Emotional Intelligence + Connection in Business with Joe Hudson

Joe Hudson is a master coach and facilitator who also spearheaded the first Venture Capital firm to focus on Sustainable Agriculture and was the largest investor in the first Sustainable Agriculture IPO on NASDAQ. Joe is committed to a life of self-exploration across dozens of psychological, neurological, and spiritual traditions. He is passionate about sharing the gifts of this exploration with others.

“People make emotional decisions. To say, ‘I’m not bringing emotions into business,’ is like saying, ‘I’m not gonna bring the biggest tool that I have to influence decisions into my business.’” – Joe Hudson

Episode Highlights:

• The importance of emotional intelligence in business in creating a deep-level connection in all relationships
• Tips in creating the best company culture and team for your business
• Why vulnerability is needed in building great relationships
• How emotions influence decision making
• What is more important on decision making – your intuition or your data
• Tips and tools on how to manage and sort your emotions in decision making
• How to stay unattached with your goals (And how an enlightened person has goals)

Website and Resources:

www.joehudson.com
Connection Course (Promo Code: EM – For a 10% discount on any purchase of his courses.)
The Life In VIEW Podcast
The Art of Accomplishment Podcast

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I am Jaime Masters, and today on the show we have Joe Hudson. I’ve been waiting to get him on the show for so long. He’s a former venture capitalist and a master coach and facilitator. I saw one YouTube video about him online, and I could not get enough. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Joe Hudson:	A pleasure, yes.

Jaime Masters:	So, let’s first go into the business background because everybody that’s listening is like, “Well, let’s hear his business chops first.” So, tell me a little bit more about that before we dive into the deeper things.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Business chops. I have a very weird business story. I started off teaching Head Start in the Hayes Valley Projects in San Francisco, and then as you’ll notice, this is very typical in my life, then I became – I did international stock lending for Barclay’s for, I don’t know, a couple years. And then I was in a rock and roll band, and then I did like mortgage stuff for Lehman Brothers. And then I pursued film for a while. Was pretty successful there in this weird television way. And then moved to venture capital. So, I kind of have that thing, and now I’m coaching.

Jaime Masters:	You’re an oscillating fan, going back and forth.

Joe Hudson:	Yes, yes, yes. And the amazing thing is how much they inform each other. Like a perfect example of this is like I was so much into the experiential stuff, even – so, when I started doing venture capital, I got this old – well, it’s not that old, but a hippie bus, like a Burning Man bus, and I got all the venture capitalists that were interested in investing in sustainable ag, which is what I was investing in, and I took them on like a three-day tour of the central valley.

	And all those folks, we got so connected on that, in that experience, that most of us are still friends to this day even though I don’t do venture anymore. And those relationships were some of the most profitable relationships that I had as well. So, they all inform each other, if you let them. I don’t like specialization. It doesn’t work for me. It’s for insects.

Jaime Masters:	Ditto. I feel the exact same. But I do feel like the journey that you go on, but especially business, evolves you as a human, right?

Joe Hudson:	Correct.

Jaime Masters:	We’re all like “Hoo, this is tough.” And “Yay.” So, tell us a little bit about your journey, especially evolving to where you are now so far.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. So, I think the best way to describe that is personal self awareness, personal understanding has always been the biggest passion in my life. And so after international stock lending, before venture capital, while I was making films and stuff, I spent most of my time meditating. So, I spent like – I had seven years in a room where I was just meditating, looking at a tree, worrying about money. Because I had none at the time. I was going into debt. And doing that journey.

	And then when my wife was like “Hey, let’s have a baby,” I was like, “Oh, we need to make money.” But I knew that whatever I did as far as making money had to be part of my personal development, or I wouldn’t stick with it. It just wouldn’t be something that I would do.

	And so when I started doing venture capital, I looked at all the tools of business and I thought to myself, how do I make these into something that drive deeper connection with myself and others? And then luckily found out that they all actually made more business sense than the typical tools that you would use. That if you actually create connection between people, when you think about business, all it is is our relationships and ideas and a little bit of capital. Like it’s just every day is very important. 

	And so all these tools started really working, which was how I got into – how I was successful at venture capital, not because of particularly what I did, but because of how I did it, and it worked for me and it constantly taught me about myself, and that was critical.

Jaime Masters:	Well, I feel like what’s so interesting, I had a mentor in business and he sort of almost separated like business relationships, right? For me, they’re all my friends. I can’t sort of pull it out. I’ll go as deep as I can potentially go. But the old school thinking is like your network, your business network, you only talk about this stuff. You know what I mean? You don’t feel like that, it sounds like.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. I mean, people say that, right? I hear people say that. “Oh, my business relationships are different.” But then, you know, like I was in Europe into venture capital. Everybody would go out and get drunk together because they wanted that real connection. You don’t have to get drunk to do it, but they say that, but then they go “I’ll get drunk,” and then they reveal everything to each other, typically, right?

	So, and I’m not saying that it has to be that way. I’m just saying that you can reach a lot of success, and without that level of connection, you’re not gonna feel happy, you’re not gonna feel fulfilled.

Jaime Masters:	I’ve been noticing that even with the pandemic, where I’m like, “Oh, I’m lonely. This is loneliness. This is great.” That connected feeling that we feel is so vital for all of us as humans, and if we can get it in business too, then we get to enjoy both sides of that coin.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. And like you can say what you want, but like the connection to the customer is critical for sales. The connection to the employees is critical for best performance. The connection to like when you’re creating a product, if you’re constantly talking to the customer about what they want, so every single aspect, connection to the street when you go public, is incredibly important.

	I mean, if you look at like Tesla as an example, their numbers did not justify the valuation that they had. But they feel very deeply connected to that story. They want it to happen. They believe in the story of Elon. And so the street reacts differently, and that’s all about connection.

Jaime Masters:	Connection is one of my deepest core values. And realizing, though, that you’re in connection, and there’s a lot of nuances to this. So, this is where sort of emotional intelligence comes up, right? So, tell me a little bit more about how important emotional intelligence is in business in creating that connection because we’re talking about a level of depth of connection that I don’t think most people are used to.

Joe Hudson:	Yes, yes, it’s a great thing. Yes, so I think the biggest thing that people get confused about is when they feel connected, when they feel loved, they feel like it’s hard to draw boundaries, right? And so they’re scared that like, “Oh, if I care about this employee or I care about this person, I’ll make a bad business decision.” Or, “I’ll reveal something about myself that will make them not like me.” Those are the two fears of that connection.

	But the truth is you can’t really love without boundaries. If you look at the paragons of love, like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, they all were strongly boundaried, right? A great mother who loves their children is strongly boundaried. So, it’s so critical to have that strong boundary for your business relationships, or any relationship to have that deep level of connection.

	On the other side of things, that idea that if I show myself, then I won’t be liked, and therefore I’ll lose business. I think that the simplest way to deconstruct that in your head is to say if they don’t like you for who you are, and you’re presenting something else, then they don’t like you for who you are anyway. Meaning they like you for the façade that you’re creating. And so that doesn’t actually drive great business, either, right? 

	Because it’s the Mungers and the Buffetts that have been working together for years – and like most hedge funds have this partnership between two people – many venture capital firms have these partnerships. They make great things. And if you’re kind of half yourself with them, eventually it just destroys itself.

Jaime Masters:	Well, now in the age of social media, right, where if you have a façade, everyone’s trying to like squeak behind it no matter what, right? So like we can’t. Authenticity now has to shine a little bit more. It actually should work better anyway, so let’s just go there first, right?

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Absolutely.

Jaime Masters:	Yes. Well, especially when it comes to team and culture. I’ve got a lot of clients that are just like, their emotional intelligence isn’t so high, and trying to know that, number one, but also manage a team that each person has their own sort of set of tools and language around that – what are some tips that you can give us just on culture and team and working with some of the stuff?

Joe Hudson:	Yes. So, I mean, I go into companies like – I mean, I’ve been into Apple and Google and banks and Wells – I mean, I’ve been into all sorts of companies. Basically like landing into mega-team functional again. And the thing that I use in that is vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder. 

	And so vulnerability doesn’t mean being weak. I think that’s what most people think of it as. Vulnerability means speaking your truth even though it’s a little scary. So, there’s this great study that was done by Google called the Aristotle Project, and what they basically did, which was really cool, is they measured all their teams and said who performs well and what do they have in common. And the thing that they have in common is that they talk to each other. That everybody around the table feels free to express themselves, and they all express themselves.

	So, if they looked at a team and there was quiet people and people who talked a lot, it was not a functional team. It did not perform well. And the only way people do that is if they feel safe enough to have those, and the only way that happens is if people take the risk, right? And people accept it.

	So, that’s what vulnerability is all about.

	Impartiality is, it can be said a lot of ways, but one of our CEOs that I coach, he said it really well. He’s like, “I have a no doctrine,” right? “When I have an idea, the important thing is that everybody tells me their nos, not that everybody says yes. Because if I get the nos, then I understand what might make the product or the idea better.” Right? Because if I say yes and everyone goes yes, but they don’t believe in it, they won’t do it. But if it’s like, oh, I got the no, then I know what’s stopping them, then I know what to do to make the process better, then I get everybody’s buy-in.

	And that’s what impartiality is about. It’s not driving everybody to what you want, it’s getting the group intelligence involved.

	Empathy means – and this is a social intelligence thing again – empathy means being with somebody but not being in somebody. So, oftentimes there’s either people who are really empathetic, and so they’ve cut it off, so you see them being very rigid, you know? Or they are in the person. So, they believe all the stories. “I can’t do it.” “Oh, what help do you need?” That kind of thing.

	Empathy means like, oh, I’m with you. I’m not trying to fix you, but I’m also not completely in your story, so that I can feel you and you know that I’m with you.

	And then wonder, I think is the most important, is curiosity. 
And so if you have a whole bunch of problems with your – this is the silliest one – if you have problems with your staff, just ask 20 how/what questions that are impartial about that subject to somebody who works for you, or somebody who you work for, and see what their point of view is. And nine times out of ten, a solution pops out of that.

	So, those are the things that I teach in groups. I teach some other stuff too, but those are the essentials.

Jaime Masters:	Well, and that’s the name of your podcast, right, too? So, yes, talk about this –

Joe Hudson:	The podcast is called Art of Accomplishment.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, great. Everybody check out his podcast. So, and I think that’s what’s so important. What pops up for me, because I work with a lot of clients too, would be like, well, what if they’re B and C players? Not A players? Do we give them that much autonomy, or is that only for like the C suite? Do you know what I mean?

Joe Hudson:	Yes. If they’re not A players, then they’re not happy there. They shouldn’t be there.  Like I don’t – and whatever it is inside of you that makes you think that your job is to take care of them instead of give them a situation where they can be an A player and you can be supported by A players, that kind of self sacrificing isn’t good for your personal life and it’s definitely not good for your business  life.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, yes, yes, thank you for saying it in that type of say. Because it’s hard. We bump up against our own issues, and so some people, it is hard, and we just hold onto the team because of whatever the excuse or reasoning is in their head, right? Or I don’t have enough time so I have to keep them for a little while because hiring somebody now would be –

Joe Hudson:	Yes.

Jaime Masters:	You know, there’s just all these stories that go into it, so yes, easier said than done is what most people would say.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. I’ll give you a great example of this. I was at a venture capital conference and somebody was saying, “How many of you had to fire a CEO?” And most everybody raised their hand. A couple people lied, I assume. And then they asked, “How many of you fired them too early?” And nobody raised their hand. “How many fired them too late?” And everybody raised their hand. 

	And my personal experience is I’ve had to let go of about three people, say, in the last four years, and I always take them on walks to let them go. And whenever I’ve taken that walk, every time they have told me it’s time for them to leave, right before I’m going to tell them it’s time for them to leave.  Because we’ve been in such connection and such communication that they know that they’re not thriving there and we’re not thriving with them, and they don’t want it to continue.

Jaime Masters:	I love that. It’s funny because even – I’ve fired a lot of people, when I had to fire over the phone because it was virtual. And four years later, she sent me an email thanking me. Four years. Like she even remembered. Literally, she sent it last Monday to me. And I was like, “Wait, what?” Yes, because you don’t know when you’re in it what the other side of it is for them, either, so you’re not the judge of the entire situation.

	So, let’s dive into view a little bit more, too, especially when it comes to vulnerability because it’s business, quote unquote. Now, I believe, as you do, as far as connection, it can’t be built without vulnerability. But there’s a lot of people that have been in business for a long time or blue collar or whatever that just doesn’t feel like vulnerability is a good thing. Can you speak to that?

Joe Hudson:	Yes. I mean, a great example of this is – I can’t remember his name, but he used to run Boeing and then he ran Ford. And when he took over Ford, he waited for somebody to give him bad news. And it took months or something like that, and somebody finally gave him bad news, and he’s like, okay, you’re the COO. You’re number two.

	That’s how important vulnerability was for that man who was that successful, right? So, if your company can’t be vulnerable, then you don’t know the problems. It’s like you’ve got kitchen drawers full of junk that you can’t see. 

	So, if you don’t have that vulnerability, if you don’t have people telling you what they think because they’re scared of you because you’re invulnerable, then you can succeed, you’re just gonna do it in a way that is inefficient and uncomfortable as hell, right?

	And so you can say to yourself, like I just notice this with people in general, at some point those people who were like, “I have to do business this way and I have to be rigid,” at some point they look up and they’re like, “I’ve got everything I wanted except for I don’t want what I’ve got.” Right?

Jaime Masters:	Yep. We’ve heard that story a lot on this show where they’re like, “Wait, crap.” Yes.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. And so, and it’s less efficient on top of it. So, why do it? Why do it? And you see it – like I’ve seen the highest levels of business. I coach billionaires and the founders of unicorn companies. I coach people who are like in the top tiers of Fortune 100 companies. All of them have been able to be successful, and more successful the most vulnerability that they bring, the most emotionality that they bring into their business. Because it’s what makes decisions.

	Like if I go into your brain right now and I was like, “Oh, I’m taking the emotional center out of your brain,” your IQ would be the same, but you would cease to make decisions. It would take you half an hour to decide what color pen to use. It would take you like four hours to decide where to have lunch, right? So, your business would collapse, everything would be over, even though you were just as smart as you were.

	It means that people make emotional decisions. And so to say I’m not bringing emotions into business is like saying I’m not gonna bring the biggest tool that I have to influence decisions into my business. That’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s like imagine an advertiser saying, “We’re just not gonna use emotions.” It makes no sense.

Jaime Masters:	So funny. That’s exactly the question I was gonna ask you next, so thank you for answering it before I even got there. I mean, because when we look into business decision making, most people are like, well, I need data. Because I have a degree in computers and I used to be very, very analytical only, and then that was the way we make decisions, because you can always point – if it was wrong, you can point back at the data, or whatever the reason is, right?

Joe Hudson:	Yes, yes.

Jaime Masters:	But then when I started interviewing, people started talking about their gut and intuition and visioning, and I’m just like – it seemed very incongruent to what the way it usually was, analytically. So, tell me more about that. Should we be leaning into making gut decisions instead of data? Tell me more.

Joe Hudson:	I love data. Like as a venture capitalist, your main job is to sit on boards, and the main job of a board, besides the routine stuff, is to find out what the best metrics are for running the business. So, it’s critical. So, if  you take a look at one company that decides, oh, we’re gonna build our main metrics on per store purchases, compared to another one that says per person purchases, one’s gonna track the customer experience, one’s gonna track just the numbers, it’s a huge difference in the way their business runs by what they track. So, data is important, and choosing your metrics, absolutely important.

	However, the idea of running your business only by metrics is like saying that I only think the left half of my brain has value, right? So, usually my experience is that the left half of our brain, the logical side of our brain, incredibly important, but it’s the last thing to understand. Like it doesn’t catch the patterns that the right brain catches until maybe months or years have passed.

	And because people make decisions emotionally, so when dealing with customers or employees, there’s a really important thing to do.

	So, I love looking at data. What I love most is going out and saying, “Let’s just look at the data like we’re not looking for anything and see what we find.” Because it tells you so much about your business.

	But if I’m gonna make a decision, it needs to feel aligned with my head, the data part, with my emotional and with my gut. I need to have all three of those. That’s a decision. And when that’s there, it doesn’t even feel like I’m making a decision. And I think that’s the biggest thing that people don’t get about decision making at all. If you think “Oh my God, I have to make a decision,” you’re already screwed. Because then you’re in fear, right? 

	Because if you’re not in fear, the decision just gets made. But if you have to be scared to even think that, oh, I’ve got a big decision to make, right? Instead of just doing the next most obvious thing. And if you’re in fear, that means your mental capacity is reduced. It means you’re starting to think binarily instead of like the multitudes of solution, right? So, there’s all sorts of things that fear does that clouds decision making. So, it’s far better to just start doing the next most obvious thing than to even think you have a decision to make.

Jaime Masters:	Sounds like a magical universe I have heard so much about. So, it’s funny because you know, right, oh, like just take the next obvious step. And I get that, and I’m a strategic planner that wants to know all the pieces until the end, right? And so I get where I have felt alignment before and I have felt in flow, so it’s easy to navigate.

	But when you don’t, it’s really hard to be like get it back, you know what I mean? 

Joe Hudson:	Okay, so that’s a great question, right? So, let’s say you’re not in that flow and you’re in the question of the data. So, here’s the way to look at it. You have a big decision to make and you can’t get it back, right? You can’t get that flow back. If you had that swat analysis in front of you, here’s the strengths, weaknesses, and everything, you’re sitting there, and you’re looking over it, and some ultimate authority, whatever, God, Steve Jobs, comes down and says, “Look, if you choose this path, you’ll be happier.” What happens to your swat analysis? Right?

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. It just goes away. So, what’s actually happening there is that you’re trying to prevent an emotional state. You’re trying to make a decision to prevent the feeling of failure or the feeling of disaster or the feeling of loss or the feeling of losing a loved one, whatever that thing is. If you can immediately just go and mourn that feeling without experiencing the loss, the decision will get made for you.

Jaime Masters:	Okay. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	So, I’ll give you the example of this. I’ve been married for 20-something years. Happy, beautiful marriage. But in every marriage, you go through these moments of like “I don’t know if this is good.” And then we’re trying to fix it, it doesn’t work. We’re like, “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s just mourn it.” So, we’ll both go and just mourn the marriage as if it’s over and get all that emotion out so that we’re trying not to – so we’re not trying to avoid that feeling anymore. And then immediately we can come together, see each other, and the whole thing is fixed.

Jaime Masters:	That’s brilliant. That’s brilliant, yes.

Joe Hudson:	Right? So, it’s the emotional fear, the fear of some emotional outcome that’s stopping the decision making. It’s not trying to figure out an outcome. That’s what your brain tells you, but that’s not what’s actually happening.

Jaime Masters:	I’m glad you brought all this up because this is what I really want to talk about. So, because emotions can be sort of wading through mud, right? And there’s a lot, and we haven’t been taught it in school. Like I remember going, “Oh, I only have the good emotions.” Like, that was my goal when I was younger. I choose to only have good ones. I have no negative ones. And then realizing and going down this path of personal growth and going, “Oh.” Right?

	So, the idea of knowing and sort of managing your emotions, I know you talked about management, and then inquiry, that’s an interesting way to be because in a decision-making point, you’re like, there could be a whole bunch of crap in there, right?

Joe Hudson:	A lot, yes.

Jaime Masters:	And so what, do you take 27 hours and do all of the processing for all of the emotions and then you’re like, “I think we’re done.” Right? Like when is done, you know what I mean?

Joe Hudson:	Yes, yes. That’s a great question. So, I call what you’re talking about emotional fluidity, right? And so the way I would say that the emotions move typically are there’s the – I won’t get into the early childhood stuff, but there’s like emotions are fluid, then we get to a point where emotions become painful because we’re told that we shouldn’t have them. Don’t be angry, don’t be sad. I get bribed out of it, I get punished out of it, I get shamed or left alone because I had an emotion.

	Then I start trying to manage and control my emotions through meditation maybe, or through whatever, any sort of discipline that I have, because I don’t want to be controlled by my emotions.

	And then all of a sudden I realize, oh wait, the thing about emotions that were hard was that I did them at people. But if I just express them and allow them to be fluid again, I have a tremendous, a lot more freedom. And what you find out is there are no such thing as negative emotions. What you have is resisted emotions and unresisted emotions. 

	So, a resisted emotion, anger resisted can look like this. “No, I’m not angry.” Or it can look like this. “Nice dress.” Or it can look like this. “You son of a …” But unrepressed, unresisted anger is determination. It’s clarity. It’s no, we’re gonna be free. No, I will live my life the way that I want to – I will get this business done. That is unrepressed anger. That is uncontrolled anger. Everything else is messing it up.

	And so when you start getting good at that, it becomes more and more fluid, and so you don’t have to manage the emotions at all anymore. And they all become enjoyable. All the emotions become enjoyable.

	I’ll give you an example that’s just – like a couple days ago, I was frustrated. The business wasn’t moving exactly the way I wanted it to move. Well, actually, I don’t care if it moves the way I want it to. It wasn’t moving at the speed. The speed is more important to me.

Jaime Masters:	Always speed. Yes, yes.

Joe Hudson:	Like I want traction. And so I was frustrated, and I have one of the guys I’m working with on the phone, and I said, “I am really frustrated, and I gotta tell you, I know that my frustration isn’t productive for you, so let’s just take a moment.” He’s like, “No, I think I’m really good with your frustration right now. Let me hear it. I want to hear all the parts of it.” I was like, “Okay. Well then, great.” And I was like, “Blah blah blah blah blah.” He’s like, “Oh, that’s really informative. And boom, we just moved on. Because we both have this thing of like having that fluidity and not taking those emotions personally.

	So, it’s a long game. It’s not a short game. But at the beginning of feeling emotions, it can be a little chaotic. But I’ll say it feels better the first time you do it, the first time you allow those emotions to move in a productive way.

Jaime Masters:	So many questions in regard to this because when I’ve done it before, right, and I’m working on doing it more, so one question is sort of how you do it and how you’ve gotten to that piece. But we have only now, and that’s a lot of moments strung together. So, there’s just emotions and emotions and emotions and emotions.

Joe Hudson:	Always.

Jaime Masters:	And sometimes I’m doing a whole bunch of other crap that I can’t, right – I can’t do stuff. So, what I have done in the past, which is not ideal and I would love for you to speak to this, is be like oh, I have my emotional time set on my calendar, right? I’m going to process that stuff that came up today earlier later when I actually have time. So, I’ll journal or try and pull it out there. But it’s so hard to manage all this. So, can you speak to how we get to be like you when I grow up?

Joe Hudson:	So, yes, great questions. I think it’s a great phase that you’re in, which is like oh, I’m gonna go and take the emotions that I’m feeling and I’m gonna go be with them not in the middle. At that point, at some point that becomes not useful, right?

Jaime Masters:	I’m pretty much almost there right now, yes.

Joe Hudson:	But for a point it’s very useful. And I would say that there’s also – what you go do in that room is really important, so some folks are gonna go and they’re gonna meditate to feel it. Some people are gonna meditate to manage it, and some people are going to journal it to understand it. I really suggest moving it, like allowing it out loud. 

	See, the thing is, when you were taught to repress the emotion, it’s a muscular repression. So, I can look at somebody, like when you see me do one on one work, it’s like people are like, “Oh, you’re a wizard.” But it’s because I can look and I can say “Okay, that jaw constriction right there tells me that anger has been repressed. They always have to smile.” As an example, right? Or, “That thing here is a repressed fear that’s happening. That hunch is a critical parent hunch. That tucked-in tail tells me that they got shamed a lot as a child.” Right?

	Because whatever emotion that we’re holding, there is a muscular reaction to that. And so, unless you start freeing the musculature, you’re not gonna get free of the emotion. So, it’s a really important thing to have that expression. And if that expression is happening, and to be super clear, never do it at anybody. Don’t get angry or sad. And the sad one’s a little confusing because people don’t know what that is sometimes. But there’s some women and men who definitely know what it is, and it’s like they get sad at somebody to manipulate them.

	So, if you’re using your emotions to manipulate somebody, stop that and just allow the emotion to move on its own. And then naturally what will happen is the emotion just becomes super fluid, meaning that it arises and it’s gone very quickly, and you start recognizing every single piece of wisdom in the emotion.

	So, when I start feeling frustration or anger, I’m like oh, there’s a boundary or there’s a way I’m not taking care of myself. I need to find out what that is.

	If I start feeling sadness, as another example, then I know that there’s a thing in me that wants to change that I haven’t fully grieved the dying of, right?

	If I feel fear, I know that there’s a way that I’m not expressing my truth the way that I need to express my truth because I’m scared of some result, and if I express my truth, the fear of the result will go away.

	So, they start to be this great wisdom. And then you’re like oh, I can’t wait to feel that emotional experience because it gives me the right data to be able to make great decisions and do things that make me happy.

Jaime Masters:	Well, that’s how you know where to go in your alignment process, right?

Joe Hudson:	Yes.

Jaime Masters:	And what those next steps are to take. But it’s interesting getting to that point, right?  So, like do you identify the emotion like in your head? Because you don’t necessarily have to name it, I’m assuming. You just have to feel it. Like I was gonna create this map of like how I feel my emotions in my body, and then go “If this, then that,” right? I feel anger. It feels like this, this, and this. I go hit my heavy bag, right?

Joe Hudson:	Right.

Jaime Masters:	And everybody’s looking at me like, Jamie, you just – no, but it would work, though. If it was a program, it would work that way, you know what I mean? 

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Okay, so there’s different techniques here, right? So, example is if my brain is doing binary thinking, I know I’m in fear. So, let me back up. If you were physically abused and I put a key in one of your hands and a quarter in another one of your hands without telling you, you couldn’t tell me the difference between them.

Jaime Masters:	Wow.

Joe Hudson:	Because what happens is that we as humans cut off the painful experiences, right? So, if you were emotionally abused, and that means in my world either a tremendous amount of emotion was thrown at you to manipulate you or you were told that no emotion was okay to feel, then it takes a while to be able to feel the quarter. And I was like that, right? 

Jaime Masters:	I was too. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	Right, right. So, I had to use mental tricks at the beginning, like binary thinking is telling me that fear is happening. Or if I see a false end, meaning I go oh, I’m scared of this happening but I can’t see right past this, then I know fear is happening, right?

	If I have like my face starts feeling flushed, I know anger is happening, right? If I start getting jittery – so there was body cues, there was intellectual cues, but very quickly it turns into somatic experiencing. Emotions are a somatic world. And what you’ll notice is that there’s never a moment where you’re not having an emotion. That’s not happening. And the other thing that’s happening is you never actually have the exact same somatic experience twice.

	So, and so pretty soon you just start going to your body for that information. I don’t think going to your body for all information is good, but I think like going to your body for that – and as you start going to your body for that, then this fluidity happens in life.

	So, if I go and I do a podcast, I don’t particularly even have to prepare for it anymore. There’s a little preparation, maybe five or ten minutes, but that’s it. And if I go and speak in front of 10,000 people, I often don’t even know what I am going to say as I walk on stage because there’s just like this connection that can happen and move through me. Or if somebody gets really upset at me in the middle of a meeting, I’m like, “Oh, okay, this is what’s happening. Oh, I feel this emotional response. I know what the reaction is that I love having for that emotional response,” and off we go.

	So, it’s just a natural process. But part of that process is to intellectualize it if you have had that same kind of experience that we’ve had.

Jaime Masters:	So, once you get through that beginning chunk, then the head is kind of out of it, is what you’re saying, right? So, you don’t have to like go through the head tricks. Or is it a part of it, too? Do you identify –

Joe Hudson:	The head is just too slow.

Jaime Masters:	Okay.

Joe Hudson:	At that point the head’s just too slow. You don’t need it for that work. You need the head for certain work, but like I was saying before, the head catches up, right? So, I’ll have revelation about the way that I live my life now or who I am or about a client that I will react to, that my head won’t understand for a week. And I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s what I was doing.” Because the right brain recognizes pattern quicker than the left brain does. 

Jaime Masters:	This is what I want to tell all these left brain people that feel like they only have a left brain. It’s usually because you’re just shutting – you know? That it is possible, and it’s better actually.

Joe Hudson:	I was that guy. I was like valedictorian of my college. I was like totally in my head. When I got married, it was like that. So, absolutely, the emotional experience is amazing. And I have this saying that says joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won’t come into a house where her children aren’t welcome.

Jaime Masters:	Aw.

Joe Hudson:	And so if you see this happen with people, like what they think controlling the emotions is great, but they want more joy in their life. And as soon as they recognize, oh, I can – if I feel my sadness and it’s not gonna last forever, I can just feel it, and I’ll have more joy. I can feel my anger and I’ll have more joy. I’ll feel my fear. I won’t become incapacitated by my fear. I’ll just feel it, and then I’ll have more joy. Then all of a sudden it like, oh, I get it.

	But the body has to get that once or twice before – then it’s just boom. People just do it.

Jaime Masters:	Yes. It sounds so easy. Just do it. Boom, and then we’re all done, and then we just do that. Because like I intellectualize a lot. I was like, okay, well, feelings only last like 90 seconds, but those 90 seconds, if it’s a strong emotion, feel very long time. And then my head gets into it, like is this the right way to process it, right? Because there’s just so many different modalities. Like you’ll read one book that says go do this. You’ll read another book that says go do this. And it’s hard figuring out – I just want a manual for me. Like, you saying that stuff, I’m like can’t you just write all that down and I’ll just check in and see if that’s right for me, too? Right? Because it’s a lot of work to figure this stuff out.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. It becomes a lot less work if you actually feel and express the emotion.

Jaime Masters:	Practice. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	And that’ll move everything really, really quickly. Like I cannot tell you how quickly. If you just said, you know what? I have some pent-up anger because I wasn’t allowed to feel anger as a kid because I was always supposed to be nice and positive, and you went into your room – do you have children or –

Jaime Masters:	Yes. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	Okay. So, it’s really fun to do this with kids. I do it with my kids. And you go in your room and you get angry, and you beat the pillow and you get angry, and you did that every day for two weeks, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Jaime Masters:	Noted. I just came back from a leadership workshop, intelligence workshop where we expressed a lot of our emotions. You like sign up for a leadership workshop and you’re like, oh, I didn’t know I’d be screaming at the top of my lungs today. You know what I mean? 

Joe Hudson:	Right, right.

Jaime Masters:	Processing the shit of childhood in a leadership workshop. But like you said, that’s exactly what is needed in order to go through and actually be a less charged up human being, right? Otherwise, you’re getting poked at and resisting whatever is coming through, and that’s – your employees feel that, your kids feel – like it’s, yes, you’re trying to be a lot less patched.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. And you’re taking everything more personally.

Jaime Masters:	Yes. It’s a bumpier ride.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Much bumpier.

Jaime Masters:	Well, and that’s the thing. So, I’m in like the practice of what that is, so this is why I love interviewing people like you that have it solidly in it, because it’s easy to talk about, but experiencing – yes, if you’ve never experienced before, we’re just talking about it, right? I wish we could sort of put on a little suit so I could know exactly –

Joe Hudson:	I can tell you a funny story about it.

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Joe Hudson:	When I realized that I hadn’t cried in seventeen years, I have this thing – so, I didn’t cry – okay, so I went home and I went through the photo album when I was like 20 years old, and I’m looking for the photograph here so you can see. Yes. So, but I was 20 years old, 23 or something like that, and I realized that – I saw this photograph of me crying, and I remembered that’s how my parents used to make fun of me for crying. They’d take pictures, right? 

Jaime Masters:	Oh, that’s so sad. 

Joe Hudson:	So, this is the thing. This is the – so, I don’t know if that’s gonna be able to be seen. That’s me.

Jaime Masters:	Oh yes.

Joe Hudson:	Right?

Jaime Masters:	Oh my gosh, that’s so sad.

Joe Hudson:	And you can kinda see in my face, I’m also like shocked, like why would you be taking a picture of me? Yes?

Jaime Masters:	Yes. Oh my gosh.

Joe Hudson:	So, I was like oh, I haven’t cried. But I didn’t have any – I didn’t know anything, right? So, I was so embarrassed of crying that I try – I put that on my desk, I had it in a frame. Still I didn’t cry. I said, I’m gonna go fake crying. But I was so ashamed. I lived in LA at the time. I went like up to 10,000 feet, and then I hiked on a trail, and then I hiked off trail so that I could cry and nobody would see me. It was like that, you know?

	And I faked crying, week after week for about a month. And then all of a sudden it moved, and it just moved for me,  and I cried. Not that it was out of control, but I had so much that I wanted to cry for like – it was four or five days straight, almost. I cried brushing my teeth. And then all of a sudden I was like oh my God, the relief, the love, the joy that I can feel because I have experienced that sadness, finally.

	And that’s what started me on the journey.

Jaime Masters:	But I love that it took you a month. Like most people won’t go that far. They’ll go a couple days and go, “It didn’t work,” and then especially without you knowing that that would even work. What made you continue to do –

Joe Hudson:	I was like, people cry. I don’t.

Jaime Masters:	Normal people are supposed to cry.

Joe Hudson:	Right. And I’m pretty sure that’s the reason. So, I’m like – I think it was my rebellion, you know? I was just like, I will not let them fucking hold me down, is what it was.

Jaime Masters:	Well, where’s the line between being addicted to – like because once you start crying, or if you’re in grief, you’re like where is that line of going back and being addicted to emotions?

Joe Hudson:	That’s a great question. So, if – okay, so if you’re manipulating people for the emotion, then you’ve crossed the line. So, that’s one. If you believe the story behind the emotion, then that also is gonna make the process a lot slower. You’ll be much more indulgent, right?

Jaime Masters:	Yes, yes.

Joe Hudson:	So, I can be really angry, and I might need that story to express the anger, but there’s always a part of me that realizes that this is not actually true. It’s just an emotional experience that I’m having, and I just have to move it. And the more that you can observe it instead of be in the story, the quicker it moves.

	And then the last thing is if you find yourself being indulgent with emotions, meaning the other way to say that is you keep on crying but nothing’s moving, it means that you’re using one emotion to cover another emotion.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, that makes sense. Okay.

Joe Hudson:	So, a lot of times people will keep on using fear as a way not to feel loneliness, or keep on using anger as to not feel hurt. 

Jaime Masters:	How do you get under that, though? Because like that’s – because when I learned how to cry – because I didn’t cry either. Crying was for wuss people, and that wasn’t me. And so I was like twenty-something.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Babies.

Jaime Masters:	Tough, you know? So, when I started crying, that was the only thing I knew how to do, so like every emotion that was negative came out in crying, right? Because that was the thing. But how can you get underneath it and know what it is?

Joe Hudson:	Yes. So, it’s not an intellectual process, it’s a physical one. And just to give you the story, my youngest daughter was crying at one point. I’m like, “I don’t think you’re sad. Are you sad?” And she goes, “No, I’m angry.” And I’m like, “Oh. How often when you cry are you angry?” She’s like, “About half the time.” She’s like 10 or 11, yes. It’s because we all know it.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, if we let ourselves, yes.

Joe Hudson:	If we let ourselves. And then she – and then I said, “Well, what makes you cry instead of get angry?” She goes, “Because my sister is bigger than me, and so if I get angry at her, she can whack me. So, I do the sadness because that works.” Right? And she literally – so, we started getting angry when she got sad, and like her whole relationship with her sister changed because she could find a real tool instead of this surrogate tool of crying.

	So, then the question is, the question that you’re asking is like how do we do that? One, I would just say we know. But the second one is iterate. Just experiment. “Oh, I’m in this emotion, it’s stuck, I’m just going to see what it’s like to feel fear right now or anger, and see if it goes deeper and see if that uncovers anything.”

	And the thing about emotional experience is you can fake it until you make it.

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Joe Hudson:	For people heavily in their head, I give them this experiment, which is I want you to be an actor playing a person just like you who’s angry. Your job is to be completely convincing, totally convincing, but not to actually believe it. It’s a character. You know it’s not you. And that just works beautifully. Every time, that works beautifully.

	So, you can just move, say okay, what is this next emotion that might be? I’m gonna try it and see if that’s actually it. And when you hit it, you’ll know. It’ll be like boom. But generally for men, generally anger comes first, then sadness, then fear and helplessness. For women, typically in our society, this isn’t true in other societies, sadness comes first, then anger, then fear and helplessness.

Jaime Masters:	I love all that. It’s funny because I have ADD, right? I’m very neurodivergent. So, this is why I have to journal because I’ll get halfway through emotions and I’ll be over here somewhere. Like it’s hard to focus that long.

Joe Hudson:	Yes.

Jaime Masters:	And we’re only talking a handful of minutes, but to be that focused that long, to explore what that is, I have to journal to remind myself what the heck I’m doing before I go to squirrel over here. How do you do it that makes it easier?

Joe Hudson:	I have a guided meditation on emotional exploration, and that keeps people – that’s – and I created it for myself to do it myself, and then I use it – I use it in the Art of Accomplishment, the master course, which is like this two-month thing online, and I’ll use it there for people because it very much helps.

	But I think the trick is, especially for somebody who’s got more the ADD, is a deep curiosity. It’s wonder. So, all of this that I’ve told you will not work if you are trying to get rid of your emotions, right?

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Joe Hudson:	So, it doesn’t matter what tool you use to try to get rid of your emotions. Eventually it will fail. It will start with like a nice high and then it will fail. So, the trick is to understand that the place you want to be is welcoming. Like I said, like she won’t come  into a house where her children aren’t welcome, right? And so it’s not managing. It’s literally welcoming it. It’s like I can’t wait to be angry, I can’t wait to be sad, I can’t wait to be scared. When that is your experience, then the whole thing moves unbelievably in flow and joy.

Jaime Masters:	So, it’s funny because I made myself a guided meditation. Yours is probably a million times better because I’m like, okay, then this. Right? Then check in with your body. Oh, that’s awesome.

	And you talked about the course. Does this go through how to love your emotions? Because sort of that last step is actually embracing and loving and welcoming your emotions, and I would like to get there, so I’m hoping that you have some tools.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. So, I have like the on menu courses, if you will. There’s the connection course, and that is learning the basics of how we work and how to be in connection. And it’s view and we explore the voice in the head, and we explore how to use these tools for businesses. And the whole course is designed to teach you a tool, use it to make your business better so that you know how to use the tool and you know it works.

	Then the Art of Accomplishment is all about the seven things that hold people back in accomplishing what they want, and so it’s like connection over perfection. Most of us choose perfection over connection, but it’s actually connection over perfection as an example, right? 

	And one of them is feel over figure. One of the segments is feel over figure, where we start to explore the emotional state. So, definitely a lot of people have big emotional states, and they start moving and arising and start to flow.

	And then I have this thing that I do just for like a very – this is the off-menu thing called Ground Breakers, which is like a week-long – we’ve recently just done a study of it. We’re gonna start doing a study of the master course. But we did a study of it, and our preliminary findings is that we actually changed multiple things on OCEAN. Do you know what OCEAN is?

Jaime Masters:	No.

Joe Hudson:	It’s quite revolutionary. OCEAN is the big five things about our personality that they say don’t change. So O is openness/closedness. C is conscientiousness. E is introvert/extrovert. A is agreeableness, and N is neuroses. And we actually, our findings show that we’re changing both O and N. We’re changing neuroses level and openness level in our work, which is really cool.

Jaime Masters:	Wow. Yes. 

Joe Hudson:	And in that one, we explore all the emotions really deeply. But what we’re doing in that one is that we are changing the pattern through the head, through changing the way we talk to ourselves, the voice in the head or looking and understanding and realizing it. We’re working on the emotional level to create the fluidity, and we’re working on the – which would be the mammalian part of the brain – and then we’re working on the nervous system, which would be the reptilian part of the brain, which is our ability to love and accept pleasure and feel love and experience joy and safety.

	And so we’re working on all three simultaneously. But the emotions is a big part of it.

Jaime Masters:	Well, when you look at how we were born, right, and then we have all this crap on us, and so what we’re trying to do is shed what that is. The babies could be enlightened, right, or whatever we call that, so shedding all of the stuff. 

	Working in that level, like it seems like you’ve done a lot of work in regards to that. That’s what OCEAN is about and stuff. I know the point of measuring it is not helpful, but what does that look like to navigate your life almost completely shedded free of the shit that’s all over you?

Joe Hudson:	Yes. I would say that it’s like a dream that you never knew could happen coming true. That’s what I would say. It’s like it’s a ridiculous – it’s also incredibly normal, and it’s very – I have a saying that if you want to be awake or you want to be special, you only get to choose one. You don’t get to choose both. Like there’s something just so plain. It’s a beautiful cosmos, but you’re a speck of sand in the universe of planets. 

	So, there’s this utter joy and like – yes, I could start crying thinking about it. It’s like this feeling of wonder and joy and at the same time being completely non-personal and not important in the middle of it. And yet you still care deeply about – like it’s embodied, you care deeply about the people around you, and you care about your children. You’re just very human, you know? 

	I like to say also, there’s that famous Zen saying that says before awakening, chop wood. After awakening, chop wood. I have been awakening, daddy issues. After awakening, daddy issues. Like it’s just more subtle things coming up to be refined. But the evolution never ends.

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Joe Hudson:	It’s not like an oak tree is ever finished, right? It’s just a forest, and then it’s just wood on the ground, and then it’s a forest again. It’s just constant evolution. It moves.

Jaime Masters:	You are never done. And it’s interesting because I’ve only been able to have the touch stone in either four- or five-hour meditation or Iowasksa or – you know what I mean?

Joe Hudson:	Yes.

Jaime Masters:	So, you know the feeling exists, and to normalize it, say that it’s normal and not like this thing that’s so far away –

Joe Hudson:	So, it’s not that hard to get. Check this out. This may or may not work, but check it out. Just ask yourself this question. What’s looking out behind your eyes? Slow it down, slow it down, and just go, yes.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, I can touchstone in.

Joe Hudson:	Right. It’s always – the idea that you have to get there is the thing that’s preventing it.

Jaime Masters:	But that’s – so this question, then, because the sensitivity – so, when I meditate, I can get to that, to an embodied state. I feel like the sensitivity to what I can feel in that state is different when I’m at a different state. Do you feel like you – the sensitivity of feeling that can be changeable?

Joe Hudson:	Always, yes.

Jaime Masters:	Okay.

Joe Hudson:	I mean, I don’t want – yes, freedom isn’t your hand is always like this. Freedom is that your hand can do this, right?

Jaime Masters:	Yes, yes, yes.

Joe Hudson:	So, yes, there’s a way that I’m more sensitive and that I can’t do anything about that, but there’s also a place of sensitivity or expansiveness that I can go that is like different than if I’m gonna try to be on a podcast, right?

Jaime Masters:	Yes. Definitely.

Joe Hudson:	But I will say, just to say – you talk about this thing, about hours of meditation, and I wonder – here’s another way to look at it. Think about the part of you that hasn’t changed. That’s never changed. Anytime at any moment of your life, it was there. You see?  I can feel it in you already, right?

Jaime Masters:	Yes.

Joe Hudson:	That didn’t take fucking four hours.

Jaime Masters:	Thank you. Thank you for this. Yes, thank you.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Because it’s your nature. It doesn’t take four hours.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, and I’m just throwing it over there because it’s a good excuse. That’s great. Thank you for shedding that for me.

Joe Hudson:	You just threw it over there, by the way. 

Jaime Masters:	I know, right? I can’t get it. I can’t grab it. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	And then you’re asking me, how do I quit doing this?

Jaime Masters:	Slap me. I think that’s the other hard part, right? Because we have our patterns, and of course that’s a pattern of mine. But the integration and being self aware, having somebody call me out on my crap when I’m in it and going, “Shit, I’m doing it again.” Like I’m throwing it. I didn’t realize that self awareness piece, like it’s hard in integration when you’re just you, unless you have amazing friends that help reflect pieces. And that’s what I’m working with, too, is having people that are friends of mine have the same languaging around this and can be like, “Oh.”

Joe Hudson:	Community of practice is so important. Psychologically the studies are clear that if you have a community of practice, I mean, Buddhism talked about it, Christianity talks about it, like that community of practice is critical. So, I couldn’t agree more about that. I think it’s really smart to do.

Jaime Masters:	How did you create that for yourself, or did you just tap into ones?

Joe Hudson:	You know, I just started saying what was on my mind, and a lot of people left. And then a lot of people showed up.

Jaime Masters:	You almost made me spit out my water. Thank you, that was great.

Joe Hudson:	I was like, I’m gonna be me and we’ll see who sticks around, was kind of my thought process on it. And the people who stuck around were the people who wanted to have that conversation with me. 

Jaime Masters:	That is a very fast implementation. I love that. That’s great. One of the questions that I had written down from before from one of the interviews that you did was about goals, right? I mean, this whole podcast. Well, just so you know because I don’t think I told you, it’s about life first, then money, right? It’s about joy first and then money. 

	We still have goals, but how do we stay unattached from our goal? Because usually it’s got a grasping quality to it. Or how would an “enlightened” quote/unquote person have goals, or do they?

Joe Hudson:	Yes, beautiful question. I love goals. I love them, I love them. And I love them in an organization because it keeps everybody feeling they’re part of something. It keeps everybody moving in the same direction. It reduces friction. So, I love goals in that way and I love goals personally because it defines the questions that I ask. If I say I want to get 100 people to listen to my podcast, it’s a different question than if I say I want to have a million people, right? And it leads to different actions, the goals.

	The people who started Google didn’t work any harder than the person who started Benedetti’s Tires down the road, right? Both of them put in the 40, 60-hour weeks. Probably 100-hour weeks in both cases. But, so I love goals because it’s like the north star that you want to move towards, and I think it’s great.

	The question is who are you if you don’t meet your goals? That’s the question that you have to ask yourself. And if you aren’t in touch with the thing that’s valuable, whether you meet the goals or not, you will be grasping. If you’re not in touch with the fact that who you are is valuable and inherently good despite your ability to make your mom and dad happy or whatever it is, please somebody or prove yourself, then you’re gonna grasp, and there’s no way around that. That’s what you’re gonna do, right?
	And you can grasp at your goals and you can get them done. It’s a lot less efficient. And by the way, oftentimes when I deviate from my goals, better things happen, right? Like I had this idea, but on the way to this idea I realized, like I got the view over the hill and I was like, wait, there’s a much better place to go over there.

	But I love goals. The idea that someone shouldn’t have a goal is like a ridiculousness. But there’s a way in which all the goals are seen through. And I think some people accomplish that in business by seeing business as a game. So, you see some very successful people, and they haven’t depersonalized it in the way that I’m speaking about, but they’ve depersonalized it by oh, it’s a game. And so it’s not about them, it’s just about winning or losing this game. Which is another way to do it, but that way to do it doesn’t make you happy. Just makes it more likely that you meet your goal.

Jaime Masters:	Lesson learned on that, yes. Well, the hustle culture, you know what I mean? It’s like, well, the commitment to the goal, they’re like, well, if you’re not committed to that goal, but just like you said, if you’re fluidly on the path and realize that’s not the correct goal, I should be going over here to find my joy or whatever it is, that’s – you gotta open yourself up first before you can start being flexible and holding the butterfly, right?

Joe Hudson:	Right. But there’s something else, too, because there’s this moment where it’s like I’m not gonna meet my goal, and I could give up on it, or this is the moment that I get creative, and I revolutionize an industry. Right? So, there’s a way that the north star never changes. There’s a way in which you realize there’s better ways to get to the north star.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, yes. And that’s the life you want to live. The fun, fluid, creative next step. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	As an example, of this, everybody in – and when you’re dealing with a car, the efficient car is not the fast car. But when you’re dealing with business, the idea is that the efficient business is the fast business, which is like utterly ridiculous.

Jaime Masters:	Right. Yes.

Joe Hudson:	The way that we measure efficiency is by enjoyment. If we’re enjoying ourselves, then we’re efficient because it means that less effort had to go into making the stuff happen. And nobody enjoys failing, so like people are like, “If we enjoy ourselves, we’ll fail.” It’s like, you can’t. You can’t fail and be like, this is great. It doesn’t happen. Like you’re like, “I can enjoy myself a bit, but I want to win. I want to succeed. I want to grow.”

	So, enjoyment’s like a far better way to guide you in efficiency. Speed is important sometimes, no doubt. And sometimes you choose speed over efficiency. But I can run a business 90% on the metric of enjoyment successfully.

Jaime Masters:	I want everybody to run their business – like most people are like, “Does not compute.” Like, KPI. But there’s no measurement KPI for that. Like, there isn’t, you know? We can measure our speed.

Joe Hudson:	There are actually – as far as employee enjoyment – so, the way I learned about enjoyment was I was sitting on the board of companies and I was looking for a way to get a leading metric. A leading indicator. So, it was like by the time the sales numbers weren’t good, it was too late, right? Or by the time the product didn’t get developed on time, it was too late.

	And so I started asking the people in the companies to just tell me how, by department, how much people were enjoying their job. And there’s different ways of asking, but what we found out was their performance in a start-up world – I don’t know it works in the big world – but in the start-up world, enjoyment – if the salespeople don’t think that they’re gonna make their numbers, they are not enjoying their jobs. If the engineers don’t think that – they’re not enjoying their job.

	So, it was this great way for us to be able to measure, get a leading indicator of success.

Jaime Masters:	That’s awesome. You’re backing it up and going, oh. Because that part of us is smarter than this part of us. Faster, faster. That’s awesome.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Exactly.

Jaime Masters:	That’s a really good way to put it. I know we have to start wrapping up. I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. So, I’m gonna ask the last question, then we can talk about the course and stuff that you’ve got. But what is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Joe Hudson:	This is the – I don’t know if this goes into action, but this is the best thing I can tell you. Every day, sit down with somebody that you’re working with and be grateful out loud for everything that you have financially, right? So, and make it last 10 minutes, and go back and forth. And make it so that you actually feel the gratitude.

	And it can even eventually be – once you get that feeling, you can even be grateful for the challenges that you’re facing. But it’s gratitude for “Oh, we do have an office right now.” Gratitude for – and feel that gratitude. And what that does is it shifts the mind from solving a problem with this is what I’m missing and how do I get it, to this is what I have and how do I grow it. 

	And in that is twice as many solutions, and in that the poverty mentality goes away. You stop defining yourself by what you don’t have by what you have, and then it just grows. I’ve seen that work to grow people’s business unbelievably. Unbelievably well.

Jaime Masters:	See, what we’re talking about is like the next level. I know science it catching up with all this stuff, too, but it is the next level of business ownership that I hope everyone embraces. One of my favorite answers to that question ever. Thank you. And I’ve done a lot of these, so thank you, thank you. 

Joe Hudson:	You’re welcome.

Jaime Masters:	So, tell us where we can get your podcast, where we can check out the course. Tell me all the pieces.

Joe Hudson:	Yes. Artofaccomplishment.com. The podcast is Art of Accomplishment. The two courses that are on menu are the connection course, and that’s a great place to start. It’s not very expensive, it’s super easy to use, it’s just press play, and you do it with somebody, and you just – it’s literally you listen to a podcast and then you do this exercise that’s about the – set of exercises which is about the length of a movie. So, you just set up five movie dates with somebody and you do these exercises. Challenging, no doubt, but easy. Easy to use, but challenging. Enjoyable but challenging. It’ll push you.

	And then from that point, then there’s the Art of Accomplishment master class, which is like once a year we do that. We do it for eight weeks. And those are the two on the menu courses. And it can all be found at artofaccomplishment.com.

Jaime Masters:	Perfect. And you were super awesome about giving us a discount code. Everybody, if you want to use EM for the code, you even get a discount. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Joe. I have been waiting for this and you did not disappoint. I really appreciate it and hopefully you’ll come back soon.

Joe Hudson:	Total pleasure. Any time. Thank you, thank you.

Categories: All, Business, Featured Millionaire Interview, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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