Lindsay Howerton: Turning Clarity Into Growth
When teams succeed, it’s rarely due to raw talent alone. Instead, they reach peak performance when every player knows their role and plays it well.
Just like in baseball you wouldn’t want your closer batting cleanup, in a corporate setting, you wouldn’t want your top performing salesperson in the mailroom. Teams win when people step into the roles that fit them best.
That lesson came through out and clear during a recent episode on my weekly podcast, Rounding the Bases when I was joined by a guest who gets results where they matter most: Behind the scenes where people, process and purpose collide.
Lindsay Howerton is a fractional COO and consultant who empowers companies to scale with clarity and intention. From manufacturing floors to strategy-focused boardrooms, she brings a rare blend of operational rigor and people-first leadership that optimizes potential into performance.
SINGLE: two worlds, one goal
Too often, organizations treat people and operations as two separate worlds. Systems are designed in one room, with culture shaped in the other. Lindsay has lived in both spaces, and knows that the two are inextricably linked.
“It’s not enough to build systems,” she said. “We have to make sure those systems serve the people who use them.”
That’s the beauty of the balance she brings as a fractional COO. More than just tracking numbers or building processes, Lindsey translates strategy into something that works on paper as well as it resonates with people.
It’s much like the balance a good catcher brings to the game…managing data while keeping the pitcher focused and confident.
Without that kind of role, leaders risk setting goals that don’t translate or building teams that don’t align with strategy. It takes someone like Lindsay to bridge the two. And when done correctly, progress suddenly feels possible.
DOUBLE: A catalyst for growth
How many talented teams have stalled because people didn’t know where they fit in? From baseball to business and everything in between, when everyone is hustling without clearly defined goals or responsibilities, effort is wasted on a lack of alignment.
“Clarity creates confidence,” Lindsay shared. “And confident teams execute at a higher level.”
In that simple, yet powerful, statement, Lindsay articulated why clarity is so important to success. It empowers people to know their role and understand how it contributes to the bigger picture.
As she put it, “When people understand their part in the story, they don’t just show up. They buy in.”
And that is the difference between teams that are good…and teams that are great.
TRIPLE: when rigor meets flexibility
Scaling a business is tricky. I’ve seen it first hand as an entrepreneur, and what began as a speaking business has evolved to include my podcast and two books.
If you lean in too hard to the process and you stifle creativity. Stay too loose, and chaos ensues. Lindsay found the sweet spot in-between.
“Structure isn’t about control,” she told me. “It’s about creating the freedom for people to do their best work.”
Role-specific leaders like Lindsay thrive in that space. They implement systems that are rigid enough to establish consistency, but flexible enough not to choke off innovation.
Because their focus is entirely on maintaining this balance, they can spot the difference between healthy discipline and harmful rigidity, making sustainable growth possible.
HOME RUN: Performance that lasts
Building growth that lasts is a powerful reality that’s as true in sports as in anything.
We’ve all seen teams catch fire one season only to fade the next. The ones that thrive over time invest in foundational systems, culture and clarity that remain intact despite external conditions.
The gift of role-specific leaders like Lindsay is that she cares more about sustained performance built through structures and habits than she does chasing a shiny object.
As she so aptly put it, “When clarity becomes part of the culture, growth doesn’t just happen. It compounds.”
Lindsay reminded me just how transformational role-specific expertise can be. By eliminating ambiguity, leaders like her create the kind of alignment that builds legacies, no matter what kind of team you’re a part of.
Listen to the full interview here or tune in to Rounding the Bases every Tuesday, available wherever you get your podcasts.
LEARN MORE ABOUT the power of role players FROM JOEL
Book Joel Goldberg for your next corporate event. He draws on over 30 years of experience as a sports broadcaster. In addition, he brings unique perspectives and lessons learned from some of the world’s most successful organizations. Whatever your profession, Joel is the keynote speaker who can help your team achieve a championship state of mind.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Joel Goldberg 0:15
Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Rounding the Bases presented by Community America Credit Union: Invested In You. Shout out to my friends at Chief of Staff Kansas City, Making Connections That Matter. If you're in the hunt for a job, looking to place someone, whatever it might be, a good resource, check them out: ChiefofstaffKc.com, Making Connections That Matter. I'm in a phenomenal peer group called The Heartland Heroes, and we recently had a speaker in, a guest speaker in and I immediately connected with her to a point where we've been, I think, just sort of chatting for like 20 minutes before we came on, because we've become friends and someone that I feel like I've now known for a long time. That's the beauty of these connections. My guest today, she gets results where they matter most: Behind the scenes, when people, process and purpose collide. Lindsay Howerton is a fractional COO and leadership consultant who empowers companies to scale with clarity and intention. From manufacturing floors to strategy focused boardrooms, she brings a rare blend of operational rigor and people-first leadership that optimizes potential into performance. But what truly sets her apart is her uncanny ability to bring out the best in others, unifying purpose-driven organizations in growth and profitability that is built to last. My amazing assistant, Ashleigh, writes these for me. I don't ever want to touch that, because she does such a beautiful job of writing these. So those were her words, but I can echo them just from personal experience. I feel like that's the reason why we're coming on late right now. Nobody knows that. The podcast starts when it starts. But it is cut into our length of this podcast because I was selfishly getting all this advice from Lindsay. Lindsay, how are you?
Lindsay Howerton 1:54
I'm fantastic. Thanks so much for having me. And it's always good to see you, my friend.
Joel Goldberg 1:58
It's good to see you too. I'm glad that we're friends, and I mean, we knew each other a little bit, you know, here and there, but, but I feel like that has has has gone to another level, which I'm really grateful for. And I want to share some of your expertise. My goodness, we could do two hours just on your personal story, but we don't have that amount of time. But I do want to hone in a little bit on that in a moment. But you're one of those guests that I have where I say, How do I really describe what you do? Because you can't list it in one sentence or two sentences or 10 sentences, but I'll let you try, because you've got, you've got your your hands in a lot of different things. How would you describe it?
Lindsay Howerton 2:37
Yeah, I would say I'm a fixer of broken things. So that's an easy way to simplify it, and maybe that's one of the things I do best, is take complicated things and make them more simple. I love finding things where there's an opportunity and bringing out that opportunity. So that's, you know, 10 years almost, of working as a fractional COO. Before it was cool, I had to explain to people what the word fractional meant, and so that's been an opportunity that lets me be in over 35 different industries, because I'm a nerd and I love to learn more, and I've got a business that we're rehabbing houses in a small town. And same thing, I saw an opportunity in in something broken and a house that people had left behind, and we're investing in it and fixing it and making it into something beautiful. So I think...I don't see things as broken. I see the thing I can get out of it and how I can make it happier, healthier, better, whether that's organizations, or happens to be single family structures.
Joel Goldberg 3:46
I mean, you've got that business, you've got the fractional COO stuff. You are a speaker, you are a coach, you are a wife, you are a mother. Am I missing anything?
Lindsay Howerton 4:01
That's that's most of it. Yeah.
Joel Goldberg 4:03
There's other stuff too. But my point is, I love you. You know you're talking about, I don't know how you do it. I'm like, I don't know how you do it. And so we just do it right and but you do it so well, and you have this, it's interesting, because I see a little bit of pitbull in you, and I say that as the ultimate compliment. It it could not be a compliment too. That's not an anti-pitbull thing. That just means, like some people, when they're wired that way, are difficult to be around. You don't, you have an incredible warmth about you and a desire to help people, while also having that other side balance of of getting what you want and getting it done. Usually it's one or the other for a lot of people. You know that with me, I'm trying to find, I'm trying to find some of the pitbull that you have, and I've got the other side. You seem to have both. Where does that come from?
Lindsay Howerton 4:46
Well, I think the technical side of me is pitbull. I can see the analytical of where we can go. And I'm a high speed so I often have, have the problem of when I come up with it today, I wish I had done it yesterday. So there's such a high force to want to move forward. But in that, you know, I'd say anybody who's good in operations is people and process. And I was good at the process, which is the speed, the drive, the pitbull. But the people part, if I couldn't X ray them and figure out their greatest gifts, understand the inside of them and what they want to do, who they are, how maybe I'm asking them to change themselves, to hit the goal, that was a faster way to get to what I wanted. So I became a specialist at both, and I think most people are one or the other. You're either great at the relationship like you, or you're the spreadsheet person like me. But I had to blend.
Joel Goldberg 5:48
You've done it so well too. I mean, sitting with you for coffee, as we did recently, was, I don't know. It was so uplifting and motivating to me. You've got that gift of bringing the best out in people, and you have, just to me, a jaw dropping story. You have one of those stories that I know has has led you to be who you are today, but most people wouldn't have made it this far. They just wouldn't have and and I know that because you made it this far, you have a different perspective, right? That doesn't mean things aren't hard. It just means, how can they be any harder than what you already dealt with growing up? Here's a kid that grew up getting up at the earliest of morning hours to your your farming kid, right? I mean, this is what you do. And so it was never laid out for you to turn into what you did, although, then again, maybe it was. Can you connect some dots here with those stories? Because you, your family, you dealt with a lot of adversity, and you came out of it. On the other side with, I would say, one of the most robust goals that anybody could do in terms of changing people's lives.
Lindsay Howerton 7:01
Yeah, so you mentioned changing people's lives. I have a personal purpose to change a million lives, and that came out of going through a ton of hiccups in my life. You know, it was difficult to come from a background where my mom got sick when I was really young, she nearly died. She had the adult version of SIDS, and then she got stage four breast cancer a few years later, which was pretty catastrophic, and was sick most of my life. You know, my dad was a vet and carried some trauma for that, as was his dad. There was just a whole host of of challenges. And my brother was severely mentally and physically disabled. I think you know you when you come from trauma, you often stay in the cycle of it, and what I was determined not to do was repeat the cycle. And there were a lot of phases of me, and the version you see today didn't look like the version back then, but the connection of the dots was, I don't know if I was uh, smart or or just so stubborn that I refuse to give up, but I have to thank those traumas, thank those people that were tough, thank all the situations, because, yeah, people get upset about a flat tire, and I think, Man, this isn't that bad. I can get this figured out. It gave me this phenomenal outlook on life where most people get upset about the small things. I'm a great coach, because I can walk you right through the worst thing. And it doesn't really phase me, because I've been through such hellacious things.
Joel Goldberg 8:46
I mean, add on to that, I don't even know what the the most harrowing part of your story is, because here's here's this mother that you love so much that you are watching go through impossible things, and then along the way, I don't remember the age. You could fill me in, you're dealing with a very public news event that affects your whole family, that I think nowadays, I feel like we see some version of this on the news every night, and at least for me, is sit there and think, Gosh, I don't know what that could actually be like. Maybe we've been numb to it, but I don't know what it would be like to live through that? Can you talk about that too? Because I sense that for you growing up, there was never really a chance to exhale or to see the world that you have right now. Or maybe you could, maybe you could see a better world. I don't know. What were you seeing at that point? And tell me that story.
Lindsay Howerton 9:37
That's a great question. I would say that when you're constantly going through traumas, it becomes your normal. It was way scarier to get healthy because I didn't know what that felt like. So I don't know that I was numb, probably to the things that continue to happen. But you know, as my family became a Kansas City news story, as there was a disappearance. Where, you know our family member, it was my mom's first cousin, disappeared on Fourth of July in the 80s in Kansas City, and she was beautiful. And they don't do missing case like they used to, but back then, we became a pretty reoccurring news event because they didn't find her. She was eventually found near Lewisburg, quite a while later her body. But, you know, we became, I remember seeing my grandma on the news begging for people to come forward with tips. And this was continual for months and months, and the amount of calls you get that give you hope. You see that from the perspective of the audience, but you don't realize on the other side that there are a lot of people that have no idea and call and give a hoax tip, or, you know, almost like, you know, fortune telling things. They all come with this stuff, and you go through 100 paper cuts of I thought this, maybe she somebody seen her, and it was, it was pretty hard for our family, and you continue to have hope that something has happened, but there's this feeling inside of you, and the detectives and all the people tell you, after a period of time that likely she's not going to be found. But, you know, I think my family was stubborn, and we continue to have hope. Maybe that's part of that tenacity too, that I come from. But it's really unimaginable to be in the spotlight like that. It's hard to explain to someone unless you've had it happen before.
Joel Goldberg 11:38
So you went through all that, you survived all that. You're living, I think, a life that you didn't have the ability to imagine as a kid, right? I mean.
Lindsay Howerton 11:50
Oh yeah.
Joel Goldberg 11:51
How, I remember, I don't mean to equate the two, but it just, it's always stuck in my head, and I wrote it briefly in my last book. You would have fit perfectly in that last book, by the way, too, because that book really is a story of grit and resilience, Small Ball, Big Dreams. And I remember asking, I just briefly mentioned, I didn't go deep into it. I did a series, a four part series. I don't know it's been a few years now on human trafficking, completely just blew my mind. Because we live with it in all of our communities, and have no idea, most of us, that it exists. And I remember talking to a survivor, a really brave survivor that's helping change lives herself now, and she made the comment. She said something along the lines of what she dreamed of growing up. She said, I didn't have the ability to dream. I didn't even know anything else existed out there. She was being trafficked by her father at, you know, five, six years old. So I'm not trying to compare. I know you're not.
Lindsay Howerton 12:41
Yeah
Joel Goldberg 12:42
You know that, but, but point being that when you're knee deep in trauma, you're just surviving. So I sit there and I think you didn't just survive, and I don't, also don't mean to discount that. You don't, I assume, carry some, some stuff still with you, but I see just an incredibly strong woman and and someone that is raising her kids and breaking a cycle of the cycle you broke for yourselves and trying to break break that for others as well. And I'm just curious where the turning point was for you, and how much that must fill your cup every day?
Lindsay Howerton 13:19
Yeah, I would say there were a couple of key points where I had to heal my trauma, because I realized there was greater purpose in my life than what I had gone through. And so I think you will find a lot of people that go through a high level of adversity. I mean, I flunked first grade, and I got picked on a bit because, you know, you're just different. You lost that core group of people that went on and you got left behind. There are things where, you know, you had to overcome the mental of the things that had happened. But the turning point for me was probably in my mid 30s, where I'm working in a manufacturing facility, and I have a love of trades and manufacturing, because I was a broken person who could hide in plain sight, and that's where a lot of people that are high trauma work in construction manufacturing, because I wasn't the best version of myself, And I could still be highly effective in that environment, because it hid what I was. But the point I left and I had to put the chips in on myself, it made me get better. I had to be a better version of myself, because I decided to be a standalone brand. And in that, I couldn't hide anymore. And so I started to unpack the trauma boxes that I had so tightly packed up inside of me. I was phenomenal at, oh, that happened. Put it in a box, wrap a whole lot of tape around it. I'll deal with it later. And at some point that warehouse got full too about the same time that I left manufacturing in which I dug in and did the really hard work to go to therapy and deal with everything and find the new version of me, which there's been a lot of iterations of that to today.
Joel Goldberg 15:11
Yeah, and I think everybody that that gets to deal with you benefits from it. You have this gift of reading personalities and and that's a little bit of the, I guess you referred to the nerd, pardon, spreadsheets. I don't know that this falls into a spreadsheet, but, but ultimately it falls into a formula and and so you you're doing all those things right, the Myers Briggs, the Strength Finders, all of those which I am fascinated by, to sit with you and have you basically know who I was within like 10 minutes was was really cool and also a little bit unnerving at the same time. Like, wait a minute, how does she know me better now than than I do myself? How much for your background led you to that? I know that having experienced the worst of the worst enables you to be able to handle whatever anybody else has going on, but you, you seem to have an incredible deep interest in what makes people tick, which, of course, makes you a phenomenal coach and COO. Where did that love come from?
Lindsay Howerton 16:14
Well, I think I was taught strategy at a young age, so I had, you know, a brother with disabilities, and a lot of background where I needed to be the person who was alert, understood what was happening, and I manage the things around me because of the chaos. And so I'm, again, a technical person, but I learned to be risk taking and more visionary in that strategy, just to outsmart the thing that was coming at me. So I would say that I I got that from from my family and my background. But as I started to realize this purpose, this feeling of trying to make sure that this isn't just a, J. O. B. I've spent a lot of my life being unhappy and not being the best version, where I isolated. I thought it was better to be on my own, having trouble trusting people, kind of in that victim mindset. And as I've come into the survivor mindset of as I've come into coaching, man, there's a gift in everyone. And if I can X ray that quickly, because I'm a high speed, high detail. You know, your gift is this ability to to be so warm that people feel almost disarmed because of who you are, like they they are. You listen to the podcast, I feel like I'm overhearing you at a coffee shop, sometimes with the people that you talk to, that's your greatest gift. If I can hand people the thing that they sometimes don't have front of mind but subconscious in that hour that I spend with them, if I can change their lives come in full circle. That's my million lives. That's my purpose. So I've challenged myself to think about, how do I change somebody's life in the one hour that I may ever spend with them?
Joel Goldberg 18:06
It's so rich, it's so deep. It's so, it it's so you. I mean, I say that knowing having sat across from you and you know you. You mentioned the thing about the coffee conversation and the warm conversation to me before we went on, and I was like, I hadn't I mean, I know that's kind of my style, my brand, but it just as you said that that was just your observation. It was like, boy, for years, I've sat there and said, I don't, I don't. I want good television broadcasts, and yes, I don't want to ever stumble on a word and this and that, but I would rather be unscripted and have a I always say I'd like for it to sound like a couple of guys talking baseball around the bar and so that that is this, that's my speaking style, too. I mean, that's just, that's who I am. So it's, it's a fascinating gift, a beautiful gift that you have to be able to read people like that. Well, we'll follow up in the final questions and delve into that a little bit, but I want to get into my baseball theme questions before it gets away from me. Of all the things, what's the biggest home run that you've hit in your career?
Lindsay Howerton 19:11
I think it was, you know, I left manufacturing, and I wasn't the best version, and I didn't really know or have a plan as to what I was going to do, and I would say people like me, as technical people, don't always just start a business. And I leaned into the absolute terror of being on my own and taking the risk and having to make all of my income based on just me, just my abilities, my my past experience and knowledge. And you know, everything in me screamed, you're not going to be able to do this. Like, somebody's going to see through you, the imposter syndrome of you're going to try to fly your wings and Veer straight to where? To the ground? And I kept at it, and to my surprise, betting on myself and and making sure that I found the confidence and pushed to get the skills and made myself the healthiest version, because I didn't, by integrity, want to coach you to do something that I was in the background doing the exact opposite. It paid off in a way that I never, ever dreamed of, to the point of your previous question, I just never thought I could make an impact on my small town. I always saw myself as a as a player, not a coach, not a leader.
Joel Goldberg 20:36
Yeah. Now you're both.
Lindsay Howerton 20:38
Yeah.
Joel Goldberg 20:39
I would say it's an honor, too. It it shows. It absolutely does. How about along the way, a swing and a miss? And what did you learn from it?
Lindsay Howerton 20:47
Yeah, I would say that I growing up in environments where I didn't always have healthy boundaries, because work was the measure of success. You know, in a in a farm environment, you don't always get the accolades of man, you did great. This is the it was how much you worked, the volume of work was the measure of success. So I got, I remember my alarm clock going off at 2:30 in the morning, and I lived on a hog farm. We took care of hogs until I was running to the bus at seven o'clock, and there had been no break, other than I would pull my coveralls off in my boots and change my shoes. And so, you know, I didn't always have a good boundary of where do I stop when I get home? And I had my own business. So my business was my home, and I'll credit my kids for fixing the biggest miss, which is my daughter, who was probably 10 or 11 at the time, you know, looked at me and said, You talk all this leadership stuff, but we don't see you participating in things here. And she called me out. And it was one of the best things I could have ever gotten, because I felt defensive in the moment, and then I realized, like I I put the work above my family and so to have this really big slice of humble pie from my kiddo going, you could do better with us, made me realign my priorities and realize that that home and relationships were just as important as the work. But I don't know that I had that before that moment, and that was a real miss for me. I missed some things.
Joel Goldberg 22:29
And learned from them thanks to your daughter. I mean, that's I was. I actually was sitting there thinking before you mentioned that story, that I wonder how your girls are growing up, not on the farm, and I'm sure you're still instilling that work ethic, but I guessing they don't get up at 2:30 in the morning, thankfully for them and for everyone. Yet you still want to, you still want to have that work ethic in them, and yet here, here you are learning from them, which is such a such a neat story.
Lindsay Howerton 23:03
It is. It's incredible to to see them blossom so much. Differently than I did. It took so long for me to be me, and my kids, having been more sheltered, just excel in places that blow my mind, in ways and abilities that I don't have. So I'm just such a proud mom as an awesome, big win. It's just how how bright my family and kids are, and I met my husband in kindergarten. So you know, every memory we have is shared. So to have our kids be different in their abilities and the opportunities, but make no bones about it. They're they're kids who got put on a pip if there was a problem, a performance improvement plan in crayon. The first page was what you did wrong. The second page is how we were going to improve it. Third page was how we're going to measure it. So and they help with my business. They've always helped with expenses, and I taught them to invoice me. If they did something above and beyond what was normal, they had to send me an invoice at the end of the month with what they thought it should be worth, things where I got to teach them differently. They worked their work ethic is different, but the same.
Joel Goldberg 23:03
Yeah. Well, they've got the same spirit that their mother grew up with, with, without some of the same resistance, and so that that's part of breaking the cycle and and hopefully broken forever. All right, what a small ball to you. What are the little things that add up to big results?
Lindsay Howerton 23:53
Probably being unrelenting on making sure that we do follow through. So whether that be that you know your speaking engagements, those thank you notes that you send, you know, you and I, you send the note you. These are the things where just those little touches. Making sure that things are scalable is really important to me. I always think about if we double in size, will this work? And when I think, no, I know that I have a bad process implementation, and I change it before I even start. And mindset. So I have more than one, you know mindset for me, if you're in a mindset of growth. Then even when the hard things come at you, even when it's unpredictable, even when it doesn't feel quite the way I wish it would, I can look at the opportunity and go, Okay, how can I versus I don't want to. So I think those things partner together have made me who I am, and some of the most successful people that I get to work with the C levels, and when I see them in a positive growth mindset, when they want it to be scalable, they want good process that makes all the difference and purpose in that too.
Joel Goldberg 25:52
All right, I got four final questions as we round the bases. Let's start with a fun one. You just referenced it. Known your husband since kindergarten. So do you remember? Do you remember how you met? Do you I mean, that's pretty early on.
Lindsay Howerton 26:09
We rode the school bus together.
Joel Goldberg 26:11
First time?
Lindsay Howerton 26:13
Yep, yeah. And we were both H's. Our last name was both H's, and we were from a really, I'm from a town of 4,000 people, Brookfield, Missouri, so we were both H's, so half of the school pictures of us are standing together so and, you know, consequently, I tried to run away from him a whole bunch, and he was the smarter one of us And the most persistent, and absolutely my rock,
Joel Goldberg 26:40
So cool. So you knew you knew how soon? You were running away. So he knew it before you knew it.
Lindsay Howerton 26:48
Yeah, I mean, I think he knew it at 18, and I got married with him at 21. But there were a couple years in there where I continued to think that I wasn't the marrying type and that I wanted to pursue career and go, you know, topple the mountain. And what I didn't understand and he helped me do, is I would have never gotten to the top of the mountain without him. He is the solid, calming base that offsets my high, high, high speed wheel. So I would have never been here without him.
Joel Goldberg 27:23
A match made in heaven. No doubt about it. All right. Second question, as we round the bases, I saw in some of our our background info on you that you you did some work with Billy Butler on the barbecue sauce. Is that? Is that true? What's the story on that? I still could forever remember the image of them spraying him with barbecue sauce after a win.
Lindsay Howerton 27:43
Good research. Yeah, I ran Original Juan Specialty Foods, which was any major barbecue sauce in Kansas City, a lot of them at that time were manufactured locally on Southwest Boulevard. So we had some organizations that had partnerships, as you still see today. You know, a lot of barbecue restaurants have partnerships with with the Royals, and actually, George Brett would drop in and see us, along with some of the other players, to try some of our hot sauces, because we did some of the absolute hottest hot sauces in the world. So a product was developed that was for him, and that was a really cool place to work because famous people would drop in all the time, including local sports fans and athletes. And we do the hot sauce challenge and drop some people on the ground sometimes.
Joel Goldberg 28:31
Yeah, I've done a couple of those, but I can't get that hot.
Lindsay Howerton 28:34
Yeah.
Joel Goldberg 28:35
I can handle the the kind of medium-ish ones and, and that's it. Okay. Third question. On your Instagram describes you as farm kid, foodie and KC business consultant. How do you how do you balance all those?
Lindsay Howerton 28:50
Yeah, I think they play together. My work ethic is definitely always going to be farm kid, but plays into having to remember to stop working, because I truly love what I do on purpose. And I grew up in the food industry, so most of my background has been working with local chefs, food manufacturing, getting to take farm to table. And, you know, fun fact, I got to work with like Farm Aid. As my first job. I got to do John Mellencamp and, you know, Willie Nelson. I remember he called the office, and I got to talk to him. I've gotten to do a lot of very food integrated things, where family farmers, because of how I was raised, I got to advocate on behalf of family farmers for local, sustainable food. So they're all married together, and I get to help lots of local food plants now,
Joel Goldberg 29:45
Which is which is amazing, because it it adds into that goal of a million. So we'll wrap it up with our, our walk off. And I just want to talk about your your business, and How Consulting, where you see this going, how you continue to get to those million and I'm going to wrap it up into this too, that I was reading that you were, I think you said this to our group. You were a painfully shy kid growing up, so there's no way you could have envisioned having the comfort level that you do, too. I think a lot of people can learn from that, and maybe it's it, the opportunity to help others can bring you out of your shell. I don't know how you got to where you did, but I think a lot of people will be inspired, because there are a lot of people that are listening to this that would say, Well, I I just really like getting up in front of people. It's scary. Oh, great, Joel, does it? He's on TV. By the way, I used to be nervous too. So it's not, it's not like it just happens overnight for people, but, but tell me about that evolution and where this is going.
Lindsay Howerton 30:42
Yeah, Joel, you know this because you speak. But I, I was doing one on ones, trying to get to my million, and I realized that I was going to have to find bigger formats. And luckily, I get to work with visionaries that sometimes see it before me and literally push me out on a stage of 400 people and say you're going to do a four hour workshop, and the hives and the internal of me is like, I've got to call in sick, like I don't want to do this. But you know, for both you and I, when I can get 400 people to hear a message that resonates, that might change them in some way, to hear my story, to hear that, you know, mindset means everything, to be able to show as an example that we don't have to repeat history, that we can lean in and do the most uncomfortable, the thing where I just go against every instinct I have when I can see a room nodding with me, resonating, wiping some tears because of what's happened to me, I know that I'm living in my purpose in a way that that I never dreamed of. And I feel proud and excited and honored every day for it. But I want bigger numbers. I want to make sure that I hit it and so, you know, find your purpose. Find the thing that gets you up, find the thing that keeps you awake at night. You're so passionate about it, and then do everything possible that's uncomfortable, to push it forward. Don't stop.
Joel Goldberg 32:19
Many, more people to serve. I was excited to see, by the way, that you recently joined the advisory board at Real Media. Brad and everybody over there, awesome people. And so I know that you got a lot of those connections and continuing to build them as well. So grateful for you to spend time. And like I said, before we could probably do this for many hours, we'll just do it again over coffee or lunch or whatever it might be, and just just grateful for you to share your experiences. I know a lot of people will benefit from it. Keep doing what you are doing. It is, it's, it's impactful, and congratulations on on all the success. Oh, one more thing too, the flipping of the homes.
Lindsay Howerton 33:02
Yep.
Joel Goldberg 33:02
That that that lights a fire every day for you, doesn't it? There's just like that. I wanted to add that one in, because there's such a symbolism for what you're doing.
Lindsay Howerton 33:11
It is. I, in our small town, we've found an amazing contractor, and we're buying every house that's falling in. And this is a social impact investment for us, for my husband and I, to go back to our hometown and try to motivate and show the opportunity by taking some of the homes that are the scariest. You know, nobody thinks that they can be rehabbed, and we're holding them. We're going to keep them as rental properties so that hard working people in our community that are working in manufacturing firms and teachers nurses will have what feels like a brand new home. And I can't imagine what that would have felt like at my age, to be able to rent something that feels brand new. So that's really important to us. Thanks for mentioning that. I mean, it's just we want to give back, and were able to and it's also a great business.
Joel Goldberg 34:04
It was in my head, there's such a symbolism to the transformation and what you're doing and now helping break those cycles, not just for yourself, but for the community that you grew up in, and as an extension with so many people, that's part of the million people that you are going to serve and make an impact. Lindsey, thanks so much for spending time. Really enjoyed it,
Lindsay Howerton 34:20
You bet, take care. Thanks, my friend. Bye.