Transcript

Reid Morris: I feel like on some level we went out on this investigation. And we’re looking for somewhat of a punctuation, right? We will have these conversations around growth-minded people and the commonalities between them, all of that. But obviously that didn’t happen.

Joe Mills: What or who does it take to build companies that foster growth in people and business?

This question started this whole investigation, we thought we were setting out to create a show about growth. And I mean, we didn’t not do that. I think it gives me this urgency in my own growth, encourage, nurture, and facilitate personal growth and integrity. Is that what about my goals? But I’m more focused on Pearl.

But at the same time, read is right as these conversations played out and one led to another and we followed leads and suggestions and rabbit holes. We came to the conclusion that we didn’t really answer the question at all. Instead, we made an unexpected discovery. But let’s back it up that the conversation that led re deposing this question.

So can you

Reid Morris: tell me about where we’re headed from here?

Joe Mills: I think one of the pieces I learned inside of this season is there’s really not a place for, should give me more around that. So, Oftentimes we like to sit inside of the space of there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. There is a right way to succeed.

There is a right path to follow. There is a right career. There is, and it’s, it’s all one. There’s all like singularity, like I need to find my dream job. I need to find where I should live. I need to find my community. I need, like it’s said as if there’s like a treasure map and you just need to like keep digging until you find the treasure map and you will uncover it and you’ll reach this state.

Perfection or something. And if you don’t find the one thing, well, it’s, it just doesn’t, like, you have to keep search until you find it. One of the things I loved about the conversations we had across the board is that they were, all these people went in different routes to find where they’re at now. And you know what?

They’re all gonna evolve again. And we talked to Lindsay about that, and she was like, Yeah, I’m gonna, like, I, I’m trying to now create experie. Versus like coaching. So it’s like another evolution for her and, and Kevin really highlighted that I think with his conversation around the hero’s journey. He’s like, Yeah, this was my second hero’s journey.

My first one was this one. My second one is, and it prepared me for this one. And honestly like, who knows what 10 years ahead looks like for him. But like we could get back together with Kevin and who knows, he could have built Dream Fuel, turned it into a billion dollar company, sold it because it was the right thing to do for his employees and everybody.

Wildly, wildly wealthy off of it, and it was like, you know, like the right thing to do. He was like, Yeah, another hero’s journey, another sequence, another season of my life. There’s not like one path, one choice you can make. There’s this idea of what we should do and I’m, I’m like rebelling against the word should because I think it’s false.

Reid Morris: I love that. And that you even explicitly, that concept of shit came up in a number of these episodes that. It clearly resonates with a lot of the people that we had on the

Joe Mills: show. They have like an ability to sit inside of unknown. That was inspirational for me and also really challenging. I, I just don’t function well without plans and sets and direction.

Like, this is where it’s going. This is what will happen. I’m controlling the outcome. We talked about that with Chip a lot, right? We talked a lot with Chip about how do you be okay with dropping your agenda? For him specifically. He’s like, Historically I like to come in and own the conversation, impose my will on the thing happening.

I’m an engram eight eight’s imposed power. That’s what they do. They search for it cause they want to fight against weakness. He’s like, I’m just okay with walking in and not having an agenda. It’s fine. And maybe they’ll have an agenda and that’s fine too. Maybe they won’t, Maybe none of us will have an agenda.

That’s fine too. It’s like this sort of acceptance of what is. . And the paradox is that by accepting what is, you actually get more of what the best option could be instead of trying to shape it yourself.

Reid Morris: So I think what that brings us to o over the course of this season, what are the different tools people use to channel that sort of intuition, right?

Um, that, that guiding feeling of where they should go next, that comfort with, you know, being where they are and all of that, whether it. You know, the Enneagram specifically, whether it’s finding Purpose and Noble, Why, Right? There are all these different tools that these different people have leaned into.

Many of them lead organizations that teach those things. Mm-hmm. , but really finding that not only are there a number of things available to you in terms of how to channel your intuition, how to. use mindset, how to make decisions, how to better understand your personality and relationships with others.

All these things you can use different combinations of them. Mm-hmm. , and I feel like that’s an interesting sort of toolkit that developed over the course of this

Joe Mills: season. Yeah. There are a lot of ’em. Which, which are the ones that you immediately, when you like, think about the toolkit you got out of the conversations, what do you find?

Reid Morris: Yeah. Uh, I had, you know, a number of, uh, let’s say realization moments over the course of these, right? I feel like you can’t help but listen to these conversations and, and these leaders talk and. Not take something away from it. So let’s say we go back to Kevin Bailey’s conversation and that whole idea of dopamine versus serotonin, right?

And we talked about how coming outta that conversation, I mean, I essentially took immediate action around taking less of a dopamine mindset and just doing what. I wanted to do what felt good, not what was the right thing to do, and how that really like changed my minds a little bit in that moment and, and freed me a bit from that constant dopamine to going to Enneagram, right?

And that’s never been a tool that I used that much. I’ve been aware of it, but I never did a lot of thought into where am I while I’m still early on in the journey of now thinking about the Enneagram more. I can already see the places that can pay dividends in the way that I show up at work and, and.

That taking advantage of any of these different tools can really help just create the right mindset and, and finding balance and, and channeling different things in the right way.

Joe Mills: Yeah, I think even going back to Tiffany’s conversation, the, the tool I took from Tiffany’s was the flywheel idea. that we got to with her where like we figured out her own little personal flywheel.

And I think that is a powerful thing. And I have not tried it yet for myself. Like, what is, what is my flywheel that gets me spinning? Like just by definition it’ll help me spin. Um, and then I think the rest of the element three conversations were really gut oriented. Really like follow intuition FO and and that was where I was like, I don’t know what the tool is here, but I know what the outcome is.

Mm-hmm. , Darren was like, I understood I needed to go get with these people to level up. John was like, We just knew it was time. We knew we didn’t have enough kids yet and we knew it wasn’t time to move. Oh, now we knew it was time to move. It’s time to go. Like very gut oriented. For me in

Reid Morris: those conversations with, if we think about Darren and John, they’re people who on some level feel like they have it, quote, figured out to some extent, right?

And And they reached that clarity in different ways. Yes. So those were sort of the moments of stepping back of like, Oh man, it’s really empowering when you just accept that intuition, right? And when you know what your principles are, or the environment that you need to be in, just in this like gut sense.

So then it became, well, how do we

Joe Mills: get to that point? Right? How do we get to that point? And, and that’s where like the tool from Kevin, two tools that he gave us. One, the framework you gave around dopamine and serotonin and how to use each of them, but also the toolkit of how do you start developing an intuition.

And he talked a lot about the, the way to do this is to ask questions. Simple questions like when you’re starting out, you wanna ask easy. Yes nos. Do I want tacos for dinner tonight? Simple. Yes. No res and, and then he’s like, And this is the thing, It’s a feeling. It’s not a word. It’s not like something pops into your brain.

It’s like this is the answer. When I ask that, does my body feel like it constricts or does it expand? Right? And that tool around how to start teaching your intuition. And you start with simple nonsense questions like, do I want tacos tonight? And you get to the point where you’re able to make decisions like, should we move across the country?

Yeah. That is the, that is like the, the thread. And then, um, Like, I think Chip obviously brought the model of the Agram to us. Like he, he kept using the, the word it is not a perfect model, but it is a very good one. So it’s a model for thinking, it’s a model for recognizing your own behavior patterns and areas that you might fall short with those patterns or how you’ll impact others.

And then that brought us into like the will conversation. And I think about it as like the overlapping circle model with will of like, does the organizational purpose. The people who are building the organization’s purpose. And so first and foremost, does the executive team overlap correctly? Is it authentic to what they’re building?

And, and then you as an individual who’s attaching yourself to that ship, if you will. Does your circle overlap? With theirs. And that was like another opportunity to see shapes and models and like understand how to see it. And so I see all of those as like tools that can be used. You’ve got Flywheel, you’ve got Intuition building, you’ve got dopamine, serotonin balancing, you’ve got Agram model, you’ve got models for building Purpose.

I think all of those things really came out in these in this first season.

Reid Morris: So we went from. The conversation with Kevin that is, you know, around mindset, intuition, all these things, and he is like, You should go talk to John, who’s somebody who’s done this really well. Mm-hmm. . Tell me about what that experience was like going from sort of the teacher to somebody who was expressed to us as somebody who’s really thrived, having channeled that kind of

Joe Mills: mindset.

Yeah, yeah. What John showed was. He was the clear, if you want to impact other people, you must start with impacting yourself. That was where I would say like the individual journey part of our season happened was John was so clearly like I, I, he’s like, I didn’t even think about if it was gonna impact them.

I was concerned with who I was showing up to be. I was letting down my relationships. I was letting down my executive founders with me. I was like not showing up as who I wanted to be, and so I knew I needed to change that and I went and worked on. And by working on John, the organization flourished. And that was where it was like, Oh, I see the impact on the individual.

Now let’s go figure out more individuals. And that’s what led us like to Gary, right? Where Gary has done an incredible amount of work of transition. Like the thing with Gary that was so fascinating to me is you continue to transition well through ups and downs. Like transition outta the NFL was like really positive.

He won a Superbowl ring, considered to be a great player in the league, had an incredible career, and then he moved. Being an entrepreneur in, in a restaurant business at just like really poor timing. They were like launching, they were growing incredibly well. 10 locations expanding like crazy, and then pandemic, which like crushed restaurants and he’s in growth mode.

So your capital’s out and like you’re making all these decisions and then overnight you, you just basically lose it. But his ability to like transition well out of that, When most people would feel smoked, crushed his, his perspective was like, I can either think I lost millions of dollars, or I think I got millions of dollars of education.

And it’s just like the reframe boop. And then it’s like that’s, I grew myself. And so we, we talked about growing yourself and then we wanted to talk to somebody who used a model for growing yourself, which is Chip and the Agram and ki what Kairos does. And then it was like he talked about community and so like that thread, John really was.

You must focus on you to make those around you better. And then Gary was an example of that and had a lot of points about how to do that and what was important for him to develop this sort of confidence in himself. And then Chip was like, Here’s a model for doing it. And then it almost went back out again, you know, which I thought was a really interesting way to sort of wrap this first series of conversations.

So let’s talk about what’s next, What’s coming for the show after this? I

Reid Morris: feel like on some level, we went out on this investigation and were looking for somewhat of a punctuation, right? We will have these conversations around growth-minded people and the commonalities between them, all of that, but obvious.

That didn’t happen. So can you tell me about where we’re headed from here?

Joe Mills: Okay. Time to answer the question I want to keep investigating. I think we scratched the surface of a shallow question that led us to find a goldmine of depth and nuance that is worth digging deeper into. Let’s be honest, in 12 conversations, we only got a couple of degrees outside of the E three network.

I want to go further. I want more perspectives. I want to talk to educators, subject matter experts, athletes, actors, founders, because at the end of the day, more perspective means more tools for our toolbox. So I guess all of that is to say the investigation is far from over.

Reid Morris: Okay, Joe, you

Joe Mills: ready to keep going?

The investigation continues next week.