“True leadership isn’t about doing it all yourself. It’s about helping others rise to the occasion.”

In this episode, Craig P. Anderson talks to Brian Wheeler, the President and Chief Visionary Officer of The Vertical Life, for an insightful conversation about leadership. Brian shares his leadership journey, from high school entrepreneurship to leading a faith-based nonprofit organization focused on developing young leaders. Brian’s story is a testament to the power of vision, humility, and influence in leadership. Brian reflects on key moments of his leadership evolution, including the lessons he learned as a teenager running a pressure washing business, and the ongoing work of leading with purpose in a mission-driven organization. He emphasizes the importance of self-discovery for young leaders and how developing a mindset of service, rather than self-centered ambition, has been crucial to his leadership style.

After You Listen:

• Connect with Brian Wheeler on LinkedIn
• Check out The Vertical Life
• Connect with Craig on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to Craig’s "The Evolving Leader" newsletter
  

• Leadership is about influence, not age, authority, or title
• Humility as a leader leads to better collaboration and growth
• Faith in your mission fuels motivation and commitment in your team
  
  

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Intro

(00:30) The importance of vision in leadership

(01:33) Brian’s leadership insights

(07:12) Brian’s early leadership journey

(11:24) Leadership in faith-based organizations

(16:36) The role of humility in leadership

Episode Transcript

This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human. 

[00:00:00] Craig Anderson:

Doesn’t matter if you’re a small corner store or a big a hundred person company. If you’re not living in the details of your business and you’re not paying attention to those things, there won’t be anything there for you. It’s so important. Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way and I created this podcast so that you won’t have to the president of the organization and I had worked on a five-year vision for the business. We sat down with his leadership team to present this view that he was very excited about and very confident in, and everyone looked at him like he was crazy when he was done. Casting the vision for your business or for your not-for-profit organization or any role you’re in. You are the person who is responsible for developing the vision and if you don’t develop the vision, if you try and outsource it, it’s not going to end well.

[00:58:00] Craig Anderson:

And so often in my work doing strategic planning with clients, I sit down with the CEO or the president or the executive director and we really work to refine a great vision. And when they present that for the first time, the team will look at them like they’re out of their mind. We tend to see so much what’s going on today in our environments that we don’t think about what’s possible over the long haul. What I’m excited to tell you is that that particular organization, that was about five years ago and five years later, they had met and exceeded many of the goals in that vision because they did the work every year to continue to move the business forward towards those goals. It’s the power of vision. Today we talk a bit about the power of vision. In my interview with Brian Wheeler, Brian is the President and Chief Visionary Officer of Vertical Immersive. I’m excited about this interview for two reasons. I really haven’t done too much work with faith-based leaders or leaders of faith-based organizations, and it’s great for us to have that perspective on leadership. And two, the mission of his organization is all about developing young leaders and we really got an opportunity to talk about that in this podcast as well. So let’s jump right in and learn the story of Brian’s executive evolution. Brian, welcome to Executive Evolution.

[02:07:00] Brian Wheeler:

Thanks for having me.

[02:09:00] Craig Anderson:

Oh, I’m excited for this conversation. I don’t always have a lot of not-for-profits on, I think maybe you’re second or third and obviously very mission and faith-based organizations. I don’t think I’ve ever had one, so I’m really excited to get your perspective and your views on your leadership journey and some of the work that you’re doing today. If that sounds like a good place to go,

[02:27:00] Brian Wheeler:

Looking forward to it.

[02:29:00] Craig Anderson:

Excellent. Well, I always start out with what I call the lightning round, but is usually about five minutes long, so we’ll jump in, we’ll jump in with the questions, see where we go. So just for you, what is the best leadership book you’ve ever read?

[02:44:00] Brian Wheeler:

I would definitely have a hard time pinning that down to one book, right? There’s so many great books out there. We can all cite all the works of Jim Collins and John Maxwell and all the rest. So I’m going to have to punt and just give you my favorite current book that I just read that’s kind of in the vein of leadership development, and that’s called Winning the War in Your Mind by Craig Rochelle. Oh,

[03:07:00] Craig Anderson:

Wow.

[03:08:00] Brian Wheeler:

It’s a great book. And granted, it’s more about the mentality of things, but that’s where leadership starts, right? It’s like it starts in our head.

[03:16:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah. I’ve told so many people that I can’t even remember where I picked this quote up, but part of leadership is mentally realizing that you are equipped to do it. And when you know that, and so much of it’s just mindset because no one really realizes when you’re in the leadership role just how much pressure that actually carries. And it’s your mindset. And I don’t know if that’s what they cover in this book. Are those kind of the central themes of the book?

[03:41:00] Brian Wheeler:

They do, yeah. They’re basically just saying that Craig likes to say our lives are moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. So whatever we spend our time towards is where we tend to directionally go, which I would agree with. And so there is this war, right, of positivity and negative thoughts and then all the distractions of today’s society. So everything in between.

[04:02:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah. Oh yeah. Love it. Alright, well we’ll drop the link to that book in the show notes. Second question for you, who is your leadership crush?

[04:10:00] Brian Wheeler:

I mean obviously Craig’s up there right now because I’ve been enjoying his works and Simon Sinek, I love his inspirational side of leadership and I’m also just a big JC fan, so I love reading the word and every day I pick up the Bible it’s like I’m always learning new things that from the greatest leader of the all,

[04:29:00] Craig Anderson:

And it is kind of amazing how there can just be something in there that just hits you on a given day that you didn’t even expect.

[04:36:00] Brian Wheeler:

Absolutely.

[04:37:00] Craig Anderson:

And finally, in 10 words or less, how would you define leadership?

[04:42:00] Brian Wheeler:

I think honestly, if I was going to keep it simple, I would use John Maxwell’s version of it and he says at the end of the day, leadership is influence. And I would agree with that because leadership can be positive, it can be negative, and what we do at Vertical, we’re trying to teach young people that leadership can happen at any age and at any level, and so therefore it’s teaching them first of all that being a good leader just means understanding that you have influence and you got to unpack that.

[05:07:00] Craig Anderson:

It’s always amazing to me that people think you have to kind of have a title to lead, and so often you’re leading in your business, you’re leading in your not-for-profit, your sports teams by just how you show up every day. And when you have the respect and you can influence people, as you say, it’s just on the negative side, that negative influence in your organization can pull things apart. But a few people with that positive influence are leading almost as much as the leader.

[05:34:00] Brian Wheeler:

A hundred percent. And that can be from the very bottom up. I mean that could be at the bottom of an organization of someone just leading in the role that they’re in and people picking up on what they’re putting down and that making an impact and rippling its way up the organization.

[05:47:00] Craig Anderson:

And you were working with predominantly younger adults in your program, how much of that is really a self-discovery for them to realize that that actually exists within them?

[05:57:00] Brian Wheeler:

Yeah, it’s a big one. It really is. A lot of what we’re doing is training the right mindsets, and that’s a big aha moment when you can take a student that says, I don’t matter yet, or someday I’ll matter, or when I get this accomplishment or this age or this life achievement, then I have influence to take them from that position to the position of wait, I matter right now, I can have influence for the kingdom right now just because of the identity that I have been given. Once they grab hold of that, it starts changing the trajectory of their lives because they start recognizing that they have a purpose and a calling on them, and if nothing else, it gets them excited to wake up the next day and be like, all right, let’s go.

[06:37:00] Craig Anderson:

Yes, I know. So often I think that was the business I had before I started doing this was largely a call center business, and you would see in some of those folks out on the call center floor the capacity to lead and to try and show that to them. And I say, Hey, we have this role and would you like to apply or will you apply? And well, I don’t think I’m qualified for that role. And it’s like, let’s see. You have these capacities to try and coach that into people to realize there’s something more there, helping them recognize what’s already there for themselves. It’s just such a huge lift gift you can give as a leader to somebody.

[07:11:00] Brian Wheeler:

Yes, absolutely. Totally agree with you.

[07:14:00] Craig Anderson:

We talked a little bit about where you are, but let’s talk a bit about your leadership journey over your life. What do you consider Brian to be your first real leadership role?

[07:23:00] Brian Wheeler:

Well, the first one that I can really strongly remember was my first foray into entrepreneurship. In high school, I had been working for my older brother who had a landscaping and lawnmowing service, and here I was pushing the lawnmower and I was thinking like, wait a second, he’s making a lot of money while I’m pushing the lawnmower, making a little money. And so my uncle had given me a pressure washer, and so I started a little pressure washing company and started doing sales and booking jobs. I actually hired a couple of my friends to be my first employees, and that was my first foray into figuring out what it looked like to attempt to lead people.

[08:00:00] Craig Anderson:

Oh yeah. At high school, no less. When you think back to that time trying to get people to do things, what did you find kind of worked and didn’t work as you’re trying to drive people towards this direction of this service that you’re providing?

[08:17:00] Brian Wheeler:

I can tell you what didn’t work, and that’s osmosis.

[08:21:00] Brian Wheeler:

At that age, as a teenager and probably even for a lot of the rest of my life, you can make a lot of assumptions and just be, ah, they’ll get it right, and people just don’t. So communication was the biggest key and still is today for me when I’m communicating well and when I’m not. I think that was a big one, just having the framework of seeing this is how we do it every time, every time it looks like this, and walking people through a step process so they have a good understanding of what the expectations are and all that goes back to communication. But at that age, that was hard to get my hands around

[08:53:00] Craig Anderson:

The end. It’s so interesting that your pull from that is that ability to create a vision as a leader of this is what a good job looks like, this is how we edge, this is how we mow, this is how we deal with things. Was that a light that went off for you or was that just something you figured out over time? Oh man, I have to be way more descriptive than I thought.

[09:15:00] Brian Wheeler:

Yeah, no, I was thickheaded then and I still can be now, so I’m going to be honest and just say it was a slow work in progress to figure out how to do that well. To this day, I still feel like that’s a lesson that I have to keep repeating of just getting better at communicating and setting expectations and casting a good vision. It’s a workload that has to happen, so I haven’t got to perfect it out, but that was the lesson. It was not a light bulb moment. It was more of just like a, huh, why are they not getting this? Let’s say it again. Let’s try again. Let’s try it this way.

[09:47:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah. How big did that business ultimately get?

[09:49:00] Brian Wheeler:

Yeah, so I ran that all the way through high school. So for three years that pretty much put me on a financial independence track from my parents pretty early, so that was fun. But after I left high school, I actually just let that business go and moved up here to Indiana from Kentucky back then, I wish I would’ve known what I know now. I would’ve sold the business instead of simply wrapping it up. But back then I didn’t know that was a thing.

[10:13:00] Craig Anderson:

I just heard another story about somebody whose entrepreneurial life began with a lawn mowing business, and I would love to know the statistics on how many entrepreneurs had their first role in some sort of business like that in high school. Oh

[10:24:00] Brian Wheeler:

Man, it’s got to be high because in high school, maybe except for this younger generation, the blue collar work, pushing the lawnmower, ricking, all those kind of things, that was definitely the sign of the times. Everybody, at least all the guys I knew they were doing something like that. Definitely manual labor. Every family back then had a lawnmower in the garage, so it’s like, Hey, you want to make some money? Go mow your neighbor’s lawn. I would like to know those stats too, Craig.

[10:50:00] Craig Anderson:

It’s got to be huge. So if you think about rate yourself looking back, how good a job do you think you did by the end of that before you made your move

[11:00:00] Brian Wheeler:

Back then being I think about that age, right? 18. I thought I knew everything. I bet. Back then I thought I was crushing it. If I look back on that, it was like, yeah, that was maybe a two out of 10, maybe a one and a half. We were making things happen, but it was not pretty.

[11:14:00] Craig Anderson:

Oh, I bet. I bet. So, yeah. So it sounds like really the two big lessons were about creating that vision and really communicating effectively, and then also when you’ve got an asset, sell it, don’t just walk away. Yeah,

[11:26:00] Brian Wheeler:

That’s right.

[11:27:00] Craig Anderson:

So now you’ve been kind of a serial entrepreneur, I think launching a lot of businesses and now you have this role with Vertical Immersive and what you’re doing there. Talk to me now as you’ve gone through that progression, how do you view leadership now?

[11:44:00] Brian Wheeler:

I think that the biggest thing that I feel like God’s been teaching me in the last few years is to look at leadership from a servant point of view. It’s looking at it as not something that we do because we’re the best and everyone needs to follow us. It is taking the position of this is the mantle God has in my life in the season, and so I need to learn how to serve people well because in this particular endeavor, especially God’s brought a lot smarter, smarter people and more talented people around me than I am, and I needed that for this type of project especially. And so the best thing I can do is just try to figure out how do I make them the best version of themselves? How do I speak into their life and equip them and motivate them and cast the big vision? But all the while it’s just about trying to serve the greater good and all of it with our students and with the staff. And for me it’s been good. It’s very humbling.

[12:36:00] Craig Anderson:

And when you’re looking at this, and especially with the strong mission that you have, how does that change how you get people to come along to recruit people into the organization and then lead them forward and keep people motivated? How does that show up given the strong mission focus that you have?

[12:55:00] Brian Wheeler:

That’s probably been my favorite part is that when you’re doing something that you feel like has a calling level to it, it’s not like, Hey, I just want to start a company, make money, but in my season of life, move past that. It’s like this is not about a money play at all. This is, this is where God has me. And I feel like then as I start casting the vision and talking to other people about what I feel like God is unpacking going on here, other people start catching that vision and getting excited. And other people are kind of that, me too, me too. I have the same feeling or the same calling, or I have a role to play here. And so then it becomes a collective, we driving this vision and they’re just all bought in on what God is doing, and it’s not about Brian Wheeler and it’s not about something that I want to accomplish as something that we all collectively see is a greater good that God’s trying to get done. And so that faith component, that inspirational piece makes it easier, I feel like to drive the leadership piece because the passion is there for everyone. Everyone wakes up in the morning and go, okay, I’m doing something that really moves the needle. Let’s go. I don’t have to work really hard to try to get them motivated. They’re internally motivated, which is a big difference between some corporate environments where the motivating factors might be the money or whatever the environment or other things.

[14:11:00] Craig Anderson:

So I am interested in that. You’ve had a lot of different businesses that maybe didn’t have that same component. Does that make it easier to lead or does it introduce different challenges for leaders?

[14:22:00] Brian Wheeler:

I do think it’s easier in one way because again, the passion I think is naturally there for the whole team. The other version of this, you’re trying to search a little deeper to get that passion. And so here it’s just now trying to find the teeter-totter balance between the passion and the economics of making it all work. So the nonprofit realm was a different realm for me to learn because every other venture I’ve done has been for-profit. And so I know those economics, this one’s, it’s like, okay, how do you be a good steward of this resource? That’s really not, its primary function is not to make profit. I mean, granted needs to operate efficiently and not be in the red, but how do you do stewardship really well in this context and yet honor all the people that are involved as well? So that to me has just added that layer of complexity where it took it away on the motivation side.

[15:10:00] Craig Anderson:

And what have you found as a leader in kind of this business different from how you were a leader in a for-profit, if at all? I don’t know because I’ve never done it, but does it change the pressures or the goals or the drivers for you?

[15:26:00] Brian Wheeler:

Well, it doesn’t if I’m just being really candid with you, but I would say five, 10 years ago even, I had a very kind of unredeemed version of business in my head. It was like, Hey, this is something I’m good at. This is where I can serve people well, and that’s not a bad thing, but I feel like God got ahold of me at some point and was like, let’s redeem your ambition. It’s kind of like God saying, Hey, we’re going to build my kingdom and not your kingdom, Brian, and letting go of that and recognizing those type of principles like, Hey, that’s not my money. It’s not my business anymore, it’s his, and I’m operating from that standpoint of view of a steward instead of an owner. So those things start to align more in those organizations, whether they are for-profit or nonprofit. And that’s probably been, to answer your question, the biggest change is that those actually have gotten more aligned is my internal, we talk about those mindsets is my internal mindsets got aligned across the board, whether it’s nonprofit or for-profit. Then those things get more sync together in terms of my life because that’s the way really we want life to run. We want to be congruent When it is congruent, which it has become that way, then it’s like, okay, I wake up every day and I feel like I’m just on mission no matter which company I’m working in. You know what I mean?

[16:38:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah. It’s so interesting because over the last, I don’t know, 10 years, maybe 15 years, but maybe even less, humility has come through as such an important leadership characteristic, which if we go back and watch movies in the eighties and probably movies in the nineties, that was not the leadership role. The leadership was hard driver type a personality, keeping everybody moving forward, just keeping cranking forward. Now we talk more about humility and it’s such a sea change and just more common than question that this kind of faith-based influence into it demands humility, but we’re also seeing that humility to come in into leadership, and it’s such a different way to think about leadership that I’ve got all these people depending on me to make good decisions. So I can’t really come at it from arrogance because if I come at it from arrogance, it’s going to be all about me. And the reality is I don’t do a whole lot as the leader of the day-to-day things that move the business forward. So it is such an interesting dynamic that’s kind of brought you to this point maybe ahead of where the curve is, but the curve, I’m not sure if we’re still headed in that way, and maybe we’re getting more towards more of the bombastic leadership style again, but it’s really of interest to me that this has kind of come to you at this point in your life. So that’s, it’s a terrible question.

[17:58:00] Brian Wheeler:

No, no, it’s a great statement because I personally hope that more people move this direction because there’s also secondary and tertiary benefits to it, quite frankly. So that personal humility allows us to operate better as people operate better in my family dynamics than I did when I was a younger man, and I was a little more authoritarian as my kids would say, I’m moving into grandpa stage. I’m like, oh, I see how people mellow over time, they get a little more humble and they get a little more. The other benefits, there’s just so many, and one of those for me is I realized that when I can sit in that place of humility and also just say, Hey, I feel like it’s not mine anymore. It’s the Lord’s or however you want to view that, then I start to take the load off my shoulders.

[18:42:00] Brian Wheeler:

When you’re the bombastic leader and you’re the one trying to carry everything, then you also carry all the stress, you carry all the anxiety and all the big decisions they weigh on you, and I just honestly didn’t want to live that way any longer anyway, and so letting that go and just taking that off and saying, Hey, look, I’m going to spend more time in my faith praying about these things and just looking for direction. And so when I don’t know the answer, that’s okay. That’s a hard place to get to. But sometimes as leaders, we put so much pressure on ourselves and I just don’t think we necessarily have to. I think sometimes we can sit and just be like, it’s going to be okay, and our faith, we can ask in humility for the answers and ask other people for that wisdom, and when we get it, then it’s like, cool. It’s good. I didn’t stress over that in the meantime because there’s always a solution, Craig, eventually,

[19:31:00] Craig Anderson:

And I think that’s however you get that, if you get that through humility or you get that through faith, right, through faith or through just kind of realizing what you can do is, and I think that’s one of the things you kind of pick up as you move up in leadership and you have more experience, you have to do a lot of stuff, but things do tend to work out. They just don’t show up. You have to do the work and you have to do the things, but you have to have confidence that you’re going to get where you’re going. The path may wave. It’s something I talk to businesses about when I do their strategic planning. It’s like, I know we’re talking about five years from now, but we got to have faith. We’re going to end up in this place. The detours are going to hit, we’re going to move around, but if we do the work and we don’t make it about my ego and my insecurity, we’ve got to keep doing the work and believe we’re going to get there. And it’s a powerful thing.

[20:20:00] Brian Wheeler:

It just goes back to having a good vision. You talked about earlier, I think the Bible says this way, it’s like without a vision, the people perish. And so when we can hang our hats on that future vision and have hope in what it’s going to be, then we can endure those downside. I was talking to a business leader the other day. He was talking about, he’s like, I’m in that valley of death where you’re into year two and actually you’re still underwater before you come up. I’m like, I think most businesses, if not all of them go through that. The ones that make it through have that hope of what’s to come, and they don’t die on the vine while they’re in that death valley trying to surface out the other side.

[20:54:00] Craig Anderson:

It’s such an important thing, and I think that’s where a lot of times people are looking to us as the leader. If we look like we’ve got the faith that we can get through this, despite the current set of difficulties. I think about if you’ve ever read about Admiral Stockdale and the Stockdale Paradox and good to great look, we’re going to get punched in the face a lot here. We got to realize that’s going to happen, but we also have to have faith that we’re going to get through to the other side, but we just can’t put everything on it and think we’re never going to get punched in the face because the reality is you get punched every day in the face in business, just things you don’t see. And it’s different by business, right? So

[21:29:00] Brian Wheeler:

Much.

[21:29:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah, right. Yeah. Let me count the ways I’ve been punched in the face in business over the years.

[21:34:00] Brian Wheeler:

It’s not for the faint of heart, right?

[21:36:00] Craig Anderson:

No, no. People

[21:38:00] Brian Wheeler:

Are like, oh, starting a business sounds so romantic. I’m like, don’t look at it that way.

[21:43:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah, I won’t have a boss. It’ll be great.

[21:45:00] Brian Wheeler:

Yeah, it’s a bad reason to start a business.

[21:47:00] Craig Anderson:

Yeah, it might be one of the worst ones. Suddenly you look around and one, you didn’t realize how tough your boss had it, and two, suddenly you’re your own boss, and if you don’t sit on top of yourself harder than that old boss did, you won’t have much of a business very long. And it’s building that discipline and building that focus, and that’s what I always think is everything that maybe annoyed me at my time in leadership in corporate America was like, oh, dude, we really have to dive this deep into this. Do we really have to pay attention to these things? How much does the reality is? That matters a lot, and that’s what I try and bring back. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small corner store or a big a hundred person company. If you’re not living in the details of your business and you’re not paying attention to those things, there won’t be anything there for you. It’s so important, so this is great. Well, so now I’m going to ask one last exercise for you, Brian. I don’t know if you’re a big fan of time travel movies, but if you are, you can pick HG Wells time machine, you can pick a DeLorean, however you like to travel through time. What would you go back to yourself in those early leadership roles? If you had one piece of advice you could give the younger version of Brian, what would that one piece of advice be?

[22:53:00] Brian Wheeler:

That’s an easy one. For me, it’s the pursuit of wisdom. Proverbs says it pursue wisdom above everything else. It’s more valuable than gold, and I wish that I had been an avid reader back when I was that young because we learn so much. Just when you become hungry for wisdom and it starts to form you and change your character from the inside out. I wish that I had known that at a younger age or picked up on that. I look back in my high school years and I wasn’t a reader at all, and I definitely didn’t just pursue wisdom. It was just kind of like I know enough wish I could go back and be like, Hey, Dumbo, better wise up. You don’t know much. There’s a lot of things you don’t know that you don’t know.

[23:36:00] Craig Anderson:

It’s so funny, I’m in a chat group about Gator football and there was some folks in there one day we started talking about business stuff and some of the younger, they have no idea how old I am. Some of the younger guys were like, oh yeah, the problem is we know how to do the actual work, and those guys don’t even know how to do X, y, or Z anymore, and they’re the ones in charge. It’s like, here’s the thing, they’re not in charge. They can still do the widget things or the detailed things. They’re in charge because the collective wisdom they’ve built and the ability to drive decision-making off that, and they know well enough to ask you questions when those are important questions. It’s a different, somebody had this the other day, I think it was in the Atlantic or something, that your contribution changes as you move through life and you gain that wisdom and experience, and it’s actually that wisdom and experience is the value you now bring, not your ability to code or sell or do any of those things, and I have to believe in what you’re doing in the mission of your business in raising up these young people to be leaders.

[24:36:00] Brian Wheeler:

That’s exactly right. A hundred percent. Yeah. Nailed it Craig.

[24:43:00] Craig Anderson:

So Brian, if people love hearing about this and want to learn more about you and Vertical Immersive, where should they go? Where can they find you?

[24:51:00] Brian Wheeler:

Well, the easiest place would just be to go to our website, which is Vertical Immersive dot Life, L-I-F-E. If they want to kind of follow along, there’s a forward slash Champions or they can click on the Champions button to become a Champion. That simply means that they want to learn more and start to follow along on our journey or maybe get involved, and so they’ll get a newsletter from us if they join The Champions. We’re also on social media, so you could look up Vertical Immersive Indy or Brian Wheeler. We’ll see my mug somewhere, right? You’ll find me. If you want to find me,

[25:21:00] Craig Anderson:

We can find you. We’ll find you on LinkedIn. We’ll drop a link to your LinkedIn. We’ll drop a link to Vertical Immersive in the show notes, and if people want to find out more about you or them though, if I have an easy path. Hey, Brian, I appreciate you coming on and sharing the story of your executive evolution and also the great work you’re doing to develop leaders that is so important. If we don’t start developing leaders today, I don’t know how much hope we got down the road. Thanks so much for being on.

[25:44:00] Brian Wheeler:

Thanks, Craig. I really appreciate it. Fun talking with you.

[25:49:00] Craig Anderson:

I really appreciate Brian sharing the story of his leadership journey and how he’s kind of grown over the years, but what I really appreciate is the work that he’s doing, taking young people 18 to 2021 and actually showing them how they can lead and become leaders at that age, and I think that’s so important. So what we’re going to do is break this down. My three takeaways from today’s episode in the area’s competence, confidence, and calm in the area of competence. It’s really what I just said, teaching young people the skills to be leaders. Leadership doesn’t have an age cutoff. We see that all the time. We see younger leaders in high school who are really effective leaders. We see people in their twenties, in their thirties. Leadership is not a function of age. As Brian talked about, leadership is about influence, and later we talked about how it’s a function of wisdom.

[26:40:00] Craig Anderson:

Really, you can build your leadership confidence by learning the importance of influence and wisdom and really help educating yourself and the work that he’s doing at Vertical Immersive. Second, we talked about confidence in the area of confidence. It was what we talked about, about believing that your vision is going to play through, even though you may be getting punched in the face every day, you have to realize, as we talked about with the Stockdale paradox, accept the fact that it’s going to be hard, that the road’s not going to be easy, but never lose faith in that vision that you have for the future of your organization or business. And finally, calm. We’ve talked a lot of different things about calm, but I think Brian brought a really unique perspective today around how faith can bring that calm to you. And so I think that’s a really important lesson for all of us to learn, is the different ways that we can generate calm within ourselves and outside ourselves through things like faith that Brian talked about. So Brian, thank you for sharing the story of your executive evolution today. As always, remember, you can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest leader of all time. All it takes is developing your confidence confidence com. We’ll see you next time in Executive Evolution.