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The Modern Independent
The Modern Independent
The Launchpad: Charting a Path Through Anxiety to Achievement w/ Brad White
In this episode of The Launchpad, Brad White joins us for this episode. As a two-time graduate of the IndeCollective cohort, Brad brings to the table his unique experiences, recounting his battles with anxiety and depression and how understanding his own emotions became a compass in navigating his professional endeavors. Brad's narrative offers a testament to the power of legacy, mentorship, and the courage to seize unexpected opportunities.
Life's twists and turns often lead us to profound self-discovery, and our conversation with Brad underscores this beautifully. He opens up about the continuous process of shaping one's identity, the influence of key relationships, and the pivotal crossroads that define our personal and professional lives. Brad's journey through significant transitions, including career changes and grief, serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of introspection and the support of a community. This episode not only shares the strategies Brad employed but also sheds light on the broader theme of finding one's footing amidst change.
As we draw this episode to a close, Brad's story arcs towards the joy of creating a successful independent consulting practice from the ashes of adversity. The nuances of measuring success, the embrace of family life, and the challenge of personal well-being are all threads woven into the fabric of this conversation.
If you'd like to connect with brad, you can do so here: Brad White
Looking for books/resources mentioned in this podcast:
- How Will You Measure Your Life, Clayton Christenson
- The Second Mountain, David Brooks
- Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell
- ReThinking, Adam Grant Podcast
Follow Us for More Content on:
IG: IndeCollective | Freelance MBA (@indecollective) • Instagram photos and videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/indecollec
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Modern Independent. As always, I'm your host, jan Almasey, the head of community here at Indie Collective. This is your first time tuning in to an episode at the Modern Independent. Welcome, I'm super, super glad to have you here with us. For those of you that you know maybe have never heard what this show is about, or some friend sent this to you and you're like why do I even need to be listening to this?
Speaker 1:We tell stories about independence that are doing amazing things out in the world, and when we say independent, we could mean coach, we could mean consultant, we could mean analyst, we could mean developer. There's so many different categories of people that qualify as independence inside of the Indie Collective space, and today you're tuning into an episode called the Launchpad. The Launchpad is a segment of the Modern Independent that is dedicated to highlighting members that have graduated from Indie Collective cohorts and are going on to do amazing things. Today I'm super excited to be sitting here with my friend and graduate of Fall 2023, mr Brad White. He's nodding, so that means I got it right.
Speaker 2:You know I also did the spring, so I'm like a double graduate and I feel very fancy now. Yeah, no.
Speaker 1:Actually, that's probably a great question Before we dive into you know, I'm sure that we'll, you know, get the background on Brad and all of the things that you have going on. What was the main difference, would you say, between cohort one and cohort two, now that you've been a double graduate?
Speaker 2:It felt weird to be a Y. I was like baby Yoda, like I had all this like wisdom and age, but I was still such a baby, like I was only a year, or less than a year, into this independent new journey I'm on, and I already felt like I had all this wisdom I could share, and so it was really fun to do it a second time. The first time I talked to Sam, I was like I've got to do it twice, like the first time is going to be probably pretty overwhelming, I'm just going to run at it, then I'm going to try some stuff and then second time, things are going to kind of settle in differently. So for me, that's exactly what played out. It was great. Plus, you get to know twice as many people, which is dope, and I've got twice as many friends now. So that was lovely and I will come back to do it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really love that. I and I hear that way more often than not that the first cohort I would. I had three phone calls yesterday for office hours and all three were recent graduates and all three said that the at some point you just have to surrender to the information and let it wash over you In a sense that that first cohort is is intense. By the time you get to week four, week five, you realize how much work there actually is. But I believe it.
Speaker 1:I think it was MG Garrett Garrett that pointed out to me that she was. She said you know, I had that moment and then I wasn't recognized. I didn't quite recognize what the value of, you know, being overwhelmed was at the time. But now that I'm a month or two out, I look back on it and I realize that I didn't, I wasn't aware of the gaps that I didn't know about and in those moments I was being forced to look at here's where I'm at, here's where I want to go, here are all of the things that are going to keep me from getting there. And now she was. She mentioned she was like I feel like I have a list, essentially, of things that I can directionally point myself out and tackle this cohort.
Speaker 2:And you know she's also coming back for the spring this year, so very, very similar, yeah, very much reminds me of the fact I live with anxiety and depression and have learned to just accept that and do a lot of work on myself with that. I mentioned that I had just done yoga right before our call and like that's become a part of like how I stay just whole as a as myself. But I've also learned to listen, like when anxiety is peaking, which it had, you know, recently for me in in January I had this period where it was like pretty intense and it was popping up and I could see it kind of day after day and all I've learned to do is, instead of like trying to control it or prevent it is like listen to it and just say, like what is this trying to tell me? So there's these signals in my body that are like dude, something's up, and I've even nicknamed this like trouble shooter, brad. So it's like the dude that comes up and it helps. That's just like, hey, something's going to hit the fan. Pay attention.
Speaker 2:And it's actually really that version of me is pretty insightful and can see things way before they happen, and I think very similarly, I learned to listen to those signals of overwhelm during the cohort and I was like man, why am I so overwhelmed by this? And it was. It was the desire to take all the stuff and run with it, and so it was a natural response. It was a positive response. I was like yes, yes, yes, and you get to so many yeses and you're just like, wow, that's a lot. So I just listened to. That, though, is like you do love this, because I actually doubted whether or not I wanted to do independent work, and it actually helped. The sense of overwhelm was a way of me recognizing like no, I love this, like I am like I cannot wait to do it and I want to do all of it, and so it's actually a positive sign Once I learned to listen to that and kind of reframe that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and pacing yeah one. I love the idea of you know, troubleshooter, brat, or when you feel your. I like to say you know, excitement and anxiety are very, very similar. The nervous system doesn't really know the difference between the two. We frame it. It's the exact same biological response, but we frame it differently. So whenever I feel myself starting to, like you know, amp up, okay I'm. The first question I asked myself now is am I getting anxious or am I actually just getting excited and a little bit overwhelmed? And then I can take a step back and remind myself not all of this needs to be done at once, not all of this needs to be done by tomorrow. The fact that I'm getting anxious about this means that there's, you know, I'm attaching value to it in a way, and so now I just need to decide am I going to, you know, come at this from a place of anxiety or am I going to come at this from a place of excitement?
Speaker 2:So I forget that you're a behavioral psychology nerd, like me I was. This is coming from an Adam Grant rethinking podcast I listened to probably three weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Adam there was like yep, it's either. Like it's the same, exact like physical arousal response to this, and that she's like I just now frame it as determination. I'm like I'm not there yet that anxiety feels like determination, but it is. It's just like what value we attached to it. So I think the same for the cohort. It's just like what value am I attaching to this experience that I'm having? And I would watch folks just in tears with overwhelm and then by the end of our conversation they're like oh, I can think of this differently and then I'd see them in the next session like taking it in differently. And so there's a lot of power in that learning experience too, of even pushing towards that point and then learning how to work through it, especially with community.
Speaker 2:I did not wear the shirt on purpose for you, I forgot. You're the head of community and I wore community shirts, so I get eight bonus points for that. But there's like a cool part about the cohort, like if this was a one on one independent course or something which I've thought about offering my own services in that kind of way, like it's just so different what you can get when you hit that overwhelm point and you can talk to three other people and go hey, what are you thinking? How are you working through that? And I love doing that too, so that's why I'll be back. That's why I did it twice and I got that double grad two hat thing for this year. It was really worth it.
Speaker 1:Double grad, double grad, all right. Well, okay, so let's rewind now. So like that, you know, was kind of a little bit of a rabbit hole, because I just am always curious about what that experience is like and it's so different between cohort one, cohort two and, and then I mean we have people that are on cohort five, right, so it just kind of the intention changes between each cohort, for the good peoples that are have our voices inside of their earbuds are coming out of their car speakers right now. Hi, people, like it's good to thank you for taking the time to listen to us today. Who is Brad White? And you know I'm not going to try to get too meta with that question. I'll just say like what in general? Like what is your life? You know your life story and how did you get into the space currently working in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was a high school principal in Denver, we actually did a whole series. We had this thing called morning meeting, where we would get the entire school together each morning and I used to teach in Japan. It's a really common practice there, it's a common practice at our schools in Denver and we would all get together. And one of the series that I made when we were founding Our high school was just called what's your story, and there was no like major point to it.
Speaker 2:There was no key, you know theme. We were driving home, like a lot of schools will do. It was just simply like what is your story? And so high school student would come up and tell their story, or they would talk about the story of their grandparent who was, you know, puerto Rican and and move to kind of mainland states and it's just beautiful. So, anyway, I really appreciate story. I think there's a. I like to throw my journals while I'm talking. Um, I think you're really excited, so I just did that. Um, stories animate me, they're awesome, so let's do it. So, all right, we'll go for the short, shortish version, because there's there's a lot to it and if you want to go in any particular direction, like, just dial it back to that.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I grew up in Colorado, so that's one of the first parts, and now I live in Minnesota. Um, they're similar in some ways, but also very, very different. And the like journey to get here I think this is the 16th home I've ever lived in, so A lot of moves and I'm not like a military brat Just a lot of stuff happened along the way, um, but yeah, I was born in um, like, conceived in aspen, born in boulder, um, and so I grew up like as a kind of a mountain kid and uh, uh was, um, honestly, a pretty sick little baby. So I had really intense asthma, really terrible allergies, um, and ended up, you know, spending a lot of time with doctors and inhalers and nebulizers and just uh shots and all sorts of things. So I think a lot of that early time, um, some people I will not use the full term, but I do swear like a sailor They'll call me a resilient mofo and I just I have learned that like some of that resilience probably comes from, you know, being a sick kid at times, um, and kind of a scrawny kid who had to fight through a lot, um, but yeah, I grew up, uh, his mind and ours kind of relationship, brady bunch thing with my family. So I've got four half brothers, one younger brother, and yeah, we moved around several times Um in Colorado. We moved down to Houston for a while, um, and even moved several times there and just kind of watching my dad I think is an entrepreneur, like figuring things out, um, and struggling at times and so anyway did all that. But mostly my life memories mostly begin in Colorado and fourth grade so like that's kind of where I grew up.
Speaker 2:Um, denver area in golden. Uh, for anybody who kind of knows that area, it's a wonderful cool spot Right by the Coors brewery. Yes, it always smells like barley and it's actually kind of great Um. So I grew up there hiking like the little mountain behind me all the time and growing up as like a white, suburban, straight Christian kid and it's like little community that was everybody was that and Got a chance to go to really really good public schools, um, and that was a huge, huge leg up and I got to try everything and I think the one thing that kind of pulled me out of my bubble Was Spanish class, weirdly, and so it took Spanish and Leslie Patino was my teacher, still a close friend today. Um, I attribute a lot of who I am today to her influence and like she taught me, um, I I'm very fluent in Spanish and I took it for 14 years, even taught it for a while. I love it, but it helped me to like bridge to a whole different community that I had essentially no access to until I had that like cultural and linguistic knowledge and I just I'm so appreciative to her. Um, she helped my right Write my honors paper for college and, um, just a dear friend, and so Something about that pulled me out and so I'm like this, you know, kind of kid growing up in this one bubble. That pulls me out and I think I had a huge passion for service at that time. Um, I still do.
Speaker 2:My grandparents are probably the reason I am what you know as Brad. So when you're like who's Brad, I'm like, uh, sylvia, and zeal like I'm bill, my grandmother Sylvia. I only got a chance to spend a few years with her, but she was one of the first five women officers in American military history and so she served under Eisenhower in World War II and, like you know, they talked about her as like an officer in heels and all these super sexist you know news articles written about her, um. But like total badass um to be, you know, daughter of Italian immigrants in the 40s with her bachelor's degree, multilingual officer leader. Like there's something about that. That's who I am, um.
Speaker 2:And you look at the other side of my family, like my grandfather had a seventh grade education and then they put him to work on the farm and in uh, southern Minnesota and north of Iowa and that's all he got. And so, like his whole life, every time we went home, you better believe he was like one watching the history channel and learning and like making up for all that lost time that he never got to learn, um. But also like you better damn, get your education. And like, tell me about school. And once I was a teacher and a school leader. Like tell me about your school, what are you doing, um. And then my grandmother she's still 97 lives on her own, completely independently, phenomenal human being, um. And like her values of service people knew literally there's like a train that would run alongside their home on 6th street Southeast in mason city, iowa, and people would know that if you got off the train at this particular crossing. You could get a warm meal from the cotrules right down the street and like they didn't have anything. My grandpa built that house like he was a carpenter Honestly probably poor by most standards and they would feed anybody who came through and like we're known as just like caring, generous people, so like who's brad white, probably that, like some mix of those values and things.
Speaker 2:And uh, so, yeah, so I came out to school in Iowa from colorado, which was a really weird Uh decision for most of my friends. They were like going to coasts or you know bolder all these cool places, and I was like I'm gonna go to a cornfield in the middle of nowhere in Iowa and uh, go and sing and Spanish stuff. And it was a really good decision because it was 90 minutes from those grandparents and just love those people, love the experience and uh, ultimately I met my wife there. I'd majored in education and Spanish and uh, she was a year ahead of me and so she was about to graduate and I was like, oh crap, like I'm gonna lose this awesome person. So she and I actually got engaged while we were still in school. I was 20 so we couldn't even toast, uh, legally, um, when that happened. But like I was like man, I'm not letting this one go, and like she was gonna move to the Twin Cities and find some other person. I was like, nope, come on and we're out. We're coming up on 20 years now and it's uh, it's gone. Really, really well, we've got two awesome kids Uh, they're nine and 12 really compassionate, cool, creative boys and, uh, man, I like them and I love them. They're both really cool people, um, so, yeah, I taught for a couple years out of college.
Speaker 2:I taught second grade at like an international school, um up here in the Twin Cities Public District School in Roseville, minnesota, and then, um, we could not afford rent because we had so much in like student loans both of us had borrowed most of our college Um stuff and and that was tough and so Couldn't afford rent, couldn't afford that. And we had a professor say you should go abroad. Have you ever thought about teaching abroad? And we're like oh not really.
Speaker 2:So I interviewed all over and we got a job offer in Tokyo, japan, and took it and moved over there and taught in Probably one of the top five schools in the world. Um, like, truly elite, they send athletes to the Olympics. Uh, they run all the major corporations in southeast Asia. Like this is like I'd gone from you know kind of a basic public school education in the states to One of the most you know elite schools in the world. And, man, what a trip that was. Um, I'm kind of teaching the powerful and wealthy and, um, man, learning a whole new world that I'd never been exposed to.
Speaker 2:So we taught there for two years, then went back for a third. Um, we actually got pregnant the week of that big earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and that was a bad time, that was hard and uh. So we had flown home. Rachel was still sick and was like, man, I'm still sick after the travel, what's up, I thought she was pregnant and she ended up staying here in the states for her first trimester. Um, and I went back and we actually went back for another year and so our son was born there and we was like, wow, we are way the heck away from family, like this is not for us. And by then, this is where, like, it kind of goes from teaching to leadership.
Speaker 2:Um, I wanted to teach my whole career. I had these like dreams of being like the dude in the tweed jacket with the things on your elbows and like gray hair. Um, I just wanted to be a teacher, like that. And, uh, I was basically running that school from my classroom. Like there were so many initiatives where it was like, oh, technology is an issue, cool, let me find five people get together, fix it. Oh, math curriculum we need to fix cool, let's do that. Um, no one agrees about benefits. And like, what's fair for health care? Cool, I'll leave the charge on that and get everybody, everybody together. So I love solving problems, I love fixing stuff, and I ended up loving making teachers happy more than Students, because it was like when I got all those teachers in a good spot, that was like hundreds of kids that were then better taken care of, and I was like, ah, that's my thing. So did my master's for flying. You're Crazy. Oh, it's huge. It was a total aha and I was like I love teaching, I'm obsessed with it still today. Um, but I was like that's, that's my way, and so Did my master's for leadership and looked for all over the country for a place to lead, because I was like, I want to come home to the states.
Speaker 2:And I got picked up by this group called the Denver schools of science and technology, dss t public schools, and they had started one school in Denver in like 2002, I think, with the goal of STEM education for urban black and brown kids. Like we're gonna crush it and make sure that all these kids Are ready to just, you know, get out into high paying, really lucrative, um and fulfilling careers. And they succeeded hugely. So 100% of kids who have ever gone to DSST schools since then have graduated with a four year college acceptance letter in their hands. And it's just, that's an insane stat. It's beautiful to see, and that's where I got my first leadership job, like I got. So I won the lottery and so they told me you're gonna do this two or three year program. You're gonna, we're gonna invest in you and you're gonna become a school director in training and you'll get to, you know, lead one of our schools someday. And then, three months later, they were like psych. We got this new opportunity to build a diverse, by design school in the middle of the widest, wealthiest part of Denver and they were like you got this, brad, go for it. Decided to recruit 160 kids in about two months, which was bonkers like round the clock work, hustle to get that, hire a team, get the building ready, do all this. We launched that fall and I think the cool part is so that year the Colorado Department of Education came at the end and said not only did your kids lead the entire state in terms of their academic growth, but it's the highest that we've ever seen in Colorado history. That group of kids learned more than any group of kids in any school ever to their knowledge. And it was like man, we got this right and I probably didn't feel that like it was a butt kicking year to start a school in every way you can imagine, but we did something really right. And what I love is I think 90 plus percent of my founding team from 10 years ago is still at that school holding the fort down. They're still doing that. It's still the number one school in the city and, man, I loved it and I wanted to stay forever.
Speaker 2:My mother-in-law is amazing and she had she was battling lymphoma and so we were coming out to Minnesota all the time and we just love our family out here too. And we were like we're doing this beautiful work in Colorado, but like we need to be in Minnesota. And so at some point my wife and I just said like let's make the move. And I didn't have a job, didn't have a thing. But I just said I'll figure it out and kind of the last code of the story before going independent. I didn't know what I was gonna do. So I was like maybe I'll consult, maybe I'll just take an executive director job of a school here. And I couldn't find anything that was a fit.
Speaker 2:And somebody said, well, minnesota has the largest achievement gap in the country. So that's where, like, black and brown kids achieve less than their white peers, or kids from a low income background don't learn as much as kids who are coming from a wealthy background. And we see that in tons most schools. And they said we have the biggest gap in the country. You know something or two about that. Can you do that here? And I said absolutely not. Like I cannot found another school. It is the most life-giving, beautiful thing. And it is so hard, but eventually I came around to it and I was like it's, we have to, like it is so bad, we have to fix this system. So I spent four years fundraising, building, doing all that and it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:I hired the best team, we bought a building this gorgeous, amazing part of St Paul, minnesota and we opened for 10 days in fall of 2023 and then closed and I it was the most devastating experience of my adult life. I had mothers literally on their knees pleading with me, crying to keep that school open, because they knew that their kids had no other recourse, no other lifeline. They knew they were brilliant and capable and that they were in neighborhoods, they were in schools that gave them no opportunity to be brilliant and beautiful, and they were devastated and so there was nothing that we could do about it. We were either gonna operate a you know, a school that could barely keep the lights on because of funding and politics and enrollment and all sorts of stuff, or we were gonna close and try to get those kids into the best schools that we could, and then just try something else. And I had literally walked like worn holes in shoes by going door to door to hundreds, actually thousands, of homes in the Twin Cities over those four years. I could not have put more into it and on a personal level, I was just wrecked.
Speaker 2:And so that's kind of where my independent journey became, like began, was like man. Now what, like I did this thing, I tried literally everything and it didn't work. So what do you do now? And so, yeah, I can kind of tell the story of where that came. But that's a huge part of me and like is this educator service my grandparents, like family dynamics, like all these experiences. So when you're like who's Brad? I'm like I'm still figuring that out, but I think those are a lot of the ingredients in this dish. That's still probably the slow cooker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that approach. I do think that your identity is something that is a continuous discovery process, right, I mean, it's not something that is static. Actually, I mean that's where you really start to run into issues, when you kind of just anchor your identity in one specific thing and refuse to add anything else into it over time. So I definitely, if you're listening to this and you're kind of thinking, well, I don't really know who I am. Maybe I'm in my 20s, maybe I'm in my 40s, maybe I'm in my 60s Latch onto that last little piece that Brad just said, right there, right, maybe take a look at what the ingredients are, right, who are the influences in your life? What are the experiences that are adding to it? Not necessarily anchoring in like a specific that this is who I am. It's like. No, this is what makes up who I am, and who I am is a continuous discovery process. I digress, I'm not gonna get too meta in that. Only I actually love it.
Speaker 2:I think no one other point. Like I've done a lot of self-work and journaling and therapy for the last few years now, so I really am into that. But also a ton of reading. Like I've learned a lot from other people talking about this and I think you know this isn't a great book, but what got you here won't get you there. Has this one part about like yeah, over identifying with, like this is who I am and like, no, you're not. Like that's a thing that you might do or a thing you may have done a lot, but like we're not one thing, and I think that's a good point. But like the second mountain from David Brooks, the let's see what's the other one from.
Speaker 1:Clayton.
Speaker 2:That's a fantastic one, so good.
Speaker 1:That is a fantastic hat.
Speaker 2:I've read it twice and I just love it and it's exactly where I'm at in my life, is like I'm on my second mountain and I'm going deeper and with these like richer relationships and less for accolades and career climbing, like it's much more inward. That's a great book how will you measure your life? From Clayton Christensen at the Harvard Business School. Such a great short piece if you want to start with one. But I've read a lot of other people grappling with like their journeys and I love that and actually rethinking.
Speaker 2:This week with Adam Grant was about the dude who like interviewed all of the former presidents and studied like what do presidents do after having been the most powerful person in the world and then they go back to like just life. What do they do? And he kind of studies how they go through those transitions and kind of rediscover their identity and passions and really interesting. So I think and read a lot about that and I'd rather live a deeper like grappling life than one that's like unexamined and yeah, I get a lot out of that. So not a digression, super worthwhile.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that idea of observing people that are exiting one identity and entering another, because I think that's something that you know when you join an indie collective cohort, you may be expecting the education piece. The part that you may not be expecting is this forced rediscovery process that you end up going through, right and just questions. You know that if you haven't done self-reflection work or you haven't kind of been put into a place, we literally start out with designing your, redesigning your life. Right, like, let's sit down, let's look at what are the. We use a framework called the three L's, right, so what are these? The lifestyle that you want to have, what's the living that you want to make that's going to allow that lifestyle to come into existence, and how do you make sure that you have room inside of both of those things for your loving relationships? Right? And and I remember hearing that framework for the first time and I was like man, I have not looked at it that way up until this point and this was, you know, two and a half years ago for me at this point, going through my first indie cohort, and now I've had the blessing of being able to shadow or emcee and and help lead in in some aspect. Seven cohorts and every single time I go through that workshop I'm able to sit down and I'm like dang, you know there's there's so much going on, there's a lot happening, but I'm I'm appreciating different parts of it at every single part of the process. So I really, I really love those pieces I want. I'm curious, you know. So I see very clearly right where your passion for, for education and where your passion for bringing people up, you know, and and helping them become the best version of themselves you can be, I mean it, it exudes from your personality.
Speaker 1:Right when Brad White enters a room, you can kind of feel that and I'm that's not me saying that like I'm hearing that in office hours from other people that you've talked to, that I've never seen you interact with, and that's just you know kind of the vibes that you're able to bring into a room. So you decide, you know, or this school shuts down, you have this existential crisis mixed with. You know, this is, like I mean you said, the hardest thing that I've faced really in my adult life, or like the most, one of the more, one of the more difficult things that you've had to go through? How do you make it from that abyss to deciding that you're going to go independent or like coming to a program like India? Me, it seems like I know you're climbing your second mountain, but that seems like you're starting out in in like the bottom of the river, at the bottom of the valley, and then you're looking at the mountain coming up on the other side. So what's what kind of happened in between those two steps in your journey?
Speaker 2:So it's a good story. It's actually really hard but beautiful to look back on, alright. So Fran is a key part of this, bill is another key part of this, and maybe Jacob. So maybe I'll tell it more in terms of people than things. So I, frankly, was really depressed, really down, really struggling after that close and kind of did all the things to you know, wrap up and basically bury, you know and this school and get all the kids and new schools and the staff and new jobs, and really hard. So there was a lot of logistics and I had to keep bringing it back up. So I was just constantly grieving. So that was a piece was like, alright, stay in that grief period.
Speaker 2:But the transition then was like, well, what's the easiest thing? You just do what you've been doing. So a bunch of people reached out literally within 24 hours and said, brad, we got a job for you. Come be the executive director here, come be the this here. And there were, I think, five opportunities within 72 hours that I could have just jumped right into.
Speaker 2:And I just saw one of my mentors this is Bill in Denver and I just said, hey, you know I'm going through a lot, what do you think and he just said slow down, brad like slow down the process, stay in that liminal space between places. And I think about like what happens when you play like a pretty little ba ba ba, like chord, versus like like these, like little notes right next to each other and really good musicians know how to play with those like the space between notes or the face between measures more than just I think a better, like coming from another musician I think a better or not better, but like another way to look at it, right is a good musician knows when to keep the sustain Right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah yeah, I love you sustain some distance.
Speaker 2:That's basically another round to go down, but amen, and I love it, though and I love metaphor and I think so staying in that sustained pedal dissonance for a minute, that's what Bill said, and he was like just don't rush into something, and I'm really grateful for that. It put our family into one of the more challenging places we ever got to. We got down to $1,836 left in our accounts. I'll never forget seeing that number, and it was terrifying because we couldn't even make our mortgage in December. So this all happened in October, and so we're a really tough spot. Just saw you disappear, so I'm going to wait. You're good, that's so great. I just sat here and started hanging out. I didn't know what happened. You just do you like, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know what I did either. I did just like crashed on me, but we're still recording. We're still good.
Speaker 2:So great. I have no idea where I was we're talking about. We got Bill. So Bill is like slow down, don't take a job. I'm struggling financially, don't know what to do, so I really stretch that time as long as I possibly could. And so that was the first advice. I'm really grateful for it, because I could have just jumped in and it wouldn't have been the right thing, I wouldn't have shown up as my full Brad self, that now people know and that you know I have tried to create like I love people, I love serving people, coaching people. It's like for sure what gets me up in the morning. And I was not that dude at that point, so it was good to not just jump into a job despite the offer. So that was the first one.
Speaker 2:Second was Fran. So Fran is this friend of mine, inter sixties, super smart, little salty, and a friend of mine had said hey, I've got a cabin way up north, right by Canada, super isolated, there's not a store or gas, for you know 30 miles, but like you can just go up there for a few days if you want. And so I grabbed a kayak and I'm out fishing, crying, like in the middle of this lake by myself and it's a Friday afternoon, like two o'clock. I had my phone with me and Fran called me, started asking me these questions and I was like I just don't know what I want to do, fran, and she was like Bullshit, brad, you know exactly what you want to do, just say it. And I was like oh gosh. And so what came out of my mouth next was Okay, fine, I want to make more, I want to work less and I want to have a much bigger impact. And that's what I said that kayak to Fran, and I love that she just called me on my BS because I was able to like say the thing that I had been held back by and, I think, a lot of people in Indy and just that I know who have been in service related careers and professions. It can be really hard for us to do that three L's activity because all we've ever thought of is everybody else around us and it's really hard to say what do I want. It was very, very uncomfortable. It took me months of resisting it and it took Fran calling me out. So I just I'm so indebted to her in that moment. Even though it was a little, you know, salty and mean it was so helpful, and so that was a huge shift for me.
Speaker 2:And then I went to this CEO conference and they were like, well, you're a washed out CEO, but you can come anyway. And they were really kind. It was so, it was so nice. They were like, yeah, you just lost your school, but just show up, it's okay. And I was literally having to leave sessions because I was crying, I was like it was, I was in so much grief after losing this kind of beautiful dream and knowing what it was going to happen to all these kids.
Speaker 2:And so I'm there and this guy, jacob, came up and he was like you know what? I saw this email that you sent out because somebody had said to this whole CEO group hey, I need to help with a strategic plan or coaching somebody. Do you guys know anybody who does that? And I was like, hey, I'm now unemployed. So you guys know me, does anybody want? You know, I can just help. And he saw that he was like I thought that was kind of cool that you were just like willing to kind of throw yourself under the bus to the entire group of hundreds of CEOs. And he was like, maybe you can help us out, and so he was the first one to kind of show me like maybe there is something I could do there.
Speaker 2:A year later now I'm supporting over 6000 kids, about 15 schools every week. I coach about a dozen executive leaders around the country. Our schools are transformed in so many ways. One of our schools in St Louis is up 24% in their student growth over last year. Like a school that's working really hard might grow by like 2% in a year that they have been that much like what we do really does work and what I do. So there's a we. Now there's all this impact and it all kind of went back to like Bill's advice, like dude, just don't rush into it.
Speaker 2:Fran calling me out and then Jacob being like Huh, maybe we could do a thing, and respecting the fact that I was still going to be open and vulnerable about it. So I don't know that I've ever thought about it as those three people, but like that feels like a. Yeah, that was the experience and I just said I don't give shot. I didn't know what an independent was. I didn't know what a consultant was. Frankly, the word grossed me out. I didn't know what a contract was. I had so much to learn, but I knew that I could serve schools and that I wanted to do that thing of making more, working less and having a bigger impact. I couldn't do that in a nine to five, so I was just going to try to figure out the rest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's a couple of points that I want to. I want to double click on for people that are, you know, digesting this, because this is, I think, the first time that I've heard the Jacob portion of the story. But I knew about Fran and what's the other name? Bill, bill, bill, yeah, so I've heard about Bill, I've heard about Fran, but Jacob is kind of a new addition to it. But two things that kind of stood out to me.
Speaker 1:One, again, that's the power of having a community. Right, even if the conversation is difficult when you have it, having people around you that are able to deliver that salty news or ask a question that you're avoiding because they know that you're avoiding it, and then giving you the space to safely answer it, are invaluable people. And then the second thing is, some people have this a little bit more naturally than others, but this sense of vulnerability on mass, at scale, right, hey, mailing list of 100 plus CEOs. I'm unemployed, I'm willing to help you. This is a bold move, bro. That is, that's your list of 200, but let's see, it's the same type of principle, right, like you were already doing some of these principles, maybe without even knowing them, just because it's a natural part of who you are as a person, but that's something that we teach.
Speaker 1:That's a whole section, that's a whole week inside of IndieCollective's curriculum is this outreach and leveraging those warm network connections and building your list of 200 and all this other kind of stuff, and that's exactly what you did. Like I have this group of people. They're all highly impactful. They all know who I am. If I lead with a little bit of vulnerability in an ask you never know, you know and then that starts kind of the train that keeps things moving. I love the idea that you had those three pillars right that I wanna make more, I wanna have more impact and I wanna work less.
Speaker 2:Work less right. I mean, I've worked the working 80 hours a week for 15 years like I had just only known work and family and very little work.
Speaker 1:That was a really hard thing for me coming into IndieCollective too, because I heard over and over again like, oh, I wanna work 15 hour weeks, I wanna work 20 hour weeks. But I grew up working, contracting, right Construction, worked at the juvenile detention center, a detention center while I was in college, was working 12, 16 hour shifts at the hospital. So my perception and then the military, right, the military is just like, yeah, you're gonna be indisposed for the next 48 hours, congratulations. I'm like, okay, cool, I'll just follow orders, right. So, but that was my perspective. I'm like this is what work is right. It's meant to be difficult, it's meant to be overwhelming, you're meant to squeeze way too much into way too little time. So having to take that step back and analyze that was super uncomfortable because I was like there's no way that I can provide the value that I'm asking for monetarily in 20 hours a week or 30 hours a week. That's not gonna happen.
Speaker 2:I still struggle really, really hard with value-based pricing, like it's such a beautiful concept and it plays out really well for what I do, but I still like, just like, grapple with it. Every time that I price anything, I'm like yeah, but like oh, it's not a buy the hour thing, it's not an effort-based thing anymore, but it is so much an outcomes thing. And it's really helped me now to have a year where I can see all these schools thriving, where every single leader that I coached last year returned to their role and all but one of them when I first started was on their way out. That alone has saved each of those organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars of hiring new people. Going through the whole process, the ripple effects that happen that alone, if I just did that, is worth every penny that I've charged and I probably should have charged more, but I didn't know. And it's still, though it's hard, where it's like, but it's a effort, impact, dollar, I don't know. So I think I'll still struggle with that for a while.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's ever. I've had so many conversations with Indies over the last two years and I don't think that the feeling ever actually goes away. I had a really solid drill instructor when I was in basic training for the Air Force and Staff, sergeant Romain. I will never forget that man's name, mostly because he was very prolific, but also a massive pain in the ass, as he should be as a drill sergeant at BC training.
Speaker 1:But he used to say all the time he was like hey, you're here in week two and in week two you're still called rainbow flight, so everybody has different haircuts, you're wearing different clothes, different sneakers. You haven't been indoctrinated into the US military at that point. You get into week three and you go get your haircut and you get your uniforms issued and everybody's on an equal playing field and you get this sense of unity at that point. But he said you look at the people that are six weeks deep and they're preparing for drill and ceremony. They're marching on command, they're physically fit like crazy. They're passing all this stuff, they're doing long, rough marches. It seems like they're not getting any demerits on there, inspections or anything like that. And he was like it's not because basic training gets any easier, you just get better at it.
Speaker 1:And that is always stuck with me, always Like ever since I heard that that you get into a situation and it might be difficult at first, it's gonna be scary and it's never gonna not be scary, like the threat of the drill instructor kicking down the door never goes away. But you learn stuff like oh, shaving cream makes mirrors shine really, really nice. Or hey, this is how I'm gonna do this next time because it's gonna work so much better, right? So then, when the drill instructor does bust through the door, your boots are already shined, your uniforms are six inches equally apart as far as your hangers go. Inside of your locker, you've shaving cream, the mirror, so there's no fingerprints or dust on it, like you have these skill sets and you've accommodated for a lot of that stuff, and so that's something that I wanna say.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter where you're at in your entrepreneurial or your independent journey. There's people that have entered in the collective cohorts, that have literally launched their businesses through that 10-week process, and then there's people that have been in corporate for 15 years and are highly, highly skilled at what they do and have amazing networks and have been doing independent contracting for these larger companies for a decade, and they're coming in and saying, well, I'm still not. I haven't achieved this balance that I'm looking for. I don't have this life that I thought that I was gonna have after entering this. And that brings me to a question that I'm curious about, which is you've talked about these experiences between cohorts, how you got here and the work that you started doing and how it has impacted other people. But again you said at the beginning, sometimes as independents we tend to look at how much we're impacting other people, not how much we're impacting ourselves. How did you measure success for yourself after graduating the cohort and really kind of going independent that first year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a little on the counter cultural side and so even the idea of setting goals, like I love it and I tell all the people that I work with to do it and I don't do it myself. So I'm hilariously like it's a total joke Every time that session comes up. I've still never done it. In those two indie collective cohorts that I did. I never wrote down a single goal and it's obnoxious and I would love to, but it's it struggle. I struggle kind of bringing it back down to earth, and so part of it is I can look back better than I can look forward on goal setting.
Speaker 2:And when I look back, like I was able to replace my income and probably add 30%. That was a huge change for us to go from like almost bankrupt as a family to I was able to replace my income working independently. I've been able to walk my kids to school every Wednesday, thursday and Friday to and from for an entire school year and like that is a gift I will always treasure. This is the last year that they'll both be walking to school to the same school and I was able to do that. Like that is freaking transformational, like there's.
Speaker 2:I could have never done that in those other jobs, and especially because their school starts at 930, which is so late, and so it's just it'd be really hard as a working parent, and especially in a school where I was usually at school by six, 30 or 7 am and they're until six or 7 pm and so there's no way. So I got all those walks, this puppy we've got over here, our other dogs, like we've gotten to spend so much time just like doing little bits of life together and I am so freaking grateful for that. So I couldn't have put that as a goal. But looking back, that's the good stuff for me. And then I think you know a very similar metric is like I hit 300,000 in revenue in that first year and I couldn't have even imagined a number like that. The idea that it even could be a six figure salary or revenue was like I didn't even know the term revenue. Like, seriously, I've learned so much. It was all mind blowing at the time.
Speaker 1:I remember you were probably on the calls and I was like holy smokes and I'm laughing because I was in the same boat. Dude Coming out of nursing and clinical psych, I was like I have you're speaking a foreign language to me, with all these acronyms, and I didn't know what a CRM was. You know when I first started learning it. Oh, that makes so much sense.
Speaker 2:The first time Sam was like is it to be BizDev RTO on your IPE? And I was like I don't know single word you just said and they all scare me and make me feel like I shouldn't be here. And I just pushed through it. I was like you know what? I got lots to do and serve and learn. So I'm here.
Speaker 2:But I look back on that the year before, when I was founding that school, I got to make it two of my kids baseball games, so there were 28,. I made it to two Last year, I made it to 26. And so I completely flipped that around and that means the world to them. I got to sit with my wife and watch these games and hang out with our dog and like just be a joy filled dad and be fully present. I didn't even have to like answer my phone or text, like I just got to be there and that is a that's again. Like that's what life is about. That's my second mountain. I wish I'd had those opportunities and the wisdom earlier, but those were huge and so now I start thinking, you know, forward.
Speaker 2:I just started doing, I did 30 days of yoga this year and like it wasn't like a New Year's resolution. It just happened to be a good timing that my friend Amy wrote me a text that was just like remember that post that you've had for four months, brad, just do the yoga, start tomorrow. And I just did. And I haven't stopped. And I needed somebody like that to call me out Again because I don't feel comfortable putting myself first. So it's a lot easier when somebody's like Brad, you should do it, cause then I'm like oh, I can make Amy happy, it's, I still got to work on.
Speaker 1:I'm with you, man. I'm in the same boat. I have the same personality traits, like coming from the nursing background and like really just being, I think, brought up through immigrant culture, being very much so like. This is a village, and so if everybody in the village collectively puts the needs of everybody else in the village, first the village survives right, and then the middle, and I can really believe that I wish we would do more of that as a society. I wish we could.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and but to your point, like you have to be able to bring your fullest self into the village if that's going to be how you contribute, and so I. All the time I literally, you know I'd work out five days a week of power lifter, boxer, but I had to work with my friend who's a chiropractor to do I'm on a like a gut reset and a cleanse right now, because I knew I have all the nutritional knowledge, I have all of the workout knowledge. I'm already in the gym five days a week, but I wasn't willing to like commit to it because in my mind I needed somebody else to be like. Well, you should do this, not because of the weight loss or anything else, but because you. You know that you could be doing better with energy.
Speaker 2:You know, that you need to adjust the way that you're eating, and so you know it's interesting my other friend, my sister Kia from the indie collective cohort Dr Kia, as we often all call her I adore her, she's one of my closest friends from the cohort and really appreciate her and she actually looked at me in the eyes and said, brad, when you work this much, this hard and you go back into your habits one right now my business is like currently booming, like I still have not reached out or advertised. All of it has been what do you call it Like?
Speaker 2:incoming, not outreach or whatever not, yeah, inbound, there you go and it's all been that. And so I'm like the second that I even say it's outbound stuff. I think we could double, triple, quadruple. And Kia just said Brad, don't like hold on, just do another year where you just repeat, you get a little more efficient and you learn. Try some little pilots, iterate and maybe, with that saved time, just live a little Like you love to kayak, you love to fish, you love your dogs, like how about, instead of building that new part of your business, you just live. And that was really really appreciated, because I needed that accountability. And again, I want to do that better myself. I will get there eventually, but I'm just not there yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that that's super, super important. Shout out to Dr Kia she's also one of my favorite people and I know there's always multiple people every cohort that pop in and I love seeing people's names pop up inside of my calendars and stuff. It's such a blessing to have three to five calls a week that just break up my agency day, because outside of being the head of community, I'm still running the agency full time and stuff like that. So being able to hop on calls and get those points and I also as we're sitting inside of office hours and I know that you get this coming from the education side holding that space for somebody to have that conversation with you and be vulnerable about something or knowing them well enough that you can pick up on when they're starting to go off track and be like, oh well, what if we do this?
Speaker 1:I just did that with somebody the other day. I was hey, we're saying things that we said a year ago and that maybe they're not serving you in the way that you think that they should be serving you, and sometimes it's doing less. Doing more is not going to serve you and that's so counterintuitive for so many people that doing less than just taking the time to be, is such a beautiful opportunity and a beautiful thing to be able to do. So I'm really really ecstatic about your journey and really proud of how far you've come, because I remember meeting Brad coming into the first cohort and there's all this enthusiasm and all of this angst kind of packed into the same package.
Speaker 2:I want to put that on a bumper sticker. Just so much enthusiasm, so much angst. That basically describes it.
Speaker 1:And now it feels I don't know if those two I would even change those two words, but it feels like a more directionally placed version of that You're still so excited, you still spring so much animation into the room and there's still that angst around. Well, what can I do next? And how am I going to help the next person? And where is this going to go? But I don't know. I mean, the way that you talk about it and the way that you talk about yourself is drastically different than it was a year ago, and I wanted to make sure that I vocalized that before we started the show or hopped off.
Speaker 2:And I appreciate that a lot. It's been a really fast, rapid process for me to just be like man learn as much as you can, dig in and help a lot of other people along the way and be a part of the community. I love it so much. I keep learning and I'm definitely staying on this track, and I can see now a five-year, 10-year frame of doing this work and I definitely could not have imagined that when it first started.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, tons of gratitude, tons of love. Yeah, I really love it. I really love it. So, if people want to unfortunately this hour is already kind of flown by, which is wild but if people want to learn more about Brad, or they want to be able to connect with you and stuff like that, where are some of the best places for them to do that?
Speaker 2:Love that. Hilariously, I still do not have a website or any sort of place where I have any information about what I do anywhere. So the only place right now seems to be LinkedIn, which I started doing when this all existed. Kind of figured that out, so it's just LinkedIn, brad White. The organization is still called Brad White Educational Consulting, because I just didn't know what to call it when I first started that thing for Jacob. So I made that up, went to the bank, started a bank account, got the EIN, everything I started on that rapid-fire day. I've just still stuck with.
Speaker 2:So for right now, linkedin is amazing. And then email is fantastic. I've learned through the program how to use a virtual assistant and I've got this phenomenal colleague, kylie. She and I worked together really tightly and she now runs email my holistic schedule of my entire life, and so it's just really great. And so email is amazing and I love getting together with people for 15 minutes phone Zoom, morning, night. Anybody who finds any negative wisdom in this and is like dude, can we just talk for a second? The answer is like an absurdly enthusiastic yes. And so LinkedIn probably just hit it up on there and look for me on there.
Speaker 1:That's it. Yeah, I'll make sure that we include the link to your LinkedIn inside of the description of this and then if you want to connect with me it's Jan looks like Jan Jan almost On LinkedIn is probably also the best place to find us. If you want to learn more about the Indie Collective Program, our upcoming cohorts, you can go to indiecollectiveco that is, i-n-d-e collectiveco. Again, this has been another episode of the Modern Independent Flavor, the Launchpad, where you hear from indie collective graduates that are out in the world doing amazing things. Brad, thank you for coming and hanging out.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Rilla, and also I'm not letting you get off without a deep thanks because the cohort connects and there is a community and there is the type of vibe because of exactly who you are. So we make fun of you as the DJ and all your energy and stuff, but none of that would happen if there was some other D-bag behind the mic and behind the keyboard. So also got to give some shine where it's due. Jan, You're a really phenomenal guy and you bring a nuanced approach to building this. That has been hugely helpful for me. So I'm not letting you get away without a shout out. Appreciate you both.
Speaker 1:Thanks, man, thank you.