Beyond Automation: Joshua Evarts on Relational Leadership and Human Connection

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Step into the world of success with Your Brand Amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Anika Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders to success. Today we're doing something a little different because I have a guest who is perfect for Your Brand Amplified and Practical Pedagogy. He's not a professor, he's not a teacher, but he is the father of somebody who works at OpenAI, and he has a lot of experience in the tech world. So this is an episode that will appear across 2 different podcasts of mine, and that is something that really is fueling me and getting me super excited to speak to Joshua Everts. Joshua spent his career leading software and national security tech companies, CEO of Transcend Logic Systems, Chief Innovation Officer at AT Solutions after its acquisition. Before walking away to spend the last decade doing something a little differently, running a cigar lounge in Meridian, Idaho, built entirely around conversation. That pivot became a proving ground for something he'd come to believe was the real engine of every business he ever ran— relationships. That belief is now a book, one in a series of books. Start with If Jesus, and this one is If Jesus Smoked Cigars: 8 Lessons in Relational Leadership, out now. He's also the father, as I mentioned, of a son working at OpenAI, which gives him a front row seat from the dinner table to how AI is reshaping the way we'll work and we'll lead. We're gonna talk about why in an increasingly automated business world, the ability to build genuine trust might be one skill that absolutely can't be outsourced. Joshua, I am again so thrilled, and I'm thrilled to hear as many of the stories. You teed me up a little bit. You teased me before we pushed record, so I'm excited to hear As much as you're willing to share about all of your different experiences, 'cause I think those experiences have really laid the groundwork for how we need to operate and what we need to be teaching people who are young at heart or young in their degrees or young in their work, right? Or having to make those pivots and transitions, what they really need to learn, whether or not they're in tech or any other business.

Yeah, Professor Jackson, first, thanks for having me on today. And of all the podcasts I've done as part of the virtual book tour, this was one that I was really looking forward to. So thanks for having me on today.

Wonderful. I'm so happy to hear that. Thank you. So let's get into it. You spent years again leading software and national security tech companies.

Yeah.

Then opened a cigar lounge.

You know, it's crazy. It doesn't make sense.

I was—

yeah. So in college, I was actually an accounting major and very good at spreadsheets, but I had started programming on a Commodore 64 when I was 11, 12 years old. So a very, very long time ago. And my senior year of college, thinking that I was going to be an accountant, found myself completely disinterested in going to class. I think my last class was an advanced corporate tax class. I got an A on the midterm and final, and I think I took a D in the course because I didn't show up for the rest of it. And my professor, who was also my advisor, said, Josh, you're never going to be an accountant. You should leave and go start a company, go do something special. And I remember going home to my wife and saying, hey, I'm leaving the college, I'm gonna go start a company. And her going, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second here. So we, uh, it was, it was the early '90s and we had gotten a small bit of work to help the state of Idaho go from paper reporting. So again, I'm dating myself, but from paper reporting to electronic reporting of automobile accidents.

Wow.

And the big trouble spot in the whole project was the drawing tool. So, on a paper report, there was a little 2-inch by 4-inch box where the officer would draw the scene of the accident or what happened in the accident. That was a part of the formal state records. But if you're going to an electronic system, there's no more pencils and stencils. And, and so we had to create a drawing tool from scratch, and that was called Easy Street Draw. And that one tool led to doing homicide investigations, arson investigations, became a tool that we migrated to the military for doing post-blast investigations. So IEDs going off. Had the opportunity to work the London bombings in '05 for New Scotland Yard.

Wow.

I deployed in Iraq in 2007, 2008. So, so kind of this whole journey of technology as it was really in its infancy, right? As, as the internet was just coming into being, smartphones were coming into being. So being able to do all those things and lead an entire technology organization with products around the world, And then pivoted after I left that time into restoring old historic buildings, 'cause there was a certain kind of puzzle that had to get solved in that. And I don't know anything about, or didn't know anything about construction. And one of the old buildings turned into a cigar lounge that my wife and I opened 9 years ago. So very interesting career of technology to historic, preservation of buildings to a cigar lounge. But the common denominator, common denominator, and the thing that I wrote about in the book was the thing that tied all those things together were relationships. So, and that could be relationships with people, it could be relationships with the technology, relationships with consumers, but understanding the inner workings of those relationships and maximizing your potential in those spaces really led to success.

Mm-hmm. I, Had a student, a former student, he graduated a couple of years ago, who was in town this past weekend. He lives in Toronto, and I'm the one professor he reached out to, to meet with. So we had brunch over the weekend and we talked about that and talked about— that is the number one thing that I think my students get out of going to USC and out of the relationship that they can form with professors is the relationship building. Because I absolutely believe in this world, people, you know, there's the concern about AI taking over people's jobs. Yes, that's happening to an extent, but we're seeing far more of people who are managing tech processes, including AI as part of that tech stack. But the relationships, knowing who you wanna pull in at any one time, or knowing somebody who can help you get a job and who can help mentor you and guide you and teach you, those are the things that Are not replaceable.

Absolutely. Professor Jackson, so something happened in the last 30 years. So we had 3 really kind of sentinel large events. Number one was just the speed at which technology and information is moving. So the creation of the internet, smartphones, social media, things of that nature, all of these things became enablers for the speed of communication, the speed of information sharing. But they confused actual relationships. So where we're confusing authenticity with influence, right? And, and, and just because people are sharing and liking and, and doing these kinds of things doesn't mean that I'm in an authentic relationship. So that's kind of the first thing. The second thing is we went through COVID. You know, my, my sons were both in their kind of formative college years when, when that took place. And we distanced ourselves, right? And we started wearing masks and we sent the workforce home. So relationships got even a little bit more difficult. And then with the advent of AI, and I'm, I made a large part of my wealth in technology. I'm not an anti-technology guy. I think all of these things are enablers. But as AI has come to the forefront, we need to understand the relationship that we're in with these agents and we need to understand outcomes. So some of my software developers that I hired 30 years ago, you know, that are in the later part of their careers, they're very worried about being replaced. Like I'm going to lose my job. And I've told everybody, do not fight this. This is an enabler like everything else. In fact, the people that have that experience with how to interact with customers, how to develop user cases and navigate the outcomes, right, are going to be the people that properly interact with those agents to be able to create those outcomes that are desired. I'm seeing more pressure in the tech space for people that can test and evaluate because these are able to do so much work for us, and yet we have to have somebody who can look and assimilate the information that's coming in and make sense of it. So yeah, I think you're spot on. Yeah.

Well, let's talk a little bit about your journey again in terms of deciding to leave the everything that's speeding up and kind of slow things down and that deliberate choice into, I wanna do something different at this point. I've done the big career, right? I've done all these amazing things, had all these amazing experiences.

It's something that as we, as we get older, I think we start getting some great clarity. So I went through cancer actually during 2020, during COVID So I got primary pancreatic lymphoma, stage 3A. Not that anybody wants to know details, but so that bloodborne mass that was in my pancreas eliminated my ability to even be around people. So the mortality rate for getting COVID and having that cancer was very, very high. So during that period, I started Really trying to understand, like, what what does the next twenty years look like for me? And what are the kind of things that I want to be doing? And it's funny as as the world kind of shut down and you weren't going out to meals and you weren't having those gatherings at your house or you were staying at home trying to survive chemotherapy, as we were coming back into sort of restaurants and going out and doing events, one of the things I noticed is people were. Constantly had their faces in their devices. And so my wife and I, we made a decision right there. It's like, we do not want to be in a relationship with our device. The device can be an enabler. Like when we were dating in college, she was 900 miles away. There was no FaceTime, there was no email, there wasn't even a cell phone. So we got our long-distance call, you know, once a week, and we wrote letters to each other. I have 3 grandsons, so I love FaceTiming with my grandsons. And yet When I am with people, I want to be present. And what I've found is that is, that is an incredible journey. Like when we get back to connecting to people and we're not doing it with a device in our hand, to the point that when we go out to eat, we leave our phones at home. Like the temptation's not even there. And when we go to restaurants, you know, the, the, the hostess will be like, oh, just click the QR code here and you can see the menu. And it's like, oh, I don't have a phone. And you would think that like I was like from the Stone Age or I had a horn growing outta my head. Like, how can you exist without a phone? And again, not anti-technology, but I am pro-relationship. Like, how do we get back to the blocking and tackling? And you mentioned it earlier, as we look for jobs and as I was hiring people as a chief technology or chief innovation officer, relationships amounted to about 60% of those hires, right? It was just all networking and finding people and then getting quality people. Because when you build healthy culture in an organization, it's one of the things I write about in the book, it attracts Healthy employees, healthy customers, healthy vendor relationships. So if we're, if we're focused on building that culture that's people first, it's going to attract the great talent and it's going to attract the great customers.

And that's one thing I've seen because I've looked at your Instagram a little bit and seen some things that you've done and the fact that you aren't just refurbishing buildings and then putting a cigar lounge, but you're working with other lounges and other people in the community at the same time. I particularly remember one of your most recent posts was about, I think it was an interview on another show where you talked about, yeah, if a rep is coming into town, we make sure that they're seeing everybody. We are all in this together. So can you talk about how you continue to extend relationships, not just with your customers coming in and enjoying, you know, an experience together, but with others in your community, other businesses, whether inside Meridian or even externally?

I think generosity is a really misunderstood concept. And I think that in this transactional world that we live in, we tend to treat generosity as a transaction, right? Like, like, I'm gonna do something for you 'cause I'm looking for you to do something for me. I try to be just recklessly generous, like, because I think real authentic generosity is contagious. And so when I look at the, the, the other cigar lounges that are in our valley, I need them to be great. I want them to be great. Because when the ocean rises, all boats float. And I think that everybody offers something a little bit different. And so, so there's not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to anything, whether it's restaurants, cigar lounges, anything. I mean, the only thing that's similar about cigar lounges is the, the common denominator is we're lighting our money on fire, like one cigar at a time.

Literally.

That's the common— literally, that's the common denominator. But, but, you know, we tend to focus on relationships more. So the music is very, very low. The chairs are oriented to face each other because I want people to be in conversation. My good friend Ryan that has 2 shops that are about 10 miles away, he focuses on experience. So he wants the live music and the band. So the seats are oriented towards stage and both those models are equally successful. And so why not offer both, right? And encourage. And, and what I find is when I'm recklessly generous like that and just really trying to engage and grow people, what I find is that, that, that multiplies. And that's the kind of world that I want to live in. So I've got to exemplify it.

Mm-hmm. You also wrote a series of books.

Mm-hmm.

And the book that we're talking about that I teed up in the intro is one in, in this series, Joshua. So can you talk about the impetus for creating, I mean, the name, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

And then also like what made you decide I need to share this and I'm going to, and it's great 'cause it's 8 lessons, right? Like you keep it numbered, you keep it quantified so people know.

Yeah.

That they're actually going to be able to get things that they can take action on right away and that they can think about right away?

Yeah. So, so one of the things that I found very important in my professional career, I, first of all, I'm an avid reader, so I, I read every single day and I read a lot of nonfiction. I read a lot of fiction. I read everything. Like, so, so I've always loved to read, but what I found is in growing all my different businesses, I would always find the trade publication that was kind of central to the industry and I would start submitting articles. So I've, I've been a short format writer for 30 years, uh, mostly 1,500 to 5,000 words. I wrote the Tobacconist column for the Premium Cigar Association for the last 5 years, so I wrote like 21 articles for their quarterly publication. So I love to write. And yet when you write a book, to put 60,000 words out there and to put these kind of bigger thoughts in a big, you know, kind of lumpy thing, you have to really, really care about the topic. And so this first book, If Jesus Smoked Cigars: 8 Lessons in Relational Leadership, first of all, in picking the title, I wanted to offend as many people as I can, so I'm going to put faith and I'm going to put smoking in the, the very front of the title. No, I chose that title because I, I find, I find the person of Jesus, the historical person, very fascinating.

Right.

That here's somebody that walked the earth 2,000 years ago that didn't have the internet, didn't have email, didn't have social media, you know, or anything like that, and yet through relationships, so impacted people that we're still talking about him today. And the reason cigars is in the title is it's cheeky. It's a big part of who my wife and I are in our cigar lounge. And a lot of the, a lot of the lessons of relationship really got revealed in the last 10 years of running the cigar lounge. And so that's, that's where that came from. The, the next 2 books are equally as cheeky. The, the second book, which I'm living right now, is If Jesus Played Golf: 8 Lessons in Thought Life. And I will tell you, in all of my life, I've been very, very strong mentally and very steady. Not in golf. There's something about golf that, that the 6 inches between my ears, like, I have been wrestling with it. So, so I'll finish that book the end of October, but it's, uh, it's fine. Then the third book is If Jesus Played Poker, uh, 8 Lessons in Strategy, where I'm kind of taking pieces of the first 2 books and now saying, how do we take relationship? How do we take our thought life? And then how do we apply some strategy that level us up professionally. So yeah, fun, fun series.

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Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun.

An army hung on her every word.

My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. 'Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast! An offer you can feast on.

Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Nice. Yeah, and like you said, a little bit different type of writing. something to stretch you a little more and to kind of bundle up all of the business expertise and personal professional expertise. Yeah. Into things that, that everybody can learn from.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and my writing style is very conversational. So for example, you know, with Eight Lessons, to, for all 8 of those chapters, I always begin with a historical story and they're obscure, right? So, so as we talk about, I think it's the second lesson in the book is relationships begin when we're open to others. So how do we allow people in? So that's a lesson. Well, the historical character that I write about is Max Yasgur, who nobody's heard of. So Max Yasgur was a dairy farmer that owned the acreage in upstate New York where they held Woodstock in 1969. So Max was simply a dairy farmer. And as the, the promoters of Woodstock were getting kicked out, kicked out, kicked out, kicked out, he's the one who finally— and he was a Nixon Republican. He was not a hippie. And, but he felt it was important that everybody have a voice. And he thought it was important. He had, he had young girls, young daughters, and felt that it was important to open up his farm, which they thought was gonna be 50,000 people, ended up being 500,000. But so this event, this, this, this really incredible cultural event that happened in 1969 would not have happened had Max not been willing to open up his farm. So that's how we kind of tie a historical story. I'll tell a little bit of my own story and then make the case for the actual lesson.

Yeah.

It's fun reading.

It sounds fun. And actually I'm like, I need to send that book to my daughter. Mm-hmm. 'Cause she's in university, starting university in another country. And she usually tends to have a few good friends, but I, she does need to learn a little bit more about, you know, building your own community in another, you know, at her new, in her new life. I mean, we spoke a little bit like you've been an empty nester for a little bit longer than I, than I am going through. So I, I know I have a lot of other lessons. You should be, you should create another one for empty nesters. Yeah.

Yeah, my dad's giving me a hard time right now. So my dad's in his 70s and he's an Uber driver actually in Los Angeles. And he's trying to— he's beating me up right now. He's like, Josh, he's like, I want you to write the book, If Jesus Was an Uber Driver. He's like, I have so many stories. And I said, Dad, that's beautiful. I said, however, like writing a book is not a trivial thing. So I think I'm probably going to have to write it just for him and just have one copy that can be for him. But no, I think these lessons, and just to be really clear, I try to make all these lessons very approachable regardless of what stage you're at in your professional career. So I think young people can take a lot from this book. I think people that are in the middle of their career, they're looking to level up, or they're being pushed into some change that's making them a little bit uncomfortable. I think there's a lot of things that get revealed in this. One of the people that were my test readers for this book, she was a psychologist, and the big lesson that she took away was affect and like how we engage with people. And the lesson in the book is understanding how we're impacting the who. And part of that is our affect. And she told me, she's like, Josh, I didn't realize that when I went into engagements, I always had a frown on my face. Like I always had a very serious kind of look. So my— her and her husband went to this event and one of the like little training lessons in the book was learning how to just smile and carry yourself with an affect of of joy and interest, 'cause your smile conveys so many things. So she went to this event and she made a point to smile, and she's like, I could not believe the impact of just carrying a smile on my face, which wasn't natural to her. That wasn't— she's like, I have this resting kind of, you know, unhappy face, we'll call it. And she's like, and now, um, I, I just had a really, really different experience. So I think it's, it's very accessible, and it's not anything that hasn't been written about, but I think this lesson of relationship is so important that even if are 1,000 books that have been written on the subject. It's not enough. We can keep consuming more 'cause we have to get this right.

And it's also, you have a unique point of view and experience that you can bring to the topic.

Yeah.

So, I, I think, I think that's very important. And it's so interesting because you led companies building mission-critical software, law enforcement, defense, right? High-stakes process, technical work. Yet you took so many things away about relationships Did it help you hone in that worldview? And was there something unexpected that it taught you about why relationships matter? Like you have this expertise, you can do this work, but the relationships are really where it's at.

So I think I was very, very fortunate to be very early in sort of the software development game. And what I mean by that is my specialty, what I was very good at was UI/UX. So user interface, user experience. And I think it was my heart for people that allowed me to be great at that. But a lot of the technologies that I was building and that my companies were building were these very forward mission-critical resources. So things that were out in the field, the whole reason that I deployed into harm's way was I wanted to understand the operating conditions. So if I'm a, if I'm a user that's on a Panasonic Toughbook in the middle of the desert, investigating a bombing, I need to understand what— where is his headspace at and how is he interacting with it? So I think I was very fortunate to, to be at the very pointy end of the spear, understanding how technology was impacting. And sometimes it was bad. It was like, oh, this, this effing this and this horrible software. Who are these guys? Are they going to have to use this? And so I got to hear the good, bad, and the ugly. so that I could come back and really work with the development teams to understand what is that relationship that happens between, between our users and, and, and the technology that they're, that they're making use of. The other thing that I was always very interested in was the why of what we're building. I would talk to my development teams all the time is don't build software because you can, build it because you should. So really understanding the business case and the business use for what we're engineering.

Yes.

And then working from there to, develop technology that, that would meet that mission need. So, so everything, even though it was technology, even though it was very pointy, even though it did some very mission-critical things, there was always kind of a relationship component to it.

And intentionality.

Absolutely.

Which is, I think that's one of the key things that you're sharing as well, is that it's not just about a money grab. It's not just about putting one more software program out into the world because you can. It's about what it, what's the impact it's going to make.

Yeah. I think that one of the things I really encourage young professionals as I mentor and do speaking engagements around the country is, you know, focus, focus on culture because culture trumps execution and focus on process and don't worry about outcomes. It's important to be observant as to what's going on. In fact, there's a whole chapter in this book that's about design versus attention. There are so many unbelievable things that have been discovered, not because There was a, uh, you know, really clever design, but, but somebody was paying attention in the process. Things like penicillin, X-rays, like, like there was a thing going on and then all of a sudden people were observing it. But focus on the process, focus on the things, doing the right thing every day. Because, because we're actually only— we only have control of 2 things in our life, and that is our attitude and our actions.

Yeah.

And so all the rest of these things that are happening around us and to us, we actually have very, very little control of that. Even cancer. So, you know, the doctor asked me to pick a battle word when I got first diagnosed. Like, like, this is the thing you're going to wake up and think about every day because I'm going to try to kill you. So that's a pleasant conversation. So my battle word was gratitude. I wanted to wake up every day and just be thankful for something. Now, there were some really bad days. So there's some days where it's like, I'm just, I don't know, I'm grateful I'm breathing in and out, I guess. Like, I haven't taken the dirt nap, the forever sleep, but Gratitude, I felt like that, that really would shift my mindset every morning and think about that thing that I, that I was grateful for. So yeah, let's, let's be intentional about the way we think and let's be intentional about the way we approach life and our businesses ultimately.

And I think that's an interesting conversation again that people are having is I have, you know, I teach graduate students and I have students coming in and saying, I've had to train the AI model that's replacing me.

Mm-hmm.

Because the company's a small company and they're gonna have all the creative done using LLMs. And I've had, you know, I mean, every different conversation that you can imagine is happening. And students are worried about that, particularly, of course, we're in LA and I, this term, I seem to have a lot of students who are in the more creative fields. They're in entertainment where I don't always have that. And knowing that, you know, you have made this shift into not being as heavy into tech, but you do have family members who are obviously at the largest LLM companies that we know. And we do hear, you know, so we have this push-pull is happening, but then we also know technology is not infallible. Like last week, I think, didn't all the major LLMs went down?

Yes.

What are people going to do, right? Like we've heard about different platforms getting out of their sandbox and like going and, you know, going into Hugging Face and taking over other platforms.

Yeah.

So what kind of conversations are you having, whether it's around the dinner table or with previous colleagues or even in the cigar lounges as people are talking about technology and, you know, especially that part we call generative AI?

Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, the cigar industry is very funny. We tend to, I would say 95% of cigar lounge owners in the country, they, they, we really are hobbyists, meaning we, we didn't, We maybe didn't come with a professional background in business. We just thought it was great to smoke cigars and we wanted to smoke at wholesale, right? And not have to pay full price for our cigars. So it tends to be a little bit less sophisticated when it comes to technology. So as generative AI has been out and everything like that, what's so funny is to look at all the socials for all these cigar lounges across the country because they've all become the same thing. It's the same kind of AI slop and everything like that. And so as I was writing articles for the publications, I was talking about there's no problem with using generative AI or using any of these tools to improve your social media and your reach and all these things. But understand that it has to have a goal of also a conversation. Like at the end of the day, am I connecting with somebody? Because otherwise it's just noise, right? And the, the amount of volume, it really struck me. I was at a professional baseball game a couple of weeks ago and a very prominent baseball player was coming up to bat. And I took the moment to look around the stadium. There was 50,000 people. And I want to say conservatively that there were 47,999 phones that were in people's hands. And I was trying to do the math of, okay, if they're taking a 5-megabyte picture, or, or heaven forbid, a 20-megabyte, 30-megabyte video. I'm just looking at the, the, the, the rapid amount of data and video and everything that we are collect— like, we are just collecting. And I can't imagine that any of those 48,000 photos that got taken of that one bat swing were any good at all, right? And, and so, and yet we're just creating more and more and more and more and more. So all that to be said, some of the conversations that I've had with my son-in-law, who again, he works at OpenAI, has been around that. Like, like, how do we, how do we look at these different models, you know, Codex, any, any of these other tools, or even some of the generative AI, Sora and, and, and Chat and everything. And how do we, how do we look at those things and, and how do we apply them to problems that might be existing and wanting to solve those problems? So, my nephew that's gonna be starting college next year, he actually reached out to me and was like, hey, Unc, like, Like, what degree should I be pursuing? And I told him, I said that you should be pursuing anything in the maths, anything in the logic. Like, be somebody who's curious. And I encourage leaders to do the same thing, even leaders that have been around a long time. Like, instead of looking at AI and going, hey, you know, it's going to take over my job, it's replacing me, be curious. Like, go find out more about it and also stay very, very close to your customers. Because your customers are going to have needs. And, and even though AI might be listening and AI might be figuring stuff out, at the end of the day, there is a person in the loop. And if you are that person, that's the real discriminator for you to make impacts professionally.

Absolutely. And that's, that is such a big key. I'm thinking about a conversation I had with somebody who's professional, works at Microsoft, and her role's shifted to working with with a lot of the companies that work with Microsoft and speaking to the C-suite and the big executives and just listening to them, right? And she said there wasn't as much of an emphasis on the problem solver. There was a much bigger emphasis on the tech. But this year now there's a shift. So she's feeling like she's in a better position because she's had a longer career. And she's like, I'm not as fast at the tech as people younger than me, but I know the business inside and out. I know how to speak the language and I know how to listen so that people feel heard and that we can identify what's really going on underneath whatever they're talking about and get to the root of that. And I think though that that is a skill that as people say, I can use tech to replace a lot of my, what would be entry-level jobs, that's, that's what we need to figure out part of is like, how do we give people those skills? And right, and pursuing the right careers, but also having those skills so that when they get into the workforce, they are teeing themselves up for not being able to be replaced.

If I could give one advice to a young person is don't ever turn down an opportunity to get in a room. So, so never turn down invitations. I will tell you, there's an old saying in Texas that when you're in the room, you're in the deal. And it's an old cowboy, cowboy term that, you know, stuff was getting done in rooms. And if you were in that room, you were gonna, you were gonna be part of it. And I would say a large part of my professional career is simply because I was either bold or crazy or whatever enough to go into rooms that sometimes I didn't even belong in. But I was invited. And so, so why not take the opportunity to, to go investigate that and, and be in that room and, and be curious and exchange a business card and also be willing to be vulnerable. Like, I was never the smartest guy in any of the rooms that I was in, but I was absolutely the most curious. And so I was okay with letting people know, boy, I don't understand that, but I would really love to understand that. You know, would you be willing to, to, to share something with— and it was genuine interest. It wasn't like lead group interest where I've got 10 people and we're speed dating, you know, kind of business engagements, but like real genuine curiosity. And I think that's what allowed me to go from technology to restoring the downtown to doing a cigar lounge is I'm just infinitely curious and I love creating the rooms and being in rooms where, where innovation, whether it's technology innovation or redevelopment innovation or relational innovation happens.

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And you do a lot of speaking. I mean, you, you mentioned that a little bit. And I also have seen that you, you do a lot of keynotes and talks and workshops. Do you find it is more about the relational side and, you know, this business side? Are you helping people understand a little bit of the tech side? Because even though you're not the AI person, right, you still have this vast background in tech and, you know, and like, I also, you know, grew up in the era where we didn't have cell phones. We went to AOL chat rooms like—

Yes.

You know?

Yes, we did.

I have friends who were like, we met on Friendster and people don't know what that is.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

So I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And because— and also nodding to the fact that you said a lot of people in the cigar business were hobbyists, they wanted to do this because they love it. But at the same time, we know small businesses can do a lot of things. Maybe, maybe the creative is not the best idea. Because it is going to be a sea of sameness, but maybe those little things that they can implement in their business structures that can help them optimize a little bit. So, I'd love to hear a little bit about what your talks are about and what you're finding interesting there.

So, I find that most of the, most of the companies and organizations that have reached out to me has really, really been focused on, on 2 things. One, either relationship development and whether that's for their sales teams, whether that's for their C-suite as they, as they look to understand chain of command How information flows up and down an organization, and how do you push a lot of the leadership further into the organization? Like, I'm a big proponent of leadership's responsibility is to put their organization in a position to have success, not to do everything. I got some really, really great counsel from a marketing director 30 years ago with my first company where he told me, Josh, you're really better at everything than everybody in this company. He's like, but we're— if you do everything, then we're only gonna go as far as you want to have no work-life balance. In fact, Carnegie Mellon put out a great textbook in the '70s called How to Transform from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm. You know, very, very technical. But it was one of the most important books that I read early in my career, because the, the, the— what makes you a great entrepreneur doesn't necessarily translate into making you great at running a professional organization. So, so number one, relationship building. The second thing that people have me look at is the relationship between technology and how you are delivering your products and services, right? So it's really the activation, the implementation, having a real strategy as to how you employ technology to move your bottom line. And again, it goes back to that idea of, do we do it because we can or do we do it because we should? And so we'll take a very holistic approach and we'll look at the entire organization. Typically, these will be like more 3-day workshops, almost like SWOT analysis and strategic planning, but with an emphasis on on how do we then layer on technology to, to positively impact an organization. So I love doing them. I, I love exhorting people. I love encouraging people. I find that, uh, I, I was a basketball coach for a decade, so I love just instilling wisdom and, and giving people, you know, a real path to accomplish something. And, and these things, especially as it relates to relationships, you're not going to fix 100% of your relationships. By reading this book, and in fact, I encourage you just pick one. Probably Professor Jackson, while you and I are sitting here on the phone or on the video, there's a name that comes to mind where we might be a little bit strained right now. Go give that person a call. Just just one person. Take them to coffee. Talk through it. Hug it out. Whatever you need to do. But but but being healthy in how we walk through our relationships—that is contagious, and and and and it'll get us there. So yeah, so I love doing those talks. Love love helping organizations achieve good good and healthy. Amazing.

And would you say that relationships, whether again with tech or with people, is the biggest issue that people need to be paying more attention to? Or are there other things that are popping up for you that founders aren't paying enough attention to right now?

I think one of the— technology is, or I should say relationships is always gonna be for me like kind of number one. But I do think that with this age of technology, the other thing that I think sometimes we confuse is we mistake activity for productivity. So one of the things that I'm very grateful for having gotten or done my degree studies in accounting is there's a very real gap exists, generally accepted accounting principles. We have a profit and loss statement, we have a balance sheet, so it's very easy to measure performance of an organization and look at what's happening from a productivity standpoint. What I think has happened And with this technology movement and AI and everything, and the other things that we talked about is we are confusing the velocity that the markets are working at as activity. Like, oh, we've got these initiatives and all these things going on without understanding how they're actually affecting our bottom line and how are they affecting us culturally. We can make these missteps. I'll tell you a quick story. So I was down in Nicaragua, and I was down on a tobacco farm down there, cigar, premium cigar tobacco farm in a city called Estelí. And I noticed that there was this big piece of equipment that was sitting behind this building, and it looked kind of new. And so the owner of that factory, very, very large family owner, I said, you know, Mr. Garcia, I'm like, what is that piece of equipment there? And he's like, well, that is a destemming machine. So this is the thing that removes the stem from the middle of cigar leaves so you get the 2 leaves that you can work with when you roll cigars. I said, well, it looks brand new. He's like, we had it for 1 day and 1 day only in our factory. And I said, why is that? And he said, Josh, he's like, we have 0% unemployment. He's like, in Estelí. He's like, we have to bus people into Estelí from all the surrounding villages to be able to produce cigars for world consumption.

Wow.

And he's like, and when I came into the office the day that that was installed, I noticed that there was a couple, this Victor and Maria, that weren't there. And I asked the staff, well, where are Victor and Maria? And they said, oh, they said, well, we got this deveining machine, and that's what Victor and Maria were doing at the factory.

Wow.

So he looked at the numbers and realized that he had taken work away from this family And, and looking at the actual productivity of the thing, there was something very real and tactile about when, when humans were deveining those leaves, that, that was not something that actually was a net positive for their organization. He's like, and I moved the equipment out. So I think understanding some of those things, the unintended consequences, and, and faithfully walking through those, that it's critical. Got to look at it.

100%. And that's where we see a lot of companies Backtracking. Oh, we're going to replace everybody in customer service. Yes. With agents. And then, oh, oops, we can't really do that. And I can tell you, when I get stuck in a loop. Yeah. Right. It's the most annoying thing and it's not going to create customer loyalty.

It's very tough. I've noticed that a lot of those AI agents, especially the chat ones that are, that are popping up all over the place on these things, like it is really unproductive and it is very, very frustrating. And you probably find yourself like I do, like I'm a pretty even-tempered guy, but there are some strongly worded emails that I will produce where it's like, look, I don't have the time to sit in this 20-minute loop of conversation that's not getting anywhere. Whereas if I talk to a person, they might not have the perfect answer, but they're certainly going to hear me and they're going to be able to deal with that. And I think some companies are doing a really great job with those kind of interfaces and making those jumps very quickly that, oh, hey, let me get you on the phone with an agent right away. And it feels like that turn cycle is a lot quicker. But yeah, I think companies are going to work their way through it. I'm encouraged that markets are efficient, right? There's lots of very, very smart people on this planet and they will figure it out. And I think it's maintaining some patience and some focus on what are the most important things that get us to the finish line.

Yeah, it's funny because one question I always ask people is, for Practical Pedagogy, is what is your North Star? And I feel like we've hit that this whole episode, this through line of relationships and how important those are. Is there anything that you would say differently?

No, other than to say that relationships are hard. As somebody who's been married 32 years, that doesn't happen by accident. I have to wake up every single day and go, Lori, you're fantastic. I would like to continue. And I bet, just full disclosure, I married way above my pay grade. So like, my job is to continue to make myself entertaining and lovable on a daily basis for my wife. But yeah, like, it is hard. Like, I'm not asking you to do something that's easy. So I think over time, when you make relationships a priority and your interactions with people a priority, you do get better at it. It's a skill you can learn. Like, I've had some people kind of challenge me on that. Like, well, they're just likable people and you're just a terribly likable guy and that's why you write about this. And what I would— what I tell people is, for those that really know me, I'm really an extreme introvert. Like, I can go and talk to people and talk to big groups, but that doesn't fill my cup up. Like, what fills me up is quiet time and reading time and reflection time and meditation. like, but not being with people. So I've had to get out of my comfort zone to engage with people. When we did the book signing big launch event in August for this book, there were 200+ people that were at this, you know, big, big event. And I sat there and signed books all night and I was exhausted. It was a couple days of just at-home rest. So yeah, I think it's easy to say that my North Star is relationships and people, but I'm, I'm all— I also understand that that is hard.

Yeah.

And I am asking you to do kind of a hard thing because it's, um, intentional and it can take energy out of you when life is messy, right? And people are like, I'm messy. Like I'm the first messy person. And so, and we talk about that in the book, right? Like, like how do you deal with what I call the villains? Sometimes people that come into your orbit that are not working towards your best interests.

Absolutely. We could have a whole other tangent about that.

Right. I know.

Absolutely. Joshua, this has been Just really refreshing conversation. We will have people; they can go to ifjesus.com, right? .com. Yeah. .com is the website. .com.

Yeah, and there's information about the workshops that I do, opportunities to to buy the book. You can go to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, any of the big Goodreads, any of the big booksellers, and get it as well. But one of the things I do include, and I do encourage people, is on the front page of the website. site, um, is a quick form thing. You're not going to get any solicitations from me. I hate those things as much as you do. But I really love to hear how the book impacts people, and I love to hear people's questions about things. And all of that comes directly to me. I'm not employing any, any AI agents to like screen those or, or somehow sell your data. I really am interested in connection and, and relationships. So yeah, ifjesus.com.

Nice. And Do you have a favorite quote, mantra, verse, poem, family motto, or even one of the books that you're reading right now that's really inspiring you?

Yeah. So our family motto, which will resonate, um, if you actually look at the meaning of Everts, my last name, it's wild boar. And so we've always had a, a family motto, which is anything worth doing is worth overdoing. So I, I think from a, from a life standpoint, we, we as a family, I would say in general, we live very loud. In that we, we try to go accomplish things. Like, it's, it's like, I don't— if it— like, the number one cause of death is birth. So we all have this short amount of time on the planet, so go make something of it. Like, I'm not a guy that's going to probably retire at any point. Like, I'm just going to find interesting things that I can do with whatever body, you know, will allow me to go engage in those events.

Yeah. This is so fun. And I, I love that you're saying that about your last name and about your family. It's very inspirational and aspirational, I'm sure, for myself and for other people who are listening. And I think there's, you know, for general business relationships really are the base of everything. Everything I've done in my career has been based on relationships. Every time I said yes was to something I didn't know was a possibility. And then, uh, For the AI and teaching conversation, it is interesting because practical pedagogy isn't really just about, it's not about the art of teaching necessarily how to use AI. It's the art of critical thinking. It's the art of relationships. It's the art of teaching all of these other things that are fundamental and that won't go away no matter what tech is doing in the world around us. So, Absolutely. Joshua Everts, thank you so much. And we'll have your links in the show notes as well as your LinkedIn. So people can also reach out there.

Professor Jackson, it's been a joy. It really has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on here.

Likewise. And thank you. If, if you are listening to this, whether on either podcast, go listen to the other podcast. Let me know what you think. Leave us a rating review. They really help discoverability. And, uh, if you have a great guest to recommend, also reach out. I'm always open to speaking to amazing people, sharing their stories and sharing things that I get to learn Thanks for listening or watching to this episode of Your Brand Amplified. Don't forget to leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast listening platform. And if you want to learn more, check us out at yourbrandamplified.com.

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