“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” –J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Jessica Honegger is the author of Imperfect Courage: Live a Life of Purpose by Leaving Comfort and Going Scared and the Founder of socially conscious fashion brand Noonday Collection, the world’s most successful fair trade fashion brand.
And in her book, Jessica shares the powerful story of Noonday: “The story of Noonday is so much bigger than me. It’s the story of artisans all around the world. It’s the story of entrepreneurs in young America. It’s the story of my partner and I and my family.”
This story all began with a trip to Washington, D.C., where Jessica was shown poverty firsthand for the first time – “and that was really what sparked bravery in me, seeing this context of living outside of my own bubble, living outside of myself, being willing to go pioneer a new script.”
Jessica grew up in a community where everyone followed very traditional scripts that had a narrow view of success, but being exposed to the Church of the Savior, its founder Gordon Cosby, and the greater efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired Jessica to write a new script.
She didn’t have the support of everyone she grew up with, she didn’t even have the support of the voice in her head all the time, but she had to walk through her fear to reach the life of impact and meaning that she was destined for.
Because we can’t let fear be a red flag, as Jessica describes. We have to view it as a yellow flag that means, no, walk this way and come see what’s on the other side of that fear. “You can’t really walk around fear – you just kinda have to walk through it.”
And when you read Imperfect Courage, it will guide you through these same steps so that you can live the life of impact and meaning that you were meant to live, too.
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The Impact Entrepreneur Show is produced by Podcast Masters
“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” –Graham Greene
Larry Hagner is the founder of The Dad Edge (formerly The Good Dad Project), a strong community of fathers with a simple but powerful mission: to help dads become the best, strongest, and happiest versions of themselves so that they can guide their kids to the best versions of themselves, too.
However, as a kid, Larry’s greatest fear was being a father. Growing up, he never saw a successful marriage modeled for him – he “always looked at marriage as a step to divorce” – and he didn’t have any positive male role models to speak of.
From that scared kid to the epic father that Larry is today is a huge gap – so I had to ask when the moment was that he opened the door to let the future in.
It all started with focusing on personal development. Larry, like a lot of us, was heavy growing up, and it really affected the way he thought about himself and approached life. However, he was pushed to wake up early, put the work in, and ended up losing 40 pounds over the course of a few months.
“I never felt so good in my life. I hated waking up that early, but we did it and that was the beginning of a whole new world for me and that’s when I started to really love fitness... and that’s when the future really opened up for me.”
You can see how that experience shaped the mission of The Dad Edge, too. It’s not all about relationship counseling or parenting tactics – it’s about becoming the best version of yourself so that you can share that with your children, and for most people, that requires taking action to fill a void in your life.
There’s a movement in The Dad Edge Alliance, of which I am a proud member, to “own your shit,” and that requires leaning into a place where you can be vulnerable and viewing that vulnerability as strength.
We don’t have to be invincible, we don’t have to be perfect, and we don’t have to have all the answers. It’s okay to reach out for help from your partner, or a wonderful community of like-minded people who will support you. Because none of us have this whole life thing all figured out, but together we can do better than any of us can do alone.
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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.
Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.
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The Impact Entrepreneur Show is produced by Podcast Masters
Tony Grebmeier is probably best known for building a multi-million dollar business with his childhood friends, ShipOffers, but it is Tony's mission in life is to create a community where entrepreneurs know they can achieve anything they want and find fulfillment, despite their past.
Growing up wasn’t always easy without a present father, and it was the community of friends and mentors – as well as his amazing mother – who taught him that life’s not easy, but you can make it easier.
One of Tony’s earliest mentors, his next-door neighbor Dan, used to tell him, “You can do this – take it easy.” Although he didn’t necessarily understand it at the time, he has come to learn that this is an excellent way to live a fulfilled life.
In our fast-paced world, we can all use a reminder to slow down.
Now a mentor himself, Tony has his own suggestions (not advice) for those that look up to him: “Chase the wins, study the lessons, and never quit.”
I absolutely love this mantra, particularly the idea of studying the lessons you receive in life. Because there are lessons to be learned in both our wins and losses, and we will never achieve our greatest potential without learning from both.
So how do we study? Tony suggests creating “when life works” and “when life doesn’t work” lists, tools he learned from his friend Dr. Sean Stephenson.
You know when your life is working, and when it isn’t, so reflect on those moments. What were you doing? Get at least 10-14 items on each list – now you have the curriculum you need to study.
Then, every day, try to practice one item on your “when life works” list – and note that it all comes back to YOUR behavior, not what other people do to you.
Because when you change your behavior, you change your life.
For more great lessons on how you can change your life and be more fulfilled, get your copy of Tony’s Be Fulfilled Journal.
“I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.” –Vince Lombardi
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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.
Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.
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The Impact Entrepreneur Show is produced by Podcast Masters
Jessica Turner is the author of the brand-new book Stretched Too Thin: How Working Moms Can Lose the Guilt, Work Smarter, and Thrive and the creator of The Mom Creative, a blog “all about creating a life well-crafted, which means different things on different days.”
Jessica’s mother was a great role model, a mentor, and the strongest person Jessica ever met. Stretched Too Thin is dedicated to her, and when you listen to Jessica talk about her strength, it’s no surprise.
She persevered through a difficult childhood, then set out to do something more for her own family. So she worked full-time, but that didn’t stop her from dedicating time and love to her children and husband.
Although everyone isn’t lucky enough to have had such a great role model in their life, Jessica has some sage words of encouragement: “You have the opportunity to be that person to someone else – and what a powerful opportunity that is!
“Every day, we have the opportunity to impact people with the way we speak to them, with the kindness that we show to them, and with having them be seen just as they are.”
Because the most important work that any of us does is the work we do with other people. And even if you weren’t shown that as a kid, you still have the opportunity to invest in other people, every single day.
Are You Stretched Too Thin?
Jessica has a 9-5 job, her entrepreneurial endeavors, and a family. Plus, she has to make time for herself. That’s simply too much to focus on all at the same time.
We too often fall into the fallacy that we have to be everything all the time – but that’s just not possible. We have to create boundaries between the different roles in our lives, and in doing this, we give ourselves the room to be fully present in whatever role we are in at any given moment.
We also have to understand our priorities. We’re all juggling a lot of balls, but some of them are rubber and some of them are glass. If we drop a glass ball, it might crack. And if we continue to drop a glass ball, it will shatter. Your health and your family are glass balls – so when it comes down to it, those have to be your biggest priorities.
And when we view our lives through that lens, it helps us get clarity on where to invest our time. To help you with this, Jessica created a free time tracker that you can download at fringehours.com/tracker. She suggests writing down everything you do for a week so that you can get an objective look at where you are investing your time and then adjust from there.
Because we have to, as the title of Jessica’s book suggests, work smarter to thrive.
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.” –Thomas Paine
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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.
Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.
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The Impact Entrepreneur Show is produced by Podcast Masters
Shakespeare said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” And our guest, Flynn Cochran, is definitely someone who achieved greatness (although he was born with a great name).
Flynn is a former U.S. Navy SEAL Officer, a former McKinsey & Co. Engagement Manager, and a graduate of Harvard Business School. Today he is the Chief Strategy Officer at Echelon Front, where he shares the exceptional leadership experience and insight he learned from both the SEAL Teams and business world. He had the benefit of experiencing leadership lessons from the likes of Leif Babin and Jocko Willink (a previous guest on the show: Ep. 25 – Navy SEAL & Leadership Expert Jocko Willink: Taking Extreme Ownership), and he saw the power of Extreme Ownership firsthand.
When I look back at Flynn’s impressive resume, I see a throughline of intensity, from football to ROTC to the Navy SEALS to Harvard to Echelon Front. So I wanted to know, what drives this?
In many ways, it goes back to growing up as the sixth of eight kids. Growing up in a large family taught Flynn two huge lessons: you have to do something exceptional to get attention, be it good or bad, and everything is better as a team.
“Individual achievements are just that – individual. They don’t bring up the rest of the team.”
Think of the business world today, where disengagement is rising and, ultimately, costing industry $500B annually. If that had happened in the SEAL Teams, missions would fail and lives would be lost – but they didn’t show up disengaged because they knew what was at stake.
This is an element missing in business today, as well as in our own individual lives; we don’t have a clear idea of what’s at stake, what matters, and why we should take action on it.
Flynn warns us that it certainly isn’t easy to create an organization where everyone believes in a single, unified Why, but what worth doing is ever easy?
Going back to the idea of team unity, as opposed to the pursuit of individual achievement, is a great place to start. Building meaningful relationships with the people around you will allow you to stay more engaged because you care about how your work impacts them, and the same lesson can be applied to your life at home.
Again, everything is better as a team – and all great teams need an exceptional leader.
“Leaders who take the blinders off take their organizations to heights they haven’t seen, and they realize that their influence, their actions, can have a massive impact on where it goes.”
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We are brought to you by the Lawton Marketing Group, a full-service advertising and design agency serving companies and entrepreneurs at all levels. They are your one-stop shop for all your website, logo, social media, print, app design and reputable management needs.
Visit LawtonMG.com for more info.
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The Impact Entrepreneur Show is produced by Podcast Masters