Leadership Coach Andrea Johnson Reveals Leadership Secrets To Help You Unlock Massive Success (#417)

417 Andrea Johnson
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Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Andrea Johnson empowers executives and founders to lead with authenticity, conviction, and confidence so they can make a positive impact on their lives, organizations, and communities. As an adoptive parent who grew up internationally, navigating mental and physical wellness, she learned that emotional resilience must be earned. The process of uncovering and understanding the significance of her core values became the key to the process that allows her clients to do the same. 

Andrea works with leaders who feel stifled and have grown unsatisfied with their current level of influence. She facilitates improved communication and corporate culture within teams and organizations as a Maxwell certified DISC consultant, speaker, trainer, and coach. 

Her passion is equipping female leaders to define a new culture by trusting their own ability to think critically, create imaginatively, and lead effectively.

And before we start the episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Sanjay, a graduate of Deep Wealth Mastery, and he says, [00:01:00] the investment I made in the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it's a rounding error compared to the value created today and the future value I'll receive.

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Now speaking of growth and adding value, check out what Leon says. He says that the Deep Wealth Mastery Program changed how and who we hire. We've now begun to hire talent today that we never would have hired if it weren't for the program. The talent we're hiring today is helping both increase our growth and profits and our future enterprise value. 

Man, I love that kind of feedback because it's that kind of feedback that's what gets me out of bed every day.

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Deep [00:03:00] Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, I have great news in the house of Deep Wealth we have a fellow entrepreneur, a fellow podcaster, thought leader, success coach, you name it, she has done it. So Andrea, welcome to Deep Wealth Podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you with us.

And there is always a story behind the story. So Andrea, what is your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Andrea Johnson: Well, thanks for having me, Jeffrey. This is a real privilege and I love being able to talk to other entrepreneurs. When I turned 50, I had an eight year old adopted son. My mother was 17 years into breast cancer. And I was not happy in my job. I had a career in higher education. I spent almost 12 years at Johns Hopkins University, almost 12 years at the University of Virginia doing research and administration. And I took stock when I lost my mother in February, halfway through my 50th year and said, I don't want my next 50 years to be like this.

And as I looked back, I realized I had played by other people's rules. I had allowed myself to [00:04:00] fall into patterns that had everything to do with conforming to the norms of society. And I realized that I was not at all celebrating the strengths that I had created with the unique aspects of my personality that would get me anywhere.

When somebody would hire me, they say, well, you just had this X Factor. And so it would show up in different places at different points in my life, but I wasn't celebrating any of that. And that was the thing that kind of put me on this path of what do I want to do differently? I looked at my husband one day and I said, I really just want to help people, but I don't think that's really a job.

And my friend introduced me to, she said, well, have you ever thought of coaching? And have you ever thought of leadership coaching? And I started researching that and looking into John Maxwell, because I don't know if it's if you've been this way, Jeffrey, but I was a student of personal growth from like the time I turned 20.

That was like, Even probably before that. And so for me, personal growth was very integrated into the way I did my life, but hadn't ever turned it outward. I'd always been it for [00:05:00] myself and I had never shared it with anybody else. And that was the story that got me started into my coaching career.

I became a maximal leadership speaker, trainer, coach, and disc consultant and discovered that core values was the main thing that is at the root of all of it. And that's what got me where I am today.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely love that. John Maxwell, one of my favorite quotes of all time, when the team works, the dream works, we use that a lot in our Deep Wealth Mastery Program. But let me ask you this, The Intentional Optimist, I love that's your nickname out there. That's how people know of you. So what's going on with The Intentional Optimist?

I love firstly, All those words that are in there, how did that come to be? Was that how you were growing up? Is that something that came a little bit later? What's going on there?

Andrea Johnson: No, it wasn't really. I've always been a spunky person, but I tend to lean towards, I'm an Enneagram 6, so I tend to lean towards the reality and the what's the worst case scenario, how do I avoid that kind of thing. And this goes back to when I turned 50 and I lost my mother. It put me into this reflective period and I said, what do I want [00:06:00] to stand for?

How do I want to be perceived? And if I want to celebrate those things that are unique about me, I need to figure out what they are. And so. When I started looking at the words I wanted to embody the principles I wanted to live out, I put them all on paper, like did a huge brain dump, and as I started sorting them, I realized I had about six main categories, and those became my six tenets of intentional optimism.

And they start out with optimistic, which I am one of those people that can be very optimistic or very pessimistic. If you know a good optimist, you know that a real good optimist is somebody who's willing to see the bad side in order to be able to see the good side. So the first one is optimistic. The second is being present.

If you're not present in your life, you're not enjoying it. That includes wonder. That includes hope. That includes the relationships that you have. And the third one is energetic. And that includes being life focused. So I want to produce in others. I want to help them thrive. I want to to celebrate beauty.

The fourth one is courage. If you're going to be a leader, you've got to [00:07:00] be courageous. You've got to be able to be undaunted in the face of really hard things. And that's where resilience pops into my story a lot. The fifth one is wise, which was something that I think was. I probably the hardest one for me to embrace because I don't think of myself as a wise person.

At the time I was 50 and some people think that's really old, I still feel pretty young. Part of that's because I have a 16 year old son, but I just never thought of myself as wise. Wise people were 85 with curly blue hair and, that's who wise people were for me or wise women. But I decided that I needed to embrace that because other people were seeing it in me.

And so WISE is the fifth one. And the sixth one, it bookends intentional optimism with intentionality. That's probably the one that is the most inherently something that I already live out, and it includes having a plan and a purpose and making sure you know where you're going. And these are not steps.

These are not. Sequential things. They're a bit like a six piece Venn Diagram that all just fit together, they touch each other [00:08:00] in ways that you don't realize. So some of them are aspirational for me. But some of them are things that are very natural and, I started out With those, I'm talking about how I wanted to live because when we learn, we learn things outside of us first.

We learn behaviors, how to like, I'm 214 days into Duolingo for Korean because I grew up in Korea and I want to recapture that. But it's still took me almost 200 days to get to a place where they actually had you speaking back to the app because we learn things outside of ourselves first and then we integrate them.

And so this is where I started and it is a great piece for people to say, these are principles that you can strive to live by, but it really governs my business, it governs how I show up in the world, et cetera. And so that's where it came from and how I use it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, there is so much there. Every one of those attributes could easily, Andrea, could easily be an episode in and of itself. Let me ask you a question yes, granted a general question. You can say, well, Jeffrey, everyone is different. They're on their own journey. They're on their own path. I'm going to ask it anyways, because so much of what you're talking about, [00:09:00] all those different attributes, Very interestingly, in our nine step roadmap, Step number five, winning mindset, and we work with the business owner, founder, entrepreneur, not just to create a winning mindset for him or herself.

But for their team, for their clients, for their M& A advisors, and even the buyer or investor. So it's all of the stakeholders because so often we drink our own Kool Aid, oh, everyone's thinking like me. Everyone wants the same thing that I want, and it couldn't be further from the truth. Even people that are on the payroll, we think, well, yeah, of course they're loyal to me.

I'm paying them. Well, yeah, you are, but that doesn't give loyalty. That doesn't mean they're going to want what you want, and oftentimes it could even be the opposite. So, what I wanted to ask, where are we just getting it wrong? Is it Pareto's Law, the 80 20 principle that, yeah, we are doing these 20 percent of things that are creating 80 percent of the so called, I'll call them friction, or potentially problems, really opportunities.

But are there common patterns that you're seeing? And if they are, what would they be?

Andrea Johnson: The biggest pattern I see is that people are living [00:10:00] in ways that are not their own. I was listening to a podcast yesterday talking about Dell when he started his company and he was growing and he hired a old school CEO to run it. This guy got burnt out really fast and it turned out that Dell had actually built a company that was natural to him and authentic.

And this other guy came in and couldn't do that kind of work. And so this is a good example of somebody who. Has done built a business for himself that was going to be something that was sustainable, but he didn't have that understanding of the conflict that would come with trying to fit it into somebody else's rules.

So when we as business owners build a business that works for us, then we can actually authentically sell it in a way in an, with plenty of awareness and be able to promote it in a way with plenty of awareness of what it is and who it is that we are selling it. Four, two, and buy, and that way we can actually, know you said a lot of times 90 percent of the power is in the buyer's hands.

This puts the power in our [00:11:00] hands when we know what we've got and we know what we're selling and we do that by understanding who we are. I do my work because I think the world needs more curious, wise, and welcoming leaders that live By understanding their core values and their strengths and a clear set of life principles.

So when you take all of that into your business and you realize, wow, I'm the one dishonoring me. I'm building a business that other people think is good, but the reality is the best business you're going to build is the one that works for you and with your strengths and then be able to sell that with

Jeffrey Feldberg: So much there again, and we're going to go into that in terms of your core values and your coaching and what you're doing with all that. But let me ask you this, because I know from our side of Deep Wealth, when we're speaking with so many entrepreneurs, here's the common narrative that we hear.

Jeffrey, Andrea, my day started off with the best of intentions. I was in a terrific mood. I got into the office or I hopped onto some calls or Zoom meetings, whatever the case may [00:12:00] be. Bam. Gone, frustrated, angry, burnt out, tired, I'm not myself, I'm not giving the best, but I don't know what to do or how to deal with that.

What would you say to a leader, entrepreneur, who is saying, yeah, that really sounds a lot like my day and days, and as we both know, Andrea, the challenge is that our days become our weeks, which become our months, our quarters, our years, our decades, and it's not a great ritual to have. So, what's going on there that you could prescribe for us?

Andrea Johnson: Well, of course, the answer is going to be different for each individual person and each individual situation. But in general, I would say that when I have those days, for me, speaking for me, when I have those days, it's usually because, again, I am allowing my own core values to be dishonored in a way.

If it's because I get in a Zoom call and I've decided that my boundaries are not worth it because I need to fight this fight that doesn't need to be fought, or I am hiring people that may not. Align with the [00:13:00] values of my business, because it, we all have a mission and vision, and being able to take that step back, another quote that I love from John Maxwell is, experience is not the best teacher.

It just isn't. Evaluated experience is the best teacher. So being able to take the time to step back and reflect, that's what a good a good Business friend can do, that's what a good coach can do, can help you step back and reflect and say, what is the common denominator with these situations?

And when we see that, then we can actually do something about it. And nine times out of 10, maybe it's because I speak core values, it's always a core value problem with my clients. And I think that's a piece that I would say, because we're building our business, and sometimes like me, we're like the only team member, it just becomes that I have to do it all.

Before I got on here, I was taking care of Bluehost because my credit card had expired. I don't have a financial person to do that. I have to do it myself. And I don't like being in that mode, but I know that I have to do those things and figure out ways to make sure that my [00:14:00] energy is built up to make sure that and living by those life principles helps too, right?

Honoring my core values and then being able to say in the tentative energy or energetic, I know that there are things that drain my battery and there are things that build up my battery. And so being able to say, I did that piece, I took care of the credit card thing, and then I did this other piece so that my battery would still be built up in order to have this conversation.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So, walk us through that. I'm showing up and saying, okay, Andrea, I heard about your core values, your coaching, your program, your system, your methodology, what you're doing. Yeah, I want some of that. So, again, everyone is different, I get that, and timing might be a little bit different, outcomes are going to be a little bit different, but generally speaking, Once I sign up, and I'm working with you, and as we record this, I know you're putting together a special group that you're going to be very selectively admitting people into to go through the program.

That said, though, timing wise, what should I be expecting, outcome wise, what would that look like, and, of course, the magic secret sauce here, the everything in between, what's [00:15:00] going on there?

Andrea Johnson: Well, I actually started working on my core values let's see, 30 years ago when I read Covey's book and at the very end, it was, these are your governing values. And what's very interesting is that they're very minor, very similar to what I had then, but Everybody is different in that some people can do a one page download and do all the work themselves and figure out their core values.

And then other people, it takes going through a digital course or working with me for six to eight coaching sessions along with that digital course. It can take. Anywhere from two months to six months to even get them really ironed out, depending on how dishonored they are, depending on how much conditioning that you have.

We have these assumptions, beliefs, and conditioning that is like an iceberg, and we don't realize we're only looking at the tip of that iceberg. So sometimes there's a lot of work to do underneath that in order to get down to it. But just understanding that core values work and understanding who you are, is a good starting point.

And then it's something that you have to repeatedly keep going through the rest of your life. When leaders [00:16:00] know who they are, they can stop imitating others and start defining their own principles and priorities, just like I did, right? Creating a path for what I would call sustainable and impactful leadership.

It's not sustainable to take somebody else's, I don't know, rules of how you do business or rules of how you define your, Mission and vision, and then try to work that, what's sustainable is what works for you. And as we embody those unique values, then we can actually foster the kind of diversity and authentic leadership we want.

So when I work with people, I just remind them, if it's in a workshop or if it's in a one on one relationship, this is the start. It's really never finished, but you will get more and more clear as you go along.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And to the person in Deep Wealth Nation who's listening to us, I can hear some of them, they're saying, yeah, Andrea, that sounds great, Jeffrey, that sounds great. All this self help stuff, this positive attitude, yeah, it's just a bunch of people that are saying these positive slogans, but they're really having their head in the sand.

They're not really dealing with reality because life [00:17:00] can be tough and life doesn't always work out and it just makes you soft and weak. So to that person, what would you say?

Andrea Johnson: I'm going to give you an example of one of, and you talked about my beta Testing program. She was one of my first in there. She is a CEO of a web design company, but at the time she had three companies. She was an entrepreneur, she had three companies, and she said, extremely successful, millennial woman, and she said, Andrea, something is just not, I can't move forward in this area, I'm frustrated all the time, I don't know what's going on, and I said, well, it sounds like to me, and she was really just a friend, I said, it sounds like to me you could use a little core value work, and when she said, okay, well, how much does it cost, and it's just sold so she just did it.

As we started working through it, she started on a retreat, and She just was, like I said, she had three businesses. Within the first two weeks, she had already decided to shut down two businesses. And that was hard. She was in the middle of a launch. she's a Marco Polo ambassador. there was things that she [00:18:00] was going to need to shut down, but she felt so confident.

In making her decisions, because she understood who she was, just on a surface level with Core Values work, that she was able to shut down two businesses, and including that one that was a Marco Polo ambassadorship, that was a full program, she was in the middle of launching. And then she turned around to her husband, who she was partnering with in this other business, the web design, and she said, I need to be the CEO here, and you need to be, like, and this is.

From a conservative Christian background, women don't do this. And she turned around and said, this is who I am in our company, and I need to do this. Within three months, that business has gone, like it shot up from a half a million to a million dollars because she knew who she was all of a sudden.

And we sat on one Zoom call and she looked at me and she said, oh my goodness, I'm a I've been dishonoring my core values. I've been like, because there are things like strategic and she was going to business meetings like community networking, business women's club meetings and she was allowing other people to just usurp all of her authority.

She would [00:19:00] go and speak somewhere and she would allow other people to just pop in and be the speaker, which is sounds good. So, it's benign, but it's really not. It was frustrating her to the point where she was feeling shamed. She was feeling unable to make good decisions. So when she got her core values straight, her decisions became clear, her filters became very evident, and her relationships, like you would think, wow, what's that going to do to her relationship with her husband?

Well, he didn't want to be the CEO. He wanted to be the web designer. And so now they have this, Business that's booming and their relationship is even better. And now they work even more closely together. So those are like three areas that are very practical in impact when you understand and honor your core values.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, that's terrific. And just hearing that personal transformation, it just goes back to when we get it right within us. How we view the world, what our personal narrative is, it can't help but to spill over onto the business side for the better. At the same time, though, the flip side is true. [00:20:00] If we don't have it right, if we're feeling not so great, if we have that negative narrative, it's ultimately going to spill over onto the business side as well.

And I know you work a lot with female entrepreneurs and leaders. What's going on as we record this podcast for women right now? And the fact that I even have to ask this question to me, it just seems we got it all wrong. But where are things? Are we getting things right? Are we taking a few steps back?

Where are we at? 

Andrea Johnson: Well, if y'all aren't on video, you can't see me like rubbing my hands together, but this is something that is, I feel very passionate about. And in our climate here in the United States I think that there's a real opportunity for women to step up and say, Look, we thought we were going to have a female leader.

We thought we were going to do certain things. There's a lot of backlash on women's leadership and women's I don't know, feminism right now. And I understand part of that. But at the same time, we need to understand that all of it is a moving target. It's a train that [00:21:00] is continuing to move. And if we sit still on that train, we're going to get left behind.

We have to keep moving. And I think as we came out of the pandemic, one of the reasons I wanted to focus on women's leadership is because it was a unique time that proved that women had the ability to lead in a very unique way. We have the ability to relate to people on a Zoom call. that maybe we, that maybe men don't have, and I don't mean that to be like gender bashing thing, there's nothing there, it's just women have superpowers that just, we don't celebrate, and just like me, not understanding what they are, trying to fit into a mold, really hurt us, and I think that now, as we're moving forward, this is an opportunity for us to, like I said earlier, be very optimistic and realistic at the same time, which would I, the word I would use there is hopeful, and be able to say, There are going to be opportunities in the next four to eight years for women that we may not have seen coming, but at the same time, we need to be realistic about some of the that we have [00:22:00] and not take things personally, just move forward and be the leaders that we've been created to be.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And for all the men who are listening to this and they're in a leadership kind of position, perhaps leading the company, they have other women who are leaders, but they're not the CEO. They're not the founder, the owner. What's the message? What's their takeaway of what you want them to know to get the absolute best and most out of the women in leadership positions in their companies?

Andrea Johnson: I think we need to remember that absolutely everyone comes from a conditioned mindset, men and women alike. And some of the conditioning that we have in the United States in our corporate structure is bad for everyone. Because if women are not given the opportunities that men are given, then it's hurting the men and the women because women have, Creative minds.

We have the ability to nurture things and the ability to broker things that, that it's just inherent in the female psyche. And being able to recognize that we all come from a place of [00:23:00] conditioning and look at what that is. I think that would be the message that I would say, think for yourself. Don't say, well, what is everybody else saying?

Or what is in the water? Or what is the way we've always done it? It's way past time. To be doing anything the way we've always done it, AI is coming in, new political stuff is happening. The world stage is very different than it was even just eight or 10 years ago. And we need to be able to move with that and recognizing any conditioning that we have that's going to cause us to think of any group of people or any type of person in any given way needs to be examined.

And that's the internal work that can have very practical applications.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And with your background, the lens that you're bringing to the coaching that you're doing, to the system that you've brilliantly created, I know you'll sometimes refer to yourself as a third culture kid.

Andrea Johnson: Yes,

Jeffrey Feldberg: What does that mean and what's the impact, as we speak today, from that third culture kid upbringing?

Andrea Johnson: sure. When I was young, [00:24:00] they didn't call us third culture kids. They called me a missionary kid. my parents were missionaries in Seoul, Korea, so I grew up in, third culture. Essentially, a third culture person is someone who was raised in one culture, or is demographically from one culture, and is transplanted into another culture.

And there are pieces of My mindset that are very Korean, very Eastern, the way I revere older people, the way I see everything is connected, but my parents were from Southeast Texas, so I have a very Southeastern mindset in the way I view like Western things, American things, and therefore my background Mindset and the way I operate and the way I move in the world is third culture.

It's my own individual culture and the nice thing about that and when I celebrate uniqueness of each individual person is that any third culture person is a unique third culture unto themselves because our personalities play a role in that as well. I hid that. Jeffrey, for a really long time. I didn't tell people that I grew up in Korea.[00:25:00] 

It was very intimidating in the 80s and 90s because people didn't travel as much. And we didn't have, I don't know, the world just wasn't, it was, this is before the World Wide Web, you know what I mean? This is before the internet and the the apps that we use that are from all over the world.

My son plays video games from China all the time and because he just, or from Japan because he likes anime. And so being able to have that perspective that is not. Only American, or not only Asian or European, having that mindset of having traveled all my life and going to school with kids from 65 different countries.

In the middle of the Iran hostage crisis, Iranian children were walking down my halls and some of the teenagers had on like Iran, it just, you learn. To give others grace in where they're coming from, you learn to see things, step back and say, I may not have the only, the right answer. I may only have one answer, and we need to look at things that way.

And that really helps me in working with coaching clients and in organizations, because I work with a lot of teams, and it helps me to be able to help others see things from a different [00:26:00] perspective.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, so interesting. And coming from a different culture, let me ask you this. I know there's some controversy around all of these personality assessments. Nothing's perfect. Let's get that out of the way. So when it comes to DISC, and for Deep Wealth Nation, D I S C, you can look it up. It's one of the most popular personality traits that you can have done out there.

And lots of organizations are using that. So, a couple of questions for you. Firstly, in your experience, you're obviously using DISC. What does DISC do for you as a leader? So, if I'm listening in, I haven't done any personality traits or tests or assessments on my team, and it's not to say, hey, this person's really smart, this person's not so smart.

It's, okay, what are this person's strengths? What aren't their strengths, necessarily? How can I lead them better? With the DISC, for starters, One of the common things that I hear is, well, if you're a white person who grew up in the U. S., it's perfect for you, but if you're from a different culture, if perhaps English isn't your first language, you're not from the U.

S., You're gonna have some issues [00:27:00] with a disc. So where are we on that today? With disc 

Andrea Johnson: I've not actually run up against that myself But I would under I actually have taken almost all the different personality tests out there. I love it I mean, I we talked about geek stuff. I geek out I know I can name my own, but when I went to grad school, I met my husband in seminary I took the California test and When I was called into the Counselor's office because there were these red flags and he said, you didn't grow up here.

You're a missionary kid. Therefore it's skewed. So I would say any test that we take that is based in English or American culture, I would say I've not come up against any racial demographics. There are a lot of great services in the United States, but as long as English is a proficient language for you, they ask enough questions that it's going to give you the opportunity to share what is truly yourself.

It takes about 10 minutes to take. So I've had many clients say, I thought that was the practice one. No, it's real. And then they look at it and they say, how is it so accurate? Well, it's you're telling it what to do. DISC, [00:28:00] we call it Behavioral Analysis. It will actually shift a little bit, depending on the environment you're in, because if, and I have to be very clear with people and say, answer this from your work environment, and then I'll have clients say, I want to take this home and do this in my family.

Great, but you need to take it again as the family member, because it's going to show up a little different. DISC measures how you communicate, how you take in information, and how you communicate it. So when we talk about leadership. And teamwork and cohesion. It's very important to know who needs the bottom line, which is a D.

Who needs all the details because they're going to ask you every question under the sun, which is a C. Those are the compliant ones. The D is the driver. We need to know who's going to need the social time in the meeting and who needs to be able to tell stories. That would be an I, the inspirational. I'm one of those.

And then you need to know who on your team are the S's. These are your steady people, 69 percent of the population. They make your trains run on time. They actually are the bottom of your change curve. So you're working towards getting everything done for [00:29:00] them. When you know who on your team does these things, then you stop expecting your, let's just say, a very typical C would be an accountant.

You stop expecting your financial, fiscal, or accountant person, you stop expecting them to just bottom line it for you. They're going to give you all the details because it's important to them and they want to get it right. And then you as a leader can understand why your sales guy, who's a very high D, comes by and says, Got that account and then is back on his way out, right?

It's I need the details, so when you understand how your team communicates and then they understand how they each communicate with each other, it opens doors to, again, I'm going to use that word grace. We can give each other grace and we can move in a way that that helps them understand.

Like I said, I grew up in Korea. we didn't go there expecting to speak English all the time. We went there expecting, my parents spent two years in language school learning how to speak Korean and they still butchered it because it's a very difficult language. But we don't [00:30:00] go to another country while Americans do sometimes expecting to speak English all the time.

And what we do though, unfortunately, is when we speak English to someone who's, that's not their first language and they don't understand us, what do we do, Jeffrey we're going to just talk louder. We're just going to say it louder. And DISC is like that. It's like having a set of languages that when we understand what the other person's language is, we no longer have to speak our language louder.

We just need to speak their language. And having the opportunity to do that within your team. Or for your employees or your staffers, or quite frankly, your clients. If you've got a client that's hard to deal with, or you're trying to land a particular client, these things really make a difference.

And it's just, once you start seeing the flags, you can't unsee them. And it gives you that one bit of communication excellence that really can make a difference in your business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So let me ask you this. I had my disc done. This is going back probably six, seven years ago as we're talking right now. And I don't know if this would mean [00:31:00] anything to you necessarily, but I But the numbers that I have are seven, six, one, two, that's from graph three, seven, six, one, two on the disc profile there.

And

Andrea Johnson: would assume that would be seven D six IS one C two. Okay. So yeah, would call you a di and you mentioned there graph three most discs. So people, keys does disc and they do reports for all kinds of different companies. YF is out there doing a lot of them. I do Maxwell and Maxwell's.

So this particular report focuses on leadership, and one of the things it also pulls out is seven PowerDisc leadership attributes that, based on your answers, so you might have a little bit of different questions, but based on your answers, it will tell you where your leadership skills are and where you might want to go.

Mitigate or augment something in order to have a good team, but when I look at a DI, I think you're probably somebody who is you're not only are you bottom line, but you really enjoy being around people. So if you go clockwise, the top two D and I [00:32:00] are more on the extroverted outgoing scale, but the D is the bottom line people.

They really, it's like, Whatever gets the result. And the I is the relational piece that makes that result happen. So you're probably a very powerful person. And, I hear you talking about, I know that your passion is helping people learn how to sell their businesses. That's a really powerful thing to do.

So being able to do that with that kind of personality. The other piece is that S is a one. So you're not much of a team player, right? You don't like all the processes, right? I'm pretty, I'll bet you probably have other people that do most of the processes for you, or we talked a little bit about this before we started recording, how you've handed certain things over.

It probably drained your energy to do some of those things. I'm just guessing. That's what I would say. And on the C, if you're a two, you're not the details guy. Somebody else needs to do it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: and Deep Wealth Nation I promise you, this is the first time that Andrea and I are speaking. We don't really know each other than a few minutes before we started recording and what you're hearing right now. [00:33:00] That said, this is the power of these kinds of tools because what she described is made to a tee.

I hate the details. I know back in the Embanet days, anytime I would hand off a project to the team, they would run. Andrew, they would run in the opposite direction because it was a mess. It was all over the place. It was horrible. That's just not me. Very much a big picture guy. Just give me the bottom line.

I don't really care all the things in between. In fact, save me the time. Just tell me the net of it. I don't need to know how we got there or what that's going to look like. Just where are we right now? What does it mean? What's the net of it? You're describing me to a T. But Deep Wealth Nation, I didn't do that so much for me, although it's interesting, Andrea, and thank you for that quick insight.

I want you to get a sense, Deep Wealth Nation, of what this could do when you have someone like Andrea in your company who's helping you, helping the team, going through these assessments, these behavioral analysis, seeing what's going on there. Where in seconds, she can say, okay, Jeffrey, you know what, this person over here, Mary, wow, she is terrific, but you are so under utilizing her, you actually have her [00:34:00] in the wrong position.

If you switch things up, she could take your company from zero to hero in the blink of an eye. What's been holding you back? Oh my goodness, Andrew. I'm just making this up. Oh my goodness. I thought about that, but I wasn't so sure, and wow, hearing you say that just brings it all together. That's the power of this.

We would take what would normally take, I don't know, weeks, months, years, maybe longer

Andrea Johnson: Years with failure in between and probably replacing that staffer. And this will give you the ability to it's cheaper and more efficient and more effective to keep a staff member and move them around than it is to replace them. Every business owner knows that. And so this helps with employee retention.

It helps with business morale. It helps with team cohesion. There's all kinds of things that we can do with it. And I just actually am really excited. I started, I got contacted by a woman at a university in Florida. she said, can you come work with my team? I have really old people and really young people.

I said, Oh yes, let's get them speaking the same language. So, it just doing those kinds of things makes a difference and watching people say like I said, I came out of the [00:35:00] university medical system and I worked for about 18 months with a veterinary hospital, which is a lot of Oddly, very close to human medicine because it's the same, it's similar people and having them say, there's just one doctor nobody can talk to.

Okay, we'll just do a disc assessment and then we do a disc assessment on the manager that works with them and they sit down and they walk through it together. I did it with each of them separately. They sat down together and worked out a whole new plan for how they were going to communicate with each other.

And now, that manager's the go to person when they need to talk to this doctor. Because she understands it because she's an oncologist for animals, right? So this is a specialty. And you want to make sure you hang on to her. You don't want her to go anywhere. And when you have that, it reduces the friction and the tension in your company.

And I love how you just lit up over all of that. Oh my gosh. It's just, that's what happens when you have just a little bit of information. And like you said, there's a whole bunch of different things out there that you could use for your team. DISC is very psychologically, scientifically based and it's behavioral.

So, it's something that you can see people's [00:36:00] behavior exhibited, and even if you haven't done the assessment, as soon as you get a little crosswalk, you can figure out, wait a minute, I'll bet that person's this and as soon as you start looking at those things will change very quickly.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And as we often say at Deep Wealth, as you're talking about this, Andrea, hire on personality, train on skills. And for me, something like the disc, it really, it shines a bright spotlight on that individual. Okay. These are the personality traits I really should know because put in the right way, wow, the company is going to benefit.

My stakeholders are going to benefit. My clients are going to love this. If I put that person in the wrong way or in the wrong area, it's painful for everyone. It's costly.

Andrea Johnson: Absolutely. And there's a benchmarking report we can do where you pull in three or four of your ideal clients or your ideal people, and depending on the size of your business, if you want to hire more people like that, then we have a benchmark report that pulls that together. And then when you're doing your, like your top three people or whatever with an interview for your hiring process, you can actually run a disk report on them and see how closely they come to that benchmark.

But [00:37:00] the other piece is when you put your people into positions that, and this is part of what I was working with that veterinary hospital about, when you put your people into the right positions and you have them communicating well, and your team members are happy and your staff is happy, and then all your systems get taken care of, guess what is really attractive?

Your company to other people who might want to buy it. It's just really attractive because who wants to come in and have to gut everything? Nobody wants to do that. So, this is the perfect way to continue to set your business up now for whenever you want to actually sell it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And the two things that are coming out of this as we're speaking, Andrea, in the absence of an instruction manual, wouldn't it be great if every person had their own custom instruction manual? Okay, here's how Andrea operates, here's how Jeffrey operates. We don't have that. So two things are going on here.

In absence of that, something like a disc assessment is as close as you're going to get to that. But let's face it in and of itself, it's just a report. It's just words on paper. It's having someone like yourself. You're an expert in this. You [00:38:00] do this day in, day out for multiple companies, entrepreneurs, different situations that can then take that, interpret that, and then apply that very specifically to that company culture, that company situation, and provide a roadmap.

Okay, here's the North Star for this individual in your company, your culture. Here's really where you want to focus on and do that. Team member by team member. Wow. That really adds up to some powerful results. We'd love your thoughts on that.

Andrea Johnson: Yeah, it really does. And when I've seen it go bad when the leaders have decided not to do what I offered to them, and I've seen it go really well. And so when you see it go really well, it's just phenomenal to watch people because Jeffrey, people don't leave companies.

They don't leave for money. They leave people. They always leave for people. And if they find that you are a company that they want to be a part of, they're going to stay there and you're going to attract the kind of people you want. And as a personal hiring manager, when I did this for a university, [00:39:00] I was able to literally create relationships with people that I interviewed knowing that I was hiring them for their personality, knowing that I was looking for specific traits.

Skills are all trainable and we can look at skill gaps and we can look at those kinds of things. But if you hire for the right kind of person, then you are going to create longevity and you're going to make sure that you have the kind of team in place that will make your company grow in ways that you never expected.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Got it. Okay. So Deep Wealth Nation, you're getting just a glimpse, just a very small glimpse of what's possible and what's all going on with all of this, Andrea. So Andrea, let me ask you this. My goodness, there are so many different directions that we can go in, but before we go into wrap up mode, with every episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast, we like to have one actionable item, perhaps a low hanging fruit wherever possible, that before this episode is over, a listener could say, okay, I'm going to take this strategy, Andrew suggested this, I'm going to try this before I go into my next meeting or call or activity, whatever's going to be going on.

Is there one strategy [00:40:00] that, by and large, tends to get results for most companies that you could recommend?

Andrea Johnson: Sure. I'm just going to go with the disc one, even though we talked about core values. If you go to my website and it's theintentionaloptimist. com and you'd put forward slash cheat as in cheat sheet, that will give you a downloadable cheat sheet with, like I said, that crosswalk that will help you to start pointing out In your team members, oh, this person does this behavior, I bet they're a D.

This person does this, they're an I. And included in that is two pages worth of, even for your children, because discs start showing up very young. And so it's a really great. Cheat sheet that will get you started between now and your next meeting. I had one client who took DISC and she was a bank manager and she felt like every time she went in to a meeting with her superiors, she just couldn't get her voice heard and she was a very high S, which meant she was very compliant and very steady.

And she said as soon as she figured that out, she learned how to make a list that she could take in there and say, We went with the script. It's time for me to share my thoughts. [00:41:00] And she said she started sharing her thoughts in these meetings with her superiors and her role within that company, within that bank actually changed.

And so if that's something that you want, that you can take into your next meeting, Do that disc cheat sheet. It's forward slash or back, whatever the slash is, cheat. but if you want something, if you want to get started on Core Values, right above my head on my website is a button that says free Core Values exercise, and that's a one pager that'll get you started to see, do I need help?

in my core values? Or is this something that some people are pretty good at honoring them? most of us are not. And that'll give you a start in that direction. So depending on, because we've talked about two major pieces of my work here, touched

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, there is so much there, and again, Deep Wealth Nation, go to the show notes, it's all a point and click, there's nothing to remember, it's all there for you. There are some incredible resources that Andrea is putting out there, from her podcast to her coaching program to the beta program that she's putting together, it's all there in the show notes, it doesn't get any easier.

And Andrea, before we go into wrap up, let me ask you this. I know there's so many [00:42:00] questions that I didn't ask that I would have loved to ask, but is there a particular question I haven't asked that you'd like to bring to the forefront, or is there a topic that we haven't covered, or even a message that you'd like to get out to Deep Wealth Nation?

Andrea Johnson: on it a little bit, but this idea of assumptions, beliefs, and conditionings, I call them my ABCs. And I think when I was a kid and all do this, we hit a point in our lives where we start complying with society around us and trying to fit in. Well, most of us do. A lot of people, some people are really good just being themselves all the time.

My main message is, especially to women, but even to men, it's please think for yourself. Critical thinking skills are critical. Literally driven out of us in school and we are taught to regurgitate everything back. So if you would take the time to think for yourself and say I'm taking in all this information from however many sides or only one side, however, you're doing it, whatever it's for business, for life for happiness and health and welfare or whatever, be willing to think for yourself and when you start doing that you'll start noticing some of that conditioning that you [00:43:00] have and that will make big change.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, and I don't know about me, you can say Jeffrey, on base, off base, following and marching to our own drum, as the saying goes. Being our own thinker, doing our own thing, it seems to me, has gotten so much harder today, especially because of social media, where we're getting one snapshot that a person has chosen, they've curated, out of who knows how many thousands or tens of thousands, and wow, everyone's life looks so amazing, look what they're doing, maybe I should be doing that to get some of what they have.

When we're not really seeing the full picture of what's going on and, well, yeah, sure, they're having some challenging times just like I am, or it's not as great as perhaps they're portraying it is. Before we go into the wrap up mode, any thoughts on social media and what we're talking about here in terms of really being our own person, listening to ourselves, following our own path?

Andrea Johnson: Yeah, I actually, I echo that. I have tried to follow all the gurus that say, do this mini Instagram post or do this kind of this, that, and the other, and I just have found that, my business thrives when I'm paying attention to [00:44:00] relationships.

And as long as we can look at how we're doing social media as a relationship, we're going to do better. And we're going to be able to stay true to ourselves better. And back to the idea of being unique and thinking for yourselves I love to tell people, it's not what you do, and this goes to social media as well, that makes you an impactful leader.

It's who you are. Who you are is enough. Who you are needs to be celebrated. It's not what you do that makes you an impactful leader. It's who you are. That is my main message to people and that's what I help people do every day.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So terrific in terms of what Sarah's actually a perfect segue into the wrap up mode. And Andrea, on the Deep Wealth Podcast, it's our tradition where I have both the privilege and the honor to ask the same question to every guest, and it's a really fun question. Let me set this up for you. When you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time.

So here's the fun part. Imagine now it's tomorrow morning, you're looking outside your window, and there it is, the DeLorean car, it's curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on [00:45:00] in, which you do. You're now going to go back to any point in your life. Andrea, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life wisdom, or life lessons, or, hey Andrea, do this but don't do that, what would that sound like?

Andrea Johnson: I probably would go back ugly enough to like 1984 or 1983. I graduated from high school in 1984, 83, 84, those were, I think, the years, my junior and senior year of high school, for girls especially. It was just a really pivotal period of time where I made choices that put me on a path that took me 30 years to get out of, and made choices to, I joined a sorority in college, I did all these things, and what I would love to say to myself is, Who you are is enough.

Who you are is good. Your opinions are good. Your thoughts are good. Your loudness is good. Your talkativeness is good. All of that is good. And we're going to figure out how to use it for you. Don't put it in a box. Don't do that. And putting things in a box means that eventually, [00:46:00] just like a good old fashioned pressure cooker, the lid's going to pop off every so often.

And when it does, damage is done. Not to just me, but to other people. So if Doc is outside my door and I'm hopping in and the smoke comes out when the DeLorean doors go up, I'm going to hop in. I'm going to go back to like 83 or 84 and just say, hey girl, you are plenty enough Don't listen and don't try to be like everybody else.

It's okay to be a loner.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Such powerful advice and I can certainly relate to that and that resonates. Deep Wealth Nation, some terrific advice. Are you really giving up your power, giving up your unique you to other people just because maybe you've been shamed that way or you've been in the wrong way? Trains to be able to do that.

Well, here's an opportunity to really, to rethink that and rejig things up, and so, Andrea, before we wrap up, I know we have all your websites and that resources, all that is in the show notes, but if someone does have a question, they want to speak with you, perhaps even want to become a client and learn more about what you can do for them, for their company, where would be the best place online for someone to reach you?[00:47:00] 

Andrea Johnson: Sure. My website, TheIntentionalOptimist. com, has a contact sheet. I actually answer DMs on both Instagram and LinkedIn, but tell me that you heard me here on the Deep Wealth Podcast, because that way I'll know that you're not Spamming me. I'll know that you really listened. And I respond to them all and we can just set something up.

I'm a little old school in my scheduling and I just, I love to schedule all those things myself. And I love to, like I said, build relationships. So even if it's something that you have a question where maybe the relationship will become a client a year or two down the road, that's cool. I'm good with that.

I believe that we invest in our clients before we actually get money from them.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific, Deep Wealth Nation. It doesn't get any easier. It's in the show notes. It's a point and click. It's all there for you. Well, Andrea, congratulations. This is a wrap. It's official. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe.

Thank you so much.

Andrea Johnson: Thank you. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

[00:48:00] Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. 

Thank you so [00:50:00] much. 

God bless.