September 3, 2025 • 23 mins
Creating and embracing your leadership promise can change your life and your business as an entrepreneur. You just need a strategy for creating it and then maintaining it over time. I discuss how to do that in this episode with my guest, Jason Hewlett.
Jason has delivered thousands of presentations around the world; performed in every major casino in Las Vegas; inspired the Troops in wartime Afghanistan; and authored “The Promise to The One”. He utilizes entertainment, musical impressions and comedy to teach leaders how to capture their unique Leadership Promise and Signature Moves.
In the Beginning There was Leadership
Teaching about creating and embracing your leadership promise has taken Jason years to create the language around what your leadership promise is. He’s been teaching it subliminally, he believes, for decades. He now believes your leadership promise is to identify, clarify, and magnify the signature moves of the people you lead. Jason wrote a book called “Signature Moves” years ago. He’s also written a book called “The Promise to the One”, which is a promise to yourself.
That all comes together with that language to help people say, “Can I help identify the talents and the gifts of the people I lead? Can I help them clarify that that's something they need to do every day in their work? And can I help them magnify it and all that we do together?” As entrepreneurs, especially for solo entrepreneurs like Jason for the past 25 years, hiring independent contractors, bringing people in and getting rid of them as people come and go brings with it a lot of responsibility.
It's interesting to see how often entrepreneurs get stuck in the minutia of doing their everyday work. You could probably spend 12 hours working on a broken printer, and not doing your signature moves, your greatness. That’s not time well spent. Instead, you could just hire somebody who could do it in about 10 minutes and fix it for you. Yes, you spend a little extra money, but you get into the things that you do best that way.
Jason truly believes your leadership promise is not only for yourself to identify, clarify, magnify your signature moves, but also to help others to identify and clarify and magnify theirs. He calls that the ICM process (Identify, Clarify, Magnify).
The Leadership Promise Showing Up in Jason’s Life
Jason recalls it probably appeared back in high school; he was the student body President of his high school. He says perhaps it came from seeing people on their student body council that didn’t follow through with the things they promised they would do. And then it all fell on him as the President.
Jason realized he was the last one in line because leaders eat last, as Simon Sinek says. He remembers that he would always have to be the one that picked up the slack. And so, the leadership promise came down to that. It came from examining: Who is keeping their commitments and who's not? He told me “What's fun to think about is that it goes all the way back to the school days all the way into adulthood and now into the leadership of not only leading my own company, but I lead several organizations and yeah, when it comes down to that it's about who makes a promise and keeps it.”
The Start of the Leadership Promise Journey for Entrepreneurs
Jason believes it comes down to your own personal accountability for the things you'll do for yourself. That’s why he wrote the book, “The Promise to the One”, which is a promise to yourself. You could keep a promise to your audience, to your customers, to your employees, to the independent contractors. But if you are waking up and not keeping those promises that you made to yourself, then it's going to trickle down eventually, and you're going to drop the ball.
Whether it's creating a morning routine, the Hal Elrod “Morning Miracle” stuff, or if we're talking about even the Gay Hendricks and “The Big Leap”, how do we get to that place of doing our greatness in ou...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Idea Climbing Podcast.
Creating and embracing your leadership promise can change
your life and your business as an entrepreneur.
You just need a strategy for creating it
and then maintaining it over time. I discuss
how to do that with in this episode
with my guest, Jason Hewlett.
Jason has delivered thousands of presentations around the
world, performed in every major casino in Las
(00:21):
Vegas,
inspired the troops in wartime Afghanistan,
and authored The Promise to the One.
Jason helps us embrace the promises we make
to those we serve, our peers we work
with, and to ourselves.
We dive into topics such as the start
of the leadership promise journey for entrepreneurs,
the definition of a promise proclamation, and how
to design yours in different areas of your
(00:42):
life, The one thing above all else you
need to do to create and embrace your
leadership promise and more golden nuggets of advice.
You're gonna love this show.
Jason, thank you for making the time to
be on the idea climbing podcast. I appreciate
(01:02):
you. So excited to be with you, Mark.
Thanks for having me, man.
And we're going to be talking about your
leadership promise, particularly in the world of entrepreneurs.
But before we get into strategies, tactics, tips,
things like that, when it comes to your
leadership promise in quotes,
how did you come across it? Why is
it so important to you? What's your story
there?
(01:24):
Oh, well, I mean, this has taken me
years to actually create the language around what
your leadership promise is. I've been teaching it
just subliminally, I believe, for decades. But when
I like to say the quote, your leadership
promise is to identify, clarify, and magnify the
signature moves of the people you lead.
And really, I've been I wrote a book
(01:44):
called Signature Moves years ago. And then I've
written a book called The Promise of the
One, which is a promise to yourself. So
this all comes together with that language to
say,
can I help identify the talents and the
gifts of the people I lead? Can I
help them clarify that that's something they need
to do every day in their work? And
can I help them magnify it in all
that we do together? So as entrepreneurs,
(02:06):
you know, especially myself as a solo entrepreneur
for twenty five years now,
hiring independent contractors, bringing people in, and and
getting rid of them as we come and
go.
It's been interesting to see how often
I get stuck in the minutia of doing
my every single day where I could probably
spend twelve hours working on a broken printer
(02:28):
or,
you know, and not do my signature moves,
my greatness. And instead, I could just hire
somebody who could do it in about five
to ten minutes, fix it for me, spend
a little extra money, but I get onto
the best things that I do anyway. And
so your I truly believe your leadership promise
is not only for yourself to identify, clarify,
magnify your signature moves, but also to help
(02:50):
others to identify and clarify and magnify theirs.
I call that the ICM process.
So think back.
When did the leadership promise first show up
in your life? Doesn't have to be exact.
But in the beginning of it, you you
didn't have it developed yet. Where did the
leadership promise show up to you?
Oh, man. That's a great question. Probably back
(03:10):
in high school, I was the student body
president of my high school. So now that
you're asking me that, I've never thought of
where the origination would come from. But perhaps
it came from
seeing
people on our student body council that actually
didn't fall through with the things they promised
they would do.
And then it all fell on me.
And so I realized, okay, I'm the last
one in line because,
(03:32):
you know, leaders
leaders eat last as Simon Sinek says and
so or Seth Godin, whoever wrote that book.
And I just would say that, like, I
would always have to be
the one that picked up the slack. And
so the leadership promise, I believe, came down
to that. Who's keeping their commitments and who's
not? And, it what's fun to to think
about is that it goes all the way
(03:52):
back to the school days, all the way
into adulthood, and now into the leadership of
not only leading my own company, but I
lead several organizations. And, yeah, when it comes
down to that, it's about who makes a
promise and keeps it.
That's kinda important.
So where does the leadership this sounds good
so far in the entrepreneurship world for an
(04:13):
entrepreneur, maybe a solopreneur or a cofounder.
Where does the Leadership Promise journey start? How
do you get the ball rolling?
Well, I believe it comes down to your
own personal accountability for the things you'll do
for yourself. And so that's why I wrote
the book, The Promise to the One, which
is promise to yourself. I mean, you could
keep a promise to your audience, to your
customers, to your,
(04:34):
to your employees, to the independent contractors. But
if you are waking up and keeping those
promises that you made to yourself,
then it's going to trickle down eventually and,
you're gonna drop the ball. And so whether
it's that morning routine, the Hal Elrod,
you know, morning miracle stuff, or if we're
talking about, like, even the Gay Hendricks and
(04:54):
the Big Leap, how how do we get
to that place of doing our our greatness,
our zone of genius instead of just zone
of excellence? I think a majority of the
human race at this point is living in
zone of excellence, especially if they're listening to
or watching this podcast. It's like, they're we're
probably all in our zone of excellence a
lot, but can we get to that zone
(05:15):
of genius?
And so I think that comes down to
keeping promises. I like to say why set
a goal when you can make a promise?
And it's not to say goals aren't important
because, of course, they are. If you're an
entrepreneur, you know that you have to have
goals as your metrics. But
if you've ever set a goal and you
missed it, you just set another one. Whereas
if you make a promise and break it,
that's a one and done. So what are
the goals that are your particulars and your
(05:37):
promises that are proclamations? Because the particulars
lead to the proclamation. So I'm gonna say
that a goal is a sacred promise, something
that I'm going to do no matter what.
And then I'm going to also say that
if I set a goal and I miss
it, how can I make sure that I
set the right goals in the future? But
what are the promises that I keep no
(05:58):
matter what? And so, I would say that
that's where the leadership promise comes into play
mostly.
Well, you just mentioned making a proclamation.
There there could be a few things behind
that. What do you unpack that a little
bit. What do you mean by making a
proclamation
within the world of promise?
Yeah. A lot of people that's a good
question. A lot of people would say like
a mission statement or a proclamation of something
(06:20):
they'll do. So when I teach this to
leaders
in a leadership setting, I'll say, what is
your what is your overall promise in business?
Like, what what are you about? And how
do we get to that place where we
can actually say, I've I've got something I'm
going to do no matter how the employee
reacts or how the customer responds.
(06:40):
I know that as, we have a company
that's a health supplement company called CardioMiracle,
and it helps with your nitric oxide
in your body. It's a miracle molecule.
What's challenging about this is we get all
kinds of complaints from customers, you know, whether
it's
the package showed up broken or, you know,
shipping was weird or we're not sure what's
going on with the website.
(07:02):
And so your promise proclamation
comes down to saying, for me, it's like
my promise proclamation is I'm going to spread
joy
every single day. That's just my promise. Right?
So, like, if a customer is mad at
me, how can I flip that into making
sure that I keep my promise to spread
joy in every interaction even if I'm ticked
off by the fact that they probably shouldn't
(07:24):
be as mad as they are? And so
that's where the promise proclamation comes in, is
you just sit down and you identify for
yourself what really matters to me, how can
I show up every single day by utilizing
my gifts and my talents? And then coming
up with a very,
very simple phrase, spreading joy. For me, that's
it. Others, it might just be, I'm fully
(07:44):
present when I'm in a meeting instead of,
you know I mean, hey. We could be
on, like, a Zoom call right now, and
I could be looking at Facebook instead of,
you know, listening to what you're having to
say.
That's a real problem in terms of a
promise proclamation. And so what are the different
promise proclamations you could make either with your
customers,
with your employees,
with your family at home, and with yourself?
(08:07):
Are those all separate ones that you do
every day? Is it or does in your
case, spreading joy, does that bleed into your
family, your clients, your, you know, project partners,
people like that, is it a different one
for each one or do you just pick
one as they spread it everywhere or is
it somewhere in between those two? Yeah. Great
question too. I mean, I would love to
just say that's a blanket statement for my
(08:28):
life. Right? Like, I'm just gonna spread joy.
That is a great
promise proclamation for everything that I try to
do. And obviously, my kids might argue otherwise.
They're like, dad, you're not always happy. Right?
But that doesn't just necessarily mean that. So
for my children, it might be more like
I'm going to my my promise proclamation with
them is to be fully present. Whereas my
(08:49):
promise proclamation with my customers would be that
I'm going to give a 100% in every
engagement experience with them. And so those types
of promise proclamations, I think, would be a
little bit separate. When it comes to employees
or independent contractors,
my promise proclamation to them is to promise
that they're going to utilize their signature moves.
(09:12):
If I do their job for them, I'm
breaking the promise.
If they don't keep their promise to me
and they don't do their job well, then
that's more my fault than theirs.
So how do you keep I mean, it
seems like in some respects,
it sounds simple if you make it just
to spread joy everywhere. It sounds simple, but
I know the things that sound the simplest
usually aren't the simplest.
(09:34):
How do you prevent from breaking promises on
a daily basis, especially as when you have
that many proclamations to
sub subcontractors,
family, clients, business partners.
Is it is it like a checklist? Is
it something you check-in with yourself every hour?
How do you keep from breaking promises? Because
I could imagine that could that could get
to be a little difficult. Yeah. It's good
(09:54):
good
analysis of it. And I'd say,
for me personally, as I've gone through this
process, I would I mean, I'm journaling all
the time. So I'd say keeping a journal
is a very important piece.
Self meditation throughout the morning especially, getting up
early enough so that you can keep that
promise to yourself.
Whether it's jumping in the cold plunge and
(10:15):
doing all the stuff all the alpha bros
talk about or, you know, making sure that
you're just
eating right, feeling good, getting some sunlight, doing
some walks. I mean,
wherever your place lands to meditate and create
your day, if it's driving in the car
on your commute to your office space,
what are you listening to? Is it a
podcast? Are you listening to music? Or is
(10:35):
it just silence and allowing your brain to
assimilate what happened the day before? I think
a lot of that comes down to just
the self reflection
and and getting to a good space. And
then at the end of the day, you
can reflect within a journal. Right? Or even
I like to jump in the sauna and
just
lay there for a half an hour and
sweat it out and think,
who did I break the promise to today?
(10:57):
Oh, I was rude to that one employee
or I I was short with this customer
who commented something rude about me online. You
know, I mean, obviously, they say don't read
the comments, but I love the comments because
that helps me to stay in check and
in line with my promises that I've made
that they expect from me. And so, yeah,
there's a great self assessment that you can
(11:18):
do, and I'd say comes down to journaling.
Once you get started,
I would imagine
it's a little bit of work to get
going, but what you said, you do different
things. You have journaling and other things like
that that you're doing on a daily basis.
And I I would imagine it could also
almost be like this endorphin rush of achievement,
especially if it's new. Oh, I'm keeping my
promises. This is great. I love it. The
(11:38):
cold plunge, the journaling, the
employees, everything is great. How do you maintain
it and not just have it be an
endorphin rush and then back to the status
quo? What do you do to maintain it
once you've achieved the initial arc?
These are cool questions, man. I mean, I
would just
I would I would venture to guess because
I haven't really gone through this process psychologically.
(12:00):
I think these are cool questions to say
that, like, yeah, I'm I'm
I'm thinking to myself
every time I achieve it, I'm congratulating myself
whether it's a check mark off the calendar
or,
even sitting in the accomplishment. So as a
speaker and an entertainer, as I've gone on
stages around the world for twenty five years,
(12:21):
I remember after a while getting a standing
ovation
became old hat. Now that's a weird thing
to get to. Right? And so I had
to eventually get to the point where it
was like, wow, I just got a standing
ovation. I need to appreciate what just happened.
So instead of going backstage and mumbling to
myself like, oh, I could've done this better.
I should've done that. Instead, I would go
(12:42):
backstage and I would, like, stop for a
minute and either pray or bow my head
or just think inside my mind and say,
gosh, thank you for this great moment. This
is amazing. What an accomplishment. I think most
entrepreneurs don't do that for themselves.
I think we are so push push go
go. What can be improved? What can be
greater?
(13:03):
That we need to just stop once in
a while and be
like, let me sit in the pause of
what just happened, which was awesome.
And that is the same as doing a
podcast
like with you when we're done.
Obviously, I hope this goes great, and I
hope your listeners are like, that was amazing.
But, like,
I'm going to finish this, and I did
(13:23):
not book something immediately after it.
I gave myself room to breathe for the
next podcast I'll be on after because this
today for me is a day I I
have a lot of podcast recordings. And so
I'm gonna sit for probably ten or fifteen
minutes and just be like,
Mark is a cool guy.
Those are great questions.
(13:44):
That was awesome.
I feel so great about it. Like, just
that part as self affirmation as everybody's become
almost averse to it because they're like, oh,
that's corny.
We don't do it enough. And so being
grateful for that moment, I think, is the
main piece
after
something wonderful happens, after we've done something well,
(14:06):
sit in it. Be be glad you did
it. Get off the phone call with that
employee and be like, I kept my promise.
That was awesome. And if you didn't and
it help it happens mostly with our kids,
I think.
If you didn't keep the promise to the
kid and you, you know, you snapped at
him or made him feel bad,
okay. Stop. What did I do wrong?
Can I come back and fix this in
(14:26):
some way? Whether it's the, you know, the
apology text or fixing it the next night
with an some ice cream.
And then we then we go into the
next realm of feeling,
it's okay to break a promise. I mean,
if everything's a promise, then you're really screwed
too. So I'm not saying that either. It's
like pick your promises.
They've gotta be the right ones.
(14:47):
So once you get on an even keel
of keeping your promises, your proclamations, everything you
just said,
as far as then the people that work
for you or with you, whatever whatever capacity,
how do you
I don't want to say switch, but get
them in the mode of promises and proclamations
and then get them to keep them. How
do you get them started on a journey
(15:08):
as you lead by example? What kind of
things do you need to get them to
go, oh yeah, I need to make and
keep promises and I need to do it
every day? I would imagine that, again, that's
not something that I'm guessing that's not like
a thirty minute meeting. Okay. Boom. Go make
promises and proclamations.
How do you get other people around you
to adopt that strategy?
Yeah. That's a promise culture that needs to
be integrated.
(15:28):
And that's not to say goals aren't still
there. Of course, they are. But to have
weekly meetings with the people that you surround
yourself with is important, if not even a
a daily check-in until people are on board
with that. And if they don't see that
you're doing the same thing that you're talking
about and expecting of them,
then it's over. Right? So
(15:48):
if, if they know that you're not the
one that's going to be there fulfilling and
keeping those promises, then, yeah, you've got a
problem. So whether it's in Slack,
emails, text, phone calls,
showing up saying, hey. How did it go?
What's going on? What's the problem? How come
this didn't happen? Yeah. Accountability is really what
it comes down to and trust. And so
(16:09):
can I trust that what you say you're
going to do, you're gonna do? Can I
expect it of you? Awesome. And then they
when they over deliver,
oh my goodness, overly praise.
I mean, I'm praising these guys every single
second, whether it's
a great job on the phone call, you
did awesome with your five second summary, or
you did great with your two minute presentation
(16:30):
to that person.
I mean, I'm I'm praising every second possible
because
we don't get enough of it. We don't
share enough,
and, we need to make sure that those
affirmations are coming through for each other.
Well, once
to continue that, once you're going, how often
should you evaluate, maybe reevaluate?
Do you reach a point where the core
(16:51):
is I'm going to spread joy every day
and it stays there and you keep the
promises going as the weeks and the months
and the years go? Or is it once
a year? Is there a time frame? When
do you evaluate, reevaluate? Maybe it's time to
do you update the promises or do you
keep them for a certain amount of time?
Yeah. Those are cool questions too. I mean,
for me personally, finding that
(17:11):
my promise is joy, spreading joys around the
world, that that's that's just something that's gonna
remain constant for me, and that becomes simple
then. But then there might be a word
that you'll choose for a month, you know,
say persistence or or we're going to create
more content this month. I mean, there are
certain things that you could say, this is
the theme for the month. Let's keep the
(17:31):
promise around this. Or I also like when
I teach people the ICM process, I say,
so the ICM process is to really identify,
clarify, magnify your signature moves. And your signature
moves are just what make you stand out
in this world. And and I say it's
what makes you stand out in a sit
down world. So,
like, for example, if there's a musical artist,
(17:54):
so
if you went to their show, Billy Joel,
let's say, here's a piano. Billy behind me.
Billy Joel, you go to his concert and
he doesn't play the piano man.
That's essentially a broken promise to an audience
expecting to hear it. Right? That's his signature
song, his signature voice, signature that you wanna
hear. I believe that every performer
(18:14):
has a signature move.
Just like Michael Jackson's moonwalk or, you know,
any of these famous legends that have the
Elvis Presley had the hip swivel and the
lip the lip thing he did. And so
what is your signature move as a leader?
And how can you identify, clarify, and magnify
that?
Identify is just by saying,
here are my talents and my gifts and
(18:35):
my skills identified for me. But now, Mark,
you and I don't know each other other
than we just met before this call, which
is awesome, from a friend. And and so
if I were to say to you, hey,
Mark, clarify for me what you think my
talents and gifts are, that might be a
little bit harder for you than somebody, you
know, that we know each other well, that
where I could say, hey, these are some
things you do good and well. And then
(18:56):
you can take that list that you've identified
for yourself, Others have clarified for you now
magnify. So I would then lead back to
your original question, which was, how do you
do some evaluations?
How do you make sure that the promise
is either something you do every single
day, month, or year?
I actually have taken it with some of
my employees and I said,
(19:16):
what are the gifts you identified
and are on your clarify list too?
That you could take one of those words
and say, I'm gonna focus on that word
this month
or this very week. And so maybe one
of their words is creativity.
I'll say I want you to focus on
being as creative as possible this week
in order to move marketing forward in our
(19:37):
company.
It's interesting what happens when I give them
permission to do that because then they're thinking
to themselves, I am a creative person. Well,
how can I put on my creative hat?
And then sometimes after our evaluation because we
either have a one on one, weekly or
or we do it every day until things
stick.
After a week, I might say, how did
(19:58):
it go with the creativity thing? And then
they're like, wow.
I put this new email campaign together. I
I think we've got some branding shifts we're
gonna do. And I go, okay. Now look
at another word if you wanna get off
creativity. Let's talk about persistence for a second.
How can you be more persistent
in getting some of these other things done
that we need? And then we're integrating all
(20:19):
of these gifts and skills that are their
signature moves so that then they feel like
they don't care how much they're getting paid.
They they wouldn't even care for a raise.
In in essence, their raise was the chance
that they got to share their talents
and use them at the highest level. And
to me, that's the ultimate leadership promise.
(20:39):
We've covered a lot of ground in a
relatively short period of time. When it comes
to creating,
designing, living, and then sharing your leadership promise,
whether it's reinforcing something you said or maybe
touching on something that we haven't touched on
yet,
If someone's listening, watching, like, okay. That's cool.
There's a lot of good stuff here. If
you were to say, if you're gonna
make a leadership promise to keep and a
(21:00):
proclamation,
at least do this one thing, at least
do this. What would you tell people to
do?
Write it
down.
Nice.
That's it. Because you know what? The the
reason we break promises mostly is because we
forget them.
We forget that we made them. You just
have to write it down. Just like a
New Year's resolution, those those, usually fall apart
(21:22):
after a few weeks.
And, that's why I like to say, you
know, that whole wise set of going, you
can make a promise. Because if you write
down a promise and you say I'm gonna
do this, and I'm looking at it and
I'm saying to myself, I'm not gonna miss
it And I'm not gonna forget about it.
This is something that drives me.
That's the secret.
So if people wanna find you online, where
to best place or places to go?
(21:45):
Well, I have jasonhulett.com,
and hulett is spelled like Hewlett Packard. So
if they go to jasonhulett.com,
they'll find essentially the whole library of what
I do or catalog. I'm
I'm an entertainer for the top events in
the world, in terms of a one man
show of music and comedy that's family friendly,
but Las Vegas quality, a very small niche.
And then I also do keynote speaking on
(22:07):
leadership, mixing in the music and comedy, which
is nobody else does what I'm doing in
terms of adding impressions and to teach leaders
to find their voice. It's very fun.
Written a book called The Promise to the
One. You can find that on Amazon. I've
also got it on Audible where I read
it and share it myself and perform it.
So that's a fun one. And then,
yeah, I'm also the president of a company
(22:28):
called CardioMiracle.
So CardioMiracle
is the leading
supplement for blood flow and cardiovascular
issues, and so people that are having health
issues can go there. So, yeah, there's a
lot going on, man, but I appreciate you
having me on. This is awesome, and I
look forward to more conversations with you.
This has been awesome. Thank you. I appreciate
you, Jason.
Thank you.
(22:48):
And
scene.
Gone.
Nice.
Thank you for joining us today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode. I also hope that
you'll subscribe to the Idea Climbing podcast and
rate us on iTunes.
Visit ideaclimbing.com
to learn more about Idea Climbing and hear
more episodes about mentoring,
(23:09):
marketing, and big ideas.
Welcome to the Idea Climbing Podcast.
Creating and embracing your leadership promise can change
your life and your business as an entrepreneur.
You just need a strategy for creating it
and then maintaining it over time. I discuss
how to do that with in this episode
with my guest, Jason Hewlett.
Jason has delivered thousands of presentations around the
world, performed in every major casino in Las
(00:21):
Vegas,
inspired the troops in wartime Afghanistan,
and authored The Promise to the One.
Jason helps us embrace the promises we make
to those we serve, our peers we work
with, and to ourselves.
We dive into topics such as the start
of the leadership promise journey for entrepreneurs,
the definition of a promise proclamation, and how
to design yours in different areas of your
(00:42):
life, The one thing above all else you
need to do to create and embrace your
leadership promise and more golden nuggets of advice.
You're gonna love this show.
Jason, thank you for making the time to
be on the idea climbing podcast. I appreciate
(01:02):
you. So excited to be with you, Mark.
Thanks for having me, man.
And we're going to be talking about your
leadership promise, particularly in the world of entrepreneurs.
But before we get into strategies, tactics, tips,
things like that, when it comes to your
leadership promise in quotes,
how did you come across it? Why is
it so important to you? What's your story
there?
(01:24):
Oh, well, I mean, this has taken me
years to actually create the language around what
your leadership promise is. I've been teaching it
just subliminally, I believe, for decades. But when
I like to say the quote, your leadership
promise is to identify, clarify, and magnify the
signature moves of the people you lead.
And really, I've been I wrote a book
(01:44):
called Signature Moves years ago. And then I've
written a book called The Promise of the
One, which is a promise to yourself. So
this all comes together with that language to
say,
can I help identify the talents and the
gifts of the people I lead? Can I
help them clarify that that's something they need
to do every day in their work? And
can I help them magnify it in all
that we do together? So as entrepreneurs,
(02:06):
you know, especially myself as a solo entrepreneur
for twenty five years now,
hiring independent contractors, bringing people in, and and
getting rid of them as we come and
go.
It's been interesting to see how often
I get stuck in the minutia of doing
my every single day where I could probably
spend twelve hours working on a broken printer
(02:28):
or,
you know, and not do my signature moves,
my greatness. And instead, I could just hire
somebody who could do it in about five
to ten minutes, fix it for me, spend
a little extra money, but I get onto
the best things that I do anyway. And
so your I truly believe your leadership promise
is not only for yourself to identify, clarify,
magnify your signature moves, but also to help
(02:50):
others to identify and clarify and magnify theirs.
I call that the ICM process.
So think back.
When did the leadership promise first show up
in your life? Doesn't have to be exact.
But in the beginning of it, you you
didn't have it developed yet. Where did the
leadership promise show up to you?
Oh, man. That's a great question. Probably back
(03:10):
in high school, I was the student body
president of my high school. So now that
you're asking me that, I've never thought of
where the origination would come from. But perhaps
it came from
seeing
people on our student body council that actually
didn't fall through with the things they promised
they would do.
And then it all fell on me.
And so I realized, okay, I'm the last
one in line because,
(03:32):
you know, leaders
leaders eat last as Simon Sinek says and
so or Seth Godin, whoever wrote that book.
And I just would say that, like, I
would always have to be
the one that picked up the slack. And
so the leadership promise, I believe, came down
to that. Who's keeping their commitments and who's
not? And, it what's fun to to think
about is that it goes all the way
(03:52):
back to the school days, all the way
into adulthood, and now into the leadership of
not only leading my own company, but I
lead several organizations. And, yeah, when it comes
down to that, it's about who makes a
promise and keeps it.
That's kinda important.
So where does the leadership this sounds good
so far in the entrepreneurship world for an
(04:13):
entrepreneur, maybe a solopreneur or a cofounder.
Where does the Leadership Promise journey start? How
do you get the ball rolling?
Well, I believe it comes down to your
own personal accountability for the things you'll do
for yourself. And so that's why I wrote
the book, The Promise to the One, which
is promise to yourself. I mean, you could
keep a promise to your audience, to your
customers, to your,
(04:34):
to your employees, to the independent contractors. But
if you are waking up and keeping those
promises that you made to yourself,
then it's going to trickle down eventually and,
you're gonna drop the ball. And so whether
it's that morning routine, the Hal Elrod,
you know, morning miracle stuff, or if we're
talking about, like, even the Gay Hendricks and
(04:54):
the Big Leap, how how do we get
to that place of doing our our greatness,
our zone of genius instead of just zone
of excellence? I think a majority of the
human race at this point is living in
zone of excellence, especially if they're listening to
or watching this podcast. It's like, they're we're
probably all in our zone of excellence a
lot, but can we get to that zone
(05:15):
of genius?
And so I think that comes down to
keeping promises. I like to say why set
a goal when you can make a promise?
And it's not to say goals aren't important
because, of course, they are. If you're an
entrepreneur, you know that you have to have
goals as your metrics. But
if you've ever set a goal and you
missed it, you just set another one. Whereas
if you make a promise and break it,
that's a one and done. So what are
the goals that are your particulars and your
(05:37):
promises that are proclamations? Because the particulars
lead to the proclamation. So I'm gonna say
that a goal is a sacred promise, something
that I'm going to do no matter what.
And then I'm going to also say that
if I set a goal and I miss
it, how can I make sure that I
set the right goals in the future? But
what are the promises that I keep no
(05:58):
matter what? And so, I would say that
that's where the leadership promise comes into play
mostly.
Well, you just mentioned making a proclamation.
There there could be a few things behind
that. What do you unpack that a little
bit. What do you mean by making a
proclamation
within the world of promise?
Yeah. A lot of people that's a good
question. A lot of people would say like
a mission statement or a proclamation of something
(06:20):
they'll do. So when I teach this to
leaders
in a leadership setting, I'll say, what is
your what is your overall promise in business?
Like, what what are you about? And how
do we get to that place where we
can actually say, I've I've got something I'm
going to do no matter how the employee
reacts or how the customer responds.
(06:40):
I know that as, we have a company
that's a health supplement company called CardioMiracle,
and it helps with your nitric oxide
in your body. It's a miracle molecule.
What's challenging about this is we get all
kinds of complaints from customers, you know, whether
it's
the package showed up broken or, you know,
shipping was weird or we're not sure what's
going on with the website.
(07:02):
And so your promise proclamation
comes down to saying, for me, it's like
my promise proclamation is I'm going to spread
joy
every single day. That's just my promise. Right?
So, like, if a customer is mad at
me, how can I flip that into making
sure that I keep my promise to spread
joy in every interaction even if I'm ticked
off by the fact that they probably shouldn't
(07:24):
be as mad as they are? And so
that's where the promise proclamation comes in, is
you just sit down and you identify for
yourself what really matters to me, how can
I show up every single day by utilizing
my gifts and my talents? And then coming
up with a very,
very simple phrase, spreading joy. For me, that's
it. Others, it might just be, I'm fully
(07:44):
present when I'm in a meeting instead of,
you know I mean, hey. We could be
on, like, a Zoom call right now, and
I could be looking at Facebook instead of,
you know, listening to what you're having to
say.
That's a real problem in terms of a
promise proclamation. And so what are the different
promise proclamations you could make either with your
customers,
with your employees,
with your family at home, and with yourself?
(08:07):
Are those all separate ones that you do
every day? Is it or does in your
case, spreading joy, does that bleed into your
family, your clients, your, you know, project partners,
people like that, is it a different one
for each one or do you just pick
one as they spread it everywhere or is
it somewhere in between those two? Yeah. Great
question too. I mean, I would love to
just say that's a blanket statement for my
(08:28):
life. Right? Like, I'm just gonna spread joy.
That is a great
promise proclamation for everything that I try to
do. And obviously, my kids might argue otherwise.
They're like, dad, you're not always happy. Right?
But that doesn't just necessarily mean that. So
for my children, it might be more like
I'm going to my my promise proclamation with
them is to be fully present. Whereas my
(08:49):
promise proclamation with my customers would be that
I'm going to give a 100% in every
engagement experience with them. And so those types
of promise proclamations, I think, would be a
little bit separate. When it comes to employees
or independent contractors,
my promise proclamation to them is to promise
that they're going to utilize their signature moves.
(09:12):
If I do their job for them, I'm
breaking the promise.
If they don't keep their promise to me
and they don't do their job well, then
that's more my fault than theirs.
So how do you keep I mean, it
seems like in some respects,
it sounds simple if you make it just
to spread joy everywhere. It sounds simple, but
I know the things that sound the simplest
usually aren't the simplest.
(09:34):
How do you prevent from breaking promises on
a daily basis, especially as when you have
that many proclamations to
sub subcontractors,
family, clients, business partners.
Is it is it like a checklist? Is
it something you check-in with yourself every hour?
How do you keep from breaking promises? Because
I could imagine that could that could get
to be a little difficult. Yeah. It's good
(09:54):
good
analysis of it. And I'd say,
for me personally, as I've gone through this
process, I would I mean, I'm journaling all
the time. So I'd say keeping a journal
is a very important piece.
Self meditation throughout the morning especially, getting up
early enough so that you can keep that
promise to yourself.
Whether it's jumping in the cold plunge and
(10:15):
doing all the stuff all the alpha bros
talk about or, you know, making sure that
you're just
eating right, feeling good, getting some sunlight, doing
some walks. I mean,
wherever your place lands to meditate and create
your day, if it's driving in the car
on your commute to your office space,
what are you listening to? Is it a
podcast? Are you listening to music? Or is
(10:35):
it just silence and allowing your brain to
assimilate what happened the day before? I think
a lot of that comes down to just
the self reflection
and and getting to a good space. And
then at the end of the day, you
can reflect within a journal. Right? Or even
I like to jump in the sauna and
just
lay there for a half an hour and
sweat it out and think,
who did I break the promise to today?
(10:57):
Oh, I was rude to that one employee
or I I was short with this customer
who commented something rude about me online. You
know, I mean, obviously, they say don't read
the comments, but I love the comments because
that helps me to stay in check and
in line with my promises that I've made
that they expect from me. And so, yeah,
there's a great self assessment that you can
(11:18):
do, and I'd say comes down to journaling.
Once you get started,
I would imagine
it's a little bit of work to get
going, but what you said, you do different
things. You have journaling and other things like
that that you're doing on a daily basis.
And I I would imagine it could also
almost be like this endorphin rush of achievement,
especially if it's new. Oh, I'm keeping my
promises. This is great. I love it. The
(11:38):
cold plunge, the journaling, the
employees, everything is great. How do you maintain
it and not just have it be an
endorphin rush and then back to the status
quo? What do you do to maintain it
once you've achieved the initial arc?
These are cool questions, man. I mean, I
would just
I would I would venture to guess because
I haven't really gone through this process psychologically.
(12:00):
I think these are cool questions to say
that, like, yeah, I'm I'm
I'm thinking to myself
every time I achieve it, I'm congratulating myself
whether it's a check mark off the calendar
or,
even sitting in the accomplishment. So as a
speaker and an entertainer, as I've gone on
stages around the world for twenty five years,
(12:21):
I remember after a while getting a standing
ovation
became old hat. Now that's a weird thing
to get to. Right? And so I had
to eventually get to the point where it
was like, wow, I just got a standing
ovation. I need to appreciate what just happened.
So instead of going backstage and mumbling to
myself like, oh, I could've done this better.
I should've done that. Instead, I would go
(12:42):
backstage and I would, like, stop for a
minute and either pray or bow my head
or just think inside my mind and say,
gosh, thank you for this great moment. This
is amazing. What an accomplishment. I think most
entrepreneurs don't do that for themselves.
I think we are so push push go
go. What can be improved? What can be
greater?
(13:03):
That we need to just stop once in
a while and be
like, let me sit in the pause of
what just happened, which was awesome.
And that is the same as doing a
podcast
like with you when we're done.
Obviously, I hope this goes great, and I
hope your listeners are like, that was amazing.
But, like,
I'm going to finish this, and I did
(13:23):
not book something immediately after it.
I gave myself room to breathe for the
next podcast I'll be on after because this
today for me is a day I I
have a lot of podcast recordings. And so
I'm gonna sit for probably ten or fifteen
minutes and just be like,
Mark is a cool guy.
Those are great questions.
(13:44):
That was awesome.
I feel so great about it. Like, just
that part as self affirmation as everybody's become
almost averse to it because they're like, oh,
that's corny.
We don't do it enough. And so being
grateful for that moment, I think, is the
main piece
after
something wonderful happens, after we've done something well,
(14:06):
sit in it. Be be glad you did
it. Get off the phone call with that
employee and be like, I kept my promise.
That was awesome. And if you didn't and
it help it happens mostly with our kids,
I think.
If you didn't keep the promise to the
kid and you, you know, you snapped at
him or made him feel bad,
okay. Stop. What did I do wrong?
Can I come back and fix this in
(14:26):
some way? Whether it's the, you know, the
apology text or fixing it the next night
with an some ice cream.
And then we then we go into the
next realm of feeling,
it's okay to break a promise. I mean,
if everything's a promise, then you're really screwed
too. So I'm not saying that either. It's
like pick your promises.
They've gotta be the right ones.
(14:47):
So once you get on an even keel
of keeping your promises, your proclamations, everything you
just said,
as far as then the people that work
for you or with you, whatever whatever capacity,
how do you
I don't want to say switch, but get
them in the mode of promises and proclamations
and then get them to keep them. How
do you get them started on a journey
(15:08):
as you lead by example? What kind of
things do you need to get them to
go, oh yeah, I need to make and
keep promises and I need to do it
every day? I would imagine that, again, that's
not something that I'm guessing that's not like
a thirty minute meeting. Okay. Boom. Go make
promises and proclamations.
How do you get other people around you
to adopt that strategy?
Yeah. That's a promise culture that needs to
be integrated.
(15:28):
And that's not to say goals aren't still
there. Of course, they are. But to have
weekly meetings with the people that you surround
yourself with is important, if not even a
a daily check-in until people are on board
with that. And if they don't see that
you're doing the same thing that you're talking
about and expecting of them,
then it's over. Right? So
(15:48):
if, if they know that you're not the
one that's going to be there fulfilling and
keeping those promises, then, yeah, you've got a
problem. So whether it's in Slack,
emails, text, phone calls,
showing up saying, hey. How did it go?
What's going on? What's the problem? How come
this didn't happen? Yeah. Accountability is really what
it comes down to and trust. And so
(16:09):
can I trust that what you say you're
going to do, you're gonna do? Can I
expect it of you? Awesome. And then they
when they over deliver,
oh my goodness, overly praise.
I mean, I'm praising these guys every single
second, whether it's
a great job on the phone call, you
did awesome with your five second summary, or
you did great with your two minute presentation
(16:30):
to that person.
I mean, I'm I'm praising every second possible
because
we don't get enough of it. We don't
share enough,
and, we need to make sure that those
affirmations are coming through for each other.
Well, once
to continue that, once you're going, how often
should you evaluate, maybe reevaluate?
Do you reach a point where the core
(16:51):
is I'm going to spread joy every day
and it stays there and you keep the
promises going as the weeks and the months
and the years go? Or is it once
a year? Is there a time frame? When
do you evaluate, reevaluate? Maybe it's time to
do you update the promises or do you
keep them for a certain amount of time?
Yeah. Those are cool questions too. I mean,
for me personally, finding that
(17:11):
my promise is joy, spreading joys around the
world, that that's that's just something that's gonna
remain constant for me, and that becomes simple
then. But then there might be a word
that you'll choose for a month, you know,
say persistence or or we're going to create
more content this month. I mean, there are
certain things that you could say, this is
the theme for the month. Let's keep the
(17:31):
promise around this. Or I also like when
I teach people the ICM process, I say,
so the ICM process is to really identify,
clarify, magnify your signature moves. And your signature
moves are just what make you stand out
in this world. And and I say it's
what makes you stand out in a sit
down world. So,
like, for example, if there's a musical artist,
(17:54):
so
if you went to their show, Billy Joel,
let's say, here's a piano. Billy behind me.
Billy Joel, you go to his concert and
he doesn't play the piano man.
That's essentially a broken promise to an audience
expecting to hear it. Right? That's his signature
song, his signature voice, signature that you wanna
hear. I believe that every performer
(18:14):
has a signature move.
Just like Michael Jackson's moonwalk or, you know,
any of these famous legends that have the
Elvis Presley had the hip swivel and the
lip the lip thing he did. And so
what is your signature move as a leader?
And how can you identify, clarify, and magnify
that?
Identify is just by saying,
here are my talents and my gifts and
(18:35):
my skills identified for me. But now, Mark,
you and I don't know each other other
than we just met before this call, which
is awesome, from a friend. And and so
if I were to say to you, hey,
Mark, clarify for me what you think my
talents and gifts are, that might be a
little bit harder for you than somebody, you
know, that we know each other well, that
where I could say, hey, these are some
things you do good and well. And then
(18:56):
you can take that list that you've identified
for yourself, Others have clarified for you now
magnify. So I would then lead back to
your original question, which was, how do you
do some evaluations?
How do you make sure that the promise
is either something you do every single
day, month, or year?
I actually have taken it with some of
my employees and I said,
(19:16):
what are the gifts you identified
and are on your clarify list too?
That you could take one of those words
and say, I'm gonna focus on that word
this month
or this very week. And so maybe one
of their words is creativity.
I'll say I want you to focus on
being as creative as possible this week
in order to move marketing forward in our
(19:37):
company.
It's interesting what happens when I give them
permission to do that because then they're thinking
to themselves, I am a creative person. Well,
how can I put on my creative hat?
And then sometimes after our evaluation because we
either have a one on one, weekly or
or we do it every day until things
stick.
After a week, I might say, how did
(19:58):
it go with the creativity thing? And then
they're like, wow.
I put this new email campaign together. I
I think we've got some branding shifts we're
gonna do. And I go, okay. Now look
at another word if you wanna get off
creativity. Let's talk about persistence for a second.
How can you be more persistent
in getting some of these other things done
that we need? And then we're integrating all
(20:19):
of these gifts and skills that are their
signature moves so that then they feel like
they don't care how much they're getting paid.
They they wouldn't even care for a raise.
In in essence, their raise was the chance
that they got to share their talents
and use them at the highest level. And
to me, that's the ultimate leadership promise.
(20:39):
We've covered a lot of ground in a
relatively short period of time. When it comes
to creating,
designing, living, and then sharing your leadership promise,
whether it's reinforcing something you said or maybe
touching on something that we haven't touched on
yet,
If someone's listening, watching, like, okay. That's cool.
There's a lot of good stuff here. If
you were to say, if you're gonna
make a leadership promise to keep and a
(21:00):
proclamation,
at least do this one thing, at least
do this. What would you tell people to
do?
Write it
down.
Nice.
That's it. Because you know what? The the
reason we break promises mostly is because we
forget them.
We forget that we made them. You just
have to write it down. Just like a
New Year's resolution, those those, usually fall apart
(21:22):
after a few weeks.
And, that's why I like to say, you
know, that whole wise set of going, you
can make a promise. Because if you write
down a promise and you say I'm gonna
do this, and I'm looking at it and
I'm saying to myself, I'm not gonna miss
it And I'm not gonna forget about it.
This is something that drives me.
That's the secret.
So if people wanna find you online, where
to best place or places to go?
(21:45):
Well, I have jasonhulett.com,
and hulett is spelled like Hewlett Packard. So
if they go to jasonhulett.com,
they'll find essentially the whole library of what
I do or catalog. I'm
I'm an entertainer for the top events in
the world, in terms of a one man
show of music and comedy that's family friendly,
but Las Vegas quality, a very small niche.
And then I also do keynote speaking on
(22:07):
leadership, mixing in the music and comedy, which
is nobody else does what I'm doing in
terms of adding impressions and to teach leaders
to find their voice. It's very fun.
Written a book called The Promise to the
One. You can find that on Amazon. I've
also got it on Audible where I read
it and share it myself and perform it.
So that's a fun one. And then,
yeah, I'm also the president of a company
(22:28):
called CardioMiracle.
So CardioMiracle
is the leading
supplement for blood flow and cardiovascular
issues, and so people that are having health
issues can go there. So, yeah, there's a
lot going on, man, but I appreciate you
having me on. This is awesome, and I
look forward to more conversations with you.
This has been awesome. Thank you. I appreciate
you, Jason.
Thank you.
(22:48):
And
scene.
Gone.
Nice.
Thank you for joining us today. I hope
you enjoyed the episode. I also hope that
you'll subscribe to the Idea Climbing podcast and
rate us on iTunes.
Visit ideaclimbing.com
to learn more about Idea Climbing and hear
more episodes about mentoring,
(23:09):
marketing, and big ideas.
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