Leadership, Legacy, and Animated Storybooks: A Chat

Chris Kiefer (00:01.486)

Welcome back to another episode of the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer, and today I am here with Joey Jenkins, the CEO of VOOX. First of all, Joey, thanks so much for making this happen.

Joey Jenkins (00:14.498)

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Chris Kiefer (00:16.53)

And yeah, tell us what is books.

Joey Jenkins (00:20.406)

Books is the first streaming service of animated storybooks for kids. So we partner with about 40 publishing partners to license their traditional kids books. And then we bring them to life with animation, music, sound, and voiceover, and create a really fun, entertaining, educational product for young kids.

Chris Kiefer (00:40.026)

And I saw that you guys have been partnering with, was it Verizon, or there's some bigger players that are just able to offer books on their platform now, is that correct?

Joey Jenkins (00:52.522)

Yeah, Verizon is a partner. We have our content on Netflix and it's called Storybook Read Aloud and some great traction there and a number of other partners, about a dozen airlines that we license our content to, a number of ed tech and entertainment partners and continuing to expand that every month right now.

Chris Kiefer (01:09.678)

That's awesome. So yeah, I'm gonna give context for everybody else, but Joey, you obviously know this. I met Joey back, I think this was like five years ago-ish, maybe six years ago in Portland. We were part of this group called Bic Brothers in Christ, and I just remember, I mean, so many good dudes in that group and in that room, but you were always,

I remember this one particular story, and I don't know if you, like, again, I feel like it was the result is not what is important, but it was like the type of person that you were. But I'm curious, I think I texted you about this before we were chatting. What is this, what was like your career journey to where you are now? And I don't know, to whatever extent you wanna talk about your...

your passions and dreams in life and how that's evolved and turned into what you're doing now.

Joey Jenkins (02:09.958)

Yeah, you know, my career journey, I studied exercise and sport science at Oregon State University. I was really fortunate and blessed there to have a life transformational mentor who was there through some really hard, really dark and challenging seasons of my life. Somebody who could just be real and raw and see the best in me. And as I say, and I'm reflecting decades later, he helped me see things in myself I could never unsee. So that just planted the seed of I would love to be that for

Joey Jenkins (02:40.566)

I went back to Oregon State, got my master's in business in 2010, became a fitness manager at 24 hour fitness for three years, um, love helping people achieve their health and wellness and fitness goals. But beyond that, I like helping people achieve their life goals and just character development and becoming the men or women they were created to be. So I actually got an investor to start my own life leadership in business, coaching business, ran that for five years. I worked mainly with 15 to 25 year old young men.

In the high schools, private schools, public schools, university system, Oregon youth prison system, I had two state-funded contracts, worked with a lot of guys who had two to 40-year prison sentences, ended up being the executive producer of a transformational story of a guy who was seven years in prison and had this incredible turnaround transformation story. That's probably my favorite project I've ever worked on.

In that five years, I also wrote the book, Never Hit the Snooze Button, which is about the importance of the little things and keeping your word and the importance of commitment. And then my wife and I started a nonprofit with three other Oregon State students about 17 years ago now. We served the homeless in Portland for six years and we now transitioned after that first six years to exclusively focusing on educating and empowering kids in Haiti.

And so my wife was an elementary school teacher. We have three kids, seven to 12 years old. And then when the VOOX co-founder invited me to join the mission of VOOX, which was to ignite a love of reading and kids, it was a seamless fit in our family's passion and central focus on education and learning and that journey. So leadership is a huge passion of mine. Love to talk more about, but that's kind of the quick high level background of my career journey that's led me to VOOX and where I am today.

Chris Kiefer (04:27.566)

I do want to talk about leadership and And entrepreneurship and whatnot, but you said something Keeping your word That is something that's been so when I moved we're now in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho And I joined this coaching group probably three four years ago and The the guy's name is Matt Laughlin great, dude, and he's this is like one of the it's like a it was a

group of 10 men that all paid Matt to be the facilitator of this, uh, group. And you do, we were together for six months and there'd be some change over. People would leave and other ones would come in and whatnot. But I did that for three sessions, met some amazing people. But one of the things that Matt always brought up is like, it's impossible to always keep your word, but you can always honor your word. Um, and then also just talking about like how

when you don't honor a commitment that you make to yourself, you're actually like, um, beating down or destroying your own, your own self confidence and just your ability to do, do show up for other people or to do what you say you're going to do in other areas. And, um, so I'm curious, I didn't realize that you had written a book on this same topic, but that seems like, I mean, honestly, it seems like it does, it ties into leadership as well, because in my opinion,

Joey Jenkins (05:35.533)

Yep.

Chris Kiefer (05:55.423)

Uh, I don't, I can't imagine very many inspiring leaders that aren't masters of honoring their word.

Joey Jenkins (06:03.477)

Yeah.

I think it's a great point. I think, uh, Daniel Harkinvy, I've heard from a CEO building champions, frame it this way, that self leadership proceeds team leadership. And I think to what you said, that's part of the never hit the snooze button, the, you know, example and metaphor of the snooze button to me, is it such a great symbolic gesture of, it's the very first thing you do in the morning where you tell yourself, you're the kind of person who does what they say they're going to do or it doesn't.

affect and then start to bleed into other areas of your life. And so I think that, you know, it's the simple things and the basic things that often differentiate us in life. And I think that keeping our word to ourselves first and foremost and then to other people is way rarer than it should be in society today.

Chris Kiefer (06:53.09)

Yeah. And I, um, I don't remember which or where I heard this, but it's like, Chris, you don't have to go to the gym every day. You just have to go to the gym on the days you told yourself when you went to bed, that you're going to go to gym the next morning. Like when you're going to bed, like you can say, Hey, I'm, I'm a little tired. I'm not feeling good. Own it and say, I'm not going tomorrow. But if you let yourself make the decision when you're groggy and the alarms going off, you're never like, yeah, that's huge.

Joey Jenkins (07:06.542)

Exactly.

Joey Jenkins (07:22.082)

That's the way I frame it, is a very simple, which version of myself do I trust more? The awake, conscious, at 10 o'clock going to bed, or the alarm just went off, 5.15 in the morning version of myself, and every day of the week I trust the more conscious. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Kiefer (07:38.862)

The one who has thought about it. Yes. Um, and also I'm thinking like, um, have you had the, the beauty of fatherhood or parenthood of just having your kids reflect back to you, um, areas where you're maybe slipping up and honoring your word of things you told them you do, you know, like, oh yeah, we'll get, we'll get ice cream tomorrow or whatever, you know, just trying to punt it down the road or like, Oh, we'll do Legos later. I'm busy right now. And you know,

They come up to you and they're like, Hey, remember you said this? It's like, how, of course you'd remember that.

Joey Jenkins (08:11.906)

Yeah. Oh yeah, no, they do. My wife and I have talked about that often. And for me, that's a really big deal. I don't know that for everybody that feels like as big of a deal, if they're like, well, something came up though, like I said, I would do that with you tonight, but this thing came up.

I'm a big believer in like you, wherever possible, even if it's painful or more painful than you thought it would be when you first made the commitment, you stick to it and you make the sacrifice and you make it happen. There are gonna be circumstances where you can't, but I think it should be extremely rare that you can't. So, you know, there's...

Chris Kiefer (08:45.774)

Yeah. And it's just prioritizing your kids like, Oh, any commitment that I make to you has the possibility of being bumped by something else more important. But I'll, if I, if there's nothing else more important than you're my top priority, you know, like what does that say over, over 18 years?

Joey Jenkins (08:59.541)

Great.

Yeah, there's that famous parenting saying, more is caught than is taught. And I think that that's, you know, part of leadership in general is you just try to model, model that as often as you can. And you hope that they catch some of that along the way as they're growing up.

Chris Kiefer (09:15.586)

Yeah. So I want to just kind of open it up to your, like in the realm of leadership, entrepreneurship, peak performance. I think you had said systems, processes, accountability. What is like top of mind for you or what should we spend the next 30 minutes talking about?

Joey Jenkins (09:35.462)

I mean, I love, you know, I'm a big John Maxwell, everything rises and falls on leadership. I love the entrepreneurial journey. And so I think that that's just super important that, you know, the impact business has in the world and the challenge of the fast paced startup world. And I've had the blessing and benefit of living through some really high highs in the last five years on that and some really low lows and lots of challenge.

Joey Jenkins (10:04.554)

When I think about the importance of leadership and how important it is in society, I would just start there probably and think that we'll see where that goes maybe in entrepreneurship and systems and processes and accountability and some of the other aspects. So I'll let you kind of pull me through some of those key areas potentially as I go. But I would say, you know, for me, back to the everything rises and falls in leadership, that mentor I mentioned, he was life transformational for me. He actually.

Chris Kiefer (10:30.766)

And this was a mentor when you were in the health and science, uh, background at in the gym.

Joey Jenkins (10:34.558)

Yeah, at Oregon State University, I worked at Oregon State's Rec Center for three years in my undergrad, two years as a graduate assistant, and a man named Troy Snow, who actually dedicated my book to, was somebody who really challenged me and inspired me. So I'm a big believer in high challenge, high support leadership. And so there's a challenge, support matrix where, you know, you have the four quadrants.

And I tell my team at Voox, when I first became CEO, I said, look, I'm going to try to pull this company to as far top right quadrant of this chart as we can possibly go. The highest challenge and the highest support that you can get. I'm not going to do that perfectly. And you have freedom to call me on that when it's to only challenge and not support, or if it's only support and only challenge, then that's something that I need to improve and step up my game on. But...

You know, I heard this, I'm reading a book right now where they talked about, it's called Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. And he talked about the difference between critics, cheerleaders and coaches. And that's just trying to be a coach. You don't want to just be a cheerleader. You don't want to just be a critic, but as a leader, you're trying to be a coach who does both of those things.

Chris Kiefer (11:43.133)

Mmm.

Joey Jenkins (11:44.766)

And I think a lot of times we err on one side or the other. We're just either an all encouraging leader or we're an all challenging leader. And Troy to me was somebody who really modeled the high challenge, high support. I never questioned whether he believed in me. He saw the best in me. He saw things in me I didn't see in myself. He challenged me to accelerate my growth, to step into the unknown, to lean into areas of discomfort. He called me out when.

I wasn't living into my full potential and he helped me step into that and do it better. And was somebody I could be real with and raw with and vulnerable and all those other things.

Chris Kiefer (12:22.214)

Hmm. How, so I have follow-up questions. Is this the, this is the thing you're talking about? I'm sure not necessarily with the emojis. There's probably a bunch of these, but is this the general concept?

Joey Jenkins (12:34.45)

Yeah, it is. I got mine from a group called Giant. They do a lot of leadership development and coaching, and I've been working with one of their executives and in their chart on the top left is, you know, high support, low challenge and what it ends up leading to, yeah, I think you're, I think that's it right there. Top left there. So yeah, what it ends up leading to is it's, it's a protector and this is a lot of leaders and this is who people would naturally want to work for.

is a protector. Like you want high support, low challenge. Just as human beings innately, that's easier. It feels better in general, but it ends up leading to a culture of entitlement and mistrust. It takes time to get there, but that's where it inevitably leads. The high challenge or low support is this dominator culture of fear, manipulation, abdicators. You don't do either. You get empathy, apathy, and low expectation. And I think in a lot of these cases, if you look at all these...

There's tons of startups who are going out of business and who end up having these businesses with 10,000 plus employee layoffs in the tech space. Oftentimes they really, if you studied and surveyed their companies, they would end up in one of those other three quadrants. So it's hard to be in the liberator culture of empowerment and opportunity. But that's always my goal as a leader is to go to the very top right of that chart as much as you possibly can.

Chris Kiefer (13:50.02)

Ah.

Chris Kiefer (14:01.238)

And what are the tactics or strategies? Cause this is relevant to me and my company. And I'm a lot of the people that listen to this podcast are in the home service world, entrepreneurship. How do you, uh, like what advice do you have for somebody who's like, okay, I see it, obviously that is the, that's where I would like to be. What are the tactics or approaches to try and be, or live in that as often as possible.

Joey Jenkins (14:26.95)

Yeah. Um, I would say, first of all, I think two things that matter a lot in this equation. You absolutely have to genuinely care a lot. And I don't know how to make somebody care, like to care about their people, to care about who they become beyond just what they produce for your company. You have to actually care about their personal and professional growth and development, their family, their work life balance, who they were made to be and what they're able to contribute in the world.

And so you're just inevitably not going to be high support if you don't actually genuinely and deeply care. If you do that, then the other part of the equation is immense amounts of courage. Because the amount of times that you need to call people out and challenge them to another level, it just takes daily consistent courage as a leader, and you have to do it oftentimes seven times in a day to hold people to a higher standard. And so I like to use, because of my fitness and sports background in general,

And as a personal trainer and managing that, I have to tell people, look, when I go to a workout, I am a high standards, self-accountability guy. And when I go to a group workout, I never would push myself as hard by myself as I'm going to push myself when I have a group there. So, so the default expectation is that.

You're not giving your best effort if you're not being challenged by an outside force. I just think that is very rarely true. And if you start with that assumption and you start with the assumption that, and that's okay, that's human nature that we all need to be challenged, but I'm also challenging from, from a place of the mission is so critical and so important. That's where our standards come from. And, and your potential is so big.

Chris Kiefer (16:04.871)

Hmm

Joey Jenkins (16:08.198)

And I'm a huge believer. I've done a lot of talks at universities on this is that every person has a unique gifting, a unique story that no one else in the world has unique strengths and passions that no one else in the world has. And each one of these unique, nobody else has in the world. When you combine all of those together from all those spheres, that person's impact matters a ton. So you can impact people, companies, spaces in this world in a way that I never could, and that's true of all of us. And so because I believe that matters so much.

I'm going to I'm going to courageously press in more with people and did the discomfort and I use this is like part of my leadership journey was Seeing that feeling that and just not saying anything or not pressing in because I was too afraid because my people pleaser side One out on a day to day hour by hour basis

And now, if you were to ask my team, I'm a fairly uncomfortable leader to work for, I would say. But I think I also have established tremendous amounts of trust with my team that leads for that to be a healthy dynamic where at VOOX, one of the things I'm proud of, and we've had a lot of challenges, but we won Inc. Magazine, best companies to work for last year for 10 to 50 employee-sized companies.

And we won that in the midst of some very challenging high pressure, high stress dynamics that I think came as a result of we had a leadership team across the board, other people on our leadership team who had earned and established tremendous amounts of trust and established a great culture of engagement and buy-in to mission, vision, purpose, and all those things.

Chris Kiefer (17:45.574)

Hmm. Yeah, that's, um, I love the, basically like you have to care. Let's you said the foundational piece, you have to care immensely and genuinely about your people. And then that gives you, I don't know if permission is the right word, but if some random person I've never met comes up and starts, you know, challenging me, that's like the extreme of like, you don't know me. You don't know idea what I want or what I'm doing. What do you do? Like, I'm not going to listen to you versus like,

Obviously a spouse, uh, in a healthy relationship is going to, you know, know every part of you, you know, very well, or, uh, or just like you said, a coach that's like checking in with you regularly, you're telling them where you're trying to get. And they're like, okay, this is what I'm seeing. Is this what you're intending to do? You know? Um, but I love that because, uh,

It reminds me, I guess I'd be curious if you've heard of, um, this guy's name is Eric Coriel. Um, and he has, uh, what he calls a high, um, or now I'm going to forget what his, what his name is high functioning, uh, team. Let me double check this. Uh, my editor can cut this moment out. Um, Eric Coriel.

Chris Kiefer (19:18.258)

Accountable, okay, that's what the word, so he calls it, Eric Coriel calls this idea of like the highest performing team is an accountable team. And then he goes in to describe what that is. But have you heard, is there any of that, does that sound familiar? You probably are familiar with the concepts, it's not like he invented them, but you haven't heard of Eric in particular?

Joey Jenkins (19:28.558)

Yep.

Joey Jenkins (19:39.89)

I haven't heard of him in particular, but I'm a big believer of accountability in general and systems and processes and leverage to drive that. So our team, for instance, has monthly sprints and we hold accountable and we share with the whole team what our team averages, what our team goal is. And there's a lot of accountability on doing what you say. So more to this news button, accomplishing what you said you were going to do and rarely missing that. And for me personally, back to self leadership, I have multiple groups that I meet with.

weekly that I have accountability in different key areas of goals. So there's one group where I commit a specific project between Friday and Friday every week that I'm going to get done. And I try to keep a running streak of how many weeks in a row I did what I said I was going to do. And I've just found that I need the leverage. Like this week's was to tear my fence down in my backyard and I had to go get a chainsaw and spend.

four hours outside of work hours, like getting this job done that would have just kept being on this running long list of things I want to get done. But I have a group that I know, all I have to do is tell this group on Friday that I'm going to get something done by the next Friday and it will a hundred percent of the time. It's done. Like in my mind it's already done because I know that group has such high standards.

Chris Kiefer (20:45.007)

Hey, good son.

Joey Jenkins (20:50.822)

And I want to make sure I deliver everything I say every time. So I might miss one out of 50 weeks with that group, but I'm, so now I have this confidence of, of a group that helps hold me accountable to get done the kind of stuff I want to get done.

Chris Kiefer (21:04.034)

And is this your, this is your company team or is this like a coaching group that you're a part of?

Joey Jenkins (21:08.883)

That's just a separate.

Separate group that I'm a part of it helps me do that I have another guy that I meet with every Thursday every Monday. We have a weekly scorecard I score a number of habits and personal practices on a score of one to a hundred and Every week on Monday. I share how I did last week how I did it compared to that weekly goal specifically Well, my goal is for this next week and then every Thursday We have a 30 minute zoom call where we each get 15 minutes to check in Strategize say what we need to do to hit our target and I track how many weeks I hit my target So I've got a 22 week streak right now I'm a

and the power of streaks just psychologically on how they drive behavior. So the whole point of this four card system is it's to get me to do more of what I want to do. So I've got things like eat salads, ice baths, sauna sessions, working out, reading time, you know, all sorts of like family going to breakfast with my kids once a week, like I, I'm a big believer in the Peter Drucker, what gets measured gets managed. And so I try to create the right measurement structures and then the right accountability for those measurement structures. I don't just measure them.

Chris Kiefer (21:44.666)

Mm.

Chris Kiefer (22:03.386)

Hmm.

Joey Jenkins (22:09.266)

I then try to invite accountability mainly because I want to get the result. You know, I'm a big believer that systems beat intentions every day of the week. And so anything that I intend on getting done and, you know, I'm, I don't do this across the board a hundred percent of the time, but I try to as often as possible. When I have a new intention, I try to put a system to it to make sure that I live into my intention as often as I can.

Chris Kiefer (22:16.932)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (22:30.254)

Okay, so I'm going to, this is me being vulnerable cause this is super relevant. It's coming up in the, this coaching group that I'm a part of. It's like, I, and I'm already thinking like, what is my intention? So I'm going to come back to that. Cause maybe that's why I'm failing on this thing. Cause I'm in general, someone that I keep my word to myself. I'm like a 5 a.m wake up, go to the gym every day. Like that's, that's what I do. But, and the physical challenges for me.

it tend to be easier. It's like, yeah, I just, I wake up. That's like, get out of bed. I go to bed early too. But like it's the, but that part of my life, if it's like I trained for a marathon and I was like, you know, I had my schedule of like, these are rest days. These are run days. This is the length. Just like crush all those goals. And then for whatever reason, I'm Christian obviously. And I, and I know that I should pray more or have like intentional, not just like praying around meals or like

the fleeting moment of like giving thanks to God, but just like I need to like sit in my chair and journal or like I have, I think the problem is that I have some sort of ideal of what it needs to look like. But the thing that I fail with is like I said, this is over the course of several months, like, all right, I'm going to do 15 minutes of prayer a day. And then it was like that.

you know, struggled with, I do it for a couple of days and then just, it wasn't like a priority and then I'd be busy or whatever. Like, no, I'm going to do it first thing in the morning, but then kids are waking you up. So then I'm like, okay, I have excuses, but that's still like excuses. Like if it's important, I'd find the time to do it, whatever. And then I, most recently it was like, I'm just going to track if I'm doing like just write down how many minutes that I do today, put a zero down, put a zero down, whatever. If I, as long as I'm tracking, that's all I was going to do.

But then I got so into like, I wanted to make it so easy for myself to like, since I don't always have my notebook, I was like focusing on how do I make this super, super convenient. So I even like right now I can say Siri log meditation.

Chris Kiefer (24:42.45)

three minutes.

Chris Kiefer (24:47.118)

And so that's all that I'd have to do to like put it onto an air table sheet to track it. Like I've made it so easy. There's no reason that Chris can't hit this. And then what like life gets the way I do other things. So pick me apart. And I guess I would also say like, maybe it's because I haven't gotten clear on why that's even important. I'm just like, I think I need to, but why? And it's like, I have other things that are very clear. There's a deadline, there's a race, there's a, you know, like something that I'm trying to do.

but why would you say what's the, why is that something? And then ultimately I just am like, you know what? I'm gonna own it and I'm not gonna do that. Like I'm not gonna keep pretending like I'm gonna do it. So I own where I'm falling short in this men's group and then just say, yeah, I'm taking a break from it cause I don't know what's going on there. Does that make sense?

Joey Jenkins (25:34.758)

Yeah, it does. I'll take, I'll just kind of take two perspectives on this. One, there's a Mel Robbins perspective of motivations garbage, and you shouldn't rely on it. Then there's a Zig Ziglar perspective of, well, we shut, you know, motivations needed daily and we shower daily. So yeah, you just bring motivation in on a consistent basis to help you do things. So I do believe in the start with why the power of why it's important.

Maybe your why needs to be a little bit stronger on it and you can do some work on that. And like I've worked with a lot of coaches on that. I've coached a lot of people on that. I personally think that's good, but not enough. And that's why I'm a big believer in leverage. So this is a Tony Robbins principle in a lot of ways, but I actually worked with the one of his coaches years ago and I wanted to get my website done. And he essentially said, look, you've wanting to get this done for six months. You haven't got it done. Let's create some leverage. So.

long story short, I write about this in my book, but said two weeks from now, we have another meeting. If in two weeks you don't have this done, essentially I had to write a check to somebody for $500 and I had to commit to that. And I was like, my wife will be pretty upset if I write this random check to this person for $500 just cause I didn't get my website done. He's like, well, is it possible to get done in the next two weeks? I said, yes. I said, is it important to you? It's been important on your list. Yes.

And so as soon as I got off that call, I put like nine time blocks, multiple reminders, and I had my website done two weeks later, all of a sudden it just took enough leverage to get it done. So I would say for you, if I was in your group and you came and said, Hey, I'm not going to do it because I've been committing, I've been saying, I'm not going to do it, my question would be, are you not doing it because you're just failing or are you not doing it because you've truly decided it's not important to you anymore, if you're not doing it just because you haven't figured out a way to do it, we can probably figure this out really quickly.

And maybe you need some, like some habit, some consistent tracker structure that drives this and for different people, that's different things, but

Joey Jenkins (27:29.33)

Atomic Habits does a great job of talking about habit stacking. Once you have one habit anchored in, it's really easy to add something else into that, and then now just know what's going to happen. So I have a few things like that in my structure. And I would say, if I was working with you on that, I'd want to find what that is or how we can create it if it's not there already. So I have this Friday weekly planning hour and a half time block. There's about 12 steps of things I do every Friday.

I never miss it because it's also attached to five points on my scorecard that I have accountability structured in for. So I do all 12 of those steps every week. And there's intentional things like send a video encouraging my team members, like one team member at books. There's things about office organization and like figuring out what my wildly important goals are for the next week and all of these things. If you and me were thinking of one new thing, if there was like a recommendation of something new I needed to add it in weekly that was, that could fit in for five minutes, all I have to do is make it number 13 on that list.

And with 99% certainty, I could say the next two years, that'll happen every single week for the next two years. So I don't think we will ever.

Chris Kiefer (28:32.97)

Hmm. So it's finding the, but, but also that's, there's the, um, everything on that list you've got, I'm assuming deep clarity on why it's on the list to begin with, how that's getting you to the end goal.

Joey Jenkins (28:46.442)

Yeah. And then you're always adjusting and iterating, right? So every for my scorecard, for instance, every quarter, I make micro adjustments to it. I've been using that for over 10 years off and on less successfully in certain seasons and others. And I've continued to figure out, you know, I started with a weekly email to somebody. Then I realized that wasn't quite enough. I needed specific weekly goals outside of just the standard goal. Then I realized I needed an actual midweek zoom meeting to help solve for that.

And all of these things have led to a better and better process. But every quarter I adjust things. So sometimes something will drop off. Be like, yeah, I thought this was important. I've actually figured out it's not important. And then I have this person that I make the case to that then can actually challenge back, I'm saying, Hey, I'm dropping these two things. I'm adding this in and I'm modifying this and dropping it down slightly. And that person, because they know they get, you know, they have the freedom and the leeway to speak into my life and say, should that really come off? Or are you just being lazy or.

Are you just taking it off because it gives you a bad score every week? Cause you missed that one consistently. So I think part of that is.

Chris Kiefer (29:46.706)

Hmm. And this person that you're talking about, is this just like a friend, colleague that you meet with?

Joey Jenkins (29:55.282)

Yeah, it used to be my mentor that I mentioned earlier, and then just different seasons of life, he still does some great coaching with me and consulting and helps a number of areas of life. But there's a, another colleague I've done a number of projects with over the last 10 years together and similar goals and striving that has become my, my new person for probably two to three years now that every Thursday I meet with on this, but we have different, what there's some similarities. There's also some different standards and goals and approaches.

So that's where this new group that I started this year with on Friday, that doesn't take me a whole lot of extra time, but Fridays after a workout, I have this, it's like it's slightly different standards, helps me up level in different ways and helps me accomplish different projects that I, that I commit to. So I'm just a big believer personally. And if anything, I may be getting too much of this, but

Lots of outside advice, input, accountability, challenge. I try to bring as much of that as possible because I wanna be hammered and forged into the leader that I'm capable of becoming.

Chris Kiefer (30:57.042)

Hmm, I love that. I was gonna say, oh, there's two thoughts that are coming to mind. One is, the being a, oh no, I was trying to remember both and I lost both of them. The,

Chris Kiefer (31:18.014)

Oh, so paying, like skin in the game, leverage. I've had people, so like this coaching group of 10 people that I'm in, and it costs, you know, a certain, the money is not important on one hand, but it's also like, there's definitely interesting, like different, I've heard people say, depending upon how much money you make, you know, the amount of money that you should invest.

to get the leverage that's needed to do the thing. Like if it's like, hey, you owe me a dollar if you don't make the website. I'm like, all right, here's a buck. But there's a number and it's like, that's gonna be a lot different for Jeff Bezos than for a college kid or whatever. But the point is that I was telling someone about this group and they were like, why don't you just like get a bunch of your friends together and like meet on Wednesdays and do the same thing? Like what's this coach doing for you? And

At first I didn't really have a good answer, but now I would say, or with the words you're using, it's because everybody has used leverage and they're paying to show up. And the fact there's another piece of it. I think that, um, if I'm willing to put in 500 or a thousand or whatever the number is for this group, then there's like a, um,

I'm not like humans. I don't like this is a different person said humans are we're not stupid Like we're not just we don't just burn money. So we put money into things and we expect an ROI so that's another thing I've been thinking about is like I Didn't I would I would tell people I don't think it's not I guess it's it is possible but very rare to find a container that doesn't involve some sort of buy-in that's actually going to have the

outcomes that you would get from a paid version of the same thing. Does that make sense?

Joey Jenkins (33:13.11)

Yeah. Yep.

And if it's not a paid version, there's other ways to create leverage with it. So like one of my groups, I said, look, this is going to be my best year ever. I want really high standards and really high accountability this year. If you're not able and willing to hit this goal for yourself, kind of this minimum threshold every month, I just, I can't keep meeting because I only have so much time, I only have so many hours I can give, like, you know, there's time resources and money resources and I have about seven hours a week.

of these meetings and accountability and groups and input and feedback. And so if, yeah, if one hour isn't truly moving the needle, like every hour that's not moving the needle, it's got to go. And so I would say in general, that one of the biggest challenges is that whole concept of your, you know, you are the five people you surround yourself with and who we surround ourselves with is who we become and I'm a huge believer in that and so.

Chris Kiefer (33:48.922)

Yeah, at some point you have to do stuff too.

Joey Jenkins (34:10.322)

I think the goal of everybody should be, you want to be with people who have, who expect more out of you. And I think that's super hard to find in life personally. You have high expectations to find people who are going to challenge you and, and tell you to do more and you should have met your commitment and step up and like make it a little bit uncomfortable for you. Isn't all that easy. And I think whenever you find it, that's the kind of group I would encourage people when you find it, like absorb the discomfort, welcome it and lean into it. The gift.

Chris Kiefer (34:17.788)

Mm. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (34:37.53)

Hmm. Yeah. I think the, um, uh, cause I was going to say the, well, another piece of that is every group that I've been in and any goal that I've had, I, I have now, I'm a big fan of commit to a timeframe that you're going to do something because I have been in situations where it's like, Hey, we should meet every Wednesday and then we start and there's no, no one was clear on when this is stopping, you know,

but if it's like, hey, we're gonna do this for six weeks or for six months or whatever the timeframe is, and then at the end of that timeframe, we're gonna take a breath and be like, all right, what'd we learn? What has changed? It's kind of like your quarterly re-evaluating of things, but I'm gonna put my head down for three months and I'm gonna get these things done because this is what I believe is to be important. Do you set that up in this one-on-one relationship of like, hey, we're not.

gonna meet forever, but we've been going for two or three years, like, what is your predetermined like checkpoint to say, how's this working for you? How's it working for me? Do what? How do we adjust this?

Joey Jenkins (35:45.758)

Sometimes I do and I would say I typically do when it's paid and I typically don't when it's not. And I think I actually probably always should. So I think that's a really good insight from you and one for anybody listening, I think is, I would recommend in all the groups I am in that aren't paid, I probably should have done that.

And I think that would actually maximize value and I think shorter timeframes at first to have an evaluation and to have every, and even upfront to say, and then let's all bring our reflections and thoughts of is it valuable if so, how, and how could it be better would be a really great starting point so that you don't end up feeling stuck in a group that's not really adding value and moving the needle.

Chris Kiefer (36:23.054)

Yeah, because then if you're like, this isn't adding value to me and I want to back away slowly, but it's like, I committed every Wednesday till forever. Now I have to be the one that's back. You know what I mean? And that's the other thing is I've, I've thought like, um, if you have like a kickball or we, I was on like a softball team, just city league, old man softball league with all the dads at our kid's school. And it's like, there's eight games and then it's over for a year, you know? And.

Joey Jenkins (36:33.345)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (36:51.274)

you should like people that don't show up to anything all year, they're like eight softball games, bang, they hit all of them. And then it's like, you know, there's only two left, there's only one left. Like, there's the scarcity, which also drives behavior. And I feel like when there's just a game every week, you just start to see like that's like contrasting it to open gym basketball every Sunday at 7pm, come when you want. And it's just forever.

Joey Jenkins (37:18.962)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (37:20.258)

and the attendance is horrible, and all of a sudden they're like, hey, there's only two left and everyone's there.

Joey Jenkins (37:25.702)

Yeah, I would say, you know, one thing I want to make sure I convey is leadership is tough. Like interpersonal life is tough. You're going to have people who think you're a terrible leader. It's not. I remember when I first became a leader wanting to quit my first six months five times because I knew when I was cleaning equipment, I can clean more equipment than anybody. If it's customer service, I can be friendly to everybody. Like these are controllable things.

There's so much interpretation and complexity of how one person likes to be led versus another person. And it's just such a challenging, difficult job. So for me, it's just a journey of trying to have enough humility to constantly get better and constantly be learning and being sharpened by those around you. And then the last thing I would say that I think is important to convey is, and I've been doing a lot of reflecting cause I just turned 40 and just kind of thinking about, I read the book, Halftime, uh, by Bob Buford and just thinking about what kind of impact do I want to leave?

How many decades do I have left on average? And started to just reflect on, you know, my vision and ambitions may be here. What I want to accomplish in time. Where are my actions? What's my sacrifice ability and willingness? And then does one need to go up to the other? Like they should be aligned.

So am I willing to lower my ambitions and vision because I'm not on track or do I need to up my standards and sacrifice and actions or am I okay living in delusion land in between in the middle there and I'd prefer not to be delusional about that. So, so for me, it was just a healthy reflection. I think everybody could, could use some reflection time on that at a lot of points and seasons in life and figure out, do your actions and strategy.

and sacrifice match your ambitions and your vision for your life and what, who you want to be and what you want to accomplish.

Chris Kiefer (39:11.958)

Mm, I love that. That's a great place to wrap up. So you mentioned a couple books, but you do have the official three recommendations if you'd like to use the ones you mentioned and tell us more about it, or just tell us what those three book recommendations are.

Joey Jenkins (39:27.518)

Yeah, I'd say number one is the book my mentor got me, Developing the Leaders Around You, John Maxwell. I read it when I was 20 or 21 and just re-read it again about three months ago. I think it's a really inspiring book on leadership. Number two is Becoming a Coaching Leader. Daniel Harkopy, who I mentioned, the CEO of Building Champions, wrote that book and just I'm a huge believer in coaching leadership as I kind of weaved in throughout. And then number three, Becoming a Coaching Leader. And then number three.

Chris Kiefer (39:50.586)

What was the title of that one?

Okay.

Joey Jenkins (39:56.266)

would be Getting Things Done by David Allen for the, this is not necessarily everyone's jam, but the systems and processes and structure I talked about. It's a great book that I believe the people who utilize the systems and structure in that book are gonna be more successful than 90% of society. And again, it's rare, lots of organization, lots of structure, but I think it's extremely valuable.

Chris Kiefer (40:23.026)

How would you compare the getting things done to, because I feel like I would have said that I read it, but I don't remember, it's been a very long time. I have read Atomic Habits. How does it compare to just the way you described it sounds to me a little bit like Atomic Habits?

Joey Jenkins (40:41.074)

Yeah, I think they're pretty different. Actually, atomic habits is more about building structure for kind of creating habits in your life. And there's some carryover, but getting things done, I think is much more.

Tactical and strategic on how do you create the right systems to manage work life in general? How do you capture the things that need done? How do you put those things on the right list? How do you do that in a structured and organized way so that you have confidence that you have a system that almost nothing ever falls through the cracks on? That it's a very highly 95 plus percent

Chris Kiefer (41:01.017)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (41:12.626)

Hmm.

Joey Jenkins (41:15.762)

effective system. So if somebody tells you, hey, this dropped, I'm not sure who dropped the ball on this, if it was you or I, you just know that it's typically wasn't you in that situation. I think David Allen's system can give you that kind of confidence if you use it all the way, you know, full proof.

Chris Kiefer (41:30.382)

Love that. And what's a movie recommendation?

Joey Jenkins (41:35.934)

I mean, my favorite movie is Braveheart. Big fan, again, lots of courage leaning in there, lots of leadership examples and modeling and sacrifice required. So I think it's a great story, lots of great history and lots of great leadership examples woven in.

Chris Kiefer (41:51.498)

Awesome. And if someone wants to get in touch with you, what's your preferred method that they do that?

Joey Jenkins (41:58.315)

Joey at VOOX.com.

Chris Kiefer (42:01.346)

Awesome. Well, Joey, this is, uh, I love, I love talking about stuff like this. Um, and it's, it's always inspiring and motivating to hear what other people that I admire and respect are doing. So thank you for coming on and chatting and hopefully everyone else listening got value out of this as well. And, um, yeah, we'll next time, uh, we make it over to Cedar point, which is at some point, uh, goal of mine. We'll see if you're still in the area. If you move back to Portland,

Joey Jenkins (42:29.75)

That'd be great. Thanks for having me, Chris. I appreciate it.

Chris Kiefer (42:30.918)

Alright.