Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
Embracing Vulnerability: Transformative Journeys in Leadership and Business
Explore the transformative journey of authentic leadership and entrepreneurship with insights from Jason Valaseck. Through embracing vulnerability, cultivating patience, and prioritizing transparency, individuals can rise above self-limiting beliefs and foster meaningful connections in their professional lives.
• Jason shares his entrepreneurial backstory and the evolution of Bodcore
• Discussion of overcoming self-limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome
• The importance of asking for help and seeking mentorship
• Key leadership traits: patience, reflection, and listening
• The significance of conviction and genuine belief in one's offerings
• Transition from aggressive sales to a service-oriented mindset
• The role of transparency in building trust in business relationships
Connect with Ron
Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”
Learn more about Global Core Strategies
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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted to have you join us as he unpacks and shares his leadership experience, designed to help you in your leadership journey. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning everyone. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President, the Chief Operating Officer for GlobalCore Strategies, which is a leadership development firm that my wife and I started over 11 years ago, and we have one thing that we really strive to do as a company, and that's to add value and make a difference for leaders to stay connected to their workforce Really simple, but very difficult to do, and so we love doing that. At the end of the day, everywhere that we go, add value, make a difference. What we do on this particular show is a podcast that we release every single Monday, with leaders from around the world, from all different backgrounds, walks of life, different beliefs, different systems, but they add value to all of our listeners, all of our viewers, and so I'm excited that we have another wonderful person on here with us.
Speaker 2:Jason is coming in from Arizona, so different time zone. He's just getting breakfast, I'm ready to go to lunch, and so we've already talked about that in the green room. So, jason, I'm going to pause and let you introduce yourself, and then we'll go into the podcast itself, but definitely take some time to tell us who you are and what you're up to.
Speaker 3:Sounds great. As you mentioned, my name's Jason, last name Velocik. I'm here in Scottsdale, Arizona. I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur. I've had some minor successes. I'm still waiting for my home run.
Speaker 3:And I think Bodcore is that business that's going to get me there. You know, when I look back at my life, you know I've always been into business and I've always had different hobbies and played sports growing up and did all the fun things that you try to do as a child and as a young adult, but the one consistent that I've always, always maintained was my health. Like, I've always paid attention to just staying in shape. You know, in the beginning it was because I was hopeful to play a sport my entire life, you life, so you want to be in the best condition you possibly can and then when that dream ends, you hope that something else will take its place and I just want to keep staying in shape.
Speaker 3:In the event that some opportunity that I didn't see found me, I did go work in the gym industry for a while and I did like that, but I didn't think that would be the right business for me at the time. I'd say in hindsight, the way entrepreneurship has changed today, it's what I should have did Now. I didn't know if I would have had the resources to create a gym when I was getting into entrepreneurship, but now, looking back, I could have started as a small studio opened up several of those and been one day acquired by somebody much larger, and that could have put me into a different playing game of gyms and fitnesses. So I never really made it down that path, but I finally have gotten there through this business called Bodcore. So this is my breakthrough to get into the longevity and health and fitness industries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Thank you for sharing. You know, because on your shirt you have good marketing in the background and when you think about, as an entrepreneur, some of the decisions that you make, some of the fear that you had to go through, some of the challenges you had to overcome, all leadership, you know. So what? The entrepreneur running the Corporate 100 company there are some very practical things that are similar across this. When you think of leadership, so you think about getting the Bacor. You've done it, you've tried a couple, you're in this. What's the things that you had to overcome as a leader running this organization?
Speaker 3:It's something that I'm still trying to improve on. When you're younger, you're taught this kind of like fake it till you make it attitude. That's what the movies portrayed as a young entrepreneur. So I think you know that's kind of where a lot of us start is we're trying to convince other people we're more successful than we really are, and that does work to an extent. But what that doesn't help you do which I didn't know until later in life is if you act like you have it all figured out, no one knows that you may need some help. If people realize that you have the ambition to go the distance but you don't have all the pieces or all the skills, they might want to help you get there. But you have to let them know that you need the help, and I'd probably say that was like the early mistakes I made was just not letting other people that I was working with and trying to lead let them know I don't have all the answers.
Speaker 2:When you think about it, jace, I definitely want to unpack that because I always tell people I use that as an analogy I've never seen a tow truck pick up a car that's paid for and running well. Sure, there has to be a reason that it stops to help you. Can you unpack more? How important was that for you to get to this place? Because you can have ego, you can have pride you can have. I don't want people to know and I want people to think I got it together. There's imposter syndrome. There are a lot of reasons people don't let people know they need help and they know they need it and they even know that the person can help them. What was that transition like? To get to where you started telling and asking for what you needed? What happened?
Speaker 3:It happened in two phases. Phase one is I just became very hungry at learning from other people. You know, early on again, I thought that was a weakness, showing that I had to learn from somebody else, and then, once I figured that out that it actually makes you seem more intelligent when you seek help from others. That kind of really helped me get on the right path and just stop acting like I have all the answers. And once I started becoming a sponge for more information, then things started to get a whole lot easier.
Speaker 3:The second part of that when you're getting started again, you know your friends and your family like they're your biggest. You know cheerleaders. You know they're. They're telling you everything that you need to hear so you can keep going the distance. And if you're not mentally mature enough for that yet, it goes to your head and you start believing that you're invincible. When you're definitely not. You start believing you can make anybody like you and that's not the case either.
Speaker 3:And others start to kind of also mirror you because they see you doing it. So if you tell other people what they want to hear all the time and you continue to do that, they'll start telling you what you want to hear all the time, and if you're just telling each other what you want to hear all the time, neither one of you are learning anything. You're just like reinforcing bad habits, possibly. So it was like being humbled and like realizing that people that I thought liked me really didn't like me that much. You know, like I hope that they did, I thought they did, but it turns out I was wrong, you know, because I was probably a little overconfident. I just needed to show some more humility. So, you know, the last decade has been all about showing humility and just like realizing you don't have all the answers and try to learn from everybody, not just if they're more successful than you or less.
Speaker 2:Wow, I love the guests when they come on, because you never know what we're going to talk about. People become really transparent. So I love that you've been transparent and vulnerable here, because you're exactly right. You think people like you. Sometimes there's this thing of being there's a thin line between arrogance and cockiness or confidence. It's okay to be confident, but people shy away from and push away from arrogant and cocky people and some people think, well, I gotta be that way so I can be successful. I'm on the fence, I hear you, I want you to be confident, but I don't want you to feel like you got all the answers all the time. I don't think I want to be in that space with you if that's how you show up. So when you think about you've gone through that journey, you begin to recognize how important it is for you to be able to ask for help and get help. How has that helped you do business better in BotCorp?
Speaker 3:It's helped me develop patience, because patience is also a very difficult skill for a lot of entrepreneurs. I mean, you just got this ball of energy in you all the time and you know that you're destined for something more, but you don't quite know what it is yet. And you think you got it, but you don't quite got it. And then you just you rush into decisions because you hear something like that's it, like that's the thing I've been missing, and you just jump right into it before you just like take a step back, you know, maybe sleep on it, decide tomorrow. Are you still equally excited about it as you were before? And then again reflecting back on other people who have done far more than you and listen to what their strategies were.
Speaker 3:And I remember, like early on, listening to like Jeff Bezos explain like things that make him successful. And when you hear other people talk about him, but like when they're in meetings with him, I guess his big thing was he always spoke last, like he never went into a meeting with all the answers and directions. He went into a meeting and said nothing until the very end, after everyone else had their time to speak and share their thoughts. So like when you hear someone like Jeff Bezos, the king of the mountain for levels of success when it comes to entrepreneurship, and if he goes into a meeting room, doesn't say anything till last. What makes you think that I should go into the meeting room and speak first? Right? So, like again, learn from others who have done it.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I mean you're dropping some really great nuggets and reinforcing the reminders. I mean you said two things that are super important. Three one is you said feedback Super important, based on your conversation. The other is being able to listen, speak last and sleep on it. Like because you know, as entrepreneurs, we are ready to go all the time 100 miles an hour, even if it's the wrong direction we'll go back, but we don't know how to just like pause and get more data. It's like off to the races, we go without getting all the data. So, three things any one of those you want to unpack for us, whether it's to get feedback, or whether it's to sleep on it or to be last to speak.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you know, this is another thing that kind of made me overconfident early on is you know, another great entrepreneur that we all kind of admire was Steve Jobs. Confident early on is you know, another great entrepreneur that we all kind of admire was Steve Jobs, and one of his biggest things was saying that people don't know what they want until you give it to them and like. So if you're too immature for that statement, again it goes to your own head and you think all of your ideas are great because you reflect that. Well, steve Jobs did it. Well, he's a unicorn, you know, he's not like everybody else and he also had the resources of Apple behind him.
Speaker 3:You know most of us don't right. So again, this goes back to being patient. And even if you have a good idea, and just because you heard this saying from somebody else who was far more accomplished, saying that people don't know what they want until you give it to them, it doesn't mean that you have the answers that people want. You still need to be patient, relax a little bit, maybe bounce your ideas off some other people, maybe even create like a mock-up test environment of your business, see how people react to it. But at the end of the day, just be more patient, as hard as it is frustrated and tired and I would show up.
Speaker 2:I wasn't at my best and my team said will you just let us do the back end, like get out of the way? I was ready to pull the plug on it, quite honestly, because I was doing too much and it was exhausting and I was missing my family time. And my team came together and said Ron, what's the one thing that you do well? I said interview. Then just do that. When the guests come on, do the thing that you do well, we have the rest. So I will tell you. I love what you're saying is how do you leverage the resources? I wasn't going to ask for help. I figured I had to do it and I didn't want to bother them. Quite out of that, it was a guilty conscience that I don't want to bother people. There were people waiting to help.
Speaker 3:Honestly, I still struggle with that. I am the worst at asking for help. Like it's still a very uncomfortable feeling, like I don't want to burden other people because I'm a Leo, I have no idea, but I never want to feel like I'm indebted to somebody else. So if someone does something nice for me, it's in my nature to want to do something nicer for them. You know, I don't want to bother somebody for something else unless they bothered me first, because then I feel like I owed a favor. So like I just don't want to put people out. So I still struggle with that.
Speaker 3:What I do to try to get past that is I try to find people who I know have the answers that I'm looking for. Like seek out who the industry experts are and just like obsess over their content. Like these podcasts are great. I consume so many of other people's podcasts because what I find is a lot of business leaders will go on a podcast and they'll have certain strategies that they may not always want to share because they're secret to their system or they're proprietary to their business and they don't want to share everything openly. But if you just keep listening to all their messaging, they'll slip up sometimes and they will share these nuggets of wisdom that if you weren't watching hundreds of hours, you would have never caught it. You can't just watch the highlights and learn everything You've got to like. Sit through the boring parts too, and just observe and listen as much as you can. And when you hear those nuggets of wisdom, save them somewhere, store them where you can. That's what I do.
Speaker 2:So if you listen and Jason will drop some stuff, come back and follow him again. He's going to drop something, so he's not going to give you the whole recipe today. So, entrepreneurs, do we give you the whole recipe today? No, we don't. But do we give you something that will help make you better today? Absolutely. So I'm glad that Jason's dropping it. He's telling you some things that he's done, and the fact of feedback and listening, and I want to learn a little bit about Barcore. Let the audience learn a little bit. You latched onto this. This is something that you're doing. It's the thing that you're really passionate about.
Speaker 3:Tell us more about that. It's kind of grown on me. To be completely honest, it wasn't quite that attractive to me in the beginning because I thought it was gimmicky. So my entire life I've always been in the gym. I'm not like a gym rat, but I've always been consistent. I've never taken more than a month off at a time, always been consistent.
Speaker 3:Well, in 2018, I find myself in a new relationship with a young lady who had a two-year-old daughter and I don't have children yet and for the very first time, I'm a stepdad right, and as a stepdad, I'm spending more time with the family and I'm also eating the same food as the two-year-old. So I'm in the gym less eating. Worse, you know, we're having a glass of wine every single night. We're having Grimaldi's pizza a few times a week and for the very first time in my life, I've got dad bod starting to hit me and I'm like, okay, the next chapter. I guess you know, learn to deal with it. But luckily, this young lady that I was dating she was also an entrepreneur and she was electric in her space. At the time, I think she was the most well-known organic spray canning artist in the state of Arizona and in Arizona. I think about being tan. You know, even though we have the sun all the time, we actually have more canning flams in almost every other state in the country. That was kind of weird.
Speaker 2:That was kind of weird Arizona and all of a sudden.
Speaker 3:So that space has evolved and this, you know, spray canning has become very, very popular and this woman that I was in a relationship with her niche was organic spray canning and she was just crushing it. She was doing fantastic. So, because she was doing so well, another gentleman who we didn't know reached out to her and wanted her to be a brand ambassador for his fat laser company. Like, he had this fat laser product that shrinks your fat cells and tightens your skin, and I'm like, well, that's gimmicky, because I was just shut off to it, because I'm a gym person.
Speaker 3:But I knew that she I mean she was beautiful. She still is beautiful and you put a girl like that who's got entrepreneurship skills, she's already owning a business that's very successful, she's very likable, she's lovely, you know, visually, personally, everything about her is fantastic. You give her any product. That business was going to succeed. And her and I were looking for a business we could do together. Like, what can we do together so we can be entrepreneurs together? You know she didn't want me canning women because they're naked in this process, so that wasn't going to work. My passion was marketing. You understood marketing, but it wasn't her passion. So we were looking for a business that would marry our skills together and this fat laser company seemed like it would be a good fit. So we ended up having a meeting with this gentleman and we were still very reluctant, didn't believe that it would actually work, and he offered to let us take it home so we could try it out. So took him up on the offer. We take this device home and we use myself, my father and this young lady my girlfriend at the time, her mother. So we were the three guinea pigs of this product and at this point we still weren't taking it serious because like it sounds gimmicky. But if it works, maybe we can make some money with it and if other people like it, they're using it. We're going to be great at promoting it. So let's see how it goes.
Speaker 3:So we all start doing this treatment to ourselves. We didn't have any change in lifestyle. I'm still not in the gym, I'm still eating the same food as a two-year-old, we're still drinking wine and beer almost every night of the week. We using this device. The regimen was you do a treatment to yourself once every third day. So we do that and I get two weeks into it and we look at my before and after photos and there was an obvious difference, side-by-side comparison, just two weeks into this thing and not even making any lifestyle changes. So when I actually saw this thing work, I was super geeked up. And then I was very excited to start a business and that started to put one foot in front of the other and exploring different ways to do this business and ended up proceeding with the business and then that has evolved into what today is called Bodcore.
Speaker 2:Wow, thank you for sharing, and I actually shared the story because I read it and you gave us a very good condensed version of it, so thank you for doing that.
Speaker 3:What did you have to overcome in your self-limiting beliefs to stay the course One? I had to have conviction. You can't have artificial excitement. Artificial excitement comes from consuming information and learning as much as you can, but if you haven't actually tasted or used that business and seen the results of it, you won't have true conviction. And when things get tough you need conviction to carry you through.
Speaker 3:And luckily, when I saw the results on my own body and I saw the change in my father because he was also a guinea pig early on and my girlfriend's mother, when I saw that it actually worked on us and knowing that it actually worked on my body, the conviction was there. Because you couldn't convince me it didn't work, because I know it did work because I used it on me. So, like you can tell me what you want to tell me all day long and you can say what you want to say about it, but I actually know without a doubt it works, you know. So that gave me the conviction to see it through. After you've got conviction from there, it's really just about you know finding what part of the business suits you best so that way you can focus your energy into that part of the business and then the other areas of the business, find complementing team members that can assist you in those areas, and to me that's kind of like what it takes to get behind something and see it through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's everything that you do. So if you're listening, you're watching, the things you do well, do well, but the things that you don't do well, find someone else to compliment those skillsets that help you. I love that you also spoke on there, Jason, where initially you know you walk into as entrepreneurs we want to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. You found a way sounds as though you've learned to be of service to people that want this thing done, and you just became a service provider, and so can you speak to how important it is to not be so salesy to people and be a service provider if you're going to really be successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is something also that took me a while to get to again, because that whole fake it till you make it thing and early on in my entrepreneur career I would consume. So actually let me back up a step. In my opinion, there's two ways to classify someone who's learning a business or becoming an expert there's headline readers and there's practitioners. A headline reader will consume content and because they're intelligent, they can convince you they truly know this business. A practitioner has both they consume content, but they've actually done the thing that they're promoting and selling. And a practitioner is what everyone should strive to get to. And I wish so badly that I would have learned that early on, because I was the fake it till you make it headline reader for a decade of my entrepreneur career and going back into it, I made so many mistakes of just like recommending the wrong thing because I believed it worked, because I consumed enough content, but never actually did it myself right. So it was like an evolution of things. So when I got to a place where I started realizing, hey, let's actually learn this skill a little bit. I don't gotta become an expert at it yet, but let's be moderately good at it before I start recommending it to other people. So I feel like that's the first step you should really take in entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3:I try to be gentle when I'm coaching younger entrepreneurs, because I did the same mistake and they don't know any different. They saw a movie and an entrepreneur did that and they thought that's the way they got to do it. So they start convincing you. They know something they don't and they really don't have the skill.
Speaker 3:So where this kind of translates back into Bodcore is I kind of changed my mindset on how I educate, coach and try to inform people, meaning I will not sell a product or service to somebody else if I haven't actually done it myself yet. I wouldn't just sell it to you, recommend it to you because someone told me about it. I would say hey, or I would just close that at least Like hey, I've never used it yet, but this is what I've learned about it. So it's really finding that careful line of just you can be passionate about something you haven't done yet, but at least clarify to people hey, I'm just super excited and geeked up about it, I haven't done it yet, but maybe we could do it together and we can learn from each other, type thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, and we call that transparency. When you think of leadership, the leaders that are super successful are the ones that are transparent about things. Hey, here's what I've learned. Here's what I don't know yet.
Speaker 2:One thing we're struggling with in society is this thing called trust, and if you want people to trust you, you got to be transparent. And people don't mind you said I haven't tried it, I haven't done it, but what they do have a problem with is you've been dishonest about it. So I will tell you an entrepreneur as a leader, regardless of where you find yourself, transparency matters. Be honest and build trust with people in any industry, even in my work. You know I'm a leadership consultant. We travel around and people bring us in to help them be better connected with their workforce. We love it. We love helping leaders figure out how do I take care of and connect with the people that are actually running my business and do it in a manner that they want to work for us, because people get to choose where they work at.
Speaker 2:Today, it's a hard market to hire staff, so be a really great leader, so people want to work for you. The most important thing I've learned over time, for all of our listeners is be trustworthy. Sometimes it's going to cost you, but at least it won't cost you your reputation. If you lie and you win and it catches up with you, it'll cost you your reputation, probably everything else to follow. So be very trustworthy, because we're struggling with that right now. What would you tell entrepreneurs that are listening as we look at our time here today? What would you leave them with when it comes to leading, or it comes to self-care or it comes to just doing right for you because you got to go first? What would you leave us with? Just?
Speaker 3:know that the truth will always surface. It doesn't matter how hard you try to prevent it, but the truth will eventually always find its way. So back to what you were saying before about being transparent. You may work with someone today and you may have a great story to share and you may have a conviction behind the story to make them believe that you believe it. But if it's not truth and you continue that relationship with that person, eventually you're going to slip up and say something, or something else will just show itself and they'll realize, man, all these years. You lied to me in the very beginning Like I love you now and I trust you now because we've been through a lot together and we get along great. So I realize this is the beginning. But now I know what you're capable of doing. I know that you're capable of looking me dead in the eye and truly making me believe that you believe something that is not true.
Speaker 3:So just like know that you cannot hide from the truth, the truth will always show itself. So, just like, know that you cannot hide from the truth, the truth will always show itself. So back to your transparency point. You know, just be upfront, be honest, as hard as it's going to be, and sometimes it may slow down your progress, but it is worth it in the end because it will force you to do things right and people in the end will respect you so much more for taking longer to get there, because they know that you did it right.
Speaker 2:Yes, I must endorse that 100%. They will respect you for taking the longer route and you did it right. So, jason, thank you for sharing so much. Before we leave, how do people reach you or your product? What do you want to leave us with for people to reach out to you if they're interested in knowing more about BotCorp? Can you drop that information or share it with us to you if they're interested?
Speaker 3:in knowing more about Bodcore. Can you drop that information or share it with us? Absolutely so. At this stage I'm still overly obsessed with communication and managing all my own profiles. So if you reach out to me at Jason Velocic or at Bodcore, all my social media handles are the same. Whether you go on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, it's all at Jason Velocic. And if you want to go through Bodcore, it's all at Bodcore. Spelled the same way you see it on my shirt right here B-O-D-C-O-R.
Speaker 3:But any message you send through any platform that goes to Jason Velocity or Bodcore, it does get directly to me. I do have a texting line. You can call or text it at 602-888-4669. And again, that goes directly to me 602-888-4669. And I'm back into sharing phone numbers because I think that's something we've gotten away from and people today they think that if they message you on social media, you may or may not ever get it, but if you give them a phone number, you're more likely to get to it. And I can assure anyone who's listening or watching this, whether you contact me on social media or my phone number or my email, which is my first and last name, jasonbelosik, at gmailcom, no matter how you find me. It will get to me because I respond and answer everything.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and for the last name, for everyone that's listening, that's B-A-L-A-S-E-K. So if you want to reach out to him, he's giving you everything. He's giving you phone numbers, giving you contact. Feel free to reach out. I mean, we're in business but we also want to help and we want to add value to everybody. Again, thank y'all for always following, thank you for telling people about our podcast and inviting guests I mean, it makes a difference and thank you for all of our as you continue to grow your business or your personal professional lives. Again, ron Harvey, vice President of Global Core, you can always follow us. We release a podcast every single Monday and for those of you that stay with us, thank you for joining us. Jason and I have enjoyed it and we hope we added some value to you to help you be more effective at taking care of the people that you're responsible for and responsible to. Until next time, jason and I will sign off.
Speaker 1:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
