August 26, 2025 • 55 mins
To be a great leader is to repeat important messages over and over again, until they become part of your culture. In this episode, Alex and Ben talk about why language matters and how they’ve seen it create meaningful change in organizations they’ve worked with. Alex then shares the 5 core principles he finds himself repeating over and over at Path for Growth. He also explains why every person listening should learn to lead well, whether they think they’re in a leadership role or not.
Information isn’t the gap between failure and success—action is. Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching helps you create a plan and execute on what matters most for your business. Apply today at pathforgrowth.com/coaching.
Episode Recap:
- Language creates culture, and part of your job as a leader is to repeat the things that matter
- Why is intentional language so important?
- There are 5 core tenants we find ourselves repeating over and over
- 1. Just because you’re growing doesn’t mean you’re living
- What does it take to practice healthy growth?
- 2. If you want to put your business in order, start by putting yourself in order
- 3. If someone depends on you, then you are a leader
- What does it look like to lead with wisdom and authority?
- 4. Your work is not who you are, your work is where you serve
- How can leaders begin to separate their work and their identity?
- 5. Strength is for service
If you’re ready to move beyond just gathering information and start executing on what truly matters, Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching can help. Apply now at pathforgrowth.com/coaching.
Resources:
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Join us for our 2025 Experience – Long Game Leadership
Connect with our Founder Alex Judd on LinkedIn and Instagram
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex Judd (00:02):
So it's one of the things that we talk to leaders
about all the time and that hasbeen just critically important
for me to remember as we growour business. It's a principle:
language creates culture. Right?The things that you say as a
team over and over and overagain create the culture that
your team, and in some ways evenyour customers, live out. So as
(00:24):
a leader, like you do yourselfand your team a great favor when
you put on the hat of CRO,right?
Chief Repeating Officer. And soin some ways, that's kind of
what we're diving into heretoday is like, we've now been in
business for five years andthere are certain phrases that
have cascaded, not even justinto our team. Like our team
knows these phrases by heart,right? Because we've said them
(00:47):
over and over and over again.But what's crazy is there are
some of our customers now thatare leading businesses around
the country that are activelyand intentionally using these
phrases with their teams.
And like, I'll meet people forthe first time and they'll tell
me one of these phrases. I'll belike and they'll act like it's
their quote. And I'm thrilledabout that, right? Like, because
that's language creates culture.So in some ways we just wanted
(01:10):
to create, as we're launchingthis YouTube channel, just a
repository of some of the corephrases that are bigger than
just phrases.
These represent fundamentalfoundational beliefs of the
mission that we're on as acompany. And that's really
important for us to focus onearly because beliefs drive
behavior. So the things we do,they are all in some way
(01:36):
inextricably interconnected intothese beliefs. If people are
interested in what Path forGrowth is and what we do and the
mission that we're on and thepeople that we serve, like,
beliefs are a great place tostart.
Ben Loy (01:47):
When did you first realize how important language
was?
Alex Judd (01:52):
Oh, gosh. I I have loved language for a long time.
Like, I don't know if I've toldyou this story before, but I
literally remember I I wassitting on my mom's bed. I was
in second grade, sitting on mymom's bed while she was folding
laundry. And I was just, like,shooting the breeze and, like,
literally, she was foldinglaundry.
And I said, you know, mom, whenI grow up, I don't think I want
(02:13):
to be a motivational speaker,but I would love to be a
motivational teacher one day.And just she looked at me. She's
like, what? Like, go playoutside. Like, what are you
talking about?
Right? But I say all that to saylike, not that it's been at the
forefront of my mind all thetime, but the topic of
intentional and effectivecommunication as a, as a means
and vehicle for intentional andeffective leadership has been
(02:34):
something that I've had in theback of my head for a very, very
long time. Fast forward, I sawthis really modeled in two
places. Number one is incollege, I was the drum major
for the Longhorn Band, which theLonghorn Band is the show band
of the Southwest people. Hookthem horns.
What starts here changes theworld. Right? 400 person
(02:55):
organization, one of the most, Imean, honestly, revered marching
band programs in the country.And you have a single drum major
that is the liaison betweenstaff and students that is the
primary student leader of theorganization. Incredible
opportunity.
Absurdly impressive organizationwith a massive history and
(03:17):
tradition. And what was so coolthat I didn't know I was
learning this at the time, beingin Longhorn Band and observing
the inner workings of thatorganization with decades, if
not a century of tradition, whatyou saw is years and years and
years of language. Right? When Isaid same thing, like we're
(03:38):
going to run a drill again,everyone would say same thing,
mo better. Right?
Like everyone would say that.And like we had all these things
that we would say that we'regoing to beat the hell out of A
and M. Right? But then we're notgoing to beat the hell out of
Baylor because Baylor is aChristian school. So we're going
to beat the hell into Baylor iswhat we're going to do.
Right? Language that createsculture. Right? I could list so
many different things thatliterally would sound like we're
(04:01):
talking a different language,but but in many ways, it was
like this giant inside joke thateveryone knew. And so I saw it
there first and then went andworked for an organization
called SPUR Leadership that wasassociated with Lake Hills
Church in Austin, Texas afterthat.
And one of the things that LakeHills did extremely well is they
(04:22):
codified their core values,which is what do you stand for?
And they used that language overand over and over again. And I
mean, we knew the mission ofthis place is to grow the
community of Christ one life ata time. And it's like, I still
have that mission memorized.That's crazy.
I worked there over ten yearsago. And so again, you created a
(04:42):
culture, shared values andbehaviors of a team by
reinforcing the language thatbrought people together. And
then certainly saw it at Ramsey.Ramsey is like a masterclass and
just listen to Dave on the radiofor three hours a day, by the
way. And I mean, you hear himsay so many of the same things
(05:02):
over and over again.
And now it's like a it's like ameme. It's like an ism that
people say his things to himbefore he can say it to them.
And, like, they, like, love it.They love that stuff. Right?
Language creates culture.
Ben Loy (05:16):
That reminds me a lot of in boot camp when Is this
coast guard boot camp? Yes.Yeah. So when you, I just
remember, like, when I firstwent to the recruiter and I got
my ship date, which was a couplemonths out from when I first
interacted with the recruiter,they give you this little
handbook and it's like thelittle it's the coast guard's
handbook. And you have tomemorize a bunch of the language
(05:39):
in it.
You have to memorize you know,there's, like, standard orders
you have to memorize. And thenwhen you're at boot camp as
well, one of the disciplinaryactions you have is they have
this huge book that's like theCoast Guard manual, and you
would hold the book out in frontof you at arm's length for,
like, a ridiculous amount oftime. And you just repeat the
same phrase reading reading thesame page over and over and over
(06:01):
and over and over again. Andthat's what that that's just
what I think of when it's like,oh, yeah, repeated language
drives culture. It's like, Imean, yeah, in a big way, I I
probably, if you started somesentences to those pages, I
could probably just, rattle offthe rest of them.
For sure.
Alex Judd (06:16):
I mean, what I think of when you say that is that
needs to be in Pathfrog'sonboarding process. Yeah. Yeah.
People stand with a in front ofthem while their arms are
shaking.
Ben Loy (06:24):
We're gonna stand for thirty minutes with a in front
of you.
Alex Judd (06:27):
In some ways too, also think, like, this podcast
could also be called, like, thenerd and the jock because Alex
shows up with his marching bandstories and Ben shows up with
his coast guard boot campstories, but Different
perspectives.
Ben Loy (06:41):
There we go. Yeah. We'll have Chet GPT make a meme
of that. There you go. So youhave these, you know, five
tenets or five principles.
What's the first one?
Alex Judd (06:51):
Let's highlight too, like, are not things that we
just wrote down and we're like,that sounds good. Let's go with
that. Like, I think every singleone of these, there was almost
like a methodology that wentinto it becoming the thing that
was repeated. Number one, itstuck because it had resonance
with real life. So like when we,recognize this principle or this
(07:14):
phrase, we were like, man, we'regoing to grab onto that and
we're going to remember thatbecause we feel like it
describes not only what we seein our business and leadership
in life, but it describes whatwe see in other people's
business leadership in life.
And then really how we take thatthen we distill it down into the
list of five that we're going toshare in this episode is we kind
(07:34):
of said, okay, what are thethings that we are saying over
and over and over again? And thereason why we're saying it over
and over and over again is notjust because it sticks with us
internally. It has like, I mean,a home in people's businesses,
leadership, life externally.Like these are the things that
when people call me afterlistening to our podcast for
years, they can quote them backto me. And oftentimes you can
(07:58):
learn a lot about what is trueby seeing what do people respond
to and what's the language theylatch onto.
And so some of these are quotesthat I've heard over the years,
which I'm going to do my best togive good attribution. Some of
them are things that we'veobserved and some of them are
directly connected to stories ofbuilding this business. So with
that, can we jump into numberone? Yeah. So number one, let's
(10:02):
tell the story behind it first.
There's five of these that we'regoing to go through. Number one,
I had started the business,which we tell the whole story.
Maybe not the whole story, butsome of the story in the
previous episode about makingthe decision to leave Ramsey and
start the business. And and oneof the things that I shared in
that first episode that werecorded was, you know, if
you're not careful, you canspend so much time preparing for
(10:24):
the worst case scenario that youdon't ever spend any time
asking, well, what if the bestcase scenario happens and how
are we gonna handle that? Andthat's where we were in the
business.
And so six months in, my one onone docket was filled. We were
staffing growth groups andOlivia was running growth
groups. Our team was alreadybigger than what I had
anticipated it being. And wewere getting more demand every
(10:49):
single day. And beyond that,like we had office hours that
were going on, we were talkingabout launching new products, we
had just put out the idea ofhaving our first in person
experiences.
My mind was on who we were goingto hire and when we were going
to hire them. And like, if youhad asked me at that time, like,
how are things going? My honestanswer would have been like,
things are going great. This isjust awesome. Right?
(11:10):
And, you know, fast forward toNovember 2020. So started in
June, we're now at November2020. And this is a wild story
that could be a huge tangent. Wewon't go on the full tangent,
but I got invited to go on atrip to Richard Branson's
private island. Unbelievable.
Right? And, actually, like,through a whole series of
(11:32):
decisions and circumstances,like, was planning to go there,
but then made the decision like,no, I don't need to be going
that right now. So now I've gotlike a week open, and I've
already planned not to beworking. And this is my first
time off since we started thebusiness. And I said, I'm just
going to go down and still go tothe beach.
It's not going to be a privateisland, but I'm going to go to
Panama City, Florida and justlike, almost find some solitude.
(11:57):
And I felt like hungry for somesolitude in some ways because we
run a very relational business.And although I'm a very
relational person, I'm anintrovert. Right? And I
recharge, refuel by being bymyself.
And so I was really excitedabout going down to Panama City.
I'll never forget, like, I hadmade the whole plan with my
assistant to, like, be off off,clear the calendar, all of that,
(12:20):
and got there in the condo inPanama City and put my computer
and my phone under a pillow inthe, like, guest bedroom and I
was going to be off. And I didall of that and then I just
remember sitting down and I'm inthis beautiful place. I'm at the
beach. There's great restaurantsin walking distance.
And I'm just, like, sittingthere and I, like, can't
(12:42):
breathe. And it's in thatcontext of, like, not being able
to breathe that, like, it hitsme, like, I have been on for six
months. Like, I have and I haveforgotten how to turn things
off. And, you know, I wish Icould say, like, that four days
was, like, this incredible timeoff where I was at the beach and
(13:05):
I got to hit restore and refreshand find my creativity again,
find passion. I was anxious theentire time.
Right? And for me, it was thiswake up call of like, this thing
has been growing, but justbecause it's been growing
doesn't mean that it's healthyand doesn't mean that I'm
healthy. And what had reallybeen happening is my stress
(13:26):
level had been growingproportional to the rate of our
business. And so the bigger ourbusiness got, the more stressed
I became. And I like, praiseGod.
Truly. I mean that. Because if Ididn't end up on this beach
house by myself, I'm not sure Iwould have recognized this.
Like, if you extrapolate thatout two years, I realized like
(13:46):
this thing is going to kill meor I'm not going to want to do
this anymore. And so it was, Idid not have answers, but I did
have questions.
I said like, this can not be theway to do this. I refuse to have
my stress level growproportional to the rate of my
business till the end of time.We are going to do something
(14:07):
different. And it was out ofthat, that the mantra that I
just started saying over andover again to myself, but also
to our customers is health andgrowth are not the same thing.
And it's wild, but I think weactually confuse that.
Like we think, oh, well, you'regrowing, so you must be healthy.
Uh-uh. Not what I've seen.Right? Everyone says if you're
not growing, you're dying.
(14:27):
We like to sound real tough whenwe say it. Right? Well, what I
have learned is just becauseyou're growing doesn't mean
you're living. And I,unfortunately, have met a lot of
people, and I also know a lot ofbusinesses that they're growing.
On the external, everything's upand to the right, but just
inside, they're just as dead asthose that aren't.
(14:49):
And so what I constantly have toremind myself, but we're also
reminding our team, we're alsoreminding the business owners
and the leaders that we workwith every single day is just
because you're growing doesn'tmean you're living. It's
possible to practice healthygrowth. The thing that I know to
be true, though, is that itnever happens accidentally. It
(15:09):
always happens because someonedecided to exercise extreme,
uncommon, unprecedentedintentionality.
Ben Loy (15:17):
Well, once you had that realization, how did that play
out practically?
Alex Judd (15:21):
Yeah. Well, I had to figure out how to breathe again,
first of all. I mean, honestly,I was a little bit scared
because I was like, well, thisis what I've been doing is
working really hard and keepingup with the pace of demand, and
I feel like that's the rightthing. If that results in this
stress level, well, then what amI supposed to do? Right?
(15:41):
And and so really, it didn'tstart with a bunch of answers,
like I already said. It startedwith a bunch of questions. And I
started to turn on my radar forpeople that were growing, that
were successful, that werecreating jobs, that were
acquiring new customers, thatwere moving forward in business
and leadership and in life. Butnot only were they successful
(16:04):
externally, they loved theirlife. Right?
And they were content where theywere. They were joyful where
they were. Their spouse lovedthem, and they had a
relationship that seemedadmirable. They had a really
incredible relationship withtheir kids. And it just seemed
like they were becoming more ofthe person, the man, the woman,
(16:27):
the leader, the Christ follower,the business owner that they
wanted to become.
And the business was every daybecoming more and more of what
it was supposed to be, not likebecoming a shadow of itself or
something you're not proud of.And so I started to pay
attention and look for those.And the first thing I noticed
was that's incredibly rare. Likeyou can find a lot of people
(16:47):
that are growing, you can find alot of people that are happy.
It's hard to find people thatare happy and growing.
Right? And so, but when I foundthem, I was like, that's my
person. And I would zoom in andI thought of those people as
like lights, right? Like lightsand like, let's zoom in and
let's look at the light. And Imean, it started as me and then
it became our company.
We started studying these peopleand we said, not only is this
(17:10):
how we want to do business, wewant to do business this way.
And then in the process of doingbusiness this way, we want to
train, teach, coach otherleaders on how to do business
this way. And that's where likehealthy growth became one of the
things that we're known for. Andwe knew we had something when on
our community office hourscalls, I'd hear Naftali or I'd
(17:32):
hear Karen or I'd hear Clint orI'd hear Justin or you can name
any number of our firstcustomers. And they'd say, well,
I know a lot of people would dosomething this way, but I am
focused on healthy growth.
And that was when we were like,bingo. That's the language.
Health and growth are not thesame thing. We are going to
create and craft a communitythat is focused on practicing
(17:53):
healthy growth.
Ben Loy (17:55):
If you could boil down, like, what it takes to practice
healthy growth into onestatement, what would it be?
Alex Judd (18:01):
Oh gosh. You know, you can really look at this
through the business lens, whichis really what we do within our
coaching program. Right? And andwe don't have one statement. We
have 12 fundamentals that wewalk people through methodically
on how to install this paradigminto their business at every
level.
But if we were to zoom back fromjust business ownership and
let's just say life, like youwant to be a person that
(18:23):
practices healthy growth, here'swhat I would say is, can you be
someone that experiencescontentment, joy, and gratitude
in the present while beingzealful and passionate and
adventurous in the way youfaithfully move towards the
(18:44):
future. And I think that'shealthy growth. Right? I see a
lot of people that are extremelygrowth oriented and goal
oriented, and they're miserable.Some of the most miserable
people I know are the most goaloriented people that I know.
Right? But then I also see somepeople that they call it
contentment, and in reality, youcalled attention to this the
(19:04):
other day in a meeting. It'slike you're confusing
contentment with complacency.Mhmm. Right?
And you've stopped movingforward. You're not looking
you're not looking ahead towardsanything and you're not
expanding in service of others.What's crazy is like, man, if
you can manage the tension andthat's what I think it is. It's
not I haven't figured out how tosolve for it. But if you can
manage the tension of, like, I'mgonna be joyful and content
(19:25):
today while also hopefully andfaithfully looking forward to
tomorrow and growing into whoI'm called to be, I think you
nailed it at that point.
Ben Loy (19:32):
So what's the what's the second one?
Alex Judd (19:35):
Okay. The the second one, I actually think is a
little bit of a practical diveinto the idea of healthy growth,
and really, it's a conversationabout order of operations.
Because the second one is thisphrase, if you wanna put your
business in order, start byputting yourself in order. The
(19:57):
first time I ever said that, I'mpretty sure it was, like, to
myself in a proverbial mirror,like, saying, like, Alex, like,
you gotta start with you. Like,and, but that's not what we so
often do.
What we so often do, and I thinkwe actually have good intentions
of doing it, and you can just aseasily substitute career for
business, right? As we say, Ineed to get stuff right at work,
(20:17):
right? I need to make sure thisbusiness is operating correctly.
I need to get sales to a certainpoint. I need to solve these
customer issues or solve theseteam member issues, right?
I need to get to a certain pointout in my work world. And when I
do that, then I'll have time tofocus more on the things in and
related to self control. Right?In and related to my own
(20:38):
personal health, my own personalfitness, my spiritual life, my
relationship with my spouseeven, or my relationship with my
kids. And and in me saying that,you can probably hear how faulty
and screwed up that is.
Mhmm. Because I have never oncein in all of my time working
with business leaders seen afrantic, feeble, frazzled, weak
(21:01):
person lead a healthy, centered,stable, strong business. I've
never seen it. Right? And like,I'm not putting my money on you
being the first.
Right? Conversely, though, Ihave absolutely seen healthy,
centered, stable, strong peoplego into work. And even if the
work is frazzled, if it's crazy,if, I mean, if it's all on fire,
(21:24):
they are the type of person thatcan actually lead in that
situation and introduce orderand stability and clarity and
direction. And so that's why Ithink this is so important is it
operates counter to our primaryimpulse because our first
impulse is typically like, Ineed to go focus on all those
things out there, and then I'llhave time to shore up my
relationship with God or or tomake sure that I'm physically
(21:47):
healthy and well. So just thethe fundamental thing that we've
said over and over again in inour coaching program that we we
have literally built out ourpath for growth fundamentals
around this in terms of how wecoach people is if you want to
put your business in order,start by putting yourself in
order.
Put some modicum of order inyour personal life so that you
can be the type of person thatcan do that in your business.
Ben Loy (22:09):
I once heard, someone say, like, you shouldn't look
(23:16):
for purpose in your work, youshould bring purpose to your
work. Mhmm. Kind of that idea ofputting the carp before the
horse.
Alex Judd (23:21):
I and I think that actually connects to one of the
other statements that we'regonna go on to too, but it's
wild. I think a lot of peoplemaybe even start their
businesses as a business owner,and certainly there was some of
this in me, right, where it'slike, I'm looking I'm going to
work every single day asking thequestion, who am I? And your
work is not where you'resupposed to go to get the answer
(23:43):
to that question. Right? Like,go to your relationship with
your heavenly father for youridentity, for your value, for
your worth.
And out of that, like, let workbe the overflow of you putting
your life in order. The thingthat I want to really highlight
for people though on this iswhat I'm not talking about here
(24:03):
is that you need to be apersonal growth world beater to
go do good work. Right? And welive in a time where we see
everyone's best example andhighlight reel of their ideal
morning routine on Instagram.Right?
And we're, like, trying tofigure out, like, how long will
(24:25):
this tub of water stay cold forif I go buy a bag of ice every
morning and put it
Ben Loy (24:29):
in there?
Alex Judd (24:29):
It's like, we're trying to, like, figure out cold
plunging. And it's like, maybeyou don't need to do cold
plunges yet. Maybe just startopening the Bible for five
minutes every And and don'tunderestimate the value of small
things done consistently. Sodon't say, man, before I go do
good work or start working on mybusiness or You know, your
(24:51):
business demands yourstewardship. So I'm not saying
you need to like become anIronman triathlete, do cold
plunge every morning and becomea theologian overnight before
you can work on your business.
What I am saying is introducesome modicum of base level
standard of order in yourpersonal life. This is why in
our coaching, we we challengepeople, establish one high
(25:11):
return habit. Because we canread all the science on habits
and recognize that keystonehabits are these things that
like they carry disproportionateweight, right? Which means the
activity itself hasramifications for things that
look nothing like the activity.It's why people that make their
bed every single morning have agreater tendency to stick to a
(25:31):
budget in their personalfinances and to eat healthy
throughout the day.
Has nothing to do with makingyour bed, has everything to do
with starting your day with atask completed. And so what's
that thing? What's the one thingthat if you would do it every
single day, it would createdisproportionate order in other
(25:51):
areas of your life? Like, answerthat question and then apply
yourself to it. Put yourself inorder and don't be surprised
when that makes you into more ofthe type of person that can go
to work with the right posture.
Ben Loy (26:04):
What's the third principle? Okay.
Alex Judd (26:08):
So the first one was health and growth are not the
same thing. The second one wasif you want to put your business
order, start by putting yourselfin order. The third one is a
quote about leadership and I'llnever forget where I first heard
this quote. It's a guy thatwe've recently become
reconnected with and man, it's aprayer of mine and it's
something that we're activelyhaving conversations about is
having him on this podcast andon this YouTube channel. His
(26:29):
name is Clint Bruce.
He's a retired Navy Seal. Theguy the guy is just such a stud.
And it was my first everleadership development event
that I've ever organized. It wasover ten years ago now. And I
was help running thisorganization called Spur
Leadership that I talked aboutearlier.
And I'll never forget, webrought in this guest speaker,
Clint Bruce. He was from Dallas,and, he was gonna come in and
(26:50):
talk about his Navy Seal storiesand teach on leadership. And
I'll never forget, this guy hasjust like an imposing presence
about him. He is like I I don'teven think a big guy is the
right word to use. The rightword that I would use for Clint
is dense.
Like, he is just a denseindividual. And you're like,
man, that's the type of guy thatlike, if he if you accidentally
knock into him, not only do younotice it, you're probably on
(27:13):
the floor. Like he is just a Imean, he is just the way he is
the way that I picture NavySEALs looking is Clint Bruce.
Right? And I'll just neverforget the way that he started
off this talk.
He said, I want all of you tolisten to me. And and then he
just kinda, like, scanned theroom, made eye contact with
everyone, and he put himself inthis position where, you know,
(27:33):
for me, I'm fresh out ofcollege, and I'm like, this dude
is talking to me right now. Heis
Ben Loy (27:39):
And that's captivated. Oh, dude.
Alex Judd (27:41):
And isn't just talking to me. He is talking to
my soul at this moment. And, hejust says with a high degree of
poignancy, he says, If someonedepends on you, then you are a
leader. And I can just look backto that moment. I can say, like,
(28:04):
that single sentence has shapedmy career.
Right? Because I'm certain I hadthoughts and ideas about
leadership up till then thatwere faulty and flawed. Right?
Maybe leadership is authority,means that it's rooted in a
position or a title. Maybe Ithought that leadership was
(28:25):
authority.
Maybe I thought it was power,right? Your ability to just tell
people what to do, right? And inreality, what he was saying is
leadership actually depends verylittle on authority or power.
Leadership is much more relianton influence. And what he was
saying is really, if you lookaround you and there are people
that depend on you, which thatis the case, unless you live
(28:49):
under a rock somewhere, that isabsolutely true.
People depend on you. Then youare a leader. So then the
question really isn't are you aleader? The question is, are you
leading? And that changeseverything.
And what's so crazy to me is Ican say this now because it
applied to me back then, but itapplies to the people that we
work with every single day now.It's the reason why I lean on
(29:10):
this quote for almost everykeynote that I give. If someone
depends on you, you are aleader. I want to, I want people
to hear me say that over andover and over again, because
here's what I've seen to betrue. The single greatest
limiting lid to peopleeffectively leading almost
always is their inability toview themselves as a leader.
(29:33):
And if you don't view yourselfas a leader, like you're not
going to lead well. The minuteyou start saying, man, I have
leadership responsibility. Well,you also like start to adopt
leadership opportunity and man,then all bets are off. But
that's the phrase that we'vebeen saying. And quite frankly,
I've been saying ever since thattime, ten years ago, if someone
(29:55):
depends on you, then you are aleader.
Ben Loy (29:58):
We talked about this a few episodes ago when we went
through Proverbs, but that ideaof of wisdom and, like, what is
wisdom? Like, what does it looklike to lead in wisdom? And, I
mean, Proverbs says, right, thebeginning of knowledge, the
beginning of wisdom is the fearof the Lord. And I think, like,
having having a right view ofwho God is because, I mean,
that's what fear of the Lord is.It's not being afraid of who God
(30:20):
is.
It's having a reverence andunderstanding of of who he is.
And having a right understandingof who God is gives us a right
understanding of who we are. AndI think that just goes into what
you're saying. Right? Like,leading with a right view of of
who you are and, like, theimpact that you can have on
other people.
Alex Judd (30:36):
I I heard this once, and it was an illustration that
was done with an umbrella. Andit basically said so many people
live we're on video now, so wecan do this with the umbrella
hanging out here. Right? And thestorms of life come and all
these decisions that they haveto make and all this leadership
responsibility that they'retrying to hold, and they're
(30:56):
holding the umbrella out here.And what is the umbrella?
The umbrella is the umbrella ofauthority. Right? They have
said, I am the I am allsufficient in myself. I make the
decisions. I make the call.
This all belongs to me. Right?You're holding the umbrella of
authority out to the side andyou're saying, I've got this.
Right? What are we called to do?
(31:17):
Well, when we stand with anumbrella over us, here's the
principle. If you want to getover what God has put under you,
you have to get under what Godhas put over you. And what's so
neat about this is it applies tothe authority of God being over
us and saying, man, fear of theLord, like you said. Right?
Like, I'm gonna apply allreverence and respect to God's
(31:39):
wisdom for leading.
But then also, man, that conceptof the umbrella of authority was
critically important for me whenI wasn't the business owner. And
I reported to people that werehonoring God, right, and they
were focused on glorifying God.They just had different opinions
than I did. And, man, it can behard to learn these lessons, but
(32:02):
there's a proper place forrespecting and honoring
authority in the right way.
Ben Loy (32:07):
Mhmm. Was there anything else you wanted to say
about that third point?
Alex Judd (32:12):
Well, I would challenge people, create a
culture that defines leadershipin that way on your team. Right?
So, you know, maybe that's amessage you need to hear. If
someone depends on you, then youare a leader. Maybe you're like,
man, I kind of already feel likeI've got my leadership
responsibility and opportunity.
Well, then maybe you need totell your team that, maybe you
need to tell your spouse that,maybe you need to tell your kids
(32:33):
Right? That there are peoplethat need to hear. I have seen
this over and over again. Ifsomeone depends on you, you are
a leader. And what's crazy issometimes you will tell the
right person that and a lightbulb will go off for them.
And and I mean, it can changethe trajectory of their life in
so many ways because they startto take on that responsibility
that they always had, they justnever took in some ways. So
(32:54):
that's the final thing that Iwould say there.
Ben Loy (32:56):
That's actually, like, one of the reasons why I ended
up joining the military was justlike a single comment from a
friend that I really respectedat the time. And Wow. Like What
was the comment? I it it itseems it's gonna seem so
arbitrary and so ridiculous, butlike just spoke into me in a way
that like I hadn't really, Ithink, experienced in the past
(33:18):
from even my peers. And I was inI was going to community college
at the time.
I I decided to stay at home andjust get my associate's degree
and then figure out what it wasthat I wanted to do next. And I
had a couple ideas of, like,what I wanted that to be. But
while I was there, after highschool, really got into fitness
and started to work out more.And Mhmm. I was working at a a
(33:40):
Smoothie King for a little bit.
So, know, you gotta throw themback the protein shakes. But but
I I met a guy. He was in a biblestudy with me. He was in the
marines, and, he we would workout multiple times a week
together, and it was a greatfriendship. And, yeah, at one
point, I don't remember I don'tremember what it was, the
(34:00):
workout that we were doing, butit was something that involved
you know, it was like a lot ofpull ups and a lot of also,
like, running, but then we'realso lifting weights.
It was like a very dynamicworkout, kind of the what you
would expect, like, military,like, functional fitness, you
know, the the HIIT CrossFit,like, that kind of that kind of
environment, or that kind ofphilosophy behind fitness. And
(34:24):
I, like, finished a set of pullups, and I turned around. He
just looked at me. He's justlike, dude, have you ever
thought being a Navy SEAL? Hewas like, that's he's like,
you're, like, really fit.
Like, you can really, like,throw up some really good
numbers. And it was it was justfunny. It was like this side
this one comment from thisfriend that I, at the point at
that point, like, reallyrespected, especially when it
(34:45):
came to fitness and, like, lookup to, just said that one thing
and that was like, oh, like, Isee a capability in you that,
like, I personally didn't see.And I I it was it's funny. Like,
I started to play around withthe idea of like, oh, yeah.
Like, what would it look like ifI joined the military? Like, is
that really something that Icould do? And I mean, one thing
led to another and I I didn'tjoin the Navy. I joined the
(35:06):
Coast Guard instead, but stillpursued like a a difficult elite
training and and completed it.And it's just amazing to see
the, like, that all I mean, Imean, that really just changed
the trajectory of my life in somany ways.
And it's like the seed to that.Or really maybe the seed was
already there, but, like, thespark was just, like, an
(35:27):
affirmation from someone that Ilooked up to.
Alex Judd (35:29):
Isn't that wild? There's so much in that that I
think we could unpack. But partpart of it though, I think that
story to me highlights twothings that we should all be
doing is like, number one, be acompetent person. Mhmm. Right?
Like, be the type of person thatother people admire because,
like, if that dude was a slobthat you were eating
(35:52):
cheeseburgers with every Tuesdayand Thursday, right, that didn't
have his act together, and thenhe, like, suddenly said, have
you thought about being a babyseal? It's like that probably
doesn't have the same effect onyou. Right? It's like, this was
a person that you looked up to.Like he had his act together.
He had put himself in order insome ways. And so that like,
it's crazy how the morecompetent we become, the better
(36:14):
we become at the things God hasgiven us to do. It's like the
the more weight our words carryin arenas and avenues that might
not even be related to ourcompetency. Right? Proverbs says
your gift will make room for youin some ways.
And so it's like he wasexceptionally confident. But
then the other thing I would saythat people need to remember is
like become confident at yourthing because in some ways that
(36:37):
earns you the ability to belistened to. But then the second
thing that I think is reallyimportant is that I have seen
this play out so many times.There will be seasons and there
will be times where people youknow, there are people in your
circle of influence right nowthat need to borrow some of your
(36:57):
belief. Yeah.
Right? Like, all of us. That guyis a great story. It was like,
he believed more about you thanyou believed in yourself, and he
phrased it as a question as thecrazy thing. Like, have you ever
thought about this?
And, man, I I can think of storyafter story where people did
that for me, and it would besuch a shame if each of us would
(37:18):
say, man, there were people whobelieved in me more than I
believed in myself, and thatbrought me to where I am today.
And then we didn't turn aroundand do that for other people.
Like, I think we are actuallycalled to let people borrow some
of our of our belief about them.
Ben Loy (37:33):
Yeah. So number three was if someone depends on you,
you're a leader, what's thefourth principle?
Alex Judd (37:39):
Okay. The fourth one also has a little bit of a setup
to it. So we were interviewingJohn Eldridge on the previous
podcast that I hosted, which wasthe Entre Leadership Podcast at
Dave Ramsey's company. And I wasinterviewing John Eldridge. John
Eldridge is probably most knownfor Wild at Heart, but had just
written a book around COVIDtime.
(38:00):
He wrote this pre COVID, butthen it was released around
COVID called Turn Down the Noiseor something like that. Pretty
prophetic book, right? I don'tknow how it's sold because
people were pretty tuned intothe noise around COVID,
unfortunately, right? But thisis actually a great example of
what we just talked about. JohnEldredge's words are good.
He's a brilliant writer andcommunicator. His affect gives
(38:22):
his words so much more weight.Like, have you seen a video of
John Eldridge before?
Ben Loy (38:27):
No. I've honestly I mean, I've read Wild at Heart,
but I know I haven't.
Alex Judd (38:31):
Dude, the way I've heard many pastors talk about
the impact that it made on themto spend time with Dallas
Willard and with EugenePeterson. Like, I've heard
multiple, like, very well knownpastors talk about, like, man,
just spending time with themwas, like, just different in
some ways. It was just adifferent experience. And not
(38:53):
necessarily because of what theysaid, just because of the weight
of who they were, and you justyou're with someone that has
such a presence about thembecause they have this quiet and
calm assurance of someone thatspent a lot of time with Jesus
is what I would say. And I Iobviously have never spent time
with Dallas Willard or EugenePeterson, but the way people
(39:14):
talk about them is the way Ifelt around John Eldridge, which
is credit to him and complimentto him.
So it was just a really coolinterview in so many ways. But I
remember asking him at one time,right? That's a podcast
particularly focused on businessowners. I remember asking him, I
I said, John, you're a businessowner. You run a nonprofit
organization.
(39:35):
And and I I think it's reallypossible if someone owns the
business for them to, like,equate too much of their
identity with what they do.Like, they interweave their
identity and their performancein a way that can actually be
very detrimental to them andmaybe even detrimental to the
people they lead. And I thinkit's a I think it's a problem.
And so I just would love for youto speak on that a little bit. I
(39:56):
I thought I had framed a prettyoriginal, like, solid question
and, like, was really eager tohopefully hear him say, that's a
good question, Alex.
What he said immediately, didn'tskip a beat, and maybe lost a
little bit of his peacefulaffect. She's like, You think
it's a problem, Alex? Like, Youthink it's a problem? He's like,
No, I know for sure it's aproblem. And I was like, Okay,
(40:19):
well there goes my like, Ithought I had this great
original thought.
Right? But then he said, thething that has become the phrase
that I now love sharing withpeople is he said, Every single
person listening to this podcastneeds to regularly repeatedly
hear, remember, and internalizeyour work is not who you are.
Your work is where you serve.And just the way he said it, but
(40:44):
then also just the weight ofthat message, right? Like your
work is not who you are.
And we live in a culture todaythat is regularly and repeatedly
trying to tell us that who youare is your work. You are what
you produce. And he said, man,you have to that is not at all
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yourwork is not who you are. Your
work is where you go to servepeople.
(41:07):
Your work is where you go tolove people. Your work is where
you go to bring your gifts andyour talents, all the value of
who you are, and to pour it outin the best interest of other
people, which is a radicalparadigm shift that I like
repeating it because I like, Ineed to hear it over and over
and over again.
Ben Loy (41:24):
One of the things that, I mean, we do every week in our
one on ones for Path for Growthis success statements. And we
read yellow green. And, I mean,one of the cool things that I've
seen is just your reiterationthat, hey, we're not red yellow
greening you. Like, we're redyellow greening where your role
is currently at, where we're at,like, in those success
(41:45):
statements, in those goals.
Alex Judd (41:47):
And I like that you bring up that example because in
the sermon on the man, it says,judge not that you be not
judged. For with the judgmentyou use, you yourself will be
judged. And I I think that isprobably when Jesus said that,
he's probably talking aboutGod's eternal role as judge and
the arbiter of justice. Right?And that we shouldn't I
(42:08):
shouldn't condemn you because ofone moment in time.
And certainly, that's true. Butpractically, what I often
experience is if I equate youwith your results and if I if I
say Ben is red, right? Well,then it's almost like
subconsciously, I can't notapply the same standard to me.
Mhmm. And that is a very anxietyinducing thing.
(42:30):
It's way better as a leader tosay, man, in God's eyes, like, I
like, I am seen through the lensof Christ's grace. Right? And,
like, I am seen through the lensof Jesus's righteousness. That's
how God sees me. And my job isto receive grace, repent from
any sin that I'm activelyengaging in, and then move
(42:51):
forward.
And in that I'm green, right?Like I am, I am like, I don't
think God is red, yellow,greening us, but I am deemed as
a child of God. And out of that,I get to go do good work, but I
have the grace even for when Imake mistakes, But none of the
work is who I am. It's just whatI do. It's where I serve.
And when I internalize thatabout myself, well, that
(43:13):
absolutely affects the way Iengage in my one on one meetings
with direct reports. And becauseI can praise God and know that I
am not my results, I don't haveto equate you with your results
either. We can just put yourresults on the table and we can
talk about them honestly. Andthen we can say, okay, what do
we need to do to move our redsto yellows and our yellows to
(43:34):
greens?
Ben Loy (43:34):
What's some practical advice you could give to someone
who right now they see wherethey place their identity and
their work kind of intertwinedand they don't really know how
to separate those things? Well,
Alex Judd (43:47):
I would say confess is what I would say. I think I
paused there because honestly itcan be really easy to go into
tactics, and it can be reallyeasy to be like, go find someone
that can just encourage you justfor who you are. Go write down
what you think is true or, youknow, go read God's promises for
(44:11):
what is true. And and I thinkall of those things have their
place. Go find a counselor,right, that can help you detach
your work from who you are.
What I believe is true though isultimately, like, our desire to
equate our work to who we are islike goes all the way back to
the very beginning. Right? Like,the fall is people saying people
(44:32):
wanting to make the story aboutthemselves. And when we say my
work is who I am, we adopt anI've got this attitude, which is
no different than Adam and Evein the garden. I don't need God.
I've got this. This is not onlyis this what I do, this is who I
am, and and I can be everythingthat is needed in this
(44:54):
situation. I can be omnipresent,omniscient, and omnipotent in
this situation. What's crazy,though, is that works really
well when things are goingreally well. And people will
praise you, people will applaudyou, but then the minute it
things don't go well, which theywill, it will crush you.
(45:14):
And you have now not just had abad day at work, you have lost
your identity as well. And sowhat I would say is if you're
like me, it can be reallyhelpful to engage in confession
with God in prayer and just say,man, I have way, way, way over
prioritized approval of man,productivity and image. And for
(45:38):
that I don't make excuses, Ineed forgiveness. And then what
I would say is oftentimes, thehealing part of confession
involves both inviting God intothe conversation, but then
inviting other people you trustinto the conversation. And this
is true not even just ofconfessing this thing, but when
(46:01):
you can tell someone that lovesyou the the thing that you're
ashamed of or the thing that youcan't believe you did or or you
can't believe you're strugglingwith this, when you can tell
them that and they say, I loveyou, and I I know God forgives
you for this, and I forgive youas well, you will start to
(46:25):
actually believe that you arenot what you do.
Right? But, I mean, in some waysthat in itself is an act of
faith because you've got to saythe thing and you've got to see
the person's eyes looking at youand for them to say, I
understand that you did thatthing. It's a good thing that's
not who you are Because I thinkit's in that practice of
confession and repentance, whichis to turn around, that we
(46:48):
receive grace and we start toreestablish our identity not in
who we are and what we can do,but who God is and who he made
us to be.
Ben Loy (46:57):
Alright. What's the last one?
Alex Judd (46:59):
So the fifth one is one that, like, truly is
foundational for our company.I'll say it, and then I'll get
the backstory for it. So so theprinciple is strength is for
service. We've done the audiopodcast now for four and a half
years, right? And we've beensaying this at the end of every
podcast, I think since westarted, right?
(47:20):
It's a core value of ourcompany, right? Strength is for
service. And the story of wherethat came from is we shared on a
previous episode that, thedecision to leave Ramsey
coincided, really with, like,the code red COVID season.
Right? And I'll never forget, itwas before I had actually made
the decision to leave.
(47:41):
I was still working at Ramsey,and COVID it was the day that
COVID became, like, a very realthing in The United States. And
I'll never forget that theycalled a full team meeting at
Ramsey, and they they deemed it,important enough that they said,
we want everyone to come down tothe auditorium and just stand
apart from each other, but we'regonna bring everyone everyone
(48:03):
was already at work. Right? Sowe were all in the same
building. And man, maybe one daywe do, like, Dave Ramsey
leadership stories episodebecause there this was one
moment of many moments that Ijust witnessed extraordinary
leadership for situations wherethere wasn't a playbook.
Right? Like no one knew whatthey were doing at that time and
you really saw the character ofpeople. And I'll never forget
(48:25):
Dave got up on stage in front ofall thousand people and he said,
let's pray. That's how hestarted. Right?
And it was a very genuine prayerof like, we do not know what's
going to happen here, but wetrust you, was essentially what
he was praying at that time. Andthen he just proceeded to very
calmly, in a very cool, nonanxious way, share the state of
(48:48):
the company, share the financialrealities of the company, share
the trajectory of the company,share the potential effects of
what might happen, share some ofthe models that he and the
leadership team had run out oflike worst case scenario,
expected scenario, best casescenario, and then talk about
the role that everyone in theroom had to play. And it was not
(49:12):
a rah rah meeting. We did notleave there saying, let's go
charge. Like, that was not it atall.
It was like a very like, weprayed to close and then we
left. And, it was just very, insome ways, solemn. But I I
remember thinking as I wasleaving, like, man, I bet
there's a lot of people that areleaving this room right now that
(49:33):
not by product of anything hesaid. All he said was the truth.
Just by product of where they'reat right now, they're probably
very worried.
Like, I bet there's a lot ofpeople in this room that are
extremely worried. And I justfound myself saying, man, from a
personal financial perspective,I'm in good shape. My family is
healthy and well. I feel goodthere. I have really strong
(49:56):
community in Tennessee rightnow, which hasn't always been
the case, but was at that time,and I'm very grateful for that.
And, like, I literally just,like, left feeling grateful.
Like, man, if we're gonna gothrough this season, I'm very
grateful that I'm in the theseason that I'm in. And the the
next morning, I just was kindacontinuing in that spirit of
gratitude, and I had woken upand was literally just
(50:19):
journaling, like, okay. Let'slet's put some actual words to
this. Like, what are all thethings that I'm grateful for?
And like, wrote, like, I justfeel strong. Like, I feel
grateful for how strong I am inall of these areas and, just
wrote all those things down. Andthen it was in that context that
what I was doing for my biblestudy at that time was I was
reading a passage from the NewTestament in the ESV. And then
(50:43):
after reading the ESV, I wouldread it the message version of
it. And I was in Romans 15 atthis time, and I had just done
all my journaling on everythingI was grateful for.
And then I literally I am I amgrateful that I feel strong. I'm
grateful for strength in thisseason of turbulence. Flip over
to the Bible, read the ESV ofRomans 15, and then read the
(51:07):
message version. And I'm readingthe message version of Romans 15
and smack dab in the middle ofthe passage, it says, strength
is for service. And, I mean, I Istill get chills telling this
story.
I got chills at that exactmoment. I think I actually had
tears in my eyes at that moment.And I literally looked over and
I had this page of all theseareas where I was strong. And
(51:27):
now I had something to do withit. And what's pretty wild is we
started doing out of that.
I said, I literally just askedthe question, what are people
really going to struggle with inthis season? And it was obvious
people are going to strugglesocially and with community in
this season. So we started doingI just put out on Facebook that
we were going to do Thursdaynight strength is for service
(51:48):
calls on Zoom. And I was like, Idon't know if anyone will show
up and I'll be darned, like, 50people showed up to the first
time.
Ben Loy (51:57):
I'm seeing a trend here.
Alex Judd (51:58):
Dude, we I mean, yeah. Apparently, my strategy
for life is, if you feel likethere's a need, like, start a
Zoom call and see what happens.Right? And I mean, we did that
thing. I think we did it forfifteen weeks and we had a whole
team.
I'll never forget, Susan. Shewas like our admin for the team.
It was all this like, like justpurpose and it was just
intentional conversation, all ofthat. There was very little
(52:19):
organization to it from my sideof things, but it was just such
a good reminder in that seasonof like, man, all of us,
regardless of what you're goingthrough right now, there is at
least one area in your lifewhere you are strong. Right?
Maybe it's financially. Maybeit's socially. Maybe it's in
your marriage. Maybe it's in inyour relationship with your
(52:39):
kids. Maybe it's intellectually.
Maybe it's physically. Right?There is something in your life
right now where you are strong.And like, man, you better
recognize that strength is notfor you. Right?
Like you were not given that tohoard. Right? The reason why you
were given that is not foryourself. It's for others.
Right?
Your strength is for service.And what's so cool is that even
(53:02):
when, I would even sayespecially when, you're going
through a tough time, if you canreadopt the posture of, Man,
there's things that I have thatI should be grateful for and
those things I should be usingto serve others, it's wild how
fast you will forget about yourquote unquote tough time. And
you point your eyes out towardscontributing to other people,
(53:23):
and I just think what youexperience in that moment is
what you were made for, is whatI would say. So all that to say
that phrase strength is forservice is something that we say
within our community of leadersover and over and over again.
Ben Loy (53:35):
Is there anything else you want to say before we close
out?
Alex Judd (53:40):
Well, I'd love to review, right? Health and growth
are not the same thing. If youwanna put your business in
order, start by putting yourselfin order. If someone depends on
you, then you are a leader. Yourwork is not who you are.
Your work is where you serve.And on the backside of that,
your strength is for service. SoI would say, man, I think those
(54:00):
principles are universallyapplicable. I actually believe
that. But then also beyond that,I would tell anyone that's a
leader on this call, which bythe way, if someone depends on
you, you are a leader.
Man, it doesn't have to be thoseprinciples. Find some
principles, apply some languageto it because it's so easy to
say the same thing a billiondifferent ways. It would be
better for you to adopt languagethat's portable and memorable
(54:21):
and for you to say that over andover again. Just remember that
language creates culture. So wecharge people to do this on
their own.
Well, there you have it. Thanksso much for joining us for this
episode. If you want any of theinformation or resources that we
mentioned, that's all in theshow notes. Hey, before you go,
could I ask you for one quickfavor? Could you subscribe,
(54:42):
rate, and review this podcastepisode?
Your feedback is what helps ourteam engage in a sequence of
never ending improvement. Wewanna amplify what's valuable to
you and obviously reduce or evenremove the things that aren't.
Also, you leaving a positivereview is what helps us connect
with, build trust with, andserve other leaders around the
(55:03):
country. So thanks in advancefor helping us out on that
front. Are you a leader thatwants to grow your business in a
healthy way, serve peopleexceptionally well, and glorify
God in the process?
Go to pathforgrowth.com to getmore information about our
community of impact drivenleaders and schedule a call with
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(55:25):
Kyle Cummings and the crew atPodcircle and the remarkable
leaders that are activelyengaged in the Path for Growth
community. Y'all are the peoplethat make this podcast possible.
Y'all know this. We're rootingfor you.
We're praying for you. We wannasee you win. Remember, my
strength is not for me. Yourstrength is not for you. Our
strength is for service.
(55:45):
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
So it's one of the things that we talk to leaders
about all the time and that hasbeen just critically important
for me to remember as we growour business. It's a principle:
language creates culture. Right?The things that you say as a
team over and over and overagain create the culture that
your team, and in some ways evenyour customers, live out. So as
(00:24):
a leader, like you do yourselfand your team a great favor when
you put on the hat of CRO,right?
Chief Repeating Officer. And soin some ways, that's kind of
what we're diving into heretoday is like, we've now been in
business for five years andthere are certain phrases that
have cascaded, not even justinto our team. Like our team
knows these phrases by heart,right? Because we've said them
(00:47):
over and over and over again.But what's crazy is there are
some of our customers now thatare leading businesses around
the country that are activelyand intentionally using these
phrases with their teams.
And like, I'll meet people forthe first time and they'll tell
me one of these phrases. I'll belike and they'll act like it's
their quote. And I'm thrilledabout that, right? Like, because
that's language creates culture.So in some ways we just wanted
(01:10):
to create, as we're launchingthis YouTube channel, just a
repository of some of the corephrases that are bigger than
just phrases.
These represent fundamentalfoundational beliefs of the
mission that we're on as acompany. And that's really
important for us to focus onearly because beliefs drive
behavior. So the things we do,they are all in some way
(01:36):
inextricably interconnected intothese beliefs. If people are
interested in what Path forGrowth is and what we do and the
mission that we're on and thepeople that we serve, like,
beliefs are a great place tostart.
Ben Loy (01:47):
When did you first realize how important language
was?
Alex Judd (01:52):
Oh, gosh. I I have loved language for a long time.
Like, I don't know if I've toldyou this story before, but I
literally remember I I wassitting on my mom's bed. I was
in second grade, sitting on mymom's bed while she was folding
laundry. And I was just, like,shooting the breeze and, like,
literally, she was foldinglaundry.
And I said, you know, mom, whenI grow up, I don't think I want
(02:13):
to be a motivational speaker,but I would love to be a
motivational teacher one day.And just she looked at me. She's
like, what? Like, go playoutside. Like, what are you
talking about?
Right? But I say all that to saylike, not that it's been at the
forefront of my mind all thetime, but the topic of
intentional and effectivecommunication as a, as a means
and vehicle for intentional andeffective leadership has been
(02:34):
something that I've had in theback of my head for a very, very
long time. Fast forward, I sawthis really modeled in two
places. Number one is incollege, I was the drum major
for the Longhorn Band, which theLonghorn Band is the show band
of the Southwest people. Hookthem horns.
What starts here changes theworld. Right? 400 person
(02:55):
organization, one of the most, Imean, honestly, revered marching
band programs in the country.And you have a single drum major
that is the liaison betweenstaff and students that is the
primary student leader of theorganization. Incredible
opportunity.
Absurdly impressive organizationwith a massive history and
(03:17):
tradition. And what was so coolthat I didn't know I was
learning this at the time, beingin Longhorn Band and observing
the inner workings of thatorganization with decades, if
not a century of tradition, whatyou saw is years and years and
years of language. Right? When Isaid same thing, like we're
(03:38):
going to run a drill again,everyone would say same thing,
mo better. Right?
Like everyone would say that.And like we had all these things
that we would say that we'regoing to beat the hell out of A
and M. Right? But then we're notgoing to beat the hell out of
Baylor because Baylor is aChristian school. So we're going
to beat the hell into Baylor iswhat we're going to do.
Right? Language that createsculture. Right? I could list so
many different things thatliterally would sound like we're
(04:01):
talking a different language,but but in many ways, it was
like this giant inside joke thateveryone knew. And so I saw it
there first and then went andworked for an organization
called SPUR Leadership that wasassociated with Lake Hills
Church in Austin, Texas afterthat.
And one of the things that LakeHills did extremely well is they
(04:22):
codified their core values,which is what do you stand for?
And they used that language overand over and over again. And I
mean, we knew the mission ofthis place is to grow the
community of Christ one life ata time. And it's like, I still
have that mission memorized.That's crazy.
I worked there over ten yearsago. And so again, you created a
(04:42):
culture, shared values andbehaviors of a team by
reinforcing the language thatbrought people together. And
then certainly saw it at Ramsey.Ramsey is like a masterclass and
just listen to Dave on the radiofor three hours a day, by the
way. And I mean, you hear himsay so many of the same things
(05:02):
over and over again.
And now it's like a it's like ameme. It's like an ism that
people say his things to himbefore he can say it to them.
And, like, they, like, love it.They love that stuff. Right?
Language creates culture.
Ben Loy (05:16):
That reminds me a lot of in boot camp when Is this
coast guard boot camp? Yes.Yeah. So when you, I just
remember, like, when I firstwent to the recruiter and I got
my ship date, which was a couplemonths out from when I first
interacted with the recruiter,they give you this little
handbook and it's like thelittle it's the coast guard's
handbook. And you have tomemorize a bunch of the language
(05:39):
in it.
You have to memorize you know,there's, like, standard orders
you have to memorize. And thenwhen you're at boot camp as
well, one of the disciplinaryactions you have is they have
this huge book that's like theCoast Guard manual, and you
would hold the book out in frontof you at arm's length for,
like, a ridiculous amount oftime. And you just repeat the
same phrase reading reading thesame page over and over and over
(06:01):
and over and over again. Andthat's what that that's just
what I think of when it's like,oh, yeah, repeated language
drives culture. It's like, Imean, yeah, in a big way, I I
probably, if you started somesentences to those pages, I
could probably just, rattle offthe rest of them.
For sure.
Alex Judd (06:16):
I mean, what I think of when you say that is that
needs to be in Pathfrog'sonboarding process. Yeah. Yeah.
People stand with a in front ofthem while their arms are
shaking.
Ben Loy (06:24):
We're gonna stand for thirty minutes with a in front
of you.
Alex Judd (06:27):
In some ways too, also think, like, this podcast
could also be called, like, thenerd and the jock because Alex
shows up with his marching bandstories and Ben shows up with
his coast guard boot campstories, but Different
perspectives.
Ben Loy (06:41):
There we go. Yeah. We'll have Chet GPT make a meme
of that. There you go. So youhave these, you know, five
tenets or five principles.
What's the first one?
Alex Judd (06:51):
Let's highlight too, like, are not things that we
just wrote down and we're like,that sounds good. Let's go with
that. Like, I think every singleone of these, there was almost
like a methodology that wentinto it becoming the thing that
was repeated. Number one, itstuck because it had resonance
with real life. So like when we,recognize this principle or this
(07:14):
phrase, we were like, man, we'regoing to grab onto that and
we're going to remember thatbecause we feel like it
describes not only what we seein our business and leadership
in life, but it describes whatwe see in other people's
business leadership in life.
And then really how we take thatthen we distill it down into the
list of five that we're going toshare in this episode is we kind
(07:34):
of said, okay, what are thethings that we are saying over
and over and over again? And thereason why we're saying it over
and over and over again is notjust because it sticks with us
internally. It has like, I mean,a home in people's businesses,
leadership, life externally.Like these are the things that
when people call me afterlistening to our podcast for
years, they can quote them backto me. And oftentimes you can
(07:58):
learn a lot about what is trueby seeing what do people respond
to and what's the language theylatch onto.
And so some of these are quotesthat I've heard over the years,
which I'm going to do my best togive good attribution. Some of
them are things that we'veobserved and some of them are
directly connected to stories ofbuilding this business. So with
that, can we jump into numberone? Yeah. So number one, let's
(10:02):
tell the story behind it first.
There's five of these that we'regoing to go through. Number one,
I had started the business,which we tell the whole story.
Maybe not the whole story, butsome of the story in the
previous episode about makingthe decision to leave Ramsey and
start the business. And and oneof the things that I shared in
that first episode that werecorded was, you know, if
you're not careful, you canspend so much time preparing for
(10:24):
the worst case scenario that youdon't ever spend any time
asking, well, what if the bestcase scenario happens and how
are we gonna handle that? Andthat's where we were in the
business.
And so six months in, my one onone docket was filled. We were
staffing growth groups andOlivia was running growth
groups. Our team was alreadybigger than what I had
anticipated it being. And wewere getting more demand every
(10:49):
single day. And beyond that,like we had office hours that
were going on, we were talkingabout launching new products, we
had just put out the idea ofhaving our first in person
experiences.
My mind was on who we were goingto hire and when we were going
to hire them. And like, if youhad asked me at that time, like,
how are things going? My honestanswer would have been like,
things are going great. This isjust awesome. Right?
(11:10):
And, you know, fast forward toNovember 2020. So started in
June, we're now at November2020. And this is a wild story
that could be a huge tangent. Wewon't go on the full tangent,
but I got invited to go on atrip to Richard Branson's
private island. Unbelievable.
Right? And, actually, like,through a whole series of
(11:32):
decisions and circumstances,like, was planning to go there,
but then made the decision like,no, I don't need to be going
that right now. So now I've gotlike a week open, and I've
already planned not to beworking. And this is my first
time off since we started thebusiness. And I said, I'm just
going to go down and still go tothe beach.
It's not going to be a privateisland, but I'm going to go to
Panama City, Florida and justlike, almost find some solitude.
(11:57):
And I felt like hungry for somesolitude in some ways because we
run a very relational business.And although I'm a very
relational person, I'm anintrovert. Right? And I
recharge, refuel by being bymyself.
And so I was really excitedabout going down to Panama City.
I'll never forget, like, I hadmade the whole plan with my
assistant to, like, be off off,clear the calendar, all of that,
(12:20):
and got there in the condo inPanama City and put my computer
and my phone under a pillow inthe, like, guest bedroom and I
was going to be off. And I didall of that and then I just
remember sitting down and I'm inthis beautiful place. I'm at the
beach. There's great restaurantsin walking distance.
And I'm just, like, sittingthere and I, like, can't
(12:42):
breathe. And it's in thatcontext of, like, not being able
to breathe that, like, it hitsme, like, I have been on for six
months. Like, I have and I haveforgotten how to turn things
off. And, you know, I wish Icould say, like, that four days
was, like, this incredible timeoff where I was at the beach and
(13:05):
I got to hit restore and refreshand find my creativity again,
find passion. I was anxious theentire time.
Right? And for me, it was thiswake up call of like, this thing
has been growing, but justbecause it's been growing
doesn't mean that it's healthyand doesn't mean that I'm
healthy. And what had reallybeen happening is my stress
(13:26):
level had been growingproportional to the rate of our
business. And so the bigger ourbusiness got, the more stressed
I became. And I like, praiseGod.
Truly. I mean that. Because if Ididn't end up on this beach
house by myself, I'm not sure Iwould have recognized this.
Like, if you extrapolate thatout two years, I realized like
(13:46):
this thing is going to kill meor I'm not going to want to do
this anymore. And so it was, Idid not have answers, but I did
have questions.
I said like, this can not be theway to do this. I refuse to have
my stress level growproportional to the rate of my
business till the end of time.We are going to do something
(14:07):
different. And it was out ofthat, that the mantra that I
just started saying over andover again to myself, but also
to our customers is health andgrowth are not the same thing.
And it's wild, but I think weactually confuse that.
Like we think, oh, well, you'regrowing, so you must be healthy.
Uh-uh. Not what I've seen.Right? Everyone says if you're
not growing, you're dying.
(14:27):
We like to sound real tough whenwe say it. Right? Well, what I
have learned is just becauseyou're growing doesn't mean
you're living. And I,unfortunately, have met a lot of
people, and I also know a lot ofbusinesses that they're growing.
On the external, everything's upand to the right, but just
inside, they're just as dead asthose that aren't.
(14:49):
And so what I constantly have toremind myself, but we're also
reminding our team, we're alsoreminding the business owners
and the leaders that we workwith every single day is just
because you're growing doesn'tmean you're living. It's
possible to practice healthygrowth. The thing that I know to
be true, though, is that itnever happens accidentally. It
(15:09):
always happens because someonedecided to exercise extreme,
uncommon, unprecedentedintentionality.
Ben Loy (15:17):
Well, once you had that realization, how did that play
out practically?
Alex Judd (15:21):
Yeah. Well, I had to figure out how to breathe again,
first of all. I mean, honestly,I was a little bit scared
because I was like, well, thisis what I've been doing is
working really hard and keepingup with the pace of demand, and
I feel like that's the rightthing. If that results in this
stress level, well, then what amI supposed to do? Right?
(15:41):
And and so really, it didn'tstart with a bunch of answers,
like I already said. It startedwith a bunch of questions. And I
started to turn on my radar forpeople that were growing, that
were successful, that werecreating jobs, that were
acquiring new customers, thatwere moving forward in business
and leadership and in life. Butnot only were they successful
(16:04):
externally, they loved theirlife. Right?
And they were content where theywere. They were joyful where
they were. Their spouse lovedthem, and they had a
relationship that seemedadmirable. They had a really
incredible relationship withtheir kids. And it just seemed
like they were becoming more ofthe person, the man, the woman,
(16:27):
the leader, the Christ follower,the business owner that they
wanted to become.
And the business was every daybecoming more and more of what
it was supposed to be, not likebecoming a shadow of itself or
something you're not proud of.And so I started to pay
attention and look for those.And the first thing I noticed
was that's incredibly rare. Likeyou can find a lot of people
(16:47):
that are growing, you can find alot of people that are happy.
It's hard to find people thatare happy and growing.
Right? And so, but when I foundthem, I was like, that's my
person. And I would zoom in andI thought of those people as
like lights, right? Like lightsand like, let's zoom in and
let's look at the light. And Imean, it started as me and then
it became our company.
We started studying these peopleand we said, not only is this
(17:10):
how we want to do business, wewant to do business this way.
And then in the process of doingbusiness this way, we want to
train, teach, coach otherleaders on how to do business
this way. And that's where likehealthy growth became one of the
things that we're known for. Andwe knew we had something when on
our community office hourscalls, I'd hear Naftali or I'd
(17:32):
hear Karen or I'd hear Clint orI'd hear Justin or you can name
any number of our firstcustomers. And they'd say, well,
I know a lot of people would dosomething this way, but I am
focused on healthy growth.
And that was when we were like,bingo. That's the language.
Health and growth are not thesame thing. We are going to
create and craft a communitythat is focused on practicing
(17:53):
healthy growth.
Ben Loy (17:55):
If you could boil down, like, what it takes to practice
healthy growth into onestatement, what would it be?
Alex Judd (18:01):
Oh gosh. You know, you can really look at this
through the business lens, whichis really what we do within our
coaching program. Right? And andwe don't have one statement. We
have 12 fundamentals that wewalk people through methodically
on how to install this paradigminto their business at every
level.
But if we were to zoom back fromjust business ownership and
let's just say life, like youwant to be a person that
(18:23):
practices healthy growth, here'swhat I would say is, can you be
someone that experiencescontentment, joy, and gratitude
in the present while beingzealful and passionate and
adventurous in the way youfaithfully move towards the
(18:44):
future. And I think that'shealthy growth. Right? I see a
lot of people that are extremelygrowth oriented and goal
oriented, and they're miserable.Some of the most miserable
people I know are the most goaloriented people that I know.
Right? But then I also see somepeople that they call it
contentment, and in reality, youcalled attention to this the
(19:04):
other day in a meeting. It'slike you're confusing
contentment with complacency.Mhmm. Right?
And you've stopped movingforward. You're not looking
you're not looking ahead towardsanything and you're not
expanding in service of others.What's crazy is like, man, if
you can manage the tension andthat's what I think it is. It's
not I haven't figured out how tosolve for it. But if you can
manage the tension of, like, I'mgonna be joyful and content
(19:25):
today while also hopefully andfaithfully looking forward to
tomorrow and growing into whoI'm called to be, I think you
nailed it at that point.
Ben Loy (19:32):
So what's the what's the second one?
Alex Judd (19:35):
Okay. The the second one, I actually think is a
little bit of a practical diveinto the idea of healthy growth,
and really, it's a conversationabout order of operations.
Because the second one is thisphrase, if you wanna put your
business in order, start byputting yourself in order. The
(19:57):
first time I ever said that, I'mpretty sure it was, like, to
myself in a proverbial mirror,like, saying, like, Alex, like,
you gotta start with you. Like,and, but that's not what we so
often do.
What we so often do, and I thinkwe actually have good intentions
of doing it, and you can just aseasily substitute career for
business, right? As we say, Ineed to get stuff right at work,
(20:17):
right? I need to make sure thisbusiness is operating correctly.
I need to get sales to a certainpoint. I need to solve these
customer issues or solve theseteam member issues, right?
I need to get to a certain pointout in my work world. And when I
do that, then I'll have time tofocus more on the things in and
related to self control. Right?In and related to my own
(20:38):
personal health, my own personalfitness, my spiritual life, my
relationship with my spouseeven, or my relationship with my
kids. And and in me saying that,you can probably hear how faulty
and screwed up that is.
Mhmm. Because I have never oncein in all of my time working
with business leaders seen afrantic, feeble, frazzled, weak
(21:01):
person lead a healthy, centered,stable, strong business. I've
never seen it. Right? And like,I'm not putting my money on you
being the first.
Right? Conversely, though, Ihave absolutely seen healthy,
centered, stable, strong peoplego into work. And even if the
work is frazzled, if it's crazy,if, I mean, if it's all on fire,
(21:24):
they are the type of person thatcan actually lead in that
situation and introduce orderand stability and clarity and
direction. And so that's why Ithink this is so important is it
operates counter to our primaryimpulse because our first
impulse is typically like, Ineed to go focus on all those
things out there, and then I'llhave time to shore up my
relationship with God or or tomake sure that I'm physically
(21:47):
healthy and well. So just thethe fundamental thing that we've
said over and over again in inour coaching program that we we
have literally built out ourpath for growth fundamentals
around this in terms of how wecoach people is if you want to
put your business in order,start by putting yourself in
order.
Put some modicum of order inyour personal life so that you
can be the type of person thatcan do that in your business.
Ben Loy (22:09):
I once heard, someone say, like, you shouldn't look
(23:16):
for purpose in your work, youshould bring purpose to your
work. Mhmm. Kind of that idea ofputting the carp before the
horse.
Alex Judd (23:21):
I and I think that actually connects to one of the
other statements that we'regonna go on to too, but it's
wild. I think a lot of peoplemaybe even start their
businesses as a business owner,and certainly there was some of
this in me, right, where it'slike, I'm looking I'm going to
work every single day asking thequestion, who am I? And your
work is not where you'resupposed to go to get the answer
(23:43):
to that question. Right? Like,go to your relationship with
your heavenly father for youridentity, for your value, for
your worth.
And out of that, like, let workbe the overflow of you putting
your life in order. The thingthat I want to really highlight
for people though on this iswhat I'm not talking about here
(24:03):
is that you need to be apersonal growth world beater to
go do good work. Right? And welive in a time where we see
everyone's best example andhighlight reel of their ideal
morning routine on Instagram.Right?
And we're, like, trying tofigure out, like, how long will
(24:25):
this tub of water stay cold forif I go buy a bag of ice every
morning and put it
Ben Loy (24:29):
in there?
Alex Judd (24:29):
It's like, we're trying to, like, figure out cold
plunging. And it's like, maybeyou don't need to do cold
plunges yet. Maybe just startopening the Bible for five
minutes every And and don'tunderestimate the value of small
things done consistently. Sodon't say, man, before I go do
good work or start working on mybusiness or You know, your
(24:51):
business demands yourstewardship. So I'm not saying
you need to like become anIronman triathlete, do cold
plunge every morning and becomea theologian overnight before
you can work on your business.
What I am saying is introducesome modicum of base level
standard of order in yourpersonal life. This is why in
our coaching, we we challengepeople, establish one high
(25:11):
return habit. Because we canread all the science on habits
and recognize that keystonehabits are these things that
like they carry disproportionateweight, right? Which means the
activity itself hasramifications for things that
look nothing like the activity.It's why people that make their
bed every single morning have agreater tendency to stick to a
(25:31):
budget in their personalfinances and to eat healthy
throughout the day.
Has nothing to do with makingyour bed, has everything to do
with starting your day with atask completed. And so what's
that thing? What's the one thingthat if you would do it every
single day, it would createdisproportionate order in other
(25:51):
areas of your life? Like, answerthat question and then apply
yourself to it. Put yourself inorder and don't be surprised
when that makes you into more ofthe type of person that can go
to work with the right posture.
Ben Loy (26:04):
What's the third principle? Okay.
Alex Judd (26:08):
So the first one was health and growth are not the
same thing. The second one wasif you want to put your business
order, start by putting yourselfin order. The third one is a
quote about leadership and I'llnever forget where I first heard
this quote. It's a guy thatwe've recently become
reconnected with and man, it's aprayer of mine and it's
something that we're activelyhaving conversations about is
having him on this podcast andon this YouTube channel. His
(26:29):
name is Clint Bruce.
He's a retired Navy Seal. Theguy the guy is just such a stud.
And it was my first everleadership development event
that I've ever organized. It wasover ten years ago now. And I
was help running thisorganization called Spur
Leadership that I talked aboutearlier.
And I'll never forget, webrought in this guest speaker,
Clint Bruce. He was from Dallas,and, he was gonna come in and
(26:50):
talk about his Navy Seal storiesand teach on leadership. And
I'll never forget, this guy hasjust like an imposing presence
about him. He is like I I don'teven think a big guy is the
right word to use. The rightword that I would use for Clint
is dense.
Like, he is just a denseindividual. And you're like,
man, that's the type of guy thatlike, if he if you accidentally
knock into him, not only do younotice it, you're probably on
(27:13):
the floor. Like he is just a Imean, he is just the way he is
the way that I picture NavySEALs looking is Clint Bruce.
Right? And I'll just neverforget the way that he started
off this talk.
He said, I want all of you tolisten to me. And and then he
just kinda, like, scanned theroom, made eye contact with
everyone, and he put himself inthis position where, you know,
(27:33):
for me, I'm fresh out ofcollege, and I'm like, this dude
is talking to me right now. Heis
Ben Loy (27:39):
And that's captivated. Oh, dude.
Alex Judd (27:41):
And isn't just talking to me. He is talking to
my soul at this moment. And, hejust says with a high degree of
poignancy, he says, If someonedepends on you, then you are a
leader. And I can just look backto that moment. I can say, like,
(28:04):
that single sentence has shapedmy career.
Right? Because I'm certain I hadthoughts and ideas about
leadership up till then thatwere faulty and flawed. Right?
Maybe leadership is authority,means that it's rooted in a
position or a title. Maybe Ithought that leadership was
(28:25):
authority.
Maybe I thought it was power,right? Your ability to just tell
people what to do, right? And inreality, what he was saying is
leadership actually depends verylittle on authority or power.
Leadership is much more relianton influence. And what he was
saying is really, if you lookaround you and there are people
that depend on you, which thatis the case, unless you live
(28:49):
under a rock somewhere, that isabsolutely true.
People depend on you. Then youare a leader. So then the
question really isn't are you aleader? The question is, are you
leading? And that changeseverything.
And what's so crazy to me is Ican say this now because it
applied to me back then, but itapplies to the people that we
work with every single day now.It's the reason why I lean on
(29:10):
this quote for almost everykeynote that I give. If someone
depends on you, you are aleader. I want to, I want people
to hear me say that over andover and over again, because
here's what I've seen to betrue. The single greatest
limiting lid to peopleeffectively leading almost
always is their inability toview themselves as a leader.
(29:33):
And if you don't view yourselfas a leader, like you're not
going to lead well. The minuteyou start saying, man, I have
leadership responsibility. Well,you also like start to adopt
leadership opportunity and man,then all bets are off. But
that's the phrase that we'vebeen saying. And quite frankly,
I've been saying ever since thattime, ten years ago, if someone
(29:55):
depends on you, then you are aleader.
Ben Loy (29:58):
We talked about this a few episodes ago when we went
through Proverbs, but that ideaof of wisdom and, like, what is
wisdom? Like, what does it looklike to lead in wisdom? And, I
mean, Proverbs says, right, thebeginning of knowledge, the
beginning of wisdom is the fearof the Lord. And I think, like,
having having a right view ofwho God is because, I mean,
that's what fear of the Lord is.It's not being afraid of who God
(30:20):
is.
It's having a reverence andunderstanding of of who he is.
And having a right understandingof who God is gives us a right
understanding of who we are. AndI think that just goes into what
you're saying. Right? Like,leading with a right view of of
who you are and, like, theimpact that you can have on
other people.
Alex Judd (30:36):
I I heard this once, and it was an illustration that
was done with an umbrella. Andit basically said so many people
live we're on video now, so wecan do this with the umbrella
hanging out here. Right? And thestorms of life come and all
these decisions that they haveto make and all this leadership
responsibility that they'retrying to hold, and they're
(30:56):
holding the umbrella out here.And what is the umbrella?
The umbrella is the umbrella ofauthority. Right? They have
said, I am the I am allsufficient in myself. I make the
decisions. I make the call.
This all belongs to me. Right?You're holding the umbrella of
authority out to the side andyou're saying, I've got this.
Right? What are we called to do?
(31:17):
Well, when we stand with anumbrella over us, here's the
principle. If you want to getover what God has put under you,
you have to get under what Godhas put over you. And what's so
neat about this is it applies tothe authority of God being over
us and saying, man, fear of theLord, like you said. Right?
Like, I'm gonna apply allreverence and respect to God's
(31:39):
wisdom for leading.
But then also, man, that conceptof the umbrella of authority was
critically important for me whenI wasn't the business owner. And
I reported to people that werehonoring God, right, and they
were focused on glorifying God.They just had different opinions
than I did. And, man, it can behard to learn these lessons, but
(32:02):
there's a proper place forrespecting and honoring
authority in the right way.
Ben Loy (32:07):
Mhmm. Was there anything else you wanted to say
about that third point?
Alex Judd (32:12):
Well, I would challenge people, create a
culture that defines leadershipin that way on your team. Right?
So, you know, maybe that's amessage you need to hear. If
someone depends on you, then youare a leader. Maybe you're like,
man, I kind of already feel likeI've got my leadership
responsibility and opportunity.
Well, then maybe you need totell your team that, maybe you
need to tell your spouse that,maybe you need to tell your kids
(32:33):
Right? That there are peoplethat need to hear. I have seen
this over and over again. Ifsomeone depends on you, you are
a leader. And what's crazy issometimes you will tell the
right person that and a lightbulb will go off for them.
And and I mean, it can changethe trajectory of their life in
so many ways because they startto take on that responsibility
that they always had, they justnever took in some ways. So
(32:54):
that's the final thing that Iwould say there.
Ben Loy (32:56):
That's actually, like, one of the reasons why I ended
up joining the military was justlike a single comment from a
friend that I really respectedat the time. And Wow. Like What
was the comment? I it it itseems it's gonna seem so
arbitrary and so ridiculous, butlike just spoke into me in a way
that like I hadn't really, Ithink, experienced in the past
(33:18):
from even my peers. And I was inI was going to community college
at the time.
I I decided to stay at home andjust get my associate's degree
and then figure out what it wasthat I wanted to do next. And I
had a couple ideas of, like,what I wanted that to be. But
while I was there, after highschool, really got into fitness
and started to work out more.And Mhmm. I was working at a a
(33:40):
Smoothie King for a little bit.
So, know, you gotta throw themback the protein shakes. But but
I I met a guy. He was in a biblestudy with me. He was in the
marines, and, he we would workout multiple times a week
together, and it was a greatfriendship. And, yeah, at one
point, I don't remember I don'tremember what it was, the
(34:00):
workout that we were doing, butit was something that involved
you know, it was like a lot ofpull ups and a lot of also,
like, running, but then we'realso lifting weights.
It was like a very dynamicworkout, kind of the what you
would expect, like, military,like, functional fitness, you
know, the the HIIT CrossFit,like, that kind of that kind of
environment, or that kind ofphilosophy behind fitness. And
(34:24):
I, like, finished a set of pullups, and I turned around. He
just looked at me. He's justlike, dude, have you ever
thought being a Navy SEAL? Hewas like, that's he's like,
you're, like, really fit.
Like, you can really, like,throw up some really good
numbers. And it was it was justfunny. It was like this side
this one comment from thisfriend that I, at the point at
that point, like, reallyrespected, especially when it
(34:45):
came to fitness and, like, lookup to, just said that one thing
and that was like, oh, like, Isee a capability in you that,
like, I personally didn't see.And I I it was it's funny. Like,
I started to play around withthe idea of like, oh, yeah.
Like, what would it look like ifI joined the military? Like, is
that really something that Icould do? And I mean, one thing
led to another and I I didn'tjoin the Navy. I joined the
(35:06):
Coast Guard instead, but stillpursued like a a difficult elite
training and and completed it.And it's just amazing to see
the, like, that all I mean, Imean, that really just changed
the trajectory of my life in somany ways.
And it's like the seed to that.Or really maybe the seed was
already there, but, like, thespark was just, like, an
(35:27):
affirmation from someone that Ilooked up to.
Alex Judd (35:29):
Isn't that wild? There's so much in that that I
think we could unpack. But partpart of it though, I think that
story to me highlights twothings that we should all be
doing is like, number one, be acompetent person. Mhmm. Right?
Like, be the type of person thatother people admire because,
like, if that dude was a slobthat you were eating
(35:52):
cheeseburgers with every Tuesdayand Thursday, right, that didn't
have his act together, and thenhe, like, suddenly said, have
you thought about being a babyseal? It's like that probably
doesn't have the same effect onyou. Right? It's like, this was
a person that you looked up to.Like he had his act together.
He had put himself in order insome ways. And so that like,
it's crazy how the morecompetent we become, the better
(36:14):
we become at the things God hasgiven us to do. It's like the
the more weight our words carryin arenas and avenues that might
not even be related to ourcompetency. Right? Proverbs says
your gift will make room for youin some ways.
And so it's like he wasexceptionally confident. But
then the other thing I would saythat people need to remember is
like become confident at yourthing because in some ways that
(36:37):
earns you the ability to belistened to. But then the second
thing that I think is reallyimportant is that I have seen
this play out so many times.There will be seasons and there
will be times where people youknow, there are people in your
circle of influence right nowthat need to borrow some of your
(36:57):
belief. Yeah.
Right? Like, all of us. That guyis a great story. It was like,
he believed more about you thanyou believed in yourself, and he
phrased it as a question as thecrazy thing. Like, have you ever
thought about this?
And, man, I I can think of storyafter story where people did
that for me, and it would besuch a shame if each of us would
(37:18):
say, man, there were people whobelieved in me more than I
believed in myself, and thatbrought me to where I am today.
And then we didn't turn aroundand do that for other people.
Like, I think we are actuallycalled to let people borrow some
of our of our belief about them.
Ben Loy (37:33):
Yeah. So number three was if someone depends on you,
you're a leader, what's thefourth principle?
Alex Judd (37:39):
Okay. The fourth one also has a little bit of a setup
to it. So we were interviewingJohn Eldridge on the previous
podcast that I hosted, which wasthe Entre Leadership Podcast at
Dave Ramsey's company. And I wasinterviewing John Eldridge. John
Eldridge is probably most knownfor Wild at Heart, but had just
written a book around COVIDtime.
(38:00):
He wrote this pre COVID, butthen it was released around
COVID called Turn Down the Noiseor something like that. Pretty
prophetic book, right? I don'tknow how it's sold because
people were pretty tuned intothe noise around COVID,
unfortunately, right? But thisis actually a great example of
what we just talked about. JohnEldredge's words are good.
He's a brilliant writer andcommunicator. His affect gives
(38:22):
his words so much more weight.Like, have you seen a video of
John Eldridge before?
Ben Loy (38:27):
No. I've honestly I mean, I've read Wild at Heart,
but I know I haven't.
Alex Judd (38:31):
Dude, the way I've heard many pastors talk about
the impact that it made on themto spend time with Dallas
Willard and with EugenePeterson. Like, I've heard
multiple, like, very well knownpastors talk about, like, man,
just spending time with themwas, like, just different in
some ways. It was just adifferent experience. And not
(38:53):
necessarily because of what theysaid, just because of the weight
of who they were, and you justyou're with someone that has
such a presence about thembecause they have this quiet and
calm assurance of someone thatspent a lot of time with Jesus
is what I would say. And I Iobviously have never spent time
with Dallas Willard or EugenePeterson, but the way people
(39:14):
talk about them is the way Ifelt around John Eldridge, which
is credit to him and complimentto him.
So it was just a really coolinterview in so many ways. But I
remember asking him at one time,right? That's a podcast
particularly focused on businessowners. I remember asking him, I
I said, John, you're a businessowner. You run a nonprofit
organization.
(39:35):
And and I I think it's reallypossible if someone owns the
business for them to, like,equate too much of their
identity with what they do.Like, they interweave their
identity and their performancein a way that can actually be
very detrimental to them andmaybe even detrimental to the
people they lead. And I thinkit's a I think it's a problem.
And so I just would love for youto speak on that a little bit. I
(39:56):
I thought I had framed a prettyoriginal, like, solid question
and, like, was really eager tohopefully hear him say, that's a
good question, Alex.
What he said immediately, didn'tskip a beat, and maybe lost a
little bit of his peacefulaffect. She's like, You think
it's a problem, Alex? Like, Youthink it's a problem? He's like,
No, I know for sure it's aproblem. And I was like, Okay,
(40:19):
well there goes my like, Ithought I had this great
original thought.
Right? But then he said, thething that has become the phrase
that I now love sharing withpeople is he said, Every single
person listening to this podcastneeds to regularly repeatedly
hear, remember, and internalizeyour work is not who you are.
Your work is where you serve.And just the way he said it, but
(40:44):
then also just the weight ofthat message, right? Like your
work is not who you are.
And we live in a culture todaythat is regularly and repeatedly
trying to tell us that who youare is your work. You are what
you produce. And he said, man,you have to that is not at all
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yourwork is not who you are. Your
work is where you go to servepeople.
(41:07):
Your work is where you go tolove people. Your work is where
you go to bring your gifts andyour talents, all the value of
who you are, and to pour it outin the best interest of other
people, which is a radicalparadigm shift that I like
repeating it because I like, Ineed to hear it over and over
and over again.
Ben Loy (41:24):
One of the things that, I mean, we do every week in our
one on ones for Path for Growthis success statements. And we
read yellow green. And, I mean,one of the cool things that I've
seen is just your reiterationthat, hey, we're not red yellow
greening you. Like, we're redyellow greening where your role
is currently at, where we're at,like, in those success
(41:45):
statements, in those goals.
Alex Judd (41:47):
And I like that you bring up that example because in
the sermon on the man, it says,judge not that you be not
judged. For with the judgmentyou use, you yourself will be
judged. And I I think that isprobably when Jesus said that,
he's probably talking aboutGod's eternal role as judge and
the arbiter of justice. Right?And that we shouldn't I
(42:08):
shouldn't condemn you because ofone moment in time.
And certainly, that's true. Butpractically, what I often
experience is if I equate youwith your results and if I if I
say Ben is red, right? Well,then it's almost like
subconsciously, I can't notapply the same standard to me.
Mhmm. And that is a very anxietyinducing thing.
(42:30):
It's way better as a leader tosay, man, in God's eyes, like, I
like, I am seen through the lensof Christ's grace. Right? And,
like, I am seen through the lensof Jesus's righteousness. That's
how God sees me. And my job isto receive grace, repent from
any sin that I'm activelyengaging in, and then move
(42:51):
forward.
And in that I'm green, right?Like I am, I am like, I don't
think God is red, yellow,greening us, but I am deemed as
a child of God. And out of that,I get to go do good work, but I
have the grace even for when Imake mistakes, But none of the
work is who I am. It's just whatI do. It's where I serve.
And when I internalize thatabout myself, well, that
(43:13):
absolutely affects the way Iengage in my one on one meetings
with direct reports. And becauseI can praise God and know that I
am not my results, I don't haveto equate you with your results
either. We can just put yourresults on the table and we can
talk about them honestly. Andthen we can say, okay, what do
we need to do to move our redsto yellows and our yellows to
(43:34):
greens?
Ben Loy (43:34):
What's some practical advice you could give to someone
who right now they see wherethey place their identity and
their work kind of intertwinedand they don't really know how
to separate those things? Well,
Alex Judd (43:47):
I would say confess is what I would say. I think I
paused there because honestly itcan be really easy to go into
tactics, and it can be reallyeasy to be like, go find someone
that can just encourage you justfor who you are. Go write down
what you think is true or, youknow, go read God's promises for
(44:11):
what is true. And and I thinkall of those things have their
place. Go find a counselor,right, that can help you detach
your work from who you are.
What I believe is true though isultimately, like, our desire to
equate our work to who we are islike goes all the way back to
the very beginning. Right? Like,the fall is people saying people
(44:32):
wanting to make the story aboutthemselves. And when we say my
work is who I am, we adopt anI've got this attitude, which is
no different than Adam and Evein the garden. I don't need God.
I've got this. This is not onlyis this what I do, this is who I
am, and and I can be everythingthat is needed in this
(44:54):
situation. I can be omnipresent,omniscient, and omnipotent in
this situation. What's crazy,though, is that works really
well when things are goingreally well. And people will
praise you, people will applaudyou, but then the minute it
things don't go well, which theywill, it will crush you.
(45:14):
And you have now not just had abad day at work, you have lost
your identity as well. And sowhat I would say is if you're
like me, it can be reallyhelpful to engage in confession
with God in prayer and just say,man, I have way, way, way over
prioritized approval of man,productivity and image. And for
(45:38):
that I don't make excuses, Ineed forgiveness. And then what
I would say is oftentimes, thehealing part of confession
involves both inviting God intothe conversation, but then
inviting other people you trustinto the conversation. And this
is true not even just ofconfessing this thing, but when
(46:01):
you can tell someone that lovesyou the the thing that you're
ashamed of or the thing that youcan't believe you did or or you
can't believe you're strugglingwith this, when you can tell
them that and they say, I loveyou, and I I know God forgives
you for this, and I forgive youas well, you will start to
(46:25):
actually believe that you arenot what you do.
Right? But, I mean, in some waysthat in itself is an act of
faith because you've got to saythe thing and you've got to see
the person's eyes looking at youand for them to say, I
understand that you did thatthing. It's a good thing that's
not who you are Because I thinkit's in that practice of
confession and repentance, whichis to turn around, that we
(46:48):
receive grace and we start toreestablish our identity not in
who we are and what we can do,but who God is and who he made
us to be.
Ben Loy (46:57):
Alright. What's the last one?
Alex Judd (46:59):
So the fifth one is one that, like, truly is
foundational for our company.I'll say it, and then I'll get
the backstory for it. So so theprinciple is strength is for
service. We've done the audiopodcast now for four and a half
years, right? And we've beensaying this at the end of every
podcast, I think since westarted, right?
(47:20):
It's a core value of ourcompany, right? Strength is for
service. And the story of wherethat came from is we shared on a
previous episode that, thedecision to leave Ramsey
coincided, really with, like,the code red COVID season.
Right? And I'll never forget, itwas before I had actually made
the decision to leave.
(47:41):
I was still working at Ramsey,and COVID it was the day that
COVID became, like, a very realthing in The United States. And
I'll never forget that theycalled a full team meeting at
Ramsey, and they they deemed it,important enough that they said,
we want everyone to come down tothe auditorium and just stand
apart from each other, but we'regonna bring everyone everyone
(48:03):
was already at work. Right? Sowe were all in the same
building. And man, maybe one daywe do, like, Dave Ramsey
leadership stories episodebecause there this was one
moment of many moments that Ijust witnessed extraordinary
leadership for situations wherethere wasn't a playbook.
Right? Like no one knew whatthey were doing at that time and
you really saw the character ofpeople. And I'll never forget
(48:25):
Dave got up on stage in front ofall thousand people and he said,
let's pray. That's how hestarted. Right?
And it was a very genuine prayerof like, we do not know what's
going to happen here, but wetrust you, was essentially what
he was praying at that time. Andthen he just proceeded to very
calmly, in a very cool, nonanxious way, share the state of
(48:48):
the company, share the financialrealities of the company, share
the trajectory of the company,share the potential effects of
what might happen, share some ofthe models that he and the
leadership team had run out oflike worst case scenario,
expected scenario, best casescenario, and then talk about
the role that everyone in theroom had to play. And it was not
(49:12):
a rah rah meeting. We did notleave there saying, let's go
charge. Like, that was not it atall.
It was like a very like, weprayed to close and then we
left. And, it was just very, insome ways, solemn. But I I
remember thinking as I wasleaving, like, man, I bet
there's a lot of people that areleaving this room right now that
(49:33):
not by product of anything hesaid. All he said was the truth.
Just by product of where they'reat right now, they're probably
very worried.
Like, I bet there's a lot ofpeople in this room that are
extremely worried. And I justfound myself saying, man, from a
personal financial perspective,I'm in good shape. My family is
healthy and well. I feel goodthere. I have really strong
(49:56):
community in Tennessee rightnow, which hasn't always been
the case, but was at that time,and I'm very grateful for that.
And, like, I literally just,like, left feeling grateful.
Like, man, if we're gonna gothrough this season, I'm very
grateful that I'm in the theseason that I'm in. And the the
next morning, I just was kindacontinuing in that spirit of
gratitude, and I had woken upand was literally just
(50:19):
journaling, like, okay. Let'slet's put some actual words to
this. Like, what are all thethings that I'm grateful for?
And like, wrote, like, I justfeel strong. Like, I feel
grateful for how strong I am inall of these areas and, just
wrote all those things down. Andthen it was in that context that
what I was doing for my biblestudy at that time was I was
reading a passage from the NewTestament in the ESV. And then
(50:43):
after reading the ESV, I wouldread it the message version of
it. And I was in Romans 15 atthis time, and I had just done
all my journaling on everythingI was grateful for.
And then I literally I am I amgrateful that I feel strong. I'm
grateful for strength in thisseason of turbulence. Flip over
to the Bible, read the ESV ofRomans 15, and then read the
(51:07):
message version. And I'm readingthe message version of Romans 15
and smack dab in the middle ofthe passage, it says, strength
is for service. And, I mean, I Istill get chills telling this
story.
I got chills at that exactmoment. I think I actually had
tears in my eyes at that moment.And I literally looked over and
I had this page of all theseareas where I was strong. And
(51:27):
now I had something to do withit. And what's pretty wild is we
started doing out of that.
I said, I literally just askedthe question, what are people
really going to struggle with inthis season? And it was obvious
people are going to strugglesocially and with community in
this season. So we started doingI just put out on Facebook that
we were going to do Thursdaynight strength is for service
(51:48):
calls on Zoom. And I was like, Idon't know if anyone will show
up and I'll be darned, like, 50people showed up to the first
time.
Ben Loy (51:57):
I'm seeing a trend here.
Alex Judd (51:58):
Dude, we I mean, yeah. Apparently, my strategy
for life is, if you feel likethere's a need, like, start a
Zoom call and see what happens.Right? And I mean, we did that
thing. I think we did it forfifteen weeks and we had a whole
team.
I'll never forget, Susan. Shewas like our admin for the team.
It was all this like, like justpurpose and it was just
intentional conversation, all ofthat. There was very little
(52:19):
organization to it from my sideof things, but it was just such
a good reminder in that seasonof like, man, all of us,
regardless of what you're goingthrough right now, there is at
least one area in your lifewhere you are strong. Right?
Maybe it's financially. Maybeit's socially. Maybe it's in
your marriage. Maybe it's in inyour relationship with your
(52:39):
kids. Maybe it's intellectually.
Maybe it's physically. Right?There is something in your life
right now where you are strong.And like, man, you better
recognize that strength is notfor you. Right?
Like you were not given that tohoard. Right? The reason why you
were given that is not foryourself. It's for others.
Right?
Your strength is for service.And what's so cool is that even
(53:02):
when, I would even sayespecially when, you're going
through a tough time, if you canreadopt the posture of, Man,
there's things that I have thatI should be grateful for and
those things I should be usingto serve others, it's wild how
fast you will forget about yourquote unquote tough time. And
you point your eyes out towardscontributing to other people,
(53:23):
and I just think what youexperience in that moment is
what you were made for, is whatI would say. So all that to say
that phrase strength is forservice is something that we say
within our community of leadersover and over and over again.
Ben Loy (53:35):
Is there anything else you want to say before we close
out?
Alex Judd (53:40):
Well, I'd love to review, right? Health and growth
are not the same thing. If youwanna put your business in
order, start by putting yourselfin order. If someone depends on
you, then you are a leader. Yourwork is not who you are.
Your work is where you serve.And on the backside of that,
your strength is for service. SoI would say, man, I think those
(54:00):
principles are universallyapplicable. I actually believe
that. But then also beyond that,I would tell anyone that's a
leader on this call, which bythe way, if someone depends on
you, you are a leader.
Man, it doesn't have to be thoseprinciples. Find some
principles, apply some languageto it because it's so easy to
say the same thing a billiondifferent ways. It would be
better for you to adopt languagethat's portable and memorable
(54:21):
and for you to say that over andover again. Just remember that
language creates culture. So wecharge people to do this on
their own.
Well, there you have it. Thanksso much for joining us for this
episode. If you want any of theinformation or resources that we
mentioned, that's all in theshow notes. Hey, before you go,
could I ask you for one quickfavor? Could you subscribe,
(54:42):
rate, and review this podcastepisode?
Your feedback is what helps ourteam engage in a sequence of
never ending improvement. Wewanna amplify what's valuable to
you and obviously reduce or evenremove the things that aren't.
Also, you leaving a positivereview is what helps us connect
with, build trust with, andserve other leaders around the
(55:03):
country. So thanks in advancefor helping us out on that
front. Are you a leader thatwants to grow your business in a
healthy way, serve peopleexceptionally well, and glorify
God in the process?
Go to pathforgrowth.com to getmore information about our
community of impact drivenleaders and schedule a call with
our team. Hey, thank you so muchto the Path for Growth team,
(55:25):
Kyle Cummings and the crew atPodcircle and the remarkable
leaders that are activelyengaged in the Path for Growth
community. Y'all are the peoplethat make this podcast possible.
Y'all know this. We're rootingfor you.
We're praying for you. We wannasee you win. Remember, my
strength is not for me. Yourstrength is not for you. Our
strength is for service.
(55:45):
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.