Leveling up the Leadership Lab in Year 4

Introducing new ways to play and engage.

The Leadership Lab is officially in it’s fourth year.

I started the Leadership Lab (originally called Peak Performance) in 2021 as a way to support my private coaching practice. The idea was simple: I’d share what I was currently exploring with my clients as a way of introducing them to ideas they may not discover on their own. By doing so I could create the opportunity to go in new directions in our coaching conversations.

I started out by writing the newsletter in gmail and manual copying my clients’ email addresses into the “to” bar. I decided to move to substack by chance; I shared the newsletter with a friend and they told me that the emails could be more aesthetically pleasing. Substack seemed like the easiest way to do that. So I moved my archive to substack and started sending from there.

Now, many years, 71 posts, a podcast launch, and over 700 new subscribers later, the Leadership Lab has grown into something else entirely.

As a result, I’m excited to level up the Leadership lab in 2024, starting with two big additions:

1) Adding Paid Subscriptions

I didn’t set out to be a writer or content creator. I honestly still don’t think of myself that way. I am, first-and-foremost, a coach.

Yet between this newsletter, the podcast, and more on the way, I find myself putting a meaningful amount of time into creating what I hope to be useful and valuable content. Giving the undeniable amount of time I put into it, it seems silly to me not to allow the option for folks to pay for it. So….

I’m turning on paid subscriptions for the leadership lab.

I want to address this upfront: If you’re a free subscriber, absolutely nothing will change for you. No content is going behind a paywall. You won’t suddenly lose access to an old post that you like to revisit.

There is a chance that there will be future initiatives that will be for paid subscribers only. As of right now, there’s one primary perk for going paid: the option to schedule a 60-minute 1<>1 call with me for whatever you’d like, from casual conversation to coaching.

As the paid community grows, I imagine the offerings for going paid to grow substantially. For now, I want to keep it simple.

By offering paid subscriptions, I’m offering you the option to directly support my content creation efforts. I think of it as the option to offer a tip to your author. It validates my efforts, and creates the motivation and resources to get even more ambitious with what I create.

I could tell you that by supporting me you’ll provide me with resources to explore additional trainings, find additional mentors, and dive deeper in my own experimentation. The reality is that I’ll do those things whether or not you pledge support (though every little bit makes it easier). That’s why I think of this as a tip. If you have some financial abundance and appreciate what I do, consider contributing. If you’re financially constrained, new to the newsletter, or just don’t feel like pledging support, then continue to enjoy the ride for free.

In my own psychology, there’s a way that this is a crossing the threshold moment for me as author and creator. It feels significant to me to “professionalize” the Leadership Lab—to carry it across the chasm from pet project to legitimate publication. This crossing the threshold carries with it an invitation: level up the content. Pour my heart and soul into it. Hold the commitment that this is something valuable for you, for me, and for the world.

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I want things to be super clear logistically, so here’s a list of what you get at each tier:

Free Subscribers will continue to receive:

• 2x monthly posts on topics relating to Leadership, Consciousness, and Emotional Intelligence

• Those posts may or may not include bi-weekly podcast episodes of No Clear Answers, where I and expert coaches breakdown pre-conceived notions of common self-help ideas

Paid Subscribers will receive:

• Everything on the Free Tier

• The option to schedule a 60-minute 1<>1 call with me for whatever you’d like, from casual conversation to coaching

• More offerings in the future

Whether or not you pledge paid support, thank you for being a subscriber. A special thank you to those who like, comment, and have been around for years now. It means the world.

For those of you interested in pledging monetary support, you can do so here:

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2. Subscriber Chat

Today I turned on a new substack feature called Subscriber Chat.

This is a conversation space in Substack that authors can set up exclusively for subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

A few folks have already hopped into our first thread and shared things they’d like to see me write about. If you have something you’d like me to write about on the Leadership Lab, I’d love to hear from you there.

To join our chat, you can either go to this link on desktop or download the Substack app on your mobile, which is available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications if you don’t want to miss out on the conversation. To get the app:

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Chat is available on web, iOS, and Android.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

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A Preview of What’s to Come

I feel as if things would be amiss if I didn’t give a preview of what’s coming in the following weeks and months as a way to entice you to dive in deep with me. Here’s what you have to look forward to:

1. Upcoming podcast episodes and corresponding writings on topics like Understanding and Escaping Perfectionism, What Emotional Intelligence is and How to Build it, Overcoming Limiting Beliefs, Addressing Burnout, The Role of Confidence in what we do, and Working with Fear.

2. An Essay diving deep into a concept Joe Hudson calls “The Golden Algorithm”. It’s about how in our avoidance of certain emotional experiences, we invite those exact experiences into our lives. In some sense you can think of this as the fundamental problem beneath all problems.

3. The launching of a new podcast (!!!!) with friend and badass coach Christine Kern on Conscious Leadership. I’m way into Conscious Leadership and think it is useful in every walk of life. In the podcast, we plan to get into the realities of conscious leadership: what commitments it entails, real stories to demonstrate how it applies to life and leadership, and the messy nuance of bringing these principles into the real world. The podcast will be a limited edition series of around 30 episodes and follow the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. I can’t wait to share it with you (it’s still a few months out).

Get Involved

I hope this excites you. I’d love it if you would:

1. Let me know what you’d like to me to explore in upcoming editions of the Leadership Lab via our subscriber chat.

2. Consider a paid subscription to support my work: