The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
From Farm to Forum: Dusty Holcomb on Purpose-Driven Leadership
Dusty Holcomb’s story begins on a farm, where the simple truth that “cows need milking 365 days a year” instilled an unshakable work ethic. Those early lessons in responsibility and persistence carried into his entrepreneurial ventures as a child—creating a town newspaper at eight and running a landscaping business by eleven. These formative experiences shaped a lifelong commitment to connecting hard work with meaningful purpose.
After spending 21 years at AAA and nearly three decades in corporate leadership, Dusty developed a leadership philosophy centered on “connecting the dots” between what people do and why it matters. He emphasizes that clarity comes first, followed by alignment, and only then can execution succeed. This clarity-first approach helps leaders address common pain points such as feeling isolated, becoming bottlenecks in decision-making, or struggling with gaps between vision and reality.
Throughout his journey, forum groups provided Dusty with critical support during times of challenge and transition. These peer groups not only offered perspective but also helped him refine his own path as a leader. He also draws on timeless insights like Viktor Frankl’s reminder that, regardless of circumstances, leaders can always choose their response.
Today, through The Arcus Group, Dusty is focused on multiplying leadership impact at scale, aiming to empower 100 million leaders around the world. By equipping leaders with the tools to connect purpose, clarity, and execution, he is helping reshape how organizations inspire and engage their teams. His journey serves as both a reminder and a roadmap: leadership rooted in values can transform not only organizations but the lives of the people within them.
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization, the marketplace for facilitators. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and it is a pleasure today to have with us Dusty Holcomb. He is founder and chief evangelist for the Arcus Group, dusty, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mo. Such a delight to be here with you today and really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about things that we are both deeply passionate about.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, we have a lot of shared passion, I know that. But I want to start with you and your story. Let's kind of just start with childhood perhaps. Where did you grow up and where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I grew up in rural East Georgia. My dad was the county extension agent for Warren County in the University of Georgia Extension Service, so his whole job was helping farmers be more successful and he grew up as a dairy farmer. So my life, my young childhood, grew up around farming, farmers and all the wonderful lessons you learn from that, that lifestyle, uh. And then went to school. I was homeschooled from fifth grade through uh high school and then uh college in Columbus state university. Uh, before getting uh getting out figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, I had no idea. So I got a business degree and found that, oh, this is interesting. There's an organizational psychology component here. I can go do some cool things, but it all started in the background of a farm.
Speaker 1:I love that you know. Listen, I've always been intrigued by what happens when you have that background. What are some of the lessons that you've grown up with from having to work on a farm and the rigorous schedule that I know that can have?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny you ask that question my dad. One of my earliest memories, one of my earliest lessons from my dad and again, you know he grew up dairy farming and his lesson to me was the cows have to be milked seven days a week, 365 days a year. They don't care if it's Christmas or Easter or any other day, and so therefore, if you want them to take care of you, you have to take care of them. There are no days off.
Speaker 2:And in that farming lifestyle that mentality has certainly been pervasive for me and my work, for good and for bad. Right, there's there's some downsides to that, but that was one of my earliest recollections and earliest memories. And then also just watching my dad serve other farmers Like I. He was, you know, dairy cattle specialist, so I remember going to the farm with him and he was, you know, a dairy cattle specialist, so I remember going to the farm with him and watching him do um, you know when we were castrating calves or you know all those little things that you just, you just do, and it's just, he just did the work, whatever it needed to get the job done. That would probably be lesson number two is whatever it takes to get the job done, and that can be fixing a tractor in the field where it broke, or it can be the fun stuff like having a fish fry for all the farmers.
Speaker 1:Those are two great lessons. Thank you for sharing those. So do you actually work every single day? You don't take a day off as a result of that.
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't get had the opportunity to live on the dairy farm like he did, but that was the mentality and I am working hard to be able to shut it off. Personally, I find myself, I love what I do, and so I give myself that as an excuse. And then I have a much smarter than me bride who will remind me you need to actually refresh the brain in order to do some things.
Speaker 1:So I'm working on it. Yeah, now the other thing I have to ask you probably are the first person I've met who has shared with me that he has castrated a cow. So what is that experience like? I just have to know.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I imagine it's not too common of a thing. Um well, the sound isn't very pleasant because they don't like it they don't like it. I can't imagine. And I wasn't very old, I was probably eight or nine, um, and they do it differently now today. Uh, back then it was, uh, it was still a knife. So, uh, it was. It was not very pleasant and I remember thinking the sound wasn't very pleasant, but it was just what we did, just part of it, so part of the life.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what were your early jobs? Entrepreneurial ventures, you know kind of coming up in school and so forth.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, I haven't thought about this in 30 years until you just asked this question. We lived in a very small town, population 254. And my earliest entrepreneurial venture that I can remember is we had a Mac computer back when those were just coming out, and I made a newspaper because our town didn't have one and so created this newspaper, wrote this whole thing. I probably was eight or nine years old and went and stood by the post office to sell the newspaper and I think we sold four copies the first day from, you know, parents that were coming in or people coming in. You know, I think they were a nickel, maybe 10 cents a piece, and I remember thinking, okay, I'm going to have to sell a lot of these in order to get anywhere. And then my mom was like, oh well, you have to make sure you're paying me back for the paper. And that's when I was first exposed to COGS and I went, huh, I need to find something with better unit economics than a newspaper in a market with 254 people. But that was the very first one and then after that it just became a series of things.
Speaker 2:My dad, my brother and I had our own landscaping company, and it was my brother and I. He was three years younger than me, I was 11. He was eight. Dad would drive us to the work and he would drive us on the trailer. We do all, unload all the equipment, do all the work. We had contracts with companies and with people at 11 years old and I remember thinking all, unload all the equipment, do all the work. We had contracts with companies and with people at 11 years old and I remember thinking, all right, this is this is okay, I'm in control, I'm in charge. If we wanted to work really hard on a Friday night and go really late so we could have the weekend free, that's what we did. Those are. Those are the two earliest memories that I have about going out and hustling to make a dollar on my own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing, amazing. Those are great stories. And so then, after college, what was your?
Speaker 2:first job, or what did you do right out of college? You know, mo, I never really understood or did the college experience where you didn't work. So I started working when I was 16, for someone else and at a men's retail store a high-end men's retail store and it was probably the single best gift I've ever been given regarding work, and the reason is I learned how to sell, and what I learned about sales was not it wasn't about me, it was about understanding what the customer was coming in for. What did they need? How do you ask questions? How do you present them with the solutions that would fit them? And so I started doing that when I was 16. And within a year I became the top salesperson in the little small company. It was like five of us, but I was supposed to be the stock boy, but I loved it, and so I would work there 35 hours a week until the holidays, and that was when I was first introduced to what it was like to work through the holiday season in retail, and I vividly remember my first retail holiday season paycheck. It was $896 for two weeks work that worked, I don't know. 80 or 100 hours, it was just like bell to bell every day.
Speaker 2:But I worked all through college. I worked 35, 40 hours a week and then, when I was in college, I started working in a call center and so my first job out of college, I was already running a call center for a large bank down in Georgia and got recruited away to go to an organization called AAA, american Automobile Association. Yeah, and I loved it because I was thinking, oh, this is great, they're hiring me, this 23-year-old kid who had no business being here to move a call center from Charlotte, north Carolina, to Roanoke Ravis, north Carolina, hire 350 people, install the culture. I was going to be the only transplant and I don't know why they hired me. I think they were either desperate or blind, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:But I took it because I was at a company I loved, because I thought where else am I going to get an opportunity to come and do all of this at 23 years old. And I didn't know anything about AAA except for the fact that it was the gift of my grandparents gave my mom and dad every year for Christmas and I thought was the most lame thing in the world. But then I stayed there for 21 years because I fell in love with the fact that every day when I went home I knew we helped people. We helped people and not in just a metaphorical sense, but we helped people get off the side of the road. We helped dads make sure that their daughters going to college were protected All the things. I've got hundreds of stories. I loved it and so I stayed there for, like I said, 21 years, did every job in the organization, but it was always about the service and helping others.
Speaker 1:And what's one of those stories that you remember that was meaningful for you?
Speaker 2:I've got one that was meaningful from a leadership perspective and then I've got one that was meaningful from a member perspective. The One of my responsibilities when I was there was to our auto repair facility. So we had 40 locations and people would come in and get their cars fixed. Auto repair is a little bit of a messy business. It's low trust and people don't understand. And I had a customer, a member, call me and say I want you to know that my daughter went into your store in Wilmington, north Carolina, and I've got a problem. So I'm immediately going all right, here we go, let me help you. I'm here to help, I'm here to understand. He goes. Here's my problem. My daughter's experience in Wilmington has now ruined her from being able to go to any other auto repair shop. Team was communicative. They took her out to the shop and explained to her. You know, I I didn't have to worry that she was getting ripped off and and and so I I was. I had steeled myself to get like oh God, we did something wrong and didn't have that. So it's just one of many, many stories I would always have on a AAA shirt and you see somebody in Target and they go hey, you're AAA, can you help me? And we just, we had a lot of fun helping people, the leadership story that's, I think.
Speaker 2:Back on we started our own towing company in Charlotte, north Carolina, to augment what our service providers, our contractors, could do. So we had a new venture we bought all the trucks, I went and picked up trucks, drove one back, towed it back myself because I figured I needed to know how to do this, drove one back, towed it back myself because I figured I needed to know how to do this. Our very first day of operation, the manager of the fleet that I'd hired a guy named George Figueredo. He and I were down at the dispatch office that we'd set up and we get a call from our dispatch center that said hey, we have a member that has been waiting for three hours and the service provider that was supposed to go to him has canceled. Can you guys go do it Now? This is our very first day and I looked at George and I said, well, let's go do it. And he goes. Well, you and I both been trained, but we've never done it before. I said, well, between the two of us, we can go figure this out. So we jumped in the truck drove over there.
Speaker 2:The member was not happy, as they shouldn't have been, and I just said look, my name is Dusty Holcomb, I'm the vice president of member services. You know we knew that you'd been waiting and want to come out here and make sure this is taken care of. And and then you know she said okay, great, here's where I want to. And then George and I stood there looking at each other for about five minutes after she left and I've like the prayer was answered, which was please don't let her stay here and watch us do this, because we don't know what we're doing, and she didn't Thank God because we stood there looking at each other going well, we think we're going to have to do it this way.
Speaker 2:We figured it out, nothing was damaged, but there's just so many stories. It was a very blessed time of my life.
Speaker 1:And that sounds amazing. And so, after AAA, what did you do after that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, after AAA, I left in 2021. We had been acquired by a much larger AAA affiliate and I was wired in a much more entrepreneurial mindset. Our AAA affiliate had been very entrepreneurial, very lean, and I'd done a lot of really neat things. I had decided I was going to take a year off and then start my own leadership consulting firm, because my entire life, ever since my very first mentor back in the call center days, had been about serving others. In fact, greg was a retired colonel and had told me hey, dusty, your number one job as a leader is to ensure that your people are taken care of, because when you take care of them, they will take care of the customer, they take care of the mission, and so that had been my founding principle and I'd lived that in the corporate world for a long, long time.
Speaker 2:Well, when I left AAA, I was going to start my own leadership firm because I wanted to help leaders and continue that, and I met some amazing people in Knoxville, tennessee, who are an e-commerce logistics company, and I think I managed to keep my promise to my wife about taking a year off for about two months before I decided to join RedStag as their CEO and help them grow and scale, and then did that for three years and then after that run was ended, it was like, okay, I feel very called that now is the season. Now's the time I get to go to help others and serve others as they grow in their leadership journeys and really bring my personal mission to life, which is to empower success in others. I did it for 28 years in a corporate environment. Now I get to do it in a different type of environment environment.
Speaker 1:Now I get to do it in a different type of environment. That is amazing. And at RedStag you were a CEO and I believe at that point you joined the Young Presidents Organization. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd actually joined YPO when I was still at AAA. I was the president of our automotive division. So 2018 is when I first joined YPO, and it was active when I was at RedStag as well joined YPO and it was active.
Speaker 1:When I was at Red Sag as well, got it and so clearly you were part of a forum and I know it's all confidential. But you know, one of the things that's important for us on this show is to sort of highlight, showcase the power of forum, the effect the forum may have had on your life in general. And again, for those who don't know, this is a small group of roughly eight people that meet every month in a confidential, structured environment to help each other be the best they can be. So you joined a forum, what was that like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's the forum experience, and either through YPO or Vistage previously, I've had almost 20 years of being in a small group forum experience and I would be understating if I said it's been the most life-changing part of my leadership journey, because I don't know that I have enough words to put into how powerful it has been. So I'll give you two specific stories. One was with my Vistage group. I was going through a very tough divorce and you know Vistage, you know you think about the forum. It can be all business and it wasn't that at all.
Speaker 2:In a season for me of deep struggle and challenge, I had people around me who, a cared, b asked amazing questions and C affirmed that, despite challenges I was facing, I was still a good human being and that there were people who cared about me and cared about me in a way that they would ask this tough questions. They were very good at being kind and not nice and and giving me the truth that I needed to hear, and so that was a. That was a transformational experience and it wasn't just about hey, tell me more about your business. And then, with my YPO forum, who I'm in with one of our, mr Chuck Hall, actually introduced us. He's such an incredible leader. Recently, my forum again all confidential, but I'll share my story because it's my own.
Speaker 2:It's your story yes, was challenged with like as I build my business, and I said, guys, I'm struggling because the biggest struggle I'm facing right now is I've spent 28 years leading others and, like I miss that.
Speaker 2:I miss the big accomplishment of the thing. And you know, being a coach is wonderful but you don't own the outcomes. And I'm really struggling with not owning outcomes. And they helped me through questions, through helping me understand, really attune and understand that I'm a builder and that's what I love to do. And so I needed to recast what I'm doing, not to be just about coaching but to be about building something. And then, when I made that mental shift which I don't know that I could have done without that input I was able to reframe my entire thinking and approach to yes, this is what I do, but here's what I'm building, and it is having people that know you know you well. Having people that know you know you well will challenge you and they will challenge me and not let you buy into your own press copings, as Mark Twain would say, has helped me become a better thinker and an evolved person to get to places I probably wouldn't have gotten to.
Speaker 1:That's powerful. That's very powerful, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So let's move on to your Arcus group, and you are the chief evangelist and the founder. I love the title, so tell us about that endeavor and what you all do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we started. You know, I came out with the idea hey, I believe that there's a better way to lead, I think, when we think about leadership through this lens of leading yourself first, that allows you to lead a team, that allows you to lead an organization. So, you know, I started with the idea of, hey, executive coaching, mentoring, things like that. And then, as I've learned as an entrepreneur, you evolve, you learn. You know, I started with the idea of, hey, executive coaching, mentoring, things like that. And then, as I've learned as an entrepreneur, you evolve, you learn, you listen to what the market and what people want. I started stitching together what I found to be kind of the keystone elements of what I believe makes a great leader. First and foremost, you have to be willing to lead yourself first. You have to be purpose-driven and value-centric and you need a system to do that, a system of thinking, a system of execution, a system. And so I realized that as I stepped back and said, okay, well, what has made others that I have served successful over the last 28 years is, okay, I put together some good systems, I put together some good frameworks. And then I said, well, okay, well, how do we help them do it. So now we say we'll take the time to do it, we give people the time and space to install. And then the third thing, which is the thing that you and I are both passionate about, which is a forum how do you get people to connect with and have an accountability partner with each other to be better that forum experience? In fact, just before our chat today, I was on a call with my accountability partner walking through some stuff. So what we're doing at Arcus Group is putting together leadership impact accelerators where we bring 12 people, we give them good systems, we give them the time and space to install them and we put them with like-minded peers so they can sharpen against and with each other.
Speaker 2:And my vision in fact it's come from a conversation that you and I had previously my vision is to be and build the number one success platform for purpose-driven, value-centric leaders, and I originally wanted to impact the lives of a million leaders over the next 10 years. And you and I had a chat a while back and I was like you know, I think I'm actually dreaming too small and I had to go and say well, what does success beyond my wildest imagination mean? And I know yours is to have a billion people in a forum. It's audacious. It's audacious right.
Speaker 2:It's a BHAG and I said I want to impact the lives of 100 million and I got to that just by going well, if I 10 X my, if I got 10, if I achieved 10% of that, then that is 10 X what I originally set out to do. That's a pretty good number. So it's not a billion but a hundred million, and it's still a big number and I had no idea how I'm going to do it, but we're going to figure it out but we're going to figure it out.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. I love that. So let's talk about another aspect of your life, so we could get to know who Dusty is, hobbies, what you do. For fun, tell us more about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started. I like to do hard things, so about 10 or 15 years ago I started doing Ironman racing. Oh, me too.
Speaker 1:Really we didn't talk talk about this, but I've stopped.
Speaker 2:It's been a while yeah, I have stopped too. It's been a while. My body did not take it. Uh, I'm a six foot four and you know 220 pound linebacker size, but I did do a bunch of. I did a bunch of iron man, uh races and did uh some marathons, and I just love doing hard things.
Speaker 2:So, anything outdoors, anything that's going to put me in a place that's bigger than me, like my favorite spots on this planet are going to be in the middle of the back country in British Columbia or in Montana, on a river, fly fishing on a boat, in the middle of the ocean with family. Those are the places where I feel most alive, because I feel the smallest and for me that's the thing. I, watching the sunrise from the back of a horse in the middle of the British Columbia bush, is probably the most alive I've ever felt in my entire life. So those are the things I like to do for fun, like to do it with family, like to we, like to be out in the boat or just anything outside. Anything outdoors, anything where I feel small.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing and British Columbia is stunning, and one day I'll see the sunrise from a horse in British Columbia. Thank you, I know people.
Speaker 2:I can make that happen for you, you can make that happen, all right.
Speaker 1:You know, I also fell off the horse in Alberta last time. I was at an EO event there and I've been back on a horse since then. But it's one of those things that I definitely want to get back to.
Speaker 2:I would love to get back to Ironman racing, but I'm not sure my body will ever permit me to do it to that degree again. Which ones have you done? I did Ironman Florida. I did Ironman Arizona. I did Ironman Lake Tahoe that race is now defunct. I did Maryland and then I did the Beach to Battleship Ironman in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Speaker 1:Very nice, very. And then I did the beach to battleship Ironman in.
Speaker 2:Wilmington, north Carolina. Very nice, very nice, very nice. How about yourself? Which ones have you done?
Speaker 1:So I finished the Zurich Switzerland Ironman. And then I was in the Vineman in California and I broke a couple of ribs at the bike run transition. I had a nasty fall in front of all my family and friends as I took a speed bump with one hand waving to them, and so I did half the marathon and then I couldn't breathe and I'm like maybe I shouldn't push it. So half the marathon I was done. Turns out, I broke a couple of ribs and the doctor said I was lucky, I didn't puncture a lung. So I was done. Turns out, I broke a couple of ribs and the doctor said I was lucky, I didn't puncture a lung. So so that was that.
Speaker 2:So I finished one and uh and uh did not finish the second, but one under my belt's good One's enough. Yeah, you're. You're smarter than me. When I did Lake Tahoe, I uh I ended up having to go to the med tent afterwards for a few hours because I developed hypothermia during the race and I was not smart enough to quit.
Speaker 1:You know, it's really interesting you bring that up because in training for marathons the one thing that I always my mantra was you don't lose unless you quit. And I think part of the cost of that is our mind over. Our body is so strong we can push through points of injury without knowing it.
Speaker 2:You really can. I did two Ironman races three weeks apart and that was physically challenging, but it was the mental challenge on that second one was I learned a lot about myself on the backside of an Ironman marathon, when you just go to this little dark place inside your head and you just put one foot in front of the other and your mind is so much stronger than your body 100%.
Speaker 1:So that begs the question how do you know when to quit? Because I'm not sure I figured that one out.
Speaker 2:I don't know that I have either, mo. Honestly, I think I'd like to be rational. I'd like to have some sage wisdom. I don't know, in fact, if anything, I need to learn that, because I just don't have a quit bone in my body and there is probably a better way to do it. If you figure it out, let me know, because I don't know what it is and I'm trying to, as I get older, become more wise and maybe become more rational, but I haven't found it yet. I don't know.
Speaker 1:And I mean that in everything, not just in the marathons or triathlons, right In business. At what point do you say, hey, this business isn't working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question. In fact, it's the conversation I was just having earlier today with my accountability partner, Mark. We were talking about that because he's got a project he's working on and we were talking through okay, what are the demarcation points where you can say I'm going to step back from this, do an evaluation. If this has happened, we're going to go this direction. If this hasn't happened, or this has happened, we're going to go that. And it was a good reminder to me.
Speaker 2:It is like okay, what are those checkpoints that you can decide in advance where you check in? And I think that, thinking out loud a bit here, I think that's one of the things that aligns so well with kind of the philosophies I have around self-leadership is you decide in advance about what's so important and about what's most important, so that in the moment you don't get clouded by emotions or anything else that's going on. So, thinking through this, I'm going to have to put a little thought into it but being able to at least decide in advance, maybe in the business context, what are the markers that must be met in order to earn the opportunity for continued investment of time, effort and energy, what are those things? I'll have to think about it some more. But it's a great question because I haven't found a way to decode it to a fully rational response. It's always emotional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, isn't that interesting. So back to your purpose and values-driven mission. You talked a little bit about, you know, liking to help people, but maybe a little bit more why that matters. Help liking to help people, but maybe a little bit more why that matters to you being purpose driven and value based.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 2:So for me, it's all about finding a way to connect the dots, and when I think about purpose driven and value centric, it's being able to connect the dots between what we do and why we're here.
Speaker 2:And so if you take the effort and energy and invest in understanding, you know what is the God-given gift or talent that you have, what is it you can do for others that will create an impact beyond yourself. And then how do you connect the dots? And from a leadership perspective, I think, when we really flex the muscle and practice the skill of connecting the dots for ourselves, that we then can translate that for others. And so when I can help another person to connect the dots between what they do and what they're tasked with doing, and why the organization exists, where it's going, what the vision is, what the mission is, etc. That dot connecting skill is where I believe that we can unlock discretionary effort. And I think the greatest leaders do the best job of connecting dots for themselves and for their teams so that the teams can make better decisions and do the work, maybe even without the leader being there. In fact, most especially without the leader being there.
Speaker 1:I love when I hear somebody say I took a vacation for a month which was unprecedented and my team stepped in. I never heard from them once. Oh, they just threw the business by 5%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's when you've arrived as a leader, right, that's when they're better at it than you are. And the ability. It comes down to the ability to connect dots, though, and the questions that I always ask myself and ask leadership teams are question number one why are we here? What's our purpose beyond making money? If you can't answer that, how can you expect your team to? But if your team can answer that without you in the room, all right, you're on the way. And then it's.
Speaker 2:The second question is where are we going? And the third question is how are we going to get there? The plan, and then where I see most leaders and I struggled with this for many, many years, and still I think it's one of the hardest things that leaders have to do is answer what I would consider the next two questions. Question number four is where do I fit in? And that's that dot connecting question for their work, their effort, their activity. Where does what I do, how does what I do matter? Yeah, and how does it connect? And then the last question where? And these, these are the ones where I find most organizations fall off what's in it for me? And it's not just money, in fact it's rare.
Speaker 1:It's rarely money yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's meaning its impact, its opportunity, whatever that is, and I think the best organizations, the best leaders do the best job at connecting dots, and so when I think purpose-driven, value-centric it's, how do we help others connect dots?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to talk more about mentorship and specifically the one or two mentors that have had the biggest impact on you. Can you tell us a little bit about that? A little bit more about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been very privileged to have a lot of great mentors. The first one I've already mentioned is Colonel Greg Camp. And Colonel Camp, retired West Pointer Vietnam veteran, he had been chief of staff at Fort Benning, georgia, and he took a chance on me. He saw something and when I first started working for him I was 21, and really took me under his wing and helped me understand what leadership is. And I'll never forget I had just been promoted to assistant call center manager and he said I'd like for you to start coming to our book club.
Speaker 2:We do a book club at ODARC 30 every Tuesday morning. I said what time is ODARC 30? He goes, it's 630. And he laughed. I said okay, and there were a number of other retired officers and senior enlisted in our company and we would just go in and talk about a book.
Speaker 2:And I remember the most profound thing, mo, was I got to sit at the table and contribute as if I had the same degree of experience as anyone else, because I had perspective.
Speaker 2:And that's what Greg. One of the great things that Greg taught me was experience is wonderful, perspective is what's valuable, and so you have to be able to share your perspective and a great leader listens to and understands the value of perspective that's different from their own. And the day I resigned from that position, I was terrified to tell Greg that I was leaving Because he was my mentor and he just sat there and said, well, I'm not surprised. And then I had to sit back for a second. He goes. I'm not surprised, dusty, because one of the best gifts and blessings we ever had in military leadership was we knew that the soldiers that were assigned to us would only be with us for a few years and our mission, our job, was to help them be successful in achieving the mission and help them be successful for their next post. So I approach every role and person who's I'm entitled to serve and care for with the mission of helping them be better for their next thing.
Speaker 1:I mean that is beautiful.
Speaker 2:I was 23. So I had those lessons at 23 years old 21, 22, 23. I've had a more recent mentor would be a gentleman by the name of Terry Dunn. He was my Vistage chair and just dear friend for 15 years and Terry had a remarkable way of always just asking the right question and I've actually taken several of my favorite questions which I love to ask. One of them is a pure Terry Dunn, which is what would have to be different. So I talk about some situation or something or some challenge or what would have to be different, what would have to change in order for the outcome that you want to be possible. I love that question. Terry taught me how to ask better questions and now I have mentors like Chuck, who asked exceptional questions, and I've been very blessed. The mentors that I have have given themselves and of themselves, freely, with no desire to receive anything back other than to contribute to someone else. That's the model that I want to live in life.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. Well, I would be honored to be one of your clients. So, on that note, tell me the target audience you have for your groups that you're launching, so that listeners who qualify, who would like to contact you and benefit from your incredible story, can do so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the target audience is the right leader, someone who owns outcomes and is transitioning. They're at an inflection point in their leadership growth. They've become the bottleneck. They're feeling lonely or they're frustrated that the team's not getting the traction that they want. So outcome owning leaders and those are typically in our groups are going to be founders, entrepreneurs. You know the hired gun, as it were, running the business. They are responsible and accountable for the outcomes of the businesses. You know set to do and the people that are doing it. And you know set to do and the people that are doing it. And you know.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we've done is we've found that there's always and I'm a great simplifier, I always try to distill to three things those three pain points of loneliness, of being the bottleneck and being frustrated come through again and again and again. And we created a leadership gap assessment to help leaders identify where they are and then what they need to do to get unstuck. And your audience could simply go to leadershipgapassessmentcom and figure that out. It's a free test. They can get the answers and decode where they are and what they need to do to get to that next level.
Speaker 2:So it's loneliness being the bottleneck, and the third one is a frustration between the vision they have and the results that are on the field. There's a gap between those two. Those are the. There's a million reasons for them, but those are the things that we see time and time again.
Speaker 1:Amazing. And what would be your process, then, for helping those leaders to overcome their challenges, so to speak?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first thing that, from a process perspective just understanding a call to understand where they're going, what is it that they're facing with? You know the when you step back, the first thing a leader has to do is get clear for themselves, and we often talk about an execution gap. Hey, we're not getting the results we want. There's something, but it's never. It's not never. It's rarely an execution problem, it's almost always upstream from that.
Speaker 2:It starts with do we have clarity and is the team aligned? And so our process is how do we build clarity, how do we work to get clear as leaders? What is most important, why are we here, where are we going? All those things. And then how do we build alignment as a team? Because when we are, we have clarity and when we have built alignment, then we can execute. And then, if we're not executing, we're having a conversation that goes back to where we misaligned or where are we unclear. Now we have to leverage the poll to make those things happen. So that's our process as we walk through frameworks to help people get and build clarity, drive alignment and then enable execution.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing, amazing Favorite book or favorite recent book.
Speaker 2:That's a trick, double trick question, because I just reread it. My favorite book is Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl, what a great book. And I just reread it. I reread it every year.
Speaker 1:Oh, that book had such an impact on me. What part of that book most touches you or most motivates you? What about it for those that haven't read it or don't know anything about it?
Speaker 2:it's all I can do not to go grab it off my shelf is the simple framing of the uniquely human attribute is our ability to choose our response, independent of what's going on in the world, independent of what is happening in the world that you cannot control. What we do get to choose is our response, and for me, that is the great awareness of the opportunity to have a circuit breaker that allows us to choose to be a future forward thinker, a leader or whatever it is, or a victim. We get to choose how we respond. So that's the part and I reread it every year because it's a good reframing, and I always reread it through a different lens than I have before, so I've never read the same book twice.
Speaker 1:Isn't that something? You're absolutely right, and what a great book. I think it's the Time Between Stimulus and Response. Is that the time?
Speaker 2:That's absolutely yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you've inspired, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you've inspired me to reread it. Thank you, dusty. Thank you again for being with us and for sharing your wisdom and your openness and your honesty and just great stories. What a pleasure it has been, and I want to just thank our audience to listening and to watching and to remind you that all our episodes are anywhere. You get your podcasts and, if you like this episode, give it a like so others can find the show. Thank you again and have a wonderful day.
