Chaos! - SoundSage

https://www.coryleeleadership.com/

Do you have enough stress in your life? Have you been unsuccessfully transitioning to a new leadership role, a new career, or even a new passion? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to chaos, a conversation about careers, transitions and leadership. Listen in this, we help you pursue meaningful work.

Mark Slabaugh 0:27

Welcome to chaos, where we talk about careers, transitions and leadership. I'm excited for our conversation today with Corey Lee. And I'm going to tell you more about Korea in a second. But let me make sure and let you know, Jim isn't with me today. My my co host, Jim is living the retired life. And so he is gone for a few weeks. And we'll be back with us here when he's done at the playground and enjoying retired life, but wish him the best. He'll be coming back in a few weeks and being with us. Today, we're going to talk with Corey Lee. And Cory is a gentleman that I was introduced to a couple of months back. And I just thought his story is very inspiring. He's gone through a couple of transitions, he chased a dream, fulfill the dream, and then let go of the dream. And I just thought that was a story that would be compelling for you today, to hear and be a part of, and I think you'll grow as a part of this experience of hearing his story. So today, we're going to talk with my friend Cory Lee, I'm going to encourage you, if you're interested in finding out more about Cory, and he's going to talk about legacy builders, if you're, if you're interested, interested in that we're going to have the link in the show notes. But it is Cory Lee leadership.com Co RYLE leadership.com Corey Lee leadership.com, you can find out about as leader as legacy builders, and be a part of that. So let's welcome in Corey Lee. Today we are talking with Corey Lee. And Corey is Korea's the gentleman that I have met by actually being a guest on his podcast, and he is going to talk with us today about transitions. He's made a couple of daring moves in his in his professional career. And so we're going to talk about those and, and we're gonna have a great conversation today, wrapped around this idea of how do I pursue meaningful work? What does that look like? And when I take that jump, is that is that good? Should I do that? What does that look like? And so, so I welcome in my friend, Cory. And Cory, thank you so much for making time today. How are you?

Cory Lee 2:47

Hey, Mark, hey, thank you, again, for allowing me to come on, you know, you talked about you came on my podcast, and there was just that real connection there. And I enjoyed your story. And I appreciate the opportunity to come on and add value to you and your listeners. So, man, I'm doing great excited about our conversation today. Yeah.

Mark Slabaugh 3:07

Fantastic. Cory, as, as I've talked with a lot of folks around this idea of meaningful work, like, how do I wrap my arms around something that gives me greater satisfaction than just a paycheck? Because I think we can do a lot of things for money. But that pursuit has a short shelf life. And, you know, a lot of folks like yourself, and, and me, you know, gone through perhaps a couple of transitions, a couple of different jobs. And so we're at this place of okay, well, I'd like to do something that I really enjoy, and what does that look like? And so, tell, tell us a little bit about your journey. And let's kind of start with that place where you were running a couple of physical therapy centers couple of gyms. Talk to me a little bit about what that workspace was like, how was that going? What were you discovering? As you were doing that kind of work?

Cory Lee 4:06

Yeah, I'll tell you a little bit of the journey because there was a there was a leaping off even into that. And so what I do right now, as I do leadership, training and development, I go in and I work with leaders. I like to say I build leaders and transform culture. But my background is actually in the medical field. My wife and I and a five year period of time to physical therapy clinics for gyms had three kids, sold all the businesses kick off kids, and transition into doing what I do now. But we've had multiple transitions right there, but I want to kind of take you back to where we made that first thing. So I grew up in north Mississippi, my wife and I both did. We got married and we moved off and that was actually probably one of the best things that had happened to us. Because we left everybody we knew all the all the culture that we knew the environment, friends, family for her to go play college softball, and so I was working, she was playing college softball work, working part time doing school full time. And, you know, I would get paid on a Friday as a physical therapist, gas up the cars, pay the bills, get the groceries, and we'd have $8 to live on for two weeks. And, you know, but it was fine. We depended on each other, we dependent upon God and our our relationship with one another flourished, but also with God flourished. And so as she finally got out of school, she was a doctor of physical therapy. And we moved back to North Mississippi, after living in Phoenix, Arizona, and it was the first time in our marriage, that we both had had a job. And and during that time she was in school, there was always this dream, wouldn't it be cool? Like, wouldn't it be cool if we owned our own physical therapy clinic? Wouldn't it be cool if this physical therapy clinic also had a gym with it, where you could really make an impact. And it was just kind of this dream within us where it was more of like maybe one day, maybe someday. But as as we both got that job, we're working at the same place. And it's first time in our family's lives that we both had a job. She was making six figures a year working from home, which was before that's even a thing. And I was getting to work an easy job market was easy, I would go, I would go into work. And I would get off at 12 and still get paid for a full day's work. But I knew I knew there was something inside of me something deep in my gut saying I was made for something more than that. And the job I'm telling you was just super easy. pay was good is the most we had ever earned in our lives. But I knew that there was a time that that dream that we had deep inside of us, it was that time. And it was time to make that step. But I share all of that background with you because I want to set that up for you that we were comfortable financially, we were set with a you know, a consistent paycheck had all the insurance, the benefits, and we had like a six month old child and we had our first child. And I knew that if I stepped out to that we were going into the unknown, unknown income, something I'd never done before. But also the moment I turned in my notice, my wife would lose her role in that company, because we worked in the same same company. So so there was a lot of risk involved. But I knew that this was our next step. And so I did turn on my notice. And we opened up that physical therapy clinic, my wife did lose her role she stayed on with the company. But it was quickly to the port where she had, she came into the job or came into the business with me. And we built that business from a small little physical therapy clinic in a town of 1100 people, 1100 people. And within five years that expanded that to two PT clinics for gyms. And in that one local clinic, we're billing out over $2 million a year in a town of 1100. People. Wow. And so so that was kind of that back background story I wanted to give to you right there.

Mark Slabaugh 8:15

Look, let's talk about the dream for a second. Like how did you develop the dream? How did you? How did you and your wife? Like understand that to be your dream? How did you discover that? What was what was that process? Like? How did you get to that? Or did you just wake up one morning say hey, you know, it'd be great. Let's do this.

Cory Lee 8:37

Yeah, yeah. So at first kind of comes in as an idea, right? Oh, that's a cool idea. Oh, it'd be kind of nice. That would be cool. And you just toy with the idea, right? You You take we all have an imagination, we can use our imagination. Or you can use it for worst case scenarios, we can say all the reasons why something won't work, or we can use the use it and say, if that were possible, how would that be possible? How can I put a house in front of the camera? So honestly, as we were, you know, she was in school and I was working, it was just just kind of a dream. That would be kind of cool someday, if that were possible, but we kind of just kept talking about the dream, we would talk about it and eventually, that talking that idea now transitions into a desire. And then once that desire comes, then you start asking, asking yourself how, what is at least one thing I could do? And sometimes we can get so caught up in the big picture of how am I going to make that happen? And we overlook the first step. And it's only once we take that first step that the next steps are revealed. So So for us, we just toyed with the idea what would that look like? And it just kind of kept on starting to become a desire.

Mark Slabaugh 9:58

So there was there Was this courage? I mean, my word you didn't necessarily say courage, but I was suspect there's a level of courage here to make that jump, knowing that your wife is going to lose her role. You talked about the security you had, but yet the security wasn't enough.

Cory Lee 10:19

And now, no, no, it wasn't. And honestly, we were people of faith. So that was a big proponent of it as well as we prayed about it. And and we just knew that that was our next step. And faith is an action word, it is a verb, right? My faith causes me to take action. And we just knew that was our next step. And we knew that if, if that was what the Lord was calling us to do that it would it would all work out, right. So we took that step. And I know sometimes people don't like to hear that it will work out. But for us, that's, that's what it was.

Mark Slabaugh 10:59

So you had this, you had the security you had, you know, a good, you had a good paycheck, you had a good income, things were very comfortable. But there was some unsettled Ness about, Hey, there's this dream I want to accomplish, you jumped into the dream. But you're not doing that today, you're doing something different. So okay, so you had the dream, you jumped into the dream, the dream became reality. And then what?

Cory Lee 11:27

Yeah, one of the things I like to teach in leadership is that leaders give up in order to go up, right, you have to give up things of a lesser value, in order to gain something of a greater value. And so in order to do that, you have to identify what's of greater value. And so I absolutely loved our physical therapy business, I loved her gyms. But there was this one day. So just to give you an idea of my time there, I would get up at five, go to the gym from five to 730, then walk over to our physical therapy clinic until about 430 In the afternoon, be in the gym from 430 to 830. So full day, but but but the love that right? Um, one day, I was telling our son Good night at 430 in the afternoon, because it wouldn't be until the next afternoon that that I saw him again. And he looked up at me and he said, Daddy, you go into your house. And it hit me right in the gut of Wow. One, I'm spending way too much time at work. And so for one that triggered me to understand leadership, have to empower other people and all of that. But as as started praying, the Lord was revealing to us that you got to give it up, you got to let it go. And I don't know if you or maybe your listeners like to negotiate with God. But I was like, I'll put it back. I'll put it back where it needs to go. But it's like, no, you got to let it go. And so we knew our next step was that season was over with that we had built it up to the point and it was time to sail. And I did not know what the next step was, like, Mark, I didn't know that you could go into leadership, and people would actually pay you to come in and teach leadership, I had no idea. So we just knew the first next step was to transition out and whatever that look like. And so we found a gentleman who bought our business I stayed on for a bit. And yeah, it kind of worked out and to developing leaders now. So yeah,

Mark Slabaugh 13:32

one of the one of the one of the big conversations like I, I have a lot with myself and frequently with others is Indian, a chapter of life. And there's a whole lot of emotions involved in that in India, chapter of life could be professional, it could be relational, you know, a friendship that you know, has been part of your life for a long time, it ends because of whatever circumstances and now you got to deal with that emotionally. And that loss. And anytime you have these kinds of these things that end there is lost, there is something that is that is over. And so before grabbing a hold of the new let's before, before we get to that side of it, talk to me a little bit about about, like letting go of a dream. Getting to that place where like you're, you're going to this this thing that I have built with, you know, the help of in a in a faith idea that God has helped me my wife has helped me others have have been a part of this process, but I've built it right. And now I'm gonna let it go talk to me a little bit about that in the Indian and coming to terms with something ending.

Cory Lee 14:43

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I'm glad you pull that up, because it doesn't make a lot of sense, right? Because you everything you just said right there. And in that moment, I wanted to let you know what my mindset was like, well, you're just quitting. You're just Waiting. Why are you quitting? And, and within that the Lord actually revealed to me kind of some of the history of that's actually what I what I do is not quit, but start things, launch things, help things get going and then hand it off to someone who can take it, run with it, build it higher, faster. But somebody's got to be a starter, somebody's got to be an igniter. And it was actually really through that process that that was revealed to me as a stream. And and you talked about holding on to it. It was not, I don't know, in the store, if it makes it sounds like it was easy to let go. But it was not. Because you wrestle with? Well, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I've been doing. Right. Like, this is all I know. And, and so I just knew in that moment, that that was the next step. And it was through that process there that really some strengths were discovered for me. But if I would have held on to that one, it would have held me back, it would help the business back probably where it is, but I wouldn't, I would not have recognized some of the gifting that I have in my own life. So

Mark Slabaugh 16:14

yeah. So there is some understanding of yourself in this process. There you as you were, you are filtering all this with kind of your own gifting your own wiring, but also your own priorities, your own core values of you know, the comment from your son and and how that impacted you. And that's not how you wanted this to, you know, you didn't want work to affect your family in that way. So that core value drove you to making another transition.

Cory Lee 16:44

Absolutely. And you know, you put that up right there, it did help me understand what some of the core values are. And one of the very first things I did after that was was launched a group called Legacy builders, which is exactly what it is, is, you know, helping leaders and entrepreneurs grow in their faith, family, fitness, finances, grow their businesses, but not at the expense of those other things important to them. And one of the reasons I did that was because I realized that as I was trying to grow my business, I found all the mentors and stuff from a distance, but I didn't have anybody I could go to and ask them questions about, Hey, how are you doing this? I didn't have anybody who understood what I was going through. I didn't have anybody that I could hold me accountable to the things I said I would do, but also kind of be guardrails, as I wanted to grow the business but not at the expense of other things important to me. So you know, as as that was revealed to me, I wanted to kind of be a river and not a reservoir and help other people help other leaders with that. So yeah, it was a great, great season of lessons learned.

Mark Slabaugh 18:01

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Give me the 30 second commercial on what legacy builders is and how you how you help leaders have faith, and build that legacy?

Cory Lee 19:12

Absolutely. Yeah, so 30 seconds is a mastermind group. We get together once per week. And there's about 10 to 12 leaders in each group. And we come around we tell our wins for the week because we want to celebrate the good things that are going on in our lives. Many times we forget about the awesome things going on in our lives, even week to week. So we do that. I do a leadership teaching. And then each week one person gets into what I call the growth seat. So that person in the growth seat brings their challenge, their opportunity, their idea, whatever it is, and then all the other leaders in the group. Think into that idea or that challenge or that some whatever it is for that individual and help help come up with a solution and a way forward and then we go around and ask for our commitments for the upcoming weeks. If it's more of a mastermind group, you can have your community of like minded leaders that want to grow, but not at the expense of those things that are other things that are important as well. So

Mark Slabaugh 20:11

real quick before, before we talk a little bit more about your own dream. If someone is interested in finding out more about that, what's the best way to connect with you on that?

Cory Lee 20:21

Yes. Best way is you can go to my website, it's Cory Lee leadership.com. So ce o ry, li le e leadership.com. And there's a, there's a link on there that tells about legacy builders, or you can email me. And that's Cory co ry at Quarry Lee leadership.com. And I'd love to give you more information about that and see if that's something you're interested in. Yeah.

Mark Slabaugh 20:47

Awesome. We'll put that link in the in the notes and make sure that people have access to that. So Cory was the dream replace? Was it a new dream now for what you're doing with this leadership...

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