How Knowing Your WHY Shapes Your Plan

This episode of beyond you'd why is brought to you by our why App. Head over to yinstitute.com to take our free why app and discover your why today.

So I've got a really great podcast for you today. I'm bringing on a very good friend of mine. His name is Jamie Duraghi. And so in the last podcast I went through all of the nine whys with you. So you're starting to get familiar with the nine whys. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start bringing on guests that have those whys and you can see how the why has played out in their life. How it's helped them make decisions, how it's helped them change direction and change course in their life, and how it's helped them build their businesses. So you're going to see all of this in the upcoming interviews. Now the very first one I've got, like I said, is a friend of mine. His name is Jamie Duraghi. So I'm just going to read you his bio so you can see who it is that we're going to be talking with on the podcast. Now. Jamie is a Los Angeles based executive coach and team facilitator. He helps ambitious people overcome their perceived limitations and develop a life of their choosing. His career draws from over 25 years as an entrepreneur and competitive athlete. Jamie has facilitated and coached in a range of countries within Africa and Asia to Europe and the US for EO forums, Vistage groups, ypo companies and their leadership teams. Now as an entrepreneur and co founder of several companies including a staffing firm, a graphic novel studio and a digital agency, he recently started Life Work Integration to create clarity by discovering the why, how and what that drives us to succeed in life. He is a Certified y and Gallup Strengthsfinder coach. He has been an EO member leader since 2004, including two time LA chapter president, regional director and chair for EO's global growth team focusing on new chapter launches in Africa, China and South America. With a passion for fencing, he is a three time US Veteran National Fencing Champion and a six time participant at the Veteran World Fencing Championships. He received his BA in French and a Master's in International Relations from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He is also a TEDx speaker and a graduate of Leadership LA. Jamie's been married to his wife Kathy Katie for 23 years and believes in the freedom that an integrated life brings. Welcome Jamie. That's an awesome bio and I'm glad I read that because there's no way I would have remembered all of that. So. So welcome.

Thank you, Gary. It's an absolute pleasure to be here with you.

Well, you know, why don't we start by telling us a little bit about your journey.

Absolutely. I started a company called Artisan Creative here in Los Angeles in 1996. So it's been about 22 years now. A full time service agency serving clients in the graphic design field. Find creative talent, ran that, running a good life, just very doing everything that's expected of a leader and as an entrepreneur. And then at one point I hit a wall. I felt stuck. I didn't really know why I was doing what I was doing. And then I came across your nine whys. And from there I chose to take a different direction in my life because I had absolute clarity as to why I was doing what I was doing.

So tell us a little bit about that. So you and I met how many years ago?

Four or five years ago now. Getting around there exactly five years ago. Five years ago now.

I remember meeting you and you came to one of our events and you were all excited because you had discovered your why and tell everybody what your why is and then what it was like for you to go through the process of discovering your why and then how that affected your thinking and the decision that you made with your business and what that decision was.

Absolutely. So I'll start with the process that I went through and then I'll kind of reveal what my why is. I met with one of your coaches and we were talking actually at an EO event and I was explaining or expressing this sort of stuck feeling that I've been going through. And this coach said, I will tell you in about 15 or 20 minutes why you're feeling this way. And I kind of sat there, my arms immediately closed and I was not receptive to that. And I said, I've been struggling with this for maybe two and a half years. And you're telling me now that you're going to say this in 15 to 20 minutes you're going to tell me the reason why. He did something that was key. He said, trust the process. So within the entrepreneurs organization, which is eo, as we've talked about, we have forums and we learn to trust the process to kind of get out of our heads and be receptive to new ideas and new perspectives. So I essentially allowed that for happen. We went through the process and then when he asked me, how does it feel when you contribute to something greater than yourself? How does it feel when you believe that you're having impact. And the feeling that I had was instant. I got goosebumps. So something happened, something shifted in me right there. When he asked that, when he asked me that question and I related, I felt and saw that my why was to contribute to the greater good. So to repeat myself, I had absolute goosebumps when I had that clarity. What that did for me was it was the meeting was in Argentina. So the entire flight back to la, I stayed up and started writing thoughts because I was getting towards that moment of change and now I knew why. So everything that started to matter to me started to come out in my writing. And by the time that I had landed, I realized that I had to contribute to the greater good beyond running the company that I was running. So I exited my business, I created Lifework Integration, and then a whole nother journey in my life began from that point onwards.

So tell us about what you wrote as you were coming back from Argentina. What are the things that happened to you as you discovered your why and you started to put it all into place?

One of the main moments of clarity that I had at that point had already been an EO leader for about eight years, and people were asking me, well, why are you giving up all of your time? Do they pay you? What's in it for you? And my answer was, I don't know. And the answer is no, they don't pay because it's all volunteer work. So people were wondering why someone who's running a business was so eager to contribute. And my answer during that period was always, I don't know. It just feels right. Which now looking back, realize that that's a kind of a weak answer and not very inspiring to others. Now that I do know, and now that I know that, my purpose is to work one on one with those who work one to many so they could lead with impact. That's a direct result of knowing my why.

Wow, that's awesome. So tell us what happened when you got back from Argentina. What did you do in your career? What happened for you and to you and how that's led to where you are now?

Absolutely. What happened from that point is that I made the transition. I actually made the commitment to become a Y coach. So from that point, I tracked you down. I sort of invited myself to one of your first seminars, workshops, and from there one I saw how the process would unfold. And each time I would see a person have an aha moment, I'd see their body language change. I said to myself, I want to do that, because that, to me, is what's most meaningful. I worked out an exit strategy, turned the company over to the current leaders. They're running the business. I have a small percentage because I still believe in the good work of that Artisan Creative does. And from there made the direction to start lifework integration. And what I believe is that many of us believe we have to behave one way professionally and another way personally. And I believe that when we find the way to integrate life and work together and truly be ourselves and truly be who we are meant to be, and that's through knowing our why, which is the starting point, then we can start living in integrity with our values, our beliefs, and everything else just starts to come into play. So I have a process that takes people through that.

That's awesome. And so now you've taken. What did you do with your businesses?

The businesses. Well, one that was, let's say, not as robust, shut it down. The other one, my wife runs the Artisan Creative company now. I gave her majority of the company, so she's the boss. She's running that business very successfully with the staff. And the third one is ongoing, the graphic novel company, we're still producing comic books, just enjoying that process. And that's more of a hobby because I've really put my time into lifework integration because that's more of a calling where others were more of things that I did to sort of pay bills and have a lifestyle. This is what I do because it means something to me at a deeply personal and a profound level. So I'm pretty much all in now.

So let's kind of reiterate this. You had a company, you were working in your company, you took your wife and put her as the CEO and then kind of stepped away yourself so you could go in the direction that your calling was taking you. Is that correct?

That's 100% correct. That's exactly what I'm doing. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, so that was quite a big shift in what you thought you were going to be doing to now what you are doing.

Absolutely. And the reason that that shift is so profound. It's one thing when you're an entrepreneur and a CEO and you're running this business and everyone is reporting to you and you're working on KPIs and metric and this great vision, and there's a shift when suddenly you don't have this team of people to do everything that you need, and it falls on your shoulders to sort of build back up and build a reputation. And that takes a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of commitment. And very importantly, most importantly, if you believe in it and you keep doing it, then you become it. I really don't appreciate that phase, that phrase that says fake it till you make it. I'm a strong believer of doing it until you become it. I believe that's much more powerful. And when you know why you're doing it, that's the energy that feeds everything else that you do.

So tell us how your wife reacted when you told her what you were going to be doing.

I believe for both of us there was a sense of relief because I had been struggling with this. And when one is not present, it shows. And as a leader, it shows even more when you're not fully present. And I believe that doesn't serve the people who you are working with, and therefore you're not serving them. So there was initial sense of relief. And then the most important part was doing my wife's why and understanding that her why is trust. Knowing that and knowing that this is a person that I can trust that will deliver to that responsibility that she's been now given. Again, it was a sense of.

It felt right. It just felt really right. So putting her in charge seemed absolutely natural. Knowing her why.

This episode of beyond your why podcast is brought to you by the why app. If you're wanting to find clarity for your life, make better decisions, have better relationships, build a better business, and ultimately have a greater impact on the world, then head over to why institute.com take our free why app and discover your why today.

All right, so Jamie, you've now gone and gone all around the world and you've helped people. You came and learned the process for helping people to discover their why. Now you've gone all over the world and you've helped others to discover their why. Tell us. Tell us one of your craziest stories that's happened to you in your travels throughout the world. In helping someone to discover their why.

One of the most interesting ones was I was doing a WHY workshop for the Entrepreneurs Organization in Beijing, and we were doing it. I don't speak Chinese, so we're doing it through an interpreter. So every time there's the round of questioning, there's a little bit of a time delay between the response and my ability to understand that. What I noticed when I did it in Beijing, and I also did the same workshop in Brazil, whether it's Portuguese or Chinese, when that person made the connection to their why through their own language, you could see their body language. Change. So whether the entrepreneur was sitting with me in Beijing or she was sitting with me in Sao Paulo, their body language change, which to me meant that they had made that connection to the limbic brain where they suddenly started to smile when they were still, maybe one of them was contesting, they was a make sense person and they were still going through and not understanding. Some of their friends in the audience started saying, that is you 100%, and started laughing. When they started laughing, the audience started laughing as a result. And you could see that connection. So for me, the why is very powerful because it transcends language and culture, because it's about that human connection, first to themselves and then to everyone around them. That's sharing that moment of connectivity.

Kind of like what it was like for you, right? You saw, you know, what it felt like for you, and then you saw what you could do to help other people get that same feeling and that same clarity.

Exactly. So imagine that that feeling times X when it's in a room and people that know each other now understand each other, it goes even deeper and it's shared in a very powerful mode. And that's the energy that I. And that's why I love doing the why workshops, because it gives me energy.

So for those of you on the podcast that don't know this, most of you on the podcast probably have taken the why app. So the why app didn't exist until maybe about eight months ago. So we had no way to help people to discover their why like we do now, where you can go online and do it in about five minutes. So what we used to have to do was sit down with somebody for anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour and take them through a series of questions, and we would really get to know them at a very deep level. That's how Jamie had his why discovered. One of our why coaches sat down with Jamie and walked him through, step by step, a couple of different incidences in his life that showed him where he found success, or he talked about where he found success. And there was a pattern that came from those two stories or three stories. And so that's how Jamie would have to help others discover their why. So when he was in Beijing, he didn't have the why app to have somebody just quickly discover their why. He had to sit there with them and try to take them through a story through an interpreter. But what you're saying, Jamie, is when they discovered their why, you could just see it in their face and in their. And in their body language and in their Reaction, is that right?

Absolutely. Everything changed in that one moment when they made that emotional connection to their limbic brain with themselves.

Excellent. So what kind of companies are you now working with in around the world or in Los Angeles?

The companies that I've been working with the most have been entrepreneurial. And as a result, I've also had opportunities. One that really opened up my mind. I did one with the Loyola Marymount University campus police. So I had the chief of police there, officers and staff, about 35 people in the room. And it was a very different experience for me because I'm used to working with entrepreneurs that are loud and proud and openly express himself to go to one that was very serious, very focused. And what I learned, again, once the leader and the chief of police connected with his why, then again, the whole energy in the room shifted, and the officers and the staff were much more open to the entire process. So for me, again, that was a very powerful moment. Also did one for an MBA class at Claremont College and to see these aspiring MBA students start to talk about why they were going to school. One of them even said that this was so powerful for them to connect with their why, which was to contribute that from an mba, they were going to go and start a nonprofit.

Oh, wow.

That's what.

Let's go back to the police.

You said Loyola Marymount. What were they. Why did they bring you in? What was it they were looking for that had them connect with you?

Well, given the sort of the current environment with law enforcement and the way the public is perceiving the law, the law enforcement body, and making generalizations, the leader here wanted to make sure that the officers and the staff understood why they did what they did, so they can see things from a very human standpoint. To complement the tough training that they always go, that they already go through. He was looking for another layer of understanding, because we know police are the connection to the community. Very often they are there. They are part of our community. So this was a first step as part of an extensive retreat that they had to really go deeper and then build up from there.

So how did it work for them? How did they feel about it? What did the lieutenant say?

One of the things that I found out from that, there were a lot of people in that room that had the right way, and that was very important for them because the process oriented through one of their three. It was the right way, was very strong in that room.

As that is important. It's also important to understand that there's other ways of hardwiring so the person that they may be speaking with may not have that the right way. Their why may be challenge the status quo. And the more they're pressing down on this to do the right way, that more that person naturally may be pressing back and not knowing why. Both sides not knowing why.

Ah. If the officer. The belief was if the officer could understand their why first and maybe ask questions in a way that can get to the core of that person again in a non threatening environment, if it's a more relaxed environment, then this would be an opportunity to connect with members of the community. Wow.

And so have you had a chance yet to follow up with them since then?

I have. It's been several months and the. The answer was we still need more time because I believe that the training is so thorough and so ingrained that it takes time for a new concept to gradually take take hold.

So here's one of the questions that I get often, and I'd love your take on this. People will ask me, are there why are there certain careers that you see more of one why than another why, or is it just kind of scattered? What have you noticed?

What I've noticed that when you're in the right career that's in alignment with your why, it just feels so smooth and there's no friction. If there's a career I'm being very broad here that somehow is not in alignment, then the question is, am I misaligned with the company or am I misaligned with myself? Because I don't know why I'm here. Because sometimes you could be at the right company, you're in the wrong seat.

For example, for me, if I was in a company that and I was asked and tasked to go do collections, I would not succeed in that because for me, I don't have that right way of doing it. I want to help. So I probably have a little too much empathy for someone that I have to go and collect that money from. So that didn't work for me. A very good example was I was serving on the board of a nonprofit. The nonprofit requirement was to raise X amount of thousands of dollars. Either you pay for it or you raise that money. And my philosophy is, well, I'm here to help, not here to raise money. So actually my why was an inhibitor in that sense. It didn't allow me to fully integrate with the philosophy of this nonprofit. And I stepped down from the board after a year because I wasn't aligned. And that was not the fault of the board. It was me not being Aligned with my why and how I interpreted the why of giving.

So let's talk about your why for a minute.

Tell the listeners the strengths that you see in having the why of contributing to a greater cause.

The strengths that I see for the why of having contribute to a greater cause is that you become that go to person. It's people can count on you to be there and kind of like the glue that holds the team together. Sometimes the cheerleader. If there's a cause that I believe in, I will go to the front of the room and talk about it passionately. It's because I believe I'm contributing and part of something bigger than myself. I can actually make things happen because I use that energy, that drive and that passion to rally others around who believe in what I believe in that greater cause to move the organization forward.

On the other side, that what can hold me back. Sometimes that's kind of the weak side of the why. The weaker side of my why is that I have the tendency to say yes to everyone who asked me for help. Even though in my gut or actually my mind I should be saying no. I have the tendency to over commit because it actually hurts me in my gut to say no. Now I've learned over the years to say let me get back to you so the internal pain is a little less. At the same time, I've learned that that let me get back to you means I cannot say yes to everything. Because if I say yes to everything, I'm saying no to what truly matters.

Very helpful. Very helpful. So the advice you would give to other people who have your why in order to help them move forward and accomplish some of their own goals would.

Be what would be to reflect before you react. Take that time because this gut reaction, this limbic brain is so ready to jump on something that makes us feel good and successful, almost like that survival mode it feeds us. So I recommend saying, let me get back to you. Let me think about it and then truly reflect on that. Measure that against the commitments that you already have made. And if you have the bandwidth and it means something to you, go and serve. If it doesn't, thank them for the opportunity and go back to what is truly doing what matters to you.

That's awesome advice. And so as you've traveled around the world, you've seen other people with your why. What happens to you when you run into somebody else that has your why? Has there any kind of like a reaction or what happens?

That's a great question. And having led a nonprofit board, it's important to have a couple of people that share that why. When you're a leader, however, it's more important to have diversity on that board in terms of diversity of thought and diversity of whys. So we don't get group think and everyone wants to give everything away because then you have nothing left. Or if everyone does everything the right way, then there's very little room for growth. So for me, the most successful entities are the ones that have the broadest range of whys within that group because it leads to different ways of thinking, different ways of tackling, let's say, challenges.

So when I meet one on one, there's a very instant bond and then the relationship evolves from that point. It's very instant. Sometimes when I would meet someone with a very different why, I used to have a reaction. It's like, oh, what's wrong with this person? And I realized there was nothing wrong with that person. They were just coming, expressing themselves through their why. So now I've understood a lot more of what it means to really listen and really be aware of how that person's expressing themselves because there's a reason why they are communicating in this manner.

So the why has kind of been a big part of your life in the last four years, hasn't it?

Absolutely. It's very much been front of center for everything that I've been doing.

Yeah. So what are you going to do next? What's next for Jamie?

What's next for Jamie? Great question. I'm going to continue on this path of hosting Y workshops. I'm also certified with Gallup Strength Finder and I've realized the strengths are how we do what we do. It's where our talents lie and I'm sure we'll have a future conversation around those. I'm just going to keep doing these workshops. I love what I do. It's purposeful. The one on one executive coaching as well drives it. So I found my path. I'm just going to do more of what I do and get better at it, I hope, incrementally, day over day, month over month, year over year.

Well, for those of you on the podcast that don't know this, Jamie is the one who's responsible for me writing my book and he's been in contact with me many times, contributing to me, helping me as I'm putting things down and as I'm structuring the book. I haven't yet come up with the title. I'm thinking about a couple right now, but the book should be Ready in the next four or five months. I'm writing chapter seven and eight this weekend and so it'll be coming out soon and it'll be all about what we've talked about in the podcast, but in more depth. So I appreciate Jamie's help in moving me forward. Jamie is a guy that I can call, as you can probably tell from our interview, you can call him whenever something's not quite right and you need a little bit of help and you want to bounce something off of somebody who's going to want to be there to contribute and add value to your life. And so, Jamie, I appreciate all the help that you've given me. And is there any last advice that you would give to listeners about understanding their why, understanding the why of people around them and living their why?

Yes, Gary, and thank you again for the opportunity. The sort of parting thought is what I, what I started with and it's why I enjoy working with, working with you. Because again, it's for, for me, it's very important to believe and feel that by my, by my working one on one with those who work one, one too many, they can lead with impact. So by me working one on one with you so you can work one to many, which is where you're taking this, this whole why to the world, you're going to impact many. So as I see you become better and stronger and taking this to a whole other level, that fills me. So at its, at its core, that's the power of the why. So listen to that inner voice, that gut, and they say that old expression, trust your gut. I believe the gut is based on your why.

Ah, that's great advice. You know, I appreciate you being here today, Jamie. Thanks for spending the time with us and thanks for telling our listeners how the why, or showing our listeners really how the why. When you discover your why, how it can change the direction of your life, how it can get you on the right path, where you're going to have passion for what you do and who knows what's going to happen once you have that passion, once you're going in the right direction. So I know you're doing some great work there in la and if there's people that are in LA and they want to get a hold of you or people anywhere that would like to get ahold of you and talk to you about your business and how to integrate their life and their work, how should they get ahold of you?

Very easy. On Twitter, it'sduraghi. I'm also on LinkedIn jamieduraghi and thirdly, my website, lifeworkintegration.com you better spell duraghi for them. D O U R A G H.

Yes, because I messed that up every time.

So yeah, it's one of those unusually pronounced and spelled out names.

Jamie, I know you and I will be in contact a lot over the coming years, and I appreciate you being here today with us on the podcast on beyond your why. So thanks, Jamie, and you have a great rest of your day.

Thank you guys.