We all make mistakes—sometimes more than we’d like to admit. But mistakes don’t have to hinder our growth and success. Instead, they can be an opportunity to learn and push ourselves to improve.
Bryan Barley joins us in this episode to explore how you can use the challenges and embrace the clumsiness of your life to better yourself and your journey and not let obstacles be a roadblock to your progress—learn to use them to your advantage!
Show Outline
- 01:09 – Transition: The Journey of Looking Back and Looking Forward
- 05:19 – Bryan’s key takeaways & proudest moments from the last 15 years
- 11:27 – Why Founders and their start-ups are identical?
- 13:41 – How to respond to chaotic environments?
- 17:52 – What’s it like to be in this season of starting something new?
- 20:22 – Keeping the Momentum Forward with your Team
- 26:27 – The power of vulnerability versus projection
- 28:18 – Bryan’s number one insight from his experience
Quotes on the Show
“Looking back on yourself, and If you’re constantly being like, what in the world was I thinking? It means you’re growing”
“The ordained path towards greatness is you being clumsy and practicing and figuring things out. ”
“Being an entrepreneur becomes one of those professions that become synonymous with your identity. The pain of the organization becomes your pain. The successes of the organization become your successes.”
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Connect with Bryan Barley
- Website: Learn More — AGC*
- LinkedIn: Bryan Barley – Co-Founder – A Generous Company
Bryan has spent the majority of his professional career starting new ventures in highly challenging contexts and championing those who are willing to do the same.
He is passionate about doing hard things in a healthy way and is seeking to create a more generous future.
Episode 35 – Full Transcript
Aaron Lee 00:01
On the little league field. We were competitors in college, we became friends. Over the last two decades, I’ve watched Brian get started in his professional career, where he spent the majority of his time starting new ventures in some highly challenging contexts and also championing those who are willing to do the same. He is a passionate guy. He’s passionate about doing hard things in a healthy way, and he spent the last decade with more proximity to generosity than the average person will in their lifetime. One thing I think makes brian’s perspective so impactful is how he’s seeking to create a more generous future. I’m excited about today’s conversation and for you to hear some of brian’s lessons from leadership and also what he’s learning in starting a new venture focused on generosity. Let’s dive into today’s conversation with Brian. Welcome to the new Generation leader podcast.
Aaron Lee 00:58
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. Thinking about change and transition. You’re kind of in a season transition yourself. What’s that journey been like for you as you look back and look forward?
Bryan Barley 01:20
Yeah. Change is, I think, a lot of times romanticize, and it’s a lot more difficult and scary when you’re in the midst of it. For context, I was going to say twelve, but you spend more time preparing the last 14 years of my life, preparing to start a church and then starting a church and putting it in your living room and having it grow and go from a coffee shop, all these different places, to eventually buying a building and renovating especially. I think when my wife and I started that journey, we had no kids. I was 25, she was 23. We did not have much life experience. I think particularly the change is like when you go from starting something so young and handing it off, it’s sending a kid off to college way earlier in your life than you anticipated or something like that. I think as you look back, try to make sense of, what did you do well, and what did you not do well?
Bryan Barley 02:16
Did you transition well? Could you have done things better? I think as you get more and more removed, the increased clarity as well as yearning to have done the absolute best that you could have done and seeing how things go in the absence of your leadership. Yeah.
Aaron Lee 02:31
Looking back, what’s that memory journey like for you in going down memory lane and thinking, what if we had done this or what if we had done that? How is that impacting and how are you reacting to looking back like that after having just made the transition?
Bryan Barley 02:46
That’s a really thoughtful question. It’s something I’ve been processing a lot. A lot of people start things and are driven to the instinctual place that I go to when I do exactly what you just described regret. Oh, I wish I could have done this, which would have been better, and it’s been interesting. One of the best decisions I made in this transition was I got connected to a counselor and have done literally weekly counseling for the last six months. Pretty much like every Friday I’m meeting with a counselor. She’s been amazing, and my wife has been with her as well, and she made a really helpful observation that like, is a bit of a buffer against that kind of dark place of regret that you can go to where she was like, you grew up creating and building this thing. You became an adult doing this.
Bryan Barley 03:31
When we grow up, we’re fundamentally clumsy. We make mistakes. An appropriate way to look back on your journey is not taking all the good things you did for granted and focusing on the bad things and being like if I only knew. I’m 38 now. If I had acted like 25, with all the wisdom and experience that I have now, at 38, I would have gone like this. That’s a dissociation from reality. That’s not even possible. That’s been really helpful to process everything that we did through a more realistic lens.
Aaron Lee 04:02
I can’t say that I haven’t looked back at similar time frames in my early-mid twenty s and thought I more often think, what in the world was I thinking at that point? Yeah, there is so much life and experience and insight that we gained along the way. I’ll ask you the question that I ask everybody that really started this journey, we’ll come back to this later, but what have you learned that you wish you had known earlier that you could pass on to a younger version of yourself? As you said, that’s a misnomer, because it is in the growth journey that we do learn and we discover more. I go back to my time working with teenagers and studying human development. 25, theoretically, your prefrontal cortex still wasn’t even completely felt right, and here you were launching something new. As you look back, it’s fascinating for me, having known and watched your story from afar, quite literally most of the way across the country, thinking back to where you started versus what the chapter was that you just closed and what the church had grown to flip that question and think about what you did learn and discover along the way.
Aaron Lee 05:14
What are your key takeaways and your proudest moments from the last 15 years?
Bryan Barley 05:19
It’s funny, as you were talking, I was thinking about, in some ways, you hope your entire life is looking back on yourself two years ago and being like, man, I was a complete idiot, right? Because that means you’re growing. If you’re constantly being like, what in the world was I thinking? I think that to answer that kind of initial question about what’s the biggest thing I would tell myself is that you’re going to be clumsy doing this. I think at 25, you start something, you don’t have a track record of success. You don’t really know. Are you good at this? Are you not? I mean, even like, you study the psychology of entrepreneurs and people who just do hard things. A lot of times you’re coming from a lot of maybe instability or pain or burden, and you’re hey, I’m going to create this thing that’s going to fix the deepest angst in my heart, and it’s going to be great.
Bryan Barley 06:10
I wish, like, when I do coaching or talk to people who are younger and starting things to be like, hey, this is the first time you did this and the first time we do anything, we’re not very good at it. That’s part of the journey towards greatness that is the ordained path towards greatness is, you’re going to be clumsy. We’re just practicing and figuring this out. I mean, a major shift for me was actually having kids and seeing the development of my own kids and seeing the way my kids learn. My oldest daughter, the first time I taught her to learn to ride a bike, that experience is full of failure. They’re crashing into chain link fences and screaming, they can’t do it, and all sorts of stuff. They collapse and go over the handlebars. As a dad, my posture towards her is not like, come on, you idiot, why can’t you get this on the first try?
Bryan Barley 06:56
There’s actually a deep sense of pride, of like, gosh, look at you. Try and have the courage to get back up again and try again after failing. The way you learn to bike miles upon miles, is there no other way other than that? I wish that what I would have told myself is like, that’s the way it’s going to go. You’re going to be clumsy. Learn from these mistakes, stay humble, and stay, teachable. Put wise people around you and just keep going and have the grit. Make your way through 10,000 little failures if you even want to label those failures again. It’s just the ordained path toward creating something significant. I think what I’m most proud of is the things that I think I took for granted on the front end or assumed would be given, which was not having scandals leading with integrity and my wife and kids still really loving me and liking me.
Bryan Barley 07:48
I think most of the time now that I’m around a lot of different types of leaders and people who have started all sorts of different things, you see that’s not a given. It’s a really hard thing. I think that’s what I’m most grateful for as well as, like, most proud of starting something, growing it, having to be successful, handing it off, and doing so with integrity and doing so in such a way that my wife and kids are still loving me.
Aaron Lee 08:13
In my life and they’re still there for the right.
Bryan Barley 08:15
Yeah, that’s right. And willing to do it again.
Aaron Lee 08:17
Yes. Talk about you are jumping into something new in this new season. You’re diving back to square one, launching something new, going back to this journey, but now you have 15 more years of life experience going into that. What’s different this time for you?
Bryan Barley 08:34
Yeah, a little background of what we’re creating. When I decided to step out of the church, I told our elders, and I told him it was going to be like, six months to try to help them make the transition as healthily as possible and not be like, you got to figure this out in two weeks. One of the people I reached out to was a friend of mine who actually plays in the NBA, mason plummet. He played the Duke. I met him when he played for the nuggets, and he plays for the Charlotte hornets right now. I knew he did a bunch of entrepreneurial adventure stuff and was just like, hey, if of anything, I’m going to make a transition in six months. Can you keep me in mind? He’s like, well, I’ve had this idea, and I’ve been looking for somebody to run it.
Bryan Barley 09:09
Would you be interested in trying that and doing that? I was like, yeah, that’d be really cool. At the heart of what we’re trying to do is make people, helping people as easy as possible. Like, we envision frictionless, generosity, technological innovations to empower frictionless, generosity because kind of our presupposition is that a lot of times people want to help other people, but there are just major points of friction that prevent them from actually acting on that. What are they going to do with the money? Am I going to embarrass you? I just don’t have time for a 15-minute social interaction after I purchase your meal or something like that, or maybe just prefer to stay anonymous. We feel like there’s real power in unlocking one, just the generous pay-it-forward experience and, like, the entrance of a generous dollar into the ecosystem of a business and how it has kind of the power, this multiplying effect within a business as well.
Bryan Barley 09:58
As we’re on the back end of another series of national tragedies, and people all the time are like, I wish I could do something. I think a lot of people want to do something, and they just don’t know how. I think what we envision ourselves as being a solution to help people just make the world a better place and keep it as simple and easy as possible. I think now 15 years removed from starting something, what’s different? I think more differentiated, to be honest. The first time I started something, my wife and I joked this was giving birth to our first child. The church we started was our child. It just feels like enmeshment in the truest sense, right? You don’t know where you start and stop and where the organization that you’re starting starts and stops, which leads to a crazy amount of pain.
Bryan Barley 10:44
It can be helpful in terms of you being like, I will die before this thing dies, and leads to a lot of times creating something and leading to it being successful, but it leads to tremendous psychological, mental, and emotional pain. I think just more of a healthy differentiation of being like, hey, this really matters. I’m going to absolutely work my b*** off to make this thing great, but it’s not an extension of my personhood or something like that. I think it actually makes me a better leader to see it for what it really is and go on the journey of being the best founder I can be.
Aaron Lee 11:17
How have you seen that similarity with other founders you’ve been learning from or coaching that ‘me and the business that I’m starting are one and the same’?
Bryan Barley 11:27
I see it all the time. I almost don’t know if it’s possible to not see it that way, especially the first time you found something. Again, you don’t have the experience. You don’t have a track record. A lot of times you don’t have a family. To be honest, most founders probably are not married. They don’t have kids, and you’re going all in, right? You’re borrowing money from anybody and everybody. The friends and the family and the fools are giving you money, and you have no track record. You’re I don’t know what I’ll do if this thing doesn’t succeed. There are no boundaries. You’re working at all times as well as it becomes. I think being an entrepreneur becomes one of those professions that become synonymous with your identity. There are professions that you get introduced to at parties, and that’s the first thing they say about you.
Bryan Barley 12:15
And there are professions that aren’t like that. I don’t mean any shade on somebody who works at target, but somebody probably isn’t introduced at a party being like, hey, this is Brian. He works at target. You’re an athlete, you’re a pastor, you’re a doctor, you’re a founder and entrepreneur. You found something that’s going to be in the first breath of the way that somebody gets to know you. This is so and so, and this is what you do. The repetition of that experience leads to an organization and you as a person becoming a mesh and being like, I don’t know where I start and stop. I don’t know where this thing starts and stops. The pain of the organization becomes your pain. The successes of the organization become your successes. And it’s real. I always see it. I almost don’t see it. So it’s very normal.
Aaron Lee 13:02
Let’s sit on that for a minute. There’s maybe something deeper about that trailblazing. Go get them, get after it persona that often gets held up as the ultimate goal of, hey, we should all want to start something. It’s making headlines. The covers of magazines on basque Company Inc. Entrepreneur. How have you seen your gifting and wiring and how you think and process being different from even Mason in this new venture? Or somebody set some people up to be naturally gifted towards starting something new and other people to take a different seat on that bus.
Bryan Barley 13:41
Yeah, definitely. Here’s just my experience. I’m not trying to paint in broad strokes. I’m not trying to invade ways that allude to things in my own journey. I think that on the whole a lot of times people who found things come from are destabilized, painful environments the way that a lot of times people respond to destabilized, chaotic environments. Maybe we’re talking about your family of origin. We’re going to get into family system theory and stuff like that. What most people do is respond to chaotic environments through being chaotic and a few people respond to chaotic environments, maybe of their family of origin through creating and being like, I’m going to create something where nobody has to experience the pain that I experienced. I was in a room of high-level leaders recently. We were kind of sharing our stories and that was the common thread, was that all of us, the first thing we found, it was a response to childhood stuff.
Bryan Barley 14:37
I think from your earliest memories, experiencing pain and being like, I’m going to create something. These delusions of grandeur from your earliest memories of like, I’m going to create something that’s going to make sure that I and nobody else has to experience this ever again is just like a unique thread that I see in high-achieving founders. I don’t completely understand it, but it’s just there. I think guys who do it see it in other guys and kinship in that. It’s in no way trying to dismiss the significance of the contributions of people who are different. It’s a bizarre similarity.
Aaron Lee 15:13
One of the tools that I use with teams in coaching that I think has brought a lot of clarity for me and part of what I mentioned a few minutes ago that I’ve seen in myself back to my 20s, this tool has helped me illuminate it. When we break down those different frameworks, part of what you describe is that trailblazing pioneering personality type, and if the numbers are completely scientific and spot-on true, which I think it makes sense that they do, only 7% of the population has that kind of there’s an issue, let me solve it mentality. It’s not a power play, a level, an elitism. It’s, hey, this is one way of thinking and then at some point in the journey of this system, in this organization, in our lives, we’ve got to break this down and build relationships and build bridges. We need people who are gifted in that and we need to get tactical and build up the system and the process and we need people who are gifted in that and all of it together is what makes it thrive.
Aaron Lee 16:17
Getting at that, let’s solve something, but also releasing ourselves if we’re not like that, to say, hey, I don’t have to solve everything in front of me if that’s not my natural skill, right?
Bryan Barley 16:29
I’ve heard similar kinds of data about that. It’s somewhere in the single digit percent of the kind of person that experiences the problems in the world and their response is like, I need to go do something about that and create something to fix that. The majority of people are like, somebody else should fix that or apathetic or just don’t even want to think about it, or whatever it is. I think to your point, it’s not only a recognition of like, hey, is that a rare instinctual response to see a problem or to walk in a room and see an issue and be like, but I’m also going to go do something about that? I think a self-awareness and relational awareness, but the vast majority of people in your life are not having the same experience. Their hierarchy of needs, their hierarchy of priorities are different.
Bryan Barley 17:15
I think even recognition of that, of like, hey, my experience is not everybody’s experience and I need to be empathetic towards that and I need to figure out what bridges with that is like, absolutely essential.
Aaron Lee 17:25
Right now in this season, you mentioned ago in that last role, starting the church, you were watching those learning opportunities, not just failures, but you were learning from them. Before we hopped on, you talked about this season of starting something new and you’re going through that cycle and that process. What’s that like for you right now to be in, hey, I’ve identified something to solve, found somebody to collaborate with, now what?
Bryan Barley 17:52
In some ways, it’s a lot more fun because there’s just a little bit more experience to be like, hey, learning opportunities. But I’m like, can be crazy driven. It’s hard for me not to use the word failures. In some ways the only failure is like, you don’t learn something and you don’t tweak it and grow it and improve it along the way. I think what’s been really amazing is in this new role, I’ve entered into a sphere of relationships with objectively, unbelievably, successful people who have accomplished really great things, who have been really kind to share meals with me and be vulnerable about their own journey. I think one of the common threads has been the willingness to stay in that place of being humble, teachable, curious, tolerant to failure, not being the expert, and not having all the answers again, I said this earlier, but I’ll say it again, really is the ordained path to growth.
Bryan Barley 18:47
The journey to innovation is not like, I had an idea, I launched it. A million people liked it. It’s like 10,000 learning opportunities. I live in Denver, and in south Denver is a guy named Ken Denman. Ken founded a company called Emotion, which was the start-up that created the technology that eventually was what Apple bought, that unlocks your phone with your face. Like, they were the ones who innovated this technology. I’ll get lunch with him every once in a while, and I’ll just say these, like, little things that you just think about all the time. We’re having lunch, tell me kind of where you are on this journey. What are you doing? I was telling him all these questions that were trying to answer and all these unknowns, and he just kind of leaned back. He was like, all right, it’s time to start failing.
Bryan Barley 19:33
It’s time to start failing. Op trying to mastermind this perfect solution, get something out there, fail quickly, fail fast. Learn, adjust, pivot, and grow it. I think just being on the other side of lunch with somebody like that, he sits on the board of Costco and Motorola. He’s just an objectively, super successful person who now kind of in the last half of his life has not lost that. I think infuses in my experience now, like, hey, what we’re experiencing of just learning and growing and being curious and clumsy is the way that something great is created.
Aaron Lee 20:04
You have a small team right now, but how do you keep that momentum moving forward when something doesn’t work and you’re pulling that learning opportunity and pulling the whole team forward? How do you inject that kind of DNA in people around you when, oh, no, you messed up?
Bryan Barley 20:22
I think what I’m fortunate in now is that everybody in the team that we have has a lot of startup experience. I’m not trying to pretend like I’m having to do something or do a lift that I’m not having to do. It’s a common understanding of, like, this is the way it goes. Once you’ve had some experience, this is the way it goes. I do have a lot of experience with failure and trying to help people process that. I think honesty and availability are the key components, the honesty of naming the thing that everybody else can see. I think people can almost handle anything when we’re honest about it, and we kind of are like, hey, this is what’s really going on. Hey, I’m scared too. Hey, I’m frustrated also. I’m angry also. If you want to talk about it, I’m more than available and I’d be happy to talk about that.
Bryan Barley 21:06
I think that just like honesty, transparency, the availability, some proximity breeds that. Like, hey, we’re two people trying to figure this out together. Just because I might be leading this thing doesn’t mean I’m immune to the fears that you’re having. This is part of the way that this journey goes, and if it scares you, it scares me too. Let’s talk about that.
Aaron Lee 21:25
That’s a really important insight that so often there’s an image or a veil of secrecy or, hey, we can’t talk about this because that might damage our reputation or it might knock me down a few levels in this competition and rise for perfection and achievement. What if I fail more than the person next to me? Am I going to be the next one on the chopping block? That requires a different culture like you said. I love how you highlighted honesty, transparency, and availability. Let’s talk about it. Let’s flesh this out.
Bryan Barley 22:00
It’s interesting. I actually picked this up from a child psychologist that I knew, and I was having a conversation with her about how you talk to your kids about hard things. And she made the comment. She said children are way more resilient than we give them credit for if they’re guided through something hard by an available, honest adult. What a kid cannot handle is being lied to and having that experience where you’re 22 and you’re like, oh my gosh, mom had said this, but it was actually like this. That’s what really messes with a kid. I think you extrapolate that and apply that to adults today and people who are working today. I think it’s kind of the same thing. People are way more resilient than we give them credit for. What throws them off is like secrets. Being told that something isn’t good is fine when all of us in the deepest recesses of our hearts, this isn’t going well.
Bryan Barley 22:49
That does something to people. A leader who can be honest and available and really kind of human to human, heart to heart, hey, we’re feeling and seeing the same things, but it’s going to be okay. Here’s why I think taps into the long history of stunning human resiliency.
Aaron Lee 23:04
One of the things that we talked about, another conversation we had before we hopped on, was about that continual learning process. That whole framework brings its best to us and to the people we lead. When we do look at growth opportunities and recognize we’re all on this lifelong journey, let’s not stop and think we’ve got it all together. Because every new person, every new relationship, every new team we’re on let’s be honest, every new year that we face and everything going on around us is going to bring new dynamics that we’ve got to figure out how to react to and respond to.
Bryan Barley 23:38
Yeah, like I mentioned to you, one of the people I’ve listened to and read to she recently passed. Her name is Mary Anne Diamond and I think she did like brain science at Cow Berkeley for a long time. She talks about five components of basically remaining healthy for your entire life, for as long as possible in your life. One of the key components is the willingness to be a lifelong learner. That’s what contributes to neuroplasticity. We can learn things way beyond the age of six or ten or 18. We can learn our entire lives. The challenge is the willingness to stay in that space. The more accomplished you get, the more painful it is to learn something new. Right, because you’re willing to look foolish when you’re 40 and you have a real track record. I’m teaching my oldest daughter to ski right now. I took her up for a birthday on Friday to go skiing.
Bryan Barley 24:26
I saw this guy who was super athletic like he was probably in his forty s, and he was very obviously skiing for the first time in his life. Like a bunch of kids who were looking foolish. I was so freaking proud of this guy. I kind of regret now, as I’m telling you this story, I didn’t go encourage him. I should have done that. Because the courage it takes to be around a bunch of kids looking foolish, to learn something, is like the essential component of remaining healthy for your entire life. Again, it’s not just on the ski slopes or learning a new hobby, to your point, we’re always growing. We’re surrounded by new people, new opportunities, new learning experiences, and new work relationships that are invitations. Rather than pretending to be the expert with all the answers, to be curious and to be humble and grow so we can be the best person, the best leader we can be.
Aaron Lee 25:14
Thinking about teaching my youngest to ski, I don’t know how much teaching there was going on because I am by no means an expert skier. Watching her, I remember that day thinking the first time down the slope, wow, this is going to be a long 4 hours with this lift ticket. We got to the bottom the first time went back up to the top, and then it was like, boom, she got it. There is just something so fascinating about watching kids, I think, as you talked about looking back to your experience of starting something 15 years ago. Now here you are walking that journey again, but also being able to watch other people walk through their own journey and humanize not just the perfected glossy headline story version that we often get the social media version, but sitting down, having a conversation, like the kinds of conversations you’re having with Kenneth.
Aaron Lee 26:06
It’s not flashy. It’s not a headline kind of event. It’s let’s sit down and have a conversation and talk about not just copying and pasting his lessons to you. Let’s l. Look in a mirror. How can I take my lesson, hold up a mirror for you and allow you to see yourself and your own growth opportunities in that and build from that to a brighter future?
Bryan Barley 26:27
It’s the power of vulnerability versus projection. Projection and pretending harm. Because Ken could have sat down. He’s objectively more successful than 1% of the 1%. Like, it’s amazing what he’s accomplished. He could have used that opportunity to elevate himself and leave me with a feeling of there’s something deeply flawed and inferior about me. That every problem I’m having, every stumbling block I’m hitting in this journey, every question that I’m asking is a reflection that I am deeply broken and I will never do what he has done. Rather than projecting, he was vulnerable and let me into his experience. We’re both elevated in that space of being like, oh, gosh, me too. You failed. I can do that. You learned from your failures. Anybody can do that. Anybody can fail and learn from their failures and improve. That’s accessible to anyone and everyone. All you got to have is, like, grit.
Bryan Barley 27:25
I think the true trademark of the highest level leaders, I think a lot of times we think the highest-level leaders are the people who don’t have any more questions and have no problems, and have no shortcomings. Really? The people at the top are the people who are humble and vulnerable and determined and don’t see conversations as some competition to win, to validate their own value.
Aaron Lee 27:48
Learning is the journey that never stops and the gift that keeps on giving.
Bryan Barley 27:53
Yeah, that’s awesome.
Aaron Lee 27:54
Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground. I got two more questions for you. One is going to be easier than the other, so I’ll give you the hard one first.
Bryan Barley 28:01
Okay.
Aaron Lee 28:02
I’m going to shift that question that I always ask. Based on your experience and now you’re coaching and in conversations with other entrepreneurs and leaders, what’s the number one insight from your experience that you are now passing on to other leaders?
Bryan Barley 28:18
As you can probably tell from this conversation, the thing that I feel like I talk a lot of times about is the willingness to be clumsy. And that’s part of the journey. The other thing that comes to mind, and it’s a lot of what my coaching centers on. You’re going to need to develop the skill of leading with heart if you’re going to really accomplish something really significant in a healthy way. I think a lot of times, really driven people if you think about kind of who you are through three components, there’s a head to think, there are hands to do, and there’s a heart to feel. Those really driven people tend to dismiss the heart part. The heart part because it’s intangible or a lot of times it’s not talked about. I just have this incredible conviction that nobody can really be successful in terms of the true definition of success if they don’t really develop the skill of emotional and relational health.
Bryan Barley 29:08
I think culture is increasingly trending to a place of there is intolerance, and I think a justified intolerance towards the extremely gifted, extremely strategic leader who lacks empathy and humility, and the ability to be relationally healthy. I think learning how to develop the skill of leading with a heart would be the most important thing.
Aaron Lee 29:26
That’s a mic-drop comment right there.
Bryan Barley 29:28
Thanks.
Aaron Lee 29:29
So I’ll wrap up with the easy question. You’re getting started with AGC launching that. How can people follow along with you and the journey of what you’re doing in and out of AGC?
Bryan Barley 29:39
Yeah, sure. All my personal socials are just my name Brian barley. Brian with a Y. Our AGC website is hello, agc.com. That can lead you to all our socials as well. We do most of our stuff on Instagram. We’re doing some really cool, generous experiments and we’re getting ready to do some real storytelling, some significant figures who demonstrate really unique generosity. A lot of times that captures the heart of what we’re trying to stimulate and empower as well. So, yeah, you can go to our Instagram or our website, helloagc.com
Aaron Lee 30:15
Awesome. We’ll link to all that in the Show notes, and I’ll tell you from just the first few posts on that AGC Instagram account, I am excited for the stories to come because of how you’ve already piqued my interest in how you’re tackling generosity. I know it’s come up a few times, not only internally for me, as I’ve been in a few situations, but I’ve been on a few text threads here just in the last couple of days, and people are trying to figure out how do we be generous? How can we have radical generosity and share something with the world around us? I think as you talked about, that combination of emotional intelligence and humility and passion with generosity, that’s a game changer right there. It’s an exciting thing to be part of.
Bryan Barley 30:55
Yeah, we’re really excited too. We can’t wait to see what comes.
Aaron Lee 30:57
Awesome. Well, thanks for the conversation, Brian. We’ll talk to you soon.