<![CDATA[The Archetype Original Podcast]]>I've spent 33 years building businesses and developing people. The Archetype Original Podcast is some of the fruit of all of that work.

Leadership is not a title. It's a human condition. This show chases it everywhere it lives. In the boardroom and the sanctuary. In the corner office and the break room. In the person giving the orders and the person carrying them out.

Here's what I believe, and what every episode comes back to. If you grow people, you grow the organization. If you use people, you lose the organization. I didn't read that somewhere. I lived it. I started a company in a home office, built it past a hundred people, and sold it in 2022 after watching servant leadership actually work. Not as a theory. As the operating system. We built something people were proud of because we treated them like they were the point. I also learned that this kind of leadership doesn't maintain itself. You have to fight for it. And when you stop fighting for it, it drifts. Both lessons matter. You'll hear both on this show.

Two kinds of episodes. Solo and guest.

Solo episodes are me working through what I've seen across three decades of building. Wherever I happen to be when the thought is worth capturing. What trust looks like when it's real. Why communication keeps failing even in good organizations. How a team that is genuinely cared for outperforms a pressured one every time. These episodes are that.

Guest episodes have one rule: no boxes. I don't book guests because of their title, and I don't require their story to connect to business at all. Pastors. Founders. Operators. Builders. Parents. Athletes. People who have carried weight and have something true to say about it. The human matters more than the resume. This show isn't only for people who run organizations. You lead your family. You influence the people next to you at work whether you have authority over them or not. Understanding how leadership works changes how you function everywhere.

This show comes out of Carthage, Missouri. Flyover country. I've built from right here, and I'm convinced the middle of the country sees some things the coasts miss. Plain talk. Long memory. A healthy suspicion of anything that sounds too polished. You'll hear that in every episode.

Who is this for? Founders trying to build something that lasts. Executives who suspect the dashboard isn't telling the whole story. Managers caught between the people above them and the people counting on them. Employees who want to understand why they experience leadership the way they do. Anyone who leads at home, in a classroom, or in a community and never thought to call it leadership. This show is for all of you.

What you won't hear: hacks, hustle worship, ten steps to anything, or guests reading from their own press release.

What you will hear: honest conversations, thirty years of watching what actually works, and one steady argument: people are the point. Not the asset. Not the resource. The point.

I built companies for 33 years. I wrote three books: Accidental CEO, Remaining Human, and The Room. I've published hundreds of thousands of words on leadership and culture and built tools and frameworks that leaders actually use. Now I sit with founders and executives and help them see what they're too close to see themselves. This show is that room with the door open.

One more thing about the name. An archetype is the original pattern before distortion sets in. Original has a second meaning: a returning to. Archetype Original is returning to what leadership was meant to be, before pressure reshaped it and drift set in. Not nostalgia. Restoration. That's the work. That's the show.

Plug in and join the conversation.

]]>https://archetypeoriginal.com/podcastRiverside.fm (https://riverside.com)Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:30:37 GMTWed, 10 Jun 2026 16:25:36 GMT60Bart Paden<p>I've spent 33 years building businesses and developing people. The Archetype Original Podcast is some of the fruit of all of that work.</p><p>Leadership is not a title. It's a human condition. This show chases it everywhere it lives. In the boardroom and the sanctuary. In the corner office and the break room. In the person giving the orders and the person carrying them out.</p><p></p><p>Here's what I believe, and what every episode comes back to. If you grow people, you grow the organization. If you use people, you lose the organization. I didn't read that somewhere. I lived it. I started a company in a home office, built it past a hundred people, and sold it in 2022 after watching servant leadership actually work. Not as a theory. As the operating system. We built something people were proud of because we treated them like they were the point. I also learned that this kind of leadership doesn't maintain itself. You have to fight for it. And when you stop fighting for it, it drifts. Both lessons matter. You'll hear both on this show.</p><p></p><p>Two kinds of episodes. Solo and guest.</p><p></p><p>Solo episodes are me working through what I've seen across three decades of building. Wherever I happen to be when the thought is worth capturing. What trust looks like when it's real. Why communication keeps failing even in good organizations. How a team that is genuinely cared for outperforms a pressured one every time. These episodes are that.</p><p></p><p>Guest episodes have one rule: no boxes. I don't book guests because of their title, and I don't require their story to connect to business at all. Pastors. Founders. Operators. Builders. Parents. Athletes. People who have carried weight and have something true to say about it. The human matters more than the resume. This show isn't only for people who run organizations. You lead your family. You influence the people next to you at work whether you have authority over them or not. Understanding how leadership works changes how you function everywhere.</p><p></p><p>This show comes out of Carthage, Missouri. Flyover country. I've built from right here, and I'm convinced the middle of the country sees some things the coasts miss. Plain talk. Long memory. A healthy suspicion of anything that sounds too polished. You'll hear that in every episode.</p><p>Who is this for? Founders trying to build something that lasts. Executives who suspect the dashboard isn't telling the whole story. Managers caught between the people above them and the people counting on them. Employees who want to understand why they experience leadership the way they do. Anyone who leads at home, in a classroom, or in a community and never thought to call it leadership. This show is for all of you.</p><p></p><p>What you won't hear: hacks, hustle worship, ten steps to anything, or guests reading from their own press release.</p><p></p><p>What you will hear: honest conversations, thirty years of watching what actually works, and one steady argument: people are the point. Not the asset. Not the resource. The point.</p><p></p><p>I built companies for 33 years. I wrote three books: Accidental CEO, Remaining Human, and The Room. I've published hundreds of thousands of words on leadership and culture and built tools and frameworks that leaders actually use. Now I sit with founders and executives and help them see what they're too close to see themselves. This show is that room with the door open.</p><p></p><p>One more thing about the name. An archetype is the original pattern before distortion sets in. Original has a second meaning: a returning to. Archetype Original is returning to what leadership was meant to be, before pressure reshaped it and drift set in. Not nostalgia. Restoration. That's the work. That's the show.</p><p></p><p>Plug in and join the conversation.</p>episodicBart Padenbartpaden@gmail.comno<![CDATA[The Archetype Original Podcast S1E3]]>Accountability is easy to talk about. It is much harder to look at the distance between what you preach and how you actually live and find it intolerable.

That is Erik Theis. Thirty two years in public service building second chance systems for other people while quietly running a deficit of his own. Pretrial release. Treatment courts. Juvenile intervention. In his fifties he closed the gap. Quit drinking. Restructured everything around discipline. Built a coaching business out of his own transformation. He wakes up at 3:30 in the morning. Runs a multi-department court operation. Teaches at multiple institutions. And is present with his grandchildren in a way he has clearly decided matters more than any title he has earned. He is not performing reinvention. He did the work.

Adam Theis is his son. Finance and economics degrees from Mizzou. Looked at the problem he wanted to solve, decided he was not equipped, and quietly became equipped. Builds automated freight payment systems by day and a food discovery app called Dishcover entirely on his own in every remaining hour.

This conversation gets into what servant leadership actually looks like outside of a business context. The gap between what you say and how you live. The sacrifice that earns influence. The trust that compounds when someone invests in you without an agenda. The quiet years nobody sees that make the visible years possible. The accountability that changes the outcome of a human life when it is taken seriously.

If you grow people you grow the organization. If you use people you lose it. This episode is proof of the first one.

Connect with Erik:
Facebook: Animal Strength and Wellness
Email: anvil2272@gmail.com

Connect with Adam and Dishcover:
dishcover.food
Email: adamhtheis@gmail.com

archetypeoriginal.com

Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: 7DWKHNESPG7NQRH2

© 2026 Archetype Original. All rights reserved. This content may not be reproduced, distributed, or used to train any AI or machine learning model without express written permission.

]]>56492762-6ae8-4961-9ac5-6bba61bef7cbTue, 11 Aug 2026 19:47:36 GMT<p>Accountability is easy to talk about. It is much harder to look at the distance between what you preach and how you actually live and find it intolerable.</p><p></p><p>That is Erik Theis. Thirty two years in public service building second chance systems for other people while quietly running a deficit of his own. Pretrial release. Treatment courts. Juvenile intervention. In his fifties he closed the gap. Quit drinking. Restructured everything around discipline. Built a coaching business out of his own transformation. He wakes up at 3:30 in the morning. Runs a multi-department court operation. Teaches at multiple institutions. And is present with his grandchildren in a way he has clearly decided matters more than any title he has earned. He is not performing reinvention. He did the work.</p><p></p><p>Adam Theis is his son. Finance and economics degrees from Mizzou. Looked at the problem he wanted to solve, decided he was not equipped, and quietly became equipped. Builds automated freight payment systems by day and a food discovery app called Dishcover entirely on his own in every remaining hour.</p><p></p><p>This conversation gets into what servant leadership actually looks like outside of a business context. The gap between what you say and how you live. The sacrifice that earns influence. The trust that compounds when someone invests in you without an agenda. The quiet years nobody sees that make the visible years possible. The accountability that changes the outcome of a human life when it is taken seriously.</p><p>If you grow people you grow the organization. If you use people you lose it. This episode is proof of the first one.</p><p></p><p>Connect with Erik:<br />Facebook: Animal Strength and Wellness<br />Email: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:anvil2272@gmail.com" target="_blank">anvil2272@gmail.com</a></p><p></p><p>Connect with Adam and Dishcover:<br /><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://dishcover.food" target="_blank">dishcover.food</a><br />Email: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="mailto:adamhtheis@gmail.com" target="_blank">adamhtheis@gmail.com</a></p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://archetypeoriginal.com" target="_blank">archetypeoriginal.com</a></p><p></p><p>Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: 7DWKHNESPG7NQRH2</p><p></p><p>© 2026 Archetype Original. All rights reserved. This content may not be reproduced, distributed, or used to train any AI or machine learning model without express written permission.</p>no01:41:3313The Archetype Original Podcast S1E3full<![CDATA[The Archetype Original Podcast S1E2]]>A quick update and two ideas worth more than an update episode usually delivers.

Guest episodes return August 6th. A new interview format with video producer Michael Corcoran starts August 10th, eight to ten episodes targeted.

I have been researching a new journal series on transformational leadership and how closely it aligns with servant leadership. Nick Saban is the vessel. He was coaching Michigan State as a twenty point underdog going into number one Ohio State and knew he could not coach them to win as a transactional leader. A call to a campus psychiatrist changed everything. Coach the play, not the outcome. Every play lasts four to six seconds. Invest in the people executing each one. Michigan State won by four points. His players still call him decades later. The piece that connects transformational leadership to servant leadership is care. Five to seven posts coming.

I have never made a single decision in my life without accountability. Not one. The same input consistently over time generates the same output. The August devotional series is built around it. The Archetype Series is also live, Judas, Joseph, Saul, and Nehemiah, at archetypeoriginal.com.

]]>25f9d9fa-04f9-4e11-a6d6-9ba08fd243cbThu, 30 Jul 2026 22:26:47 GMT<p>A quick update and two ideas worth more than an update episode usually delivers.</p><p></p><p>Guest episodes return August 6th. A new interview format with video producer Michael Corcoran starts August 10th, eight to ten episodes targeted.</p><p></p><p>I have been researching a new journal series on transformational leadership and how closely it aligns with servant leadership. Nick Saban is the vessel. He was coaching Michigan State as a twenty point underdog going into number one Ohio State and knew he could not coach them to win as a transactional leader. A call to a campus psychiatrist changed everything. Coach the play, not the outcome. Every play lasts four to six seconds. Invest in the people executing each one. Michigan State won by four points. His players still call him decades later. The piece that connects transformational leadership to servant leadership is care. Five to seven posts coming.</p><p></p><p>I have never made a single decision in my life without accountability. Not one. The same input consistently over time generates the same output. The August devotional series is built around it. The Archetype Series is also live, Judas, Joseph, Saul, and Nehemiah, at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://archetypeoriginal.com" target="_blank">archetypeoriginal.com</a>.</p>no00:13:4512The Archetype Original Podcast S1E2full<![CDATA[The Archetype Original Podcast S1E1]]>Leadership has a wake. Not sometimes. Always.

In this episode I use the water, the boat, and the wave to explain what servant leadership actually looks like before it ever has a name. One idea. One story.

I start on the shore with the science of water and the brain. Dr. Wallace Nichols spent years documenting what proximity to water does to us. He called it the Blue Mind. Dopamine rises. Oxytocin rises. Cortisol drops. The brain shifts into the same state reached in deep meditation and creative flow. I felt it long before I could explain it.

Then I take you to the boat. The glassy water ahead that looks untouched and perfect. The wake behind it that is anything but. How it builds from idle to full throttle. How it rolls outward and does not stop until it hits something. The people closest to the hull feel every bit of it, whether the person driving ever looks back or not.

Then the wave. Four thousand four hundred pounds of ballast loaded before anyone gets in the water, because without the weight there is no wave. My wife Carie and I love to teach people to surf. We coach them through every stage before the boat moves and from the wheel as things get loud and chaotic. We work to pull them into the smooth side of the wave. When they find it and drop the rope and the wave carries them forward on its own, the whole boat changes.

That is the picture. What you watched on that boat was not a watersports lesson.

The water is the environment a servant leader is trying to build. The wake is every leader's reality whether they look back or not. The wave is what becomes possible when a leader decides to use what they create on purpose, for someone else.

Standards. Stewardship. Presence. Not as concepts. As something you can now see on the water.

Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: NVVHV7AHATINHJBC

]]>708cf7f8-7eb7-46bc-8cfd-9c3f65d639b6Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:25:12 GMT<p>Leadership has a wake. Not sometimes. Always.</p><p></p><p>In this episode I use the water, the boat, and the wave to explain what servant leadership actually looks like before it ever has a name. One idea. One story.</p><p></p><p>I start on the shore with the science of water and the brain. Dr. Wallace Nichols spent years documenting what proximity to water does to us. He called it the Blue Mind. Dopamine rises. Oxytocin rises. Cortisol drops. The brain shifts into the same state reached in deep meditation and creative flow. I felt it long before I could explain it.</p><p></p><p>Then I take you to the boat. The glassy water ahead that looks untouched and perfect. The wake behind it that is anything but. How it builds from idle to full throttle. How it rolls outward and does not stop until it hits something. The people closest to the hull feel every bit of it, whether the person driving ever looks back or not.</p><p></p><p>Then the wave. Four thousand four hundred pounds of ballast loaded before anyone gets in the water, because without the weight there is no wave. My wife Carie and I love to teach people to surf. We coach them through every stage before the boat moves and from the wheel as things get loud and chaotic. We work to pull them into the smooth side of the wave. When they find it and drop the rope and the wave carries them forward on its own, the whole boat changes.</p><p></p><p>That is the picture. What you watched on that boat was not a watersports lesson.</p><p></p><p>The water is the environment a servant leader is trying to build. The wake is every leader's reality whether they look back or not. The wave is what becomes possible when a leader decides to use what they create on purpose, for someone else.</p><p></p><p>Standards. Stewardship. Presence. Not as concepts. As something you can now see on the water.</p><p></p><p>Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: NVVHV7AHATINHJBC</p>no00:31:4611The Archetype Original Podcast S1E1full<![CDATA[The Archetype Original Podcast S1E0]]>Hey, I'm Bart Paden. This is my first podcast. Ever.

Thirty-three years in business, starting in Carthage and Joplin, Missouri, building a software company from the ground up after I got hooked on the internet back in 1993. I sold that company in 2022, and that sale put me through something close to an identity crisis. Who was I if not the guy building that thing?

What I found when I went looking wasn't new. The decisions I'd made to put people first weren't original. Just rare. I talk through what servant leadership actually means to me, why it's a hard stance and not a soft one, and why the success of that company belonged to the 104 people who showed up for it, not to me.

I walk through the four books behind everything I've built, including The Room and the Archetype Leadership Index I'm building now. And I close on the thing I believe most: if you grow people, you grow the organization. If you use people, you lose it.

Two kinds of episodes are coming, solo and guest. I want you in this with me.

archetypeoriginal.com

]]>135649c0-9063-493c-b075-7cd1fa507bfcFri, 19 Jun 2026 22:20:55 GMT<p>Hey, I'm Bart Paden. This is my first podcast. Ever.</p><p></p><p>Thirty-three years in business, starting in Carthage and Joplin, Missouri, building a software company from the ground up after I got hooked on the internet back in 1993. I sold that company in 2022, and that sale put me through something close to an identity crisis. Who was I if not the guy building that thing?</p><p></p><p>What I found when I went looking wasn't new. The decisions I'd made to put people first weren't original. Just rare. I talk through what servant leadership actually means to me, why it's a hard stance and not a soft one, and why the success of that company belonged to the 104 people who showed up for it, not to me.</p><p></p><p>I walk through the four books behind everything I've built, including The Room and the Archetype Leadership Index I'm building now. And I close on the thing I believe most: if you grow people, you grow the organization. If you use people, you lose it.</p><p></p><p>Two kinds of episodes are coming, solo and guest. I want you in this with me.</p><p></p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://archetypeoriginal.com" target="_blank">archetypeoriginal.com</a></p>no00:21:181The Archetype Original Podcast S1E0full