Episode 9 - Leaders Grow First: Repetition, Delegation, And The Dreams Vault

Big goals don’t move without people who are personally on fire. In Part Two, Reed and Chase sit down with Dane Espegard to unpack a leadership approach that treats employee dreams as the engine of performance—and then shows exactly how to operationalize that idea so it lasts longer than a motivational bump. From capturing dreams to breaking them into steps and setting target dates, Dane explains how simple systems and small nudges create momentum that spills over into sales, service, and culture.

We dig into the Dreams Vault, a lightweight platform that emails leaders each week with upcoming actions teammates set for themselves—like booking a flight or signing up for a race—so managers can send timely, human check-ins. We talk about replacing generic rewards with “buying a dream,” the kind of quirky, meaningful gifts that people actually talk about. That visibility makes accountability easier: performance conversations map directly to the life goals someone truly values. You also hear how Dane handles exits with abundance, creating long off-ramps and genuine support so people thrive, whether that’s here or elsewhere.

The second half gets personal and practical: making peace with repetition, delegating as a former do-it-all operator, and stepping back so emerging leaders can breathe. Dane shares how joining peer groups outside his industry accelerated growth and helped him design a culture where lessons are caught, not just taught. We close with what’s next: scaling the dreams movement, granting monthly dream scholarships across companies, and building a brand where the star isn’t a person—it’s the act of dreaming with intent.

If this conversation sparks ideas, follow the show, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a quick review. Your feedback helps more people build teams where personal dreams power real results.

You can follow Dane and find his content at daneespigard.com or thedreamsvault.com 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:04

The only way that we accomplish our work goals, these big audacious goals that we have as a team, is if every single person on our team is leveling up. There is not a greater accountability piece for my personal growth than being in a leadership position. Right? And if I want to talk to people about accomplishing their dreams, I'd better be doing that myself.

Why Dreams-Centered Culture Works

SPEAKER_01 0:24

You're listening to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, your guide to climbing higher in life and leadership. I'm Reed Moore, and alongside Chase Williams, we're here to help you break through obstacles, scale your potential, and lead with greater clarity and purpose. Hey everybody, you're back on the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, where Chase and I are here to help you climb higher in life and leadership. And as promised, we have episode part two with Dane Espigard, an incredible guy, somebody who absolutely embodies this part of our leadership model, engaging and developing others. So looking forward to being back with Dane here, and I hope you guys enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

So I want to dive into a little bit more of what you just said, which is give me some of the practical ways that a leader who's like, oh my gosh, like being focused on people's dreams and celebrating their progress toward them and helping them think abundantly is going to be super helpful for culture. But I'm unsure of the practical ways to connect supporting their dreams back to maybe the mission of the company or the quarterly sales goal. And you just shared a couple of examples. What are some other ways you're practically creating a conduit between this culture of achieving your dreams and like what the company needs to accomplish?

Turning Dreams Into Practical Systems

The Dreams Vault: Dates And Nudges

Celebrating Wins And Buying Dreams

SPEAKER_02 1:43

It's going to be different for every business, but one of the core beliefs for somebody to do this is that they have to have a belief that if Janet on my team or John or whoever, if they are living a more exceptional life and they are progressing in their personal life, they will perform better at work. Yeah. Even if it means they may be out of the office one day, this whatever. But but the idea of if they're on fire, there's no chance that they're not a better version of themselves here. So if somebody believes in that, they can wrap their head around some of the stuff that we're talking about. But we do, you know, that, for instance, right at the end of the workshop. I think that's an easy time to do it. Um, in the software that the dreams vault, um, I forever just used Google Sheets. Right? Everybody had their dreams list in there. I could view them. So I could go in at any time and say, I want to buy this person a dream. You know, instead of saying I want to send them a gift card to a nice restaurant, it was like, well, let me just see, instead of$200 to a restaurant, let me find a dream. How cool would that be that I just buy them a dream? And that also keeps a butt a buzz around the team. Everybody's excited about that. And so uh I just knew that when I so from 2021 to 2020 uh through 2023, we didn't have any software. So I would get paid to go and do workshops for teams, and I knew deep down, I'm like, this is great, but it's just gonna be like a steroid shot in their arm for a couple of months, and then they're just gonna they're probably gonna go back to doing what they're doing. That's normal human nature. There has to be some sort of integration tool. And so with the Dreams Vault, we had it created basically the way that I would want to use it as somebody who's doing the the dreams culture. And so every Monday, a team leader gets emailed with any upcoming date. So in the software, the same thing that we would do if we were a great manager or coach when it comes to a sales goal, right? We would ask the individual to break it down and say, what needs to happen in order, right, to reverse engineer it? What needs to happen in order for you to hit this? Okay, cool, let's put that on the schedule. And then we'd want to provide some accountability to say, hey, remember this week you're supposed to get this done. Did you get it done? Whatever somebody's style is. The same is true for a dream. So when they do the dream session of planning, they'll go in and they'll mark down like if I were to accomplish that dream by this date, what are the things I have to do? And it could be something as simple as research a location, buy a plane ticket, book a hotel. But what the system asks them to do is to book, to, to put in their target dates of when they'd like to accomplish it. Well, every week the the CEO, team leader, whoever whoever the company wants to have will receive an email of any upcoming target date in the next seven days. So every Monday I get an email. Some sometimes there's nothing. It's just, hey, you have no upcoming dates for your team. But other weeks it'll be, hey, here are five dates of people on your team that are supposed to do something this week. And then for me, it allows me to do whatever I want. I can call the person. I often will just send a text and say, Hey, Reed, I saw that you're signing up, you're supposed to be signing up for that race this week. Super excited for you, you know, whatever. Something like that that's just a positive nudge. And that seems to do the trick for a lot of it. Um, you also can set up where you know I'll get a notification if somebody accomplishes a dream on my team. So it could be a Thursday night at midnight, and somebody's in there in the software and they mark down that they completed a dream. They can put a photo in there to chronicle it. And then I wake up Friday morning with an email that says, So Johnny on your team accomplished a dream. And then I can choose to shout them out on Slack channel or something else. Um, I can choose to wait until our next all hands meeting to share. But those are some ways to do it. My Christmas gift shopping, I'll typically just grab a bottle of wine and uh sit at my computer and pick out things on people's dreams list, and it's hilarious. All the I try and pick really weird ones that they weren't gonna spend money on for themselves. So, like this winter, I think I bought uh three, and I try and do the health category as much as possible. So this year I bought three sessions of acupuncture, two sessions of colonics of colon hydrotherapy. Um I had um I think I had two sessions of a float tank thing. So it's a lot of like one guy got a cat tower because he had that on his list. He wanted his so I I went on Amazon, found the biggest cat tower you could you could have. So like the gifts that they get are just they're everybody talks about them because they're super weird. Um, but it's you know, it's a cool, it's a fun, it's way more enjoyable than me buying the same thing for everybody every single year. Uh I'm buying you a comic.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

I'll have to have some uh intentional thought around that. Yeah, it's good, yes.

Exiting With Care And Abundance

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So uh okay, so let me ask you uh a different question. Uh how do you deal with people that you need to exit out of your culture, knowing that a really good uh positive culture is um it's a healthy environment, and sometimes that means uh removing people or maybe releasing them to their dreams being fulfilled elsewhere and and everywhere in between. How do you how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_02 6:59

I haven't had too many challenges with that. And I think part of it comes from when we're using the dreams culture, they know that I actually am caring about them as an individual. So I don't I can't say that there's been a time that I've had to abruptly ask somebody to leave the team. In other words, there was writing on the wall, right? There was a long off-ramp before it happened, performance slipping, they're they're not being the best selves, whatever. And so typically in those opportunities, I'll just have proactive conversations to say, hey, I just I've noticed the last X amount of time, it doesn't seem like you've been, you know, 100% engaged. And that could be here. And again, it's if you're not engaged here, there's no chance that you're, you know, I don't know what you'd be doing to be able to accomplish the dreams and stuff that you're doing. It doesn't seem like you're moving yourself forward. And so one of the things that I say often is look, I want all of you on our team to be here for a very long time, as long as you're really excited and you're progressing while you're here. If this isn't serving you anymore, I would love for you to go somewhere else where you're engaged on fire. And I mean that. And I think one of the things that um it's hard to flip if somebody has a scarcity mindset with their people. But I think a lot of people have the mindset of like, ooh, I can't lose them. Right. And uh in my mind, it's like I'm gonna lose everybody. Everybody on my team is temporary. At some point, they're gonna leave. They could do so well that they leave, right? That they retire. And I think that's great. But the the mentality of this is I would rather have somebody thriving and leave to a bigger thing than just camping out and being less than themselves and then me feeling good that they're not gonna get poached, right? It's the I use this as an extreme example, but my wife and I in our vows, we took out till death do us part because we're like, well, no, if if you know, we don't want it just to be baked into no matter what. It's like, no, we want to continue to have to date each other, right? And I want the, you know, if there's no till death do us part, it's like, well, I have to make sure that I continue courting this person. And it's the same for if I'm trying to get great talent to my team, I'm probably gonna roll out the red carpet for them, but I should never stop that. Yeah. Right? It shouldn't be different once they get on the team versus when I'm recruiting them. And so for me, I do that by continually trying to level them up, reach their goals, their dreams. And if they can no longer do that here, if they've hit a ceiling here, I would love for them to go somewhere else because they're gonna be the best advocate for our team, right? In terms of, and I just kind of believe in the paying it forward concept when it when it comes to that.

Tying Performance To Personal Dreams

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, I and my my thought is this is such a powerful accountability tool, right? Or you could call it leadership tool, because if I can, if I can layer in uh holding someone accountable to performance at work on top of a foundation of what they care about the most, their dreams, then I can truly either help someone move forward or help them see that lack of performance here is keeping them from accomplishing their dreams. That's what I hear you saying. And I think sometimes leaders are challenged with accountability because they have this idea that this person's gonna care so much, much about the thing that we sell or the mission that we have as a company. Not that that's unimportant, but they're never gonna they're let me not say never, they're rarely gonna care about that thing more than they care about their own dreams. So if I come pointing it back to, hey, how's your performance, you know, uh serving these dreams as an example, then not only am I re-demonstrating that I care all the time, but I'm actually helping them how to figure out how to connect the two in a way that's super meaningful to them. That's really good.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

And we've all had, I'm sure every listener can think of some leader that poured into them, and you could tell, like they really just wanted me to excel. And you and it could be a leader from 15 years ago, but when that happens, we also ultimately care about what they're building because it feels phenomenal to have somebody pour into us. And so that's where I always go back to, where it's like, look, the mission, I share a very vivid vision of what we are building within our team. And it's all over, and we talk about it nonstop, but the core of it still is the only way that happens is if everybody on my team is leveling up. Yeah. And this is and the reason I can say this smoothly is because I say it every single month at our hands-on meeting where it's our whole team, they hear me say the exact same thing every single month, and it's that. The only way that we accomplish our work goals, these big audacious goals that we have as a team, is if every single person in our team is leveling up. So it is about you as an individual. And if you're slipping, we care about that because we want you to be your best version. And I also find for myself, it's like, man, there's not a greater accountability piece for my personal growth than being in a leadership position. Yeah, right. And if I want to talk to people about accomplishing their dreams, I'd better be doing that myself. If I want people to be getting healthier, I'd better be doing that myself, right? And so just like kids are such a great accountability, right? To say, oh, now there's eyes on me all the time. I was reading through your guys' uh leadership model and the whole like I I say this line all the time, which is, you know, lessons are are far more often caught than they are taught. Sure. Right. And you guys have that as part of your part of your ethos. And I think that's totally true when it comes to the dreams.

Make Peace With Repetition

SPEAKER_01 12:28

So one of the things that you said that just piqued my interest is, you know, you're saying these things all the time. And one of the challenges that a lot of leaders have is maybe you could say the making peace with the repetition of, I'm not necessarily going to say a lot of different, different or differing things, but I'm going to say the same things over and over and over. And by the time I'm really sick of saying it, I'm going to say it another thousand times. And that actually is an element of good leadership. When when in your leadership journey did you make peace with that, or is that just something you've always done?

SPEAKER_02 12:58

I don't think that I always did it. I think um, and I don't know that I ever had to make peace with it. Let me think this through. I think it was more just as I started doing it more, I started recognizing that, oh, people are you know buying into this, or they're starting to be able to say it back to me. I also was fortunate in the Cupco world, there's so many great leaders. And so, and it is a business that's built on pouring into the personal development of young people. And so I was very fortunate to have some really great examples of leaders when I was in my 18 to 22 year old range. And so I think that you know, much of that I got from other people of, oh, they're saying the same thing over and over again. And and I was taught early when I started learning how to run sales trainings to say things three times, right? And the idea of when you know they hear it, they understand it, now they can repeat it, right? So um, and so I think it it kind of stemmed from that. And then I used to have an elusive culture, right? And and what that means is it'd be kind of like the flavor of the month where I'd read a personal growth book and I'm like, I'm gonna talk about that. Yeah, right. And then the next month it'd be something else, be like, I'm gonna talk about that. And then as I settled on the dream stuff, I was okay. This has to be in in every thread of what we do if I really want it to take hold.

Delegation, Family, And Letting Others Lead

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Love it. So good. Yeah. That's really good. And it's interesting because it my the way I heard that was you you learned that from modeling, and then you learned that from seeing that it was effective. You're like, oh, this is actually working. I think I'll do more of this thing that works. Love it. When you look at your leadership, um what are the areas that that have been a challenge for you personally?

SPEAKER_02 14:40

For me, delegation, um, and I think everybody's wired differently. Um I always I am a go-getter. I forever have prided myself on the amount of hours that I work, and nobody's gonna be able to do it on my team as well as I can. And so there's there was a lot of um beliefs that I that weren't necessarily on the surface, right? I wasn't necessarily self-aware of them, but but that through doing a bunch of work, kind of figured out like, oh, this is what's led to these things. So for me it was delegation, and and I there was multiple layers to it. So I'd say I went through one stage of that in my like mid-20s, where I got promoted to run a division, which means I just had more territory to oversee, more individuals to oversee. So there was a kind of a forced maturation process during that where I was like, okay, well that I have to level up because I just don't have the hours to do all of it. Uh and then it took me another almost eight years, I'd say, in that role to reach the the second kind of coming of that. And that also happened for me around the time I had kids. Uh-huh. And so uh, you know, it was kind of the up to that point when I was, you know, married and and dating my now wife, I always kind of bought into like, well, no, this is I'm sorry, I'm working a lot, but I have to. And I I bought I bought my own lie with that of like, well, it's gotta be this, because that's what it had always been for me. And then having, and I there wasn't as many examples of people at the level of success that I aspired to have having a whole bunch of kids. So that's where I kind of maybe ran out of the examples to look and find. Um and then through a lot of you know, mistakes and struggles and tough conversations and realizing, you know, uh, hey, if if I do this, I'm gonna have another fight with my wife. Uh, so if I can maybe figure out how to not do this and still get the result that I want, and you know, so it wasn't necessarily clean in in terms of how it happened. Um, but I think that that uh that next wave having kids, it kind of forced the necessity of, well, I I I don't want to be that dad, and so I've got to figure out how I can start leveling up. And then as I started on that second quest, I think, of the delegation stuff, things started to click faster. And then um at that time I also had I was stepping out a little bit more of the uh in a direct in our direct sales world, as you achieve more, there's this you know, you become somewhat of a celebrity within the business. And at first that's really nice, right? And you like that. And then after a while, I was like, okay, I don't I don't need that anymore. As I started to step out, I started retaining even more of my top talent. And I realized, oh, there's only so much oxygen in the room. I have a big personality, and so when I was doing everything, I was losing sometimes my like five-star recruit when they graduate from college. And I think for them it was, well, this is his, and I want to be the star somewhere. And so, like right now, I'm I'm behind the scenes in a whole lot of stuff. I have a larger team than I've ever had, our production is larger than it's ever been, and and I work less than I ever have. And it's not because I, you know, I'm just relaxing, it's because I have so many great leaders that it wouldn't be right for me to step in front of them to do those things. It's empowering those people to step in. So for me, I'd say delegation was was probably the biggest.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Well, it's amazing. And the reason I asked that, right, is is on on this uh line of thinking about you know, leaders need to be able to engage and develop others, one of the things that can really happen is is our you know individual performance and results, how we start this whole thing, can ultimately actually be something that that disengages or or keeps other people from developing. And it sounds like maybe new school or hard knocks you got to a place to where uh you're you're you're leveling up and continuing to do that at a high level too.

Learning From Masterminds Beyond Industry

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yeah, I think that that was for sure it. And for part of my like, you know, I'd say the the shift that I made leveling up five, six years ago was joining some other groups that were non-industry specific. So for me, it was like joining front row dads and being around a bunch of just butt-kicking dudes that were not in the cutko world and you know, starting to learn some things from them to say, oh, that's really that's really interesting. And then being around another mastermind lifestyle investor with Justin Donald and even a kind of like uh, I mean, the guys in that group, men and women, are you know, a whole nother level of success. And so those things for me being around those groups also shed some light on more examples for me of, oh, that's a totally different way of living, or that's a different way of doing business. And so um, I think most people are showing an example, it's a lot easier for me to learn it than you know, hear a concept. And I'm for sure that way. So I think that me branching out and joining some groups like that made a difference. I love it. That's awesome.

What’s Next: Scaling The Dreams Movement

SPEAKER_00 19:38

So, Dane, well, maybe maybe the last question, maybe not. We'll see how it goes. But um, I'd love to ask you when you look out under the horizon of your leadership journey, maybe like the next thing that you're excited about in your leadership, what is that thing either that you're working on or you feel most excited about at this phase?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Great question.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

I so there's there's a couple.

Where To Find The Book And Software

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Um one of them is Cutco specific, and that is I have some young up-and-comers that are so wildly talented that it has been very enjoyable for me to see them move to their next step, to their next level. And so I'm really excited. I have some that are getting promoted to the same position that I'm at, and I'm really excited about that of having created some peers, if you will, and then also helping bend the curve on things that I took me 10 years in that role to figure out for them to do a lot faster. So I tell them I'm really excited about that. And then um the thing that that you know gets me most excited is is making a larger impact with the dreams concept. I didn't know what it was gonna be when I launched the book at first, and then when the software came out, I was like, this is like this is what I had dreamt of, but I don't, I'm so software inept that you know I didn't know how long it was gonna take me to get something created. Um and so for me it's it's been just an awesome journey. We onboarded two, or we're we are onboarding two new clients here in April to the software, and so it's been all very organic thus far. Um and it's exciting for me to think about a year, two years, three years down the road where we've got 100 plus companies that are using the software, and there's a lot of neat things that I'm excited to do with it, and it'll be a different. I I'm also trying to build a business where I'm not the brand. And I I know that'll be somewhat of a challenge because anybody that I've met with is like, well, you gotta go do this, you gotta do this. I'm like, but I that's gonna lead to the brand being me. And I I want the brand to be dreams. I want it to be just, you know, hey, that concept makes sense. We don't need to hire him, we could just do this ourselves and and get content from us, and and um and I just you know, this year in our software there's this little ticker that has how many dreams have been in in the input it into the system. And uh there's 30, I think there's 39,000 or 40,000 that are in there right now. And so I get really excited about when it hits a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. We're starting to roll out a dream scholarship. So within the companies that are using it, I'm picking a dream once a month from a random person in a random company, and we're just granting that dream. And so stuff like that is is really exciting for me. And then I've been also rolling this out for some families through front row dads. So dreaming with your kids, and and so there's just there's a ton of I'm excited about the different directions that this could go in without being married to any of the end games with it.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I love it. I love how uh much it engages and develops people. Like and just in in my mind, uh uh, you know, Nadane, like this, there's so much about this is just the heart of leadership that we want uh our listeners to hear. Um so they can get your book. I know they can get your book, uh Dream Machine on Amazon. Where is there a better place for them to go? And then also, where can they um where can they go to get your software? Like, what's what's the path for listeners to be able to engage in this?

SPEAKER_02 23:05

Well, they can go to uh my website's just daneespigard.com, but the the website that has the software, it's called the thedreamsvault.com. And that's got there's a spot where they can see a little demo of the software and stuff as well, and they can reach out to us on there. But I think that's in terms of buying the book, Amazon's fine for that. There's not necessarily a better spot for that. Awesome. Uh but yeah, the the Dreams Vault is where uh they can see the software in action.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Amazing. Well, we'll we'll push this stuff out because we just think the world of it, I think the world of you. And uh man, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to share uh with all the leaders that are listening here. You're a phenomenal leader. Obviously, you're building people, building lives, doing what leaders do, and and we just appreciate you sharing your time.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Well, I thank you guys for giving the platform. This was an awesome conversation and looking forward to hopefully uh meeting up with you guys in person when we when we bring the RV through. Yeah, absolutely.

Closing Thanks And Listener CTA

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah, absolutely. All right, you want to take us home? Yeah, thanks, Dane. We appreciate you being here. If you enjoyed this episode of the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, please subscribe, like, share it with another leader. You can get more resources at Sherpa Consulting Group.com. Remember that leadership is a journey. Every step you take matters. Keep climbing. We'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.