What if I told you that the first step toward growth and healing is self-awareness? That's right - after wrapping up the Create Conference in Dallas, Texas, I found myself reflecting on my own journey and the areas I could develop. I sat down with my good friends, Pastor Jeff Jenkins and business expert Vic Keller, and posed some introspective questions. Their honest feedback not only sparked my self-awareness but also put me on a path of personal growth.
As we move forward, we'll be journeying to Sundance, Utah for the GSD Elite Mastermind event! This will be a chance for us to learn, grow and take our understanding to the next level. The conversations won’t stop there. We're taking everything we learn and moving to Atlanta for the next Create Conference. So, buckle up and join me on this exciting journey of self-discovery and improvement! You won't want to miss out on these transformative events and insightful conversations.
Welcome to the ATLG podcast I am your host Ken Joslin, former pastor turned coach & host of CREATE, the #1 Faith-based Entrepreneur conference in America. My mission is to help faith-based entrepreneurs become the best version of themselves by growing in our Core 5: Faith, Health, Relationships, Business & Finances. You can get more information as well as join our FREE Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/676347099851525
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media and tag Ken Joslin.
What if I told you that the first step toward growth and healing is self-awareness? That's right - after wrapping up the Create Conference in Dallas, Texas, I found myself reflecting on my own journey and the areas I could develop. I sat down with my good friends, Pastor Jeff Jenkins and business expert Vic Keller, and posed some introspective questions. Their honest feedback not only sparked my self-awareness but also put me on a path of personal growth.
As we move forward, we'll be journeying to Sundance, Utah for the GSD Elite Mastermind event! This will be a chance for us to learn, grow and take our understanding to the next level. The conversations won’t stop there. We're taking everything we learn and moving to Atlanta for the next Create Conference. So, buckle up and join me on this exciting journey of self-discovery and improvement! You won't want to miss out on these transformative events and insightful conversations.
Welcome to the ATLG podcast I am your host Ken Joslin, former pastor turned coach & host of CREATE, the #1 Faith-based Entrepreneur conference in America. My mission is to help faith-based entrepreneurs become the best version of themselves by growing in our Core 5: Faith, Health, Relationships, Business & Finances. You can get more information as well as join our FREE Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/676347099851525
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media and tag Ken Joslin.
Speaker 1:
What's up guys. Welcome back to another episode of as the Leader Grows. I am your host, ken Jocelyn man. What an amazing, amazing last few weeks. We just wrapped up Create Conference in Dallas, texas, the number one faith-based entrepreneur conference in America. It was extraordinary. We had some amazing, amazing people on the platform this year. My good friend, gary Brecca, absolutely crushed it, as he does every conference that he speaks at. It was phenomenal.
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I love being in a room with Gary because literally he's the number one guy people talk about, because when he shares on health and biohacking and biology and all the stuff that he does, if you're familiar with Gary, he literally is the one person in the room. People are like I've never heard this before. If you've never heard Gary, he will absolutely blow your mind. Good friends like Brendan Bruchard, vic Keller, irwin McManus, randy Garn, amberley Lago I mean just Kyle Carnahan some unbelievable, unbelievable communicators and speakers Seth you, lorda, dude just it was an amazing two and a half, three days as we went through our core five faith, health, relationships, business and finances. And I just want to kind of backtrack a few weeks to talk about kind of my experience. It's been a couple of weeks since I've recorded a podcast. We've dropped some amazing episodes with some guests Ben Newman, my good friend, sean Mike dropped today as I'm recording this, but just some amazing people that we've dropped, and so I'm super excited.
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I want to kind of rewind and share with you guys a little bit of my journey during create, after create. You know, anytime that you, anytime that you come off of an event like we had at create, you're always for me. I always go into, I was going to self reflection mode. I always try to be Uber self aware and there was some areas this year or this, this, not this year because January we crushed it. I'm at create. It was one of my I don't know six or seven days. I've given myself a 10 on my school board and my planner and my GSD planner. This one probably would have been a seven. A seven is obviously you know, man, I'm usually every day. I'm an eight, eight, eight and a half, nine, pretty much every day, and the conference itself was great, but we had some.
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We had some, some, some components of the conference that didn't go the way that I wanted them to go and it was time for me to be able to take a step back and go. Okay, what happened? Why was our marketing off? Why was this off? Obviously, attendance wasn't where we wanted it to be. It was still better than the very first one that we ever did in Atlanta.
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So we're in a brand new city in Dallas, texas, nobody really knows us. The first year we were in Atlanta, we had about 150 160, which is where we were at here in Dallas. Last year in Atlanta, a year later, we had over 330, 340. So we almost doubled our attendance. So we know it's a new city, we know it's all new, but there were so many things about this conference that were phenomenal, but there were some things that I looked at and went, okay, we've got to improve on this. So a couple of things. If you're taking notes, man, I want you to go ahead and grab this because this is huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. I want to talk about self-awareness real quick and just walk you through my personal experience and what happened in my life over the past two to three weeks. Number one self-awareness is the first step to growth. Self-awareness is the first step to growth.
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So we finish our Create conference and I sit down with my good friend, pastor Jeff Jenkins, and we had about a two hour conversation and then we went to lunch, had another hour conversation and we just kind of formulated and thought through some questions for me to be able to take back to some of my guys that I'm super close with, specifically guys like Vic Keller, especially on the business side. You know he vicks a an uber successful business guy. He's done some amazing things. I mean his net worth is a lot and but he just knows business. His business acumen is absolutely unbelievable. He buys and sells companies for, you know, a couple, two, three hundred million dollars at a time and he's just an unbelievable business guy. He served as Warren Buffett's CEO for Berkshire Hathaway Automotives for three years, took that from an eight billion dollar a year company to an 11 billion dollar a year company. So he just has a. He has a very strong business acumen.
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And so Jeff and I met, we kind of talked and so some of the questions that came out of our conversation for me to ask Vic were this, and this is self awareness. So I'm in the car, I'm driving back from Dallas to Birmingham. It's nine hours. I was on the phone almost the entire time and with Vic, about two and a half hours of those we were on the phone. Self awareness is the first step to growth. So here's the question. I asked Vic two questions, and these came out of the conversation with with my good friend, jeff Jenkins.
Speaker 1:
And the question was this Vic, if you bought GSD today, you bought me out. You said, ken, here's a check. I'm buying it, but I want you to stay on with me. What would you have me do and what would you not let me touch? What would you have me do and what would you not let me touch? And the phrase there was a pause, just like there was right there. There was a pause and he said do you want me to be honest? He said do you want my feedback or do you want my honest feedback? And I said, bro, I can't get better and make the impact that I know God has called me to make if I don't get honest feedback from you. So Vic looks at me or not looks at me. I actually was on a phone, we actually were on FaceTime, but Vic looks at me on the phone and he goes.
Speaker 1:
Number one you have too many people around you that tell you how awesome you are, which is great. You know which is great and you know when he was a dude. I love you. You've got a massive art for people, but you've got too many people around you that just tell you how awesome you are. And create was amazing From the outside. Looking in, it was phenomenal. Everybody that was there loved it. But you know, it's almost like I pastored for a number of years, and so when you go to another church I go to church the Highlands here in Birmingham when you go to another church and you see they missed an audio cue or a video cue or the band missed this or there was something that you notice all the little things that most people don't notice. So I noticed all the little things that most people didn't notice. So that was, that was the question. So self-awareness is the first step to growth. So the question was, if you bought me out today and wrote me a check and I stayed on, what would you have me do and what would you not want me to touch? And so it started into about a 45 minute conversation of how we can get better. And it's funny because it takes me back to a conversation oh my gosh in 1999 or 2000,.
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We did this huge student kind of rally in my, in my, my hometown of Gainesville, georgia. I was a youth pastor at the time. It's several hundred youth youth or several hundred students in my youth ministry and myself and about three or four other guys around the area. We got together and said, hey, let's do something in August before the kids go back to school. Let's have this big event at the Georgia Mountain Center which held I don't know 1200 kids. We pretty much filled the building up. It was over a thousand and I had my good friend, ron loose, who was a dear friend and a mentor at the time, who came in to speak and we went to.
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After the event was done we went to grab some dinner at. You know, youth Pastors favorite place to go is Chili's, right Back in the day. I probably haven't been to Chili's now in about 15 or 20 years, but it's been a minute, but we go to Chili's all the time, right, and so we go to Chili's and I'm sitting down there with my good friend Tony Elrod and Ron. Same type of conversation. Event was amazing, you know, almost the building was complete If we had over a thousand kids, like 1100 students there brought in a good friend, good friends of mine from Nashville band to come in and do some worship, do some, do some music. Ron spoke, I spoke, it was just a phenomenal night. And so we went to Chili's. We're sitting there, I'll never forget it.
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And I asked Ron. I said hey, man, what could we have done better tonight? What could we have done better night? He looks at me, he goes Kim man, you did a great job, it was phenomenal. You and Tony put together a great event. Man, there were a lot of lives changed.
Speaker 1:
I said Ron, listen, I understand we did good, but what could we have done better? Now, remember, self-awareness is the first step to growth If you're not getting feedback. One of our five core values is is intentionality. One of those is teachability and on the teachability side, it means that we're not only open to feedback but we actively pursue feedback. And you can't pursue feedback and be open if you're not self-aware. And I'll never forget. Looking at Ron, he goes oh man, you did a great job.
Speaker 1:
I said Ron, listen, I know we did a great job. We did a phenomenal job. Create was phenomenal. And I told him at the time it was called the one conference is what it was called. And I said I know we did a great job. But I'm asking you what we could do, what could we do better? And I said, ron, I've been listening to your leadership stuff for probably at that time, two, two and a half years. And I said I listened to everything you put out.
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I watched you walk. I was on stage when he walked in the building. I saw him walk in the side, kind of over behind the stage, and I watched you walk in the building and I watched you walk up the stairs and you sat in one of the camera wells up top with Tony and I saw you. I saw you look and you were just scanning the crowd and I could see you just gathering information. I know we did a good job, ron, but I know we can do better. What did you see that we could have done better? And for probably 15 minutes I didn't have a pen on there, forget it. I didn't have a pen. I asked the server at Chili's for his pen, gave me the pen. I wrote on a napkin for probably 10 minutes and he probably gave me 10 to 12 bullet points of things that I needed to do to be able to improve it was. It was an unbelievable I mean it was an unbelievable, unbelievable time.
Speaker 1:
And so, when you understand that self awareness is the first step to growth, even in, even in the moments where you win, you want feedback. You want to go to the right people to be able to speak into your life, to be able to get feedback. So self awareness is the first step to growth. Same thing I did it at the conference 20 some odd years ago with Ron is the same thing I did with Vic. What do we need to do to get better? How can we get better? What do we need to do?
Speaker 1:
Which literally led down a conversation, an hour and 15 minutes. He had to go for a little bit because he had it was doing something at his furniture store that he owns for for one of his, for one of his sons, and we hopped back on a call about an hour, hour and a half later for another hour and 15, 20 minutes and it literally led me to looking at again from a 10,000 foot view I say that all the time. My good friend and coach and mentor, sean Lojoy, taught me that probably 15 years ago, you know, from a 10,000 foot view. It caused me to look at what we were doing from a different perspective and not just celebrate the wins. And we did great and it was awesome. People's lives were changed, businesses transformed, relationships formed. I mean it was an amazing, amazing three days.
Speaker 1:
But it caused me to look at the whole event from it with a 10,000 foot view, instead of, you know, being on the stage. And this is awesome and the people are loving it. It's really, really good because I understand self awareness is the first step to growth. How can we get better? And so it caused me to start having conversations with different people and asking them specific questions to be able for us to have the ability to be able to get better. So self awareness is the first step to growth. Second thing, I want to share this real quick Self awareness is also the first step to healing.
Speaker 1:
It's also the first step to healing. Listen, if you're not asking the right questions to the right people, whether it be mentors, whether it be your peer group, whether it be your therapist like you've got to be able to ask the right questions, you've got to be open to their feedback, you've got to be open to the process and when you're self aware and you're asking the right questions and just like Vic said, do you want my feedback, or do you want my honest feedback? I said, dude, if I don't have your honest feedback, I can't get better. And if I can't get better we can't make the impact that God's called me to make. And I know the impact that he's called us to make is huge. And so that conversation with that conversation with Vic led into that was us.
Speaker 1:
That was on Saturday. That led into a conversation Sunday afternoon with Gary Brecca. That was an hour and 10 minutes. Then that led into a conversation with my good friend Emily Ford. That was almost an hour Tuesday as I set by the pool with my daughter down in the panhandle on 30A. And then that led into a conversation Wednesday night when I got home, with my good friend Irwin McManus. And it just led in from one conversation to the next and I just began to ask questions and I was quiet and I just listened and I just got feedback. I'm casting vision and then I'm asking questions, casting vision and I'm asking questions and I'm listening, and then I'm asking even more questions from their comments.
Speaker 1:
So two things I want you to grab out of this today, guys, is this I don't care at what level you're winning. Let me say this too it's easier to be self aware when you're winning than it is when you're not. When you have momentum, it's the best time in the world for you to be self aware and to start asking questions to those people that are around you that love you dearly and aren't concerned and necessary. They're more concerned. Let me say this If they're concerned with you as a human being, then they are the impact that you make, because they love you as a human being. They don't love you for the impact, but they love you enough and they understand the impact that God's called you to make. So when you have those right people in your life, what happens is then they speak into you with such a deep level of truth and intimacy that it really just reveals some things that you may even subconsciously not want to address or not even want to know that are there.
Speaker 1:
So self awareness is the first step to growth, and self awareness is also the first first step to healing, like, in order to heal some things in your heart like am I good enough if you struggle with you know some of the limiting beliefs that I teach on a lot like fear, insecurity, scarcity, comparison, shame or success. Like, self awareness is the first step to having to understanding. Oh, I had this limiting belief. I didn't know I struggle with scarcity. I didn't know that I either spent everything I had or I saved everything I had because I was worried there was nothing else coming because of how I grew up. So self awareness the first step to growth and it's also the first step to healing. So here's what I want to encourage you to do. If you're listening to this podcast right now, I want to encourage you to do this. I want to encourage you to go to whoever's in your corner or your circle circles, your 10 or 12 people you spend most time with your corner, those three to five guys or gals that know you, that do not have a problem being brutally honest with you. So go to those guys, go to those gals, come up with some great questions. Here's a great question Um hey, Vic, dude, I know you love me. You're here for me. I we've got a great relationship. I'm really grateful for you. What am I missing? What am I not seeing?
Speaker 1:
I remember I was in Miami, and I'll wrap it up with this. I was in Miami with my good friend, um Richie, who used to run the card on licensee program for for grant and Richie's got three NBA championship rings. Mindset coach for LeBron, worked with Miami when he was there and then transferred over to the Lakers. When LeBron went to the Lakers and we went to a dinner one night with it was a very high level room, some very, very wealthy people and I pulled Richie aside and this is what I told him before we went I'd never been in a room like that before. This was two and a half, three years ago and I said, richie, I don't ever want to be the guy in the room that doesn't know what he doesn't know. If you see something out of me or hear something out of me that's out of line, I'm giving you permission right now to pull me aside and let me know, because you don't ever want to be the guy who doesn't know what he doesn't know.
Speaker 1:
Guys, the only reason I am where I am, the only reason I'm able to make the impact that I've been able to make, is that I live my life through the lens of teachability. I'm not only open to feedback, but I actively pursue feedback. Listen, self-awareness is the first step to growth and I promise you, if you'll do that and you make that a consistent part of who you are, especially when you're winning. It's not that you don't go, dude. We crushed it this weekend. We did amazing. But if you can't take an honest assessment of where you are and have the people that are in your corner also give you an honest assessment, the reality of it is is you're not going to make the impact that you want to make, you're not going to make the impact that you were created to make, and it's going to rob you of some of the fulfillment.
Speaker 1:
Just walk through the pain. It's just like when I started my health journey three, three and a half years ago. I'm down 80 pounds. I had to get on the scale for the very first time to be able to look at where I was. I had to be able to face like, ooh, this is where I'm at. I do not like this. This is uncomfortable. It was a sucky moment for me to be able to do that, but it gave me a reference point. It gave me a starting point and it gave me a before picture and a picture of a scale that I was able to post on social for my, the people that I love and care for my community to be able to hold me accountable.
Speaker 1:
Self-awareness, guys, is the first step to growth. If you want to grow, if you want to heal, get self-aware, go to your circle, go to your corner, ask the questions hey, is there anything you see in my life that I'm missing? What are my blind spots? Guys, listen, if this podcast has blessed you which I hope it has, because it's just, it's as real as it gets, because this is what's coming out of my life If this podcast has blessed you, do me a favor, share it on your Instagram page, snap a screenshot, share it, tag me. I'll share that with my audience. Give you a little love as well. And, as always, man, if this has blessed you, hit us up, let us know, give us a five star review. That would be just absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:
Our podcast continues to grow, continues to do some amazing, amazing things. Listen. Next thing up for us Sundance, utah. Our GSD Elite Mastermind will be in Sundance. November 1st through the 5th. You can go to growthdrivecom forward slash Sundance. The number one faith-based mastermind and conference in America, will be back in Atlanta for Create. January, the 11th through the 13th. Growthdrivecom forward, slash, create Atlanta. Love you guys a ton. Go, crush it this week. Let's go.
