The Seven F Words Every Leader Needs to Say with Geoff McLachlan
No More Leadership BS
The Seven F Words Every Leader Needs to Say with Geoff McLachlan
September 9, 2026
You can't lead a team if you can't lead yourself, and most leaders never audit their own lives the way they'd audit a business. This episode lays out the Seven Fs of leading your life like a CEO: faith, family, friends, food, fitness, finances and fun. The panel gets honest about hope, grounding, donuts, e-bikes and why a hundred dollars will never hug you back. Be your own best boss first. Everyone you lead will thank you for it.
 You Run a Company. Who's Running You? The Seven Fs of Being Your Own Best Boss

Over 275 episodes in, the panel takes a hard left off the org chart and points the leadership conversation right back at the person in the mirror. The premise is simple. If you're capable of running a team, a department or an entire company, you should probably be capable of running your own life with the same intention. Most people aren't. They'll build a five-year strategic plan for the business and let their own faith, relationships, health and money run on autopilot.

So the crew lays out a framework they call the Seven Fs: faith, family, friends, food, fitness, finances and fun. (It started as five. Then six. Then someone pointed out that leaving fun off the list was a crime, so seven it is.)

Faith, Family and Friends: Hope Is Not a Soft Skill

The panel opens with an observation that's hard to argue with. The most successful leaders they've worked with almost always have a strong circle of faith, family and friends behind them. The reason comes down to hope. Faith gives you hope, and hope is the raw ingredient of resilience. Without it, you're not leading your life. Everything else is leading you.

Family and friends do a different job. They keep you grounded. One host describes a peer group of executive directors that met regularly for one purpose: to say out loud the things only a handful of people could understand, so those frustrations didn't get carried home and dumped on the people who didn't deserve them. And when you start reading your own press a little too closely, your spouse will happily bring you back to earth. That's a feature, not a bug.

There's a biological argument in here too. Humans have been running in small tribal groups for a quarter million years. Connection isn't a nice-to-have. Your brain chemistry literally changes when you have people around you that you know, like and trust. Sorrow shared is sorrow divided.

Food and Fitness: You Are the Machine

The CrossFit joke lands here. Coach says "everybody get on a machine," and the whole gym yells back, "I am the machine." The panel's point is the same. Poor eating habits and poor fitness work like chains. They limit what you can do, they drain your confidence and, as one host puts it bluntly, if you eat like crap you feel like crap, and then you treat people like crap.

The counterbalance matters too. When fitness becomes the only place you hang your ego, you become the person policing everyone else's mashed potatoes. That's not leadership either. The advice is refreshingly low-tech: eat the donut occasionally, not daily. Take a ten-minute walk around the block. Leave the AI assistant at home and get some actual sunshine on your face. You get exactly one vessel for this trip, and neglecting it shortens the trip.

(There is also a spirited debate about e-bikes and whether the younger generation has earned the battery. No consensus was reached.)

Finances and Fun: Net Worth vs. Net Ability

This is where the episode gets sharp. The panel pushes back on treating money as a thing unto itself. A hundred dollars can't hug you. It won't walk with you. It represents something, and until you figure out what that something is, you'll keep chasing the number instead of the life. One host reframes the whole idea: forget net worth and think about your net ability to have fun, to show up for people and to build experiences with the ones you love.

The panel has met plenty of extremely wealthy people who are miserable, because "more" is never "enough" and what they actually wanted was human connection. Nobody on their deathbed wishes they'd saved another five hundred dollars. Fun, meanwhile, is a state of mind you choose, and one host's habit of telling friends "I love you" every time he leaves a room is the kind of leadership that doesn't show up on a P&L but shows up everywhere else.

The Bottom Line

Leading yourself comes before leading anyone else. If your faith, relationships, body, money and joy are running on autopilot, that shows up in how you lead at work whether you notice it or not. Audit the Seven Fs. Fix the weakest one. Then go be a better boss to everyone else.

Tune in for:


You've got the title. Now go earn it in your own life.

Have questions,  suggestions or just a great story to tell about some Leadership BS you have experienced? Let us know by emailing us 

Today's Featured Coach - 

Geoff McLachlan - Motivational Speaker, Trainer and Coach, Bringing Fun Back Into the Workplace,  Owner/Founder of Professionals At Play  Reach Geoff directly at geoff@professionalsatplay.com or 509-869-4506

The rest of the gang: