Bringing Systemic Change: Unconventional Coaching & Advocacy with Justin Foster

Episode 59 – Transcript + Timestamps

Bringing Systemic Change: Unconventional Coaching and Advocacy with Justin Foster

Introduction

[00:00:00] Yvonne Heimann: Hey everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Boss Your Business. And you’ll start seeing a little bit of a trend here lately, and I am not shying away from it in this episode. You’ll know what I’m talking about here in a second. First, I want you to meet Justin Foster. Justin, you are the co founder of Massive Change, an advisory firm dedicated to supporting business leaders who are called to use their status and brand to take systematic change.

[00:00:32] Now you guys know what I’m talking about. In addition, Justin serves as a fractional CMO and a CMO coach along a journey that began in a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon. I want to hear more about that to now living in Austin, Texas. Justin has spent two decades providing unconventional and often heretical strategic coaching to leaders in every sector and [00:01:00] industry.

[00:01:00] You are also a vocal advocate for neurodiversity. Guys, did I tell you we are having a pattern here lately? Conscious masculinity and mental health. Justin, you were speaking my language. I’m happy to have you.

[00:01:17] Justin Foster: I’m happy to be here. I love your, I love your energy.

[00:01:22] Yvonne Heimann: I’m still calm so far. So let’s, let’s see if I can scare you away.

Aligning Your Work To Your Sense Of Justice (as neurodivergent business leaders)

[00:01:27] No, I don’t think so. Reading, reading from your bio. Now, how did you get here? Because this sounds like what I want to hear in 2024 as this podcast launches, launches. Your episode going live. You guys know what I’m talking about. I have those tongue twisters sometimes. How did you get here? How did you get to this passion and mission?

[00:01:56] Justin Foster: Well, Yvi, I think that I’ve always [00:02:00] had a mission or a sensitivity to injustice. and I, my name, Justin, literally, you know, that it’s roots are in the word justice and, I grew up in a very interesting time in America in the 70s and 80s. And I grew up in not just on a cattle ranch, but, in a family that was part of a Christian fundamentalist cult.

[00:02:29] And with, so I grew up in this very distorted view of the world, but with this great sensitivity, of a highly sensitive person, HSP, a neurodivergent person, ADHD. And an old soul, and so when we played as my brothers and I, when we played cowboys and Indians, I always sided with the natives when, when I read about the civil war, I thought, why in the world would anyone ever support the [00:03:00] confederacy?

[00:03:01] When I was 13, I read a book about the Holocaust. And and so, and as often happens. Our lives are a microcosm of something in the world that we are supposed to take on. It took me many years to get to that point where I’m actually where my, my sense of justice is aligned with my work. Partially because as a trauma survivor, you, you, you build a hologram and then you go out and that hologram kind of takes care of you in the world.

[00:03:37] And I, I was a. I had created an identity and I didn’t know who I was without that identity. But as I, it, that identity began to die when I had a spiritual experience, a spiritual awakening, the first of two so far in 2014, that hologram began to die. And what, what, what was revealed to me was this. This [00:04:00] mission that now is manifested in massive with my partner in Always Virginia to equip business leaders who have also had awakenings to take on systemic change.

[00:04:12] In the world, in their industry, in their businesses.

[00:04:17] Yvonne Heimann: Damn. This, this is why I like this question because you never really know which part of the story comes out and how, and yeah, I have to say though, now you’re in Austin, Austin is like a bubble in Texas.

[00:04:34] Justin Foster: It is. I’m like, but, but they say it’s, this is true. Austin would not be Austin without Texas. You know, they’re the good things of Texas are here, you know, in the sense of, like, I grew up on a ranch.

[00:04:46] I believe deeply in the cowboy culture, which tends to be more inclusive than people realize. Yeah. You know, cowboys were in the American West. 40 percent of cowboys were were black, you know, the whole there’s this deep association with Latino [00:05:00] culture within the cowboy culture. And so there’s good things here.

[00:05:03] We just have very narrow people in charge. If we took the narrow people out of office and put more open minded people in, Texas would be an amazing, extra amazing place. Like it used to be, by the way, with Lyndon Johnson and Lloyd Benson and, and even back in the day when he was governor, George W. Bush, it was a different state than it is now.

[00:05:26] Which tends to be more MAGA in its bloodlines.

[00:05:31] Yvonne Heimann: Ain’t that the truth? I didn’t know that was going to go that way. Yeah, Texas is one of my states where it’s like, so many people are like, just, just stay in Austin or what’s the other one? And I’m like, I’m Visiting those cities. I am. Yeah, but not where we wanted to take this.

[00:05:52] Oh, my God. He’s totally getting caught up on the whole Texas thing. Well, welcome to my brain. When I hyper focus on something, I got to smack [00:06:00] myself out of that one. Same.

Three Things To Actually Make Change In The World

[00:06:02] So how, how are you bringing change nowadays. How, how are you getting involved? How are you helping your community follow that mission?

[00:06:18] Because a lot of your community has similar goals and values as you do.

[00:06:24] Justin Foster: Yeah, so this is a little bit of a longer answer, but I think it’s important for context is if you’re going to go change the world, you need 3 things. You need a calling. We don’t figure out for you what your calling is. We don’t do that.

[00:06:38] We’re not this isn’t about corporate social good or social impact where you’re like, okay, we need, we’re going to attach our brand to ending homelessness or whatever. That’s honorable. That’s fine. But that’s not what we do. You have to come to us with a calling, whatever it is. And what we do is we make it real for you.

[00:06:56] We make it actually an active party of your life and not something that’s [00:07:00] you know, you work on during, you know, Christmas break and maybe you’ve read a blog post once in a while. We make it real, we make it real for you. So you need a calling. The second thing you need is you need a brand. And that’s really my specialization is your brand is how other people experience your soul.

[00:07:18] And so if you, that process of branding yourself, and I say yourself, it’s inclusive to individuals or leaders of companies and the company brand or organizational brand. So, it’s a very inclusive us and we and you in that process, but you have to have a brand. All of your great change agents were very aware of their brand.

[00:07:41] Ghandi, Martin Luther King jr, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Mandela, they all were aware of their brand and your cause is not enough. There are so many people with callings that no one has ever heard of. And as I’ve said to my corporate clients for 20 years, being the best kept secret just means you suck at [00:08:00] marketing.

[00:08:01] So, so that’s number two. Then I’m like,

[00:08:03] Yvonne Heimann: whoop, there it is.

[00:08:06] Justin Foster: And, and number three, you need to have what we call, it’s a Spanish word, an Indomable mindset. And Indomable is a Spanish word that basically translates as an untamable or unable to be domesticated mind. Because when you take on systemic change, the system will fight back.

[00:08:27] It will gaslight you. Your friends will call you crazy. Your own ego that your ego that got you here will try to destroy this because it doesn’t understand it. All of this is it requires a new level of consciousness as a movement leader that we call an indomable mindset.

[00:08:47] And when you have those 3, then you can begin to look at things like resources and building a movement and all that. But if you don’t have those three, then if, or you’re not on your way [00:09:00] with those three. So that’s what we do. We, we, we help you articulate your calling. We help you build your brand and we help you develop an indomable mindset.

[00:09:09] Yvonne Heimann: Which builds an amazing foundation. Because I also believe, especially it’s probably happening in corporations to with with main leaders, but what I’ve seen in the entrepreneur space of small and medium sized businesses where it’s like, we just followed something initially and then trying to put words to, to the mission and being able to own it.

[00:09:37] I’m like, I have seen it in myself where happened to be on a podcast where suddenly I’m like, this is what I want to do. This is the future. This is why. And I got full on goosebumps. I said it the first time publicly, it just came out where I was like literally digging for months, trying to put words to what I [00:10:00] want to accomplish with AskYvi and who I want to show up for and what I want to do and what I want to change, I think those, those are so interconnected with each other where it’s also, I think, our own personal growth and, and that, how do I say that the confidence of also carrying it?

[00:10:26] Justin Foster: Right. Yeah. And, you know, fear means go, and you have to, you have to, to, in order to follow your mission, you kind of have to let elements of your old life die, your old identity die.

[00:10:40] And that’s, and I think, and I, this is where I have compassion because you think about spiritual awakenings and somebody becomes a monk or a pirate or a poet in a cabin. What do you do if you’ve been doing the work. You’ve been meditating, you’ve been, you know, sitting with plant medicine, whatever, however you get there, I don’t care.

[00:10:58] And you have this like epiphany, this [00:11:00] moment where you actually meet yourself. And you see the world as it is, not as it was perceived by your ego. When, and what do you do when you got kids in school, you’ve got a company, you’re the CEO and founder of a company with a hundred employees, you know, and this is where Spiral Dynamics comes in.

[00:11:21] Spiral Dynamics is kind of a model that combines evolutionary psychology with quantum physics. And it’s a very simple, simple, but, but, complex, which often it has how it goes, a model for what people go through is that when you have an awakening, an elevation of consciousness, you first change your life.

[00:11:43] So that’s the me phase. You change your life. You, you stop, you stop with bad destructive habits. Maybe you get out of a toxic or unfulfilling relationship. Maybe you move, whatever. That’s used to change your life. The [00:12:00] next, the next level is, we, so we, as if you have a family, you change, kind of change the family.

[00:12:05] It’s like, we’re going to spend more time, eating healthy foods or we’re going to grow, or we’re going to take more, nature vacations, or we’re going to do volunteer work. We’re not just going to, you know, binge Netflix and play video games or whatever, but when you own a business that we includes your business and so one of the steps that we help someone, a leader, a business leader work through is how do you recalibrate and says a key phrase, how do you recalibrate your business to match your level of consciousness because it doesn’t go the other way around.

[00:12:38] And you can no longer live a split life where you’re sort of secretly spiritual then. And you think, okay, that’s it. Now my business is aligned with my soul. It’s another Spanish word consecuente, which means basically integrity. And then you’re like, okay, I’m done. Ha. Ha ha. No. . . Now

[00:12:59] Yvonne Heimann: you get to Wouldn’t that?[00:13:00]

[00:13:00] Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that wouldn’t be nice. Nice. I literally just a week ago, had a meltdown off. I am done being conscious. I just wanna be dumb in the corner. Watch Netflix. I am so tired of this. Yeah. Fortunately it just lasts for an hour or so. Yes. And then I’m back at it. But yeah, we’re never really done.

[00:13:18] Justin Foster: We’re never really, I actually wrote an essay. I write a weekly essay in a community I run called The Third Way and I wrote an essay called The Shadows Never End. We never get rid of our shadows. We, we just, there’s always new ones. Anyway, that third level is the everyone phase and that’s where you get into complexity science and the fact that movements are ecosystems.

[00:13:43] So you could be a badass business leader and you have built your business by all the things you’ve done. Almost everything that you used as a leadership approach, a strategic thinking approach to build your business is the exact opposite in a movement because you don’t control the movement. [00:14:00] Now, you don’t really, you don’t really control the business either.

[00:14:02] We just allow you to believe that illusion, but, but you really can’t control the movement. You cannot command followers. You inspire followers. So we teach Leaders how to walk this journey from me to we to everyone. Most of our clients come to us where they’ve already done the work for themselves. And they’re just like, okay, now, what do I do with my business?

[00:14:24] And they have no idea. And because. Until we came along, this type of coaching and advisory didn’t exist. You’re not going to get this at Vistage or at EO or YPO or some business association, you know.

Making The Shift: Machine-Centric To People-Centric Business

[00:14:41] Yvonne Heimann: This is, this is why I was excited to have you on the podcast because it’s like, I’m on a similar journey where it’s like, can we, can we take the boxes away?

[00:14:51] Can we take the, this is the way to do it where I’m like. Yeah, we can have frameworks. Yes, we can have general [00:15:00] ways of doing things, but it comes back down to the driving force. It’s like I can deliver the same service in like 10 different ways, but it needs to be aligned with my personal values. It’s like, it’s, it’s interesting, literally on, on a low level as just which offer to choose, you go out there and you look at, so many people say VIP days is the, the solution. Course creation is the solution.

[00:15:33] And I’m like. Bullshit. Yeah. VIP days. Yeah. Great for a cash incentive, but they do not provide safety. If my highest value is a safety, I need something that creates residual income and, and I have a more steady income rather than the roller coaster and starting as simple as that, all the way to making an impact of [00:16:00] bringing in a change where it’s like, it is so core based.

[00:16:06] That you can’t just put somebody in a box and say this framework is the one for you to do.

[00:16:12] Justin Foster: That’s right. And there’s this universal law almost of the soul, which is if you express who you really are to the world, the market will tell you what it’s worth. You know, there is sort of conscious free market capitalism.

[00:16:28] It does work. You look at, you know, the famous John Mackey and conscious capitalism movement that came out of Whole Foods or Patagonia or others. It does work, but you can’t do that if you don’t know who you are, you know, that’s, that’s, and so this is, I see this very commonly with companies run by men, men have where there’s this general crisis of masculinity because the power structures that we built are no, are being dismantled.

[00:16:56] And that’s terrifying because our identity is very much attached to the, the [00:17:00] power, it’s like, we have sort of a phallic obsession with systems that, you know, benefit us. And so when, so I think about this, when you had, when you were doing your work and were you self employed when you began to have an awakening and

[00:17:19] Yvonne Heimann: self employed since pretty much always

[00:17:22] Justin Foster: saying, yeah, and this is an indicator is.

[00:17:27] Is you started to have boundaries and this is what I’m will and will not do. It’s just who I will be and will be. Well that same thing happens in business. You’re like, no, there’s, there’s a no asshole rule. Like I’m not going to work with assholes. I’m not going to make assholes more free.

[00:17:46] Yvonne Heimann: I’m going to charge you double because you’re a pain in the ass.

[00:17:49] Justin Foster: Or I, or, or unwilling to fire a customer that’s a pain in the ass or. This is to the point to willing to be [00:18:00] Machiavellian to have moral relativism about marketing practices that you there’s no way if you’re a conscious person that you would market to someone the way you wouldn’t want to be marketed to, but that shit is completely justified in the lower conscious business world.

[00:18:16] All of that changes for you, how you market, how you hire, how you build products. As you, as you’re expressing it all changes.

[00:18:26] Yvonne Heimann: Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. I’m like, and, and even, even without having had the, the conscious recognition of it, it’s, it’s been interesting to see the changes with my team, how we talk with each other, what’s happening, the response I’m getting,

[00:18:47] and like in an upcoming episode, the audience will hear where I’m like, I literally fired my best person three times because things weren’t aligned, but we still got along well. And now we [00:19:00] both are on the level where it matches nicely, where she has found herself, she is getting more outspoken about her mission and values.

[00:19:10] And now suddenly it completely clicks and it’s like, I don’t even, I don’t even need to say anything. Where it’s like, there she goes and things just work so much smoother and so much nicer. And we are both without having planned for it, pulling in the exact same direction. And again, I’m like, unconsciously, I didn’t really honestly pay attention to it.

[00:19:35] We just started paying attention to it off. Okay. What worked with hires, what didn’t work with hires, where Lily just make the list. And based on that, made the decision now thinking of it more in the elevated conscious mind. Yeah, it makes complete sense. Why I’m like, we got to run personality tests.

[00:19:55] How was your brain working? What do you care about? What are your values and all that stuff?

[00:19:59] Justin Foster: [00:20:00] Right. Almost all of our, our social conditioning about business as entrepreneurs or business leaders. is masculine, linear, and machine based. It’s what I call smokestack thinking. So it’s industrial age thinking.

[00:20:18] This is why women In leadership positions, especially women CEOs, their companies outperform everybody else because they knew coming from a traditionally marginalized group up into acquiring power that we now live in a not a machine centric world. As businesses, we live in a people centric world. So I often say we’re all in the people business.

[00:20:42] Just most people suck at it. And and that flip, though, is when, you know, whether it’s hiring or whatever, is you move from seeing the role to seeing the soul of a person. And I think of Howard, Howard Schultz, the, you know, [00:21:00] the longtime CEO of Starbucks who, who did not allow the term part time employee because he said they’re full time humans.

[00:21:07] Ooh, I like that. And this sort of, again, this mindset is, it’s kind of like the namaste of business. You know, like this, the wholeness in me, the goodness in me sees the goodness in you and this goes back to something I’ve been saying very frequently lately. And you saw this is what you just described is the goal of a, of a leader is not to empower.

[00:21:30] You cannot empower. They already have power inside of themselves. You can disempower the hell out of them for sure. Disincentivize, disappoint, disengage. Your job is to liberate your team, your employees and your customers to operate from their higher selves. And when you do that, flow happens and where flow happens, money happens, brand happens, art happens, innovation happens.

[00:21:57] Yvonne Heimann: That was another one where I didn’t even think about it like [00:22:00] that, where I’m like, yeah. Because that’s exactly what’s happening right now. My, my core team, they, they are in their genius. They are perfectly positioned. They love their job. They get to do how they think, how they do. And the floodgates are just opening.

[00:22:26] Justin Foster: Yeah. Which is feminine energy. Feminine energy flows.

[00:22:30] Yvonne Heimann: Oh my God. When, when you were talking about boss, right? A lot of the masculine and all of that. I’m like, yeah, that is, that is my journey right now where I’m like. Stepping out of the masculine, stepping out of that into more of the feminine, into more of the flow, into more of my feelings rather than just the thinking, holy crap, that has been a job.

Intuition Vs Instinct: Their Differences And Their Effects

[00:22:59] Justin Foster: [00:23:00] Well, and then it’s about integration. You know, between the masculine and the feminine, the masculine is more logical, linear, literal, strategic, great at logistics, great at execution, great at getting shit done, great at, you know, bringing a carcass back to the village, you need that stuff. If you’re too feminine in your business approach, you’re going to get your ass kicked.

[00:23:22] Most are not. Most go the other way, which is they’re way too masculine. And this is the thing that you also learn when you embrace consciousness as a business leader, is that intuition is data. Instinct’s terrible. Instinct’s about survival. And you make a lot of dumb ass decisions going off of instincts.

[00:23:39] But intuition, she, use that word on purpose, is never wrong. And think about that as a competitive advantage that you can make intuitively based or strategy decisions and and you and what and that advantages is. You’re still [00:24:00] using data. You’re just using data that comes from the quantum field, not just because it showed up on a spreadsheet.

[00:24:07] Yvonne Heimann: So how do I make the distinction? How do I recognize when it’s intuition and when it’s instinct?

[00:24:17] Justin Foster: So it depends on the person, but you can tell it in your body. Intuition comes from the, the heart center. You know, they say, I feel it in my gut. That usually is instinct, because if you believe in the chakras and all that, the ego is stored in the stomach.

[00:24:37] So we have these somatic, responses to instincts that are basically just our animal brains giving us information and that our neocortex using association and social conditioning to tell us a story about why we feel that way. And intuition is quiet. Instinct is loud. Instinct says run, [00:25:00] attack, hide.

[00:25:01] Intuition is go ahead, go ahead and do that. It’s okay. That’s another, another indicator. It’s, it’s the way it sounds is different. And the 3rd, 1 of the other indicators that instinct is always for your benefit or the benefit of the people or only the people around you. Because again, it’s mammalian mostly.

[00:25:20] Most of it’s mammalians, the animal brain. Intuition is for the benefit of everyone around you, not just the few people you’re in charge of. Intuition serves the higher good for all the people that touch the brand, touch the community, whatever. So those are a few indicators, there are many others.

[00:25:39] Yvonne Heimann: I love that.

[00:25:40] Tell the audience, if they want to dive deeper into this, if they want to connect with you and do all the things, where can they find you?

[00:25:48] Justin Foster: Yeah, we’re very findable. The landing point for all of it is most, most of the time it is is to go to our website, massivechange.co i, Justin Foster very findable on LinkedIn, [00:26:00] Twitter, Instagram, all of that stuff.

[00:26:02] And you can. You know, read about that. We have a community on sub stack called Making It Massive. You can link right to it from our website. And those are, those are some of the best ways to engage with us. And we do, and then you’ll notice that we do have an experience called The Moonshot. It’s a three day immersive experience, private, not a group where you come to Austin and we help you make your calling real in your business or your career. And so all of that you can find on our website.

[00:26:35] Yvonne Heimann: I love that. And as always guys, go look at Justin, go connect with him. You will find all of the links in the description as always. Easy to click for you. So go dig deeper. Thank you so much for coming on today. I have a feeling this is just going to be the first one of you joining me.

[00:26:54] I have a feeling we’re going to have another episode here in the near future because this is way too much fun. [00:27:00] Yes. Thanks so much for joining me.

[00:27:03] Justin Foster: Thank you. Thank you so much. You’re, you’re, you’re really good. A really good host. I love your energy. Thank you for the great questions and for having me on.

[00:27:12] Yvonne Heimann: Thanks so much for coming on and thanks everybody for listening again. Don’t forget to hit that follow button and leave a review. Tell Justin how you like the episode. Bye everybody.

Timestamps

00:00 | Introduction

01:27 | Aligning Your Work To Your Sense Of Justice

06:02 | Three Things To Actually Make Change In The World

14:41 | Making The Shift: Machine-Centric To People-Centric Business

22:59 | Intuition Vs Instinct: Their Differences And Their Effects