About LeadWell365
Simple leadership wisdom for complex times
LeadWell365 exists to help leaders in churches, missions agencies, nonprofits, and beyond lead their people well — every day, not just on retreat days. We build practical tools around the Lead Develop Care (LDC) Framework, including the personalized LDC Blueprint, coaching, seminars, and resources for leaders who want to grow in clarity, capacity, and care.
There has to be a better way. That's what drove us to create something different — not another leadership theory to collect dust on a shelf, but a practical framework that actually works on Tuesday morning, whether you're walking into a sanctuary, a field office, a board meeting, or a Zoom call.
The Story Behind the LDC Framework
Terry Cook and his collaborators spent decades studying leaders who consistently got results and kept their people — leaders in military command, in business, in ministry, in nonprofits, in education. Across every sector, the same three responsibilities kept showing up. Lead. Develop. Care. Distilled, tested, and refined with leaders in more than 75 countries, it became the framework that thousands now use.
The Problem We Solve
Walk into any bookstore and you'll see shelves lined with leadership books, each one promising to reveal the secrets of great leadership. Here's what we've discovered after working with leaders around the world: most walk away more confused than they started. With so many excellent books available, they're left wondering which strategy or tool to use, and when.
Leaders are drowning in advice but starving for clarity. They have all the pieces of the puzzle scattered across their desk and no picture to guide them. Many feel like they're barely hanging on — too busy and overwhelmed to even reflect on their own leadership.
We see brilliant, well-meaning leaders who have deep character but haven't been taught how to actually lead. Others who drive results but burn their people out in the process. Some who care deeply for their teams but struggle to make hard decisions or set clear direction.
The common thread isn't a lack of effort or a lack of heart. It's a lack of framework.
Our Mission
We help leaders cut through the noise and focus on what actually matters. LDC isn't about adding more to an already full plate — it's about being more intentional with what you're already doing. We want to give you the box-top picture so you can finally make sense of all those leadership puzzle pieces, and a clear path for putting them to work.
What Makes Us Different
We're not trying to reinvent leadership. We're trying to make sense of it. The best leaders throughout history — Lincoln, King, Churchill, and countless quieter ones leading churches, missions, and nonprofits — naturally practiced these three responsibilities. We just gave them a name and a framework.
Most leadership development focuses on what leaders should know. We focus on what leaders should do. There's a real difference between cognitive knowledge and lived practice, and that difference shows up in results — in your team, your culture, and your own sustainability.
Leadership development is a lifelong journey. We give you a roadmap for it, but you still have to walk the path. The goal isn't to become a perfect leader overnight. It's to become a more intentional leader who keeps growing — month over month, year over year.
About Todd Cothran
Todd Cothran is the founder of LeadWell365 and the author of (soon to come) The Whetstone Way. He's an entrepreneur, educator, and pastor who has spent his career building things that help people grow — founding both a media company and a software company, starting one nonprofit and reviving another, and walking alongside leaders across ministry, business, and nonprofit settings.
What ties all of it together is the same thread: a deep desire to see people flourish. Whether he's mentoring a young pastor, coaching a missions leader through a hard season, or building tools that scale that work to more people than he could ever meet in person, Todd is committed to one thing — helping leaders become the kind of people their teams want to follow.
Todd holds a Master's in Christian Apologetics from Biola University and a Master's in Theology from New Covenant School of Theology. He met Terry Cook at a polling place in 2012 and the two became friends and colleagues over coffee in the months that followed — a friendship that eventually led to LeadWell365 and the Blueprint.
One of Todd's greatest joys is spending time with his family in Charlottesville, Virginia, and visiting his grandkids in Colorado and Texas.
About Terry Cook, LDC Framework Architect
Terry Cook is the author of Lead. Develop. Care. and the framework's primary architect. Building on Paul Stanley's original observations from the 1980s, Terry has spent decades teaching, refining, and applying LDC with leaders in more than 75 countries — from CEOs to church planters to field missionaries. His work shaped the framework into the practical, transferable model that leaders use today.
Terry and Todd live within five minutes of each other in Charlottesville, Virginia, and continue to collaborate on the ongoing development of LDC and its application across new contexts.
