If your only goal in running a business is to earn money without proper regard for your team, your venture is doomed to fail from day one. Learn from Jamaul Ford on how to use empathy and an eye on legacy to create a successful leadership approach and a well-rounded team. In this episode, he shares valuable lessons from his long career in healthcare and presents how he applies them in prioritizing the human aspect when running a business. Jamaul also emphasizes the importance of cultivating a caring workplace culture, paying more attention to collaboration and communication, as well as embracing the “empowering to excel” mindset.

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Prioritizing Humanity In Legacy Building With Jamaul Ford

My guest is a little bit different from my usual guest. He’s got a long career in health care, and he now works with all kinds of businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs, taking them from 0 to $10,000, $10,000 to $100,000. What’s so interesting is he thinks about this from a human perspective. In this show, we talk a lot about how to create a legacy through empathy and through a commitment to the growth of the people around you.

What’s so fascinating for me is even with somebody who’s so different from me and just doing things that are so foreign to me in terms of his day-to-day, there are so many commonalities in terms of what we’re trying to do as people who create things in the world. Have a read, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Jamaul, welcome to the show. It’s really good to have you here.

Marc, I’m so glad to be here. I’m glad to be getting the chance to get to know you more and more from talking to you. I’m super excited to be a part of the show.

I gave a little intro before we started, but I’d love for you to share with our readers just a little bit about you and what your mission is in the world.

My name is Jamaul Ford. I’m a second-generation entrepreneur. I’ve been in the healthcare industry for many years. For me, I’ve hung my head on trying to help people be more empathetic to their customers, empathetic to their employees, making sure that there’s a good understanding and a good buy-in across the board on the products or the services that a company is offering. I believe that once you do that, you’re going to have a long-lasting actual business compared to a business that is only for a short period of time.

Empathetic Approach

I’m looking at your bio here, and you’ve got a long, rich history of working with lots of different people. When we talked earlier, we spoke a lot about the importance of an empathetic approach. I’m curious. How would you say an empathetic approach affects the course of success for either a small business or an individual to something larger?

One big thing that I always try to remember, whether it’s me trying to start a new project or I’m working with a potential client that is creating a new project or trying to expand their particular business or project, I always think empathy over ego. I believe that we sometimes get so locked into what we want to do that we don’t consider what the market is asking us for or what our actual customers are asking us for. I think it’s a blend of understanding what people and your community want, understanding what you have the tools to give them, and being committed to giving them what they want in your own way. I think it’s a blend of the two.

I love that empathy over ego. It allows you to do the voice of customer work that, whether you’re in healthcare, running a creative agency, or running your own business, which I would argue is a very creative pursuit, running a business, being an entrepreneur, being willing to put yourself in the shoes of someone else.

I will tell you this, Marc. I 100% agree with that. I think from a creative standpoint, it’s also super important outside of the business standpoint. I have been a professional bass player for years. I still play. I play at my local church, and sometimes I play festivals or different things like that. For me, as a musician, I’ve always said to myself, “I love to play. I can play all these licks. I can play all these things, but that’s not what’s important.”

The most important thing is that the actual crowd gets the message that the artist up there is trying to present. It’s very important for me all the time, even from that aspect, to get out of the way to be able to get the overall message that people came to receive out there. Sometimes, even as a musician, you want people to look at you and what you’re doing and not see the big picture. I definitely agree with that.

It reminds me of something that I read in Donald Miller’s book, the Building Your Story Brand book where he talks about the customer journey. For me, when I was reading this as an artist, it was a little bit hard because it’s not the same thing when you’re talking about business, but there are ways to think about it.

It’s like you’re not the hero. You’re working, whether it’s with a crowd or with a company. However you’re working, you’re guiding them through a journey. They are experiencing some transformation. I love music. I’ve been to some live music, not as much as probably a lot of people, but when you’re there, people talk about feeling transported or transformed. There are feelings and chemicals going on in your body when that stuff happens, all that stuff. You’re literally changing the chemistry of your body. You’re doing that for people out there.

It’s very much so super important from that standpoint. Even to go back to what you were talking about before, one of the greatest examples of actual being an artist and trying to help people tell the story is the book Pinocchio. The book Pinocchio is the ultimate example of that. People always think about Jiminy Cricket. Jiminy Cricket’s responsibility was to guide Pinocchio to being a real boy.

One thing that people never consider is Geppetto was the artist who created Pinocchio. That was his creation. Jiminy Cricket came in and said, “This is your creation. I want to make it better, but I can’t force it. I have to guide it. I’m not the hero of the story. Pinocchio is the hero of the story. I can only give him advice and tell him what to do.” I’ve always loved that example when it comes to actual, you’re not the hero. When you talk about being an artist and not being a hero, that’s the first thing that came to my mind.

I think even in the book, he mentions Jiminy Cricket now that you mention it. Sort of the ultimate guide. He literally doesn’t have the physique to make anything happen. He’s the conscience. He’s the voice of reason. He’s the voice of purpose for Pinocchio. I’d have to reread this. It’s been a while, I’ll be honest. I don’t know how well it ages, but I think when I think about that position as a guide and bringing it back to you, that’s what I hear. What you do for a lot of your clients is guide them, challenge them, push them through to bring more empathy to their communication, bring more collaboration, and give them the tools that they then have to execute with.

I believe that being in this particular space and being a thought leader in the space of consulting and business, you can get hung up on what you believe is best for that company, for that founder, for that CEO, for that COO, and just tell them you should do this. For me, it’s always teach a man to fish or give a man a fish. For me, I always step back. Many times, even as a consultant, you can see it. It’s like, “Do this,” but that’s not your responsibility.

Your responsibility is to consult and to guide them to the answer. That way, when you’re not there, they still know the pathway to get to the answer. Once again, empathy over ego. Many times, our ego gets in the way of us allowing the customer to be the hero. You want the accolades for coming up with the answer.

It can become a slippery slope. I believe that when you’re working with an actual customer, and you set a pathway, whether it be in the creative space or in the business space, when you put that roadmap together, that roadmap and you stick to it, is going to allow you not to get in the way of the customer. As a consultant, when I’m working with someone and, I say, “This is the goal that they have,” and I put that roadmap in place, I’m not the person that’s coming up with the ideas in the roadmap. I’m helping guide them down that road. That way, they can go back and forth down that road.

Collective Growth

That is a nice segue into something that we talked about before. One of the things you said you like to do is when you’re working with clients as consultants, sometimes you go back and forth. You advocate for a culture of open collaboration and collective growth. If you’ve got even a specific example of an individual again or an organization, what happens when someone shifts? Are there tools? You talk about the roadmap. Where does that fall on the roadmap? How does that sit within that framework?

Another thing I like to say, and I always like to bring it into a consulting standpoint, if I’m working with a company as a whole and not maybe an executive, I always say caring culture succeeds. What that means is, as the leader of the company, it’s not just about everybody seeing my vision, but it’s about them seeing themselves in the vision of the company.

Company leaders must not force everyone to see their vision. It is about them seeing themselves in the vision of the company.

One of my favorite books is Extreme Ownership. In Extreme Ownership, it dials into the mission. When you’re in the army, there’s a mission, and you may not agree with what your commander is telling you to do, but if you go rogue, you may die. The number one thing they tell you to do is this is the mission. You have to find yourself within the mission. You have to say, “What part of this mission I like? How can I fully invest in this mission?”

For me, when I’m bringing on a team member, working with someone that’s bringing on team members, I always, once again, bring it back to the values of the owner of the business and then making sure that they understand the values of their employees, because from there, the buy-in on both sides is very easy.

When I say a caring culture succeeds, it’s easy for me to care about my employees and for my employees to care about me if we have the same value system. Going from that, caring even goes beyond the company. I’m big on when I’m transitioning someone internally from a regular role to a leadership role. I never teach people how to be a leader strictly for my company or for that company.

I teach them leadership skills overall, and then I tell them how these skills apply to this company. For me, it’s investing in them to where if they can have success beyond my company, I don’t want to pigeonhole them to being with me. I think it becomes tricky because when you find a quality worker, many times we get so stuck that we don’t want them to leave. We do things as a company or as a business to try to make them want to stay, or we don’t invest in their success overall. It still is to the detriment of the company.

You’re working against the outcome because you don’t want them to leave. They’re your best worker. You should be investing in them, but that’s almost like a personal risk. If I’m creating this culture of openness and communication, I would offer a culture of coaching where you’re invested in people’s growth, there’s a chance that they may grow beyond. I can relate to this.

I think them growing behind your company is great.

Why is it great? I would love to hear you say why it’s great.

It’s great for a number of reasons, but for me, there are a few things that a company needs to have success. You need pipelines, and you need two major pipelines for me. You need a pipeline of customers and you need a pipeline of employees because those are the two things that pigeonhole most companies.

You want to find your target audience in a collective group. Let’s say I’m in the fitness industry. I’m going to go marketing to apartment complexes because I know there’s 800, 900 people that stay in this apartment complex. That’s a huge funnel for me. Same thing. If I’m working in the fitness industry and I need employees, I’m going to go to the local college and find kids who are maybe getting their degree in some fitness.

If I put together a system of training that is spectacular, I can win awards for my company through this system, which will attract even more employees. Really focusing on that individual employee will ultimately stop your growth from being able to train fully to be able to train the rest of your employees. I think that’s super important to always consider. Stopping someone else’s growth is stopping your growth on a multitude of levels.

Stopping someone else’s growth actually stops your growth.

I can almost hear the comment section going, “What about employee satisfaction and all that other stuff?” What I’m hearing you say is that by being dedicated to employee satisfaction, by offering opportunities for growth, education, the most top-quality training and opportunities, and that kind of thing.

In my world and my background as a creative, I run an art gallery. It’s almost one of the greatest joys of owning and running this art gallery. When someone says, “I’ve got bigger fish to fry now,” like I’ve grown out of the gallery. We sell small work. We sell work every day. I think it’s a great place. People have great things to say about it, but every now and then, an artist grows beyond where they say, “My prices have gone up. They’ve gone up too far. I need to go to a bigger gallery.”

I say, “That’s great.” There’s a bottom line somewhere. If you want to keep being in business, you have to attend to that. You have to make sure people are happy while they’re there. Along the way, if I’m known as a place where people come and they end up in a better place when they leave, if I’m the place that just churns people out and people are burnt out when they leave, we’re not talking about that. You’re not talking about not giving a crap about your employees.

Legacy Building

I will say even from that particular standpoint, in the even bigger picture, legacy. In talking about legacy, many people always want to figure out what their legacy is, what their business legacy is, and a legacy lives beyond you. It’s something that goes beyond your physical time here and your human experience. For me, I always think if my legacy is to live on beyond me, I have to fully invest in others because word of mouth, whether it be business or whatever, is the number one thing that’s always going to submit legacy.

If someone leaves your art gallery and you’ve invested full time and energy into them, they will always praise you. When they find those young creatives, those young people who are trying their best to find their way, and they see the success of this person who left your art gallery, the very first thing they will ask them, “How did you get here?”

Your gallery is going to be the number one thing that they say because you put full energy into the success of that person. I believe that is legacy. That is why it’s important to invest, whether it be in creatives or employees because employees are going to leave regardless. There are people who get hired and fired all the time.

My dad is of the generation you get a job, and you stick with it. That time has gone for a lot of professions.

I would say even from that standpoint, and even from the standpoint I used what you said, you said that you sell smaller works because you sell smaller works has probably a roundabout price range for those works. Generally, when artists gets recognition or starts to work on other things, that has to change, whether the size of the work changes or the price point of the work changes. Those are all factors that has to happen in order for that artist to feel success.

Same thing with employees. An employee comes to work for you. They are at a level. Unfortunately, inflation is large. We have a lot of things going on. As a company, you have to know not only your target audience but your target employees, too. Are you a starter job? Are you a job that’s for people in between the ages of 18 and 25? Are you a job for people between 26 to 35?

It gets very unique. Are you a job for single mothers? One of my favorite stories is a guy by the name of Pat Bet-David. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Pat. He’s an insurance professional. I think he sold his insurance company for $350 million or something like that. He runs these huge actual conferences now. He has something called Valuetainment.

When Pat started his insurance company, he had trouble finding employees. He niched down to Hispanic single mothers. That was the people he invested in because he understood their income level wasn’t where they needed it to be. He had the resources and tools to give them the skillset to be able to get them to the next level. I think that it’s important that he knows who his target employee is. I think it’s super important to understand that.

That’s a beautiful example. I have to say, still ringing in my ear is what you said about legacy. I think that’s maybe one of the best ways I’ve heard. If you want to have an impact in the world that goes beyond your time and your physical form, if you will, then you have to invest in others. I like it because it is, in a way, an influence, but it’s not about influence, power, and money. It’s about investing in others on whatever scale. I’ve heard this, and I’m going to have to look this up, but there’s some quote about like, “We live for as long as people remember us” or something like that.

That’s just a beautiful way of thinking about it. Ralph Waldo Emerson also said, “If we’re truly here to serve others, then we have to invest in ourselves.” There are two sides to that coin because people often get stuck in their minds about, like, “I feel selfish about building this thing because I’m building myself up.” If you’re doing that and investing that right back in others, then there’s that beautiful, virtuous cycle if you’re not hoarding all of that. That stood out to me as a beautiful way to phrase that.

One thing I will say about that. This actual event put it in perspective for me. The death of the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth. When she passed, it probably was like 8 or 9 months, and people were not talking about her. At least in the United States society, people were not talking about her as much as maybe when she was alive.

Why is that important? She is the most successful monarch in human history, I would say, at least for our somewhat of recorded history outside of the Roman Empire, because her reign was about 70 years. For England, it was the most financially successful time of the actual country. She has a ton of accolades. Now, as the world, maybe in England, they talk about her a good bit, but for us, we don’t mention her on day-to-day. Legacy has some timeline. Legacy has certain things. I don’t want my legacy to be one day. I want my legacy to have an extent.

That example brings the point, and I might have a slightly different view on what success is, but certainly financially, the royal family did great for the last 100 years, and she reigned. By those metrics, certainly successful. I’m not as up-to-date on how she served over there, but I will say it’s an interesting commentary. Not to get too political, but money isn’t everything.

It is an important factor in the success of a business. What I’m hearing you say, all the stuff we’re talking about, legacy and communication and empathy, I feel like this is in the air now. People are aware that there’s only so far you can get by focusing on numbers, getting people in the door, and getting employees in the door.

If you’re not focused on the human side of creating, whether it’s in this world, whether you’re creating a business or whether you’re creating relationships, whether it’s work or personal, if you’re not focused on the human side of the collaboration that you’re having, again, with a client, with a friend, with a partner, kid, if you’re just focused on these traditional success metrics, in my mind, that’s not a success to me. There are people who may disagree with me on that one. I have people leave and say, “Even though we’re not working together, you help me get to the next level.” I got kids. Someday, they may be grateful.

Yeah, they’re still kids. They hate me every other day. I’d like to think that somebody notices that we got them from nothing to being successful people in the world. Parenting is an amazing example of this. It is not a profitable business. You’re spending all kinds of money to invest in the growth. That’s maybe too far in the other direction.

I don’t think so. I will say, Marc, what you do, especially with the gallery, has such a profound impact on the idea of legacy because being creative and being able to tap into it goes back into empathy. It goes back into these things. When you’re able to tap into society, what’s going on in the world at that particular time, what your human experience is, everyone around your human experience, and you’re able to create a piece of art that transcends time and certain things.

Your human experience allows you to create a piece of art that transcends time.

That’s very impactful because when you leave, like even us, you are doing this show. It’s a form of art. It’s a form of leaving something towards your kids. It’s also a form of being able to show people beyond your timeframe here on what you did. That’s very important. I believe that at the end of the day, when done the right way and within the right spirit, I will use that term, and from the right perspective, it can have a profound impact beyond your timeframe. You talk about great books, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill, the Bible, and so many books.

Yeah, that’s certainly a very good example of something very practical.

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, like those particular things. They transcend time. I’ll say this, and obviously, if you want to transition to something else, that’s cool, but I always think the Roman Empire was 1,600 years. The Roman Empire was BC and AD. It was 1,600 years. The United States has only been here roughly about 500 years.

I always think to myself, I don’t know any Sumerians. I don’t know any Samaritans. I don’t know any Roman people. I know Marcus Aurelius, you know Julius Caesar, you know a few people, but there’s a lot of people in that timeframe where you don’t know what happened. You have a big idea. You learned it in school. Legacy has a timeframe.

Even the people we know now that has legacy, their legacy still have a timeframe. Martin Luther King’s of the world, the J.D. Rockefeller’s of the world. While these people have legacy for us in a thousand years, who’s to say they will be remembered? That’s why it’s so impactful and so important that you take the time to make sure that you do something in your lifespan that transcends yourself. Whether that’s creative or business, you want to make sure that you’re leaving some nugget beyond yourself.

That’s sometimes that’s very hard to do in business because you generally tend to find yourself being selfish. When you invest in your employees and not only from a financial standpoint, but from an education standpoint, from a well-being standpoint, that’s going to carry with them. Whether they’re not with you and they’re 70, 80 years old, and they’re like, “I loved my job,” you were that job. You were the person that allowed them to take off to be able to go to their kids’ baseball games. Their kids are going to remember, “My dad always came to my games.” I want to be them at my kids’ games. Legacy is super important, and it presents itself in a multitude of ways.

Culture Of Growth

That would be a great note to close on. I had another question that does relate, and it ties a couple of things together. This idea of legacy and creating what sounds to me like a culture of coaching, but this open communication and this investment in the growth of the people around you. I wonder if you have any specific suggestions if people reading are thinking of either growing. I know a lot of independent artists who are looking to bring people on to help them with marketing or sales or that thing. If you were to talk to folks like that or even small businesses, what’s one way or one piece of advice that you would say that could create that culture of growth?

I have a lot of sayings. I have a lot of maxims. One thing I always say. What I always use is empower to excel. For me, it’s important because micromanaging is a huge thing. As an artist, as a business, you’re real sensitive about your work. You’re real sensitive like that’s your baby. Your work is your baby, your business is your baby, and you want people to handle it a certain way.

You always have to remember you hired that person because they have expertise in some area, and you have to let them do their job. You can give them guidance on what’s important. You can teach them the standards of your business. You can teach them what your vision is, what your mission is, and how to get there.

That’s what 90 days of training is for. There becomes a time that you have to let people make mistakes, and that’s very hard as an artist because when you’re doing an art show and you have a marketer and a marketer sent out the flyers 2 days before, and they were supposed to send it out 2 weeks before, you going to want to fire that person. You’re going to be like, “No, you got to go.”

That’s a great example. I was thinking about my kids. We’re at the point where sometimes, you want to keep them in the lane so they don’t get hit their head or whatever. Sometimes you’re like, they got to touch the hot pan and learn. The example you gave is that’s even more scary. If you’re working for me or we’re working together and you have a set of responsibilities, maybe we have a partnership, and your work impacts me in a way, I can imagine that it would be incredibly difficult. What would be a different path? You want to fire the person. You screwed up. You had an impact on my business. I’m done. What would be another way to approach that situation?

I’m going to give you the worst example. I’m going to give you the best, most terrifying example you’ve ever heard. In 2019, I was operating at High-Level Speech and Hearing Center and we had an employee. I was working at the hospital at the time, and he was interning at the hospital. Whenever I transitioned to High Level, I felt like he would be a good fit as well. He wound up coming and working on High Level.

We implemented some of the systems that we were doing at the hospital. I trusted him a good bit. I trusted his skills there because I had taught him prior to that. At that time, I would say I was not a good leader at all. What wound up happening was we wound up getting this contract. We had this contract with this school. The contract was worth maybe $1.5 million. At the time, they wanted us to do additional work.

The work that they wanted us to do, they wanted us to implement therapy for the school. They told us they had about 200 kids they needed therapy for every week. It wound up being 400 kids. We were severely understaffed to do the work. I found myself scrambling, trying to find employees. I found myself trying to do a lot of different things to make it work.

What wound up happening with this particular employee was he was doing a lot of the work on his own. I’m always about team, let the team work. He was so like, “I don’t want anybody to mess up what I have going on. This is the system that I built, and I’m the only person that knows.” He found himself working at 1:00, 2:00 in the morning doing things.

What wound up happening, Marc, was, I want to say, in March of 2020, we wound up losing the contract, and we lost the contract because he had lied about something that he had done that he was supposed to do, and he didn’t do it. They were requesting information because they had to have it submitted by a certain period of time. He said he was going to have it done. He did not have it done in the timeframe. When we got that email, we not only lost the additional money from the additional work that they wanted us to do, but we lost the original contract. We’re talking about a $2 million annual contract. Your first mind tells you, “I want to let him go.”

That would be up there, yeah.

The thing about it was I stepped back and looked, and when those things happened, I looked at myself and said, “What could I have done better?” I’m not a good leader at this moment. I’m not where I need to be in order for him to have the success he needs. For me, I challenged myself to become a better leader. That was hard because what I had to do was not only educate myself on leadership, start reading more, get consultants, and get people to help me with leadership, but I had to reestablish that relationship with him of him seeing me as that leader as well.

That’s very common with me, even dealing with companies now. Many times, I’ll get places and sometimes the employees have lost respect for their leadership. That generally happens because you say you’re going to do something and don’t do what you told them you were going to do. An example would be in your gallery. If you had an artist come in, you said, “We’re going to put your stuff here. We’re going to do this, this, this, and this.”

You have the ability to do it. You said it with good intentions, but you have so many other things going on and you have so many other people that you want success for that you did not get that artist what they needed. They start to lose respect for you because you over-promised and under-delivered from your position. You never want to find yourself in that space.

I’m always conscious of that. I always keep a mindset of making sure that not empowering my team from a standpoint of you do the work. I’m just going to let you do it. I’m not going to be a part of the work. I empower from a standpoint of I’m knowledgeable about it. I’m here to help you. We are a team. You’re not by yourself. I’m not going to do it on my own. We’re working on this together. Even though I’m your boss, sometimes I can lead from behind, have you walk in front, and then turn back and ask me questions. For me, empowering to excel. That’s what that means. I’m big on that.

I like that visual. I was talking with a coaching client earlier. We talked about different ways of having a conversation where you’re eliciting, in the case of business, maybe called voice of the customer. In our world, it’s maybe a critique of the work. Something that’s intended to help you improve from the person who’s looking for the feedback.

Maybe it’s from the leadership, or maybe it’s a 360. Maybe it’s going the other way. What’s so effective is the way that I like to think about it that I’m hearing you say too, is you’re not sending somebody out on their own and good luck, you can’t call me. You’re leading from whatever position. Maybe you’re leading from behind. You’re facing in the same direction.

One of the conversational tools that I offered to this person earlier, if I’m talking to maybe somebody who is a client of mine, or somebody who’s bought some of my services or bought some of my art, if I wanted to have this conversation with them, I might offer them this framework. If you’re my boss, I’ll say, “We both want my work to be better. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Even if my work is already good, wouldn’t it be great if it was better? We both are oriented in that direction. That’s good for the company. That’s good for you. The format of this conversation that I love is it puts you on the same side of the table to say, “I want to hear from you what’s working well.” What is working about? Maybe I’m on time, maybe I’m always showered, I get my work done on time, whatever.

To say, “What are some things that you can think of that would make it even better?” It’s a less oppositional framework than like, “Pros, cons, what’s working, what’s not working.” It’s more like we’re sitting on the same side. We both want you to move forward because when you move forward, all the boats go up. What’s working well, and what are some things that would help me improve that would help me get even better.

It’s less about like, “You’re not doing this the right way.” It’s more like, “If you added that column there, that would help improve your speed or whatever it is.” I like that example that you gave because the visual for me is that you’re all moving in the same direction. You’re moving with them. You’re right next to them, you’re there, you’re available, and they feel supported, which I think is a big part of empowerment.

One other example I’ll give you quickly is I don’t know how many national football games you’ve watched. I played football in college. I played football in high school. There are different coaches for different things. During the game, there’s always a coach that’s in the press box. He’s up there and he’s watching the game from a downward view and seeing what’s going on.

At halftime, NFL, there’s a lot of interaction between that coach and what’s going on with the players on the sideline. Generally, in high school, sometimes, that coach comes down at halftime and tells people what he’s seeing and what adjustments he needs them to make. The thing about that particular coach is he has a big-picture view of what’s going on on the field.

When he tells a certain player, “I need you to block that guy this way. I need you to run the route this way.” The response of that player will either be yes, sir, or it will be that they tell that coach why he’s having trouble doing that. That coach has the big picture perspective, and he’s not in the woods, like on the ground with them, he has to consider what that player is saying.

Maybe there’s a physical aspect where the player he’s going against is stronger than him. What the coach is asking him to do, he can’t physically do. Maybe the player in front of him is faster. He’s like, coach, that guy’s whooping me every time. Coach, I can’t get past him. I know you want me to do that, but I’m having trouble doing that.

Now, because he still had that big-picture perspective, the coach can come up with an alternative solution. He brings the whole team into the solution because the individual solution would not work for that player. For me, leading from behind looks like that. It’s like, “This is what I believe you should do. You give me feedback. After I get your feedback, we’re going to put together a strategy and we’re going to go implement that strategy.” Yeah, definitely.

Closing Words

I love that example. I love that image. You have somebody whose role it is to look over the whole situation, and that’s an important role, but it’s also important to be whatever that means to you on the field. You can communicate back and forth and say, “You have this idea about a direction. Let me tell you about a couple of things here. Go ahead and tell me what you think we should do to adjust. We execute.” I love that. I got to close things up here. I think we talked for like an hour and a half. Before we go, I’d love for you to share if people are interested in finding out more about you and what you do, where can they go?

If you want to find out more about me, you can go to @JamaulTheMaven on Instagram, Jamaul The Maven on Facebook, and @JamaultheMaven on X. Also, I’m launching a community, the Maven Mastermind. You can go to MavenMastermind.io. In the community, there’s a waiting list. At this particular time, you can sign up for the waiting list to join the community.

Once you join that waiting list, you will get one of the first courses, and it’s absolutely free. The course is getting your first 100 customers in 90 days. It’s a step-by-step guide to getting your first 100 customers for whatever you’re doing. Generally, a lot of times, you would get a course, and you were supposed to have success with that course.

For me, I think courses and community coincide. It’s not just about giving you the information. It’s about helping you along. This community is super important to not only give people information but also let them collaborate and work together to have ultimate success. Success is a team game. It’s not an individual game. You can’t have individual success, but even the greatest tennis players in the world have a team behind them, supporting them whenever they hit the stage. My goal and the goal of the Maven Mastermind is to give you that support.

Success is a team game. You cannot have individual success. Even the greatest athletes in the world have a team behind them.

Jamaul, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been a real pleasure to have you here.

It’s been great, Marc. I appreciate it.

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Thanks for reading, everybody. That was such a great episode and such a great conversation for me. As always, we would love it if you liked this episode if you rated the show, if you subscribed to it and if you shared it with friends. I believe that unleashing people’s creativity and finding ways to do that can change your relationships and your business, and I believe this can change the world. Thanks for reading, and if you ever need to find me, I’m at MarcScheffCoaching.com. I’ll see you next time.

Important Links

• Jamaul Ford
• Building Your Story Brand
• Pinocchio
• Extreme Ownership
• Think and Grow Rich
• Meditations
• @JamaulTheMaven – Instagram
• Jamaul The Maven– Facebook
• @JamaultheMaven – X
• MavenMastermind.io

About Jamaul Ford

Jamaul, known as “Jamaul the Maven,” is an accomplished second-generation entrepreneur whose business journey transcends mere commercial success. His mission is rooted in fostering growth, empathy, and community. With a profound belief in the power of understanding and connecting with people, Jamaul’s approach to business has always centered around helping others thrive. Having navigated the challenges of scaling diverse businesses, Jamaul’s expertise ranges from elevating startups from zero to 10k to steering enterprises towards the 100k milestone and beyond.

His success is grounded in his commitment to forging genuine connections and fostering community building. A leader who believes in being actively involved with his team, Jamaul values learning from every experience and advocates for a culture of open collaboration and collective growth. His passion is sharing these universal lessons with others. Jamaul offers not only strategic guidance but also real-life insights and the emotional nuances of growing a business with empathy. He is dedicated to inspiring and empowering others to pursue their own journeys of growth and success.