The Leadership Practices of Elite DTC Brands

Written By Sherilee Maxcy

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Dusty Holcomb discuss the critical role of leadership in scaling businesses profitably. They explore the chaos that often accompanies growth and the importance of clarity and purpose in navigating this chaos. Dusty shares insights on self-leadership, the significance of delegating outcomes rather than tasks, and the necessity of creating space for strategic thinking. The conversation emphasizes the need for leaders to adjust their routines according to life’s seasons and highlights the power of gratitude in leadership. Dusty also introduces Arcqus Group and its mission to empower leaders.

Key Takeaways

  • Leadership is crucial for profitability in scaling businesses.

  • Delegating outcomes allows for greater team empowerment.

  • Adjusting routines to fit life’s seasons is important for maintaining effectiveness.

  • Understanding the difference between growth and scale organizations is key.

Meet Dusty Holcomb

Dusty is the Founder & CEO of The Arcqus Group, an executive coaching and leadership consulting firm dedicated to empowering leaders to unlock their potential and create lasting value through principles-centered leadership. The Arcqus Group specializes in CEO mentoring, executive coaching, vision and strategy planning, leadership team building, and other leadership consulting services.

In his personal life, Dusty is an avid sportsman, triathlete, and five-time Ironman finisher. He resides with his family in the Charlotte, NC area. He is passionate about leadership, learning, and positively impacting the lives of others.



Transcript

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00:00 Navigating the Chaos of Scaling

02:43 The Importance of Leadership in Profitability

06:01 Chaos vs. Clarity: Finding Your Focus

08:42 The Power of Purpose and Vision

11:26 Self-Leadership: The Foundation of Effective Leadership

14:50 Delegating Outcomes vs. Tasks

17:37 Creating Space for Strategic Thinking

20:46 Adjusting Routines for Life's Seasons

23:48 The Role of Gratitude in Leadership

26:43 Impacting Lives Through Leadership

29:35 Arcus Group: Empowering Leaders



Jon Blair (00:00)

Do you feel stuck in the chaos of scaling? Is it stealing your ability to rise above the business and focus on strategic leadership? Well, you're in luck because today's guest is here to help. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Free to Grow CFO podcast, where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a profitable DTC brand. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free to Grow CFO. We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. And today I'm here with my buddy, Dusty Holcomb, he's a Christian, leadership nerd, five time Ironman finisher, lot more than I can say, husband and father of three, purpose driven leader, CEO and founder of Arcqus Group, and much more. Dusty, how are you doing, man?

Dusty Holcomb (00:46)

Jon, I am so good. It's so good to be here and I'm delighted to spend the whole time with you today.

Jon Blair (00:52)

Yeah, me too. For those of you don't know, the way that I originally met Dusty is actually through a 3PL that has a deep focus in the e-comm space, Red Stag Fulfillment. Many of you who listen to the show and follow my content have heard me talk about Red Stag and the journey that Guardian Bikes, the brand I was formerly on the founding team of, that we went on with scaling with Red Stag as one of our key partners. So that's where I met Dusty, but he's actually got a really robust background before that and has found himself now founding Arcqus Group. And so before we dive into talking about how leadership will make or break a brand's scaling journey, I'd like you to just quickly run through everyone kind of the most important stuff in terms of your background and journey to ultimately leading up to where you are today.

Dusty Holcomb (01:43)

it. My leadership journey started when I got tucked under the wing of an army colonel, 25, no, 28 years ago now, who taught me what servant leadership was. And then I had the privilege to serve at AAA for 21 years, held every role in the organization from a leadership perspective, and really enjoyed the mission of serving our members and creating value for them. I was our CMO, I was our COO, president of our automotive division.

Principally my entire career, I've been a leadership nerd and worked on and focused on empowering the success of others through leadership. And then after that company was acquired, I exited, joined Red Stag as the CEO, spent three wonderful years there, and then exited last year to pursue my mission, which is to enable and empower leaders to create success and start my own firm and scratch that entrepreneurial itch while chasing God's purpose for my life.

Jon Blair (02:43)

I love it, I love it. I'm curious, when I say, and I'm a big proponent of this, I think in the DTC world, scaling profitably, which is what our show is all about, we're talking a lot about return on marketing spend, deciding when to hire people, but I do talk quite a bit about this kind of more implicit concept of when a company is led well, it tends to be more profitable and when it's not led well, profitability suffers, it shows up downstream in profitability. When you hear that, what are some of the first things that come to mind for you about how good and or bad leadership results in healthy or unhealthy profitability?

Dusty Holcomb (03:30)

Two things come to mind immediately. One, the articulation of the difference between a growth organization and a scale organization. Now, there are no binaries in life, but if you think about those two things on different ends of a spectrum, they're different decisions, different strategies, different efforts you have to engage. So that's one thing that comes to mind. The second thing that comes to mind is the difference between proactive thinking and reactive thinking. And the leadership impact of taking the time and space to decide in advance what's most important so you can be proactive and not reactive all the time. And I think that organizations really struggle and stumble, especially founders when they're navigating these tensions, when they're in a reactive mindset because they don't have time and space to think.

Jon Blair (04:19)

Yeah, okay, so that actually leads me to the next thing I wanna chat about a little bit more. You talk about this chasm between chaos and clarity, right? And I wanna camp on that for a little bit because I know this personally from helping scale several different brands even after Guardian and being a key leader at Guardian. Scaling is chaotic.

Right? It's, there's, no, I think every business is chaotic, but I think when you're early stage or, you know, lower to middle market and you're scaling, it's exceptionally chaotic. and one of the biggest struggles that I always find as a leader and as I started hiring leaders at Guardian and trying to coach leaders to then be leaders of subgroups of, you know, teams within the organization, the thing I found myself talking with my executive team the most about was you've

Dusty Holcomb (04:43)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (05:11)

got to rise above the chaos and work on the business, think about the business, not just get stuck in it. So like, I'm curious, what is maybe your framework or kind of your, the way that you think about helping leaders navigate that chasm between the chaos of scaling and clarity.

Dusty Holcomb (05:31)

The way I think about it is if you invest the time, effort and energy in deciding what's most important, because the chaos of life and business and scaling of growth is really about knowing what to say no to, or perhaps more effectively, what to say not yet to, because there's really three answers to any question, yes, no or not yet. Chaos is much, I don't want to say simpler, but it is more navigable when you can articulate no and not yet and not being stuck in this back of your feet reactive stance of saying yes to too many things before it's the right time.

Jon Blair (06:13)

That's interesting. I have oftentimes told brands scaling, I like to come up with these simple phrases to help them think, they're kind of heuristics for thinking about like what is scaling? One of them is like scaling is a game of removing constraints, right? But another one is, always say scaling is a game of saying no to the right thing so that you can say yes to the right things. think.

Dusty Holcomb (06:22)

Mm.

Jon Blair (06:40)

Michael Hyatt, who I think you and I have maybe talked about in some of our conversations before, he's a leadership thought leader that I've followed and read his books for many years and has been very formative in my life. He talks about every yes, every yes comes with a thousand no's. You're saying no to a bunch of other things every time you say yes. When you're helping kind of a leader think through yes and no, double click into that a little bit of like how you help them kind of navigate deciding what Nos they're willing to say in order to say yes to something else.

Dusty Holcomb (07:16)

Yeah, the way I think about this and what we teach in our programs is the first thing you have to do is understand the first principle of effective leadership is to lead yourself first. And so that means you must have gotten deep under the covers and articulated purpose, have a clear understanding of vision and a vivid vision, not a etheral, hey, I want to go do that cool thing someday, one day, but a really articulated, crisp, vivid vision that you can then make your decisions against.

There's a wonderful story about the British rowing team in England going to Sydney Olympics. And they had a heuristic that they landed on that was, will this make the boat go faster? And the entire team made, every decision against that framework. Will this make the boat go faster? Well, going out to the pub after practice, make the boat go faster. Yes or no. If the answer was no, they didn't do it. So when we teach leaders, we talk about getting zeroed in on your purpose, your vision, your mission, what you create as from a value perspective all the way down so that those answers aren't easier, but you've already allowed yourself to articulate, here's where I'm going, here's what matters, is this going to help me get there? That's how I defend those, all the things, all these wonderful opportunities, and they may be perfect, it just may not be the right time.

Jon Blair (08:35)

Yeah.

Yeah, and you know what, actually it gets worse, or guess harder, as you actually achieve more success, right? At least in my experience, there ends up being more potential demands on your time. And here's the thing, earlier in your journey, when you were just getting the thing off the ground, some of those would have been what you should have said yes to in a previous stage, right? And so I know for myself personally, I'll get asked to do something.

And like a year and a half ago, I should have done this thing. But this year I'm like, no, things have changed. Things have evolved. Circumstances have changed, not only for my business and where I should be sitting as a leader, but where I should be sitting for my family, right? As the leader of my household. There's something I wanted to point out, because I just recently finished reading for the first time, Think and Grow Rich, which I've kind of avoided it, because it's like one of those, I would say like very cliche like books. I'd stay away from that kind of stuff. And I also get personally like candidly, I get a little concerned about philosophies that fly in the face of my faith. But I finally picked it up. And actually it was very, it was actually very complimentary to the way that I view.

Dusty Holcomb (09:38)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (10:04)

the world and success. And one of the, where it starts is it says that, and actually what I realized is like a lot of people point out they can grow rich related to just monetary riches, but the author actually talks again and again about demanding riches out of life. And that may mean monetary financial riches, but he also talks about other areas of life to demand riches from. And where does he say over and over and over again where it all starts?

a very intense desire and definiteness, he keeps saying definiteness, of purpose. And when he goes to later, I think there's 13 principles, when he goes to later principles, he always points out, hey, but by the way, if you still have not clearly defined your purpose, and going back to your vision, I think the reason the vision, you said the vivid vision, the reason it's so important is because it has to stir up desire. It has to stir up the desire to push you through those

Dusty Holcomb (10:56)

Yes.

Jon Blair (11:00)

those tough times. And Michael Hyatt actually says a lot. He's like, emotions are what get you through business and what gets you through scaling. But it's emotions tied to this very clear vision that's very clearly aligned with a very clear purpose. It's not unadulterated, unbridled emotions, right? It's emotion aligned with this purpose. Do you agree?

Dusty Holcomb (11:26)

I agree a hundred percent. I'll double click on something there because, I agree like purpose is the anchor is the bedrock. It's the foundation. When you have that articulated for yourself, you allow yourself to connect the dots between the things that matter and don't matter. You allow yourself to say no personally, professionally, spiritually, you know, in, in your community, whatever those things are, it's the net, the ability to navigate trade-offs.

the ability to have a circuit breaker. And so that's the way I like to think about this from a mental model perspective is you're installing a circuit breaker. I'm a huge fan of Viktor Frankl, Mansearch for Meeting. I reread it every single year. And it is that agency, the ability to make a choice between an action and deciding what reaction you're going to inject into the environment. When you have that purpose clearly articulated, defined, you allow yourself to have that circuit breaker moment before you commit to things that are or are not appropriate for where you were trying to go. I couldn't agree more if you don't have that purpose articulated for yourself and haven't learned how to connect the dots for yourself, how can you lead your team? How can you unlock discretionary effort within your organization?

Because that's what really creates great organizations, is when the people understand where we're going and can answer the question, why are we here beyond making money?

Jon Blair (13:00)

Yeah, it's interesting. There's a book called Clockwork I read a number of years ago. And he talks about the distinction between delegating a task and delegating an outcome. And when he talks about like delegating a task, you just say, do this, right? And someone does it or they don't do it. And you have to be very clear about exactly how you want it done so it gets done the right way. But delegating an outcome...

Dusty Holcomb (13:06)

Hmm.

Jon Blair (13:29)

actually forces you to explain the principles behind it. You don't explain necessarily the steps, right? You may explain the steps the first time you want them to do it, but then you spend your time explaining the principles, the purpose, right? And not just the, there's actually like multiple layers of principles. There's the company level principles, and then there's the principles for maybe the department that person runs, and then there's the principles for the outcome that they're trying to generate.

Dusty Holcomb (13:52)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (13:57)

And the beauty is when you explain, I talk to my business partner a lot of times about this, because we're in a season of multiplying our team and scaling our business. The real leverage is when you can create, when you can train, when you can raise up leaders who can train other leaders. That's like, and I think, think Max, John Maxwell, that's a big focus of his. He talks about like how to raise up leaders that can raise up other leaders. When you can do that on the basis of principles, guiding principles, people can make decisions for themselves all the way up and down the organization. So they have agency and they can decide how to do things the best way possible, but it still aligns back to the outcomes that the business is trying to generate. And that to me is the ultimate beauty of leadership when you get that figured out.

Dusty Holcomb (14:50)

I couldn't agree with you more. It's a flywheel of creating durable, sustainable growth. One thing I'll say there is when you can create those outcome-oriented principles, you must as a leader be able and willing to surrender the how. And that's where so many leaders get locked into chaos is because they can't let go of the how. Because you know what? They're probably the best in the organization at executing that tactical item today. But what they're doing is they're robbing great people from an opportunity to stretch further and contribute more and not navigating a trade-off which says, hey, I may be the best person at doing this task today, but if I do it, what am I not doing? I am stealing from a potential growth opportunity from a team member and I'm burdening myself with work others could or should do.

Jon Blair (15:39)

Mm.

Dusty Holcomb (15:49)

And so you really have to think about what is it that only I can do. Andy Stanley did a great speech years ago and he was talking about a one sentence job description. And I love this because he said, the most brilliant one I've ever heard came from my assistant. And her one sentence job description was, I do the things that I can best do so that Andy can do the things only Andy can do.

Jon Blair (16:17)

Mmm, that's so good.

Dusty Holcomb (16:17)

And so she was so dialed in on doing all the things that she could do well so Andy could lose complete sight of them and focus on the things only Andy could do. So I think you're right. It is the ultimate goal to create a principal first outcome oriented leadership where you delegate that and you articulate what by when and you, not the how, because when you lock in on that how you're stealing opportunities from others.

Jon Blair (16:40)

Yeah

So, okay, there's, I see this clear, like when we're talking about this chasm between chaos and clarity, right, I see this clear example in my own leadership, in the numerous businesses I've scaled, including Free to Grow, which I founded and I'm scaling, and what I see our clients struggle with in their scaling brands, which is at the beginning, you do execute most stuff yourself, right? And when you start, scaling and building your team and delegating, you know, outcomes, with this principles focused kind of like leadership and delegation. It starts to feel like you're being lazy by not doing, not doing stuff. I'll say not very eloquently and the it's funny cause I know this.

in principle, I've seen it play out in my own leadership when I was scaling Guardian Bikes. I know it to be true, but I'm still like, hey, I feel like I'm just sitting here. Like, I'm not doing anything, and so, am I being lazy? Is everyone gonna find me out? But then, what's the reality? And this is where it ties into clarity. It takes time to do the thinking in the business. And you can't rush the thinking. And so, going, you mentioned earlier space, and I wanna double click into that for a little bit. Creating and finding space and spending the time to do the thinking in the business is something that oftentimes only the top leaders can and should do. What are, do you have any sort of tips or best practices on like rhythms or disciplines that founders should consider?

to try to create that space to do this work that's of the utmost importance.

Dusty Holcomb (18:37)

I do, and I'll say this first, if embracing an opportunity to find this space isn't uncomfortable, then you're not doing it right because growth comes through discomfort, right? It should be uncomfortable to find this space to do it. So there's a wonderful book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, and he talks about the power of setting aside the first hour of the day, make it the first 30 minutes, don't get locked in.

on the prescription of the amount of time, but giving yourself space for quiet reflection. There's a couple things that I recommend to every leader that I coach, every CEO that I work with. One, you need a quarterly deep dive retreat. Spend a long weekend away, three days away from the office. Make an appointment on your calendar with yourself, for yourself, for the business. Put it on the calendar, block it out a year in advance, and defend it like it's an appointment with your most important client. If you can't do that, you're stealing from the business. You're stealing from those opportunities to think, reflect. There's further exercises where you go down to monthly, weekly, and annual Think Week. Bill Gates made that famous years and years ago, and I highly recommend that. The most important thing, get quiet. Turn off the damn phone.

Allow yourself to disconnect from the digital leash or maybe it's a digital shock collar that is really good at disrupting your thinking patterns. And we're all slaves to being responsive and we train people to expect immediacy of response. Not everything's urgent. Not everything needs to be responded to. And it really, it resonates, Jon, with what you were just talking about. Hey, when we're, going through this phase, we're scaling the business and it feels lazy. Well,

Jon Blair (20:00)

Yeah.

Dusty Holcomb (20:30)

we have to allow ourselves to go, what are our outcomes? What are the principles that we're working on and identifying? We're identifying that for our teams. What is the outcome that I am focused on creating? And so how, then you give yourself a goal and then you can deconstruct it. But if you're not doing that for yourself and having someone help navigate that for you, like I still have a coach. I still need that because you know, I get bottlenecked on the same things that I help people get unstuck with. You know why?

Jon Blair (20:46)

Totally.

Dusty Holcomb (20:59)

Because I can't see my own blind spots. You just can't do it. And so taking the time and space very prescriptively, quarterly, monthly, make a weekly appointment with yourself, two hours a week is amazing for creating clarity and asking very simple framing questions. It's always a Socratic approach to giving yourself time and space to think.

Jon Blair (21:16)

Totally.

Yeah, I love it. Some of the things I do, I do a quarterly planning with my business partner outside of the office every quarter, and then I actually do one with my wife. I'm actually talking to her tonight about when we're gonna schedule that. We do four to six hours outside of the house. And we actually even have a, I've done several different planning, life planning exercises, but in this season with three little kids where it just feels like pure chaos at home, we opted for just a very simple. I took the.

Dusty Holcomb (21:46)

Haha

Jon Blair (21:51)

I'm an EOS guy and formerly an EOS coach. I took the EOS VTO, which is a two-page plan for long range and short range, and I just adapted it to our life. And we have a one-page life plan for the moment. I've done some of the other exercises, the life planning exercise in What's Michael Hyatt's book about that, Living Forward. And yeah, and that's a fantastic book. Great exercise, but it's like a...

Dusty Holcomb (22:13)

Living Forward with Daniel Harkinvey.

Jon Blair (22:19)

It's a 10 page life plan and it includes your eulogy, which like if you've ever written your eulogy before I have, it's a very intense and eye opening experience. What I'm, the point I'm making is you mentioned like, hey, like just do it, opt for just doing it as opposed to like quantity because you start to build the muscle. And like for us and myself in this season, I've had to simplify our planning. We do it quarterly and me and my wife still sit down once a week and me and my business partner sit down once a week and we look at how are we tracking against our plan, where are we stuck, what needs to be adjusted. But I've simplified both of those routines for this season because there's so much complexity in our life with being parents of young kids. But I've noticed that I have a tendency, I think a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders do, to be all or nothing. Like if I'm not doing it all, then it's just a waste to do any of it. And I found shrinking it,

Dusty Holcomb (23:10)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (23:15)

and still sticking with the discipline is better than going to zero. Do you agree?

Dusty Holcomb (23:20)

100 % I'll put it into a metaphor that I had to kind of slapped upside the head with a number of years ago. The principle you're talking about is whether it's season adjusted or time and state of business adjusted, it is don't make perfect the goal you're going for. And the metaphor that I heard about that really awakened this within me was someone saying, hey, when I would go to the gym if I couldn't get my two hour workout where I got to do 45 minutes of cardio and then an hour of heavy strength training and then 30 minutes in the sauna and blah, blah, blah, blah. If I had a day where I only had 45 minutes, I just wouldn't go because it wasn't good enough. It wasn't strong enough. And what I was actually doing was robbing myself of the activity of them. And so we set ourselves up for failure when we say perfection is the standard.

And anything less than that is not worth doing. And what he talked about was he goes, hey, what is my minimally acceptable standard? My minimally acceptable standard for a workout is 100 pushups. I can find the time and space in a day to do 100 pushups. Now, I still love a two hour workout. I still love all those things, but if a day's crazy, I'll do 100 pushups and call that a win. So in the season, if it's 15 minutes of journaling, dude, that's totally enough, reevaluate your prioritizations and how you are setting yourself up as a standard because that's what allows you to shift. It'll change. These seasons don't last, but your standards and how you set yourself up for failure by pursuing perfection, yeah, those can be really dangerous.

Jon Blair (25:05)

Yeah, I learned a lot from having a bunch of, having three little kids all back to back. I used to have, before I had kids, I had a two hour, you know, morning ritual. Started with reading the Bible and prayer and journaling for like 45 minutes and then reading another book for 45 minutes and then reading my life plan and kind of reading my goals. Today, that's probably, that's probably 40 minutes. It's five times a week, it means I didn't get woken up most nights, right? And like some weeks I'll make it a week straight and other weeks it's two days. But even the days, I always do something seven days a week. And my minimum viable morning routine is at least just opening my one year Bible and being like, I'll read the Psalm and the Proverb that's for today, right? I'll say a quick prayer, I'll jot something down in my journal. And this may sound crazy, but whatever business book I'm reading, I'll read one page. And like,

Dusty Holcomb (25:36)

Ha!

Jon Blair (26:04)

For some reason, if I read one page, even though there's not necessarily that much information on that one page, I feel like I got my routine done. In fact, I had to do that this morning because of some sleep disruption with the kids last night. And for me, I had to adjust my workout routine to right now, it's walking for an hour. And the reason why it's not as intense as I would like, but I do it outside and I've decided that in this season with the little kids and running a business from home, it's more important for me to be outside before the day starts than it is for me to do an intense workout in a gym. I get so stuck in this office, I've just gotta get outside. And so I've opted for something less intense, but I do consistently and it still helps keep me in shape and keep my mind and body strong. And it works for the season and at some point in the future I'll change that, but.

Dusty Holcomb (26:43)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Blair (26:58)

It's probably, I'm probably a couple years away just based on what I'm learning about being a dad of little kids. So, but it makes a difference.

Dusty Holcomb (27:05)

It makes all the difference in the world. you know what? Those adjustments are going back to where we started the conversation about navigating chaos. It's knowing how to dial up or dial down the different demands across the different areas of your business or of your life and say, this is what's most important right now. And this is how I'm going to show up. And you know, for me, it's, you I have a, I have a six minute routine. If I need to go there in the morning, it was very similar to you. I can hit my quick devotional, I can hit my quick journal, I can read my quick business item that I want to read, my nugget, and I can do a quick exercise. I can hit my, in only six minutes, but I can get an hour in and you know, just, I know those days where it doesn't happen and I make the change and I don't hold it against myself. The one thing that I do every day without fail and well, there's probably two things, but this one that I do as a practice is write down three things I'm grateful for.

I think gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to reframe your thinking and orient back to what's most important.

Jon Blair (28:10)

I love it. You know, it's crazy. Having just come off the back of finishing Think & Grow Rich, I finished reading it like a week ago. The title is exactly what the book is about, which is that riches in life, whatever area, doesn't it? Riches start with your thinking. And actually the problem for most of us is in our thinking. And right before that, I read Mind Your Mindset by Michael Hyatt and his daughter, which again is like,

Dusty Holcomb (28:25)

Mmm.

Jon Blair (28:39)

Hey, it's all about your thinking. What is your mindset? What are your limiting beliefs? What lies are you telling yourself? And are you interrogating those lies? And the real interesting thing is, and going back to this, like we're sizing up and sizing down routines and things for the season, or seasonally adjusting them, it's like we are, by doing that, you're not letting the typical blockers and mindset just cause you to just stop taking action. And the crazy thing is, it's even, I would even say, it's messy, but it's actually good self leadership. The fact you're making adjustments to still stay on purpose, seasonally adjusted, is good self leadership in my opinion. And it's when people don't address those things, when their self leadership starts breaking down and they start letting the mindset creep in and stop them from living life on purpose.

Dusty Holcomb (29:35)

First principle of leadership, I deeply, deeply hold this as a bedrock belief, is that in order to lead others, you must lead yourself first. Self-leadership is how you become a person of influence and impact on the lives of others. And so you have to make these adjustments. You have to make these decisions. You cannot be dogmatic and stuck on a plan. You have to lead yourself first. Self-leadership is the key.

And that means you have to have a process, a routine, and give yourself grace.

Jon Blair (30:08)

So two final questions here. The first one is about Arcqus Group. What, talk me through, if there's someone listening who's kind of, they're interested in some of these principles that you've been talking about here, what are the kind of products or services that you offer to like put this leadership coaching actually into motion in practical terms?

Dusty Holcomb (30:31)

Yeah, thanks, Jon. There's a lot of things that we see in working with leaders, but there's three big pain points. Number one is leadership is lonely. There's isolation. And so we see that all the time. Number two is people feel stuck because everything's ending up on their plate. They feel overloaded, overwhelmed, all those things. And number three, there's a frustration between I have a vision and I'm not getting the results that I want. So as I stepped back and reflected on these pain points, one of the things that we do is we work with leaders to install a leadership operating system, a principles based approach that allows them to articulate and define for themselves and for their business, everything that matters from self leadership, self awareness, to purpose, vision, mission, values, and operating plan component down to execution with team leadership and whole setting and creating a culture of accountability.

Well, as we, as I worked on this and created this leadership operating system, I realized that most people who want to read these things, they read books, they get all these things, they only retain about 10 % of the energy and the things that they read. So it's okay, how do we solve for that? Well, if we set aside 12 weeks to install this process, to give you tools one week at a time, the likelihood of things sticking and building on each other becomes much, much more successful.

And then the third principle of loneliness. Well, if you don't have to navigate leadership alone, you can do it with 11 other leaders and 12 person cohorts. You can be much more successful. You can have accountability. So one of the things we do is we offer leadership accelerators to allow people to do it with a circle of like-minded leaders to install common systems and frameworks that are unique to them, their leadership operating system, and the time and space to do it.

We also work with CEOs and executives around strategy planning. But what I have found first and foremost is those pain points are so pervasive and they don't have to be that way. People just need a system and the time to install it and the right people, of course.

Jon Blair (32:37)

Yeah.

I love it, I love it, that's so cool. ⁓ So unfortunately I gotta land the plane here but it's because I've got a doubleheader with Dusty, I'm gonna be on his podcast a short while from now so we gotta leave some time for that. what, this is, I've started, I used to ask, I always like to shut things down with a personal question because I'm a believer that you can't unwind the connection between personal and business life, right? There's different domains and.

Dusty Holcomb (32:49)

Haha

Jon Blair (33:10)

and our personal life is intertwined with our business life. I used to ask kind of a funny question about like something shocking that people out there probably don't know about you, but recently I've been really moved by reconnecting with the purpose behind why I do the work that I do. And so my question to you is what is the most important purpose-driven outcome that you hope your vocational work creates over the rest of your lifetime?

Dusty Holcomb (33:42)

The most important purpose-driven work that I hope to fulfill. And I believe it's God giving me a gift or a talent to help others connect the dots between what drives and motivates them and the influence and impact that they can have on another human being. I don't, and will never know the ripple effect of having one conversation with a leader who makes a better or different decision that creates that impact for another person. My b-hag for what we're doing at Arcqus Group is to create a life impact for a million leaders over the next 10 years. And that's what I want to do. That's what I want to do.

Jon Blair (34:22)

love it.

I love it, man. I believe, and I've said it before on this show, business is, well, the Bible says that God is a God of creation. Entrepreneurs, in my opinion, are the great creators of our time. And so there's very few things that are as aligned with God's nature as a creator, as being an entrepreneur. And leadership is, and business, is one of these vehicles that God has created that we can make impact through and make impact in just multi-dimensional unfathomable ways. It's one of the reasons why I'm so obsessed with it and trying to hone the craft. And so I love what you're doing. If people listening are interested in finding out more information about you and Arcqus Group, where can they go?

Dusty Holcomb (35:20)

Let me do this first, Jon. There's something, if people are stuck or struggling, we have a free leadership tool called a leadership diagnostic, a leadership impact diagnostic. If they go to clarityalignmentexecution.com, it'll take them to the tool. They can follow that assessment and it'll help them unpack. It's free. We just want to make it impactful for them to make better decisions. If they'd like to learn more about what we do, go to ArcqusGroup.com, A-R-C-Q-U-S group.com or they can follow our podcast at leadershipunlockedpodcast.com

Jon Blair (35:54)

Make sure you check out the episode with Jon Blair on it, coming soon. well, Dusty, thanks so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. As you can tell, I'm a leadership nerd, too, based on the intensity with which we went back and forth. I appreciate your wisdom, as always. So thank you so much for coming on. Look, everyone, don't forget, if you liked today's episode, please hit the subscribe button wherever you're listening and leave us a review because it helps us reach more people like you.

Also, if you want more tips on scaling a profitable DTC brand, follow me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn, and if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow can help your increase profit and cash flows you scale, check us out at FreeToGrowCFO.com. Thanks for joining, Dusty.

Dusty Holcomb (36:38)

Awesome, Jon. Thank you so much for having me.

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