Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.125)
If you're business owner struggling to align your professional life with your personal values and create a life of purpose, then our guest, Brandon Jenkins, is about to give you a simple win you can implement today. Brandon helps leaders moving from expert to leading experts escape the golden path fallacy. Find their natural style and empower their teams. Brandon, so excited to have you here. Really looking forward to this.
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (00:26.348)
Yeah, me too, Adam. Ever since our first talk, man, been looking forward to it.
Adam O'Leary (00:30.323)
Absolutely. So one thing that you've talked about before and you said this early in your military career that your main motivation was just taking the next step on the path. For a business owner who feels like they're just going through the motions, what's a small first step they can take to start identifying their core values?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (00:49.326)
I love that. depending on where you are, you may actually be able to just sit down, piece of paper. OK, if you like digital notepads, fine, open up your favorite note app and just kind of take 10 minutes and reflect on your favorite people, your favorite conversations, the times at your job when you just are loving it. feels light and you feel like you're in the flow and just jot down brainstorm for 10 minutes.
what you love about those things. What about that person? How does that person make you feel? What about that interaction at work? What about that thing you're doing at work? And you'll have a list of about 10 things and then take like three minutes and like narrow it down even more and get like the top three. I would say that's that is a quick like first step to begin to see what is truly most important to you.
And I would extend that beyond professional, I would extend that into your family life as well, because it's all connected.
Adam O'Leary (01:54.204)
I love that and once you know what's most important to you and what your values are, what would you say is kind of the next step for somebody to take?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (02:03.115)
Yeah. Next step is now that you have a little bit more clarity on those things, do what I like to call an energy audit. All right. You have those things that are most important to you. Those values could be passions, maybe strengths of yours that you just love to utilize and get into game. Now for take three days. Okay. Make sure one of those days again is at home. And then the other two can be at work or wherever you want them to be. Make sure you get at least one at work, one at home.
And just audit like everything you're doing that's over like five, 10 minutes. OK, you don't need to do the brushing your teeth, the shower. OK, but anything, any activity over 15 minutes or so start to jot it down and reflect on, OK, which of those values, passions or strengths were present there for me? Could have been using them, could have been talking to somebody about them, could have been thinking about it.
And then at the end of those three days, you'll kind of have a little bit of a picture like, I spending a lot of time doing the things that are most important to me? Or maybe they're completely absent from those three days. And you're like, my God, man, got to there's I got to there's something I got to change here.
Adam O'Leary (03:18.141)
love that. And I know one thing that kind of happens to entrepreneurs or pretty much anybody honestly is that we get distracted by all sorts of things. Right. If you look at screen time on your phone watching videos or doing things that might not actually provide that value right. Those those elements that we have that we're looking to that we're looking to build out right. How do you recommend. So once we do go ahead and build out like
that list and say okay this is where my values are aligned these are not where my values are aligned what would you say would be the next step how are we deciding which ones we're cutting how do we decide what we're keeping in our life I guess where would you go from there
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (04:02.177)
Well, I would say the more you do this, the more in tune you become with yourself and what feels right. Right. Our gut feelings. When somebody says they have gut feeling or it's a gut instinct, that's like based off of your life experiences and the things you do and the results that you see from those things, whether or not what you did was the direct cause of that or not. And then our brains start to take all of that and builds this
gut feeling, so to speak. And so the more that you practice things like, OK, what's really important to me and where is this showing up in my life or not? You start to kind of hone your gut feeling on that. And so then I would say you start to look for opportunities to get more of the things that you truly care about into your daily life versus looking at your calendar and just start cutting things instead.
Look for the things you can add that help you stay aligned and in tune and give you that good gut feeling. You feel that energy. You feel that flow. Look for more opportunities to put those in. And the more those are in, right, then the less space will be there for some of the other stuff that you don't want to be messing around with.
Adam O'Leary (05:21.223)
I love that. And what are some of your core values and how have you built those into your day?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (05:26.325)
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked that. I spent a lot of time on this, especially in the beginning with my coach. My core values right now are growth mindset, humility. And let me define that humility is extreme confidence in where I've been and what I've done in the self-awareness and situational awareness to know.
that I don't know everything, that I can still learn from every situation, and I can learn from other people, most importantly. And then the idea of team. Okay, so team has always been an extremely important concept to me, both being on a strong team in what you can do together and empowering my teammates. Empowering my teammates.
to be able to do what they're supposed to do on that team to unlock that potential and be able to do that. So how they show up in my own life is very, very similar to what I just described for the listener. OK, I do the same thing. I don't do it as much now, but certainly when I started to really draw my attention to this golden path fallacy, I started to.
to be more intentional about understanding and revealing what was important to me and then looking at my days and seeing where that was showing up. And in a leadership position, which is where I really started to get very interested in this, I look for opportunities to interact with my people in a way that gave me more of that that good gut feeling energy flow.
doing what I was uniquely meant to be doing with my team. I started to look for that just day to day. I didn't blow anything up. I didn't quit my job. It was just small alignments that I was making each day and core values. I was looking for ways to empower my teammates. was looking for when I was going into those situations, asking more questions than telling so that I could learn because I believe that I could learn from them. And then that growth mindset, I think it
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (07:32.015)
all of that, just believing that I could continue to get better each day with those small alignments.
Adam O'Leary (07:39.13)
Absolutely and just for those listeners who don't quite understand what you meant by golden path fallacy Can you just describe to the listener what that means?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (07:47.416)
Sure. It is. We kind of talked about in the beginning, the you're on this path and sometimes it just becomes automatic like you're on autopilot. And it doesn't mean that you're necessarily on the wrong path. It doesn't mean that you don't enjoy what you're doing. But after a while, if you're looking up and you look look around and you're like, wait.
Why am I doing this? It's probably a good sign that it's golden path fallacy. And you break the fallacy with some of the things that we've been talking about with intentionality, with really tuning in to what actually matters to you. The more you do that, remember we talked about, you'll build that gut and you get a sense of like, what is unique about you? What is your unique blueprint? What is your unique purpose? And
then you can say, all right, this path I'm on, is this aligned with what I believe I'm meant to be doing? Is this aligned with those values? And if not, again, that's when you start to kind of make some tweaks. And when you break the autopilot and you're intentional about it, to me, you are escaping the golden path fallacy.
Adam O'Leary (08:55.578)
I love that and I guess for yourself how did you bring over some of your personal values into your professional life? What were some of the biggest things that you've noticed especially as you started implementing this? What have been some of the biggest wins I guess you can say?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (09:14.365)
the feeling that I was showing up to wherever I was working at the time when I started really all of this, working with a coach and, getting really intentional. I was getting ready to take command of a 300 plus person helicopter squadron in the Navy. and so the more that I was in tune with what I believed I was uniquely there to do on that team.
Then the more I would wake up and when I went into work, it was like, man, I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Now that was a progression. It wasn't like I started doing this and then the next day, boom, I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I never doing anything that doesn't align again. No, like I said, it's you know, this is kind of a lifelong practice. But over time, it just became like, man, I want to wake up. I want to go in. I want to be there because I know when I get there, I know what I can what I'm supposed to be doing. And I don't mean
like a checklist telling me you're supposed to show up at work and you you turn on the computer, you make the coffee, yada, yada, yada, going down the checklist. No, I mean, like I got there and I just I was I knew what I was supposed to be doing and I felt it right. We talked about the gut feeling.
Adam O'Leary (10:27.364)
Absolutely, and I know one thing that you've said in the past is that your coaching is built on a concept of like a unique blueprint Do you mind kind of walking everybody through just what what does your coaching involve? What is typically the steps that you would take?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (10:42.069)
Yeah. So your blueprint, essentially we go through a research phase. And so somebody would start working with me and we would have our regular calls. Right. Could be as much as every week if that's what if that works in your schedule and that's what you want. And we start with a research phase and in that research phase, you're you're showing up and we're there together each week and you're bringing like real world like what are you doing? It's kind of like the energy audit I gave you. Well, you're showing up with
Okay, what interactions that I have this past week and how did I feel about those? mean, what was a terrible one and why was it so terrible and what was an amazing interaction I had and why was it so great and what was something that, you know, we go through your real life decisions you're making people you're interacting with the activities you're doing at work, the activities you're doing at home or not doing the trips you're taking with your family or not taking and we use your real world real life.
And through coaching, we just work together to kind of reveal what is at the core of those things. What is most important about all those things to you. All right. And so over the course of a month or two, we build out the research. And then you have for any any viewers who are watching this, know, behind me, I have a visual representation of my blueprint and we take all these different players, these different values and passions and.
strengths and elements of your purpose. And then we go through a filtering exercise, right? We start to help you with things like the energy audit. We start to help you really filter down what's most important to you. And in this time of your life and for the people that you believe you're meant to be working with, collaborating with in relationships with.
How you're meant to kind of show up and bring all of this part these parts of you your blueprint to bear on that
Adam O'Leary (12:40.594)
I love that. And what sort of results have you seen from your clients who have implemented this process?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (12:46.475)
I've seen clients go from, for example, being a corporate pilot and always having been a good pilot, a good skill that they had, right? And just not feeling the fulfillment of it. Wondering if I'm only doing this because...
I'm just good at being a pilot and this was something I could do and earn some money. And so I'm a pilot. Again, like no intentionality there with alignment of values and purpose just kind of on that path. And through our work together, realize that, man, there were a lot of like values that were kind of being assaulted in this corporate environment that this person just was like, why am I putting up with this?
And so through all this work, realized what their purpose was and what was important to them and what they were and were not willing to kind of put up with as they were making these alignment tweaks. And so they moved on and went on to start two separate businesses. And so they just had that clarity that like, whoa, yeah, I don't need to be on this path anymore. Right. And so they kind of they quit and went a different way.
You don't have to do that. That can feel overwhelming to people to think that I'm going to go through this and then I'm just going to quit this whole career that I've built over a lifetime. No, you make small tweaks, but you may hit a point where you're like, whoa, there's some values here that really I'm no longer willing to allow them to be assaulted, violated, not in play, whatever. So you may decide you do want to make a big shift.
Adam O'Leary (14:23.324)
love that. And Brandon, where can people go to learn more about you?
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (14:27.021)
I'm active on LinkedIn. So Brandon L. Jenkins on LinkedIn. You'll see me there. I'm active five, six times a week. I'm posting content, hosting LinkedIn lives every week. And then tier1coaching.com is my website where you can go learn a little bit more about what Blueprint process might look like for you.
Adam O'Leary (14:48.754)
That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Brandon, for jumping on with me today. This was an awesome episode.
Brandon "Jenks" Jenkins (14:52.621)
I loved it Adam. Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Adam O'Leary (14:55.899)
Absolutely, and thank you all for listening. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will see you on the next episode.
