A strategy brief for Jer · June 2026

Leadership for the soul.
A plan for the pack.

Everything we've researched, designed, and fact-checked to turn Wild Dogs Leadership into a launching pad that makes leaders everywhere — without trading away the crock-pot.

scroll · the hunt begins
01

What we found in your material

Four documents, one promo video, one website. Together they aren't a course catalog — they're a worldview: the head is commoditized, the gap is the soul, and formation is slow on purpose. The four values aren't branding; they're the curriculum.

Excellence

Action-oriented, with the highest kill-vs-chase ratio of all African predators.

Sacrificial

Hunters feed the pups and the injured first — and when food runs out, they go back out.

Team Leadership

Teamwork and leadership as synergistic — core to work and play.

Resilient

Legacy through facing hardship courageously and relentlessly.

Wild dogs
~80%
Lions
~28%
Hunt success rate. The pack out-executes the apex predator — by hunting together. No competitor owns this brand language.
3–7×
Coaching is underpriced vs. the executive-coaching market
~0%
Current website conversion — a brochure with a contact form
1
Empty market quadrant: soul language and research evidence
"If you want to change the world outside of you, you have to change the world inside of you." — Jer, promo video. The whole plan serves this sentence.
02

Scale the front and the back.
Keep the middle small.

The small, slow, soul-deep cohort is the moat — big players can't sell it because it doesn't scale. So don't scale it. Scale the reach in front of it and the multiplication behind it.

Scale the front

Content, the free Scorecard, the AI companion — your ideas touching thousands who may never buy anything.

Keep the middle small

Cohorts and coaching: premium, fit-screened, Jer-delivered. "Deliberately small and slow" — said out loud, as positioning.

Scale the back

The Pack alumni community, org-paid cohorts, and certified Guides — alumni who become the leaders who make leaders.

The ripple model — self → team → org → community → world — already is a theory of scale. The business model and the philosophy are the same shape.
LinkedIn · referrals · promo video ATTRACT — free Leadership Soul Scorecard ~40% lead capture 5-day email course + live workshop NURTURE — free Soul of the Leader cohort ★ $950–1,500 / seat The Pack — alumni community $25–40 / mo 21 Laws track + coaching retainer $400–1,200 / mo B2B org cohorts $2,500–5,000 / seat Wild Dogs Guides certification — leaders who make leaders
03

Three things first

Zero build cost

Reprice — 3–7× under market

$100/hr sits in the bottom decile for 25 years of experience (NA average ≈ $288/hr). Move to retainers: $400–600/mo individual, $750–1,200/mo org-paid. Grandfather current clients. Price anchors the entire ladder.

Verify before scaling

The Maxwell IP question

Teaching a paid course built on the 21 Laws may require Maxwell Leadership licensing. The own-IP flagship is the asset that can be grown and licensed freely — verify before anything scales.

Positioning

The 15-month course isn't the front door

Market norm for a first purchase is ~6 weeks. Keep the long course — it's the most defensible thing on offer — as the prestige continuation, with a 6-week "Foundations" extract as the entry product.

04

The Kahneman discovery:
science proved the thesis

We ingested Thinking, Fast and Slow cover to cover. The Nobel Prize–winning psychology of judgment is the head-vs-soul message, proven: knowledge lives in System 2; behavior under pressure comes from System 1 — and System 1 is formed only by prolonged practice.

System 1 · The Automatic Self

Fast, always on, runs your leadership at your tired worst. Cannot be educated by information. Formed only by reps over months — the soul, in Jer's language.

System 2 · The Knowing Self

Slow, deliberate — where the 5 Levels and trust pyramids live. Knowing doesn't transfer to doing. The head, in Jer's language. The gap between them is the product.

"My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence… as it was before I made a study of these issues. System 1 is not readily educable." — Daniel Kahneman, after a Nobel Prize's worth of studying bias. The crock-pot thesis, with a Nobel attached.

The wicked environment

Power measurably increases trust in your own gut while deference corrupts your feedback — the more senior the leader, the more they need a pack that tells the truth. The scientific case for cohorts and The Pack.

Team tools, straight from the research

The premortem · write-before-you-discuss · judge decisions by process, not outcome. Slotted into sessions 5–7.

05

The courses — nothing replaced, everything deepened

Maxwell + Lencioni stay as the warm spine Jer loves. Every session gains two companions: a soul text and a research twin — the empty-quadrant position made real: evidence-armored soul.

Flagship · 9 sessions · certificate

Team Leadership: The Soul of the Leader

MAXWELL 5 LEVELS + LENCIONI 5 DYSFUNCTIONS

Jer's structure unchanged — projects, chat questions, 35 hours. Each session adds a soul text and research twin:

  • Pack Covenant — Clinton's timeline + Ivey character research
  • Humility & Will — Brooks's second mountain + Collins's Level 5
  • Servant First — Greenleaf's best test + Grant's giver data
  • The Leader's Shadow — Palmer's five shadows + the Accidental Diminisher
  • Trust — Brown's BRAVING + Edmondson's psychological safety
  • Resilience — Bolsinger + the Stockdale Paradox
  • The Ripple — "impact that continues in your absence" (Frei)
Formation track · 20 sessions · ~15 months

21 Laws: The Body of the Leader

MAXWELL'S 21 LAWS — IN FIVE ARCS

The spacing is the pedagogy. Five arcs give the long road chapters, each with a research twin:

  • The Leader's Lid — LPI pre-assessment (5M+ respondents)
  • Earning the Right — Google's Project Oxygen
  • Multiplying Others — Wiseman's 2× capability finding
  • Momentum & Priorities — Collins's flywheel & 20-Mile March
  • Legacy — LPI re-test: measured growth as the proof artifact
Soul text+ Maxwell / Lencioni spine+ Research twin= Evidence-armored soul
Greenleaf · Servant LeadershipBarton · Strengthening the SoulCollins · Good to GreatLoehr & Schwartz · Full EngagementPalmer · Let Your Life SpeakWiseman · MultipliersBrown · Dare to LeadGrant · Give and TakeClinton · The Making of a LeaderKahneman · Thinking, Fast and SlowCoyle · The Culture CodeParker · The Art of GatheringKegan & Lahey · Immunity to ChangeRohr · Falling UpwardEurich · InsightEdmondson · The Fearless OrganizationNouwen · In the Name of Jesus
06

The Leadership Soul Scorecard

The website's one conversion action. Built on Kahneman's method — don't ask people to rate themselves; make them catch themselves. Fifteen questions, no self-ratings, every answer a small honest mirror. Quizzes capture ~40% of takers; the contact form captures ~0%.

Part 1
Instinct
Fast, fluent questions that catch System 1 in the act — halo trap, self-credit, the harshness trap.
Part 2
Evidence
Count, don't estimate — feeding the pups, "I was wrong," the deferred call and its fear, truth from below.
Part 3
Shadow
Three scenarios that discriminate the shadow poles of each leadership energy.
Part 4
Soul
Container or contents · hollow-after-the-win · the amnesia test · the gap — asked last, by design.
Q6 · The Kegan upgrade

"Imagine acting on the call you've been deferring — this week. What's the first fear that shows up?"

Reveal: you're not failing to act — you're succeeding at a commitment you didn't know you'd made. One foot on the gas, one on the brake.

Q12 · The Rohr frame

"How much of your energy goes to polishing what you've built — versus discovering what it was all for?"

Reveal: you built a world-class container. This score is your acquaintance with what it was built to hold.

Q14 · The amnesia test

"Your next major achievement — but no one will ever know. Including, after a year, you. Still pursue it?"

Reveal: the difference between building a résumé and building a soul. Also the mutuality screen.

Alpha Hunter Tracker Heart TYRANT · ABSENT RELENTLESS · WORN-DOWN SCHEMER · CRITIC RESTLESS · NUMB HEAD–SOUL GAP THE HEADLINE SCORE
Alpha — the Sovereign

Blesses rising talent, decides under pressure. Shadows: Tyrant / Absent Alpha — and each is the other's flip risk.

Hunter — the Warrior

Disciplined force for a mission bigger than self. Shadows: Relentless / Worn-Down.

Tracker — the Sage

Sees what others can't, spends it to equip people. Shadows: Schemer / Critic.

Heart of the Pack

Keeps the mission human. Shadows: Restless / Numb — with clinical signposts where needed.

07

Beyond the course

The Pack

Alumni community · $25–40/mo

Never cold-launched: free for 3 months post-cohort, one monthly ritual Jer leads, everything else member-to-member. The retention engine, referral engine, and Guide pool.

The Pack Companion

AI · between sessions only

Never an "AI coach." WOOP rehearsal, immunity-map journaling, Dinner-of-Truth prep. Plumbing for the crock-pot — the evidence says AI scaffolds; it cannot form.

B2B Cohorts

$2,500–5,000 / seat, org-paid

Same course, same delivery — 5–10× the revenue per cohort. The HR Support line becomes the door into these accounts. Assessment pre/post data is the sales collateral.

Wild Dogs Guides

Certification · year 2

2–3 hand-picked alumni licensed to run the flagship. Maxwell certified 40,000+ and produced the dilution; we certify three, fit-first. Greenleaf's best test, operationalized.

Painted Dog Conservation

$800 = one anti-snare collar

"Every cohort funds a collar." Sacrificial becomes a receipt. ~$2–5K/yr, days to set up, and no leadership brand anywhere has a species partnership.

Retreats → the Safari

$3.5–5K domestic · $12–15K Mana Pools

A 3-day alumni retreat this year at 60–85% margins. The year-2 moonshot: soul work in the bush where Dynasties was filmed — watching the actual pack hunt.

08

Making leaders willing — fact-checked

The hardest problem isn't teaching character — it's getting successful, defended people to want the mirror. Every approach below was verified against meta-analyses; the popular ideas that failed fact-checking (growth-mindset effect sizes, noun-identity copy) are excluded by design.

ApproachThe principleEvidenceWhere it lives
Motivational interviewingNever assert a diagnosis — assertions generate counter-argument; evoked reasons generate changechange talk r = .55Reveal copy, enrollment calls
Self-affirmation firstAffirm an unrelated value before hard feedback — never afterd ≈ .27–.32Values screen before results
Autonomy + real deselection"This isn't for you if…" + "you're free to do nothing with this"SDT meta, 184 datasetsAlready Jer's instinct — sharpened
AA-grade group structureLeader discloses first · accountability dyads · long durationCochrane: beat CBTCohort norms, The Pack
Facilitated WOOPIf-then plans close every session, live — facilitation ~doubles the effectd = .65The homework spine
Anticipated inaction regret"Who will you have become at 70 if nothing changes?" — paired with a next stepr = .50 intentionsResults pages
Adult character changeCite Hudson & Fraley (measured trait growth in ~16 weeks), not pop mindset stats12-study mega-analysisSession 2 — "I am who I am" rebuttal
09

The order of operations

Now — 3 months

Foundation

  • Reprice coaching & flagship
  • Verify Maxwell licensing
  • Build the Scorecard; rebuild the site around it
  • Start the LinkedIn rhythm
  • Contact Painted Dog Conservation
3 — 9 months

Engine

  • First repriced cohort, with assessments pre/post
  • Launch The Pack with all past grads
  • Pack Companion for clients
  • Quarterly free workshop · start the book draft
  • First podcast guest spots
9 — 24 months

Multiply

  • First org-paid cohort · 6-week Foundations course
  • Domestic retreat · publish the book
  • Publish outcome data
  • Pilot 2–3 Wild Dogs Guides
  • Price the Mana Pools safari