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AJ Riedel: Welcome to this episode of the thriving through podcast today. My guest is John Losey. John welcome. I'm delighted to have you on the podcast and I'm going to turn the mic right over to you and tell us a little bit about what you're up to and how long you've been a consultant.
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John Losey: Okay, yeah. My name is John Locey. I'm with the Into Wisdom group.
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John Losey: And what we do is we guide individuals and organizations to their next best step in growth and sustainability. And we do that by designing and delivering experiences and resources for professional and organizational development.
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John Losey: And I've been doing this in some way. I've had a very windy path, but I've been doing this since the early nineties. In some form or another. I 1st started consulting. Probably it was in 93, or 94
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John Losey: in the experiential learning world while I was working at camps and and schools.
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John Losey: and then in the early 90 or the early 2 thousands. I just went full time in the consulting for about
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John Losey: about 6, 7 years, and then I went inside of a large corporate university doing their professional and organizational development work at the corporate University, was there for 10 years, and then came back out and kind of rekindled my my consulting business in what? Gosh! It must have been 2016, 2017, and that's what I've been doing full time again for about 8 or 9 years.
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AJ Riedel: Okay, wonderful.
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AJ Riedel: Tell me about the process. When you came out of the corporate consulting gig into self employment again. How? What steps did you take to rekindle your business.
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John Losey: Well, the
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John Losey: I had always kept one or 2 really good clients
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John Losey: all the way through, and they and all my employers always let me do that. And then what I was doing internally was managing the leadership and professional development and then worked into doing the org development stuff internally inside that large corporate university. When I came out, and I went in there intentionally to learn the corporate world better.
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John Losey: Most of my work before I went into the corporate university was with small medium, sized sized organizations, nonprofits, mission organizations, camps, that kind of stuff.
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John Losey: And I really wanted to learn what larger organizations were like, and man, was that a great education going inside for for a decade? And so when I came out, I took a deep breath and
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John Losey: realized that what I needed to do was reestablish those relationships that I had, but also build new relationships with medium and large sized organizations.
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John Losey: At 1st it was all
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John Losey: people who I'd worked with, either internally or people who I'd known. So it was word of mouth.
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John Losey: and I got out there did some of that stuff and started to gain small and
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John Losey: small and medium sized organizations. What I found my niche was my niche
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John Losey: at that point was really working with organizations in transition, whether they were entrepreneurs wanting to become a going concern.
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John Losey: these people who are not serial entrepreneurs. They wanted to start a business and grow it so helping them transition to a going concern. And then small organizations that were transitioning into let's say they're 3, 4, 5 under 10 people in their organization going to up to 30. That's another big transition and helping them truly understand who they want to become and then working through it. And then I
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John Losey: I worked with a large small pieces of larger organizations. So when you hear people in marketing say, Oh, I worked with apple. Well, I say, I worked with apple. However, I worked with a small group
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John Losey: within a division of apple. I work with Disney. Yeah. I worked with a small group within a division of Disney. So yes, I have experience working with those large names, and more often than not, the gig you're going to get isn't going to be corporate wide. It's not gonna be going to be enterprise wide. It's going to be a small group that either saw you at a workshop
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John Losey: or got your name from somebody else. Say, this guy can do this for you. So that's where I started after I came back out of corporate. It was with existing relationships, and those went into other. You know it was all by the network.
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AJ Riedel: Okay?
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AJ Riedel: And you said that you
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AJ Riedel: so do you prefer to work with larger or organizations, or cause you said initially, it was small to medium.
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AJ Riedel: I'm going to check this.
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John Losey: I like working with anybody who can pay me.
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AJ Riedel: What?
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John Losey: That would be one of my key demographics there, because I tend to do a lot of when I see a need, I go and meet it.
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John Losey: and that's not always the best business approach
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John Losey: to me. It's great practice, but it's not good business, and so I've got to be really conscious of who I'm working with. So what happened over the pandemic. So I was doing just fine as a small independent consultant Guy, and then, when the pandemic hit. I saw a lot of my consultant friends, my facilitator friends lose basically everything. Their schedules were blank, and I'd been doing virtual stuff for a while. So I got people together. I said, Let's talk about what is possible virtually.
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John Losey: And I ended up developing great relationships with a lot of people who are. They're wonderful world class facilitators and great consultants. And we spent a lot of that time during the pandemic learning how to do our jobs like this over zoom and virtually, and what's possible. And we really like broke new ground in that territory. During that time the problem was, I developed all these great relationships with people who don't have budget for what I do.
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John Losey: And that's what I realized when one of my key clients, who I was serving all the way through the pandemic and through part of my consulting between myself and their Cfo. We figured out that they were going to be in a cash crunch in about 6 months.
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John Losey: and we
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John Losey: came to the agreement that you've got to break all your vendor contracts if you want to survive, and mine had to be first.st
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John Losey: So through my own consulting, I lost my my role there, which was, which was fine, but I realized how much I needed to go back and reestablish those connections in the in the areas who have the organizations that have budget for what I do, what you know for for developing organizations and developing people.
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John Losey: So that's that was the real big understanding coming out of the pandemic where I had to shift everything around.
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AJ Riedel: Okay? And would you? So what you're looking for is organizations that need to develop their people.
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John Losey: Well, organizations that realize they need to develop their people. All organizations need to. And you can't separate out professional development and organizational development every time I go in. And somebody says we need coaching. Well, yeah, you need coaching. But you could streamline your organization a bit, or someone brings me and said, our organization is horrible. We need to work on that. Yeah. And you could use some coaching. So it goes hand in hand. And the realization was 1st of all,
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John Losey: coaching and consulting are when you go internal
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John Losey: to an organization they're not positive terms.
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John Losey: Coaching is usually seen as discipline
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John Losey: and consulting is what you pay a lot of money for nothing for.
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John Losey: And so and that's just the reality that I learned when I went internal
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John Losey: I remember I called myself internally. See, I'm a consultant, they said. No, don't call yourself that. You'll be out of a job.
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AJ Riedel: What do they? What do you call yourself?
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John Losey: Well, I call myself a guide. Organizational ecologist, I I
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John Losey: you can't swing a cat without hitting a coach or a consultant out there. So the water is really muddy, and the encouragement that I have for people who are looking for those types of service, for professional development, for personal development, for looking how to streamline your organization. That's what I call myself. I do organizational development, professional development.
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John Losey: And sometimes it looks like coaching. Sometimes it looks. But
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John Losey: if you are going to be. If you're calling yourself a coach.
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John Losey: be really clear on what you have to offer
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John Losey: and differentiate between what what you do as a culture coach and a consultant. If you're coming in and just offering advice, that's not coaching
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John Losey: that would be consulting.
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John Losey: And you better make sure that if you're going to be a consultant, you have chops and very specific knowledge in the industry you're going to be consulting in. I mean, you can bluff your way in. But if you want to be a going concern consulting in an industry, you better have 8 to 10 years of direct experience in that industry at upper levels of leadership
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John Losey: and with the coaching thing. If you're clear and you have a clear model of your coaching, and then it's not about giving answers. It's not about fixing people. Coaches can work in any industry because you're not about giving advice. You're about creating clarity for your performer.
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John Losey: and if you can get that message across and just saying people might have hesitancy in working with you if you don't come directly from the industry. But if you can explain that what I bring you isn't. I'm not going to fix you. I'm going to help you get clear on where you want to go and then help you develop your plan to get there.
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John Losey: because most often the best coaching happens when you've created clarity for your clients, and they take ownership of their own growth and development.
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AJ Riedel: Right, absolutely. Absolutely.
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AJ Riedel: You said when you talked about what you do, you guide people to the next best step.
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AJ Riedel: Tell me more about that? What does that mean?
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John Losey: Yeah. Well, I come from a background of early on in my career. I actually did a lot of backcountry stuff at the outdoor education. I was a guide. I would take people on backpacking or canoeing, or all kinds of different trips in the backcountry, and what I realized is that the when I was either as a guide or somebody who helped put together trips. Questions were really important, key questions were important. So when I say that I guide. It's an important picture of guides. Don't take the trip for you.
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John Losey: They walk alongside you and help you help you get to where you want to go.
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John Losey: And so that's what I view myself as a guide, because I help you number One. Figure out where you want to go, and then walk alongside you so that you make the accomplishment
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John Losey: too often what happens when we try and do it for our clients?
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John Losey: Failure means that they can blame us, and they
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John Losey: take 0 ownership of what happened.
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John Losey: whereas I can help walk alongside you. But you've got to take the trip.
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John Losey: and it's the same thing like with. If you look at, I don't like to make the comparison between athletic coaching, because the picture most people have in that is a a coach with a whistle, blowing it and yelling at you. And what I figured out is that
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John Losey: the training is what happens at practice.
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John Losey: and coaches are doing that, and that's training. And that's skill building and all that. And that's really looking at.
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John Losey: Where do you want to grow? And then creating a path to get there
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John Losey: coaching happens on the I was a football and wrestling coach. Coaching happens on the sideline. You can't get in there and play.
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John Losey: You've got to at at the breaks at halftime, and there's different times you've got to listen to what the people in the field are saying.
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John Losey: Get clear and ask them, what do you think is going to be your best move next time?
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John Losey: And so that's when I, when I talk about being a guide, it's really important for people to realize that they've got to take the journey themselves.
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John Losey: and I'm here to help you. Number one clarify. And where? Where does success look like? Where do you want to end up
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John Losey: and then help you decide what are the next steps that you need to take? A lot of my materials? Kind of have that feel to them and come from a I call my my yearly program. That I do is called a growth Expedition.
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John Losey: and the planning is very similar to yes, questions that you would do if you want to go on a trip.
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John Losey: and the 1st thing you do is either decide what equipment I have. That'll that'll tell me where I want to end up, or ask where you want to end up and make sure what you have in your inventory.
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John Losey: So those are. That's where the guide piece comes in
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John Losey: and it creates a. It creates an image that I think is, it can be really easily
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John Losey: translated into most people's lives.
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AJ Riedel: I like that, so do most of your work is the year long program.
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John Losey: No, most of my work. The the my workflow tends to be. I do as many like in person or or virtual workshops as possible.
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John Losey: and that puts me in front of decision makers. And I've really started to learn who I need to be in front of.
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John Losey: And then I go and I do a workshop on a topic that is important to them. My workshops need to be my best stuff.
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John Losey: and a lot of times I'm doing it at associations or conferences. Sometimes I get paid, sometimes I don't. The payoff is. I'm in front of these people, and I get to have a conversation with them
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John Losey: which sometimes lead to longer engagements. My favorite thing is to step inside alongside an organization
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John Losey: and help them figure out what they need. What's their next best step.
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John Losey: Sometimes it's the 1st step there they might have might have been in business for 5, 10 years.
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John Losey: but they don't have a clear picture of where they're going.
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John Losey: so I'll take them through what I call a game planning retreat, and it's about can either be a weekend
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John Losey: 2 day, or I split them up. I prefer 2 days in a row, but you can split it up as well and basically get them to answer really important questions like, what's your purpose? How do you behave? What's most important to you right now? What is your your mission? I separate mission and purpose.
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John Losey: and that's just language that you have to get straight with everybody because everybody means something different when you say mission vision values goals, objectives. You just have to get that language down. But if I can get them to answer these key questions, what I'll do is I'll turn it into a playbook for them.
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John Losey: And this playbook leadership brings with them to all their meetings, and they've made a lot of hard choices before it gets tense. So in the meeting, when something crucial comes up, they're not having to rethink everything they can go to their playbook and say, Here, it's we've already got a good lead on this.
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John Losey: And so that's 1 thing I really love to do, the strategic planning which usually happens continuously.
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John Losey: And you have. You do a strategic plan, and then you make sure that that runs its course as you start another one, and as you start another one. But the foundation to a strategic action plan is really
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John Losey: having the having that playbook to work off of, and then you. Then it becomes a lot easier to build out those strategic plans.
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AJ Riedel: Okay.
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AJ Riedel: So tell us more when you say playbook
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AJ Riedel: flesh that out a little bit for us. So we really understand what you mean by playbook.
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John Losey: Well, a playbook is something that is, you thought about it before stress comes in.
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John Losey: and it has in there the high level stuff that everybody needs to know about.
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John Losey: Whether from the top it's it's created by the top leadership team. But it's communicated over, communicated out to everybody. So everybody knows how decisions are made.
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John Losey: If you're
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John Losey: there's 2 types of mission statements, there's 1 that helps you make decisions. And then there's others that are meant for bumper stickers.
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John Losey: and they're not the same thing. And one I get, you need to have something for your marketing people.
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John Losey: But ultimately most of those are really hard to make decisions by.
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AJ Riedel: So give us an example of a good mission statement that guides decisions. If you.
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John Losey: Yeah. Well, it it takes more than a mission statement.
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John Losey: And and for me it looks like this. You need a good purpose, and you need a good mission.
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John Losey: And then it's what I want to talk about. Behavior is really what that gets is your values, because your behavior is guided by what you value. So when I talk about my, you know what's my purpose statement. I guide people and organizations to the next best step towards growth and sustainability. That's why I exist. That's why in wisdom exists my mission. Your mission is basically an explanation of what you do.
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John Losey: So what do I do?
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John Losey: I design and deliver experiences and resources for professional and organizational development.
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John Losey: So your purpose pulls you forward. Your purpose is grandiose. Your purpose is that thing that just gives you that intrinsic motivation to keep going when things are hard.
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John Losey: Now your mission narrows your focus.
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John Losey: If it doesn't fit your mission statement, it shouldn't be part of what you do.
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John Losey: So that's how those things work together. One is is pulls you forward. The other one makes sure that your energy goes to the right right place. That's how I define those things. Not that other definitions aren't correct, but when I'm working with somebody I want to make sure we're all on the same page.
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John Losey: And I come in and say that when we talk about these things this is what we mean.
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John Losey: So those things go along really well in in the playbook. You'll also have your behaviors. And and what we talk about is because
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John Losey: values are revealed by how you behave. What we want to do. I ask them, say, tell me about somebody, your employee, who is like the poster child of your organization that truly gets your culture, and they start well, what they start to explain. This person does this, this does this. And and then we start to talk about well, what does that really mean. So, for instance, one group I was working with, they're actually a engineering firm.
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John Losey: and we got to talking about it and said, You know, whenever he walks in. He notices that there's like, there's the trash cans overflowing.
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John Losey: He sees the details, and so that behavior for the value was we pick out the we pick up the trash.
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John Losey: and that creates an opportunity to tell the story about well, why is that a core behavior? Well, we we you really need to know the details. We value detail attention to detail.
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John Losey: And that that's their story. Around that.
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John Losey: I worked with another one. That was a their event production company.
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John Losey: And and and they say we fix the curtains.
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John Losey: And what that was is that if they see something out of place as they walk in, no matter who you are, you fix it if you see it, you fix it.
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John Losey: and so that creates rather than having values, that every other organization your industry has. If you're saying that you value integrity, teamwork,
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John Losey: authenticity, look and see are those on everybody else's as well.
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John Losey: That's not a value. That's the that's the price of entry to your industry.
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John Losey: And if that's on your if that's on your statement of values, then you you don't value anything differently, and there's no strategic advantage for somebody to go work with you rather than anybody else.
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AJ Riedel: Yes.
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John Losey: You got my! You got my my soapbox on that.
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AJ Riedel: What strikes me, too, about, you know, integrity is, what does integrity mean on a day to day basis?
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AJ Riedel: Not integrity. Of course everybody wants integrity.
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AJ Riedel: you know, who's gonna say they don't have in one integrity. But how does that play out in the day to day? Behaviors of the people in the company.
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John Losey: And that's why you asked the question of What does it look like?
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AJ Riedel: Cool.
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John Losey: And that's how you build that you. What I'll do is I'll take them through an exercise. It's called Silent movie exercise, and you take them in to. All right. Now, picture you're watching a silent movie. All you can see is what's happening up on the screen.
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John Losey: Pretend you're in a staff meeting. What do you see up on that screen that tells you? You know we're hitting it out of Park. We are really doing it well
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John Losey: now they have to describe the behaviors that demonstrate their values.
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John Losey: And that's how you can get to that that prime story. Because, again, integrity. Yeah, what does that mean it really for a lot of people. It really doesn't mean anything other than a good word that go on my brochure.
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AJ Riedel: Exactly.
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John Losey: As opposed to. If you if you say that you give them an example of of you know what?
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John Losey: we'll we'll cancel the order.
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John Losey: Okay? Well, what do you mean by cancel the order? Well, it means that if we saw something that went out wrong
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John Losey: we'll take it back. We'll cancel it because we saw that there's a problem with that, even before anybody else did.
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AJ Riedel: Didn't, didn't wait to to get caught, so to speak, to me of integrity. Your story about during the pandemic, when you, your clients, you became clear that they were gonna have to break contracts and integrity in action, was you saying? And mine's got to be first.st
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John Losey: Yeah. And and my thing about using integrity as one of your values is that show me an organization that doesn't have integrity. That lasts more than 3 years.
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AJ Riedel: Too.
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John Losey: So it's like, of course, that's you need. If you're going to be a part of our organization, that's what you gotta bring with you.
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John Losey: You've got to bring with you the value of teamwork you've got to bring with you integrity you've got to bring with you the transparency or authenticity. Whatever words you want to use in there, that's just the price of entry. Now let's talk about the the things that make us are us, the behaviors that make us unique to to us.
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John Losey: And that's the great conversation, because they often have a hard time identifying what is unique to them. And then we break it out. What do you already have? Those are your core values. And then you get into all right. What are your aspirational values? What do you really want to work on. You may demonstrate it some of the time. But, man, we really need to do this.
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AJ Riedel: Nope.
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John Losey: And what does that look like? What are those behaviors? And then, if you really want to get into it, if I'm getting doing a deep one with an established organization. What are your accidental values?
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John Losey: If somebody who doesn't know you walks in, what would they say? You valued.
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AJ Riedel: Oh, interesting!
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John Losey: And then you have to ask yourself after you get that feedback. There's a story of a of a store that is off of that malls
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John Losey: and you walk in. And the 1st thing you notice is man. These are all very young, good looking
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John Losey: fits.
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John Losey: They all could be models. You must. You must really value looks.
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John Losey: And then that organization has to decide. Is that something that we want to claim as our own?
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John Losey: Or is it something that that we want to, you know, not necessarily appear that way, and that's a hard conversation to have with existing organizations of is what are your what are your actual behaviors and values based on your lived
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John Losey: values and behaviors?
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AJ Riedel: And how's that coming across to your customer?
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John Losey: Right.
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AJ Riedel: Gonna switch gears a little bit.
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AJ Riedel: When we talked earlier, you described your marketing approach is boring.
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AJ Riedel: You said you focus on word of mouth and direct relationships.
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AJ Riedel: I'm curious because we're we're, you know, in an age of digital marketing. Why has this approach worked so well for you? Because this is sort of
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AJ Riedel: with an analog marketing in a digital age.
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John Losey: Well, and I don't believe I use the word boring.
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AJ Riedel: You did.
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John Losey: I think when I'm pretty sure I didn't.
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AJ Riedel: Yeah.
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John Losey: Okay. But the thing is, I don't think relationships and connection, and any of that stuff is boring. Now, the reason I take that approach is number one. I dove into social media marketing. I dove into a lot of those things, and I found that number one. I'm probably not good at it because I don't believe in it.
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John Losey: I don't think that people 1st of all, if you're if you're getting your consulting or or consultant through Facebook, Linkedin Instagram. You're going to waste a lot of money because there's just so many out there. You can't vet them.
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John Losey: So that's 1 of the things. I don't think even Linkedin, which comes across as the more professional, whatever it is. Again, I keep a Linkedin profile. I'm on Facebook. I don't do Instagram because it doesn't match what I'm doing. And I have Youtube channels, all that kind of stuff. But that's more about people who see me do a workshop.
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John Losey: It's so that they can investigate me.
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John Losey: Is so that I can point them to my website and say, these are my services.
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John Losey: So to me.
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John Losey: you might have heard recently, although it came out a long time ago, the idea of connection before content.
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John Losey: and as when I heard that oh, that's great. But I'm a facilitator because I don't present content. I lead people through process still fits connection before process
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John Losey: in business, and this comes from a lot of the networking stuff. I come come to the realization. It's connection before transaction.
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John Losey: And if you want to have a sustainable business, if you are not connecting with not just your clients, but your potential clients. You're not going to be sustainable.
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John Losey: And so that that really, probably, if you want to describe my my marketing approach is connection before transaction.
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AJ Riedel: Okay, okay? And I want to go back. The I'm really intrigued by the workshops.
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AJ Riedel: So you said, sometimes they're paid, and sometimes they're not.
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John Losey: Correct.
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AJ Riedel: It sounds like that is a really good effective way to connect with potential clients.
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John Losey: Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
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AJ Riedel: Tell me, tell me more about you know, if if if if another self employed consultant talk listening to this, tell me, tell us more about how you go about getting workshops, how you sort of got into that space, and and how they could apply that.
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John Losey: Yeah, I 1st like
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John Losey: I would go around before I went into the corporate university. I would go around and speak to youth groups and camps and all that kind of stuff do orientations. And then, when I started working for I did an enterprise wide coaching, initiative enterprise wide employee, engagement, stuff, emotional intelligence. And so, as a part of our organization, we, the University, won all kinds of awards at the learning conferences.
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John Losey: and I would go, and I would present whatever we were doing on that topic. And that's how I got in with those organizations. When I left, I thought, that's where I needed to go back to, and I could get in there. But I realized that those aren't the people who would hire me.
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John Losey: Those the learning people aren't looking to bring in learning people.
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John Losey: And so I said, I got to think differently about this. So then I got in, and because I had a lot of presentation workshop experience and also a lot of design experience. I could come alongside different groups and say, You know, what are you? What's important to you right now. I started speaking with CEO groups
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John Losey: through like different associations. And I realized, you know what, while it's great to work with the Ceos, they're not the ones who make the vendor decisions unless they come in. And they say we will use this guy, the smart Ceos don't tell their people what to do, they might put it on their desk.
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John Losey: So I realized that probably my best course of action is the professional organizations
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John Losey: where I meet with the people who are making the decisions. Hr, for what I do. The Hr associations are perfect.
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John Losey: I just I last year I asked a bunch of Hr people, what are you looking for? And they said, Man, I wish our leadership would understand how hard it is for us when they
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John Losey: either don't have a hard conversation, or they do it poorly, because that becomes something comes across our desk and even becomes litigation.
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John Losey: So I went to the Hr groups and I said, how about if I came in? And I did? I've got about 8Â h, but I'll come in and do an hour and a half on showing you what are the components of how to have a tough conversation? And then here's some strategies to have those.
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John Losey: and if you want to bring me in with your leaders. I can actually do skill building in 4Â h or 8Â h what you want. And so just last week I did one. And I've got a bunch of nibbles right now. Hopefully, it's gonna land. But that's the idea is you give really really great stuff. And I say, give, because a lot of times. It's going to be giving away. But it puts you in front of the right people. The harder part is figuring out who the right people are
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John Losey: because you make all kinds of assumptions of who you should be talking to as a consultant.
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John Losey: But ultimately you've got to do a little bit of digging and talking with different groups of people to find out who what is the who is the person going to make the decision to bring you in.
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AJ Riedel: Right. Yes, that's critical, not not because there are other people who who will be interested in your topic, but they're not the decision makers. So you've given a workshop.
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AJ Riedel: and it's the decision makers that are in the workshop.
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AJ Riedel: How do you?
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AJ Riedel: How do you get business from them? What do you do after
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AJ Riedel: to to carry through on a on a you know, a relationship that you that was just starting through the workshop.
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John Losey: I focus on the relationship and not selling.
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AJ Riedel: Okay.
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John Losey: If you did a good enough job they'll come up to you and say, man, our people need this.
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John Losey: do a good job, deliver the right stuff, and don't try and sell your stuff for yourself.
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John Losey: Put it out there and say, this is what I can do. This is what I can do for you, you know. Be really careful how you introduce yourself. Don't make that your pitch, make it, hey? This is who I am, and this is what I do.
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John Losey: and at the end you can make yourself available, saying, Hey, I've got 2 different times during the week where Monday mornings I do a virtual coffee, break. Anybody who's interested could come in and just chat and talk through stuff and just have a cup of coffee Fridays. I do open office hours virtually.
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John Losey: and it was originally just for clients. But now anybody who shows up sometimes I don't have anybody. Sometimes I have 3, 4, 5 people in there all talking about what they're working on and helping each other out. And I'm not up there to solve problems. I'm there to facilitate relationships
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John Losey: and those things that's there's nothing in that for me other than cultivating relationships and connecting with people. But are those are the connections that pay off later on. It's not a tactic.
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John Losey: It's truly believing that if you, if you connect with people and you help other people connect, they're going to think about you, when when what you offer is needed.
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AJ Riedel: Okay.
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John Losey: Them.
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AJ Riedel: Yep, that's a very strategic, long-term way of looking at at client acquisition. It's not.
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AJ Riedel: I mean, client acquisition is very, very cold, and you know, Salesy, but what you're talking about, I mean, when it all comes down to it, it is a relationship.
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John Losey: Yep, yeah. And it's I mean, if you use the term client acquisition. Be careful, because pretty soon you're gonna believe that's what they are. They're acquire a acquisitions as opposed to people who have needs.
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John Losey: And people who are struggling with something or people who see potential.
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John Losey: And if if they become those client acquisitions, it's like the idea of personnel management. When you look, you forget that the people who work for you and with you are people. They're not resources.
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John Losey: They're more than resources. And I think that's that to me. It's it's 1 of those things, and maybe it's just me. But if I start talking in the way that a lot that I heard.
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John Losey: and not every like. When the social Meco media.
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John Losey: social media networking and marketing stuff came up. I heard a lot of people that it was all about strategy task, all these step-by-step things like that. The best people I met in that world were the ones who said, You know what you want to be really good on social media do good stuff.
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John Losey: and by that it's not just quality stuff, but
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John Losey: but stuff that people value. It's good, it's good for them. It's good for the community. Do good stuff. Otherwise, anything you do on social media isn't going to work at least long term.
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John Losey: Yeah. So.
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AJ Riedel: Okay.
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John Losey: Maybe I have pie in the sky. I'm a little Pollyanna when it comes to that stuff.
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AJ Riedel: I I want to tell. I want to cover. We're starting to wrap up. But I have a couple more questions.
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AJ Riedel: You're currently working on critical thinking training and AI content for non technical people tell us more about that.
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John Losey: Yeah. So I was asked by. But when I was in the large corporate university I was asked by a bunch of Vps, hey, our people need to be better critical thinkers. So what do you mean by that? They all said something different.
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John Losey: So whenever a top executive asks you for something. You better make sure you include it in your solution. So I stepped back, took all the stuff that they gave me, which is all really good stuff kind of made a higher. I call it quality thinking. And we created a model that I can give to elementary school kids.
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John Losey: focus, think, act, reflect, 4 steps easy to talk about, easy to do, but I can break that down for executives.
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John Losey: And a big piece of it is is that the focus piece, making sure that you're you. This is energy, the direct energy you need to do. But the idea is
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John Losey: people focus on on decision making. You hear a lot of stuff on decision making.
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John Losey: I'd rather focus on how you got to the options that you have to decide from.
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John Losey: because if you have a good judgment process.
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John Losey: Your list of possible options for your decision are all going to be good.
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John Losey: And so you're looking at the least bad one.
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John Losey: and the idea is decision is a moment. You make a decision in a moment, but you need to figure out, how do you go out and gather information? How do you synthesize that information to come up with possible actions? And those areas around the decision are far more important, because if you have crappy options, you're going to make a bad decision. If you have great options, it makes it really difficult
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John Losey: to make a bad decision.
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AJ Riedel: I.
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John Losey: And then with AI is a couple of years ago this came across our group's desk, and I run. These groups called guided practice groups started during the pandemic where we were trying to look at all the different platforms we had and decided, don't just don't read the User Guide. Read the user guides and then break it
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John Losey: and make sure that you're using all of the stuff that's within that platform. And if it won't do for, do do what you want.
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John Losey: add something onto it. So we have this practice of looking at platforms and trying to break them to our will. Well, we started doing that with AI several years ago, and we're still having that discussion. And just this morning we had a great discussion on AI,
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John Losey: and the idea is, I wrote an article in medium called How to use AI use AI without losing your soul.
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John Losey: and it falls right into my lap. I'm not a tech guy. But if you want to use AI without losing your soul, the very 1st thing you need to do is know yourself.
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John Losey: and then you treat AI like a intern. You never give high stakes, projects to an intern. When they 1st start off, you train them because interns they want. They'll give you. You ask them to do something, they'll give you what they think you want, not what you really want.
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John Losey: AI is, whatever platform you're talking about. It's going to give you what it thinks you want.
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John Losey: And so when I say, treat it like an intern, you're going to have to go through a long conversation with that AI, to get it to where it's going to get you what you want.
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John Losey: And so there's like one time prompts, rarely work.
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John Losey: You enter in a conversation and do it that way. The other thing is, figure out if it's like an intern, you need to figure out what you really love to do, and what you want to learn to do.
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John Losey: and you give AI everything else
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John Losey: if you really love to do it, keep doing it. That's what gives you joy in your work if you don't like to do it. But you want to learn. Don't give it the AI, because you won't learn
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John Losey: if you're not good at it, but you want to get better. Don't give it to AI. If you don't like it. You're not good at it.
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John Losey: and you don't want to learn it. That's where AI can come in and serve you. If you don't like to write emails, heck, use AI to help guide your emails, make sure
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John Losey: key thing to put in a prompt when you generate text. Please do not use typical AI words and phrases, and it'll pay attention to you because it's easy nowadays to tell if something was generated by AI
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John Losey: if you don't want to do spreadsheets, heck, they can design spreadsheets for you. They can do your Powerpoints for you. They can do all that kind of stuff, but if you like to do that, don't give it up.
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John Losey: Because that's what gives you joy in your work?
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John Losey: So those are the 2 pieces. Right now, I'm working on change management as well. So critical thinking, I'm doing a project for a group back East. Who is there? They know that there's big changes coming. So we're going to train their leadership on change management and understand organizations change people transition.
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John Losey: You can flip a switch and start a new program. But people don't. You don't flip a switch and get the people to buy in.
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John Losey: So we're going to train the leadership how to do that. But then we're going to give the frontline people the employees some ideas on, how do you navigate personal and professional transition? So that's going to be part online, there's going to be some virtual parts of it. And then I'm going to go back there in June and do some in person training with them.
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AJ Riedel: You kind of feels full circle because you said when you 1st came back to self-employed consulting, you were focusing on organizations going through transition. So a lot of what you had worked on then
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AJ Riedel: was getting the people to be able to make the transition. And now you're you're working with helping people make transitions.
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John Losey: Yeah. Yeah. And it's all I mean, when I was my boss, when I was working at the university, he'd stop. My actually my boss's boss would be, go to a conference, come back and throw a business card on my desk and say, John, figure this out.
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John Losey: and that was one time is employee engagement. One time it was emotional intelligence. One time it was coaching. And so my job was to go figure out this stuff, and it turns out that the I brought a lot of my own research in there when I started working there, and I did a lot there. And now I'm walking out with a bunch of a big menu that people can choose from as far as what I can help them with.
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John Losey: and because it's industry agnostic.
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John Losey: I don't really care what your business is. I want to help you figure out what's next for you, and figure out what's next for your business.
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AJ Riedel: That sounds like a good place to end
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AJ Riedel: a nice wrap up. Thank you for being my guest today on the thriving through podcast have a wonderful rest of the day.
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John Losey: Oh, it's my pleasure, and I and I hope all the consultants that are out here listening.
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John Losey: you're doing important work. Don't sell yourself short, but also make sure that you are focused on who you're serving. But motivated by what's important to you.
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AJ Riedel: Oh, love it, focus on who you're serving.
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AJ Riedel: but also on what's important to you, because that's going to drive the motivation.
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John Losey: Yep. Yep.
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AJ Riedel: Yep, wonderful. Thank you.
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John Losey: My pleasure.
