In June 1940, Winston Churchill stood before the House of Commons and gave the "Finest Hour" speech, setting a steady, resolved temperature for a nation facing the worst.

Nine days later, his wife Clementine wrote him a letter. Someone close to him had come to her with a warning: his staff were finding his manner rough, sarcastic, and overbearing, and he was in danger of being disliked by the very people he led. She wrote, "you are not so kind as you used to be," and she urged him toward "Olympic calm."

In public he was steady. In private, his people had stopped bringing him ideas.

In this episode, Julie talks to founders, business owners, and every leader about a truth most of us would rather not hear: you are the thermostat of your company. Your mood, your urgency, and your late-night one-word replies travel faster and farther than you think, especially in a small team with no layers to absorb the heat.

Julie covers:

• The difference between a thermometer leader and a thermostat leader
• Research on emotional contagion, and how one person's mood moves through a whole team
• Four signs you might be adding to the mess, starting with a team that has gone quiet
• 1 Peter 4:7-8 and why Scripture calls leaders to be clear-minded and disciplined when the pressure rises
• Five practical ways to set the temperature on purpose, including "find your Clementine"

Julie also shares where her own work is headed. She now consults with founders and leadership teams on culture, communication, and how leaders show up, as an outside set of eyes who can see what everyone inside the building has gotten used to.

CONNECT WITH JULIE Website: https://juliewagner.co

Instagram: @leadershipclearly and @oh_hey_jules

TikTok: @oh_hey_jules

THE LEADERSHIP CLEARLY FOUNDATIONS COURSE Out today. Five days, one short lesson a day, and a one page Communication Plan you can lead from for years. www.juliewagner.co/the-leadership-clearly-foundations-course

FREE: THE LEADERSHIP VOICE STYLE QUIZ Four minutes. Find out how you actually communicate as a leader. www.juliewagner.co/the-quiz

Renée Bryan spent 35 years in financial services training advisors and brokerage houses across the country. She was very good at it. Then in 2012 she committed more deeply to her faith, and almost immediately her six figure income dropped to one sixth of what it had been.

She did not walk away from God. She leaned in. What she learned in that season became a book.

In this conversation, Renée and Julie get into the part of money nobody preaches on. Not budgeting. Fear. Renée draws a line most financial teachers will not draw, between the fear you are carrying and the money you are losing, and she is specific about what a fear based financial decision actually costs. She talks about the 3 a.m. moment at her dining room table during her divorce when she asked God where He was, and why she now believes she used that moment as permission to leave. She talks about the season she is in right now, watching a business she loves wind down, and what it looks like to grieve something while still walking forward.

She also does not flinch on the hard parts. Renée names the institutions she believes profit off people's financial fear, walks through why she thinks Dave Ramsey's debt-free-first approach is a fear based rule rather than a universal one, and offers the test she uses on her own choices: if she is building a story in her head to justify a decision, that is usually the decision God does not want her making.

Julie brings her own season into it. She was recently laid off from her corporate role, and this conversation happens in the middle of that, not after it.

"If God puts a passion in our heart, God will make a way. Period. End of story."

Renée E. Bryan is an author, educator, and the host of Fearless Finances. Her book, The Morality of Money: Remove Fear and Discover Financial Freedom Through Simple Economic Principles and Universal Truths, is available on Amazon.

This is our first video episode. Watch it, or listen wherever you already get the show. Audio is not going anywhere.

This conversation is financial education and personal testimony, not personalized financial advice. Talk to a professional who knows your situation before making decisions about debt, savings, or investments.

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CONNECT WITH RENÉE E. BRYAN

Author website: reneelizbryan.info The Morality of Money on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFHBT1TY

Money & Faith Study, for book clubs and church groups: www.reneelizbryan.info/money-faith-study-for-churches/

Fearless Finances on YouTube: youtube.com/@Fearless_Finances

Instagram: @fearlessfinances4ever

TikTok: @fearlessfinances4ever

Facebook: Fearless Finances Read the first 30 pages free: reneelizbryan.info/the-morality-of-money-by-renee-e-bryan-sample.pdf

Email: fearless.finances.forever@gmail.com

Renée is also President and Primary Instructor at Bryan Ventures, Inc., insurance education: www.bryanventures.com

CONNECT WITH JULIE

Website: https://juliewagner.co

Instagram: @leadershipclearly and @oh_hey_jules

TikTok: @oh_hey_jules

THE LEADERSHIP CLEARLY FOUNDATIONS COURSE Out today. Five days, one short lesson a day, and a one page Communication Plan you can lead from for years. www.juliewagner.co/the-leadership-clearly-foundations-course

FREE: THE LEADERSHIP VOICE STYLE QUIZ Four minutes. Find out how you actually communicate as a leader. www.juliewagner.co/the-quiz

This episode is financial education and personal testimony, not personalized financial advice.

In one year, Hannah Kuykendall's eleven month old daughter was rushed to the ICU with no diagnosis and no promise she was coming home. Her husband's spine was crushed on a landscaping job, leaving him without feeling from the waist down and without the career he had spent ten years building. They lost their home. They moved to a new state with no family nearby. And overnight, Hannah became the only income for a family of five, on a teacher's salary.

She did not step back from a single thing she was leading.

Not the fifth grade classroom. Not chapel. Not the children's ministry at her church. Not her home.

In this conversation, Hannah tells Julie what it actually looks like to lead people while your own world is coming apart, and why she believes surrender and quitting are opposites, not synonyms. She talks about feeling like a fraud in leadership roles while privately struggling with her own faith. She talks about sitting in a parking lot calling her papaw because she did not know how to feed her kids. And she talks about what changed the day she stopped trying to author the chapter she was in.

"The chapter I was in was not in my control, but I knew the author who was writing it."

Hannah is a fifth grade teacher, a chapel teacher, a children's ministry director, a wife, a mom of three, and the author of She Builds Her Home, built on Proverbs 14:1. This episode is for the leader who is holding everything together in public and coming apart in private, and who needs to hear that being honest about it will not cost her the room.

A note on this episode: we recorded on video and the file never made it to the cloud. You will hear both of us reference video and "our viewers." The audio is fully intact. Next week's episode is our first video podcast.

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CONNECT WITH HANNAH KUYKENDALL

Website: www.mrshannah.com

Book: She Builds Her Home https://a.co/d/04hTA1bB

TikTok: @thehannahunfiltered

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@Shebuildsco141

Email: contact@mrshannah.com

THE LEADERSHIP CLEARLY FOUNDATIONS COURSE

Releases Monday, August 31st. Pre-order now. juliewagner.co/the-leadership-clearly-foundations-course

FREE: THE LEADERSHIP VOICE STYLE QUIZ

Four minutes. Find out how you actually communicate as a leader. juliewagner.co/the-quiz

CONNECT WITH JULIE

Website: juliewagner.co

Email: julie@juliewagner.co

Instagram: @oh_hey_jules and @leadershipclearly

TikTok: oh_hey_jules

NEXT WEEK Renee E. Bryan, author of The Morality of Money, on removing fear and finding financial freedom. Our first video episode.

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