Episode Overview:
In this episode of The Fortified Life Podcast, host Jason Davis sits down with Dr. Johnny Walker, a dynamic leader dedicated to transforming individuals and organizations through character-driven leadership.
As an Executive Coach, Corporate Facilitator, and the Founder & President of Character Inc., Dr. Walker shares his insights on personal growth, leadership development, and the power of integrity in professional and personal success.
Key Takeaways:
✅ The role of character in effective leadership
✅ Strategies to develop resilience and mental fortitude
✅ How faith and purpose drive personal and professional growth
✅ Practical steps to lead with authenticity and impact
Why You Should Tune In:Dr. Walker brings years of experience in coaching leaders to operate at their highest potential. Whether you're a business professional, entrepreneur, or ministry leader, this episode will provide actionable wisdom to help you fortify your leadership and life.🎧 Listen On: all digital platforms
📅 Release Date: 01/29/2025
💬 Join the conversation using #FortifiedLifePodcastTune in and get ready to be inspired to lead with purpose, passion, and unwavering character!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome to the Fortified Life Podcast, where we learn how
to develop a dependency on Jesus in the marketplace. From
the boardroom to the bathroom. God is with you. Here's
our host, author, speaker, teacher, encourager, spiritue, coach, and my husband.
It's the man they call mister forty five Jason Davis.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hey, what's going on? Everybody? Welcome back to another episode
of the Fortified Life podcast where we talk about building
a dependency on Jesus in the marketplace. I'm your host,
Jason Davis aka mister Fortifi. Every week we have the
opportunity to bring on coaches, authors, speakers, trainers and influencers,
(01:00):
all those who are also passionate about putting God back
in business and folks. This week it is no different.
I'm very excited because our guest this week is a
man of wisdom and he certainly is a mentor of mine.
Before I bring him on, let me introduce him to you.
(01:21):
Doctor Johnny Walker is a master facilitator, speaker, trainer, author,
and the president of Character Incorporated, a global behavior change
firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, with offices in Los Angeles, Trinidad,
and Dubai. Johnny received his undergraduate degree from Sanford University,
(01:41):
double majoring in religion and sociology. He earned his master's
degree and agency counseling from the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
Before entering Corporate America, Johnny spent over fifteen years in
law enforcement in Alabama with two different agencies. During this time,
he developed two divisions in the police department, led a
(02:04):
drug team, and served as the SWAT team's hostage negotiator.
While in law enforcement, it gets better, Ladies and gentlemen,
he is a bi vocational minister and ran a counseling
practice focused on assisting youth and families. He's worked with
a ton of fortune, five hundred companies, Coca Cola, Yamaha, Delta,
(02:26):
Johnson and Johnson, and a host of others. But, ladies
and gentlemen, please welcome to the Fortified Life Johnny Walker, Johnny,
what is going on?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hey? Thanks for being here. You know, when people read
my bio, I always think I want to meet that guy.
Oh that's a lot of stuff, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, that's actually a great place to start, Johnny, certainly
when I read it. But I know listeners, as you're
listening to that, you're like, man, I heard at least
three or four things which singularly in its own track,
has its own backstory. But just give us a little rundown,
Johnny professionally. I know we heard it in the bio,
(03:06):
but people don't know the connective tissue that God used
the weave all those together. So give us the backstory.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I think that's a great way to explain it. I
often tell young people, and I've done counseling and coaching
with young people, teenagers and college students for good Night,
I'll be fifty six soon and that's thirty seven years crazy.
And I always tell them, you know, don't worry about
when you're entering into college because everyone likes to ask you,
(03:35):
what are you going to be? What are you going
to be? You know, I don't know what I want
to be when I grow up. Obviously from my resume
it looks like that I know what God has me
doing today. But I went to Sandford to prepare for ministry.
God called me in the ministry when I was sixteen.
He literally told me to go to Sanford University. I
had to go look it up. I didn't know it existed,
and so as I'm there here, I am preparing for ministry,
(04:01):
and suddenly I realize, you know, after I graduate, before
I graduated, you know, people are like, hey, come be
our youth minister. Hey can be a pastor of our
small church. But because I didn't immediately go to seminary,
this is in the eighties, are graduated nineteen ninety from Sandford,
suddenly no one would hire me, no one even would
entertain my resume. And so, you know, I just continued
(04:23):
seeking God on this, and I finally said God, I've
done all I can the church way. I'm just going
to do what I want to do for a job,
and if it's the wrong one, shut the door. And
I don't remember signing up for the police Officer exam.
I actually remember being down there, but I remember someone
(04:43):
telling me to go do it. I just remember a
small bit of my memory of signing up for it
months and months and months before this prayer. The next day,
I get a postcard in the mail and it says,
you know, your police officer exam is tomorrow. I looked
at the date. It had been lost in the mail
for two months.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And so I go down there. I do great on
it I get on the list, I end up, you know,
becoming a police officer. And a lot of people kept
asking me, especially my buddies from Sanford, Sanford itself, when
you're going to go into full time ministry, And you know,
at first I felt bad because I was believing the
lie that I wasn't in ministry. And this is before
(05:26):
marketplace ministry really became a thing. And God showed me
through this time. And there were times I was by vocation,
was a youth minister out of counseling practice at one point,
and I was doing all three of those. That was
really burning the candle at three ends. But at some
point God showed me that I was in ministry. And
when people would ask me that, I would say, you know,
how many battered women did you minister to today? How
(05:49):
many drug addicts or drug dealers have you ministered to today?
And they would just look at me and I'd say,
please stop judging my ministry. I'm not judging yours. I'm
not demanding that you're ment be mine, be like mine.
You can stand behind a pulpit and preach, and that's
a wonderful thing, but just because I'm not doing that
every single week doesn't mean I'm not in ministry. And
so really God started changing this mindset in me that
(06:12):
ministry is just simply meeting needs and God is going
to place you wherever He has you. And so as
I was going through all this, I was working three
jobs and basically was going backwards about five grand a year,
and my wife stayed home. She homeschooled the kids. We
have four children right now. They're ages thirty one to nineteen,
(06:32):
so there's big, you know, a lot big gap between
them and I had to do something different with my talents.
And one of the great things that the second Police
Department in pel City, Alabama did for me. It was
one lower pay that wasn't great but from where I
was before, but they gave me opportunity to develop a
couple of divisions of the police department, developed their standard
operating procedures, work with you know, the school board, work
(06:55):
with the city council, and do a lot of these
different things. Gave me no opportunity to run a drug
team and come up with unique and innovative ways to
engage in that, and that was very successful. And so
what I learned about myself and what God taught me
was I have some really unique skills that he has
given me. And UH and so then as we were
(07:16):
looking at you know, we've got to do something. We
can't keep refinancing the house every four years. That the
you know, even though we built it and we had
a lot of equity in it at the time, we
couldn't keep doing that. There was a there was a
time limit on that. And so I started looking to
use my talents and abilities in the marketplace while still
staying in ministry. So I moved my counseling practice to Atlanta, Marietta, Georgia,
(07:41):
northwest Atlanta and UH and started working there on the weekends,
kept working in my counseling practice in Alabama during the
week kept police and looking for a job in Atlanta,
and found one and and his sales and so I
moved everything over and UH and so from there I
was very, very successful using my dad was partnering with
(08:02):
Integrity Solutions. Taught me integrity selling, values based selling. Knocked
it out of the park with that. After five and
a half years, a startup grabbed me and paid me
good money to work with them, and I built another
sales funnel for them. They sold that company out from
underneath me, and I thought, you know, God has enabled
me to develop multimillion dollar sales funnels. I don't need
(08:24):
a million dollars. I'm going to start my own company.
And what happened was I started a coaching company. Within weeks.
My father had an accident on his bicycle, ended up
in ICU, and his short term memory was a little
bit jarred when he got out and he's okay, and
he's still alive today and doing well. But he called
(08:44):
me and he said, We've always talked about working together,
and maybe God had all of this happen all at
the same time, with you starting your own company, and
this happening to me that we could work together. And
so I went home and my wife said, what did
your dad want? And I said, well, he wants me
to go in the training business with him. And she said, well,
(09:05):
what are you going to do? And I said, I
don't want to be a trainer. I want to help people,
and she goes, but what are you going to do?
I said, well, he needs the help. I'm going to
do that. So I went to the first facilitator certification
with Integrity Solutions, and my wife and I were talking
after the second day, and she says, well, how's it going.
I said, this is what we're doing. This is basically
(09:25):
coaching to groups, and I can impact so many more
people with a values based process, and then I could
one on one and so from there, you know, I've
partnered with them so that I'm not an employee. I
started developing. I had to have my own company, and
I started developing my own programs Foundational Core Values, Coaching
for Impact, Serving for Impact, and some others. And we
(09:49):
still sell and facilitate theirs, but it's just kind of grown,
and I do some content creation for them, and God
just continues to show me how to use my talents
and abilities differently to impact more more people.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Wow, that that is so That is so good, Johnny.
Just the tapestry that God weaves together and in all
our lives. You know, Johnny, you mentioned something because, as
we know here in the show, Ladies and Gentlemen, you know,
the personal bleeds into the professional and vice versa. You
mentioned something that I think a lot of people either
(10:24):
find themselves in or or maybe they actively choose to
do it. And you mentioned burning the candle from opposite ends,
and for you it was three different up in the
middle too. How did you even how does one even
go about navigating that, Johnny, Because I feel like, you know,
we've got the gig economy now and everything is, you know,
(10:48):
multiple streams of income, and so how does how does
one even go about navigating that?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
That's a great question. So before my dad was in
the people training business for selling service and things like that,
he was in training for time management. So I grew
up in a lot of this, and and I was
very blessed to have an amazing father and mother. I
actually shared a counseling office with my mother for years,
got to work with both of my parents. It was
(11:17):
very unique. But my father taught me time management, and
that really was that's the key in balancing your family.
I was policing in the town I worked in, and
so we had a great department. So on Saturday when
I was working, you know, we would take turns watching
each other's beats, take lunch so you could watch your
kid play baseball, that kind of thing. And but the
(11:41):
time management piece is key. I think sometimes and a
lot of people just aren't willing to do the work
it takes to get to that next level. I mean,
often people say professionals do what other people aren't willing
to do. And so I was always reading, I was
always studying something different. I mean, there was a time
(12:04):
where I went back to get my master's degree. I
quit one of my three jobs, you know, one of
my I quit one of the part time jobs and
made going back to school that I went one in
two classes at a time and paid for cash and
so not to get into debt. And it took time
to do that. But you have to be really, you
have to have the vision. You have to know exactly
what you know the next step you're gonna do. You're
(12:26):
not gonna have the complete vision. God doesn't do that.
It would be nice, you know that. Oh I see
it all and I know everything. I know the next
ten steps. God basically gives you a flashlight, that doesn't
you know, one of those little pee wee flashlights that
you can see just enough in front of you to
trust him to take the next step. But you have
to take those steps, and you don't see often you
(12:46):
don't see what is way down there. But that's good too,
because if you saw the scary monsters that were down there,
you'd run. Yeah, but you know that scary monster, you know,
is is further down the path and we're God's going
to take you. You're going to deviate around it, and
so it's good that we don't see at all. But
you know, sometimes you have to burn the candle at
(13:09):
both ends. But you need to balance it with your family.
You need to make sure that you know, spouses are
on board. And you know, I made sure the whole
goal was for my wife to stay home with the kids,
to homeschool the children. Anytime I was at home, the
whole family was there. We could go on vacation anytime
we wanted to because of homeschooling when they were younger,
(13:29):
and so my schedule became the family schedule, and so
it was really a lot of partnership with my wife,
a lot of sacrifice on her end as well. But
it really does boil down to time management and now
a cell phones, you know, having your calendar there. My
dad calls it time activating. You don't just have an
(13:49):
idea of what you're going to do. You look at it,
is this what have to be done today? If it does,
you put it in your calendar. You time activate it.
It doesn't need to be done today. You can put
it in your calendar for time the next day. But
a lot of time management, a lot of collaboration with
my wife and trusting God on the next steps and
the where I am today. I never would have thought
(14:11):
the path that I ended up taking was the path.
And so you have to trust that God is not
crazy in that, because, I mean, let's be honest, we
think that He is sometimes like that. I don't think
this is it. And so trusting God and that my
way is crazy, his way is not. His way is
(14:32):
always true, and He will take us through some very
painful things because we learn more through those. In fact,
we learn faster through those. So stop expecting that everything
is going to be you know, rainbows and unicorns and
everything's going to be wonderful, and you know, tiptoeing through
the tulips. It's not that. And so when you're going
through the rough times, and the biggest one is sticking
(14:53):
with your values, knowing your foundational core values, knowing who
you are. And I I believe those are part of
God's image on humanity. And when we become Christians we
get the complete image of God, the fruit of the Spirit.
All those are values, but these are our guardrails for
how to engage the world. And so no matter if
you're angry, frustrated, you follow these so that how you're
(15:16):
handling this bad situation, your emotions don't make it worse.
And so when I followed my values, things weren't perfect,
but they were better. When I followed my emotions, things
fell apart drastically, And that my story has a lot
of falling apart in it, which is it's not fun
(15:37):
to talk about, but we all have it. And so
you're gonna make mistakes. They're not failures as long as
you learn from them. So you just got to keep going.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Absolutely, folks, I told you he was a man of wisdom. Johnny,
you started.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Wisdom. We just get to share it. But thank you, true.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Johnny. You were kind of laying little sea throughout and
talking about your professional experience in your opinion, and you
probably have many that you can think of, but what
was probably a major turning point in your life for
you that really shaped everything family, personal, professional, and was
(16:21):
really like you can go back and mark, you know,
they say X marks the spot, and even if you've
got a dozen of them, was there maybe one or
two that was like Wow, when I think about it
and what God did. Everything changed after that.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, So my dad was in Birmingham with a client.
He called me and I was working at this police
department and this is probably two thousand and six winter early,
you know, February something like that, and he calls me
to do dinner. I said, come to the house. He goes,
I don't have time. I got to get home, but
meet me on the highway. So I met him on
the highway and he asked me how things were going,
(16:56):
and I was complaining great, great, great, great great. But
I didn't like this. I didn't like that. You know,
the captain had just rearranged my schedule and I didn't
like that. And my dad looked at me and he said,
you know, you would be great at doing what I do.
I've said this to you for years. You'd be amazing
at it, he said, But you know, you would need
to get your own stories, and you know, go out
and take some risks and practice these principles and this
(17:18):
and that. And then he said, and I'm going to
back up a second, but he said, when I when
you were in high school, I made and he gives
me this number. Now, when I was in high school,
and I asked my dad how much money he made.
He was from the generation of Nunya nonya business, that's
the you know, and so he would never tell me.
So I just assumed because we weren't extravagant. We had
(17:41):
old cars. You know, I didn't wear polos and eyes
ods back in the eighties. So I just assumed. I
don't know seventy thousand dollars. So I just you know,
in the absence of truth and HELI will do well.
Sitting at dinner in two thousand and six, many many
many years later, he gives me this number that was
well into the six figures. I said, excuse me, He said,
(18:01):
how do you think I paid for cash for your
college and your sister's college and your brothers to go
to private school and for them to go to college.
I just managed the money differently. We had the money,
we just weren't didn't spend it on cars and clothes.
And I don't remember anything else, he said, all you know,
it was like Charlie Brown's teacher, and you know. And
so I'm driving home totally dissatisfied because in three jobs
(18:22):
I'm making just under seventy thousand dollars. So I'm feeling
like I've arrived. And I didn't even know this was
all subconscious. I had no idea that I had this belief,
this false belief that this was my capability. Well, suddenly,
knowing what my dad did, my capabilities in my mind grew.
When I pulled up at the house, we'd built this house.
(18:42):
We were going to be building a house every two years,
use the capital games to build the next one, eventually
own our house outright, we stopped after the second house.
This house was the same size at the house I
grew up in. And so what happened was is I
had this subconscious motivation when I wasn't making the seventy
thousand dollars back in the nineties and early two thousands,
(19:03):
when I was living in a smaller house, I had
all this, you know, motivation to make it back to
the level of economic standard that I grew up in.
And this was not conscious, This was all subconscious. And
suddenly it hit me that I was limiting God, I
was limiting my family, I was limiting myself by these
(19:23):
false beliefs and my belief in what I was capable of.
Because if your dad's capable of it you are. That's
how we kind of think, you know, my daddy can
do it, I can do it kind of thing. And
so that was a huge turning point for me and
realizing I and this is what I realized, I am
not using the gifts God has given me to the
best of my ability. And it wasn't about money. It
(19:44):
was about resources. Yeah, because we didn't. We don't. We
didn't up our you know, when I made more money,
we didn't just up our spending like most people do.
We upped a little bit. We bought some nicer things
for the kids, and we added vacations. But we gave
a lot of money away as the Holy Spirit led
us to, as the Holy Spirit said, hey give here,
give there, And sometimes that giving was in a check
(20:07):
in an amount that it was like, I don't know
where I'm going to pay the bills next month, and
you're having me write this check. So but that was
a turning point for me in belief about who I was,
what I was capable of. And God just suddenly and
almost in an instant, connected all those dots in my head.
The Holy Spirit just kind of said, look look at
(20:27):
all the things that I've been having you do, and
now what can you do with that? What can you
do with this experience? And how can you benefit your family?
And how can you benefit other people? And literally I
set a goal to be working in a having a
sales job by January first, two thousand and seven. I
was stupid because no one's open January first, two thousand
(20:48):
and seven. But January second, I was standing and Marietta
actually got even brought me back so I could stay
with my folks some while I traveled while we sold
the house in Alabama. Standing in Marietta, Georgia, north of
Atlanta on January second of two thousand and seven. So yeah,
very cool.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I love the our capacity and our capability, but God
seeing it through a God lens, that's that's powerful. I
love the and did Johnny. That's actually that sets us
up perfectly to take us into the work that you
do with clients. So as in as a corporate trainer,
(21:30):
as an executive coach. We heard some of the companies
in your bio, but you're big on values. So what
sets apart the type of training and coaching that you
do with these different companies and executives.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So everything we do is values based. I mean, there
are two godlike traits that all humans have in common.
I've even stood in a Muslim country north of Dubai
and the UA and sargeant and said, in front of Muslims,
our creator creatives with two godlike traits. The first is values.
We all want to be treated by values. The second
is purpose. We're all desperately seeking meaning. And everyone just
(22:09):
nods there. Yeah, yeah, they nod their head, and we
all define these the same. I had them define integrity
and then discuss it and it all comes back. But
the same are very similar. And so I believe that
this is God's imprint on humanity and it helps us
to navigate a very fallen world. And he knew this
in advance when he created us. But what we do
(22:30):
is we take values and we create values based processes
so that because everyone wants to be treated by values,
we want to train people in a values based process
that will keep them on track so they do what
they do on their best day, whether it's sales or communication,
or service or coaching their people and leadership. They can
do what they do on their best day more often,
(22:51):
more consistently, and more effectively. And so having a process
I screw it up all the time. I fail to
follow up process that I wrote from time to time
and when, but when I do, here's the beauty of
a process. All you have to do is get back
to it, admit that you're wrong. Being willing to be
wrong is a big piece of it. But say, you
(23:12):
know what, my emotions are getting the best of me,
and I'm going to go back and follow this values
based process that brings out the best parts of me.
And so they work because they're intrinsic in everyone. We
train people globally and they work in every culture, with
every ethnicity and every religion, sexual orientation. You know, none
(23:33):
of that matters because we all desire to be treated
by values and so we have you know, we partner
with Integrity Solutions to do integrity selling, integrity service, integrity coaching,
tegrity communication. We've developed to chase after some smaller companies
because you know, some big, big companies they can afford
a lot of training. Some smaller companies can't. So we're
(23:55):
developing some trainings that are that are more focused on
the values piece and really more specific to the values piece.
Where integrityes is values based, ours is values the impact
series' values focused. So we have coaching for impact and
serving for impact, and we're going to be creating, communicating
for impact, and selling for impact to reach out to
(24:16):
some of these smaller companies or people that just have
their own business and we're going to make themselves deployable.
And so we're developing an LMS to do that.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Very very cool, Johnny, you made me think about something
just values being the lifeblood. We all know what happened
three years ago, Johnny. There's no secret with the COVID
nineteen pandemic, and then you had a lot of racial
and justice, you had economic uncertainty, and companies it's almost
(24:53):
like now companies are kind of re evaluating and getting
back into Okay, what do we want to do for
or training and foreign employees or for executives. So what
have you What trends have you noticed within organizations of
where they want to go or where they're seeing deficiencies
(25:13):
with their employees or teams.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Well, I think I think the biggest thing that we're
seeing right now is this DEI diversity, equity and inclusion. Unfortunately,
it's it's uh, you know, we're we're seeking equity by
making things less equitable for others. And and you know
when that stuff happened with with Donald Trump and assassination attempt,
(25:35):
and I saw stuff that it means don't didn't earn it.
I mean, so there's a lot of negativity around this stuff.
And I'm not whether people agree with that or not.
It's it's just not it's not good. And so diversity,
equity and inclusion. People are afraid to say, hey, I'm
feeling like I'm not equal because we're trying to elevate
some people and we're devaluing some others in the solution.
(25:58):
You know, a company asked me this. They didn't like
my answer. I said, let me tell you a very
simple answer. It's values. If if my my foundational core
values are integrity, truth, faith, family, and respect. All right,
those are the five that are the most important to me,
that can make me great, help me make great decisions
on a daily basis, keep me in check. I'm willing
to be held accountable to them if I followed those
(26:21):
and how I treated someone, and how I treated everyone,
regardless of ethnicity, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of you
know what class they were, as far as are they
the president of the or the CEO or they you know,
you know, the low man on the totem pole. If
I treated the janetor the same way I treated the
CEO by my values, that is true equity. That's it
(26:45):
you're treating. I mean, everyone gets the same type of
interaction from me. And again, a values based process, not
just talking about yeah, that would be great, but having
a process that you can that can hold you accountable
to that becomes important. I think that's where the church
misses it. I mean it's almost like we're talking about
these ideas you know, out in space up in the heavens,
(27:07):
and yeah, we should be more like them. But you know,
there are as of processes of how we should treat people,
processes on how we should disagree with people and how
we engage them in using the fruit of the spirit,
which are all values. So Christians have an advantage over
non Christians, but we don't take advantage of it. We
(27:30):
act like these are things I have to earn, these
are things. Oh, I'm not a patient person. Let me
tell you something. It's like walking down the aisle of
a supermarket. You can scoop from the left hand side
of the aisle, which is emotionalism, which is what we
normally do to any given situation. Or we can sweep
from the right hand side, which is the fruit of
the spirit and truth and values and all these wonderful things.
(27:51):
What do we fill in our basket with that we're
going to use and how we engage this situation. So
now my wife looks at me when I say I
am not a patient person, especially when I'm driving in Atlanta,
and she smiles and she says, oh, no, sweetheart, God
has given you all the patients you need. You're just
not accessing it. And I'm like, and that's really it.
(28:12):
So when you take this back to something like diversity,
equity and inclusion, if we teach people a process, no
one is offended. If everyone's held accountable to the same process.
Doesn't matter what color your skin is, it doesn't matter
what your religion is, it doesn't matter what your sexual
orientation is. Everyone is going to be accountable to treating
people this way. I think that is true. We you know,
(28:35):
equity and inclusion and the diversity part. We want to
celebrate diversity, the different talents and abilities and even cultures
and what we can teach each other. Those are wonderful things,
and so differences, you know, are important. But if we
just celebrate differences, then we don't have unity. United, we
stand up, divided, we fall. And so how do we
(28:57):
balance this? And I think God gave it to us.
And then in purpose, organizations have visions, they have purpose,
and then they take missions. They have different departments, and
I mean that's how we do it. We literally use
what God has given us and it works.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
It sure does. That's one of the last things Jesus said.
You reminded me, Johnny. He prayed that we would be
He prayed for oneness. I mean, it's it's right there
in the scripture. Like your wife said that we got
to the access as moment she keeps me in line.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Well, Johnny, you've given a lot of nuggets of wisdom,
and you've laid out the process with which how you
and your organization go about coaching and training. But there's
some pretty cool stuff that you all are working on
coming here in twenty twenty five. So, folks, what you
(29:57):
don't know is here on the fort to five life,
we have people that that sprinkle things coming down the pathway.
And so Johnny's been working he's been cooking up some stuff.
So Johnny, if you can, obviously not the whole recipe,
but if we were to get a tea spoon or
a tablespoon full of what you all been working on,
what would those new things be.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, So we're working on Character University and the idea
behind this. So right now, what we do in our
training requires a facilitator, whether we train someone to train
the trainer internally or bring someone in like me, which
gets expensive and small companies can't afford it. So we're
going to be launching Character University, and the idea is
(30:40):
to give them trainings in small nuggets. It's called chunky
and retention studies. So they'll watch several videos a week
and then at the end of the week you'll have
some discussion questions. Now, if you're doing it by yourself,
you need to find someone to discuss it with so
that you're verbalizing what you're learning. You can bring small
groups together and everyone can sign up for the same
(31:01):
course and then you get together once a week or
the most every two weeks. Don't want to go too
far down the line and share how you've been applying
the principles and this way it becomes something that is
self deployable. Now they can also bring us in to
do the facilitating for the follow ups, and they can
you know, but they can also do it by themselves.
They can also hire us in to do a kickoff
(31:23):
like we normally do now, and we can do it
the same way we do now if they want to
spend that money and they believe that's a valuable a
way to do it and brings value to the organization.
But what we want to do is we want to
bring additional options for the people, the entrepreneurs, the small
companies that you know, they maybe they can't spend twenty
thirty thousand dollars, but they can spend you know, three
(31:44):
thousand on their sales team, and then they can you know,
there'll be instructions on there and how to lead that conversation.
And then they can always hire us into coach on
a you know, on occasion as well. But the whole
idea behind character You is for people to be able
to find processes that will help them to incorporate great
character into everything that they do. And so that's what's happening.
(32:09):
We're hoping to get our first course up there. That's
self deployable by Q two. It's going to take some
video work and whatnot, and we're right now working on
the new LMS, so hopefully we can meet that goal.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I love it, Johnny. I'm already fired up about it,
even though I can't touch it or see it. It
sounds like something I'm ready to dig into. Well, Johnny,
as we get ready to close here, you've laid out
all types of nuggets and told us your story testimony,
and now I know listeners know what you're thinking. How
(32:44):
can I get in touch with Johnny and keep up
with what he's doing? So, Johnny, how can listeners follow
up with you?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, they can find us on the internet at www
dot Character Inc. I NC dot com and they can
call us at six seven eight eight eight eight one
two five two. And I want to give something to
the listeners. We give our values assessment away for free.
(33:14):
So people can go to Gotvalues dot com www dot
got got Values v A l U E s dot com.
It'll take you to a page on our website. There's
a short video. After you watch it, your register. We're
not going to spam you, and it'll email you the
values assessment and it's a two week process ten minutes
(33:34):
a day, but it'll narrow down one hundred and sixty
five values to your four to five foundational core values
that'll help you make great decisions on a daily basis.
They have to meet certain criteria you're willing to be
held accountable to them, and there's some others in there
as well, but it's all there on the assessment. It's
in the video. We give that away because God's image
shouldn't be sold and we want to introduce people to
(33:57):
God's image in them. And it works everywhere, works at home.
The principles we teach people, use them at home, at
work with friends because people are people, and so we'd
love to have a conversation with any of your listeners
that has an organization or if anyone needs any executive
or professional coaching.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Folks, you heard it from the man himself. You know
how to get in touch with him and what a
freebee got values dot Com. I've taken the assessment myself,
and folks, it is a hugely impactful. Well, Johnny, that's
all we have time for today, but in an action
packed segment, you have more than delivered value to all
(34:41):
of the listeners today. So Johnny, thank you for hanging
out with us here on the Fortified Life Podcast.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Well, thank you very much for having me. It's been
an honor to be here.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Absolutely well, folks, make sure you go to Fortified Life
podcast dot com. We'll have all of the show notes there,
everything that Johnny has listed out, website resources, phone number,
values assessment. We'll have all of that available to you.
So don't you worry. Well, folks, that's all we've got
(35:12):
time for here on the show. You know how we
leave things. Don't compartmentalize your faith in the marketplace and
from the boardroom to the bathroom, God is with you.
We'll see you next time on the Fortified Life Podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Thank you for listening to the Fortified Life Podcast. You
can catch us live on Wednesdays at eight thirty pm
Eastern Time and on demand. Check out Fortified lifepodcast dot
com for more details. So learn how to live out
your faith in the marketplace. Grab a copy of Jason
Davis's book Fortify Being Rooted in God's Plan for Work
(35:50):
in Business, Available on Amazon
Welcome to the Fortified Life Podcast, where we learn how
to develop a dependency on Jesus in the marketplace. From
the boardroom to the bathroom. God is with you. Here's
our host, author, speaker, teacher, encourager, spiritue, coach, and my husband.
It's the man they call mister forty five Jason Davis.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Hey, what's going on? Everybody? Welcome back to another episode
of the Fortified Life podcast where we talk about building
a dependency on Jesus in the marketplace. I'm your host,
Jason Davis aka mister Fortifi. Every week we have the
opportunity to bring on coaches, authors, speakers, trainers and influencers,
(01:00):
all those who are also passionate about putting God back
in business and folks. This week it is no different.
I'm very excited because our guest this week is a
man of wisdom and he certainly is a mentor of mine.
Before I bring him on, let me introduce him to you.
(01:21):
Doctor Johnny Walker is a master facilitator, speaker, trainer, author,
and the president of Character Incorporated, a global behavior change
firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, with offices in Los Angeles, Trinidad,
and Dubai. Johnny received his undergraduate degree from Sanford University,
(01:41):
double majoring in religion and sociology. He earned his master's
degree and agency counseling from the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
Before entering Corporate America, Johnny spent over fifteen years in
law enforcement in Alabama with two different agencies. During this time,
he developed two divisions in the police department, led a
(02:04):
drug team, and served as the SWAT team's hostage negotiator.
While in law enforcement, it gets better, Ladies and gentlemen,
he is a bi vocational minister and ran a counseling
practice focused on assisting youth and families. He's worked with
a ton of fortune, five hundred companies, Coca Cola, Yamaha, Delta,
(02:26):
Johnson and Johnson, and a host of others. But, ladies
and gentlemen, please welcome to the Fortified Life Johnny Walker, Johnny,
what is going on?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Hey? Thanks for being here. You know, when people read
my bio, I always think I want to meet that guy.
Oh that's a lot of stuff, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, that's actually a great place to start, Johnny, certainly
when I read it. But I know listeners, as you're
listening to that, you're like, man, I heard at least
three or four things which singularly in its own track,
has its own backstory. But just give us a little rundown,
Johnny professionally. I know we heard it in the bio,
(03:06):
but people don't know the connective tissue that God used
the weave all those together. So give us the backstory.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I think that's a great way to explain it. I
often tell young people, and I've done counseling and coaching
with young people, teenagers and college students for good Night,
I'll be fifty six soon and that's thirty seven years crazy.
And I always tell them, you know, don't worry about
when you're entering into college because everyone likes to ask you,
(03:35):
what are you going to be? What are you going
to be? You know, I don't know what I want
to be when I grow up. Obviously from my resume
it looks like that I know what God has me
doing today. But I went to Sandford to prepare for ministry.
God called me in the ministry when I was sixteen.
He literally told me to go to Sanford University. I
had to go look it up. I didn't know it existed,
and so as I'm there here, I am preparing for ministry,
(04:01):
and suddenly I realize, you know, after I graduate, before
I graduated, you know, people are like, hey, come be
our youth minister. Hey can be a pastor of our
small church. But because I didn't immediately go to seminary,
this is in the eighties, are graduated nineteen ninety from Sandford,
suddenly no one would hire me, no one even would
entertain my resume. And so, you know, I just continued
(04:23):
seeking God on this, and I finally said God, I've
done all I can the church way. I'm just going
to do what I want to do for a job,
and if it's the wrong one, shut the door. And
I don't remember signing up for the police Officer exam.
I actually remember being down there, but I remember someone
(04:43):
telling me to go do it. I just remember a
small bit of my memory of signing up for it
months and months and months before this prayer. The next day,
I get a postcard in the mail and it says,
you know, your police officer exam is tomorrow. I looked
at the date. It had been lost in the mail
for two months.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And so I go down there. I do great on
it I get on the list, I end up, you know,
becoming a police officer. And a lot of people kept
asking me, especially my buddies from Sanford, Sanford itself, when
you're going to go into full time ministry, And you know,
at first I felt bad because I was believing the
lie that I wasn't in ministry. And this is before
(05:26):
marketplace ministry really became a thing. And God showed me
through this time. And there were times I was by vocation,
was a youth minister out of counseling practice at one point,
and I was doing all three of those. That was
really burning the candle at three ends. But at some
point God showed me that I was in ministry. And
when people would ask me that, I would say, you know,
how many battered women did you minister to today? How
(05:49):
many drug addicts or drug dealers have you ministered to today?
And they would just look at me and I'd say,
please stop judging my ministry. I'm not judging yours. I'm
not demanding that you're ment be mine, be like mine.
You can stand behind a pulpit and preach, and that's
a wonderful thing, but just because I'm not doing that
every single week doesn't mean I'm not in ministry. And
so really God started changing this mindset in me that
(06:12):
ministry is just simply meeting needs and God is going
to place you wherever He has you. And so as
I was going through all this, I was working three
jobs and basically was going backwards about five grand a year,
and my wife stayed home. She homeschooled the kids. We
have four children right now. They're ages thirty one to nineteen,
(06:32):
so there's big, you know, a lot big gap between
them and I had to do something different with my talents.
And one of the great things that the second Police
Department in pel City, Alabama did for me. It was
one lower pay that wasn't great but from where I
was before, but they gave me opportunity to develop a
couple of divisions of the police department, developed their standard
operating procedures, work with you know, the school board, work
(06:55):
with the city council, and do a lot of these
different things. Gave me no opportunity to run a drug
team and come up with unique and innovative ways to
engage in that, and that was very successful. And so
what I learned about myself and what God taught me
was I have some really unique skills that he has
given me. And UH and so then as we were
(07:16):
looking at you know, we've got to do something. We
can't keep refinancing the house every four years. That the
you know, even though we built it and we had
a lot of equity in it at the time, we
couldn't keep doing that. There was a there was a
time limit on that. And so I started looking to
use my talents and abilities in the marketplace while still
staying in ministry. So I moved my counseling practice to Atlanta, Marietta, Georgia,
(07:41):
northwest Atlanta and UH and started working there on the weekends,
kept working in my counseling practice in Alabama during the
week kept police and looking for a job in Atlanta,
and found one and and his sales and so I
moved everything over and UH and so from there I
was very, very successful using my dad was partnering with
(08:02):
Integrity Solutions. Taught me integrity selling, values based selling. Knocked
it out of the park with that. After five and
a half years, a startup grabbed me and paid me
good money to work with them, and I built another
sales funnel for them. They sold that company out from
underneath me, and I thought, you know, God has enabled
me to develop multimillion dollar sales funnels. I don't need
(08:24):
a million dollars. I'm going to start my own company.
And what happened was I started a coaching company. Within weeks.
My father had an accident on his bicycle, ended up
in ICU, and his short term memory was a little
bit jarred when he got out and he's okay, and
he's still alive today and doing well. But he called
(08:44):
me and he said, We've always talked about working together,
and maybe God had all of this happen all at
the same time, with you starting your own company, and
this happening to me that we could work together. And
so I went home and my wife said, what did
your dad want? And I said, well, he wants me
to go in the training business with him. And she said, well,
(09:05):
what are you going to do? And I said, I
don't want to be a trainer. I want to help people,
and she goes, but what are you going to do?
I said, well, he needs the help. I'm going to
do that. So I went to the first facilitator certification
with Integrity Solutions, and my wife and I were talking
after the second day, and she says, well, how's it going.
I said, this is what we're doing. This is basically
(09:25):
coaching to groups, and I can impact so many more
people with a values based process, and then I could
one on one and so from there, you know, I've
partnered with them so that I'm not an employee. I
started developing. I had to have my own company, and
I started developing my own programs Foundational Core Values, Coaching
for Impact, Serving for Impact, and some others. And we
(09:49):
still sell and facilitate theirs, but it's just kind of grown,
and I do some content creation for them, and God
just continues to show me how to use my talents
and abilities differently to impact more more people.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Wow, that that is so That is so good, Johnny.
Just the tapestry that God weaves together and in all
our lives. You know, Johnny, you mentioned something because, as
we know here in the show, Ladies and Gentlemen, you know,
the personal bleeds into the professional and vice versa. You
mentioned something that I think a lot of people either
(10:24):
find themselves in or or maybe they actively choose to
do it. And you mentioned burning the candle from opposite ends,
and for you it was three different up in the
middle too. How did you even how does one even
go about navigating that, Johnny, Because I feel like, you know,
we've got the gig economy now and everything is, you know,
(10:48):
multiple streams of income, and so how does how does
one even go about navigating that?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
That's a great question. So before my dad was in
the people training business for selling service and things like that,
he was in training for time management. So I grew
up in a lot of this, and and I was
very blessed to have an amazing father and mother. I
actually shared a counseling office with my mother for years,
got to work with both of my parents. It was
(11:17):
very unique. But my father taught me time management, and
that really was that's the key in balancing your family.
I was policing in the town I worked in, and
so we had a great department. So on Saturday when
I was working, you know, we would take turns watching
each other's beats, take lunch so you could watch your
kid play baseball, that kind of thing. And but the
(11:41):
time management piece is key. I think sometimes and a
lot of people just aren't willing to do the work
it takes to get to that next level. I mean,
often people say professionals do what other people aren't willing
to do. And so I was always reading, I was
always studying something different. I mean, there was a time
(12:04):
where I went back to get my master's degree. I
quit one of my three jobs, you know, one of
my I quit one of the part time jobs and
made going back to school that I went one in
two classes at a time and paid for cash and
so not to get into debt. And it took time
to do that. But you have to be really, you
have to have the vision. You have to know exactly
what you know the next step you're gonna do. You're
(12:26):
not gonna have the complete vision. God doesn't do that.
It would be nice, you know that. Oh I see
it all and I know everything. I know the next
ten steps. God basically gives you a flashlight, that doesn't
you know, one of those little pee wee flashlights that
you can see just enough in front of you to
trust him to take the next step. But you have
to take those steps, and you don't see often you
(12:46):
don't see what is way down there. But that's good too,
because if you saw the scary monsters that were down there,
you'd run. Yeah, but you know that scary monster, you know,
is is further down the path and we're God's going
to take you. You're going to deviate around it, and
so it's good that we don't see at all. But
you know, sometimes you have to burn the candle at
(13:09):
both ends. But you need to balance it with your family.
You need to make sure that you know, spouses are
on board. And you know, I made sure the whole
goal was for my wife to stay home with the kids,
to homeschool the children. Anytime I was at home, the
whole family was there. We could go on vacation anytime
we wanted to because of homeschooling when they were younger,
(13:29):
and so my schedule became the family schedule, and so
it was really a lot of partnership with my wife,
a lot of sacrifice on her end as well. But
it really does boil down to time management and now
a cell phones, you know, having your calendar there. My
dad calls it time activating. You don't just have an
(13:49):
idea of what you're going to do. You look at it,
is this what have to be done today? If it does,
you put it in your calendar. You time activate it.
It doesn't need to be done today. You can put
it in your calendar for time the next day. But
a lot of time management, a lot of collaboration with
my wife and trusting God on the next steps and
the where I am today. I never would have thought
(14:11):
the path that I ended up taking was the path.
And so you have to trust that God is not
crazy in that, because, I mean, let's be honest, we
think that He is sometimes like that. I don't think
this is it. And so trusting God and that my
way is crazy, his way is not. His way is
(14:32):
always true, and He will take us through some very
painful things because we learn more through those. In fact,
we learn faster through those. So stop expecting that everything
is going to be you know, rainbows and unicorns and
everything's going to be wonderful, and you know, tiptoeing through
the tulips. It's not that. And so when you're going
through the rough times, and the biggest one is sticking
(14:53):
with your values, knowing your foundational core values, knowing who
you are. And I I believe those are part of
God's image on humanity. And when we become Christians we
get the complete image of God, the fruit of the Spirit.
All those are values, but these are our guardrails for
how to engage the world. And so no matter if
you're angry, frustrated, you follow these so that how you're
(15:16):
handling this bad situation, your emotions don't make it worse.
And so when I followed my values, things weren't perfect,
but they were better. When I followed my emotions, things
fell apart drastically, And that my story has a lot
of falling apart in it, which is it's not fun
(15:37):
to talk about, but we all have it. And so
you're gonna make mistakes. They're not failures as long as
you learn from them. So you just got to keep going.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Absolutely, folks, I told you he was a man of wisdom. Johnny,
you started.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Wisdom. We just get to share it. But thank you, true.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Johnny. You were kind of laying little sea throughout and
talking about your professional experience in your opinion, and you
probably have many that you can think of, but what
was probably a major turning point in your life for
you that really shaped everything family, personal, professional, and was
(16:21):
really like you can go back and mark, you know,
they say X marks the spot, and even if you've
got a dozen of them, was there maybe one or
two that was like Wow, when I think about it
and what God did. Everything changed after that.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, So my dad was in Birmingham with a client.
He called me and I was working at this police
department and this is probably two thousand and six winter early,
you know, February something like that, and he calls me
to do dinner. I said, come to the house. He goes,
I don't have time. I got to get home, but
meet me on the highway. So I met him on
the highway and he asked me how things were going,
(16:56):
and I was complaining great, great, great, great great. But
I didn't like this. I didn't like that. You know,
the captain had just rearranged my schedule and I didn't
like that. And my dad looked at me and he said,
you know, you would be great at doing what I do.
I've said this to you for years. You'd be amazing
at it, he said, But you know, you would need
to get your own stories, and you know, go out
and take some risks and practice these principles and this
(17:18):
and that. And then he said, and I'm going to
back up a second, but he said, when I when
you were in high school, I made and he gives
me this number. Now, when I was in high school,
and I asked my dad how much money he made.
He was from the generation of Nunya nonya business, that's
the you know, and so he would never tell me.
So I just assumed because we weren't extravagant. We had
(17:41):
old cars. You know, I didn't wear polos and eyes
ods back in the eighties. So I just assumed. I
don't know seventy thousand dollars. So I just you know,
in the absence of truth and HELI will do well.
Sitting at dinner in two thousand and six, many many
many years later, he gives me this number that was
well into the six figures. I said, excuse me, He said,
(18:01):
how do you think I paid for cash for your
college and your sister's college and your brothers to go
to private school and for them to go to college.
I just managed the money differently. We had the money,
we just weren't didn't spend it on cars and clothes.
And I don't remember anything else, he said, all you know,
it was like Charlie Brown's teacher, and you know. And
so I'm driving home totally dissatisfied because in three jobs
(18:22):
I'm making just under seventy thousand dollars. So I'm feeling
like I've arrived. And I didn't even know this was
all subconscious. I had no idea that I had this belief,
this false belief that this was my capability. Well, suddenly,
knowing what my dad did, my capabilities in my mind grew.
When I pulled up at the house, we'd built this house.
(18:42):
We were going to be building a house every two years,
use the capital games to build the next one, eventually
own our house outright, we stopped after the second house.
This house was the same size at the house I
grew up in. And so what happened was is I
had this subconscious motivation when I wasn't making the seventy
thousand dollars back in the nineties and early two thousands,
(19:03):
when I was living in a smaller house, I had
all this, you know, motivation to make it back to
the level of economic standard that I grew up in.
And this was not conscious, This was all subconscious. And
suddenly it hit me that I was limiting God, I
was limiting my family, I was limiting myself by these
(19:23):
false beliefs and my belief in what I was capable of.
Because if your dad's capable of it you are. That's
how we kind of think, you know, my daddy can
do it, I can do it kind of thing. And
so that was a huge turning point for me and
realizing I and this is what I realized, I am
not using the gifts God has given me to the
best of my ability. And it wasn't about money. It
(19:44):
was about resources. Yeah, because we didn't. We don't. We
didn't up our you know, when I made more money,
we didn't just up our spending like most people do.
We upped a little bit. We bought some nicer things
for the kids, and we added vacations. But we gave
a lot of money away as the Holy Spirit led
us to, as the Holy Spirit said, hey give here,
give there, And sometimes that giving was in a check
(20:07):
in an amount that it was like, I don't know
where I'm going to pay the bills next month, and
you're having me write this check. So but that was
a turning point for me in belief about who I was,
what I was capable of. And God just suddenly and
almost in an instant, connected all those dots in my head.
The Holy Spirit just kind of said, look look at
(20:27):
all the things that I've been having you do, and
now what can you do with that? What can you
do with this experience? And how can you benefit your family?
And how can you benefit other people? And literally I
set a goal to be working in a having a
sales job by January first, two thousand and seven. I
was stupid because no one's open January first, two thousand
(20:48):
and seven. But January second, I was standing and Marietta
actually got even brought me back so I could stay
with my folks some while I traveled while we sold
the house in Alabama. Standing in Marietta, Georgia, north of
Atlanta on January second of two thousand and seven. So yeah,
very cool.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I love the our capacity and our capability, but God
seeing it through a God lens, that's that's powerful. I
love the and did Johnny. That's actually that sets us
up perfectly to take us into the work that you
do with clients. So as in as a corporate trainer,
(21:30):
as an executive coach. We heard some of the companies
in your bio, but you're big on values. So what
sets apart the type of training and coaching that you
do with these different companies and executives.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So everything we do is values based. I mean, there
are two godlike traits that all humans have in common.
I've even stood in a Muslim country north of Dubai
and the UA and sargeant and said, in front of Muslims,
our creator creatives with two godlike traits. The first is values.
We all want to be treated by values. The second
is purpose. We're all desperately seeking meaning. And everyone just
(22:09):
nods there. Yeah, yeah, they nod their head, and we
all define these the same. I had them define integrity
and then discuss it and it all comes back. But
the same are very similar. And so I believe that
this is God's imprint on humanity and it helps us
to navigate a very fallen world. And he knew this
in advance when he created us. But what we do
(22:30):
is we take values and we create values based processes
so that because everyone wants to be treated by values,
we want to train people in a values based process
that will keep them on track so they do what
they do on their best day, whether it's sales or communication,
or service or coaching their people and leadership. They can
do what they do on their best day more often,
(22:51):
more consistently, and more effectively. And so having a process
I screw it up all the time. I fail to
follow up process that I wrote from time to time
and when, but when I do, here's the beauty of
a process. All you have to do is get back
to it, admit that you're wrong. Being willing to be
wrong is a big piece of it. But say, you
(23:12):
know what, my emotions are getting the best of me,
and I'm going to go back and follow this values
based process that brings out the best parts of me.
And so they work because they're intrinsic in everyone. We
train people globally and they work in every culture, with
every ethnicity and every religion, sexual orientation. You know, none
(23:33):
of that matters because we all desire to be treated
by values and so we have you know, we partner
with Integrity Solutions to do integrity selling, integrity service, integrity coaching,
tegrity communication. We've developed to chase after some smaller companies
because you know, some big, big companies they can afford
a lot of training. Some smaller companies can't. So we're
(23:55):
developing some trainings that are that are more focused on
the values piece and really more specific to the values piece.
Where integrityes is values based, ours is values the impact
series' values focused. So we have coaching for impact and
serving for impact, and we're going to be creating, communicating
for impact, and selling for impact to reach out to
(24:16):
some of these smaller companies or people that just have
their own business and we're going to make themselves deployable.
And so we're developing an LMS to do that.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Very very cool, Johnny, you made me think about something
just values being the lifeblood. We all know what happened
three years ago, Johnny. There's no secret with the COVID
nineteen pandemic, and then you had a lot of racial
and justice, you had economic uncertainty, and companies it's almost
(24:53):
like now companies are kind of re evaluating and getting
back into Okay, what do we want to do for
or training and foreign employees or for executives. So what
have you What trends have you noticed within organizations of
where they want to go or where they're seeing deficiencies
(25:13):
with their employees or teams.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Well, I think I think the biggest thing that we're
seeing right now is this DEI diversity, equity and inclusion. Unfortunately,
it's it's uh, you know, we're we're seeking equity by
making things less equitable for others. And and you know
when that stuff happened with with Donald Trump and assassination attempt,
(25:35):
and I saw stuff that it means don't didn't earn it.
I mean, so there's a lot of negativity around this stuff.
And I'm not whether people agree with that or not.
It's it's just not it's not good. And so diversity,
equity and inclusion. People are afraid to say, hey, I'm
feeling like I'm not equal because we're trying to elevate
some people and we're devaluing some others in the solution.
(25:58):
You know, a company asked me this. They didn't like
my answer. I said, let me tell you a very
simple answer. It's values. If if my my foundational core
values are integrity, truth, faith, family, and respect. All right,
those are the five that are the most important to me,
that can make me great, help me make great decisions
on a daily basis, keep me in check. I'm willing
to be held accountable to them if I followed those
(26:21):
and how I treated someone, and how I treated everyone,
regardless of ethnicity, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of you
know what class they were, as far as are they
the president of the or the CEO or they you know,
you know, the low man on the totem pole. If
I treated the janetor the same way I treated the
CEO by my values, that is true equity. That's it
(26:45):
you're treating. I mean, everyone gets the same type of
interaction from me. And again, a values based process, not
just talking about yeah, that would be great, but having
a process that you can that can hold you accountable
to that becomes important. I think that's where the church
misses it. I mean it's almost like we're talking about
these ideas you know, out in space up in the heavens,
(27:07):
and yeah, we should be more like them. But you know,
there are as of processes of how we should treat people,
processes on how we should disagree with people and how
we engage them in using the fruit of the spirit,
which are all values. So Christians have an advantage over
non Christians, but we don't take advantage of it. We
(27:30):
act like these are things I have to earn, these
are things. Oh, I'm not a patient person. Let me
tell you something. It's like walking down the aisle of
a supermarket. You can scoop from the left hand side
of the aisle, which is emotionalism, which is what we
normally do to any given situation. Or we can sweep
from the right hand side, which is the fruit of
the spirit and truth and values and all these wonderful things.
(27:51):
What do we fill in our basket with that we're
going to use and how we engage this situation. So
now my wife looks at me when I say I
am not a patient person, especially when I'm driving in Atlanta,
and she smiles and she says, oh, no, sweetheart, God
has given you all the patients you need. You're just
not accessing it. And I'm like, and that's really it.
(28:12):
So when you take this back to something like diversity,
equity and inclusion, if we teach people a process, no
one is offended. If everyone's held accountable to the same process.
Doesn't matter what color your skin is, it doesn't matter
what your religion is, it doesn't matter what your sexual
orientation is. Everyone is going to be accountable to treating
people this way. I think that is true. We you know,
(28:35):
equity and inclusion and the diversity part. We want to
celebrate diversity, the different talents and abilities and even cultures
and what we can teach each other. Those are wonderful things,
and so differences, you know, are important. But if we
just celebrate differences, then we don't have unity. United, we
stand up, divided, we fall. And so how do we
(28:57):
balance this? And I think God gave it to us.
And then in purpose, organizations have visions, they have purpose,
and then they take missions. They have different departments, and
I mean that's how we do it. We literally use
what God has given us and it works.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
It sure does. That's one of the last things Jesus said.
You reminded me, Johnny. He prayed that we would be
He prayed for oneness. I mean, it's it's right there
in the scripture. Like your wife said that we got
to the access as moment she keeps me in line.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Well, Johnny, you've given a lot of nuggets of wisdom,
and you've laid out the process with which how you
and your organization go about coaching and training. But there's
some pretty cool stuff that you all are working on
coming here in twenty twenty five. So, folks, what you
(29:57):
don't know is here on the fort to five life,
we have people that that sprinkle things coming down the pathway.
And so Johnny's been working he's been cooking up some stuff.
So Johnny, if you can, obviously not the whole recipe,
but if we were to get a tea spoon or
a tablespoon full of what you all been working on,
what would those new things be.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, So we're working on Character University and the idea
behind this. So right now, what we do in our
training requires a facilitator, whether we train someone to train
the trainer internally or bring someone in like me, which
gets expensive and small companies can't afford it. So we're
going to be launching Character University, and the idea is
(30:40):
to give them trainings in small nuggets. It's called chunky
and retention studies. So they'll watch several videos a week
and then at the end of the week you'll have
some discussion questions. Now, if you're doing it by yourself,
you need to find someone to discuss it with so
that you're verbalizing what you're learning. You can bring small
groups together and everyone can sign up for the same
(31:01):
course and then you get together once a week or
the most every two weeks. Don't want to go too
far down the line and share how you've been applying
the principles and this way it becomes something that is
self deployable. Now they can also bring us in to
do the facilitating for the follow ups, and they can
you know, but they can also do it by themselves.
They can also hire us in to do a kickoff
(31:23):
like we normally do now, and we can do it
the same way we do now if they want to
spend that money and they believe that's a valuable a
way to do it and brings value to the organization.
But what we want to do is we want to
bring additional options for the people, the entrepreneurs, the small
companies that you know, they maybe they can't spend twenty
thirty thousand dollars, but they can spend you know, three
(31:44):
thousand on their sales team, and then they can you know,
there'll be instructions on there and how to lead that conversation.
And then they can always hire us into coach on
a you know, on occasion as well. But the whole
idea behind character You is for people to be able
to find processes that will help them to incorporate great
character into everything that they do. And so that's what's happening.
(32:09):
We're hoping to get our first course up there. That's
self deployable by Q two. It's going to take some
video work and whatnot, and we're right now working on
the new LMS, so hopefully we can meet that goal.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
I love it, Johnny. I'm already fired up about it,
even though I can't touch it or see it. It
sounds like something I'm ready to dig into. Well, Johnny,
as we get ready to close here, you've laid out
all types of nuggets and told us your story testimony,
and now I know listeners know what you're thinking. How
(32:44):
can I get in touch with Johnny and keep up
with what he's doing? So, Johnny, how can listeners follow
up with you?
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, they can find us on the internet at www
dot Character Inc. I NC dot com and they can
call us at six seven eight eight eight eight one
two five two. And I want to give something to
the listeners. We give our values assessment away for free.
(33:14):
So people can go to Gotvalues dot com www dot
got got Values v A l U E s dot com.
It'll take you to a page on our website. There's
a short video. After you watch it, your register. We're
not going to spam you, and it'll email you the
values assessment and it's a two week process ten minutes
(33:34):
a day, but it'll narrow down one hundred and sixty
five values to your four to five foundational core values
that'll help you make great decisions on a daily basis.
They have to meet certain criteria you're willing to be
held accountable to them, and there's some others in there
as well, but it's all there on the assessment. It's
in the video. We give that away because God's image
shouldn't be sold and we want to introduce people to
(33:57):
God's image in them. And it works everywhere, works at home.
The principles we teach people, use them at home, at
work with friends because people are people, and so we'd
love to have a conversation with any of your listeners
that has an organization or if anyone needs any executive
or professional coaching.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Folks, you heard it from the man himself. You know
how to get in touch with him and what a
freebee got values dot Com. I've taken the assessment myself,
and folks, it is a hugely impactful. Well, Johnny, that's
all we have time for today, but in an action
packed segment, you have more than delivered value to all
(34:41):
of the listeners today. So Johnny, thank you for hanging
out with us here on the Fortified Life Podcast.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Well, thank you very much for having me. It's been
an honor to be here.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Absolutely well, folks, make sure you go to Fortified Life
podcast dot com. We'll have all of the show notes there,
everything that Johnny has listed out, website resources, phone number,
values assessment. We'll have all of that available to you.
So don't you worry. Well, folks, that's all we've got
(35:12):
time for here on the show. You know how we
leave things. Don't compartmentalize your faith in the marketplace and
from the boardroom to the bathroom, God is with you.
We'll see you next time on the Fortified Life Podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Thank you for listening to the Fortified Life Podcast. You
can catch us live on Wednesdays at eight thirty pm
Eastern Time and on demand. Check out Fortified lifepodcast dot
com for more details. So learn how to live out
your faith in the marketplace. Grab a copy of Jason
Davis's book Fortify Being Rooted in God's Plan for Work
(35:50):
in Business, Available on Amazon
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