Mindfulness in the Workplace with Justin Winstead

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. In a world where burnout is becoming all too common, how can we rediscover joy and purpose in our work?
That's what we're looking into today, and we're going to dive into that with our guest. I'm Stephen Skasz here again with Mike lusky. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Lusky** (0:38)
Awesome. Thanks, Stephen. Yeah, to our friends that follow us on the podcast, welcome to another enlightening episode of The Bliss business Podcast. You're in for a real treat today. Today, we're going to delve into the transformative power of mindfulness and purpose.
We're both in the workplace with our guest. He's got just a remarkable journey from humble beginnings in rural Louisiana to becoming a successful entrepreneur and an inspirational leader. Beyond that, he's a cancer survivor. He's also the founder of the Improver Group, which is dedicated to enriching the lives of leaders, entrepreneurs, and their teams with the essence to try to really thrive both personally and professionally. I think as you find out, his story, which you're truly going to enjoy, is a testament to number one, I think, his resilience, his faith, and his purpose. He brings really a wealth of knowledge on the topic of mindfulness and enhancing that in the workplace, with the dynamics in the workplace, how to foster a strong culture of empathy and productivity, and then really at the end, to turn those challenges into opportunity. As you as the audience, you're always interested, what am I going to get from this episode? You'll discover a few tips on integrating mindfulness into your daily routine with your team, how vision and purpose can transform that journey. So with that, let's welcome justin Winstead to The Bliss business Podcast. Welcome, justin.

**Justin Winstead** (2:24)
Hey, man. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and serve your audience through this incredible medium of live podcasting. I mean, this is awesome. I will say, though, I like to try to exceed expectations, and you raised them a little high, so I got to work really hard today. I like to lower them. It makes them easier to exceed.

**Mike Lusky** (2:43)
We're in trouble.

**Stephen Skasz** (2:45)
Rockstar. Hey, justin, can you share your personal journey and kind of what inspired you on the path here on there?

**Justin Winstead** (2:54)
Yeah, so the quick highlight of my life is I was raised in northeast Louisiana, like you said, a little small town outside of Monroe. If you guys are familiar with the Duck Dynasty, guys, I'm kind of from that area. I'm just a cleaner, shaven version, one of them. So this accent is what happens when you mix Louisiana, country boy, Cajun boy with Texas twang. This is what comes out. But I was raised out there. My dad was a high school dropout. My mom was a public school teacher and I had siblings and we just kind of struggled a lot in life. Money was hard to come by. There was the haves and the have nots in the world, and I felt like we were on the have nots side. I can remember looking through the floor of our trailer house and seeing the ground underneath because we didn't have solid flooring. When it would rain, we'd get buckets and bowls to catch the drops so that the house wouldn't flood. just kind of growing up, relationships were big, family was big. We loved to get together and eat and visit. A lot of front porch and back porch sitting. Somewhere along the way, I developed this idea that money is bad, rich people are evil, and if you are successful in business, you cheated your way to get there.
And that was a part of my paradigm and philosophy on life. And I got really involved in our church probably around the same time, and they weren't the ones who kind of planted that idea. But I ended up going into the ministry because I thought, well, I love people. I love serving and working hard. It was a part of my upbringing. And so I went into Christian ministry and that really kind of exacerbated that mindset of the money is bad because so much of that is like, you know, if you are sweating through life and it's painful and toiling, then that's a badge of honor. But one of the things that began to dawn on me over time, it's been about 10 years doing youth ministry, church planting, pastoral work, was this idea that where there is no margin, there is no ministry, there is no mission, there is no way to serve people and help people without margin. And I began to get interested in this idea of creating margin in my life with my money, with my time, with my energy and focus. And I went into the business world and there's a lot of roads that I traveled through that with real estate and some oil and gas. Of course, everybody's got to jump into a multi-level marketing plan. At some point, I did one of those. But the where I really found my spot was building a property and casualty insurance agency. And part of the way I built that was using the skills that had helped me be successful in ministry, of teaching, of facilitating group discussion, of mentoring. And I built my agency that way from a marketing standpoint. That was the way I served my referral partners. And over time, I just began to realize that actually it's that teaching, that serving, that counseling and guiding that I enjoy the most. And so now where I'm at with the Improver Group is I've smashed these two things together. You know, how do you think about life in a big way and think about causes and people and others that are bigger than yourself? How do you operate with integrity and still try to have morals and love in your living? But then how do you do it in a productive way that allows you to perform better and create those margins that we need in order to survive and thrive in life and business? So that's what I'm about.