Dealing with Anxiety at Work with Chester Elton

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The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Life on Purpose. My name is James Lachlan, former seven time World Champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself.

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Before we jump into today's episode, I want to tell you about the Purpose Club. I started the Purpose Club quite some time ago so that I could coach people of all backgrounds. Not everybody has access to coaching and certainly it can be out of people's price range. So I wanted to create a community where I coach my members each month and it's incredibly affordable and I do a deep dive monthly live session and deliver my best techniques, strategies and habits. And I impart great lessons on leadership, motivation, mindset, abundance, habit, installation and you're creating a lasting legacy. There's free replays in there from all the previous live casts. There's high impact worksheets for you to take home and actually work through. Throughout the month you'll receive weekly planning emails with actual planners to fill out your weekend. You'll get a weekly self evaluation email where you can evaluate yourself on all different levels. Relationship, life, business, wealth, career. Everything that you want. You'll get weekly journal prompts to really get your mind tuned into that higher level thinking and also on a monthly basis you'll get planning worksheets and reflections for your month. So if you would like to learn about it, please get in touch with me or someone in my team. You know, jump onto Instagram. Jameslochlanofficial drop me a DM or you can email me james jjlochlund.com or just go to the website jjlochlund.com and check it out. Enjoy the show and I hope to see some of you guys over in the Purpose Club.

I'm incredibly excited to welcome in this week's special guest, New York Times best selling author Chester Elton. Chester consults to some of the biggest leaders on The Planet has done incredible work, has published 14 books, and in today's session we're going to talk about anxiety in the workplace. And he shares some absolute gold around how leaders can really create an incredibly high performing culture. So sit back and enjoy.

Chester, a massive welcome to the Life On Purpose podcast.

Listen. Thank you for the invitation. In the few minutes we spent together before the podcast, it's already been delightful, so I can't wait.

Yeah, we've got a few shared common interests in rugby in Canada and in Rory Vaden.

Yeah, that's true. Played rugby in high school and you lived in my part of the world for a while in Vancouver and became a massive hockey fan, which I'm delighted to hear about. And yes, who doesn't love Rory Vaden? And nothing but great things to say about Rory.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, I'm glad he brought us together like this. I came across your work via Rory and his team. So really, really great to connect and your work is quite inspirational and for leaders out there, it's going to be transformational. So for anybody that's listening up and this is your first time listening to Chester, I want you to go and follow him and a couple of things places you can do that is get on Apple Music or on Spotify. Follow his podcast Anxiety at Work, which there's also an amazing book which is his most recent release. And he's written, published 14 books. Thirteen books.

Fourteen. That was number 14. Anxiety at work. Yep.

Incredible. So please do go and check those out. But let's chat about a little bit if we rewind the clock just to get, get started. Where did your career begin? With leadership and business and all that fun stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it's a fun story and I'll try to make it short. I grew up in sales. You know, I grew up in Canada. I was born in Edmonton, grew up in Vancouver. My dad was in radio. He grew up as a radio guy, he was an announcer. And then he went into management. And I have four older brothers. And of course for us that was magical because radio stations got free tickets to everything, right? The concerts and the CFL football games and the hockey games. And so we were living the life. Well, my dad always said, look, nothing ever happens in business until somebody sells somebody something. So sell. And when you sell, you learn the products, you learn the processes, you learn the business because you have to, you know, you learn customer service and the whole bit. So we did, we went into sales. Four of us actually went into media sales at some point. We sold advertising or TV or radio or whatever. Our oldest brother, we don't talk about him quite as much. He's a lawyer, you know, so the black sheep in the family. But so I started to work for a company in Detroit and then New York, and we sold TV time. And it was great fun. You know, we had great expense accounts. I'm living in the most exciting city in the world, New York City, and newly married. We had a little place in Brooklyn, you know, and it was just great fun. Well, I just never felt like I was making the world a better place. I mean, we were selling lots of airtime, but other than that. So I got a chance to work for a recognition company out of Salt Lake City, Utah. And it really intrigued me because it was all about recognizing employees for, you know, either long service, you know, their. Their loyalty to a company, sales performance, high performance, which, you know, you're all about. And we were a tennis family, a rugby family. If there was somebody was keeping score, we were playing, you know, So I love that idea about celebrating excellence and celebrating loyalty. So I took. I took a job, and they gave me a territory, Was living in Brooklyn at the time, in northern New Jersey. And we had a lot of pharmaceutical companies were our customers. You know, if you want to learn about pharma, you go to Switzerland or New Jersey. Those are the two epicenters for pharma companies. So I'd done this project with recognition programs with a consulting firm, and I said, hey, we should partner up on this more often. You do the strategy, we would do the programs. How do I learn more about your company? Well, he sent me a book written by their senior VP of international. It was called the Talent Equation, if I'm not mistaken. And I loved it. So I called our CEO, and I said, kent. His name is Kent Murdock. I said, kent, this is brilliant. I mean, they're the thought leaders in employee engagement and thought leaders publish. Nobody has published the definitive book in employee recognition. If we were to publish that, then people would call us. So always from the sales standpoint, right? Make my life easier, get me better referrals. And he said, boy, I love that idea. Well, write the book. And I went, I think you misunderstood. The idea is that you should write the book, and then as the salesperson, I would benefit from this book, right? And this was the moment, James, he said, you know what, Chester? You're a smart guy. Figure it out.

Isn't that a moment?

That's so good.

So I said, well, you know, I'm not a writer, but I started to play with titles and chapters and so on. Well, about a year later, he calls me back and he says, you know, Chester, I've always liked that idea of a book. I've hired a writer. His name is Adrian Gostic. Introduce yourself, write the book. And so in 2000.

We got a little publisher, you know, that would take a chance on new authors. And we published a book called Managing with Carrots. Hence the orange. You know, orange is our color. Carrots are our vegetable. And we dropped it on Kent's desk and it was so cute. He said, I love being CEO. You say stuff and it happens.

Genius.

It's good to be king, right? I love it. And we didn't know. We didn't know. You know, James, we think we sold like 30,000 copies or something. And. And in most business books, that's a massive hit. I mean, normally you'd say, well, if it's not Seven Habits, if you're not selling a millions of copies, then who cares? But this smaller publisher was thrilled. So I said, what's your next book? And we said, we really hadn't really thought that far ahead. And then as hard work meets opportunity, as you know, in high performance, right. People would say, hey, we love the book. You speak on your books. And we said, sure, why not? They all. We loved your speech. Of course, you have training with this. Sure, why not? And so we worked really hard at our presentation skills. We worked really hard in creating meaningful content for workshops and so on. And we did that. We wrote seven books for that company. Wow. And then there was a change in leadership. And this is another lesson. Good people took over, right? It's just they didn't get us, not for a minute. They didn't appreciate thought leadership. And we found we were kind of fish out of water. And so we took a huge risk. We went out on our own. And Adrian and I have been writing now for 21 years and 14 books. I think we sold at 1.6, 1.7 million copies.

That's phenomenal.

30 languages we've presented in over 45 countries. Not new Zealand. So you got to figure that out for us.

We got to change that. We got to change that fast.

Yeah, yeah, we got to get on that project. So that was the journey. And then along the way, just meeting amazing people and writing. We went from employee recognition and engagement to culture to teamwork to leadership. And the red thread has always been that we never met a great leader, a great team, and a really healthy and high performing culture that there wasn't that red thread of gratitude that they appreciated and valued each other, that they never took each other for granted.

And it's been a formula that's held true. I'm a big believer that there are certain.

You know, eternal truths. You know, there are certain. But trust, obviously, is a foundational principle in high performance and great teams. And I honestly believe that gratitude is another one of those indispensable building blocks. If I don't. If I don't feel valued, if I don't feel appreciated, if I don't value and appreciate the people around me, I think our chances for doing well.

Go way down. So long, answer a short question. Hope that was helpful.

That's amazing. Absolutely amazing. And let's think about maybe a team or an organization where you have really seen that trust and that red thread, as you say, of gratitude running through it. Has there been one team that you've interacted with or served or spoke with or just met that you think, wow, they've got it. They exemplify what I write about.

No question. Actually, there are several. I'll mention three or four, and then we'll take a deep dive. But there's a wonderful restaurant chain here in the United States called Texas Roadhouse. 600 restaurants, 70,000 plus employees. Phenomenal team culture. Phenomenal culture of gratitude. And I'll get into that in a minute. WD40. You probably have a can somewhere in your garage. Yeah, I never leave home without mine. I've got my travel size right here.

I love it.

Gary Ridge, who's the CEO there, has created a tribal culture. He says tribal is different than teammate, coworker. In a tribe. We defend each other, we eat together, we celebrate together. It's a deeper connection. Took that company from what.

250 million to 4 billion? I mean, just in 12, 13 years, stock we all should have bought 10 years ago. And American Express financial companies kind of take it on the chin when it comes to culture quite a bit. Ken Chenault, who we profiled in our book Leading with Gratitude. Phenomenal culture. My son actually works at American Express and is a huge fan of the culture they've built there. And.

Just to mention a few.

How do you build it? So let's say there's a CEO listening, or there's somebody that's in senior management going, I want to try and start a change here and lead with gratitude. How can someone actually start to implement that in a business? What does that look like?

Hey, James here.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Well, you make a good point, James. And it's always easier when the change happens at the top, right? As, you know, captain of a team, leader of a team.

How many times have we seen, you know.

A football team, a baseball team, a hockey team, where it's basically the same players, they change the manager and it changes the culture. Classic example of that. Actually, we did a lot of fun work with the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team. And Scott O', Neill, the CEO at the time, builds phenomenal teams. I mean, phenomenal. You should have him on your podcast. He's brilliant. Just wrote a book, Be where your feet are. Life lessons. Not just to be an extraordinary leader, how to really be an extraordinary person. A better husband, a better father. It was Scott that first taught us the principle of assume positive intent. You know, assume positive intent about your people. 99% of people come to work wanting to do a good job, and they're going to make a mistake, and that's okay. Well, he takes over the Philadelphia 76ers when they were literally, they had the lowest winning percentage of any professional sports franchise ever. Ever.

That's a great job to be taken over.

Well, there's nowhere to go but up, right? You know, so. So literally, they play 82 games a year in basketball. It's a long season. 41 home games, 41 away games. They had seasons where they were winning, like 12 games. Can you imagine being on a team like that? I mean, it was just. Psychologically, it would just. It would just batter you. Now they take over, and he puts together a sales team. You can say, hey, I'm in sports sales. Great. Which team are you selling? The Philadelphia 76. You go, oh.

How about the Boston Celtics? You know, how about anybody but the Philadelphia 76ers? Three years in a row, they. They broke the NBA record for season ticket sales. Wow. And the way they did it was they got their fans to believe in the process. Now, I'm in the States knows it's process. So they'd say, trust the process. And they said, look, we're going to be bad, and we're going to be bad for a little while. Now is the time you want to get in because we're going to build something really special here and you can be a part of that. And so they, they, they drafted players, they brought in players that just played with heart and gusto. And if you know anything about the city of Philadelphia. Yeah, they want to win. Every city wants to win. You know what they want to see, though? They want to see you leave it all on the floor. If you go out and you're diving for basketballs, if you're giving it your all and you lose, not a problem. Like, seriously not a problem. Because it's a tough city. It's a blue collar, it's, you know, Philadelphia. If you're from Philly, there's a, there's attitude, right? Yeah. I mean, you do, you just love it, right? It's like your grinders in the scrum, right? I mean, those guys just get, get after it, you know, and that's what they did. And all of a sudden they started to win games. They went to the, the, the conference finals. They, they, they got beat on a Hail Mary shot from the corner. A guy fell into the stands and bounced around the rim three times and went and broke everybody's heart. The thing is, they left it all on the floor. And now getting a ticket to a Sixers game, that's a tough ticket.

That's amazing. What a turnaround.

Well, and what he did was, is he brought his teams together and he said, look.

We'Re going to assume positive intent about each other. We're going to give world class every day. We're not going to make any excuses and we're going to cheer for each other. I mean, it's a simple formula, right?

Yeah, there's not complex, but sometimes that's exactly what a team needs, right?

Well, sure. A simple message. And back to your question. How do you change a culture? How do you build that culture? Back up, simple messaging. I'll never forget this was years ago. We were working with a Silicon Valley company and said, we really want to emphasize culture and vision and values. We said, great. Well, so, you know, what are your core values? The guy says, geez, you know, we just had a retreat. We really codified our core values. I said, well, what are they? He said, well, let me go get him. Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Which was the first indication that and he comes back and he says, yeah, we have 12 core values.

And I said.

12'S too many. I said, you know, Moses only had 10.

And by the way, most people can't name those either. I mean.

Yeah, I mean, everybody knows maybe half of them, right? So we worked really hard. You know, the rule of three, which was another rule of Scott. I mean, world class, no excuses, cheer, rule of three, you know, ABC 1, 2, 3. You know, the Michael Jackson song, you.

Know, that's how the brain works, right? We remember things in small little chunks.

Absolutely. You know, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, so, and, and so you inculcate that, you make it very simple to remember. The concepts are simple. Now, it's all in the execution, and that's where it's hard. And yet he would model it. You know, when we first met Scott, he was at the NBA and it was really interesting. He was in charge of season ticket holders for the entire league. And what he found is that the team in San Antonio would come up with a great marketing strategy or something, and then they wouldn't share it with the guys in New York because they were in competition with New York. You'd say, you're not in competition with New York. You're in competition with the other teams in San Antonio with the restaurants, with the movie theaters. If you've got a good idea, share it. And so he did really simple things, you know. Now, you know, in, in, in hockey you get an assist, right? The two guys that touch the puck before you score the goal. Basketball is the same thing. Do you know what they call an assist in basketball? They call it a dime. I don't know why. It's sports, right? He dropped a dime on them, right? He did all the work, passed it off. Guy hits the shot, it's a dime. So Scott would do really simple things. He'd say, you find the best practice and you share with the rest of the league. And I'll give you a dime, like 10 cents. The coins this big.

I love it.

He said, I'm telling you, there were stacks of dimes in these cubicles. They would never spend them. Can't buy much with a dime. Anyway, the point is. The point is, is the symbols, the celebration. Did you give it your all today? Were you world class? We don't make excuses, right? And we cheer for each other. You know, my dad had a great saying, you should write this down, James. You're going to like it.

I'm going to write it down.

He says, excuses, even when valid, are never impressive.

Excuses, even when valid are never impressive. So this idea of, well, it was bad weather. Well, my God. Yeah. And that's. Can be true. It's not impressive. I'll tell you what's impressive. The weather was bad, we had a flat tire, the car broke down, and we still got here 15 minutes early. That's impressive, right?

Hell, yes.

No, I agree.

Excuses, even when valid, are never impressive. I'm going to remember that.

And, you know, you want to be high performance. You want to. You want to be impressive, and. And you've. You've never met a great athlete that made excuses.

You know, they only made decisions and then got on with the work.

Yeah. One of my favorite tennis players growing up was Rocket Rod Laver.

Yeah.

And I used to love the stories about the Australian tennis players because they loved the game.

And they would tell stories about the Rocket at Wimbledon, and he would go out of the locker room and he would have his wife tape up his wrist because he had an injury in a phone booth. And then he would cover it with a sweatband because he never wanted there to be an excuse as to why he lost. And it's so funny, because his wife was an American, and she'd say, rod, just tell him. Tell him you're hurt. He goes, nope, not going to make an excuse.

If I'm well enough to play, no excuses. I mean, you got to love that.

That's an amazing mindset.

Yeah.

When you come down to Australia, New Zealand in Melbourne is the Rod Liver arena, and it's just incredible. It's where they do the Australian Open, so you'll have to go and check it out.

So this is my dream, James. So we go to Australia, New Zealand, we go to the Australian Open, and we stay there for a couple of months. Right. Really absorb the culture. Then we go to Paris for Roland Garros, Then we go to London for. We go to the UK for Wimbledon, and then we wrap up at the US Open back in New York. We just make it to it. Wouldn't it be an amazing year?

The perfect year?

Oh, yeah.

I love it.

Who knows? Someday.

You talked about this great thing a second ago about doing things for the love of doing it, the love of the game. So in the leadership game and the thought leader game, what is it that you love about it? What's the passion for you?

Well, you know. And this again from gary Ridge at WD40 and Scott O' Neill at the Sixers and Ken Chenault I picked up early in studying them. They were students of leadership, and I love that. You know, Scott was always looking at other leaders. How did they do that? What were, what were the principles? How. How can I do more of that? They were students of leadership. The thing I love about leadership is the ripple effect.

Now you think about some of the great teachers you had, which I think are some of the world's great leaders, right? Coaches that you had. Maybe, maybe your dad, maybe an uncle, maybe your grandfather or grandma.

And the ripple effect of great leadership is incalculable. You know, my high school basketball coach, some of the principles he taught me, my high school rugby coach, you know, we were the Hillside Highwaymen from West Vancouver. And James, our motto was highwaymen hustle. So whether we won or lost, we always got after it so good. You know, you'd never want to be at the end of the game. Say.

We could have hustled a little more. We could have gotten after it just a little more. Say, no, we're high women. We hustle.

That's so good.

Yeah, and I love that, you know, I love that you just. If you're going to do it, go for it. And I think that.

In life, you know, whether they're teachers or coaches or family, they lead you and they. And that ripple effect, the way they impress about your character, your integrity, your work ethic. And so that's what I love about leadership. You know, like, I love gary Ridge at WD40.

The people that work there. It's so fascinating. You know, you'll go to a company and you can tell pretty quickly if they've got a good culture or not by the quality of the people.

You know, at American Express, it was always amazing to me. I mean, I'd meet all these leaders. They were all world class and they're all good people. Like, yeah, they were. They were good leaders. I'll never forget, I was doing a conference for a consulting firm. They had all their leaders there, and they were asking, you know, say, what do you want from your leader? And there was one answer in particular that I've never forgotten. He said, you know, I don't want my leader to just make me a more efficient worker. I don't want my leader to make me a better worker. I want my leader to help me become a better person.

And all of a sudden, everything changed for me because, you know, one of my favorite statistics in all our research, by the way, we've got a database of over a million engagement surveys that we look at, you know, 80,000 motivators, assessments and so on. So we like to look at the data wow. And it's really interesting. You know, my favorite data point is if you're happy and engaged and motivated at work, you're 150% more likely to be happy in your personal life.

So. And we've all, we've all had that, right? We've all had a job where the alarm clock went off with it. Ah, do I have to, you know, can I think of something so that I don't have to go to work today? Because it's just soul crushing. And then we've had those jobs where the alarm. We can't wait to get out of bed. My dad worked for the same broadcasting company for like 40 years. 40 plus, whatever. It was amazing. And as he was older, you know, I'd say, dad, so what was it about radio that kept you? I mean, not just in radio, but the same company. He said, you know, Chess radio was the latest technology. Think about that, right? It's just sound, right?

So good.

You know, it was the latest technology. We, we were interviewing world leaders. I mean, we could hear their voices, right? And he said, there were days when I would jump out of bed and throw my fist in the air and just say, yes, I get to go to work today.

Incredible.

So tell me more. And he said, well, it was an exciting industry. It was cutting edge. We were, we were. This was the new medium. And he said, you know what? But more than that, it was the people I got to work with.

That that made all the difference. And I thought, that's it. A noble cause, something you love and people you love doing it with. It doesn't get any better than that. Yeah.

And if a leader could take that on board and appreciate that, that could be transformational for their company. While executing on that is quite clear, there's not 100 metrics and, you know, 18 or 20 core values there. It's three.

Well, yeah. And, you know, and what's the ripple effect? I mean, you love your job, you do better. People that love their jobs make more because they're better, you know, and what that means is you can send your kids to university, you can, you know, you can buy a car, you can buy a house, you can go on a vacation, you can, you can pass down, you can give to your favorite charity. You can, you know what I mean? I mean, you can be about doing good things, all because you had a leader that, yeah, helped you become a more efficient worker, but sent you home happy. I tell leaders, I said, listen, I know you got a lot of things on your list. You got to Hit quotas. You got to take care of customers. You got to, you know, it's one of your most important jobs. Send your people home happy.

That's incredible. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy called Christopher Luxon. He was the former CEO of Air New Zealand, and he implemented this amazing thing where if someone in his workforce had experienced domestic violence, and here in New Zealand we've got, I think, the third highest domestic violence rate in the planet. Surprisingly, if you were affected by that, the company Air New Zealand would pay for counseling, would give you a number of weeks leave to deal with it. If you were the perpetrator of the domestic violence and you worked at Air New Zealand, you were also given free counseling and time off to recover and to fix your life and figure out where you need to take things. So I just thought that he, as a leader, was thinking more than the bottom line. It wasn't about Air New Zealand making X amount of dollars for their, for their investors. It was actually, no. This is about the quality of the experience for the staff members. And year after year after year, they won best airline in the world. And people are like, what's with this Air New Zealand thing? Why are they so good? Why are they safety? Instructional videos? So funny. It all came from great leadership and not just from the top, but right across all levels. So to me, that really rings true with what you just said.

Yeah, I think it's very true, James. Gratitude attracts gratitude. We like to be with people that appreciate us, that care about us, that love us. I'll tell you a story. Adrian and I were privileged to write a book.

For Kent Taylor. Not a name you'd know, but he's the founder of Texas Roadhouse restaurants. I mentioned them earlier.

600 restaurants, 70,000 employees. Well, Covid hit. So it was one of the first things that shut down all the restaurants here in the states. 8 million. 8 million. 5 million. 8 million. Millions of people in the restaurant industry in a matter of days lost their jobs. Not one of them worked for Texas Roadhouse. Kent stepped up and said, you know what? I'm going to give up my million dollar salary. I'm going to kick in another 5 million of my own money and we're going to pay everybody, everybody, whether you can come to work or not. Because, you know, before the vaccine, if I had elderly parents, if I was living at home in a restaurant, you got young people, right? They're busing the tables and working in the kitchen and stuff. He said, we will pay you even if you can't come to work. And their whole premise was a party every night at Texas Roadhouse. Hand cut steaks, everything made from scratch. The rolls just to die for. Cinnamon butter. I mean, just ridiculous. Every kind of beer on tap. I mean, line dancing. And he hated takeout because you can't put a party in a bag. Takeout was maybe 5% of their business. Well, now it's got to be 100%.

So he grabs everybody and says, look, we're not, we're not firing anybody and we're not closing down. So how are we going to make this work? Every morning and that we could listen in on the calls. He'd bring his leaders together and say, what's working? What's working? What's working? All of a sudden they were having parties in the parking lot. They were, they, they figured it. Let me tell you something. In four weeks.

They were profitable again.

Wow.

Four weeks. Their stock went from like $80 and something down to like 18.

It went up over a hundred. It went up over 100.

Phenomenal.

And here's why. Because if you work for Texas Roadhouse, you're a roadie, right? You were good at Roadhouse. You're a roadie. Oh, good. And Kent did every job. He knew how to wash dishes, he knew how to cut a steak, he knew how to bus a table. He knew how to work the bar. And Kent loved hard working folks. And he said, if you come and you work hard and restaurant business is hard, that's hard.

We will never let you down. So while everybody else is unemployed, you've got a job. They've got a program at Texas Roadhouse called Andy's Outreach. Their mascot is an armadillo. I don't know if you know what an armadillo. It's like this desert rat, you know, thing. And they put a cowboy hat on them and give him a six shooter. And Andy's Outreach is the employee assistance program. So if all of a sudden it gets really cold and you've got a heating bill you can't pay, you go to Andy's Outreach, they'll pay your bill. You're a waitress and you get in a car wreck and you need a car, they'll buy you a car. It all started because there was a dishwasher who's deaf and he was this hard working guy washing the dishes. And he died all of a sudden from a heart attack unexpectedly. And you don't make a lot of money washing dishes. His family couldn't pay for the funeral.

And so the Texas Roadhouse Executives got together and said, that's not right. They gathered the money, they paid for the funeral, they took care of his family. And he said, and we can do better than that. He said, if you do, if you take 50 cents out of your paycheck, we'll match it for Andy's outreach. They started the fund with a couple hundred thousand dollars. Now they have a restaurant in Logan, Utah, that generates over a million dollars a year. And 100% of that profit goes to Andy's outreach. Incredible. Now you tell me you're working hard, something goes wrong, and your boss at work steps up and says, we got your back on this.

So when the pandemic hits, what did every one of those roadies do? What do you need, boss? What do you need? How are we going to do this? Let's figure it out. Brilliant.

That's amazing. Like, unbelievable. Great, great lesson for leaders out there and also for staff. Like, when you give that respect, love, commitment, it's returned and giving it with no expectations. That's an amazing example.

Yeah. And by the way, the audiobook, the book is called Made from Scratch. If you're listening, download Made from Scratch. It's the improbable success of Texas Roadhouse. It's the Kent Taylor story. Adrian and I did the research and actually wrote the book for him. It was one of the great honors of our life to write that book because Ken didn't survive the pandemic. Very tragic.

I'm sorry to hear that. That's an amazing, amazing contribution to society that he has made and you guys have been a part of that journey. So, yeah, please, if you are listening, go and download Made from Scratch. That's incredible. I'll make sure to put it in the footnotes as well. And let's talk a little bit about your more recent work. So anxiety at work, to me, that's a really important thing to chat about because anxiety is on the increase. I think it was like 700,000 cases of anx last year, which leads to other issues, which leads to, you know, depression and suicide and all these awful things. So, anxiety at work. What is it? And what do we need to be thinking about as leaders and how do we help move things forward?

Yeah, well, if you're watching the video portion, I just got to hold up the copy of the book.

Love it.

The legendary success story of Texas Roadhouse, Kent Taylor. It's brilliant. Anxiety at work. Yes. No question. So Adrienne and I have been studying culture for 20 years. What are the key elements of a great culture well, it became really apparent. The pandemic really shone light on anxiety and as well it should have. I mean, the whole world shut down. I mean, it just wasn't your neighborhood. It was every neighborhood. And the number one cause of anxiety is uncertainty. We did our homework on this one. Well, nothing was more uncertain than the pandemic. Am I going to get sick? Am I going to die? Do I have a job? Is there going to be food on the shelves at the grocery store? I mean, that's a lot of uncertainty. Are we ever going to go back to work? Is the company going to survive?

It was really interesting. Our books have always been, you know, Gostick and Elton. If you look at the bottom, it's got our goal. James was Lennon and McCartney. That was right? Yeah, we're not quite there yet. But anyway, this book is different. If you look, it's. It's gotten and gastic. Anthony Gastic. Anthony is Adrian's son, and since he was a little kid, suffered from anxiety.

And he's 25 years old now. He's super smart kid. He's studying DNA and, you know, genome stuff. He's getting his master's at usc, you know, University of Southern California. Super smart kid, by the way. We found that most super smart kids in particular suffer from a lot of anxiety. They kind of go hand in hand. Yeah. And he said, you guys need to write on anxiety. He says, because you oldies, you never talk about it. And he's right. You know, my generation, you would never talk about anxiety or depression because what did that mean, James? If you had. If you talked about. What did that. What did that say about you?

Yeah, you've got some stigma, right?

You're weak. Yeah, you're weak. Oh, you can't handle it. Well, you know, I told you it's going to be a hard job. So he said, you oldies never talk about. He says, you got to understand our generation. It's all we talk about.

And he was right. We did a really interesting generational study. The difference is baby boomers rarely talk about it. Gen X a little more. Millennials, Gen Z or Gen Z, as we say.

All the time. And why? Well, they grew up much differently, right. Digital world. All of a sudden, all this information, all this incredible bad news that washes over you every day. Active shooter drills, you know, mass shootings. I mean, here in the States, it's ridiculous. You know, you have active shooter drills in elementary schools. The teachers lock the door because of active. You know, you go to a movie theater. The first thing that you Know, kids are thinking, what's the fastest way out of here? Because there were movie theater shootings.

Crazy stuff. Like, crazy that we would never have imagined. So, yeah, they grew up a little more anxious, a lot more digital. Way too much information. The Facebook life. Everything looks great.

No one can have a bad day. Well, we came across this expression called the duck syndrome, and it started at Stanford University. And, you know, you think about a duck, right, Coming across the pond, you go, oh, so elegant, so graceful, so calm, and yet, what's propelling that duck across the pond? They're paddling like mad underneath there. And so the students would start to call each other ducks. They'd go, you're a duck.

I know. You look like you really all got it all together, but. And then one of them said, I actually kind of think like, I'm the little duckling behind the mama duck. You know, the duck, they got the two or three, four or five. She said, I'm looking around, and all the other ducklings look like they're doing great. And all I know is I'm paddling like mad to keep up with mom, you know? So this. This idea of. It's there, and it's pervasive. I'll give you some. Some numbers. Pre pandemic, about 18% of employees said they had some kind of anxiety disorder, something that affected their work. So one in five, call it 20%. One in five, middle of the pandemic, that jumps up to 30%. So now you're at almost a third of your population. Wait.

In millennials.

It'S 42%. Actually, workers in their 20s and early 30s, it's 42%. Wow. You're approaching half your workforce, and yet, because of the stigma, nobody talks about it. Now, somebody comes to work with a broken arm, you go, hey, buddy. James. Hey, take some time off. Take care of that.

Right away. You've got almost half your workforce coming to work with broken arms, but you won't talk about it. It's not right. And here's why. And this is what we teach leaders. And for you, leaders that are listening in, if you. If you don't remember anything else, remember this. Your job as a leader is to do three things. Normalize the conversation. Hey, everybody's been anxious. Everybody. Normalize the conversation. Destigmatize it. If you had a broken arm, we'd address it. If you said, hey, I was playing rugby, just, you know, pick up. Stupid. Got caught in the scrum, broke my arm. Take a week off, take care of that. You go to your boss and say, you know what? I'm just completely overwhelmed. I need time off just for my mental health. Oh, geez, I don't know, James. See what I mean? Take the stigma away. Broken arm, overwhelmed. Same, same. Now, the third one is fascinating. If you'd asked me three years ago, four years ago, what are the characteristics of truly great leaders, I would have said, well, master communicator, master motivator, right? Paints the vision of taking the. As all, you know, taped, taking charge, you know, a brighter day, James, if you ask me. Now, there's only one characteristic that matters, and if you don't have this one, none of the rest matter, and it's empathy. If you can't lead with empathy, it's game over. It's literally game over. Now, there's a difference between empathy and sympathy. I'm going to put you on the spot, James. What's the difference between sympathy and empathy?

So for me, right on the spot, if I was to think about that. So sympathy is me, an inner feeling of me as the leader, feeling sorry for this individual situation. Like, oh, they're disadvantaged or they're injured or they're suffering. I feel sorry for them. I want to fix it.

Whereas for me, empathy is like, hey, let me jump into their shoes and walk a day in their life and, and try and figure out what is it that they're challenged with, why is it challenging? And how can I partnership or support them with that, with that journey forward.

See, this is why CEOs all over the world listen to you, James. You're exactly right. You're exactly right. You know, sympathy is. I'm strong, you're weak. I'll fix it. Empathy is. I'm going to crawl down into that space with you and I'm going to say, hey, I don't know exactly the way you're feeling. I felt like this, too. Let's figure it out now for you leaders that are listening, I know what a lot of you are thinking, and it's this.

Chess. I got a lot on my plate. I got customers. I got supply chain issues. I got quotas. I got competitors breathing down my neck. I get that this is a nice to have. I am not a certified counselor. I don't have a degree in psychology. I am not a father confessor. These are soft skills and nice to have. I can't add this to my leadership plate. And the answer to that is, yeah, I get that. And so do your people. They know you're not a certified counselor or psychologist. They want you to do one thing and. James, what's that one thing that they want you to do?

Listen.

Absolutely. You nailed it. See, James, I don't even know why you have me on your show. You know all this stuff. I should be the test. Am I? Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Straight A's.

Yeah.

They want you to listen because here's the. Here's the. The dirty little secret.

What percent of employees do you think feel safe talking to their immediate supervisor or their boss about mental health? What's the percentage?

I'm going to say 15%.

First time you. First time you've got.

Wrong.

It's the first time you've got it. You've missed it, James. 15% is high. It's 10%. It's 10%. So. So reverse that. 90% of people won't talk about it. Why? Because of the stigma. You're not gonna. You're not gonna promote me. You're not gonna give me the plum assignment. You're not gonna give me a raise. You're gonna see me as weak. I'm just gonna suck it up. So here's the downside of that. If you don't have a safe culture, and a lot has been written, and I like Amy Edmondson, Harvard School of Business. Psychological safety, brilliant concept. The pandemic, I think, has asked us to up our game to emotional safety. Is my voice heard? Do I matter? Right. And when you've got 90% that are afraid to talk about it, here's the ripple effect, the negative ripple. Right?

50% of millennials and 75% of Gen Z say that they have recently left a job due to mental health issues.

That's huge turnover. And I'm convinced that if they worked at places where it was. Where it was safe to talk about it, those numbers would come down dramatically. You've got these super smart people that are suffering from anxiety. They can't talk about it, so they work until they're burned out. And then they just blink out and you go, what happened to James? That guy was amazing. Yeah, it was kind of weird, huh? Yeah, he just kind of just packed it in. My guess is not in every case. It's never universal that in a lot of those cases it's because they got burned out. And they got to a place where they were just overwhelmed. And rather than admit that they were suffering from debilitating anxiety, they just said, you know what? I'm just going to quit. I'll take my own time off. I'll rally. I always do. And when I feel good, I'll just Go get another job. They're smart, they're capable. You can do that instead of finding these brilliant people, figuring out what's going on, listening, empathizing and winning together.

That's powerful when you think about it. When a leader says, I've got all of this stuff on my plate that I have to deal with, I cannot develop that thing. Well, actually, that thing directly correlates to the revenue and churn and burnout turnover of their staff. So it really needs to be a key pillar in their leadership toolkit, like developing empathy, developing compassion.

Yeah. So as a leader, how do you make it safe for people to talk about mental health and anxiety? How do you do that?

You'd have to say, well, for me, anyway, I think you got to talk about your own. Show your vulnerabilities and show them that you also are struggling. So share your weaknesses.

Yeah, see, again, I still don't know why you've invited me on your show. Because that's exactly right.

Exactly right. You know, as soon as you become vulnerable and you talk about it and you talk about your journey and your trials and how you came out and.

Confessed or whatever language you want to use, you shared your vulnerability. Now it's safe. Look, if the boss can talk about it, everybody can talk about it.

And that's the scary part about being a leader. Because if the leader can go out and get stupid drunk, then everybody can go out and get stupid drunk, Right? If the leader cheats on his expenses, everybody cheats on their expenses. Right?

That's the negative ripple effect. The positive is, hey, if my leader comes out and says, you know what, I struggle with anxiety a lot. There's a brilliant leader at Walmart Canada. Her name is Nabila Extalaban.

And she's one of these ridiculous high performers, Muslim, worked at Starbucks, worked at these incredible brands, Right? Always the rising star chief people officer for Walmart Canada. 100,000 employees. She's responsible for 100,000. Can you imagine? 100,000.

That's seriously insane.

Yeah. So she comes out and says, listen, I'm a recovering workaholic. She talks about it.

I was working on three to four, five hours sleep max.

Never said no. You would never think I ever had any issues. I was the happiest, most driven, ambitious. What did it cost her? Her health, her marriage, her self confidence. Now she's in this position. They've made mental health the number one issue for Walmart Canada and she shares her story everywhere. Now here's what's really interesting. People have come up to her and said, now I've gotten to know Nabila quite well. In fact, we had a call today, got a wonderful.

A wonderful online conference in January about mental. It's going to be called Ripple. Anyway, and Nabila is key to this. They say to her, well, easy for you to say now you're the chief people officer at Walmart Canada. Would you have gotten there had you not made all those sacrifices? And I just love her answer. She says, oh yeah, I'm confident I would have gotten here. It would have taken me longer and knowing what I know now, I would make that trade. That's powerful.

That's incredibly powerful. What an answer. Yes, there's a lot to be said. I was reading some studies on Karoshi. So obviously the Japanese have actually got a term that means death by overwork. And it's a bit of a pandemic there in Japan. So a young 31 year old journalist, Miwa Sado, was found dead with her phone in her hand, mobile phone. And she logged 159 hours of overtime that month. So roughly 40 hours a week of overtime she had logged. And so I was just understood, why does this happen just in Japan? And I was like, no, actually I remember a story about Arianna Huffington collapsing due to burnout and overwork. She broke her cheekbones, she woke up in a pool of blood. And that really was a wake up call for her. And she started, I think it's called Thrive Global, whole campaign.

So what a wonderful coincidence. Arianna Huffington and Nabila Extellaban and myself, the three of us did.

An online workshop on exactly this. No way. Yeah. I mean, it's so funny that you would bring up Arianna Huffington.

That's incredible.

So you can see that. What's normalizing the conversation now, you know we talked about tennis, right? I grew up in a tennis family.

What happened at the French Open? Naomi Osaka said, look, I love playing tennis. It's the press conferences I can't handle. So initially, the French Open said what? Said, look, that's part of the game. If you can't do the press conferences, we're going to penalize you. In fact, you may have to forfeit a match. And everybody said, you know, we're going to bring the hammer down, right? She said, okay, I withdraw. She was the number two tennis player in the world at the time. Well, you know, these big tournaments, they want as many of the top players as they can get. And I'm telling you, the backlash. And by the way, Wimbledon and the US Open Said the same thing, said, naomi, if you can't do the press conferences, we're going to fine you. She said, fine, I'll withdraw. All of the sudden, all the fans came out and said, you've got to be kidding me. You're not going to let this brilliant young woman play tennis because she won't sit in a room and answer stupid questions from inane questions from crazy reporters, like, that's. That's the trade off. Well, and then, of course, all the mental health stuff starts coming out. All of a sudden, all three tournaments pivoted on a dime.

Of course they did. Yeah.

Yeah. And it was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, that. Oh, listen, take all the time. You know, it was just so disingenuous. What I loved about it, though, is it shown the light.

Yeah.

And then we saw it happen at the Olympics, you know, Biles the Goat, the greatest of all time, you know, and then actors and musicians and, you know, I live in New Jersey, and New Jersey is famous for pharmaceutical companies. John Bon Jovi and the Boss, baby. Bruce Springsteen, the legend himself. And, you know, Bruce. I call him Bruce because we both live in Jersey. You know, we're tight. He said, look, in his autobiography, Born to Run, he said, suffered from a lot of anxiety as a young performer and so on. He says, the only place I don't feel anxious is when I'm on stage. So share a quick story with you, James. So Broadway shuts down, right? The guy that opened Broadway was Bruce Springsteen. So if you could show your vaccination card and you were willing to wear a mask through the whole concert, you could go, well, Bruce Springsteen is 73 years old now, and the reason they could open with his show is because it's a piano, it's a guitar, it's a mic. You don't need a lot of stuff, right? He comes out on stage now, the place is packed. He comes out on stage, black jeans, black boots, black T shirt, walks out on stage with his hands in his pockets, looks at the crowd, and he goes.

And he gets a raucous standing ovation. People would just give. They were so thrilled to be in a theater again with the Boss, right? And so you ask yourself, why would you ever pass that up? I mean, talk about affirmation. Talk about gratitude, right? And he did, like, three and a half hours straight. I mean, the guy's unbelievable. Have you ever been to a Springsteen concert? He plays forever. He loves.

My dad's a big, big fan. I love to see him.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you start Getting people of the magnitude of Bruce Springsteen saying, oh, yeah, mental health. Struggled with it my whole life. You know, Naomi Osaka, one of the best tennis players in the world. Yeah. And. And it starts to normalize the conversation. It starts to destigmatize mental health. And what does it do? It creates a lot of empathy because all of a sudden, the fans were going, yeah, yeah, I know that feeling. I'll tell you a great experience Adrian and I had. We were doing these anxiety workshops, which can be somewhat anxiety inducing.

Just.

So we're doing it with these restaurant, you know, managers. And as we're going through it. Managers. Yeah, my people need this. You know, I got a lot of young people. Oh, you know, we're telling them, here's how you kind of spot it. Here's how you deal with it. They go, yeah, yeah. You know, you take breaks. One of the last breaks we took, I'll never forget. Store manager comes up and he goes, you know, this is going to be really good for my people. No doubt. It's good for my people. And by the way.

Me too.

It's so interesting.

Yeah. And so it's everywhere. You know, I say, hey, how many of you in the audience have never had an anxious day in your life?

Right.

If anybody raises their hand, you know, one thing for sure, they're not telling you the truth.

It's such a human experience. Like, anxiety is natural and normal, and, you know, we can work on managing it, but it's a normal thing. And I guess initially it's obviously helped us stay alive, but it's when that gets out of control, and particularly in the workplace, it can be debilitating. So when people read the book, is there exercises and ideas, tangible things that they can do that can help them manage the anxiety in the workplace?

Yeah. There are eight strategies on how to deal with uncertainty, build resilience, and get things done. That's the subtitle. And if you download the audiobook, Adrian and I actually read the book so you'll hear more of this voice. So if you have trouble sleeping, go to the Chester chapters. I'll put you out. Yeah. And at the end of every chapter, we do a quick summary. Here's what to look for. One of the chapters that I really like, and one of the tips is, how do you spot anxiety? Because you remember we talked about high performers, and anxiety almost always go hand in hand. Not always, in many cases. And the reason you don't notice it is because they're good at hiding it. You know, they're good at hiding it. Naomi Osaka. Until it really became crazy. Well, happy kid, incredible talent, top of the world, one of the world's best tennis players. Got the world by the tail, right? And so we say, look. Look for subtle changes in behavior. People that show up late, somebody starts losing their temper, that never loses their temper. Quality of work goes down. Now, the last thing in the world is that you go up to him and say, hey, James, I listen to this podcast. You're suffering from anxiety, aren't you? I knew it. You know that that drives people even further away, right? The language that you want to use is. You know what, James, I've noticed. I've noticed lately that you're showing up late. I've noticed lately that the quality of your work now, the pandemic's been hard on everybody. The let me know, is there anything I can do to help? So you always start with the work. I have noticed. And it is really interesting. When I say I have noticed, it gets translated into, I care.

And when you know your boss cares about you, you're more likely to say, you know what? We're homeschooling four kids, and my mom has moved in with us, and we're just overwhelmed. And it's. It's. It's. It's. After six months of this, it's. It's just really taken its toll. And then what does the leader say? Okay, so what. What can we do to help? Can we offload some of your stuff? Can we redistribute some of the. Do you need just a little time off to just. Yeah, you know, if I could. If I could work from home on Fridays, if I could take every other Friday off.

Their top performer. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, a good friend of mine, David Kosher, he's a senior VP at American Express, he said, you know what chance he goes, work gets done. Whether you're there or not, work gets done. If you need some time, take some time, and then you come back and it'll be fine. And then somebody else on the team is going to need some time, and you know what? You'll fill in for them. Work gets done. We can survive a couple days without you.

So great. More leaders take that approach, you know.

Yeah, the work will get done. Take care of yourself. You know, the old adage. And Nabila Extellaban uses this analogy a lot. And, and you've heard it before as well, you know, in the airlines, Air New Zealand.

Right.

In a crisis, what do you do? You put your. You put your oxygen mask on first.

That's right.

And then you help everybody else. So, you know, as leaders, take care of yourself first. Make sure you're taking care of yourself. Because if you're working 80, 90 hour weeks, week after week after week, can't do it. Skin do it. Yeah.

There's almost like a badge of honor nowadays that people wear proudly. Like, I do the most hours and I only sleep four hours a night, and I do X, Y and Z. But actually, for the leaders to be sitting there and serving at the highest level, they need to be getting their sleep and their rest and their vacations.

Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting that the tide between our two books is really quite lovely. You know, leading with gratitude, we've got eight strategies there on how to lead with gratitude for extraordinary results. And anxiety, we've got eight strategies. Well, the eighth strategy in anxiety is use gratitude.

And so it's a nice tie. You know, the human brain isn't wired to keep you happy. It's wired to keep you safe. That's why negative news gets so much attention, because we're on the lookout for what could possibly go wrong as opposed to what could possibly go right. You know, when was the last time somebody said, hey, what could go right? Nobody says that. Hey, what could go wrong? Right. So we're always on the lookout. We're always, you know, afraid. Right. So you can't be. You can't hold two emotions at the same time. Yeah. So you're either in a state of gratitude or you're in a state of anxiety. Well, choose gratitude. Right. And so we've got a lot of great practices there, like keep a gratitude journal, perform random acts of kindness, you know, write thank you notes. I'm a huge fan of thank you notes. It's old school. I know nobody does that anymore, but I've also got a thing. Adrian and I are doing a lot of executive coaching because you know, top executives, who do they talk to?

That's right.

They got nobody. Right. So.

Yeah, that's right.

You're Simba, you're top of the food chain. Right. So what's interesting is, say, what are some of your personal rituals? You know, do you write in a gratitude journal? One of the things that I do first thing. And some of these are executives I coach, some of them are friends that are going through a hard time. I do a morning ritual where I go for a walk and I do a little 10 minute meditation, you know, and at the end of that meditation, they always give me a little positive affirmation. And I capture that. And I text it out to, Geez, I think I'm up to like, 12 people now. It's getting a little. Well, and it's a personal message and it's like, hey, here's your thought for the day. And here's. Here's what it means to me. I hope you're having a great day. And I always have. Always cheering for you, Chess. And I send it off so, you know, and it's not like you have to respond, you know, sometimes you get a little heart or whatever. So I remember talking to one of my coaches. I said, hey, by the way, I send this to you. Is that a good thing? He goes, oh, I love it. Like, don't miss a day.

That's amazing.

I go, great. I was texting a friend of mine and she was just really going through a hard time and she'd never respond and I'd always send it out. And I thought, you know, just wanted to let her know I'm thinking about her and I know times are hard. I got the sweetest text back after probably sending her 60 texts, right. She said, hey, thanks for not giving up on me.

That's amazing.

Made my day.

That's incredible, Chess. And it's a good reminder for leaders of all backgrounds, even if you're a leader within your family, one of the greatest leadership privileges of all time is to reach out and let people know that you're thinking of them and write those thank you notes. And it's funny. I'll share something with you, Chess. I am sitting over here in the corner every year on my son's birthday. He's only five, so I'm only five years in, but I plan to keep this up. I write him a handwritten letter, and I'll just show you my terrible handwriting. So I write him a handwritten letter every year saying what's going on in his life. And at this time of the year, I print out a bunch of photos, old school, of what's happened in his life and in the family's life. And I'm going to give them to him when he's an adult, when he's in his 30s. And I just think documenting things and acknowledging things and connecting with people in a written form, it's, It's. It's an old fashioned way of communicating. But it's a really deep and sincere and thoughtful way to communicate. So I love that. That's part of what you do and who you are.

Yeah. Oh, listen, he'll treasure those. You know, I'm a huge fan of journaling. And let me find. Oh, wait, I took it to the city with me. Yeah, here it is. So I lived in Italy for two years.

As part of my. I was a missionary for my church, you know, in southern Italy. And it's so great. In my church, they can send you anywhere. And I always joke that when you open that letter and it says, you know, you're 19 years old, you got to spend two years in Southern Italy. That's when you know, Jesus loves you, you know, So.

I love the old school, you know, the handmade papers and so on. This is a glass bookmark that I picked up in Venice, you know, Venezia. And I love, you know, keep the gin. I'll put little, you know, tickets to hockey games and theaters and little thank you notes and stickers. And I've got 40 of these.

That's amazing.

And I write them, you know, basically for me. And yet I'm hoping at some point my kids will. I've told them that I've put money in some of the pages, so at least you should go looking for treasure. But I gotta share this one with you. It's really funny. So it's got these little latches, and it's very like Arabian Nights, right? So I was out visiting my son Garrett in Wichita, Kansas, and we went to church together, and I bring it and I, you know, write it in church. You know, the sermons in church aren't always engaging, so I want to be productive. Anyway, I left it on the pew.

We're almost back to his place. I said, geez, we got to go back. So we went right back while everybody left. It was all kind of locked up, and I couldn't find it. Oh, well, somebody's turned it in. Like, who wants it, right? So we did. We found a guy. He said, oh, yeah, it's in the lost and found. He goes, I'll go get it. Meet me at my house, right? So he gives me back this journal. And I said, so what parts of the journal did you like? Like, did you read? And he goes, are you kidding? I was afraid to open it, that some, like, evil spirit was going to come out and grab me. Like, the curse of the Elton journal, you know, so that's so good. I love it. I'm a big fan of handwritten notes and letters. And you know what the message is with that, James? Is I. I took the time, I care, right? And people say, yeah, but is it timely? Like, you know, a text is really timely. It's, you know, Right away. So, you know, the thing about a letter or a handwritten notice, it's always timely. And here's why. Because when it arrives, people put it aside and then they go, oh, now I've got time.

And they read it. I've got all kinds of, like some of my favorite thank you notes. I put them in my journals, right? And my kids, you know, long after I'm dead, they'll go, hey, look what they said about dad. Look what dad said about somebody. I, when my kids were off at university, I would write them a letter every, every week. And it was always interesting to me. When they came back from university, they'd have all their stuff. And here are the textbooks that I was going to cash out or the clothes I'm going to throw away. Here's my box of letters from my dad. They never throw them away, they always keep them.

Lovely.

That's amazing. And that's, to me, that's what it's all about. That's fatherhood, leadership, one of the most things of all time. I love it. That's amazing. And Chester, working people connect with you. So I know that there's going to be a lot of people just hooked now. They'll want a lot more of you. So I know that on LinkedIn you've got an incredible community. So how can people follow you and get into your community there on LinkedIn?

Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place. You know, we've got lots of followers there. We're constantly publishing. I post a little gratitude photo every day. It was so funny. I started in March and I said I'd do it for a year and then I, I couldn't stop, so I keep doing it. So follow me on LinkedIn. We've got a. Twice a month we publish a newsletter called the Gratitude Journal. And we've got like 123,000 subscribers. We bring in guest authors. I just got a note. Today.

We bring in other authors and they'll help write the message on the newsletter. And I think it's three or four times now it's been the thought of the day on LinkedIn, which is always lovely. We also have a podcast. We promote the podcast in the newsletter Anxiety at Work.

Always free. So LinkedIn, the gratitude journal and Anxiety at Work, we also have a website called thecultureworks.com when your culture works, everything works. And that's where a lot of our speaking and writing and training and we're doing a lot of executive coaching now as well. So.

The books, the speaking and the courses and the Coaching.

That's amazing. People are so fortunate that you're putting it out there and that you are accessible. And anybody that's listening, please go and subscribe to the podcast and leave a review and get on LinkedIn and follow on LinkedIn and go and visit the website, please. I'll put all the links in. For those that are listening, I'll put it in under the YouTube description. Also put it on all the footer notes on Instagram and so forth. And also, Jess, I've got one question for you before we finish up. So if you had to give a piece of advice to your children or grandchildren, and that advice was around, hey, dad, Granddad, how do I lead a life of purpose? What would your answer to that be?

Wow, that's a. Why didn't you just ask me? What's the purpose of life? I mean, come on, James.

You know.

I'm a big fan of simple messages.

And I'm going to share with you another book. I don't have it handy. I should. I always have one here. It's called the Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. Have you heard of this book? No.

No.

It's a children's book. It's written for children between the ages of 80 and 8. So pretty much everybody listening to this podcast qualifies. It's. It's an artist. He's in northern England, Charlie macassie, and he's got these beautiful sketches, and it's the story of a little boy, and he's going into the wild, and it's scary. And he befriends this wise old mole. They free a fox from the snare, and then they add to their tribe this big, giant, gentle horse. And there's a couple of messages in there that have really stuck with me, that, you know, that I'm. I'm teaching my grandkids. And the little boy and the mole are sitting on the branch of a tree. And the mole asks the little boy, what do you want to be when you grow up? And the boy says, kind.

And, you know, if you want to live a purposeful life.

If you want to really develop deep relationships, be kind. It costs you nothing.

Later in the story, they go through the storms, and they're exhausted and they're soaking wet. And the little boy is laying on the back of the horse, and he asks the horse, what's the bravest thing you've ever said?

And the horse says.

Help.

He said, you know, asking for help doesn't mean you've given up. It means you're refusing to give up. And so the second part of leading a wonderful and purpose driven life is don't be afraid to ask for help. My dad had an expression. He'd say, ches, you be good to everybody. Everybody's having a tough day. You don't know people you pass on the street, people that work with and for you, you don't know what they're going through. You don't know if they're having trouble at home, trouble with their health, trouble with their kids. Here's what you do know, is that the time that they spend with you, they can feel valued. They can feel like their voice is heard. You were kind, you were encouraging. They mattered. I love that message from my dad. You be good to everybody. Everybody's having a tough day. Being kind costs you nothing. And when it gets tough, don't forget the people that love you will rally. Don't hesitate to ask for help. And you know what, James? That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

That's stunning. Yeah, so that's amazing. I think for your grandkids, if they eventually listen to this or they hear this somewhere else, that's going to be so profound and impactful, but also for anybody that's listening to this, that's incredible. So I want to say thank you for being so vulnerable and open and sharing that. That's incredible. And thanks for taking the time to connect.

You bet. Hey, listen, I'm a rugby player from way back, so this has been a delight to. Actually, you know, I live in the States for so long now. Nobody knows rugby in the States like, nobody. So it's. So it's great to know that, you know, as an old scrum half, I've got the winger out there that's got the speed up and down, the up and down the pitch. James, this is. This has been delightful. Than. Thank you for your energy and your positivity and the good works that you're doing there. You know, Adrian and I are always humbled when we get asked to be on people's podcasts that you would share your platform so that we could talk about leadership and gratitude and make it safer to talk about anxiety. You know, that's a ripple effect that we never take for granted. And so I'm honored and grateful for your time and your work and that you would think that I could add something for your listeners to make a difference. So from. From one gratitude leader to another, thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for listening in today and investing in your own personal growth. Please hit that subscribe button and I.

Would love, love, love if you'd leave.

Me a rating and review as it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks and folks, it's that time. Get out there and live life on purpose.

Sam.