Season 2, Ep. 10 | Burn On, Not Out with Brooke M. Dukes Transcript

More Elephant​ Intro

[00:00:38] Jason Rudman: So here we are in 2026, and as I was framing what we wanted the first conversation in 2026 to be, I don't know about you, but I am not really a resolution setter anymore.

I do believe in recentering myself in 2026, but it doesn't come with a list of, oh, I'm going to do that, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that probably because most of the time I actually don't make it to March before I've given up that resolution.

Brooke Dukes is the author of Burn On, Not Out, a book that will take you on a journey of how to rethink your relationship with achievement, burnout, and purpose. 

There is a More Elephant moment that Brooke is going to get into as we engage in conversation that led her to build a company and a key Success by Design Club that will help leaders intersect their personal and their professional life and rethink the relationship that they have with their purpose and what they're seeking to achieve.

Brooke, it is 2026. I am delighted that you found the time in your busy schedule to join us on the More Elephant podcast. Welcome.

[00:01:54] Brooke Dukes: Thank you so much for having me. Really excited.

[00:01:57] Jason Rudman: The book is a brief read, but my goodness, it takes you in many different places.

And so, on the More Elephant podcast, we always start with people's origin story so our audience can get to know what got you to this point. And there is, as I said, a really very deliberate pivot, a ‘More Elephant’ moment in your life as you describe in the book, that took you on a very different journey that I think, as you would acknowledge, was years in the reckoning.

Would you take everybody through your origin story that is effectively outlined in Burn On, Not Out?

[00:02:34 Brooke Dukes: Absolutely. Gosh, I was 34 years old and it was my second corporate job, and a Fortune 100 company. And, I'd been with the company for a bit, but I'd been working on a particular deal. I was a director there for a year and a half with United Airlines, and at that point, the CEO said, okay, we want the team to go to Nova Scotia—we are going to outsource part of their call centers there.

I was eight months pregnant and was already supposed to be on bedrest. However, in true fashion, especially for me at that time, I was not adhering totally to doctor's orders, but for that, I knew at eight months pregnant, it was not a good idea for me to get on a plane to Nova Scotia.

So I prepped my right hand person. We had twenty-five people working this deal. I was the quarterback of the deal and my right hand actually had more experience in IT. She was so much more qualified to go on this trip than I was, so I made sure everything was fine.

Told my boss and he said, great, if you want her to also get your six figure bonus. So, I was quite devastated and he said, I'm gonna give you the corporate jet; go over, it will all be fine. And I went.

And on the way home, I found myself in preterm labor. My daughter is fine. At this point, actually for many years now, I've been able to look at it with gratitude because it was a significant emotional event for me. I'd risk my life and my child's life for money. 

There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. And really, as I was in the hospital, so many things came to me, as far as, I really recognized if anyone was looking at me from the outside, what would they think I valued? 

They would think I valued success, money, climbing the corporate ladder. That couldn't have been further from the truth. I had an amazing husband, a beautiful son, a daughter on the way. So, at the highest point in my life, I found myself at my lowest and recognized that I was completely living outside of my values. 

And even going deeper. Obviously it didn't happen all at once. Looking at that and journaling, meditating and doing all the things, I found that it wasn't about success. It wasn't about money, it was about none of that. It was about safety because I was an emotionally and physically abused child and what I knew was that my perception at the time was, money kept you safe!

My mother stayed in a relationship—one of the reasons was because she couldn't financially afford to support us. And so, I looked at that unconsciously.

I didn't know that was where my drive came from. I didn't realize that's why I was pushing myself so hard, taking risks with my health, not listening to my body..is because unconsciously, that's the only way I felt safe.

It was at that moment I left corporate America and started my first company and have never looked back.

[00:05:49] Jason Rudman: There's a lot to unpack there.

We are thankful that your daughter is well. Thank you for making sure that the audience is aware that she's great.

What I appreciate about the boldness of what you described, even in that short synopsis, is that there's a series of compromises that we go through, right?

I think as human beings in chasing, more often than not, I believe somebody else's definition of what achievement is and purpose actually means, and not our own.

So you wake up one day and say, all right, this is it and then you said, “I started a company.”

I know there is a lot more to it. Take us through what was going through your head, how you got from that point of probably a sense of despair and belief that I can't solve it…

You write in the book that you have to go through a period of figuring out. I've got to make these moves because if I don't make these moves, I, as Brooke, don't survive.

I'm not necessarily saying physically, but mentally, I'm at that point.

So how did you start that process because you have a husband and two kids as well, right? There's a level of reliance you had dropped in, this was a job where you could make a six figure bonus. There's a level of reliance for your family on you being the firestarter.

[00:07:05] Brooke Dukes: Yeah. Through this period had the luxury of having maternity leave, so I had a great deal of time to read;  a lot of people don't have that luxury. They're in it.

And, I came to the conclusion there was a part of me that needed to shift. I had to shift my identity. And, I knew in order to be able to do that, because I really did buy into, in that moment, if you grind it out, if you work hard, if you take massive action, all of that masculine frequency, which I know, has nothing to do with gender. It is all about frequency.

I lived in that warrior space because that's what kept me protected and alive as a child. I needed that force, that push, that determination, that drive to get out of the circumstances that I was in.

Well, I recognized that the things that got me to where I was, were even though I was grateful for that, I was grateful to be alive and the life I had, also the things that were going to, in the end, probably kill me because I was abusing my body so much with so much work. I would work fifteen, sixteen hour days.

So I recognized, I knew I needed the leverage. And so, through that time, I was talking to my husband and he didn't love how hard I was working and pushing my body and doing all of that. So, I really had a huge support in him and recognized that I had to get out of corporate America, or I was going to keep feeding those triggers, feeding that conditioning, and I was going to go right back to where I had come from on that corporate jet.

So it was the leverage. And when I work with people, that has to be part of it. It can't just be the ‘moving towards the pleasure’ piece—oh, I'm gonna love working for myself. I mean, as a small business owner, it is very hard. It is not easier than corporate America. It has its whole another set of challenges.

You have to also look at moving away from pain. What am I going to lose? What is going to happen if I stay in this scenario? So that's really what I focus on, is that leverage piece and informing and letting my family know so that they could support me. They understood what I was doing…not everyone did, and that's okay. It was enough support that I needed to catapult me to that next level, which honestly was the beginning of fulfillment in my whole life.

[00:09:46] Jason Rudman: I love that last part. So where was the unexpected support and where was the unexpected resistance?

[00:09:53] Brooke Dukes: It's my ex-husband now, but we are best friends. We spend all holidays together with my husband, his wife, all the kids we have. It's been amazing. And he was really so supportive and I wasn't sure he was going to be because he was the type of man that you go work for a large company and you retire there…and there's nothing wrong with that. He did not have an entrepreneurial bone in his body and he knew that, which is good. You know how you're wired. 

That really is something would've happened regardless because I am an entrepreneur through and through. He really got it because he was living it with me too, and I'm sure it scared the shit out of him, me being preterm labor in a corporate jet as well. So that was good. 

[00:10:45] Jason Rudman: Let's hope so. Let's hope so. We know so, but let's hope so.

[00:10:50] Brooke Dukes: Yeah. And then there were friends and even some family members that just didn't get it—you have the perfect job, you make all this money. Why can't you just slow down?

They didn't get it. And that was the beginning of most of my life decisions a lot of people don't get, and that's okay. So I had to build that drive, that self-esteem, that trust in my own intuition to be able to take me forward in what I was going to do.

And that's a lot of what we teach people in our consulting and in our community is you are your number one best success strategy. You know what's right for you. You just gotta learn how to trust it again.

[00:11:36] Jason Rudman: So learning to trust yourself combined with how people on the outside perceive—you mentioned something there, which I think is such a truism as well, there's so much projection that people looked at you and said hold on a minute, you have the perfect life!!

You've got this perfect setup. You've got two kids, you've got a husband. You've got a wonderful house. You've got all of these markers that are also checklists, on some level, for what we call the American Dream. the house, the picket fence, the 2.2 kids, the husband. 

[00:12:12] Brooke Dukes: We even had a dog.

[00:12:13] Jason Rudman: And a dog. Of course, we need a dog. And then the comment around trusting yourself.

[00:12:19] Brooke Dukes: Yeah.

[00:12:20] Jason Rudman: So where did that resolve come from in you, given what you described, because I think that's important as we propel to the Success by Design club and the life that you've created.

Have you thought about where that kernel of trust and the belief that you could step off and step into a different life that you could create…where does that come from?

[00:12:46] Brooke Dukes: It's interesting because you brought this up before as far as purpose and it aligns with both. When I wrote the book, which we're in the process of writing a second book, I didn't know about human design. I just knew that in me instinctively, I always knew I had a purpose. And I also always knew that purpose is not doing.

Most people get it confused. I think purpose is an action. So I knew for me, I was a person that when, given the opportunity, could support changing the world. I've always known that and it's been my biggest vision. I want to raise consciousness of the world and it's been a series of shifts in thought to get there. So that was in me. 

I knew I had a level of trust in myself that I was born with. And at that point, right when I started my first company, is when I started my personal development journey and learning about myself and learning how the mind works. I really got into psychology, behavioral science, and neuroscience and just understanding, especially given my background and my childhood, why I did some of the things that I did.

Where did the triggers come from? Where did the conditioning come from? And, ten years ago, I learned about human design and I thought, yeah, no way, too complicated. Who has the time for that?

I have no way to integrate it because I'm all about integration. I don't want someone to just learn something from me. I want them to figure out if it aligns with them [then] how do they integrate it in their life. So I let it go. The only thing that I learned was I was a manifesting generator, which I'm like okay, I had no idea what that means. Sounds cool, whatever. Put it on the shelf.

And then six years ago, I learned about it again. And then I went into a little bit more, but I still said, man, this thing is too complicated. And then, four years ago, I came across it. One of my friends showed me a podcast called Powerhouse Women, and it was just one episode in my car, so I listened to it. 

Podcast was fine. Then when you're in your car, it automatically goes to the next episode and it was this crazy Australian woman talking about human design. Her name is Emma Dunwoody. She is now one of my best friends; came to my wedding. She's one of the leading human design coaches in the world. And she said, my background is behavioral science psychology in NLPI. I Integrate those in and then teach you how to simply integrate into your life.

I'm like, oh shit, I am in now. And I'm always on the three rule—one time, okay, maybe a coincidence; two, we'll see…three, you gotta do it. So then I jumped in and started learning, and that's how I learned I have a defined heart center and human, and that means you have an innate sense of who you are and what you need to be doing in the world. I was designed that way, so that really helped me as I started to learn that.

And then I looked into more to understand, okay, what else? How else was I designed before life happened? Significant emotional events and traumas layered on the armor of conditioning that shifted me away from who I was designed to be and show up in this world.

[00:16:34] Jason Rudman: In your book, you encourage readers to step off the hustle bus, which I really love. In fact, you write “you don't need more hustle, you need more energetic alignment and strategy that sticks.”

[00:16:46] Brooke Dukes: Yeah.

[00:16:47] Jason Rudman: So, you recognized you didn't need more hustle—I'm gonna go back to go forward—and then you resisted, over a period of about six years, this bright light that was human design. For those in the audience that are not familiar with the concept of human design, and even by your own admission, the first time you saw it, you were like, I don't know what that is. That's too complicated. I'm not touching that. Explain a little this concept of human design.

[00:11:13] Brooke Dukes: So human design, and a lot of people think either they don't know anything about it or they think it's woo crap. It couldn't be further from the truth. Essentially what's happening is it's astrology, the I-Ching. It is the ‘Tree of Life.’ It is the chakra systems. Even quantum physics as neutrinos. It started in the eighties.

And what it's showing you is at the time, the day, and the place of your birth, of these, this ancient wisdom and neutrinos line up to affect your DNA. So for anyone that thinks this is all woo, China spends over a hundred million dollars a year studying neutrinos. It's a thing that affects our energetic field and our DNA.

Human design is able to tell you, in one chart, within less than a minute, what your human design is and at the time of your birth, here is the life's work that you were put here to do. Here is your purpose. Here's how you best communicate the challenges that you will need to learn from in order to get to the gifts. Here's your area of genius.

So, for me, once I learned that—I've been an executive coach for over twenty years—I'm like, this information, which by the way, I have yet to, in the last four years I've been working with this, meet one person that said, yeah, I don't really, doesn't really resonate with me.

[00:18:54] Jason Rudman: That's not me. When you describe who they are. 

[00:18:56] Brooke Dukes: Right.

And so I can get information about them that would've taken me three, six months, or I may have never gotten to it about them, in less than a minute. So, that jumping off point, your energetic blueprint, who you were designed to be in this world. Now let's look at the shadow areas that are making it so that you cannot be that person. Let's look at that conditioning and all.

It gives such a fast jumping off point to be able to really help someone to achieve success and fulfillment, because we've always been taught you can have one or the other, you know, really can't have both until maybe when you retire. So it's about living now and finding your own strategy within you. You don't need another guru. You just need to remember who you are.

[00:19:55] Jason Rudman: If the health holds up then I don't want to retire until I'm maybe 95 and all the faculties are working. 

So, as an executive coach and moving from corporate to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship is really tough, right? It is not for the faint of heart. We've had many entrepreneurs on the More Elephant podcast, each of them were their own unique journey, but that commonality of stepping out on faith, a problem to be solved, and then the hard work begins in terms of laying everything on the line in order to make that actually come to life. Describe your entrepreneurial journey on some level for us. Again, I appreciate on some level, you are in a sales role, so on some level, I feel that's corporate entrepreneurship, right? 

[00:20:37] Brooke Dukes: So for me, the jumping off point, which is another thing I write about in the book, was network marketing.

A friend of mine had been telling me about it for two years, and I thought, in my arrogant way, that is beneath me; there's no way in hell I'm going to do this pyramid scheme. That was literally what I thought when I first heard about it.

And then, as I'm getting to a point of desperation, I know I need to leave corporate America, everything in my being is saying entrepreneur. But I didn't have any entrepreneurs in my family. I had no idea how to go about that.

It was a perfect jumping off point for me because it's hybrid. You still are working within a structure, even though it's your business. So I was there for four years [and] within four years, I made it to a regional vice president. What I loved about it though is the personal development because that is the foundation of many network marketing companies. I loved the women that I met because I recognized that being in corporate America, given my childhood, I didn't really align with a lot of women. And some women, especially when I was in corporate, they were harder on me than anyone else. We found ourselves competing and it wasn't great.

However, in this network, it was a woman-owned business so I really got to see the power and the beauty and just fell in love with women again. I fell in love which in turn, helped me to really build that self-love because yes, I knew a purpose, I had a drive, but my self-love and my self-esteem wasn't where it needed to be.

And so that time there, even though it wasn't my business model, I so appreciated it because it gave me the time to find out what I was passionate about. And that's when I dove in and really started studying everything to do with the brain and behavior and all of that. And then, my second…I started an insurance company because I knew that I wanted, I could do it very easily, especially at that time. 

[00:22:56] Jason Rudman: Hold on! You started an insurance company.

[00:22:58] Brooke Dukes: I did.

[00:22:59] Jason Rudman: Okay. Why? Other than you could do it easily. What was that solving for you? 

[00:23:05] Brooke Dukes: What it was solving for me was a financial crunch. 

[00:23:08] Jason Rudman: That's what I was going to assume, given the journey that I know you've been on. Okay…

[00:23:14] Brooke Dukes: Yeah. And I did that. I built a book of business over a year and a half with my team and I was able then to sell that business. I went in with my, I had a partner, I created a partnership with another company, another consulting firm, and we built over sixteen years and I learned so much in that, like really dove into everything and we were working on culture, leadership, sales, billion dollar companies—Quicken Loans and Home Points, and all these very large organizations—which was wonderful for me to learn on.

But, as a consulting firm, when you're working with such large companies, it's feast or famine. And my partner and I disagreed on the direction the business should go. I really wanted to start working with entrepreneur, small businesses. I was getting burnt out from the large companies, all the red tape and it's like trying to move a freighter. You don't see the impact that you're making as quickly as you do in a small business.

So in 2023, I went out on my own without any partners and started BMD consulting with my vision to raise the world's consciousness. Take everything I learned from these billion dollar companies and bring it to small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, so they can learn from my experience and from the experience I got from some of the giants.

[00:24:53] Jason Rudman: So that journey leads us to Success by Design Club. As I mentioned, it's a community for high achieving leaders and I could wax poetic, based on the boilerplate language that you shared with me about what it was, but I'm not going to do that. Would you describe the concept and ultimately what you're trying to achieve?

[00:25:12] Brooke Dukes: I went back to my roots when I first came out of corporate, and really, what was it that I was missing? What would I have loved to have had at that stage that just wasn't available? And also I looked at where are we at right now with AI, with COVID. 

When I take all of those things into consideration, and my vision to impact the world, I knew I needed a community of like-minded people, because that was one thing I couldn't…women, especially at that stage, we weren't really sharing the ideas and I really wanted some peers to be able to talk to. What I recognized was, we're all dealing with the same things. Some of us just are afraid to talk about it.

So, I knew I needed to get my story out there. I needed to attract, because I knew there were a lot of women and men in my same space, where you wake up, you're just going through the motions. You feel great. When people ask you what brings you joy, you're like, I don't even remember anymore. I've been on this hamster wheel for so long. I forgot who I am and what makes me happy. So I knew it was a community.

I knew that with COVID we wanted to come back. We wanted that interaction. We were craving connection again. Then, with AI, people don't need to pay for information anymore; the way that I was doing it for all those years, standing on the stage or being in a boardroom, training, talking to people, giving them information, we don't really need that anymore. What do we need? We need community. We need connection. We need experience. We need shared experience with others to feel that support.

And so that's what Success by Design was born from because I wanted to speak to those high achievers and really help them. They're pushing, they're performing, they're pretending, and they want to start building success that not only looks good on the outside, but it feels good on the inside.

So I wanted to just get it out there.

[00:27:29] Jason Rudman: Yeah, I feel again your focus is particularly for women but at the end, I think it's universal. And I think the pandemic taught us a lot about these universal challenges that for so long, women and men never actually gave voice to. There are a lot of men in my life who would subscribe to “I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel and I don't know how to get off.”

I think, again, societal norms for men and women create, they also reinforce these hamster wheels of the breadwinner or the role of the woman to nurture the kids. I feel like deconstructing all of those heteronormative views as part of the un-shedding. The stopping pretending that you described that the Success by Design Club ultimately helps people lead to.

[00:28:14] Brooke Dukes: Yeah. And I feel like you're absolutely right and that's why we have men in a Success by Design Club as well, because it's a human issue. Yes, have women experienced a lot of, they have been held back. And it's time for us to take a seat at the table. We can no longer dim our light. You know? I know for me, not only, I took on the same role as my stay at home mother while working a full-time job. So I don't know how liberating all of that was. I felt not liberated at all.

And on the other side of it, you have men that are taught, don't show any emotion. Take the action, make it happen. You are the man, you're the breadwinner. We turned them into robots. So, on both sides, we are telling people to not listen to our internal wisdom that's telling us this is all bullshit.

[00:29:14] Jason Rudman: Yeah.

[00:29:14] Brooke Dukes: So, you've talked about that masculine and feminine…

[00:29:17] Jason Rudman: Yeah, so you described hyper-masculine energy. You as somebody that was in the hyper-masculine energy mode, I think, because of the environment and what you were trying to do to, what you would now say is, survive because you were not thriving, right? It was what you needed to do to survive that intersection of masculine and feminine energy. I think the inference of hard and soft power and how that gets supplied.

So connect that, if you would, to the club. If I were a member of the club, a. how do I join, b. what do I experience, and c. what's the impact that you ultimately believe the Club is going to have on this group of leaders.

[00:29:58] Brooke Dukes: One of the main things is because I am a recovering masculine frequency workaholic person, and it really was a complete identity shift for me because I had built a great deal of success using that model, but I hadn't built a great deal of fulfillment, especially as I got older.

So before, it was all about chasing action, getting it done, forcing, making it happen. So many people find themselves in that, and you mentioned people are terrified to get off the hamster wheel because they think everything they built will fall apart. What we teach is that is not the case. 

Yes, you could have been very successful, as was I, with that type of activity, that type of frequency. What I know now is I am so much more successful, attracting ease and flow, just pausing to listen to my body, to align that mind and body because I am my best success strategy. And my best work is done when I'm journaling, when I'm meditating, when I'm walking in nature, when I'm getting downloads of things that I need to respond to, as a manifesting generator, that are going to move me towards my vision. And listening to that, recognizing that I don't know the path that's going to get me to my vision. If I knew it, I'd already be there.

So, I need to really focus and look at what God, universe, whatever you believe in, what are the signs that are coming to me every day and when I'm in constant activity, because for me, when I felt uncertain or afraid, I would take action because it gave me relief. It helped me to feel certain because that was my conditioning.

So what we teach people, whether we're doing consulting or with Success by Design, is slowing down actually can bring you more success. In Success by Design, for our core membership, we have a monthly call. It's an hour and a half. It's me and I'm teaching people exactly how to jump off the hamster wheel, how to create success that looks as good on the inside, as it does on the outside.

What's gonna look good and feel good to me may not to you, and that's okay. We don't need cookie cutter, we just need to remember who we are and take guidance from ourselves. We also have a resource library with programs, PDFs and videos. Then we have an executive membership that people really want to dive deeper and they want some individual coaching, with round tables, not just with me, but with the other members. We give an additional call per month, which is an hour and a half, where we really dive into more specifics on your specific human design, your specific conditioning and behaviors, and what's going on with [them] as they align to your vision or not.

We're so confident that this is what is going to move corporate America and the world forward, we give the first month for free and the core memberships  are forty-seven dollars ($47) a month. Give up Starbucks and you can make it happen because I really want to impact, I don't want any barriers to entry. I want this in everyone's hands.

[00:33:43] Jason Rudman: Changing corporations through changing leaders. So you've mentioned the Club, you have a Culture Compass as well that is geared to companies. How do you work with companies on their leadership halo, their culture and creating a culture that emulates everything that you said for the individual you've recognized is incredibly important. How does that work at the company level?

[00:34:08] Brooke Dukes: So we have assessments. We have a cultural assessment, leadership style, sales style. And ideally, in a perfect world, if I lay out the plan for a company, the first thing they would do is take a cultural assessment because it's an amazing way to understand how your people are experiencing your culture today. Culture is the beginning of everything. If growth is stalled, if your people are leaving, if you can't attract top talent, sales are lagging, it all goes back to culture. 

And then it [Culture Compass] also tells you, from your employee's perspective, the ideal culture that they would like to have to make them happiest and most productive and we align that with the eight areas of the company that most impact sales. All the way from onboarding to customer service and everything in between.

Then you receive a detailed report that gives—we'll do an hour and a half with the leadership team —to really dive into that report and so that you can put together a map based on the challenges you're experiencing, based on the goals that you have, what is your step-by-step map that you need to shift the culture because you do not want to boil the ocean.

[00:35:31] Jason Rudman: When we started to talk about this great episode, you also mentioned that embedded in your work is what you've called a GRACE communication framework. I think we need more grace in the world. So it is G R A C and then a small e. Would you give us a few notes on the framework and what it seeks to accomplish?

[00:35:49] Brooke Dukes: Oh, thank you. That is also an assessment, a framework from Maslow's six basic human needs. Four of those needs we are asking for unconsciously as we communicate. 

So, one is growth. The others are recognition, achievement or connection. So what we're able to determine from that is someone's focus and motivation and the need they're asking for. What we have been able to do is really support companies and individuals, employees within that company too, quickly, within the first ten minutes of meeting someone.

This isn't a personality test, right? It is to find out, in that moment, what need that person is asking for. So whether you are a salesperson, can you imagine how your sales would increase if you knew how to quickly, within the first ten seconds, build rapport with a prospect? That's the number one thing in communication, building rapport.

So we've been able to use that. We use it in Success by Design. We use it in our consulting to really help people because everything, culture, communication, that's the foundation of an organization. If an organization or an individual is experiencing challenges—for an organization, it goes back to communication and culture, for an individual, it goes back to their environment and their communication. So we're able to really work it on both sides.

[00:37:28] Jason Rudman: Yeah. Without revealing who, company or individual, is there a really insightful from:to that you could describe for the audience? You worked with a company or an individual and they were here and, through the work, you're able to share where they are today.

[00:37:51] Brooke Dukes: I have both, so I'll give you the company first. Then you can let me know you want to hear the individual. 

[00:37:55] Jason Rudman: Let's do both because this integration of the personal and professional, as we've learned each other and talked about this, we don't have two separate lives, or I don't think we should. 

However, I think, to your point, imposter syndrome, not being authentically yourself, I can attest that at early in my career, there were two versions of me. There was who I was outside of work and who I was in work and they were not compatible. Yeah, let's do personal and professional.

[00:38:23] Brooke Dukes: So professional. The first one, it is a commercial building company, about fifty seven million [dollars in revenue] and the founder, CEO would like to retire. However, his right-hand person, within three years of him being able to retire, left, and that person was supposed to take over the company. So then, as he was digging in and really looking at, oh, there were so many reasons why it was actually a blessing that this person left—this person was a cancer within the company.

We were able to recognize that via the cultural assessment because that's the biggest thing that a lot of leaders don't understand. You could spend a lot of time and a lot of money having individual conversations with people. So many times, I would say, probably seventy percent or more of the time, they're going to tell you what you want to hear, especially during times of change within the company because they're afraid they're gonna lose their job. It's self preservation.

The cultural assessment, it's anonymous. So we really got to the root of what was happening within the company and we recognized there was a lack of communication. As you can imagine, in commercial building, it's not exactly the number one thing people pay attention to is am I communicating most effectively? It's “we're under a time crunch, get your shit done or get out,” you know, a lot of times.

We were able to use GRACe as this owner was really explaining to the team what happens, how things were going to shift, that we were coming in to support them, we were able to pull things out of the report to really tell them, here's what's in it for you. No matter how giving and how loving and how value-focused you are, you still think what's in it for me?

So we were able to pull that out too, here's what you said [then] this is how we're going to change it. Here's what you said would make you happiest and more fulfilled. Here's how we're going to change that. And it's just been so amazing. They didn't proactively create the culture, so they don't know how to sustain it. This helps you to be able to grow without the secret fear in the back of your mind, whether you know you have it or not, what if this changes everything? What if people start leaving? What if it crumbles the culture? All the things. So that was how we used it with this particular client of ours.

[00:40:58] Jason Rudman: And then on the personal level, do you have a success story to share?

[00:41:02] Brooke Dukes: Of course, I do, this is an existing member of our Success by Design Club, and she came to us with a lot of the same issues, right?

I don't know what I want anymore. The things that used to light me up, they don't anymore. When I asked her, what do you love doing, she's like, I don't even know. I am so heads down, I can't figure out where I should go, what I should do.

So, she joined Success by Design and she joined as an executive member and we started to unpack what was going on in her life. We started to unpack her design. And it really came out that she wanted to be a business owner. She wanted to start an events company. She wanted to write a book. She wanted to slow down, and it gave her all of that.

It gave her the tools to be able to communicate that to her family once she had to communicate to herself  because she couldn't, she didn't know what that was. And then to take the steps. Today she's running a thriving business and the book is practically writing itself.

And it's all because I just reminded her who she was, where her genius lives, why she was experiencing these challenges, how to shift, how to decondition some of the things that were going on and the way that she reacted to make it more proactive. And now, we're doing an event in May, she's instrumental in that and supporting us, as are all the members.

And also, mid-February, because what I'm finding is as we're growing, the community needs more support, my IT person, who is a genius, is creating a bot called Oz, and it will be a coaching bot. So you can go in and given your human design and the things that you're experiencing, it can give you daily activities that align beautifully with you. Journal prompts to help you to uncover things. You can ask coaching questions just like you would ask me on the calls.

And Oz will essentially me, it's my intellectual property in an AI bot. So we're so excited about that as well.

[00:43:19] Jason Rudman: You have to move with the times, right? AI is a thing and yet we're still trying to figure out the role that it's going to play and how comfortable we are because part of what I also take from everything that you've described is, at the end of the day, humans will always need humans.

[00:43:35] Brooke Dukes: Yes.

[00:43:36] Jason Rudman: And I feel sometimes we get so far away from that. The interconnectedness, you mentioned this, I think the pandemic taught us a lot.

One of the things for me that it taught us is the frailty of human connection. And especially when you're sequestered away from the family you were born into and the family that you've chosen, that has chosen you, that your community, that human connection is so vital. And I think it's clearly something that is at the cornerstone of, as you said, you're a human designer by heart, right? The connection you've realized is incredibly important to you because it also fuels you. 

We started this conversation acknowledging it's the turn of the year. So, do you have any pearls of wisdom other than we will ensure that people know how to check out the Success by Design Club, but if we were to take it up a level because you want to change the world, is there a sentiment that you would leave the audience with in this new year that's particularly resonating with you as you think about the years ahead?

[00:44:42] Brooke Dukes: So in fact, I just did an episode for our podcast on this, and a lot of times this time of the year is so very stressful to people, right? They're trying to plan for the next year and I mean, it really, we double down on that activity and a lot of times we lose our boundaries because family's involved and should do this and I have to do this.

I really challenge people to take this time to rest and reset. No doing. Recognize what your boundaries need to be around family, around work to keep your peace, to keep you feeling fulfilled and take this time to energize. Because when we do that, get into nature, right? If you meditate or if you journal or get a massage, like really get into your body, get into that and see what comes up.

Really slow down. Take this time to really rejuvenate for twenty twenty six [2026] and I guarantee when people do that, they will have the most inspiring ideas that come up that they would not have had if they were just feeding into the whole craziness of the holidays that they put out there.

You don't have to do that. You don't have to feed into that frenzy that they want to get us all into. This can really be an amazing time to reconnect with yourself and your family if you set it up correctly.

[00:46:24] Jason Rudman: Yeah. The adage slow down to speed up comes to mind. Brooke, this is a remarkable conversation. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate your honesty and your authenticity. I really do. The book Burn On, Not Out—you can download it on a Kindle, which is what I did, and it is a quick insightful read. How do people learn more about Brooke Dukes? your consulting business? the Success by Design Club?

[00:46:54] Brooke Dukes: You can go to brooke m dukes dot com and learn about everything that we do. I am Brooke Dukes on all social media sites, and we also have a podcast called Burn On, Not Out, so you can learn more about what we're doing there as well.

[00:47:13] Jason Rudman: We will make sure that we reference all of that in the show notes. Brooke, at some point, I think we probably have another conversation in maybe season three because I can't wait to learn more about the success stories and everything that you're doing to change the world.

Thank you for your time and here's to a phenomenal twenty twenty six [2026] for you.

[00:47:35] Brooke Dukes: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

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