Level Up - A Leadership Podcast

Monte Pedersen enjoyed a 35-year career in hospitality management before deciding to form his own leadership and training firm focused on Strategy Execution Management. In this episode, James and Monte discuss some basic concepts of strategy formation, execution, and how it all ties to taking care of the people who make up your company.

Key takeaways offered in this episode will help leaders to examine their own company’s strategy execution and their role in creating a culture around accountability to one another. Get out your pen and notebook! This episode has a lot of nuggets of wisdom throughout.

Nathan Jones is a former college football coach turned senior living advocate. Nathan was introduced to the world of senior living just out of college, and from the moment he first stepped foot into a senior living community, he was hooked. Since that day, Nathan's mission has been to change the negative perception surrounding aging & senior living through sharing authentic stories of older adults. He does much of this work through his company, Dash Media.
In a prep conversation together for a different episode topic, I learned that Nathan hadn't been returning my text because he was in the hospital. It led to an important conversation together about the nature of work, self-imposed hustle, and the need for purposeful pauses - especially as an entrepreneur in a passion-fueled industry like senior living.
The pressures of keeping up with and responding to everyone, talking about how we're feeling, taking breaks, being a good leader... these and so many more factors of running a business can easily become a compounding snowball of depleting mental well-being.
For content creators like Nathan and me, it is also challenging to experience impactful moments without our brains shifting in the moment to how this will translate to a good story. Ironically, this pulls us out of the moment and fully experiencing it.
This was an important conversation about entrepreneurship, content, mental health, and everything in between.

"Don't just think positive thoughts. Feel positive feelings." This is just one of many golden nuggets of wisdom I gained from my conversation with Dana Garnett, a conflict management strategist and professional mediator. Dana is an insightful conflict expert who helps businesses and teams clear the deepest rifts to working in harmony fast. Founder of The Mindful Strategy she applies her vast business and life lessons learned to help improve business and social dynamics.
In this episode, we explore what causes conflict to exist - both in individuals and on teams. She shares her insights on the elements of a successful team and how conflict arises when one or more of those elements is not in sync with the others.
How does taking someone else's position actually help you? What's the harm in leaders ending conflict with "let's agree to disagree"? Can leaders actually get better at managing conflict or is it something you troubleshoot when it comes up?
Let's dig in. Your conflict management strategist is dialed in.

Sean is a turnaround guru. In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times.
In the COVID era, just about every company experienced elements of turnaround. In this first segment of a two-part episode, Sean shares some of his insights and advice to leaders to draw lessons from our collective experiences during the pandemic, how to avoid pitfalls and ways to watch for warning signs within their own organizations that things may be headed south.

[Content Disclaimer: this episode explores themes of loss, including death by suicide.]
Loe Hornbuckle is the owner and operator of Sage Oak, a network of boutique care homes for seniors. I had the opportunity to visit him and the team at Sage Oak Denton and saw their warm and caring team in action.
Loe has a bit of an "outlaw" streak, which he credits his late father for imparting on him. I can relate.
In this episode, we learn about Loe's story and how his love and passion for senior care came to be. He shares his thoughts about how other people can become a successful entrepreneur in the senior living industry (or whether they should).
"It's definitely daunting, and it should be," he said about becoming entrepreneurial in this space. He advised how someone who is considering this path should treat each job as a learning opportunity, respect the business, and go into the path of business ownership in senior living with clear eyes.
We also spoke about personal loss, grief and how to move forward in life and leadership. Loe and I would like to dedicate this episode to his friend and business partner, Austin Good. If you would like to and have the means, please consider donating to the same organization Loe supports in memory of Austin.
https://naminorthtexas.networkforgood.com/projects/91738-main-giving-page