Leadership & The Courage to Fail: Kurt Bush

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world. Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Welcome to the show, Kurt Busch. Kurt, thanks for coming on.

Yeah, glad to be here, Christian. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So why don't you give the audience a brief CV synopsis of your credentials?

Yep. So I spent about a decade of my early career working in the manufacturing world. I supervised a production process. I spent some time in HR. I did some labor recruiting for the plant, did some benefits administration. I actually really love that. I know people don't love that, but I had a great time doing it. I went from there into seminary as an adult. Then I pastored, helped pastor a couple churches for about another decade after manufacturing. And then I launched a coaching practice where I coach leaders of all kinds. I would say everybody leads something. So I coach leaders of their families and leaders of organizations and everywhere in between. I help them get a little more clear on who they want to be and how they want to be and take steps to make that so.

That, that is an interesting life journey.

Okay.

I'm going to start. I'm going to start with the obvious. Yeah. You're calling into ministry as, as a mature adult. Yeah. What did that look like?

Yeah, I mean, there's a much deeper story that would take days to talk about, but my wife and I got plugged into a church plant at a really young age. We were newly married, no kids, just kind of diving into this thing that we felt passionate about. And I had a couple of really good mentors along the way that let me lead in capacities that I probably didn't have any business leading in. So I think through that process, through some mentors pouring into me on purpose, that sort of led into this, like, okay, there might be something there for me to do vocationally.

Was that a difficult decision to make?

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to— I don't mean to make the face I just made, but yeah, it was— it was probably a year and a half or 2 years that I knew that I probably should be enrolling in seminary that I didn't. I enjoyed my career. I enjoyed the company I worked for. I enjoyed the people I worked for and with. Yeah, it was really, really hard and I avoided it for a really long time.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. Because seminary is not cheap and it's not easy. And I don't think I'd voluntarily sign up for that. I 100% wouldn't sign up to be a pastor. I've said this multiple times. I'm like, that sounds like one of the worst job descriptions on the planet.

Yeah. Say more about that. What do you mean by that?

Well, I mean, I think for me, in my experience, a pastor's job is largely I think the hardest part about it would be the potential— not saying this happens all the time, but the potential is always there— to be serving two masters of your calling to God on one hand, and then the congregants as another? Yeah. Because, you know, obviously, your job is to pastor them and lead them. But that would seem to be a constant stress point. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair. And I do, I'm pretty young relative to some colleagues that still pastor churches. I do think it's different today than it would've been 25 years ago. The internet makes a difference. Polarization makes a difference. Megachurches make it, like all of those things make that job harder today than it probably was at the turn of the century. But yeah, yeah, I think I would say it's probably different in practice than it is in theory, if that makes sense.

Well, yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm going to put a pause. I'm going to put a pin in this and I'm going to come back to it because I find the topic interesting. But I want to start with leadership. Okay. Yes. It's, it's interesting timing that I just wrote a Substack article for, you know, tens of people to read about leadership. And my own failure of leadership just in the last 18 months. And I'm gonna— I'll just summarize it for you. And then I want to hear your perspective. So this is not the first time of failure of leadership on my part. But this latest iteration was I was frustrated with the execution and the direction of the business. And I felt like even to the point where I don't know if I'm helping or hurting. I even asked the leadership team at our annual meeting, I'm like, I don't know that my head was in my hands, but I had that that level of frustration and discontent of like, I don't know if I'm in the right place. And what was interesting was that my failure of leadership had become so complete that it was like, I don't even know one, if you guys need me, and two, you guys decide what direction we're going. And I kind of wrapped it in the magnanimity of I'm giving them the option and the choice rather than clearly saying this is what the failure was. Was I was not willing to ask myself, what do I want? Mm. Yeah. And to put it out there. Yeah. Like, okay, you want this. Now you've said it. Now you're beholden to it. Yeah. And then being able to hold them accountable to it. And if they— didn't— me being able to say, this is what I want, this is what I need from you as part of the team. If they didn't execute on that, being able to say, I'm sorry, we're going to have to part ways. I need somebody else that can do this. To the extreme that making changes to the leadership team did not even consciously rise to my brain as an option. Right? Yeah. So did a lot of— a lot more deep work over the last 6 months. Have declared what I want, what the vision is, and given the leadership team explicit asks of this is what I need from you. Yeah. And it— I guess my question to you is, what are your thoughts on that? Does that resonate with any experience you've had in working with other leaders?

Yeah, 1 million percent, Christian. I mean, I just want to say first, like, I think in 2026, anybody willing to write, here's a failure of leadership that I had, I think deserves some sort of, some sort of accolade or applause. I mean, the, the courage to say, here's a place that I failed. Maybe you can benefit from my failure and my learning. Right. So I maybe like I'm struck right away at how, how rarely that happens kind of in the public sphere. So thanks for telling the story. I think my approach, like, can I ask some questions?

Absolutely. We'll turn this into a therapy session.

I like to call it coaching because I'm not a licensed therapist. Fair enough. Uh, so do you, do you know what the barrier was or what stopped you from naming what you wanted or needed? Uh, yeah, so, and you don't have to answer, I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, I think, I think the more I can share, the the better it is for me and for everybody else. And I did share it in the article, so I'm not coming up with anything that I haven't already disclosed. The problem with me was that I had a very deep subprogramming that ran that acted as an insurance policy for my ego. And what that narrative was, was that if I was productive, if I was useful, I couldn't be abandoned. Yeah, right. Yep. And the way that manifested for decades was more like So if the premium payment was made, if I make more premium payments, that means that I'm good for even future years, right? Yeah. And so it was this default of just grow, right? Yeah. And on the surface, I would have told you, and I think practically in some ways, I had designed the business around what I thought I wanted. It did provide a financial lifestyle for me and my family. It gave me a lot of time freedom with my family. I got to grow my children and participate in their lives and have great relationships with them as adults. So on the surface, it was what I wanted.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I would have said that it was what I wanted. But when the kids are all gone, and it's like, OK, what's next? That wasn't a sufficient answer. Yeah.

Right?

Yeah. And there was a little bit of— well, not a little bit, a significant amount of it that was, I don't want to say what I want because going after it risks what I have. Mm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. So there were several, several things that contributed to that, but that, that's the bulk of them. Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for saying that. Do you— one more question, then I think I have some, some resonance. Do you know, like, where else would this show up for you? Like, are there other places in your life where this same mentality would show up, where there was this barrier? That would keep you from naming what you need or want?

Well, that sounds like a ridiculous question. Of course. Which is very interesting, because when I start— I've worked with the same coach for 6 years now. When I started with Jacob, which is an interesting aside, he used to do marriage coaching with his wife. He was an Orthodox rabbi. Before he became an executive and business coach. When I came on with him, I didn't hire him. He came along with another service provider, which was weird. They said, you know, yeah, you get to work with us, but you also get to work with Jacob while you're working with us. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. And I At that point in my life, my marriage was in crisis. And we spent probably 6 months talking about marriage. We didn't talk about the business in my coaching sessions, right? Yeah. And I'll never forget the question he asked, which was so profound. In context of the marriage. He asked me, well, what do you want? What do you want? What do you need from the marriage? And I'm like, what kind of question is that? Right? Like, I mean, it had never risen to the level of consciousness. But in reflecting on it and asking it and getting it clear, okay, this is what I want. He said, great, now go tell your wife. And I'm like, ho, ho, ho, hold on, hold on. And I had this conversation sitting down with my wife in the middle of turmoil and strife. Yeah. And I said, okay, this is what I need from you. And then I said, what do you need from me? And she looked like a deer in the headlights. She's like, "What do you mean?" And I'm like, "What do you need from me?" Right? Yeah. And at that point, we'd been married 20-plus years. And, you know, that conversation had never been had by either one of us. And it took her several weeks to even, like, contemplate it and come back to me with an answer. Yeah, but absolutely. And I'll just add this codicil here that what that showed me, you know, a long time ago, 5 years ago, 6 years ago, was that you don't have business problems or personal problems. You have problems that emanate from you and they just show up. And I never would have made the connection that the problems that I had in my marriage were the same ones that I was having in the business. Even to the point that, even to the point that, last year, I didn't see that I wasn't clear and never asked for what I wanted from my wife. Was the same problem I was sitting with last year. Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah. Christian, I, I think that is really why— like, you said a lot of gold in there. I, I think here, here's where I see resonance with people I work with, two, two ways. The first way is I think so many of us, uh, lack the ability to answer the question what we need or want, and not because we're bad people, not because we're bad anything. But I think that that idea of naming what we need or want is really foreign to us. And I don't know, I live in the Midwest. Naming what you need or want is akin to blasphemy, right? Like, that can be 100%. Yeah, it can be seen as selfish. It feels—

it feels selfish.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think based on your story, we would both agree that it's not— that at some point those needs will be met or those we will find ways to meet those needs, either healthy or unhealthy. So being able to name them and share them feels like the opposite of selfishness. So, so that's one way. I just— and I was the same way. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and tell you I've always done that well. I still don't do it well. But, but I see that in a lot of my clients as well. Naming what we need or want is really hard. Here's the other thing, and you already said it. About problems being problems. What I run into is clients who feel stuck or clients who have, you know, this feeling of failing or the feeling of being an imposter.

Mm-hmm.

No, nobody gets up in the morning and goes into work and says, man, I just, I just want to be exhausted today. Or, you know what, I just want to have a failure of leadership again today. You know, nobody's getting up and doing that. The reality is there's something keeping leaders stuck in those places that goes beyond just how do I do my job? There are a million resources that tell leaders how to lead. I mean, there's a million John Maxwells out there that say, here's what a good leader does. But, but that all gets undermined by these other things internally. Those things like you just said that show up in other places. Our leadership tactical skills and practical rhythms and those things get undermined and disrupted by our sort of internal things that we carry into those spaces. My coaching partner will say everywhere we go, there we are. And I think that's, that's so true in leadership because we just carry it in and we'll do the things we always do. And that leads to some of those things that you've shared and leads to this problem leading into this problem and leading into exhaustion and burnout and all those things.

It reminds me of the line from Ball and Chain by Social Distortion: You can run all your life and not go anywhere, and wherever you go, you're sure to find yourself there. Yep.

100%. Well said. I didn't expect Social Distortion to show up on a podcast I was on today. I love that.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite songs. Yeah, I think the other line in there is, is, uh, I'm my own worst enemy because every now and then I kick the living shit out of myself. Shit out of me.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

Um, okay, so having said all that, I— here's what showed up for me is I had head knowledge about a lot of things around leadership and around myself, but what was missing was the acts of doing the work to break out of that pattern, right?

Yeah.

And I substituted, I substituted the head knowledge for the action. Yeah. Yeah.

Talk about that.

Yeah.

Christian, it feels like we're reading each other's mail. This feels almost scripted. It's not. It's not. So we believe and subscribe into something we call— well, we didn't make it up. We're borrowing it. Everything is borrowed on some level. Something called the transformational model of learning that says that transformation or growth or learning or anything like that does not come from information alone, because if it did, we would already be transformed and changed. If knowing how to be a better leader was all I needed, I would already be a better leader.

Mm-hmm.

But here I am on a Friday feeling kind of busy and rushed, knowing this isn't how I want to be. So what we believe then is that in addition to information, there needs to be some sort of action that we can try that disrupts other patterns of behavior, disrupts other ways of being. But then also there's a third step that says we have to reflect on that and see how it worked. You know, it's one thing to get into action, but it's another thing to get into action and then say, how did that— how did that go? How did that feel? You know, if I'm trying on a suit coat, if I put it on, I have to look in the mirror and say, is this the right one? So we think not just information has to lead to action and practice, but then also has to have this kind of reflection to say, how did that go? Did that work? Did it have the outcome I wanted? If not, then I go back to the beginning. I get some different information, different practice, reflect on that, and we can do that over and over and over.

Yeah. And I find, I find people, I mean, myself for a long time, wrote another Substack article about that, of being medicated to avoid emotion. People don't want to feel negative emotions, right? I mean, that's normal. And all of the different ways we go to avoid that. Yeah. But I had a conversation just this morning with my CFO, and we'd had a conversation yesterday afternoon. And I didn't like the way it went. And I didn't really think about it. But I woke up this morning, and I kind of had a fresh perspective. And so I called him and I said, look, the conversation we had didn't really go the way I— it didn't sit with me, right? And I said, when I initially reached out to you, how did that make you feel? And he proceeded to start telling me again what he thought. And I said, hold on a second. I know what you said about what you think. How did that make you feel? Yeah. And he paused for a second. And he said, well, it honestly, it frustrated me and it confused me. I'm like, bingo. Yeah, right. And we had this 30-minute conversation. And, and the reality was that I didn't know what I was needing from him and asking him, right? We just kind of got caught in this, this loop, this feedback loop. And, and so I realized that I really needed something else from him. And, and so I asked him, and I said, can you give that? And he goes, I think I can. And I'll try. But it was uncomfortable for him, because I was pushing him into a new space. I'm like, I'm no longer wanting just information. I want your advice.

Right?

Yeah. And I don't want you to tell me what you think I want to hear. I want your opinion. Like, Right. Uh, but it all started with the question of feeling, like, how did that make you feel? Yeah, but that— people don't start there.

No, I— and, and I think it's different for everybody. Uh, the reason is different for everybody. I, I also wonder— I mean, I don't know if I can push a little bit and you can— you can push back. I, I sometimes wonder— I mean, this is a today wondering. 10 years ago, Curt would have never wondered about this. So I'm learning kind of as we go. I'm building the plane as we're flying it, right? I, I wonder what a negative emotion is. Like, is there even such a thing as a negative emotion, or is an emotion just an emotion, right? Like, is something that stirs in me, uh, that, that's outside of my control? I imagine that CFO felt frustration not because he chose to feel frustration. Um, like, I wonder what that frustration is telling him. Or her, I guess maybe you didn't say his name.

It was him.

You know, like, what is that frustration trying to tell him? And is it negative? And why do we assign it a negative? Or can it be something that drives, you know, positive connection, positive momentum forward? I sometimes don't even know what to think about the idea of a negative emotion, if that makes sense. And you can push on that if you want.

Well, no, I think I conceptually understand what you're saying in that all emotions, negative or positive, you know, what label we put to it, are useful.

Yeah.

Yeah. But there's definitely a category, and I would put fear, anxiety, anger, rage, you know, that are in that bucket of negative, right? That we avoid, whereas the positive, happy, glad feelings we don't avoid. Yeah, that would be the distinction is the avoidance.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you know, do you know the movie Inside Out and Inside Out 2?

I have not.

They're Disney movies and, and they are their Internal Family Systems 101 is what we like to call them. So my partner and I are Internal Family Systems practitioners. And basically here's a scene that I love that helps kind of capture, I think, what, what we're talking about here. There's a scene. So in the movie there's one main character and we get to see inside the main character's head and there's different characters for different emotions. There's joy, there's sadness, there's disgust. Angst, Anxiety, and each one of those is its own character, exactly like you would imagine. And they have a, like a control room that's driving the main character, right? And what happens is in the second one of these movies, Anxiety gets a hold of the control board and just runs amok and goes crazy. And the main character gets angsty and all this other, like all the things you would imagine. There's a beautiful scene at the end where the character that plays Joy prys the Anxiety character away from the control board and says, "What are you doing?" And Anxiety pauses and looks at the character for Joy and says, "I was just trying to help." And it's just— it's beautiful. And again, these, these are movies that are easy to understand. I would recommend them to anybody. I think that's, that's what I wonder all the time is how much of How much of these questions around our emotions and our feelings is about how we let them drive the bus versus whether or not we should feel that, right? Or whether we even get a choice?

No, no, it's a, it's a, that's a, that's a very brilliant point. Because fear, for example, is there for a purpose. It's to protect us, right? So it's not bad. You know, so maybe that's what you were taking umbrage with, is this labeling of good or bad. I think all of the feelings at some level serve us. Yeah. Fear, fear is one that absolutely protects us until that protection is actually destructive, right? Like, yes, that's, that's the thing. And For me, I learned this a long time ago when I was learning how to be an advisor. Take that term for whatever you want. Okay. And the guy that was facilitating this program did this visualization technique that he called releasing. And it was when you have an emotion, a negative emotion, to envision a balloon in front of you that you're holding on a string. And then I want you to let that balloon go and I want you to watch it. So you're feeling the emotion, you're feeling it, but you're separating it from yourself.

Yeah.

And you're letting it go. And, and then like if you start feeling that again, that's fine. You just do that over and over. But for the longest time, I could never do— I could do it once or twice, but like never in the moment and But what it did show me was that I am separate from my emotions. My emotions are not me, which is exactly what you're describing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think to like circle back to your original question, I, I think so many of us will avoid feeling those things or naming those feelings because we've just had so many years of, of attaching shame to them. Or, you know, I remember early on out of seminary, I would feel anger and I would have this immense feeling like, well, a good pastor wouldn't be angry. How could a good pastor be angry, right? I'm also, I'm be-seen-not-heard years old, if you get what I'm saying there. So I think there is just a whole generation of us that just don't know how to do, don't know how to feel the feelings and don't know how to hold them in a healthy way without letting them also then just drive the bus, right?

No, I mean, and that's probably the biggest failure I gave my children. And I've talked to them as adults of like, I did not teach you how to emotionally regulate because I didn't know how. And it wasn't something I was taught. But I do think back about my upbringing and all of my friends when we were kids. I mean, what did you hear? Stop crying. Yes. Right? Yes. As opposed to— we're getting ready to bring foster kids into our home, and part of that training was, you know, dealing with, with kids that have been traumatized. And it's, it's, it's like just being able to say it's okay to be sad. It's okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. I mean, I, yeah, that resonates so deeply what you said of like, stop crying, don't be sad, just be happy.

Why are you sad?

Why are you sad? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, do you know Brené Brown?

I have read, I have been to a couple of her presentations.

She's amazing. And we look to Brené Brown a lot for things like guilt and shame. And she just has— you probably know this quote, but she has the quote where she says, people aren't sucking on purpose to piss me off. They're doing the best they can with what they've got. That's true of me. That's true of you. That was also true of my first formation and my family of origin who didn't know how to tell me anything other than don't be sad. Allows me to get to a little self-compassion for me and for my family of origin. But yeah, I mean, I think over generations, I think that that process and that progress, I think hopefully continues to bear fruit, right?

Yeah. Or another one. As a kid, you weren't allowed to be angry. No. Like you couldn't be mad at your parents. You couldn't be mad at the situation, right? Like that. Mm-mm-mm. And, and then, and, you know, I'm envisioning with these Fussers kids, you know, because they're going to be angry, and it's like, hey, it's okay, because it's not about me, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's another analogy that, that we like to use in our practice. It's, it's the analogy of a beach ball underwater. You ever hold it? Try to hold the beach ball underwater. Um, if the beach ball is the emotion and I'm telling You know, if I'm telling a foster kid, don't be angry, they're going to put that beach ball further and further underwater. And at some point that beach ball is going to rush out like there is no holding it under there indefinitely. These emotions, when we try to hold them down, like they are going to come out. The question is, do we want to help them out or do we want to let them burst out where they're going to like— exactly.

Everybody. Exactly. Curt, how do people find out more about your coaching and your work if they want to learn more?

Yeah, thanks for asking. Our coaching practice is called the Brimstone Coaching Group.

I love that name.

Yeah, well, it's— I always like to remind people this is not like hellfire and brimstone. Ah, okay. The brimstone butterfly is the longest living butterfly in the world. And we love the imagery of butterflies being transformed creatures. They're the only living transformed creatures. So yeah, that kind of brimstone, not the other, like, like pound on the pulpit kind of brimstone. Okay. So brimstonecoachinggroup.com is our website. That's the easiest way to kind of see who we are and see what we do and how and why.

Beautiful. Listeners will have that link in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.