The Entrepreneur DNA - How To Lead With Authenticity Build Legacy Thrive Through Chaos Stan Gibson

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Start your clarity journey today — take the free Chaos to Clarity assessment and download the Double Down On You toolkit at https://leadwithstan.com In this episode of Entrepreneur DNA, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stan Gibson—a best-selling author, speaker, and host of The Inspiration Podcast. Stan shares his incredible journey from being a walk-on college football player to helping his team go from worst to first and win a national championship. We talk deeply about leadership, systems vs. talent, emotional intelligence, wellness routines, and building legacy through masterminds and self-awareness. Stan drops truth after truth—from real life to business to personal development—and gives away two free tools you can download today at leadwithstan.com. This episode is for any entrepreneur navigating chaos and looking to find clarity, identity, and direction again. About Stan: Stan Gibson is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, and leadership coach. He’s the founder of The Resilience Lab, a mastermind for high-performing entrepreneurs and executives who want to lead with clarity, emotional intelligence, and legacy. As the host of The Inspiration Podcast, Stan shares powerful stories of growth, systems, and self-awareness to help leaders thrive in chaos and build lives of purpose. Website: https://leadwithstan.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadwithstan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadwithstan Podcast: The Inspiration Podcast with Stan Book: Living a Rich and Intentional Life – available on Amazon About Justin: After investing in real estate for over 18 years and almost 3000 deals done, Justin has created a business that generates 7 figures in active income through wholesaling and fix and flipping as well as accumulating millions of dollars of rental properties including 5 apartment buildings, 50+ single family homes, and 1 storage facility Justins longevity in real estate is due to his ability to look around the corners, adapt to changing markets, perfecting Raising private capital, and focusing on lead generation which allows him to not just wholesale and fix & flip, but also accumulate wealth through long term holds. His success in real estate led him to start The Entrepreneur DNA podcast and The Science Of Flipping podcast and education company, and REI LIVE where he’s actively doing deals with members. He has coached and mentored thousands of aspiring and active investors over the last decade. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is up? The Entrepreneur DNA. Welcome back. I have another incredible guest. This guy is very dynamic, best-selling author, nationally recognized speaker. He is one of those leaders of the leaders that we are all aware of. Runs an incredibly successful mastermind for said leaders. And his national football team went from worse to first and won the National Football League. Stan Gibson is here, my friend. How are you? doing awesome. Thank you so much for having me on, Justin. I'll tell you what, you're crushing it, my friend. I'll tell you what, I've been listening to a lot of your episodes, and I'll tell you what, you know, Degrozias, Tim's story. I'm on the Peloton, dude, and I'm like cranking, and I think I'm burning it up. And so what you're doing, keep doing it. I love your episodes, and you put a lot of pressure on me to have to stand up to those standards, but thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Thank you for those kind words. I do my very best to deliver for the audience. And so I know you have a podcast yourself. And I'd invite all of my listeners and

my viewers to join your podcast. The name of your podcast is. Thank you. It's the inspiration podcast with Stan. You know, I'm not as far along. I'm in my second season, but I'll tell you what, it's absolutely crushing it. We made it to the top of the charts for Apple and Spotify in week one. And a lot of us just been, we've just had some really great guest. And, you know, I really think there's a lot of imposter syndrome out there. I think there's a lot of people trying to find out how to dig from the bottom and how to elevate and co-elevate. You know, it's not that I search out for ex-athletes, but, you know, I had

Carly Patterson who won a gold for the U.S. in the Olympics in 2004 in gymnastics. And just her story about how we almost didn't even feel the team that year. Because as we went from the world, and everybody was hurt, and they said, now, we're going to do it. And, you know, last week I popped up

one with Lauren Sizzler, who's the ESPN sideline reporter. And she lost both parents when she was 18 within five hours of each other due to fentanyl. And And so just these stories, they're just grabbing people. And so I love it. I'm just having a ball with it. So the inspiration podcast is Stan, if you're bored and you're, you haven't listened,

you've listened to a lot of Justin Colby and the DNA, you know, give me a shot. Let's let's, let's do it with you. I invite you guys to listen to Stan. Stan is dynamic. That is why he's here. That's why I invited him here. That is why he's going to, he's going to crush this episode for sure. We have a lot to talk about.

We probably go four hours, but we'll try to limit it here to a reasonable amount of time. You mentioned something when we're off camera that I think really resonated with me is someone who's an ex-athlet. I always consider myself an athlete. I don't feel like I ever lose that, although probably can't jump or run as fast. So I say that because you have a story about your youth, let's call it, in the college days and how this story of yours really is applicable to life, to business, to marriages, to everything that we do in the real world. I just think this story is something that everyone needs to hear from you. So talk a little bit about, you know, your experience there at Eastern Illinois and what you did going from worst to first and how that all played out.

Yeah, Justin, thanks. I'll tell you what, it's a, it's a story that's just as applicable today as it was three to four decades ago. And I hate to say that, but it was a lot ago. I was a pretty good high school football player, Justin, but, you know, I really didn't have any D1 offers. And, you know, the best I could do is a D2 offer at Eastern Illinois University. And I came on as a what's called a preferred walk on it. And for those of you that don't know what that is, you're basically asked to go do the same things all the scholarship guys do, but you're kind of on your own dime. And that was okay because, you know, I had been hosted when I went there to be recruited by a guy that went in the third round to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

And I could just see this team. I could see this team was developing. It was growing. They didn't have success in the past, but I wanted to be a part of something that was growing. And so I get there. And yeah, these guys, they're massive. and they run fast and they're bench pressing the weight room. And it's just, it's like, oh, this is going to be fun.

They lose their first game. They lose their second. They lose every game of the year until their last one. When they go one in 10, voted one of the worst teams in college football. And, of course, you don't keep your job when you go one in 10. So they terminated the coach. And they brought in a new guy. And they brought in a guy by the name of Darryl Mudra.

His nickname was Dr. Victory. And he walks into this cold, smelly locker room. And he looks at us. And, you know, there's like 85 of us. And, you know, we're just coming off of a bad season. And he says something kind of pathetic and prophetic. He says, I know nothing about football guys. And when you're coming off a one in 10 season,

you don't want to see your new coach come in with that much authenticity. But that's what he was doing. he was being authentic. And he was telling him, he said, in fact, guys, I'll tell you what, I'm going to be coaching from the press box because I can see better up there, but I really don't do much game day coaching. And he said, you know what, but here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to set you up with some really good coaches.

And he did. Within a week, he had hired a guy that had just played at Eastern Illinois three years earlier. And he brought him in. And it was Mike Shanahan. Mike Shanahan, who's got four Super Bowl reams. And Mike didn't even have his son yet, Kyle, who's head coach for the Niners. And he brings in, he brings in, you know, a few more guys that, you know, are now in the Coaches Hall of Fame.

And they're all in their late 20s and 30s. So what he's doing is he's, A, showing authenticity. But yet he's also surrounding us with good coaches. And he saw something else very unique. He says, you know what? Well, I'm going to bring in good coaches, each one of you. Each one of you are coaches yourself. Because you know if you're getting your ass kicked or not out on the field.

We don't know. And until we have that understanding, can we make in-game adjustments? And those adjustments, you know, allow us to go ahead and to create new strategies as the game goes on. How many organizations today, Justin, would absolutely crush it if they're taking a lot of their advice from the field? I mean, it's just dynamic. And, you know, here's the unique thing. Well, he brought in some good coaches. He also kept the majority of the coaches from the one in ten team.

You see, they weren't bad coaches. They were great coaches in bad systems. We ran an offense. We ran a defense. We ran some systems that didn't work for the coaches. And it was the same thing with the players. And let me just not bury the headlines. We went from one in ten to national champs in 12 months.

Now, I registered that year. They moved me to from tight into offensive center and I needed to throw on 40 more pounds. But I still got to keep close enough to the action. These were still all my brothers. I mean, we were all still in the same fraternity. And so I got a close-up view. And I always said I learned everything I needed to know about

people-centric leadership when I went to college, just not in the classroom. I got to learn it on the football field. And, you know, the final thing he did because, because, again, we had not. 90% of the players from that 1 in 10 team, Justin, still winning national championships. They weren't bad players. They were great players in the wrong position.

We moved our quarterback out to wide receiver. We moved our linebacker where he had to think too much to the edge rush where he became All-American. We had literally seven guys that went pro off of that team. They were great players in a bad system. And that's how a lot of organizations are designed to date. They've got great employees. but they don't have the trust,

they don't have the authenticity. They're not asking them to be part of the coaching team. Yeah. And so that's the parallels that we're working with today. And, you know, in all honesty, I wasn't going to put on that 40 pounds. It wasn't going to have. And so after my sophomore year,

I just said, you know what, this has been a tremendous experience, but it's time to move on. And lo and behold, within about two months, I was called and asked to become the assistant head coach for a high school, about 20 minutes away for my junior and senior year at college. And I took these very principals because when I walked into this high school, number one, you don't get asked to be the assistant head coach if the team's doing well, especially two weeks before the season starts. And I show up in our first game, we lose 89 to 6. And I don't know if I was more surprised that they scored 89 or the fact that we actually scored 6.

Both were absolutely surprises to me. But I will tell you what, the good thing about juniors is they become seniors. And when you put in these same principles of taking and letting them, you know, I always say, you know, when leaders learn to coach, employees learn to lead. When leaders learn to coach, employees learn to lead. So when we threw the responsibility back on these kids to get better, we showed up the next year. And we played that same team that had beat the same team that had beat us. 809 to 6. They were still ranked in the top 10 in the state. And I'd love to tell you that we won that game. We did not, but we lost six to nothing. We had developed that much. In 12 months,

we did the same things. We gave them new uniforms, just like we did at Eastern Illinois. We put white shoes on these guys. They could run faster, jump higher. We just instilled a confidence and surrounded them with good coaches. And I brought some of the other coaches over from Eastern Illinois that weren't playing as well. And so those are the paradigms, Justin, that I think work. in today's environment, today's chaotic times they're the same paradigms

that I bring to my clients, I bring to my masterminds, I bring to my keynotes, I bring these paradigms and they work. Stan, you know, you bring in this idea of systems. I was just talking about this. I'm actually a 49er fan through and through.

So you brought up our guy, Kyle. I believe more, the older I get, Your story and your examples are the truths, right? Meaning, it doesn't matter your skill level if you're in the right system. If you have the right game plan, you can be literally the last pick of the draft and get paid $250 million in your three. It is because you were put in the right system and then you were able to execute. So I've seen this in my own business where as good as I am, I may not have been surrounded by the people that could keep me running as fast as I need to run.

And I've taken my losses. I've taken my lumps. So I would tend to agree with you through and through that the key on so many different verticals, business, life is the strategy that you're playing more so than skill sets that you have. because that can be learned. So I'm getting your mastermind. Give me an example of your mastermind. Let's talk about your mastermind for a second. What do you find to be a common mistake,

myth, or something that you feel a lot of times you come across people that need some correction on these strategies? Yeah. And before we go there, great bringing up Mr. Irrelevant, Brock Purdy, by the way.

I'm a big Iowa State fan as well. My daughter went there, My son-in-law played there. And so, yeah, you know, Mr. Irrelevant brought into the right system. And you're right, you can make a lot of money. You can be a superstar if you're in the right system. No doubt about it. So I do have, yeah, I'm a host of the Mastermind.

And it's the Resilience Lab. And I'll tell you what, we really base it on four tenants because I really believe that there are a lot of the people I work with are saying, take me from chaos to clarity, help me understand how to, Number one, you know, gain trust, authenticity, have the emotional intelligence that it takes today, which is very different than it was 10 to 15 years ago. Help me to have the self-awareness, the team awareness, help me to understand how to have greater clarity and build a culture that trust and works from the bottom up. Again, I go back to when leaders learn to coach, employees learn to lead.

And so we talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about the emotional intelligence. I take all my clients through a series of assessments because I don't think there's one assessment that just fits everybody. I take them through. There is a part of the Clifton Strength Finders, but I actually work with my good friend Rex Miller out of Texas

where we've developed something that even takes strength finders multiple levels to deeper, where you can have what we call the genius paragraph. We can show you a paragraph that you're the Katie Ledeckie, you know, Michael Phelps of your swim lane, You are, without a doubt, that is where you belong. When you stay in that swim lane, you can conquer anything. You've got a magic trick that people marvel.

And when you understand that swim lane, and you understand that that swim lane has shadow, we call it kryptonite, they can also become weaknesses. And when you build that paragraph around your kryptonite and you start to have this awareness and your team starts to understand you better and you start to understand them better, then authenticity, trust. All these things start to come to the forefront. And we start to see cultures start to change. We start to see budgets that are met.

We start to see deadlines that we come in ahead of deadlines. So I'm a big believer in emotional intelligence. I really think that with artificial intelligence, everybody has a chance to be the smartest person in the room. But it's emotional intelligence. It's the ability to come in and have the right people skills, the right authenticity, the right trinity, the right trust. trust to lead teams. So that's the first component is we go in and we work deeply, deeply on

those elements. The second is well-being. I wrote a book called Living a Rich and Intentional Life, and it goes into a lot of the neuroscience on sleep, nutrition, exercise, visualizing, essentialism. It goes into all the core elements of well-being. I really, truly believe, Justin, that we're putting everybody first and we're saving, saving ourselves to be taken care of last.

I cannot tell you how many clients I'm coaching right now. And it's like, you know what? I'm gassed. I'm done. I just can't do it anymore. And when we talk about it, I say, how selfish are you being? And I mean,

Not selfish enough. You're absolutely right. Not selfish enough. And you know what? It isn't just the morning routines. Because I'll tell you what, I've even doubled down on my evening routines. My evening routines, you see,

I'll tell you what, I always say, you know, tomorrow starts tonight. Next week starts this week. Next quarter starts this quarter. But in the evening, you know, I was neglecting. You know what? All it takes is I want that water bottle

already filled. I want my creatine in it. I want my lemon water in it. I want it in the refrigerator. I don't want to have to think about it the next morning. I want the coffee. All we got to do is hit the button. I want my workout clothes already laid out. I want my clothes I'm going to be wearing already laid out. I want all the decisions that I have to make the following morning already made because you know what? We make over 35,000 decisions a day. As adults, we make over 35,000. And sometimes we make them by 6 o'clock in the evening. And guess what? We're finding the Cheetos. We're finding the Cheetos. We're something to binge and there goes our evening, there goes tomorrow, there goes next week. So taking more preparation, it's systems. How do you use systems? How do you use routines? I teach a lot of

workshops on routines and why routines and habits will always trump discipline. It'll always trump discipline. So I have a lot of workshops. And that's what we have in this mastermind. And this mastermind, by the way, there are tools I want to give you. I will give them to you at the end of this episode. If you go to leadwithstand.com, leadwithstand.com, I will guarantee you, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you two things. I'm going to first, I'm going to give you what I call a double down on you graph. And it's simple. It's simple. But it's got all the neuroscience of sleep, nutrition, exercise, essentialism, visualization.

It's got all of the elements that make you better, but it's also got all the neuroscience. What are the four to five things that happens in your brain that happens in your body when you have appropriate hydration? What goes on? And what are the resources? Because I really want you to have a bigger why than a watt. I know that you know what to do. But until you know why, you're never going to go ahead and take it to the next level. So that well-being, that ability to have sustainable energy, that's the second component.

The third does get into more systems. It gets into how to use artificial intelligence for good, not evil. I use artificial intelligence all the time. I use it as my own coach. When I know how to use artificial intelligence, it's really a beautiful machine. And I realize there are some people that will take it and make it, you know, do horrific things with it. But I believe that artificial intelligence is here and it can help you. And the fourth tenant, the fourth tenant is leaving a legacy, creating and leaving a legacy.

We all need to find out what that means. I'll tell you what, Justin. I'm working with so many, so many executives that are ready to age out. They are ready to move on. And I cannot tell you the fear they have of not having left a legacy, a legacy at home, a legacy in the workplace, a legacy in the community. And I wish they wish they would have had this advice in their 40s, in their 50s, is they were developing and thinking about leaving a legacy.

And there's still time. and I'm really going to work with these individuals because I really believe that there's a lot of intellectual capital that's walking out the door. And nobody wants it. Everybody's moved on. And they're saying, I'm right here. And so I'm looking to bring those individuals into my resilience lab mastermind

and introduce them to the people that say, give us this wisdom, give us this knowledge. And so, anyway, that's what the resilience lab is. And again, go to lead with stam.com. And I will give you two things. Again, I'll give you the double down on you, and I'm going to give you an assessment from chaos to clarity, and you're going to find out how you chart out as it relates to your emotional intelligence, as it relates to your well-being, as it relates to the systems you're using, as it relates to leaving a legacy.

It's very simple, very simple. It takes eight minutes to take. And again, I may not be your jam, but if you take it, we talk about it, I will find someone that says, hey, here's where you're, here's where you're, can, here's where you can find the appropriate coach, the appropriate mastermind. That's my guarantee to you. That's my guarantee, Justin, is that I will help you find the right avenue. You talk a lot about chaos and clarity. I'm sure you've read this, but Jordan Peterson put out a great book, The 12 Rules of Life, I believe. Jordan Peterson, 12, but he talks about controlling chaos. Now, he tended in the book, he went more biblical, right, around the chaos of the biblical stories and Adam and Eve and then the control.

But I believe the strength is in knowing who you are and then where your strength is because I know people who live in control. They need to know what the outcome is. They don't want to take risk. They control all things of their environment. And they're okay with that. And there's probably some psychological background behind that that I'm not, you know, educated enough to talk about. I tend to live more in the chaos. The challenge, and Jordan talks about this.

And maybe you probably, I would guess you, you support this. But he talks a lot more about the chaos has big swings. You have big highs. You have the opportunity of growth and expansion and all these amazing things that comes within the moments of chaos. you also can fall all the way to the bottom in those moments. And he talks about this blend of being able to have one foot in both of control and chaos. And the blend can really give you the strength of what it needs. Now again, he kind of goes into biblical part.

But I find myself as a leader, as a driver, and a lot of people in your mastermind, I'm sure similar to me to some extent that we tend to live in this chaos because we can. because to some extent we feel like if we can be chaotic, then we can allow ourselves to control the chaos. Sometimes you can. Sometimes you can't. I've definitely been on the other side where I can't control the chaos and it hurts financially a lot.

2024 was that year for me. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about your, you call it clarity and chaos. I want to lean into that message because I do believe a lot of these entrepreneurs out there are in moments of chaos a lot. And there's reasons behind that. So when talking about clarity and chaos, how would you define it?

What do you think people should be utilizing? Well, I think you're absolutely right, Justin. And I'll tell you what, never shy away from chaos because I'll tell you what. Chaos, you know, that's where growth happens. That's where growth happens. You can never define it. You can never see it while you're in it, but it will guarantee you. You look back a year later and yes, you know, the chaos is like, what did it take from it?

What did I learn? I will tell you what. A lot of this comes down to self-regulation. It comes down to self-awareness. again, I believe that when you know who you are and you know who you're not, when you have that better understanding and you're in a time of chaos, you know how to regulate out of it better. And that's why I have such a strong practice around identity transformation. And I really strongly believe, again, when I work with clients and in masterminds, we work on identity

transformation. What is that? I firmly believe that, yes, when we're born, we have a lot of fears that, you know, we're just born with, it's part of our DNA, part of your name of your broadcast era. But we have a lot of fears that were already established. But I believe that most of our beliefs, most of our morals are learned behaviors. And I believe that we take a lot of those behaviors and we process them. and we put them into the amygdala, we put them into the part of the brain that becomes truths. And unless we can unlock that through neuroplasticity, which is the ability for our brain to grow, whether we can unlock that through the reticular activating system, which helps filter,

what do I want to believe that's false and what do I want to believe that's true? Until we start to understand that our brain is bigger than any data center we could build on the face of the earth, but we're not using it. And when you start to have that self-awareness, when you start to understand what you're your identity is, whether you're in chaos or whether you're in clarity, you know how to navigate the landscape so much easier. And that's what I really believe. So when we take, when we work with clients, again, I believe that we have to unlock all the limiting beliefs. We have to go in and we have to understand, you know, when you're in chaos, what have you been told? What is it you believe?

and we have to unlock it and create a new identity. And I'll tell you what, I've done a lot with mine, Justin. I have really worked hard over the last two to three years making sure that I understand my limiting beliefs. You know, who does God say I am? You know, what is my identity? Where do I show up best? And I will tell you right now, connecting dies and connecting people,

I have come to that conclusion that, you know what, that's probably the best, one of the best things I can do as a servant leader is I just seem to have this magic trick of connecting dots and I connect people. I connect probably five to ten people a week to somebody that can help them, maybe more than I can. But that's why I like masterminds.

That's why I like masterminds because I think that, you know what, while I can help a lot of people and I can connect them with 10 people just off the, you know, top of my head that can help them, when you put 15 people in there, now you've got 150 connections.

You've got a thousand years of experience. You've got a system that can help you when you're in chaos, somebody else is in clarity. And when you're in, you know, both sides can absolutely help one another. That's co-elevating. And I'm working with the CEO right now. And we have come on that word of co-elevating and how to be an ambassador as, you know, of the company that he operates, co-elevating.

And so that word has really kind of come and become, I think, kind of a mantra and a foundation for me recently is how do we co-elevate. And I think we do that, whether we're in chaos or we're in, clarity. It's so I'm also huge advocate of masterminds because I believe about the collective experience is let's just use an example of 50 people, 50 entrepreneurs in the room. Being a part of my podcast, being a guest on my podcast, I put you into a non-formal mastermind. All of my guests network with one another within the the WhatsApp community. And it's because I really believe in the collective experience, we can share resources. We can share experiences. We can lift each other

up you know Stan has gone through experiences that I haven't gone through yet but as I'm going through I can go in there and say hey Stan you know have you experienced this thing and in you know I'm saying this now to you because of how much I believe it however in practical use it's difficult and the reason being is pride and ego tend to get in the way right so I'll give my own example and I'll lean into you 24 was a brutal year for my real estate business I run many businesses one in my main vertical is real estate. I've done it for almost 20 years now. I have a platform. People look up to me. I'm a leader in the space, et cetera. And while going through the challenges I ended up going through, which is I had a contractor essentially used criminal activity and fraudulently give me

scopes of work, et cetera, I didn't speak up. I wasn't authentic. I hid from it. In a large part, retroactively, but in taking a step back and looking, why? Pride and ego. Instead, I should have leaned into my communities. I should have leaned into the masterminds. I'm a part of two real estate masterminds that have a wealth of knowledge combined in them. I could have leaned in. I could have been authentic. It could have been transparent. Instead, my pride and ego held me back because I have a pedestal. People look up to me, right? And I really believe if we is a human, and as humankind can reduce your pride and ego. And you mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast,

but authenticity and transparency, if we as leaders can start to be that example, I genuinely think we are going to change the world. Because when I went and I outed myself on social media to my platform, I have literally never had so much outreach. and so much engagement on a single post. And I had no idea what type of outreach I was gonna get. It was 99% positive.

It wasn't a woe as me, oh, boo-hoo, no, but I was just transparent. And people literally came in and say, thank God you spoke up because I, as someone with less experience, have dealt with something like this. I thought I was the only one. I didn't know people at your level go through these, challenges. And the last thing I'll say, and I'll give the mic back to you, people have to realize

at every level, the challenges can be bigger. And at new levels, new devils is a saying I like to say. And it's because you don't know what's ahead of you. You're at the highest point you've ever been. You don't know what's up here because you've never been up there. Right. And those devils, as they would be, can be sneaky. And they, they are different than the ones that you may have seen down here. And so I encourage all people to just lead with transparency, lead with authenticity. And I would love your feedback on that, right? Because I believe you, myself and many people that have a voice can change how, you know, businesses run, entrepreneurs, leadership. Yeah.

I'll tell you what, Justin, you know what, you could continue to preach as far as I'm concerned. You don't need to hear from me, but I will tell you, a, congratulations on having that authenticity. speaking up, I know that you learned a pretty big life lesson right there. And as leaders, as leaders, we don't feel like we can do that. We don't feel like, you know, we can, we're too tough for that. I mean, it's going to be a sign of weakness

if we show that authenticity. And there's nothing that could be further from the truth. And, you know, so it's, to me, it's that ability to go ahead and to have that authenticity, to speak up. It's that ability that we just don't take as leaders because I'll tell you what I find out. I found out that the higher you go, number one, I think they say I'm going to be off just a few percentage points, but I think it's like 67% of CEOs have imposter syndrome. I would know.

I would only make it's higher. I probably is and they don't know how they got there. And they're afraid that somebody's going to expose them every single day. Yeah. And so they've got this imposter syndrome. So they have all this built up, you know, frustration and, you know, condemnation. And, yeah, they can go home and talk to a spouse. But, you know, while it makes you feel good, the spouse doesn't really get what's going on within the confines of what you're doing.

And it's good to have something to go to, but sometimes it's just not the appropriate resource. And you can't go to, you know, the people that report to you, whether it's, and again, you could be the CLO, anybody. in the C-suite, but you can't go to the person below you because it's going to be a sign of weakness. You can't go above you. You can't go to the board because it's a sign of weakness. So what do you go? That's why.

That's why you have masterminds. That's why you invest in you. I know you're like me. I have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in me, in me because I don't have all the answers. Amen. And I wish I did. And I'd love to come on to this and tell all of you that are listening out there. I can change you on a dime.

But that's why I say, my guarantee to you is that if I'm not your jam, I know who is. I can get you there because I've taken that time to get to know a lot of people that are far smarter than I am. And I will tell you what, back to artificial intelligence. I just spent three weeks ago going into some deep dive, putting all my assessments, all the all the meisms about Stan Gibson into artificial intelligence saying, help me understand some things that maybe I haven't understood about my childhood of why I was always so me and not they. And it spent out some beautiful information. Now, it doesn't mean you have to take it as 100% gospel, but it gave me something to think about.

And so there is an element that I work with my clients with artificial intelligence as to how to use it as one more avenue, just one more avenue. You still need a human touch, but it's one more avenue to help you die deeper into your self-awareness, which I think is the critical element of all leaders today, Justin, self-awareness, understanding who you are, who you're not, being that Michael Phelps, being that Katie Ledecky, but knowing not only your swim lane, but know how to associate and leverage other people that make it a whole system. My strengths, my strengths in Click and Strength Finder's, I have what's called strategic, which doesn't mean I'm the smartest guy in the room.

It just means I filter quickly. I have Activator, which means I move really fast. I want to get things done. But that becomes my kryptonite because I move too fast. I leave my team sometimes in the dust. And with strategic, I've already got the solution. You mean, we've still got to go back and look at eight or nine options? I've got the solution.

We've moved on. We're ready for the next. They're saying, no, no, no, no. I had had to surround myself, not had to. I've been gifted. to surround myself with analytical people, with people that are very different than me because they slow me up, I speed them up.

And when you can put together a team where you leverage appropriately, and that's the thing that we do when I work with organizations, how do we make sure, I have seen, Justin, I've seen grown men cry in a room where we went through this process that we go through on self-awareness

because they said, I didn't think anybody knew the value got brought to the table and everybody says, are you kidding? Are you kidding? And, and, and when they start to talk about it, and they start to talk about not only their gifts, but they're kryptonite, now there's a level of understanding at the table. And it's a, you'd be like, like, you know, like you, if you thought I was upset with you, if you knew me better, you say, oh, that just stands kryptonite app to end up. It's not personal. And when you know that, and your team knows that, then you start to have that authenticity that we're talking about.

and you start to co-elevate within the organization. So a little bit of a long-winded answer to maybe your question, but that's that I really believe that about self-awareness. What is your go-to personality test? I think you just mentioned it, but I wanted to be like, what would you suggest someone, start to getting to self-awareness?

Yeah. So I have to, I have a one-two punch for it. And again, if, please, I'm not trying to sell you anything, go to lead withstand.com. And I will personally,

personally take you through two things, just pre-of-charge. I will take you through, number one, we'll look at Clifton Strength Finders, but we're going to turn it upside down. We're going to take something called a genius spark because if you were strategic, if one of your gifts was strategic, Justin,

and mine strategic, they might look very different. We're both strategic, but they're going to look different. And when we do a granular take on those strengths, we're going to come up with different sentences that apply how it looks for you than how it looks for me. So we use first Clifton Strength Finders

and then morph it into something called the genius process. But the second thing I use is the Enneagram, and I'll tell you why I use these two. The Clifton Strength Finders will tell you where you're strong at the season of life you're in. So if you haven't retaken it since COVID, you need to retake it because that was a life-changing event, you know, divorce, any kind of, losing a job, anything, or maybe

you took on a new job, but retake that because, you know, it isn't that number three, and again, if you don't know, Clifton Strength Finders, everybody, there's 34 strengths, and you wake up with five of them. They are yours. You, I mean, there's 33.6 million variations with those 34 strengths, you own five of them. You're very unique. We look at what's strong, not what's wrong. So we use that. But that's a season of life. But then we use the enneagram. And for those of you that don't understand the enigram, the enneagram is over 1,500 years old. It's got nine different personality types. And I will tell you what, it's a DNA thing, baby. It is how you were born. And some of those will be very, very accurate on your fears, on stress, on how you're wired.

And while I love to work on what's strong, not what's wrong, we have to look at the DNA aspects of the enneagram. Because when we combine them, well, you've got a new sense of self-awareness that you've never, never realized as it relates to how you manage. And I will tell you this, one more thing. It's great to do this in the workplace. My wife and I've been married for 43 years. And I had her take these two years ago. while we've always had a good marriage, this made a great marriage. Because now what I thought she was doing to agitate me, I've found out it's just her gifts.

It's her beautiful strengths. And so now I could celebrate what's called development, which is the ability to help. And I will tell you, when spouses help the other spouse develop, it doesn't come across that way. And my activator of always wanting to do things and she wants to, you know, be at home and relax, she could now pull me back and we could do it in a language that we both understood. So I'm really big on having that legacy, not only at work, but at home, at home with your spouse, at home with your kids. That's right. Yeah.

And those are incredible tests. And I think I just want to echo everything you're saying and we'll wrap it up. But I find myself going through my season wishing I would have retaken those tests because I would have realized my action. divator sentence and my I can just like you, I will leave my team behind and that's what I did in 2024. I built up, but I didn't build down and I'm sure everyone's aware of the age old story of the two builders building a building. One just kept going up. The other would go up and down, up and down, up and down. He built the foundation. And if I could have retaken those tests, and if we could have done this podcast and reminded me, you know, Stan. So this is guys and girls,

listen, follow Stan, find Stan all over the locations you can, bestselling author, book on Amazon, great mastermind, great speaker. Do you want to share everyone where to go follow you at simplicity level on the website again and also has a great mastermind? If you're a leader in the space, you're an entrepreneur, definitely research Stan, reach out to them, but tell everyone to go find you. Yeah, I'll tell you what, please, just come to lead with stan.com. You know what? Yeah, I do have a website. I've got, you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on all the social media. and but just go to the reason I'd like for you to go with lead with stand.com is because there you know what yeah yeah I'll get your name and in your email but there I can I can really

zero in on what I can do for you whether it's the double down on you whether it's the assessment whether it's just connecting you with the right person you know that's my thing I'm at a season of life I can do that I can do that I can be the best servant leader I can I've made a 180 from probably where I was, you know, probably a decade or two decades ago. So this is about you. It's not about me. Go to leave with Stan.com. And that's my guarantee to use that it's all about you and we'll find you to help you need. Brother, I appreciate you coming on. You definitely have a servant's heart and you're thinking about them more and thinking about you. And that comes through, through and through. So guys, if this is pretty cool, if you like Stan, if you think someone needs to

meet with Stan or get with Stan, please share this episode with at least two of your friends. And we'll see you in the next entrepreneur, D&A. Thank you very much. Peace.