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Priscilla: Leadership sounds good. When people talk about vision, about growth and influence, it feels different though when you're the one carrying the pressure, making the hard calls, and holding the team together and trying not to lose yourself in the process. This is why this conversation matters. Today I'm joined by Jay Jacobs.

A man who understands leadership in a way that a few people ever will. Jay has led in disaster response operations. He has testified before the United States Senate and he has decades of serving families in funeral service and building and sustaining multiple businesses, all while leading through personal and health challenges at home.

He doesn't speak about leadership from theory, from trends, or from. Polished branding, he speaks from lived consequence. So if you're a founder carrying more than most people can see, this episode is for you. This is a conversation about the real weight of leadership, how to make sound decisions when the pressure is high, and [00:01:00] how to lead in a way that is steady human and grounded.

So there's no hype here no cliches, just depth wisdom and the kind of growth that leaders need.

Priscilla: Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Kitchen j Jacobson. I'm gonna jump right in what is your biggest leadership failure?

Jay Jacobson: that's a very good question. I thought a little bit about that one of the big failures that I had followed immediately after the United 32. Air disaster in Sioux City, Iowa. It was a disaster in which nearly 200 people did not survive the plane crash. And we were charged with caring for those that did not make it.

But my biggest failing came not during the disaster. But when I returned back home and when I returned back home, [00:02:00] it found it very difficult to be present in the moment. It was hard to reengage with people. It was hard to get excited about anything, to talk about anything. And when you're going through that, you don't even realize you're numb to everything.

It was my wife who ultimately pointed out that, she didn't get the same person back that she sent up to Sioux City. And it started me thinking about, okay, what. What does it mean to be present with the people that are in front of you? And I often tell people that, be where your feet are which is a reminder to always be present with the people that are in the room with you, not your phone, not the people that you're thinking about at work, but the people that are literally in the room with you.

But it took months to come back from that kind of lack of presence to reengage with my family, to reengage with my community and my coworkers. And to be honest, I took some time away from funeral service. I took a couple years off worked in a different industry and got my head back [00:03:00] together so I could be there and be fully present with the families that I was serving. 

Priscilla: It's interesting that you speak about, not the actual leading, but what it does to you. , Why do you think that you had that experience speaking to other leaders? Is that common?

Jay Jacobson: It is very common. We have a much better understanding today about post-traumatic stress disorders. Then we did when I was coming back from Sioux City, I was only 27 years old when this took place. Very young and very new in my career, and, they had people in place to help with the National Guard that had served up there.

They had. People in place to help with the volunteers that had served, but they never thought about the funeral service personnel that were serving there. So the 150 of us that went up there and helped all just left and went back home, and we were left to our own devices to try and figure out how to reengage with our families and with our communities and it showed a very [00:04:00] large gap in the structure that we had put together to help.

People transition. A lot of the things that happened up in Sioux City in terms of the way Iowa funeral directors took care of things became the model for the modern day d Mort program, which is a disaster preparedness program that's all encompassing. So we don't have to rely on lack of supplies and lack of facilities and lack of training.

It's all provided well in advance of the need. And that also encompasses the aftercare the following up with those who volunteer and go up and serve in these situations, making sure they get the counseling they need, following it to help them reengage.

Priscilla: I wonder what that taught you about leadership that experience.

Jay Jacobson: One of the biggest lessons, that I took away from Sioux City was you can't do it by yourself. it took 150 of us to deal with it. It took 150 different ideas of ways of doing things and [00:05:00] discussing it and arriving at what worked. And you can't do it when you get back home.

It takes a loving family. It takes a community that's understanding. It takes a deep seated faith to help you find your way back into the reality of the world that you're in. And, it's just a good lessons for particularly young professionals to always try to have balance in their life.

Not just all work, not just all play, but a balance of faith, a balance of work, and a balance of family life, so that you always have those three pillars to stand on when one of 'em gets kicked out, the other two are still there.

Priscilla: Wise is advice there? I'm thinking now even of our audience of business owners and founders who, sometimes we look at leadership from the front and we don't consider what's happening at the back and how that is impacting the leader and the way that they lead. Thank you for sharing that.

Jay, how did you end up. [00:06:00] In funeral services and from, the unique perspective that you got from that, I'd like you for you to define for us what is leadership. .

Jay Jacobson: I started off with my interest in funeral service back when I was a junior in high school. An unusual set of circumstances that led me into this profession. But I was asked to be a Paul bearer for my aunt's funeral up in South Dakota. That funeral was . Three stooges do a funeral. It was awful. It was poorly organized. It was not professional. There was nothing about that was respectful. And so when I came back from that my attitude was, this is something I can do and I can do it much better. And from that point on, that was my goal.

I was going to learn this profession, I was gonna learn to do it in the way that I wish I had been treated when I was at my aunt's funeral. And from that moment on, I realized that every single service that I helped with, that was the only time that family got to do that. Even though I did this every day, they only [00:07:00] got to do it once.

And I've always tried to instill that kind of servant leadership in all of the staff that I supervise. All of the young people that I mentor, an understanding of the family's perspective. This is their most. Valued possession at the moment, and their world has just collapsed, and you're entering their life at the worst day of their life at that point.

And it's up to you to treat that as a sacred responsibility and to enter into that and treat the family in a way that you are prepared, professional, and fully present for them.

Priscilla: It's so interesting 'cause I wondered like how did you end up in that business? Most people don't really think that way. And I wonder what you got from working so close to people who are in grief crisis and something that typically business leadership, I don't think it quite caters to that sensitivity of taking your client and having that empathy to the level that you [00:08:00] need to in such a sensitive situation.

Jay Jacobson: It is a daily practice of dealing with critical conversations. Every single person that you meet with is in crisis, and so at least once a day, if not several times a day. You're meeting with a group of people that need guidance that are lost. They need help and you're there to slow things down.

You're there to ask open-ended questions and to get the information out in a way that allows them to feel human and respected in a way that honors their loved one. And really a lot of times we don't know the person that we're burying. We don't know the person that we're gonna be cremating.

We only know their family and we know of them through the questions we ask the family. And so it becomes very important that as funeral directors and professionals, that we learn how to ask the right questions to ask those open-ended questions that allow the family to [00:09:00] share memories. That they may not have even thought about for years.

And one of my favorite questions to ask a family particularly when it was one spouse or the other we were sitting with, and the children of the two, I would ask them, how did your parents meet? And nine times out of 10, the kids had never heard the story about how their parents met. And so here we are, the widow is sharing how She met their father, and the kids are just in awe because it's a story they've never heard, and it mentally prepares them for the next several days when they will start hearing story after story. That they may never have heard from all of the deceased friends, from all of the family because it truly is a time of sharing and remembering those kind of events.

And it just helps prime them to be able to be in those moments and to enjoy, it's okay to laugh. It's okay. I mean, So many of these stories about how they first met are funny. And it allows them the permission to smile, to [00:10:00]laugh,, to realize not everything is lost as long as we remember.

Priscilla: Bringing that humanity forward in how you see your client and how you interact with your client it's really remarkable. Now, you've written a book

Congratulations on that. Be a legendary example. What does that mean?

Jay Jacobson: My book actually came out of some adversity my wife and I were going through about two years ago. She went in for a routine knee replacement that went horribly wrong, and over the period of 18 months, she had to have 12 major surgeries. And during that time, sitting in the hospital rooms, I started.

Writing up what was going on that day for our two daughters, so they would know almost minute by minute what the doctors were saying, what the test results were. And the stories of how I was feeling started creeping into those pages that I was writing. When we got all said and done I was looking over all of that and I said, there's some very.

Good pillars of [00:11:00] leadership that are exemplified when you go through this kind of event. And they're true in the crisis of healthcare and they're true in the crisis of everyday business leadership. And so I started pulling all of this information together and formed it into the six pillars

of leadership that I was able to derive out of that and put it in a way that is a book that's written from lived experience instead of secondhand or third hand. Stories of how the leadership pillars were developed from being a paper boy and. Saving enough money to buy a bicycle all the way up to testifying before the United States Senate.

But those all were pieces that helped build that type of leadership that isn't just being a supervisor. It isn't just being a boss. It's not just. Holding a title, but it's that type of servant leadership where you get in the trenches with the people that have the same goals that you have.[00:12:00]

You help them all be better. You help them all grow, you help them all achieve the mission.

Priscilla: Maybe you can share with us the moment when you realized what it meant to be a leader. , Were you always interested in leadership? What led to that journey?

Jay Jacobson: My journey in leadership. It was thrust upon me with the accident in Sioux City. We were sitting at the funeral home late afternoon, about a quarter till four, just winding everything up and then we get a phone call. Now, our funeral home is one that was owned by a corporation that had funeral homes all over the country.

So when we got a phone call from our home office it's always a big deal, especially when it comes late in the day. And this one was one of the most significant phone calls I've ever taken in my life When they over the phone told me. They had been called by United Airlines insurance carrier, and informed that they had a plane over Sioux City, Iowa that was not going to make it, it was going to crash, and that they wanted [00:13:00] to have our staff ready and available to make the trip to Sioux City to assist in any way that was necessary and to rally the other locations that they had throughout the country.

To find funeral directors that could do likewise and help. And so we sat there for 40 minutes contemplating the fact that there are 300 people on an airplane that are alive right now. And in a very short time, they expected none of them would be alive. And we waited 40 minutes we watched on the news as , they were made aware of the situation.

It's an eerie experience and it really helps. Pull you into the moment to understand that you're being called to do something that is far beyond what you ever expected you have to do. And so you pull on everything that you've learned up to date, you rally that, and you use those skills, and you don't realize that you've spent a lifetime building those leadership skills to make 'em available, and [00:14:00] you've practiced them to make 'em available for this kind of a crisis.

So it would be three days later when they finally did call and say, we need you to come to Sioux City, and it was seven days of caring for. Those who did not survive. It was seven days of documenting everything, making sure absolutely everything, every document was perfect, making sure the timing of everything was perfect, making sure everything was done in a dignified manner protecting the privacy of those who did not survive.

But just understanding all of the pieces that went in. To making that happen and to do it in a way that was respectful of the deceased that would one day be returned back to their families back home.

Priscilla: Yeah. As you're speaking about it, I can just picture the scene . I was reading somewhere where you define what you think true leadership is that usually you were doing this but you were not doing it at this like scale and intensity and pressure and that the consequences of.

[00:15:00] Being under pressure is what you referred to as true leadership. I wonder if you could expand that.

Jay Jacobson: Leadership has to start number one with integrity. If you aren't practicing integrity in your everyday life nothing else can be built upon that. Everything else that you said on top of it's gonna fall down. I had , an example of two very wonderful funeral directors who exemplified leadership in very different ways.

When I first started the first gentleman, Mr. Bickford was 85 years old when I first met him, and it was still working every day in the funeral home. He was the model of servant leadership. He was the same whether he was working in an embalming room, whether he was out in the community or whether he was at church or if he was sitting with a family at a visitation, he was exactly the same person you could count on him.

, It made no difference what situation he was thrown into because he had lived his whole life that way. The other gentleman, Mr. Stein was [00:16:00] very good when he was in front of the crowds. He was very good when he sat with his clients, but as soon as he left the building, he was somebody totally different.

And just to see the dichotomy of those two people and the way it played out in their lives was a great lesson in leadership. Mr. Ste would eventually lose his business. He would lose his family. He would literally lose everything that he felt. Of value. But yet Mr. Bickford died at 90 some years old, a very happy full life, married to the same woman for over 60 years.

And it was just a good model of what leadership looks like, that kind of being true to yourself. Not putting up a front. And so when you start practicing leadership, you practice that integrity. You practice the servanthood caring for people. You practice the ability to adapt when things change.

Those are all the things that when those big crisis, [00:17:00] like an air disaster come around, you already know this 'cause you've practiced them every single day. And so now you are a leader. You may not be a boss. You may not have a title, but you are a leader.

Priscilla: Oh, it's interesting that you say that. 'cause as you were speaking, I was seeing this, I don't know , whether it's like a current way you know, people have leadership titles. Okay. And when you are in front of people and you're acting in the capacity of leader, you're a certain way.

And then , when you're not in that capacity and maybe your personal life or other things, you are a different way and. I don't know maybe you could speak to how that has become a norm.

Jay Jacobson: Unfortunately it has there are a lot of people , that when they're at work and. They're supervising people. , They are the boss and they treat people differently based on their rank. What can you do for me? Not what can we do together? And I think that's the big difference between a boss and we see a lot of them in the [00:18:00]workforce now that just simply are bosses or supervisors that aren't leaders.

A leader asks the question, what can we do together? How can I help take something off of your shoulders to make you more successful and help us achieve the ultimate goals and the ultimate mission of our organization? And when you've got somebody who puts aside themselves and asks those kind of questions, that's the leader and that's the leader that people will follow, not just take orders from, but they will actually go out of their way to do a better job for a leader than they will a boss.

Priscilla: Yeah. Yeah I see that. I wonder, when you wrote this book. Was it because you saw something that wasn't being addressed , why did you feel that you should write this book?

Jay Jacobson: I actually started writing it to share some of my thoughts with my two grandsons. I wanted to leave behind the kind of conversation that we're having right now. What does it take to be a [00:19:00] quality person? What are the lessons that I would want to pass on to you guys when you're old enough to understand what these concepts mean?

And that's really what it. Came out of wanting to provide something to leave behind for the next generation. And I've spent most of my life mentoring others and I can think of nothing better than , to mentor my grandsons and help them become fine grown up young men that have those kind of values.

Priscilla: I love the way you show that being a leader is not something that you're called up to, but it's something that you become in your everyday life because you value things like integrity and it's not waiting for a leadership position , but who are you in every part of your life?

Did I get that correct?

Jay Jacobson: Yes,. You have to decide I'm going to be a leader. I am going to be the kind of person that people want to follow because I care about them. I care about their success as much as mine. And if you think about people in your life, there are leaders out there [00:20:00] and there are bosses out there, and the leaders, it's easy to follow them.

It's easy to go down a path that you may not even understand what the path is. But because the leader says, we're going this way, you follow them. A boss that's oh, I don't know. I'll go, but it's only because I have to. Leadership should make you want to follow.

Priscilla: With our audience of small business owners, a lot of conversations that I've had with past guests has been this thing that has taken place where people don't want. To lead people. There's a lot of start a business with no people, start a business with ai, only , people don't want that responsibility of having to lead other people.

I wonder what you think about that, Jay?

Jay Jacobson: I have some very strong thoughts on that.

Priscilla: I'd love to hear them. 

Jay Jacobson: they should get out of the way and let people who do lead. Because there are people out there who are good leaders. And I talk to a lot of young people in jobs that have bad leaders. And I said, why are you staying?

There are other people out there who [00:21:00] value you. So if you're stuck in a job that you're not valued and you have the ability to make a change. Find somebody you can follow that is a good leader. Somebody you can grow with. Somebody out there who is as invested in who you become as you are. Leadership isn't for the faint of heart, and it does take a commitment. It takes a full ownership of the goals, and it takes the responsibility to stand up and say, I'm responsible for these goals when they don't happen. I don't blame my team. I don't blame somebody else. It's my responsibility. You have to have that kind of ownership.

When you're a leader. You have to be able to show that and show that to your people and say, you know what? I'm not gonna blame you when things go wrong, but I'm gonna give you the credit when they go right, because we are a team. But as, the leader of the team, , if I haven't done my job enough that we're successful, that's my fault.

It's not yours.

Priscilla: What's been the hardest decision that you've had to make as a [00:22:00] leader?

Jay Jacobson: I think the hardest decisions have been in the area of job change. . It's hard to leave what's familiar even when you, sense it's wrong. And just recognizing that the values that you have. You're not willing to compromise, but the organization you're working for is willing to compromise you and recognizing that and being willing to stand up and not compromise your own values and saying, it's time for me to leave when I don't know what the future looks like. Those are the hard choices and I've had to make those choices several times in my career and say this organization is not going the right direction.

There are other directions, and it goes all the way back to. The original thing that, that got me into this profession, are we doing it well? Are we doing it professional? Are we doing it for the right reasons? And if the answer is no to any of those, then we either have to be in a position where we can change it [00:23:00] and affect that change in your organization.

Or you have to say, it's time for me to move on. When you get to the point where you cannot change the organization. That is impossible, then it's time to move rather than compromise your values.

Priscilla: that line of what is ethical, what is legal, and balancing how you maintain your values within, the marketplace or the business where you are operating. Do you have like a way that you think through these things?

Jay Jacobson: For me it becomes very easy because I spend a lot of time developing personal mission and value statements, and I work with a lot of people helping them develop their own so they begin to understand who they are. And through that process of having gone through it myself, I have a pretty good understanding of what my values are, what my non-negotiables are.

And so for me it's easier because I've spent years practicing that I know where I'm heading, I know what my values are, and I know when I'm being asked to compromise those [00:24:00] values that I'm not going to that's a non-starter for me. And so when you get up against that kind of a wall, you know it's time to make a change.

It's important for individuals, no matter. Whether you're gonna be a leader or not is to start to understand yourself. Understand that you get to make the choices that affect the future of your life. Now, my wife and I worked with a group of junior high youth boys for several years, and we were their mentors in the youth group, and we spent a tremendous amount of time talking to them and helping them to realize that they are the only ones who get to decide.

Who, the future people, they're gonna be, the decisions that they make about, drugs or alcohol or friends or anything like that. They make those decisions themselves and it affects who they become ultimately. , A lot of times we forget that these kids in junior high are starting [00:25:00] to have those deep thoughts about, okay, who am I going to be?

And to be able to walk alongside them and help them realize. That who they become is dependent completely on the decisions they make and helping them understand to make better choices and to see the vision that goes beyond that simple choice that decision , to have a drink today, they can't see 20 years from now what that's going to do or what it may turn into.

But having watched generations. My wife and I could share some stories and say, this is what can happen. These are the choices you can make. So those are the kind of things , that when we mentor people, we need to be cognizant of.

Priscilla: Yeah, that's important. Having that way of making decisions so that you don't just get swept away when things start happening. You have a compass this is what I stand for. This is what I absolutely will not do, and these are my values. Which is important, and , that every person is a leader.

I love that you [00:26:00] say that. Wonderful. The small business owner who says, i'm the visible leader in my business as the founder of this thing. And how do I deal with the pressure of leadership and making decisions?

Jay Jacobson: It goes back to what they've practiced. I've spent my whole life being very visible. Being a funeral director in small town Iowa, you're like in a fishbowl. And so everybody is watching every minute of the day, how you carry yourself outside of the business, inside of the business, in the community, out in the real world.

And so you have to have practiced the fact that you're somebody's impression of your profession. You're somebody's impression of. What a leader should be, what an owner should be. And so if you always keep that in your mind if you always measure by, okay, would my actions play well on the front page of the newspaper? Would my actions play okay? If they were talked about in the [00:27:00] front of the church building? I don't know, but in your mind, if you hold that kind of compass and you hold yourself to that level of scrutiny, when you have to make those tough decisions, you inevitably make the right choice. And even if it turns out that it wasn't the most advantageous choice, it's still the right choice.

'Cause , it honored your values, it honored who you were and kept you true to those. And so in the end, you've succeeded because you have not compromised.

Priscilla: making sure that you don't compromise yourself. It's interesting when you were talking about, would you like this on the front paper, I thought about, I dunno if it's last year or when there was that big tech CEO, at music concert and then the camera flashes by. And it was interesting to see , the different ways that people viewed what happened to him in the aftermath, where he lost his job and all that.

And a lot of people felt what's his private life? And other people felt he's a leader. And other people say he's not a politician. And it was interesting [00:28:00] to see how they view leadership. 

Jay Jacobson: ultimately, I look at, how did he feel about it? It tells me much more about him as far as how he was affected, not because he lost his job, but how did he feel when he saw his own picture up on that screen? Now, did he feel like he was not doing something wrong? I don't know, but that's the voice that needs tempered.

If there was nothing wrong in his head about what he was doing There's a certain amount of reality check there. So his voice and what he felt ultimately says more about who he is than all of the other people around him. I.

Priscilla: That's true. And it leads me to culture because leaders have influence, and leaders show what is acceptable and it becomes, a culture of people following whatever the leader is doing. I'm interested to know for, small business owners that transfer of how I behave to the culture of the business. Maybe you can speak to practical things that they can think through .

Jay Jacobson: [00:29:00] Well, The practical things are you be honest with the people you're doing business with, you be honest with your staff that you supervise you be honest with your family back home. You be honest in the community. You make sure that you are well trained.

, You keep up on things. You make sure that you aren't falling behind in terms of the knowledge base that's out there for your industry. You make sure that you keep current on that. You don't close your mind off to new ideas. I had a mentor that once talked about, we've served on a board together, and one of the lessons he taught , we had nine members on our board and the first thing he told us is, your job is not to agree.

If you all agree, then we don't need you. The best decisions are made when people can sit down and respectfully disagree and arrive at the best solution. And that kinda always stuck with me in terms of leaders and in terms of people who run businesses. Don't be afraid to listen to a [00:30:00] lot of voices and do it respectfully.

Teach your staff the why behind what you're doing if they understand why. And the ultimate goal of the decisions you're making, it makes it easier for them to understand than the decisions you make if you have to have layoffs because you're not profitable. If you have been forthright with them all the way through and have talked about where the business is and the demands that you have and the decreasing revenues that you're seeing, and.

All of those things, if you're honest and forthright with them, it makes it easier when you have to deliver bad news to do it, and they understand why. Not just that it's, oh, the company wants to make more money. It's very rarely that the company needs to make more money. But it's never communicated.

So those are the kind of things that true leaders do is they make a habit of the open dialogue and having those conversations.

Priscilla: I like that you mentioned that with the layoffs that , if everything is open, if everything is transparent, [00:31:00] certain things are not a surprise. People can see where it's going and , they don't have to question, your agenda or what it is that you're trying to do. We're in an age where people talk about quiet quitting, especially with small businesses where, people just show up for the presence and are not engaged. And a lot of times we talk about what the leader should do. Perhaps , if you can speak about what the leader should not do in this age of quiet. 

Jay Jacobson: Leaders have got to be engaged with the people that they're surrounded by. You don't have the quiet quitting . When you have those conversations with people on a daily basis, when you know their names, when you know their family situation, when you know the workload that they're having, when you meet 'em on a Tuesday morning and say, what can I take off of your plate this week to make your job easier?

You don't have people that quietly quit. You have people who , honestly will say, this is what you can do to help me. And when you step up and you actually help them with it, they understand you really meant it. And that's the important part of you really have to [00:32:00] mean what can I take off your plate to help you?

What can I reassign to somewhere else to help you? But mostly what can I personally do to help you? Those are the kind of relationships and the kind of conversations that. True leaders need to have with their colleagues and with those that they supervise on a daily basis. Because you get a feel if you're talking to somebody every day when they're having an off day, when they're upset, when things aren't going well, you know it, but if you don't talk to them every day, you let them quietly check out, and that's the last thing you want.

You lose good people when you don't engage with them.

Priscilla: There's a lot of this talk, especially on LinkedIn your coworkers are not your family . I don't know if you get the sense that I'm speaking about where it's they don't care about you and the company doesn't care about you and you shouldn't care about them either because they're not your family and the team and the family are two different things.

I wonder what she'd say to that. 

Jay Jacobson: It's very interesting that [00:33:00] you bring that up because I do a lot of reading and one of the books that I read recently is the quarter century Life Crisis, I believe was the title of the book. It was talking about this younger generation of workers and what their expectations are in the workforce.

And the premise of the book was basically you only wanna be in a job long enough to suck out everything you can from that company and then move on. It was very me centered almost selfish kind of workforce mentality and corporate America has done that to themselves because they haven't shown loyalty back.

But we've gotta change that. If we as leaders and as corporate owners and managers want to keep good quality people, we have to invest in 'em. We have to be loyal to them. We have to provide them with the things that they need to grow in their careers. Otherwise we have that, okay, I'm gonna only be here long enough to get everything that.

What's in it for me [00:34:00] out and then I'm gonna go on to the next company and do the same thing. And so when we start looking at resumes, when we start looking at hiring people, it used to be if you were at a job for only a couple years, nobody would look at your resume. But not anymore, that's the norm.

And it's unfortunate because we aren't doing enough to keep long-term talent. There's an institutional memory that comes with people who stay in corporations and in businesses for lengthy periods of time that you can't recreate. But the onus is there again, on the leaders. It's on the leaders to provide an environment that says, we value you enough to make sure you stay here for a career, not just for a time. 

Priscilla: Yeah,

That's an important message. Especially during this time. There's a lot of that sort of message being peddled to people and people running with that message. There was a time that your wife was not well and you still had to show up as a leader.

And I wonder [00:35:00] how leaders who are in those situations where, of course you have your private life and you have things going on in there, but you're still trying to show up the best you can as a leader if you can speak to, what you learned through that time and how people can, care for themselves

when your personal life is pulling against your professional life

Jay Jacobson: I was very fortunate., I run two businesses. Both of 'em I am able to run from my home. Which allowed me the freedom to care for her when she needed for the last two years to be here, to pivot, to change my schedule so that I was here at the times I needed to. We went through COVID just before that, so we had already changed the way we did business in terms of it being remote.

, It allows us , to shift how we do business, not what we do. When we went through COVID I also run a cookie business. And a cookie business is based on, corporate events. It's taking a platter of cookies to a corporate office, but overnight that shut down.[00:36:00]

And so we pivoted to figure out, okay, what do companies need now? And. We figured out that they still needed to be connected to their employees. They still needed to raise the morale of the workforce that's now completely separated from everyone else. And so we started putting together programs where we would ship all of their employees a dozen cookies that would all arrive the same day. And so all of these people working remotely, all of a sudden they're getting on their computers, texting all of their other coworkers. Did you get your cookies? And so now you've got a community event that's formed around something very simple, a box of cookies but just being able to pivot and see what people need, that arises out of being connected with people and understanding of.

The isolation everybody was feeling at that time and being able to provide something that helps people feel a little less alone a little more connected to the people they used to [00:37:00] see every day for eight hours a day. And have just a little piece of normalcy back in a situation that was totally out of the realm of what anybody thought was possible.

Priscilla: When COVID happened and the business is completely shut down. What are the conversations that you're having and your staff and how are you navigating that situation?

Jay Jacobson: We had a lot of deep conversations. It was, oh, are we gonna have to lay people off? Are we gonna have to close our doors? Are we done? Is this where we say our business is no more? And that's where having those kind of conversations, bringing in a lot of opinions, bringing in a lot of new ideas and a lot of disagreements and arriving at the best solutions and identifying and really drilling down to what do people need right now, and finding a way to deliver that to them.

That ability to pivot in business is huge. And you don't have those conversations if you haven't had 'em before. If you haven't taught your [00:38:00] people that they can speak openly and can share ideas without being shut down, without being criticized, then you can't expect them to function that way when crisis hits.

So the real key to all this is the practice. Every day leading up to a situation, you have no idea when it's gonna come or what it's gonna be. And because we had done that, because we'd had conversations with our staff and be able to have that open dialogue they knew in the moment they could share what was deep on their hearts.

They could say, I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my job. I'm afraid your business isn't gonna be here next month. And so we were able to talk through those things in an open and non-threatening atmosphere.

Priscilla: And for yourself during the time that you were caring for your wife, how were you caring for yourself as a leader? Because like you said, a lot of times we don't see the backside of leadership and how do leaders take care of themselves so that they can show up in a way that is good for the people [00:39:00] they are leading.

Jay Jacobson: To be honest, I didn't do a great job of it. It's hard because you're thrust into a situation where you're pretty much alone. We ended up three hours away from home at a hospital. For most of her care. We were separated from , our friends and our family and the community that we had leaned on.

And that's when I started writing. That's when I started putting thoughts to paper and that's how I processed through what I was feeling. That doesn't work for everybody. My wife spent a lot of time doing a lot of counseling afterwards helping her deal with the issues that she has gone through and trying to process that.

And , those are the way that people should work through things. don't hide. Work through them. You find a process that works for you and do it. For me, journaling just writing things down was a tremendous help.

Priscilla: I like that you speak to journaling and also counseling. And some people go for therapy to help them with [00:40:00] processing hard things. Now just to finish this off, I know we're a little bit over time. I wanna do a rapid fire round with you if that's okay,

Jay. first question is, what is one trait every leader needs when they're under pressure? 

Jay Jacobson: They need the ability to slow things down. They need to be able to walk in a room and have everybody calm down just because they're there. And that happens when you slow your speech. , Even though you may be racing inside, you project a calm demeanor. That's when people will look to you to say, okay, this is somebody that's figured out a plan.

Even if you haven't, you look like you figured out a plan

And it just, it lets the room breathe.

Priscilla: No, that's so good. What is the one lesson that Grief and Crisis teach about leadership?

Jay Jacobson: It teaches probably the biggest thing is that. The world will go on tomorrow without you if you were not here tomorrow. And it teaches you not to take [00:41:00] yourself so seriously. Because we've saw, in my career, literally hundreds and hundreds of people that I've taken care of that one day they're here, the next day they're not. And the world continues to go on. The families grieve, but for the most part, the rest of the world doesn't even know what happened. And so it's a very humbling realization when you deal with this on a daily basis. We can be here and think we're very important and very essential to the whole world turning, and we aren't.

We could be gone tomorrow and the world will continue to turn. The news will still continue to play every night. The sun will come up in the morning and go down in the evening and you won't be here. But that's all right. And so it's given me an urgency to get things done. It's given me an urgency to tell people the things I want to tell 'em while I have an opportunity to do that.

Priscilla: What breaks trust faster than most leaders [00:42:00] don't realize.

Jay Jacobson: When they think about themselves more than the team. When their actions and their responses are self-protective versus team protective when they take credit for work of others that's probably the biggest violation of trust. You have to be willing to give credit away and you have to be able to take on criticism.

Don't let people criticize your team and let 'em criticize you. You built the team, you're responsible for the team. So if there's a problem with it, , that would be the leader's fault. The leader can help the team do better, but ultimately. The leader didn't prepare the team, didn't inform the team, didn't do whatever.

So that's where the leader has to fall down. You take the criticism, but you give away the credit.

Priscilla: Now what restores trust? When trust has been broken with a team.

Jay Jacobson: It is very difficult to be honest. It's very difficult and it takes a long time. You [00:43:00] have to start by saying I was wrong. You have to own it. You have to be able to come in front of your team and the people involved and say. I was wrong. I should not have done that that way, or whatever the case is.

But you have to own it. You have to own it and you have to do it publicly. You can't just pull 'em off to the side and say, I was wrong. You have to do it visibly because the mistake that you made was visible. So owning it has to be just as visible.

Priscilla: The best leadership advice that you have received.

Jay Jacobson: Be yourself 24 7. And that's one of the first lessons I learned from Mr. Bickford just watching him and he didn't have to tell me that you just watched him and you knew this guy can be himself 24 7 and it's okay. People like him. People trust him, people follow him. People admire him.

And when you can do that and just be yourself, then , it takes so [00:44:00] much stress away because you don't have to figure out, okay, what room am I in today? You're always in the same room. So you can always act the same and you can always have the same level integrity. And the stories are all the same.

And.

Priscilla: That's so good. This is for those who are thinking, for leaders to follow, what makes someone safe as a leader to follow.

Jay Jacobson: When it still, it goes back to do they care about their team more than they care about themselves? And that's really the defining element of servant leadership is, does that leader care about me?, Can I trust him? That when he makes a decision, it's not in his best interest, but it's in our best interest.

That's really the defining moment of leadership and trust.

Priscilla: Oh, I've enjoyed this conversation thoroughly because I think.

If there's a way that you've spoken about leadership, one that makes it very simple one that makes it very human and in a way that every person can see, [00:45:00] that they too are a leader. I wonder what you want people to walk away with when they read Lead by Legendary example, a story rooted guide to integrity, vision, and servant leadership.

Jay Jacobson: I would like them to walk away with a deep understanding of how leadership is forged in ordinary events. It's forged in everyday conversations. Everyday actions. It is the smallest decisions that really build leadership, not the big ones. The big ones come later. The big ones are built out of what you make the decisions in the small matters.

And this whole book is, a testimony to the way those lessons were learned. It is part memoir, it's part leadership. It also has a guide for 10 weeks of course, study designed to be done with a group of leaders, people who wanna become better leaders.

Okay, let's take apart what does it mean to have [00:46:00] integrity? And we go through that exercise and then they ponder that for a week, and then we go into the next pillar. But it helps walk them through 10 weeks of intense leadership. Training that they can do on their own, , as far as a group, I don't encourage 'em just as an individual do it.

You need to have other people holding you accountable, but get a group together that wanna be better leaders and walk through this. When we put the book together, the publishing company that I was working with wanted me to put this out as a separate book the workbook part of it. And I said, no, I want people to be able to have it.

I want them to use it. I want them to grow leaders. I wanna make a difference, not just tell a story. And so we combined it so , this book. Is a book and it's a workbook. So , you get both. And we also just went through the process of putting it on audio format. I'm a huge audiobook. Uh. Consumer I've always got an audio book going in the background. That's how I'd read my books. And so it was [00:47:00] very important to us to have it out in audio format. And it was interesting because when we would talk with a gentleman who recorded the narration he would email me and he'd said, boy, this chapter says I'm having a tough time because I see why you didn't read it yourself.

Because I get cracked or choked up. Just reading it. That's how personal the stories are. That's how deeply we've tried to write that so that you as the reader understand what it took to, to develop this kind of leadership.

Priscilla: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I think really when I think of your book and I think of what we've talked about today, I really see that it's a lot about character and servanthood. It makes me think of, oh this. People keep saying, oh, there're not enough leaders, or we don't have the right leaders.

And it's really like everybody should see themselves as a leader. And it's about building your character and having that servant hood mentality. Thank you so much Jay. Jay Where can people follow you? I'll link where people can go and check out the book,

Jay Jacobson: They can find me on my webpage, which is [00:48:00] under Jacobson Pro Staffing. That is my staffing company, and that's also provides information about the book information about leadership. Our blog sits there as well. We do a regular blog on leadership skills, leadership issues. A lot of information is designed for funeral service, but it transcends that and goes out into the broader marketplace as well.

Priscilla: Thank you so much. Thank you for this time and for sharing your wisdom. 

Jay Jacobson: And thank you appreciate very much.