Right, right. Good to see everybody. How's it going? How you doing? Welcome to our new
extended version. So I hope you're in for the long haul. Got your coffee or whatever
other thing you need. Okay, yeah, very cool. Yeah, so let's jump right in and get going.
I know a lot of people are still jumping on. So hey, Ben, how you doing? Good to see you,
Matthew and Emily. Robin, good to see you. Hey, Glenn. And Lee, welcome. And of course,
Bridget and Dia helping me host. Very good. Matthew, do you have two logins?
Luke is not with me here. So he was going to jump in from his place. Is that okay? Yep.
Very cool. Very cool. Well, we'll give Yeah. Oh, you like the lead in Robin? Yep. Yep.
You haven't been on some of the calls for a while. It's been a feature for for a bit.
So we missed you. That's great that you liked it. Yeah, we're trying to be a little more
people know they've come to the right spot and feel a little more welcoming. Take a minute
to catch up. Well, what so welcome to the new the new mode of operation. You know, normally
we'll, you know, we'll wait for a few more people to jump on. So we can nobody misses
the announcements. So let's take a second while we're doing that. And just here in the
last month, what's been going on in your business? And what's the Lord been teaching you? So
anybody wants to go first? I know, I've had conversations with at least four of you. So
hey, Robin, you go? Yeah, we are. We are transitioning from me being running the company
Noah to rich doing that. And he's taken the reins dramatically. So we've, we've had a
lot of people that are in our organization that are behind that and supporting that.
And we're struggling a little bit with our revenue. Because of that, because of the new,
instead of a 10, just a 10x, we're going, we're trying to get a brand new business started.
And then me personally, I'm, I just built, I just finished the house. I'm in right now,
you can't see it, because I've got this background. But I just built a little model
home 864 square feet out of pocket, just to show people what they can do for I did, I did
this house for $50,000, which is unheard of. But I'm looking to maybe roll this out as a
possibility for renters that want to become homeowners to be able to do exactly what I've
done here. So that's what I've been up to. Well, the last section.
Yeah, that's amazing, Robin. That's so great. Yeah, that's a lot of that's a lot of transition,
a lot of change. So yeah, that's going to be the topic. Yeah, Matthew, you want to go next?
Sure. I was just when you asked what had been going on, I was I was laughing just because I
thought, man, I don't I can't take up all three hours. But no, just real quick. The beautiful
thing is, since you and I had our, our, we had a brilliant SOS call. And that was absolutely
magnificent. Right after all of those things took place, I've been I've been in really a real
space kind of moment. Things got really tight. But what was fantastic is for the first time
of my entire life. And I got to share this with some people. I've been at rest the entire time,
just trusting and knowing that whatever's going on, God is going to work for our good and for
the good of what he's called me to do. And now I reached out to Todd today, and and have brought
my CFO, and my creative director, everybody's come back together, and we're going to get rolling.
And incorporating the company is going to get set up with with Todd and his group. And then
we actually started filming content yesterday, for the first time to the channel. So
there you go. That was a big change for you. So yeah, so if I can ask the team, if you guys can
spotlight people who are speaking, so it's not just stuck in the gallery, that'd be great. Yeah,
let's go to Ray. While Ray's coming up, I know I've done about four, I think four SOS calls
since we since this month, just remember, you get two of those anyway. So if you just like,
hey, man, we just need to talk.
book. You know, we need to lock down. I actually got to do Ray
with you in person, which was amazing. I got to actually meet
you. So yeah, tell us what's going on. I know there's a lot
going on, but tell the group.
Well, we got you muted somehow.
Now we got Ray's audio.
I can hear Ray. I think we're I think we're good.
We're good. I can hear Ray.
I cannot hear Ray. That's interesting. Ray, speak, I'll
read your lips. I don't know why I can't hear you. Can you guys
hear me? All right.
Yeah, we can hear you.
Now we can now I think
you're good.
I'm gonna have to stop you. I really cannot hear what you're
saying. So sorry, man. Sorry, my friend. Let's get this sorted
first, because I definitely want to hear what what you're doing.
I've clicked on every can somebody else jump on Ben's
Can you hear me?
I can hear you fine. Somebody else.
Can you hear Robin?
So strange. Yeah, it's just Ray.
That's so funny. You can also try captioning if that does it
fast enough for you. I mean, remove the spotlight for him,
and then I'll put it back on.
Okay, let's try it again. Right back in. Okay. All right. Good
stuff going on in your life. I don't want to miss what you're
saying. Okay, Ray, you want to try one more time?
Maybe for me. So everybody can hear him. But Deon, that's the
crazy part. Yeah, that is. Let me let me see if I can
try taking him off spotlight.
I took him off and put him back on. I'll take him off
altogether. Take him off. Yeah. Okay. All right. Try again. Go
ahead. Deon, got anything? No, maybe take
Deon off the spotlight. Who knows? Yeah, take me off the
spotlight that I've never seen that before. So there you go. A
little bit of family fun while we're trying to get this
conversation going. Let's try one more time. Deon, anything?
No, go ahead. I'm reading your captions. I'll catch what you're
saying. Ray, go ahead. I don't want to hold you up.
Yeah, good to meet you, too.
Wow.
Hmm.
Wow.
Yeah, that's so great.
Thanks for sharing.
I got to read everything you said, so that was fantastic.
And I know you shared a great deal of that with us, with me anyway.
And what I appreciate is the journey that the Lord has you on.
And it's interesting you brought up that topic, because that's part of what we're going to
talk about today.
What do we deal with these struggles that never seem to end?
It seems like every Christian business person, every kingdom executive goes through this
challenge, this process.
And it's really interesting as to what happens.
And I also want to chat a bit about brokenness, because there's a healthy brokenness and there's
an unhealthy brokenness in the kingdom, and definitely appreciate you raising that.
So thanks very much.
I definitely appreciate you bringing that up.
All right.
Well, let's go to Ben, Ben Cormack.
Hello, guys.
It's great to see you, man.
I'm fired up.
That's an awesome testimony, Ray.
So good.
And it's been an interesting month.
I'm thankful for the opportunity to connect with Dion in the, I don't remember what you
call those calls exactly, but it was right on time for me.
So in a family-owned construction company, thank you, Dion, the SOS call.
My dad, it really became clear to me about, it's been about a month ago now that it was,
the time for my dad's retirement had arrived.
He wasn't necessarily on board with that fully.
He was reluctant to accept that truth, I would say.
So it'd kind of been hanging on for a while.
And really the Lord showed me that obedience isn't an option, really.
If it's like, if I'm disobedient in stepping out in faith and trusting him, something he
showed me, that it's actually evil, that he's not all right with it.
So it's really been an opportunity, a season for me to trust him and in new ways.
So we've embarked on this adventure of completely rearranging our company and people are, we've
got the right people on the bus, but we're taking new seats.
So I've shifted and really this plan to reorganize the company didn't come until I was obedient
to have a really tough conversation with my dad, to lay out kind of where we're going.
But as soon as I did, man, the grace of God showed up and I've been walking in it.
It's just so awesome to see how he's totally before us and he's, I mean, he's working on
our behalf all the time and I see it almost hourly, it seems like.
And there's lots going on, in the middle of this whole transition, we've been, I lost
an accountant that has been with us for nine years.
She had a life change and needed to transition out.
So I've been operating our company.
We used to have this precision set of books and for the last six months, I'm somewhat
blind.
You know, we're in the process of onboarding a new option there, but I guess I bring that
in to say there's probably three or four different areas that were really solid.
I knew where we were going, what I was doing and he's, you know, those things aren't where
they were in the past and I've learning and getting the opportunity to learn what it means
to really trust him, kind of moment by moment, be led by him and just to stay in his grace.
It's been fun, really is exciting to me about what's possible moving forward as I learn
to walk in that, you know, in just a more tangible way.
Wow, thanks.
Well, you know what I loved about that conversation, Ben, was we talked a lot about the assumption
that's holding us back.
There's an assumption about the Lord, usually that's holding us back.
And you know, a lot of our times together here on these calls is to get through, find
assumption. And the Lord sets us free, you know, with those assumptions. And the assumption was,
you know, well, you know, I know your dad was a big portion of the sales. So that was a big
consideration. It wasn't just the toughness of, hey, it's my dad, and he's the founder.
But also to take the business, what's next. And the assumption also is, oh, we're always looking
from our viewpoint. But what what, you know, it sets your dad free into what the Lord has next
for him. It's not always, it doesn't always have to be as negative as it seems, you know,
the Lord turns that. And so you have the advantage, your dad knows the Lord. So that helps.
So quick update on that. You know, we're on pace for exceeding our sales last year right now. I
mean, we've had some, some awesome projects that have landed and have come in. So man, revenue is
taken care of, it appears. And I mean, we're in a really good place. And now we're watching,
you know, I'm watching as, you know, people who are really, I think, even more equipped to excel
in their new positions are taking their place. And then so that's pretty exciting. One of those
assumptions that man, he exposed in me, one of these beliefs that I was carrying was that,
man, I was the provider for, you know, these people, and I was afraid of letting them down,
which kind of paralyzed me from taking the action that I needed to, because I didn't,
you know, there are a lot of people counting on that revenue. And, you know, the Lord just really
showed me or reminded me that he's my provider, and he's theirs. So then I just released that.
It's been fun. We'll see where it goes. Yeah, no, thanks for sharing. Let's bring Mark,
and then we'll jump straight in. Mark, what's how's it going with the roof with the pallet business?
Yeah, yeah. Interesting, to say the least. I think last month I had talked about, I had just
brought on or let go of an operations manager, a friend of 10 years and 11 years. I mean,
I've known him a lot longer than that, probably close to 20. But he's been operating as our,
he's been working as our operations supervisor for operations manager, it's a better term,
for like the last 10 years. And I brought in someone new. And, and try to keep this short.
The employees, it was probably about day five or six of the new operations manager. And
our office administrator came to me, she said, employees would like to talk to you. I had just
been stopping through. I don't, I'm not always at the business, probably maybe once a week type
deal that I'll show up there. And as soon as I showed up there, they're like, she pulled me to
the side and say, hey, the employees would like to talk to you. And it was right around lunchtime
for them. And I said, sure, sure. Let's do it. Do it right now. Let's go, you know, table one.
Anyway, everybody kind of gathered around. And they basically said, hey, either this guy gets
goes, or we go, we're not going to come back from lunch. 35 employees. This is a first for me. I'm
like, Whoa, okay, Lord, what's going on here? So I really didn't have a lot of options. I went back
to the, the operations manager I had hired. And I said, well, basically, unless you've got 20
employees in your back pocket somewhere, this business is not gonna run. And then we're gonna,
you know, yeah, I'm gonna have to let you go. And I'm leaving a lot out here. But the basically,
they said, as a group, and a lot of them are Hispanic, they said, hey, we're loyal to you.
We'll, we'll work for you, we'll make this work. But if that's who you want us to work for, you
know, the new operations manager, we're not going to work here, we're gonna go find other jobs.
And so, I don't know, it was just an interesting thing that the Lord showed. I mean, it just like,
it showed them that I was in a way, I mean, in hindsight, I could see that it showed them that
I was loyal to them. And, and also the same that they were loyal to me.
And they've kind of taken the ball and run with basically, we had two
longer term employees that have kind of jumped up. And I'm kind of like, I don't know what's
going on. But it's working. And I still, I still don't know what the long term answer is yet. I'm
still working through that with the Lord. But
Yeah, I don't know how to answer that.
Well, you're raising so many great points and so I would, you know, I'm very tempted
to jump into some of them but maybe just to say that in general raising up your own leaders
from within, even if they don't quite have the qualifications or the history or the resume,
they know the business and they know you and the team knows them and the customers know
them.
There's a tremendous amount to be said for that.
And I've made the mistake of hiring the superstar, you know, who is just, you know, fantastic
Harvard MBA, worked for Goldman Sachs, blah, blah, all the credentials in my world, which
were incredibly impressive and had the same response.
Not mutiny from employees, but question burned.
But you know, what's lovely about that is, you know, it sounds like you learned where
they're at as a team.
And I think it probably looks like the Lord used it to bring you even closer together
with them.
You know, so, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I had tears in my eyes when they were talking to me, I was like, I couldn't
I was trying to hold back tears and they're like, yeah, we'll work for you.
We like you.
We'll do it.
We'll do whatever it takes for you.
But this guy?
No way.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's definitely worth getting an exit interview with them.
I think the gift you can give them is the feedback, even if it's tough.
Because that guy's going to go off and that person's going to go and do it again.
If that was an issue, it won't just be your team.
So the gift we give them is call them, call them out and call them up and let them go.
And then let them get out.
Yeah.
So I understand.
Yeah.
I know we have to release people, you know, and there's a whole time where I want to do
a whole session just on how do we, you know, hire people?
What's the Kingdom approach?
How do we release people?
What's the King approach to that?
And several of you over the last few months have had to let close friends go or people
have been there a long time or, you know, in Ben's case, his dad, the founder, you know,
that there's there's a limitation that these people bring.
So, well, thanks for sharing.
Oh, that's great.
Anyone weighing on that?
Anybody else going through what Mark or Ben, what Ray or Matthew is going through?
Anyone want to add before we jump in here?
So let me see that.
I just wanted to let Mark know that, first of all, kudos to you that your employees felt
comfortable enough to come up and say, hey, it's either he goes or we go.
I mean, that's that's a big plus that you have built that in.
But it also tells me a lot about cultural fit.
You know, if you bring somebody in, whether it's from the inside or the outside, they
don't fit your culture of your organization.
It's not going to work, even though they may be like Dion said, a superstar.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
You know, the whole thing about building a Kingdom culture, even if nobody in your team
knows the Lord, there is a Kingdom culture brings goodness and kindness to them.
And one of the things is and oftentimes when we say Kingdom culture, we think we mean a
soft culture and it isn't.
It's a highly productive culture.
And today we're going to focus just on the tag end of Matthew 11, 28, which has been
our key verse for a while.
And the reason we stay with this is because we don't want to fall into the trap of I've
heard that verse.
It's not a question.
Have you heard it or even learned it?
Have you become the verse?
Have you become Matthew 11, 28?
So when Jesus said, come to me, all weary and heavy laden, I'm sure you can all quote
it by now.
That means that he says, and come to me and I and I will give you rest.
In other words, everything in the Kingdom starts with rest.
And you say, why?
So let's map that from an upstairs idea to a downstairs idea, because when you're when
you're at rest, your mind is most alert.
When you're quiet in your heart, you can think the clearest.
It ignites your skills, your abilities and your ability to hear him.
It ignites every all your downstairs faculties going to hyper drive in rest.
And so the enemy tries to keep you worried and heavy laden or what we would call stressed
and anxious, because that is a crippling effect on your downstairs faculties, your upstairs
faculties, when you set up rest and peace, something very special happens.
And that is you step into this truest self of who you are in Jesus.
And strangely, that makes you sharper, clearer, better listener, better leader, better everything.
And so one of the things I want to talk about is this map.
And we've talked a lot about don't be a triangle, don't be all upstairs, this triangle, right?
Or the other way you hear from God once and you're all about execution, we want to be
be a good square. That means we take what we learn upstairs and we map it directly.
And I think many of us are not used to taking the scriptures and mapping them very clearly
into the downstairs. So for instance, as we continue with that verse, take my yoke, take
my partnership. And he says, and learn from me. So that's why, of course, where we get
our direct learning component. And then he says, fine, gentle and humble. Why does he
bring that up? Because gentle and humility is the fast track to learning. When you're
gentle and you're humble, right? What Mark just demonstrated a few minutes ago was his
humility with his employees, right? Because it's hard to go and say, I made a mistake.
Was it a good person, but maybe just a bad cultural fit? You know, whatever the reason
might be, might be, you know, not that the employee or the manager was bad. But in this
case, that humility puts you in a high learning mode and gentleness puts you in a high learning
mode. When we become obnoxious or stubborn about a position, the Bible refers to this
as being a fool. You know, and there's this weird thing in the scripture about dealing
with a fool. And it's fully such a strong word in modern language, right? We don't like
that word anymore. It sounds so judgmental. But what the Bible is talking about is don't
answer a fool according to his folly, or you'll become just like him. And so and sorry, don't
I or he will. So I got these two wrong, because they're direct contradiction. And I think
they're one verse after the other one says, answer a fool, according to his folly. So
that, you know, if you answer a fool, according to his folly, he will become more deluded,
if you but so don't answer a fool, according to his folly, or you'll become just like him.
So what do we do? We do answer him, we don't answer him. It's literally a contradiction.
And the bottom line is, you can't deal with a fool. Why? What is fool? Fool isn't an intellectual
thing. Bonhoeffer called this the theory of stupidity. And what the theory of stupidity
is, and we see this a lot when it's cloaked with Scripture. And that is, we get into a
position where we get so locked into a view of thinking that we can't hear anything else.
And when we can't consider anything else, and the beauty of humility and gentleness
is that puts us right in the Father's heart, and it just does away with all those threats.
We can call them our echo chambers, modern language, we all sit in our echo chambers,
and they become so reinforced through the algorithms and so on, on social media, keep
us on the platform, that what happens is, we get so entrenched. Well, we can do this
spiritually as well. The Lord speaks to us, and then we get entrenched about a particular
point of view, about a person we should hire, about a business we should open, about a strategy
we should take on. And so learning from Jesus out of that partnership means this humility,
and it means gentleness. And the humility includes going to others and saying, I'm hearing
this from the Lord, what do you think? And having the humility to hear whatever it is
they may say next. And then He goes on, and He says, you will find rest for your soul.
Your whole inner being, soul, comes to a place of permanent rest. Not just rest as a bit
of reprieve from stress, but permanent rest. A place of abiding. Abiding in rest, because
everything in the kingdom starts in rest. Because it's in rest, you can see the gifts
God's giving you. In the rest, you can hear His voice. In the rest, you're igniting all
your faculties, and all your training, and all your thinking, including your business
training and your leadership training and everything else. And then that last verse,
verse 30, and it says, for my yoke, my partnership is easy. We've explored that, that it's effective
and delightful. You're highly effective, you're highly, that's how it is. There's a lightness
to kingdom leadership. But here I want to break out the very last phrase, and my burden
is light. Now that word light is only used twice in the Bible, in the New Testament Greek
word. And it literally means, there is an element of lightness, but it's also agile
and quick. There's a, I get very agile and quick and fast, and I get to pivot quickly.
You can't pivot quickly when you're stubborn. You can't pivot quickly when you've decided
to lock something in, because you've decided you know how it is. And many of you, how many
of you have done six hats training? I think most of you have gone through six hats, if
I use that language, you know what I'm talking about. So Edward de Bono, six hats, six colored
hats, right. So the red hat, which is your intuition hat, there are six modes of thinking
that de Bono...
I think it's on the app, six modes of thinking.
And in that particular mode, what happens is when we're in red hat mode,
that's your intuition mode. That's my experience.
I've been doing this for 30 years. I know how this works.
I know what I'm doing. This should be the outcome.
Those are some of the actually brilliant.
If you really want to make the team
laugh, just say my experience tells me and then everybody knows you're 95% wrong.
You know, I mean, it's just because it never is that.
Why? Because so, you know,
white hat data is the facts, you know, what actually happens.
So here's what happens.
The Lord in his kindness will quickly help you find the assumption you've made.
And the minute you act in obedience,
you take bold action from that assumption, something releases, you know,
has been, you know, in your story, you had to face a very tough assumption.
I can't make this change because whatever, fill in the blank.
And once you got past that assumption, I think was in 24, 48 hours,
the Lord just just seemed to download to you really rapidly.
Is that about right? Do I remember it correctly?
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah. So, you know, I don't know what to do.
I'm sitting on it. What would be the strategy of the plan?
I'd make I'd take the first step and that
releases something downstairs and suddenly it all becomes really obvious and clear.
So anyway, we'll get back to a little more of that.
But I do want to just circle back for a second
and talk just a couple of quick things.
So next, I see we have.
I thought I saw me see, I think you're on.
Yep. Hey, Jonathan, glad you're on with us.
And Michael, I thought I saw you earlier.
Got to have you guys with us again
since you're now permanent members.
We're going to be at your place next time.
Yay. In Seattle.
So it's going to be amazing time.
We're very excited about this.
You guys are in for a massive treat.
So that's in Seattle, August 2nd.
We're going on the first that that night we will have some time together.
We've hired a little room so we can all hang out, have some cocktails, be together.
The next morning we're going to have this
cinematic encounter, which I'm really excited about, where we get time
to engage the Lord, enjoy worship.
And it's going to be something where it's, I think, a time of the Lord
clearing assumptions, clearing wrong beliefs,
clearing lies we believe that we don't need to believe and opening us up to seeing
what he sees and, you know, I think we're going to come back with a whole different mode.
But I wouldn't be surprised if if a bunch
of businesses just jump to the next level after an encounter time like that.
OK, so and then the second thing is we're
very excited to announce that we have a date for the Inner Circle Conference,
September 22nd through 20, September 20th to 22nd.
It's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
It'll start 11 a.m.
Eastern on Friday morning and it will go through till Sunday afternoon.
The Inner Circle Conference, Graham will be one of the speakers.
I'll announce much more shortly.
But I just want to get get that on your calendar.
We'd love to have you there
because what we're going to focus on at that conference, it's going to be a full
virtual conference, that's not an in-person conference,
much like we did for Brilliance 23 or 24.
For those who attended that, it'll be a similar mode.
And yes, Barry will be helping me from Sage.
And that's I'm really excited.
That's what was taking so long was to get him to get on Barry's schedule.
I think Barry and the folks at Sage have done what?
Twelve hundred of these virtual events for over a million and a half people.
Unbelievable what they've done.
So we were very excited because I think we've been building this inner circle
program to the point that we're going to make some changes.
So directly after the conference.
So starting in October,
we're going to take these three hours and break them up into the first hour.
We'll be talking about our partnership and we'll have Graham Cook more involved.
So Graham will be attending more often, at least for the first half hour.
And we want to talk a lot about the
practical elements of walking with the Lord as a kingdom executive.
And so that's going to be the focus.
We're going to invite any kingdom executive, whether you're the CEO,
whether you're an executive in an organization, whether you're in a bigger
company, we want to open that up to any kingdom executive.
We want to we want to take everything we
have and make that kingdom executive the hero will make you the hero of the story.
And by that, we mean we're going to take
these monthly meetings.
you on how to partner with the Lord in every possible thing we can to make that
successful. We want to do laser coaching and hot seats and then thirdly we're
going to start doing the actual components of the Edge training. So
remember the 40 weeks of Edge training stuff? We've repackaged all that to be
12 key best business practices and that stuff's all covert stuff. So
it's stuff that you can go and share with your team members and we want to
make you look like the genius you actually are. So we want you to be the
smallest person in the room knowing the latest materials and the latest and so
that will be all around leadership, productivity, innovation and economics.
And so we're going to spend a section of these meetings the last probably 45
minutes around one of the Edge tools. Now we've revamped it so if you say
well I've been through the Edge training we've taken it up a notch and
that will also give these executives time once a week to have will have an
open office time and we'll be able to really help them practically with how do
you use this in your business. So here's what we're trying to do. We would like to
offer Kingdom executives at the event the offer is going to be what if you
were the touchpoint for the kingdom at your work? What if your job can be a
touchpoint for your work? You guys understand the language. Your work is
what you were created for in his workmanship in Christ. Your job is what
pays the bills. What if your job can be the touchpoint for your work? What if we
can teach you 12 Kingdom executive habits that we've learned as a
Kickstarter for you in understanding and working your partnership with the Lord
and what if we can give you 12 capable capabilities on the best management
practices from around the world that we've been doing. So we've added three
brand new ones on how to manage your influence etc etc. Now we've got all the
topics and we have time at the end I'll show them or I'll show you next time but
the idea is we want to make we want to create Kingdom executives that are
squares. They know to hear from the Lord and they know to execute at a level that
is impressive. We want them to become amazing just like what Jesus said I do
what I see the Father do and because the Father loves the Son he tells him
everything is about to do and it will amaze you. We would love these people to
be amazing in their different context. So it doesn't matter if in a big company or
small company if they desire to be a Kingdom executive that's what we're
gonna go after. So feedback how how does that sound to you since you are those
people and you're the ones we're talking to you how does that how does that sound?
How many of you like the Kingdom executive description? Yeah and you would
identify if you heard that you would say that was me. Okay excellent yep so we
were looking for the word and you said so obvious yeah but it took us six
months to find it. So I don't think it's because we slow I think it was that this
is what it takes it takes a long time to hone in on who's your who. You know find
your people find your purpose right honing down your who down to that degree
and for me that's that's what it is. So what we'll do is all that new stuff will
kick in on October the 2nd and we'll kick in into the new mode. So it'll be
like this conversational chatting laser coaching but also add the whole edge
piece which means that we're we're going to for people who want to you know
follow on afterwards you know they can bring other people in and we can have
corporate clients. So we'll consider all these Kingdom executives to be private
clients. Corporate clients will be when if they are that impactful in the
organization we want to be able to come in and help them in their organization
and say what if we come and trained everybody on the edge stuff. That's why
all the edge stuff will stay covert. I have to keep be careful not say
covert. Covert has to stay covert meaning that there's going to be no doesn't
matter about their religious or scriptural or you know Christian
mindsets. We want to we want to take all the Kingdom goodness all baked in and
give it to that team member and so then we'll we'll come up with corporate
pricing for each of those groups. So this is allowed and thank you to Glenn
who's been very helpful in all of this putting this together and because we
were asking ourselves how can this help the single solopreneur and help the
executive at PwC because you know that space. So from a company that has over
300,000 employees to the one single employee how do we how do we move the
kingdom forward?
and create kingdom activators.
We need to learn to activate the kingdom
in our personal lives, in our teams, and in our companies.
And the good news is you don't need 51% of the people
to be believers to change the business.
Because you're partnered with the three,
and so you're in the majority.
You're in the game.
So you only need one, it just needs to be one of you.
So instead of surviving a situation,
what if you not only thrive,
but shifted the whole atmosphere of the business you're in?
What if you become the peacemaker
when there's so much toxicity in the culture?
What if you become the antidote to the enemy's strategy?
So as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about it.
So we're gonna kick that off, September 20th to 22nd.
I don't think it's gonna be called
the Inner Circle Conference,
we haven't given a name yet, we're working on it.
We have some working names, but we'll come up with one.
Yeah, so Kingdom Expansion, yeah.
It may just be the Kingdom Executive Conference.
I can hear Barry in my head.
Be clear, don't be clever, you know, so.
So I love that.
Be clear, don't be clever.
All right.
Did I miss anything else, team?
Did I get everything, dear?
All good, okay.
Thanks for letting me do the little plug.
I appreciate it.
Let's go back to,
so I wanna keep this part pretty brief
and I'd love to get into a discussion.
I think, I've forgotten who exactly said this,
but sometimes we go through
these long, difficult financial times.
And how is it that we are in partnership with the Father,
we're in our yoke with Jesus,
we're walking in the stuff
the Father has prepared beforehand,
the Holy Spirit's our guide and our coach,
we are people, executives of the kingdom,
which means we have endless resources, and yet we struggle.
Why are the kingdom people the poorest?
We're the abundance people.
You know, what's with that?
And I remember having this conversation
actually with Pedro once,
which I think is why he started 100x,
because he was lamenting this issue.
And then the Lord challenged him to start 100x.
So the point comes back to,
I think what happens is this.
The Lord is more interested in who you're becoming
than what you end up doing.
And I think that's the first thing.
The second thing is,
everything upstairs starts in his heart
and then becomes who we're becoming in him.
But then he expects that to have a downstairs expression
for us to become a square.
Not just to do what he says,
but to be who he's created us to be.
And this sounds rather obvious,
but here's where I noticed a couple of things,
is that when we come to rest,
all our kingdom learning starts
and all our downstairs learning is ignited.
Because in that place,
we can now start to see what we must do.
Think of the day of Pentecost.
You know, 3,000 people are speaking in tongues
and everybody thinks they're mad.
And Peter gets up and gives clarity.
He said, these men are not drunk as you suppose.
So then he explains about the prophecy
and he gives clear description.
So what's going on there?
Peter's giving leadership to an upstairs event
that's just happening, right in the event,
and he's giving it a downstairs,
understandable explanation.
This is what's going on.
This is what this means.
And then their response is,
what does this mean?
What must we do?
Right, that's the response.
So Lord, what does this mean?
What must I do?
There's the one thing the Lord wants you to do.
So if we're thinking about why do we go through,
and I'm speaking for myself here,
why do we go through long extended financial battles
when we feel God's called us to business and to wealth?
Here's why.
I'll speak for myself again.
In these scenarios, how I learned this is that
when the Lord gave me as a 26 year old,
a very powerful prophetic word from a office prophet,
who was a very substantial office prophet,
not just a person with prophetic gifting,
which is what most are,
an actual office prophet and said,
you're called to the ministry of wealth and wisdom.
And I said, cool.
And what you know, as you start to grow and engage.
with the Lord, he starts to show you the levels of what that
means. But took me a while to realize I will never enter do
anything in finance or in wealth, until I did kingdom
finance and understood his generous heart. So when the Lord
says, you know, from Corinthians, give seed to sow
and bread to eat. Too many Christians are eating their
seed. So when the Lord wants to bless you increases the
storehouse, not of your bread, but of your seed. So when you
have a new project or something going on, you have to look
around. So I went to the Lord so frustrated one day, and I said,
Lord, I'm trying to launch this thing, you know, for you. And
the Lord says, not interested you doing it for me. I want to
do it with you, with you. And you're not doing it in my way.
You're not doing it the kingdom way. And I said, Lord, I'm, I'm
being honorable, and I'm, you know, full disclosures and all
that stuff. And the Lord said, you don't, you're not expressing
my heart. When I realized, I said, Look, can you just tell me
plainly because I'm really dense. So tell me plainly. And
the Lord said, you don't have enough seed in the ground for
the size of the harvest you're asking for. He says, you're like
the farmer walks out with a handful of seed and you throw in
the ground. So okay, let's back up 50 trucks. My expectation in
God was massive, in that I believed he could do it. But I
had a handful of seed in the ground. And so then I realized
and I think I was talking to one of you about this this week. Oh,
Ray, I think it was us. We're talking about sometimes God
says, make this investment, and then it all goes south. And you
go, what's with that? And the Lord says, that's how hard I
have to work to get you to put seed in the ground. I'm not
saying that about you, right. But in my case, for sure. And
it's helpful to know this because the Lord wants us to
have more seed in the ground, right? And sometimes, you know,
the Lord will have me give away things. Why does this work of
seed? Because it says that we can be generous on every
occasion. Yeah, Ray, it sounds like you want to weigh in and do
that. Which I can't hear. So I'm gonna watch you on the chat. Go
ahead.
Keep going.
Okay.
That is that's fantastic. Well, that's exactly what I bet you
would just take a minute or go to the Lord and say, Lord, did
you have to help me get a lot of seed in the ground? Can you
point out when? A business guy called me and said, Oh, man, I
really felt the Lord told me to start this business. I
of the business and it failed what was all that and i said what if you consider all that to be
seed have you asked the lord if that seed now i don't think we can be presumptive but let's ask
the lord i can't tell you i said to the lord okay i don't want to do forced forced seed management
can can i rather be a partner in it right i want to intentionally i want to intentionally
partner with you and this is where the prophetic you know um
where the prophetic does some very interesting things to us the first thing is that when we
have a lot of spontaneous prophetic words the problem with the spontaneous words that's fine
they're they're legitimate but they tend to be the shallow end of the prophetic pool
the reason that the shallow end is because that spontaneous word can only address a need
but a crafted prophetic word one that you in discussion with the lord and you're reviewing
and you're talking to others and it's in a well organized you know well weighed and governed word
you start to partner with the intentionality with god's intentions with his kind intentions
and so with the prophetic when we're in business it's very helpful to know that what the prophetic
word is doing is the word is not for the now you the present you it's for the future you
your prophetic word is god is speaking to your future you and he's saying okay we're going to
grow you up into this and in this point this word applies so a lot of believers stay at this level
keep getting words and reinforce words the lord's told me 17 times and so the question is why didn't
you believe him the first time i suppose but you know in his kindness he tells us again and invites
us again because he's just relentlessly kind so the question is we stay at this level and so we're
waiting for somewhere magically this word up here to become true today and it doesn't come to pass
and the reason is we never rose to the level to who that word was for because the real you in jesus
was given that word and the lord in his kindness isn't setting the bar so high you can never get
there and that's why the prophetic words of your lives change because the lord gives you the next
place you grow into that then he gives you another one and you go into the go well what about the old
word no you fulfilled that let's move to the next word and the next word but overall of your life if
you're tracking and if you're looking at god's intentions you can see the underlying theme in all
your words are all saying the same thing so it's look at the words word behind the words and so
you know as i've gone through this process myself i've realized that it's not up to me to get me
there it's the lord in his kind compliment he's saying this is how i see you and you go wow so
that there's that there's the prophetic word has a father's compliment in it he's saying you're this
and you're so it's good to know what he's saying and then say okay lord how do we go from here and
the the downstairs or the sober view of yourself is to say okay i'm still here you're saying here
what's the next thing we're engaging what's the next upgrade because you're the architect i resigned
as the uh manager of my own self-development program right when we came to jesus he's the
author and finisher of our faith so we resigned from that function so what's the next thing because
now we become sober and that's where the humility and the gentleness comes from because the lord
kindly and gently says if we stay here here's here are the things that will disqualify this
word from ever coming to be and and so we can't we can't take the word and think it's for the
it's for the me now well god lives doesn't live in time so from his viewpoint it is but from
our viewpoint it means that he is building us up to a place so the word the prophetic word
pulls you up into a new kingdom possibility and in which you can be fully enriched in all that
that prophetic word is offering you because god fully intends and he's fully committed to getting
you there in fact you have to actively turn off the process you have to actively even if you take
some detours make some mistakes along the way he he is totally fine with that he's not asking you
to execute perfectly he's just asking that you walk with him in it and so what i have found is
very helpful if the lord says i've called you to you know
to wealth, and then he says, and there's been a prophetic word maybe around
real estate, since several of you in that space are in real estate,
then if I don't ever learn anything about real estate, and I don't go on any courses,
and I don't study anything, so there's a downstairs learning that has to honour
the upstairs word. So, it's amazing though, the kindness of the Lord,
He brings the right course, the right person, the right connection,
and you're on the road. That's just, He is that kind, and that good,
and so meticulous in the details, you're bumping to the right person,
whatever, He's architecting the whole thing, so the downstairs learning
honours the upstairs word, and on top of it, you're going through an upgrade.
I can never step into wealth until I step into His generosity.
Because the scripture is not only generous on every occasion,
but that you will then have all that you need in everything.
So, the scripture is promising, in His financial management,
scripture is promising you will have everything you need for your business,
your capital, every, the next person you need to hire, I'll bring them along,
you just need to receive them. But that means the kingdom way.
What we can't do is claim a kingdom promise, and use a worldly way,
and think we'll get there. So, I think that, and none of us are deliberately
trying to do that, of course. So, I thought as we go through this,
it just seems that the Lord wants us to grow up into the full thing
of who He says we are, and He's very kind in that process.
So, many of us grew up with condemnation, or like most Christians,
we live in like constant low-grade condemnation.
So, when we hear a prophetic word, and we say, oh, that's what He's saying,
that's what I am, we feel condemned. This is what I'm not.
That's why the Lord never deals with what you're not.
He only deals with who He's becoming, who you're becoming,
and who wants to be for you. And so, what's helpful, what pulls you up,
is Lord, who do you want to be for me now, in this next step that I didn't learn before?
Well, you know, I'll be your provider, I'll be your sales executive,
I'll be your whatever. So, He steps into a very practical place,
and again, we have to come to rest, because we can't function,
this mechanism doesn't function except in rest.
So, you can't connect to your yoke in stress.
The way of the kingdom. Let's have some conversation.
Let's weigh in. What do you guys think?
How many of you connect with what I'm saying, in terms of this learning,
how does the prophetic map to the downstairs? Yeah, for sure.
Cool thing is, no condemnation.
I can relate to that, Dion. I love how Father does that.
You know, the higher He takes you, He just pushes more of the kingdom,
and more of the Jesus, and it just expands.
You're not trying to fix all this stuff, and it's just brilliant,
because you can move fast, you can get healed as you move forward,
if you accidentally get shot. You know what I mean?
But the point is, I love that, like how He constantly, you know,
elevates us, and just pushes us with His grace, and I don't know.
No, that's exactly Emily, I think. The way I think of it is,
that when I try to take on all this stuff, so that I can do it,
that's when I'm not at rest. When I rest, it means I let it go.
Rest means I have to let go what's in my hand, to receive what's in His.
Right? Rest means that I go, it's like childlike trust.
I can't be in a yoke, and be pulling, and say,
okay, I've got it, Jesus, I'm just going to hook you,
you know, we're hooked together in this, I'm just going to pull in this direction,
because I want to please you. And He says, could you please stop pulling?
So, the interesting thing about it, my burden is light.
There is a burden, there's a weight to be pulled, for sure, serious weight.
Sometimes you're going to be in times of long hours, real focused times.
It doesn't mean we work 10 hours a week.
It doesn't mean, what it means is, it feels light to me.
There's such delight in what's going on, there's such deep trust
in who the Father is in this, that I can boldly step into a position
he's saying and saying okay what's next so this is not the time to take business decisions
that he isn't asking you to take because he's painting the upstairs will always be way ahead
of the downstairs this means that what you're seeing in the lord and what you're seeing in
your business there's always going to be a gap because the business is slowly following right
and so where i've made mistakes is when i've tried to shrink the gap or i've made business decisions
um i mean in one particular case oh well i see tamra i see your hands up let me go to you first
listen no i always love your stories so it's we've been on this journey and we've shared a
little bit in here um last november we kind of we were growing we were doing great our company was
doing awesome it felt like it was flourishing and we were getting to that pivot point of tipping over
into the greater things that's where we thought we were and then um we lost a significant employee
and everything crashed i spent the next four months struggling in depression couldn't pull
it together everything felt fractured i just was so discouraged i mean there was this journey that
god had to take me on um but it was a beautiful journey because in the journey he broke off some
very significant things i let go and let god be the ceo of the company so that was a huge step
forward but i also let go of the fear of man and that was huge for me to be able to recognize number
one that i was letting what i feared about uh what was possible in my life based on other people
okay so god got to break up this huge burden of fear of man and then um and out of that i
get to be set free you know lots of burdens flew off the company started to get back into a flow
again uh todd stepped in big time in december and took over marketing and sales and just um and in
four years of having this company he has bought me tooth and nail adore my husband but something
shifted you know but he has bought me tooth and nail on this i hate this i don't want to do this
i don't like but it was my it was my assignment from god and that's how he kind of looked at it
but he kicked in in december and since then the transformation of our company
of our marriage of what's possible of our team has been significant so significant that
in my inner being god just started setting me into who i am supposed to be number one
todd is the we've known all along that todd has the prophetic word from 12 years ago or 13 years
ago of he's going to be the wealthy businessman and he's the one who's got this influence on him
and um that has not manifested in his life and he's like why not why not why not so this is a
great conversation but here's what's powerful that happened this assignment that i held on to
so tight saying i have to do this for jesus i have to do this is my assignment i get to do
it you know me yeah i just i mean i'm hold on strangleholding this thing
to make sure his day is alive uh even while i'm squeezing it but um god changed so much in me in
that time of challenge and depression and recognition and failure and the whole journey
of six months to where was it a month ago todd or six weeks ago um god woke me up one morning
and said todd is ceo and i went what
okay you know todd's got the calling to be the wealthy businessman i don't that's not my calling
you know my calling is as a you know influencer and raising people up and um so we got up that
morning and i said to todd oh by the way you're going to be ceo you need to talk to god about that
and he's like what i think that was on a sunday we were on the way to church and i said oh you're
going to be ceo so you know get ready and monday and god worked on him all day long and monday
morning i woke up you know we woke up and he's like god's like we're in worship together and
it's like today's the day and i go okay todd are you ready to be ceo and he and he's he's pacing
the room back and forth he can show you your story todd but he accepted the ceo position
what a month ago or six weeks ago everything has kind of shifted and it is a beautiful peaceful
place
I was so at peace.
I'm COO, I'm doing operational stuff,
but he has flourished.
He is blossoming into this person
that God has always meant him to be.
But the journey of the last 13 years,
what you were talking about,
we get to go on this journey of becoming
in order to even step into,
I mean, all the years of seed planting,
you know, in his character,
gets him to step up into receiving this role
for a company that he never, ever wanted to be part of.
Only God gets to do that.
So it was this amazing journey.
And the beautiful thing, yesterday,
the person who quit in November,
who was such an integral part of our company,
she called me and said, can I come back?
And I instantly went, of course, you know,
and you coming back knowing that Todd is CEO and I am COO,
and you're really going to be working for him.
Are you okay with that?
And she was like, yes, absolutely.
And when she worked with us before,
her and Todd had a little bit of tension going on.
So there's been a healing that's happening.
And there's just, so I love the,
don't get discouraged in the planting of seeds.
And I think that's where I had gotten
is in the discouragement of the planting of seeds,
not recognizing that the harvest
was just literally around the corner.
And so I just, so much has happened
since we talked last, even a month ago.
I just wanted to share the encouragement of that,
because it's right in alignment with what you're saying.
Wow, thank you, Tamara.
And congratulations, Todd, on your new job, your promotion.
Appreciate it, yeah, yeah.
God had to drag me in, that's all right.
I know, yeah.
Why does the, so why does the Lord,
and this is not aimed at you, Todd,
this is all of us, right?
Why does the Lord have to drag us into stuff?
Okay, I got dragged into getting seed,
dragged into the, and it's like,
Lord, why can't I just see what you're seeing?
And the reason is we're still trying to do things for God.
If we get out of the for God mode
and get into the with God mode, everything changes.
Because in the with God mode,
he's the leader of the process.
And I know we keep hopping on this over and over
and over again, because it takes that much time
to unlearn this usury, this usury theology.
God must use me.
God doesn't use people, and we know this.
Just like you didn't have kids
so that you had someone to use to mow the lawn.
So it's the same thing, God doesn't use people.
But he loves to partner, he wants in on the journey.
He wants, because why?
As Graham would put it,
he wants the pleasure of your company,
but he also wants you to have the pleasure of his company,
to find out what he's like, how he wants to be for you.
There's so much God is wanting to give us,
but we're stuck in these very small spaces.
And so God expands our thinking, expands our heart.
Let's go to Matthew then, Glenn Hobbs.
Did you see the note that I sent you?
Because that's what I was gonna share about,
if that's all right with you.
Yeah, sure, I mean, you can share whatever you want to talk about.
All right, well, I just, I'm new to this,
and so I just want to make sure that...
Yeah, no, thank you for asking, but you're welcome to share.
Well, I just, so, I thought that I was in this crawlspace time,
and, you know, because I was really confused,
and oh my gosh, the words that I'm hearing today,
and just the exact conversation that we're having
that I needed to hear, oh, I don't know,
oh, it's really powerful, because
the whole idea of doing things with the Lord
instead of for Him is so transformative and new for me.
And it's just been such an amazing journey that,
you know, I felt like I was asking the Lord,
I said, did I mess all this up?
Did I hear you wrong?
I took this giant step of faith,
and all of a sudden I thought, well, wow,
man, if I did this wrong, I'm toast.
And anyway, a group that I'd been leading
for over almost a year, maybe a little more than a year,
some issues arose in that group,
and it really, I got a very uneasy sense
of what was happening, and I.
I stepped away for a few days to just pray about what the Lord wanted me to do in it.
They had an issue, well someone made an issue about surrounding some things with a ministry
that I love and I'm very involved in that actually Dion was one of the people they were
saying things about and so I prayed about it and during the BS Brilliant School of
Leadership I reached out through Bridget, it's kind of precious I didn't want to interrupt
Dion while he was talking, so I messaged Bridget, I didn't hear anything back and then later
on I got a text message from Dion saying hey I hear we should talk and so we talked and
then I lay out everything that's going on in the group and just to be, you know I didn't
want to incite anything or inflame anything so I just read him exactly with no inflections
or anything what was going on so that he would have an idea and he said you know Matthew
there's a different spirit moving here than what's being said and we're going to move
in the opposite spirit and so we're going to move in kindness and so he agreed to come
meet with our group.
The real quick version of that is the group wound up disintegrating for now and I've left
it to allow them to hopefully have some healing and restoration but what was amazing about
that was me doing what the Lord had led me to do with that group of people at the end
of our conversation Dion said hey Matthew could you tell me about your ministry one
more time and so I told him and explained about it because I was getting ready to leave
this group because I'd spent the money that I had cashed out sowing seeds and now that
I understand that reference that I was sowing those seeds trusting the Lord that he's going
to bless it all which is fantastic and Dion said well you know we can't charge a ministry
like that and I said well the thing is I'm having a really hard time figuring out how
to file my papers and file whether I'm going incorporated or 501c3 or something I never
heard of which he said well do you have a minute I'd like to introduce you to somebody
and so he brought Todd into the conversation and Todd and I started he Todd wanted to hear
about it so I told him about the ministry and Todd was like oh my god all of a sudden
all I hear is hallelujah hallelujah thank you Jesus thank you Jesus and then Todd says
well Matthew we're gonna help you get started we're gonna they're gonna train my CFO they're
gonna free she's gonna have courses if I understand it correctly like online courses for like
a year to learn how to walk and maximize all of the things all the things that they're
gonna help us establish I mean God brought that all together in an afternoon I went from
quitting the group to being blessed with being able to still stay in the group with my partner
Luke and all those things came through and the Lord is just and then we started filming
yesterday for the first time creating content directly for the program for the for the channel
for the ministry and it's and it was beautiful and so just thank y'all so much for everything
yeah well thank you thank you Matthew for what you guys do for reaching out to those
who don't fit in church you know and I I love I love the the compassion of your heart I
appreciate Glenn yeah thanks Dion and hi all I was just going to add a comment from from
my journey just on the on the partnership thing and I've realized that my journey with
the Lord has actually been a central theme has been of this this thing of partnership
I never understood it only looking back I realized this is what it is and when I realized
that I've we have had significant challenges in my career and so on over the years it's it's
really coming back to one of two extremes off of partnership the first is I would say
passivity where I might have a word or a promise or whatever and I just assume God's going to go
and do that and there's nothing on my part to go and do it and I just just let it be and I've
I've ended up in the ditch on that one in in a work situation in a bad way and then
um the the other is the other extreme of of presumption where I've sort of done like okay
I'm going to do this for you Lord or I suddenly get sort of wound up but I get sort of okay I
have to go and do whatever the case may be and lo and behold I end up in the other ditch another
side and and through all of those journeys it's really been a case of the Lord kind of bringing
me back to the point of no I don't want you to be passive I want to do this with you no I don't
want you to go run ahead I want to do this with you and and so this has just been a theme that's
been you know and continue
used to grow in me at this point in time, you know, so it's just
that, just that comment of it's not, it's not passivity, it's
not presumption, but it's really the partnership.
That's so good. Now, Glenn did an amazing one hour podcast,
which will be available this Friday. And we would, we'll make
sure you get it. And Glenn, really, thanks for going through
all that. Because what the thing here is, it's not that I don't
know if it's that we're presuming on the Lord, I know,
we all use that word, because I don't think you can presume on
the kindness of God. I think he loves it. If you presume more,
could you presume more? Could you expect more? You know, I'm
that kind, right? But it is a matter of getting out of step
out of sync, you know, I think maybe his word, and, and the
scripture is, you know, we live by the Spirit, let us also keep
in step with the Spirit, which infers an amazing thing. That
means you can be hearing in the Spirit, but get ahead. To me,
that feels like the way the Lord talks to me about is you're
trying too hard. Especially when you're in ministry, or you're in
leadership, you want to do the absolute best, you know, it
comes from a good heart, it comes from a desire to please
the Lord to catch every nuance. You know, I've rarely seen
people get ahead of the Lord leaders get ahead of the Lord
where that wasn't the underlying motive. It wasn't that like it
wasn't from arrogance. It wasn't from any of that. It was
from a deep desire to be to live a life quote worthy of the Lord.
Well, the minute you in Christ, and you're in partnership with
him, you are living a life worthy of the Lord. What a life
worthy of the Lord means is that you are receiving everything
Jesus deserves you to have because he paid for it. See,
Jesus paid already. And that's why the Father very geniously
put you in yoke with Jesus, because that's where all the
preparation, all the promises, all the everything is there. And
then the Holy Spirit teaches us to stay in step, don't get
ahead, don't get behind. So think of the oxen analogy, if
you put a yoke around two oxen, of course, Jesus like the mega
bull, and then we feel like the scrawny little bull next door.
And if he just pushes, we get crushed, you know, that's why
he's I'm gentle, I'm gentle. But I think I sometimes wonder if
we're pulling the thing around, then I look up and I said, the
yoke isn't even touching my neck, you're doing all the work.
I'm like the scrawny, skinny little neck. And there's this
yoke, and it's all around. I think that's how it feels. But
to me, with the word the Lord uses to keep me in step, is you
really can slow down, you're trying, you don't have to try to
please me, you please me, because you're in Christ, you already
have all the favor of heaven, because you're in Christ. And
again, lots of unlearning, right? So hey, guys, so I hope
this is encouraging to you. I hope this is, I know, there's a
little bit of real talk. But honestly, you know, just
watching all the comments and responses, it sounds like every
single person knows what I'm talking about, because we all
love the prophetic. But what the prophetic is doing is it's
opening up our hearts and our capacity in the Lord to become
the person God sees when he looks at us. And that's what
grace is. Grace is the indwelling presence of God, to
empower that. That's what grace is, to empower the real you in
Jesus. That's what grace is. As you know, we don't like those
other kind of lesser definitions, you know, like
unmerited favor or whatever, because then Jesus didn't have
any, if that's true. You know, so the question around, and I
don't mean to take a sideswipe with that, but I just don't, I
want to accelerate the unlearning. It's not so much
that I care to, you know, as Graham would say, God is going
to diss your illusion. You know, he's going to get rid of
disillusion, he's going to diss your illusion. You know, God is,
he never functions in illusion. And what the enemy tries to do
is take your prophetic word and create an illusion around it to
try to get you out of step, to try to get you to run ahead, to
get you to push. And the Lord says, rest, rest, rest, rest,
because you will find rest for your soul. And if you're in that
rest, you'll be highly effective, to delight, you'll be
agile and fast. I want to talk practically, let's, let's land
this in a practical downstairs, let's map this further
downstairs. So I picked a mathematical function, a
mathematical word called a forcing function, anybody
familiar with the concept of forcing functions. And I was
listening to a podcast, I think I was listening to the Tesla
shareholders meeting, and Elon mentioned, I think he loves that
word forcing function. And I got to be thinking about, I started
talking to the Lord
about that. And I realized the Lord does this for us.
They are. There's a in mathematics, forcing function
means if you can think of a signal, I'll try to keep it less
mathematical. But if you can think of a signal, then if
you're trying to go here, and you're trying to jump up to
there where your business is, you want to up level your
business to the next level. What a forcing function does is it
compresses the time. A forcing function takes what would have
taken a year and does it in a day is a forcing function as
all in a week, it gives it it forces into an almost
supernatural or should we say kingdom natural, that's a better
word. Because in the kingdom, it's nothing is supernatural
because isn't supernatural to God's natural to him. And since
the same for you, it's natural to you. Right. So I just edited
myself on the fly. So this forcing function is an
incredible function, because what it does is when you have
permission, one of the things I like to ask the Lord, and this
we're going to land this on an exercise today, is there a
forcing function that you need to implement in your business in
your ministry? Is there a forcing function that the Father
is behind that he's giving permission for? Because a couple
of things one, because what happens is he shrinks down the
time base. And so what sounds absolutely unreasonable and
unattainable in that timeframe. So, you know, we use these
forcing functions all the time. And, you know, even as recently,
when when the Lord said, I want you to start a global church, I
had a real problem with this. Firstly, I love the local church
and I've been a local church guy. And as many of you know, I'm
an ordained minister since my mid 20s. I have a degree in
theology, most of which I fortunately have had repaired in
Jesus. And some theology courses are great. However, the
forcing function in my life was when the Lord said, so Bridget
and I were visiting in Charleston, in January of 23. Is
that where it was, Bridget?
January 23, my birthday, yeah.
By the way, did you have your hand up earlier?
I did earlier. It was about sowing and sowing seeds.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah.
No, it's fine. I was just going to share that when we were
running 2016-2017, we ran a campaign for Graham called the
Gift of Time. And Dion and I did it purely out of obedience to
the Lord asked us to do it. And we invested into Graham's
ministry so that he didn't have to travel so much. Little did
we know that when all our stuff happened in 2018, that that
would actually come back to us not in money necessarily, but it
became our work and our job. That and through Brilliant. And
so I think sometimes when you're sowing, it's not always directly
in correlation to where you sowed. But sometimes, and we
didn't do that in order to get a job, you know, three years
later, we did it out of obedience at that point. And
then the Lord brought us in, you know, miraculously after all
our cruel, cruel space experience. So yeah, just an
encouragement that sometimes you do things out of obedience,
you don't really know why and how it was ever going to come
back as fruit, but it did. So you know, that's what I was
going to share.
Yeah, that's a good point, because you raise an additional
point. You know, a lot of people say I don't have a heart for
that. So I'm not giving to that. That's not how the kingdom
works. A downstairs worldly thing. The upstairs is I want to
have a heart for that. So I'm giving to that where your
treasure is, there your heart will be. Also, you can direct
your heart through your seed. You can direct your heart into
the things God is expanding and opening up to you. You can give
into the thing that you want your heart to be in, which is
what we didn't realize we were doing. And now, you know, it's
such an honor to be partners with Graham and Teresa, and the
team at Brilliant. So let's talk about this forcing function a
little more because when we were, I think it was January 23,
we're in Charleston, and we were visiting the Sage studios with
Barry and Blue. And we were, you know, trying to figure out I'd
met them at 100x conference. And I was very impressed by, by them
and that by Barry in particular, just had a particular clarity to
what she's as a real gift. And, and so we went there to see the
studios and see if we could Brilliant should run a
conference there. And while we're there, we just Bruce and I
was chatting and waiting on the Lord. And Bridget, you know, at
some point, we're gonna have to start a church. Now, you see, I
have an assumption of what that means. I have an assumption that
means get a building and a staff and a program, all of which I'm
zero interested in doing. So I said to them, what did I do, I
connected those assumptions to the Word of the Lord. And I said,
we're not going to start a church not for years to come. See
what happened there is I did the opposite of a forcing function.
What I did there was I delayed it out into the future because of an assumption I had.
And so a little while after that, we had a great visit and happened to be actually on
Bridget's birthday.
And then I think shortly after, a few weeks later, we were in Nashville visiting my son.
And about four in the morning, the Lord wakes me up and says, okay, we're going to start
a local church.
And the first thing I went to is I said, Lord, he started a church and I said, what, Lord,
I don't want to, you know, this is how you explain stuff to God, like he doesn't quite
get it.
So I was doing that thing, the Gideon thing.
I'm the wrong person.
I'm from the wrong tribe.
God just ignores all that negativity and waits for us to finish, then he just carries on
saying what he was saying.
As you notice, the angel of the Lord just said, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior,
you know, called out his identity and kept going, just ignored all his negativity.
And so when I got down, I wrote down the blueprint for what became Brilliant Church.
And the Lord said, I want it to be global.
I want it to be online.
I want you to lead.
I said, Lord, everyone really expect Graham to lead it.
And the Lord said, I want you to lead it.
And I said, well, I've just done this for Pedro, you know, and his deal.
And you'll remember this, Tamara, you guys just finished registering and doing all the
stuff with.
And we just got the first board meeting and everything ratified and got it all up and
running.
So I said, well, why don't we just use that?
And the Lord said, I have my assignment for Pedro.
This is your assignment.
You must take this on.
I said, Lord, do you have any other assignments?
Just asking, you know, you know, I'm going to do it.
Just asking, just thought I would throw that in there just in case there are, you know,
multiple choice or something, you know, anyway, so.
And of course, we, Bridget and I flew to Santa Barbara.
We sat down with Graham and Teresa and with Jenny.
And we just said, we feel like this is what the Lord is saying.
And, you know, I just didn't think that.
And then the Lord said, I want it to be an apostolic prophetic movement so that, so that
you can empower local churches, but also give people a place to belong who have stepped
into the kingdom and have started becoming kingdom activators and now have no home.
You know, and actually, I've got to be honest, my heart broke because I was thinking, I don't
want to be a church where people can't come and be an activator.
And if they do, they can only activate in my space.
They can only do what fits our mandate, our little box or whatever.
And I don't want to disciple anyone to a movement.
I want to disciple them to Jesus.
I want them to go and do whatever he says, go and do that.
And so we launched that.
Now, now we flip the forcing function.
And then the Lord said, by the way, I also want a leadership school.
So I called Tamara.
We worked out the thing.
You guys, like in rapid time, registered Brilliant Church and for us and the 508.
And we got that going.
Three weeks we launched the church and a school that now, you know, I have a very high opinion
of Team Brilliant.
So, you know, that's just, you know, what we did.
I know.
I think, Jenny, I saw you earlier.
I don't know if you have any comments on any of it and what it was like, but there was
a forcing function that the Lord put in place.
And what should have taken what I thought was going to take three to five years took
three to five weeks.
So there you go.
We launched on the first of May.
We just recently celebrated our first year when 28 countries, 49 states.
God is doing something.
And I had to I had to find the assumption that was that was causing me to misinterpret
the word and take the wrong action.
We say upstairs, upstairs permission leads to ball downstairs action.
I was trying to do ball downstairs action.
The interpretation of that.
And so that's that's the kindness of the Lord.
So forcing functions, once you kick in a forcing function, by the way, several things happen.
You highlight weaknesses in your leadership.
You highlight weaknesses in your team.
You highlight weaknesses in your products, in your systems, in your vendors.
I mean, it just flushes out everything, you know.
And these forcing functions are incredibly helpful because what they do, it requires
super clear decision making.
And the reason I'm telling my story is going to because I'm asking the law, I want to give
you five types of forcing functions that I found work, and maybe one of them will help
you.
So in that moment, it clears it brings such clarity.
And as you know, clarity, because complexity is the enemy of clarity, right?
We know that as you grow, things get complex.
And when things get complex, you can't see anymore.
And so you have to force clarity to get to simplicity.
It takes a lot of courage to be simple, right?
Takes a tremendous amount of courage to be simple.
And of course, the master of simplicity was Jesus himself, you know, tells these
You know, these parables that are so profound and teach us how to walk with the Lord and
be with the Lord.
And he made it so simple, every single person could understand it.
So here are a couple of things that, you know, we, so we launched the church, we're going
along and, you know, a couple of months into it.
And then we, then we had this discussion.
We need to have a conference.
And you know, we had just gone to see Sage.
So we were thinking of doing something at Sage.
So we contact Sage.
We engage them.
We start the process.
And Barry is like on our case, if anyone's worked with Barry, I know, Ray, I know you've
worked with Barry.
You've done a few events with her.
Anyone's worked with Barry, you know what it's like.
And she kept asking.
And so we thought we're running a church conference.
About I don't know, halfway through the planning phase, we realized we are not running a church
conference, we're running a school conference.
That's how far off we were.
Maybe you guys look at us and say, well, you've got Graham, you have an office prophet, you
can the guys never miss it.
Oh, we miss it all the time.
It's part of the learning.
It's part of the direct learning, guys.
And I want to demystify that this gets better, the more maturing Christ you become.
It's the same, just more zeros get added.
That's all that happens.
Just more at stake, Jenny.
You forgot that we had personnel, we had some team members during that time as well, that
we had phase out and new ones come in.
And I think the thing that keeps just coming back to me, Dion, is, and I appreciate how
you said that, it's not that it goes away, the more you carry on, and the more you're
walking with God.
But what happens is you begin to see him as big, and you see his capacity and what he
can do.
And that's what becomes bigger than anything else.
And so you begin to look for his beauty and his majesty everywhere.
And anything less than that, it just pales in comparison.
And so when I think back on that time, that was such an intensely accelerated time.
And going through it, I remember the conversations that we were having were all about partnership
and partnering with what God wanted to do in that time.
And we didn't have it all together in the beginning.
We didn't have the full picture.
You didn't have that full picture, and we figured it out as we went along.
And what made it delightful was the partnership aspect, knowing that it wasn't dependent upon
what it was that we could accomplish or what we could do, but it was fully dependent upon
partnering with him and making it be easy.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Jenny.
So much went on at that time with us.
In that moment when we...
And they talk about having to be humble, explaining to the company you just hired that actually
it's not a church thing.
The offer isn't come join the church.
The offer is sign up for the School of Leadership.
And also we realized we'd misnamed it.
So then it became the Brilliant School of Leadership.
Because we just called it Brilliant Leader, I think, in the beginning.
Maybe some of you remember that in its first incantation.
And we realized that when we ran that, when we were running the Edge, Tuesdays we do the
spiritual leadership, kingdom leadership stuff.
Wednesdays we do all the covert stuff where we trained all the best business practices.
And then we realized, hang on, these are two separate things.
Not only were they two separate things, but the Brilliant Leader was a business in and
of itself.
And that's what became the Brilliant School of Leadership.
On the other side, that's what became the Edge.
That's what you've joined.
That's the inner circle.
That's gone back to mine and Bridget's company, I-49.
And that's what we're building.
But it's still very closely tied.
It's not a direct Brilliant thing, but it's all tied.
People join Brilliant TV on the app, then many of them want to say, hey, I want community
now.
So they join the church.
Many of them want leadership training.
So Brilliant School of Leadership.
And then they want to become kingdom executives and truly activate the kingdom at a high level.
Now, doesn't that sound like an impressive value ladder?
Okay, full disclosure, we never thought of any of that.
None of that was us.
We discovered that the Lord had built that.
And so we gave it a name.
And man, you guys are such clear thinkers.
Yep, we're geniuses.
So I'm trying to make this very real, you know, I'm just letting you know, man, none
of us have this now.
But here's the amazing venture with God.
Jenny, thank you for bringing that up.
Our confidence in His competence grows exponentially.
In fact, we find out the Lord will relentlessly be kind and good to you until you settle this
issue.
that he's always kind to you until your confidence is set in permanent mode.
It's like God wants to turn the volume up to 10 and then snap the knob off so you
can't turn it down, and that's exactly what he wants.
He wants you to know.
And I remember a few years ago,
Graham shared this question and he just absolutely undid me.
And at Brilliance 23 last September, I tried to raise it in the thing.
And I kind of got emotional.
And the question was, you know, because you can use this for yourself.
You know, so in my case, Dion, what will it take for you to believe
that I am unceasingly and relentlessly majestic towards you?
What will it take in your life, in your business?
What will it take for you to turn the knob up to 10 and snap it off and leave it
in that extreme mode of confidence in his goodness?
What will it take?
And and I said, well, Lord, I don't want any I don't want to put you
in a place where you have to do these forcing functions on me.
Force me to proceed.
Force me to take on a position that I didn't even think I wanted.
I didn't want to be a pastor of a church particularly.
And
now I'm loving it, absolutely loving what we're doing at Brilliant Church and just
watching our team grow has been huge for us.
So what's going to happen in a forcing function?
You're going to flush out all the weaknesses in your system.
You're going to flush out where all your
lack is, which is great to know because now you can deal with that.
It's going to teach your team collaboration and coordination on the main thing.
And all the fluffy bits will fall away
very quickly because I have time for the fluffy bits and I have time for politics
and blah, because we've got to deliver it in a week, you know.
And and for us to pull off that conference
in such a short period of time was was extraordinary.
And we walked away from that conference and we said that was our best event yet.
And then we did Brilliant's 24.
No, no, no. That was our best event.
And we quoted it as best not because we
had fantastic conversion rates and all that stuff, but because it felt like we
gave Jesus the bride he deserves, which is what Brilliant's mission statement is.
Why do we do what we do at Brilliant?
To give Jesus the bride he deserves.
He deserves her to be equipped, to know she's fully loved, to know she's that that
he adores her, et cetera.
That's what she deserves.
Jesus deserves for her to know.
OK, let's talk about quickly five, five quick things.
I put a little slide deck together just to vary it up a bit.
Yeah, I'll just pull this up here.
So let's just quickly walk.
There's only a couple of slides.
I don't like slides normally, but we've been talking about, you know,
when you think of the bell curve of the growth of a business, there's the idea.
There's this kick it off and start.
So a hundred X are pretty good at that front end piece.
You know, that was when I drew this diagram
for Pedro, that's what he isolated as.
But then what happens is we start to hit success.
And then you see the little resistance factor there from success to prime.
Prime is the point where if we try to get
from success to prime, we develop infrastructure and systems
in our business that's built around success and they very loose structures.
They are, you know, everybody kind of doing everything.
A lot of generalists, right.
A lot of generals working hard.
So if you if you think about when you
started, you were the single solopreneur, you did everything right.
Then you transition to a team that did
everything, a bunch of generalists.
The hard part of going from success to
prime is to start to specialize and put people in their lane.
And you start hearing words like, can we
go back to the good old days where we all knew everything?
Because now we don't all know everything.
Can we? You know, one of the first things I had
to implement when I came to Brilliant is Graham doesn't have to know everything.
And they will. But he's the you know, he's the he's the founder.
He's the owner. And I said, yeah, he doesn't need to know everything.
He needs to know the important things that he needs to know to do his job.
And we need to be very transparent, make sure we are super quick.
So I promise, Graham, you'll never learn
of a major change in the business you didn't hear from me first.
And so in that in that mode to get to prime, we have to go through a different
process. So for some of you, you can say, well, what's the time period to do this?
Honestly, you can have a 40 year old company that's still in success mode.
You can have a 18 month company that's running in prime.
Prime is that place in the business where it can flourish without the founder.
If we took you out of your business, would it flourish?
That's what prime is now to do that, it means we have to go from you being
the leader to a team of.
leaders. And so as we go through that process of doing that, here's here's a
definition. So speed drops off as we get into complexity. So if we're simple, we
pick up speed. That's Jack Welch. Simplicity drives speed, right?
Self-confidence leads to simplicity drives speed, the three S's of Jack
Welch. And so the simpler you make your organization, the faster you'll go. And
what happens is, as the company grows, complexity comes in because and then we
bring in controls, we said we have to put people in their lane. So now there's
reports and connections, and there's a more structured environment control. And
so what happens is with control comes complexity. So the trick is to be right
here in the in the spot, because we, we know simplicity drives speed. And we know
that control drives complexity, what we're trying to do is hit that prime
spot right at the best trade off of those two things. So what we're trying to
do here is we're looking for the forcing function that gets us to prime, or at
least takes the next big step towards prime. So here are five forcing functions
that I've used. They can be event I explained brilliance 23, we create an
event, and oh, we need 18 months to prepare for the event. What if we had 18
days, that's a forcing function, it compresses the timeframe to feel almost
unrealistic and unattainable, it flushes out all the parts you don't need, it gets
to the core of what it is you do. And it helps you get down to the heart of the
matter quickly. To you can have a team forcing function, Ben, you just gave us
that example, right? And and I think maybe Mark, you're in the process of that.
When you move key team members around, you can end up creating a forcing
function. Then the next thing is product. You know, one of the things about
products are, I kept thinking of Robert Kawasaki, he was one of the founders or
one of the early employees of Apple. And he talked, you know, he talked one of his
lines were which we did in the train, we do the training and on the edge is, you
know, don't worry, be crappy, you know, go ahead and ship it, get it going, get the
first thin slice, get it out, find out if this will help the client. I mean, I
don't want to be so bad, the client doesn't love it. But his point is, we can
sit there and over engineer things forever. So what a forcing function is,
we have a release date on that day, right? And not like the CIO I once hired,
Glenn, you remember, we were on team, then we hired this guy, Vic Mazza, very smart
guy. I said, Vic, how are we doing? He says, we're two weeks, we're two weeks
from launch. I said, that's fantastic. When's the launch date? He said, I have no
idea. So, you know, you don't know, you know, I've always been two weeks away
from launch, you know, we're, we're one thing away, when we get that deal, then
when we get this, then. So what you have to do, you have to create a forcing
function. And the forcing function can also be around your overhead. Don't gear
up your overhead for the prophetic. Please do not gear up your overhead in
anticipation of the prophetic. Because as we talked before, there is a timeline
difference. And so you can gear up your overhead once the prophetic is
manifest, because you have no idea when you're going to rise to that point. So
now you're going to burn through all that extra cash while you're growing.
Don't, no need to put yourself there. Another forcing function is financing,
like restructuring your debt, restructuring your cap table, some of you
need to, you know, really relook at your capitalization table, what's what's
capitalization table, it's just your shareholders, your debt structures, how
how you're capitalized. And of course, you know, I've spent a lot of time in my
life career doing that stuff. But you can think about the forcing function. So
here's the question, some of you, it's time, one of the forcing functions is to
get the right, we've used this firefighter model before, do you have
the right people with their hands on the net? Think of this as your management
model, right? So do you have the right people at the net? Do you have the wrong
people on the net? Here's how you know. If you've got an overpowering person who
doesn't know how to be in team, they'll walk up to the net, and they'll just rip
it out of everybody's hands, because they are so powerful in their
presentation, then you have no net, the company will jump out of the window and
hit the tarmac. The other thing is there's no tension in the net. Everybody
so kumbaya that we're all just in agreement. So what happens is now we're
all standing in the middle all in in agreement, and now the nets on the floor,
that's the same as having no net. So in other words, there has to be tension. So
tension in your team says there's balance and something healthy is
happening. Overtension, when somebody walks in and
rips. So I will sometimes call people after a
meeting and say, why did you not pull your side of the net?
If you're on calls with Brilliant, sometimes they'll use that expression.
I'm not being difficult. I'm just pulling my side of the net.
And we expect tension. Yeah, I know we want to spend the money on that, but
maybe we should spend the money on this. I know that we think this is the
big important thing, but what about that? So when you introduce a forcing function,
you clear out all these tensions in your team.
Find out whose hand should be on the net, whose hand should not be on the net.
Okay, so that's, I hope that was helpful. Comments.
Yeah Dion, I was just saying that, oh I'm sorry, was someone
speaking? No, go ahead. I'm just trying to find you.
Oh yeah, I was just saying that there's tension in my team right now.
And it's good to go over this again, because sometimes,
not that I, you know, when you're dealing, like I don't know where they're at with
the Lord. I mean, I'm in a secular environment and it's right where the
Lord wants me to be, because it's that, that he's permeating the dough, you know,
like the kingdom, which is fine. So there's kind of, you know, I wouldn't
call them attitudes around that or anything, because the tension is the way
I see it, because I know the Lord's working in it.
But it's good to, to really see that from the, you know, from the kingdom
perspective, because then you can, it just, it just kicks out any
opportunity for the enemy to use offense in any form.
You know, when you know that the Lord's there and you've got that tension, you're
moving forward, your team's changing the way it's supposed to be. So
yeah. That's, thank you for sharing. I mean, I, we know
many of us are very strong and opinionated leaders. We maybe have a
forceful personality or a forceful way of
presenting something. We can rip the net out of people's hands
and then say, so what do you guys think? They don't have a net anymore, so they
don't say anything. And a lot of times companies, and this is,
I've seen this a lot, especially in bigger corporations, they say to the
employees, we want to hear what you really think.
And the first poor soul who happened to raise their hands and say what they
thought had their head handed to them. So they're like, we're not ever doing
that again, right? So what you've done is you've set up,
there's no net, there's just one person got the net. And that's a team with a
leader. So if you're going to create a team of
leaders, if you're going to lead a group of
leaders, that's a higher level function. And that shows a level of humility and
gentleness and grace that it takes to lead that.
Because you still have to give very clear direction. Yeah, we're still, I've
heard you all, we've made a decision, we're going here.
When everybody feels heard, you know what, I've learned a great deal,
and I think Bill Hybels once said this, he said, it's not that
everybody wants you to take their opinion,
what they just want to make sure is they have their day in court, that they were
heard. Even if you don't, you don't have to
agree with them, they just want to know you heard them.
And a lot of times, a lot of that over tension in the net
can be lessened by just taking a minute and listening
and asking. You seem very strong about this, tell me again, what am I missing?
And when they've talked it out, and then you make a decision, even if it's against
what they wanted, they'll come with you for the most part.
So I think, you know, those are the skills we're learning. Go ahead, Emily.
Yeah, and I'd like to, these people that I'm around right now, these
grace growers, some of them, you know, I don't know how
you guys handle like the whole not responding thing. For instance, it's
almost like they use like a, it's a,
ghosting. He's kind of, but not in a way,
it's almost like I'm a leader, so I don't have to respond to you. And I'm such a
communicator, where I'm like, I went into some degree, I mean, I get the
fact that, you know, you've got your different spaces and all that, but
I love what the Lord is doing, because it's not,
it doesn't bother me. I'm just, it's just
His fruit that He's got me in right now, that He's growing me in,
that helps add to the group, rather than, well, you know, I guess,
you know, they're not gonna respond or whatever,
but yeah, so it's a good opportunity for,
you know, growing in fruit in different levels of,
especially around, you know, vice presidents and
CFOs and whatnot, so.
If I was the chief strategic officer, which I,
you know, the Lord, I wouldn't do that. I don't know, is that like an executive
thing or something? I mean, what is that?
Basking in my own importance, or maybe just genuinely busy.
Yeah, let's, I want to state, let's keep Emily on the call, and let's bring in,
let's keep Emily.
Spotlighted, let's bring on Jenny and then Glenn, did you want to weigh in as well as him?
Yeah, Jenny. Yeah, I just want to say here because I've watched you do this so many times Dion
and I marvel at it because I see the outcome that he takes people through and it really
it is that conductor where he is conducting, you know, the orchestra and every person has felt
heard and then Emily, I've also heard Dion say, well first let me say because he does the
listening and he is gentle when he has what he will call his fatherly tone, we are all very much
at attention and follow through with it and no one, there's safety there because we have that
culture of trust and so we have followed, we've seen him in that gentleness and with that trust
and so to say that I've heard Dion on calls when people are not speaking up is like, come on guys,
we got to get this going and so to have that firmer tone that really does initiate the
conversation and initiate the discussion because what it is, is he's saying you're as much a part
of this as I am and so you need to participate in this and it really does require that people then
put their hands on the net and it does it immediately, it instigates the conversation.
Thank you, Jenny. Glenn?
Yeah, we could spend a while on this one and unpack it but
there's a couple of thoughts that come to mind. I had one situation, Emily, that triggered the
thought was an organization I was with was a big organization and we had some of that dynamic and
I had one situation where it was actually the leaders that were not actually engaging a whole
lot and I had an opportunity one time, I was having a conversation with one of these partners and
I said, Andy, what I really appreciate about you is I don't feel micromanaged by you
but I do trust that when there's something that you want to bring to my attention that you'll
pick up the phone and you'll call me and you'll talk to me or someone like that and I could see
in his mind that he hadn't thought about it perhaps that way but I said, Andy, I'm just
trusting you, I'm going down this path, this is what I'm doing but I trust you that you will
bring any course correction or steer to me that I need to hear from you and that did a couple of
things, it gave him permission but also brought about an awareness that perhaps he
wasn't really perhaps giving the direction that otherwise and so then that also then sort of
also gave me a little bit of protection because if I did go off on a course that he wasn't happy with
he had it so anyway that was just one thought that came to mind in what you were saying.
No, that's wonderful, Glenn, because I've had that exact same experience where I said the same
thing to one of the leaders and said, hey, if there's anything, you know, just let me know,
I trust you, I mean almost to the verbatim but, you know, I thank you for giving those pointers
because, you know, sometimes you and it could be their own thing but I don't think she was
thinking about it either so. Yeah and that's been my experience many times, it's not intentional,
it's just they have a mode of operating and they just don't actually understand that we may feel
a little bit of a vacuum in their guidance or their leadership and, you know, I found the best
way to do it is say, well, this is the direction I'm going and invite that feedback, you know,
and there's one other little other thing that I developed with the team over time and this
actually applied more with clients but even within our own team and we introduced this thing called
Bing Bing and this may be this topic for another time to unpack a little bit but the point was
with these little touch points with key people that I had on regular occasions and the point
was just checking in, right, and we found that that actually almost like static discharge and
you just reduce the because there's what I found and discovered with clients in particular is
everything seems to be going great and then suddenly something blows up and think, well,
what the heck happened here? I mean, everything seemed to be good but what was happening there
was this incremental static build-up over time, little frustrations, little frustrations, little
frustrations and I realized that by putting this sort of Bing Bing mechanism, this little
mechanism for just discharging, just checking in, it actually bought us so much time down the line.
we didn't end up having to do firefighting and damage control and all sorts of things.
And so that little thing actually just created a degree of peace and harmony over time, you know.
Yeah, that's really good, Glenn. So I want to weigh in on that for a second, because Glenn,
I love what you said. And anyway, I love what you're in the problems you're solving. And being
that touch point, being the ignition point for the kingdom, I think yeast maybe was the
illustration you used. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Miles Monroe, I don't know. I don't know where I feel
like the Lord is just like, I want you to dive in with Miles. So like, I've been saturated,
and he was really key on the yeast being the permeate for the dough in the world. And it,
you know, he said, he's so funny, because he used the analogy that yeast packets together
don't do anything. So you can see that as all of us being together, but it's when we start going
out into the world, and permeating the dough, that's when the kingdom, you know, and then we
multiply and things like that. But I just, man, I've just been taken to a whole different level
with Miles in the kingdom business perspective. So, yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeast packets
together do nothing. I love that. So that's, that's classic Miles. We love Miles. Let's weigh
on two things. If you're listening to this, and you are the leader, hear what this conversation,
you may be tempted to turn out the conversation. Well, I don't, I'm not trying to report, you know,
I don't report up to anyone. Be aware of your, the phrase Andy Stanley would use is manage your
power. Sometimes you don't realize your silence can be very loud. Your delay in response to
something can be very, very loud. And you'll end up, it's like a pyramid of problems. If you respond
now, you're going to have a small period, the longer you wait, the more this thing just gets
alive. So don't leave it to your team's imagination. By the way, it's not a sign of their weakness.
It's just an intentional thing you can, you can do. The second thing I want to bring up what,
what Glenn said, the first step to fixing anything in leadership is to create self-awareness.
That is the first step. If you want to reduce, you know, all the studies of 30 something years
that I've been doing around leadership and formally studying even the PhD thing and all that,
it all came down to this one thing. Self-awareness solves probably 80% of leadership problems,
up and down. Sometimes going to a team member and saying, are you aware that you do this?
Are you aware going to your, your, your leader, you have to do it in a more respectful way,
but you can still. So the way what Glenn was doing there was he was creating self-awareness
in such a respectful way. And he, he found a way to authentically position it as trust.
I trust you. So therefore I'm going to do this. And if I go off the rails,
that leader can't go and say, you know, that Glenn, he never listens
because you've set him up a bit, but you made him aware that was his responsibility.
So what you can do is you can set up default arrangements. So if I send you an email,
you know, Hey Glenn, I report to you. I send you an email. If you do not respond,
what I'm going to assume, I'm going to assume the golden rule that silence is golden, right?
So if it's, if it's quiet, it's all good because you'll, I know you're really busy.
So if I can serve you in that way, by you not even having to respond because you're good with it,
I will wait 24 hours and then execute. And so notice the three things I was doing there.
Not only did I get him to own it, I put him on a timeframe, but I also served him and he goes,
wow, you would do that? Yeah, I would do that. And if, if you don't have time to talk to me,
and yet you want to just, just send me a note to say, hold it or let's talk,
just send me a let's talk note. And I will, I'll put that on hold. So when you're the leader,
be aware of how loud you can be, you know, Andy Stanley tells a story. So if you don't know,
Andy Stanley is, they run a big church called North Point Church here in Atlanta,
and North Point has many campuses. And I think, and then they have a lot of affiliate campuses,
which are getting around 85 campuses now across the country. Andy ministers to over 3 million
people a month. Okay, so that's Andy, has a big staff, 300 people. And so they wanted to fix
something in the staff meeting. And he said, no problem, I'll just send out an email. And his
executive assistant just about fell off her chair. And she said, no, you will not. He says, no big
deal. You're busy. I'll just send out the email. And she said, Andy, do you know how loud that will
be if it comes from you? That will be so loud. Now, we don't think of ourselves, especially in
small organizations,
We don't think of ourselves and our impact on people.
Just be really aware,
especially if your team genuinely love you
and respect you and wanna be with you,
just how loud that can be.
So mark to your deal where you start off
in the beginning of the call,
maybe you get some key employees
that are part of the hiring process.
So next time, involve them, right?
So that's always the thing.
I pull all the people that person's gonna work with
and I say, and then what I say to our team is,
tell them what you wish you knew before you worked here,
anything you wanna say.
Because the new person coming in,
not only says, wow, that's transparent,
but the person also comes and says,
I'm gonna be really clearly measured here.
This is not gonna be,
I come in and some authoritarian deal.
So we can disciple, train, educate and influence
those who are above us,
even if they're not necessarily believers.
So that's the yeast point that Emily was raising.
That's where we cause the dough to rise.
That's what shifts the atmosphere
is the gentleness and kindness,
yet clarity without backing off.
Does that help?
Okay.
So we'll try to respond to the specific things.
Anybody wanna weigh in
before we jump into the exercise here?
Let me give you a shot to talk.
How are we doing?
If you need a break, by the way,
and it's a long session,
just go off and come back as needed.
Just do your thing.
So we can take a second.
If you need to stretch, get some coffee or whatever,
do your thing.
And while we're waiting for people,
any thoughts that from all that we've been doing,
what's standing out to you right now
that you're saying, man,
this is something I wanna go and talk to the Lord about or?
Yeah, I love this conversation.
And this is a perfect time.
We have eight new people on our team as of this year.
And so I binge watched everything in the training
to know how to,
cause I took it with you a year, whatever, two ago,
and then rewatched all the videos again
in preparation for this new team in January.
And I am, I'm leveling this now,
because again, we're bringing back on the,
who was the president, we're bringing her back in.
So we have a culture in place
that's different than the culture she had.
So it's been really interesting.
You made the comment about how powerful your voice is.
And I'm noticing that in my new people,
if I say something, they're like,
it has so much weight.
And I have not given myself the,
I don't know, the proper perspective of that.
So this is a perfect conversation for today
because I'm watching how I say something
that I consider simple and direct and whatever,
and they're just taking it like it is written law.
And I have to be kind of careful what I'm saying
in directing how they're moving forward
and what they're doing.
So, yeah, I wasn't aware of that.
This is such an interesting topic, Tamara.
I know Graham won't mind me sharing this,
but when I first started working at Brilliant,
it was something Graham would say
what it was on his mind.
And for a prophet who's a very seasoned prophet
and knows how to be gentle
and not get ahead of the Lord and so on,
he just thought he was just giving his opinion.
Everybody was weighing in,
but not all voices have the same weight.
So I'd be teeing up.
I think, Glenn, you were in on the training.
Certainly, Jenny, you'll remember this.
We were doing this training,
this three-day training at Brilliant,
because one of the first things I introduced
was weekly training, and then we do these training.
And we like hit the pinnacle of the ta-da moment
where, okay, now we're gonna land the plane.
And Graham just made this comment.
He was just saying what he was thinking,
and it crashed the entire training.
And there was not a stitch of malice in his heart at all.
It was just saying what he thought.
And he was like, oh, cool,
we all get to say what we think.
No, not you.
The rest get to say what they think.
And it is a fun thing.
And I talked to him afterwards,
and he looked at me genuinely bewildered.
Okay, so what caused that?
Humility.
You say, hang on a second,
didn't we just say we have to be humble?
Yeah, but be aware humility makes you blind to your power.
Just be aware.
So, you know, not that you have to puff yourself up,
but just be aware that that's the effect of humility,
because you can be so humble and not think.
more highly of yourself and say stuff that just derail the whole team.
You didn't mean that.
So it's it's what we call throwing grenades, self-sabotage.
We sabotage our own planning, our own culture.
We don't mean it because that's the noise in our heads.
That's how we speak to ourselves.
So it I'm amazed
how how Graham has how Graham took to that,
you know, because nobody had mentioned that to him before.
Great point, though.
OK, well, as you know, in this session, we've been
what we try to do on these calls is to try to be as transparent as possible
so you can see not just the point we're making, but how we learned it
and the stories that led up to it.
I hope that was helpful. OK.
So do you want to pick a forcing function?
If you could pick a forcing function, I know you haven't chatted the Lord
and you haven't had much time and so on.
But what's what does what strikes you right now
of a forcing function
that could compress the learning of your team or your own learning?
If you're a solopreneur, you know, if you if you are,
if you could compress this, what would be?
What would be the forcing function you would look to?
So, yeah, so if you could find your forcing function, write it down,
then I'm going to see if we've got enough. I think we're still
we're still small enough as a group to everybody can share.
So why don't I do this while you write that down?
I'm going to those who want to take a break on if you want to turn off
your camera or whatever and just give yourself a minute to think, do all that.
And let's get back in, say,
three fifteen Eastern.
Three fifteen Eastern.
Back in eight minutes.
you
test test test test test
test test test test test test
test test test test test test test
How are you guys doing?
All right.
Let me kick it off with Bridget.
And by the way, Bridget, there's a couple of people,
I'm not sure everybody knows exactly what it is you do,
so why don't you, you're not just here as one of the owners of the company,
but you all see a different capacity.
Sure.
I am helping lead the church with Dion,
and my primary function is working on the community aspect of it.
I also manage coaching for parenting and empty nesters.
And so we started the church last year in May 1st, 2023,
as you heard from Dion.
But around about September, October,
we realized that although the people were enjoying being in the community
with everybody else,
once a month wasn't quite enough to practice that community style.
So we took a radical decision of starting small groups.
And we had thought that some of them may be in person, but as it happened,
everybody met online through Zoom.
And it was quite a radical shift.
So we got a curriculum that we already had on food of the spirit.
We got that to span over 12 weeks and we took the huge step of faith of
asking who would like to be facilitators.
And what we did though,
we were careful because we wanted to protect our members.
We called them facilitators in particular.
So they knew they were not going to have to teach.
We already had the curriculum and they were not counselors.
So all they had to really do was facilitate the discussion.
So we did a training in November and some in December and in January,
we started the groups.
And it was a bit of a bumpy start with technology, but we came up with,
we ended up with 43 groups across the country and several across other
countries as well, New Zealand, Australia, and one in Europe.
So we took a, it was pretty radical,
but we realized that we quickly needed the people to get,
to feel as if they're part of something bigger,
but also they could actually have community.
And that really did force us to get that, you know,
being very specific about what we meant in community and people being
surrounded by people who had the same language and they felt like they'd
found their tribe.
So it was a significant push for us.
So in what way did launching the small groups feel like a forcing
function?
Well,
I think it was pretty radical to go from being in the church only six or
seven months to quickly going into small groups,
which was another level of organization.
But the Lord had told us when Dion and I started back in,
even back in March, February, March,
when we were talking about the church,
the Lord said he'll bring the right people to us at the right time.
And one of the people that all brought to us very quickly was God.
And one of the people that all brought to us very quickly was Paul who had
run this kind of small groups online in a different organization.
So he came alongside us and it forced us to get into the simplicity of how
to actually implement something where people are going to connect,
not just once a month on a big zoom call,
but actually independently in little groups.
What I like about that particular forcing function was one,
it forced us to be open to having new people join as volunteers.
it forced us to trust people and trust the Lord specifically with people and
people with the Lord.
And three,
it forced us to put a curriculum together that could be used in a way that
would really bless.
And so it forced us to learn how can we really serve the members of the
church.
yeah,
thank you.
Thank you for sharing that.
Let's,
let's open it up to,
to I'd love as many of you,
if not all of you to share about what you feel is your forcing function that
go for it.
Ray.
I can't hear you,
but I'm reading you now.
Okay.
Wow that's very powerful and radical but somehow seems to suit you so that's
fantastic but I you know you're raising an interesting point that's that you're
raising Ray is that you know the Lord uses everything to our benefit we know
all things work together but when we map that downstairs what that means is the
very thing the enemy tried to manipulate and used to take you out is the very
thing God will use to give you territory and bless you so and I think you do get
to a level where these forcing functions start to happen almost simultaneously if
not simultaneously because especially as your team grows as your effects grow the
effect of the forcing functions are so much more scaled up and affect so many
more people and so you have to make the adjustments quicker and faster so I do
think that's that's fantastic so yeah thanks for sharing okay so weird that I
can't hear you but there you go we appreciate it we'll go from Robin and
then we'll see who else wants to share
there can you hear me now I can yeah we got you all right I have a couple one
personal forcing function I'm getting older and I used to be able to go out on
the job site and finish concrete build houses and and you know now that I have
three bulging discs I can't do that anymore that was definitely for me
personally a forcing function that moved me into a different role and and then
for those of you that don't know we have been doing remote inspections for tiny
houses on wheels for well since 2016 and we were trying to get in we are trying
to get into the mainstream inspection of commercial and residential construction
so what came to my mind as a forcing function I was at an event in Orlando
of the International Code Council and one of the building code officials from
Washington State we were chatting and he said you know he's got a new
designation usually when you do an inspection you write on the job card
either pass fail or I think there's one more thing you can help me with rich
because you do that thing but anyways it's you either pass or you fail or you
have to do some revisions to to pass and he had a new one which was he said
it was ni it was and I stand for he said not inspected and he said we have been
you know understaffed and our jurisdiction our commissioners mandated
that we have to get to an inspection within three days or the contractor can
move on and so now he's had to write on the job card and up and I said how many
of those do you do oh he said thousands and all of a sudden my brain was like
going crazy and and so I haven't figured out how to how to use this because what
we've been trying to do is fit into the existing mold of remote of private
You know, which is in person most of the time and there's a lot, there's modular inspections and there's private providers and we've been trying to fit that mold with the right amount of engineers, the right amount of license inspectors and all of that.
And what came to my mind was.
A forced function where you would go to.
The general population and educate the general population.
Or through an audit of building departments.
To see and have our scale of how well a billing department.
Might be doing this house that I'm sitting in right now. I had.
I built and I know that the inspector that came through here at 50 inspections a day.
And there was no way he could do a proper inspection on this house. And I believe that to be happening across the nation.
And so, if the general public and commission and heard from.
The general public would, you know, talk to.
The commissioners and the commissioners for pressure.
The building departments to do an audit of their building inspections and building departments.
And they would find out that there's a lot of eyes.
Or that there's a lot of really quickly done inspections or skipped and that kind of thing.
Then that might be a way for us to.
Say, okay, well, we have a solution.
And that might be, you know, the remote inspections that we've been trying to.
Trying to promote all the way, so it's kind of a rough thing that I just came up with.
But it would be a forcing function that force the building department to reach out to.
People like us who have been successfully doing.
Uh, we just calculated in the last 2 years.
We've done, um, almost 2000.
Remote inspection, so we've got a lot of, um.
You know, a lot under our belt. Sounds good. Thanks for sharing.
Well, I know some of you have to go early. Um, Jonathan, are you there?
Bustler yeah, there's Michael.
Yeah, to go. Uh, no worries. Well, I know you guys have to go. So why don't I bring you up? Did you want to share next? Uh, Michael.
Sure, I'd love to, um, it's just been.
So interesting to hear everybody's stories and kind of feels like we're not alone. Like, a lot of people are in the same boat, but yeah, definitely. We're in a forcing.
A factor right now, and just kind of restarting and, and, um.
Shifting our economic engine from what we used to be as a.
As a work for hire into a owner of IP and creating of our own content. So there's a bit of a pressure there.
But I'm just like, the more I hear about this, the more I kind of listen and.
Take in and learn how to operate in the prophetic to learn how to hear.
Um, God speak, is that something that's deeply passionate in our hearts? We want to hear what he's saying and we want to do that. Like, that's.
That's all we that's all we have wanted to do. We've given everything into that.
Um, but there's but you're right. There's a developing and there's a process and it's and I can see it. I can see the pieces now.
Um, and so there's a reconciliation with that, but the, but I am finding right now as we speak, the beauty of the forcing factor, like, literally in the other room right now.
There's a forcing factor brainstorm session happening at the clarity of what it is we're supposed to do.
Because we have, um, a sane amount of opportunity. And so it's really been like, what is the thing God's asking us to do like this?
Let's I love that statement. Let the fluff kind of fall off and it's already happening. Um, and and it is like, yeah, there's a clarity of vision.
And there's a strength of purpose that comes along with that forcing factor. So it's not it doesn't feel like a burden or a negative.
It feels like, um, I get to do this and I, I, I get to focus on what I really want to do and what God want, what, not what I want to do, what, what, what I want to do with God.
Like, that's the thing. He wants to do it with me, with us and be an invitation to that process together. And that that's so it, that is what releases the burden, you know, it makes it fun to wake up in the morning and go to it.
But I can see I, yeah, and I do, I definitely also see, uh, like you said, the event, we have a, we have a couple of, of critical projects. We've poured a lot into that are coming and they do force, uh, you know, they, they force a lot of rapid decisions and, um, rapid creativity, I would say too.
So that's, that's, uh, I can see the power of it, but yeah, I guess as I sit back here and kind of just take it in and process where we're at and the journey we're on and the mistakes and hiccups and the tension, all, everything you talked about today, we relate to.
I mean, it's like you could, uh,
It's pretty funny to me, but it's also beautiful.
And I know it's brought,
the understanding of the journey has brought clarity
into our situation and to help us sort through
what it is God wants to reveal and change in our heart
so that the words he's spoken can come true.
Because I can see, that's becoming clear,
the words he's spoken and the guidance.
As I look at it now, it's like I can see the pieces
adding onto each other and on the journey
kind of being a beautiful one of just the right preparation
at the right time to bring us to the right point.
So, yeah, that's it.
Well, thanks for sharing.
Well, I know you guys went through
a very significant forcing function this week.
But we're so healthy though.
And what's interesting is that every kingdom leader
goes through this, you know?
And I think a lot of times we think maybe it's just me
or what did I do wrong or what?
And once we get rid of all those thoughts,
we're free to really partner with the Lord.
So thanks for sharing, yeah.
Well, if Jonathan comes back, we'll pick it up.
Glenn, let's go to you next.
Yeah, a couple of quick things, Dan.
What came to mind actually from a downstairs perspective
was an article written in the Harvard Business Review
in the January edition of 2005.
And the article, the publication was called
Do Your Commitments Match Your Convictions?
And it spoke about the challenge
that people went through when they lost their jobs
or there was a severe change
that took place in their world.
But the benefit, what actually happened,
it was a forcing function
because what actually happened is for many people,
particularly in secular work,
is their job diverges from their work.
And as that gap gets wider and wider
and it's incremental, incremental.
And so what happens is there comes a point in time
where there's stress actually
because of the distance between what you're doing
versus what your job versus what your work is.
And what they found is when people go through these crises
that hits a reset button allows the reconnection
or an opportunity to reconnect their job with their work.
And using our terminology, not theirs,
but that convictions and commitments
and convictions get aligned again.
So that just came to mind as something that comes about.
And that thing sort of brought me
to the second sort of thought process,
which was that, you know,
we talk about that the Lord is the initiator
and we're the responder.
And so many of these cases, if I look back at my life,
it's really the Lord who's been the one
who's initiating these forcing functions in my life.
And it's not that I'm proactive on those forcing.
He's the one who actually brings about
those forcing functions and creates those things.
And Dion, you and Bridget have spoken at length
about your crawl space situation and so on,
that a forcing function, but it created a,
it brought you into a new space
that the Lord wanted to bring to you
that you would never otherwise have got to.
And so I'm just, I'm intrigued with this thing
that the Lord is the initiator of these forcing functions
in many instances, right?
And so we can just say, okay,
so turn it into a prayer and say,
Lord, what is your forcing function for where I am right now?
Let's talk about that and see what he comes up with.
Yeah, no, I love that.
I think maybe that's at the heart
of a lot of what we've been saying all day, right?
We've been saying, instead of having it forced on us,
you know, don't make the Lord use a forcing function
to get us to adopt his forcing function.
You know, it's like, don't force me to place so seat.
I want to partner with these kind intentions.
So what do we have to unlearn for that to be the case?
We have to unlearn, it's up to me.
I'm doing it for him.
He's holding me accountable.
Well, all that stuff is great downstairs language.
Responsibility and accountability
are downstairs language things.
Jesus took full responsibility upstairs
and the father held him fully accountable
for all the sin of the world, put it on Jesus.
So we start with his accountable to the father,
he is responsible to the father.
And our, but he needs our agreement, obviously.
And so it's learning,
it's learning to come to that place of high performing rest,
which you can only say in the kingdom,
makes no, it's a contradiction in a downstairs way,
because the more you rest upstairs,
the more you high perform downstairs.
So I think you're right,
because you catch on to what the Lord's doing.
Oh, we're doing this, we're not doing this.
And by the way, it can be like forcing functions
on the scale you're saying, Glenn,
but it can also be simple things like,
Lord, I need your help with this, right?
I need your help with this.
Yesterday I had a day where my energy level
was really, really low,
just because the sheer amount of output.
what we've been doing, you know, we just had a big church event and various other things.
But I knew that I don't need to be weary or heavy laden.
So I knew that I was going to take more rest than I normally.
And so, as you know, because we talked at the end of yesterday, just how much we accomplish
in such a short period of time.
So it's just like the Lord just gets on it, you know, and here's the thing, he says, you
don't have because you don't ask, invite the Lord into all.
Lord, what's your function?
How do you want to say who needs to help me?
Help me with this.
Help me with that.
Be with us.
I know you with me, but he waits for the he waits to be asked.
And so just ask.
Okay.
Thanks, Glenn.
Todd.
We got my forcing function.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Loud and clear.
My forcing function happened in 2022.
In January, we were with our business prayer team in our home, the three of them and Tamara
and I, and I'm getting a word and a picture from God.
I'm at the top of my scale as a project manager in electrical utility industry, building
substations, transmission lines, cross country, keeping the lights on.
But I'm getting in my heart, June, and I say, Tamara, we've got to retire me from my day
job in, in June.
And then let's, let's, let's make this happen.
What can we do?
And we're thinking through this and we're working.
She's doing all the registered agent work on the side.
And I'm helping along with that a little bit.
We're growing our missions outreach in Kenya, like crazy planting churches.
And I'm like, I don't have the bandwidth to have a day job anymore.
It pays really well, but what are we going to do in June?
I, you know, I've forgotten about that, that, that word that God gave us.
And, you know, we prayed into that, forgot about that whole plan in June with the day
we go to inspect our final inspection on our house that we are going to buy a very nice
house on a golf course community.
And we get into the house and the finishes are horrible.
Robin wasn't there as an inspector and it was just awful.
And I was livid.
I'm like this house, beautiful, big spatial house.
It was great.
And we're not buying this house.
This was horrible.
What they did to it.
And we're backing out, told the people we're out of here where we want our money back or
keep them, keep the down or whatever we put on it and the earnest.
And anyway, we're out.
We're driving to church for leadership to Bethel Austin.
We're driving to a leadership program.
I get a call from my boss that day in June.
He says, Hey, Todd, we don't have any more projects for you.
We're going to look for two more weeks to see if we can get you some more projects.
I'm in a big company of over 2000 employees and lots of stuff going on.
But the 2022 downturn, we can buy two people for the price of you.
And so by June, and I had forgotten that I told Tamara and our team, we got to retire
me out.
Well, God retired me out.
The force that that put on me has been incredible.
And then being able to now focus on growing our ministry and the missions program is just
going crazy.
The time that allowed me to do that.
And then I kind of got lost in here a little bit.
And then God says, Hey, no, I want you to lead the Destiny 508 nonprofit services to
do that.
And then now I get we're being forced into let's complete the thousand people.
God gave Tamara and I, as we're driving some time ago, go start a thousand 508 nonprofits
and ministries and get them launched.
And then we're OK.
We're halfway there.
We're 500.
But now we've got 500 more.
And so now we're being forced like, God, let's finish this in six months.
So I was like, Tamara and I were talking, let's just finish this in six months.
Well, what would it take to get 500 more ministries signed up and launched?
And you'll see where God wants with that is the thousand, the end, or is a thousand,
just the journey that we're on to learn that.
And so anyway, so now I get to be CEO and push into all systems.
I'm a very systems and process guy.
And so now I'm getting all the tech and automations connected and working with another business
planner, but it's forcing me.
But anyway, that was my initial.
Now I'm at this.
I got to launch 500.
I got let's go get 500 more and see where God's going to do that.
But I need to know more of this.
I would love more training on this and how do we apply it well to our businesses and
where we're at on this forcing function thing, too.
So thank you for bringing it all up.
Yeah, sure.
You know, what you're bringing up also is that forcing functions are messy.
Yeah, we think they're all neat and tidy.
They're not neat and tidy.
In fact, when we launched, like when Bridget was saying the small groups, we had an app
that didn't work properly.
We were struggling, you know, trying to get it all going.
And so the team that were doing that was, you know.
scrambling to get that working we were trying to how do you train these people we don't have a
training program don't have this all it would be easy to look at all the things of why we cannot
do it and that's why forcing functions look unattainable and they look unrealistic and
that's what makes them so precious so that's what that's why them at some point as kingdom
executives the impossible has to become effortless at some point and because when the lord's
initiating something something that would have said oh well this will take you know six months
to do like you said well what if the lord gave you that in three just saying
so what would you do you know we geared for it what we have to do etc
it starts to ask all the right questions all the right partnering questions
so i've never seen the lord back off a fight you know jesus never lost a fight so remember last
week or the last month the month before we talked about the five stages you go from exploring
to pioneering then you get into warrior mode because it's a fight now and sometimes these
forcing functions just end the war on that issue quickly it's like sometimes god just pulls the
plug on the wall it's okay we're done with that let's just end that fight move you on to the next
field so yeah definitely i understand you want some real practical stuff of course i think you
guys have access to all the edge materials so i think you do have a good portion of it
but bring them up here and drop questions on the app because we do check them before the event
before these calls to check if any of you are driving a specific issue hey i tried this this
didn't work there's a question section just put it in there and and we will or just you know let
us know for sure we're still small enough we can all we can do it very personally who would like
to go next how are we doing let's let's pull up somebody else okay so uh tamra
so it's um i love that todd just shared all that it's been quite a journey but for me and there's
something you said that god brought up this the whole forcing thing is new to me i haven't
pondered this yet but i he's giving me all the applications he's showing me what he's doing in
my life right now but 20 years ago i got a prophetic word so you and i wasn't even into
the prophetic back then but i got this word and i've been holding it all these years 20 years of
holding this word and the word was that i would be an impactful influencer on stages and at the time
i wasn't doing any of that i was yes i was running ministries and whatever i was in service but i
wasn't that person um i did end up growing into being a influential stage person in the secular
world and uh crashed horribly due to arrogance in my field of favor which turned into being
a nightmare and i lost it all and then god is rebuilding it and so having said all that last
spring or that last spring last fall i was in this leadership training course and they were
bringing out um excuse me what is what's the prophetic words god has for you and that word
came up again that this is who i would be and uh i'm saying all that because i thought that was
where he was taking me when we crashed in november and i lost my president because i was going okay
god here we go we're gonna we're gonna do this thing because i heard it again go this now's the
time it was a now word it was not a 20 year old word and and then all the company crashed and all
the everything happened um but what kicked me back in again was we met with ray and i know
he's not on the call anymore but we met you know ray and jessica his wife we were on a trip together
and um he in that time we were together with them he invited me to be on his stage in october
and i'm like wow that's a big stage to be on after not having done it for like 15 years you know
and what was funny in january god again said this is your year this is when you get launched and i'm
like i don't even know how to make that happen and out of the blue i got two or three or four phone
calls from people going i want you on my podcast i want you on my radio show i went i didn't even
i didn't even seeking them they just came and then i think it was in february uh ray said i
want you on my stage and i went oh my gosh god how do we get ready i understand my inner world
has been working with you a long time and we're good but my this
this level down here, how do we make that happen?
So that's when I brought on team members
who know how to do a podcast.
So we've got a podcast starting
and how do I do all of this?
How do I get my persona out in the world?
Because I'm not a Facebook person.
I'm not an Instagram person.
That's Todd's world, but I get to be that
because that's what you do.
And, but he was my,
he was the forcing function that God used to say,
it's time, you have a stage to be on in October, get ready.
And my first book is getting published next week.
I have another book coming out in September.
I mean, so God is accelerating the process.
So all of these things that you have on there
are the things to do.
I've got the new team.
I mean, we're working on restructuring the ministry
to make it possible.
I mean, there's just all these things that we're doing.
You started your publishing company.
Started publishing company last week
so we could publish our books.
So, you know, God says, do it.
And he knows we're jumpers.
So he calls us jumpers.
He says, go.
And we say, how high?
Whenever, you know, that's what we get to do.
So in the process, he's building this other thing
in our company and in our world.
And so it makes complete sense
why he said Todd is CEO a month ago,
because I had to be set free from the role.
And so he just, he is so, so good
and so kind to us to set us up for success
when we are totally not,
it's not even in our sphere of thinking
to have something be possible.
And it's only because of him.
I, you know, who would have known 20 years ago
this is the year?
Literally it's 20 years ago to this year.
Yeah.
So the word came.
So that's what I love.
I love so many elements of that story.
I love that prophetic words don't have a sell by date.
You know, upstairs, there is no time base.
God doesn't measure time, he measures growth.
And, you know, and I think that's the joy of it
is that, you know, even if we get behind,
which this doesn't necessarily mean you got behind,
there are most words we get from the Lord,
we're talking 20, 30 years to get there.
I mean, you think about it,
it takes what, at least 20 years to get a,
an office anything, an office profit, an office anything.
Because of all the learning that's involved,
because there's subtlety and nuance of how to do it with him
and who he is and so on.
So I'm glad, so congratulations on the book
and the publishing company and the invitations to speak
and sounds fantastic, you know?
So I'm so glad that, I'm so glad the Lord is,
so the Lord's got you in his own forcing function,
which is the point Glenn was making earlier.
He's initiated when you're just running along going,
cool, let's do this.
Yeah, so there are, yeah,
so there's a lot we can say around that.
So let's just, let's go to Matthew and after Matthew,
let's see who else, we still got to do a few more.
Hey, let me put my hand down there, it's distracting.
Man, thank you so much for sharing that Tamara.
It's been such a joy to like hear you and Todd share today
and to see how everything's just,
God's bringing so many pieces together.
It's just, it's really, it's so mind blowing
that like you were saying,
he accomplishes all of these things for us
and it's been so amazing for me.
The forcing function that I didn't realize
was a forcing function.
I mean, I'm literally getting so much information today
that's exactly where, I mean, it's,
the timing is so perfect.
So for me, it was, I was thinking,
I got this incredible word from the Lord
and I started taking all of these steps
and actions and obedience and then all of a sudden
I realized that all of them,
all of the finances and stuff that I had,
I had all the reserves that I had cashed,
liquidated to start this were dissipating very quickly.
And I was like, Lord, did I make a mistake?
Did I do something wrong?
And he said, and he didn't really answer me
except he brought people into my life
to answer the question.
They didn't know I was asking, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
People just started coming into my life
and blessing me like you did Dion, like you did Todd
and by default Tamara.
And just everything going on.
And it's so amazing.
And so all of a sudden I woke up and I was,
cause I kept asking the Lord, I was like,
Lord, everything is in place.
The websites.
place, the platforms are in place, Luke's got the social media stuff all lined up, the YouTube
channel, all the things that you said we were going to do, that's all there. The only thing
missing is the content. And he said, well, who's providing the content? And I said, well,
I thought it was me. And he goes, well, that's very sweet of you. So anyway, I woke up yesterday
morning and the Lord said, today's the day. Text, message Luke and Kirsten and see if they're
available and let's start today. And so for me, he had given me a forcing function of, he said,
we're going to be here by the end of the year. And I thought I had so much more to do with that
happening than just my daily yes to do what he's called me to do today and to walk in that.
And what's amazing is that all the things I've been teaching and sharing that I've learned
through the Brennan School of Leadership with people about, you know, the Lord's already
accomplished everything he wants you to accomplish. It's all there. It's done.
All he wants you to do is participate with him in it and walk with him every day. And he'll lead
to watch him unfold supernaturally, all of these events behind the scenes.
And so as I thought we were out of money, as I thought I had lost people, you know, Luke and
Kirsten got with me this last week and sat down and Luke had filmed. I led a deal called First
Wednesday at our church, the church plant we're doing. And Luke asked if he could come film it
and video recorded everything. I'm sure he did an amazing job because he's so exceptional at it.
And I spoke about the fruit of the spirit and because I've been enjoying pouring the things
I'm learning at Brilliant into my church and, well, sorry, not my church and the church plant
that I'm partnering with the Lord in. Anyway, so I spoke on the fruit of the spirit and Luke,
when I was meeting with him, said, hey, by the way, I mean, he and I haven't talked in a few
weeks. And he said, by the way, I've been going through the video, I've been doing all this stuff
and, you know, doing all the editing and putting it all together, piecing it together. And I have
multiple, I have so much content that I can put out. I can have you speaking gigs by the end of
July. And I went, huh, because the Lord had been talking to me about speaking and about doing that.
Anyway, just so the Lord is providing secondary business opportunities, like me doing speaking
engagements, we're going to be launching content. He gave us a vision. Even Luke messaged me
when, after we got done with yesterday, he goes, I hear the merchandise that the Lord is going to
have us provide so that people can participate in this movement to be building people up and
the inclusion into the body of Christ of all the people that we've been trying to exclude
from the body of Christ, because they're just too sinful or they're too broken or either too
whatever the church has labeled them in the religious spirit of the church. And so anyway,
it just, it's, it's so exciting and so amazing that God's opening all of these doors and facets,
like in the last 48, 72 hours. And I'm just, it's very exciting to be in this, this,
you know, basically he's, he created the forcing function and it's just great because everybody
that's involved is flourishing out of it. Oh, that's, thanks for sharing. There was a
lot of richness in that. I think people, I see Todd liked your daily. Yes, that's it. You know,
Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread, not for our annual bread. And the reason is if it's
daily, it's fresh. So get, you know, fresh every day. So we don't need to ask the Lord for our
monthly bread or our whatever daily bread. Well, I think we've got time for one more. I know we
were going to play you a wonderful little clip. Dear, can you just check how long is that clip?
I think it's about five minutes long. Is it that we wanted to wrap up with? Yeah, it is five minutes
and 24 seconds. Excellent. I thought so. Well, I don't want to actually cut off anyone else who
wants to share it, but otherwise we wanted to roll out this. There was this really amazing city. If
you want to get that ready, there's this amazing clip that from Simon Sinek and he is I love the
title. Do you love your wife? And Simon talking about leadership. And I thought this is one of
the smartest analogies and we want to share with you. So let's let's let's listen to this together.
Do you love your wife? Yes. Prove it. Like what's the metric? Give me the number
that helps me know. Right. Because when you met her, you didn't love her.
Now you love her, right?
Tell me the day the love happened.
It's an impossible question.
But it's not that it doesn't exist.
It's that it's much easier to prove over time, right?
Leadership is the same thing.
It's about transition.
So if you were to go to the gym,
it's like exercise, right?
If you go to the gym and you work out
and you come back and you look in the mirror,
you will see nothing.
And if you go to the gym the next day
and you come back and you look in the mirror,
you will see nothing, right?
So clearly there's no results.
Can't be measured.
It must not be effective.
So we quit, right?
Or if you fundamentally believe
that this is the right course of action
and you stick with it,
like in a relationship.
I bought her flowers and I wished her happy birthday
and she doesn't love me.
Clearly I'll give up.
That's not what happens.
If you believe there's something there,
you commit yourself to an act of service.
You commit yourself to the regime, the exercise.
You can screw it up.
You can eat chocolate cake one day.
You can skip a day or two.
It allows for that.
But if you stick with it consistently,
I'm not exactly sure what day,
but I know you'll start getting into shape.
I know it.
And the same with the relationship.
It's not about the events.
It's not about intensity.
It's about consistency, right?
You go to the dentist twice a year,
your teeth will fall out.
You have to brush your teeth every day for two minutes.
What does brushing your teeth twice a day for two minutes do?
Nothing.
Unless you do it every day twice a day for two minutes.
It's the consistency.
Going to the gym for nine hours does not get you into shape.
Working out every day for 20 minutes gets you into shape.
So the problem is we treat leadership with intensity.
We have a two-day off-site.
We invite a bunch of speakers.
We give everybody a certificate.
You're a leader, right?
Those things are like going to the dentist.
They're very important.
They're good for reminding us or getting us back on track,
learning new lessons.
But it's the daily practice of all the monotonous little boring things
like brushing your teeth that matter the most.
She didn't fall in love with you because you remembered her birthday
and bought her flowers on Valentine's Day.
She fell in love with you because when you woke up in the morning,
you said good morning to her before you checked your phone.
She fell in love with you because when you went to the fridge
to get yourself a drink, you got her one without even asking.
She fell in love with you because when you had an amazing day at work
and she came home and she had a terrible day at work,
you didn't say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but let me tell you about my day.
You sat and listened to her awful day,
and you didn't say a thing about your amazing day.
This is why she fell in love with you.
I can't tell you exactly what day,
and it was no particular thing you did.
It was the accumulation of all of those little things
that she woke up one day, and as if she pressed a button,
she goes, I love him.
Leadership is exactly the same.
There's no event.
There's no thing I can tell you you have to do
that your people will trust you.
It just doesn't work that way.
It's an accumulation of lots and lots of little things
that anyone by themselves is innocuous and useless,
literally pointless by themselves.
People will look at little things that are good leadership practices
and say, that won't work, and you're absolutely right.
But if you do it consistently, and you do it in combination
with lots of other little things,
like saying good morning to someone,
looking them in the eye.
My friend George, who's a three-star general in the Marine Corps,
he says his test for leadership, and I love this,
he goes, his test for good leaders,
if you ask somebody how their day is going,
you actually care about the answer.
The number of times we're walking to a meeting,
we're rushing, we go, how are you, not good,
I've got to get to you later, I'm late for a meeting.
If you ask the question, you are standing there,
and you are listening to the answer.
It's those little innocuous things that you do
over and over and over and over
that people will say, I love my job.
Not, I like my job.
I like my job means, yeah, the challenge is great,
they pay me well, I like the people.
I love my job means, I don't want to work anywhere else.
I don't care how much somebody else is willing to pay me.
I'm devoted to the people here,
and I care desperately about the people here
as if they were my family.
In business, we have colleagues and co-workers.
In the military, they have brothers and sisters.
That's how they think of each other.
If you really have a strong corporate culture,
the people will think of each other like brothers and sisters.
It's like a family, right? No.
Brothers and sisters.
Deep love. Fight, but the love doesn't go away.
Bicker, the love doesn't go away.
And I'll fight with my sister, but if you threaten my sister,
you're going to have to deal with me. Right?
We'll fight internally, we'll bicker with each other,
but nobody's going to hurt each other,
and when that side shows up, you're looking at a unified front.
Brothers and sisters.
Now, how do you create brothers and sisters out of strangers?
Common beliefs, common values, you know?
Parents, in other words,
executives who care about...
Their children's success, who care to raise their children, teach them skills, discipline
them when necessary, help them build their self-confidence so that they can go on and
achieve something more than you could have ever imagined achieving for yourself.
That's leadership.
This is a long clip, but it's absolutely, I hope that blessed you because here's the
deal.
Take it upstairs for a minute.
As powerful as that was downstairs, which it certainly was, great leadership is not
doing this or that.
It's just that consistent, small things and a heart and a mindset towards people.
Here's the word of the Lord to you, though.
I am with you in your learning, and I am consistently, relentlessly kind and good to you.
And so no need to beat yourself up.
God can redeem back any time you feel you've lost.
And every little mistake we've made didn't make God fall out of love with us because
we were disobedient that time or those 10 times.
It doesn't change.
He loves you because He loves you because He loves you because that is what love does.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for being part of this Mancina Circle.
We love you guys, and we will see you in Seattle.
Bye.