TLDR;
What makes a leader finally decide it’s time to change?
Hey there! This is Michael Hunter from Uncommon Teams, and welcome to another episode of The Uncommon Leadership Podcast, where I have real, unfiltered conversations with successful leaders about their journeys—the highs, the lows, and the moments that forced a change.
Here, we go beyond the business talks and dive into the human side of leadership, exploring the crossroads and points that redefine success.
In this episode, I’m in conversation with Chad Brown, a business owner and leadership coach, who opens up about a time in his life when he was forced to confront the opportunity cost of his career.
Brown also reveals the one mindset shift that saved his life and his family—making every decision based on the future he wanted to create, not on the instant gratification of the moment.
Later, we also uncover why leadership is a lifelong practice, and how you can find joy in the constant challenges and uncertainty of business.
I truly feel like this conversation is a wake-up call for every leader on the brink of burnout.
Watch the full episode to uncover the lessons you need to hear.
- A sneak peek of our conversation…
- How Professional success can be a lie if it’s driven by a need for external validation rather than a genuine purpose.
- A leader must make decisions based on the future they want to create, not on what is most urgent or loudest in the present.
- Leadership is a practice, a lifelong process of attempting, discovering, and refining—it’s not something you can master or achieve.
- Self-leadership trumps everything. You cannot effectively lead a team until you have done the work to lead yourself well.
- The key to navigating a world of constant change is to change your relationship with uncertainty and find joy in the next challenge, rather than trying to escape it.
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About the Speakers
Chad Brown
Coach | Cornerman to Business Owners and Founders | Head of Talent Development @LeadSimple |
CEO & Owner @ Shade Tree Films | Associate Partner @Take New Ground
As a coach and cornerman for business owners and founders, Chad Brown thrives in conversations with the restless and relentless. Drawing on his experience as a founder and entrepreneur, he is intimately connected to the unique challenges of those pursuing something bigger than themselves in business and relationships.
Chad’s philosophy is rooted in the belief that there is reward in discomfort, and he sees himself as a living invitation into the work that produces change, growth, and vitality.
Ways to get in touch with Chad Brown
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-brown-founder-freedom/
Website:
https://www.founder-freedom.com/
Email: chad@chadlbrown.com
Michael Hunter
Founder @Uncommon Change | Interlocutor / Curious Host @UncommonLeadership Interview Series | Author | Change & Innovation Partner
Michael Hunter partners with top tech leadership teams across six continents to create extraordinary cultures. With 35 years of experience at companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Tableau, he helps leaders sustain meaningful change. Michael believes that only by integrating mind, heart, body, spirit, and intuition can leaders truly navigate change safely and build a lasting legacy of impact + human-centered leadership.
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Presented By: UncommonChange
Transcript:
Michael Hunter
Whether you want more innovation, more easily, you’re feeling burnt out or overwhelmed, or you simply know that something isn’t quite the way you know it can be. You are not alone. I hear the same from leaders every day. On Uncommon Leadership, we explore aligning personal fulfillment with business success, creating authentic teams, and cultivating the resilience, adaptability, and ease necessary to move beyond simply surviving today’s challenges into thriving. I’m Michael Hunter with Uncommon Teams, and today we’ll uncover fresh insights into what it means to lead in today’s world. And joining me today is Chad Brown.
Chad is a scaling strategist and coach. He founded a media production studio called Shade Tree Films in 2008 that services global companies such as Volkswagen, Target, and Pixar Animation Studios. This is where his love and passion for leadership and business was developed. He sold that company in 2021. Over the last seven years, he has trained and developed creative entrepreneurs who want to increase their profit and work less. When he is not helping others create more freedom in their business, you’ll find or not be able to find Chad on a wild adventure in the mountains with his family. He resides at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Orem, Utah with his wife Katie and three children, Addison, Kenya, and Milo. Welcome, Chad.
Chad Brown
Thanks for having me, Michael. I’m excited for this conversation.
Michael
I’m glad you came in from the wilderness for it.
Chad
That’s right.
Michael
When did you first recognize that integrating your whole selves, bringing that into everything that you do, might be a valuable approach?
Chad
My journey, my story, is one of failure. Everything, every meaningful lesson I’ve learned is from some sort of failure, and certainly failed flat and fell flat on my face in this aspect, when you asked the question, what it reminds me of is the time that I, you mentioned I started my film studio, Shade Tree films. And when we started that studio, I say we, ’cause I had a 50-50 business partner when we kicked it off, when we started that studio. There was a beautiful, magic, and lucky moment that we were in, where equipment was really accessible and large brands were starting to look at smaller creators to help them create content, which is really cool because up to that point it had all been big production, big bills, you know, and it was really hard to get into. And then all of a sudden, with the advent of social media and the popularization of video, specifically on Facebook. Facebook is one of the first ones to really start utilizing video advertising, we got this crazy opportunity to start working with brands that we only could dream of working with really quickly within about two and a half years of starting our business. So we just, it was like, what’s the saying is that, success is when luck meets preparation, something like that, and that’s absolutely what happened to us. I think the luck was probably bigger than the preparation, but, we were along for the ride and in that moment, in that time rather, I allowed that business to completely take over my life.
We quickly grew, as I mentioned, we started adding cinematographers and editors. We leased a big space for our studio so that we could do in-house production, and there was a lot going on and. It was probably my fourth or fifth business starting, and it was the first one that was actually starting to see some success, quote unquote success.
If people are listening to this, they can’t see me, like I’m doing the air quote success, because as we could get into that definition is pliable, but, monetarily and in the market, we really started to see some success, quickly. And I let it, like I mentioned earlier, I let it completely take over my life. And to the point where we were traveling over 300 days out of the year because we wouldn’t turn down any contracts that came our way and all of them were production on location. So, we were traveling all over the world to produce these videos. Meanwhile, I had my wife and two daughters who were one and four at the time, were in a small apartment in Southern California and essentially my wife was a single mom.
And, I saw my kids rarely, I missed birthday parties, soccer games, momentous occasions, kindergarten, graduations, you name it, I missed it. And it was all under the guise, all under the lie that I told myself, which was, it was all for them. And. That’s a pretty relatable lie I think that people can, recognize in themselves.
I didn’t know it at the time. I actually didn’t know it until I hired a business coach myself to help me turn this around. But what I realize now, looking back on that moment of time, looking back at that period of time, is that I was unwilling to integrate my life as a whole into the work that I was doing.
I separated the two. There was work and then there was family and home. And what I made up was that home and family needed to be sacrificed for now to build something really big and really successful so that later on we could have time together as a family and at home. And the problem with that is, is that you never turn the corner.
At least I didn’t. There’s always another thing to go after in business. There’s always another level, another client, another contract, and we chased that for a good three years. And towards the end of that three years, I was on the brink of losing the things that I was, that were most important to me, my marriage, my relationship with my kids, and I was burnt out.
I was exhausted. And all of this was contributing to my very poor leadership. We had high turnover in the studio. We couldn’t keep good talent, and there were often, there were often blowups on set where, you know, we, even a couple of times, some of our best team members left in the middle of a production ’cause they couldn’t take the pressure and the expectations and then not being recognized for the work that they were doing.
It was a mess. And that moment is when I said, I don’t, this isn’t working. I’m not proud of the father that I’ve become. I’m not proud of the husband that I’ve become. I am not proud of the leader that I am of this business and something has to change and if it doesn’t change quick, I’m gonna walk away.
It was to that point and that reality sunk in and I talked with my business partner and he was on the same page. We both realized, man, something’s gotta change, but we didn’t know how to change it. We didn’t know another way. And so that’s when we started exercising resources, talking to people that were in our network and starting to figure out how do we run this thing in a sustainable way that it can both be successful, make the difference in the market that we wanna make, continue to do our art and live life with our families, the way that we wanna live life with our families.
And that was the moment that we decided to hire a business coach. And the business coach, I thought they would come in, I thought he would come in and he would like, help us build this system or, you know, structure our time or, you know, any of that sort of stuff. And that stuff did happen.
That stuff was part of it. It was valuable, but it wasn’t the most valuable part of it. Probably the most valuable moment in that experience was the second call we had with the coach and, I said something that I always say, which is, I’m a family man. Family is the most important thing to me.
And he looked at me and he said, Chad, you’re lying. You’re lying to yourself. And until you stop lying to yourself, I can’t help you. And I was like, I was offended at first. I was like, oh, hold on. Okay, I’m paying you. Let’s slow down here. And then it struck me. It was like, yeah, I am lying to myself because the reality he showed me, that the reality that I had in life, in my business and with my family, was not consistent with what I was saying, and that’s a lie.
If it wasn’t a lie, I would create what I say is most important to me. And then over the next four years, he really helped us formulate the business. He really helped us become the leaders that we were proud to be. Meanwhile, investing in our families the way that we wanted to invest in them. It was an incredible transformation.
And, that’s the moment that I realized all of this is integrated. There’s not containers. There’s not separation. And when one isn’t healthy, the other isn’t healthy. And that’s the moment. I mean that when you ask your question, that is the time of my life that I think of, wow, that’s when I discovered that.
Michael
That’s so exactly what I hear all the time.
It’s one thing that we think we’re doing for the good of all these other things, and it becomes the only thing and all these other things that we tell ourselves we’re doing this in service of, we forget about that are left along, that are dropped on the floor.
We still have the phantom them that we’re carrying around with us. So we don’t allow ourselves to realize that the phantom, all of those things, is not exactly the same as the real, all of those things.
Chad
Yeah, and it’s haunting, right? I mean, I knew in the back of my mind what was going on with my family when I was in this phase of life, and I ignored it.
I explained it away. I convinced myself that this is the way that it had to be in order to do something successful. I mean, we’ve gotta put bread on the table, you know. What my kids wanna do, play sports and go to Disneyland and all of that sort of stuff. And so this is how, the way that it has to be.
And what’s interesting about that, Michael, is that at times, often, my family actually showed up as a hindrance to my performance at work, when they had a need or a desire or something. I’m not proud to say that, and I don’t say it lightly, but I’m just being very honest, is that pretty soon those things that are so important to us can start to look like a burden rather than something that supports or, enriches the other thing.
Michael
Yes. Even to the point where I worked for a long time with a leader who would go from meeting to meeting, scheduled meetings, ad hoc meetings, hallway meetings. So it’d be like six hours he had meetings. He hadn’t had anything to drink, hadn’t been to the restroom, which he needed to do for four of those in six hours.
Because he was always so interested in that next meeting. So, his validation from talking with that next person, helping them solve their problem. He left his body almost literally on the wayside falling behind.
What was it that tipped the needle for you there, that you went from, this is just the way things are to all of a sudden, no, this isn’t gonna work, I can’t do this another day?
Chad
Yeah. There were a few things. My kids would, at least my older daughter, would cry every time I was leaving ’cause she knew it, it would, you know, she didn’t know when I would be back. I mean, I could tell her, but a 4-year-old mind, and you know, understanding all of that felt like forever for her to be, for me to be home in 5, 6, 7 days.
So that became increasingly hard to do. It hadn’t got to the point where we were missing deadlines and stuff like that in, in sense of, in the sense of my leadership, but I could see that road. One of my gifts is that I’m really good at projecting the road that we’re on, and I could see that the road that we were on, in the way that we were leading the business was not gonna be good.
If we kept taking these contracts and having the same issues we were having with our team, we were gonna find ourselves in a really bad situation. And finally just feeling like, and lastly I would say feeling like I just didn’t know my wife anymore. Like we weren’t partners, we were roommates, acquaintances.
You know, when we were together, it was to-do lists and logistics, and, you know, all of that sort of stuff. We weren’t dating, we weren’t taking opportunities to just connect, and I was really missing that. I was starving for it. I didn’t recognize that right at first, but then that’s, as I started thinking about it, when you’re on the road, you have so much time to think. And, you know, on airplane rides, sitting at airports and all of that sort of stuff, I think at one moment I thought, wow, this isn’t how I imagined my marriage to be. And I think that was like opening the Pandora’s box of like, okay, what’s going on here?
Why are we willing to sacrifice that for the business? So it was a lot of things.
Michael
What was it that made it, that a hundred and first time your daughter cried when you left, that hundred and first time that you realized every time you were talking with your wife, it was just logistics and not love? That the hundred first time that you looked forward and said, oh, this isn’t sustainable.
Is it gonna be sustainable for much longer? What was it that hundred and first time that made it the time that made you switch?
Chad
I’m a very decisive person. Once I recognize, or once I’m pretty sure that’s the decision that I’m gonna make, I don’t waste any time. I don’t waste a lot of time thinking about it or planning it out.
Sometimes that’s to my benefit. It’s certainly been to my benefit in times starting that business that was to my benefit. Soon as I saw the opportunity, boom. I was on it. And so when I realize something isn’t working or I want something new, I just decide and I go after it. A lot of times when I tell this story, me and my business partner, we put six, when we made the realization, we put six months on it.
Literally, we put it on the calendar. If we don’t have this figured out or we don’t see light at the end of the tunnel figuring this out, in the end of the next six months, we’ll hang closed on the door and we will walk away. And I’ve just always been a decisive person in that way, when I see what I want, I go get it.
And so, it was just the natural next step for me. Once I recognized, once I saw the light, once I saw the lie, right, that my coach Adrian showed me. Once I saw that, it wasn’t even a choice at that point. It was like, okay, this is what has to happen.
Michael
What was it that crystallized all that into focus for you? That all these feelings that had been sort of, in the background, shifting around, suddenly crystallized, you’re like, oh, there’s a decision to make and this is what I’m gonna make.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah. It was future pacing. Like I talked about seeing that road that it was going down, I was headed toward divorce. I was headed towards a terrible relationship with my kids.
I was headed towards, overwhelm, more overwhelm, all of that sort of stuff. So if as I future pace that those decisions, I realized that wasn’t the future I was interested in, and so a course needed to be changed. And so to crystallize it or to actually bring it to the now, which I realized is, every decision I make today has a future.
Every decision I make today has a future. So, if I make my decisions based on the future that I want, then I can actually create that. But if I make the decisions based on what’s most urgent now, or who’s the loudest or what? You talked about validation earlier, and I think this is a really important point for me to get into this conversation, which is I also came to the realization that all of what I was doing wasn’t for my family.
It was for my ego. I was, when I was at work, A, I was, I’m really good at what I do, and people would recognize me for that. We started speaking from stages, at industry conferences and you know, when we would deliver a product, they were over the moon about it. And so, all of that validation and ego food was what I was after.
And so, realizing that I was making the decisions based off of that short term instant gratification of feeling really good about myself, was what was leading us down that road. So, I could take it to the, in that context, I could take it to the now and say, if you make this next decision based on what your ego wants, you’re gonna continue to have the future that you have. You’re gonna continue to have more of what you have now. But if you make a different decision, a different metric, which to measure your decisions off of, you can change it.
Michael
So was it that for a while, maybe a long time, some parts of you were saying, Hey Chad, this is not working so well. And you were, your ego was so excited about all the validation was getting that it persuaded you to just ignore those voices. And as you projected forward, that drop dead point where your wife and family and all the things that you really said you were there for would disappear.
We’re still a little bit out of focus, and then all of a sudden there was one day where those voices got loud enough that it, they were competing, if not yet, overwhelming your ego. And at the same time, the distance at which you were focusing, you were now looking over that cliff where everything you cared about fell away.
Chad
Yeah it’s, and they’re both always present. Meaning, it’s not like I stand in this call with you today, Michael, and like, oh yeah, I don’t have any temptations to follow my ego desires now. I’ve got it made. I’ve got it figured out. I know. No, that’s not it at all. And in fact, I’m consistently paying attention.
I’m consistently, sometimes not paying attention and reminded by my wife, Hey, what are we focusing on right now? Well, where are you making this decision from? But it was me. I mean, we opened that conversation through this experience, she now has the right and the courage to speak in and say, I don’t know that you’re making the right decision for what you say we want and what we say we want together.
And that’s been incredible. But they’re always both present and it’s consistently a decision to be made.
Michael
Yes, there’s always our full counsel, heart, mind, body, spirit, ego, other sources of influence and guidance that we have, and they’re always there offering to help us. And sometimes we can see, hear, perceive all of them more or less equally, or at least actually acknowledge each of them. At other times, one or more of them are harder to connect with, or are overwhelming the others. And it’s just like, yeah, over the course of a day, you’re gonna get hungry, you’re gonna get tired, kinda get thirsty, and your breathing sometimes it’ll be smooth and easy and deep and full. Other times it’ll be short and shallow and all these other combinations. It’s a part of the bio rhythm of being human.
Chad
Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. And part of that is, I really love a lot of the work of Carl Young and he talks about the shadow self, and the shadow self, if we resist it, if we try to pretend like it doesn’t exist, or we moralize it as bad or wrong or broken, what we resist persists. So if I’m constantly fighting against that and making up stories about who I am, because I have this inclination to feed the ego, to just go, I mean, I can work, man.
I could work eight, I’m not saying I wouldn’t burn out, but I could work long hours, lots of projects. It’s just part of me. I can do it. And if I resist that. If I tell myself, if the internal dialogue is that I’m wrong, bad, or broken because of that desire or because of that inclination, if I resist that, it will persist and it will actually get stronger and I’ll feel more torn.
And Carl Young talks about embracing the shadow self. It is part of you. It informs your experience. You don’t have to make decisions from it, but you do need to love it in order for it to not control the way that you show up day to day. I think about that a lot and now it’s a practice of saying, well that’s, that is part of me.
I love that part of me. That can be really beneficial at times, especially on sprints or stretches or, you know, if I’ve made the agreement with my family, which I now do, I now practice that all the time is when there are sprints, when there are moments of something that needs my attention more than what we’ve agreed upon, I go negotiate it with them.
And now I can love my whole self. I can appreciate my whole self rather than living in a resistance against part of myself that I, you know, have caused trouble in the past.
Michael
Yeah. Part of my shadow side is my perfection monster, which will be for a long time, and as I came to love it more and more, I decided I wanted a way to personify it and a way to simplify both its terror and the love I have it for it now, and then I found this.
Which to me is the perfect combination of that. And it’s kind of terrorizing and also adorable and cute and, super cuddly, at least to me. Other people tell me it’s the most scary thing ever, and it’s the opposite of all those things, which is also perfect because what is going to best help me inhabit my true self and find a balance between all those sometimes conflicting parts and sources of guidance is different, at least in part from what’s gonna help you do that. It’s gonna help your wife do that. It’s gonna help every individual, if you and my clients do that, and in some cases what you need and what I need will be completely opposite.
Chad
That’s right.
Michael
And the more that we can acknowledge what we need, then accept that if you need something different than what I need, that isn’t A, isn’t something that’s wrong with me or wrong with you, just different things. We need different things. And then spread that out to everyone we interact with becomes way easier to have those conversations that you and your wife and, your business partner eventually managed to have on, this is what I need to show up and be in this relationship with my true self. Help me understand what you need to do that, and let’s find a way that we each get what we need and we can work together.
Chad
It is such an essential part of leadership when I think about what I did so wrong in my first few years of leadership on our team is that I expected everybody to value the same things that I valued. And if they didn’t, something’s wrong with them. Instead of, you know, taking the time to get to know them as human beings and what it is that’s actually important to them.
Why they are doing this, not why I’m doing this, and then pasting it all over them. And that is certainly, one of the reasons that so many of the people that worked for me, didn’t feel appreciated and didn’t feel seen, and ultimately didn’t see a future on our team for themselves because I wanted them to value what I valued.
I wanted them to behave the way I behaved. And, which ultimately is, you know, as I can look back on it, and, it only makes sense is that if that were true, if everybody did value what I valued and behaved how I behaved, it would be a really terrible company and product offering because there would be no multiple perspectives and there would be no interest in working with each other.
Michael
Yes. So now how are you building these cultures where everyone feels safe and empowered to bring everything that they are into everything that they do and have those conversations about how that doesn’t work with each other, and how to make that work for everyone?
Chad
It’s an interesting question. I don’t put a lot of attention to safety. Safety is an interesting term, an idea. I don’t, it’s arguable that we’re, we may never be safe. I don’t know. I don’t know that or not. I know there’s emotional safety. I know. You know, I’m interested in leading a team of courage and the definition that I use for courage is making bold decisions and action even in the face of uncertainty.
And uncertainty can feel like not being safe. But when we take courage, we can still step forward. We can still take the action, we can still ask the question, we can still give the feedback, even though what’s on the other end might not be, might not feel safe. And I don’t use that as an excuse to not treat people well and to make sure that they know that I care about them.
But I use that because I think if we’re scaling and we’re growing, we’re constantly gonna be coming up against things that look like threats consistently. We have to because that’s how growth happens. So, I wanna focus with both myself and my team is that we’re a group of courageous human beings that support each other.
And the other part of that is, if I successfully bleed that into my culture, and they do, my team does, they will give me feedback that I don’t want to hear sometimes. They’ll be willing to do that because we value courage. We value the ability to stand in a commitment with each other, not be swayed by, personality or concern for being disliked or any of that sort of stuff.
And I’ve just found that makes for a much more innovative and exciting, and real experience rather than trying to manage how everybody feels. And so, the first step to that is me being willing to be courageous myself. That’s, you know, that’s my journey is, I could encapsulate my journey in one concept, which is, I can’t lead others well, until I’m leading myself well. It’s impossible. And so it’s, as I continue to refine myself, then that comes out of me with my team and with my clients and that calls them into another level of refinement just by me working on myself. That’s it. So that means being willing to hear feedback that’s hard to hear.
That means creating habits that are producing the future that I say I want. That means admitting when I’m wrong. That means, so many things.
Michael
Yes. This is one reason that I always start with a leader and not the team because, until a leader is leading themselves well, no one else around them is, it’s so much more challenging for everyone else around them to lead themselves as well, and to help the team lead itself.
And I find exactly the same as you said that no one else has to know this is going on. Even if the leader doesn’t tell anyone the work that they’re doing, the change that they’re making, everyone else is gonna up their game as well and start leading themselves a little more, at least also, just from the ripple effect and osmosis and that change infecting everyone else.
Chad
They’ll either, I would say, they’ll either start making the change themselves or they’ll get out because, when you raise the bar, it’s really uncomfortable to be on a team, in a company, in a relationship like this is, I see this a lot too. You know, as we’ve, as I’ve grown older and, a lot of my peers are starting to have marriages that are 20 years, 25 years.
I’ll notice that if one partner decides to really up the bar, either that the other partner follows suit and jumps in and gets on board and, ups the bar for themselves, or it doesn’t work anymore. Because it’s incredibly uncomfortable to be a part of a relationship where people are leading themselves well, making challenging decisions, taking courage and just you’re not. And so when, I consult with, a leader or leadership team and they feel like they don’t have A players on their team.
I just tell ’em, look, start working on yourself. Work on yourself, like what you were saying. Start working on yourself. Make the changes that need to be made, lead yourself well, and those who aren’t up for the gig will start to filter themselves out.
Which is no problem. That’s natural. That’s a natural growth, process. But it’s always fun for them to watch that happen. And it’s always a bit surprising too, that, you know, I’m always surprised and they’re usually surprised by the ones that do actually step up once there’s meaningful leadership there.
The one who looked like a C player or a D player is now showing up like an A player and you’re wondering where was this person the whole time? And in reality the invitation just wasn’t there.
Michael
And the people who leave, because they no longer sit, it’s not necessarily that they’re not also leveling themselves up, it’s is that their level up becomes not a good fit with your leveling up. It’s like, if we all go through, if you know the team has been eating, just mush this is what the team does. They eat mush and then all of a sudden the leaders realizes, oh my gosh, I just really love Italian food. And so then Italian food and foods kind of along that spectrum start being brought into the team all the time.
Some people just aren’t gonna go for Italian food. Now, they may also be realizing, you know what? Mush isn’t the most nourishing for me either. I love Japanese food or seafood, or I just really love mush. That’s really what nourishes me the best. And so they can all go find other communities that love seafood or mush or whatever is nourishing to them. And so they’re leveling up because now they’re doing this more consciously and intentionally just doesn’t match the direction that you’re not going.
Chad
That’s right. I, as you say, that, I would totally agree. In fact them choosing to leave, and find something new is actually an indication of leveling up for them.
Right? At least that’s the way that I see it because, there’s this opportunity for them to like realize, Oh, this isn’t where I want to be. That’s why I always coach the leaders that I’m working with. I always coach ’em, Hey, we celebrate people leaving. If they’re leaving for the, you know, if it not, if that’s like because it’s toxic and you know, all of that sort of stuff.
But if those who just decide this journey is not the right journey for them, we celebrate that. That means two things. They’re gonna find the journey that is right for them, and you’re gonna have somebody in that’s gonna take their place that this is the journey they want.
Michael
Yes.
Chad
And so we love, I love that transformation, that shift for leaders has always been a really powerful one in my work with them because now they can celebrate the natural movement of a team.
Michael
Yes. And that leveling up doesn’t have to mean I’m a hundred percent behind what the direction you’re going. Or I’m a hundred percent not behind the direction you’re going and I’m gonna go somewhere else. It might also be, direction you’re going is fine. It doesn’t really give me sparkles and rainbows and it doesn’t really drag me down either.
It’s a neutral thing for me. So I’m happy to continue going this direction. For all the eating Italian food all the time, that’s fine. I don’t mind it.
And so while, again, it’s the intentionality and the consciousness of that choice, that to me indicates the leveling up, not the direction that someone is going and how that aligns or, with the direction that I’m going.
Yeah.
I see how this is all great. For each of the leader and all the individuals on the team, how does this help create value for the business?
Chad
Oh man, that’s a big question. Well, the business benefits most from my perspective, when everybody wants to be in it and wants to row in the same direction. I’ve seen plenty of businesses where they’re scattered, they’re rowing different directions, they’re not, you know, a good percentage of the team doesn’t know if this is where they want to be.
They don’t know if they have a future in it. They’re not loving, the product or, you know, any millions of things could be the reason why they’re not in it fully. And it’s always detrimental to the business. It’s always a, it’s always a cost. There’s a cost time and monetarily. In all of those situations, I can say the business was suffering in some way or another because people weren’t there because they wanted to be there. They were there because it was a paycheck until something better came along, or, they were feeling distrust in their team or with their leadership or, you know, whatever. I mean, I just, I don’t see any way that it doesn’t affect the efficacy of the business in the marketplace.
In fact, I think it’s probably the primary indicator or driver for success in the marketplace. Like, you know, when we talked about personal life and business, you can’t separate the two. You can’t separate, here’s our business over here and here’s our people. That’s just, take away the people, there is no business. So, what the people are doing and how they’re relating to the work that they’re doing is gonna determine the success of the business. And, so I can’t, I’m honestly sitting here trying to think of a way it doesn’t impact the success of the business.
Michael
How do you help people find their way through all the change, uncertainty, and overwhelm. It seems to be everything these days?
Chad
This comes back, not to be repetitive, but I think it’s worth coming back to. This is the building a culture of courage is what I really aim at, both for myself and with my clients. There’s not the uncertainties today are different than a year ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. But it’s not like there wasn’t uncertainties then.
Uncertainty is a feature, not a bug of this experience. And so, I don’t put a lot of attention and credence on, like, if there’s uncertainty or the uncertainties that we have today are uniquely challenging or anything. Like, I just don’t, I don’t fall into that camp. I just say, uncertainty is the game.
That’s what we’re here to play. You can’t escape it, by the way. You can pretend like you’re escaping it, but you can’t escape it. And so really the question is, how do you wanna play the game of uncertainty? Do you want to play it scared? Do you wanna play it timid? Those are, and those are fine, I’m not naming those as like bad, but you know, those are, those will produce a certain product and a certain output. Or do you wanna play it courageous? Do you wanna play it curious? Do you wanna play it lightheartedly? You know, and that, I know for me personally, that was one of the biggest shifts that I made in the process of my leadership journey and coaching, and still making, is that even in the trials, even in the uncertainties, I can do it playfully, I can have fun with it. There’s a practice that I invite my clients into, and the name of the practice is ‘for the rest of my life’. ‘For the rest of my life’ because one of the traps that we as humans fall into, that I’ve observed that I fall into, is pretending that as soon as I solve this problem, everything’s gonna be okay.
As soon as we hit this revenue hurdle, as soon as we hire this C-suite member, as soon, you know, you name it, I’ve heard it in my work. As soon as we do this, everything’s gonna just really be great and gravy, and I just say, you know what you’re gonna be solving, as long as you want to continue to engage in this thing, you’re gonna be solving challenges for the rest of your life.
You’ll be dealing with uncertainty for the rest of your life. If you can actually internalize that, like, Oh, this is the game we’re playing. It’s like Simon Sinek, you know, the infinite game. The purpose of the game, the purpose of playing the game is to continue to play the game. And how do you wanna play it?
Because it’s not going anywhere. And so, to me it’s not about the uncertainties. It’s like, how do you want to play? How do you wanna show up? And you can choose, I believe you could choose that. I mean, we each have our own personalities and our challenges, and those personalities and, sure, we’re unique, and our needs. You started the conversation by talking about different needs that people have, and that’s true. And there’s an invitation for us to play this thing the way that we wanna play it.
Michael
I like that it’s transforming our fears, our roadblocks, the things that are worrying us, from a thing that I must get past or I’m no good. And then once I’m past it, everything is unicorns and rainbows into part of the landscape. It’s like I can get past, I can get past this particular tree and the next particular tree, and the next particular tree.
There’s always gonna be trees. Even if I’m in the middle of the Sahara Desert, there’s a tree to get past at some point. And if I can turn it from, I just have to get past all the trees too. There’s just always trees. Let me find a way to make peace with there always being trees.
Maybe there’s a way to enjoy it or play games with them or approach them courageously or timidly or however I want to be in the world to just say, it’s all good. There’s no better, worse here, then I can stop focusing on Man, another tree to, Hey, there’s another tree and another rock, another stone, another cloud, and it’s just, there’s all these things that I can start playing with and interacting with creatively, and enjoying the process rather than fearing it.
Chad
Yeah. You mentioned in my bio, you mentioned my love for the outdoors, and this is an analogy that I use a lot because it’s a really great analogy. I love to hike. My wife and I love to hike, and we have always taken our children hiking from the time they were ankle biters to now, we still go hiking together. And it’s interesting, especially as a parent, to observe how different people take in the experience and play the experience of hiking. Because if you think about hiking, it’s kind of silly because what you’re doing is just putting challenge after challenge in front of yourself.
Right. It’s like this steep hill, this rock face you gotta scale. This river you gotta cross. This tree stump, you gotta get over. This final ascent to the peak you’ve gotta, you know, and all. And for some reason, for people who choose it, it’s incredibly enjoyable, and then for other people, it’s their worst nightmare because it just looks like challenge after challenge after challenge.
And why the hell am I doing this? Doesn’t make any sense. And the difference from my perspective, the difference is the way you relate to it. Because I can go on a hike, you know, I can go on a 18-mile hike that does some amount of elevation. And the whole time, each challenge that I’m faced with, I can go, and this is what I usually do, is like, oh my gosh, look how fun this is.
We’ve gotta figure out how to cross this river. Oh my gosh, look how fun this is. We gotta figure out how to get over this tree that fell from last season that wasn’t here before. You know? And I think it’s the same thing. It’s like, if we’re going through life and business, getting hit by every challenge and thinking that once we get over that challenge, then it will just be smooth sailing.
It’s, you’re gonna just live a life of contention and resistance to your business and the people in your business. And, you know, there’s an opportunity, I think, for anybody, to change the way they relate to it and find joy in the next challenge.
Michael
For people who the next challenge is they wanna contact you and learn more about your approach to helping them lead with courage and find joy in their next challenge, what’s the best way for them to contact you?
Chad
A great place is LinkedIn. Send me a message on LinkedIn Connect to connect with me there.
You can also go to my website, founder-freedom.com. Both of those are great places to reach out to me or reach out to me directly, chad@chadlbrown.com is a great way too. That’s my email.
Michael
Great. And I’ll have those links in our show notes, and on your website, you have a masterclass for people?
Chad
I do.
Yeah. It’s a how to scale your Business masterclass. It’s an introduction to the work that I do with mostly creative business owners, meaning filmmakers, photographers, but the principles that are taught in the masterclass are absolutely applicable to anybody looking to scale. And it’s really around scale strategy.
So, I offer that for free on my website. I think you could also link to that as well directly so people could go grab that free gift for your listeners, but it’s, it’s short. It’s to the point. and it’s a lot of years of my experience of figuring out what does it take to scale a business in a way that’s both meaningful and that you can create the life that you want.
Michael
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll have that in notes as well. Thank you for that. What, Chad, what would you like to leave our audience with today?
Chad
As I reflect on the conversation, the most meaningful thing that is, I dunno, about the most meaningful thing. A very meaningful thing for me in my life has been to realize that I am in this for the long haul. Life in general is a journey, an opportunity for me to learn and to discover new things about myself, overcome challenges, and I think the principle of practice has been the most, one of the most transformative perspectives for me is that I’m practicing, and I’ll be practicing for the rest of my life.
It’s something that I love about the medical field or the mental health field, is that they call their careers a practice. My wife’s also a yoga instructor, and they call that even if you’ve been doing it for 30 years, it’s a practice. Because practice is a process of attempting, discovering, and refining.
And so leadership isn’t something that happens; it’s something we practice, and there’s always something new to learn, refine, and apply. And that has been the most meaningful framework for me in business, in leadership, and in relationship.
Michael
I love it. Thank you for that. And thank you, Chad, for being with us today.
This has been a lovely conversation.
Chad
Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.
Michael
You’re welcome. Thank you, audience, for joining us today. Chad and I would love to know, what are you practicing today?
Thanks, and have a great day.