell me what's going on, what you like, and what you would like to hear about. It has always helped us to create content. Thanks, Greg. This was fun.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Thanks, John. As always. Next time.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah.