September 14, 2022 • 45 mins
Jesan pivoted from student affairs leadership to entrepreneurship in a novel fashion: He started with revisiting his grad school curriculum.
After combing through the syllabi from his master’s program, Jesan thought, “I could take that topic and turn it into a product.” And so he did, marketing his conflict resolution and reconciliation skills to business audiences willing to pay for them.
From his early solopreneur days of consulting and speaking engagements to founding HSCT Publishing, creating training programs, writing books, and hosting podcasts, Jesan centers his businesses on the idea of intentional leadership.
And it’s in no small part thanks to capitalizing on his MA work, adjuncting, and previous career in higher ed.
Jesan’s books & podcast
12 Rules for Leaders: The Foundation of Intentional Leadership
My Boss Doesn't Care: 100 Essays on Disrupting Your Work By Disrupting Your Boss
Marketing for Peace Builders: How to Market Your Value to a World in Conflict
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast
Where to find Jesan & HSCT Publishing
Jesan on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram
HSCT’s website and HSCT LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram profiles
The Leadership Toolbox website
Check out more from The Work Seminar
Visit theworkseminar.com or find @TheWorkSeminar on social media.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jesse Butts (00:23):
Hey everyone.
Thanks for joining mefor another episode.
I'm your host, Jesse Butts.
Today, I'm chatting with JesanSorrells, an MA in conflict
resolution and reconciliationfrom Abilene Christian
University turned entrepreneur.
Jesan is the founder and CEOof HSCT Publishing, the host
of the Leadership Lessonsfrom the Great Books podcast,
(00:45):
the author of 12 Rules forLeaders, and much more.
Jesan, welcome to the show.
Thanks for, for joining us.
Jesan Sorrells (00:52):
Hi, Jesse.
Thank you for having me on.
I really am gonnaenjoy this today.
And I look forward to talkingwith you and your listeners.
Jesse Butts (01:00):
Absolutely.
Thank you for, for reachingout to me originally.
Sometimes people arecurious how I find guests.
A lot of times they'reold connections or, or
people that I've found.
Jesan was actually onewho reached out to me.
So always glad for peopleto reach out to the show.
Jesan Sorrells (01:16):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, I do love whatyou're doing here.
I love what you're puttingtogether, the project you were
putting together and love tosupport folks when they are
in not only the podcastingspace, but also the...
well, just in general, thespace of trying to help
people become better people.
So, and of course , one ofour missions here is helping
(01:36):
leaders become better leaders.
Jesse Butts (01:39):
So, so Jesan, before we dive into how you
found your way from that MAin conflict resolution and
reconciliation to life as anentrepreneur, can you tell
us a little bit about all ofthe things you're doing now?
I, I mean, I mentioned thepublishing company, one of your
podcasts, and your, your book.
(02:00):
Maybe you could kind oftie it all together for us?
Like, like what is the, theoutput that you are you're
producing as an entrepreneur?
Jesan Sorrells (02:07):
Absolutely.
So, the output that I'mproducing as an entrepreneur
really focuses aroundthis idea of leadership.
In particular,intentional leadership.
We fundamentally believehere at HSCT Publishing
that all problems in allorganizations can be resolved
through the effectiveapplication of intentional
(02:27):
leadership practices.
Now, I said a number ofdifferent things there.
And I made a bold statement,and I realize that it's bold.
But it is that idea ofintentional application.
We want people to leadwith their brains on.
Right?
And leading with your brainon whether you're at work,
whether you're at home,or whether you are in the
community really requiresyou to engage and engage
(02:51):
emotionally, engage spiritually,engage psychologically.
It requires you to engage.
And so the books areabout engagement.
12 Rules for Leaders isour most recent book,
as you have mentioned.
But we also had a book thatcame out about six years ago,
which is timely for now calledMy Boss Doesn't Care, 100 Essays
on Disrupting Your Workplaceby Disrupting Your Boss.
Everybody laughs at that title.
(03:13):
Everybody loves that title.
Jesse Butts (03:14):
Yeah, it's a good one.
Yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (03:15):
It is.
And then of course, theLeadership Lessons from
the Great Books podcast,where we read a great book
for you, so that you don'thave to do it as a leader.
Or we read a great piece ofliterature and then we pull
lessons from that great bookor from that great piece of
literature that leaders canapply to their lived lives.
(03:37):
It is about practicality.
It is about intentionality.
And of course I host anotherpodcast called the Jesan
Sorrell's Audio Experience,which is a wide ranging podcast
where we talk to entrepreneurs.
We talk to business leaders, wetalk to pastors and theologians.
We talk to psychologists.
And we try to figure out whatexactly it is that unites
(03:58):
all of these folks in common.
So we're doing alot of work here.
We're producing a lot ofcontent, and this is in
addition to blog posts.
We have a coupleof Facebook groups.
We've just got a lot ofthings going on over here.
Jesse Butts (04:08):
I wanted to ask about that, a little bit
more about the intentionalleadership, but first I was,
uh, just a little curious foryour great books podcast is
great books like in the senseof, now I'm drawing a blank
on the university in Annapolisand New Mexico, that's, you
know, famous for like the greatbooks of the Western canon.
Is it...
(04:29):
that canon or is it kindof ... what qualifies as a great
book for, for your podcast?
Jesan Sorrells (04:34):
Sure, sure.
And this is a greatquestion because
Jesse Butts (04:37):
St.
John's University?
That
Jesan Sorrells (04:38):
John's
Jesse Butts (04:38):
what I was trying, trying to think of.
Yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (04:40):
It is.
Yes.
Well, not only St John'suniversity, but Cambridge
University or, or evenColumbia University has still
has a great books program,which is kind of amazing.
When we talk about great booksin the Western canon, we are
really talking about thoseclassics that are usually,
, lambasted very often asbeing, you know, about being
(05:00):
written by dead white males.
Right?
Now, there were a lot of whiteindividuals and this, they
were, a lot of them were maleand a lot of them are dead.
so we can't get away from that,but it is about reading the
books that have really stoodthe test of time as foundational
books for Western thought.
Right?
So I'll give you an example.
(05:20):
We read St.
Augustine's City of God on thepodcast and broke that down.
Almost nobody reads Cityof God now outside of
a theological program.
Right?
But we're also readingFriedrich Nietzsche's
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
And we are bringing a couple offolks on to talk about Nietzche.
Most recently, we recorded anepisode which will be coming
(05:42):
out in September, on, JosephConrad's Heart of Darkness,
, which, , Apocalypse Now, themovie Apocalypse Now, was
based off of that, off ofthat book back in the 1970s.
But we also read books by, youknow, Virginia Woolf or by W.
E.
B.
Du Bois or Chinua Achebe.
Right?
So we're expanding the canon.
Our longest podcast episode,which was a four hour one,
(06:04):
featured Miyamoto Musashi'sA Book of Five Rings.
And so we talked abouta book of five rings.
We talked about how martialarts and sales, how jujitsu
and jeet kun do all meettogether in Miyamoto Musashi's
understanding of What does itmean to actually be a warrior?
What does it actually meanto be a focused sales leader?
And have you apply that thoselessons to your real lived life?
(06:27):
So a lot of content thereand I read about four heavy
duty books a month to makesure that this happens.
Jesse Butts (06:33):
For those of you who love reading and
love reading the thickerdenser books, there are
other opportunities besidesprofessorships to, to
engage with these things.
You were talking aboutunintentional versus
intentional leadership.
What are a few things anunintentional leader does
versus an intentional leader,just to get a better sense of,
of what you're doing there?
Jesan Sorrells (06:53):
Sure.
Sure.
So an unintentionalleader does all of the
things that we identifyas bad leadership, right?
So an unintentional leaderis tone deaf to their people.
An unintentional leaderlacks emotional intelligence.
An unintentional leader makesdecisions that are more reactive
than they are proactive.
(07:15):
An unintentional leader doesn'toften care about their people
because they don't know how tocare about their people, because
they're not paid very oftento care about their people.
An unintentional leader may be abureaucrat merely following the
rules, collecting a paycheck andthen going home and not really
leading their people, sittingin a position, holding a,
(07:36):
here's an old school word fromliterature, holding a sinecure.
Right?
And not really moving forward.
And it's not as if anybodyintentionally becomes
an unintentional leader.
Usually it is throughcircumstances.
Usually it is throughposition and status, and
usually it is through habit.
And so breaking thosehabitual behaviors, making,
(07:56):
helping people, not making,helping people recognize
what those habitual behaviorsare, is a key piece of
the work that we do here.
Jesse Butts (08:03):
So I'm, I'm pretty fascinated by how you went
from grad school to, to this.
And if we could just go backa little bit in time, I
know that you have a BFA,was it in design of...?
Jesan Sorrells (08:16):
So, yeah, so my, my bachelor of fine arts degree
is actually in printmaking,with a minor in drawing.
And I almost got aminor in painting.
Jesse Butts (08:23):
So when you were wrapping up that BFA,
what were you, what were youthinking in terms of why you
wanted to go to grad school,what you were hoping to do?
I mean, just in general,but also that shift from BFA
to this, you know, conflictresolution, reconciliation.
Not, not exactly a linearpath that that most of us
(08:43):
would assume, uh, someonewould take after finishing
your undergrad degree.
Jesan Sorrells (08:47):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Jesse, if, if your listenersgo and look at my LinkedIn
profile, and please feelfree to connect with me on
LinkedIn if you're listeningto this podcast, but, if you
go and look at my LinkedInprofile, it is a winding road
through many different, uh,through many different areas.
And so coming out of the BFAprogram, I'll be honest, Jesse,
my first thought was, How doI get a job and feed myself.
(09:10):
And I applied to, , a number ofdifferent printmaking studios
to be a printmaking assistant.
You know, I did thehard work, right?
But at the same time, while Ihad been in college, pursuing
my artistic endeavors, I hadalso at the same time been
trying to learn business.
And so I had taken a coupleof business classes, , which I
wasn't really impressed with.
(09:31):
And then I had also wound upworking in the administrative
end of higher education asa residence director and
basically a jumped up RA.
And if any of your listenershave ever lived on campus,
you'll know what that is.
That invariably led me down thepath towards conflict resolution
and reconciliation andentrepreneurship, because the
work that you do with studentsin a highly administrative
(09:53):
environment, the work that youdo with 18 and 19 year olds
really does involve leadership.
It involves team building.
It involves conflict, itinvolves managing a budget, it
involves making hard decisionsfinancially about what can
be done in a particular year.
And what can't.
It also involves listening to alot of wild, crazy, hair-brained
ideas and saying No to some ofthem saying Yes to others and
(10:17):
being in the gray area withmany of them and just seeing
if they are going to work.
And so all of the elementsof creativity that you
would think would be in thearts are also in the space
of working with students.
So over the long course ofyears, I wound up working at
the University of Minnesota.
And while working at theUniversity of Minnesota, I was
able to pursue, the degree withAbilene Christian University,
(10:38):
through a partnership there.
And pursued that degree, andliterally every day that I
showed up to, to work on thatdegree, I was experiencing
something similar in, inhigher education in my,
in my administrative work.
That invariably led me toentrepreneurship because after I
got done with higher education,once again, I was looking around
saying, How do I eat here?
(10:58):
And at the time I was married.
I had a few kids.
And, you know, they, theydo like to eat and they,
they do continue to grow.
And so you do have todo something, you gotta
live in the world.
And so, really looked aroundand I said, What are all the
skill sets that I have here?
And this is a critical questionfor your listeners as well.
When they're thinking abouttheir path, What are the
(11:20):
critical skills I have thatother people don't and that
they are willing to pay for?
Now, that's an importantintersection because we
all have skills that otherpeople don't have for sure.
We all have that.
But we all might not haveskills, that other people
don't have that other peopleare willing to pay for.
(11:40):
That's an important distinction.
And so we have torecognize that.
And we had to put, I had toput those, the intersection
of those two things together.
And then I thought, thisis my second thought,
Where can I go with this?
And what's the numberone place where people
spend most of their time?
And the number one people,number one place where
people spend most oftheir time is at work.
Jesse Butts (12:02):
I'm curious about the, the program itself.
, is it a bit of psychology,philosophy, political science,
like, like what were you readingand studying in that program?
Jesan Sorrells (12:12):
So there's three different tracks in the program.
There's a theological track.
There's a school track, whichI did not go down because
it's mostly K through 12.
There's a, a divorceand family track.
And so out of thosethree tracks, that was
the one that I picked.
I went down the divorceand family mediation track.
And so I learned alot about mediation.
I learned a lot about howpeople's emotions work
(12:34):
in the mediation space.
We studied a lot of, as youmentioned, psychology, , but
also a lot of philosophy.
A lot of thinking abouthow do you structure
the mediation table?
And what does an act ofmediation do for people?
Or what does itnot do for people?
Why do people in the UnitedStates maybe favor mediation a
little bit less, whereas peoplein Europe and in Australia
(12:57):
favor it a little bit more.
And by the way, there arefundamental differences in
the ways in which the culturesof Europe, the culture of
Australia differs in, in theface of mediation in comparison
to the culture of America.
And of course, welooked at the law.
Now that doesn't mean I read forthe law or that I'm a lawyer.
Don't get, don't get wrong.
I'm not, don't get it confused.
I'm not a lawyer.
And I do not giveout legal advice.
(13:18):
But we did learn how to readcertain pieces of the law.
And how to examine those inlight of what was happening
at the mediation table.
This allowed me to become aTexas state certified mediator,
which I am by virtue ofhaving my, my master's degree.
It also allowed me in variousother states in the union
(13:38):
to do mediation work at avery high level, higher than
a usual volunteer would be.
And most of the volunteersat community community
mediation centers are great.
It allowed me to do that workthat a much higher level than,
than what they were doing.
And it certified me to beable to train other mediators
in how to do this work.
Jesse Butts (13:57):
Were you planning on, maybe not a full career,
but were you planning to,to work in marriage, family
therapy services of some sort?
What did you end updoing right after that?
Jesan Sorrells (14:08):
Yes.
I was planning onworking in that space.
That was the initial, thatwas the initial thought.
And I found out very quicklythat people in America don't
really want to pay for that.
What we like in Americais we like litigation.
We enjoy, and we arestructurally and culturally
oriented towards litigation.
(14:29):
And that's not aknock on America.
That's just a, a state, , astatement of fact, you
know, about where we are.
We would prefer if we're in acar accident to sue somebody
or have our insurance companiessue each other, right?
Whereas if you're in a caraccident in Australia and I'm
sure your Australia listenerscan confirm this, you go
directly into mediation oryour insurance companies
(14:49):
go to mediation, right?
And here's the other dynamicthat almost no one talks
about, when you're dealing withdivorces, when you're dealing
with family mediations, you'reseeing other people's trauma.
And you're seeing it in avery raw, very real way.
You are seeing abuse.
You are seeing drug abuse,physical abuse, psychological
abuse, emotional abuse, and ofcourse, sexual abuse, sometimes.
(15:10):
You are experiencing anddealing with other people's...
not only other people'strauma, but the trauma of
people around the people whoare involved in the mediation.
Right?
So it's not just the twoparties who are involved.
It's also their kids.
It's also their neighbors.
It's also their in-laws.
It's, it's anybody whothe trauma touches.
Right?
After doing a few few,a few hundred hours of
(15:32):
practice mediations, youknow, I, I, I decided that
I didn't wanna bring thattrauma home to my children.
Right?
I wanted it to be a littlebit more removed from me.
I have known many mediatorsin my time who have gotten
divorced themselves after beingdivorce and family mediators.
And so I thought that'snot really something that
(15:52):
I want to go through,either unintentionally
or intentionally.
I don't wanna get caughtby someone else's trauma,
at least not at that level.
So switching over toworkplaces for me was very
easy because workplaces area place where we bring all
of this stuff, but we put asheen over it and we hide it.
And we put on a good show.
Now post COVID that's alittle bit different because
(16:14):
everything has collapsed.
All the boxes that we use touse to separate ourselves,
have all collapsed together.
But back then 10 yearsago now, , that was a
dynamic that I didn't, Ididn't want to deal with.
Jesse Butts (16:25):
So, you know, you did your few hundred hours and
you decided it wasn't for you.
What type of roles did youhave after that before you
ventured into entrepreneurship?
Jesan Sorrells (16:37):
Yep.
So I had stayed inhigher education.
And I had kind of, sortof advanced through there.
But I'd wound up moving alongfrom the work that I was doing
at the University of Minnesotato doing the same work at Ithaca
College, which is the othercollege in Ithaca, New York,
that is on the other hill.
So, I went there and wastasked with, with building
a program, for first yearstudents, which I did somewhat
(17:00):
successfully, I think.
I think the program'sstill going on there...
and built relationshipsand engaged with folks and
eventually through a wholeseries of somewhat unforeseen
events, which would take toolong to go into on this podcast,
but, you know, through a seriesof unforeseen events basically
quit that role, you know.
And I, and I didn't haveanything, on the horizon.
(17:22):
And so entrepreneurship lookedreally good because the area
that I was moving into wasan area where there weren't a
lot of opportunities for a guywith my particular skill sets,
coming in from the outside.
Jesse Butts (17:35):
So after you, you left that role and you
said entrepreneurship lookedlike one of the better things
on the horizon, did you havethis idea of leadership?
Where did you start?
What was your focus initially?
Jesan Sorrells (17:48):
Yeah.
So initially my focus was inconflict because I thought,
and I was, and, and I stillthink this today, conflict
gets you into everything, kindof like The Godfather, right?
The Godfather used to tell hissons, you know, If you become a
lawyer, you can steal more moneywith a briefcase than a gun.
Back in that old school movie.
And so the the, the flipon that is you can get into
(18:11):
everything if you're willingto go and engage with other
people's conflicts, even ifthey're conflicts at work.
Most people areafraid of conflict.
Most people are afraidof confrontation.
They confuse those two things.
They think that confrontationand conflict are the same thing.
And by the way, just asa side note, they're not.
Right?
Confrontation is justsaying, Jesse, you and I
(18:31):
are at a crossroads here,because there is some issue
about which we disagree.
That's all confrontation is.
It's saying thatthere's a disagreement.
It's recognizing thatthere's a problem, right?
Conflict is everything thathappens after that statement.
Whether you agree, whether Iagree, whether we disagree...
how does that path go?
What the escalationlooks like, what the
(18:53):
deescalation looks like.
How do we negotiate?
Do we bring in a third party?
Do we appeal to rulesand regulations?
All of those things comeafter confrontation.
Most people, however,don't recognize that
confrontation and conflicthave a gap in between them.
And most people can makeintentional decisions
inside of that gap andchoose to have a conflict.
Jesse Butts (19:17):
What did your, your first venture in
entrepreneurship look like?
Jesan Sorrells (19:21):
Yeah, the first venture entrepreneurship looked
like me literally pulling mygrad school syllabus, looking at
all the topics that were coveredon my grad school syllabus,
and saying to myself, Okay thattopic, I could take that topic
and turn it into a product.
And I think the topic was, justconflict, Conflict Management
101, something like that.
(19:41):
Because again, aroundthose, the intersection of
those two questions, whatskillsets do I have that
people will pay me for?
So I think people willpay me for conflict.
I'm gonna take a bet andmake ...and not take a bet,
I'm gonna make a bet, right?
People will pay me forresolving conflict or they'll
pay me for teaching themhow to resolve conflict.
Teach me how to fishor fish for the man.
Which one do you want to do?
Right.
And so I was gonna do acombination of both of those.
(20:04):
And so I started out as justa, a jumped up trainer.
Right.
A jumped up consultant.
And running around.
And literally I wasrunning around going to
networking events, doingspeaking engagements for
free back in the day.
This was 2013, 2012, 2013.
Podcasting was not thething that it is now.
Although if it had been, Iwould've gone on podcasts.
A lot of self-promotion.
(20:25):
I wrote a lot of blogposts, back in 2013.
To date, I think I've writtenclose to 500 blog posts around
conflict leadership, dealingwith difficult people, dealing
with dysfunctional behavior,confrontation, all these
...entrepreneurship, marketing,all these kinds of areas.
Right?
And I built a plan forhow to market myself
fairly aggressively.
(20:46):
And I will say this, you know, Iblogged for nine months straight
into the void and distributedthat on LinkedIn and thought
no one was looking at it.
And then did find out thatsomeone was looking at it and
they gave me my first big break.
And I wound up working, workingwith them in partnership
with our, our local communitycollege in the area that
I was in at the time.
Wound up getting into apartnership with them where
(21:08):
they basically sourced leadsfor me, sent them to me.
And then I went outand did the work.
And then after that,the business exploded.
Jesse Butts (21:15):
So, so the first product was essentially
you, you and your services.
I mean, you were doing the,the, the blog posts and the
appearances in hopes thatpeople would contract with
you to help their organizationunderstand and solve and
remediate some type of conflict.
Is...
Jesan Sorrells (21:32):
correct.
Yeah.
Oh Yeah.
absolutely.
Yep.
Jesse Butts (21:35):
How long were you a solo consultant before
building a, I'm not surehow to phrase this, but
a product that wasn't...
Jesan Sorrells (21:45):
Me?
Jesse Butts (21:45):
You, yeah, yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (21:48):
Yeah , that's a great question.
And so I did, I did everythingbackwards, so from 2013 to
about 2016, 2017, , you know,I was solo, I had people
come to work with me onprojects, things like that.
And, and as, as we were goingalong, or as I was going along,
(22:10):
the training content becamea product in and of itself.
I began to see that themanuals that I was developing
and the approaches thatI was developing were a
product in and of themselves,which is great, except
it's a product that reallystill focuses around Jesan
showing up and being Jesan.
And I thought, Well, okay,that doesn't scale, but I don't
(22:32):
know how to crack that nut.
So maybe I need toget more people.
And so from about 2016, 2017to right here on the right
on the back end of COVID.
So 2020, we built a crew.
And so, you know, wound uphaving 25 people working for me.
And we began to developmore solid product
based thinking, right?
(22:53):
And so our thinking beganto shift away from services
and towards products.
This is where we began todevelop the Leading Keys
platform, which we currentlyhave at LeadingKeys.com,
which is an asynchronousplatform that's a subscription
as a service, a SaaSproduct basically, that we
developed over the courseof time, initially targeting
towards long term care, thelong term care industry.
(23:14):
And now it's targeted muchmore towards a general market.
And then after that, righton the heels of that, we
began to put our trainingcontent together and we
developed what we call nowThe Leadership Toolbox,
which you can check thatout at LeadershipToolbox.us.
It took me a long time tofigure that out, and to figure
out how to do that and how toarchitect all of that together.
(23:34):
And the biggest challengewas figuring out how to talk
about the architecture of thatbecause I'm inside the journey.
So it makes sense to me, butanybody outside the journey,
it may not make sense to them.
Over the course of time, wealso took some of the training
content, the insights, theblog posts, the ideas, and we
began to put together books.
So the first book wasMarketing for Peace Builders,
(23:54):
How to Market Your Valueto a World in Conflict.
That book was incrediblyniche and self-published,
incredibly niche.
That was, it was my firstself-published venture.
I'd never done anythinglike that before.
I didn't even know ifit was going to sell.
And it sold in the mediationworld like hot cakes.
As a matter of fact, itstill sells a couple of
different copies everymonth, you know, still, still
floating around out there.
And then my second bookcame out, My Boss Doesn't
(24:16):
Care, and got a littlebit better in production.
We hired a graphics,hire graphic designers.
We worked with,professional editors.
We worked with copy editors,developmental editors.
We began to mold together theunderlying again, architecture
for having a publishing company.
And then on the other sideof COVID, we relaunched
as a publishing company.
And so, we publishedtraining content.
(24:37):
We published our books.
We work with authors onrefining their scripts and
refining their content.
And of course we still dotraining and development
work, but it is inside of thatleadership toolbox construct.
And so the LeadershipToolbox product is the
product that we sell.
The Leading Keysplatform is the, is the
product that we sell.
Jesse Butts (24:55):
And just to clarify with your, your
publishing company, are youseeking authors or are authors
who have a specialty in theleadership space coming to you?
Just, just kind of curious.
I mean, cause it sounds likethe majority is, is content that
you and your team are producing.
I'm just kind of curious aboutwhat else you're publishing.
Jesan Sorrells (25:14):
Yeah, we have authors that are coming to us.
We also have organizationsthat want to work with us.
And so that's an untapped marketwhere organizations have content
that they would like to haveeither edited, or published
internally to their own folks,or even facilitated to their
own, to their own people.
And so we have a coupleof, we have a couple of
clients that we're doingthat work for right now.
(25:35):
And so there's some definitespace there, particularly as
you think of brands that aremoving in the direction of
having their own podcasts anddoing their own and, and I
mean, brands have been doinginternal blog posting for years.
For a long, long time.
But how do youbring that together?
How do you create PDF content?
How do you createeB ook content?
How do you unite thatwith podcast content
(25:57):
and who produces that?
And so that's a lot of workthat can be outsourced.
And we're the service thatcan take that on and does
take that on for clients.
Jesse Butts (26:08):
You've, You've described yourself as an
entrepreneur and you're,you're starting new businesses
and, and things like that.
To you, what is the differencebetween a business owner
and an entrepreneur?
Thinking of listeners who, whomight think about going on their
own and, you know, the, the kindof different paths that they
could consider, entrepreneurshipversus business owner.
Jesan Sorrells (26:31):
Depending upon what I am doing on
any given day, I'm in oneof three roles, right?
And I could even shiftroles during the day.
So there are some projectsI work on during the day
where I am a freelancer.
I'm doing work, I'mgetting paid the money.
Done.
Right?
That's freelance work, right?
That kind of work doesn't scale.
(26:52):
I don't wanna frame it as smallpotatoes cause every project
matters, but it's projects thatI care about that are personal
or that are passionate to me.
Those are typicallyfreelance projects.
That makes me a freelancer.
Then there are projectsthat can scale.
So anytime I work on abook, anytime I'm working
on a book with a team or acrew, anytime I'm working
(27:12):
on publishing a piece ofinternal content for a client.
That's entrepreneurship, right?
Because that's a productthat can scale, right?
And so your listeners shouldthink of entrepreneurship
in terms of, We aregrowing a particular thing.
Right?
We're growing a book orwe're growing an audience
or we're growing a communityor we're growing a platform.
Leading keys is anentrepreneurial product.
(27:34):
Leadership toolbox is anentrepreneurial product.
The books are entrepreneurialproducts, right?
When you look at a product,you can think of 10,000
more ideas that go alongwith that particular thing.
That makes you an entrepreneur.
A business owner, however,and I can be a business
owner during the day too.
A business owner is inthat third space where they
are looking at the overallscaling of the business
(27:59):
as an entity, right?
They're working on the business,not necessarily in the business.
Right?
So working on the businessmeans figuring out what are
the processes and proceduresthat need to be improved?
What are the gaps orholes in our strategy?
Who needs help on our team, andhow do we increase our team?
(28:20):
What does the actual visionand mission, goals and values
look like of this organization?
That's what a smallbusiness owner does.
Right?
Now don't get me wrong, veryoften a small business owner
will work in the business.
The challenge with beinga small business owner is
knowing the line betweenworking in the business and
working on the business.
(28:40):
And being able to walkthat line very carefully.
And I'm gonna go back to thisword again, intentionally.
Jesse Butts (28:47):
What do you enjoy most about your work?
Jesan Sorrells (28:49):
What I enjoy most about my work
is the fact that I getto get up every morning
and do things like havingthis podcast conversation.
Every day I get up is somethingdifferent, something new,
something engaging and exciting.
I'm also fairly, I'm gonnause a, a broad word here.
I'm also fairly parapatetic.
So I have wandering interestsand I've built a model of
(29:11):
work, a model of making animpact in the world where I
can dump all those interestsin that, in that bucket.
And I can shake it andthen something will fall
out that will get me paid.
Now there's many things I'vedumped in that bucket that
don't get me paid at all.
And there's some things I'vedumped in that bucket that
are just wild and crazy.
For example, some of yourlisteners may be familiar
with the actor William Shatnerfamously enough on Star Trek.
Jesse Butts (29:34):
I, I would guess so.
Yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (29:36):
Some of them may be, I, I don't know.
I don't know who watchesTV or who doesn't.
I'm a big fan of WilliamShatner's spoken word albums.
I think they're hilarious.
I think they're great.
And I would love to doa spoken word album.
And so I have a projectthat I'm working on with
some friends of mine.
That's inside thebucket of this work.
And I spend a couplehours a week moving
that project forward.
That's anentrepreneurial project.
(29:57):
Cause at the end of it, there'sgoing to be a product that
can then be sold in a bunchof other different places.
And eventually I'm gonnahave a spoken word album and
my wife thinks I'm crazy.
My kids roll their eyes.
And it's something thatI've been wanting to work
on for quite some time.
Jesse Butts (30:10):
I'm sure.
When I was a kid, Ihad heard of like...
Rocket Man washis first big one?
Yeah.
I actually remember kind ofdiscovering it in reverse.
It was, he was on like aBen Fold's side project
Jesan Sorrells (30:24):
Yes.
Jesse Butts (30:24):
and, I can't I can't remember the,
I think it was maybeone or two tracks on...
Fear of Pop?
I think was the, the album.
So I, I discovered him then,then I kind of discovered that,
oh, He'd done this, you know,half a dozen times before this.
I was...
you know, it's interestinghow we discover those things,
but yeah, I, I found thosepretty entertaining too.
Jesan Sorrells (30:43):
I, I love, his version of Common People.
And I, I listened to a lotof that stuff in college
with my buddies and weall thought it was, you
know, hilariously funny.
And at the same time,there's a little seed
that was planted there.
Sort of of, Hey, you know,if you build a structure,
you could maybe do this too.
And that's, that'swhat entrepreneurship
allows you to do.
(31:04):
It allows you to build astructure that again, you
can dump a bunch of differentthings in, and then you
can do some exciting stuff.
Jesse Butts (31:10):
We've talked pretty extensively about how,
when you started your business,you went back to your, you
know, master's syllabus andhow so much of what you see
in the business world relatesto the conflict resolution and
reconciliation and leadership.
I'm curious, are there anyother skills that you picked
up in grad school or workingin higher ed that we, we
(31:33):
might not have discussed yetthat have helped you in your
life as an entrepreneur?
Jesan Sorrells (31:38):
Yes, so, and this is a big one.
And it's one thatgets overlooked.
It's the skillset of caring.
C A R I N G.
Caring.
Caring.
One of the challengesthat we have in our world
today is that there's alot of talk about empathy.
And we've, we, we've raisedat least the conversation
around empathy to itshighest possible form.
(32:00):
But if you go out and dealwith real people in the real
world, you find out thatthere's actually two different
kinds of empathy floatingaround in the world today.
There's empathy you see inmarketing, where empathy is
marketed to us as a way to sellproducts or goods or to get us
to care about a social cause.
And then there's theempathy that you actually
(32:22):
have in your real life.
Most of the empathy thatpeople have in their real
lives, most of the empathythat leaders have in their real
lives is very narrowcasted.
It is to family,it's to friends.
It might be to peoplethat they work with or
that they are leading, butvery often they're not...
Leaders, particularlypositional leaders, , managers
and supervisors usually maynot feel as though they are
(32:45):
paid to be empathetic becauseemotional labor is hard.
It's hard to care.
It's hard to care about youremployees when you may not
have liked them from the jump.
It's hard to care aboutyour employees when you're
stressed or you're burned out.
And no one seems tobe caring about you.
(33:07):
It's hard to care about youremployees when change, like
what we're going throughright now with COVID seems
to be hitting you left andright, and you are asked, and
you're being demanded, to bereactive rather than proactive.
And so what I learnedin higher education was
that you have to care.
(33:28):
You have to make yourself care.
And it's not in terms of,I'm gonna hold your hand
or I'm gonna give you a hugor you're gonna come over
to my house for a barbecue.
What we talk about very often,and what I've talked about
for years is this conceptof hard headed empathy.
And it's making a hard headedintellectual decision to care.
No emotion involved.
(33:48):
You don't have to involve youremotions if you don't want to.
Just decide to care.
Today, I'm going careabout that employee who's
gonna talk about that thingthat I don't care about.
I'm just gonna care.
And here's howI'm going to care.
I'm gonna actuallylisten to that person.
Jesse Butts (34:00):
Would you say you love what you do?
Jesan Sorrells (34:02):
Absolutely.
If I didn't love it, I wouldbe doing something else.
Are there days when Iwake up and it's hard?
Yes, for sure.
Do I like all those days?
No, I don't.
But overall, or I'vebeen doing this work
for almost 10 years now.
, I wouldn't do anything else.
I put, I put, I've put in myMalcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours.
(34:25):
I, I don't think I'm capableof doing anything else.
I don't think I would be agood employee at this point.
And that's not becauseI couldn't follow the
directions or do the, do thethings that are required.
It's because I know somethingfundamental that Seth Godin said
many years ago, the marketerand writer Seth Godin, said
many years ago, If you have onemore dollar in your checking
(34:46):
account as an entrepreneur onthe day that you end your work
and you earned that dollar,then no one gets to tell you
that you can't play againtomorrow . And you've lived long
enough to play the game again.
Jesse Butts (34:58):
Using one of the words that I'm sure,
if I ran an analysis hasprobably been said, one of the
most times in this podcast,was there an intentional
decision in your life thatyou had to love your work?
That you had to dosomething that you loved?
Jesan Sorrells (35:12):
Yes.
There have been many momentswhere I've had to decide.
The most recentmoment was with COVID.
March of 2020 our businesswas shut down as being not
,was deemed non-essentialby the state of New
York, and was shut down.
At that point around 90% ofour clients abandoned us.
We, we saw a massive revenuedrop, right, within two weeks.
(35:34):
And I remember driving in mycar down the road to file some
piece of paperwork somewherethat didn't really matter.
And I just remember yelling inmy car and hitting the roof of
the inside of my car and saying,No, this is not how this ends.
We're not stopping here.
I haven't done all thethings that I need to do yet.
And this is the vehicle thatI'm going to do them in.
(35:56):
Not literally my vehicle,but like the, the business
is the vehicle that I'mgoing to do them in.
And I do.
I remember driving down theroad, just hitting the roof of
my car, just yelling in my car.
Making intentional decisionsisn't always pretty.
People have this idea thatsomehow it'll be beautiful
and very intellectual.
No, there's, sometimesthere's emotion involved
in it and it's visceral.
But it's a visceraldecision that still is at
(36:18):
the front of our brains.
We're still activelythinking about it.
And by the way, what that meansis we're also still responsible
for the outcomes that come aboutbecause of those decisions.
And we have to be okaywith that as a leader, too.
We have to be okay withthat as followers too.
We very rarely talkabout responsibilities.
And too often wetalk about rights.
(36:39):
And so the responsibilities ofintentional leadership mean that
when you make the decision, asI did in the car, driving down
the road in March of 2020,when you make the decision to
just say No, and just continuegoing, regardless of how
bad it will be, you are alsosaying Yes to whatever those
consequences are going to be.
(36:59):
And you have to be willing toadmit to that and be willing
to be okay with that, tobe an intentional leader.
Jesse Butts (37:07):
How do you describe your relationship to work?
Or, or maybe said a bit,a little bit differently,
how large of a roledoes in your life?
Jesan Sorrells (37:16):
I have worked very hard to put it
in its appropriate space.
To put it in itsappropriate box.
Right?
So I work from home.
Right?
Now we have employeesall across the country.
Matter of fact, we justrecently onboarded a new person.
She's in Kentucky, but werecently onboarded a new
person, which is great.
But we have employees allover the country, but I work
(37:38):
out of my home in Texas.
And so, you know, I come tomy office in the morning, I
work, you know, a regularday, you know, eight to four
or eight to five or whatever.
And then I leave.
And the work staysin the office.
Right?
But I've been very intentionalabout that because I'm a person
who can work all the time.
It doesn't bother me.
(37:59):
There's always morework to be done.
There's always anotherproject to be taken on.
There's always a newchallenge to face.
And so to put boundariesaround that means now I can
do other stuff with my family.
Now I can, take upother hobbies, right?
And have other interests.
It means that I havethe space to go and do
things that I enjoy.
(38:19):
Or go and do things for otherpeople that they might want me
to do for them, that they enjoy.
I have the time to havefriends, so work stays
in its, in its box.
And again, it's somethingwhere I've had to be
intentional about that.
For other folks whoare listening, your
mileage may vary.
You know, but I willsay this, I have advised
entrepreneurs before.
And one of the key questionsI ask them is, How good
(38:40):
is your relationshipwith your significant
other or your partner?
Do they understand that youare probably going to in the
first couple of years of thisdevote 80 to a hundred hours
a week of your life to this?
Do they understand that?
Because if they're not on board,if that's a negotiation you
haven't had yet, stop your ideaand go have that negotiation.
Now, fortunately I marrieda woman who, , whose family
(39:01):
was in business for twoor three generations.
She understandshow business works.
She's owned her own business.
You know, and did, did, did thatkind of work in her own area.
So she kind of understoodthat already, but most people
who haven't, who are, who arefocused on work as a thing
that I do for an organizationand then I collect the
check and go home, that'sa different mindset shift.
(39:23):
It's different between anemployee mindset and an
entrepreneur mindset, right?
And it's not bad.
It's just different.
Right?
It's a differentkind of mindset.
An employee puts work ina box, whereas an employee
has, an entrepreneur,sorry, has to construct
the box around the work andhas to keep it contained.
Jesse Butts (39:39):
I, I know You, you mentioned earlier,
What can you do that noone else can that people wi
ll be willing to pay for?
as kind of a central question,if not the central question.
I'm curious if there's anythingelse you would add to that?
Jesan Sorrells (39:52):
Well, step number one, or step number one,
if you're gonna pull out a pieceof paper, so you're gonna whip
out a piece of paper, right?
And you're gonnawrite this down.
You're gonna write down allthe things you know that
other people don't know.
That's hugely important.
Most of us underestimate whatwe know and we overestimate
what other people or whatwe think other people know.
One of the things that this workhas taught me is that there is
(40:14):
a vast wealth of things thatI know a ton of things about,
but there's also a vast wealthof things that other people
know a ton of things about thatI don't know anything about.
Right?
So in the era that we livein, where what we know can
then create a service ora product, because that's
where our skill sets lie.
We've gotta writethose things down.
(40:35):
All the experiences thatyou've had from, you know,
when you were in high school,and you thought it didn't
matter all the way to whateverpoint it as you're at now.
Write those things down.
Step number two, go and talk,not to family and friends,
but go and talk to strangers.
Talk to people who have no skinin your game, who will give you
honest feedback about whatever'son that list, who will say
(40:56):
Yes, I would pay for that.
Or, No, I wouldn't pay for that.
What I learned after having moreof those types of conversations
is how to market myself.
Yes.
How to frame the architectureof what it was I was doing
in a different kind of way.
But I also learned thatsometimes for some people,
it just won't work.
And those are notyour customers.
(41:19):
Those are not your clients.
And that is OK.
Sometimes you have to govery far afield to find your
customers and your clients.
And that's okay too.
And then the third thing is,How long do you want to do this?
Look?
99% of all business projectsfail in the first year.
They fail becausepeople run out of money?
Yes, that's usually primarilythe, the answer that's given,
(41:43):
you know, I ran out moneyand I had to go back to work.
But that's not the real answer.
The real answer isyou ran out of will.
You ran out of persistence.
You ran out of familysupport from your significant
other or from your family.
You ran out of ideas forhow to market yourself.
You ran out of courage toask other people for help.
You ran out of all ofthose intangible things.
(42:05):
The money, and I don'twanna be flip here, however
money is not your biggestproblem as an entrepreneur.
It's not your biggest problemif you're in grad school or
out of grad school, askingyourself, How do I want
to go and where do I...
money is not yourbiggest problem.
You think it is, but it'snot your biggest problem.
All of those other intangiblethings weigh far more into
(42:26):
the equation than money does.
Jesse Butts (42:28):
This has been a really, really wonderful
conversation, Jesan.
If you'd like to share where,where people can find your
resources, particularly ifanyone, you know, is kind
of thinking about somethingin leadership or something
entrepreneurship, anythingthat you're doing in
those areas would be greatto, to hear a little bit
more about as we wrap up.
Jesan Sorrells (42:46):
Absolutely.
Well, first off, thankyou Jesse, for having
me on The Work Seminar.
I appreciate you offeringme a space on your platform.
And I wanna encourage you tokeep going forward and doing the
work that you are doing and tokeep persisting, because we need
more folks like you, you know,doing this work in this space.
So thank you.
(43:07):
As far as places wherepeople can find me.
So you can of coursefind me on LinkedIn.
You can go search myname, Jesan Sorrells.
I'm, I'm there.
I'm also on Facebook andI'm on Instagram, you can
find me there, both ourpersonal profiles and you
can find the HSCT publishingprofiles everywhere
all over the internet.
You can direct message me againon LinkedIn or on Facebook
(43:27):
or on Instagram, reach out tome and mention that you heard
me here on The Work Seminarpodcast with Jesse Butts.
If you would like to find outmore about how The Leadership
Toolbox can help people in yourorganization become better,
or if you'd like to just takeadvantage of some of those
webinars, you could check usout at TheLeadershipToolbox.us.
You can also check outour leading keys platform.
(43:49):
Check that out atLeadingKeys.com.
If you'd like to pick up a copyof my newest book, 12 Rules
for Leaders, the Foundationof Intentional Leadership,
co-written with contributionsfrom Bradley Madigan, it's,
it's available everywhere.
Finally, the podcast.
The podcast and the book arereally the easiest accessible
ways to get ahold of me.
If you don't have a wholelot of money or you want to
(44:12):
get something like coachingfor me without paying
my full coaching rate.
And so you're gonna wanna checkout the Leadership Lessons
from the Great Books podcast.
We're on all the majorpodcast platforms.
Jesse Butts (44:22):
All right.
Well, thank youagain for joining us.
This was really,really a treat, Jesan.
Jesan Sorrells (44:26):
Thank you, Jesse, for having me on.
I appreciate it.
Hey everyone.
Thanks for joining mefor another episode.
I'm your host, Jesse Butts.
Today, I'm chatting with JesanSorrells, an MA in conflict
resolution and reconciliationfrom Abilene Christian
University turned entrepreneur.
Jesan is the founder and CEOof HSCT Publishing, the host
of the Leadership Lessonsfrom the Great Books podcast,
(00:45):
the author of 12 Rules forLeaders, and much more.
Jesan, welcome to the show.
Thanks for, for joining us.
Jesan Sorrells (00:52):
Hi, Jesse.
Thank you for having me on.
I really am gonnaenjoy this today.
And I look forward to talkingwith you and your listeners.
Jesse Butts (01:00):
Absolutely.
Thank you for, for reachingout to me originally.
Sometimes people arecurious how I find guests.
A lot of times they'reold connections or, or
people that I've found.
Jesan was actually onewho reached out to me.
So always glad for peopleto reach out to the show.
Jesan Sorrells (01:16):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, I do love whatyou're doing here.
I love what you're puttingtogether, the project you were
putting together and love tosupport folks when they are
in not only the podcastingspace, but also the...
well, just in general, thespace of trying to help
people become better people.
So, and of course , one ofour missions here is helping
(01:36):
leaders become better leaders.
Jesse Butts (01:39):
So, so Jesan, before we dive into how you
found your way from that MAin conflict resolution and
reconciliation to life as anentrepreneur, can you tell
us a little bit about all ofthe things you're doing now?
I, I mean, I mentioned thepublishing company, one of your
podcasts, and your, your book.
(02:00):
Maybe you could kind oftie it all together for us?
Like, like what is the, theoutput that you are you're
producing as an entrepreneur?
Jesan Sorrells (02:07):
Absolutely.
So, the output that I'mproducing as an entrepreneur
really focuses aroundthis idea of leadership.
In particular,intentional leadership.
We fundamentally believehere at HSCT Publishing
that all problems in allorganizations can be resolved
through the effectiveapplication of intentional
(02:27):
leadership practices.
Now, I said a number ofdifferent things there.
And I made a bold statement,and I realize that it's bold.
But it is that idea ofintentional application.
We want people to leadwith their brains on.
Right?
And leading with your brainon whether you're at work,
whether you're at home,or whether you are in the
community really requiresyou to engage and engage
(02:51):
emotionally, engage spiritually,engage psychologically.
It requires you to engage.
And so the books areabout engagement.
12 Rules for Leaders isour most recent book,
as you have mentioned.
But we also had a book thatcame out about six years ago,
which is timely for now calledMy Boss Doesn't Care, 100 Essays
on Disrupting Your Workplaceby Disrupting Your Boss.
Everybody laughs at that title.
(03:13):
Everybody loves that title.
Jesse Butts (03:14):
Yeah, it's a good one.
Yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (03:15):
It is.
And then of course, theLeadership Lessons from
the Great Books podcast,where we read a great book
for you, so that you don'thave to do it as a leader.
Or we read a great piece ofliterature and then we pull
lessons from that great bookor from that great piece of
literature that leaders canapply to their lived lives.
(03:37):
It is about practicality.
It is about intentionality.
And of course I host anotherpodcast called the Jesan
Sorrell's Audio Experience,which is a wide ranging podcast
where we talk to entrepreneurs.
We talk to business leaders, wetalk to pastors and theologians.
We talk to psychologists.
And we try to figure out whatexactly it is that unites
(03:58):
all of these folks in common.
So we're doing alot of work here.
We're producing a lot ofcontent, and this is in
addition to blog posts.
We have a coupleof Facebook groups.
We've just got a lot ofthings going on over here.
Jesse Butts (04:08):
I wanted to ask about that, a little bit
more about the intentionalleadership, but first I was,
uh, just a little curious foryour great books podcast is
great books like in the senseof, now I'm drawing a blank
on the university in Annapolisand New Mexico, that's, you
know, famous for like the greatbooks of the Western canon.
Is it...
(04:29):
that canon or is it kindof ... what qualifies as a great
book for, for your podcast?
Jesan Sorrells (04:34):
Sure, sure.
And this is a greatquestion because
Jesse Butts (04:37):
St.
John's University?
That
Jesan Sorrells (04:38):
John's
Jesse Butts (04:38):
what I was trying, trying to think of.
Yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (04:40):
It is.
Yes.
Well, not only St John'suniversity, but Cambridge
University or, or evenColumbia University has still
has a great books program,which is kind of amazing.
When we talk about great booksin the Western canon, we are
really talking about thoseclassics that are usually,
, lambasted very often asbeing, you know, about being
(05:00):
written by dead white males.
Right?
Now, there were a lot of whiteindividuals and this, they
were, a lot of them were maleand a lot of them are dead.
so we can't get away from that,but it is about reading the
books that have really stoodthe test of time as foundational
books for Western thought.
Right?
So I'll give you an example.
(05:20):
We read St.
Augustine's City of God on thepodcast and broke that down.
Almost nobody reads Cityof God now outside of
a theological program.
Right?
But we're also readingFriedrich Nietzsche's
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
And we are bringing a couple offolks on to talk about Nietzche.
Most recently, we recorded anepisode which will be coming
(05:42):
out in September, on, JosephConrad's Heart of Darkness,
, which, , Apocalypse Now, themovie Apocalypse Now, was
based off of that, off ofthat book back in the 1970s.
But we also read books by, youknow, Virginia Woolf or by W.
E.
B.
Du Bois or Chinua Achebe.
Right?
So we're expanding the canon.
Our longest podcast episode,which was a four hour one,
(06:04):
featured Miyamoto Musashi'sA Book of Five Rings.
And so we talked abouta book of five rings.
We talked about how martialarts and sales, how jujitsu
and jeet kun do all meettogether in Miyamoto Musashi's
understanding of What does itmean to actually be a warrior?
What does it actually meanto be a focused sales leader?
And have you apply that thoselessons to your real lived life?
(06:27):
So a lot of content thereand I read about four heavy
duty books a month to makesure that this happens.
Jesse Butts (06:33):
For those of you who love reading and
love reading the thickerdenser books, there are
other opportunities besidesprofessorships to, to
engage with these things.
You were talking aboutunintentional versus
intentional leadership.
What are a few things anunintentional leader does
versus an intentional leader,just to get a better sense of,
of what you're doing there?
Jesan Sorrells (06:53):
Sure.
Sure.
So an unintentionalleader does all of the
things that we identifyas bad leadership, right?
So an unintentional leaderis tone deaf to their people.
An unintentional leaderlacks emotional intelligence.
An unintentional leader makesdecisions that are more reactive
than they are proactive.
(07:15):
An unintentional leader doesn'toften care about their people
because they don't know how tocare about their people, because
they're not paid very oftento care about their people.
An unintentional leader may be abureaucrat merely following the
rules, collecting a paycheck andthen going home and not really
leading their people, sittingin a position, holding a,
(07:36):
here's an old school word fromliterature, holding a sinecure.
Right?
And not really moving forward.
And it's not as if anybodyintentionally becomes
an unintentional leader.
Usually it is throughcircumstances.
Usually it is throughposition and status, and
usually it is through habit.
And so breaking thosehabitual behaviors, making,
(07:56):
helping people, not making,helping people recognize
what those habitual behaviorsare, is a key piece of
the work that we do here.
Jesse Butts (08:03):
So I'm, I'm pretty fascinated by how you went
from grad school to, to this.
And if we could just go backa little bit in time, I
know that you have a BFA,was it in design of...?
Jesan Sorrells (08:16):
So, yeah, so my, my bachelor of fine arts degree
is actually in printmaking,with a minor in drawing.
And I almost got aminor in painting.
Jesse Butts (08:23):
So when you were wrapping up that BFA,
what were you, what were youthinking in terms of why you
wanted to go to grad school,what you were hoping to do?
I mean, just in general,but also that shift from BFA
to this, you know, conflictresolution, reconciliation.
Not, not exactly a linearpath that that most of us
(08:43):
would assume, uh, someonewould take after finishing
your undergrad degree.
Jesan Sorrells (08:47):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Jesse, if, if your listenersgo and look at my LinkedIn
profile, and please feelfree to connect with me on
LinkedIn if you're listeningto this podcast, but, if you
go and look at my LinkedInprofile, it is a winding road
through many different, uh,through many different areas.
And so coming out of the BFAprogram, I'll be honest, Jesse,
my first thought was, How doI get a job and feed myself.
(09:10):
And I applied to, , a number ofdifferent printmaking studios
to be a printmaking assistant.
You know, I did thehard work, right?
But at the same time, while Ihad been in college, pursuing
my artistic endeavors, I hadalso at the same time been
trying to learn business.
And so I had taken a coupleof business classes, , which I
wasn't really impressed with.
(09:31):
And then I had also wound upworking in the administrative
end of higher education asa residence director and
basically a jumped up RA.
And if any of your listenershave ever lived on campus,
you'll know what that is.
That invariably led me down thepath towards conflict resolution
and reconciliation andentrepreneurship, because the
work that you do with studentsin a highly administrative
(09:53):
environment, the work that youdo with 18 and 19 year olds
really does involve leadership.
It involves team building.
It involves conflict, itinvolves managing a budget, it
involves making hard decisionsfinancially about what can
be done in a particular year.
And what can't.
It also involves listening to alot of wild, crazy, hair-brained
ideas and saying No to some ofthem saying Yes to others and
(10:17):
being in the gray area withmany of them and just seeing
if they are going to work.
And so all of the elementsof creativity that you
would think would be in thearts are also in the space
of working with students.
So over the long course ofyears, I wound up working at
the University of Minnesota.
And while working at theUniversity of Minnesota, I was
able to pursue, the degree withAbilene Christian University,
(10:38):
through a partnership there.
And pursued that degree, andliterally every day that I
showed up to, to work on thatdegree, I was experiencing
something similar in, inhigher education in my,
in my administrative work.
That invariably led me toentrepreneurship because after I
got done with higher education,once again, I was looking around
saying, How do I eat here?
(10:58):
And at the time I was married.
I had a few kids.
And, you know, they, theydo like to eat and they,
they do continue to grow.
And so you do have todo something, you gotta
live in the world.
And so, really looked aroundand I said, What are all the
skill sets that I have here?
And this is a critical questionfor your listeners as well.
When they're thinking abouttheir path, What are the
(11:20):
critical skills I have thatother people don't and that
they are willing to pay for?
Now, that's an importantintersection because we
all have skills that otherpeople don't have for sure.
We all have that.
But we all might not haveskills, that other people
don't have that other peopleare willing to pay for.
(11:40):
That's an important distinction.
And so we have torecognize that.
And we had to put, I had toput those, the intersection
of those two things together.
And then I thought, thisis my second thought,
Where can I go with this?
And what's the numberone place where people
spend most of their time?
And the number one people,number one place where
people spend most oftheir time is at work.
Jesse Butts (12:02):
I'm curious about the, the program itself.
, is it a bit of psychology,philosophy, political science,
like, like what were you readingand studying in that program?
Jesan Sorrells (12:12):
So there's three different tracks in the program.
There's a theological track.
There's a school track, whichI did not go down because
it's mostly K through 12.
There's a, a divorceand family track.
And so out of thosethree tracks, that was
the one that I picked.
I went down the divorceand family mediation track.
And so I learned alot about mediation.
I learned a lot about howpeople's emotions work
(12:34):
in the mediation space.
We studied a lot of, as youmentioned, psychology, , but
also a lot of philosophy.
A lot of thinking abouthow do you structure
the mediation table?
And what does an act ofmediation do for people?
Or what does itnot do for people?
Why do people in the UnitedStates maybe favor mediation a
little bit less, whereas peoplein Europe and in Australia
(12:57):
favor it a little bit more.
And by the way, there arefundamental differences in
the ways in which the culturesof Europe, the culture of
Australia differs in, in theface of mediation in comparison
to the culture of America.
And of course, welooked at the law.
Now that doesn't mean I read forthe law or that I'm a lawyer.
Don't get, don't get wrong.
I'm not, don't get it confused.
I'm not a lawyer.
And I do not giveout legal advice.
(13:18):
But we did learn how to readcertain pieces of the law.
And how to examine those inlight of what was happening
at the mediation table.
This allowed me to become aTexas state certified mediator,
which I am by virtue ofhaving my, my master's degree.
It also allowed me in variousother states in the union
(13:38):
to do mediation work at avery high level, higher than
a usual volunteer would be.
And most of the volunteersat community community
mediation centers are great.
It allowed me to do that workthat a much higher level than,
than what they were doing.
And it certified me to beable to train other mediators
in how to do this work.
Jesse Butts (13:57):
Were you planning on, maybe not a full career,
but were you planning to,to work in marriage, family
therapy services of some sort?
What did you end updoing right after that?
Jesan Sorrells (14:08):
Yes.
I was planning onworking in that space.
That was the initial, thatwas the initial thought.
And I found out very quicklythat people in America don't
really want to pay for that.
What we like in Americais we like litigation.
We enjoy, and we arestructurally and culturally
oriented towards litigation.
(14:29):
And that's not aknock on America.
That's just a, a state, , astatement of fact, you
know, about where we are.
We would prefer if we're in acar accident to sue somebody
or have our insurance companiessue each other, right?
Whereas if you're in a caraccident in Australia and I'm
sure your Australia listenerscan confirm this, you go
directly into mediation oryour insurance companies
(14:49):
go to mediation, right?
And here's the other dynamicthat almost no one talks
about, when you're dealing withdivorces, when you're dealing
with family mediations, you'reseeing other people's trauma.
And you're seeing it in avery raw, very real way.
You are seeing abuse.
You are seeing drug abuse,physical abuse, psychological
abuse, emotional abuse, and ofcourse, sexual abuse, sometimes.
(15:10):
You are experiencing anddealing with other people's...
not only other people'strauma, but the trauma of
people around the people whoare involved in the mediation.
Right?
So it's not just the twoparties who are involved.
It's also their kids.
It's also their neighbors.
It's also their in-laws.
It's, it's anybody whothe trauma touches.
Right?
After doing a few few,a few hundred hours of
(15:32):
practice mediations, youknow, I, I, I decided that
I didn't wanna bring thattrauma home to my children.
Right?
I wanted it to be a littlebit more removed from me.
I have known many mediatorsin my time who have gotten
divorced themselves after beingdivorce and family mediators.
And so I thought that'snot really something that
(15:52):
I want to go through,either unintentionally
or intentionally.
I don't wanna get caughtby someone else's trauma,
at least not at that level.
So switching over toworkplaces for me was very
easy because workplaces area place where we bring all
of this stuff, but we put asheen over it and we hide it.
And we put on a good show.
Now post COVID that's alittle bit different because
(16:14):
everything has collapsed.
All the boxes that we use touse to separate ourselves,
have all collapsed together.
But back then 10 yearsago now, , that was a
dynamic that I didn't, Ididn't want to deal with.
Jesse Butts (16:25):
So, you know, you did your few hundred hours and
you decided it wasn't for you.
What type of roles did youhave after that before you
ventured into entrepreneurship?
Jesan Sorrells (16:37):
Yep.
So I had stayed inhigher education.
And I had kind of, sortof advanced through there.
But I'd wound up moving alongfrom the work that I was doing
at the University of Minnesotato doing the same work at Ithaca
College, which is the othercollege in Ithaca, New York,
that is on the other hill.
So, I went there and wastasked with, with building
a program, for first yearstudents, which I did somewhat
(17:00):
successfully, I think.
I think the program'sstill going on there...
and built relationshipsand engaged with folks and
eventually through a wholeseries of somewhat unforeseen
events, which would take toolong to go into on this podcast,
but, you know, through a seriesof unforeseen events basically
quit that role, you know.
And I, and I didn't haveanything, on the horizon.
(17:22):
And so entrepreneurship lookedreally good because the area
that I was moving into wasan area where there weren't a
lot of opportunities for a guywith my particular skill sets,
coming in from the outside.
Jesse Butts (17:35):
So after you, you left that role and you
said entrepreneurship lookedlike one of the better things
on the horizon, did you havethis idea of leadership?
Where did you start?
What was your focus initially?
Jesan Sorrells (17:48):
Yeah.
So initially my focus was inconflict because I thought,
and I was, and, and I stillthink this today, conflict
gets you into everything, kindof like The Godfather, right?
The Godfather used to tell hissons, you know, If you become a
lawyer, you can steal more moneywith a briefcase than a gun.
Back in that old school movie.
And so the the, the flipon that is you can get into
(18:11):
everything if you're willingto go and engage with other
people's conflicts, even ifthey're conflicts at work.
Most people areafraid of conflict.
Most people are afraidof confrontation.
They confuse those two things.
They think that confrontationand conflict are the same thing.
And by the way, just asa side note, they're not.
Right?
Confrontation is justsaying, Jesse, you and I
(18:31):
are at a crossroads here,because there is some issue
about which we disagree.
That's all confrontation is.
It's saying thatthere's a disagreement.
It's recognizing thatthere's a problem, right?
Conflict is everything thathappens after that statement.
Whether you agree, whether Iagree, whether we disagree...
how does that path go?
What the escalationlooks like, what the
(18:53):
deescalation looks like.
How do we negotiate?
Do we bring in a third party?
Do we appeal to rulesand regulations?
All of those things comeafter confrontation.
Most people, however,don't recognize that
confrontation and conflicthave a gap in between them.
And most people can makeintentional decisions
inside of that gap andchoose to have a conflict.
Jesse Butts (19:17):
What did your, your first venture in
entrepreneurship look like?
Jesan Sorrells (19:21):
Yeah, the first venture entrepreneurship looked
like me literally pulling mygrad school syllabus, looking at
all the topics that were coveredon my grad school syllabus,
and saying to myself, Okay thattopic, I could take that topic
and turn it into a product.
And I think the topic was, justconflict, Conflict Management
101, something like that.
(19:41):
Because again, aroundthose, the intersection of
those two questions, whatskillsets do I have that
people will pay me for?
So I think people willpay me for conflict.
I'm gonna take a bet andmake ...and not take a bet,
I'm gonna make a bet, right?
People will pay me forresolving conflict or they'll
pay me for teaching themhow to resolve conflict.
Teach me how to fishor fish for the man.
Which one do you want to do?
Right.
And so I was gonna do acombination of both of those.
(20:04):
And so I started out as justa, a jumped up trainer.
Right.
A jumped up consultant.
And running around.
And literally I wasrunning around going to
networking events, doingspeaking engagements for
free back in the day.
This was 2013, 2012, 2013.
Podcasting was not thething that it is now.
Although if it had been, Iwould've gone on podcasts.
A lot of self-promotion.
(20:25):
I wrote a lot of blogposts, back in 2013.
To date, I think I've writtenclose to 500 blog posts around
conflict leadership, dealingwith difficult people, dealing
with dysfunctional behavior,confrontation, all these
...entrepreneurship, marketing,all these kinds of areas.
Right?
And I built a plan forhow to market myself
fairly aggressively.
(20:46):
And I will say this, you know, Iblogged for nine months straight
into the void and distributedthat on LinkedIn and thought
no one was looking at it.
And then did find out thatsomeone was looking at it and
they gave me my first big break.
And I wound up working, workingwith them in partnership
with our, our local communitycollege in the area that
I was in at the time.
Wound up getting into apartnership with them where
(21:08):
they basically sourced leadsfor me, sent them to me.
And then I went outand did the work.
And then after that,the business exploded.
Jesse Butts (21:15):
So, so the first product was essentially
you, you and your services.
I mean, you were doing the,the, the blog posts and the
appearances in hopes thatpeople would contract with
you to help their organizationunderstand and solve and
remediate some type of conflict.
Is...
Jesan Sorrells (21:32):
correct.
Yeah.
Oh Yeah.
absolutely.
Yep.
Jesse Butts (21:35):
How long were you a solo consultant before
building a, I'm not surehow to phrase this, but
a product that wasn't...
Jesan Sorrells (21:45):
Me?
Jesse Butts (21:45):
You, yeah, yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (21:48):
Yeah , that's a great question.
And so I did, I did everythingbackwards, so from 2013 to
about 2016, 2017, , you know,I was solo, I had people
come to work with me onprojects, things like that.
And, and as, as we were goingalong, or as I was going along,
(22:10):
the training content becamea product in and of itself.
I began to see that themanuals that I was developing
and the approaches thatI was developing were a
product in and of themselves,which is great, except
it's a product that reallystill focuses around Jesan
showing up and being Jesan.
And I thought, Well, okay,that doesn't scale, but I don't
(22:32):
know how to crack that nut.
So maybe I need toget more people.
And so from about 2016, 2017to right here on the right
on the back end of COVID.
So 2020, we built a crew.
And so, you know, wound uphaving 25 people working for me.
And we began to developmore solid product
based thinking, right?
(22:53):
And so our thinking beganto shift away from services
and towards products.
This is where we began todevelop the Leading Keys
platform, which we currentlyhave at LeadingKeys.com,
which is an asynchronousplatform that's a subscription
as a service, a SaaSproduct basically, that we
developed over the courseof time, initially targeting
towards long term care, thelong term care industry.
(23:14):
And now it's targeted muchmore towards a general market.
And then after that, righton the heels of that, we
began to put our trainingcontent together and we
developed what we call nowThe Leadership Toolbox,
which you can check thatout at LeadershipToolbox.us.
It took me a long time tofigure that out, and to figure
out how to do that and how toarchitect all of that together.
(23:34):
And the biggest challengewas figuring out how to talk
about the architecture of thatbecause I'm inside the journey.
So it makes sense to me, butanybody outside the journey,
it may not make sense to them.
Over the course of time, wealso took some of the training
content, the insights, theblog posts, the ideas, and we
began to put together books.
So the first book wasMarketing for Peace Builders,
(23:54):
How to Market Your Valueto a World in Conflict.
That book was incrediblyniche and self-published,
incredibly niche.
That was, it was my firstself-published venture.
I'd never done anythinglike that before.
I didn't even know ifit was going to sell.
And it sold in the mediationworld like hot cakes.
As a matter of fact, itstill sells a couple of
different copies everymonth, you know, still, still
floating around out there.
And then my second bookcame out, My Boss Doesn't
(24:16):
Care, and got a littlebit better in production.
We hired a graphics,hire graphic designers.
We worked with,professional editors.
We worked with copy editors,developmental editors.
We began to mold together theunderlying again, architecture
for having a publishing company.
And then on the other sideof COVID, we relaunched
as a publishing company.
And so, we publishedtraining content.
(24:37):
We published our books.
We work with authors onrefining their scripts and
refining their content.
And of course we still dotraining and development
work, but it is inside of thatleadership toolbox construct.
And so the LeadershipToolbox product is the
product that we sell.
The Leading Keysplatform is the, is the
product that we sell.
Jesse Butts (24:55):
And just to clarify with your, your
publishing company, are youseeking authors or are authors
who have a specialty in theleadership space coming to you?
Just, just kind of curious.
I mean, cause it sounds likethe majority is, is content that
you and your team are producing.
I'm just kind of curious aboutwhat else you're publishing.
Jesan Sorrells (25:14):
Yeah, we have authors that are coming to us.
We also have organizationsthat want to work with us.
And so that's an untapped marketwhere organizations have content
that they would like to haveeither edited, or published
internally to their own folks,or even facilitated to their
own, to their own people.
And so we have a coupleof, we have a couple of
clients that we're doingthat work for right now.
(25:35):
And so there's some definitespace there, particularly as
you think of brands that aremoving in the direction of
having their own podcasts anddoing their own and, and I
mean, brands have been doinginternal blog posting for years.
For a long, long time.
But how do youbring that together?
How do you create PDF content?
How do you createeB ook content?
How do you unite thatwith podcast content
(25:57):
and who produces that?
And so that's a lot of workthat can be outsourced.
And we're the service thatcan take that on and does
take that on for clients.
Jesse Butts (26:08):
You've, You've described yourself as an
entrepreneur and you're,you're starting new businesses
and, and things like that.
To you, what is the differencebetween a business owner
and an entrepreneur?
Thinking of listeners who, whomight think about going on their
own and, you know, the, the kindof different paths that they
could consider, entrepreneurshipversus business owner.
Jesan Sorrells (26:31):
Depending upon what I am doing on
any given day, I'm in oneof three roles, right?
And I could even shiftroles during the day.
So there are some projectsI work on during the day
where I am a freelancer.
I'm doing work, I'mgetting paid the money.
Done.
Right?
That's freelance work, right?
That kind of work doesn't scale.
(26:52):
I don't wanna frame it as smallpotatoes cause every project
matters, but it's projects thatI care about that are personal
or that are passionate to me.
Those are typicallyfreelance projects.
That makes me a freelancer.
Then there are projectsthat can scale.
So anytime I work on abook, anytime I'm working
on a book with a team or acrew, anytime I'm working
(27:12):
on publishing a piece ofinternal content for a client.
That's entrepreneurship, right?
Because that's a productthat can scale, right?
And so your listeners shouldthink of entrepreneurship
in terms of, We aregrowing a particular thing.
Right?
We're growing a book orwe're growing an audience
or we're growing a communityor we're growing a platform.
Leading keys is anentrepreneurial product.
(27:34):
Leadership toolbox is anentrepreneurial product.
The books are entrepreneurialproducts, right?
When you look at a product,you can think of 10,000
more ideas that go alongwith that particular thing.
That makes you an entrepreneur.
A business owner, however,and I can be a business
owner during the day too.
A business owner is inthat third space where they
are looking at the overallscaling of the business
(27:59):
as an entity, right?
They're working on the business,not necessarily in the business.
Right?
So working on the businessmeans figuring out what are
the processes and proceduresthat need to be improved?
What are the gaps orholes in our strategy?
Who needs help on our team, andhow do we increase our team?
(28:20):
What does the actual visionand mission, goals and values
look like of this organization?
That's what a smallbusiness owner does.
Right?
Now don't get me wrong, veryoften a small business owner
will work in the business.
The challenge with beinga small business owner is
knowing the line betweenworking in the business and
working on the business.
(28:40):
And being able to walkthat line very carefully.
And I'm gonna go back to thisword again, intentionally.
Jesse Butts (28:47):
What do you enjoy most about your work?
Jesan Sorrells (28:49):
What I enjoy most about my work
is the fact that I getto get up every morning
and do things like havingthis podcast conversation.
Every day I get up is somethingdifferent, something new,
something engaging and exciting.
I'm also fairly, I'm gonnause a, a broad word here.
I'm also fairly parapatetic.
So I have wandering interestsand I've built a model of
(29:11):
work, a model of making animpact in the world where I
can dump all those interestsin that, in that bucket.
And I can shake it andthen something will fall
out that will get me paid.
Now there's many things I'vedumped in that bucket that
don't get me paid at all.
And there's some things I'vedumped in that bucket that
are just wild and crazy.
For example, some of yourlisteners may be familiar
with the actor William Shatnerfamously enough on Star Trek.
Jesse Butts (29:34):
I, I would guess so.
Yeah.
Jesan Sorrells (29:36):
Some of them may be, I, I don't know.
I don't know who watchesTV or who doesn't.
I'm a big fan of WilliamShatner's spoken word albums.
I think they're hilarious.
I think they're great.
And I would love to doa spoken word album.
And so I have a projectthat I'm working on with
some friends of mine.
That's inside thebucket of this work.
And I spend a couplehours a week moving
that project forward.
That's anentrepreneurial project.
(29:57):
Cause at the end of it, there'sgoing to be a product that
can then be sold in a bunchof other different places.
And eventually I'm gonnahave a spoken word album and
my wife thinks I'm crazy.
My kids roll their eyes.
And it's something thatI've been wanting to work
on for quite some time.
Jesse Butts (30:10):
I'm sure.
When I was a kid, Ihad heard of like...
Rocket Man washis first big one?
Yeah.
I actually remember kind ofdiscovering it in reverse.
It was, he was on like aBen Fold's side project
Jesan Sorrells (30:24):
Yes.
Jesse Butts (30:24):
and, I can't I can't remember the,
I think it was maybeone or two tracks on...
Fear of Pop?
I think was the, the album.
So I, I discovered him then,then I kind of discovered that,
oh, He'd done this, you know,half a dozen times before this.
I was...
you know, it's interestinghow we discover those things,
but yeah, I, I found thosepretty entertaining too.
Jesan Sorrells (30:43):
I, I love, his version of Common People.
And I, I listened to a lotof that stuff in college
with my buddies and weall thought it was, you
know, hilariously funny.
And at the same time,there's a little seed
that was planted there.
Sort of of, Hey, you know,if you build a structure,
you could maybe do this too.
And that's, that'swhat entrepreneurship
allows you to do.
(31:04):
It allows you to build astructure that again, you
can dump a bunch of differentthings in, and then you
can do some exciting stuff.
Jesse Butts (31:10):
We've talked pretty extensively about how,
when you started your business,you went back to your, you
know, master's syllabus andhow so much of what you see
in the business world relatesto the conflict resolution and
reconciliation and leadership.
I'm curious, are there anyother skills that you picked
up in grad school or workingin higher ed that we, we
(31:33):
might not have discussed yetthat have helped you in your
life as an entrepreneur?
Jesan Sorrells (31:38):
Yes, so, and this is a big one.
And it's one thatgets overlooked.
It's the skillset of caring.
C A R I N G.
Caring.
Caring.
One of the challengesthat we have in our world
today is that there's alot of talk about empathy.
And we've, we, we've raisedat least the conversation
around empathy to itshighest possible form.
(32:00):
But if you go out and dealwith real people in the real
world, you find out thatthere's actually two different
kinds of empathy floatingaround in the world today.
There's empathy you see inmarketing, where empathy is
marketed to us as a way to sellproducts or goods or to get us
to care about a social cause.
And then there's theempathy that you actually
(32:22):
have in your real life.
Most of the empathy thatpeople have in their real
lives, most of the empathythat leaders have in their real
lives is very narrowcasted.
It is to family,it's to friends.
It might be to peoplethat they work with or
that they are leading, butvery often they're not...
Leaders, particularlypositional leaders, , managers
and supervisors usually maynot feel as though they are
(32:45):
paid to be empathetic becauseemotional labor is hard.
It's hard to care.
It's hard to care about youremployees when you may not
have liked them from the jump.
It's hard to care aboutyour employees when you're
stressed or you're burned out.
And no one seems tobe caring about you.
(33:07):
It's hard to care about youremployees when change, like
what we're going throughright now with COVID seems
to be hitting you left andright, and you are asked, and
you're being demanded, to bereactive rather than proactive.
And so what I learnedin higher education was
that you have to care.
(33:28):
You have to make yourself care.
And it's not in terms of,I'm gonna hold your hand
or I'm gonna give you a hugor you're gonna come over
to my house for a barbecue.
What we talk about very often,and what I've talked about
for years is this conceptof hard headed empathy.
And it's making a hard headedintellectual decision to care.
No emotion involved.
(33:48):
You don't have to involve youremotions if you don't want to.
Just decide to care.
Today, I'm going careabout that employee who's
gonna talk about that thingthat I don't care about.
I'm just gonna care.
And here's howI'm going to care.
I'm gonna actuallylisten to that person.
Jesse Butts (34:00):
Would you say you love what you do?
Jesan Sorrells (34:02):
Absolutely.
If I didn't love it, I wouldbe doing something else.
Are there days when Iwake up and it's hard?
Yes, for sure.
Do I like all those days?
No, I don't.
But overall, or I'vebeen doing this work
for almost 10 years now.
, I wouldn't do anything else.
I put, I put, I've put in myMalcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours.
(34:25):
I, I don't think I'm capableof doing anything else.
I don't think I would be agood employee at this point.
And that's not becauseI couldn't follow the
directions or do the, do thethings that are required.
It's because I know somethingfundamental that Seth Godin said
many years ago, the marketerand writer Seth Godin, said
many years ago, If you have onemore dollar in your checking
(34:46):
account as an entrepreneur onthe day that you end your work
and you earned that dollar,then no one gets to tell you
that you can't play againtomorrow . And you've lived long
enough to play the game again.
Jesse Butts (34:58):
Using one of the words that I'm sure,
if I ran an analysis hasprobably been said, one of the
most times in this podcast,was there an intentional
decision in your life thatyou had to love your work?
That you had to dosomething that you loved?
Jesan Sorrells (35:12):
Yes.
There have been many momentswhere I've had to decide.
The most recentmoment was with COVID.
March of 2020 our businesswas shut down as being not
,was deemed non-essentialby the state of New
York, and was shut down.
At that point around 90% ofour clients abandoned us.
We, we saw a massive revenuedrop, right, within two weeks.
(35:34):
And I remember driving in mycar down the road to file some
piece of paperwork somewherethat didn't really matter.
And I just remember yelling inmy car and hitting the roof of
the inside of my car and saying,No, this is not how this ends.
We're not stopping here.
I haven't done all thethings that I need to do yet.
And this is the vehicle thatI'm going to do them in.
(35:56):
Not literally my vehicle,but like the, the business
is the vehicle that I'mgoing to do them in.
And I do.
I remember driving down theroad, just hitting the roof of
my car, just yelling in my car.
Making intentional decisionsisn't always pretty.
People have this idea thatsomehow it'll be beautiful
and very intellectual.
No, there's, sometimesthere's emotion involved
in it and it's visceral.
But it's a visceraldecision that still is at
(36:18):
the front of our brains.
We're still activelythinking about it.
And by the way, what that meansis we're also still responsible
for the outcomes that come aboutbecause of those decisions.
And we have to be okaywith that as a leader, too.
We have to be okay withthat as followers too.
We very rarely talkabout responsibilities.
And too often wetalk about rights.
(36:39):
And so the responsibilities ofintentional leadership mean that
when you make the decision, asI did in the car, driving down
the road in March of 2020,when you make the decision to
just say No, and just continuegoing, regardless of how
bad it will be, you are alsosaying Yes to whatever those
consequences are going to be.
(36:59):
And you have to be willing toadmit to that and be willing
to be okay with that, tobe an intentional leader.
Jesse Butts (37:07):
How do you describe your relationship to work?
Or, or maybe said a bit,a little bit differently,
how large of a roledoes in your life?
Jesan Sorrells (37:16):
I have worked very hard to put it
in its appropriate space.
To put it in itsappropriate box.
Right?
So I work from home.
Right?
Now we have employeesall across the country.
Matter of fact, we justrecently onboarded a new person.
She's in Kentucky, but werecently onboarded a new
person, which is great.
But we have employees allover the country, but I work
(37:38):
out of my home in Texas.
And so, you know, I come tomy office in the morning, I
work, you know, a regularday, you know, eight to four
or eight to five or whatever.
And then I leave.
And the work staysin the office.
Right?
But I've been very intentionalabout that because I'm a person
who can work all the time.
It doesn't bother me.
(37:59):
There's always morework to be done.
There's always anotherproject to be taken on.
There's always a newchallenge to face.
And so to put boundariesaround that means now I can
do other stuff with my family.
Now I can, take upother hobbies, right?
And have other interests.
It means that I havethe space to go and do
things that I enjoy.
(38:19):
Or go and do things for otherpeople that they might want me
to do for them, that they enjoy.
I have the time to havefriends, so work stays
in its, in its box.
And again, it's somethingwhere I've had to be
intentional about that.
For other folks whoare listening, your
mileage may vary.
You know, but I willsay this, I have advised
entrepreneurs before.
And one of the key questionsI ask them is, How good
(38:40):
is your relationshipwith your significant
other or your partner?
Do they understand that youare probably going to in the
first couple of years of thisdevote 80 to a hundred hours
a week of your life to this?
Do they understand that?
Because if they're not on board,if that's a negotiation you
haven't had yet, stop your ideaand go have that negotiation.
Now, fortunately I marrieda woman who, , whose family
(39:01):
was in business for twoor three generations.
She understandshow business works.
She's owned her own business.
You know, and did, did, did thatkind of work in her own area.
So she kind of understoodthat already, but most people
who haven't, who are, who arefocused on work as a thing
that I do for an organizationand then I collect the
check and go home, that'sa different mindset shift.
(39:23):
It's different between anemployee mindset and an
entrepreneur mindset, right?
And it's not bad.
It's just different.
Right?
It's a differentkind of mindset.
An employee puts work ina box, whereas an employee
has, an entrepreneur,sorry, has to construct
the box around the work andhas to keep it contained.
Jesse Butts (39:39):
I, I know You, you mentioned earlier,
What can you do that noone else can that people wi
ll be willing to pay for?
as kind of a central question,if not the central question.
I'm curious if there's anythingelse you would add to that?
Jesan Sorrells (39:52):
Well, step number one, or step number one,
if you're gonna pull out a pieceof paper, so you're gonna whip
out a piece of paper, right?
And you're gonnawrite this down.
You're gonna write down allthe things you know that
other people don't know.
That's hugely important.
Most of us underestimate whatwe know and we overestimate
what other people or whatwe think other people know.
One of the things that this workhas taught me is that there is
(40:14):
a vast wealth of things thatI know a ton of things about,
but there's also a vast wealthof things that other people
know a ton of things about thatI don't know anything about.
Right?
So in the era that we livein, where what we know can
then create a service ora product, because that's
where our skill sets lie.
We've gotta writethose things down.
(40:35):
All the experiences thatyou've had from, you know,
when you were in high school,and you thought it didn't
matter all the way to whateverpoint it as you're at now.
Write those things down.
Step number two, go and talk,not to family and friends,
but go and talk to strangers.
Talk to people who have no skinin your game, who will give you
honest feedback about whatever'son that list, who will say
(40:56):
Yes, I would pay for that.
Or, No, I wouldn't pay for that.
What I learned after having moreof those types of conversations
is how to market myself.
Yes.
How to frame the architectureof what it was I was doing
in a different kind of way.
But I also learned thatsometimes for some people,
it just won't work.
And those are notyour customers.
(41:19):
Those are not your clients.
And that is OK.
Sometimes you have to govery far afield to find your
customers and your clients.
And that's okay too.
And then the third thing is,How long do you want to do this?
Look?
99% of all business projectsfail in the first year.
They fail becausepeople run out of money?
Yes, that's usually primarilythe, the answer that's given,
(41:43):
you know, I ran out moneyand I had to go back to work.
But that's not the real answer.
The real answer isyou ran out of will.
You ran out of persistence.
You ran out of familysupport from your significant
other or from your family.
You ran out of ideas forhow to market yourself.
You ran out of courage toask other people for help.
You ran out of all ofthose intangible things.
(42:05):
The money, and I don'twanna be flip here, however
money is not your biggestproblem as an entrepreneur.
It's not your biggest problemif you're in grad school or
out of grad school, askingyourself, How do I want
to go and where do I...
money is not yourbiggest problem.
You think it is, but it'snot your biggest problem.
All of those other intangiblethings weigh far more into
(42:26):
the equation than money does.
Jesse Butts (42:28):
This has been a really, really wonderful
conversation, Jesan.
If you'd like to share where,where people can find your
resources, particularly ifanyone, you know, is kind
of thinking about somethingin leadership or something
entrepreneurship, anythingthat you're doing in
those areas would be greatto, to hear a little bit
more about as we wrap up.
Jesan Sorrells (42:46):
Absolutely.
Well, first off, thankyou Jesse, for having
me on The Work Seminar.
I appreciate you offeringme a space on your platform.
And I wanna encourage you tokeep going forward and doing the
work that you are doing and tokeep persisting, because we need
more folks like you, you know,doing this work in this space.
So thank you.
(43:07):
As far as places wherepeople can find me.
So you can of coursefind me on LinkedIn.
You can go search myname, Jesan Sorrells.
I'm, I'm there.
I'm also on Facebook andI'm on Instagram, you can
find me there, both ourpersonal profiles and you
can find the HSCT publishingprofiles everywhere
all over the internet.
You can direct message me againon LinkedIn or on Facebook
(43:27):
or on Instagram, reach out tome and mention that you heard
me here on The Work Seminarpodcast with Jesse Butts.
If you would like to find outmore about how The Leadership
Toolbox can help people in yourorganization become better,
or if you'd like to just takeadvantage of some of those
webinars, you could check usout at TheLeadershipToolbox.us.
You can also check outour leading keys platform.
(43:49):
Check that out atLeadingKeys.com.
If you'd like to pick up a copyof my newest book, 12 Rules
for Leaders, the Foundationof Intentional Leadership,
co-written with contributionsfrom Bradley Madigan, it's,
it's available everywhere.
Finally, the podcast.
The podcast and the book arereally the easiest accessible
ways to get ahold of me.
If you don't have a wholelot of money or you want to
(44:12):
get something like coachingfor me without paying
my full coaching rate.
And so you're gonna wanna checkout the Leadership Lessons
from the Great Books podcast.
We're on all the majorpodcast platforms.
Jesse Butts (44:22):
All right.
Well, thank youagain for joining us.
This was really,really a treat, Jesan.
Jesan Sorrells (44:26):
Thank you, Jesse, for having me on.
I appreciate it.
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