The H2 Leadership Podcast

Making Time for Your Next Chapter — mitchmatthews.com/time (free with code H2LEADERSHIP)

In this episode, Alan Briggs sits down with Mitch Matthews — coach, speaker, and host of the Dream Think Do podcast — for a conversation that feels less like an interview and more like two coaches getting honest with each other over coffee. Mitch is the CEO of a training organization focused on helping executives, entrepreneurs, and founders define what success actually means to them — and then build a plan to go after it.

What unfolds is a wide-ranging, practical, and genuinely fun dialogue about dreams, the questions that unlock them, the questions that shut people down, and what it looks like to lead well in a moment of historic change.

If you've ever locked up when someone asked you what your big dream is — or if you've watched someone else lock up when you asked them — this episode is going to reframe how you think about that conversation entirely.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Mitch's origin story — from a 12-year-old loitering at a bike shop in Iowa to discovering his life's calling at a Schwinn Selling School at 14
• Why Mitch calls his work "success coaching" instead of life or executive coaching — and why that distinction matters
• The Dream Think Do framework — why dreaming has to come before thinking, and why most people start strategizing too early
• Why the question "what's your big dream?" actually shuts people down — and the better questions to ask instead
• The power of the word "might" — and how one small word change opens up possibilities that pressure closes off
• What semantic interference is and why it matters for every leader, coach, mentor, and manager in the room
• The story of the first Big Dream Gathering — how a product nightmare in 2006 became a movement now happening on college campuses and corporate retreats across the country
• Why dreams have seasons — and how to tell the difference between a dream that isn't right and a dream that just isn't right yet
• How the best leaders are navigating AI — standing in the tension of what's scary and what's possible at the same time
• Why AI is actually making people hunger for real human connection — and what that means for coaches and leaders
• Alan and Mitch coach each other live on the question "what do you want?" — and what makes a great clarifying question great

Reflection Questions:

• What's something you want to experience more often — and what would it take to give yourself permission to pursue it?
• Are you dreaming before you think, or are you jumping straight to strategy before you've given yourself enough space to imagine?
• Where in your leadership are you standing in the tension between what's scary and what's possible?

Free Resource from Mitch: Mitch put together a training called Making Time for Your Next Chapter — built specifically for high achievers who want to figure out what's next but feel like they don't have the time to even think about it. It's normally $97, but he's making it free for H2 Leadership listeners. Head to mitchmatthews.com/time and use the code H2LEADERSHIP at checkout.

Connect with Mitch Matthews:

• Website: mitchmatthews.com
• Weekly "4 Things" email: mitchmatthews.com/4things
• Instagram: @mitch.matthews
• Facebook: @mitch.matthews.104
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mitchmatthews
• Dream Think Do Podcast: mitchmatthews.com/blog/

Resources Mentioned:

• Making Time for Your Next Chapter — mitchmatthews.com/time (free with code H2LEADERSHIP)
• Gradually Then Suddenly — Mark Batterson
• The Second Mountain — David Brooks (referenced by Alan)
• Working Genius Assessment — Patrick Lencioni (referenced by Alan)
• H2 Leadership Coaching — h2leadership.com

 

In this episode, Alan Briggs brings two of his popular Taking Steps video emails to the H2 Leadership Podcast — short, practical teachings he sends to leaders every couple of weeks. Today's focus is space. Not the theoretical kind. The kind you actually have to fight for in a real schedule with real demands pulling on you from every direction.

If you're constantly behind, constantly stressed, and never quite present in the moment — Alan has a reframe for you. Space is not a luxury. It is an occupational requirement of leadership. And if you don't fight for it, it is not going to show up on its own.

Alan walks through three types of space every leader needs to build into their life, and then zooms in on one of the most powerful practices he's implemented in his own leadership — the quarterly think day. Eight hours, no meetings, no email, just deep thinking on the biggest decisions and opportunities in front of him. The results have been consistently transformative.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why the way most leaders think about time is actively working against them
• The three types of space every leader must fight for: micro, medium, and macro
• What micro space looks like in a real day — and why even five minutes matters
• The Sabbath as a "get-to day" in a world full of have-tos — and why every leader Alan knows who takes it seriously wishes they had started sooner
• The quarterly think day — what it is, how Alan structures it, and why it costs about ten dollars and returns serious clarity
• Why leaders who only react are slowly losing their creativity and their purpose
• What it looks like to go from a full day of deep thinking to presenting clear objectives to your team
• How macro space — vacations and sabbaticals — isn't just good for you personally, it's essential for your team and your leadership
• The simple challenge: can you take two, four, or eight hours this quarter to actually think?

Reflection Questions:

• When was the last time you had uninterrupted space to think about where you're actually going — not just what's in front of you right now?
• Which of the three types of space — micro, medium, or macro — are you most neglecting, and what would it take to fight for it this week?
• If you blocked a think day this quarter, what are the two or three big topics you'd bring with you?

Resources Mentioned:

• Right Side Up Journal — available on Amazon
• H2 Leadership Coaching — h2leadership.com
• Taking Steps — Alan's monthly email and video series for leaders

In this episode, Alan Briggs sits down with Stu Davis, Executive Director of COS I Love You — a Colorado Springs organization that brokers connection between the church, nonprofits, business, and public sector for a candid, practical conversation about what it actually looks like to expand your network without it feeling slimy, transactional, or just plain weird.

This one was recorded live in a room full of leaders, and the energy of that conversation comes through. Alan and Stu have both spent years learning, and sometimes failing at the craft of genuine connection, and in this episode they pull back the curtain on how they think about it, how they've had to mature in it, and what separates the connectors who build real trust from the ones who just work a room.

If you've ever walked away from a networking event feeling like you needed a shower, this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why networking feels slimy — and the one thing that makes the difference between transactional and transformational connection
• The "engagement funnel" framework: how relationships move from acquaintance to friend to partner to collaborator to team — and why skipping steps is where things go wrong
• Why you should always state your agenda upfront — and how doing so actually builds more trust, not less
• The abundance vs. scarcity mentality in practice — including a story about a colleague who said one thing and did another
• What the best connectors do that most people don't — and why being only a connector isn't enough
• Alan's five-part framework for moving from intuitive to intentional connecting: grid, filters, environments, processes, and multiplication
• The green-light introduction — what it is, when to give it, and why it's one of the highest forms of relational trust
• Why name-dropping usually backfires — and what to do instead when you need to establish credibility
• How one dinner unlocked over $110,000 in business for Alan — and the mindset shift that almost made him say no
• Why "needy is creepy" — and what it looks like to refer someone to a competitor and actually gain trust by doing it
• The one question to always ask at the end of a meeting: "Is there any way I can serve you?"

Reflection Questions:

• Who in your network do two people you know need to meet — and what's stopping you from making that introduction?
• Are you operating from an abundance mentality or a scarcity mentality — and would the people around you agree with your answer?
• Have you moved from intuitive to intentional in how you connect people, or are you still running it all out of your head?

Resources Mentioned:

• COS I Love You: https://cosiloveyou.com/about-us/ 
• Who Not How — Dan Sullivan (referenced by Alan)
• Right Side Up Journal — available on Amazon
• H2 Leadership Coaching — h2leadership.com

About Stu Davis: Stu Davis is the Executive Director of COS I Love You, an organization in Colorado Springs that sits at the intersection of church and city — brokering relationships and building collaborative opportunities between nonprofits, faith communities, businesses, and public sector leaders.

Want more? Visit h2leadership.com for coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead well.

Leadership is complex, but it doesn't have to be lonely. Let's get after it.

In this episode, Alan Briggs does something he's never done before — he opens by admitting he was wrong. For years as a leadership coach, Alan over-emphasized habits and healthy rhythms while under-selling the power of big, audacious goals. He watched too many leaders get crushed by massive targets they never hit, and he overcorrected. Now he's setting the record straight.

The truth is, direction and destination aren't in competition. They need each other. Habits without a destination drift into maintenance. Big goals without daily rhythms become wishful thinking. The mature leader holds the tension between both — and that tension is exactly what this episode is about.

Alan shares the personal story behind his upcoming trip to Machu Picchu — a promise made at his grandfather's memorial — and how that destination is anchoring his daily training and health habits right now. He also walks through what thought leaders like James Clear, Jim Collins, Angela Duckworth, and Benjamin Hardy all say on both sides of this conversation, and why they're ultimately pointing toward the same conclusion.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why Alan swung the pendulum too far toward habits early in his coaching career — and what changed
• The "both/and" framework: how direction (daily habits) and destination (big stretch goals) work together
• Alan's Machu Picchu story and why a promise at his grandfather's memorial is driving his health right now
• What James Clear, Jim Collins, Angela Duckworth, and Benjamin Hardy all agree on
• Jim Collins' bullets and cannonballs concept and how to apply it to your leadership
• The "We are going to _____ by _____ because _____" formula for naming your moonshot goal
• Why measuring lead indicators (not just outcomes) is the key to real progress
• How the Right Side Up Journal connects big goals to daily habits in one place
• The boat and oars analogy — and what it costs you when only one oar is in the water

Reflection Questions:

• What big goal have you been avoiding naming because you're not sure you can hit it?
• Are your current daily habits actually moving you toward a destination — or just maintaining where you are?
• Where have you been choosing between healthy and high impact, when you could be pursuing both?

Resources Mentioned:

• Atomic Habits — James Clear
• Grit — Angela Duckworth
• 10X Is Easier Than 2X — Dr. Benjamin Hardy & Dan Sullivan
• Good to Great — Jim Collins
• Right Side Up Journal — available on Amazon

Want more? Visit h2leadership.com for coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead well.

 

Most leaders have heard that coaching is valuable. Fewer have seen what it actually looks like from the inside. In this episode Alan Briggs and Jonathan Collier pull back the curtain on a real coaching relationship, using clips from Alan's conversations with Daryl Smith, gathering pastor at The Journey Church in Newark Delaware, to show what Healthy AND High Impact leadership looks like when someone does the work.

Daryl stepped into a bigger role with real weight and made a decision: he was not going to just survive it. What happened next is exactly what H2 Leadership is all about.

In this episode:

• Why stepping into a new role is one of the most common entry points into coaching and what separates leaders who thrive in the transition from those who just endure it
• The counterintuitive move that changes everything: why slowing down is the most high impact thing a fast-moving leader can do
• The org chart story: how Daryl went from sitting on an idea for six months to presenting it to his lead team in seven days and why his lead pastor is still referencing it today
• A full walkthrough of the Start Stop Keep tool and the five questions that helped Daryl step into 2026 with momentum, confidence, and direction
• What Daryl said about how coaching changed his marriage, his relationship with his kids, and his presence at home

The line that will stay with you:

Coaching helped Daryl listen to God more clearly, lead people more wisely, and live more honestly. That is Healthy AND High Impact in a single sentence.

This episode is for the leader who:

• Just stepped into a bigger role and is figuring it out as they go
• Is grinding toward high impact but knows their health is taking the hit
• Has been thinking about coaching but has not pulled the trigger yet

Connect with H2 Leadership:

Website: h2leadership.com

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and help other leaders find the show

Sabbatical gets misunderstood, feared, and misused — and most leaders either wait too long to take one or avoid it altogether. In this episode, Alan joins Andrew Estes on the Nexus Church Planting Podcast for a conversation that cuts through the baggage and gets honest about what a sabbatical actually is, why boards resist it, why church planters think they can't afford it, and why the leaders who take it well come back with more vision, more creativity, and more fire than they've had in years.

If you've ever thought sabbatical is for someone else, someone further along, someone with a bigger team — this one is for you.

What You'll Learn:

• The difference between micro, medium, and macro rest — and why you need all three to lead sustainably
• Why sabbatical is not discipline, not a vacation, and not an escape — and what it actually is
• The abundance vs. scarcity mindset that determines whether a leader can truly rest
• Why boards and congregations fear sabbaticals — and how to address every one of those fears honestly
• The surprising truth about sabbatical as a leadership development tool for your entire team
• Why church planters can't afford to wait — and what to start doing now even if you're only three years in
• The six R's framework Alan uses to help leaders prepare well and waste nothing
• "Don't resign, redesign" — what it looks like to come back from sabbatical ready for the next decade

Key Insight:

You are not as valuable as you think — and that's actually great news. Sabbatical forces the leadership development your team needs, creates the empowerment you've been meaning to build, and reminds you that God was never depending on you to hold it all together in the first place.

Reflection Question:

What's your honest excuse for not pursuing sabbatical right now — and is it rooted in scarcity thinking or genuine wisdom?

This episode originally aired on the Nexus Church Planting Podcast. We're grateful to Andrew and the Nexus team for sharing it with the H2 community.

Connect with Nexus:

Full episode: https://www.nexus.us/episode/06-alan-briggs--demystifying-sabbaticals

Website: https://www.nexus.us

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nexus-church-planting-podcast/id1838803043

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd5AMLFOOTjdiQ8wiwMW51Q I

nstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nexus_church_planting/

Resources Mentioned:

The Sabbatical Journey Field Guide — available on Amazon

Sabbatical Coaching Group — sabbaticalcoachinggroup.com

Lilly Foundation Clergy Renewal Grants — lillyfoundation.org

 

Why are we winning right now? I've sat with several leaders recently who are honestly asking that question. Not bragging. Not saying they're crushing it. Just genuinely trying to understand why the flywheel is finally spinning — why the fruit is finally showing up.

The answer is almost always the same. They've been tending the grove for a long time. They just couldn't see it yet.

In this episode, I'm talking about the difference between the grove and the grocery store — and why so many leaders are frustrated not because they're failing, but because their expectations are off. We want grocery store results on a grove timeline. And that gap is where discouragement lives.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the leaders who are winning right now have had things growing below the surface for a long time — and what that means for where you are today
• The grove vs. the grocery store: two images that will change how you think about growth, results, and timing
• Why winter seasons in your organization aren't a sign of failure — they're when the roots grow deepest
• How pruning, dormancy, and rest prepare you for the next season of fruit
• Why expectations around speed are the real killer for most leaders — not what they're producing or not producing
• The crucible: what to do in the in-between season when you've left Egypt but haven't reached the promised land
• Why internal cultivation — your heart, your maturity, your self-awareness — matters as much as what you're building externally
• The reminder every leader needs: you are cultivating, but you are also being cultivated

Key Insight:

The grocery store is an illusion. It hides all the work — the soil preparation, the transportation, the years of tending before a single piece of fruit made it to the shelf. When we build our expectations around the grocery store, we miss the beauty and the necessity of the grove.

Reflection Questions:

Are you longing for grocery store results when you're actually in a grove season — and what would it look like to tend that grove well right now?

What crucible season has shaped you most, and how is that work showing up in what you're building today?

Want More?

For coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, visit h2leadership.com.

We are leading in one of the most anxious moments in recent history. The attention economy, the age of outrage, nonstop news cycles, and the pressure to have an answer for everything — it's a lot. And most leaders are moving from confusion straight to action without ever stopping to get clarity.

In this episode, Alan Briggs shares five necessary skills he believes every leader needs right now. Not hacks. Not productivity tips. These are the deeper practices that keep you grounded, tethered, and leading with conviction instead of anxiety, even when everything around you feels like it's spinning.

This is fresh teaching from Alan. He describes it as something that was crystallizing for him in real time. And if you've been feeling the weight of these anxious times in your leadership, this one is for you.

What You'll Learn:

• Why the antidote to overwhelm is not certainty — it's clarity, and how fighting for even 5% of it shifts everything
• What it really means to listen to understand — and why this skill matters most when change is highest
• The gift of Sabbath and micro-rest that most leaders have left unwrapped for years
• How to discern when and how to respond to crisis — and why you are not a PR firm required to comment on everything
• Why you need to audit who and what you're listening to — and what to do when your inputs are producing bad fruit
• The most counterintuitive leadership shift Alan has seen in a decade: trading winning for faithfulness
• What changes when you lead from conviction and Spirit-guided wisdom instead of pressure and anxiety

Key Insight:

When overwhelm is high, the antidote is not certainty — it is clarity. And when you fight for even a small amount of clarity, overwhelm and clarity have an inverse relationship. One goes up, the other comes down.

Reflection Questions:

• What would change if you led from conviction and Spirit-guided wisdom instead of pressure or anxiety?
• Of these five skills, which one do you most need to lean into right now — and what's one step you can take this week?

Resources Mentioned:

Right Side Up Journal — coaching companion tool (available on Amazon)

Want More?

For coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, visit www.h2leadership.com.