Welcome to the win at home first podcast. I'm your host, Corey Carlson. This podcast is where we talk about how successful business leaders win, not only at work, but also at home. On this podcast, we will go behind the scenes with great leaders to hear stories of how they win. Thank you for listening and on to today's episode.
Hello, welcome to the win at home first podcast. My name is Corey Carlson. This is episode number one. I am so excited you are listening to this podcast because I know there are a ton of podcasts out there to choose from. I've heard it said before, the new currency is attention, so to have your attention for the show, I am forever grateful and I don't take it lightly. Some of you may be asking, who is this guy and what is this show about? Well, others of you have been asking me to launch the show for a while, to give more tips and tricks and ideas of what business leaders are doing to win both at work and at home.
(01:02): A few months ago I wrote a book called ‘Win at Home. First’ with the subtitle inspirational guide to work life balance. And when it came out, it was an Amazon number one new release in three different categories, one of which was Christian leadership. So pretty cool. It's very exciting. At the, at the time, and still is, a few months ago, Forbes magazine wrote an article titled seven books. Everyone on your team should read. I was super excited when at home first made the list. So the purpose of this podcast is to share ways that successful business leaders have built their career, but also did it while winning at home. We'll get a hear the different rhythms and mindsets that they had to help them win at home. Oh, also learn about maybe the bad times, right when they were not winning at home, but how did they recalibrate? How did they intentionality in getting engaged with their children?
(02:03): Again, spending more time with their spouse, maybe working out more in journaling or getting whatever mental capacity that they needed to do. See, all of us want to win. We want to win a work. We want to win at home. We want to win our personal life and our health and our finances everywhere. However, work has the strongest poll of them to get our attention right? We need to make money. We've got bosses, we've got emails, we have a lot of different demands that pull us towards work. And for some of us, I know in different parts of my career we have tied our identity to our career. Maybe it's the job title, it's how much money we make. It's are we sitting in the corner office? How many people are we leading? And so we can tie our identity to our value as a person, as a leader, as a man.
(02:57): Not Just that. And there's also KPIs, right? Key performance indicators with work that help us measure if we're winning or not. Where at home it's a lot more difficult. She can just see we've got this natural draw to go towards work, but if we're not careful, we'll give our all to work eventually to get that out corner office in wonder, is this it? Did I do all of this for this? And it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel fulfilling. Or we build a nest egg of wealth only to see a crisis, take that money completely down, do the turn of the stock market or maybe we work so hard for an employer. And then we ended up getting terminated, which I know I speak from personal experience and all of us will eventually retire. So we put all of these efforts into work where it ebbs and flows but yet family's there the whole entire time.
(04:01): So we want to make sure that we're living a life to the full and then we are both winning at work and at home it's a no, now you know the reason for this podcast and my heart behind it, you probably want to know who I am and do what authority do I have to speak about success in both. Okay. As well at home. So let me share a story with you. Maybe you'll be able to relate to a little over 10 years ago I was sitting in a church classroom in Denver, Colorado and our group was being led by the pastor Jay Pathick and he is still the pastor there in Denver mile high vineyard. And this group was to set us up as we are all volunteers and we are volunteers and you know, business leaders in the community. And then at the church in the name of the group was called equip to equip us to be better volunteers, better leaders for the church.
(05:00): And I was excited to be a part of this group because I love listening to Jay. Jay was a very wise pastor is a wise pastor funny and I was excited about investing not only in my spiritual growth but my leadership growth. And so looking forward to the opportunity. This particular night, the topic was on character and as I'm sitting there in this room, I am diligently taking notes, just hearing everything Jay is talking about. And out of nowhere I hear this phrase that from God, it wasn't necessarily audible, but it was a voice, something that came over me and it says, you have to come clean of your affair. I was like, what? Who said that? What do you w who said that? What are you talking about? And as I sat there in that chair, heard it again, felt it again. You have to come clean of your affair.
(05:57): It's like, no, I don't. So I sat there and I'm having this wrestling match with God of, no, I don't have to come clean of your affair. We just got promoted and moved from Kansas city to move to Denver, making the most amount of money I've ever made. We had two kids at the time, so it was like, God, I just got promoted making more money. Family's doing well. Why would I come clean in my affair? There isn't, there's no way that would be a train wreck. So I'm sitting there continuing asking questions back and forth, wondering why now? Why do I have to come clean of the affair? What's the reason? I have no idea what the rest of the room thought of me. And if, if I looked like a zombie, I live like a ghost. Just sitting there. If I looked as confused as I felt in my mind or not, I don't know. But I was in my own world. I no longer could hear what Jay was saying. I wasn't paying attention to what Jay was. I had my own conversation taking place at that time. Then out of nowhere comes another phrase and it was, you have to hand over your story for a greater story. I was like, what? What does, what does that mean? And at that time I was unfamiliar with what that phrasing was.
(07:17): Should I sit there, my story for a greater story? What exactly does that mean? If I hand over my story, then that means I'm getting divorced that I, I don't want that. Well my family, I have to move back to Missouri. Do I have to move back to Missouri? Just all of these different questions are starting to go through my head. And then as I'm having these thoughts going over and over, I started almost having this piece of Amy, it is time to come clean on my affair. What is this greater story? So now it became somewhat of an invitation. Someone of I was intrigued of what was I being invited into? What is this greater story? So as I drove home that night, I was coming to peace of, I will, I'll tell Holly about the affair, but I, I had a couple of last minute kind of negotiations with God.
(08:10): Come on God, let's just make this between you. And I like a, you know, like I've been doing for the last few years, but God wasn't having any of it. So as I walk into my home that night, my thought was, Hey, if God really wants me to tell her, she'll be sitting on the couch waiting to hear what I have to say as I walk in the house. She was in bed and my thought was, woo, thank goodness I I don't have to tell her, you know, God would have had her sit on the couch. That was part of the plan. So I went to bed that night. The next day we are running errands, doing different activities and the pressure to tell her kind of started to settle down and it settled down before in the, in the past I'd go for a run. I would work on emails. I would maybe have a drink, I would do different things to get my mind off of having to come clean in my affair. As the day progressed, I felt that invitation again from God of Hey hand over your story for a greater story. And so that night I wanted to come home and tell Holly that, you know, I, I did have the affair. So as I told her, she said right away she had a peace come over herself that said it will be okay. And now granted she heard that it was not immediately peaceful. There was a door slamming and yelling and, and all those things and rightfully so, right? I was a, I was a complete jerk
(09:42): To do that. So it was not cupcakes and balloons at all
(09:45): House. You're unstoppable at work at home. It's another story. Sound like you good news. I'm here to help. If you're ready to win at home, then go to Corey M carlson.com and download your free copy of 10 ways to win at home.
(10:04): Well, we began a process of restoration. We process of us restoring our relationship to each other. And then we had our own individual journeys of getting better. And so
(10:15): That began a process about 10 years ago were I continually grew too to the point where I'm at today. And through this podcast we'll share a variety of different tools and methods and things that I learned, but the next key step that took places, we then transferred from Denver to Cincinnati when we got to Cincinnati. Another cool God's story was I was a vice president of a hundred million dollar division for a company in Cincinnati. And I loved my boss at the time, but we are traveling different directions every single week. And it came to this point where I was kind of almost going back in old habits of working too hard and not focusing on my quiet time, spiritual mind a couple of times, all these different things and getting stressed. And I went to my boss to say, I need,
(11:07): I need some help. I love connecting with you, but I don't necessarily get it, you know, we don't get to do that enough for traveling. And so he said, hire coach. You know, I've used a coach before and get one. So I was like, Oh, you know, I wish it was that easy, would have told me this. Sooner meantime, I go to a large church in Cincinnati called crossroads and had gotten invited into participate in this two year immersion program on discipleship. And I had only volunteered once at our kid's club and this woman Kim bottle, put my name in the hat to be one of the volunteers that got to go through. And I, and I was selected in that process. There was an individual named Brandon Shaffer who is the director, five capital's who still involved with to this day. But he did a talk and I absolutely love to talk it combined, you know, the Bible would business books with just some of these learnings that they were sharing during this program.
(12:09): And I, I just fell in love with that knowledge. I knew that's what I needed to make me a better leader at home and at work. So I went up to him afterwards, it said, that was incredible. I want more. He says, well, I do executive coaching. So at that time I hired him to be my executive coach. So I'm learning tools and concepts and ideas that are helping me become a better leader. And why this became so critical is w at work I was running a couple of different businesses and they were not doing as well as they should be. And so our [inaudible] company was having what was called bleeder meetings. If you ever want to build culture at a company, don't call meter meetings, bleeder meetings. It does not help. But I would have to go into those meetings and have these bleeder meetings and say what I was doing to help turn the business around.
(13:04): I was mitigating the gap how I was going to improve it. Well in the short term I was obviously [inaudible] handling all that well. My identity was wrapped around being in that business. So I would come back to the team and talk with everyone. And really I was very results driven, not relationship-driven because of these bleeder means cause my identity was still tied to some of that. I was, there was a tension there. I did not know how to do it, but through this executive coaching and through an outside perspective of learning some of these new frameworks, I actually started to flip flop it and be more about relationships with the team instead of just results and so it started to change my ways and I saw that at that company that I worked for, how it was starting to change. I took one other corporate move where I was president of sales for a national contractor at 30 different direct reports or salespeople.
(14:00): Some were W2 somewhere 10 90 nines now we're reporting up through me and I went into this role with this idea of, Hey, I'm going to be going for re relationships over results. I'm going to be investing them. At that time I really started a w work on my own personal vision statement, which is to connect people to greater performance and even more significant purpose. We'll talk about that in future podcasts and how I arrived at that when I started invest in them people differently than just what was their sales revenue for the month. Yes, it was still important and we got to it. But it was also, are you dating your spouse? Are you being intentional with your kids? Are you working out? And you know, I remember talking to an employee about it too many nights in a row of late night emails and helping them, I understand that that wasn't sustainable.
(14:50): What was is in that process, these employees started to date their spouses. They were in fact intentional with their kids. They were starting to get a better rhythm of a work life balance. And in the end it actually was helping our bottom line. So when that started to transpire, and I saw that it's when God put on my heart, instead of just doing this for this company, go out and do this too. Other companies too, other leaders. So about three and a half years ago, I left my corporate job to begin executive coaching. As Brandon invested in me as a coach, I want to do the same to others. And so I began that journey about three and a half years ago. And in the process hiring different clients and a lot of neat, fun stories that you know will impact or I've been able to see how leaders have been [inaudible], you know, balance the home and the work.
(15:47): What are they learning and being effective. The one the biggest items that I kept seeing when I got hired by clients is I get hired to help them create a vision [inaudible] values for their business. I'd get hired to help them improve their culture. So it's Oh healthy and productive with some clients. Guy would get help to review profit and loss statements, but time and time again, as we would start to unpack those company issues, I would ask them, how is home and your spouse and your kids and are you getting quiet time? Are you journaling? Are you exercise? All these different pieces? And I would find out, no they're not. Or that's an area of improvement. And when I start to ask, what are your biggest challenges in your life? Most often they weren't even work-related, they were home-related. It's that idea of what keeps the CEO or the business owner up at night.
(16:43): It's actually not always work related. Sometimes it's home-related. So I kept finding myself saying, Hey, you need to win at home first. Ordered to have more capacity to lead well at work in order to be more empathetic with your employees. And so as I worked with employees, I kept saying this phrase over and over again, you need to win a home first so that we can have extra abilities to lead the team. And so probably about two years ago, I had some clients, all of who I respected starting to almost reinforce what I was hearing in my quiet time of I needed to write a book, put some of these tools, ideas onto paper so others can get it. Well, I wasn't necessarily being obedient to God during the quiet time. So God used messengers through my clients to say, [inaudible] write a book. And when they started to say, write a book, I decided to go for it.
(17:36): I wrote the book, I shared that story on the book itself at the beginning of the podcast. And so that's where we're at today is the fact that on my journey, I've had my own brokenness. I have up and I've got more mistakes unfortunately, that I'm sure I'll share on future podcasts. But if we are going to have sustainability of success, of winning at both work and home, than we are going to have to be intentional with how we spend our time with our family. Our mindset is we walk back into the front door after a long day of work, all of these different components. And so my heart behind this podcast is to be your guide to help you win both at home and work. Now understand my family's not perfect. We have our own situations. My daughters will roll their eyes at me if I say it's time for a devotion or some coaching lesson, you know my wife and I have to have conversations to get back on the same page. Absolutely. But what I can tell you is, dude, our intentionality, we can recalibrate quicker and we used to. So I want to go on this journey, this podcast to, to share what I'm learning, what I'm reading, what I'm seeing out there,
(18:51): Business leaders, and bring it to this podcast so that you can also grow. So I'm excited to be on the journey with you. Join us next time as we start to talk about how we all have brokenness and how you have pieces of your story that can relate to my affair. I, and I hope it, it's not as bad as my affair, but I'm also confident that no matter what it is, smaller or bigger, yeah. Each of us are allowing mistakes and brokenness to define us and hold us back. And so we want to start to break through some of that on our next time. The thanks for listening and keep winning in a home burst. Goodbye. Thank you.
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