#01: Leadership & Culture

Steve Gasser (00:00)
All right. Welcome to the Remarkable Podcast. I’m Steve Gasser and today I have the pleasure of speaking with someone who’s not only a good friend, but a mentor and a leadership coach of mine. I’ve known Dr. Joe Hill for almost a decade and he’s a creative force with endless energy, a true expert in creating high performing leadership teams, especially in community college spaces. He has a passion for leadership, creativity, and just making an impact.

I think that’s some of the things that make him truly remarkable. So let’s dive into his journey and uncover some of the things, some of the insights inside his success. Joe, so good to have you here.

Dr. Joe Hill (00:56.88)
What an amazing privilege. What do you get when you put an extrovert and an introvert into the same podcast?

Steve Gasser (01:05.602)
boy, I’m not sure.

Dr. Joe Hill (01:06.96)
I don’t know that there’s even a punchline, but I just wrapped up hosting my own podcast, just wrapped it up a few minutes ago, and it is so much easier to be on your side of the mic, my friend, because all you do is tee up the questions.

Steve Gasser (01:24.311)
Yes, I mean that’s kind of the goal is you’re gonna do 90 % of the work today. So thank you for being on this on the podcast

Dr. Joe Hill (01:28.368)
it’s a pleasure. And just to hang out with you, we’ve done it for nearly a decade now, and this is just fun and just safe place. Let’s have some fun and let’s bring everything to the line of perhaps maybe ridiculousness.

Steve Gasser (01:46.927)
We’ll probably go there by the end. So just for our listeners, tell us a little bit about who you are and some of your background.

Dr. Joe Hill (01:53.922)
Yeah, so husband of one father to three, those three are making more humans, which puts me into this class that I still am really having a hard time wrestling with. I’m, I’m grandpa, grandpa Joe to one of the grandkids to the other one, Maximilian. he calls me grandpa cactus, but there’s a story behind that. I, I don’t know. I don’t know. So I’m claiming the, I’m claiming the grandpa space right now.

Steve Gasser (02:03.706)
Yeah.

Steve Gasser (02:21.508)
Love it.

Dr. Joe Hill (02:23.344)
Educator through and through so went to to to college to play football. And apparently you have to a major at some point, so I bumped into some people that took the teacher tests and they passed it and I thought I’m like 3 % smarter than you are. So I took the teacher test. And passed it as well and decided it was this big beam of light that says that I should probably go into education. I.

Steve Gasser (02:30.79)
I didn’t know that.

Dr. Joe Hill (02:50.956)
I was not a school kid. I mean, I went to school so I could do the things after school, but it’s just, it’s been an amazing journey, almost 30 years working on the inside. Educator through and through, I love human potential. Just seeing, I don’t think I fell in love with it early enough in my career as an educator, but truly right now seeing the potential of others and also the systems that they’re driving has become my new life work.

Steve Gasser (03:19.834)
Yeah. So tell me more about the Higher Performance Group and your company.

Dr. Joe Hill (03:23.822)
Yes, it is a, it’s, I don’t know, I would say it’s probably two decades in the making. I would sit in my day job thinking about this work. I would think about, how do I actually spend more time with the people that I’m working with directly to figure out what they’re wired to do extremely well, where their frustrations are coming from and how that, how you can create

like an internal system, but also an external system for more things to be happening that are like preferred. I want more preferred things to be happening in my life. Well, that sounds like a goal. So what are the things that you’re doing right now that aren’t helping to reach that for individuals and systems? My mind would always be there, but I was stuck doing bus routes and managing budgets and

playing board dynamics and all the dreaded B’s, shifting boundary lines, all of those things as an educator and somebody running as an educational leader. So in 2013, I decided to step out of that altogether and forge this whole new, I was at the ripe young age of 45 and decided to do something altogether different for

Steve Gasser (04:28.55)
and

Dr. Joe Hill (04:48.42)
the rest of the time I have in that dash, right? The dash between your birth date and the next date. So yeah, it has been an absolute joy, an absolute joy.

Steve Gasser (04:58.8)
And that’s kind of when we started meeting too. You’re one of the mentors of mine in leadership development.

Dr. Joe Hill (05:04.324)
Yes, yeah, still recall those days. You were the guy that came in and the rock and roll bass player back in the day. Had some fun just getting to know that of you and then to find out that you had a marketing firm. And my mind started to shift into, I want to work with somebody that I already perhaps have a relationship with and I didn’t have a relationship with anybody that knew anything about what you.

Steve Gasser (05:12.452)
Yeah.

Dr. Joe Hill (05:32.292)
what I needed to do and what you knew I needed to do. So, we work.

Steve Gasser (05:35.622)
And we’re speaking the same language at that time too. mean, we had the same tools, the same language.

Dr. Joe Hill (05:40.268)
Yes, yes, and variants of that that have kind of grown or spun out of just some more advanced work of that. But it’s all about the people that you meet. I tell you what, here’s a little secret on the side. So yes, and founder of the Higher Performance Group. But I also, I drive Uber on the side, dude. You know why I do it? I do it for the same reasons why I do everything in…

high-performance group. It’s the people that you have the opportunity to meet, the relationships that I don’t create relationships, although I do have some regulars when I drive you know three or four hours a week. Humans are really intensely interesting and I found a life work and being able to actually just find out what that is and drill into it even further to help them just like amplify. That’s what I want to do and you can help me get there. Yes.

Steve Gasser (06:37.44)
And you find doing that coaching, even driving the Uber.

Dr. Joe Hill (06:40.88)
All the time. I mean, I think I’ve repaired a few marriages actually along the way because Yeah

Steve Gasser (06:48.71)
Now, and I don’t know if you still do this, but you to be, you would sit in the middle seat on the airplane.

Dr. Joe Hill (06:54.516)
my goodness, that’s because my admin at times we’d have, you know, disagreements and things like that. And I’d go to my seat and I’d say, how did I end up in the, and I’d text her and she said, well, because you weren’t very well behaved this week. I’m just like, but actually I’ve, after a while I found that I enjoyed being able to just have access. This introvert, it’s interesting. I don’t mind having conversations with people if they’re going someplace.

Steve Gasser (07:08.39)
Mmm.

Dr. Joe Hill (07:24.92)
Yes, in an airplane we’re going someplace, but I need the conversation to go someplace. If you’re just talking about the weather and sports and who gives a flipping rat’s wrinkled rear end? I don’t. Then earbuds are going in. I’m just like, we’re done. But if you want to talk about like you and what makes you tick and some of the aspirations that you have in life, I think that’s one of the things I’m called to do is just help ask really good questions to help people behave.

in a way that isn’t in accordance to that thing pulsating in their chest. Yes.

Steve Gasser (07:58.183)
Yeah. So let’s get a little deep. But I find not many people really take the time to listen to you. So when somebody like you actually says, you know, want to get to know you, not just talk about the weather. I find people really open up.

Dr. Joe Hill (08:11.224)
Yeah, it’s sometimes it’s creepy. You know, you find the right person or the wrong person. They’re like, why are you asking me that? Well, that’s just a quick, you know, we just click off of that and you move on. I’ll put the movie on.

Steve Gasser (08:18.406)
Yeah, I don’t want to know that.

Steve Gasser (08:27.174)
So here’s my next question. What do you enjoy most about what you do? I mean, you are traveling across the country, meeting with different community colleges, the leadership teams. What do you enjoy most about what you do?

Dr. Joe Hill (08:39.374)
It’s kind of end of cycle stuff. Yeah, I’m a startup guy, so I love the kickoff keynotes that I do. I love being able to put inspiration into the room and get people laughing and sometimes crying. And I love the kind of the, the entree of it all, but I love even more so Steve, seeing the proof of the work, seeing the proof of the work, seeing the results.

A lot of what I do, I would say I’m kind of the culture guy. I haven’t put that in my LinkedIn bio yet. The culture guy. Yeah, that’s like anybody that puts award-winning. If you put award-winning in your LinkedIn bio right now, I’m like, I can’t run away from that quick enough. we can talk about that at another time. But culture.

Steve Gasser (09:12.486)
culture guy.

Dr. Joe Hill (09:30.256)
It is the thing that I have found. Yes, I did a huge book report going to postgraduate school, right? And lots of research around this thing that really exposed my behaviors as a leader and the ultimate, know, bottom line in education isn’t necessarily about your revenue line, although it kind of is. It’s enrollment. It’s enrollment.

Steve Gasser (09:51.878)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Joe Hill (09:55.768)
and if our students are learning well and all that stuff. But what I tried to prove is my behaviors are gonna impact just the overall performance of the organization. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. I hired somebody to run all my stats, because I’m not, I was a dumb football player, right? So I always sat next to the cutest person in class and I asked for the notes and that type of thing. had, the stats were run and I didn’t like the numbers. couldn’t like.

I could not prove significantly as the term that they use in scholarly work, I could not prove significantly that my behaviors had any impact on performance. But what I could find out, what was this, huh, my behaviors had direct impact on something else that had direct impact on overall performance. And that something else has become the life work of building healthy cultures.

Steve Gasser (10:47.418)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Joe Hill (10:55.554)
across organizations. Culture is, it is the new commodity for anything. Err. Hi-er. Yes.

Steve Gasser (11:00.069)
Yeah.

So how would you define culture? What is culture?

Dr. Joe Hill (11:06.04)
Yeah, I stole it. absolutely, Seth Godin, you’re out there someplace listening to this podcast, I’m sure. I stole it from you. People like us, we do things like this. Because it’s the most simple definition that just pops you right in the nose. And if you don’t like the way things, like if you don’t like how things are going in your system, and if you’re a leader, that’s your responsibility. Because culture,

People like us do things like this and you celebrate that, but you also must manage against that when it’s a little sideways. And it’s hard. That’s why most cultures, I looked at a stat the other day, 76 % of college presidents say campus culture is the most important work, but only 12 % of them are actually investing.

time to focus or investing in bringing in support to work on that work. Which means you’ve got a ton of accidentalism and you’ve got intersections where people are doing the same things over and over again and you’ve got leaders wishing, I wish it were different again and again.

Steve Gasser (12:18.118)
Yeah. Yeah. So why do you think that is?

Dr. Joe Hill (12:23.98)
The disconnect between knowing and doing, we make broad assumptions. We absolutely make broad assumptions. Every organization has an HR department. And that broad assumption is, well, that’s the responsibility of the HR department. Culture seems to have just been like, just kind of like abdicated, if you will. Well, that’s that office is supposed to…

Steve Gasser (12:26.48)
Yeah.

Dr. Joe Hill (12:50.958)
because we should have really good glowing reports in our engagement, know, staff engagement reports, annual reports that we do, the how’s our driving reports. All that stuff kind of funnels out of HR. Well, what’s HR doing 80 % of their day? They’re putting off fires from people. Next. Okay. Let me call legal on that. Next. They just don’t, HR doesn’t have time to work on this.

I would argue it’s probably more the role of the president, CEO of the organization to define that culture, to define that macro culture, because you’ve got subculture all over the place that kind of is the driving force. Anyways, I could go into this. We’d have to order pizza because this is the stuff that really makes me tick.

Steve Gasser (13:23.482)
Leaders define culture, yeah.

Steve Gasser (13:41.687)
There’s so many directions we could go here with this, Joe, but what’s one of the challenges that you’ve had in building your business?

Dr. Joe Hill (13:53.07)
Wow, did I mention I’m an educator? I went to teacher school. I didn’t go to business school. So you have been an incredible mentor for me and a few others that I still meet with today, even though, you know, I’ve got an established practice going. It’s the hardest part was just understanding how to run a passion through a business model. Right.

Steve Gasser (13:57.786)
Yeah.

Dr. Joe Hill (14:21.5)
all the operational things. what do you mean I got to do that for tax purposes? I mean, just talk about Mr. Idiot with the dream, just walking through going, I could do this and then stopped in my tracks with all of the things. So over the course of the last probably 10 years, it’s learning not daily, but definitely every quarter ways to create better efficiencies and just what you need to do.

to truly run a pretty square business. That’s been hard for me. That’s been really hard for me.

Steve Gasser (14:55.974)
Because you’ve built a really strong team too. I you have great people around you. How did that happen?

Dr. Joe Hill (15:05.038)
Well, when you say I have great people around me, those are relationships, right? They’re almost the affiliate relationships. don’t have, I have one employee. I look in the mirror and go, come on, you got this today, man. And that’s on purpose. That’s on purpose. When I went into business, I did not want, I’m really hard to manage. I would make a piss poor employee. I’ll just, anybody out there?

that don’t you wouldn’t want to hire me because I’m absolutely well and also my dispositional type. I mean, we could go into personality types in that type. I just I don’t play conventional to anything. Don’t try to put me into any and I work for the institution for nearly 30 years. So you can imagine my post traumatic institutional stress of being this innovative creative entrepreneur.

Steve Gasser (15:35.418)
Yeah, you’re always the hardest person to lead, yourself.

Steve Gasser (15:57.232)
something’s hard coded in your brain.

Dr. Joe Hill (16:03.024)
sitting within the confines of compliance-based structures going, really? Really? So I wanted to be a team of one, but I’ve surrounded myself with people that I can quickly pick up the phone and also just some light duty contractors that would come in and go, I would suck at that. So would you do that for me? And how much would you charge me on a monthly basis? So that we’ve kind of put together a bit of a team.

I’ve used a few of your really good marketers to just help me take an idea and move it into a practical solution. Yeah, on the operational side, I’ve got some folks helping me there as well. But yeah, when we go out to eat, it’s just a lovely time. We try to do that on a quarterly basis where we bring everybody together. I’ve got one person that is actually out in the Philippines. So she’s a little bit harder to get over here.

for pizza. But yeah, it’s been so fun because I’m a team builder as well. So if you’re within that circle of you’re caring for this HPG mission that we’re on, man, you’re part of the inner circle and we’re going to take area. Yeah.

Steve Gasser (17:00.717)
She doesn’t come every week.

Steve Gasser (17:17.392)
I’ve loved that about you. That inner circle, I like that. I think some of the most successful businesses I’ve seen, they treat their employees or their contractors kind of like family. We have influence over each other.

Dr. Joe Hill (17:29.548)
It really is. I mean, I’m still a small business. I hope to have a large impact, but still a small business. And, you know, I don’t know much about the demographics of what’s going on in the small business world, but you get up every morning and it’s a, you’re either the lion or the gazelle. One of the two. Either way, you better get up and put your, you know, Reebok pumps on and start running.

Steve Gasser (18:00.143)
This question falls right in line with you. How do you define effective leadership? What are some of the qualities you think are really essential in a good leader?

Dr. Joe Hill (18:07.44)
I would say character’s got to be number one. You just got to have to be a human that has integrity. You don’t have to, it doesn’t matter what newspaper you’re reading, it’s a leader that didn’t have what they needed to have to just earn the respect of their people. And that is, that’s absolute character. Do you shake a hand and say, I will get that done. And do you get that done? That’s so important for a leader.

Steve Gasser (18:18.544)
Yeah.

Dr. Joe Hill (18:37.264)
that chemistry piece, obviously just, are you, do you have likeability? You know, are you, would you be a fun person to go to a ball game with? Yeah. And sometimes you have to fake that. I’ll, I’ll be honest. Some people are just not wired to have very good chemistry. So, but it’s, it doesn’t, it doesn’t give you a free pass, right? You gotta have to have to have a bedside manner.

Steve Gasser (18:47.386)
Yeah, what I enjoy spending time with you, yep.

Dr. Joe Hill (19:05.604)
going into the doctor tomorrow to talk about having a bit of a surgery. And I hope the doc has both a brain, right, real competent, but also a good bedside manner to walk me through this, because it’s going to put me on the bench for a few weeks. like, you’re have to walk me through this, doc. You got to have that chemistry. Ultimately, you’ve got to also have just the smarts. You got to know what you’re doing. You can’t step into a room and…

Steve Gasser (19:25.158)
You have both sides, yep.

Dr. Joe Hill (19:31.642)
There are some people out there that have the privilege of titles, but they’re just buffoons. You know, they don’t even know, have no idea outside of just maybe what was given to them, right? Contemporary modern ways of doing things. We’ve got to stay sharp. There’s no such thing as being learned. Learned people also, I talked about having award-winning. If you put learned,

Like I went to this college and therefore I am a Learned. Go away. We’re learning every single day.

Steve Gasser (20:06.31)
Speaking of learning, what are some of the habits or practices you use to maintain personal and professional growth? How do you stay up to date? I mean, there’s a lot changing just in the community ed space right now.

Dr. Joe Hill (20:17.796)
Yeah. And I don’t stay like tactically sound because I still have to remain a generalist. Right. So I can’t come in and probably run the joint anymore because I don’t know what new legislation happens to be. I don’t know what some of the new rules and regs and standards and, but staying on top of understanding, you know, what are, what are modern and contemporary ways of

impacting and engaging communication. We’ve got to stay really, really in tune to how do we engage others? What’s the science behind that? What’s the art behind that? What’s the art and the science behind just building connection with others? What’s the art and the science of taking a look at perhaps an entire program scope? All that you have to offer and being able to distill that into a very simple, focused

aligned clarity. How do we effectively execute upon our most important objectives? Those things you learn every day. You must stay, I think, fairly, fairly fresh. And I always, I don’t know, it’s probably not been real good for my relationship with Miss Becky because I’m always got an earbud in.

I’ve always got something pumping into my head. If I have dead time, there’s no such thing. There’s wasting time. I hate it. Always on it. When I’m driving Uber, honestly, I’ve got an audio book just cooking in my ear. But I’ve got these new earbuds. Here’s a unpaid advertisement. Do you have a place in your podcast for an unpaid advertisement? So it’s the Shocks. It’s the Shocks earbuds that don’t go, they don’t go in your ears.

Steve Gasser (21:53.626)
You’re always on.

Steve Gasser (22:07.248)
Yeah, sure. could yeah, can add as some references here. yes.

Dr. Joe Hill (22:15.514)
They go around your ears and they transmit the sound into your bone down here. So, you know, it’s safe, but I’m always sneaking, just sneaking new learning all the time.

Steve Gasser (22:26.266)
Because you can get the ambient sound out of there. Imagine all the bike riding and running you do.

Dr. Joe Hill (22:28.238)
Yeah, yeah, you can’t mow your yard while you’re doing that. You got to put the other ones in while you’re mowing the yard, but.

Steve Gasser (22:35.492)
Yeah, I’ll make sure I put a link over to those. Those are great.

Dr. Joe Hill (22:38.404)
Yeah, yeah. So, but learning, all the time. I get up in the morning and just can’t wait to just experience, experience and staying curious. And that’s my temperament type is I get up with not many answers, unfortunately, but I have deep questions every single day.

Steve Gasser (22:55.408)
Yeah. We got a lot of answers though. How many books have you written?

Dr. Joe Hill (22:58.922)
one a year over the last six, seven years. yeah, and there’s always one. There’s always one. My next one. So I’ve written books for teams. Those are the majority. I would say that’s the core of my work. I’ve written my last one. Actually, it’s right here. Another unpaid advertisement. Systems.

Steve Gasser (23:04.824)
One ear. Yeah. What’s your next book?

Dr. Joe Hill (23:29.624)
Okay. So teams and systems, but I had this, I’ve never really written one for just you, the leader. Yeah. So what is, what are the higher performance leader qualities that lead to exceptional results? I put that one off for a while because I don’t believe in leaders. You might create a clip right there because people are going to lean in. What do mean he doesn’t?

Steve Gasser (23:48.422)
Yeah.

Steve Gasser (23:57.616)
don’t believe in leaders, what?

Dr. Joe Hill (23:58.916)
What do mean he doesn’t? I believe in teams because leaders don’t change systems.

Yeah, but we have to start with really good leaders that will then build exceptional teams. But if you’re just thinking that all of your problems are going to go away if you find the right leader, how timely for this discussion, right? It doesn’t matter. That leader must build the team to fix all the gaps that we have.

Steve Gasser (24:25.594)
And that leader has to be the healthiest person in the room in order to do that.

Dr. Joe Hill (24:28.012)
Absolutely. Yep. And that challenges me if I’m actually an influencer to the leader. I’ve got to be 5 % healthier than you are leader. So if you’re the healthiest one in the room, I got to be even more healthy. Which, yeah, I had my gym time this morning workout number one, and I was telling you, I might have to go on the bench for a while. And it’s just I’m going through a grieving period of just not being able to get out and just

Steve Gasser (24:38.192)
Yes.

Dr. Joe Hill (24:56.826)
do all the things that I love to do, but 2024. yeah. You know, and I’m not waving goodbye to any of it. I might just need to go into the maintenance shop and get some things, get the lug nuts tightened up a little bit.

Steve Gasser (24:59.75)
Cause you’re a busy guy. You’ve been doing triathlons and marathons.

Steve Gasser (25:13.926)
So a couple final questions. What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make their mark?

Dr. Joe Hill (25:21.219)
start

Steve Gasser (25:23.559)
That’s so simple.

Dr. Joe Hill (25:23.906)
start. It’s a John Acuff book actually I think out there. There’s another free advertisement. you know it’s the it’s the battle between I’m going to perfect it. I’m going to I’ve got to keep perfecting it. Most of that never gets launched. It’s being able to launch imperfection.

Steve Gasser (25:44.838)
I love that.

Dr. Joe Hill (25:46.788)
Yeah, just being able to launch imperfection because honestly, I’ve iterated everything that HPG Higher Performance Group is today.

it in Brene’s Brene Brown’s language, it was a beep first draft, right? Because you would have beeped it out if I would have actually said the S H I word. First draft, you have to be willing to just put a crappy first draft out there.

Steve Gasser (26:01.829)
Yeah.

Steve Gasser (26:07.344)
So, yeah.

Steve Gasser (26:13.648)
Yeah, and I think what happens so we put that crappy first draft out of there. It feels like a setback. How do you help? Help entrepreneurs deal with those setbacks or actually what feels like a setback

Dr. Joe Hill (26:24.496)
Oftentimes that setback is only in their head. It’s like, you know, and I’ve had you and some others that have said, no, actually, look, you taught me MVP. What is an MVP, Steve?

Steve Gasser (26:37.392)
Yes, minimal viable product.

Dr. Joe Hill (26:40.408)
Yeah, you got to start with something that sucks right out of the gates. Okay, and when you can actually show but look what you did. And look, you’ve got two people that have expressed some interest here you were hoping for 500. But two plus something equals 500. It’s easier easier than zero plus if you’re at zero, nothing’s gonna happen. You get to you’re on your way. And you know what you know.

you were the one who decide where you go. Our favorite. You got it. You got it.

Steve Gasser (27:12.698)
got brains in your head, you got feet in your shoes. Yeah? I heard you say that at one of the leader cast events and I loved when you gave the Dr. Seuss poem.

Dr. Joe Hill (27:24.452)
Yeah, yeah, I’m just kind of a goofy guy. I am. And I think the more that I just become comfortable with just being myself, it’s just being authentic. And people love, people just love to kind of giggle a little bit. We got a lot of serious stuff going on in the world. And if you can bring some levity in the space, you can be serious about your mission, but you can kind of be light in terms of how you engage humankind.

to get there because people are carrying some really heavy things right now.

Steve Gasser (27:57.84)
Yeah, you never know what people are carrying. And I think that lightness, I’ve watched a couple of your podcast episodes. And what’s the title of your podcast?

Dr. Joe Hill (28:00.144)
Exactly.

Dr. Joe Hill (28:09.754)
The show at Joe.

Steve Gasser (28:10.8)
The show with Joe. Yes. And a lot of energy that you’re bringing. I think the last person I saw you interview was a runner.

Dr. Joe Hill (28:13.328)
How about that?

my goodness.

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, the most fun part of my every week, have fallen, I think 2025 is going to be just doubling down on the power of podcasts because people love to tell their stories. That’s the thing. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. Person on, if I’m middle seat, they love to tell their story. Right. And I think, you know, that’s the duty of care is to actually become interested.

Steve Gasser (28:20.794)
He’s done lots of marathons.

Steve Gasser (28:48.006)
interested before being interesting.

Dr. Joe Hill (28:48.965)
Yeah.

Yeah, too many interesting people out there that don’t have enough interested people to listen to them. Yeah.

Steve Gasser (28:58.96)
So a couple of final thoughts. What is one thing you wish you knew before you started your career?

Dr. Joe Hill (29:05.296)
I think the power of agency, that power of you literally can do, I could have been a surgeon even though my ACT score was probably plastered on the back of some quarterbacks out there, honestly.

If I decided that I wanted to go to medical school and be a top-notch surgeon, I could have been. I didn’t have that mindset growing up. And it is something that I want to offer now to the world to say, literally, it’s what you stick in your mind you can become. Your mind is the most powerful force on this planet. So I wish I would have known that earlier.

I’m definitely spinning that up.

Steve Gasser (29:58.286)
Yeah. So has your journey been a straight line or there been kind of different versions of Joe? Like a version 1.0, a version 2.0?

Dr. Joe Hill (30:06.988)
Wow, yeah, I go to high school reunions and people probably, one, it’s the white hair now. It used to be like jet black, but that’s what being a school leader does to folks out there. a school principal and hug a school superintendent. Hug your college president because they’re not getting a whole lot of love these days. I’m sorry, what was the question?

Ha ha!

Steve Gasser (30:35.934)
Has your journey to where you are, has it been a straight line or there have been bumps and roadblocks and…

Dr. Joe Hill (30:38.584)
Not at all. my goodness, so many pivots, so many pivots. And I’m not talking about, you know, COVID pivots. Just everyday, everyday realities of you think you’ve got the right idea until people give you some feedback and you go, hmm, that’s not, you become as wise as the people that you serve, right? You just, you have to continue to develop and create and,

Steve Gasser (30:42.8)
Yeah.

Dr. Joe Hill (31:08.612)
That’s why I work with campus leaders now saying, your most important thing is not your programs. It’s the partnerships, the people you’re serving. You should engage them and say, now, what do you need from us? Instead of just plastering them with, here’s what we have to offer. Well, there’s enough people that are out there in my world that are campus adjacent. Like, I didn’t have a real good experience in high school. Why would you think I’m indifferent?

I’m okay just doing this thing over here. You’ve got to figure out new ways to just go, I’m interested in you and take the time, right? Take the time to actually just start to unpack. that’s interesting. How do you think you’d become one of those people that jump out of the airplane and fight fires? cool. Do you know there’s actually a program out there that might, I mean, it’s taking the time to be able to do that. And that’s what I’ve done in my life. It’s just asked really good questions and,

Steve Gasser (31:57.222)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Joe Hill (32:08.28)
No, I’m gonna course correct.

Steve Gasser (32:10.938)
And those are great questions. think sometimes we get so focused on our products and services and what we’re doing, we don’t get out and ask the end user, what do you want from us?

Dr. Joe Hill (32:20.43)
Yeah. Yeah. What’s your problem? mean, from, from a marketing standpoint, if you’re not solving somebody’s problem, you’re going to be out of business very, very soon. Unless you’re some government funded organization that will just don’t get me started. Don’t you write. Then you never really have to assess.

Steve Gasser (32:22.779)
Yeah.

Steve Gasser (32:32.89)
Yeah. There’s just always money coming into those.

Steve Gasser (32:39.184)
So Joe, what advice would you like to end with?

Either.

Dr. Joe Hill (32:43.958)
Us, real folks, mean, yeah, we all have our own insecurities. You know, it might be the, just, sometimes it’s just that, that primal thing that you had just buried within you. My, grew up a poor kid. I grew up a poor kid that, didn’t know. I mean, it had boxes brought in at Christmas time, from, knows where it was coming from, but what.

I mean, so to this day, it’s still just a primal need that I have that is, are we gonna have enough? We’re gonna have enough this quarter? We’re gonna have enough to go on? Right, so I think dealing, just getting very, very real with who we are, but also the origin of where we came from. Because if you don’t deal, and that’s probably way too deep than what you wanted, but for my own journey, unless we battle those spaces from whence we came,

That it’s still alive and well today. So I can be not very hopeful. I can awful eyes a lot of situations if I don’t deal with that, that place of origin of scarcity.

Steve Gasser (33:51.866)
Yeah, think what you’ve been really good at too is getting people into that kind of that place of origin and it starts with your light conversations and then you go so deep to make people go. yeah I know talking to you. thought okay. This is what I’m passionate about This is what I what I do, but it all starts with being curious and asking those questions so

Dr. Joe Hill (34:14.35)
Yeah, well, we’re I’m a man of faith as well. So there’s just this there’s there’s always something that you’re doing that is serving a greater purpose. So that’s why behind me here is a t-shirt that says cancel average. We are not called to just be complacent and go well, I’m going to do this for until that magical thing rings when I can retire and then the whole planet is just

Populated with people that are just showing up and going well, I got three more years and then I’m gonna They’re the most miserable people When they hit the three-year mark Honestly, I’ve met so many people that were retired and thought this is gonna be and it never is because they never really lived a life of abundance and risk and just Kind of all in to anything in particular. So average is running rampant

And I have some, some of my research that I’ve done within organizations in terms of just how well we communicate with people, how well we connect with people, how well we align our organizations. If you put some metrics to that, it’s also average, which means you’re paying a lot of money right now for disengaged employees. And that’s not good, especially if they’re public dollars. And that’s what I’m fighting for.

Steve Gasser (35:27.546)
Yeah.

Steve Gasser (35:38.468)
I love cancel average. Don’t settle for average.

Dr. Joe Hill (35:43.278)
or mediocre, but I could never spell mediocre. It’s spelled weird.

Steve Gasser (35:44.346)
or mediocre.

Steve Gasser (35:48.74)
Yeah, find out what makes you come alive, because that’s really what the world needs is more people that are coming alive.

Dr. Joe Hill (35:54.698)
or to use your name of your podcast, Steve, let’s bring this full circle.

Steve Gasser (36:00.666)
Look at you. Yes. What makes you remarkable? And that’s the whole reason I wanted you on this podcast, Joe. You are one of the most remarkable people I know. Not only in the leadership space, but in that creative space. Your creative mind, the way you think about things, the way you process. I’m so glad and so grateful for your friendship and for being one of our first guests on this podcast.

Dr. Joe Hill (36:01.712)
What makes you remarkable?

Dr. Joe Hill (36:24.08)
The bar has been set really low for number two. what an honor. just so covet our friendship, Steve. Thank you so much and just an honor to be your number one.

Steve Gasser (36:28.847)
you

Steve Gasser (36:38.63)
You are the number one. All right. Have a great, a great afternoon. Take care.

Dr. Joe Hill (36:44.656)
Thank you,