Navigating Leaders

Episode 25: The Missing Link Between Knowing and Growing

• Gabriel Griess • Season 1 • Episode 25

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:14:10

You know what you should do, so why do you still feel stuck?

Most people don't struggle because they lack information. They struggle because they never turn what they know into consistent action.

In this episode of The Navigating Leaders Podcast, Gabriel Griess sits down with growth coach Brandon Smeltzer, founder of Undefeated Growth, to explore why some people make meaningful progress while others stay trapped in the same patterns year after year.

Together, they unpack the surprising lessons Brandon learned while coaching undefeated sports teams, struggling leaders, executives, parents, and people fighting to save their marriages. The conversation reveals why accountability matters, how small actions create massive change over time, and what separates growth-minded people from everyone else.

If you've been feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, stuck, or frustrated by the gap between where you are and where you want to be, this episode will challenge the way you think about growth and give you a practical path forward.

Because lasting transformation doesn't start with knowing more. It starts with taking the next step.

====================

RESOURCES

🌎 Website: navigatingleaders.com

👀 Vision Engine: navigatingleaders.com/vision-engine

📖 The Results Tree—A Proven Path to the Life You Really Want: TheResultsTree.com 

Undefeated Growth Website: undefeatedgrowth.com

Undefeated Growth Instagram: @undefeatedgrowth

Undefeated Growth LinkedIn: @undefeatedgrowth

Season of Life—A Football Star, a Boy, a Journey to Manhood: Season of Life Book

====================

ABOUT BRANDON SMELTZER

Coach Brandon brings more than twenty-five years of experience in coaching and leadership development. A championship winning sports coach, Brandon can help you and your organization break through walls; functional, relational, or spiritual. He has a unique gift of seeing the big picture and knowing how to map the route forward. Brandon is a certified John Maxwell Team coach and communicator as well as the designer of the Undefeated Growth process. He and his wife have seven kids and are active servant-leaders at their local church.

CONNECT WITH GABRIEL

🎥 YouTube: @navigatingleaders
📸 Instagram: @navigatingleaders

👍 Facebook: @navigatingleaders

🎵 TikTok: @navigatingleaders

🗣️ LinkedIn: @navigatingleaders

====================

ABOUT GABRIEL

Gabriel Griess is a retired US Air Force officer, the CEO of Excel Medical Staffing and MedForceX, and the founder of Navigating Leaders. A graduate of the elite Air Force Weapons School, he has spent decades leading teams in high-pressure environments and equipping others to reach their full potential. As a combat veteran and an entrepreneur, Gabriel helps individuals cultivate self-awareness, resilience, and the ability to create lasting impact.

An internationally sought-after keynote speaker, he addresses audiences on personal transformation, strategic leadership, and veteran empowerment. The Results Tree is the framework he lives by, and when applied, it will unearth your destiny.

SPEAKER_01

What's that's top performing individuals are? What's that's top performing individuals report? Welcome to the bottom. My name is David Brace, the host and my family. And we're gonna awaken your vision. Today I'm thrilled to have Brandon Smelzer with us today, the founder and coach at Undefeated Growth, Undefeated Undefeated Growth. And uh just an amazing coach and so excited to have him here. So if you're welcome here with me, Brandon. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01

That's so good. So uh we had a great conversation the other day. You got a copy of the results tree. We've had a chance to ground. Um, tell the audience kind of your journey into coaching, what you do, and uh, and then we'll jump into it.

SPEAKER_00

Getting into coaching was a providential accident. I was a junior high football coach, high school baseball coach, and I was at a place in my career where, on a motivation side, I really wanted to make an impact in the lives of others. A lot of people who get into sports coaching, they get into sports coaching because they want to see transformation and results in the lives of people. They don't just want to win games. We were winning games, but I saw no difference in the lives of the young people that I coached. They were acting the same in the hallway as they were at the beginning of the season. And the great challenge was I was doing all the right things that a character-driven, even a faith-based coach is supposed to do. I was doing a Bible study with the boys. I was uh encouraging and affirming, and I wasn't degrading the young men, but there was not transformation. And I realized that my methodology had to change. And so from that space, uh I went on a journey of asking a question: what would transform the lives of these young men? What was the missing ingredient from knowing the truth and they knew the truth and actually living it out? And it that that season.

SPEAKER_01

So let me hear you, let me hear. So you've you've created winning sports teams, correct. Right. And you're obviously you're a fit dude and probably a great athlete in your own right. I was okay. I wasn't great. All right. I was okay. All right, all right. That's usually what great athletes say. And and uh so you create this environment and you're getting the performance results on the field, but the the individual growth, the the maturing, if you will, the different choices or better choices, you're not seeing that happen. So what's missing?

SPEAKER_00

So what I realized with the young men, uh, what was missing was action, small repeatable action. So it wasn't an issue of knowing truth. It was an issue of trying. It was an issue of taking the truth of where we wanted to grow, of being a better son, being a better uh brother to a sibling, being more honorable to a teacher in the hallway, and taking and actually turning it into small actions and interpreting it at the lowest possible level and repeating that to get the change. They they weren't, they they knew the right things. These are young men who come from great families, they go to a great school, value-driven school, faith-based school. So they hear the truth constantly. The gap is doing the truth, not just knowing it.

SPEAKER_01

Just that simple go from off to on. Absolutely. Wow. So you so was there an assumption that they would just know what to do?

SPEAKER_00

I think the assumption for me coming into coaching was that if you tell people the right things, they're they're they're gonna do the right things. Like just knowing the right things will will produce the right actions. It was an assumption. And it was an assumption that I had observed in coaches who had come before me, the coaches who had mentored me. And uh, and I and I I guess I just realized what really set me back was I was walking through the school hallway and I looked at our trophy cabinet, and it was in the summer, and uh, there were all these gold trophies that had been won at the school, some of which I had contributed to. And I'm looking at them collect dust and realizing that the janitor that summer had to move some trophies out to make room for new trophies. That's awesome. It's a winning school, a lot of success. But the reality of it is those dusty trophies that get put on a shelf or even thrown away, what's the sum total of those wins and those winning seasons, if not transformation in the lives of the people? And if the lives of the people who contributed to those championships were not transformed in a way that goes beyond the athletics, what was it all for? And uh so I pulled back and it it was it was really humbling to go to go winning and going undefeated. Uh, the word undefeated is huge. We we built our company's name around that. Uh, it started with a season where um I'm training the kids hard, I'm working hard with the kids, and we had we had parent conflict. I had parents hanging down my door about why their kids weren't getting as many catches and why their kid wasn't getting as much playing time. There was conflict among the young men, but I'm doing the Bible studies and doing the character talks, but they're still having conflict. And at the end of the season, it was an undefeated 10-0 season, but it was misery. So we're winning. Our practices are working in a performance side, but but what was really meant to transform young men was not getting results. And I knew something had to change in the fundamental way in which I approached the people. It's this is really important. Uh, I I have this um I have this uh math inequality. I'm not a math guy, right? Uh, but I have this math inequality that just that just uh it's seared deeply inside me. And it it's this simple inequality. The adult is greater than the athlete. The young people that I've worked with for a long time, they will be athletes for 10, 15% of their life. They will be adults for 80% of their life. The adulthood is greater than the athlete. And if what is happening in that sport is not translating into lifelong success, I'm failing fundamentally at what I was doing. And it it and so I sat back and went, man, I'm failing at what I'm doing. I have to change my approach.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. Yeah, like so the NCAA tournament when it's on, a lot of times has that banner that says 98% of student athletes go pro in something other than their sport. Yes. Right. So it's that building, building the adult part. So talk to me about pulling back. Talk to me about that season. What like what did you go through? Yeah, how did you do it? And then and then when it was done, did you come back to coaching?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. I've okay I'm still I'll still coach junior high sports, I coach high school sports in certain settings. Um, now I'm in a season where when when that was that was probably 15 years ago, my kids were much younger, and I was purely coach, coach Smelzer, coach Brandon. Uh now I'm dad, and I get a chance to coach their teams. And so uh so I've stayed in the coaching space, sports coaching space ever since. But but what setback was I I spent probably an entire summer, a lot of soul searching. Um, faith is very important for me. I'm I'm a man who, when I was 19 years old, I had a radical encounter with Jesus Christ and he transformed me. He took me from a um as a college athlete who found identity in sports, and he gave me identity in him. And that faith in Jesus Christ uh permeates every part of my life. But just because I had faith in Jesus Christ doesn't mean that I could really make a transformational impact in the people around me. Um, and so I spent an entire summer uh reading books. There was books I was reading, Proverbs was extremely helpful for me. Um, and then there was a passage of scripture. All of those culminated in one simple thing: a sense that instead of doing Bible studies or character talks every week that change, like a revolving door. This week we're going to talk about integrity, next week we're gonna talk about faithfulness and we're gonna talk about diligence. Instead of a revolving door of character talks to inform, I'm going to take one simple truth that they can build their entire life on that if they never, if we didn't talk after the season ended, but they lived out that principle daily, they would be miles ahead in life. So it has to be something, and this is a the the art of this is it has to be both timely where they're at as a as an athlete, but timeless for where they're going as an adult. And there was a book that was really influential for me in that season of helping shape that one single truth for the young men. And once I got that single truth, then the strategy was I'm going to tell it to the young men 50 times in 50 ways. But most importantly, I'm going to hold an environment around my team that requires these young men to try it either on a daily or a weekly basis in their unique context. So the young man who comes from a parents who are divorced will try that truth in a different way than the young man who has mom and dad. The young man who uh has mom and dad but is an only child will live out that truth a little bit different. The young man who um who lives uh in a neighborhood next door to a widow might live out that truth in a different way to serve that widow than that young man who lives in a different community. But the point is, they're gonna live it. And I'm gonna I'm gonna leverage my influence as a sports coach to hold them accountable, to turn it into action. And by the end of that first season, I had moms coming to me crying. And one mom said to me, What did you do to my son?

SPEAKER_01

In in a good way.

SPEAKER_00

In a good way, with tears in her eyes. And she she said this. She said, I gave him to you, and he was selfish. He was me, me, me, me. By the end of the season, he was coming to her, you, you, you, what can I do for you? I'll tell one story.

SPEAKER_01

So before you get to the story, like give us an example of one of these character traits that you had the team live out for the season.

SPEAKER_00

So the truth for that particular group of athletes was really simple. Success in life as a man is determined by relationships. Now that flies in the face of the three most common things that men are told make them a success. Men are told that their uh accomplishments make them a success. Uh, you know, they're they're quote unquote D1, they're uh they're all state. They're the founder of a company, they're the C, whatever it is, it just takes different titles later on. Um uh a sense of um uh accomplishment, like sexual accomplishment, of being able to get girls or appeal, things like that. Uh pride, success, how much I know, how much I have my stuff. Those are all success markers, faulty, flawed success markers. And so I attacked it straight on. There was a book that really informed me on this. It was Incredible Seasons of Life.

SPEAKER_01

Is that the name of the book?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Seasons of Life by Jeffrey Marks. It was about a football coach uh in Baltimore who brought a similar principle to the young men in his school. And so I borrowed the heart of that truth and I put it before the boys and I said, here's the reality. If your relationships are failing, you are failing. I don't care about our record. And then I said, You were going to do something either weekly or daily to add value to your core relationships. And I defined the core relationships around the young men, and each of the young men interpreted and translated that truth into small, meaningful actions in their core relationships. And they just repped it, just repped it. And by the end of the season, you had a young man who, instead of just co-living with a little sister that he didn't get along with, had actually went out of his way and asked her if she wanted to play 10 times at the point in the season. And by rep number eight, the young man realized that a lot of the dynamic of tension with his little sister was tied to his contributions, not hers. He started the season saying, she's so annoying, she's so this, but by the end of the season, he recognized his own failings that he brought to the table. And the best part of it all, Gabriel, was I didn't have to sit down and teach it. I reverse taught them. By their reps, they realized. And then what I've I just found when people realize things by their own actions, it lasts longer and it sinks deeper into their minds and in their hearts and their living rather than something I just hand off and inform. And so all the stuff that I wanted to teach young men through the weekly Bible studies or the character talks, we actually reversed in by their living reps and practice. And I that first season I thought, man, I've got this thing, it's going to change sports forever. Uh little did I know where it would go and um and how it would be applied widely.

SPEAKER_01

So so I have nearly three teenagers at home. Yeah. Right. One that's 11, almost 12, that acts like a teenager, and the other two are.

SPEAKER_00

Um how do you get them from zero to one? From zero to one. Yeah. One of the greatest challenges that we deal with, and this is not just teenagers. This is, and I'll tell you what I've learned through the last 15 years of repping this simple process is that it's not a teenage process. It's not an athletics process, it's not a sports process. This is a human process.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So let me boil back out to the fullest extent here. The most important thing that we do is we tap into the intrinsic motivation of the person across the table or the team across the table. What is their will? So early on, when I would do a character talk, I could come in and leverage my authority as a coach to a teenager and say, you guys are going to go home and do something nice for your mom. 80% of the kids would do it because they didn't want up downs or they didn't want to make them sprint, or out of respect or reverence for coach, which coach has a lot of authority. What I what I didn't realize early on was when I stopped and said, this is where we're going, general priority trajectory, you have to figure out where you want to apply this. You tell me where you're going to apply this. What's your relationship that's struggling the most? And what's the small action you're going to do to change this? You ask them to do an inventory of some sort. Maybe not using that word, but right. I ask instead of saying here's where you need to grow, even though I may know where that kid or that executive, that CEO needs to grow, it may be evident and obvious across the table. I will say, you tell me where. Because once the person, once someone picks where they want to go, we've uh we've tapped into the singular most potent energy source on this planet. It's not oil and gas, it's not nuclear energy, it's the will of a person. A human being, their intrinsic will is the most powerful energy source on this planet. Buildings are built by the will of man.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Once you tap into that, so what you find with go back to your teenagers, start with where they are and start with what they want to change. What's one thing you'd like to be different in 90 days? What's one thing? What's one thing that you want? Now, one of the challenges we deal with teenagers is, and I'm sure you see this with yours, I'm the proud owner of several teenagers as well. Um, and and we have so much perspective because we've lived decades, they haven't even finished their second decade. And we can take our multi-decade perspective and wisdom and try to force it on their lack of perspective. And we we just can't, it it doesn't work that way. So where are they and where where would you like to grow? Some of them are going, oh man, I I I'd like to um man, I'd I'd just like to get a B in that class. But you should be getting an A. But if they if it's better, if it's better and if it's theirs, it's a great place to start. So the will of the will of another person, uh I I we we have some all of our coaches, we practice this when we work with teams, we call it um check-in for buy-in, where we inspect that the will of the other person has been brought to the table. Because at the end of the day, if I tell someone how to grow and I tell someone what to do and the results aren't great, they will push it back on me. But if they tell me where they want to go, if they tell me what they want to do, and they walk away and try it and the results aren't great, it was their choice, not mine. So I am um, I I I believe the one unclimbable mountain on in this in this planet, the one unclimbable mountain is the will of another human being. And I respect the will of another human being.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. There's a lot of patience involved to take that approach, right?

SPEAKER_00

But the good news is when a teenager decides to summit a small hill in the grand scheme of life. I'm gonna make my bet each day. I'm going to uh I'm gonna say thank you to mom twice a week. They decide to summit a small hill. Frequently, what happens, if you've ever climbed, I'm sure you've climbed, you you're you look like an adventurer. Um when you get to the top of a hill, we we tend to almost covet the bigger hill that we can see from the top and go, I wonder what the view's like from up there.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so that small hill tends to create a sense of hunger of wanting to climb more or wanting to climb something even bigger and even a greater risk. And so one of the mistakes we make is just parents, not that this is about parenting, but I believe parenting is a form of leadership. We are leading them. Uh, one of the mistakes we make is that we see the giant summit mountain that they are going to have to attack, and we almost force it on them before they're ready to climb that. They're ready to climb the hill. They're not ready to climb K2.

SPEAKER_03

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Even though we know their journey will require K2 at some point down the road. So it's about readiness for climbing than the actual hill that they're on right now.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so now I've got two paths I want to go down. I want to go down kind of the parent path, but also the the coaching path. So um well, let's go with the parent one because this there's stuff coming up for me a little bit as you share here. And um as a parent, we screw things up, at least we think we do, right? And and generally it's not unrepairable, right? Like you'd have to really do something terrible to to be unrepairable. And so what do you say to to parents or executives or leaders who who kind of need a do-over? Like maybe they've been pushing that K2 climb when it should have just been, you know, five or six times up the bleachers.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

How do you how do you help somebody recalibrate or come back in and and create a safe space to begin again?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know, the old adage, uh, the best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best day is today. Right. Um, we all want the fruit in the shade of the tree that took 20 years to get there. Um, but at some point we got to put it in, we got to wait, right? So no matter what we've done and brought to the table up to this point, today's the best day to start. Now, here's the greatest news of all. My life is a living testament of that, of this truth. We live in a universe where people can change.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not against personality traits. I think there's great value in them. I'm not against strengths. I'm not like the diagnostics, there's great value in that. But the universe we live in, people can change. The addict can recover. The broken can be made whole. The confused can get clarity. So we live in a universe where people can change. Parents deal with a great sense of guilt and a great sense of self-condemnation. And oftentimes that sense of condemnation holds them back from starting today. Now, having said that, I I like to call it the crowded out principle. So imagine we have a three-seater couch, and uh there's three occupants on the couch, and we realize we don't want any of them on the couch. There's actually someone who comes to our house that's of greater honor, and we would rather them sit on the couch. Uh one of the best ways to get the right people on the couch is just to have that person start sitting down and making it incredibly uncomfortable for all of them to be there on a three-seater couch. Force that one in there. And what ends up happening is if you think of the occupants on the couch like habits, if we we establish the right habit, we can crowd out the wrong thing. Let me give you an example. Uh, in my work with teenagers, they would come to me and they would say to our in our season, I want to have a healthy relationship with my mom. They would say, uh, I want to stop raising my voice to my mom. I want to stop talking back to my dad. Uh first of all, I don't Yes, please.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, please. Yeah, you have to sign up for that, right?

SPEAKER_00

Uh and I would, I'm not a parenting expert. Um, I I'm figuring this out as well. Um I I believe that the whatever expertise, if I have it, is I would more say I'm a student, a passionate, committed student of growth and how growth works. So, because of that, I would find uh kids would come and say, I want to stop arguing back with my mom. Mom, well, how do I measure that? I can't hold him accountable. I sit down across the table. Did you argue with your mom? Oh, well, I think I was nicer to her. Like that's squishy. Yep. So what we do is we we practice the crowded out principle. So I've found, I've found that if I have a negative behavior that I'm doing, this is my negative behavior. There is usually a positive antidote action to that. So boil down the negative action to its positive antidote in opposite. So if the kid is talking back to mom, that's a verbal issue, that's an interpersonal relational dynamic. We sew or we replace it with intentional gratitude. So instead of the kid saying, I'm going to stop arguing back with my mom, I help the young man come back and say how many times a week they're going to intentionally specifically thank her for something. Here's why.

SPEAKER_01

You reframe it.

SPEAKER_00

We reframe it. And because our minds can only hold so many things at a time. I can't, you know, people that walk away with growth lists of 35 are doomed to fail. They fail. You cannot have 35 things in your mind at a time and be effective at any number of those. So what we do is that our like think of our mental, our mental capacity. It's a limited couch. It's a three-seater couch. It's a four-seater couch. Call it whatever you want, but there is scope and there's boundary to it. And currently, my responses are filling that couch. So I'm going to take my intentionality and I'm going to take something that's the positive antidote of something that's in the couch right now. And I'm going to force it into the couch and I'm going to start repping that and put it on the couch of my mental focus and my intentionality. And over time, what's going to happen for that teenager is gratitude, specific gratitude is going to be more of a default over time and over reps, not one time, not even five times. But when the rep is 10, 25, 35, 45, 50, it redefines a relationship. And the kid wakes up and goes, Oh my goodness, I don't think I've argued with my mom in like two weeks. Nice. But if but if they sit down on the negative side and say, I gotta stop, I gotta stop, I gotta stop, it's okay. So now that's with the kid. It's this isn't a kid growth thing. This is a human growth thing. So if a parent looks at their habits with their kids and says, This is the this is my struggle, this is where I'm off. And we all have it. I have it. I I don't know about you, but I have it. Here's my off. What's the antidote on? And I'm going to intentionally focus on that repeating that small opposite, like almost like a medicine to the negative thing that I'm doing. And I'm going to start today and I'm going to sew it and sew it and sew it and sew it. And and know that in time it's going to change the dynamic. It's going to become more part and parcel to who I am and my demeanor. I live in a universe where things can change and people can change.

SPEAKER_01

So I can see the, I can totally see the talking back to mom and now being in gratitude, you know, hey, mom, thanks for making my breakfast. Thanks for doing my laundry. Thanks for, you know, give me a kiss before bedtime. Thanks for picking me up. Thanks. Like there's an infinite list, right? Thank you to all the mothers and fathers out there. Um give us a couple. I know people are listening and they're like, they're trying to grab this. So do you have a couple other examples of the don't, shouldn't, wrong, and maybe the more reframed positive? Like, what do you see? A couple other ones that might help people grab this idea.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, in a leadership setting, um uh a lot of I'll have young managers that we work with in the course of our training um that will say things like, I want to be more confident. I want to be more confident is really a positive way of saying a negative. They're saying I lack confidence and I want to stop that. So I want to be more confident. So we'll drive it down to, okay, who's the most confident, effectively confident person that you know? And what are those actions that they do? Define it by action. What is effective confidence? And once they start defining effective confidence by a specific action, oh, that looks like smiling and thanking someone when I walk out the room. Awesome. That's great. How many times a week are you gonna do that? And when do you want to start?

SPEAKER_01

You might have in two weeks I asked you. I love I love when are you gonna start? And when are you gonna start? Right, because if you're gonna be in this work, there's always a buy-when.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and I'll tell you, uh, I sit across, uh, I don't, I don't sit across coaching tables one-on-one with teenagers much anymore. We have people on our team that do more of that, but most of it is CEOs, rising managers, um, uh team dynamic, like executives, executive leadership teams. I never leave a table without defined actions that they've committed to do. And there is a very clear, here's when I'm coming back. And and I I tell this to all of our clients, all of our coaches say this to the clients is when we meet you next time, we will not ask you how you are. We will ask you how did you teenagers, ever the foundations of what I learned about growth, I learned from teenagers. And here's here, let me boil it down as simple as I can. We do not grow by knowing. We grow by doing. Doing is where the growth is, not knowing. If knowing produced the growth, YouTube would have solved the world's problems. And I do like YouTube. I do too. But it's the point in which I take a video, I go out into my garage, I get my toolkit, and I do what the handyman says, and I accomplished it. Then it becomes knowledge that I have. You know, it the the Hebrews goes from information to application. The the Hebrews, the the term wisdom, the term wisdom is you know humanly understood um in any culture, but the Greco-Roman, the Greek understanding of wisdom was very much, was very heavy, it was very intellectual. The Hebrew understanding of wisdom was quite different. Well, how they understood wisdom was skillful handling. So if I said you're a wise farmer, the Hebrew would have understood that as you have a great farm. I could go look at your fields and see the depth of your wisdom. But Greek understanding of wisdom was less practically applied and more, which is why we've we got the philosophers. And so we could sit and be wise talking about things. Sadly, in our culture, we are more influenced by the Greek understanding of wisdom than we are by the Hebraic understanding of wisdom, which is important because uh the reality is we grow by doing, and in doing we become wise.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the experiential part of learning is so powerful. So uh one of the things we we we discussed and we both both uh both agreed on earlier was the idea of progress, right? Right. So um, and there were two things that came up, and you can go wherever you want to go with this, but like I always say don't let perfection be the enemy good. Yeah, right. So good enough is get going. And um, and I forgot the other one I was gonna say, so let's go with don't let let's go with progress.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. We we say it ad nauseum to our client partners, our growth partners, um, in the in the corporate space, and even those who come to us on an individual growth area, um, we say we chase progress, not perfection. And the amount of people who are waiting until everything is just right to start.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that was the other one. That was the other one, right? You just triggered the other part was in the pathway to progress. Right. Thanks for triggering my line here. Um, but in the pathway to progress, right? Getting started zero to one, there's also that unworthiness piece that, you know, my life, my finances, my fitness, my family, my relationship with God, whatever it is, is in such disorder that I can't really begin over here. Right. And so we talked about sort of the both and ands. And so as you're as you're bringing people into this space, asking them to now step into the arena, get out of the stands and go into the arena and begin to do progress, have some progress. How do you how do you also coach into in the same spot? It's maybe that unworthiness piece.

SPEAKER_00

So what I'm hearing you say is that uh many people, like self-condemnation, regret of the past can hold them back from even just starting. Yes, right. You're exactly right. And uh I I I use I use what someone used with me that helped shake me out of stuck.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Uh one of the one of the things So let's hold this. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna we're gonna tell the story. Yeah. But before you tell me how you got shook out of stuck, tell me what you were stuck in. Because you're a put together dude, right? And sometimes when people listen, um, and I'm sure you see this in the coaching space, it's like, well, that's good for you. Or if I were where you are, yeah, I totally do that, but I'm not where you are, right? So that's so there's there's value for folks to hear, you know, when somebody who's as put together and as successful as you are, that hey, has wasn't always this way. So give me that stuck story and then how you got shook.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So so that undefeated season that we go back to 15 plus years ago, uh, I was a young professional out of school. I was a teacher, I was a coach, uh, I was low on the org chart, but I was growing in my career. Um, I set out, I felt like my purpose was to help uh help people change lives. Sports was an incredible medium to do it. I was very familiar with sports. Um, it was integrous with my faith. I mean, like I had all the markers. And so I'd been at the school uh as a as a coach, assistant coach. Uh, I was now a head coach of a junior high team. Um, and I was kind of growing in in both reputation and uh enrolle at the school. And the head of the school calls me into his office, and which is a little bit strange because I was a couple levels, like I was several levels beneath him on the org chart, why he would call me in. It was uh May. And he calls me in and he he says, uh, he said, Brandon, uh, I'd like to promote you here at the school. And of course, like I'm young, 20-something. I've I'm full of vigor and like I think I'm a pretty big deal. And uh my answer, uh my thought was like, well, I'd kind of like to be promoted here, you know. It's kind of let's go. About time. Yeah, it's about time. Seriously, seriously. Doesn't he know all that I do, you know? And uh and there was this dramatic pause, and he looked at me and he said, But I can't. Okay. And it sat me back in my seat. And uh, of course. So I'd like to promote you, but I can't. But I can't. But I can't. And he began to list out uh certain things, uh certain gaps in me professionally that he observed that he he said had to change.

SPEAKER_03

What a gift.

SPEAKER_00

Uh absolutely, absolutely. Um, if if you had been sitting in the meeting and said, dude, this is a gift, like this guy's giving you a gift right now, I would have told you to shut up and back off, right? That's where I was in life. And so I he and he listed out some specific things that were holding me back uh from really growing in his ability to promote me at that school, um, tied to certain uh certain things I was doing and certain things I wasn't doing. And but I was, I worked hard. I showed up early, I worked hard, I did things with passion. I've always been a person with passion. And so I left the meeting angry. I spent about two weeks in a personal pity party. It was going into summer, and he said to me, he said, I want you to take the summer and I want you to come up with a strategic plan to change these three specific things. And I want you to show me that plan in July, August. Well, I was so young and Can you tell us what the character areas were? I'll tell you one specific one. Uh, one one specific the the most notable one was as a 20, maybe 26-year-old uh working at a at a school, he said, I gave off the perception to parents that I knew how to parent their kid better than them. And he very gently but directly pointed out that some of the parents of my athletes could be my parent by age. And at that time I didn't have children, I was newly married. And he pointed out the um uh he didn't call it hypocrisy, but he was it was a gap, it was clearly a gap. And and really what it a lot of what it boiled down to was perception because of how confident I am, which by the way, this is why I think strengths-based uh engagement has a backside to it that needs to be discussed in the growth space because every like glaring strength that a person has, it casts a weakness shadow. Someone who's excellently excellent at communication can either have a real shadow of listening or a perceived shadow. Because in the spaces that they're in, they are exercising that strength and other people don't always feel heard in that midst. So whether it's really a weakness of listening or it's a perceived weakness, you and I know someone's perception is their reality. So whether I thought that I could parent those kids better than the parents, or it was perceived, perception is reality. And he graciously said, take the summer, I want you to come up with a strategic action plan of what I can strategic action plan to change this, and tell me what you're going to do. And I I was young enough in organizational leadership. I was young, 26. This was my first job out of college. Um, I didn't realize he had put me on a pip.

SPEAKER_01

Like he And you had gone undefeated in your first night.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I I I we had we had gone undefeated in football. Um, we had a uh the our baseball team uh had exceeded all markers of success uh that we had had, only lost a couple games, and it was because we had a junior high team that actually lost a game to a high school varsity team at a tournament. Oh wow. But it was only by a score of like four to one. And so we had like incredible success, but there were these things that were holding me back. And I'm so grateful that he intervened in I'm grateful that he named my stock. So I come back and I'm looking at two things. I'm seeing young men who aren't changing, yet we're winning. And I'm seeing, uh, whether it was real or perceived, a gap in which I can't move forward. So, so the young men needed change, and so did I. The reason I'm so passionate about undefeated growth in our five-killer process is that it is literally how my life changed. Not just teenage boys' lives changed, not something I applied to them. I applied it to myself. So while that first season I required the boys to do small repeatable actions to change things, I was concurrently doing the same things in my professional world. Now, I I ended up working at that organization for gosh, maybe 15, maybe 15 more years. Um uh, and I did get promoted. The same man who said he couldn't promote me eventually promoted me into the role where I oversaw all parent education, training, and development. Wow. And I am firmly convinced it's because what is the core process of undefeated growth is the process that changed my life, that changed the young men's life, that changes CEOs' lives, that that brings holistic growth in workspaces and professional spaces, self-leadership, work leadership, all the different areas. Uh, I was stuck. I was stuck. And um, I, you know, it it I was spent two weeks having a pity party and until I realized that there was there was truth to what the man was saying to me, and I needed to change. So it set me on a change, change journey.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's amazing. Well, it's amazing that you used that moment and that time, right, to set the foundation for your company on defeated growth. And we'll talk about that. And in a similar story, is is my book, The Results Tree, was really my process of shifting and changing and creating repeatable stuff. And now we offer that to folks at navigatingleaders.com. And so there's that um, there's this idea that um we're best able to help who we were yesterday or who we were last week. Right. Right. Because I've been through that fire, I've been through that journey, I've been through that experience, and and now I have something that that I want to share. Yeah, right. Really, it's like if if you can get through if you can get through this easier, safer, cleaner, you know, than than I did, then then, you know, what value, right, to share. So so tell me about undefeated growth and and your five pillars. You were kind of setting that up. Let's hear about that.

SPEAKER_00

So we so working with teenagers year after year, rinse, wash, repeat, seeing the same transformation. At first I thought, oh, this is for boys. And then I was the varsity softball coach and I repped it with the young ladies at our school, and they had the same growth markers, they had the same growth outcomes, different settings, same progress and growth. Uh, I was, of course, repping it with myself. Um, and then I had a dad come to me and say, Hey, can you do this uh for me in my marriage? And we walked through the five pillars of growth. Uh, I uh walked through it, helped him apply it, and he saw radical transformation in his marriage that was on the way, on the way headed toward a divorce. And uh he he he turned it. I didn't turn it, he turned it. Uh then another dad came to know some of the things that he did to turn that relationship?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm sure there's people listening going to give me something. Absolutely. And and I and I want to these a person's growth actions and intentional actions are nuanced for their context, right? So, for example, go back to a teenager, some young man may do the dishes one three times a week in order to grow in his relationship with his parent, but that may not be as valuable to mom and dad in the season and context that they're in.

SPEAKER_01

So I always want to keep on the come from, right? So this is this is one of the things I think I've told the audience here the story about how my attitude towards dishes changed, right? I used to grumble and hate and you know, and and get angry about how people stacked them and they got the bottom of the dish, like all that, right? You know, but then my heart changed, right? Right. And and now I I do dishes with joy and it's worship and it's gratitude. And right. So I get I get that there's an absolute essence to my action has to be co-aligned with the right heart space.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01

All right, all right, cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he one of the actions he chose was uh each night uh when they settled the kids, he was going to intentionally sit next to her, wherever she was, whether it was in bed, on the couch, uh, intentionally sit, turn phone off, uh, look her in the eye, and just say, tell me all about your day. No, this was no, this was this was the wife. This was the husband wife. Okay, great. Yeah. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and so and and so he starts boys out there, you could say that to your mom too, and it would melt her heart.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh you want an extended curfew time, just rep that action, right? I mean, uh, yeah. So he did it and he he began to turn around a marriage that was really struggling in about three months. Um by the way, what I had observed with men in messes at this point, I'd walked with other dads who were in messes. That's a book, by the way, men in messes. Well, but but here's what men in messes do. Uh, because we're fixers, we see a mess. And if it's a marriage mess, uh we're we're gonna buy the diamond ring, we're gonna buy the gold bracelet, uh, we're gonna book the Bahamas vacation, um, and we're gonna do the dramatic, radical, extreme change action. The problem with all of those, and it's a problem, is that I can give the drastically expensive gold ring. I could go on the incredible vacation with my wife, and we come back to the same habits that got me in my mess in the first place. If the habits don't change, the status quo won't change. So this man changed his dynamic, his working habits with his wife. Then another dad came.

SPEAKER_01

So he put on the sofa, turn off the phone, and tell me about your day.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and he has a works at a major, major, major DFW-based company, global organization, has a really important job, as we all do, right? Uh, but he turned it off so that he could turn on intentionality and availability to his wife in small doses. Small doses that, and and he invited me into accountability for that. And I held him accountable. He did the action. So after three months, he's like, we're sitting on the couch laughing again together. We haven't laughed together in years, but we're laughing together. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm asking him why are you thanking me? I didn't sit on the couch next to your wife.

SPEAKER_03

You did.

SPEAKER_00

Again, go back to the intrinsic motivation. When a person picks an action and a person reps the action, the growth outcomes belong to them.

SPEAKER_01

So talk to me, yes, and talk to me about the accountability piece. What is it? How does it work? Who gets to be part of your accountability group? Why is it essential? Um, how do you reset it and start it like that? I mean, that's That is a foundational piece in this space.

SPEAKER_00

So I I believe um I believe that the best accountability partner, the best accountability partner is someone who loves my potential more than they love my feelings. Like you like that, like that administrator at the at the school. Absolutely. I'd sat you down. Absolutely. He loved my potential in my professional potential more than he loved my feelings. If he had loved my feelings and wanted good feelings in our dynamic, he would have never said the hard thing.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and I want to I want to pause here. You're 26-ish. Yeah, ish. Okay, so so the audience, wherever you are out there, like like going back to the tree thing, right? The best time to plant the tree was 20 years ago or 100 years ago. And the best time to have made a change was yesterday. But for young folks, um, you are far more nimble, far more flexible. Your your neuropathways are not as entrenched. Um, like you can take ground faster than some of the more wise gray-haired folks in the room because our habit patterns are so much stronger, and our social status and our social construct and our community, like everything around us is more rigid, it's more set because it's been around longer, right? Like nothing, nothing different than that, right? And in how people view us and have expectations about us, right? So I just want to to to folks who maybe are just getting started in their professional career, just getting started in this growth space, like there's a gift in being young in that you don't have as much to overcome, right? And and it may not seem that way, it may not feel that way, but but you really can can pivot right in on a dime. And so I just invite folks, we're gonna we're gonna end here in a little bit with with some growth steps and some how-tos and and some applications. And so um I just want to encourage everybody listening to to listen to what Brand's gonna share with us here in just a second, but also uh know that it's never too late to start, but you actually have an advantage because you're still you're still pliable like you were when you were 26. Like you took that as a great affront, but then took all your Vim and vigor and got after it and figured out something.

SPEAKER_00

I going back, I know we go back to my sports coaching. I will take a coachable young person with less talent and accomplish more with that athlete than I can with high talent, low coachability.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and the Navy SEALs do the same thing with loyalty, right? Trust. Yeah. Right? Can I trust you with my wife and my money? Yeah. Right. Because they go and fight and die together in really, really spooky spots.

SPEAKER_00

So what you're talking about is uh I would call it coachability. Yeah. Is it we say this a lot all across the board with the people we walk with? It's okay to be where you are. It's the only place to be because it's where you're at. It's not okay to stay there. Yes. Okay. So how do you move them? Yeah. You move small repeated actions. I uh I've seen uh whether it's um whether it's the executive leader or the executive team who says, yeah, we should build a learning management system, we should uh we should develop a new client service, we should become the company that uh or whether it's the teenage young man who says uh says to himself, yeah, I I should develop a relationship with my mom or with the Lord, or should people I see that people often have a have a sense of where they would ultimately like to go in a category. There's a sense of uh yeah, I want to be successful when I go down the road. What victory would look like. Yeah, absolutely in summed me. Uh what I have more often found is if I ask a person a simple question, okay, so that's what you want, that's great. Um what's the single intentional action you're doing this week to get closer to that? And if I get a blank stare, the likelihood that that person will accomplish that that vision is very low. But if someone has already, this is my next step this week that I'm getting toward that, I'm applying for junior college. My dream is to own my own company. This week I'm putting my application into junior college. Why? Because it starts my process of education. That's fantastic. The person who knows the next, it's like if I said, I want to drive to California, I want to go see the sandy beaches and you know, San Diego Zoo. Um, you should rightfully ask me which direction out of my driveway do I need to turn. In grand vision, most people don't know which direction out of their driveway. So if they don't have the first steps figured out, and if they don't have the first steps figured out, uh ready to go, then what ends up happening is that destination stays as like fuzzy dream as something I'll get to do someday, and it never becomes reality. I was with a young man, um uh mid-20s, trying to jump into career, and uh in in and we basically from where he wants to go, I said, okay, where would you like to be? This is and the question I asked him was uh when you bring when you bring your son home someday, when someday when you're married and you bring your son home, what do you want your work dynamic to be like? To have the access and availability to your son. Well what you tell me that. And he's like, Well, I don't want to be working, you know, 22 hour days. I don't want to be on call on that. I don't and and go, okay, so this is that industry that you said that you want to go into in order to get to that freedom and flexibility that you told me, that's at least five years experience. So where are you at? Do you have your certification? No, I don't. Cool, do you know where to get certifications? No, I don't. So how about you text me in one week and you tell me the next three things you gotta do to get on a path toward that certification? Because tons of people know where they want to go, but they don't know which direction to turn out of their driveway to get to that ultimate destination. And I find that if you stack next three steps, next three steps, next three steps, the steps we take start to get bigger, they start to get more consequential, and the dream and the vision that we're chasing starts to get closer and closer and closer, and it creates momentum. The problem, like growth, growth and momentum work together, it's contagious. When growing people are around growing people, they tend to stir each other up. Uh the problem is so does stuck. Stuck is contagious as well. People talking about what they'll do someday without a next step, those people tend to congregate together. They sit down and they have great coffee talks. Um, they even have mentors, but they're the same year after year after year after year. It'll turn it into action.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, because it's safe or there's some limiting belief operating. So Christy and I are in this space where uh we have so much activity in so many domains, and and it can quickly become overwhelming, right? And so we're in this in this season right now where we're really being intentional about do we have the next step scheduled, booked, the meeting, the appointment, whatever it is, like knowing we're pointed in the right direction. Like, for instance, um, our daughter, Michaela, who MG, he's got some some some special needs from from her epilepsy and brain surgery, which folks have heard about, um we're we're working to have her be a high school cheerleader, right? And and there's all sorts of um stuff we're facing in that, right? The the entering criteria for being a cheerleader, the legacy of the program, uh you know, and and some other things, but we have our next meeting scheduled, right? And so the moment we've done that, we then lay the rest of it down. I'm not gonna worry about step three, four, five, fifty, seventy-five, ninety-five, because in that now it becomes overwhelming. Now it's now I'm paralyzed, now I'm living in fear and anxiety, which we're not designed to do. And so something we're doing is being very specific about in each of the major domains or tasks, what's the next step? And do we have it scheduled? And the moment we have that, then we use that collectively between the two of us. Like, nope, hey, we got that coming up on Wednesday at 145. Until then, this is this one is you know, at rest. You know, we'll get to it and then we'll figure out what the next step is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I I think that's a brilliant, I think that's a brilliant way to do it because uh a wise man once said, tomorrow has enough worries of its own. Oh my gosh. And seek first the kingdom of God today. Yeah, right? But tomorrow daily bread, right? It's all it's all daily. So one of the things, uh, and I tell this with our with our clients a lot, is we we all carry heavy stuff. Just what like that, you're carrying that every single day. I'm carrying things with my family, I'm carrying things with business, you're carrying things with business. Everybody carries heavy things. What we what we have to do is we have to develop habits of of where to place those anxieties and where to where to let them. So what you're doing is that you're taking the next step, you're putting on your calendar, and you are requiring your calendar to carry that anxiety. Your unwillingness to pick it back up when the next action is scheduled means that you're care that your calendar is gonna have to carry it. Um, and so when I uh like when I train someone who uh in coaching them who they've got a strategic project coming up, something like this, something big, heavy, a presentation, whatever it is. We say, okay, great. So that presentation is in, you know, on June the first. Wonderful. Uh, what's the buildup process to produce it with excellence? I've got to do this and this and this. These are the four things that have to happen. Awesome. How much time does that take? This is how much time that takes. Cool. Show me in your calendar where you have that time committed to produce those components of the presentation. Reverse build it. And then we move them to put it on the calendar. Once it's on the calendar, you don't have to worry about it anymore because that's next Tuesday at noon's responsibility. It's already been committed. And a lot of times what people will do is they'll just carry it inside about something big and looming that's coming, and they'll carry it inside without calendaring it. And they wear the anxiety for it. And they're processing it constantly. Exactly. So you putting it on your calendar is a master stroke of being able, uh the scripture calls it casting your anxieties on the Lord. Um, but in a whether someone follows the Lord or not, every human deals with anxiety. That's not a Christian thing, that's a human thing. We are told to put it to the Lord. And by putting it on the calendar, that trusts that what happens between now and then, the Lord is going to work in all the different ways to equip me, prepare me, and ready me to step into that moment and nail it.

SPEAKER_01

Do you ever bump into people with resistance to like running a strong business calendar and maybe a family calendar and maybe a long-range strategic calendar? Like there's lots of tools in this space. And it is, it is hugely empowering. So have you bumped into people that have resistance and how do you help them overcome resistance? Because I'm a big fan of long-range scheduling.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I do sometimes encounter people who they don't like strategic planning. Um, fortunately, when when I meet with someone, it usually sometimes it comes from a pain point. Like, okay, here's the feedback I got from my boss. I need to make some changes. So there's a little bit of built-in readiness on that. Um, but what we do is I'll zoom people out and ask them the question, where do you want to be in 90 days? Or where do you want to be in 120? Where do you want to be? I I usually I don't go beyond five years because so much life can happen in five years. Um uh, anyways, I I'll I'll pull someone back and go, where do you want to be? Where are you now? What has to happen to get there? And then do you have the time allocated and committed in your calendar so that that can become a reality? And uh, and if someone can't answer that question again, going back to I want to go to California, but I don't know which way out of the driveway, that person is not going to get to California if they can't tell me the first three turns. So I'm gonna guide someone into owning the first three turns. In my coaching space, um, I'll almost always lean in and help the person find their motivation for the action that they're chasing, the priority they're chasing, because ultimately the outcomes are theirs. They shouldn't thank me for having a better marriage if they did the work.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's their work, not mine. My marriage is my responsibility, not theirs. So, however, there are times, Gabriel, where I will, I will flex and say, I'd like you just to trust me on this. I'll tell someone early on in a coaching journey, I'll say, There's probably gonna be two or three times in our process that I'm gonna look at you and say, trust me. And that's when I know an action that I'm confident you need to do, and you're I'm confident you're gonna like the outcome. Now it's a risk. I step out into a space that if they don't like the outcome, it's gonna blow back on me. But if I'm highly confident, just trust me on this. Uh, I may step out and flex and say, I want you to trust me on the next month on strategic planning and booking that one hour, we sometimes I'll call it innovation hours. Uh, you have a senior manager who has the day-to-day battles and demands, but they have a strategic project that they've been handed or they've signed up for, but it never seems to get done and it looms over them. It starts to take in, take out family time because it's not getting planned. And I'll lean in on them and say, let's work on your working plan and let's get that committed in your calendar and then rep those innovation hours. Just rep the five this month. They can be where let's put them on your calendar, and I'm gonna hold you accountable to just execute those five. And then let's see where you are at the end of the month and if it's getting you closer to where you want to be. And if it's not working, we'll we'll regroup. Well, that's we'll change the stuff. Five hours and 160-hour work week or 180 hours. It's well, and if if we don't plan, there are a thousand waiting important things that will tell you what you can't do.

SPEAKER_01

Or urgent, maybe not important.

SPEAKER_00

Well, urgent and important. I mean, well, you know, you have a difficult client relationship or uh some damage control that has to be done. It's important, but it's going to tell you that you can't innovate. But the problem is, I like to think any anyone who builds an executive leadership team, anyone who works in executive leadership, they need to see themselves as um as the old-time builders of train tracks.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So the old-time builders of train tracks, they'd get this virgin pristine land, they'd clear the land of the trees, they would lay the tracks. But fast forward 10, 15 years after the tracks are laid, it's a commerce route of people going. If you're an executive leader, you have to see yourself as a train track layer, not someone who already exists with train tracks, but your job is to clear the land so that your people can move forward. If your people are waiting on you to do their job, you are failing as an executive leader. Your job is to lay the tracks. Their job is to drive the train. And they can't drive it where you haven't laid it. Yeah. So show me on your calendar where you're getting that strategic planning done. Show me where you're putting in the hours to lay that that another 10 miles of track that helps your company get to the learning management system, get to the HR, HR process, get to the whatever the priority is. But if you're not building tracks out ahead of your people, your company will know you are the lid to your company as an executive leader.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's so true for so many businesses and so many organizations. Uh yeah. And a good, a good sort of canary in the coal mine in that is when people keep nudging you or asking you for, hey, have you signed that? Hey, where is this? Hey, I'm looking for that. Hey, can I get on your calendar? Yeah. You know, um, or when you do get on the calendar and people are asking questions where you're like, shouldn't you be making that decision? That's that's a place where they're um either they're fearful or they don't want to take responsibility, or you haven't really truly given them authority. Yeah, or you know, like it's a it's a it's an indicator. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

A lot of executive leaders I've work with, they'll they'll start by talking about empowerment, delegation. And I I will frequently lean in and go, what do you mean by that? Because what some leaders mean by delegation is I'm gonna find someone on my team, I'm gonna take that task and I'm gonna give it to that person and not think about it anymore. Yeah, how's that work in parenting? It doesn't. It's ineffective. Yeah delegation is not giving someone a task. There, there's a tell show let method. There's uh there's different methods of handoffs. Um uh we I I'm I'm militant on if I'm gonna delegate something, not only am I gonna tell you, not only am I gonna delegate, I'm gonna hand it off. You're gonna know what excellence looks like. You will, you will, you have to have observable excellence, you have to have observed what excellence looks like. And you, if I'm delegating something to you, you are going to know the day and the hour I'm checking in. And if I haven't demonstrated what excellence looks like, and I haven't nailed down the day and the hour of when I'm checking in, I haven't delegated anything. All I've done is sent a staff member off to wonder, hope, dream. And honestly, I'm handing off a giant gorilla ball of anxiety to that employee. And they're gonna wonder, they're gonna wonder, am I, am I doing this the way the boss wanted? Because I I'll have executive leaders come to me and they'll say, uh, man, I want to get my people more innovative. I want to get my people, I want them to perform better. They'll they'll frequently point at their people as I get inside their executive leadership team and I watch them in strategic quarterly and annual and biannual planning times. We call it target growth coaching when we work with executive teams to help them accomplish their organizational objectives. And I will see the working dynamic. They, these executive leaders will leave the table without clear check-in times, without clear accountability. And where there's not clear accountability, we know the adage, right? You only expect when you inspect. So that's not there. They have team members waiting for them to tell them what to do. They have team members waiting for them to make decisions on an infrequent interval. They don't know when they can get in the boss's office or a meeting to be able to get the check signed or get the the variants approved. And what I find is sometimes the frustration that the executive leader has with their team is actually a reflection of executive immaturity. Now, I don't put that on my website because very few senior executives will come and say, I have executive immaturity. Most of them are not self-aware in that, in that sense, but sometimes it's discovered in the process. We never call it out in the room. But one of one of my favorite things to do is working with an executive team and helping them develop executive health together, um uh where they have working accountability rhythms. They know when they leave the room, everyone knows what everyone is chasing. I know that when we left the table, you're gonna move, you're gonna build more tracks that way in your department. I'm building tracks that way in my department. And when we come back at the defined interval, not when the boss calls the meeting, but it's a sacred rhythm. It's every two weeks, it's every month, it's every week. Whatever is necessary for the organization and the executive team, that when we come back in the sacred rhythm, I know you will have laid a half mile of track in your department. I will have laid mine. And if I'm stuck somewhere, you may lend a hand and go, Brand, I got you with that. I'll send some people over for that. I got you. So that my executive team is a place of help and advancement. It's a place of decision and it's a place of um uh place of uh of of direction. And that can get done in my executive team and seeing teams find that healthy order together, oh man, it it just it lights my fire.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. Well, it sounds amazing and encouraging. Um, if if people want to know more about undefeated growth and where to find you, maybe follow you on some socials, where do they where do they go?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so our website, undefeatedgrowth.com. Um, uh anyone who ever wants to reach out, connections at undefeatedgrowth.com or brandon at undefeatedgrowth.com, just reach out to me directly uh or through connections. Our team, uh, we we're a team of uh seven executive growth coaches. Um we are growth coaches, we're not life coaches. It's it's it's there's a distinction there. Um, but we're growth coaches where we come alongside individuals and teams, leaders in all different domains, and we help them define, go from stuck to To strong. And using the same process, same vocabulary, same verbiage, everyone on our team comes from incredible leadership domains. We've got business leaders, we've got seasoned educators, seasoned entrepreneurs who are bringing that inside the process, the same process that transformed junior advoys that now works with senior executives. And so undefeatedgrowth.com, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, TikTok, Undefeated Growth at Undefeated Growth.

SPEAKER_01

Do you have any cool dances on TikTok? No, I don't.

SPEAKER_00

There's no help for my dance. No dance coaching? No.

SPEAKER_01

So uh there's somebody out there on a treadmill, driving, walking, listening to this, uh, that's that's wanting to go from zero to one. Yeah. They're like, all right, you got me convinced, Brandon. How do I get started? Like, what do you what do you what would you encourage somebody to do in the next you know three to five days?

SPEAKER_00

So I would say if the priority, first of all, name the priority. Okay. Where is it that you want to go?

SPEAKER_01

Name the priority.

SPEAKER_00

Name it. Is it you want to go to greater health? Is it you you want um your team to perform at a higher level? Uh you want your team to manifest uh to exhibit this characteristic, servanthood, servant leadership, whatever whatever it is, name it. You got to name it. If you don't name where you're going, well, you're gonna get it. Which is nothing. Yeah. You name nothing, you get nothing. But it doesn't stop with naming. A lot of people can name where they want to go. It has to be turned into a small repeated action. So name it, define the next simple, reachable action. The outcome is not the action. The step is the action. So if I if I want to be healthier, uh, my next action is not to become healthier. That's a hope. That's not an action plan. It's got to be a workable action plan that someone can check in and see that you've done it to find that next simple action. This is where I'm going, and this is what I'm gonna do, and this is when I'm gonna do it. Then I'm gonna invite someone in, accountability. You have to have accountability. Our five pillars of growth priority, action, accountability, reflection, celebration. And when we celebrate, we don't celebrate the outcomes alone. Because we know that if a person is trying to become healthy, that's not the outcome of one action. And it's not linear. It's not. That's that's the outcome of 10,000 actions repeated in the same in the same trajectory in the same direction. Uh, if an executive team wants to be healthier, hit a growth mark, or um a rising manager wants to be more confident, a better communicator, that's not a one-time thing. That's a 100-time thing. But we celebrate and we train our leaders to celebrate. We actually have a training that we do called the Art of Celebration. We train people how to celebrate. We don't know how to celebrate. In our culture, we celebrate outcomes only. So let me go back to sports. Uh somewhere out there, high school football this fall, there'll be a team that will finish a glorious three and nine. That's deeply unimpressive. And have possibly the most remarkable and successful season in their history at three and nine. If success is only the state championship, that means every other team in the state failed. Now, I've coached long enough to know that the talent that I get every year that comes in, I've had teams that I think objectively, knowing youth and knowing performance at that level, that is probably a that's probably a that's that's probably a two and eight group. They lack nine of the skill positions, they don't have a kid who could throw. Um, the receivers couldn't catch a cold. You know, now we're gonna get them and we're gonna develop them and we're gonna make them better. But if if it's a two and nine talent team and that coach goes six and five.

SPEAKER_01

We're winning the state championship this year. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we're winning the state championship this year. Uh, you know, some you know, someone's 100 pounds overweight and and says, in you know, in three months, I'm gonna be fit for, you know, whatever swimsuits, whatever, right? That's absurd. It's unrealistic. We have to know, we have to know where we're starting. We have to know our context. And so, so if we only celebrate the the win outcomes and the performance outcomes, we miss all of celebration. And the reality is if we're chasing a really big priority, the journey to get there is long and slow. It is long, hard, and slow. We need to embrace it. So there are all these moments across the way, all these moments across the way that need to be celebrated. I remember, you know, on the journeys to our undefeated seasons or even in difficult seasons, I remember going nuts on the sideline when I watched a seventh-grade young man get his first tackle in his life in game nine of the season. Meanwhile, I've got other boys who had pumped out 100 tackles at this point and were doing it very effectively. If I measured that young man first tackle game nine with 109th tackle game nine, that kid would be uncelebratable, like, like ignorable, whatever. But if my celebration level changes for that young man, that's a problem in me. And that's me not knowing that young man's context in his growth trajectory. So, what I would say to that person who's chasing growth, wants to grow, I would say, know where you're starting from. What is your starting place? It's okay to be where you are. 100% okay. It is not okay to stay there. So in two months, in two weeks, there's probably three to five actions that could be done between now and then that won't change everything, that will change something. I would beg, I would beg you, stop trying to change everything with one thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. Yep. So we started this conversation about, you know, highly effective people and what do they have in common? The answer is coaching.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Right. And and it can be in a formal relationship, it can be in a in just a mentorship relationship with somebody who's been there and done that, and you've asked for permission to to have some of their time to get their feedback and their insights. And then nailed, nailed the accountability piece. Like we we've got to have accountability in order to um to stay in the game, right? Because if we're by ourselves, uh it's easy to quit. And we can talk ourselves into and out of it, anything. Oh, rationalize it all day.

SPEAKER_00

We're great self-negotiators.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. Well, Brandon, I really appreciate you being here. Thank you for bringing all your insights from Undefeated Growth. Yeah. Thank you for this extended conversation here. Uh, to the audience out there, I know that there was value creation here for you. Uh, if you're somebody looking to get started, get started. Like, don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Progress comes with the next step. We've talked about how to eat an elephant one bite at a time, and I promise it gets more tasty the further along you go. Uh, but we just got to get started. And so uh be honest, take an inventory, be kind, be gentle, be courageous, be curious, and uh and get in the arena, right? Get out of the stands, get in the arena, get a little dirty and uh and see what you can create. So we appreciate you being here. Uh share this, subscribe, like it, drop in a text message to any of your friends that you think would would value from this, and uh and grab a copy of the results tree. Uh it's got an amazing construct and a way to really apply most everything Brandon and I talked about here today. So until next time, my name is Gabriel Grease, your host of Navigating Leaders. Be well and God bless.