Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.99 - Your Life Has Six Pillars, Nathan Crankfield Breaks It Down | Seeking Excellence Podcast | Excellence Coaching | Aristotle Habits

Transcript

Ep.99 - Your Life Has Six Pillars, Nathan Crankfield Breaks It Down | Seeking Excellence Podcast | Excellence Coaching | Aristotle Habits · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

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  Seeking excellence at its core is that human fulfillment is
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  going to be found at striving to be great in all the meaningful
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  areas of our lives, not just picking and choosing the ones
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  that come more natural to us or that we're more interested in
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  succeeding in. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
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  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good or die
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  try. Here's the show.
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  You're the you're the founder of Seeking Excellence.
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  Just curious what what is that? Yeah, so seeking excellence, I
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  started five years ago. It really was a fruit of the
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  pandemic. And so during the pandemic,
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  everybody remembers how fun 2 weeks to slow the spread the the
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  lockdowns were. I'm sure all of us reflected on
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  this is the the best time of our lives, right?
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  But there were some great fruits that came out of the pandemic,
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  although there is a lot of suffering and, and well, but two
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  things for me. One was starting to see
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  excellence. The other was I met my wife kind
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  of in the process of starting to see excellence too.
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  And so a lot of good that that came out of that time of, of
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  suffering difficulty, a lot of loneliness for me at the time.
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  But when the two weeks to slow the spread, when the lockdowns
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  began, I started doing what I call the holy happy hours
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  online. And so that was kind of the, the
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  starting phase. It's kind of like what we call
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  theology on taps, which are essentially young adult faith
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  oriented events. And so I would have a priest, a
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  woman and myself on a Zoom webinar for about an hour and we
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  would drink and and talk about a topic.
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  And so it was kind of like a thing where we talked about what
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  we were drinking, what kind of cocktail or whatever we want to
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  be having that night. And then we'd be talking about
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  overcoming your fears or developing a prayer life.
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  And did them for six weeks. The six and final guests were my
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  priest who married us and, and my wife, my future wife.
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  And we had just kind of met through this process of me
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  putting these events on. But about four months after
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  that, I started the podcast. So in August of 2025 started or
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  of 2020, excuse me, started the Seeking Excellence podcast.
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  So just launched this kind of a place for me to get some
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  thoughts out, express myself, really was almost selfish in
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  that I was really clarifying a lot of my views and opinions on
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  things through the process. And then I had this vision for
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  it of just wanting to expand in the coaching community and
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  creating more and more content. And so over the last five years
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  they've kind of slowly adding to that and getting that to come to
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  fruition. And so I've I've started a
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  coaching program this year in January of 25I launched that
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  last summer, I launched my online locals community and then
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  it just been increasing the content through YouTube, social
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  media and the podcast as well as doing more and more speaking
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  engagement. So speaking mostly at men's
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  conferences, I'd do some corporate speaking as well.
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  And soon I'm rolling out an executive coaching program too.
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  So I'm very excited about that. If there is only one message
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  that you can you can express to your audience, what is that?
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  Yeah, seeking excellence at its core is that human fulfillment
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  is going to be found at striving to be great in all the
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  meaningful areas of our lives, not just picking and choosing
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  the ones that come more natural to us or that we're more
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  interested in succeeding in. And so that that, I would say,
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  is kind of the the fundamental message is that it's based on
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  Aristotle's great quote where he says that we are what we
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  repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an
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  act but a habit. I think in today's world, we
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  think a lot of times, oh, I'm a good person because I used to do
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  this or because my, you know, parents raised me this way or
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  because I've got my master's degree and it's like, well,
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  that's great. And you might be making a lot of
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  money. You may be successful in one
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  area of your life. But if we look under the hood,
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  we can see that a lot of people, you know, male and the exterior
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  look really successful, feel really successful, but might be
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  on the verge of divorce, might be physically in ruin, might be
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  mentally all over the place and not good at, you know,
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  regulating their emotions and having outbursts on other people
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  or their family at home. And so I think that's what I
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  really try to teach people is that it's these pillars of
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  excellence that build the entirety of an excellent life.
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  That is really the the thing I think that all of us are are
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  searching for. Pillars of Excellence.
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  Yeah. So I have these six pillars
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  basically. So I've kind of broken down into
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  the six different categories of life.
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  So mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial,
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  professional. For me, coming from a person of
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  faith, I kind of look at them as my end of life report card.
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  And so I'm like, what has God-given me to steward and to
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  be exceptional and to be intentional in?
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  And so I think about these kind of main areas that I think all
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  of us have, like even if you're not really somebody who's not
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  even deep in their faith and still realize that they're still
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  giving a mind, you're still giving a body, you're still
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  giving, you know, emotions, heart, relationships, you're
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  still giving a soul, you're still giving professional life
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  that you have to cultivate and to do what you want with and
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  then also finance it. And I think that we're
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  ultimately going to be judged in how we kind of steward ourselves
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  in these six areas. And you can see also over time
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  that all six categories are very interrelated.
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  And so if I have serious financial problems is one of the
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  top causes of divorce in the United States.
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  And so thinking about that like budgeting and just being on top
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  of that, planning for my future retirement is not just something
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  I do because I want to be financially successful, but it's
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  because I don't want that added stressor in my relationship, in
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  my family life. If my kids be worried and
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  nervous that they don't know if we're going to be able to live
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  in our house or afford our next meal.
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  So all of that really does kind of tie in.
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  And then obviously financial problems are a huge cause of
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  mental health stress and depression and those sorts of
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  thing. So all of it really is
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  correlated and has been largely driven from my own experience
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  growing up without seeing excellence in most of these
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  really important areas. Curious to just get more into
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  the hustle of what you do. So you mentioned you started
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  this local community. What, what inspired that and
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  how's that been going or what do you think I guess more generally
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  has been most successful business decisions you've made?
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  For sure, yeah, Locals is an interesting one and really
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  driven out of this this point that I have been doing the
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  podcast for a few years and was like, OK, you know, it was all
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  fun and games as it being a hobby when I was young and
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  single and, you know, made enough income it didn't need the
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  extra money or whatever. But as I got older and then got
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  married, we now have two children.
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  But really after we had our first start to realize like, OK,
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  you know, stepping away on on Wednesday night to record
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  podcast scheduling with guests doing stuff on Saturdays, it's
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  not as fun when mouth's the feed.
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  You have a very expensive Denver mortgage.
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  And so it was really at that point that I started the Locals
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  as an opportunity for people who had been, you know, listening to
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  the podcast for years and wanted to support us financially in
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  some way just to kind of cover our costs.
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  And at least I got to the point where I was like, it at least
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  can't be a drain on my family. It's one thing if it's not
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  profitable, but it can't be a drain.
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  But I did have this vision or dream, and I still have this
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  vision or dream of someday full time doing seeking excellence
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  work cuz it is the most fulfilling and something that I
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  feel like God is really placed in my heart to want to do.
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  And so that was really the start of it.
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  I'll say along that I was building kind of the speaking
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  side and I've made some intentional investments in 2024
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  to go through a speaking coaching program that was really
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  focused on building your speaking business and not just
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  doing it kind of as a hobby and being passive about the
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  opportunities that came my way. But I would say kind of a
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  combination of those three things.
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  It's really hard to kind of nail it down because they're all
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  pretty similar, the coaching program very similar and, and
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  just kind of getting that started and getting that rolling
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  is another income stream. But the way that I view it with
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  all of them, I think speaking is really the kind of top of
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  funnel. And so I would say doing the
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  speaking coaching program was probably the most impactful
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  business decision that I made because it's speaking and
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  getting in front of people and having them have a, a powerful
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  experience with me for 45 or 90 minutes, whatever it might be in
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  a speaking opportunity that can drive locals, that can drive the
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  coaching program. And so that one I think is
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  really important to kind of invest.
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  And I'm, you know, I'm a sales manager by day as well.
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  And so I know the importance of, of driving top of funnel into
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  the rest of it. And so I really had to get down
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  thinking about, you know, Gary Keller, the book, the one thing
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  really working to figure out like, what is my one thing that
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  if I'm successful here and I put enough time and resources into
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  this, I'll be successful in the rest of it That I believe that
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  that thing is, is speaking for me.
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  Why did you think locals? That's a good question.
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  I think that Patreon is like kind of the OG community
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  builder, right? So I had heard a lot of things
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  about Patreon and it was in 2020 then I was starting to do all of
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  this. And there are people who were
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  speaking out against certain political agendas, certain
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  societal moves in Patreon in 2020, specifically, whether it
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  be George Floyd or, you know, stuff to do with
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  pharmaceuticals, let's say that I had heard them restricting
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  payments. So they had started to turn
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  people off and all those kinds of things.
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  So my understanding basically was that locals was started as a
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  response to that as a more free speech oriented platform.
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  And so because I have certain opinions and things that share
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  and promote and values that are not always in the line with the,
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  the world's ideology, then I thought it was really important
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  for me to have a platform that was going to be more flexible
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  and open with me saying what I believe versus being nervous
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  about, you know, not not crossing a certain topic because
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  I, I was afraid the Patreon was going to come and, you know,
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  cancel me or something like that.
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  And so that was kind of the drive behind that.
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  They're pretty similar, I think in in what they offer and
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  things. But yeah, that was really the
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  the main reason for it. Yeah, it totally makes sense
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  man. I'm a big believer in values
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  aligned businesses. That's why I cancelled my Chase
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  Bank account and stopped using PayPal.
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  What what? What is the most cancellable
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  view that you express? The book you I expressed, that's
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  a good question. I would say.
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  I mean, I, I shared Catholic values, you know, and so I think
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  that that always can be something that gets you in
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  trouble from the position that I have on abortion, you know,
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  being pro-life, being pro traditional marriage against
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  gender ideology, transgenderism, especially meaning being against
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  that, meaning that I don't want to force on society that I don't
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  think it's good to promote it to society.
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  I took a somewhat contrarian view, especially like I've done
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  deep dives into like BLM, I'm pretty anti BLM as an
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  organization does some deep dives into that, diving into
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  specific cases that they really rallied behind, probably most
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  notably Mike Brown's case and being against the outrage that
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  exists behind that. I would say also cancelable in
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  the world. I'm not somebody who is and even
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  even in the Catholic world, I think this would be kind of
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  controversial. I'm not like a hard line, women
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  should stay home. But I do think it's the ideal
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  that mothers of young children are are the the primary
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  caretaker of those young children.
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  I think that biology and society and tradition have established
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  that as a pretty good basis or or rule for life, or at least an
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  ideal that we should strive for. I recognize that it's
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  financially difficult in today's world.
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  So, yeah, I got into some stuff, especially in the Catholic world
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  with Pope Francis. But the world doesn't care about
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  criticizing Pope Francis back when he was doing some
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  controversial things. But I would say just kind of
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  those general things. I know that especially people
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  who were, you know, we don't, we don't necessarily follow the
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  prescribed medical treatment for children, let's say.
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  And so talking about those sorts of things sometimes get you
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  canceled. It definitely got people
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  canceled in 2020 in the midst of the coronavirus.
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  And so some of those contrary views I think are, yeah, can't
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  be really. It gets you in some trouble.
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  In the right. Or wrong audiences all.
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  Right man, you're checking all the boxes.
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  I think I agree with everything you said and more.
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  So yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's more.
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  There's more aligned there that that I didn't hit on.
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  OK. So so the locals make sense.
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  What? OK, you said you invested in how
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  to build speaking as a business. What would you learn from that?
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  Yeah. So I went through this great
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  program. It's called the Speaker Lab and
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  you know, not not a, an affiliate or anything of the
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  program, but I really loved it. If anybody's out there learning
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  about or looking to learn about becoming a speaker, I really
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  encourage you to check it out. You can start with her book.
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  I forget Grant Baldwin is a guy's name and he wrote a book.
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  I forget the name of his book about this.
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  I called the Speak to Lab, but he's got a great book that kind
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  of summarizes the kind of main point they use the speak
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  analogy, which is like kind of selecting your your niche,
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  establish yourself as an expert. Is the EI know I missed Pi can't
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  remember what that was. K is knowing when the scale and
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  a is like acquiring paid speaking gig.
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  So I know that I didn't spell the word right there.
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  The letters I remembered, but the thing that was really great
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  about it, I would say is just getting the opportunity to learn
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  from people who had made the transition.
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  So for me, I was trying to transition from being like, OK,
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  I have, you know, 4 to 6, sometimes 8 Catholic speaking
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  engagements a year. How do I get that into the
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  corporate world? And how can I translate that
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  experience and, and really try to build that up?
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  And so in the Catholic world, you can have this kind of weird
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  thing. I think it's because a lot of
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  Catholics are anti capitalism. And even though some of them
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  won't outright say that, and that's definitely a, a somewhat
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  controversial take that I can't have in the Catholic world is
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  that I love, I think capitalism is amazing.
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  I think that we underestimated another I have Cavalcott takes
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  on. I think sometimes we abuse
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  nonprofits and you have people who are getting wealthy on
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  nonprofits, which I don't agree with and think it's good.
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  That can be a whole rabbit hole to get into in the the financial
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  world. But for me, just being a
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  believer in capitalism, believing in sales, believing in
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  the goodness of promoting good ideas, being compensated for it.
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  I wanted to learn from people who had done that and made that
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  transition and built a speaking career.
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  And some of the, I mean, their success stories are crazy, which
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  I hope to be one of them is implementing the program and in
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  a year or two years, making six figures and above, sometimes
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  multiple 6 figures in speaking. And so it's just something you
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  can scale really well. And I think in our world today
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  where you have so much flexibility as entrepreneurs,
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  there's so many different things we can do.
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  People underestimate some of those things that can be really
• 14:02
  high impact, but not take a ton of your time or like Alex
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  Harmozzi is one of my favorite, you know, voices in business.
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  And like, how can you create something once and sell it
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  multiple times? Well, that's what a lot of
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  people do with keynotes. They developed and crafted a
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  really good keynote talk. And then if you can sell that
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  for $5000, ten, $1000.20 times after that and you spent two
• 14:22
  days creating it and it takes you, you know, the time it takes
• 14:24
  to travel to an event, most of which are pretty awesome on the
• 14:27
  corporate and secular side, you're getting paid pretty well.
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  You're getting to go to fund places if you're doing
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  leadership retreats and things like that.
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  So I was like to me that's a very good investment of a few
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  $1000 to go learn about how to scale from you know $15,000 of
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  speaking events that 100 to $200,000 of speaking events.
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  But I don't think a lot of times we value some of that non
• 14:49
  traditional education information that can come in the
• 14:52
  form of trainee or coaching. What's the single most impactful
• 14:57
  piece of advice for you in that area?
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  Man, I would say that the, there's two that come to mind.
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  And so I know it's not the single most, but as far as the
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  actual like speaking the, the profession, the by far the most
• 15:14
  impactful thing was their process that they showed and
• 15:17
  this kind of document exercise they provided for how to develop
• 15:20
  a really good talk. I think that before I always
• 15:23
  really relied on talent, like I can be comfortable in front of
• 15:26
  people. I can go up on stage, you know,
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  kind of ad hoc or get thrown into Q&A and be like very
• 15:30
  comfortable and excited to really enjoy it and bring energy
• 15:33
  on stage. I don't get as nervous as some
• 15:35
  people do or dread it like a lot of people do.
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  And so I would just kind of rely on that.
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  I think in my early days because it's like, Oh, I can do that.
• 15:41
  Just a few bullet points. I podcast, right?
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  So I always have stuff to talk about.
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  But when they talked about, no, dude, like you should script out
• 15:48
  your entire talk and you should go through these different
• 15:50
  points and and wrestle with it in these ways and, and just
• 15:53
  showed me really how to refine it in a great way.
• 15:55
  I still don't even do all of that every time, but even just
• 15:59
  like amplifying and just showing me what excellence looked like
• 16:02
  in preparing a talk has taken me to just this new level of like,
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  I would just do these really detailed outlines and I just
• 16:08
  noticed like when I really studied them and made the real
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  outline, I used to feel like it restricted me, but now I'm like,
• 16:13
  no, it actually makes you not suck because you're not bouncing
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  all over the place and rabbit holing and getting confused and
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  lost, which obviously is also a business thing, but I think that
• 16:22
  was kind of the more speaker side.
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  I would say that they're approach to how just a really
• 16:27
  simple, it's not really revolutionary in how to reach
• 16:30
  out to companies and organizations and like giving
• 16:32
  you the freedom to do that was something that was also on kind
• 16:35
  of the business side of it. Really, really helpful.
• 16:37
  Just giving some framework to be like this who you want to try to
• 16:40
  reach out to. This is how to find good events
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  for you, how to like broaden your search to know what to look
• 16:45
  for and all that kind of stuff on the corporate side, because I
• 16:48
  didn't really know what that looked like before.
• 16:50
  So that was also really helpful. OK.
• 16:55
  Anything else we have on cover that you want to share with the
• 16:56
  audience? Yeah, that's a good question.
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  I just, I, I guess my, my, the only other thing I would say is
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  I just encourage people to, to start and to think a little bit
• 17:09
  bigger than they currently are. If they're on the verge of doing
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  any type of side hustle or business idea or whatever it
• 17:14
  might be. I think that there, there's
• 17:16
  always these extremes that people operate in a lot of
• 17:19
  times, you know, we, we show going back to Aristotle to find
• 17:22
  that virtuous middle, the, the mean and the, and the virtue.
• 17:25
  And I think that a lot of times when I've talked to people,
• 17:27
  especially recently or like my coaching clients and things, I,
• 17:30
  I had a conversation with a client recently who was
• 17:32
  projecting out, we do these 10, five year, one year goals in one
• 17:35
  of the sessions casting like working on a vision for our
• 17:37
  lives. And he was talking about how
• 17:40
  like, oh, like my goal is in 10 years to make, you know, 150 or
• 17:44
  $170,000. So I'm like, dude, I don't want
• 17:46
  to, you know, make you materialistic or, you know,
• 17:49
  think you're thinking about money too much.
• 17:50
  But I was like, he was like, I know it's kind of a stress.
• 17:52
  I was like, that is not a stress for you.
• 17:54
  You are an amazing human being. You're already very successful,
• 17:58
  already making a really good income at a really young age.
• 18:00
  I'm like, dude, you need to be thinking a little bit bigger
• 18:02
  than that. I don't want you to get, you
• 18:04
  know, thinking that income is the only thing that's important,
• 18:06
  that you shouldn't be your present husband and father and
• 18:08
  all those things. But encouraging people sometimes
• 18:10
  just to dream bigger and think bigger because the one of the
• 18:13
  key questions I think in today's world, especially when it comes
• 18:16
  to finances. And I had to talk about this, my
• 18:18
  financial coaching specifically, which is part of the the
• 18:20
  excellent life program. Is this this great thing that
• 18:24
  came my my biggest take away from Robert Kiyosaki and rich
• 18:27
  dad, poor dad is shifting from saying I can't afford this to
• 18:30
  how can I afford this? I think the same thing goes for
• 18:33
  all of our dreams in life. Just not saying like, oh, I
• 18:35
  can't, I can't lift 225 lbs or I can't run a marathon or I can't
• 18:40
  get this promotion at work or I can't get married.
• 18:43
  I can't have a happy marriage. We have all these fixed mindsets
• 18:46
  and limiting beliefs that are really not what God wants for us
• 18:50
  in our lives and it's not what we ultimately want in life.
• 18:52
  And if we just are willing to break that mold and say, how can
• 18:55
  I afford this? How can I create a happy
• 18:57
  marriage out of the situation that I'm in?
• 18:58
  How can I get the promotion at work?
• 19:00
  It actually forces you and opens up your creativity to think of
• 19:04
  ways to achieve the things that you want, not just be accepting
• 19:07
  of the fact that oh, I can't have this earth.
• 19:09
  It's difficult to afford a house right now.
• 19:11
  But actually saying, but how can I afford a house?
• 19:13
  If I want to buy a house, I want my kids to go up in the
• 19:15
  backyard. How can I make that happen?
• 19:17
  And actually brainstorming and thinking of ways to do that and
• 19:20
  being open to the possibilities that come to mind then.
• 19:22
  Because so much more is possible than we really think of or
• 19:25
  imagine, I think. Absolutely.
• 19:29
  Well, let's keep seeking excellence.
• 19:30
  Thank you, Nathan. Thanks for listening.
• 19:32
  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 19:35
  See you next time.