The Dance of Leadership and Wealth: Inclusion, Culture & Financial Strategy with Dr. James Pogue on Brave New Wealth Podcast

In this compelling episode of the Brave New Wealth podcast, Dr. James Pogue joins host Julienna Viegas to explore the intersection of leadership, cultural connection, and financial strategy. Together, they unpack what it means to lead with both empathy and impact within organizations and beyond.

Drawing from his background in academia, martial arts, and global leadership consulting, Dr. Pogue shares how personal growth, cultural fluency, and inclusion aren’t just ideals, they’re business imperatives. From navigating discomfort to building systems that retain top talent, this conversation is a masterclass in turning diversity and leadership into measurable outcomes.

Whether you’re a C-suite leader or building your team’s capacity for connection and performance, this episode offers practical insights to help you lead with clarity, courage, and curiosity.

About the Host: Julienna Viegas

Julienna Viegas brings a global lens to business and leadership conversations. Born and raised in Belgium, with academic roots in International Relations, Political Science, and Economics, she has lived and worked across cultures—making her a natural connector and trusted advisor to diverse business leaders.

With over a decade of experience supporting entrepreneurs and startups, Julienna specializes in business development, client success, and growth strategy. In her role as Client Development Director at Engineered Tax Services, she helps organizations unlock hidden financial opportunities through strategic tax planning, all while fostering long-term, high-value partnerships.

Listen on iTunes
Listen on Spotify:

Podcast Episode Transcript

Host (Julienna):
Welcome to the Brave New Wealth podcast, where we discuss wealth from a mental, physical, social, and financial perspective.

I’m your host, Julienna. Bienvenue à tout le monde. Bienvenido a todos.

Herzlich willkommen. Everyone is welcome here. This podcast is sponsored by Engineer Tax Services, where I am a director.

Engineer Tax Services is a subsidiary of Engineer Tax Advisory.

where we want to support and empower business owners, entrepreneurs, CPA, real estate investors by providing proven expertise, education, and strategies that will help you take advantage of tax incentives that are often overlooked. So this is tax season, reach out to us if you want to receive free benefit analysis about your situation.

Today, I am very, very excited to have with us, Dr. Pogue.

Thank you very much for being with us. I want to cheat a little bit and read your bio because it’s super impressive.

Your journey is incredible and I don’t want to miss anything. So Dr. James Pogue is a distinguished expert in diversity, inclusion and leadership serving as the president and CEO of JP Enterprises.

With a background that includes military service during Desert Storm, Dr. Pogue brings a wealth of experience to his work in helping organizations address complex issues related to diversity and bias.

Dr. Pogue developed the diversity inclusion bias assessment model, a tool designed to measure and enhance organizations’ progress in these critical areas.

He also created the No Nonsense Experience, a series of small group discussions aimed at fostering meaningful conversation about diversity and inclusion. His academic journey includes studies at Grambling State University and Harvard University, further solidifying his expertise in leadership and organizational behavior.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Dr. Pogue is a seasoned martial art artist with over 25 years of experience, during which he has won five national titles and earned both silver and bronze medals at the world championships. He’s also a proud father of two daughters and grandfather to six granddaughters.

Through his comprehensive approach, Dr. Pogue supports leaders in making informed decisions that attract, engage, and retain talent.

And this is at all level. So this deepens the understanding of diversity, inclusion, and biases.

Dr. Pogue, thank you very much for being here today. I’m super impressed with all that you’ve accomplished.

We met each other recently and so I’m going to give you a challenge. If you meet someone and you have to tell in a nutshell in 30 seconds, who are you?

How would you introduce yourself?

Dr. James Pogue:
I’m both curious and restless.

I’ve been blessed with a few gifts. Me and my brain get along well. Me and my body have gotten along well so far.

And I try to leverage both to navigate this world in a restless way and a curious way, leaning towards the benefit of others and being in service of others.

Host (Julienna):
Wonderful. Well, thank you very much. So I like to throw a little challenges and to begin, I’d like to ask you maybe what is something you have done recently that took you out of your comfort zone?

And that can be, you know, from the mental, physical, social, or even financial perspective, something you told yourself, well, this is not going to be easy, but that’s the only way, you know, I grow. So I’m going to go ahead and do it.

Dr. James Pogue:
So that question adds one really clear answer for me and one vague answer.

So the clear answer is I have now started to add one of my hobbies, but it’s really something more critical to me to my bio, my professional bio.

And that is the fact that I teach dance and that I enjoy dancing. So I teach a partner dance called Kizomba that comes out of Angola and has a lead part and a follow part.

And I’ve been doing that for several years now. And the, there’s a lot of a connection between the role that leaders and followers play on the dance floor and leaders and followers play on teams.

That someone has to establish a vision for where the organization or where the partnership wants to go. Someone has to agree that I will, I will support this vision and I will go the direction that you’re asking us to go.

And so there’s that broad kind of similarity.

But then there’s the details of it, the idea that the follower is simply a job description.

Sometimes the follower in the context of the dance leads the leader, right? And sometimes the leader needs to follow the follower.

So the shift from the idea that this role that I play is a job title that doesn’t really detail out all of the components of my responsibilities in the relationship.

So whether it be a leader and team relationship or partners on the dance floor. There’s a lot that comes, I’m able to steal from one and place to the other.

But talking about it has not been something that is, I’ve been doing for years and years. It’s been something I’ve been doing for about say seven, eight months.

And the curious part is that when I lean into it, when I’m in front of a crowd, there’s a eye opening, there’s an eyebrow raising, there’s a, both elbows on the table and like,

okay, I’m curious, tell me more about that. So I think I may have missed the opportunity to better influence, to better lead, to better guide many, people over time. So in the absence of regret, do press the, I do intend to press the accelerator with that and allow people to leverage my experiences in an effort to help them become better professionals moving forward.

Host (Julienna):
Wonderful. That’s, that is very impressive.

First of all, I love that you pick that kind of dance, which is not very common.

I mean, it’s not very famous. Now Angola is part of my ancestry. that’s, that’s really, really neat.

And I’m excited to learn more about that. So what motivated you to, pick this over, you know, salsa or tango or why?

Dr. James Pogue:
Sure, sure. So I will make sure that my, give a shout out to my good friend. His name is Jonathan Williams.

He wanted to go on an all Latin dance cruise. And he says to me, Hey James, why don’t you come with me?

I said, man, look, I’m not going on any cruise with you. I’m a grown man. do grown man things that doesn’t feel right in my spirit.

Sharing some kind of closet, you know, in my mind, I imagine everybody’s in the closet on the cruise ship. So there’s no way I’m sharing that kind of space with you.

I’m not going.

Dr. James Pogue:
And he, to his credit, says, well, that’s because you don’t know anything about vacations. I had never been on a vacation at this point. It was just five, seven years ago, something like that. And you don’t know anything about vacations. You don’t know anything about cruises. And you don’t know anything about partner dancing or Latin dance.

So give me your money and let’s go. And, you know, he loves me and he wants the best for me. And he’s not going to put me a terrible situation. So I drink off a cliff. And it’s the, the cruises, thousands of people. And everybody’s there just for this. Right. wow. workshops all day and social dancing all night.

And I knew none of it. It was very, very uncomfortable from the moment we checked in, standing in line, all the people that are hyped up, you know, with some of our salsa people, Latin dance people, they can be quite extroverted and quite sparkly. I am not. I am not sparkly person.

So it was uncomfortable, but you, you get thrown in the deep end. And they rub some of the sparkle on you. And before you know it, I at can fake a sparkle. So I ended up, that first night I danced till, I don’t know, five or six in the morning, messing up women’s pedicures, just creating all kinds of problems.

But the first lesson I learned that a, lady that you asked to dance, that I asked to dance, or that asked me to dance, would rather dance with an enthusiastic beginner than sit. So they’d rather be involved. They’d rather be included than to be excluded and silenced or diminished. Again, lesson for work, right?

You can accidentally exclude people, you can accidentally diminish people. But if you do it falling forward, I tried to include her or him, but I just messed it up. That’s better than doing nothing. So I go, I’m working the salsa thing, working the bachata thing.

There’s, there’s Roomba rooms and Mambo. There’s all kinds of things happening. And then over here, there’s Kizomba, but I don’t know any of this. I know the word salsa and Bachata, but that’s it. And I had to decide for the next few days, where am going to focus? Cause I am a bit of a nerd and I like to focus in on something and study and get good. So I chose Kizomba and plan B was Bachata.

so that’s, that’s how things started several years ago. And again, I can nerd out on things. If I’m going to do something, I might as well be good at it. And once I get good at it, why wouldn’t I give somebody the gift that somebody gave me?

Host (Julienna):
Wonderful. Wow. That’s very, very impressive. And yes, that would be very uncomfortable at first, but that’s where the greatest pleasure comes from.

And I’m excited to hear how you are applying all of these things, you know, in the workforce and when you train people.

So, no, this is very exciting. And I kind of see it with language as well. You know, people want to learn a language and they are afraid because they’re going to butcher the words and…

But really the best way to do it is just jump in the pool. That’s how I learned English, you know, when I was 18 coming from Belgium and had no French speakers around.

So it was a bit painful for the first three, four months and then I became fluent because I had no choice.

And so I see it, you know, happening the same way with you and Kizomba. You’re probably very fluent now.

Dr. James Pogue:
I’m fluent in that, however, like, example, my Spanish is very basic, but I understand very long, a lot of is better for me.

So I’m not good and I get nervous when I’m out and speak Spanish.

But I promise you every time, a hundred percent of the time I’ve done it, especially in front of Spanish speaking people, it gets warmer.

I think I like it. You know,

Host (Julienna):
Yes, absolutely. That is the best way to connect immediately with people when you make an effort.

My daughter just came back from Paris, my son went to the UK, that was a big challenge.

when they meet people there, they’re excited to speak French with them.

they embrace, just like you say, they embrace them in the culture right away because they’re making that effort.

Absolutely. So with that, you kind of told us a little bit about the things you do outside of work, you know, to relax and, you know, to balance the workload.

And so is there other things you want to share aside from Kizumbo? That’s the main focus that you would do outside of work, you know, relax and balance.

Dr. James Pogue:
mentioned new things and for me, I’d never really cared about the money.

And I think that was a huge mistake. And by mistake, mean, not like I knew what was wrong and I did it wrong.

It was, I didn’t know that it was something I should really focus on, even though some VIPs in my life told me I probably should spend more time with that.

I wish somebody would have beat me over the face and skull with a wet noodle and said, You must have a financial plan in order for your business to be super successful.

You can’t accidentally be financially successful. You must set goals and those goals must underneath have strategies.

Underneath those strategies, there must be tactics. I do that for every other part of my business. And I do that when I’m consulting with other people, but I just never cared about the money, you know?

And so in my introduction, you mentioned the work that I do sort of underneath the diversity, inclusion and belonging banner.

I think. And, you know, hot takes. And part of the reason that the DEI efforts have failed, because we focused too much on the DEI and less on the finances of it, the business of it.

How does this inclusion work? Impact the business and help it to be productive and make money.

And so if you’re going to call yourself a professional in this space or have expertise in this space, you better be able to link it to the money-making aspects of the organization.

And if you can’t, then you got to muscle up in that space. Right. You have to think strategically as it connects to the business unit.

So for me, I have worked to get into that space much more aggressively to talk about it much more.

I mean, I’ve always thought of myself as a strategic person before DEI existed. I did other things, right?

It just so happens that the work that I do happens to be connected to that. So sometimes while I do have some expertise in that space, I would say the majority of my expertise happens to fall into this area of organizational.

psychology, organizational success, and helping leaders to understand what’s happening in the, the guts of their organization and, and, and tweak it or explode it, but regardless lead it so that you can be better.

Host (Julienna):
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing this. So this leads you to what you do on a day to day.

And if you can tell us a little bit, what led you to pick this, you know, vocation, explain to our listeners, what exactly you do that way we can go from there.

Dr. James Pogue:
Joe, what seems like a hundred years ago when I was finishing college, I had the Dean of Students, I ran for student government president.

I lost by like 10 votes. So I was crushed because before then I was, you know, kind of a big guy on campus at Gramley State University.

The band is a big deal. I was a drum major in the band. So it kind of made me a big deal. I was involved in some fraternity activities and all of that.

So I run for student government president. I lose, I’m crushed. He takes an interest in me and helps guide me through this difficult time in my life.

And at some point in time, he asks me, so you’re going into biology pre-med, what do you want to do?

I said, I want to be a trauma surgeon. He says, why we get into all of that. Then he says, is this the kind of job that you would do for free?

And that paused me. I don’t know if it was a week or two weeks, but I came back to him and said, no, I would not, but I would do the kind of job you’re doing for free.

Where you’re helping people, you’re involved in the organization and you’re helping to make sure that the people in the organization and the organization are successful.

I want to do that kind of thing. And I think maybe university might be a good place to do that. So I pivoted to getting a PhD so that I could position myself to be a president of a university.

That was the direction I wanted to go. I wanted to lead an institution of higher learning. So what I also recognize in terms of the research that I wanted to do was I wanted to find out why some students graduate and some students don’t.

There are students that are way smarter and more capable and competent than me, but they didn’t graduate.

And that was strange to me. I didn’t understand. So my research was in that space.

Why is it some students, some people are successful in organizations and others are not?

Right? Now change the organization to a hospital. Why is it that some doctors are successful in a hospital or they want to work at a hospital or nurses or environmental staff and others don’t?

Why is it that some people are promoted up through organizations and others are not? Why is it some people are retained and others are not. The question is consistent throughout organizations.

My curiosity and my restlessness is devoted to solving for that problem.

It is extremely expensive for organizations to replace talented people. It’s at least one year’s salary to replace talented people.

It’s easier to keep them. It’s cheaper to keep them. So if you can find talented people, easier to keep them.

So I help them help organizations to do that. I have a high level of passion around that.

As you can see that some of this might connect to some of these quote unquote DEI areas.

We can talk about why some women float out of organizations or some underrepresented groups float out of organizations.

Some international people float in or float out in different rates. So when we start to take a look at it through that lens, it’s about the organization being successful and getting all the best people it can.

And that’s what I want organizations to be able to do. And that’s what we try to help them.

Host (Julienna):
Wonderful. So what were some of the findings that you came across that maybe were surprising to you as you were studying, you know, why some succeed, why others don’t?

Like, I’m sure, you know, we can’t go through all your thesis. It would be a lot, but maybe we can have a link if you have it published because I think it’s super interesting.

But what were maybe two or three things that maybe surprised you to find out, you know, determine why some are more successful than others?

Dr. James Pogue:
One interesting note, but not one that I would ask people to action on, but it’s interesting.

It’s sort of a correlation without causation. So that’s my preempt there. The most highly correlated variable in my research to a student graduating, it’s a black and white variable of graduating.

Did you graduate or didn’t you graduate? Was the income of the mother.

The income of the mother. And that’s connected to a bunch of other pieces. Mothers then and now make decisions on where the kids go to school, where the family lives, whether little Billy needs tutoring or not.

And if so, what that tutor is going to be, they’re more likely to have interviewed the tutor and all these kinds of things. They’re more likely to do the school visits and to talk to the teachers about what little Billy or Rahi might require.

They’re the ones that are more deeply involved in these kinds of activities. In our conversation, I may have mentioned to you, your children are bilingual in large part because you are, because mothers teach language.

Right? They’re the first teachers more often than not. And that tracks its way through all the way through college level education.

So that’s one piece. But as you take a look at all of the variables, what are the trends that you see?

The trend is the more deeply involved the student is in the university space, the more likely they are to graduate, regardless of GPA.

Are they on club number one or club number two? They play a sport, they ran for student government, something or other.

They have a mentor or two that exists in the administration. Plus they’ve got a favorite faculty member and they go to office hours.

These, all these connections create a pull, a push, a requirement that you come back to school next semester, next semester.

Disconnected students do less well. Transition that over to organizations. How then do we connect people to the organization, make them sticky to each other.

Right. And you do that by. Training mentors, not having mentors. You train the mentors on how to mentor the people they want to mentor.

Differentiate between coaching, advocacy, champion, and mentoring.

And make sure that people have all of them. Right? And then you engage them in whether you want to call it employee resource groups, or you want to call it the group that gets together afterwards to go golf or frisbee or have bourbon, whatever it is, but you involve these people deeply and you do it actively going back to dance.

You ask them to dance and you, if you mess it up, you do it in a clumsy way that says, I really want you here.

I just don’t know how to do it yet. Right. So that those would be the two pieces of learning that also track through to the work that we do today.

Host (Julienna):
Fascinating, fascinating. And I want to venture to say that, you know, I have, again, I haven’t read anyone’s thesis about this, but just looking at my own kids, you could apply maybe some of that to high school even, because I look with, you know, my kids, yes, they’re great, but I have three and they’re very different.

And with my oldest, at some point I was like, well, he’s not going to graduate. When you were talking about how involved he was, well, he wasn’t involved.

As my daughter, she was like student president and running on the football court and doing all these things.

And it wasn’t even a question. Same with my youngest. But the fact that he was not that interested, he was not involved, he was over one, it’s a huge high school here in Allen, Texas.

And yeah, he was, we were a little bit afraid, you know, cause we were like, he’s not that interested, but eventually he did make it, but we were sweating.

But I can see without having done a ton of research, the fact that he was not involved at all.

I mean, aside from a few friends and my daughter was in all of the things that were accessible.

So, well, this is great. It makes me want to read more about what you found.

Then what point are you inspired to create JP Enterprises?

I mean, cause this is all connected and when do you like jump and say, okay, I’m going to do this and it’s going to be my own thing that, you know, I’m going to develop.

Dr. James Pogue:
That’s a question. So in 2008, I, at the advice of my mentor and boss, I requested a sabbatical from the university that I was working on to have a year to do research and to think.

And his advice to me was you take a month and you do nothing. Don’t write, don’t read, you just sit around and do nothing so that you can prepare yourself for 11 months of hard work.

And so I took the month, it was January, maybe it was February. And I watched all the episodes of Sex and the City back to back to back to back.

I had missed out on so many social things. Because I’m very much what are they called? Like I’m an elf, I’m a square dude.

Just, I do my work and I go home. But, I didn’t really understand these strange creatures called women.

And I figured that Sex and the City might have some information to help me.

I’m just saying that’s what I was doing in my life at the time.

But then I got to work and I started to catalogue the conversations that I’d had with many university leaders, particularly the presidents and presidents of organizations.

And two comments became tipping points for me. The first was a president, says to me, James, the higher up you go in these organizations, the more of you they own.

And the they is going to change to be a big time donor. Could be a governor appointed committee or board of regents or something like that.

And they own parts of you. When they say show up, you got to show up. The second, a leader says to me, my entire agenda can be thrown off because an 18 year old has a bad day.

And these things caused me to pause. Am I really going to be able to have the type of impact that I want to have under these kinds of, and in this context. And I decided, maybe there’s another way.

So I started to sketch out a business plan of what that might look like. And that business plan started with trying to impact colleges and universities to facilitate the retention at that time of young men.

Across the board, young men were not doing well. Right. And it didn’t matter the ethnicity of the young man.

What mattered was that he was a young man. And the college and university were simply no longer set up or maybe never set up for young men, they’re set up for well-behaved girls.

Right. And so when a different kind of person shows up in today’s marketplace, it’s more difficult for them.

And then add in what if you don’t have money? What if you don’t understand universities? What if, what if, what if—other forms of disconnection?

It makes it that much harder. So I wanted to increase the going rate and increase the graduating rate of the university.

But I knew that the best way to do that was by impacting the men, right? So I started an organization to work on that.

And over time that grew out to working with universities in total. And my initial, my first contract outside of universities was with the hospital.

And they said, if you can do it for universities, can you do it for us? Can you help us become the first choice hospital for our potential patients in our neighborhood, for doctors and nurses and so on that may want to work?

So yeah, that’s how it started. So in 2008, I jumped off the cliff and I haven’t looked back.

I’ve looked forward and fell on my face any number of times, but looking back, not so much.

Host (Julienna):
But that’s, yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I do, there is a pattern in what you do and I do love how you use failure as a jumping board for the next best thing.

Like you don’t let it stop you or, you know, this is going to be hard or this is a challenge, but I’m going to use it, use it as a jumping board to get to the next thing.

And that’s so important, so important. Oftentimes, you know, the fear of failure and just, or sitting in the failure is what keeps us from moving forward.

I can see that you’ve just, that’s a pattern with you. Like, okay, this is gonna be hard. I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out and then I’ll do better.

Dr. James Pogue:
I have thoughtfully and aggressively, I didn’t realize it at times. I looked backwards with it happened softly, but carved people out of my life that see failure as a stopping or a pausing point.

And now I, when I see it coming, I’ll have a conversation with them some kind of way that is something like, I’m not sure you know who you’re talking to.

Right. Of course I’m going to fail and do something silly. And I expect you to call me out when I do that.

And if you can’t call me out and tell me I’m wrong, I don’t know what we’re doing here together. I don’t know what this is about, what this relationship is about, right?

Secondly, if you think I should pause because I failed, you’re not good for me. You’re like a virus.

And I have enough challenges. I don’t need to go out and recruit people who are going to slow me down on the life journey that I’m trying to have.

I got grandkids I’m trying to role model for, and I got nieces and nephews, and I got a mama I want to make proud, and all of these kinds of things.

And I can’t have you as a parachute to my success—not a parachute, a parachute to my speed that I’m trying to run.

I’m to accelerate here. So, and I’ve got this much time left on the planet, just this much.

And I’m trying to be, to look in the mirror and say, you know what? I’m proud of you.

Host (Julienna):
Yes, no, this is great. And it reminds me of something I just listened to, in fact, this morning on my run that, you know, I love Brené Brown.

She has kind of a French name, I want to say it in French, but yes. Where she says, you know, boundaries are the locks and safety guard to the sanctity of our homes.

And that’s what we do when we just kind of, you know, reject those negative influences in our lives or the naysayers or…

People wanted to drag you down. So yes, that’s a lot of wisdom there. So with all of that, what are some of the things that have been the most rewarding in your journey?

And I’m sure there’s so much, but I do know that you’ve taken your work internationally, you’re in and out all the time.

So I’m actually glad that you’re here today and able to do this. I’m not sure. Well, yes, I do know where you are.

Sometimes I don’t know which continent you are, but today I do know. So yeah, just maybe tell us what have been some of the most rewarding, you know, things that have happened throughout this journey.

Dr. James Pogue:
So from the international perspective, there was a couple aha moments, well, a couple of times this aha moment happened where I realized I didn’t have to be bilingual to be bicultural. That my work is easily translatable.

Finding the wobbles in relationships, organizationally between leaders and leaders and leaders and teams, it takes curiosity, it takes some time and talent, but it can happen in the absence of me understanding the words that you’re using. Right?

So we have a client that was in, or is, has a footprint in the States, in UK, and in Asia Pacific.

And different parts in Asia Pacific from India to Singapore to Vietnam, et cetera.

And the wobbles are similar to the organizations that we have in the United States.

We characterize 15 or 16 different primary variables that get in the way of leaders leading teams to success and profitability.

This group may not have the same four as this four’s priority, but they’ve got the same 16.

You’ve got the same 16. And so one example, for example, might be new leadership and new CEO or a new local level leader.

Another might be loneliness. Another might be religion. Another might be geography, where you’re from.

So when we go into organizations and assess them for the challenges, we see the same things and therefore we can build a good roadmap to take them from where they are to where they want to be.

Host (Julienna):
Wonderful, wonderful. Yes, it translates.

If you can make a connection, you don’t need words. And we see this and we’re not going to dig into it, but people meeting new culture and they go in the forest, whatever, and they find ways to connect as humans and it goes beyond language. Of course, language helps. But I can tell you the best dances I’ve ever had are, been with people who don’t speak English.

Dr. James Pogue:
Interesting. Interesting. That as a possibility of communications we have to do something else, don’t we?

Host (Julienna):
Yes, absolutely. And you become creative and your brain starts, you know, going in directions that you wouldn’t think.

All right. So we are, this is awesome. Like I have so many more questions, but I do want to know maybe what are some of your goals this year so that we know how to support you.

And then of course, you know, we’ll have information for, for people to, reach out to you.

But so first of all, if you can share with us, are some of your goals this year and things you hope to accomplish?

Dr. James Pogue:
Sure. So growth and scale is where we’re focusing this year. And that involved bringing on a building and building out a sales team and also a marketing team.

So that’s been a big part of what we’ve been doing over the last year. We’ve transitioned in and out about 60%, 70% of our team.

Some because, hey, I want to do something else. Like we had a lady, she had been with us for the longest. She was the longest serving employee.

It’s our team member. And she says, look, I want to do something else. It’s time for me to grow in a different direction.

She was a hundred percent virtual. And she says, I want to be in an office. And I said, we don’t have that. Everybody’s virtual.

So I can’t offer that to her. I want her to be happy and move on. So she does. So we’ve transitioned in and out a lot of people, which meant we get opportunity to grow and we get different kinds of particular expertise.

And we’ve done that. And then we’ve also are building out, as I mentioned, this marketing team. Have a tech team to help us scale in terms of the technology that we’re using to make it replicable and much more quickly.

In addition, we also have this sales team that’s out there like jackhammers and talking to people and getting the conversation going that need to happen.

So it’s really all about growth and scale. And so if an organization is interested in trying to identify the wobbles that are keeping it from keeping its team members, from keeping its team members happy, from promoting up the right people, from being able to see and surface leadership, well, then we may be an option for you.

I’ll say this that in every organization we work with, when I ask the senior leaders, I say something like this: is it accurate that in your organization that people are initially promoted up because of technical expertise in a particular area and they’re not promoted up because of leadership?

They’ll say yes. Then I’ll say, okay, if you could see leadership and you could promote that up, can’t you teach the technical stuff?

And they say most of the time, yes, I can teach you that. Right. If you don’t have the capacity, then we can find that out pretty quickly.

Right. So leadership becomes a higher-level commodity.

It’s a thing that transitions you from a manager of things to a director of people. Right. So a VP of people, operations, marketing, et cetera, but you’re leading people.

So if you are a leader in an organization, you’re like, we need to be able to do more of that.

We want to advance the skillsets of our leadership, our leadership team, our C-suite, our board.

To be able to engage with people in more significant way, it might be a good option for you.

Host (Julienna):
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. I’m already thinking of a couple of people that I’d like to introduce you to that could be good partners, maybe, possibly.

So where is the best place for anyone who hears this podcast, conversation today to find you?

Where can they find you? And we’ll share what you share with us in the notes as well. But what’s your preferred way to reach out?

Dr. James Pogue:
Sure. So you can find me on LinkedIn, James Pogue, P-O-G-U-E. You can also go to the website, jamespogue.com.

And I’m there. JP Enterprises, you Google that and we’ll come up. Any one of those—LinkedIn, James Pogue, jamespogue.com—or Google us and we’ll come up.

So happy to help out wherever we can do an initial call and see if there’s a good fit, a good way that we can be of service to you.

Host (Julienna):
Thank you very much. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the Brave New Wealth podcast.

This was wonderful and I do hope that you’ll come back and talk with all of us more.

Dr. James Pogue:
Absolutely. The wealth of dancing, we can dig into that at some point.

Host (Julienna):
Okay, all right. I’m all for it. Thank you very much.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Brave New Wealth podcast.

I’m very grateful that Dr. James Pogue was able to come on and share with us some of his passions, his journey, and his expertise in helping organizations use their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, aligning them with their chosen KPIs and having those difficult discussions that help them move forward. I’m really grateful for the insights that he gave.

Please get a hold of him if you want to use his team to help your organization grow.

If you like this podcast, please let me know you stopped by, leave a comment, a like, share with people you think will benefit from it.

And I hope you will join me for the next episode. À bientôt.