Brad Johnson: Well, Jimmy, didn’t see this conversation coming.
Jimmy Rollins: Right?
Brad Johnson: I mean, we met yesterday, and what I found in life is good people, they tend to open doors to other good people. And we’ve got a mutual friend in Andy, and he hit me up with a text a couple of days ago. He said, “Hey, I know we’re going to be in Arlington for Scale Summit. I’ve got a good friend. Cool if I bring him over. I’m going to have him deliver a little message to the team, and I want you to meet him.
Jimmy Rollins: Wow.
Brad Johnson: Didn’t know your name. Literally, “Hey, Jimmy, Brad,” and then I sat in yesterday when you talked to Andy’s team about culture. And told some of your story, and to say the least, it was a powerful message, and I was like, “Hey, we’ve got a podcast set up. You want to knock one out tomorrow?” And you’re like, “Yeah, let’s go.”
Jimmy Rollins: Let’s go. Let’s do it.
Brad Johnson: So, thank you for being here, and I’d just love to hear like a little bit of your story as we dive into this conversation.
Jimmy Rollins: Well, Brad, first, I’m grateful to be on the podcast, and I believe that we are always one person away from reaching a lot more people. And I believe all of us carry a message, a story, from our past, from our struggle, from our wins, from our losses that can help others. And so, any opportunity to help other people, that’s what I want to do. And then Andy’s just been a great friend. And so, I’m honored to be here and honored to meet you. And, yeah, my name is Jimmy Rollins, and I’m not the baseball player, but I will say I’ve been in a restaurant in New York where I just let people go with it, and I got free appetizers. So, there’s nothing like a free appie, you know? And so, I absolutely love to do what I get to do.
And people have tried to say, “Well, what do you do?” And I feel like I’ve been put on this earth. It is simply this: to give, to be known for what I give away, and not what I keep, right, in knowledge, in finances, in generosity, in wisdom, and not from a place of being an expert, but from a place of learning over some failures. And as we talked about last night, like all of us could be another failure away from succeeding, so don’t quit. And so, if I embody something of who I am, I just want to be a life-giving person that helps other people that come in contact with me, whether it’s a podcast, a stage, a church, a corporation, a boardroom, or my own living room. And that’s what I love the vision of what Triad is doing and what you guys have talked about.
Like, not just winning at work, but winning at home and winning in marriage and all the things. So, I’ve been on the road, been speaking, communicating for 25 years, 20 years, faithfully. In this, in the beginning, I was kind of bi-vocational. I used to be a headhunter, a technical recruiter, and I had to learn language and code talk and all of the different things and help people get jobs in Washington DC Metropolitan area for their skillset. And I loved it because it was, again, helping people. And that has been literally, if you were to like, say, like, what is my life has been about, in every role, in every environment, at every job, it’s always about helping someone in getting better.
And so, I feel like I embody this, the mission of our people getting better. And so, over that time, I went from technical recruiting to working for Brinks Home Security to selling cell phones for CellularOne, all the way back to, and then getting into the headhunting space. And now I’ll never forget, I was doing youth events where I would go speak to troubled kids, and I still do that as a give back, but that kind of brought me to where I am today, where I pastored a church. I’ve served as a chaplain for a professional sports team. There are some teams who bring me in to speak, but, again, it’s just helping people.
So, I believe that I don’t want to be known for what I keep, but rather what I give. And whether that’s a sermon, a business room, a boardroom, a podcast. And so, I’m here today to just be a servant and serve people with some wisdom, some knowledge, and some failures.
Brad Johnson: Well, let’s dive into that.
Jimmy Rollins: Come on.
Brad Johnson: What I’ve seen the last 20 years in finance, finance is it’s a business of relationships. At the end of the day, we’re helping people with money, but money’s just a tool to get them from where they are to where they want to go. And the best in this business are relationship people, but they’re great communicators. And I’ve seen a lot over the years. And it was cool yesterday in our first experience, I just listened to you riff for about 45 minutes. But you have a skill set and connection and communication. So, where was that unlocked? Were you always like, as a kid, you were just rolling around, and everybody’s just in a circle listening? Or how did that develop? Where did you see that God-given gift that you had?
Jimmy Rollins: Well, this is ridiculously crazy what I’m about to explain. I believe that if there’s purpose in our lives, like we’re not qualified, but we get qualified through practice, we get qualified through overcoming trials, and I had a severe stuttering problem growing up. I was insecure. I would not talk to a lot of people, because I didn’t want to stutter. I didn’t want them to kind of pigeonhole me into someone who wasn’t educated or someone who came from a certain background. And so, I was very insecure. I was very quiet. I always felt like, “Why me?” this imposter kind of syndrome. And it was about 17 or 18 where my mom and dad started working with me, getting me in places where I could get my language together, but it was still an issue. And so, this speaking and communication is actually, to me, it’s like a joke that now I speak all over the world with a stuttering background, and also with ADHD and dyslexia.
And now I’m writing books that helping people around the world. And so, I’ve always been in a place where I’m not going to feel like I’ve arrived because, honestly, I shouldn’t be here anyway. And so, with that mentality, I’ve embraced this thought that I can’t be successful in one area and not be successful in all areas. And that communication just started with helping young people. And my sister was leading a nonprofit and a group of underprivileged kids, and I would come and just love on them and take them to games and buy them. I don’t know if you remember the Starter jackets and the… Come on now.
Brad Johnson: I had one.
Jimmy Rollins: Absolutely.
Brad Johnson: 90s high school kids.
Jimmy Rollins: Come on. And playing Tecmo Bowl, and all the things, but it started in the stages of what I would call development, the stages of figuring it out, the stages of learning perseverance, the stages of getting kicked out of Bible college. Like, all of these different stages prepared me for this stage. But so many people want to just get to the place of success without going through the place of trial and the place of struggle and the place of that’s bringing out perseverance in us. And I just want to encourage whoever’s listening, where you are right now, you may feel like, “Man, I’m not where I want to be,” but you got to look back at the wins of also you’re not where you used to be.
And all of those areas have given you skills for the next thing. And just me getting into a place where I couldn’t talk, but I could sing. I would never stutter when I would sing. I thought I was going to be a singer. I wrote songs that artists are using, and I had no idea that that was not what was intended for me to do. It was actually giving me confidence that I was going to speak one day, and the confidence that I found in singing overcame the stuttering problem and communicating. That’s crazy to me that someone with dyslexia, someone who struggled, you know, the only A I ever got in high school and college was gym. You know what I’m saying? And I don’t even know if it was a good A. Maybe they just gave me that to make me feel good about myself.
But now being in boardrooms and being with one percenters and talking to different people and seeing in the room last night, just people come alive through encouragement and through enrichment and through communication, I can’t believe that I get to do this now. And so, that skill got developed in trial. It got developed in struggle. It got developed in being bullied. It got developed in learning how to deal with difficult people. And now I absolutely have used all of those skills. It wasn’t a college education. I got a doctorate in life.
Brad Johnson: Love that. Well, you said something yesterday because right now you’re in a cool transition phase. I mean, you’re 52.
Jimmy Rollins: Fifty-two.
Brad Johnson: And back to never being scared, I mean, a lot of people would be like 52. I’m kind of entrenched in my career right now, right?
Jimmy Rollins: Absolutely.
Brad Johnson: And what I love that you shared last night, like vulnerably, like, hey, I’m looking for kind of that next phase for me. And you said, “I’m going to get off my stage and help others get on theirs,“ back to giving back. And so, what led to that? Tell me what that means. How are you in that process?
Jimmy Rollins: Well, actually, where that came from was in the mountains of Buena Vista, Colorado. And I was there doing some soul care, some soul work, and trying to figure out who am I? You know, what has God put me on this planet to do? Where is my worth? Where is my value? I was a pastor building a church. It was very successful traveling in church, kind of in that ecosystem.
Brad Johnson: And these are like big church, not like my small town, United Methodist, like 50 people. Like we’re talking…
Jimmy Rollins: Yeah. I mean, these are some of the largest churches in the country and around the world. And I did not feel like I was winning. Everyone else was calling me successful. I want what he has. You want what I have, but I don’t even want it. And I felt very pigeonholed, and I felt very away from people, even though I was pastoring because the church had gotten big, and now I’ve got 30-some odd staff and board meetings, and I’m not touching the people or not close to the people. I’ll never forget feeling like that and going to the soul care. And at the end of the soul care, I really felt this awakening in me that was these words, “I’m calling you Jimmy to get off your stage to help others stay on theirs.”
And I thought that that was just a physical stage, but it’s actually to help others through the stages of business and life, through the stages of how do I balance the bottom line and help my wife or husband change the bottoms of the infants that we have at home. And I could not believe it. So, I felt alive, giving up something that I had worked really hard to build that my dad passed down to me. And I’ll never forget my dad saying on the golf course, after I hit a really poor shot. When I told him, I said, “Hey, dad, I’m thinking about stepping down, and I know I’m a third-generation preacher, and I know you’ve built this and gave it to me, but I don’t think I’m built for this.” And he said, “Whew.” I was shocked. And he was like, “Finally.”
He was like, “I didn’t know how to tell you that I felt like there was more. I felt it’s going to be different.” And he said, “You’re created to do something different, and there’s not a category for it.” And I was a little ticked off at him because I wanted him to like tell me exactly what to do, but he said, “You have my blessing.” And I gave up what others dreamed to have to now I help people. I would be the chief help officer. I’m going to help with marriage. I’m going to help with managing your relationship with your kids and business. I can step into a boardroom and talk about culture, and talk about organizational development, and talk about leadership, and Enneagram, and talking boundaries, and working genius. And making sure your team is growing the soil at home, so that they can thrive in the soil at work.
One of the thoughts that I had, Brad, was it’s great to have a big team. It’s great for business to grow, but when your team is unhealthy, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, it’s hard to be healthy at work and produce. And there’s a lot of business owners that want to invest in their team for the purpose of growing the bottom line, right? But there’s a different philosophy, which I love at Triad, is let’s grow the person so that they thrive in every area of life, including work. And so, the philosophy is this: if you require more work than you’re helping us do at work, then we need to do some work. I’ll say that again. If the person is unhealthy and they require you as a manager, you as a boss, you as a CEO, if their personal life is jacked up, they’re going to require more work, more meetings, more hands-on thing, more correction, and then they end up causing you to not be doing the thing that you need to do because they’re requiring more work than they’re helping you do at work.
So, let’s do some work on their heart. Let’s do some work on their mind. Let’s do some work and I feel like this, being emotionally healthy. We have a lot of people that are financially healthy, but not emotionally healthy, financially healthy, but not physically healthy. And so, let’s create a holistic approach so that we’re not only growing a company, but we’re growing legacy in families and kids and creating those environments. So, what do I do with, I was pastoring, and now I’m sitting here in the boardroom. You know what? I get to be one-on-one with someone, and I love it. I love this platform. I love you trusting me to speak into your audience.
Brad Johnson: Well, let’s go a little deeper there. You sent me a conversation you and Nick Cannon had, which wasn’t that long ago.
Jimmy Rollins: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Maybe a year or so ago.
Jimmy Rollins: Yeah. And it’s like an episode, I think, it’s like four or five on there. I sent you one of them. I believe I sent you.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, we’ll throw it in the show notes. I listened to it last night. It was my bedtime story.
Jimmy Rollins: Come on.
Brad Johnson: But one of the things I think a lot of founders in our space, there’s a lot of pressure. It’s not easy to you walk in the room, and the whole team’s looking at you, and it’s like, “Where are we going?” And guess what? They’re humans too. All humans have flaws. Don’t always respond perfectly under pressure, but I would say if you were going to take a role and maybe one up the pressure that you face as a founder in finance, it would be as a preacher because you kind of are the guy advising everybody.
Jimmy Rollins: Absolutely.
Brad Johnson: Business leaders, it’s like you’ve got to be this perfect guy in the mirror and you’ve spoken pretty openly about that pressure and, hey, I’m another dude with my flaws. And you mentioned, “Hey, I’m a husband, I’m a dad. I’ve got three kids at home. And a lot of times the message you were sharing from the stage preaching, it wasn’t always what was happening at home.
Jimmy Rollins: No.
Brad Johnson: But what I love is like you owned it. You were real with it. And I haven’t heard that a lot from somebody in that space. So, can you speak to that?
Jimmy Rollins: Absolutely. I think the principle is this: like we all want to be free, and I think freedom is this thing that we chase that we don’t know when we have it until we get there. So, we have people of high net worth, but they don’t feel fulfilled, right? We have all of these different dichotomies of successful on the football field but broken at home. And I feel like that was me. I traveled the world. I was speaking to tens of thousands of people but had no relationship but the one I laid next to every night, my wife. I was out there providing a place of safety, financially safety, that my family was covered with health insurance and all these things. But the missing piece was me covering my family.
And so, in that, I became addicted to the platform. And what I learned in that time was that if we allow the applause to get to our heads, then we also create an invitation for the criticism to get to our hearts. And in what we were doing, me and my wife, we lived in a glass bowl. Everyone can see in, everyone, and you had this immense pressure of performing. Now, we have staff, and if I mess up, the whole thing goes down. A bad marriage is kind of an occupational hazard for a preacher. And so, I had questions in my faith of why am I fulfilled over here, but at home, I don’t even want to be home. And it got to a point where I had to work on it at home. I talked about doing the work, counseling, doing the work, accountability.
And so, the principle of all of this that I’ve learned through this is this, is that my faith would say, “What does it prosper a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” I want to change that to the Jimmy Rollins CliffsNotes version. What does it prosper a man to have the greatest business in the world, to have the greatest amount of clients in the world, and lose his family and have no relationship with his son, and have no relationship and not be a model at home? So, here we are. I’m traveling. I’m doing all of these different things around, and I’m preaching hope, and talking joy, but had none. I was preaching from what I read, not what I knew. I was talking from this idea of success, but I didn’t know this.
And here’s the principle if you’re listening, if you win in the wrong thing, you lose in the right thing. And I was winning in the wrong place. I believe that we should win at home so that now we can go win in the world. But I wasn’t because I didn’t have these four things I’m going to talk about really quick, transparency. Who has an invitation to see your blind spot? You know what, you and I, in our best efforts, as good-looking as you and I both are here on this podcast, Brad.
Brad Johnson: I’m glad you said it.
Jimmy Rollins: Right? I was thinking, I know the audience was thinking about that when I said, how did they find him? GQ model. You should see me in my bike like spandex, my cycle clothes. It’s a mess. My wife says it’s a mess and it’s offensive. But anyway, transparency is what I let you see. So, if you’re taking notes, if you’re on here, I want to encourage you to listen into these four things, and then it’s vulnerability. It takes it to another place. Transparency is what I’ll let you see. Vulnerability is what I let you know because we can have a bad day. But when you give me definition of that bad day, when I have the definition of your dysfunction, it doesn’t create criticism. It creates empathy, right?
So, transparency is what I’ll let you see. Vulnerability is what I’ll let you know. And once you’re vulnerable and say, “Guys, I’m going through some things at home. My son, da, da, da, da, da,” right? I get to accountability. That’s what I let you hold. Transparency is what I let you see. Vulnerability is what I let you know. Accountability is what I let you hold. And now I get to intimacy, relationship, and that’s when I have nothing to hide. Here’s what I want to tell our audience. I know this from experience. You’ll always be as sick as your secrets in every area of your life. I’m not perfect. I’m free. And freedom is having nothing to hide. When I get to the place of transparency, vulnerability, accountability, that’s what I’ve been with Andy. That’s what Andy has been with me.
Transparent, vulnerability, accountability, and now we’re not pursuing perfection. We’re pursuing freedom. When you can show up and be authentically yourself, maybe blessing is trying to find you if you’re listening. Maybe favor is trying to find you. Maybe that client that you’ve been dying to get is trying to find you, but they can’t find you because you’ve not shown up as your authentic self. Maybe they’re just looking for your authenticity and not your eloquent words.
Brad Johnson: What was the awakening for you? Was it a friend that said, “Hey, I just see you kind of not practicing what you preach”? Was it just one morning you woke up, and there was just…
Jimmy Rollins: That’s a great question.
Brad Johnson: What took you down that path?
Jimmy Rollins: The awakening was because I wasn’t present at home, alcohol started pastoring my wife. And I am traveling, and my youngest, my oldest daughter, is sending me pictures of mom passed out in the bathroom and me having to explain it. It came to a head when my oldest daughter, at the time, and this is 12, 13 years ago, Irene and I had gotten into an awful fight, and I’m calling her the B word and all of these different things, and we’re yelling and elevated. And I had no idea that my youngest, my oldest daughter, had pillows over the other two kids’ heads, trying to protect them from me. And the awakening was when everyone wants you to come speak, but your kids don’t even want you home.
And my wife, as a pastor, I’m a leader, and she’s in rehab. And the awakening was, what does it prosper a man to gain stages and not be able to work through the stage of a difficult moment at his house. And so, I’m emotional right now because someone who’s listening I want you to just lean into this thought. There’s no greater teacher than pain, but maybe there is someone else’s. And if we can learn from someone else’s pain, then maybe we don’t have to carry as much weight as we’ve been carrying emotionally, spiritually, grief, disappointment, betrayal. If we can learn through the pain that I’ve gone through by me being real on this podcast, maybe I’m helping you stay on your stage.
This is why Irene and I exist is that I may not have the most amount of money in my bank account, but I’m a millionaire and purpose, and my currency is pain, and I don’t keep it. I give it away. Pain is not meant to be kept. It’s meant to give away so that your pain can be the teacher that someone else would walk in purpose.
Brad Johnson: You shared a little piece of that story on the interview I listened to, and it was your immediate reaction to the time your wife was going through because you, I think, at one point, it was like, “I’m changing the locks. I’m out.”
Jimmy Rollins: Yeah. I was out.
Brad Johnson: And then I think through counseling, you kind of got called out a bit. Can you share a piece of that?
Jimmy Rollins: Yeah. I think I got called out a lot, and a few of the statements that stick out to me right now, as we talk, is a friend calling me who was like more of a mentor. And he said, he was asking me how things are going. I was like, “You know, Irene and she’s drinking and all things and that we’re fighting.” I wasn’t owning my own stuff. And he said this, he said, “It’s your fault.” And he said, “Jimmy, I’m tired of hearing you complain.” He said, “You will never have the wife you want until you learn to love the wife you have. And if you try to get in this marriage and get a new wife because you have some ideal that the situation will be better, it’s not about her getting better, it’s about you getting better.”
That sat with me. That was a blind spot for me. Like, when advisor goes out and advising someone, they need to know the whole picture. You’re asking a client, a potential client to unfold the picture. What’s the story? What’s your goals? But before we get goals, where are the areas that you’re struggling? This is life, not just a new client. But what if we took on that approach?
In order for me to get better, I first got to expose the vulnerabilities, expose the issues, expose that moment, realized that I believe this, that love is at its best when people are at their worst. But we live in a culture that says, I’ll love them if they love me first. But the very definition of love, in order for it to be love and that to be experienced, there has to be something that’s unlovable. And that was the day that I fell in love with my issues and my wife’s issues and dysfunction to the point that I realized that us being together, it’s not for her to help me, it’s for me to help her be all that she was created to be.
And I think what’s difficult in this industry is we’re helping people be all, that they are created to be in legacy, but legacy requires family. If you have an inheritance to give away when you’re gone, but no family to give it to, what was it for? I feel like the very nature of this business is family. But oftentimes, it’s easy to neglect the main thing when the dollar signs show up and the accolades show up and the client of the month shows, advisor of the month shows up. I want to be dad of the month. I want to be husband of the month, right? I want be connected to who I am and I feel like that moment when my friend said that, that sits out to me significantly. Significantly.
Brad Johnson: Well, you shared, you were like the guy for everybody else. But I think you said yesterday, there were four people that matter at the end of the day because you have three kids, right? And those were the ones that you were talking about it, but you weren’t doing it. So, how did you flip that? Because obviously, there was a lot of work that went. It wasn’t just snap the fingers. Was that talk from your friend was like, we’re calling somebody we’re talking and your wife into the game? How did that play out?
Jimmy Rollins: Well, I think many of us, we’ve gone through education systems and we’ve gone through college to get tools to do a skill. But the one tool or the set of tools that we neglect are the tools to deal with conflict in our homes, to deal with conflict within our own souls. And I’m going to call it being emotionally healthy. I took a year to learn about how to have conversations with myself before I have conversations with my wife or people I’m in conflict with. I took years to what we now have pinned as, we call it marital mapping for marriage, but misery mapping.
What are the areas that you feel that come up a lot? Are you angry? Are you upset? Are you in grief? These are your emotions. Are you shameful? When did you feel that before this moment? So, I asked myself questions like, where have I felt this before? So, before me and my wife are sitting across the table or me, an employee sitting across the table having a hard conversation, I first want to know what is in me that needs to change before they change? And so, I had to be vulnerable with myself, transparent with myself, accountability for myself, and that took counseling, coaching other couples, moments where no one is around, where I would then walk into an auditorium and I’d be the only one there. You know what I would do? I know I’m going to talk to these people or preach to these people or do a talk, a motivational expression to these people. I would sit in the audience in different chairs and get a vision for the personal pain that all of those people are coming in the room with, as I did yesterday.
And now, I want to inspire, motivate, move through transparency. I mean, the old adages is people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I want to build rapport. I want to create laughter in the room. Now, let’s talk about principles like I did yesterday. But that took work, that took pain, that took having hard conversations with my children saying it was my fault, that took admitting that I was a preacher who back then who had a pornography issue. I don’t care that the world knows. You know why? Because it’s freedom. Not having secrets. I don’t have secrets.
And it’s so liberating to wake up not having a thought of what if they find out? It’s liberating. And so, I just want to encourage, you’re not going to counseling to fix your marriage. Your marriage is an indication that you need to be fixed. And so, I look at controversy, betrayal, conflict as a mirror. So, if we were in a situation and we had to have a hard conversation. And Brad was just like, no, I’m better looking. I’d be like, no, I’m better looking. And we went back and forth and I had to say, Brad, I just want to break this down for you. And we had to have a difficult conversation. I’m looking at you as a mirror to reflect back at me what needs to change in me. And here’s the principle, what you don’t reflect internally, you will project externally onto other people.
So, maybe you’re dealing with a hard conversation at work, but really, that hard conversation wants to bring out a way in you that handles conflict at home, right? Here’s what I found about one percenters. They don’t know how to come under the company that your family has established while you’re out building the physical company. In other words, if you’re a business owner, you got two businesses. You control this one. Your wife should control the other one, because she works all day building an environment and then you get to come home and be in charge. Now, you’re in charge here, but you need to submit and come under here. I talk to a lot of one percenters. No one will tell them, hey, bro, you’re arrogant. Hey, you’re ridiculously in charge. Hey, man, you need to pass gas because you’re uptight. You don’t need a counselor. You need to fart. No one will say things like that, but I make it funny so that they have a moment to embrace. Wow, wow, wow.
And so, I can’t say who it was, but I was out playing golf with a one percenter and they brought me in to do an intensive, relational intensive, like how to communication boundaries with their company. And day one, then we played golf, then was day two, and we went and played golf and I was beating him bad. I didn’t feel sorry for him though because I don’t know. I knew he doesn’t know how to lose. He got quiet, he got– I’m like, bro, you got a lot of money in the bank, but I’m kicking your butt on this golf course. And I told him, he goes, he was all uptight. And I was like, hey, man, tou shouldn’t get mad at that last shot. He’s like, why? I was like, because you suck, right? Is this what I said?
And I said, and on that thought, you actually suck at work. And he was like, almost like, I paid you to come in. Yeah, you paid me to come in to tell you the truth. And I said, no one else will tell you the truth. And I was like, you invite your team to a table and you’ve given them responsibility. But responsibility given, without authority given is control. And that’s why you have yes men at your table. They can’t be creative because your idea trumps theirs.
Do you know how to lead from the second seat and bring out the best of other people? Your business, your company are going to do way more, going to go way further. You’ll have loyalty. You’ll stop having the back door bigger than the front door. You just got to be low and humble and go to counseling and take Tums because you’re too uptight.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. It’s interesting. I’m five years into this entrepreneurship. I had, kind of your transition out of the church, I was 13 and a half years in what became from 12th employee to one of the largest companies in the world in finance.
Jimmy Rollins: Wow.
Brad Johnson: And in our space, at least. And what’s really interesting if you allow yourself to be honest with yourself is when you are leading the company, it does create some of those behaviors by your team because I mean, you’re the guy that’s kind of in charge of do they have a job or not? And what gets in the way is truth a lot of times, because we all have that thought in our head when you walk in a room with another human and you can kind of see some things they don’t always see in themselves. So, this conversation, how would you start to coach somebody that’s maybe not super aware all the time with how they show up to start to become more aware? Is it you in their ear kind of sharing that? Or what are some ways that people can start to get through that? Because that’s a common issue with leadership.
Jimmy Rollins: Well, I think there’s first just assessment. Like, we have to look at Enneagram, we have to look at Working Genius. We have to read The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni. Like we’ve got to do some work and not read those books to fix them. And many business owners, you’re trying to figure out how do I get my team to do this. But we’re not looking at, hey, how do I become better, a better leader?
And we let the assessments do the talking. And every assessment has a brilliant, there’s a brilliant nature to being a 7 or 8, but there’s also a dark side. So, let’s not just talk about what’s amazing about it. Let’s talk about what’s the struggle about it. Now, we look at the assessment and now, we can talk and have hard conversations because I’m also like you. So, here are the things that I’ve had to do and I feel like, and then we give the team permission to answer the questions about us. The best teams is when you bring in me or you bring in someone who can do an assessment and you sit down and you interview them and they can say, here’s the question. How is it like working for me?
Brad Johnson: And they can answer honestly.
Jimmy Rollins: And they can answer honestly, but they’re answering with me as a coach to take that into a way to present it, how you can receive it so you don’t feel bullied by the people you’re paying, right? But when people have access to that and have access to, man, he’s changing just like us. What you’re saying is this, I’m not asking anything from you that I’m not willing to do myself. That’s true leadership. It’s not telling people what to do. It’s people following you.
That’s why I said yesterday, culture is not taught. It’s caught. And so, what do they catch you doing? And here’s a thought about culture. What you celebrate will create culture in your employees and your partners and your environment, and it will create repetitive performance. You make it important, they’ll keep doing it. But guess what? What you tolerate, it also creates culture. And it’s like, what you tolerate, what you’re scared to have the conversation, if it’s an angry environment, it’s going to create culture and, honestly, you won’t have longevity and loyalty. I want loyalty. Not minions just going around doing what I say. I want loyalty to the point that they can challenge me and, at the same time, know that I have to make the final decision, but I’m listening to them not to be right. I’m listening to them, so I ensure that they understand that I understand what they’re saying. And so, my goal in the conversation is not to be right. It’s to be understood.
And here’s a thought for the people who are in charge of other people. The thought is this is like, are we listening to understand or are we listening to be right? Awareness of your employees’ strengths does not mean the absence of your own. Many times, if you haven’t done the work, they’re strong in an area, you feel insecure so you’ll control it because you don’t want anyone to see that you don’t know. But the best bosses know who they’re not so that they can hire who they’re not to fill the gaps, but they don’t get to a place of transparency, vulnerability, accountability. I know what I’m not. So, I hire so that our team can be the fullness expression of success.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Okay, I want to switch it up. We were having a conversation last night and this was an hour into knowing each other.
Jimmy Rollins: Gotcha.
Brad Johnson: And what was cool is you have a gift of connection. Like, we talked about communication, but I’m sure you’ve heard this before, like you just break down walls really quickly. It’s through probably your humor. You’re not taking yourself too seriously. But I’ve got a friend named Josh, played college football with him. And so, my coming up, Minneapolis, Kansas, 2,000 people, all white dudes. And so, my wife and I, both small town Kansas, like one of our principles for our family is we love small town. But the downside of small town is lack of exposure to the world. You know, like if you never leave the small town, you don’t get out and see the diversity and everything that is out there. And so, we raised our kids in a small town, but one of our principles was we wanted to travel, we wanted exposure, we wanted different cultures, different people, different ethnicities.
And back to my buddy Josh, who I played college ball with, grew up in Chicago, black dude, one of my best friends in the world. And he’s challenged me because he’s seen Triad grow and he is like, where all the black dudes at? And in finance, being in this business since ‘07, I’m just going to say it’s very middle-aged white guy. And even females were excluded. Now, that’s changing and it’s changing for the better. But I just wanted to ask you, what are your thoughts on that take? How could finance open up the door to more diversity, more of what the real world looks like? Not just a bunch of white people running around managing your assets. What are your thoughts?
Jimmy Rollins: That’s a great question. And I get this in every environment, especially the church environment, right? And they’re like, or the nonprofit environment, like, how do we embrace diversity? And I said, well, a company can never embrace something that the owner doesn’t embody. Like, if you want an area to become diverse, what’s that diverse expression look like in your life, personally? Because who we are is what the environments that we create and what the environment will be.
And so, we can’t ever have diverse people in seats until we’re open up to diverse people in the seat of our hearts, and we have to embody and embrace this mentality that the word unity does not exist if there’s not disunity or difference or division, right? The word unity in itself embodies that it’s not uniformity. There’s a scripture that says how good and pleasant it is when brethren dwell together in unity. It doesn’t say dwell together in uniformity. So, we take that principle, take it out of the book, and just live that principle. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Here’s the challenge. You don’t get to pick your neighborhood, right?
And what happens is, is I feel like our nation, our globe is divided, it’s not because of racism. It could be elitism. And elitism is that I don’t have to care. I’ve created an environment that I love everybody but up to a point. And so, it starts here. Would you agree that everyone loves to be comfortable?
Brad Johnson: Of course.
Jimmy Rollins: Right? And it’s crazy how you can be, I love to be comfortable. Now, you can say, if me and my wife are shopping for a couch and she’s 5’3, 125, 130 pounds, how do we come together on a couch purchase? Her legs are going to hang off and my legs are going to be perfect, right? So, she says, no, I’m comfortable here. Then she starts to prefer what she’s comfortable with. So, now comfortability has caused preference. And preference is, I prefer this, right?
The next stage is standard. You started at comfortability, now your preference. Now, your preference has become a standard, and the standard is everyone who prefers what I prefer, that’s who I surround myself with. Preference, comfortability. Preference, I mean preference standard. Now, it gets into exclusivity. Exclusivity is very dangerous because this is where stereotype start to grow.
A stereotype is this, when your mind has decided to stop learning based off of what you’ve heard or experienced in the past. Like many of the listeners right now, they haven’t heard a diverse, who I am here on this podcast. They’re like, wow, this guy, like he’s smart or he knows a lot, like I want to bring him in, but why wouldn’t you have before? Because you didn’t have proximity. Stereotyping is deciding something about someone or something with what you saw in the news, what you read, but you didn’t have proximity with in making a decision. So, what I believe diversity is, is opening us up to be comfortable with things that may not fit us, to not have a preference. I prefer to buy a Sleep Number bed where both sides, everyone can have their own setting, but we’re still in the same bed, right?
Now, the standard is everyone is valued. And it gets to this place of not exclusivity. Man, there’s differences. So, everyone’s wanting to know like, is this racism? Is it not? Well, are you just comfortable? Has your comfortability turned into preference? Has your preference created a standard that’s gone to exclusivity just building your world with people who you prefer to be in your world?
And I got some friends I could say here today, I got a white friend. I got white friends. But what I love about this conversation is different doesn’t mean better. It just means different. And the culture of your business, if you opened up that business book, your mindset to reach anybody, everyone, and anybody, I bet you, you could take your sales numbers to a whole ‘nother level. And I feel like in the– I know the African-American community because I am African-American. And just open yourself up to, I’m learning so much from Andy, but it’s like he doesn’t love me because I’m black. I don’t feel like a project, I feel like a friend.
And we may dress different, we may talk different, we may vote different, I don’t know, and even talked about that stuff. And guess what? The difference of just who he is and who I am, unity. And that’s where favor and blessing come from.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. It’s interesting you said comfort. So, we did a little project as a family, Johnson family values, and one of them is Johnson’s get uncomfortable and do hard things and that’s where the growth comes from.
Jimmy Rollins: That’s great.
Brad Johnson: But I never looked at it through that lens. I mean, Triad exists today because I was having that conversation with my kids, and then I looked in the mirror and I said, I’m staying comfortable. I know there’s more out here. I know it’s time for me to kind of leave the nest that I grew up in. But I was preaching it, but I wasn’t doing it. And then I kind of had that realization where it’s like, I’m not going to be on my deathbed where my kids tell me, well, dad, you talked about it, but you never did it yourself.
Jimmy Rollins: Wow.
Brad Johnson: But hearing it through that lens of like, apply that to all of your life, and you brought a story to mind. I was at this conference and there was a project where people were incarcerated. And they created an entrepreneurship program inside of jail so that when they got out, they wouldn’t fall back into what got them in. And there was this dude named Chris, was one of like the three or four there. And this was like a bunch of one percenters, 150 in the room. A guy named Jayson Gaignard runs a group called Mastermind Talks. Really, really cool community.
And I remember looking over in the corner, baldheaded dude, pretty big, burly, full-face tats, like covered. Like the type of guy if you let yourself go there, you’re like, hmmm, it’s intimidating and you create the narrative in your head. And I made a decision right there because my natural tendency was, hmmm, probably not going to strike up a conversation with that dude. I flipped it and I said, I am. I must. And about a day later, I got on a bus with him. He was sitting in the back by himself and I just walked straight back, sat down next to him, and I said, “Hey, Chris, can I hear your story?”
Jimmy Rollins: Wow.
Brad Johnson: Grew up in LA. Dad was a drug dealer, had him on a street corner by the age of like six or eight running drugs for him. I won’t go full depth into the story, but what I learned in that moment as I was probably 40, had our roles been reversed, had Brad grown up in that environment, I would’ve been the guy in that room with the face tats. And I think a lot of times, in life, back to comfort, we just write somebody off before we even know their story.
Jimmy Rollins: It’s true. I do it too.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I mean, you can’t always control the first thought that comes through your head. And so, I appreciate that and I’m going to continue to help run this organization in a way where we don’t ever write people off before we know their story because there’s a lot of really cool stories out there that given the chance. So, I don’t even know where to take it from here. We could literally– I think we could do an eight-hour podcast. I’m not going to do that to you. I know you’ve got some speaking engagements tonight. But Jimmy, I really, really appreciate the conversation, Andy, who’s right over here off camera. Andy, come on. You got to at least like pop your face on here. You made this conversation happen. So, here’s the Andy.
Jimmy Rollins: Here’s the Andy, guys. This is a good man right here. We’re twins, I don’t know if you can tell.
Brad Johnson: So, and what’s cool is this conversation happened because you all met in an elevator randomly, and it was like that sort of conversation that just…
Jimmy Rollins: Yeah. In another country. It’s crazy.
Brad Johnson: So, anyway, gentlemen, appreciate it, Jimmy.
Jimmy Rollins: Absolutely.
Brad Johnson: And till next time. I have a feeling there’s going to be a next time. I hope so.
Jimmy Rollins: I hope so too. Can’t wait. Thank you.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, appreciate you.
