Welcome everybody to an episode of the Crafted Journey here from Digital Artisans. We've got a special guest here today, James Kowski, who I have been working with in his adventure of hierarchal learning. James, if you will give us introduction of your name, your area of expertise, your current title. Thank you. Great to be with you here today, Susie, and I appreciate this. So my name is James Koski, and I'm the founder of Hierarch LLC. And we are originally a high performance coaching practice. I've been certified as a performance neuroscience coach in the area of flow and the psychological state of flow. Prior to that, I had a degree in engineering and I worked for about thirty five years in the semiconductor industry and then retired out of corporate about seven years ago and started along this path. Currently working in development of new curricula, programs, new frameworks to support people of faith who are also professionals, which is called salt and light cohort of about twelve people that we meet weekly. And we have, tell twelve structured sessions that focus on spiritual anchors, aligned work, longevity, which is taking care of and mastering your physiology and psychology, and togetherness, managing relationships. So these are all kind of foundational elements to connect our faith to our profession. And human growth and development are my areas of focus. I'm current currently pursuing a PhD in in human growth and development from a neuroscience perspective and focusing on the impact of Christianity on human flourishing. And with that, we're gonna pivot back. You mentioned that you studied engineering, so we're gonna go all the way back to your origin story. And we don't have to stay long, but but tell us what drew you into engineering, and and where did you study? Yeah. So I I went to high school in, Western New York, Dunkirk, New York. I attended Cardinal Manzenti High School, grew up Catholic. And, my guidance counselor, father Ted Rogue, told father Ted, I I'm kind of interested in psychology. I was taking a class from Mr. Birkin, who was one of our teachers at Menzene. It was an introduction of psychology, I was really fascinated with it. He said, you know what? There's not much going on in that, and you're really good at math and science. You should look into this engineering thing. I think it's going to be big. This was in nineteen seventy eight, and it was before the semiconductor industry and microchips and all of that. It was the Wild West back then. He sounds like a pretty prescient guy. Yeah. Father Ted knew what he was talking about. I was fascinated with NASA, had a pretty powerful CB radio outfit back in the days. Was, right behind my house, interstate ninety, called the Thruway in New York. And so I could I could get on the my CB radio and a really tall antenna out the back, and I could talk to truckers going back and forth. So that was my thing. Was always interested in that. Just understanding how electronics work, I was kind of interested in that as well. So I I was fortunate enough to travel the world and and work on a lot of interesting projects. What was your first grown up job after college? What what in specific do you remember about it? So I was very when I was at at RIT, they they had a co op program there. So you did a lot of work study. So my last year, I had to get two quarters of work study in co op and two quarters of school. And they started the first undergraduate program in microelectronics in the country. And one of my most important mentors, Doctor. Lynn Fuller, hired me to work full time in that program in microelectronics. And that kind of launched me into into industry. I had four interviews, four job offers. One was with national semiconductor with Fairchild. One was with Texas instruments. And one was with a company called analog devices, which is still a very big and successful company here in Massachusetts. And so I moved to Massachusetts in nineteen eighty three, took that job with Analog Devices and, and I've been in Massachusetts ever since. And, and that was, it was a management working right in manufacturing, making microchips. And what was really interesting is I I had to to work with individuals who were on the line actually doing the work of making the microchips. Some of them gone to college. Most of them got out of high school and were able to job in manufacturing. So it was just a great opportunity to work with a broad range of a lot of different people, and female and college educated and really brilliant engineers and people who were just hard workers on the line. And I learned so much from that job. You called out father Ted. You called out this gentleman, Lynn. Is there anybody else that really made an impact on your career that you'd like to think back on and maybe give a shout out to? Yeah. Well, my sixth grade homeroom curse. Yeah. So he was he was instrumental in in my me getting interested in science back in sixth grade. And it was interesting. I went went home a couple of years ago and I was able to arrange. I spent the night at doctor Fuller's and hung out with him and his lovely wife, Oksana. Then I was able that next day after I spent the night there, I was able to set up a meeting with Doug Kirst, which I hadn't seen him in probably thirty, forty years maybe. And he had just recently retired from teaching. And he was in Rochester, so I went to see him. So those two guys were hugely instrumental. And throughout my career, there were so many that made an impact on me. But, you know, if I think about from a current perspective, I've I've been a coach, and I recognize that a number of my clients, large majority of them were were people of faith, not by design. It's just to work with me. I decided to work with them. I hadn't really reconnected with my faith, but that's happened over the last few years who really inspired me. A couple of them were clients. A couple of them you might know. And one of them was father Frank Savola, who's actually going to be presenting at the Salt and Light Mastermind in the company. And so he was an important mentor for me as I reconnected with my faith. But then I joined a non denominational church north of Boston that's growing in leaps and bounds. Just this last Easter, we had eighteen hundred people come for Easter service, which is I know how it compares to other churches, but I would venture to guess that it Oh, I've got a a few mentors from that that have been a big part in my spiritual journey. Pastor Bren O'Tonnen, pastor Travis Boyd, who are who, you know, have met with me quite often over the last last couple of years, last few years. And so all of these people were inspiration for me to come up with this salt and light framework that is the basis for this group coaching cohort of which you're participating now. That's awesome. Getting to hear a little bit more about the people who make it who you are. What was the moment that made you decide to start this particular cohort? Who specifically do you think it's designed for? So the moment was when a little over a year ago, I started working with a group to talk about marketing and it's critically important, especially for a small business owner and for a business owner like a coach. Oftentimes it's difficult to do self promotion and to market yourself. You want to stay, you don't want to be fake. You want to be genuine and how to identify your ideal client and, and just started not trying to really overtly sell, but to just put it out there and say, here's what I'm to join. And I wanted to make it super affordable for people and, you know, and give a lot of value. But people who find it difficult to connect them to to their faiths, which there's a hunger for because people wanna be able to, you know, to feel that the work that they're doing really matters too. Yeah. Right. Your calling is where your gifts meet the world's greatest suffering. And what what I know for myself and what I think I see in others that I'm journeying with is that we have a kind of suffering because we really thought that careers would give us a certain thing that, you know, we knew we shouldn't have thought it, but we thought it, and here we were trying to redefine, but you can't do it you just can't do it alone, and so this cohort that you provided, this direction you provided, honestly, it was a it was a for me, so I'm so glad that you had it. Thank you. What have your greatest takeaways from our sessions together? Well, that's a great question. I got a validation of what I suspected. Now this is not the first mastermind I've done. I've done a number of them, but I did them using high performance frameworks that I was trained in. Those cohorts worked beautifully, you know, and we focused in, you know, the areas, you know, high performance habits and areas of, such as performance, necessity, clarity, energy, productivity, courage, fluent physiology and psychology and persuasion and purpose and all of those things, which are foundational work. You know, when, and when I first became a coach, you know, kind of always, I was always, I always thought about, you know, this is, this is really, this type of work is it's kind of it's connect it's Christian in its nature to, you know, coaching. Think You can you it's easy to connect your Christian faith to that type of service. And so and so moment with salt and light was when, you know, I kind of thought that at the beginning, you know, these cohorts that I ran with the, with the high performance frameworks, they worked really well, bringing people together who had never met one another, very open and vulnerable. You know, you tend to, you know, it's, it's counterintuitive, but you tend to allow yourself to talk about things you might not normally talk about with people in the office or family or everybody's got hidden agendas, you know, and you don't know what you might lose. And you know, when you have these types of conversations with people that are, that you're close to. They worked great, but they didn't work. I could see that they could work better. And I thought, you know, if I brought together people of faith who kind of have some of the same challenges that these other people have, but maybe some different ones, but they're still people of faith that that particular group is going to really coalesce, crystallize quickly so that it becomes a much more effective cohort to help people. Because we've got the common denominator, that foundational element of our belief in Jesus. That was my moment, and that's been validated with this first cohort. I've been very, very fortunate, but looking forward. I'm going to be launching three more of these this year. Great. Yeah. Well, congratulations. And one final question. So this is where we're going to set out things. We're going to talk to our future selves, write ourselves a little letter right here. What are the three goals that you're setting for your future self to look to have done in the next five years? Great. You know, connecting with the, the, the salt and light program is just one element of my life. The other element, well, there's multiple elements of course, but, but the other thing that that's really animated me over the last year is, is the connection to my, my church, which I'd mentioned it before. The name of the church is Netcast, which is, you know, it's cleverly named for being fishers of men That the big hallway out in front church is like a river. And the bait we use is free coffee, and we get to talk to people because we have a coffee shop right in the front of the church. But I have it's such a natural it was such a natural church home for me, largely because of the music. You know, it has an incredibly worship band. And when I was younger, was twelve years old and taking guitar from another important mentor of mine, Tom Gestwicki, who was my first guitar teacher. He started a folk choir at my church playing in the folk choir. I was it was early worship. And then, so at netcast, I started working in the kids ministry, just volunteering with third graders, second and third graders and helping them out. They didn't have live worship, live singing in kids' ministry. You know, they would watch videos or they'd watch a simulcast of the church service and the worship that was going on in there. It's just, you know, disconnected. And so last September we started a kids' ministry worship team, and I have access to all the musicians that are part of the main worship group. And for Easter, we had six musicians on the stage in the big room that we have in kids ministry, and and it was amazing. Right? So so connecting with Netcast, thinking about my PhD, thinking about salt and light, all of these things might be able to church further their goals of reaching more people about Jesus. So the thing that I'm envisioning is kind of a melding of all of this stuff that, you know, between church, my my education and the work that I'm doing to further promote this concept of the salt and light master and try to to impact as many lives as a result with that work. Exactly how that's gonna turn out, I don't know. But my vision is as our church is growing rapidly, I would I would love, you know, our our church take on a ministry for professionals. And because I think that oftentimes, people who are caught up in their careers lose sight of their faith or don't even ever get connected to it, even it. And they they rely on themselves and their careers to be what defines them, and that's and that's, that's all well and good, but as we know, it's I don't know. I hope that answers the question. I think it came You did. So I'm gonna put a calendar invite on your calendar for five years from now, and we're gonna review how things are going. I love that. With, with the church, with salt and light, and then with your PhD. Beautiful. Fantastic. Thank you again for doing what you do, for sharing what you've shared. Thank you for your contributions to the world that is being made right now. Well, viewers, listeners, thank you again for tuning in, for learning a little bit more about someone's crafted journey. Look forward to seeing you on the next show.
