Episode 28 – Influencing and Leading Change: How to prepare not to worry

Change is coming around every corner. How do we prepare for what’s next?

In this wide-ranging conversation, Jim and Aaron discuss crisis, preparation, and building rhythms to prepare for what’s next.

Jim Frawley is the founder and CEO of Bellwether and specializes in helping corporations maximize their efficiency and enhance their growth.

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Show Outline

• 0:00 – If you reached a crisis, what would you do? Where would you go? How would you respond today?
• 1:23 – What is Bellwether, and what is its role?
• 5:35 – Who we are and how we show up at work can be a reflection of who we are.
• 8:11 – What was the motivation behind writing the book?
• 12:46 – Where is my place in this? How can I influence change?
• 15:15 – How do you prepare your people not to worry in different ways?
• 19:41 – The biggest failure in her career.
• 23:42 – What’s different about the new year?
• 27:42 – How can anyone be satisfied in life if they can never be separated from their want?

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Highlights from Episode 28

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“How can anyone be satisfied in life if they aren’t satisfied with the one person they can never be separated from?

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

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Connect with Jim

• BellwetherHub.com
• LinkedIn/@JimFrawley
• How Leaders and Managers can become better coaches [Medium]

Jim is a coach, consultant, as well as the founder and CEO of Bellwether, a talent coaching firm. He specializes in helping corporations maximize their efficiency and enhance their growth.

Jim is also the best-selling author of Adapting in Motion: Finding Your Place in the New Economy and host of the Bellwether Hub podcast.

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Episode 28 – Full Transcript

Aaron Lee 0:00
If you reached a crisis, what would you do? Where would you go? How would you respond? Today on the new generation leader podcast, I talked to Jim Foley. And I’m excited about this conversation because we’re gonna get into change crisis, what happens? And how can we truly get to square one? How do we get back to the foundation of who we are, what motivates us and what drives us, so that when crisis comes when change comes, and we’re faced with the inevitable next step, we will be ready, we’ll be prepared. And we’ll be able to jump right in. Jim Foley is a coach consultant, as well as the founder and CEO of Bellwether, a talent coaching firm, he specializes in helping corporations maximize their efficiency, and enhance their growth. He’s also the best selling author of adapting in motion, the host of the bellwether hub podcast and the upcoming TEDx speaker in Ireland. I’m excited to have Jim on the show today. And I know you’re going to enjoy following along. So here’s my conversation with Jim Foley. Welcome to the new generation leader podcast, we’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world ready to reach your true potential. This is the new generation leader podcast. Good Well, tell me a little bit about the work you’re doing and what you’re seeing.

Jim Frawley 1:23
Yeah, so I started Bellwether, eight years ago. Bellwether is it’s really an executive development company that it takes many different forms. And we work with people. One in executive coaching function, which I don’t like to call it executive coaching. But it’s executive coaching, and it’s ready for the C suite and all the things they don’t know about getting ready for the C suite. Then there’s business coaching, small business coaching, architects, real estate agents, lawyers, they need to readjust the way that they’ve been doing things, especially with the pandemic, we’re almost rewriting business plans to help them go forward. And then the fun stuff is the group coaching, which is almost redoing completely the learning and development programs within businesses in the way that they’re approaching executive development as a whole. And I have a kind of a strong philosophy on it and a strong belief in the way that it should be done. My career started in corporate training 20 something years ago, and it evolved over time going more through the business than from an HR perspective. So I’m one of the, like I said, one of the few coaches, but I’m a coach who’s got the business, I’m coming at it from a business angle rather than purely training and development angle, which helps quite a bit.

Aaron Lee 2:33
Absolutely. So are you covering all the bases? Do you have a particular niche where you’re focused, industry wise,

Jim Frawley 2:41
covering all of it? from an industry perspective, it’s agnostic. I mean, when I think about the clients, I’ve had just this year, there’s a lot in finance, I spent about 15 years of finance. So I just naturally get a lot I speak the language and I resonates a lot of law construction company, I had a number of those biopharmaceutical company, technology company, healthcare company, so it really jumps and architecture firm real estate agents. So the challenges are all the same, like when I focus on the three primary areas, yes, the industries have unique challenges for the businesses and the industries. But when we’re talking about executive development, we’re talking about how to put together a strategic plan. They’ve got the expertise already. So how do we put that in a framework that’s going to manifest over a period of major change? How do we put together a real change management program that’s actually going to work? How do we put together an executive communication program, that’s actually going to work most people just completely skip over the whole executive communication aspect. And so those are my three real sweet spots. We’re putting together an executive develop, I’m writing a curriculum and executive development curriculum. There’s a big chunk on strategic planning, there’s a big chunk on executive communications, and there’s a big chunk on change management. And that’s a nice little arc just to kind of get every executive needs those three capabilities. So those are if I had to categorize them, those would probably be the big three nuggets. Yeah, I’ve

Aaron Lee 4:01
definitely seen that the the challenges are similar across industry, I used to think they were the same, but nobody teaches that arc, or any component of that arc in school. And so you get all the know how the nuts and bolts of your particular industry, but it’s creating that arc, building the bridge, putting it all together, that really unlocks the full potential of an organization.

Jim Frawley 4:27
It does really does. And you know, when I speak to people working at the business schools I speak to because I’ll speak to colleges about putting together programs for their students. A lot of the students come back and say, the real world doesn’t operate the way we operate within the walls of the university. It just doesn’t happen. And sometimes people just need a little bit of a wake up call. At the same time, macro change, regardless of industry. My big comment on that is macro change requires a focus on the micro individual. It’s why change management doesn’t work. You’re telling people how to operate in a new way. without focusing on the individual that’s forced to make the change. And nobody’s going to make change if they don’t want to make the change. So when I’m doing a change management program, it’s things like, what is your belief system? And how do we articulate that belief system in a productive way? How are you asking really good questions about other people’s belief systems? How are you defining and articulating the way you like to receive information in a really particular way, and like those types of things that nobody really builds, from a developmental standpoint, but those are the things you actually need, if you want to become an executive that’s going to be successful? Absolutely.

Aaron Lee 5:35
I was on yesterday with a keynote that a friend of mine was doing. And we co presented talking to mid and upper level leaders who are signing on to a leadership program. And this one is coming out of the Asian affinity group within this corporation. And there’s so much of that story, I think, that guides and drives who we are, how we show up at work. And, and sometimes we try to keep those things compartmentalized. And it’s only when we really tap into it. Just in the last hour, I had a coaching client say to me, so I’m going to put this feedback to you bluntly, but it’s not how I would share it with my team member, though. It’s exactly what the team member needs to hear. And he shared that with me, he related to me. And I said, Okay, can I be blunt with you? That wasn’t blunt, that was spot on what you need to say. But he is coming from a place of struggling with those hard conversations struggling with conflict and tension. And he wants to be nice about it. He wants to be kind, he wants to make sure he maintains that relational connection with his team member and not alienate them. But he’s shying away. And so yes, a lot of those pieces and dynamics are, are very important. Yeah,

Jim Frawley 6:55
completely. I mean, most people, and you could attribute it to a lot of different things. You know, we live too much on technology, we do all these other things, but we don’t know how to have difficult conversations in person. Because we want to be liked, we don’t want to be disliked, we don’t want to ruffle feathers. We don’t know how people are going to react. But if you take a look at the really productive leaders, the ones who have a belief system in place, and are comfortable with what they’re telling, and can frame it in the right type of way, it takes practice, those are the ones that are going to evolve, because those are the ones who have trusted relationships. And it also goes back to the whole who you are, who you want to be and who you ought to be type of thing. When we go to work. Like there’s no such thing as work life balance, everything’s the same, right? We do it all. And it’s not one versus the other. But when we think about belief systems and who we are, and what we believe and who we want to be, which is what a coaching engagement is really all about is I’m here and I want to go there. But there is this hovering thing of who we ought to be who we’re supposed to be. And we think and I mean, I had this problem when I was in corporate, you know, work really hard, and you’ll be rewarded, and someone will notice, but nobody notices, right? Because everybody’s thinking about their own selves and who we ought to be generally gets in the way of who we really can be. And that’s a tough exploratory thing to go through. But an important one, it’s an important one to kind of reflect on.

Aaron Lee 8:11
So you wrote, adapt in motion, what was the motivation behind publishing that

Jim Frawley 8:18
I wanted to write a book for a long time. And I would always write, I used to travel three weeks out of the month for my job. So I was constantly on the road, started writing in the airport. And then the pandemic hit, and I said, Well, now’s the perfect time, we’ve got the time. So let’s just kind of get up early and do it. I say different things. One is, you know, I wanted to share, you know, things I always wish I knew and all of that, you know, the more I reflect on I think I wrote the book just because I needed to figure out my way to talk about all the things, it really helped me dilute the way I was thinking about things and to adapting emotion, finding your place in the new economy is how do you prepare for change when you don’t know what change is coming? And we were sitting right smack in the middle of a pandemic, nobody knew that change was coming. And that was my macro change. Micro individual, you’re aware of chain? What’s the arc of responding to the change when you don’t know what’s coming around the corner? And you’re aware that things are changing faster than you can keep up? We know that, then it’s, you know, how do you prepare for it, you got to focus on the individual from a physical and mental, a social standpoint. And then you get to learn and you become wise in your decisions. Because now we live in an economy or workplace or a world where planning is kind of irrelevant, because it changes. It’s not irrelevant. That’s the wrong word. But it’s not as relevant as before decision makings, what’s really, really important, how do you make really good decisions? Because we have to be so quick. And how do you teach your people at work, how to make really, really good decisions, you can’t make good decisions, if you’re worried about what other people are going to think you can’t make good decisions if you’re insecure with who you are as an individual. So all of that work has to be done in advance. And it was more of me just kind of getting all of that out. I really wish I knew that years ago, when I was in corporate I think The reason I didn’t like corporate when I was in it was because I didn’t know how to articulate my frustrations. And I didn’t know how to articulate where I wanted to go, I just didn’t know. Now that I’ve got a decade of coaching under my belt, 20 year career and corporate, you know, all of these things. Now, it allows me to kind of be a little more transparent and open and clear on what it is that I’m hoping for. And the book helped me do

Aaron Lee 10:22
that. That’s great. What kind of reception Have you had from the book? And it’s

Jim Frawley 10:25
not rocket surgery, of course. But it’s very blunt. And it’s honest, most of my challenges. And I think this is what most people get out of, there are people who really like it, whether it’s a little tidbit on how to network or the importance of networking, and how to think about networking, I get that one a lot. How people never thought about a frame that way, versus some strategies in terms of mental health and self care and self love and belief systems. You know, I kind of cover the gamut. So the response has been good. But I think what people appreciate it was how honest I was in it, because I realized that my complaints about my time in corporate were solvable only by me. And there’s this new level of accountability that I wasn’t really open to, I never really had to work hard. If I was really honest, never had to work hard, you just kind of go into an office, you kind of check the box, you do whatever, you bring some value. And that’s it. I didn’t really know what it was to work hard until I had my own business. You think you work hard, right. But when you think you’re working hard, it’s really you’re just stressed, right? Just because you’re stressed doesn’t mean you’re working hard. And that was my challenges. I was working in finance, I was working crazy hours, I was doing PR for the banks, and I was during the financial crisis, it was awful. But when you’re stressed doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing good, crazy work, you can spend all day digging a tunnel. But if your company needs a bridge, it’s kind of irrelevant. We don’t really know I would argue many of us, especially in America, what it means to really do hard work anymore. And so there’s a new level of accountability that I had this realization on, I think that’s what people get out of the book is that you’re responsible, you’re ultimately you lie in the bed you make if you don’t like the feedback you’re getting from your boss, that figure out another way to get the feedback that you need. Right? You’re ultimately you know, I hear that all the time for a while I don’t get the feedback I need. So where else are you going to get a you have to start pushing and driving. And when we hear companies talking about we want entrepreneurs and residents and we want people to do that’s ultimately what they’re talking about, is what are you creating? What are you creating at the office, and I did a podcast not too long ago, you know, I could go back into corporate now that I know what it’s like to run a business on my own. And it will completely change the way I would operate. In the business, I would almost be an entrepreneur, but within the framework of a business, let them buy the printers and everything else. But you’re just doing it within the confines of this different type of environment. And a lot of people don’t think about work that way. They just think about something that has to do, but it’s not. That’s why we lose all of our meaning.

Aaron Lee 12:46
I think one of the challenges that frustrates me most that I keep hitting every now and then is what you just described that somebody is getting feedback, but they think the problem is outside of themselves. And there’s so much growth that can happen when we do recognize where is my place in this? What can I do to change and influence. And whether you’re in a small business with just a few people or I was downtown on our large urban city university campus earlier this week, talking about the power of influence there with a lot of peers, in a lot of different departments. The only way they can build a bridge to affect change is to influence they aren’t high enough on the leadership ladder to dictate change. Because the organization is so large. That’s a great lesson. And I think one of the reasons I was just looking at your book, and your published date was almost the same as mine, same story. And the outline before COVID COVID happened. Let’s look, because what else are we doing right now? And the key question that started that conversation for me, which is usually the Hot Seat question at the end of the podcast. But you just answered it. So I’ll ask you again, if there’s another lesson at the end. But what have you learned that you wish you had learned earlier in your career? And it’s those powerful insights. And so how you described where you sit now how it would be different going back into corporate setting, it’s lessons that we all need to hear. But there’s something you just said that I want to focus in on. You talked about the financial crisis, we’ve talked about change, how do you see the intersection of change and crisis and how we get pushed to react?

Jim Frawley 14:32
The intersection of change in crisis, what we just saw with the pandemic as well, and it’s not so much changes our problem, it’s the speed of change is our problem. And when we look at the reason so much change causes crisis, I think, is we have core emotions, and they impact us individually. So when we think about preparing people for the next downturn or preparing people for any of these, it’s an individ You will fear it’s not necessarily what’s good for the business you have to deal with, you have to come down to an individual level. And we’re afraid we’re going to be left behind. We’re afraid the world is going to evolve without us when you think about the amount of businesses that closed because of the pandemic and the individuals that were affected. And so how do you prepare your people to not worry in different types of ways? How are you comfortable so that when you come in and you have to make an adjustment, you’ve already got a few steps in the right direction, you have a social network in place that you can start to get, you’re not just calling them, when you lose your job, you already have it in place, they’ve already seen you when you’re at your best, so it’s easier for them to make a phone call for you. How are you mentally prepared? For something like that? How are you mentally prepared for the despondency that comes with losing your job where the business is failing or anything like that? And that comes down to inner dialogue? And how do you have a really good inner dialogue and interview yourself and belief systems and all of that, to ask yourself, what are the next steps, so we have to emotionally remove ourselves from the logic of the situation. I tell a lot of entrepreneurs don’t ever put your name in the business that you’re launching, because you’re trying to sell yourself. And that’s impossible to do when you’re trying to sell yourself and you’re just getting started as an entrepreneur, so change the name of it, so that you can sell a product, it’s much easier to talk about it and remove yourself from it, we have to remove ourselves from the change in the crisis of change, while recognizing that we also have to take care of our particular situation. So the big thing, also, with downturn and changing crisis is you know, the money question, and who’s gonna keep the lights on and everything else. And I very few people are smart with money. And there are three questions, you really have to ask, what’s your budget? What’s your net worth? And how much do you need? And if you don’t have those three answers, then you’re just kind of, you know, shooting in the dark? Well, once you have control over, you know, how much do I need to make in order to cover my minimum budget? What is my current net worth? How close am I to getting to when I don’t have to work ever again? And what’s the final number? It’s a 20 minute exercise for people to figure out those three numbers and monitor them on a regular basis, gives you control over your, your mindset. People who say I have to you know, I’d always launch a business, but I just can’t do it. And you say why? And I said, Well, it’s going to cost too much money. You say, Well, how much is it gonna cost? I say, I don’t know, you know, and when they do the math, and actually that you suddenly realize many more things are possible. We didn’t have answers, you know, we don’t have the answers in front of us. And so a lot of our nervousness in our crisis challenge comes from the fear of the unknown. When we can familiarize ourselves with what’s happening and what we can control and what our actual situation is, then we’re making fundamentally different decisions in the moment, because we have more and more arrows in our quiver that we can pull

Aaron Lee 17:37
on. Yeah, like the thought of the arrows in the quiver, the preparation, I was just talking with a couple of business leaders yesterday about the idea of preparation versus reaction. And preparation isn’t quite as appealing. And you see that after natural disasters, you see that in these larger crisis experiences that sure there could have been preparation. But preparation isn’t as glamorous as jumping in and responding in that moment of crisis. But there’s certainly no shortage of crisis.

Jim Frawley 18:08
No, there’s certainly never a shortage of crises. But when you sit, we can prepare as much as we can. But we can’t control the situation, the act of preparation, the act of planning, there was an old saying, I think Eisenhower said it where planning is key, but the plan is worthless. So no matter what plan you put together, it’s not going to follow just like any business plan you put together, the world’s not going to follow it for you. However, the act of planning the act of preparation, talking through these things, if you’re sitting to work and saying, you know, what, if the market goes up by 50%, or down by 50%, what are the decisions we have to make that gets you ready to be able to make those decisions? You’re five steps, 10 steps, 100 steps further down the road than other people who haven’t had those initial conversations? And that’s the real value of it. When you have these conversations with your friends or your family about what would happen. And let’s see, in 2023, we have a recession. What does that mean? We talk more about the big picture, kind of let’s philosophize about, you know, how it’s going to change the world and the dynamics and everything else. But there are real tangible things that you could be talking about to that. If this happened, my first phone call will be this second act will be this, my third act will be this. And this isn’t intense, crazy work to do. It’s more about just saying what would I do and theorizing about the type of preparation that you need to get done?

Aaron Lee 19:23
Looking back over your career? What were the key factors that helped propel you forward at various points along that journey?

Jim Frawley 19:32
That’s a great question. And you know what, I have a piece of paper right above my desk, about pivotal moments for my career, but it’s a little different. I remember the first time I got a check. I went out to lunch with an individual who really changed my way of thinking was just as a friend now. My first true sale like all of those my biggest failure with a client what I consider a big failure. But if I look at my career, I think the thing that drives most of it, you know, in 2008 I kind of fell backwards into The financial industry. The only reason I worked in the financial industry is because my job got me stuck in Omaha, Nebraska. And I wanted to move back to the east coast and the only company out in Omaha, though, moving back to the east coast was a financial firm. And so that’s why I joined them. And it ended up being an almost 20 year career in the financial industry. But I worked in executive communications for a large portion of that. And I got incredibly lucky one, I worked for an incredibly cool company that was acquiring other businesses. So I learned a lot about change management naturally through that, how do you merge these, I think we did five m&a While I was working there, we absorbed those companies, it was massive, it was really, really big. That was one, we had a dynamic CEO who was fantastic and really believed in executive communications, and was very specific in terms of how to articulate to varying audiences, clients, shareholders associates. And when I was writing speeches and doing PR during the financial crisis, you could see the executives that did really well with this, and the ones who didn’t, the ones who had their belief systems, the ones who didn’t, the ones who could communicate well, the ones who couldn’t. And the ones who could do these things thrived. And people were drawn to them, and the ones who couldn’t, are no longer in the financial industry. And so I think that was probably if I could put one big, massive thing on it was how much I learned during that time, I didn’t realize how much I was learning. But that informs so much of my work today was that maybe five to seven year block of major stress to companies, public relations, executive communications, doing all of that and learning and having the agency to do what I was able to do. That would probably be the most pivotal part. And then there were other things I learned as well, of course, along the way, but that was the big one.

Aaron Lee 21:41
What’s interesting in that example is it’s it’s the experience, it’s the environment, it’s also the influence of watching people steps ahead of you play out, live out their career, and being able to watch that in in living color, and now be able to look back and assess, perceive, reflect on what they were doing, how they were doing it, and how others can do that.

Jim Frawley 22:05
Yeah, and you could see it happening again, it’s playing out again, with, you know, the pandemic and the new recession commentary that’s going on. Now, it’s a lot of similarities, a lot of similarities I’m having and conversations with clients now,

Aaron Lee 22:16
what passion is driving you into 2023. And what you see ahead for your work,

Jim Frawley 22:23
well, I got a TED talk coming up. So that’s nice. So that’s a big, that’s a nice one. For me, that’s gonna be over in Ireland. So I’m excited for that in March, you know, one of the things I learned, I’m constantly learning, as I’ve had this business for almost a decade, a few years back, my big goal was, you know, I had to find my voice, I didn’t really have an opinion, I had to unlearn all the stuff I learned in corporate so that I could bring something of value. And that’s benefited me incredibly well. Now, and during the pandemic, my rules were, you know, there are no rules, right. And that’s it for me over the last two years, where there are fundamentally no rules. And so now I feel like I’m in a really good position to push the envelope in really different ways. I have strong, strong opinions on the way coaching should be done. I have strong opinions on the way learning and development should be done. And they all involve a very high required ROI, and a lot of work. And I see myself as being the clients I work with hire me, because I’m one of the only coaches that has a guaranteed ROI, I’ll give the money back if it doesn’t work. So the thing that’s driving me is that I’m able to make a really big difference. And I know it’s going to work, and I know what works for clients. And that’s awesome. So I’ve got my voice, I know there are no rules. And so now I get to see what I can build with that, which is gonna be a lot of fun.

Aaron Lee 23:42
That’s exciting. On the last episode, we were talking about the new year, and 2023 feels a little bit different as we head towards starting a new year, that we were all really excited the wow factor of 2020 came and then 2020 happened. And then 2021. And we thought, well, maybe this year will be our fresh start. And then 2022 And somewhere I saw recently, there was commentary that 2022 was probably worse than 2021. Its terms of stress and the impact and and how much we saw across so many segments, but 2023 is starting to feel like just like you said, for yourself, you have voice you have clarity, no rules. Let’s get after it. And maybe we’ve gotten back to a place where we can all start from and jumpstart, get a fresh start, not try to bite off too much in the new year. We’re focused, we know where we’re headed, and maybe just maybe,

Jim Frawley 24:39
maybe just maybe, right. I remember the saying, you know, 2020 the year perfect vision. Everything was gonna be great. And then disaster struck. And I remember when the pandemic first started, people joked about how you got to stay home for a week maybe this might turn into a month and rumors like that’s crazy. And then it turned into a year. And there was commentary back then about how the impact of this could go on for almost a day. Acade people thought it was crazy. But at the end of the day, we’re three years into this right 2021 22, we’re about to 2023 with a recession, right. So it could continue on for another number of years, this very well could be a lost decade, which people don’t appreciate. But you can take advantage of it. If you do the work, if you take the accountability, if you sit and wait for the office to give you more work, if you sit and wait for someone to kind of give you, you know, we’re given everything technology gives us whatever we want, you take a look at what AI can do now. And it’s just kind of you don’t really have to do work, the people who understand that they have to do work and can do work are going to do very, very well, I think, over the next couple of years, the ones who sit in are extremely passive, are not going to have a good time. And that’s really, really, it’s a difficult pill to swallow. When you realize you’re not being accountable on yourself and what you’re doing, and you have to do more. But you also have to do it in the right way. We have to be learners. So there are right ways to do it. Be sure to ask for help. And I think the people who do the work are the ones who are going to who are going to turn out to be pretty good.

Aaron Lee 26:04
Well, if you’ve brought us back all the way around in this conversation that the people who look to others, to do it collaboratively look beyond themselves and realize maybe within themselves, there is a lack and a gap. But that lack and the gap isn’t a problem. It’s an opportunity to reach out and to collaborate and accomplish more together than than we could on our own. But that’s maybe a human nature factor that we’ve got to overcome.

Jim Frawley 26:31
Yeah, you know, we have to ask ourselves and be honest with ourselves, we have to ask ourselves the difficult questions, the really difficult questions and the things we don’t want to pay attention to the reason so many people had a hard time in the pandemic, is they lost the social interaction, they were forced to have that conversation in their head and they weren’t ready for it. And they weren’t ready to answer those questions. And depression went up and drinking went up and all of these types of things because they weren’t ready to accept the challenges that they have and embrace the imperfections that they have. Jock Russo’s My favorite quote. And it was meaningful for me, how can anyone be satisfied in life if they aren’t satisfied with the one person that can never be separated from and that’s, that drives a lot of the way I think about a lot of the work that I do is, you think about ethical philosophy. And you think about how serving others makes you a better person and all of this, but I kind of flipped that on its head for ethical philosophy to work, you have to be at your best. So you need almost a healthy selfishness to take care of yourself before you can help others. And that takes work and it’s uncomfortable work. And you’re not going to like what you see sometimes. But everybody has the imperfections that they’ve got. And imperfections actually can become attractive if you embrace them, and you deal with them and address them and just take ownership of

Aaron Lee 27:42
them. I was just having a conversation the other day, it pointed back to the Golden Rule, which is a concept that I think is transcended various religions. But at the heart, it is about what you just described that humility yet self and being confident enough taking care of yourself enough not to elevate yourself but taking care of yourself enough to be able to take care of someone else and perfectly exemplified in you can’t help somebody else on the airplane unless you put on the oxygen mask first. We do we all have to figure out those those rhythms, those habits that allow us to truly recharge ourselves. And I find that’s one of the foundational conversations I have in a one on one coaching session in a group coaching session. We start there, how are you know, really, how are you and figure that out, because from that starting point, then we can find somewhere to move to. But until we get back to square one, we’re on shaky foundation,

Jim Frawley 28:48
right? And it gives you a platform to at least begin a discussion and you need to take steps backwards and forwards. Both are fine. But we have to articulate we have to be honest and push ourselves to where we want to be.

Aaron Lee 28:59
The journey is ours. And we can make the choice and choose our path forward. So Jim, as we wrap up, I’m going to ask you the question again. And more specifically this time. Yeah. What have you learned in your career that you wish you had learned earlier?

Jim Frawley 29:15
One was the Rousseau quote, how can anyone be satisfied in life if they can never be separated from the want? Or how can anyone be satisfied in life, they’re not satisfied with one person that can never be separated from its from his confessions? That was just like kind of a lightbulb moment for me. But the other thing I would tell myself younger is the race is only with yourself. I’m a very competitive person, and we see other people doing the things we wish to do. The only reason they’re doing that the only reason we notice it because they’re doing what we want them to do. We’re not doing it. And you don’t have enough context to be jealous of other people. So it’s kind of irrelevant. They may have more money from their parents that gave them a headstart they may have stumbled in met someone in a hotel lobby that kind of Kickstarter, whatever they may, they may be Full of BS, like who knows, right? It’s all it’s irrelevant to getting done whatever it is that you wish to get done. And so when we see other people being incredibly successful in a way that we want to be, use that as a lesson and learning and just say, Oh, I really like how they did that. How can I incorporate and make that my own and make it your own type of style? And I think that’s, there’s plenty to go around. It’s more about focusing on you in the best possible way.

Aaron Lee 30:24
That’s good. You talked earlier about figuring out what drives you what are your motivations? What are your key values and what what’s at the heart of you? So I think there’s a lot to chew on. We covered a lot of ground. I enjoyed the conversation. How can people connect with you?

Jim Frawley 30:41
The website is Bellwether hub.com, though whether it’s B E LL. W. E th, er, I’ve got the bellwether hub podcast, and go to Jim frawley.com. I’m on all the socials as much as I hate social. I still have a presence there. Jim Frawley and why I think is my handle and just reach out anything. I love these types of conversations.

Aaron Lee 31:00
Good. Oh, link all of your socials and websites, your book, and those quotes. We’ll drop those in the show notes at NewGenerationLeader.com/28. Thanks, Jim.

Jim Frawley 31:11
Thank you. Appreciate it.