Episode 196: Wise Decisions with Drs. Jim Loehr and Sheila Ohlsson Walker

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Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hemner, your host. On today's episode, we have Jim Lehrer and Sheila Olson Walker. They are the co-authors of the book Wise Decisions. The first time I came across Jim was from the book The Power of Full Engagement, which was written, I think, in 2005 or 2006. And so when I saw that they had come out with a recent book, I picked it up and I thought, you know what, this would be a great guest to be able to have on. I think if you— I had never really considered what is the science or the research behind wise decisions. In poor decisions in life and in business, but I think you're gonna get a tremendous amount out of these two. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Jim Layer and Sheila Olson Walker.

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Sheila Olson Walker and Jim Lair, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

We're both excited to be with you, and I hope we can create some interest for your audience.

Well, I know you will. Our audience is small business owners and their teams, and I know that your books and the content that you've put together is going to really serve our listening audience. So we're grateful to have you on. We always start with background and origin story because I think it tells a lot about kind of how people got to where they are. Sheila, I'd start with you. Can you give people, just our listening audience, a little bit of kind of your backstory and how you got to where you are?

Well, um, that's such a great— I love origin stories too. Um, I am first-generation American, grew up, uh, here in the U.S., a bit in South Africa as well. Um, uh, fell in love with tennis at an early age, and really, you know, tennis and sports is the is the vehicle that taught me all the big skills that got me ahead in life. I played college tennis, Division I, played tennis in Germany for a few years on some, for a team and tournaments. And then I had a job in the investment business. I was a finance and marketing major in college and I was a research analyst and managed a mutual fund here in Denver for 7 years. And then I pivoted to a job, you know, basically a pursuit in life that was something that felt vastly more intrinsically motivated, motivating both for personal and professional reasons, and went back to school and got a PhD in a field called behavioral genetics and worked on a big twin study actually over in London, the Twins Early Development Study, and studied how nature and nurture shape children's outcomes relevant for education. So my current career is an extension of the scientific background. I taught at Georgetown and then Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. And we're back here in Colorado now. And I'm really more of a translational scientist trying to bring the science to life to help people live their very healthiest and best possible lives. And that's where I find— that's how Jim and I connected. So that's, uh, that's the, the nutshell version.

Oh, that's fantastic. Jim, how about you? Your, your origin story.

So, um, I, um, you know, went and received my master's and doctorate in psychology and became a licensed psychologist in Colorado. And then I took— I was offered a big job as chief psychologist and executive director of a very large community mental health center that served the whole central and southern part of Colorado, 8,600 square miles and 9 offices. And I thought that I would probably do that. I was pretty young at that time. I thought I'd probably be doing that the rest of my life. But I became, uh, associated a really great friend by the name of Dr. Joe Vigil, who was in that catchment area where we had our main office. And he was a track and field legend. An Olympic legend in terms of training athletes to become extraordinary. And he kept— we became friends, and he got me running and doing all kinds of things. And he kept asking me, Jim, what can you tell me as a psychologist that will help me to get more out of my athletes, to help them perform better? And I looked like— I looked at him like a deer in headlights, and I said, Joe, I have no idea. I've learned how to get people who are not well, to get them healthier. But I have no idea how to take healthy people and make them extraordinary. And he said, well, you know, that's going to be the next— this was in the '70s— that's going to be an enormously important, uh, contribution in, in sport and, and human performance, and you ought to get into it. So I started looking into it and eventually resigned to a 23-member board of directors. They thought I had really lost my mind. I moved to Denver and set up a private practice specializing in performance Psychology, then went, uh, to Florida because I really realized I needed to be in a different climate and was 2 years at the Jimmy Connors United States Tennis Center in Sanibel, then 6 years at the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. Then I started a company with Dr. Jack Groppel, who had his PhD in bioengineering, and we call it the Human Performance Institute. And we had the most incredible living laboratory of high performers from every conceivable aspect, from Special Forces in the military to, um, 17 number ones in the world in various sports, Olympians and surgeons and all kinds of people, critical care workers in medicine. And it was a living laboratory for me. That's where all— most of my work really came to a head. And We eventually sold the company to Johnson Johnson, and now we're applying all the lessons that we learned with adults to youth. And Sheila and I are both on the same board, the Youth Performance Institute, and that's how we came together and, uh, and wrote this book called, uh, you know, um, Wise Decisions, which is all about how do we get people to make better decisions throughout their lifetime because we realize this is actually maybe the most important dimension in, in, in human assets.

That's so true. Sheila, I have to ask before we get, get into it, how valuable do you wish it was that you would have met Jim when you were playing college tennis?

Oh, it would have been invaluable. I'm happy to have found him when I did though.

Yeah.

So I have to ask, Um, well, let me, let me go back.

Before I—

we hit record, I didn't share this with you, how I even came to get introduced, um, to your, your book and, and both of you. I was— years ago, somebody had shared with me, we were talking about time management, and we put together this, basically this, uh, you know, my ideal week effectively, and And it was, you know, I can't have any white space in it as a business owner. And I really bought into that philosophy. And it was— it did not work for me at all. As a matter of fact, I've gone completely opposite of it. And then I began to understand the importance of energy management. And whenever I was putting that out and sharing that with people, they shared with me your book, The Powerful Engagement, Jim. And so that's how I got introduced to both of you. And I was like, oh, this is really good. And then I started sharing that with other business owners, and then I came across your book Wise Decisions. And the thing that actually— and Sheila, this is my question for you— there's a lot out there around morning routines, around habits, and rightfully so. But given all of your research, what made both of you come to the decision, no pun intended, to say, hey, we need to put a book together around making wise decisions? Can you kind of give the background and the story of how kind of how all of that evolved and got to where you are.

Sure. The book evolved from our work, our collective work. I mean, it's amazing. Jim started the work that I'm doing, you know, 40 years ahead of me. And it's the same. He was doing this work without the, you know, neuroscience, fMRI studies, the molecular level studies, and so forth. So we started talking about the human brain and how people develop into who they and the stories that we can tell ourselves about what's true and how we believe these people believe that these stories are in fact the objective truth. When from every strand of science we know it is, you know, what's perception is reality. Our own perception is our own reality. And what's real in the mind is real in the body as well. So we're, it's kind of a living ecosystem of how we perceive and make meaning of situations based on our DNA, based on our childhood, how we grow up, our parents, our life experiences. And they all shape this lens through which we make meaning of life events. And so our collective life course, the things that we choose to do, our sense of purpose, how we wanna show up in life are a consequence of all of these decisions, these little decision points. And the little decisions all add up and set the stage for the big decisions. It's all incredibly synergistic. And so we just, you know, Jim and I are both interested in how people can become the best possible versions of themselves. And this all starts with a foundation of health. That's our first chapter in the book, multi-level, mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. And spiritual health is really our higher-order values and beliefs, those big drivers that, that, that push us from the inside out, intrinsic motivators. But, uh, when we are in a healthy place— and wise decisions do begin with, uh, being in a healthy, grounded, balanced place— um, we can make the little decisions that set the stage for the big decisions. And as as parents. We have 3 boys, and as parents, they're watching very closely what we do. And so not only can we help ourselves unpack the decision-making process by being aware and act rather than react when situations come up, but in doing this, we're modeling for our children how they can carry forward wise decision-making and make sound decisions in their own lives.

I have a tool.

It's interesting that, uh, Sheila and I started looking into this because we came— we're kind of like connected in the same place with what really matters most in terms of the trajectory of a human being and the family. And really, what, what is the, the core kind of factor that really everything somehow relates to. And so the more we looked into this, the more we realized that the unique thing about human beings is they can make decisions, they can make choices, and they're making choices. We looked at how many choices the individual makes in 15 minutes. We could make, you know, 10 or more decisions, and they just fly by. We never even think about them. And within one day, we have people stop and think about how many decisions you made. Everything from what time to get up, did you push the snooze alarm, what shall I have, shall I have breakfast, shall I work out, should I take that phone call, shall I wait till later, shall I have that tough call with my parents, with my mother who's ill or having trouble, or on and all day long we're making these choices. And we realized there's no real scientific but practical guide for putting the decision-making process under a microscope. And so we decided to make that happen. And, um, you know, for me, and I think for Sheila, it was exhilarating to, to really get in there and realize how much traction we can get when we actually apply a lot of this that we now have an understanding of, the more we, we recognize how decisions and good decisions are made, we're much more likely to follow that path. And that's really an essential component to a successful person, right?

These kind— these decisions are— decision-making so often just occurs unconsciously. It is a reaction based on all these factors that, that we talked about earlier. And so just having a framework and some guideposts to think about and to start to vet, you know, A, when we're making decisions, because we're not always aware of those, you know, those discrete moments. So bringing awareness to ourselves around, I'm making a decision, and then having a process to go through that is— the more repeated it becomes habit, the more, you know, the things that we give attention to grow stronger neurobiologically. They wire up into automatic habit in our minds and bodies. And so we just, we were, it was both complex and exciting to put a framework around the decision-making process that applies both to adults and to young people.

In a second, I wanna ask around the research that you did and how you even begin to kind of do the research on a topic like this. So you get alignment on, for both of you, to say, yes, this is something we both agree on. We have a thread here and let's go now and almost test this hypothesis. So I want to come back to that, Sheila. I'll ask you in just a second. Before I get there, Jim, I'm curious. One of the concepts I really loved is whenever you talked about Yoda, and can you talk about Yoda? Because it's very memorable. I wasn't as much of a Star Wars person, but I think everybody will be able to know that Yoda. But what is the Yoda that you introduced in the book?

So as we got into this, and you've raised a really important question, how do you approach, you know, a science-based approach with all this? You know, we're looking at the whole mind-body continuum, and all of it plays a role in this. And we started looking at the human brain and tried to understand where in the brain are decisions vetted, that they're made. And we realized, and this is more Sheila's territory, but we realize that a great decision is actually— there is a process that is being fed into this, we call it Control Central, where you, you have everything from emotions and, and, and really cognitive, um, logical processing. You have all of the, the sensory systems, the sensory portals that are all reporting in and then some kind of decision is made. And we said, you know, there's in that, in that process, and this human insula appears to play a very central role in the decision-making process, that it's almost like we have a little person inside of us. And, um, and we call it your own decision advisor that is actually advising you either consciously or unconsciously as to what you should do here. You're consulting something, you're referencing something. And so we started amplifying that. We realized that the letters, your own decision advisor, spells Yoda. And this is not the Yoda of Star Wars, but there's some similarities. You're trying to go in and, and arm this capacity that you have for wisdom. For great decision-making. And so we're educating Yoda. The book is about taking this understanding that we need to reference something that is really time-tested, the most important values and who you are, and bring that to the fore, particularly in important situations that, that may change the trajectory of your life on the decision itself. So Yoda is, uh, We all have a Yoda. We just try to make this more conscious and then equip Yoda with the, the basics that it needs to actually give you great advice. It's giving you advice, but so often the advice it's giving you is quite dysfunctional.

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can you tell us about when you began to do the research? And what is— how do you even start to have, you know, begin to formulate the research so that you can actually pull out the frameworks that obviously you produced in the book?

Well, it's a great question. The, uh, the research process, uh, was quite organic. You know, I think this book is a synthesis of a number of different concepts from different literatures that we've put together, both from the academic literature, but also from books and so forth. Jim and I are both scientists at heart, so we went into the PubMed literature to get peer-reviewed research in neuroscience and epigenetics and child development and human development. That's the basic— This is all a story of human development and what's possible in every way, shape, and form. So we went also into the habit literature, forming habits, automaticity, the health literature, the integrated health, mind-body health. So, you know, there's still this notion out there that the mind and the body are two separate things and mental and physical health are discrete, you know, elements of who we are, but they're the same molecules that affect the mind also affect the body. So, and that's a message that Jim and, you know, Jim has been out there with for years. But I think it's a very important message for people to understand is that we can't, you know, we can't be our very best selves unless we're looking at all elements of our, you know, of our health. So there was, you know, basic health literature, developmental literature, neuroscience, of course. Jim talked about the insula as this kind of routing station that connects different areas of the brain that helps, that helps us synthesize both the things we know from a cognitive standpoint, the things that we know inside of our bodies. Our emotions are first reveal themselves in our organ systems, our viscera. This is the work of Antonio Damasio at USC and his dear friend, his first grad student, Mary Helen Imardino-Yang. But our feelings emanate from our emotions, and our feelings are really the first conscious representation of our emotions. But our bodies give us very important emotion as well. If we have the kind of a tight chest or clenching our fists or a chest ache or a headache or nausea around something that we're thinking about, a decision we're trying to make, that's also data. So in our book, we talk about this 360-degree data set, really trying to draw from, you know, the mind-body system, things that we know kind of intellectually and things that our body is telling us, and using our sensory systems to make the kinds of decisions that will serve us over time. And that means as we look back from, you know, we, as we look back later on down the line, these are decisions that given the data available at the time, We went through a thoughtful vetting process where we made the best decision that we could. And of course, we can't always know everything in advance, but having a process to make sure that we act and don't react using all available data, both held by us and also running it by a handful of trusted advisors— we call those our Yoda Advisory Board— to help really think about what this will look like over the long term, how it could manifest into other decisions. Because again, decision-making is an iterative process and the little ones add up to the big ones.

What Sheila was saying there is really important, Bradley, that we tend to think of decisions as being purely intellectual and that we just reference the logic. But all the work that we did and all the The evidence is that, you know, decisions— the best decisions come from, as Sheila said, this 360 data set that you're— what is your gut saying to you? What, um, what are your emotions saying? What, what kind of feelings are you getting? What's bubbling up there? Um, what, what is, uh, your— you know, what are the facts here? What have you really vetted the facts? What are alternatives? And what are the things that you're really pushing for? And then one of the big things that we try to help people understand in the book is that our brains are complex and they often work to our disadvantage. If you really want something, your brain was designed to kind of get you there. And if you want something bad enough, your brain is gonna— it's a fiction-making machine. It makes up all kinds of crazy things so that you begin to realize, oh yeah, this is really what I— so that the only choice you have left is the one you wanted in the first place. Your brain has duped you from the beginning. It's hijacked your ability to make a good decision. And we're trying to raise awareness of how you can end up with, uh, with a choice that you thought in a sense was the right one, but you really, when you look deeper at it, you realize that you were hoodwinked. Your own brain kind of set up this, manufactured this lousy logic, and you ended up buying that car you should have never bought. It was overpriced. The salesman got to you, and now you have buyer's regret, and now you're going to have to figure out how to get rid of that car. And though that's a decision that may not cost you, you know, um, for years down the road, but some of these decisions are really difficult because they do have huge consequences for years, maybe for your entire lifetime. So that, that's an important point, is that really great decisions come from a variety of points inside the human system.

And cross-checking, cross-vetting those sources, and again, and also getting input from other a small group of trusted people is vital because what happens in Jim's car example, you know, we tend to— we'll go— our attention gets incredibly selective. We pay selective attention to the things that validate the story that we want, the outcome. I want that car. I look good in that car. You know, it's a pretty car. And so the other elements of the decision-making process, maybe the economic, you know, element of the process or other practical elements of the process may get stuck into the backseat because the selective attention is only paying attention to the aesthetics or other things that may be drivers to reacting rather than thoughtfully acting.

It's a competency. It's an acquired competency, Bradley, that every time you make a decision, you can actually get a little better. And you realize I've got to do a better job of this. And then as you do better, you're probably making everybody around you better because they're watching how you're making decisions. Your children, if you're a leader in a corporation, everyone's watching your decision-making process. And if you make decisions out of anger and frustration and you kind of fly off the handle, you know, they realize this and then they watch the long-term or even short-term consequences And, um, it may in a real way, you know, undermine your leadership because they recognize you're not a good decision maker and you haven't really practiced the art of great decision making. And that's what this book really is trying to help people understand. You can get so much better at this, and all we have to do is understand the process, you know.

This—

feel free, Sheila, to completely debunk what I'm about to say, okay? And it may be a poor question, all right? But as you both were talking, and as I was able to get through, uh, maybe 40% of your— of the book before our podcast, one thing that's been helpful for me is this concept of inversion thinking. So taking, okay, well, what's the— what's the characteristics of wise, good decisions Okay, well, let me think of the complete inverse of that. And one of the elements that has certainly been the case for me, especially in business and personal life too, is making decisions when I'm emotional. And so emotionally, both— now, this— sometimes emotions, people immediately hear that and they think of negative emotions. Actually, some of the worst decisions I've made in business have been when I'm fired up. I don't know how else to say it. Like, I am ready to go, really optimistic and excited, just rationally, irrationally optimistic, right? And so then I just think, oh man, every decision I touch, because the last 2 or 3 have turned out well, every decision now— so let's go for the home run, let's go for the, you know, the grand slam. Can you kind of speak to that aspect of poor decision-making, maybe?

So it goes back to this whole concept of reflective consciousness. And when you're feeling an elevated state, when I'm feeling an elevated state because we're excited and we've got a great idea and you can just see it happening— and I know that feeling, I get that feeling too. Um, and, and what— or they can be the inverse where, you know, we have— we're in a negative mood state and everything looks dark and there's no way out of the of the place we're in for a period of time, recognizing that we are in a mood state that could impair grounded, balanced decision-making, that's enough. It's just being aware of it again. And you don't have to pause it for a month or a year or a decade. It just sometimes is just taking taking a step back, getting outside of your physical context, going for a walk, doing something to kind of break up that kind of full-body state of elation or negativity or whatever it is, and coming back to it. Writing helps also. There is research on when we write with a pen, pencil, and put pen to paper, it draws in not only the executive control network, which is the kind of attention executive function, but also the default default mode network, which is where creativity and ideas happen. We sort of connect the dots when we're not thinking. That the default mode network is on when we're off. So knowing that it's not the good— a good time, knowing that by itself, and then just saying, you know what, it's not a good time. So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to pause and I'm going to come back to it, but I know it's not a good time now. That's enough because you're right, emotions can be valuable sources of data and they can also have us, you know, plunge off in a direction where we're like, oh, what was I thinking? And maybe, you know, just, uh, you know, a, a, a pause during the day or having a good night of sleep, um, you know, those things can all help us look at it through, through a different lens.

Making decisions generally when you are emotionally hot, whether positive or negative, is probably not a good formula. So you want to You want to try to get yourself in a balanced emotional state, and then one where you can look at your values, look at the consequences, look at the future. What do you really want here? And what are all the things that actually should be incorporated into this decision-making process? And if you're really hot emotionally, you can't really tend to any of those things. If you're hot positive or hot negative with anger, envy, frustration, it's going to cloud the decision-making process. So that's, that's a really important part, Bradley, of, of what the book is all about, is helping people understand what is the best chance you have for making the, the best opportunity for making really great decisions.

So, so on this, I'd love to follow up on that. We have this in the book, we have something called the 7 Lens Process, and they're all overlapping and synergistic, but one of the lenses is looking at it through the lens of, you know, time, the future on the timeline, and looking back, whether it's a week out, a month out, a year out, 10 years out, 20 years out. On the big ones, this is a very, very important lens to use. And, you know, in short-circuiting bad decisions that happen in the short term in this impulsive state, that is an incredibly important one to really— and that takes getting into this balanced state where, you know, it may take— if it's a— it may take a couple of days to be in the state where you can actually look back, or you have a couple of conversations with people who help set your perspective on, but this could happen, and that could happen, and that could happen. And then the, you know, the other thing that we haven't talked about— we've talked about Yoda, but we came up with something called the Yoda Code, which is 5 or 6 words that best describe who we want to be every day, how we want to show up, these principles and values that are the most important to us. And when we get to the end of the line in life, um, you know, who— how we want to be remembered by the people who knew us the very best. And so in making these decisions, aligning, um, the decision itself with who that person is, how we want to show up, if we want to be remembered as being kind and generous and grateful and having integrity and humility and being courageous. These are all things to really sit back and feel and integrate into our thinking around the decision-making process. And that's a mind-body combo. That's not just intellectual. That's a feeling piece. And so, um, again, I'm going to go back to just the awareness and knowing that we're making a decision and knowing that it's time to pause and step back. But this element of conscious awareness is something we can always work on every single day. And the more that we practice these things, the more they wire up as automatic habit.

Love that. Jim, I'm going to leave you— give you the final thought. What is something that, that we can all do in day-to-day decision-making? As you mentioned very early in our conversation, in 15 minutes, we could be making 5 to 10 different decisions very quickly and unconsciously. As we're going through, say, for a lot of our listening audience, our business owners and entrepreneurs, and they are having to make decisions, and in some cases pretty big decisions, every single day. I mean, they— there's even at times I felt decision fatigue. It's like, man, I'm just tired of having to make decisions. But when we're faced with a, a big decision, let's say whether or not to hire this person, you know, you think, man, I, you know, kind of go back and forth. Is this the right person to hire? This is a big decision for the future of our company. This is an important position. I've done all the right things. I've checked all the right boxes. But now I'm the one that's got to make the call. Can you give us a framework of being able to how to walk through that?

So that's a great example of, you know, there we have an opportunity to really be very reflective and to do our homework before we make the decision. You know, I use this analogy of your a defendant and you're walking into a courtroom and there's a jury there, and one of the jurors, just as you walk in, instinctively says, that guy's— or she is guilty. I just feel it. Have not heard any evidence, but they just have this gut response that the person is not going to be— is not going to— is not going to be a good person. And that happens to all of us, and we have to be very guarded and make sure that we're doing this in a way that when we, when we look back, we may make the wrong decision. But we go through what is the most important issue here with this person, what, what do we want first and foremost. We want to know maybe their character, their ability to work with people, their respect— respectfulness, their honesty, their integrity. And you have a priority list that must be properly vetted all the way through. And the questions that are asked And the way in which you make the decision has to absolutely be prioritized according to what you believe are the expectations that this person— they have to have a certain amount of talent and skill, they have to be reliable, dependable. And what are the consequences if you don't get this right? What are the risks involved if you get some of this wrong? And, uh, what are the core values that you have and that the company has? And you're really trying to make sure this person's core values align with that. There are a lot of people who have the competencies, but you really have to understand what makes a person really valuable in a company and make your decisions first and foremost about, about the, the way in which this person is going to present themselves as a really important component, as a leader perhaps in this company, and what do you want from that person? And then you have to look at their competencies and all of the skill sets that they have. But I think laying it out and making the decision-making process— so often you can't trust, you know, recommendations because people are afraid of getting sued, so they say everybody's great. Yeah. So you have to be very careful about how you gather information And your interview techniques have to be very, very skilled and thorough, really very smart, so that you actually get some sense of who this person is, maybe even putting them in situations that really demand some creative thought. And, uh, you begin to realize this, this maybe isn't the person because they're not leading with the values that we want to represent here in this company. So it's a, it's a process just like we have here. We've been talking, it's— you have to kind of bring all the issues to the forefront and make this as deliberate and conscious as possible and recognize that if you go through everything, you still could get it wrong, but you're going to take responsibility for it because you're going to really be thorough because so much is riding on getting this right.

That's great. Sheila, I know people are going to want to connect with both of you. How can they do that? But also, if they want to learn more about the book, where's the best place to be able to point them to?

Uh, for me, my website, uh, SheilaOlsonWalker.com, uh, and it's, uh, Sheila as it's spelled, and then O-L-S-O-N, and then Walker, W-A-L-K-E-R. Um, that's the best place for me.

Okay, fantastic.

And, and we can, you know, you get books at Amazon and Barnes Noble and everywhere else. Um, and my, uh, she also has a LinkedIn. Um, I have a LinkedIn as well. Um, and my website is jim-lair.com. And, um, all the assets that I have, videos, all the different things that we collected at the Institute for almost 30 years, a lot of that is embedded in that website. So, um, there are ways to, to connect, and we hope they find real value in the book.

Absolutely.

Well, I know that they will, because I, I certainly did, and I got tremendous value out of this conversation. So I appreciate both of you. Coming on. I hope to have you back on in the future.

Well, grateful to be here.

Thank you, Bradley. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Take care.

You know, one of the things that really stood out to me is obviously the concept of Yoda, uh, but also whenever he mentioned about running emotionally hot. And I had never been able to kind of put it together into one thing, but I was saying— I said before, hey, I've made some poor decisions, especially in business, whenever I've been emotionally high or emotionally low. And I've never actually thought about it as being emotionally hot versus stepping back away from that, doing some thinking time. So I thought that was a big takeaway for me. Uh, want to pick up their book. Uh, Jim's got— he's written so many different books. As I mentioned at the very beginning, The Power of Full Engagement, Managing Energy Not Time Is a Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. That's one of my favorites. I definitely encourage you to pick that up. That's been a New York Times bestseller. A big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P, DirectClicks, and of course, Club Capital. You want to be able to get A-players on your team on a regular basis. You want to have a stream of people.

You—

a lot of people want to know, how do you even find A-players? How do you source really great candidates? Well, that is where Autopilot Recruiting really excels. You want to be able to find 4 and 5-star talent, or what I call A-players. Autopilot Recruiting is able to help you with that. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. David has had another incredible year running multiple businesses. He's come on the episode, on the podcast many different times, and so many people have raved to me about the quality of the content that he puts out on a regular basis and gives you the scripts and the word tracks, the things that they're actually doing. To be able to have the type of success that they've had. So go to club— excuse me, go to coachpconsulting.com, coachpconsulting.com, and let David know you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. And we'll give you your entire first month off, which is 8 coaching sessions. You can give him kind of a test run. You'll see why he's really the fastest growing insurance agency coach out there. Coach P Consulting. Com. Hey, our friends at DirectClicks have been with us and partners of the podcast for a long time, and they have grown leaps and bounds over this past year, a lot by obviously the quality of the work that they do. And thanks to many of you sharing and talking about your experience with DirectClicks. If you want to know more about SEO, about pay-per-click, social, etc., go to directclicksinc.com and let the team at DirectClicks know that you've listened to the podcast and heard about them for a number of years. Uh, Matt and Maddie were telling me about, you know, people listen to the podcast now for 2 or 3 years and they finally say, okay, I'm gonna finally reach out to DirectClicks. So if you're working with someone else, haven't had the type of experience— I mean, you want the numbers, right? You want good quality leads your team can convert, but you also want a great experience. Somebody that's going to help, help you make decisions. They're going to follow up with you on a regular basis. They're going to book their monthly reviews to let you know, how is my money being spent and should I spend it elsewhere? Should I spend more here? Can we turn this up or turn that down. They are going to dial it in to make sure it's right for you. Yes, there's a standard process for everyone, but they're going to customize it to make sure that ultimately you're getting a good return on investment. DirectClicksInc.com. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.