From Plans to Action: Embracing Flexibility and Real-Time Decision-Making

Starting the conversation:

Every choice has a consequence — success is intentional. The decisions we make for our companies have a ripple effect on society and the environment. Kevin Howard, Principal Consultant at Climate Changes Everything®, LLC, shares his perspective on how leadership is evolving and that even in change, with planning, you can shape the success of your future.

Interdependency exists in everything. Our businesses require customers to stay in business. And having options to access materials and technologies is required to deliver goods and services. There are many interdependent parts of business, and recognizing each place we connect to people and entities outside of our own orbit is empowering. This depth of knowledge allows for curiosity and understanding of the way business is done, enabling you to make decisions knowing you have the right information right now.

In this program, you will hear that every choice has a consequence, that business success is intentional, and how to discern the signal in the noise using feedback loops. The biggest pitfalls of filtering information are that the filter may use unrecognized ideology or confirmation bias. Jess Dewell talks with Kevin Howard, Principal Consultant at Climate Changes Everything®, LLC, about why it is BOLD to explore the edges of your values to design intentional growth.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Kevin Howard

What You Will Hear:

03:10 What is your most cherished personal value?

• Connect your core values to a deeper understanding of personal identity.
• Recognize that acting out of alignment with true nature can cause problems in business and society.
• Approach life and work as fundamentally interconnected with others and the environment, rather than independent.

10:10 Curiosity as a cherished value and its business impact.is a core element of the overall customer and brand perception.

• Use curiosity as a driving force, even when it seems to create challenges.
• Rely on intuition and attention to what is unsaid to discover important truths in professional and social interactions.
• Prioritize continuous dialogue and open communication to bridge potential gaps caused by differing assumptions.

15:40 Building stamina for decision-making and the importance of adaptability.

• Start with clear plans, but prepare to adapt rapidly as new information becomes available.
• Remain flexible and open to adjusting tactics instead of following an initial process too rigidly.
• Increase effectiveness by welcoming feedback and real-world changes, ensuring progress toward goals.

22:25 The increasing impact of externalities on business strategy.

• Monitor global economic, political, and regulatory shifts that can affect business outcomes.
• Integrate consideration of these outside forces into every strategic plan to sustain success.
• Stay ahead by anticipating changes and preparing for factors beyond the immediate business environment.

28:00 Accountability and the importance of truth in decision-making.

• Ground all choices in reliable, accurate data to ensure wise decision-making.
• Navigate through noise and misinformation by cutting through bias and focusing on facts.
• Maintain a disciplined approach to using feedback, letting truth — not assumptions — guide your actions.

36:45 Why we do what we do matters — authentic motivation and excellence.

• Draw motivation from personal passion to fuel resilience and persistence.
• Devote time and energy to meaningful goals so that consistent effort becomes both enjoyable and rewarding.
• Build success on authentic foundations, enhancing satisfaction and long-term fulfillment.

38:50 Transformation through challenging goals and personal growth.

• Embrace difficult goals to transform yourself through steady, ongoing effort.
• Overcome reluctance and discomfort to experience a sense of accomplishment and pride in progress.
• Apply dedication consistently, recognizing that positive outcomes and enjoyment come after persistence.

46:15 Humanizing big issues —narrative, climate risk, and finding your place in the story.

• Use compelling stories to make large, complex challenges personally meaningful and relatable.
• Frame big problems in ways that empower individuals to see their potential role in creating solutions.
• Spark motivation and engagement by connecting broader issues with day-to-day realities and personal impact.

50:00 It is BOLD to explore the edges of your values to make better decisions right now.

Resources

• Climate Change Narrative (Video)
• Kevin Howard on LinkedIn
• Book: Onward, At Last

Transcript

Jess Dewell 0:00
We are the best liars to ourselves. We can make numbers mean anything, we can make patterns mean anything, versus just looking at it to look at it.

Kevin Howard 0:09
In other words, let go of the how. Don’t be so wedded to the original plan that you are not as open to the new information that could accelerate.

Jess Dewell 0:18
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business Podcast, we are normalizing important conversations.

Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly, are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training, and the programs that you are already using.

This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out. Maybe you’re ready to scale.

Maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 1:09
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 1:21
Kevin Howard is a passionate individual that through his journey, both being raised on the East Coast, being active duty in the U.S. Army and NATO, attending college at the University of Houston and graduate school in Connecticut, he ended up working for U.S. Bank and got this urge, this itch, that there was more that he wanted to be involved with. And he started learning about the environment and he started learning about what is actually going on in our world today. And he learned a lot of different things.

And part of this journey, part of his passion is what we are here to talk about today. And you’re going to learn so much about, Kevin. I will tell you, in our conversation, we are talking about the fact that every choice has a consequence.

And what is that? And are you ready for it? The second thing that I want to call out that I know you will want to know about to take away is business success is intentional.

And that means we must include feedback because when we avoid the feedback, we lose some of the intentionality. And the third thing that I will call out ahead of time is that there is a lot of noise out there. And it is up to us to find the pulse and threads and the signals within that noise that matter to what we’re doing, that matter to our value set, that matter to the decisions and the approaches that we are making in the world.

So Kevin Howard, the founder and principal consultant at Climate Changes Everything is going to be joining me in just a few moments. And I hope you enjoy our conversation. I want to know what your most cherished personal value is.

Kevin Howard 3:10
Jess, thank you for asking the question. My cherished personal value, it’s derivative from understanding who I am. And so I would say my cherished, maybe I could put it in the form of my love language, it is to be in right relation with each other and the environment that sustains us.

I would say it’s steeped into that because it’s also central to who I am, who I’ve discovered I am, which I find to be a major problem both in business and in society is that we have been convinced of things that are not necessarily who we are. And then that frames how we make choices and how we run our businesses. And maybe that’s why we have the existential challenges we face, both in economics and in ecology and the climate crisis and on.

Jess Dewell 4:03
Right relation. I want to hear more about this. I think I know what I mean, but I wish to not assume.

And I have so many questions, I want to actually make sure they might be relevant.

Kevin Howard 4:15
That’s fine. This notion of in right relation. Okay, so we growing up in the United States, growing up on Western civilization, growing up as beneficiaries of the age of reason, we have been given a series of virtues, values and narratives that have convinced us that we are independent, free and separate beings and that the most appropriate way for us to obtain the goods and services that take care of ourselves and our family, that allow us to run our businesses and be successful is to compete with each other. Right.

And based on how the competition goes, plain and fair and square, this is how we essentially earn the benefits that we achieve, that we obtain. So this is the framing of who we are within the context of the Western tradition, the American story or what have you. Problem with that is, is that’s not exactly how we actually are.

That is not exactly how we actually lived. That is not as a result, it obscures who we actually are. Whether you’re talking about running a business, are you talking about just functioning as a person?

We, our actual existence is in symbiotic relationship with the rest of humanity and the natural environment that sustains us. In other words, before we can make that decision today that our business needs in order for us to be successful, we need air, we need water, we need nutrients, we need shelter, we need a lot of things. We need atmospheric pressure.

All these things we don’t control. None of those things do we produce. We have to receive that before we take the next breath and make the next choice and engage in the next action.

The idea of believing that we are separate from all that, that we are independent of all that, gives us the wrong idea of who we are and empowers us to do things that are actually self-destructive. In other words, if we rely on all those things in order for us to act and the means by which we benefit ourselves, we benefit our businesses, is competition. A context where the actors either win or they lose.

There’s no in-between there, right? We have created a structure where in order to be successful, we compete against the hands that serve us. We compete against the hands that provide for us, right?

And that leads to the toxicity that governs our market today, that governs our country today, that governs our planet today. Yeah, this core virtue, this core value of what’s my number one value of being in right relationship, is to remember that I actually live symbiotically. I actually live interdependently and that’s not some woo-woo spiritual off on top of the mountain somewhere.

That’s literally how I exist every day and that if I honor how I exist every day by making choices that support that, right, then I create a sustainable environment, a sustainable life that will be good for me, will be good for my children, will be good for their children and right now we’re not functioning.

Jess Dewell 7:44
Is your love language quality time or acts of servants or did I totally get it wrong?

Kevin Howard 7:50
The notion of in-right relationship, which is what I referenced, can manifest in each of those expressions.

Jess Dewell 7:56
You just said love language and I was like, can I guess which one it is from your answer? So that was my guess.

Kevin Howard 8:02
Certainly acts of service. Acts of service is my particular love language and why? Again, if you recognize how you function, just let’s stay in the physical function.

If you recognize how you function, how does your business function? Your business doesn’t survive without your customers. Your business doesn’t survive without all the vendors and support networks.

The business doesn’t survive without law enforcement, without a legal system to enforce contracts. There’s so many things outside of your business that allows your business to survive. To value those things for what they are, they give you the opportunity to create business and should then inspire you to run the business in a way that gives something back.

But if you ignore because of the story we’ve been told that none of those things are as important as what you do, that it all starts with you. You are independent of all that and therefore your success is a function of your choices alone, right? If that’s where your value structure is and that’s how you make your choices, then what happens is it does accommodate making choices that are actually destructive to the things that you need in order to continue to be successful.

And so this is the pragmatic application of what I’m saying. About the importance of being in right relationship for business and personally.

Jess Dewell 9:26
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

Announcer 9:41
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary.

Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 10:10
If you’re just joining us now, you’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. We’re talking with Kevin Howard, principal consultant at Climate Changes Everything. Now back to the program.

My most cherished value, Kevin, is curiosity. And I think it’s interesting because I think most people would answer and describe it different, right? For me, I could be curiosity killed the cat, right?

That cat runs out of nine lives and I am. And so I actually recognize there are times that being curious puts me at a quote-unquote disadvantage. However, it’s that next level down below that, that using all of the senses, remembering what is in the space between us, understanding that naming what isn’t being said can have a quote-unquote danger or repercussion in the way that we exist and do us and business and society.

We need it. What is being said? That’s not actually in words.

What is being sensed that alludes to a question or a concept or a construct about belief, whatever that belief is. And it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, because your belief is yours and my belief is mine. And understanding that that might be different is something that I find very fascinating and I’m incredibly curious about.

And when I’m in tough conversations, whether it’s a negotiation, just trying to realign a management team back together to get back on track to their vision, ultimately all that happened was that everybody started doing stuff and there were assumptions made. Everybody’s interpretation of that was just enough different that because there was not regular conversation, because there was not regular ways to check in and have a balance or to make sure that all of the perspectives were there, there became rifts. And it can really cause setbacks.

And I actually think that is a true basis of what causes a company to stagnate. Everybody, whether it’s fear, whether it’s actual not taking action or whether it’s risk or whatever that is, I find that incredibly fascinating. So what do you think about my most cherished value from the value of right relation?

Now I’m like, well, let’s see where this goes.

Kevin Howard 12:37
First and foremost, I think curiosity is essential. It is essential. Sometimes it doesn’t work out to your advantage.

That’s the no free lunch component. Every choice has a consequence. But the thing about it is the fact that it doesn’t work out doesn’t mean that’s not great information that will lead to the future success.

It is imperative for a business owner to recognize that no matter what your background and experience is, the reality of the situation in which your business operates is much bigger than your background and experience. So therefore we have to be open. In other words, we have to be open to the new information.

We can’t evaluate whether new information is true or not based on whether we’ve known it before or whether it was consistent with what we experienced before. Because our experience, no matter how diverse it is, is just a narrow subset of the reality of the market that is going to drive the success of your business. At the heart of what makes a business successful is that you got to be curious.

That means you have to be open to the new information. You have to be able to evaluate what is actually true, notwithstanding the source. Because that is one of the biggest mistakes we make today, is somehow we think that people who align with our beliefs are a greater indicator of truth than people who don’t.

And therefore, whether it’s the person riding up in the elevator and the way the dress indicates that they’re probably not going to the C-suite, they may have some information that is critically important to you. You have to be open to the truth wherever it comes from. Trust that you have the capability, even if it’s new information, to see if it makes sense, to assess whether it makes sense.

Because if it doesn’t, you just dismiss it. But the idea we have, this narrow filter, typically is governed by our ideological approach, our business theories, our philosophy, our background and experience. And those things are not helpful when it comes to identifying the new information.

Because whether it’s true or not, it’s not based on whether it’s any of those things. It’s either true or not. And you can’t assess it if you just have a clear lens to assess it.

Jess Dewell 14:52
You know what? I’m telling you, Kevin. So here’s my number two, because now I think I want a two-word one like you.

And because to your point of everything that there is a consequence, and I said, cats have nine lives. I probably have a few more than that because that’s where curiosity takes me sometimes. And it’s two, how are we going to use it?

Can we claim it? Will we accept it for what it is and or not? And how amazing is it that we have the choice?

And I hear what you’re saying about belief and ideology and maybe what has worked or the way or the trends with which we see swinging back and forth in the terms of way business is done across decades. I think some things we want to be the same and some things are definitely changing and all of it is amazing. And that means we’re always facing this decision.

And I know decision fatigue is really real and where we started this conversation and where your expertise lies actually is one of these things where it almost sounds like we have to build up stamina with which to make all of these decisions and not get fatigued. Do you ever just go, I don’t need to make this decision?

Kevin Howard 16:02
This leads into another concept and another area in terms of how to manage business and how to manage. Navigate. We set up these plans.

Like we, so we have our 2025 plan for success and how are we going to grow the business X number of percentage. And then we’re going to enter this market and this and that and other. Those plans are based on whatever the best information you had at the time that you made it.

This is an intention. And I think in business, you need to, success is intentional, right? So good.

You have an intention, right? You have a game plan. Now here’s the other side of the story in terms of now, once you have launched down the road of your path of your plan, you got to let go of the how.

You got to let go of the how. And why, why does that mean? In other words, to stick to the plan based on the information you had at the start of the process and not be informed by the new information that you’re going to get as you go through the process, right?

We’ll deny you many of the paths for success. In other words, the only path to success is not that pre-planned version. I’m no doubt it makes sense and it’s rational and everything lined up, it would work.

Your goal is to actually succeed in the most effective and efficient way. Oftentimes, if you look retroactively at your successes, your success is rarely in alignment with how you originally planned it. One of the secret sauces of achieving your business goal, your personal goal, is start out with a plan.

Take those first few steps going down the road. Be totally open to the feedback, the effectiveness, the efficiency, the acceleration, the deceleration of what you’re doing as you’re heading towards your goal, right? And adjust accordingly.

In other words, let go of the how. Don’t be so wedded to the original plan that you are not as open to the new information that could accelerate. So, I tell colleagues as a business banker, historically, I’ve told clients down through the years, think of yourself as a running back weaving through the defense.

The running back, when he was handed the ball in the backfield, he had a specific hole. Go through the off-tackle hole, but the successful running back, they pivoted because that hole was blocked and they went this way and they went that way and they got to the touchdown. And the goal was to get to the touchdown.

It doesn’t matter that you didn’t go through the off-tackle hole. So, to answer your question in terms of there are times where according to your original plan, you should be deciding this here. But based on the new information that you have, sometimes you got to let the market come to you.

Sometimes you got to pause from it, whether it’s in a negotiation over a price. Sometimes the pause means that they fill the gap and they come to you. You had the strategic approach to close the deal, but you wouldn’t get the better price.

So, sometimes in the moment you will know and be able to make the better choice that maybe I need to hold up for a minute and let this play out. Again, our successes are rarely the way we designed them. And we can benefit from that coming into it too by simply letting go of the how and making the best choice we can as we go through the process.

Jess Dewell 19:14
If we think about what we buy in the world, we buy on the basis that we believe somebody else knows what our certainty is. And the one thing that is very interesting to me is that it’s totally counterintuitive to whatever, whatever is actually going on out there. Because it worked for them in that time, for that market, for that thing, for their attitude, for what they had available for resources.

And even if you could get everything the same, except for time, that is still enough of a difference that it probably won’t look the same. While success is repeatable, success may not be scalable. And I think that is where people get stuck because they get to this place of, I did it and I had success, this is great.

And then they get stuck there because whatever they did, they ran out of somebody else’s belief of what the process was. And they chose not to listen along the way. And that’s actually where I think our perspectives can come in in regardless of the problem that is being solved.

That’s it. Cool. Methodology?

Well, don’t throw it out the window. You had success. What are the places that you can break it open?

What are the places you can move some pieces around? Does this even make sense for the time, the place, the buying patterns, the needs, the technology, whatever word you want to put in there actually matters and uses? Because be, and that’s not even thinking critically.

When I use a methodology, it will have a ceiling. If I can claim that means when I get there, I reached the end of the process. How cool is that to have a known end at a minimum?

At a maximum, like what you’re talking about, the intention is there. You get started, you get the feedback, the end goal, that initial intention can come to fruition even though the path might never look like what we could have thought because all we have is hindsight to the moment. And I loved how you said it when we made the plan.

And I was in a room, I was in a room of 150 CEOs. And I asked them about their goal setting and goal achievement and through a series of questions. And at the end, I think two people out of 150 actually were able to power through their plan to get to the goal in the way that they thought.

The other 148 got to their goal, got to that intention, but had a variance, not a little variance, a big variance to a gigantic variance of the way there.

Kevin Howard 21:53
From a chronological perspective, from a probabilistic perspective, if you want to increase the probability of succeeding in your goal, you have to expand the means by which you’re willing to get there. Right. And what gives you the highest probability is where you take advantage of what the market offers as you’re going through.

This is the running back avoiding the defense. You don’t run right into the little linebacker, right? And again, this is from 25 years of advising entrepreneurs and businesses from startup to middle market size corporations and stuff like that.

One critical thing that is increasingly getting obscured is the impact of externalities.

Jess Dewell 22:36
Yes.

Kevin Howard 22:37
Yeah. Okay. For an entrepreneur, they have an idea. For a business owner, they have an idea. They know their business. They know their competition. They know their customers. They know the markets in which they’re operating. And so that’s their comfort zone.

That’s where their strength is. The problem is, and it’s just factually true, over the last 30 years, from the early nineties up to today, factors in the macroeconomics, factors in the geopolitical realm, factors that affect things like oil prices and energy costs or whatever, the regulatory environment, these externalities are getting to the point where you cannot successfully develop your strategic plan for the growth and success of your business without having some understanding of what is true about these externalities. Because what happens is they completely smother you.

COVID is a great example. There are so many successful businesses in the country, 30% of all small businesses in the not because they weren’t successful, closed and never opened up again because their markets were shut down, right? And their access to capital was insufficient to hold out when we did open up the markets in 2021.

This is just one example of the externalities. There are others, but it’s an increasing impact. And so I would say to other entrepreneurs, other C-suite folks, other people managing big businesses is that, yes, unfortunately we have to get a little bit more educated as to what is true about these externalities that could affect our businesses, right?

Too much to cover in this conversation right here, but there are many relevant examples that will drive, let’s say, the regulatory environment in which your business will operate, the tax environment in which your business will operate, your capacity to sell. An example of that would be whatever is going on in the tariff policy of the current administration. Again, we’re business people.

We don’t care about the politics. We’re just talking about what’s going to affect our business and whether or not we have profound tariffs and what is going to be the impact of that depending on where we want to operate as a business and who our customers are. And so understanding what is true about that and how that could affect our business will then inform your strategic plan over the next three to five years.

That is essential. Longer can we just keep our head down and stay in our lane and just focus in on the markets that we understand and not mitigate against the externalities which are just increasingly becoming a part of our lives.

Jess Dewell 25:17
I do strategic growth work, and so that long-term strategy is something that does come into play. It’s interesting to see some of the conversations that have happened over the years. We don’t put a stake in the ground.

How do we make a decision? We don’t put a stake in the ground and say this is what we think to just see what some feedback would be to your points earlier, Kevin. Then what are we going to do when we get surprised?

I really don’t want to be a wily coyote on the side of the train or at the end next to the train tracks when the train’s going through. I think I can safely speak for every business owner. It’s true for them too.

We do not wish to crash and burn. We wish to keep going. To do that, we have to be adaptable.

That makes me think about this decision fatigue because it still sounds like there’s a lot that we’re going to have to face, but I want to flip that a little and move away from that concept of where we could go with this conversation, which is on the surface, and go maybe one step further, which is I don’t know if the right word here is discipline or accountability or some phrase or combination of word that encompasses both of those. When I’m thinking about decisions, when I’m thinking about the power of intention, when I’m thinking about whatever we’re doing right now, and we must adapt and grow, and that feedback loop that most processes and methodologies avoid, we’re integrating.

It’s easy to let accountability go. That feedback said this. Guess what?

We are the best liars to ourselves. We can make numbers mean anything. We can make patterns mean anything versus just looking at it to look at it and sense and see.

I’m a big proponent of my love language, by the way, is actually touch first. Second is quality time. When I talk about business, I write notes because I got to touch the concepts that you’re saying and I’m saying, but I also recognize there’s this sense, which is why I listen a lot.

People say they listen. I’m like, can you feel you’re listening? I feel the listening.

When I think about that love language and I think about what we’re talking about, it gets me really excited. I’m like, how many ways can this actually show up for us? How many ways can we stretch the edges of this?

Because if we don’t, we are actually doing a disservice to our commitment to our decisions. Which do you think it is? Do you think it’s discipline?

Do you think it’s accountability? Do you think it’s a combo, something else that we have to face here? Because we’re talking about it, so let’s talk about doing it.

Kevin Howard 27:42
As opposed to using the terms we’re using, because yes, we need to be accountable for the choices we make. It’s true. But the thread, and I think quite frankly, on these type of concepts, there’s the signal and there’s the noise.

And the signal, the heart, the core, is what is true about either the feedback that we’re getting in the decisions that we’re making that tell us what we need to know in order to make the next best decision. The accountability comes from doing that, but you have to have the truth. The problem, technology has really helped us over the last some decades to create mythologies that are not true.

This is what led to the financial crash back in 2008 with the mortgage industry and misrating mortgage-backed securities and stuff like that. Okay. So drilling it down to that business owner making the decision and how they can be accountable to the core is what is true about this feedback.

What is my customers telling me? What are my vendors telling me? What is the price signals telling me that I need to incorporate into my next decision in order to protect the success and the capabilities of my business?

That’s the only thing that matters, is what is true. And if we can get the accurate information, if we can get past ideology, selection bias, and the history, and all that stuff, and just clean the lens and see things as they are, and let the data speak for what it is, and then use that information to make the better decision, then our decisions will constantly be affirmed by the reality in which our businesses operate. Well, if we depart from the reality, if we depart from what is actually true, because of preferences, biases, ideologies, philosophies, or whatever, right, this is when we find ourselves where we didn’t expect to be.

That’s the difference between successful businesses and those that don’t succeed, is that they actually read the market. They actually read the reality, and they accounted for it, and adjusted for it, and were ahead of it.

Jess Dewell 29:52
I’m your host, Jess Dewell and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success. Don’t forget, press that bell icon so you never miss a program, and it’s time to subscribe as well.

Announcer 30:16
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Jess Dewell 30:32
We’re talking with Kevin Howard, Principal Consultant at Climate Changes Everything. Now back to the program. Two things are popping up for me.

The first is I have a teenage athlete and there is an immense amount of peer pressure as a teenager. Then you pile on this desire to have specific goals reached that are maybe aligned with other people’s goals, but require a certain amount of work. The difference in those that succeed at that level are do you understand what the goal is and are you willing to do the workout, prioritize the time, get smarter about how do you talk to your friends and still stay engaged, yet eat right when everybody else is eating fast food, or exercise when everybody else went to a party, or sleep even.

And I think those student athletes that are actually doing some of those things, they stand out. And what do we not like as humans? It doesn’t matter if we’re a teenager, it doesn’t matter if we’re early adult, it doesn’t matter.

I’m 47. I have a goal for 48. So I’m in my late 40s, right?

And anybody who’s older, we don’t want to stand out. And I think today, when we choose to do it, and we’re listening to the truths you’re talking about, we’re just naturally going to stand out. So can we claim it?

Can we own it? Can we stand in it? Because I will tell you in business, what I’m finding, not only in the work that I’m doing in the realms that I play, but with the companies that I’m working with, is that when we can claim something that we see and feel, not only is it part of our journey, not only is it part of the leadership and the place that we’re supposed to navigate to, because it’s the right time, we’re going to look different. People will question us, or they will put pressure on us, or they will say you’re out of the norm, or it doesn’t subscribe to our equation. There are times that it’s okay to say okay to that, because we got to pick our battles.

However, we know which ones are right, and it really takes fortitude, strength, and I’m going to call a little bit of sassiness or feistiness to just stand up and say, this is what it’s going to be right here. And those people who are doing that are actually setting themselves up. They’re seeing success now, but they’re actually setting themselves up to adapt to what’s next, because they already have tuned in and claimed the pulse.

What is the feedback that they’re getting? What are the patterns that they are seeing? Does it matter to what we’re doing today?

And as we start seeing it, maybe it might. Maybe it’s an outlier, but it actually is something that’s very interesting that could help everybody. I have a really old story, actually.

Before there was this thing called affiliate programs and referral marketing, I was in the e-commerce world, and we had a lot of people that were trying to start to sell there early in the days when people were still afraid to put credit cards online. This is when this is going on. We had a bunch of people that were selling their software and they wanted to promote and bundle.

So we had different entities that wanted to bundle together, but then they needed to do this tracking thing, right? And our development, nope, nope, nope, we’re not going to do this. We’re not going to be able to do this real fast.

We have to really think about this because our goal as a company was to provide the most valuable service to as many clients as possible. And if somebody requested something that would be for just them or 10% of our client base, the answer was an automatic no. If it was a good idea, we’d think about it.

Could we figure out how to make it apply to many? But if we couldn’t, it didn’t. And that was an interesting take because at the time, everybody was like, every feature they could imagine, they were doing all of these one-off things.

And then they ended up with these technologies that really had problems scaling. And everybody ended up behind the times because they couldn’t scale because their features were so individualized that they couldn’t work together as they grew. And what came out of that though, there was this weird random thing that you could do in a database and you give it a tag.

People with websites, they tag. People with YouTube channels, they tag, right? We have hashtag social media posts, even OneNote, right?

Any of those things where you keep all your random notes and things like that, you can put all these little tags in there, right? It was one of these things that was like, name a tag and does it do what you want? Turns out we were able to help 100% of our clients with that one small thing.

And it was the most popular feature ever used. And it literally took a whole bunch of time to think about, but a really tiny time to implement. And people came and used our service just because of that.

We didn’t charge extra for it. It was just this thing. So to the point of, will you do a different?

Could you listen? We’re getting enough examples of this that maybe we could come up with something that could help the many. And could we stand by it, regardless of the outcome, initial outcome to get to whatever might the next better iteration might be.

And when the answer to all three of those things were yes, magic happened. All the stuff we’re talking about is straightforward, yet it is far from easy. Would you agree with that?

Kevin Howard 35:51
You just demonstrated dynamic decisioning. The idea is whatever your plan is that started out with was a good plan. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But as you were responding to the feedback loop from your customers, you found a solution, low-cost solution, efficient solution that attracted the traffic that you wanted to use the broader services that you were going to be selling. And that’s great. That’s exactly, this is how success works.

In my opinion, it doesn’t necessarily work according to here’s the a hundred steps to success. And as long as I stick to it, I’m good. No, it actually is much more dynamic than that in the capacity to be open.

But now going back to your story about the teenage athlete, it reminds me of something that is relevant to running a business is being a successful athlete. Why we do what we do matters. Why we do what we do matters.

It is so important that we are in tune with why we do what we do and that why we do it is from us, that it’s not externally driven. I give the most obvious externally driven motivation. I want to make some money.

I want to make some money. I want to be successful. I want the American dream.

The way to get that is not to be driven by that directly, because that has nothing to do with you. What has to do with you and what gets you excited to jump out of bed in the morning is some series of activities that speak to you, that motivate you, that unpack your passions. If you love a particular sport, if you actually love the sport, then it’s not work to do to spend the 10,000 hours.

For expertise, the level of commitment that goes into being exceptional is best fueled by a motivation that’s authentic to you. It’s not an external thing. Yes, it resolves the issues of, yes, there’s a price for fame.

You’re not going to be a face in the crowd when you’re the best. That’s just no free lunch. The price for being exceptional is that you stand out, and so give them something to look at.

This is what excellence looks like. There’s nothing wrong with that, particularly when you earn it, particularly when you’re passionate about it, because it comes from an authentic place, from your heart center out through your mind center and into the choices that you make. To the business owners out there right now, why you do what you do matters.

If that is based on your deeper motivating beliefs, the things that really drive what makes you want to live, what makes you get up in the morning, then it’s going to feed into your business. Everything else becomes a chore. Everything else becomes a burden, becomes just a Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.

That is not how you want to be successful. Thank you for sharing both those examples, because I think they gave us insight to really look at leadership as it relates to business.

Jess Dewell 38:47
I bet you have an example too, or many. I’m thinking about this and I’m going to tell you, I have a personal goal that is butt puckering. I learned that word from my father-in-law.

I have not had a butt pucker goal since I learned what this word was decades ago. And I was like, I think I need one of these. And that means I’ve got to become somebody else along the journey of getting the feedback, making the decisions to get to where I want to go.

I’m thinking about what you’re saying and I think it’s fun, but there are days I’m like, I don’t want to do the work. There are days that are like, especially when we’re impacted by the things, like I’m impacted by a lack of sun or many rainy days in a row where it’s hard to be outside in some small semblance of comfort. You and I both live in a place where there’s a lot of moisture and rain, right?

The Pacific Northwest, and I don’t mind rain. I can be in the rain comfortably. If it’s cold and really wet for many days, it’s hard to be outside for me, then that’s my story.

So whatever that is. But I recognize that when that hardness happens, we still have a choice. Can we go out regardless and say, I get to do this.

And even if we do during it, it might not feel good, but after it feels good. And my goal, my butt puckering goal is to be able to do 48 pushups by the time I’m 48. When I started this, I could not even do one wall pushup.

Okay. I am well on my way. As of today, I can do 20 in a row.

And that’s pretty amazing. And I do many sets. So I’m doing more pushups, more than that in a time of my workout.

But there are days I’m like, I don’t want to do these pushups. I would rather take the time to prepare for an interview. I would rather sit down and talk to my kid and my husband while I’m drinking my tea.

We can have a moment in the I might want to just sit down and read part of a book. I might want to get outside and go walk. And none of those things are pushups.

But when I get done with the pushups, boy, do I feel proud. And boy, do I say, I am showing up to this, even though I didn’t want to, I was there and I was all into what I had. And so I think sometimes, even if it feels uncomfortable inside that moment, when you get done, you go, this isn’t actually fun.

Look at the results I’m getting. So the fun might not show up in the doing. It might show up in the completion of a small step.

Kevin Howard 41:25
Hey, that is the juice. Yeah, absolutely. You could see the incremental.

Yeah, you could see the improvement. You’re at 20. You remember when you couldn’t do one.

So we’re on the journey. We’re 48 by 48. And I love it.

Absolutely love it. An example that was transformative in terms of my background and experience. I had built a successful 25 plus year career as a business middle market banker and credit side.

I know I had done sales too, but I also love to get out in nature and I love to just camp and to fish, get on the lake, be out by the ocean, whatever, love it. And, and so I, through that passion started to came across information where I started to realize that climate, that the climate is an issue. It is actually real.

And I started, and I, again, I’m a credit guy. So I’ve always, it’s always about when you’re making multimillion dollar decisions as to who you’re going to invest in and stuff like that. You need the data.

You need to know what’s true so that you can determine whether you can get paid back and what, you know, that kind of thing. So I approached this whole climate thing in the same way. I watched Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.

There you go. Now it’s all politicized. But what about the data is actually true?

And so I went through that journey of searching your signal from the noise. And so by the time I realized that it was actually true and that it could present existential challenges over the next hundred years, I decided my goal was I can’t just go on and continue to do deals when this is going on. I got to do something about that.

And so I shifted my career. I had to go back to school. I was working for the fifth largest bank in the country.

I shifted from the business line into portfolio risk management, enterprise risk management to put myself into position so that when the commercial banking industry recognized climate risk as an actual vertical one risk, like credit risk, I was in position to help a bank understand what it was and to integrate it into the risk management framework and to develop the strategic approach of how we’re going to mitigate, how we’re going to manage that risk.

So I was a part of the team that stood up the climate risk management group at US Bank, fifth largest bank in the country. So I shifted my career. At 50, the climate problem is literally it’s chemistry, it’s physics, and it has enormous economic impact.

But it’s not a financial problem. It’s derivative of the absorption rate of carbon and methane in terms of how much sunlight it absorbs and what effect does that do on weather and then ultimately on climate. So I had to learn that stuff and become a translator in financial services.

And so I did that and ultimately left the bank, started my own business. I’ve been financing entrepreneurs all this year. Now I started my own business, Climate Changes Everything, Oregon-based company and stuff like that.

And I now advise financial institutions, state and local governments, counties on the climate transition to renewable energy, why that’s essential, what have you. But it all started with watching a documentary, seeing that this thing is being politicized and finding out what’s true about this story so that I can make a decision. And it has transformed my career.

And I can tell you this I jump out of bed after a good night’s sleep and I’m ready to co-create a serious new reality where I can educate people as to what is true about this issue and how they can get ahead of it. And I do it to business owners and I do it to banks and I do it to county government and state government. And life is great.

Jess Dewell 45:34
And it turned out bigger.

Kevin Howard 45:36
That’s the whole thing.

Jess Dewell 45:37
You wanted to make change for the existing role you had and what happened. And that, by the way, that is butt puckering to go, this is a thing I want. I don’t know how it’s going to disrupt my life, but I’m being called to do it.

So let go. That’s awesome. And then to be able to go when you got done, to be able to go, oh, I can see what I can do.

And then actually having all of that success and then going, this is actually bigger than just here. How do I know there’s more in there? The need is there and the requests are there and the people are asking and the organizations and the infrastructures and the entities are asking for this.

Kevin Howard 46:11
It’s so interesting, though, what I have found in that journey.

Jess Dewell 46:15
Yeah.

Kevin Howard 46:15
You start off with a plan. You got to let go of the how. Is that the biggest impediment to people recognizing the urgency of the moment when it comes to climate is not the data.

Quite frankly, the data is hyperbolic and it’s not moving the needle. The data is hyperbolic and the biggest impediment is that we don’t have a narrative that humanizes what’s going on, that resonates with regular people. Now, if you ask farmers know the deal, their crop yields are being affected.

Forget about the politics in Florida. If you own a house in Florida, if you own real estate in Florida, you understand the proliferation of extreme weather events is due to your insurance and not the marketability of your real estate. This is the reality creeping in, notwithstanding the politics.

But nonetheless, there’s not a unifying narrative that helps people connect, you know, this planetary phenomenon that’s been building for 10,000 years and drill it down into why should I care as I jump into my dually and go out into the woods and do what I love to do. But the narrative would help you to understand what the connection to those things are. And so in order to tell that story, I wound up writing a book.

I write social commentaries. My book is called Onward at Last. It was originally published by Atmosphere Press in December 2022.

But the narratives that I was talking about, which has a lot to do with what is true about what we are told, became even more obvious in the last year’s presidential election. So I wrote a new edition, the 2024 presidential election edition of my book Onward at Last. And John Fullerton of the Capital Institute wrote the foreword.

And now we’re telling this story and going around the country here and other places telling the story of why does this matter? What is the human story that matters? Why is it going to matter to your children and their children?

How are we able to do something about it as big of a problem as it appears to be? And yet we have something we can do about it. That has now become my mission and that is concurrent to my consulting business, which deals with the technical issues and the data and stuff like that.

Just telling the story. And so the goal on top of all of this is literally we are creating an independent film project. I just came back from the Illuminate Film Festival and we’re working on a film project a fictional story cut from an American perspective that demonstrates this new narrative of why climate is important.

The working title of this independent film is called America. Was it all just a dream? And what it’s trying to do is put us within the moment that we live.

We just came out of a presidential election. We have whatever’s going on in Ukraine. We have whatever’s going on in Gaza.

What does this all mean? What is the new story that actually is relevant to help us to understand what is true about all these events that matter to our lives so that we can find our place in this? And what can we each do that can make a difference?

Because a lot of people want to do something. A lot of people realize things are not as they thought they were. And they just think is it too big to affect?

No, it’s not. Because the great change just like in my life starts with you. It starts with recognizing that I’m empowered to contribute to the problem or I’m empowered to contribute to the solution.

And how is an important thing and how is the narrative? How is the new story? And I’m elated to be a participant in telling that new story.

Jess Dewell 49:58
Hey, Kevin, I want to know what makes it bold to explore the edges of our values so that we’re making the right decision right now.

Kevin Howard 50:06
Now we’re going back to the beginning of our conversation. What is true? The reality in which we live is simply much bigger, more diverse, more sophisticated and complicated than the narrow lane of our personal experience.

The reason why we need to stay open to the new possibilities, open to the new explanations, open to the new values and virtues, it challenging our own values and virtues is because we get better information. We learn the better information, the more relevant information. And it’s essential for us to do that in order for them then to exercise our free will choice and build a life based on the current reality.

What is true about the things that drive the markets in which we operate? What is true about the things that drive the societies in which we live? If we understand that, we will know where we could find our place in it.

And that is the bold superpower about living on the edge of your own values and your own experience that is because that’s where the learning is. That’s where the growth is. That’s where the truth is.

Jess Dewell 51:22
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and we’ll have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us.

What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah, there are going to be how to’s.

Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now.

But guess what? You’re not. So engage right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 52:13
Jess hosts the bold business podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com.

Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.