#387: The Purpose Factor with Brian Bosché – Part 2

Summary

Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast
Episode #387: The Purpose Factor with Brian Bosché – Part 2
Date: March 12, 2026
Host: Perry Holly and Chris Scotty
Guest: Brian Bosché, President of Maxwell Leadership

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Episode Overview

In this engaging follow-up episode, hosts Perry Holly and Chris Scotty continue their conversation with Brian Bosché, President of Maxwell Leadership, on “The Purpose Factor.” Building on Part 1, the discussion centers around how finding and understanding purpose is not just a personal journey but an essential tool for leaders and organizations. They explore concepts such as fulfillment, burnout, mental freedom, practical interventions, and how the Purpose Factor assessment can be leveraged to increase engagement and performance in teams and entire organizations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Brian’s Journey to Purpose Work

• Brian shares his unexpected path from journalism and law to leadership development.
  • “You don't go to school for this. At 16 years old, you're not like, ‘I'm going to help people find their purpose.’” (Brian, 02:21)
• Personal struggles—divorce, job loss, depression—made him frustrated with the traditional narrative of “finding your purpose.”
  • “I got really tired of the idea of purpose. I started out on purpose. I was broke. I can't go to Hawaii.” (Brian, 02:53–03:27)
• His drive: Make purpose practical and actionable, not abstract or unreachable.

2. The Link Between Purpose and Well-being

• Brian and the hosts note the prevalence of anxiety and burnout and connect it to a lack of clarity and fulfillment in one’s role.
  • “When you help somebody find their purpose … you’ve increased their certainty, you’ve increased their clarity, you’ve increased their confidence, and it has a natural reduction on things like anxiety and depression.” (Brian, 04:45)
  • “Clarity of purpose can actually extend your life as much as three to seven years compared to the average according to research as well.” (Brian, 05:17)
• He introduces the concept of “internal freedom” (mental freedom) versus “external freedom,” referencing Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
  • “If I help you find your purpose, I can make your mind more free. … Mental freedom precedes external circumstantial freedom.” (Brian, 05:20–05:58)

3. Pain as a Catalyst for Clarity

• The role of adversity in clarifying what truly matters:
  • “Pain is a powerful elimination tool. Pain is a powerful focus tool because everything you thought that mattered gets taken away.” (Brian, 06:38)
  • “People who have high conviction, it started in moments where pain and clarity coexisted at the same time.” (Brian, 06:59)

4. The Founder’s Burden: Burnout and Fulfillment

• As organizations grow, founders/leaders drift away from the work that originally brought them fulfillment.
  • “As you get further and further away from the customer and the service … that distance puts you in the position to constantly give away, but not be close enough to receive fulfillment.” (Brian, 08:24)
  • “Burnout is the result of giving and not getting any emotional return on investment.” (Brian, 09:11)

Memorable Quote:

“Burnout is the result of giving and not getting any emotional return on investment. To not see somebody's life transform, to not get any gratitude… Not that it's about us, but not seeing any gratitude feedback.”
— Brian Bosché (09:11)

• Leadership Intervention: Leaders should “get closer to the work”—interact directly with what fulfills them and connects them to the impact, not just administrative tasks.

5. Making Purpose Relevant in Business

• Addressing leaders’ skepticism about “soft” topics:
  • “Purpose for me is a non-negotiable… Purpose is a production tool. Purpose is a performance tool.” (Brian, 10:19)
  • “Without clear purpose … I’m not going to have a high degree or willingness to sacrifice. And so I’m just going to kind of phone it in.” (Brian, 10:28)
• Purpose helps team members find a reason to stay, rather than just avoid leaving.
  • “They're looking for a reason to stay, not a reason to leave. By human nature, most team members don't like uncertainty.” (Brian, 11:38–11:45)

Memorable Quote:

“A lot of leaders…are always like, ‘Brian, wait, you can't have my people find their purpose. They're gonna leave!’ That sounds more like a you problem.”
— Brian Bosché (11:53)

6. Connecting Individual Purpose to Organizational Mission

• Importance of aligning each person’s purpose with the company’s mission/vision for maximum engagement.
  • Perry shares an anecdote about employees undervaluing their roles (“I just service cars”).
  • “Used in that sentence, ‘just,’ was a cuss word... You save people's lives when they're having a heart attack … It’s making it relevant again.” (Brian, 12:52–14:32)

7. Where to Start in the Organization?

• The trickle-down effect: start with the C-suite/executives.
  • “It spreads most effectively from the top and then down … Influence works from the top 10% down.” (Brian, 15:03)
  • Reverse org chart: leaders shoulder the team.
• For success and sustainability: “I have to make a purpose case before performance case is ever a thing. … If there's no purpose case for that, it's going to be a short term gain, it's not going to be a long term game.” (Brian, 15:43)

8. Practical Use of the Purpose Factor Assessment

• Best practices for utilizing the assessment’s report:
  • Use highlighters to distinguish between known strengths (green) and new discoveries (yellow). (Brian, 17:19)
  • Partner review: Have business partners do the same for each other—leads to deeper awareness and understanding.
  • “If I can make you aware of the words and phrases associated with the best of what you have to help others, that's purpose … now it's an intentional decision making tool.” (Brian, 17:19–18:25)

9. The Ongoing Journey of Purpose

• The assessment is not a “one-and-done” exercise; it’s a tool revisited regularly.
  • Chris: “This is a tool that I think will fuel and ignite your team members to be more engaged and to live out with the conviction to be able to do what you're doing.”
• Importance of aligning performance reviews and ongoing conversations to individuals’ purpose report.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I wanted something that was practical, that was tactical, and that could help me make a decision about what was next for me.”
  — Brian Bosché (03:30)

• "Clarity of purpose can actually extend your life as much as three to seven years compared to the average according to research as well."
  — Brian Bosché (05:17)

• “Burnout is the result of giving and not getting any emotional return on investment.”
  — Brian Bosché (09:11)

• “Purpose is a production tool. Purpose is a performance tool.”
  — Brian Bosché (10:19)

• "They're looking for a reason to stay, not a reason to leave. ...Most team members don't like uncertainty."
  — Brian Bosché (11:38–11:45)

• "If I can make you aware of the words and phrases associated with the best of what you have to help others, that's purpose..."
  — Brian Bosché (17:19–18:25)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:21 – 03:56: Brian’s personal journey with purpose and initial skepticism
• 04:45 – 06:14: Connection between purpose, anxiety, and internal freedom
• 06:32 – 07:24: Pain as a tool for clarity; conviction develops in pain
• 08:04 – 09:56: Burnout and interventions for fulfillment in leadership
• 10:19 – 12:00: Purpose as a production and performance tool in organizations
• 12:02 – 14:32: Connecting individual purpose to broader organizational mission (the “I just service cars” story)
• 15:03 – 16:39: How purpose spreads in organizations, starting from the top
• 17:19 – 18:25: Practical steps to work with the Purpose Factor assessment
• 18:43 – 21:32: Summing up the episode—best practices, the one-pager, and ongoing application

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Actionable Takeaways & Best Practices

• Leaders should seek (and enable) clarity of purpose for themselves and their teams—for better engagement, resilience, and long-term performance.
• Burnout often arises from disconnection with fulfillment; leaders should intentionally reconnect with impactful, meaningful work.
• Integrate purpose work at the executive level first, then cascade through the organization.
• Use the Purpose Factor assessment as a living document—highlight insights, revisit regularly, and leverage it for ongoing team discussions.
• Purpose is not a “soft” add-on—it is foundational to performance, sustainability, and retention.

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For more information, resources, and the Purpose Factor assessment, listeners are invited to visit maxwellleadership.com/executivepodcast and explore solutions tailored to their organization.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I'm Perry Holly a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

[B]

And I'm Chris Scotty, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Super excited that you're here today. I'm just going to tell you as we open, if you didn't listen to last episode, you need to go listen to it. I would encourage you to listen to it before you get here. This is going to be a continuing conversation because our conversation was just so rich about understanding not only your purpose, but your team's purpose. And so we'll get to that in just a minute. I want to encourage you, go to maxwellleadership.com executive podcast. There you can click on a form and you'll see a button up there. You may got a question if you got a need or if you're looking for some training or some coaching inside your organization. One of the things we do is base everything here around John's five levels of leadership methodology. It is the common language in organizations. And so we would love to be able to help you and your team in any way. Well, as I mentioned, this is going to be part two, finding your purpose. And so we have with us Brian Boshet. He is the new president of Maxwell Leadership. He and his wife Gab. We should have probably had Gab on here instead of Brian, but we'll have that next time. We just wanted to set the tone with him first. He's going to close it, I promise you on that. But one of the things we absolutely love about them as people and as leaders is their focus on helping people find their purpose and then the fulfillment. And that was so rich for me last episode about understanding the purpose and the fulfillment that they get from working on your teams and organizations. You guys coach and now we're bringing that to Maxwell Leadership. So before, before we dive into some more content, tell us just real quickly. I know that you were a journalist at one time inspiring big screen TV news. We just learned that you were a law student and you took the bar exam. How did you end up developing an assessment and sitting at this table? Give them a little bit of a love.

[C]

You don't go to school for this. You don't go to school for this. You don't. At 16 years old, you're not like, I'm going to grow up and be an Astronaut. You don't grow up and say, I'm going to help people find their purpose.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Doesn't really happen. Wanted to be a national TV journalist, all of that. Went to law school to be a better journalist. Got to be a journalist. I got to cover government corruption and terrorism right out of law school in kind of a documentary style unit. I was so excited. What nobody knew is that I was getting ready to go through a divorce. My ex wife walked out on me the week before I started the dream job.

[B]

Wow.

[C]

Okay. So the depression had already begun. And then when I got laid off from the dream job a year later, the divorce was final. And in this same month, and it was the first time I had ever experienced depression. And all these people, Brian, find your purpose. Find your purpose, Find your purpose. And I was very frustrated with that. I thought, I got really tired of the idea of purpose. I started out on purpose. Frustrated about finding purpose because it was like this journey driven experience, like spend a bunch of money, go to Hawaii and maybe find yourself in a sunset. This isn't helpful. I'm broke. I can't go to Hawaii. I know.

[A]

Walk across Europe. Yeah.

[C]

Find myself. Less than 1% of people ever find themselves. They just come back, you know, $10,000 less money in their wallet, going to find themselves. So I wanted something that was practical, that was tactical, and that could help me make a decision about what was next for me. And so I began this journey depressed, even frustrated with the word purpose, wanting to use it as a decision making tool to help me know what was next for me.

[A]

Fantastic. Well, it is an assessment. And if it hadn't been clear to you about the purpose factor and what Brian and Gab have brought to, it's just been amazing for our team. Chris put us through it, we took it seriously. We deep dived on it. We had you debrief us on it. We then began individually looking at what fulfills us and the roles we have and how does it play to our purpose. One thing I notice, a lot of the coaching work we do and working with organizations, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of burnout, there's a lot of people stressed at different places. And I wonder if you've noticed in the research, I'm guessing if I really am clear about my purpose and my fulfillment fact, which it tells me my fulfillment factor is part of this report. Does that, have you noticed that? Is that helping people shed some of this anxiety?

[C]

Yeah. Oftentimes you look at anxiety and depression not From a clinical standpoint here, just talking about it from a coaching standpoint, a lot of it hangs out in and around fear of rejection, fear of uncertainty. When you help somebody find their purpose, discover their purpose, turn it into a decision making tool, you've increased their certainty, you've increased their clarity, you've increased their confidence, and it has a natural reduction on things like anxiety and depression. Clarity of purpose can actually extend your life as much as three to seven years compared to the average according to research as well. So it has a huge difference on that. But there's another principle there too for me when I look at this and what all this research, over a decade of research represents to me is something that I feel deeply committed to, which is internal freedom versus external freedom. If I help you find your purpose, I can make your mind more free. If I can make your mind more free, I can help you produce more freedom in your circumstances. When you read Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl famous book, one of the things that he says is when everything is stripped away, everything is stripped, taken, taken from you. He says the thing that you have is the mental freedom, the ability to choose a better attitude. He talks about mental freedom. Mental freedom precedes external circumstantial freedom.

[B]

So when you were going through that journey, I'm sitting there thinking about everything stripped away. Did you. You probably didn't have the language for it, but that's. Is that what you felt, did you feel like when you had everything stripped away from you? Yeah. I know you were working through some depression and stuff like that, but did you have that mental clarity?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, and that's how it came up with the purpose. Right. You kept digging, digging for the purpose.

[C]

Pain is a powerful elimination tool. Pain is a powerful focus tool because everything you thought that mattered gets taken away. And it wasn't by your choosing. None of those things that happen for me in that moment, they were not that, they were not my choice.

[B]

Right.

[C]

They were my circumstances. But there's, and you know, I love to talk about another word. My second favorite word, first word is purpose. My second favorite word is conviction. That's another episode. Right. But when you look at people who have high conviction, it started in moments where pain and clarity coexisted at the same time. And oftentimes the pain came before the clarity or the pain was the clearing mechanism to get all the distractions and the things that you thought mattered out of your way.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So as a leader, right. And we're going to Go back to this. I know you've coached a lot and Gav has as well. The job can begin to feel heavy. Yeah, Right. If you're not getting that fulfillment, which means you're not in your purpose. Right. What, what interventions? How have you coached leaders and team members to help them get from that? Right. Where their fulfillment came from? Back to alignment of it. But yeah, not changing jobs.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Like, it's like we're working on the purpose and the fulfillment. What's the intervention? How have you seen leaders make that transition or that tipping point to realize that they needed to take that next step to get to that point?

[C]

The founder CEO is a really interesting case study because you started as a founder and you play all the positions and you might be the solo person. You're like, you started it by yourself. No business partner. You're doing everything. You're doing the selling, you're doing the delivering, you're doing the quality control.

[B]

You're doing invoicing, you're doing it, all of it.

[C]

Right. So your hands are in the work, your hands are in the dirt. And then the more successful you become, the more administrative state you need to support that. And the further you get away from the thing that caused you to originally love the thing you've created. Distance. So as the administrative state grows, as you get further and further away from the customer and the service and the product and how it impacts somebody, that distance puts you in the position to constantly give away, but not be close enough to receive fulfillment. Burnout looks like this. Give, give, give, give. Keep giving, keep giving, give inefficiently, not even giving your best. Just give and give. And then all that distance, you're getting nothing back in return.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Burnout is the result of giving and not getting any emotional return on investment. To not see somebody's life transform, to not get any gratitude. Not that it's about us, but not seeing any gratitude feedback.

[B]

That's part of the.

[C]

To not experience personal growth. And so the intervention there is is to help the leader get close to the work. And the result, again, that's great to make space on their calendar to say, you know what, it's probably an inefficient use of my time to coach somebody one on one, but I know when I coach this type of person on this type of thing and help them solve that type of problem, it fulfills me and it reminds me of why I started this company. That's one of the key interventions that I've seen. You're just too far away You've got to get closer to the result.

[A]

Well, I can hear someone saying that this is great individual assessment for me personally, but we're running a business here and can you help the leader out there? Maybe the senior leader is having trouble connecting the dots about how is this going to help my business and not be too soft or too personal for somebody, but didn't help the business. I mean, how do they connect those dots?

[C]

Purpose for me is a non negotiable and it's about individual purpose, macro, mission, relevance. How can I draw a connection between the individual and the overall purpose, mission and vision of the organization if I can tie a thread between those two things and constantly remind them of that connection? Purpose is a production tool. Purpose is a performance tool. I always like purpose is performance because without clear purpose, without a clear pathway whereby I can experience fulfillment, fulfillment, I'm not going to have a high degree or willingness to sacrifice. And so I'm just going to kind of phone it in. And so for leaders, it's not to look at purpose as one of those soft skills or one of those workshops we did one time that nobody's reading their report. The PDFs buried somewhere in an email, right? We never look at it. I've got leaders that read this almost every week. They pick up their. They've got it printed off, they've got it spiraled, and they read it almost every single week because they're trying to make sure that what they're doing is relevant. And so it's an organizational connection tool. It is an engagement tool. Again, I think I said this in the first episode we did together. They're looking for a reason to stay, not a reason to leave. Why? By human nature, most team members don't like uncertainty. To leave a job means to increase uncertainty. It doesn't increase certainty, it increases uncertainty.

[B]

That's well said.

[C]

And so all of the, actually a lot of leaders, this is one of the biggest things, they're always like, brian, wait, wait, wait. You can't have my people find their purpose. They're gonna leave.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[C]

That sounds more like a you problem. That sounds more like a you problem. But if I can get them connected to their work, they're looking for a reason to stay.

[A]

Well, I have a side question.

[B]

Do it.

[A]

Yeah, sorry, Yeah. I was on a coaching call a couple months ago and it was a group call and one of the. I have the senior leader, but I have their directs and it's a car, automotive business. And they said, I said, what do you do? And the guy says, I just service cars. And it blew all over me, Blew all over me. But I had to remain composed. But I thought I told the senior leader, if people on your team are saying that they just do something, am I off base here? But it sounds to me like they're not really clear on that thread. You said between my purpose and your mission, you don't just service cars, you're doing much more. You're actually providing safe, reliable transportation for families in the local area to get from home to work. I mean, I could go and make it as hokey as you want, but it seems like they have a very important role, but they're not feeling it.

[C]

Used in that sentence just was a cuss word. That was. That's how strong that word stands out. Upset me because it's. I'll never forget when I was going through all the tough stuff, divorce, depression, I had somebody in my life said, why don't Brian, why don't you just be a lawyer?

[B]

I'm sorry, I know you just about six months. I can tell how I went over.

[C]

I don't want to just be anything. Why don't you just end this conversation? And so it touched a nerve. But Gabrielle was working one time with the California Highway Patrol. She was speaking on generational leadership styles and purpose as well. And she was talking about how this, I believe it was a sheriff, not a sheriff. It was high up in leadership. Was once having a conversation with a guy who actually worked on the radio transmission towers that helped them all communicate in their cars. And the transmission guy was telling the story where his daughter came home from school and the daughter didn't know how to answer the question, what does your dad do at work? And that leader that was talking with the transmission guy said, no, no, no, you. You save people's lives when they're having a heart attack. You help people in the very. By making sure that that thing's working. You make sure that the precious seconds that matter after a near fatal car accident that we actually capture the life in those seconds. Right? It's again, purpose, mission, relevance. If maintenance is done poorly, the tire falls off, a family is at risk, and it's making it relevant again.

[B]

So talk to us about at what level do you then bring this into the organization? So we've been talking about it as a posture of self and about leaders. Would you look at bringing it in at an individual contributor level? Would it be maybe the second in command, maybe the C suite? Only in your experience, because you guys have done this with Fortune 500 companies with smaller companies. Where's the best place to bring this in? And then how does it become that common language that we talk about?

[C]

Yeah, it spreads most effectively from the top and then down. Sure, it always does. Just like we learned from John Max.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Influence works from the top 10% down. It is a trickle down effect in organizations. If you start down here. Right. If you start down here, and I don't like the, I'm not a traditional org chart guy. Right. I don't look at it as a pyramid. One of my good friends and even a mentor in my life said we need to turn that org chart upside down because the leader that is viewed as sitting at the top actually sits down here and puts that org chart on his or her shoulders. That's a picture of leadership in terms of what you shoulder with your team, for your team. That's just a side note.

[B]

Yeah, sure.

[C]

But you start there at the proverbial top because they do what they see, your people will do what they see. So if they see leaders committed to getting individual clarity in their purpose and connecting it to the mission of the organization, when they see purpose being the primary decision making lens, not just performance, the whole organization changes. For me in my life, I have to make a purpose case before performance cases ever is ever a thing. We don't get to talk about money, profit, revenue. If there's no purpose case for that, it's going to be a short term gain, it's not going to be a long term game. I can't do this for three, five years, ten years, a decade if I'm only playing a performance game. But if I play a purpose game first and a performance game always, I'm set up for long term success. So I want to start up here in this executive C suite and then I want to work it down, then work it down, then work it down. Because it has to work down by example.

[A]

So I had an impressive question about performance and how you relate. But I think you've really answered how these are connected. So I'm just thinking about practice practically because I took this and I got this beautiful report and I was a little bit. It's. It can be overwhelming. I mean there's a ton.

[C]

I mean I probably 46 pages. I think it's 46.

[A]

Well, I'm, I'm advanced. Maybe mine's 43. His probably not. Yeah, 40, 45.

[C]

46. 46 if you count the back page.

[A]

Yeah. So what can you just. In this a real life. So you Take you take the assessment, you get this beautiful report. Can I do you recommend people have a. You did a beautiful debrief for us. But what's the best practice once you have this?

[C]

One of my favorite things to do, it's just a simple exercise is to get a green highlighter and a yellow highlighter. Take out the report, set aside 30 minutes, 45 minutes, hour, if you want to take some time with it, coffee, whatever, Sit down with a green highlighter and highlight everything that you kind of already knew about yourself. Then with the yellow highlighter, highlight everything you learned about yourself. Because a lot of the things that are in there, you've potentially not had words or phrases to describe before, which means they were latent kind of abilities, skill sets and gifts that you weren't aware of. So it's an awareness creating document. If I can make you aware of the words and phrases associated with the best of what you have to help others, that's purpose the best of what you have to help others and give away, then I've just taken something from your unconscious mind to your subconscious, not just your subconscious, to your subconscious mind, to your conscious mind. And now it's an intentional decision making tool. And so I also have like business partners do the same thing, but they switch for Forbes, which is so interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So you take his and vice versa. You highlight in green what everything you already knew about him. You highlight in yellow what you learned about him.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And oftentimes you'll see a lot more yellow than green.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And this is where you'll see maybe that's where a lot of conflict crops up because this is a place you didn't understand them as well and vice versa.

[B]

That's good. Well, I'm going to wrap us up. That doesn't mean that it's the end of the journey around this for the purpose factor for you, for your team. You were saying earlier during the episode about leaders who just print it off and just kind of go through it once a week or you know, in themselves. This right here, I'm holding up. For those that are on YouTube, those that are not. Well, you might not want to look at Perry and I, so you can stay off YouTube, but if you are, mine did black and white. Perry's going to hold his up in the color. Yeah. This right here for your team. You know, you talked about gratitude and you talked about understanding your team. This is a one pager that you could have and just look at, you know, hey, Perry and I are meeting. Right. Whatever. I need to Know this, I need to know that. And you can, you can lead with different things based off of this. It's great. One pager for yourself. You can definitely dig into it. And the reason I shared that is because I don't think it's optional for you to know your team's purpose. You guys weren't with us a couple months. I'm like, I'm in. Team's got to take it. We got to have a conversation. I had a with one of my team, I had a year end debrief And I posed 10 questions and that team member answered those questions. And then we took those questions and aligned it with the results out of her purpose factor. And we said, this is why. Like, this is why. And now we're off and running in a new year, doing things a little bit differently, communicating a little bit differently because we had the conversation around this. So thank you for all that you went through, even back to living at home for three months. Three months for doing that. But this is a tool like we talk about on here. There's lots of tools. This is a tool that I think will fuel and ignite your team members to be more engaged and to live out with the conviction to be able to do what you're doing. And so Perry's going to give you the URL in just a minute, but when you get there, I want you to click on that Explore Solutions tab. There's going to be a form and just put your contact information and the purse factor and we will be in touch because we want to add value to you and to your team. And we didn't even talk about your family and your community and how you could use this. And so it can just go on and on.

[A]

Yeah, it is a tool, but it's a tool that keeps on giving a gift. We go back to it again and again and again to do that. So thank you, Brian, for being with us. Thank you, Chris. Great conversation. As a reminder, if you'd like to get the learner guide for this episode or leave us the word purpose factor and a comment there, we'd love to get information to you about that. You can do all [e-mail] executivepodcast. You can also leave us a comment or a question there. You know, we love hearing from you. So grateful you spend this time with us. That's all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive podcast.

[B]

Sam.