How To Become An Agentic Sage (Brian Whetten)

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This is a powerhouse of an episode and one of my favorite conversations I’ve ever had on the show.

Brian Whetten is a leadership coach, author of Yes, Yes, Hell No! and the founder of Core Coaching. He’s spent the last 25 years reverse-engineering how some of the most successful entrepreneurs combine high consciousness with high agency. Along the way he’s discovered what separates people who just talk about consciousness from those who actually overcome “the wall” to unite power, consciousness, and integrity to create lasting value.

Much of our conversation centered around the image below that sparked our relationship and the inspiration for the episode title. Most people get stuck choosing between spiritual bypass and achievement addiction, never figuring out how to integrate both dimensions successfully to embody the illusive “agentic sage” territory. Brian does an incredible job sharing how you can move to the top right and expand your leadership to integrate the best of both worlds.

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This episode is great for:

• Entrepreneurs who've had spiritual awakenings but struggle to integrate consciousness without tanking their business

• High achievers discovering that success without meaning feels hollow and unsustainable

• Coaches and service providers trapped between authentic expression and financial viability

• Leaders ready to stop choosing between being "pure but poor" or "rich but soulless"

Ideas that really stuck out to me:

1. “The wall” is benevolent physics not personal failure. When high-achieving people start adding consciousness to their lives they hit an invisible wall that makes everything exponentially harder. The wall exists as natural law like gravity, slowing you down when you have more power than leadership capacity. Power without the ability to turn it into value creates soul-level holes that generate never-enough addiction whether you're chasing money or spiritual experiences.

2. Power equals consciousness + material resources. In spiritual land, people often treat power like its a bad word. Brian completely reframes power as neutral and simply the capacity to create change in the world. Both spiritual awareness and wealth are forms of power that demand responsible stewardship. The misuse of power regardless of good intentions creates karmic holes inside us that can never be filled through external achievement. True leadership is the capacity to turn any form of power into value for the whole system not just yourself.

3. Proving worth vs. providing value changes everything. When operating from the soul-level insecurity that comes from misused power, we default to proving our worth through self-promotion, achievement, and spiritual superiority. This creates an inherently inefficient never-enough energy. The antidote is consciously shifting to providing value which requires having honest conversations about what others actually need rather than what makes us look enlightened or successful.

4. You cannot skip developmental stages. He maps five stages everyone must navigate such as taking, pleasing, achieving, giving, and receiving. Most conscious entrepreneurs try to jump from achieving straight to receiving (authentic leadership) without going through the giving stage. This creates the pure but poor valley where good intentions meet financial reality. The giving stage works beautifully in families but creates disasters in business because it drops to self-sacrifice when competing with pure capitalism.

5. Pull vs. push transforms the journey. Instead of trying to heal yourself or fix your limitations through spiritual practices, identify what Brian calls "Yes, Yes Hell no" goals so aligned with your authentic desire that they pull you through necessary growth.

6. Containers stronger than your weaknesses are non-negotiable. Every spiritual tradition warns against spiritual pride because you cannot become an agentic sage alone. This requires finding teachers, coaches, communities, or structures that can call out your blind spots and hold higher integrity than you can maintain solo.

7. Problems of excess vs. problems of lack require different solutions. Our culture understands scarcity but has almost no wisdom about abundance. Problems of excess occur when your wealth exceeds your ability to turn it into value. The rich founder trying to have maximum impact is often operating from ego not genuine service. The second-generation trust fund kid represents the endpoint of unprocessed excess who is having resources but no quality problems that require growth.

Brian expands the spiritual development conversation beyond just improving your experience, to the question of value creation. You're not just becoming a better person for your own sake, but also so you can develop the capacity to handle more power responsibly so you can serve at a higher level. This makes the entire journey about contribution rather than personal advancement.

The world needs people who can wield both material resources and spiritual awareness with integrity. But the question is - how the heck do we get there?

Hopefully this conversation provides some helpful clues!

- Scott

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Recommended Resources:

• About Brian Whetten

• Core Coaching

• Yes Yes Hell No! (Book)

• The Dangers of "Repressed Special": A Conversation With Brian Whetten and Tom Morgan

Episode Transcript

• Brian Whetten Full Transcript

Show Notes

• 00:00 - The Journey to High Agency and Consciousness

• 02:46 - Navigating the Wall: Challenges in Growth

• 05:52 - Understanding the Dimensions of Life

• 08:42 - The Role of Consciousness in Business

• 11:54 - The Frustration of Spiritual Awakening

• 14:45 - The Struggle of Conscious Entrepreneurs

• 17:44 - The Dilemma of Spiritual Coaches

• 20:52 - Wealth and Its Impact on Meaning

• 23:51 - Problems of Excess vs. Problems of Lack

• 26:44 - The Nature of Power and Leadership

• 29:31 - The Relationship Between Power and Value

• 37:06 - Power and Leadership: The Balancing Act

• 40:24 - Creating Value: The Purpose of Power

• 44:22 - Pride and Power: The Dangers of Excess

• 48:01 - Healing the Inner Wall: The Journey to Freedom

• 54:09 - Proving Worth vs. Providing Value: The Conscious Business Trap

• 01:04:42 - Navigating the Poor but Pure Phenomenon

• 01:11:56 - The Meaning of Life and Abundance

• 01:12:25 - Solving Problems: The Key to Growth

• 01:15:04 - The Cycle of Giving and Receiving

• 01:16:49 - The Value of Revelation and Growth

• 01:17:47 - Pushing Against the Wall vs. Being Pulled Through

• 01:19:58 - The Importance of Community and Containers

• 01:24:38 - The Three Keys to Spiritual Growth

• 01:36:05 - Creating Mature Faith Without Suffering

• 01:40:16 - Building Scalable Containers for Growth