How To Build Leadership And Team Culture Remotely With Justin Kane

Leadership is not just about the title you hold; it’s about the culture you create. In this episode, I sit down with Justin Kane, COO of Cleaner Marketing, to uncover the pivotal lessons he’s learned while transitioning from ministry to marketing leadership. Justin shares his journey of rebuilding confidence after personal setbacks, navigating career transitions, and scaling a marketing agency to impressive heights—all while fostering a thriving, remote-first team culture.

We explore the importance of respect, honesty, and inclusion as foundational pillars for success, and how celebrating noble failures can transform team dynamics. Justin offers actionable insights into creating a culture that values people over profit and equips leaders to take ownership. Whether you’re building a remote team, navigating challenges, or seeking to elevate your leadership game, this episode will inspire and equip you with practical wisdom.

Connect with Justin Kane:

Connect with Justin Kane on Instagram at @JustinJKane for insights on leadership, breaking mental barriers, and fostering confidence. His journey and wisdom can inspire your personal and professional growth! 

Books Mentioned:

• As a Man Thinketh by James Allen 

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:01 Discovering Confidence Through Setbacks
• 6:25 From Ministry to Marketing Leadership
• 10:10 Building and Scaling Remote Teams
• 14:36 Creating a Thriving Workplace Culture
• 22:56 Failing Forward and Noble Failures
• 28:01 Prioritizing Culture Over Profit
• 31:03 Mentorship and Continuous Growth

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is such an honor today to have Justin Cain on the podcast. Justin is father of two daughters, an author and a businessman. He is the founder and COO of Cleaner Marketing. Cleaner is not your average marketing agency that's going to talk to you about your clicks, your impressions or your brand awareness. They talk to you about dollars generated for your business. They specialize in direct response marketing, which is a tactic that focuses on generating a return on investment. If it's not making you money, they're not doing it. In addition to his business, he has a core mission to help as many men as possible to create a better life, develop a winning mindset and make a lasting impact. Justin, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Justin Kane: 0:47

Yeah, I look forward to this, and I think I heard you mention founder. I'm actually not a particular founder, I am a partner in the business. So Cohen Wills is the founder and we are just both owners of the company. So I just want to make sure, just in case that he didn't think I gave him any misinformation.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:06

Always good to be clear.

Justin Kane: 1:07

Clarity is kindness.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:09

I love it.

Intro/Outro: 1:13

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:29

Justin, I would love to start with you sharing some of your story with our listeners. You and I met a number of months ago and I got to hear a little bit of your story. I'd love for you to share a little bit of that, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader, around your journey and your development as a leader.

Justin Kane: 1:45

Yeah, you know, as I was even preparing to spend this time with you, I was trying to think okay, what is an effective way of trying to communicate my story so that somehow, some way, the audience listening would be able to either identify or, you know, put themselves in the shoes that I was facing? And so I'm going to start my story, maybe about four years ago, where I found myself sitting across the table with who I would call a mentor in my life. I hadn't seen him for some time. He knew me from my past, but we finally reconnected. And as I was sitting across from the table with him, he said these words to me, as true as they were. They stung, but they were just truth. He goes, man. I see a man who lost his confidence, and I was like man, as much as I would try to put on a good front, he could see right through it. And when he said that, I was like you know what? There's no doubt that what you just said is very true in the season that I'm facing right now, which was on the verge of losing a marriage that I had for 19 years, knowing that that comes with a lot of collateral damage. How do you navigate through that? I was in ministry for 20 years as a pastor, so what does that look like? What does a next season look like outside of maybe, a marriage that may not be restored?

Justin Kane: 3:07

And he said these words to me that I thought were quite profound. They made an impact in the moment and I've continued to share them throughout. And he said man, every person, whether it's a man or a woman, is going to face three Fs Fog, which is where you sometimes are just unclear, uncertain about what the future holds, what steps to take, which direction to go, who to talk to, who can help you, who's maybe not in your corner? And you kind of face this fog and it shakes you a little bit. Anytime I've ever shared this, I've always seen people resonate like oh yeah, I've been through that fog season in my life. And he said often fog leads to fatigue, where you just get tired, you start to lose hope, you start to lose that big belief that you had and what the future may hold.

Justin Kane: 3:51

I was a very optimistic, very hopeful. I had dreams, man. Those things got diverted and it was just like man, how did I get here but not see some of those dreams fulfilled. They were shattered dreams, so to speak, and so it led to fatigue, where you're tired of fighting, you're tired of believing, tired of you know what am I waking up for? You know, tired of trying to search for what's next.

Justin Kane: 4:12

And that leads to the third F, which was flirtation. You start flirting with how do I get to? You know, there's a story of Abraham and Sarah that were supposed to have a child. You know, that was given by God, named Isaac, and they decided to kind of divert. They flirted with another option, and sometimes you flirt with compromise, you flirt with a shortcut, or you flirt with you know what. Maybe I'll just lower my standards. And so I started finding myself there, and so that conversation kind of really woke me up to what will I do now? Kind of really woke me up to what will I do now?

Justin Kane: 4:49

And as men, I think for us, as men, many times we justify our actions, we make excuses and we start to ship blame, and I was not exempt of that. I looked in the mirror and I found okay, justin, if you're going to take any directional change from that conversation, it begins with just taking responsibility, as hard as that pill is to swallow and saying, okay, what can I focus on, what can I change? So, just about a year after that, myself and my ex whose name was Sarah at the time we dissolved the marriage, which is very, very difficult. It's not something that I had wanted, it's not something I ever thought would take place in my life, but I was left at a place of going okay, what's next?

Justin Kane: 5:27

And prior to you and I jumping on this call you and I just had a brief conversation about and God always has something up his sleeve. He's always working behind the scenes, he always has something that he wants to offer to us. That is his best. And for the last number of years, I've just experienced the goodness of God and experienced success in what I'm doing here at Cleaner Marketing and understanding man, how do you step away from something you've always known, which for me was ministry, into something that is very unknown but right up my alley, which is leading a team and growing a business? And I couldn't have scripted it any way differently than this. I probably would have made a different script, but this one has worked out so much into to where I look at I go. Man, I'm so happy to be where I'm at today. So that's kind of my story in a hopeful way that would resonate with somebody, maybe listening to it.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:21

So tell us a little bit about Cleaner Marketing, because this is, this is. Here's another thing which started as something else and transformed into something completely different, unexpected.

Justin Kane: 6:32

Yeah, and I'm going to make a quick connection to why cleaner marketing was so impactful to my life, something internally in me that always wanted to partner with somebody Like you know, if I met someone like you, I'd be like man. He and I we could do something together. And probably I love the idea of doing something with someone rather than pioneering and being a solo act and then people benefiting from that. And so I was a constant search, so it'd be one guy after another. I was just in this search of who is that, because something inside of me was like I just really wanted to see that take place. And so when I was in that season of just trying to figure out what next looks like and you go into the interview process, you're trying to make sure that you find maybe the possible right career path. It was just challenging. And so I met a gentleman and I just love how divine connections come into your world, like people that just randomly come into your world, but they're maybe there for a season. Some are there longer, but, man, they just they're pivotal in the things that you were set up for. And there's this gentleman who is the president of a nonprofit here in Clearwater, florida, and we connected. He was writing a book. I had ghostwritten a number of books. So in Clearwater, florida, and we connected, he was writing a book, I had ghostwritten a number of books. So he's like can you help me get this launched and off the ground? And I said I would love to. He goes, I'll just do it on an hourly basis and let's see if we can do this.

Justin Kane: 7:58

Well, anyways, that happened to kind of lead to a friendship. He was going to a business men's meeting I'll try to make this story short as I can and he said hey, can you come with me? I couldn't come that morning but he said hey, when I go I'm just going to offer up a prayer that they can pray for you to find what's next for you. Well, he was at a table and he said hey, I have a friend named Justin. Would you guys pray for him? He's a good, sharp young man and I really feel like he would add value to wherever he goes. We're just going to pray that he finds the right next step. Well, the guy who is leading the business meeting was at his table. He said have him, give me a call. And so I gave him a call that night.

Justin Kane: 8:39

Next day we met for like three or four hours. He said, hey, I'm going to hire you on. And he said, while we're in this conversation of me hiring you, he said I do have a son who started a marketing firm. He can see it has great potential but he can't run it. I would like for you to connect with him. That's something internally I knew in my heart. I was like, ooh, I think I found I never met him before, but I think I found something that I've been looking for. And so he and I connected and and within two months it was just he and I.

Justin Kane: 9:05

I was no longer working for the father. He and I joined a partnership. He said, justin, I think I can grow it if you can run it. And that was a little over two and a half years ago. And the partnership has been just one of those partnerships where you just couldn't ask for anything better. And the business has exploded over the last two years. We've just now passed the 2 million mark, or in what we call it our agency world, a revenue, a monthly reoccurring revenue, which sets us at that particular bar. So we're super excited about that achievement. But more than that, we're excited just to kind of build a great culture. We have a great team Now. I think we just hired our 17th person in the last two years, so growing quite rapidly and I couldn't have made this up, but it's just been an exciting journey, I think that's fantastic Let me talk about that for just a minute, Crossing the $2 million annual mark.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:02

That's a big deal. It's a really big deal. Most agencies are not there. Most agencies are not there yet and the idea of leading 17 people that alone is intimidating to a lot of our listeners, I know. Are your team members remote? Are they all in one location? How does that work.

Justin Kane: 10:19

Yeah, and man, you, being in the leadership space for so long, and man, you, being in the leadership space for so long, understand what the dynamics or the potential setbacks could be from that. So in my mind I've always known, hey, we're at a table, we have a leadership team, let's run the company through this leadership team. But I was like, okay, justin, you have to pivot, because now what? 70 to 80% of now anybody that's going to be on your team is completely remote. So we have people in other parts of the world that work our hours, have a little bit of a different language barrier, and so that has wildly been like a surprise of how we've been able to maintain a culture as we've grown. Of course, we do it over just this kind of platform that you are an iron. Right now I'm a firm believer that you run an entire organization through one core meeting, and so we get a pulse at those meetings and make sure that the direction is kind of set.

Justin Kane: 11:16

But, man, it has been a thrill to watch all these individuals from all different walks of life, even different religions, come on board and, if I can't downplay this enough, we are all in the same boat rowing together and there is nothing better than having momentum as a company when it comes to your culture and the team that you're on. So yeah, that was a bit of a challenge. Initially in my mind, that was a limiting belief. How could I possibly help create a culture that is healthy, life-giving, thriving, us rowing in the right direction, with people that are not going to be present in front of me? In technology, it's allowed that there's a distance there. I mean, it's not easy, but somehow we were able to do it, and I'm grateful for the fact that we were able to create something that I only believe could happen if you're all in person.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:08

So what does a healthy culture look like for you at Cleaner?

Justin Kane: 12:12

Yeah. So some of the things that kind of come to my mind when we use that phrase, even within our company, is one we have a high level of respect for each other, so no one has a greater respect than somebody else on the team. Doesn't matter if you're Justin, doesn't matter if you're a business partner, cohen, doesn't matter if you're somebody who is assisting, somebody who is assisting. It's like it does not matter. Respect is the highest level. So we value that greatly and it's not just something we say like you have to model this consistently, you have to model this consistently, and I think that that translated across the board. We respect our clients, no matter if they have a bad day, an off day, a grumpy day. It does not give us the right to treat them any such way or talk about them in any such way. That does not actually clearly state man, we respect those that we serve. So I think that was one of the pillars. The second thing for a healthy culture for me was just a safe harbor. Can I somehow create a place where the entire team can be honest, because I think it's very easy for them to filter what I can say, what I can't say, how I should say it, who should I say it to to? And so we very openly made it very clear honest feedback is pivotal, and because some cultures are more timid than others, you know, and then then they have a picture of somebody who's a boss, so maybe we can't say what we need to say, you know, it's like we need to hear in a respectful way, but it has to be honest so that myself, cohen, can have the best pulse possible of what has taken place in that. And I think when they actually experienced this high level of respect from maybe me or Cohen to them, and then they were able to be honest and they didn't get anything slapped back or they didn't get like this knee jerk reaction man, it just fostered this honesty. And then we did it in a group. So it wasn't like, hey, we're going to have this one-on-one honest conversation. No, no, you can be honest amongst everybody and you're not going to get hurt by it, you're not going to get scolded by it. It's okay for you to do that. So I think that was a really big second pillar of that. And then I think the third one was man, they felt like I'm a part of this, like like you're allowing me to play a role, like you're entrusting me with the, you're actually teaching me and coaching me and mentoring, like you're actually giving me time, and so they felt extremely included, like if you're not rowing well, it's going to affect all of us. If I'm not rowing well, it's going to affect everyone. So let's make sure that we hold each other accountable. So a lot of those just different facets led to this involvement of everybody and this joy of being a part of what we're doing. So that's been really cool to see kind of that progression of people just being like man, I'm excited to be a part of this thing.

Justin Kane: 15:05

You know it wasn't just monetary. We don't. We don't set major goals. We don't set major goals, we don't set monetary stuff. It was like you probably heard this before, but I heard that culture and vision. What's the difference? Vision is the steak, culture is the plate, and if that plate is extremely dirty, it doesn't matter how good that steak is, you really don't want any part of it. I just always heard who we be is greater than what we do, and so I've just watched it come to life very surprisingly, like it's actually work. You know, but, but, but. You can tell the difference when something's life-giving, because now people feel like a sense of connection and community rather than we're all these splintered little pieces trying to in our own little boats rowing. No, I really feel like we're all in the same boat.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:48

I don't have a different boat than any of the assistants have you know, but I think when people feel valued like that, they feel included and they feel valued beyond just what they do, but valued for who they are, as individual human beings, like they lean in and I think you see productivity and efficiency go through the roof efficiency, go through the roof and they start taking like these steps of initiation and you're like, wow, you've definitely taken ownership of this and now they excited to build their teams.

Justin Kane: 16:18

And I think one of the things that helped with that is, on our weekly call, I always kind of initially and then I sprinkle it throughout.

Justin Kane: 16:25

Now I sprinkled the hey, let's ask a question, what's your favorite? This, and we just got to know each other personally and that really allowed people to see each other from a more human place than a co-worker or a what's your job role type thing, to oh, I, actually, I, I, I know that person. And then when people you know started to share health issues with their kids or whatever, it was part of that group discussion that we either prayed for them or that we, you know, gave that person time off because it was just one of those things that just fed into the exactly what you said. They felt like I'm a human here, they value me because they have some of these remote international team players have not experienced that. So when they taste it, it's a very different taste to them and you can see them kind of build up with confidence, like our team members here, maybe a year ago, two years ago and here, with confidence, and it's really cool to see that take place.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:59

You know you are having to lead today at a different level than you did two, three, four years ago, and that same thing is going to be true two, three, four years from now, yep. So let me ask you, like how do you level up, how do you develop the skills, and the leadership skills particularly, that you're going to need, and your team are going to need, for you to have in the years to come?

Justin Kane: 19:21

That's a great question. I think so much of it is like don't get bored with the fundamentals, like those fundamentals. If you get off into the sexiness of the ideas of stuff, sometimes you forget some of the basics that are so important. I mean, so I have right here actually it is a manual, it's never closed and I review it probably every single day and then I go through, I go through this gentleman who kind of mentored me for years on leadership. He has very similar to probably products that you put out, courses that I just every morning when I'm driving, I listen to one of those sessions every single day and just repeat it. You know, I listen to one of those sessions every single day and just repeat it, you know.

Justin Kane: 20:01

Yeah, and that just keeps my mind on Justin If you're going to be a leader, you have to be in the right position, because if you're down there playing the oboe, or you're playing the tuba or you're playing the violin, who's the one orchestrating it? And when I'm relinquished my role in my position, it suffers, you know. And so I have to make sure that I stay in that proper position, and that, for me, has bar none been one of the greatest pieces of advice, so that a company can grow and thrive, and then people can thrive along with you.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:35

Yeah, absolutely. I love that man and I love the imagery of the musical instruments. Yeah, I heard somebody say years ago gosh, probably 25 years ago now that the conductor of the orchestra is usually the person whose picture is on the front of the album, but he's the only person on stage who never makes a sound. Never makes a sound. His job is to bring the music it is and the skills of everybody else together in such a way that it creates a masterpiece.

Justin Kane: 21:07

And that's what leaders do, that's what you do, and then ego says no, no, no, I can play that two of a better, so I'm going to go show them how I can play it better and then they can do it like me. And, man, that is where you really start having to go. Ok, justin, what is? Where is your position in all of this? And as a leader, it's not to play, it is to hold them up into who they are so that they can play, albeit it may be progressively, they have to grow and that's what I mean I think this is why I appreciate so much about Cohen is that we've adopted the fail forward mentality. We are going to fail, we are going to make mistakes, the team is going to make mistakes, but we are going to own it. We're going to fail forward, we're not going to make excuses for it and we're not going to try to hide it from the rest of the team, like we will be okay to admit.

Justin Kane: 22:00

I remember early on where one of our SEO people was like I'm going to jump in and help our content team Cause we just got overwhelmed with growth, and she came and she said this is not a good standard, like what he provided, and he was doing it out of the goodness of a heart and we did this in a team meeting and you could tell he had to swallow something because he did it out of just servitude. But we praised her for keeping a standard of saying this is not going to be a standard we want to present to our client. We then praised him for having noble failure. Like man, you tried, you step so good, so good, noble failure.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:38

I love that.

Justin Kane: 22:38

It just simply didn't work out. And I said man that is to this day, we still talk about that as a team of recognizing what he did with courage was to step up. He failed, it didn't meet a standard. We celebrated it as noble failure. And then we celebrated her for saying you F, and that one little story has kept us consistently being able to repeat it so that we keep a high standard. But we want noble failure, we want to fail because that means that we're reaching beyond our comfort zone, we're reaching into something where we're taking a risk, and then it allows other team members to go okay, wait, I'm okay to fail here.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:13

You're like, yes, you are okay to fail because Cohen does it, I fail, but we fail forward, and I think that illustrates too a concept one of my mentors taught me decades ago, which is that what is rewarded is what's repeated. You rewarded that behavior right.

Justin Kane: 23:29

You rewarded that.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:30

You celebrated that and what have you seen since? It's been repeated, right, it's become part of the culture. That is totally true. It's so important for leaders to understand that principle. Yeah, what you reward with your attention, with your focus, with your words, with what you celebrate, that's what's going to be repeated.

Justin Kane: 23:48

It is and it has to be genuine. You know, like if that statement is a good statement to put on a wall and you tell people you do that. No, no, no, you don't Like. That moment was a prime, teachable moment. To do that live, yes, even though he had a swallow embarrassment, like you know what I'm saying. But to this day man is. I mean, we're in the process of wanting to, because they're part of an agency to buy them out because they're so valuable to our team and it's like man.

Justin Kane: 24:19

I remember when he felt probably like the lowest of low but the entire team kind of surrounded him. You know, another example that stood out this is a little bit different of the thing, but I think it's good for anybody maybe listening to this is we had a client paying us very good money. They're brand new. We try to expedite them because we knew they were kind of in a rush to get things going. We had a team on to get them all the stuff they need and the client berated one of our guys Like I was there, cohen jumped on and he said some things and we were all silent. The guy never got mad, nothing like that.

Justin Kane: 24:54

And one of the coolest moments I think happened within our company was when me and Cohen we talked. We talked with some of the other leadership team and we're like what do you think we need to do? We need to fire them. We need to fire our client, not fire our guy. And we rallied around our guy and we said, hey, first of all, you handled it like a champ. Second of all, we don't believe a single word that he said about you. He was coming from a place of no context. Thirdly, I want you to know how valuable you are. Now. This is a guy who's probably never experienced this in his life. And we let the whole team know hey, we are going to let go of this client because this is not about the money. We have a culture of respect here and we stand behind our team. We believe in what they did. The way he handled it was perfect.

Justin Kane: 25:37

And so we let the client know we're going to let them go. They said, well, you need to give us a refund. We said we'll refund you. It's like six or $7,000. The entire team knew it. You know what I'm saying.

Justin Kane: 25:46

And so everybody on our Slack channel just wrote back to this individual man we love you. Good job, man, I was on that call with you and I'm so sorry what you're going through. And he came back to he said, justin, he said I've never experienced that before. He was just crying, you know what I'm saying. Like it was broken down because he felt like can you imagine the buy-in now that has for the rest of his life? For the rest of his life, you know? But it was a genuine moment.

Justin Kane: 26:14

It wasn't a tagline or a saying. It was like, okay, this is where the rub and that's what I appreciate about Cohen, my business partner as as well is because we're not fighting over nickels and dimes here. It's like no, no, no, we will preserve this at the cost of any type of money. You know what I'm saying. Like this culture, health or none, is the most expensive thing we have in our business. And once that is, you know the Bible says something very different. If the foundations are cracked, what can the righteous do? Like if that foundation is not healthy? I don't care what you build on it, that thing's going to show some signs of wear and tear very quickly.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:52

So true. I had a guest on the podcast earlier this year, Mark Miller, who was the vice president of leadership development at Chick-fil-A for a long time. Wow, and Mark wrote a book on culture, fantastic book.

Justin Kane: 27:03

Oh, he did. I haven't, even read it.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:05

I'll make sure I pick it up so good. One of the things he talks about is that culture is not the words on the wall. Nope, culture is what happens down the hall. Yep, and I love that phrasing.

Intro/Outro: 27:17

I love how he puts that phrasing.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:22

I love how he puts that. It's so memorable, but it's so true. That's exactly what you've been describing during this episode is the power and the impact of culture and how intentional that you guys are being a cleaner about creating a culture that is healthy and sustainable.

Justin Kane: 27:34

Healthy and sustainable, and so I've always heard this is like a leader in his position ultimately should get a place where 50% of his job or his time is to see TTM, coach, teach, train and mentor and they all have little different facets. Where you're, you're working with your team, consistently with patients, and then we always end every single one of our Tuesday calls with a covenant that if you said yes to me which I'm going to try to talk you out of any of your commitments Like I want to make sure that you're not just said yes to me, which I'm going to try to talk you out of any of your commitments, like I want to make sure that you're not just saying yes to me because I'm asking that of you, because I'm your boss or whatever it is, and that's how you think a boss, you know employee relationship works. No, no, no, I'm going to try to talk you out of it. But if you have committed to it, if there's anything that's going to deter you from accomplishing it, you have to let us know sooner than later, or something's going to hold you back from being true to that commitment, and that's where we will give you a safe harbor so that you can say it, you can be honest about it, and I think that's the hallway culture you know what I'm saying when it goes from the wall to the hall, is that okay? Hey, you have a place where this has to be real. You know what I'm saying? This is not just us talking about it, and I say that because we're involved in this.

Justin Kane: 28:45

Everybody is involved with making sure that we stay on track, because, if not, you get gap, and when that gap gets undressed, it becomes culture and that's where people go oh yeah, you're supposed to do that, but we don't do it like that anymore and you're like that changed why? Because that gap never got identified or addressed. And when that gap isn't going to address, that's when CEOs across the nation start getting let go because gaps were never identified. So those Tuesday meetings are like gold for me, like what gaps every single team member needs to bring to me, the gaps that they're seeing, because they're the closest thing to that thing I'm not, and so if they can give me that gap, it helps us prioritize. Okay, what do we need to do to mobilize around those gaps? And that's created a lot of them. Then knowing, oh, it's my responsibility with this to provide him the pulse that he needs so that direction can be set. That's so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:40

Yeah, justin, I know you are a continual learner and you've alluded to that a number of times in our conversations. Is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening?

Justin Kane: 29:52

If you haven't read this, check it out. So many books. Now I'm going to go to the classics, because the classics of probably every single one, but for me it was. And the breaking limits you know what I'm saying. Like I didn't realize there's some mental barriers that I faced and so you know it's like, as a man, think it Like that book really broke limits. Think and Grow Rich really broke limits because for some reason, coming from the ministry, I had very limiting thinking when it comes to money. You know what I'm saying. Absolutely. What we're making now in the company per month, it doesn't even seem big compared to the $40,000 limit I had in my mind one day. You know what I'm saying. I was like $40,000 a month. For some reason it was just bigger than a million. You know what I'm saying.

Justin Kane: 30:39

It was just a weird number that I could tell I had a barrier there of going like I never even thought that would be a possibility, even though I know it's done all the time all throughout the world. It was a thing. So any of those books that kind of really helped me break the barriers of my mind, um, you know, I do like taking thoughts from books here and there, um, and then kind of journaling those thoughts, like working out my own thought process to that. So when you said culture is not on the walls, it's in the hall, that'd be like a thought I'd throw in my journal and then I'd be like, okay, justin, break that down yourself. How do you process that? And that's how I kind of digest some of the stuff that I read, maybe the books behind me and stuff like that. But I'd probably always default to the books that help you kind of think beyond some of your barriers, because for me that's probably where I struggled the most.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:34

That's so good Books that make you think differently.

Justin Kane: 31:37

Yeah, always my favorite. Yeah, break some mental barriers in my world. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:43

Every time we talk, I learn something and I walk away better for it, and I could keep talking to you for another hour, but I feel like I literally could do a joe rogan podcast with you and we could talk for three hours.

Justin Kane: 31:56

We could we absolutely have like the best time walking. Like I remember we said at dinner that when I was like I could talk to this guy for hours, yep, totally get it. I appreciate that, but I would totally agree with that.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:13

Unfortunately I have to call it on this one because these episodes I've got to dial it in.

Intro/Outro: 32:19

And that's unfortunate.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:21

But we're going to do this again, because these conversations always are ones I walk away from and you make me think, yeah, very fruitful. I know our listeners feel the same way, and I know they're going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you and more about what you're doing. What is the best way for people to do that?

Justin Kane: 32:39

So I would say Instagram is probably the only best way, because for me, you know, you go through those seasons where you're like shut everything down, get yourself in a closet and then come out. I'm, I'm in that place. I am solely focused on building a business with Cohen, raising my two daughters and doing a lot of writing behind the scenes, um, but so social media has been a very, very limited thing in my world, just because it was more of a distraction than a tool, and I know in due time it will become a tool again. But Instagram is probably going to be that tool that probably I'll make some movement in. So if anybody ever wants to follow any stuff because my outlet beyond business is to specifically try to help men beyond business is to specifically try to help men and that's where you mentioned the bio to break some mental barriers, regain their confidence and discover what their manhood really means again. So that's probably where you'd find me, justin J Cain, on Instagram.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:38

Love it. We'll have that link in the show notes. Thank you I appreciate you.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:42

Thank you for being so generous and so transparent today with your story and what you've learned so far and I know, I know that your best days are still ahead and whether it's on your end or my end and just digest it themselves and review it, that really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out. My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible.

Dr. William Attaway: 34:54

This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 35:33

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.