Sam Donaghey

Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. I’m your host, Sam Donaghy. And today I’m joined by Fast Slow Motion’s Director of Growth, Michael Johnson. Michael, it’s always great to have you here on the show.

Michael Johnson

Always excited to be a part of the same.

Sam Donaghey

So today’s episode is all about unlocking purpose and building a brand that aligns with who you truly are. So today we’re going to explore how to avoid costly mistakes, find clarity in your mission, and turn your expertise into a thriving business. So whether you’re a corporate leader, you’re an entrepreneur, or someone who’s ready for the next big step, today’s conversation is going to offer practical tools to help you succeed. Joining us today is Gabrielle Boucher, a sought after speaker, TEDx coach, seven-time author, and co-founder of The Purpose Company. Gabrielle is known for helping individuals transform their purpose into a scalable, profitable business, empowering them to speak, write, and consult at the highest level. So Gabrielle, we’re thrilled to have you with us today.

Gabrielle Bosché

Hey, what’s up Sam? Hey Michael, I’m so excited to hang out with you guys.

Michael Johnson

Gabrielle, your work really speaks for itself. And personally, I’ve been going through this Purpose Factor journey. I’ve read the book, actually just finished the last chapter this morning. And so now I’m like ready to go. I’ve really enjoyed the journey and it’s an incredible resource. So just wanted to first say thank you for putting that together for people. It’s really, really, really needed.

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, well, thank you. It is definitely a lifelong journey that myself and my husband Brian — my business partner, co-author, co-TEDx presenter — Brian Bosché and I put together really because of our own personal journey and our personal frustration with that journey of finding purpose. It’s not exactly something that you go to school for, saying I want to be an expert in purpose. In fact, I studied politics and religious studies — the two things you’re not supposed to talk about. Like at Thanksgiving dinner, I did both of them at once. But we wrote The Purpose Factor really because we felt like we had to. Once we had really unlocked the science behind purpose discovery, applied it to our own lives, and helped thousands of clients, we knew that we needed to create something that was systemizable and scalable that would work for anybody, anywhere.

Michael Johnson

So you went through this journey yourself. Could you give us a little more background on that process and maybe what you figured out your purpose was?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, I think that every single one of us has this curiosity inside of us of who am I and why am I here? And answering those two questions is really the most profound journey I think any of us can really go on. And usually we’re asking those questions at pivotal times in our lives — these transition moments. So it could be graduating from high school, going into college. It could be starting a career, starting a relationship, ending a career, ending a relationship. There are these pivotal times in our lives where things slow down just long enough for us to really be curious about who we are and what we’re supposed to do with this beautiful thing called life.

And that was really a big journey that I myself was on. I was kind of checking off all of the boxes. I’m a first-generation college graduate, first person in my family to go to grad school, and I had this really clear idea of where I wanted to go. And in my mid-20s, everything fell apart. The direction that I thought I was going after, the dream job that I thought I was going to be going into — I was like the typical millennial, like I want to go change the world. So I got into nonprofits. I got into working for universities. I got into working for government. I got out of working for government. Anything that you can imagine. I was really just trying to find my purpose. I felt like a kid lost at Costco — like, are you my purpose? Are you my purpose? I kept trying to associate myself with mission-oriented people and mission-oriented things, thinking that their conviction was going to be my conviction. And I realized it wasn’t until I really had to tap into who I am and what is the best of what I have to help other people — which is how we define purpose — that I really could create a lot of clarity about what was next.

Because I think so many times we meet people who are letting circumstances decide what’s next. They’re letting the next relationship or the next job or the next economy or administration decide what’s next for them. And really what we’re on a mission to do here at The Purpose Company is really empower people with clarity so that they know exactly who they are and exactly how they can help serve the people around them.

Sam Donaghey

You know, I’m interested as well, Gabrielle — you were one of the first people really to crack the code on millennials in the workplace. So as a fellow millennial, what helped you recognize the need for clarity around working with us?

Gabrielle Bosché

Oh my gosh. Well, so much. I think a big part of it was that I was someone who was born to a mom who had me at 42. So she was kind of bringing me into a season where she would bring me along with her friends and her colleagues. And I was homeschooled for part of it — I swear I’m normal. But because of that, I just had kind of a different upbringing than a lot of my friends. A lot of my friends were my mom’s friends. And so I would go into rooms and have great conversations with people who were 20, 30, 50 years older than me. And what I saw was this huge disconnect between people who were young and people who were older. And there was so much frustration and friction between the relationships. And a lot of it was because we were more critical than curious. We would look at each other and say, I know what’s wrong with you. It’s because you don’t like technology, or it’s because you love technology too much, or you think the world moves too fast — well, you think the world moves too slow. And there was so much that I think we were really missing from each other.

And so I have long believed that my mom deserves credit for the TSA’s “if you see something, say something.” She used to say that all the time. And I truly believe that if you see something, you have the authority to solve it. And I just noticed this friction point a lot in my early teenage years. And so I wrote my first book actually about how to reach the next generation when I was 17, because I realized that there was such a gap — so much we were missing out on as a society and as a workplace because we just couldn’t quite understand where the other person was coming from. So bridging the generation gap and the generational leadership gap is something that I just kind of fell into because I knew I needed to solve the problem for myself so that, hopefully, I could help solve the problem for my generation.

Sam Donaghey

Love that. So in my other role, besides being the podcast host for the Fast Slow Motion Podcast, I’m the recruitment director. Another question would be: what are some of the unique things about millennials in the workplace that you’ve seen, and do you have any recent insights?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, I think it’s so interesting because there’s always that challenge of what’s wrong with the next generation. And this isn’t something that’s new — I mean, Socrates was complaining about it back in the day. So we’re always looking at generations around us and creating generational distance. That’s actually how, as a generation, we create a generational identity — through differentiation. And actually, that’s not a bad thing. That other generations look at each other and say we’re so different — that actually creates a core identity. I think it’s a really good thing.

But what’s been so interesting, Sam — and you might have seen this in your own journey — is that millennials lead very differently. So as we’ve seen other generations where maybe you see baby boomers who tend to lead very top-down, and that’s because they were the last generation where, by and large, they had military or military-era parents. So everything was very systemized, everything was very structured — it was like create something and delegate it out. The next generation is Generation X, which was really the latchkey generation where they really popularized the phrase, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. So very independent. Yes, they love working with a team, but at the end of the day, they know every single person needs to pull their weight. And then you come to the millennials, which was really the soccer team generation — the participation trophies that we all catch hell over. But what that has actually looked like translating into the workplace is that it’s not that millennials want trophies — it’s just that we’re seeking recognition for contribution. And that’s really a human component. So millennials really lead from the middle. And this is actually the millennial leadership theory that I became very well known for over the last decade: baby boomers lead from the top, Gen Xers lead from the side, and millennials lead from the middle.

And so it’s really interesting seeing these three generations in the workplace. And now as we have this huge rush of Gen Z who are tending to lead a lot more like their parents the Gen Xers, and leading from the side — only time will tell.

Michael Johnson

That’s so interesting — the different components of different generations. And kind of shifting the focus to purpose: do millennials or current generations have more difficulty with identifying what their purpose is versus generations in the past, or has it always been kind of hard to define for everyone?

Gabrielle Bosché

So every generation really does have this important wrestling moment when they have their coming of age. And so much of this is actually in a wonderful book called Generations by Strauss and Howe — it’s a great book. I definitely encourage folks to check it out. It actually shows almost predictively how every generation is going to struggle through their coming of age and really create this collective identity.

But what we see as a generation is we find that generations tend to either replicate or rebel against how they were raised. Gen Z is actually replicating how they were raised, which is pretty rare — usually you’re going to see the rebellion. So millennials are rebelling against their parents, and boomers tend to be rebelling against those who raised them. And so when you think about purpose — like I said, purpose is the best of what you have to help other people — so much of that is rooted in what you’ve overcome.

So if I only had 20 minutes to sit down with both of you and talk to you about your purpose, one of the first questions I’d ask is: what have you overcome that you can help someone else overcome? It’s a powerful question with really important ramifications. And so when we look at each generation, they’ve all overcome really hard things. The baby boomers had to overcome really hard things. Gen Xers had to overcome really hard things. Millennials, Gen Z — when we collectively as a generation identify that our authority is in our story of what we’ve overcome, I think some really cool things will happen. And I’ve really seen a lot of that alignment happen over the last five years for millennials where I think we really came together and identified that we’re really the advocate generation. I’m stressing how I actually label millennials as the hero generation — not like we didn’t need more of an ego check — but being known as the hero generation really means, like the last hero generation, the greatest generation, really coalescing around a cause and wanting to be known for solving a large societal problem. I can definitely see that is something very close to the millennial heart, no matter the industry they’re working in.

Sam Donaghey

So you’ve basically defined purpose as being the best of what you have to help others. So many of the guides on purpose make no connection to the application to others. So how did you first make this connection yourself?

Gabrielle Bosché

When we looked at purpose in society, we were really disappointed because the concept of purpose felt so fluffy. Purpose is one of those things that when you’re going through a crisis, people would just tell us you really just need to find your purpose. Or when we were trying to figure out what’s next, it’s like, well, is this something that’s aligned with your purpose? Or go after your purpose. It was something that felt really good to say, but was really hard to hear because we didn’t know how.

And so as we really started studying — it took about a decade of really looking through systematically — what is purpose? How does it practically show up? Because you see every society has a concept of purpose, this reason for being kind of put inside of it. And so what we did was we really studied what did popular religion say about purpose? What did Stoic philosophers say about purpose? What were the core foundational components of motivators? What did they say about purpose, and what were the things that have kind of stayed true over time? And then how do we take something and really distill it into something that was replicable? Because so many times we’d meet people and they’d say, I found my purpose. And it was this — looking out into a sunset, having this beautiful emotional moment. And I’m a data nerd. So I’m like, I can’t replicate that. I can’t quantify having an emotional moment looking out over the sunset.

So how do I create something that no matter who you are, where you come from, you can walk through a series of questions — which we put into our Purpose Factor Assessment — to be able to really find out what is the best of what you have to help other people. And we’re really the only assessment that helps people connect their purpose to what they do. Because what I don’t want someone to do is find their purpose, or think they find their purpose, and then decide it’s exactly opposite of what they’re already doing.

Because I think we are so addicted to change as a society. It’s like: you’re not happy, change your relationship status, change your job, change your location, change your hair — I got bangs last year, so I know what that’s like. And so many times we think the change is going to create the clarity, but it’s actually the opposite. And so we were really keen on making sure we focus on what we call acquired skills, which is the education and experience you’ve really received over your lifetime. And how do you put that in your hands to actually serve other people? You don’t need to change what you’re doing right now to live out your purpose. You can do it right now, no matter where you’re at, no matter what you’re doing.

Sam Donaghey

So it’s a mindset shift as opposed to a complete pivot into a different direction based on your circumstances or the work that you do.

Gabrielle Bosché

100%. And we’ve done this tens of thousands of times. And so when we look at how people have actually consumed information about their purpose and then answered that really powerful question — what’s next for me — what we wanted them to be able to do is instead of looking to the right or to the left, looking up and looking down, to look at: what do I have in front of me? Who do I have around me? And how can I actually create more opportunities to serve other people with my purpose right now?

I mean, I’ve seen that from working with celebrities, with former NFL athletes, with optical surgeons, with the military. What we’ve actually found is when you give people clarity on how to use their purpose right now, it creates such a sense of calm and peace and, most importantly, fulfillment. That’s actually one of the core things that we measure with teams when we work with them — how fulfilled are you at work?

And so much of it really comes from the perspective shift, exactly like you said, Sam, that once you actually find out — man, I was using my purpose all along — what a cool thing. And that’s why we love working with companies so much, being able to help people find their purpose at their company. That’s what we really see as the future of employment: empowering companies and corporate leaders to help their people find their purpose at work.

Sam Donaghey

And it’s just looking at some numbers here — the Gallup Global Emotions Report shows only 40% of people worldwide report feeling a sense of purpose or meaning in their daily activities. So this is a huge market for you really, isn’t it?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, it’s a never-ending market too, because there’s always more people to help and serve, and there’s always new opportunities to help people make those connections. My most fulfilling emails are from people who go through — maybe they find our Purpose Factor Assessment through their company, their company provides it, or maybe they find it online — and then they have their kids take it. It’s actually designed for 10th grade and up. And it changes the conversation around the dinner table. They’re like, I helped my spouse — my spouse took it and they didn’t know what was next for them, and now they totally do. So it becomes a kind of viral moment, I think, when people find their purpose and actually figure out what to do with it.

Michael Johnson

One of the things I thought about or read in the book — The Purpose Factor, which is incredible — I love the concept of finding or discovering your purpose in and around what pains you. Could you talk a little bit more about how things that bother you can uncover or unpack what your purpose really is?

Gabrielle Bosché

It’s a huge clarity point when you do identify what bothers you. I kind of quoted my mom quoting the TSA — if you see something, say something. There’s a reason, Michael, that when you see something, it bothers you and it doesn’t bother me or Sam. There’s a reason that you see something and you’re like, why is no one doing something about that? And it’s because there’s something innately in you that knows something’s wrong. And instead of looking around and saying, I wish someone would do something about this, it’s actually that purpose piece inside of you paying attention to a problem that needs to be solved.

Because at our core, every single one of us are problem solvers. Whether you’re the president of the United States or you’re a barista, everyone is solving a problem for someone else. And so when you get really clear on — number one — what problems do you enjoy solving for other people? I love asking: what size of problems do you like solving? Do you like solving big complicated problems? Do you like solving small specific problems? It’s a really important thing to keep in mind so you get to do more of that at work. I also like to find out what types of problems do you like solving specifically, and for what types of people? Is it problems of injustice and representation? Is it problems of contribution and recognition? Is it problems of being equipped and empowered to live out your daily life the best that you can?

So when you actually find out what types of problems you like solving, it brings a lot of clarity too. Because so many people will tell me, oh, I know my purpose — my purpose is to help people. Which is partially true, right? All of our purpose is to help people. But I’ll oftentimes challenge people because I’m a little cheeky: oh, your purpose is to help people, so do you want to help me move? Or do you want to help me do my taxes? Like, accountants don’t even want to do other people’s taxes. And the answer is, of course, that you don’t want to help everyone with everything. So how can you get clarity on who you want to help and what you want to help them with?

Michael Johnson

One thing I love about the way you’ve defined purpose though is you introduce the element of it helping others. So much of what we talk about in society is — it’s my purpose, it’s my why — and it’s very me-centered. And so one unique thing that I love is the element of bringing in other people. How does that help provide clarity to someone who may be struggling with what their purpose is?

Gabrielle Bosché

Well, I think so many times when we talk about purpose, it is so us-focused, and that’s why it’s so depressing. There are actually a number of studies that show the more that you focus on happiness and asking people if they’re happy, the less happy they actually are. And I think that when we continue to say things like, are you happy, or make it really focused on us — like, is this what you should be doing — I think we actually miss the mark.

I think we’re focusing on the wrong thing. And I think when we’re so focused on us — is this what I’m supposed to be doing versus is this who I’m supposed to be helping — it creates a lot more joy in the process as well, because all of us are surrounded by opportunities to help and serve other people, whether it’s our family, our colleagues, our clients, the person who is serving you your coffee in the morning — there’s always opportunities to help other people with your purpose.

So I think that’s a really important shift: moving away from us. One of my favorite quotes is from Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose-Driven Life. One of the first lines is, it’s not about you. And I think that’s really freeing, actually, especially in a society that’s addicted to selfies and opinions and all of that. It really is so freeing when we realize it’s not about us. And as simple as it sounds to say, really losing ourselves really is one of the core foundational pieces of finding ourselves.

Michael Johnson

Gabrielle loves a framework. And so in the book, The Purpose Factor, you really lay out a framework for what composes a purpose. There are four parts: the natural advantage, acquired skills, pull passion, and your origin story. For those that haven’t read the book, could you at a very high level just walk through what some of those are, to help the folks listening, and maybe start that journey today?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, so there are four elements like you mentioned. Natural advantage is the role you tend to play in life and work. And Sam will love this as a recruiter — it’s one of the key ways that we actually help people find out if they are looking for what’s next when it comes to their jobs or their roles. It really tends to be, again, that role that you’re going to find most fulfilling. There are five different archetypes under each of these four elements. And so you may be a builder, or you may be a teacher, or maybe an overseer. And so you’re going to recognize that there is this role you tend to play — it’s kind of the thing that you plug into and do without really thinking about it. It’s the difference between going upstream versus going with the flow. You can do stuff outside of your natural advantage, but it’s going to be a lot harder.

So what I love doing is having teams — say I have five sales team members — and having them take it. They could each have five different natural advantages. And knowing how you actually sell according to your natural advantage is really empowering. Because say, if you’re a teacher and you’re a sales rep, you’re going to teach as you’re selling. Versus if you’re a recruiter, which is one of the types, you’re going to find more fulfillment getting the other person excited about the opportunity. So even that alone we’ve found has been really freeing, for example, with sales teams.

The second type is what we call your acquired skills. Like I said, it’s one of the most unique parts of our assessment tool — it actually shows you how to use the skills you’ve already developed. So say, for example, you could be a messenger. That means you spend a majority of your time taking and packaging information and distributing it for other people. So identifying what skill sets you have so you can lean into those and continue to hone and sharpen those skills.

The third part of the Purpose Factor Framework is your pull passion. That is the problem that you want to solve for other people. So that’s where you’re going to focus on what size and type of problems you like solving and how you’re going to find the most fulfillment solving those problems for other people.

The fourth type is your origin story. Your origin story is the perspective you’ve gained by overcoming some really hard things in your life. And one of the things we love doing with origin stories is really being able to understand: what have you overcome that you can help other people overcome? And being really clear on that. Because so often, whenever you really get down to it and I were to ask each of you who do you really love helping, it’s usually someone who was like you five years ago, or maybe ten years ago, or twenty years ago. Because you know the hurt, the pain, the frustration, the resources, the encouragement. You know what you needed at that point.

And so helping people get really clear on that is really, really empowering. So there are a couple of key questions I love to ask. So if I only have a few minutes to walk through this with people — which I’ve actually done before on podcasts before, so maybe you’ll have to do a follow-up where I actually walk you guys through it — I already mentioned one of them: what have you overcome that you can help other people overcome? The second question I already asked: what size of problem do you like solving — big problems or small problems? The third question I love asking people: where do you see yourself most fulfilled, and can you explain your most fulfilled day at work? Why do I love this? Sam, you can steal this for recruiting. I love finding out what people will say is their most fulfilled day at work, because they’re usually sharing who they’re helping, what problem they’re resolving, and how they found recognition and fulfillment from that experience.

And the fourth question usually comes around: what skill set are you most excited about continuing to hone? Because you always want people to be thinking about forward momentum — what skill set do they have, what area of focus can they continue to go deep on? So those are the four questions I love asking, and your audience can use that in recruiting. They can use it in their one-on-ones. They can use it with their family tonight. It’s a really cool thing to be able to have a conversation around those four questions.

Sam Donaghey

Love that. Just a quick question as well — when it comes to purpose, do you typically try to focus on an overarching purpose, or can purposes be multifaceted? Can you have many purposes across your life?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, it is a foundational question that we talk a lot about at The Purpose Company, as you can imagine: can your purpose change, and do you have different purposes? So by and large, your purpose doesn’t change, but who you serve with your purpose does. So when you get really clear on what is the best of what you have to help other people, you can recognize that who you serve with that is different. So if you’re a stay-at-home parent, you might be serving your community or your family in one way, but if you were to start your own business, you’re now serving your clients in that way, or serving customers in a different way. So by and large, your purpose doesn’t really change, but who you serve with it does. Which I think is actually very empowering for people when they recognize it — they’re not letting circumstances change their purpose, but they’re being aware of who is in front of them that they can help serve with their purpose right now.

Michael Johnson

Yeah, so as people go through their life, their skills are going to change too. They’re going to learn new things, they’re going to get better at some things. How does that impact your purpose? Your acquired skills shifting over time.

Gabrielle Bosché

Yep, so that’s really the foundation. That’s one of the only elements of your purpose that could change. Just because — let’s say, for example, one of the core elements of acquired skills is the craftsman. So that means they spend a majority of their time moving their body. They could be an artist, they could be a bodybuilder, they could be a stay-at-home mom — they’re just moving their body throughout their life, throughout the day. Now they might get into a business where they were podcasting or moviemaking or they were a publicist. Well, now they’ve moved from a craftsman more to a messenger. So you can in fact change your acquired skills. That’s really the only one that changes substantially. But that again just means it’s the skill set that you are using to serve other people with your purpose.

So one of the cool things is when you take the Purpose Factor Assessment — which takes about 20 minutes — it actually produces a purpose factor statement. It actually gives you a statement of here’s what your purpose is. And then it gives you a fulfillment factor statement, which says here’s what’s going to most fulfill you. And it actually shows you what your core values are according to your purpose. So as you can imagine, core values can change throughout your life. And so that will actually be reflected inside of the assessment when you take it. So it’s pretty fun when we work with teams — when everyone on the team takes the assessment and then sees their core values — and we put the core values of the company up on the board and talk about the correlation and how their core values help support the core values of the organization. It’s a really cool feeling when people have those lightbulb moments of like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know there was so much alignment here.

Sam Donaghey

And how many archetypes are there within the framework?

Gabrielle Bosché

There are five under each. So there are 625 different combinations possible when you take the assessment.

Sam Donaghey

Five each, okay. That’s extensive.

Michael Johnson

Well, Gary, Sam and I are both musicians. Sam’s a better musician than I. And I love chicken wings. So how could I differentiate?

Gabrielle Bosché

The chicken wings — as the dish, or is that like a band that I haven’t heard of?

Michael Johnson

No, no, that’s as in the dish, as in the dish.

Michael Johnson

I’ve got a reputation for getting that wherever I go for some reason. So how do I differentiate my love for music and chicken wings from the pull passion that I should use within my purpose?

Gabrielle Bosché

Oh my gosh, that’s so good. Thanks for letting me razz you a little bit. Yeah, so passion is very different from pull passion, which is why we really extensively studied even the term passion. And what’s so interesting is when you look at the dictionary definition of passion, it’s actually defined by Oxford as a barely controllable emotion. And so oftentimes we tell the next generation to follow your passion — but if it was a mad lib and you took out the word passion, you said: hey, Sam, if you don’t know what to do next, just follow your barely controllable emotion. Well, that sounds like a recipe for disaster or jail.

But what we found was it wasn’t the emotional piece of it. Passion is great. Passion can be a core motivation. And so you can be passionate about chicken wings. You can be passionate about ham sandwiches. You can be passionate about solving world hunger. We use that word interchangeably, which really just means that you have a strong emotion for it, which is amazing. But we shouldn’t let our strong emotion stand in place of where our purpose is. And so that’s where pull passion comes in. Pull passion is the size and type of problems that you enjoy solving. And usually one of the core elements — one of the tests of do we know if this is a pull passion — is: are you willing to sacrifice for it?

So the second dictionary definition of passion is the death and suffering of Christ. That’s why you’ve heard of The Passion of the Christ. So whether you have faith or not, I find it very interesting that the second dictionary definition in the English language of passion corresponds to sacrifice. And I think that’s actually a much more interesting definition of passion, because although you may be passionate about music, where does that sacrifice come in? Or you may be passionate about chicken wings — where does that sacrifice come in? And so the emotion side of it I think is really important. But when you’re looking at what kind of problem can I solve for other people, that’s the real passion that we like to spend our time around.

Sam Donaghey

Hmm, yeah.

Michael Johnson

Super powerful. And it brings a lot of clarity to — I mean, the reason I’m talking on this podcast and not singing is because ultimately I wasn’t willing to sacrifice for music. And if I did sing, we’d probably sacrifice some listenership. So I think it’s a big win for everybody. I did love the Purpose Factor Assessment — I took that and would recommend it for everybody. Yeah, and you’ve talked about it a little bit, but could you just tell us a little bit more about why it exists, why it was developed, and how people can access it?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, absolutely. So the Purpose Factor Assessment — you can take it at purposetest.com. It takes less than 20 minutes. I think right now it’s $49 and we’re really on a mission to democratize purpose. We were really tired of purpose really only being for the 1% of the people who could afford to go to the expensive retreats and had enough time to stand up on a mountain, look out at the sunset, and ponder the bigger things of life. And what we wanted to do is really bring purpose back to the people and help people know that no matter who they are, where they come from, or where they stand right now, they not only have a purpose, but they have a duty to use that purpose to help other people. So it’s a really simple template and assessment that you can just take. Like I said, it’s 20 minutes.

At the end of it, you get a comprehensive 49-page report that includes your core values, your purpose factor statement, your fulfillment factor statement. What’s really interesting is as you’re reading this — and I hear reports from people all the time because they always email me back — I had one leader say, this is like witchcraft. Like I had no idea that something like this could read my mail, so to speak. I feel so seen. Because inside of the report, it’s quite prescriptive where it talks about: here’s what’s going to most fulfill you, here’s what’s going to most frustrate you, here’s where you need to spend your time and attention, here are some blind spots that you need to be aware of. And it really is kind of a 360 review. It’s very different from a personality test that might say here’s what you like or dislike or here’s what you’re good at or bad at. This is really foundational because it gives language to what most fulfills you. Because oftentimes we have those days where, man, I really liked what I was doing — that was a really great day — but we can’t quantify it, we can’t necessarily put words to it. And that’s really what the Purpose Factor does: it gives words to your emotions and feelings so you can create moments where you experience fulfillment on demand, where you know this is something that I’m going to really enjoy doing. So whether you’re going into a new job or leveling up in your career or finding new ways to challenge yourself, you can really ask the key question: is this aligned with my purpose factor? And it becomes a decision-making tool to really not only determine what’s next, but determine what’s now.

Sam Donaghey

You know, some of those personality traits that you can do — Myers-Briggs, that sort of thing — they’re developed based on psychology, right? Clinical psychology potentially. So what about this? What is this developed on in terms of the science behind it?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yes, it’s very similarly developed, actually. So when you look at things like MBTI, DISC, StrengthsFinder, that sort of thing — it’s usually a combination. So number one, qualitative research. And that’s really the core foundation of so much of what we’ve done over the last 10 years, really developing and diving deep into a lot of the qualitative research we’ve done on purpose discovery. We’ve manually done thousands of these assessments and collected data and actually looked at what were the things that tended to be true over time.

The second part — and most of the good ones are also focused on this — is brain science. It’s actually what part of the brain lights up when you are talking about things like purpose, when you’re talking about things like fulfillment or strengths. And so that’s also woven throughout. And the third part of — like I said — many of the good ones that have really stood the test of time, is it turns information into a tool. Because information alone is not necessarily transformation. And so you see the really good ones that have become very popular and have been integrated into the way that we live and work are really focused on giving someone a tool set to actually do something with, and a tool set to evaluate themselves in context of other people. Which is really important — a really good assessment doesn’t just say this is who you are. It gives you an assessment and says, here’s who you are in context of others, because that’s really where the tool shines. And that’s something that we’re very, very proud of that the Purpose Factor does.

Sam Donaghey

Gabrielle, as we wrap up, we always like to ask our guests for a quote or a piece of advice that’s inspired their journey. So do you have something today that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Gabrielle Bosché

Yeah, I think the biggest thing would be to really lean into identifying what have you overcome that you can help others overcome. It’s one of my favorite questions I ask people — old and young, doesn’t matter where you come from or what you’ve done. What is that really hard thing that you had to push through, that you had to suffer through, that you really wish didn’t happen to you? And how can you repackage that and put purpose to the pain? Because there are so many people out there who need just a crumb of wisdom that your life has proven you have. So oftentimes I see people who count themselves out. They say, I don’t have authority. I don’t have a white lab coat. I don’t have letters after my name. Who am I to share insight on this? And you’re just a few steps ahead from someone else who desperately needs the information that you’re living and thriving from. And I just encourage you to think back about what that is, and then who is it that needs that information.

Sam Donaghey

Love that. Gabrielle, thank you so much for joining us.

Gabrielle Bosché

Thanks for having me on guys, this is so fun.

Sam Donaghey

Well, that wraps up today’s episode of the Fast Slow Motion Podcast. A huge thank you to Gabrielle for sharing her insights on finding and making the most of your purpose. If you’d like to learn more about Gabrielle’s work or connect with her team, you can visit purposecompany.co.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform and check out past episodes at fastslowmotion.com/podcast. If you have any questions, or any topics that you’d like us to explore, as always you can send them to fastslowmotion.com/podcastfeedback. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you again next time.