Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam.
Foreign.
And welcome to tonight's episode of Pivotal Change. I'm your host, Ryan Kahn. And this is a show that is all about leadership, influence. Business owners, executives and entrepreneurs who all have influence and they want to grow that influence or turn it to a positive direction. And you're just looking for those one or two things that you can do to make your pivotal change on your path to success.
We got a very fun guest, a new friend of mine. We've known each other for just a couple of years now, Jennifer Hess Williamson. She is a speaker and an author and a business owner and she has quite the credentials in her background that make her the perfect guest and a very fun person to talk with and just know she is the COO of BMC Accounting and is taking busy time of the year, tax season to come speak with us on the show. And she's also the co founder of GIS Organizational Health and and lastly but not least, she is the voice behind the myth of business, which is messages that challenge business leaders and how we think, how we identify and how we take ownership. So, Jennifer, welcome to the show.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate being here. Yeah, we've only known each other for a couple of years, but hit it off well. And I appreciate you calling me fun because I don't know that that's really a descriptor I get very often.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: You were fun last time we hung out, so that works for me. But one of the things that I think most people don't know is they don't really have the backgrounds or the origin stories of people that come onto the show. And they only get you for 30 minutes to an hour. So when people meet you, they probably don't know. They get to see confidence and clarity now. But what's the real version of you that they wouldn't have seen maybe a few years ago?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Well, a few years ago, especially if you go back about 15 years, they would have seen a version of me that was very, very protected, very careful, actually a lot bit prickly. Prickly was something I needed to be in order to protect myself. So was in a very dangerous marriage. And until I stepped out of that, I was very, very careful, very composed.
I it's a common symptom of people who come out of domestic violence to have kind of an unhealthy control.
And so that's what they would have seen. What they wouldn't have seen is that control was really actually agency that had needed to come out. And what they wouldn't have seen was that maybe anger or What I would call fire inside is actually something that I've been able to use to be productive. Now. They would have just seen it erupting probably in the past.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: I like that a lot that you. Not the fact that you had to go through that and that there's trauma and serious changes that have to occur in your life, but I like that you were able to do what the title of the show is and make a pivot. And you changed your life and you drove all of that and you focused it into a positive direction. And I know from personal experience, my background in law enforcement, things like that, there's a lot of people that can't do that. And so you were able to do that and you turned it into business success and personal success.
Let me ask you a little bit on the personal side about like, you know, outside of like, business titles and things like that, what do you want people to feel about you when they leave the room? And where did that come from when they get that feeling about you?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Wow, that's a great question. So I think we've all been in rooms when.
When somebody just connects with us, right? Somebody kind of pushes past a layer and they help us to. To see something or to feel something or just even recognize something about ourselves that. That we aren't aware of prior.
And really, that actually has more to do with them than it does to do with me. And so I want people to leave a room that I'm in with something of their selves and less of me.
If all I'm doing when I walk into a room is focusing on my presence and my poise and my power, people aren't going to really be able to absorb anything. I remember hearing something, I think I read it in a book decades ago, and it says that all truth comes to you in seed form. And it's become almost one of my life rules that, you know, I can see something that is fully cultivated and grown in someone else, but I have to accept it as a seed. And really, when, you know, as leaders, either with our employees or with our children, the best we can do is just plant seeds. It's. It's really on them to have the soil that's able to accept that and to germinate that. And I could take this analogy as far as we wanted to go, but I think, you know, for me, that's really kind of what I think of myself as a leader is just really as a seed planter.
And so I. And I love, like, man, I love tools, I love nuggets. I love things that kind of just stick in my, you know, stick in my gut or things I have to chew on for a long time. And so, you know, I want to be able to offer that to people, but it really. It's really about helping people that are in a room with you see something of themselves and see kind of the potential, right, for hope or for change or that, wow, I don't have to stay the way that I've stayed or stay in the situation that I've been in. And so, yeah, I really want it to be more about them and less about me.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: I absolutely love that answer, and I can't tell you how much I love that answer that you want. When people leave the room, the feeling about you that they have isn't really about you. It's that you help them achieve something or find. Find something or unlock something in themselves. So when they leave the room with you, they're a better person because of it. And it's not a selfish, look at me. It's a. I've planted seeds and I've done stuff. So I want to play on your metaphor a little bit more about planting seeds. And you said, you know, you gotta water, germinate, grow, things like that, you know, so you spent, you know, a little bit of time. You said, being a prickly person or even in hiding is kind of what you were saying earlier on. Is there an exact moment that you can share with us where you realize that surviving wasn't the same thing as living or thriving?
[00:06:44] Speaker B: I would say that that really true understanding of the difference between surviving and thriving probably didn't happen until I was out of it. Because when you're surviving, you're just surviving. And. And I think it's really important to remember that nobody survives. Wrong. And so we do what we need to do to survive. And so I was prickly. I had layers. I was a very different person.
Authentically, I was the same person inside.
I was. It would be hard for someone to recognize me now, 15 or 20 years later from what. Who I was then. But I survived, and I did it the way I needed to.
I have a very complicated word relationship, rather with the word surviving, because I think there's this a bit of a connotation with the word survivor that kind of makes you feel like you're still in it, right? Like you just got pulled out of the ocean and so you're still laying there, like, just gasping for breath and. And soaking wet. And I feel like, for me, moving from surviving into to thriving. And so I call myself a thriver now, or as you said, into to living, it was really about recognizing, okay, that was a season. And I did what I needed to do to survive, but I. I needed to stop just living in it still. I was still living in it emotionally. I was still holding on to so much fear. I was still holding on to so a lot of obsession, to be honest, and a lot of bad habits that had come out of that season of my life. And that had translated into me being an incredible worker.
And I put a lot of energy and a lot of effort into, into my work and into being a mom. We have a lot of children and I was just doing a lot and I was not being very well. And I can remember at one point, probably not too long before I met you, actually, Ryan. The first time my husband had. It was a season of my life where I had actually reached my capacity. Up until that point, I didn't even know I had one. I was just always more and more and more, give it to me. And he looked at me and he said, jen, you are diminishing.
And I.
That was kind of the moment that I realized that it was time for me to just take back control. I had taken back control of some of the really big things maybe 10 years prior to that, and it was time for me to take back control of all the little things that were just sucking the life out of me. And so, yeah, I think that was probably the time that I can think of.
Of course, there were moments in, in my previous marriage where, where I realized that something needed to change, but that was still moving from, you know, surviving in it to kind of surviving just out of it. But to really move into that, that living and thriving part, it took, it took me kind of taking 100 ownership of, of all of it. Not just the circumstances, but everything that was happening inside as well.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Well, thank you for sharing that. And you drop some serious nuggets out of there. Nobody survives. Wrong. You know, I. Let me see. I realized that I had a capacity or I reached my capacity. I didn't even know I had one. And then somebody boldly told you that, hey, you're diminishing. Like, that's, that's serious life changing stuff. And you're, you're very fortunate to have those relationships. And thank you for sharing that.
So there's also a little bit about your story about, you know, on August 25th, you emerged. Right. And so we're going into that seed, that flowering and that budding area.
So what changed internally? What changed Practically that made you stop negotiating with your own life. A lot of people have conversations with themselves and lives. What made you stop negotiating your own life?
[00:10:42] Speaker B: That is a great question. So, yeah, it was August of 2025, so just a few months ago that I kind of call it coming out of hiding. But we literally had lived in state protection for about five years prior to that.
My ex husband had found us in, I believe in 2024.
And so we had been living for almost two years kind of with the knowledge that, that he knew where we lived and we had made the choice that we were not going to run again. We had put down roots. Our kids are where we are now. Our, our church, our family, our schools.
And so we wanted to stay.
And it was probably a lot of what had happened kind of with me personally a few years before that, where I had really moved into that truly living, being very intentional about what I allowed in my life. And you know, coming out of that survival, going into thriving, I realized, you know, that fear just had no place in my life any longer. And it's, it was kind of this mantra. For years. This has been like my number one life rule. I've said, don't let the fear of what might happen keep you from doing what must happen. And so that came out of this, this kind of revelation that I had back in 2012 that all of my reasons for staying in that previous relationship had been fear based really, you know, he might go batshit crazy, he might stalk me, he might do this, you know, and, and there was actually no reason to stay. It was all just fear. And I knew what must happen. I knew that I needed to end this relationship. And it was the fear that kept me. And so, you know, having stepped out of that. And of course, of course, obviously I love mantras that had kind of. I had really absorbed that one as one of my, my life rules. And what I realized in that 2023, 2024 time period was that I was only doing that in the big stuff. And so as I began to absorb that and allow that to become really just a catalyst for making those small changes, right, Taking control of.
Of my thoughts, taking control of Jennifer,
[00:13:08] Speaker A: can I jump in because.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Because you're getting ready to do something that I really want to dial in on. And I know we only got about. Goodness, 30 seconds for the break, but. So you're a mother of nine also. Just, just nine kids, you know, and you, you're an ex on executive level in multiple ways. So there's real systems that you've taken control of. And we all have, like our busy stories.
You know, what had to die, the systems you're getting ready to go into. Give me just two or three real quick. What had to die in order to make that work?
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Oh, what had to die immediately was answering emails, any type of communication that had to do with business. After a certain time, I just, it was the first thing that I did. I had to take control of what I allowed coming in. It. It was such a small thing in one way, but, like just making that choice that I will turn off notifications on my phone, I will not take my laptop upstairs and I will not answer any business stuff after a certain time. It was actually the beginning of me allowing myself to take control over things that I didn't even realize were tumultuous inside. So, yeah, that was probably the first real concrete thing that I did.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: I hope a lot of people just heard that. So we're going to go ahead and cut to commercial break here in just a second, but we come back with more Pivotal Change. I'm going to go right into conversations about the core of what a lot of what you believe, which is the myth of busyness. So be ready for that. Everyone else, sit tight. We'll be back after this commercial break.
Foreign.
Welcome back to Pivotal change. We're going to keep rocking and rolling with this episode with Jennifer Hess Williamson. But before that, I want to let you know where you can find this episode and all other episodes. Go to NOW Media tv. You can find all of the live streaming, the on demand services of this show and every other. And you can also find our podcast version. It's available on Roku, it's on iOS, and here's a perfect example of what that menu looks like. When you go to the website NOW Media tv, you can find everything both in English and Spanish. So we're going to jump back in here, Jennifer, and like I kind of promised you, I said we're going to talk about the myth of busyness, which is something that people say, you know, I don't have time, which is something that I think we hear all the time.
Do you think that or you claim that's a leadership red flag, But I want you to go ahead and tell us. Let's define it, let's make it clean. What is the myth behind busyness and why do smart leaders keep buying it?
[00:16:04] Speaker B: So the myth of busyness is something that I think about, I talk about, I am writing a book on it. And there's really four myths surrounding the idea of busyness, but I think the one that is probably hardest, especially for leaders to break, is just this idea that that busy equals valuable.
I have a full calendar. I have an impossible inbox. I haven't taken lunch in six months. Therefore, I must be important.
Right? And that's hard to hear.
But busyness, it's just. It's armor. Nobody questions your worth if you're clearly working.
And I think what happens is that we often substitute busy for impact.
And what I found is that when we break that myth that just because I'm busy, it means I am valuable. It helps us to actually really find what's truly valuable and what's truly impactful and what truly, truly brings, you know, all the things that actually matter to our lives. And it helps us to just get a little bit quieter and find more of a core of truth, I think, in selves, in ourselves.
You know, busyness is. It's a great place to hide behind. We. We all have done it, right?
How are you? I'm busy. I'm so busy. I have this, this, this, this, this, and. And that constant motion.
It just often means that we don't sit long enough to ask, is it really actually taking us anywhere? Is it actually as valuable as we think it is?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Amen. So I think that's. That's beautiful. You. You know, people think business equals value. Some people say business equals productivity, but it doesn't. Sometimes busy is just busy. And you're not, like you said, moving the peg forward or moving the arrow up and to the right.
And people are using it either as a mask or as sometimes. Do you ever find that maybe leaders use it as some form of camouflage, like, especially when the business is growing or should be growing?
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And I think that growth is probably the most dangerous version of busyness because.
Because growth is. Is fun and it's exciting, but it kind of can give us cover. Right. We don't question what's working. And so we just oftentimes will plow forward with maybe a fuller plate than is healthy.
And, you know, anyone can do anything for a season. But when we truly really begin to take control of our lives and our schedules, we realize that even there's always a season, right?
[00:18:34] Speaker A: We're.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: We're accountants. We know that. My husband says there's always a deadline. Like, there's literally a deadline every single month, right? And so, you know, it's. It. We always will put off what matters because, you know, something is working and, oh, if I just get that next thing done. And so busy does become that. That camouflage on that cover. I think, you know, it's very easy to see it in leaders because everything is urgent, because they're living out of reacting instead of acting.
When people start listing what they do instead of where they're going, I think that's. That's a really good kind of a.
Like a telltale. Hey, maybe this is someone who's just spinning wheels and not really either in control or aware of what their true value is or aware of where they're going.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: I like that. Wow. I like that a lot. So a lot of times I tell my audience or I tell them to all the time to watch the show with a pen and paper. I bet they're filling their notes up pretty well today. So that's a good one. So you've said in the past this little phrase that says you own 100 of your time, and I really like that. And how would you phrase that or say that to a leader who really feels trapped by some of those things that we accountants know or clients dealing with payroll and constant fires to put out with whatever, inventory, whatever.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: So I would say you own 100 of your time.
It is. It's a hard truth, right? It is so hard. This is something that I, I'm still struggling with.
This is one of those seeds that's. That's still growing in me. It is not fully grown, but I think this is. It's just true.
We so often just think that life has happened to us, but the reality is, is that you have chosen literally everything that's in your life, unless you are a child or an indentured servant or a slave. Right?
You're. You are doing what you want to do 100 of the time. You know, you. You chose this job, you chose these clients, you chose not to hire that person that you need or you have chosen not to fire the person that you know needs to be fired. You. You chose to put your kids in all of these activities, and you chose to have the kids in the first place. You know, that's. There's. It's. It is a difficult truth, but it's so important. You have to kind of almost go to that extreme of saying, yeah, I 100 own all of the things that are in my life right now in order to be able to kind of get yourself to the place where you can begin to actually take control of your calendar. And it's.
It doesn't happen overnight, but it, it begins if you cannot get that foundational understanding that you own 100 of your time, you own 100% of what is happening internally. 100. And what's happening externally? A majority of what's happening around you is because of your choices.
Obviously there are certain things that, that are out of our control, but I think it's important, you know, trapped, like, I think a lot of people feel very trapped by their schedules. And trapped is just a feeling, right? It's the. Your calendar is your choice.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: So, okay, man, you just took the bridge. I wanted. It was about the count. I wanted to be practical with it so that we're dealing with these constant fires, always being busy. And who knows, maybe Sunday night or Monday morning we look at the calendar and we're like, holy guacamole, Batman. You got all this going on here. So practical moment, right? What are the first three decisions that you make when your calendar is trying to lie to you about what really matters?
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Wow, that. That is a great question. So I love time management. I think tools are really important. I think it's good to have some foundational kind of understanding of maybe some time management tools. There's a lot of them out.
For me, I think the first thing you have to recognize is that not all time has the same value.
And so you can block out chunks of your calendar. You can use the Eisenhower matrix, right, and kind of decide what the priorities are. You can put things through a funnel and eliminate and delegate and do all those things. But if you are.
If you are not aware of what your best time is, none of those other things are going to be optimized. And so for me, one of the single best things I ever did was I mapped my energy. It sounds a little foo foo, but it was actually really, really powerful. So I began to kind of recognize for myself, like what, what, when do I show up best? And so for me, that's first thing in the morning. Like I can conquer the world before 9:00am I mean, just put me in front of everything at 7:30 in the morning and. And I'm gonna kill it. And what I realized was that I was wasting that time so many days on things that didn't matter at all. So now those are my golden hours. Nobody can touch them. They are blocked off on my calendar. And they are, they are revered.
And I realized.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Can I plug in real quick? So you've taken an assessment of yourself and you've said literally, whatever it is, biologically, sleep patterns, whatever it.
My highest and best energized person here. And so I'm going to block out this time for what I am going to place as my highest priority most urgent things I need to get done and stop reacting to the world around me and squandering my best energy.
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And it's important to recognize that that will change. That changes with the seasons. For me, that changes day to day.
So Monday I am high energy, but I'm low people skills so I work from home on Mondays. Friday I'm low everything, so I do tasks on Fridays because there's nothing like a good bank wreck to just not, you know, not use your brain.
And, and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, bring the people and bring the, bring all the deep, heavy work that needs to be done.
And then, you know, I, I have some seasons of the year that, that my energy wanes or my energy increases. And so being aware of that as
[00:24:56] Speaker A: well, I like that a lot. So it sounds like you found kind of those boundaries to put in place, days and times of the week and things like that. And that's something that people could use to immediately produce not only their exposure to the negative, but probably their own personal culture and emotions and the culture around them. So let me do this real quick because I want to expand on some of these concepts. Of course, we're only halfway through the episode as people are watching. We haven't had a chance. Where could people find you, get a hold of you get a hold of your content material. Where would we find that before we cut to break here?
[00:25:25] Speaker B: Sure. So I came out of hiding in, in last year. So I am on social media. Jennifer Huss Williamson.
I do a fair amount of really more my personal story through the socials. I do have a website which is where you can book me to speak. Jennifer Hesswilliamson.com and my husband and I do own an organizational health company that's focused on EOS implementation and leadership. We do some Gen Z workshops, things like that. And that's just business coaching dot com.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: That's perfect. Well, we're going to stick a pin in the conversation. We've made the halfway point of the episode. We'll be right back. It'll change, so stay tuned.
Welcome back. We are halfway through the episode and we are still getting incredible content. I hope your pen and paper are ready. You got fresh ink, a fresh pad, and you're going to keep filling that out. Jennifer Hess Williamson has been dropping some serious nuggets with us now. She's an author, she's a speaker, she's an accountant, business owner. She's a mother of nine. She really is a wonder woman of all people. And we're going to go transition. If you heard her mention just before the break on her website about the gist organizational health that she owns with her husband, we're going to talk a little bit about that where she's the chief operating officer of that company.
So as the CEO, I want to ask you about that. What's the fastest way that you spot chaos disguised as hustle? We talked about, you know, the busyness inside of a company. How do you spot that? How do you call it out?
[00:27:27] Speaker B: So I have a, what I would call almost a mindset anchor. We use this in our accounting firm as well and that's that fast is good but clear is better.
And so I think when I see that clients eyes are glazing over or staff need re explaining and they need instructions multiple times or sops are unclear, that's hustling, right? That's hustling. That does not bring clarity. And so it's just that that idea that fast is good. We want to be efficient. We, we work in a production environment, a lot of industries do. But if you are sacrificing clarity for fast, you are going to get chaos every time.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: If you're sacrificing clarity for fast, you will get chaos every time. Man, I wish I could have told that to about a hundred people that I've met and helped in such a simple way. You know, I feel like we convey very similar messages. But to say it clearly and concisely is a really, really well put thing. So let's say you've called out and you've caught some of this and you realize that things, things aren't as clear as they need to be. What are the first systems that you would install to help kind of reduce the drama, reduce the reworking or the funnels. Anything that needs just like you have to constantly escalate stuff because it's not going right. What systems are we looking at?
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Well, I think ownership and really clear ownership is probably the single tool that you can give to just prevent rework and escalation. I mean drama, like we just don't accept it. I just don't accept drama.
But you know, our companies run on eos. My husband is an EOS implementation and one of the fundamental concepts there is that like everybody has a number. I know, you know, having nine children, we've, we've only got two left at home. But there were years where all the kids, we have nine children in an eight year span. So it was, it was just organized chaos for a decade or so. And you know, if, if I were to say, hey, can someone unload the dishwasher? I would have had at least five or six kids say, sure. And then nobody would do it because they would all be expecting a brother or sister to do it. But what I learned right when kids were really little was, you know, Aiden, can you unload the dishwasher, and Briar, can you take out the trash, and Soren, can you wipe the counters? And it's, it's just ownership at its basics. And so that really, that clarity of ownership, it translates into every single organization. And it's so important, it reduces escalation needs almost immediately.
You know, we just don't accept drama. But I think, I think that would be the first system in place. I think core values and a strong accountability chart are going to be probably the two most important things to follow.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Ownership, absolutely. Core values. If you don't know, what does he stand for? I don't know if you stand for anything. So. And those are operational, workable tools. I can preach on that all day. I love that. So let's get back to that. Eos.
So you get the EOS style, discipline in there. What's the part that people embrace and they want and they love and are there any parts they tend to resist or is there commonality in that?
[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's really interesting because we do have actual owners, right? Our leadership team, and then we have employees who, who implement eos in their company. So at our current accounting firm, we've been running on EOS for almost 10 years.
We as owners, and most owners, they want the accountability piece, right? They, they already have a vision for their company. It's just a matter of kind of clarifying that. But we want the scorecard, we want measurables, we want accountability.
And employees will self select out. We see that pretty often when they truly don't want accountability and really would like to just keep coasting. So that's the part that's, you know, everybody kind of seems to like accountability because good employees always like accountability too. The one that's hard is the people piece. So having the right people in the right seats, it is so hard for everybody.
You know, when you start building an accountability chart for what you need and not who you have and what they actually do right now, and you instead say, this is what we need and do we actually have the right person in that seat? Then it starts to get real and it starts to get, oh, we might need to make a change here. That's hard. Those are hard conversations.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's where a lot of fear or trust comes in, is when you have to make those hard conversations. And of course clarity and communication is going to be huge.
So let's talk about that trust. Like, how do you build that high accountability without creating a fear based culture that like, hey, we don't have the right people, you're not in the right seat, we're going to start moving people, action, things changing, flipping stuff on its head, because that can be pretty scary. People fear, change, always have, always will.
Can you break that down?
[00:32:27] Speaker B: Well, I think when you, when you have all the components working together and so you've identified what the vision is and everybody's working towards it and you've identified what we should be measuring and what's actually the most important thing for that role.
Then when someone doesn't hit the mark, it's about the result and it's not about the person. So I think fear based accountability or a fear based culture is about like, you failed, you did something wrong, you, you.
My accountability is, hey, we agreed on an outcome. We, we agreed on this thing that we're measuring and, and really, curiosity becomes a part of it. I would say it actually becomes a little bit of fun when you've got really, truly trusted folks in your organization and you know where you want to go and you didn't get there. There's a bit of curiosity like, okay, what happened? Why didn't we get there? That's very different than I'm a failure or you're a failure. And, and that's really, I think, the difference between like true accountability that measures results and, and fear based accountability.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: So you're, I'm gonna switch the words up and you tell me if I'm paraphrasing correctly. It's a little bit more of. You're taking on a tinkering mindset. So we've built this system, we've built this machine, we're trying to get to a goal and the machine didn't perform like it's supposed to be. So when you get back here and tinker with the parts, the pieces, the players, and see how to get it here versus all right, who screwed up and whose head is going to roll? Two completely different responses.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. I love that tinkering mindset. I, I call it curiosity, but it's the same thing. It's just that what, you know what's going on here? Yeah.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: Okay, good. I like that. And I think that's an approach that people can genuinely practice. So you've already mentioned that you do, you do workshop, I think you said, for Gen Z is what you said. So obviously generational gaps are huge. I've done a lot of dealing with Gen Z, millennials, Gen Xers, all that kind of stuff.
I have found my, my niche to be a little bit more millennials because I am one, but I'm one of the good millennials. Okay, so that generation, general generational gap is real.
So what's one move that like, helps people out?
They have experienced leaders in positions where they can have emerging leaders from other generations and they stop misreading each other or just getting the cultural, you know, age gaps along.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: I think it's understanding what they value.
So again, the curious mindset, the tinkering mindset is, is really important to bring into this space as well.
You know, it's. The reality is we do value very similar things. If, if you have good folks in your organizations who reflect your core values and who want to be there and believe in the vision, and you're gonna have a lot of the same values, but how we define those values is gonna look different. The way that Gen Z understands work life balance looks very different than the way a baby boomer understands work life balance. And so they both value it, but we need to understand what that looks like to them. And so I think that just that it's almost always a communication conflict. Right? I've had so many examples of phenomenal. I understand gen zers. All nine of our children are gen zers. But they do bring something that's, that's very different into the workplace. And they're the only folks we have that are coming into the workplace. So we have to figure out how to work with them. I actually think they're phenomenal. I have a young manager who's actually a Gen Z or she's great.
And, you know, what we have to be able to say is what, what do you value? And what does that look like to you? And that's really about communication. So I think, you know, you can't, you can't bridge a gap that, that you haven't mapped. And so we need to kind of map that a little bit. What is this? What is this gap between us? What does this look like? What, what are you looking for in this work relationship?
[00:36:24] Speaker A: I want to echo what you just said. You can't bridge a gap that you haven't mapped out. It's the first thing engineers literally do is they go map the riverbank in order where they're going to build the bridge, and then they Map out the bridge design. So that's a good spot for us to hit pause and move into our final segment of the night. So, Jennifer, we're going to keep rocking and rolling, everybody. El not done yet. You get more wisdom here in just a few moments. Stay tuned. There's more pivotal change in just a moment.
We are back on pivotal changes final segment of the night. But what you should do real quick is you should pull out your phone, go to the Internet and pull up NOW Media TV or NOW Media TV and go to the website and book market so that you know exactly where you can find pivotal change. All of our other shows, we've got culture news, we've got entertainment, we've got business and leadership as you're watching tonight. And go ahead and bookmark that and download the podcast and start listening to these shows wherever, whenever you want to listen to them, you can Stream them live 24.7roku iOS, you can find us everywhere. So, Jennifer, let's start blending in what you said. So we've got a conversation about, you know, everything we just talked about the busyness and then also putting practical steps in working on calendars, how to start tinkering, how to find mind shift anchors. And all of a sudden in all of this process, the owner is looking at themselves in the mirror saying, wait a minute, I might be the problem, I might be the bottleneck. Where do we go? What's the first thing? Just give me like one or two real quick. What's the first thing a leader can do to make the pivotal change to not be the problem or the bottleneck themselves?
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Well, I think recognizing it is huge because too many people don't. And for me, it took me way too long to realize it. So that's huge. Congratulate yourself for recognizing it.
Often there's a hard conversation.
So much of decisions that we avoid are just about hard conversations. I was just telling my kids this last night. We have family dinner once a week and family dinner with our kids who don't live at home.
And I said, you know, you guys are gonna have hard conversations for the rest of your life. You need to start practicing that in small things so that you can do it when it, when it needs to scale into something that's much bigger.
You know, oftentimes if you're a bottleneck, it's because you haven't made a leadership decision. And so there's someone who's not living up to their potential or they're, you know, you really need to grow and you're afraid of what that means from a financial standpoint.
And so I think having that hard conversation, that hard conversation might need to be with yourself about the truth of what your capacity is and what you should be handing off. And to be honest, there's probably someone in your firm that can do that thing better than you can anyway, especially if it's something that you don't love.
So, you know, there's someone in your firm who will love it and, and learning to hand it off to them.
I think having that hard conversation with yourself, with the next person making decision. You know, leaders, we, people need to be led and leaders just need to make decisions. It is so easy to pivot. It is so easy to change. Changing your mind is, is actually a beautiful thing. Like make a decision, move forward if you need to, to change or pivot or tweak or completely throw it out and fail forward, as they say, do it. But just have that conversation, make the decision, move on.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: Love that, love that. Using some very familiar language there. And that's, that's really important. So that's, that person have to make that decision. They're avoiding a leadership decision. They have to do it. They're going to have to learn new habits and they're going to have to unlearn old habits. So I'm curious, I want to do a throwback real quick here. You know, so you've left an abusive diagn dynamic in your past with your marriage, but people have other abusive or traumatic or somehow very extremely uncomfortable. I don't want to just throw around the word abusive or trauma loosely, but people come from some bad workplace scenarios, some bad family systems, things like that. What's, what's one of the first lies that they have to unlearn or one of the first things that they have to unlearn about themselves so that they can lead themselves and possibly lead other people.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: I think, I think this is going to go against a little bit of, of maybe what a traditional care approach would be for someone who is in the true survival mode. And so I want to, to be very honoring of that space. You know, I'm, I'm not a therapist. I only have my own lived experience. For me, what allowed me to step into a place of, of truly thriving was, was looking in the mirror. If I had just lived in a victim mindset. I mean, sometimes there's a really obvious bad guy. And that was the case in my situation.
And you know, I needed to acknowledge that. I needed to place that where it belonged, that there is a bad guy here. And. And I am not it.
But if I'd stayed there, I would have stayed in victim mode. And so for me, it was pulling out that mirror and saying, okay, but, Jem, what have you allowed into your life? Where have you. Where have you changed and shifted and. And really warped and gotten away from your true self? Where. Where's that line that you said that you never cross? Would cross? Where did that line change? And then where did it change again? And where did it change again to.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: To.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: To the point where I don't even know what boundaries are? And so, for me, it was. It was kind of going, all right, no one is coming to rescue me. Like, no one is coming to rescue me. It is. I need to. I need to pull this mirror out, and I need to. For me, it was about a year of just looking in that mirror and going, who am I?
Who do I want to be? How do I get there? Where's the gap that. That I. You know, we hear often about the integrity gap, which is the difference between what we say and. And who we truly are, or what we say and what we do. I would call this. Maybe I call it the survivor gap. It's that gap between who you had to be in order to survive and who you truly are.
And so it's a.
It's. It's less of an ugly gap than the integrity gap because we needed it.
And. And really kind of sometimes it's pulling layers off when you look in the mirror, and sometimes it's bringing things back in. But I think it really starts again with ownership.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: As. As difficult as that is when. When you are a victim, there's still a degree of ownership that you have to absorb if you're going to be able to step on.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: No, I. I agree. I agree that that's very. You actually said it very well without, you know, being ugly to. To victims. Right. And I don't mean victims. I mean being ugliest. I hear quotes the.
You know, but that. That is the truth. You said 100 of your time is owned by you or you own 100 of your time. That. That's true in any c.
So, you know, not nearly as severe, but we do have a lot of leaders out there that are in powerful positions or they look really competent and powerful in their positions, but they really, truly feel trapped or are trapped in their minds. You know, what question would you ask them or have them ask themselves to cut through that excuse and get to action?
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Well, I think I would go back to that life mantra that I have that don't let the fear of what might happen keep you from doing what must happen. I think the question is like, what must happen? You know, we know, like we, we know, all of us know and we avoid the things that must happen because of our fear based thoughts of what might happen. And so like I'm afraid to fire that person because I'm afraid of what their workload is going to do to the rest of the staff. Or I'm afraid to fire that toxic person because even though they're really toxic and they're affecting my culture, they're a high performer. And, and I got news for you, high performing, toxic people are still toxic.
Right? And, and so I think kind of moving out of that fear based, like what might happen into really what's a love based decision. And we don't use the word love very often in the business world. But like saying this must happen is loving. It's loving to yourself, it's loving to your organization, it's loving to your culture, and it's loving to the, to the staff that you're going to keep. And so I think kind of going what must happen? Or maybe phrase it as what decisions am I making out of fear instead of love?
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Gotcha. So that kind of makes me, you know, fear and love goes along with people's value, people's worth and how they spend their time. So you know your book that challenges, you know, certain cultures. So what could a leader do to stop teaching? What should they do to stop teaching their teams about time and worth? We've got maybe a minute for that answer before I want to break into the last thing of the night.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: I would say stop measuring worth by actual time, right? Stop focusing on the logistics.
Just how much time did we spend? You know, results are the currency, not time.
I cannot wait to be at a place, we are so close there we have this curated 100 trusted staff in our accounting firm right now. And it's so beautiful, you know, when I say this is what I want done and they share my vision, I don't care how they get there, I don't care what hours they work, I don't care how much PTO time they take, I can't wait to be done with pto. And to be honest, throw away the employee handbook because results are the currency, not time. And I think that's man, you gotta have the other stuff in place, right? You gotta have the core values, you gotta have the right culture. But when you get that, that's the most important thing is let's Focus on where we're going, not so much how we get there.
[00:46:33] Speaker A: I like that a lot. So that's pretty big. So final thought of the night here. You know, let's say that today is somebody's August 2025, right? Their emerging moment, and they decide to emerge. What's the one move you tell them, hey, you got to do this right now. You've got to do this today.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Burn the ship.
Okay, Seriously, I, I, you know, tell one person the, the truth and the true story, someone who's going to hold you accountable.
It was actually before August 2025. It was in, in early 2012 when I did finally step out of that marriage. And I did something that on the surface seems maybe a little shallow, maybe even a little ugly. I sent an email and I sent it to all of my friends and family and even his. And I did that for one reason, because I knew if I did not burn that ship, I was going to talk myself out of leaving again as I had talked myself out of leaving for 15 years prior.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Even though you said it seems shallow, that was that first step. You communicated that, that first thing. And you talk so much about clarity and communication today. It's really been awesome. So let's get a clear message to the audience and where they can find you because I'm sure people are going to want your book. They're going to want to contact you for services. How do people find you, Jennifer?
[00:47:48] Speaker B: So the book is not out yet. Hoping by the end of the year I will be fully published. But it is the Myth of busyness is is the title. Jennifer hesswilliamson.com is where you can find out more about me and my story and bookmark to speak.
Just Business coaching.com is our organizational health company and you can just find me on the social medias. Jennifer Hess Williamson, thank you so much
[00:48:13] Speaker A: for coming on the show tonight. It's been a real treat for everyone in the audience. I want you to go out into the world and see the change and be the change. We'll catch you here next time on pivotal Change.
