Scaling a Business Without Losing Control Leadership & Hiring Secrets With Steven Perry

Scaling a business is every entrepreneur's goal, but many struggle with maintaining control, hiring the right team, and stepping into a true leadership role. In this episode of The Catalytic Leadership Podcast, Dr. William Attaway sits down with Steven Perry, an accomplished entrepreneur who left a $900K/year corporate career to launch The Well Recruiting Solutions. Steven shares invaluable insights on transitioning from operator to CEO, recruiting top talent, and building a business that aligns with core values and long-term vision. If you’re an agency owner or business leader navigating growth challenges, this episode provides actionable strategies to help you scale effectively without losing control. Learn how to streamline hiring, develop a leadership mindset, and create a sustainable, high-performing company.

Connect with Steven Perry:
Steven Perry is active on LinkedIn, where he shares leadership, hiring, and business growth strategies. Connect with him at LinkedIn or visit hirethewell.com to access his top interview questions and learn more about The Well Recruiting Solutions.

Books Mentioned:

• 360-Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Right now, you can get an extra 20% off your ticket for the Scale with Stability Summit with my exclusive code CATALYTIC20 at checkout.

Visit scalewithstability.com to grab your ticket—I hope to see you there!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Steven Perry & His Leadership Journey
• 5:52 Lessons from Scaling a Business Without Losing Control
• 13:07 The Biggest Hiring Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make
• 21:30 Building a Leadership-Driven Culture for Sustainable Growth
• 28:55 How Faith and Purpose Impact Business Success
• 36:05 The Recruiting Formula That Attracts A-Players
• 42:56 Final Insights & How to Connect with Steven Perry

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:37

It is such an honor today to have Stephen Perry on the podcast. Steve's a bold, encouraging and generous leader whose journey embodies faith, resilience and purpose-driven success. Born in San Diego and raised along the West Coast, steve spent 21 years in Alaska, where his first job was as a commercial salmon fisherman. At just 15 years old, he started Perry Pavement Services, funding his way through high school and college. He earned a full-ride Naval ROTC scholarship, competed in basketball and track, and fast-tracked his education, graduating in three and a half years with a degree in finance from the University of Alaska, anchorage. At 20, he began his career as a financial advisor with Fortune 100 Company New York Life, achieving historic milestones as the youngest partner, the senior partner and managing partner in Fortune 100 companies.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:30

Steve's written two books and has spoken across the US, inspiring audiences with his insights on personal growth and entrepreneurship. His latest chapter started in September 2023 when Steve stepped out in faith, leaving a $900,000 a year career to follow God's calling. By January of 2024, he launched the Well Recruiting Solutions, a firm helping insurance and wealth management firms to build talent pipelines to achieve their growth goals. Inspired by the hard work and lasting impact of a well, the company reflects Steve's commitment to creating resources that sustain success for generations. Steve, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Steven Perry: 2:10

Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor and a pleasure to join you today.

Intro/Outro: 2:17

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: 2:33

You know I would love to start with a little bit of your story, steve, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. I touched on a couple of the hot points, but I know there's so much more. How did this whole thing get started?

Steven Perry: 2:46

Yeah Well, I'll be honest, it all began by trying to get out of Alaska. 20 years, as you mentioned earlier, was enough for me. Now I did all the things right Captain on the basketball team in high school and building my own company. I had employees, but really my first formal leadership position was, as you mentioned earlier, when I opted to go into the leadership track at New York Life Insurance Company. The reason being was I wanted to move out of Alaska and I knew, if you did well in that career track someday, that they would give you your own office and they would move you to a new place Typically not a very exotic location for the first time. But that was the honest motivation behind that. And little did I know what I was going to learn along the way. And it was like very first person that I hired on my team was twice my age and I've been in business his whole life, and so I very quickly learned. I'm 25 years old, I've got a fancy title as partner, but really all that meant was I needed to find the right talented people to come join our team and help train and coach and develop them to build financial advisory practices. I was the rare exception.

Steven Perry: 4:00

Most people that start off at 20 in that career do not do well, and so I needed to find people who had established careers prior and were really in that mindset of becoming an entrepreneur, and so they had some stability, they had connections, they had relationships, they had a foundation of business, and that probably meant they were significantly older and significantly more experienced than I was, and so learned that really, really quick. That age doesn't matter necessarily, but I also needed to operate with humility, because if I pretended like I knew everything, they were going to know that that was not the case, and so I just stuck to what I knew, and then everything else was like let me learn this and serve you in any way that I can. And so the ninth person that I hired on my team was about 12 months in, and he was a vice president of operations of a large restaurant franchise, leaving a significant six-figure career because he was working 80 hours a week and wasn't going to see his family for the rest of his career, and so he wanted to change and do something new, and he had all kinds of formal management and leadership training, and I learned a ton from him. His name is Ryan Faulkner, and we became best friends over time and I remember I'm a pretty animated guy.

Steven Perry: 5:15

I like nonverbal feedback and kind of gauging, like, hey, are you into this? Like, how are we? So my coaching sessions with him was always interesting because I would learn just as much from him as he would learn from me. But he would always sit there like this, didn't matter what I was saying Didn't matter, like, hey, you just broke the record for this. Hey, you're crushing this, this or that. Or like you know, hey, you need to do this better. Or you know, whatever, whatever the conversation was, it was always the same thing. And finally I asked him I'm like, why do you do that?

Steven Perry: 5:45

And he's like that was something I learned very early on in my training was that if I, if my disposition is out of a flat affect, I'm going to get the most honest communication from the person who's sitting on the other side of that desk, because I'm not giving them any indication and encouraging them to go one way or another. And that was super difficult for me, but it was an amazing challenge to learn, to realize. Okay, I can't care what you think, I need to be confident about the message that I'm delivering or the questions that I'm asking from you, your facial response. I have to be willing to not even need a response from you from that and then just deliver what needs to be delivered. So that was just one small sliver of example of things I had to learn really early in my career, and then a couple of years later I promoted him into a partner role, and so we're both leaders in this firm second line leaders.

Steven Perry: 6:37

I was young enough. I've never really had a great. There's a lot of people that are at the top that just don't understand me, and so some really get me and love me, and some we just butt heads. So I ended up in that position where the guys who are our managing partner left.

Steven Perry: 6:54

I was a few months away from being eligible to become the managing partner in our office and didn't have great relationships with the guys that made that decision, and so they brought someone else in, and that was super challenging because technically, on paper, we had basically the exact same track record of performance. He just happened to be 10 years older than me and was not a great leader Like, like, like bad and I've had been blessed to have amazing leaders my whole career, and so that was my next leadership lesson, you know, with John Maxwell's book 360 Degree Leader, I finally learned like I got to lead up, I got to lead horizontally and I got to lead down. That was, you know, the next super challenging lesson I learned. We can go into a lot of them, but those were just two of the first things that kind of come to mind.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:37

That's so good. Yeah, I often say, you can learn from anybody.

Steven Perry: 7:46

It sounds like that was one of those. Yeah, I'll jump off of that really quick, right? So that was part of God's plan for me to learn that, and it was a miserable year and a half, but finally I got to the point where I was like, all right, I'm doing well enough. Again, I'm making it through this guy that then I earned that opportunity to move out of Alaska. So they moved me to the exotic location of Lubbock, Texas, which they're like, hey, it's flat there, Just so you know. And I'm like I'm sure it's fine.

Steven Perry: 8:09

And, and you know, coming from mountain Alaska, I fly into Dallas. I always wanted, I always wanted a BMW seven series, which there there were none in Alaska, because that car just gets trashed up there. And so I found one. I flew into Dallas, I bought it, and then I'm driving to West Texas and I'm like this is not, there's hills, it's beautiful, and you know, you finally get about halfway. It's five and a half hour drive and all of a sudden it's like, oh, I can love it Three hours up in front of me Anyhow. So I get there and by God's grace I had, I had a Steve Perry, a guy who probably should have gotten the office.

Steven Perry: 8:43

He had been there, he had grown like most of the office. He had hired and they, you know, and they were on his team. He was a phenomenal leader. His name's Danny Baker. And I come in and the very first day he picks me up and he drives me around town and I'm realizing oh my gosh, this is me, this is me a year and a half ago.

Steven Perry: 9:02

And I can do this one of two ways. I can come in as the new sheriff in town and be like I earned this, I was this. Or I can say I can take the approach of buddy, you live here. You've lived here, You've been in this office for 10 years. I'm just here to help and support and build your career. And so it took longer in the sense that I had to run every decision by him so we could collaborate together, versus it would have been more efficient just to decide things unilaterally. But proof was in the pudding. You know God blessed that place where we grew from 40 advisors to almost 100 in two and a half years. You know we can go on and on, and on and on, but I share that because from a horrible situation that was super miserable to wow, I couldn't have learned that lesson unless I experienced it myself, and I was just like thank you, Lord, for allowing me to go through that so Experienced it myself and I was just like thank you, lord, for allowing me to go through that.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:52

So I did screw it up. There is no wasted experience. You know he can and does use even the most painful moments to make us who we are. Love that, so you're in love.

Steven Perry: 9:59

Now what? So that was that was interesting. I shared the story. Right, faith is pretty important. You read that in the like. That is not. That is not like separation of church and state, like it is 100%. So, like we prayed every staff meeting, we opened a prayer. Our prayer was Lord, help us be so successful that we can't help but point to you as a source of success, like we want this to be a supernatural level. And so you know, just to put it in context, to brag on God for a little bit, there's 115 offices. All of them compete every year in like 15 metrics. Right, the ones who grow the most in each of these different metrics or have like the best retention or whatever, win a trophy.

Steven Perry: 10:36

And we won in our first full year there. We won eight of the 15 trophies. We won more than half of the trophies across 115 offices, and so I was like, wow, thank you Lord. And so we got to give them all the credit. And then the problem comes right. So we got to compete against those numbers again the next year. So you're up this much and you got to be up more than that the next year to even have a chance. And the next year. We won nine. We broke the record again. It was phenomenal, and so again, I give all the glory to God in that and the team amazing team. It was fun, super fun, and so my stock is kind of high in the company was fun, super fun, and so my stock is kind of high in the company.

Steven Perry: 11:09

And so I get an opportunity what looks like a great opportunity to move up to Minnesota. I'm driving three hours in any direction from Lubbock and we've got a couple million people sparsely spread around that area to move to the Twin Cities in Minnesota where there's 6 million people, 4 million in the Metro, probably 50% higher median wage, a lot more wealth, right, great, great opportunity. Little did I know that that office had gone from 150 advisors to 90 and was going to go down to 50 over the next year. They had had nine partners and they were down to two, both of which were exited within my first year. And let's just say, the way the contract works, you get paid for growth and you get penalized for not growth. So it was a triple whammy, right? So we're moving to a new place.

Steven Perry: 11:59

I don't know anybody. I've never lived in a metropolis before, so it's different, right, in Alaska and in West Texas we were really the only game in town. You've got a hundred advisors in one firm in Lubbock, texas. There's no one else that has that. In Minnesota there are dozens of firms that have that, and so we had to compete.

Steven Perry: 12:17

I didn't know anybody and I'm dealing with a firm that's like this. No one wants to move into leadership because they've seen what's happened in that, and so that was challenging, and so I finally started getting up and going, got a couple of great people on the team, and then COVID hits four months after that. So we're in a whole new world. Fortunately, we had been using Zoom since back in my time in Lubbock, so we were already on that cadence, and so that was less challenging than a lot of people had to adapt to. But we got sent home and I'm sitting there trying to run this firm, recruit and build a team of advisors from the bedroom right next to my kids in our rental house that we had moved into. So everyone had their version of challenges with that. Ours was multiplied in there.

Steven Perry: 13:05

But what I realized in that is I got sent home. I don't have the choice. I got told you can't see your advisors, you're not allowed to be in physical proximity to them, no matter what you believe about whatever's going on in the world. And I got given the game plan of how I had to do it and I realized I don't own this. I started off to be an entrepreneur and was okay with being an entrepreneur, but now I'm just an executive leader, and so that really started the journey of all. Right, lord, this is probably not going to be the rest of my career, but what's your timing? And so that brought us to. That brought us. I actually almost left in 2022, told my boss I was leaving in 2022, told my boss I was leaving, and the last second, both my wife and I felt God saying I want you to stay, I want you to minister to the people. I've given you a great platform, I've given you a great reputation. I want you to serve all of the other amazing leaders that are around you.

Steven Perry: 14:03

So I started a weekly prayer group with all the other managing partners. We had 35 of the 115 managing partners coming on a weekly basis to a Zoom meeting. We had one in our office that was happening weekly and I'm just God said do this, I'm doing these things. And it was super encouraging because all of them were coming back to the office challenging morale. They have lots, lots of advisors and it was just a bright moment in their week where we got to pray for them and encourage them and share amazing words with them.

Steven Perry: 14:33

I did that for almost two months and then a vice president shows in my office with a letter from the head of the company that said cease and desist, you can't do this. I'm like, why am I here? Why did you call me to do this? I started networking and I met guys that were part of um, other fortune 100 companies that were leading faith driven ERGs, um at other companies that looked a lot like ours. And I started networking with them and they're like, yeah, you can. Yeah, under the DEI initiatives, right, there's ERGs and all these companies 40% of Fortune 100 companies have faith-based ERGs. So like, go get it started.

Steven Perry: 15:16

And so I started meeting with home office executives who were in charge of that and remember how I told you like some people I get along with really well and some people don't understand me and we don't get along well. All of those people happen to fall in the second category and it just went nowhere. It went nowhere. All of those people happened to fall in the second category and it just went nowhere. It went nowhere and I'm just like Lord, I don't know what to do here. Meanwhile, again to his glory, there's 500 and something leaders in the company. The biggest thing that they look at is how many new advisors are you recruiting on an annual basis?

Steven Perry: 15:46

And in the midst of all of that, where I was going to leave at the beginning of the year in April, decided to stay battling all of that. Where I was going to leave at the beginning of the year in April, decided to stay battling all of that. By God's grace, I was the number three recruiter in the entire company that year and frankly, it didn't matter because again, at that level, you have to not only do it yourself but you have to have a team of managers and again, it was just a very challenging environment to be able to do that. So finally, about a year from when I thought I was going to leave, god said it's time and my wife was like let's do it, let's go.

Steven Perry: 16:14

And so I thought I met with a bunch of different firms. I thought I was going to buy a firm, got really, really close, met with my boss Again. Hey, I got to be here at the end of the year. Just want to give you a heads up. I love the people that work in our organization. I don't want them to not have a leader. And so the next he's like well, let's get together in two weeks, you can tell me for sure.

Steven Perry: 17:45

The next week I met with the firm that I was going to buy and we just couldn't come to terms. It was nothing on their fault. They're actually clients of ours now amazing people. It's just the numbers weren't going to work. And then the next week they fired me after 17 years, and I'll tell you that was the shortest meeting. I got up, I hugged the guy who fired me and I said thank you, thank you, and it was like thank you, lord, for ending this here, because I didn't know how I was going to end. I was ready. I was so ready, and that was the launching point to the next chapter. Wow.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:13

And now there's the well. Now we have the well. So tell me about this what birthed this in your heart and what is it that you're trying to accomplish?

Steven Perry: 18:23

So the process of determining it. I would wake up Monday morning. I would pray fast Lord, what business do you want me to look at this week? He would lead me in a direction to go have these five conversations, go fly here and meet with this guy and shadow his business. And then the next Monday I would pray and fast. Is that it, lord? Nope, okay, what's the next one?

Steven Perry: 18:44

So it was a series of week-long projects that led me after about six weeks. One of the things that he led me to do was he said, steve, I want you to go to India. I was on the board for an organization. They're a nonprofit there. It's got Bible colleges in every state in India. So I went to go visit a bunch of those, got to speak on my book and just meet a lot of amazing people. And you're, you know you're. So you're there in the middle of India, surrounded.

Steven Perry: 19:05

I was like I had like six different people around me. They're telling me about their family, like was martyred for their faith. They got kicked out of their village, like their houses were burned down, and I'm and they're asking me they're like Steve, what are you going to do next in your career? And the current idea was the well, and so I'm telling them about it. And I took a breath about 30 minutes later and I realized, if I'm that passionate about this idea, if God has that fire coming out across the world where I really just want to help these people, that's what I got to do, and so that was the moment that I knew, and that was November 2023. And we started really January 1st 2024 with me and a virtual assistant, and now we've grown to 38 people all around the US, all around the world, actually clients all over. And you talked about the imagery of the well. We started with a focus in financial services, because my family was very middle class, lower end, maybe middle class and getting into the financial services career has literally set up my grandkids that I don't even have yet for opportunities truly believe that the financial services career path is a phenomenal well that takes a lot of hard work and energy to dig and build that will be able to fulfill, or to fund and fulfill and sustain a family for generations to come.

Steven Perry: 20:35

The same thing works, though, when you're going into a company, and it's what do they need? More than anything, it's people. They need talent. More than anything is people. They need talent, and so it's really hard as a company to build a consistent flow of talent into your organization, because that was basically my whole job running these firms and really talented people doing that on a consistent basis and it was a grind every single year.

Steven Perry: 20:59

And so we're able to be the well for companies where we have a deep hole, be the well for companies where we have a deep hole, a deep pool of talent and a process to find the right people so that there's a stream of talent into an organization on a consistent basis and an on-demand basis when they need it. So we've expanded out of financial services still a good chunk of our business is in that and the wealth management insurance advisory space. But now we're doing some in healthcare. I'm doing some in construction as well, because, again, if you can recruit commission-only insurance salesmen, you can pretty much recruit anything is kind of the approach that's a good word.

Dr. William Attaway: 21:38

So what are some of the things you're seeing as you've been doing this? Now, I mean just over a year, but to build a team, the size you have in just over a year is pretty astounding by itself. What are some of the things that you're seeing with some of your clients?

Steven Perry: 21:50

Well, it used to be that people would hire recruiting firms because they would have access to talent that they didn't have, and while that's still somewhat true, depending on the sophistication of the company, what we're finding is actually our biggest value proposition is to filter through all of the noise, because if you look, if you just go on LinkedIn jobs and you look for anything, you're going to find a hundred, 200, 300, 500. I've seen as high as a thousand applicants, because it's so easy. All you do is click a button and LinkedIn is just one of the places that you do it. So I'm a hiring manager, I'm a talent acquisition lead at a you know, not just a small medium business right? I'm going to get hundreds of applications. I'm still trying to deal with all the other dailies. I don't have time to go through that. I don't have a team to sift through that.

Steven Perry: 22:39

So our value proposition is really let us take all of that off your plate, let us write the job description, let us put the filters in there that we know are going to get the right people in and the wrong people out, and then let our team handle all of that so that we can give you the two, three, four I don't know how many do you need to see, but the best two, three, four people for that position. So you could actually recruit and you could just select from the very best people. And then you could run that across all of the dozens of recs that you're trying to fill yourself, that if you post that yourself, you're going to literally be waiting through applications until like the next decade. That's where our value, I I feel, comes in, more so now than, um, maybe traditionally, where it was like we can't even find the people. That's really good.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:26

That is a constant struggle that I see with clients. They're trying to find good people, they're trying to find the right people to sit in the right seats on the bus, and it is a perpetual challenge. So you swing and miss, you swing and miss, you swing and miss. You might get one out of four. If you're doing it the more traditional way of exactly like you said, put the posting out, get a couple hundred resumes, go through them, close your eyes and point your finger and let's try this one. I love what you're doing because it is so intentional and so purposeful in how you are trying to connect people with the right opportunities and the right opportunities with the right people.

Steven Perry: 24:01

Yeah, and one of the things, one of the other things I found that happens is just because of, I would say, the level that I've been at my career, as I'm networking with people. You know, my, my networking is with the C-suite, the leaders or the owners or the partners of different firms, right, whether it's financial services or not. And I find that you know, one out of five of those conversations they're going to say hey, by the way, steve, I'm open to an opportunity and they're not going to share that with anybody else. That's right, that's not something they're advertising, because there's hundreds and hundreds, or sometimes millions of dollars on the line if that conversation gets to the wrong place. And so I will say because of that, we do have some access to some passive talent that no one else is going to know is out there, and I think that's super, super valuable too.

Steven Perry: 24:52

You know, the hardest part for me is I've always been a natural connector, just like I'm. Like you need this, I'll get you that, you need to meet this guy, right. And the hardest part for me now is I have to stop and say but I need you to sign this contingency agreement first, and because that's how my family eats and like I owe it. I owe it to my partner, I owe it to my, I owe it to my family to make sure that now we're getting paid for those connections, and that's been really the hardest part of this business.

Dr. William Attaway: 25:20

Stands out about you as I was researching you and preparing for our conversation, is your commitment to not segmenting your faith into just one part of your life, but that you aspire to be a fully integrated person, a person of integrity, where every part touches every other part, and you are the same person no matter the environment that you're in, whether you're at home, or whether it's your faith, or whether it's your work, or with your team or interacting in a networking setting. You're the same person, and I don't believe that is as common as I wish it were. What has driven that in you, where you want to make sure you're bringing all of you wherever you are?

Steven Perry: 26:01

I would say understanding who I believe God may be to be. You read a little bit in the bio. You read is a little bit of my personal mission statement, but the whole thing is that I am a bold, encouraging and generous follower of Jesus Christ who will help fund billions to grow God's kingdom by leading others to live radically generous lives. And when I made that about four years ago, I used that to run my life by. And so am I doing that, because I believe there are still billions of people on this earth who've never heard of Jesus and there's thousands of people who are willing to go tell them. They just don't have the money to do that. God has put me in America, where we still have the best opportunity to create wealth of any country in the world. He's given me the ability to do that to run business, to lead people, to multiply myself, to empower others. I don't need the credit, I don't need to do everything, I don't have to have my name on it. And then the unique willingness to have hands that are like this, that most things drop through them into other places.

Steven Perry: 27:10

I have a one of the things I talk about in my book, which is it's totally biblical is the idea of heavenly net worth right? God says lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, not treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy. And so one of the one of the things that we've tried to live our life by is I want my balance sheet whatever investments, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That should be equal to or less than, how much have I given back to God? Because that's the formula that he's given us, and so sometimes that means giving over 50% of our income for the year, which it has meant that a couple of times. There are definitely times where I look at that I'm like, oh my goodness, I could use a little bit more of that in my bank account to fund this new person we want to hire on our team.

Steven Perry: 27:54

But that thought goes about that quick because I would rather have that got up in God's treasury, in my heavenly net worth, knowing that God controls everything and he loves a generous heart and, quite frankly, he's the guy that's going to determine anything that happens in our business, whether it goes well or not. It's what he wanted to happen for that, and so I just have to live obediently in that and being driven to I mean we're not. I'm not here. I'm not here to create a $10 million company, $100 million. This is a billion-dollar company, not for us, but because that can be used to preach the gospel around the rest of the world. And I don't need the money. My hands are like this and it's just going to flow right through it.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:37

I love that mindset. I think that's so healthy and others-focused, and I think that's what we're called to be as followers of Jesus. You have to lead at a higher level today than you did a year ago when you started the well, and that same thing is going to be true a year from now and five years from now and 10 years from now. You have to continue to level up your game. How do you do that? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your clients are going to need you to?

Steven Perry: 29:01

have. I've got a coach. So I have a coach that I work with every single week. I've worked with him for eight years so he's seen all of those different things. I know he's always getting better. I've watched him get better. He's practicing. He still owns multiple businesses he's not this sage that did it a while ago and so he helps keep me accountable, helps make sure I'm growing. I used to read 50, sorry, my wife would make sure that I clarify. I used to listen to 50 books a year.

Steven Perry: 29:30

I don't do that Still counts, still counts. That's what I'm saying Right now. I don't. Most of it's the Bible. I started this year off trying to do a 30-day sprint through the whole Bible. It's probably going to be a 60-day sprint. I've got four more days left on the plan and we're just about done with February. I look at that. I'm like that's the best wisdom in the world. So I truly live that.

Steven Perry: 29:54

There's an amazing book I read last year it's been in the last year called Lead with Prayer, which talks about some of the interviews. Some of the top leaders in nonprofit and business ask them about their prayer life and they talk about how they spend two hours a day in prayer. There are days I do that. That's the goal, that's the cadence we've set with the company, but I would say that helps me in growing my leadership. Quite frankly, a lot of it is listening to the Holy Spirit and just being quiet. I mean that chair right there. I kneel in front of that chair, face down, and go in the presence of God for at least five minutes a day and just listen to his voice, and that's where a lot of the decisions come from. I'd say you know, you ask what have I developed recently in leadership. One of the things I've developed in is like I need to listen to that voice more.

Steven Perry: 30:40

I found myself going to my partner, who is an amazing godly man, very aligned. His wisdom and discernment are his gifts and I found myself asking him hey, what do you think about this? When I already knew the Holy Spirit had given me the answer and I was convicted that me asking him that is being disobedient. I know what the answer is for this. Yeah, we collaborate on a lot of things, but I know what the answer is for this. I'm just trying to have him confirm that's not that he needs me to not waste his discernment and his energy on that when I already know what the Holy Spirit said about it. So that's one of the latest hottest off the press things I'm working on. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:15

Well, I think that demonstrates what I've heard throughout our conversations, which is that that teachable spirit that is in you is always at play. You are always seeking to learn and grow beyond where you are today, and there is no better way to do that than to listen to the one who created us. Steve, I could talk to you for another hour. There's just so much here that I know our listeners are benefiting from. I know they're going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn more from you and more about what you're doing at the well, what is the best way for them to do that?

Steven Perry: 31:43

Super active on LinkedIn, stephen Perry, or you can look up the well recruiting solutions on LinkedIn and find me on there. One of the fun things I did doing a lot of podcasts is I created an easy landing page called hirethewellcom. On there I've got a little download where these are like the top most fun creative interview questions that you can use to make sure you get the best hire every time. So you can go on there and download it and then it'll link you to our website and connect with us there as well. But those are LinkedIn. I'm on that multiple, multiple times a day.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:19

Perfect.

Steven Perry: 32:19

We'll have those. You'll see some of my. I think I shared a basketball story this morning where I airballed a three and then ran to go try to save the ball and crashing out of bounds and I got to go to the chiropractor. So there's one on there too.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:31

I will make sure to have all those links in the show notes. I love it, Steve. Thank you so much for your generosity today and sharing from what you've learned so far And's been an honor to be here.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:44

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, 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.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:20

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. 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. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. 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.