I'll say that again, John has an impressive gift shop if you ever go to one of his events,
you know, I went there and I'm buying all these, you know, getting all these books and
everything and I'm like, man, how am I going to take care of this and I look over in their
suitcases I'm like, ooh, like he thought of everything.
This is amazing, right?
So he's got a nice little suitcase, you can fit everything inside.
Just really, really awesome.
And I got one of these cool jackets, which I love.
It's great.
It's a great jacket.
And so yeah, I'm really good.
You look good.
Right?
Thank you.
This this has improved my looks by at least 15 20%.
So I mean, totally worth the investment.
We're gonna keep visually showing you since you have that look.
So we're really excited.
And what's really cool is we're just talking backstage with john, and he is teaching something
for the very first time.
This is a lesson he came up with last week, pertains to, you know, some of the different
challenges he heard you guys have, that was brought up at faith over fear.
And I'm, I'm really excited.
I have my notepad ready.
And so I hope that you're ready.
And I'm just going to turn it right over to john.
So we're super honored to have you john.
And we will be doing q&a.
After about 30 minutes, we'll do some some q&a and, and we're excited.
Thanks Ray.
And while I teach, I would just encourage you if you have a question, just, you know,
write it down, write it down.
Because it the interaction is so important.
The teaching is informational.
The interaction is transformational.
You really in a kind of a mentoring situation, you have to have both of them.
And so I love the q&a.
And so as you have questions, just kind of write them down, you have a system, I think
you can even maybe send them to someone and but but but we'll do I'll do 2530 minutes
teaching that will do 25 or 30 minutes of q&a and I and I'm excited to be with you.
Thank you very much and excited to be a mentor of yours.
I know I'm not the only mentor, you have better mentors than me, but thank you for
letting me be part of the family.
And so we're going to, we're going to really grow together.
So I'm one quick thing, sorry, one quick thing is you're on something very exclusive.
And I would just, you know, we asked that you, you know, you'll get the recording of
this, please don't record it on your side or share it outside.
But I would be taking screenshots, I would be, you know, obviously taking notes and sharing,
because there's a lot of people that would love to be in this room that are not in this
room.
And so use that to your advantage that can attract people to you.
And and then obviously the sharing the knowledge.
Yeah, in fact, thanks for bringing that up for a for a moment, because I do a few of
these, just a handful, literally, three or four companies.
And what they find out Ray is that the exposure to that I am a mentor of that company is the
greatest recruiting tool they have.
I mean, if you just take a few pictures of me mentoring and say, you know, I'm getting
my mentoring lesson from John right now, that'll create a buzz for you.
So anyway, it's just a it's just a thought, okay, here we go.
So this is a new lesson, okay.
And like I always teach you, you're never good the first time.
So the good news is you're getting a brand new lesson, no one else has ever heard, you're
the first to hear it.
You know, the bad news, it's first time, so probably won't be very good, but we'll give
it a shot.
Okay.
And the title of the lesson is, do I need to be a know-it-all leader?
In other words, do I have to be a leader that pretty well knows everything that is happening?
And when I was a young leader, the reason I'm talking about this is because in my early
days as leadership, I was immature.
And I was a know-it-all leader, I said, I need to know everything I need to know what's
happening.
How can I make leadership decisions if I'm unaware?
And so I was controlling, I was insecure, I was a new leader.
And obviously, whenever you're new anything, there's some insecurity in it, because you
really don't know if you're going to be any good or not.
So I think there was some insecurity, there was some control thing.
And also, I'll say this, I didn't want to appear like I didn't know, it was almost like
an image deal.
Even if the people look at me and say, you're the leader and you don't know this or know
about this, it's almost like, I want to be Mr. Answer Man.
So when people come to me, I know, here's why we made that decision.
And so this was kind of my first few years, not many, by the way, not many years, I learned
my lesson pretty quick.
But for the first couple, three years,
I was kind of a know-it-all leader.
And I found out very quickly
that this was very debilitating in my leadership, very.
It was slowing me down.
I was way too much hesitation
and I just wasn't creating the momentum I wanted
because of the thinking that I had.
So here's our big decision dilemma.
This is kind of what we're building off right here, okay?
And so this is what I want you to grasp.
And it's a question, two questions
that we got to make a decision here.
And the first question is,
do I need to know it all before I go?
In other words, do I have to make sure
I get all my ducks in a row?
And when I get it all right,
I planned and I've got it all figured out.
Now I take off and I run with that decision.
So do I need to know it all to go?
Or do I go before I know it all?
That's what we're going to wrestle with today.
Good question.
You know, Peter Drucker was a mentor of mine
and he was, you talk about known as a management guru.
He was the world's best.
So everybody looked at Peter
and thought probably he was the ultimate planner.
And one day we were having lunch together
and he said, John, he said,
everybody looks at me as a manager
and I write management books.
But he said, I have found that planning
without doing is not effective.
In other words, if I try to plan everything
and get it right before I do it,
he said, you can't get it right before you do it
because you don't know what's out there yet.
You have to, it's like you have to go out there
and discover what's out there
so then you can make your leadership decisions.
You never have the answers on the front side of action.
This is huge.
We get the answers when we take action.
So should we plan on the front?
And of course we want to do our best,
but the best way I can explain it is,
it's a football coach who has a pregame plan
and you know, the first, I don't know what,
eight plays, 12 plays, it's already set.
I mean, get the ball, here we go.
And they do a pregame plan based upon
what they think is going to work successfully with the team.
But during the first half,
they began to find all kinds of things
that they didn't experience or expect.
And so what do they do?
Well, a good coach has a pregame plan,
a great coach at halftime adjusts the plan.
In other words, your ability at halftime
to now take action on what you're seeing
is going to greatly determine how successful
you're going to be in the second half.
And if you're a college football player,
one of the things that sets Nick Saban apart
out of Alabama over other coaches,
because I've watched him in dozens of times
come out at halftime completely with a different strategy
that has allowed them, literally,
I watched him do that for a national championship
when he changed his quarterback and took his starter
and put him on the bench and put Tua out on the field
and they won the game.
And it was his ability to make halftime adjustments.
And so this is going to really work us.
We're going to go through some kind of mental gymnastics here
to kind of get to the answer that we want
so that we really become what I would call
a stellar decision maker.
And so let's go.
And I'm going to always talk now about mature leaders.
And the reason I'm going to talk about mature leaders
is because mature leaders have the ability
to see everything from different perspectives
as immature leaders don't.
If you're immature, you only see your perspective.
This reminds me of so many lousy leaders.
All they can see is their perspective.
And so therefore they do a lot of assumptions
and they have a horrendous amount of misses.
If you're mature, it's exactly opposite.
A mature person says, well, tell me what you think.
And they get their perspective
and they're just much more knowledgeable
about the way people think than if I just rely on my own.
So it will always kind of head up these thoughts
with mature leaders because I'm talking to mature leaders.
That's all you would have here.
You wouldn't have any immature leaders in your group.
Good night.
You're all mature, okay?
So here we go.
Number one, mature leaders know
that they can't know everything.
So when I ask the question, are you a know-it-all leader?
All of us maturely wise know that we can't know everything.
I mean, we're not that good.
We don't have that much time.
But what I want you to know is leaders
that have a little bit of immaturity,
they know they can't know everything,
but what they do is they spend too much time
trying to know everything.
know as much as they can know.
And that came out very true to me. As you know, I, for 25 years,
I was a pastor came very true to me when I went to San Diego and I followed the
founding pastor who had been there for 30, I think he'd been there for 37 years.
I was only 33 years old. And so I was going out and he was showing,
I was going to follow him. It was already settled.
And he was showing me everything and he was telling me about everything.
And in the process, as I would go out and be with him,
I kept thinking he's, he's involved with too many people. Good Lord.
He had 27 committee meetings every month. You know, and, you know,
I just got tired of thinking of the number 20. I mean, that's almost every day.
You're with a different committee really. And, and the first month,
I went to all those committee meetings and I thought, you know,
I can't handle this. This is not, this, this isn't going to happen.
This can't happen. And so I went to the search committee,
which was a committee that basically said they want to be the pastor.
And I said, we got to have a conversation. Now this is right,
right in the middle of what I'm talking about. I said,
what do I have to do in this church that only I can do and no one else can do it
but me. Let's, let's, let's talk about that. I, I can't train somebody.
I can't equip somebody. I can't delegate. I have to do this.
And we got into an incredible three hour conversation.
Let me tell you something. When you get ready to do a to do list,
you had better first knock out your not to do list. You, you,
you just better go X a whole bunch of stuff in your life. If you can't,
you just call me sometimes because I have a strong ability and gift to put a
whole bunch of stuff out of people's life.
80% of the things that leaders do are as worthless as can be.
They like to do it, but they're worthless. And to, Hey,
to get rid of the worthless, you have to be ruthless.
You gotta be just cutting them out.
And so I sat there with the search committee and after three hours,
there were only four things I had to do in that church. Now,
I better know about those four things because those four things I'm going to be
told, I mean, they had things like, I mean,
very simple things like I had to go to church and preach. Okay, well,
that was a little limiting to me, to be honest with you, but, but all right,
I'll, I'll, I'll do that. I can do that. But, but you're getting the picture.
You're getting, you're getting it. What do I have to do?
Because what you have to do, you do really need to know a lot about it,
but, but whatever thing you can pass off, delegate, equip, train people.
Now that that lessens that need for, for all that knowledge.
I really, I love the story. I've, I love the story of Thomas Edison.
He had a South Florida home and his good buddy Goodyear Thomas Edison was hard
of hearing, very hard of hearing.
And back then hearing aids were just kind of being invented.
And so he got him as a gift, some hearing aids and for Thomas Edison.
And one day they were in the parlor and they were talking and he noticed that
Thomas Edison didn't have his hearing aids in. And he said,
where are your hearing aids? And Tom says, he said, well, they're in my pocket.
He said, well, why don't you have them on? And Tom said,
I don't like to hear a lot of average people talk. He said,
I just pulled him out. He said, I just, I just I'll hang with them.
But he said, there isn't very much.
I want to know from average people. And I looked at it and I thought,
I resonate that so much. I'll tell you what average people talk,
just wear me out. I just sit there. I think everyone discuss something.
It's going to make a difference.
Are we ever going to discuss something that's going to have some life change to
it? Or are we just going to basically have an evening together?
Now there's nothing wrong with having an evening together,
but I'm just saying to you in this area of when do I make a decision and how
much do I need to know? Let me just tell you right now,
you need to know a lot less than you think you need to know to make good
decisions, but you did need to know the things that you need to know,
to make the good decisions, which brings me to point number two,
know that they're that mature leaders know that they must
know something. So the question is, what should I know? It's now I'm getting,
I should know, you know, Colin Powell,
the great general of desert store
basically said,
if zero represents no information and a hundred represents knowing
everything, he said, I make my decisions on the number 60.
And I always have felt that that was so clear and over to, he said,
I probably would like to know a little bit over half to make the decision.
60 is probably about my number. I surely don't need to know 80 or 90.
So can you just give me a little bit of over,
I've always liked that how he did it. Cause you just hear that you,
you understand it. And then he went on to say, basically,
I want 60% information and that'll allow me to fill in the 40% of
intuition. I, you know, intuition can be.
If you tell me enough stuff, I could intuitively begin to figure it out as a leader.
So let's go to number three.
Mature leaders know that they must know what's important that affects the decision.
So when we're asking ourselves, how much do I need to know?
What we do know is this.
There are other factors that affect the decision that we're making.
Decisions are never made in isolation.
One of the challenges of leadership is we make decisions based on a lot of narratives,
an incredible amount of things that affect that decision.
So a decision is not made in a vacuum.
And some of the things that you just have to know for context of making a decision are
things like, what are our values?
What's the vision?
What's the mission of the organization?
What kind of a culture do we have?
What's the purpose?
Why are we in existence?
What kind of personnel do I have?
A lot of decisions, you can't even make them until you know what kind of personnel.
Now, all those things I'm giving to you right now are things that are not the decision itself,
but they affect the decision.
So decisions need to be made in agreement with the things that are important.
It's just that simple.
So the decision I'm making right now, is it a value of ours?
Does this fit our vision or our mission?
Does this fulfill the purpose?
So they're not the decisions, they're just the things that affect the decisions.
Here's what I want you to know.
Isolated decisions, decisions that are made without context, they become a distraction.
And I have watched this happen in organizations all the time, where the decision, it becomes
a distraction to people because it had nothing to connect it with all the things that you
have to connect a decision with.
I am rushing because I want to get to number four.
I've never had number four taught to me.
I've never heard anybody teach it.
And I want to get to number four because I'm going to promise you there's some life in
here that is going to spring forth in you.
So number four, mature people, good decision makers, know that what they know, you have
to know this, you need to know what you know can change.
And this is where the big miss is.
In fact, I almost, when I was writing this, you need to know that what you know can change.
I almost got real strong and said, you need to know what you know will change.
I think that there are a few things that don't have to change in your life, such as values
and things like that.
But 90% of what you know right now in your leadership is going to change.
Harvard Business Review says that now when you get your Bachelor of Theology degree from
a university, it has a five-year shelf lifespan, just five years.
So when you get the degree, you've got five years to run on what you learned.
And in five years, everything you learned is no longer there.
So wouldn't it be nice if the universities would refund our money after five years, or
give us half back, or I've got all kinds of things for universities to do that they aren't
going to do.
But anyway, so let's talk about this because this is where you get deep mentoring.
When I hear people teach, I can tell, I mean, within 10 minutes, a lot of them are like
first-level teachers or mentors, and basically they kind of know what they've learned.
But in mentoring, you want to get around men and women that have layered learning over
years because they bring a depth in their teaching that you just don't get.
And you're just about to get some depth.
So let's talk about COVID for a moment.
COVID caused all kinds of disruptions, accelerated change.
In fact, I told leaders during COVID, it's the only time in my leadership life you could
change anything you wanted to without explaining it to anybody and could get by with it.
It was like, oh my, you want to change something, just go ahead.
Because people were so desperate and were so confused, you could just slap anything
on the wall and people, it's okay.
Because their life was in incredible turmoil.
They lacked confidence.
They were out of their comfort zone.
They were in uncertainty.
So now that we've come out of it, here's what I'm noticing.
I'm going to give you three words in a moment, but here's what I'm noticing out of COVID,
out of all the upheaval.
The first thing that I'm noticing is a word that isn't a word, but I'm giving it to you
because that's how I make words.
You know, I have several words in the dictionary now that weren't words, but I introduced them
because that's how-
how's the word become a word? Somebody has to say it.
Then somebody has to repeat it. And sometime somebody puts a definition on it.
And it's like the law of countability out of my 17 laws of teamwork.
When I wrote the law of countability,
my publisher said there's no such word as countability. So you can't use it.
And I said, I will use it because it should be a word. And so we used it.
Now there's a word countability. Well,
I'm going to give you another word that's going to become a word.
And by the way, why would you allow anybody
to put boundaries on your mind
and just basically try to stick you in a yard? Honestly,
I mean, is that kind of like how you want to live?
So I'm going to give you a word that's not a word, but it'll become a word.
You just trust me two or three years. It'll be in the dictionary.
And the word is effort team. It's a great word.
What effort team means, because what I'm seeing,
I'm seeing a lot of effort team now with leaders.
And what I'm saying to this efforting, here's what, here,
let me I'll define it for you.
Effort team is trying to make something work
that has worked, but it doesn't work as well as it used to.
That's efforting. So now I'm efforting. I'm just,
all that worked before COVID that worked and oh my gosh,
we got to make it work. And I'm efforting.
I'm just trying to fit it back and it doesn't fit. It's not going to fit.
So there's a lot of efforting going on that has no return at all.
And so when we're talking about what you know can change,
I just want you to know that people are efforting way too much.
They're still trying to go back to how they led before COVID to make it work
after COVID. The second word is protecting.
And this word protecting, you understand that.
Protecting means that you're doing the same thing that we've always done,
but it isn't getting any better now. Oh,
I wish I had an hour to teach you on this, because this is what,
this is the major mistake of, of people in organizations.
I'm going to protect this. You're doing the same thing you've always done,
but it isn't getting any better.
Why do we protect things that don't work?
Why do we protect things that don't produce?
And yet I watch people all the time in their organization have
budgeted items for stuff that they don't work,
but they're protecting it because they've had it around so long that they almost
feel emotionally insecure if they don't do it. And, and, and,
and remember what we're talking about is knowing that what you're doing will
change. You got to know that. So efforting isn't going to work.
Protecting isn't going to work, but the third word adjusting is going to work.
And adjusting is just simply making sure that you and the team are
intuitive and agile. And they go together, really intuitive and agile
to maximize the before advantage that good leaders have.
Now, when I talk about the before advantage that leaders have, let me,
let me clarify that all great leaders see more than others.
And they see before others see more is the big picture before is the quick
picture. Now listen to me carefully
in the society and the culture we live now,
seeing before others see is more important than seeing more than
others. See when, when I started before, wasn't even the picture. When I,
when I started off as a leader, 50 years ago, you didn't have to see before.
Things weren't moving that quick. You just had to see more, the big picture.
Now, now you guys need to see the big picture,
but you need to see the quick picture. And, and, and the PR and before,
before is all the advantage. Uh,
90% of your success as a leader is, is in the word before,
trust me on this. So we,
we effort and protect way too much.
And we adjust way too little.
So what's the answer? What's the answer?
The answer is that we have to have what I call personal inner agility.
It doesn't start with the, with the team. It starts with me and, and,
and personal inner agility to me is, is this,
I have to, if I'm going to do agile in the company, if I'm going to, if,
if I'm going to do agile and adjust real quickly, I have to be agile.
I can't change my character into my behavior.
So I have to be agile. And so I have to be agile on the inside.
So I can do agile on the outside,
which means I have to consistently understand that things change and they
change all the time. And instead of resisting the change,
I go to it and embrace it and see how I can take.
advantage of it. And I'm going to give you quickly four practices that will help you build this inner
agile self. And these are simple practices. I do them all. So it'll just help you and away we go.
So here they are. In other words, because I have to be it before I can do it.
I have to be agile personally before I can do agile professionally. Number one is you have
to pause to move faster. That sounds like an oxymoron. It doesn't make any sense. But when
I say you have to pause to move faster, what I'm saying is if you are pausing while you're staying
engaged, you're putting thinking and action together. Most of the time we separate them.
We do action or we do thinking. But we don't do thinking while we're doing action. And so the
best way I can explain it to you in a racing term is that in the middle of action, which I'm always
in action, I have pit stops. And those pit stops allow me to adjust, you know, change the tires,
you know, do whatever. But I have pit stops. But remember this, they're pit stops.
They don't run the race. And after the race is over, they have pit stops. They understand pit
stops have to be in the race. You can't win the race if you don't have pit stops. You can't win
the race of agility if you don't have pit stops in your action. And again, the pit stop, hey,
you go over to have a pit, a pit stop is not a rest stop. So they're not going over and saying,
boy, let's take a half hour and you get a cup of coffee and relax and talk about how the game's
going here. No, no, no, no. They're only stopping just long enough to get better. And that, so this
is huge. Just like you've heard me teach, don't separate success and failure. Huge mistake. That's
a whole different lesson. You got to keep them together. They work good together. They work
terrible separate. They add value to each other together. They tear down each other, separate it.
So that's the first thing. The second thing is you have to embrace your ignorance.
I don't know about you, but this is not hard for me. This one's kind of like, oh, good. I got this
one down. Embrace my ignorance because I am constantly amazed at what I don't know.
I'm constantly amazed that, you know, there's just so much I'm still
growing in and learning in. And when you embrace your ignorance, I'll tell you what you do.
I can see a person that's embracing ignorance because they're always curious and they're always
hungry. And so that, you know, if you're a been there, done that person, you aren't my kind of
person. You need to be on some shelf of life because your game's already over. You know,
you got to embrace that curious, hungry. And let me tell you how I know that. Here's how I know that
there is always a better answer always. So whatever answer I have in anything that I give,
I'm always under the conviction that there's a better answer. So I'm always, while I'm doing my
best with the answer I have, I'm always looking for a better answer. I watch people. I mean,
I love these people say, well, I found it. You didn't find anything. You didn't find it.
You don't find it. There is no finish line. This thing of growth and learning,
it never stops. Okay. Number three, set direction, not destination.
So many times we say, okay, okay, this is where we want to end up here. No, no, no, no. You don't
want to end up here. You just want to go start in a direction that will get you there. And here's
why. We don't improve after we arrive, dear Lord. We improve while we're going. That's why this,
that's why this lesson is so appropriate to where people are. The improvement, the adjustments,
and here's what happens. You start on, you go, you start on what you know,
but you improve on what you're doing. And so it's kind of like, okay, I've got to start.
And here's what I know. I know enough to have direction to start, but 80% of all the
approval will be in the action. And then number four, what number four is you need to constantly
test your solutions and you need to test yourself. And my best advice there for you is that
one of the things you really, really want to have in your life a lot is a lot of what I would call
quick, cheap failures. They're just the, gosh, they're the greatest assets you can almost have
is you go out and you try it and didn't work, but it didn't cost you. If you have a lot of
quick, cheap failures, you won't have major disasters because what happens is.
You pull back and you say, Oh, that didn't work. That didn't work. And that's huge.
Okay. Quick review, quick review. You're hanging out. You're doing super,
by the way. No, that you can't know everything.
No, that you must know something. No, that, that,
that you must know what's important and know that what you know,
it's going to change. Now,
number five is know that starting early is an advantage in leadership.
We've already talked about the before the before is a huge advantage.
Okay.
So when a decision is to be made,
you need to be very, um,
intentional in making it as fast as you can.
Okay. Go get that 60% knowledge, whatever you have,
but you, again,
the person who starts first wins the race. It's the,
it's the Gail Deaver's illustration. I'm not going to give to you now,
uh, of this world app that I said, Gail, I can, I can, I,
if I ran a hundred yard race with you, I could win. How can you do that?
She was beyond herself. And I said, if you give me an 80 yard headstart in,
you know, yeah, 80 yards, I can win this rate. Don't know.
Let me explain something to you very quickly.
The fastest person doesn't win the race. It's the person that started first.
Starting first is the biggest advantage you'll ever have as a leader.
The biggest advantage is that you made the decision quickly.
So let me just give you some quick thoughts.
The best thing you can do is make a right decision quickly.
The next next best thing you can do is to make a wrong decision quickly.
And the worst decision you can make is to not make a decision at all.
Now, why is a bad decision better than no decision?
Well, a bad decision, if you make it quickly creates action.
And as soon as you make a bad decision,
the action itself tells you it was a stupid decision.
So you learn very quickly. What won't work. If you make a bad decision,
you learn much more quickly about what work that if you don't make that
decision, or you don't know what will work.
So you keep delaying inevitable failure.
Now decision-making is overrated.
And this decision-managing is underrated.
So I'm sneaking this in on you. Don't miss it.
What I'm really doing is I'm talking to you a lot about decision management.
Okay. Let me, let me just prove it. Let me ask you to show me by hands. Okay.
I'm watching you show me how many of you have ever made a bad decision.
Would you raise your hand? Thank you very much. It's okay. In fact,
we could probably do this if we really wanted to. And if you, you know,
get your feet in the air and I mean, how many, I mean, I mean, how many,
I mean, just think about, about all the stupid decisions you've made in your
life, you know, and I've made, you know, I don't, I don't know how many you've
made, but I'm I'm I've made more. Okay. Stupid decisions. Okay. Okay.
And yet we recover, we recover,
we can get back. We can, we can override those dumb decisions that we make.
Okay.
When a person makes a decision, I hear people, I said,
that decision made me, Oh, that was the one. When I made that decision,
that decision made me. And I want to walk into them. And I was saying,
you're a wonderful person, but you're a shallow thinker.
The decision never makes you at all.
The management of that decision is what makes you,
you make the decision in a moment,
but you manage it for a lifetime.
It's the management of the decision that allows the decision to take hold.
It allows the decision to be consistent.
It's the management of the decision that's essential.
So when you and I make a decision,
that is the first step,
but the management of that decision would be all of the rest steps that you and
I would have. Okay. Now, okay.
Let me see here. I got to skip some stuff. Cause I got to get into Q and a,
I'm very sorry. I got a little bit too much material. Um,
since I'm, since I'm emphasizing before,
let me just, let me just take a moment and talk to you about intuition.
Intuition is very hard to teach. Uh, the, in the 21 laws of leadership,
there are two laws that are very difficult to teach timing and intuition,
because timing and intuition does favor the gifted leader always.
If you're, cause we are intuitive in the area of our gifts.
So which of the three questions describes you,
I sense, or I intuit, uh,
before, uh, movement, before we start.
If that's true of you, you have great foresight as a leader.
Or I sense during the action, I sense during that movement, which means you're flexible.
You say, oh, well, that isn't working, let's go over here.
Or you sense after the action's been taken, which honestly usually results in the failure
of that decision, that leadership.
The more that you understand before, the more that you will exercise movement, and
the more that you exercise movement, the more you will increase intuition.
One last thought.
Okay, here we go.
The last thing I want you to do is to know that discoveries determines decisions.
This is the icing on the cake.
Three minutes, we're going into Q&A.
This is the icing on the cake.
Don't miss this.
The best way I can illustrate and spread that icing for you is to say that 10 years ago,
I said, after training 6 million leaders in every country in the world, I told my nonprofit
board we were going to go to transformation of leaders.
We're going to take it to a whole different level.
We train leaders and have good leadership skills.
Transformational leaders not only have good leadership skills, but they also have good
values which enhance those skills.
I said, we're going to go to a nation, we're going to find out a country that will invite
us in by the president, and we're going to go in and try to do transformation.
We've never done it before.
Remember, you're never good the first time.
I took my key leaders to Guatemala the first time, and I said, now you have to understand,
we're going on about 20% what we know and about 80% what we don't know.
We're here not as authorities.
We're here to introduce what we know, try it out, see what works, see what doesn't work,
ask a lot of questions, and find out what we need to know.
I wrote this statement, and it's a powerful statement.
Here we go.
I'm talking about our initiative of going in to Guatemala for transformation.
Here's the statement.
What we knew was much less than what we didn't know, but we did what we knew so we could
discover what we didn't know.
I'm going to repeat that one time, because you can live off of that statement for a couple
of weeks.
What we knew was much less than what we didn't know, but we did what we knew, in other words,
we took action on what we knew so we could discover what we didn't know.
The moment we took action on what we knew, we knew that we could discover everything
else because action is going to reveal everything else we need to know.
Discovery is a result of this, acknowledgement, and the acknowledgement is this, we don't
know it all.
That's where we start.
Discovery is a result of action, we act on what we know.
Discovery is a result of assessment, we now know what we didn't know.
Discovery is a result of adjustment, we now tweak what we did not know.
Discovery is a result of action elevation, we act on what we discover so we can discover
more.
Those five A's are the process of discovery, acknowledgement, don't know it all, action,
we're going to act on what we do know, assessment.
Now as we're taking this action, we're going to find out what we don't know, adjustment,
we're going to fix what we don't know and start it, and then action, and that elevates
us until now we're acting not only what we knew in the beginning, but now we're acting
on the discoveries we're having right now, and the discoveries we have right now are
going to elevate us to discoveries that we don't even know that we need to know yet,
but that's what happens when you take action.
So if I'm a, I got to know it all leader before I do something, you're going to be left behind.
Honestly, you're going to eat dust all the time, because there are those who are moving
right now, they're going to learn a lot, they're going to fail a lot, they're going
to adjust continually, but they're going to get there faster, they're going to get there
faster because they were secure enough to go where they hadn't gone, to admit they didn't
have answers they didn't know, but they were secure enough to take action to find them
and that's the key to your success.
The things that you do not have in your life right now.
are because you haven't taken action on them.
Every one of us have incredible possibilities
and fruit hanging around us,
but we've never acted on it.
And remember this,
the good stuff doesn't come to you.
You go to the good stuff.
That's the lesson.
Hope it helped you.
Ah, that was awesome.
I mean, you're pretty good the first time around.
Yeah, maybe at the end of the year,
I'll teach it again, right?
See, hey, then you can grade me a little bit better,
but it's the best I could do the first time around.
It was awesome.
It was obvious the first time around,
I had a little too much content and I realized,
you know, oops, oops, I got a little bit too much in here.
But anyway, it's a real practical lesson.
It works.
Yeah.
Two quick things, and I won't slow things down
because I know we got some questions
I think Vanessa is gonna pull up.
Two quick things.
Man, it really, I just felt that when you said
how you manage your decisions,
not the actual decisions is what makes you.
And what immediately came up for me is Peter, right?
You know, Peter made the decision to deny Christ three times
even though, you know, he had been told he would do that.
And he's like, no way.
He made that decision,
but how he managed that decision
is he showed up very differently.
And, you know, it was just so admirable
if you're looking at a story of someone very flawed
that went on to make an incredible difference.
So that was number one.
And number two is, I love this, and I just experienced this,
do what you know so you can discover what you don't know.
So my eight-year-old daughter
was having a lot of issues at school.
She's a firecracker, she's a spark plug,
and, you know, just having some discipline issues at school
and I prayed on it and I got to homeschool
and I don't know anything about homeschooling.
And so I, you know, I just, you know, trusted that part
and I did what I know, which wasn't much,
but I reached out to some people.
Now I know a whole lot more
and I'm actually excited about it.
And so I just love, those are my two biggest takeaways,
but I just really appreciate, great, great lessons.
I got a ton of notes and we'll roll them over to questions.
And thank you.
Thank you.
Awesome, awesome.
Thank you so much.
Listen, let's start with you, Jason Wessler.
You had a question, I'm going to ask to unmute you.
Guys, be ready when I ask to unmute you
so that you can ask your questions to John.
So Jason, I'm asking you.
Yeah, hey, thank you.
So, you know, you mentioned intuition,
so I'm just wondering if you can advise
what the best book would be to learn more about that,
you know, trusting ourselves, that inner voice,
you know, probably God really, right?
Well, Jason, this is, intuition is hard to teach.
So let me start with what I know
and then I'm going to go to what I think.
There's a difference between what I know and what I think.
Here's what I know, you are intuitive
in the area of your giftedness, end of statement.
So every person is intuitive.
So sometimes people say,
well, I'm not a very intuitive person.
I want to say, well, you are in the area of your giftedness.
I don't know what your gift is,
but if I put you in your strength zone, your giftedness,
you're very intuitive.
That's why it's your strength zone.
So every person is intuitive.
The challenge is sometimes when I'm teaching leadership,
they're not gifted as a leader.
So therefore they're not intuitive in their leadership.
So let's say that I'm not intuitive.
So it doesn't come naturally to me.
There are three things that you do to increase intuition.
Number one is you need to be around an intuitive leader
and spend proximity time with that person.
What happens is they will visually flesh out intuition
in your life because they're intuitive on a daily basis.
And so you'll see them, you'll see them make a decision.
You got to stop and say,
now how could you make a decision that quick?
And what you want to do is every time you see them
kind of lean in and go a lot quicker than you would go,
just call time out and say, now, can you help me there?
I mean, you hardly reflected all that
and you made the decision.
What you're trying to do is you're trying to pull back
the curtains of an intuitive person
and have them spell out why and how they do this, okay?
And that's, and by the way,
the more intuitive people you are around,
the more intuitive you will become.
There is a catching of intuitiveness,
not to the degree of being gifted in it,
but at least being helped by it.
That's number one.
The second area that you need to really work hard on
is you need to trust your gut.
You give your mind way too much favor
and you give your gut way too little.
favor. You dismiss the things that you feel inside sometimes because one, it doesn't make sense,
it doesn't add up, or your mind is in conflict with it. And the reason that you need to do a
little bit more gut stuff is because I have discovered even people that are not intuitive,
they in their gut sometimes just know what to do. But if you don't do it, if you let your mind win
over your gut, you'll never become intuitive because you don't get to practice it. Again,
you have to practice it. So when you start saying, I can't explain it, but I feel it,
it's kind of here, then do it. Now, what you also have to do is the third thing,
is you have to evaluate how successful you are when you practice, and you take those risks,
and you go with your gut. And what you need to do is you need to remember the times.
You know, I overrode my mind, and I did that instinctively or whatever, and it really worked.
I did it, and it didn't work at all. You can tell you're improving when you up your percentages.
If you've been doing that for 10 years, and it doesn't get any better,
then you're not improving yourself. Usually, practice, even intuitive practice,
gives you confidence that allows you then to pretty soon allow that influence of the inner self
to rise a little bit higher that will allow you to do things. But you're going uphill. Remember,
you have two strong emotions. You've got the mind, you've got the gut.
The mind almost always wins. And the more the mind wins, the stronger it gets, and the less
the gut wins, the weaker it becomes. So you're trying to move those emotions up a little bit
higher. But those are three things that you can try. And I can promise you they'll make you better.
I can't not promise you that they'll make you intuitive. I still think it's a major gift.
And so I think you can get better intuitively. I don't think unless you have the gift,
you can become great intuitively. Good question. Thank you.
Very good. Popping over to Colton.
Oops, Colton, we can't hear you.
Still can't hear you. Can you hear me now?
Yes, yes. Got it.
I was like, oh, no, my one spot, my one shot. Hey, John, thanks so much for your training.
Good to see you again. It was funny. My pastors, they told me to say hi to you,
Becky and Roger Tirabasi. They told me to say what's up.
They're wonderful people. My gosh, tell them hi.
Yeah. So my question is this, just to give you background, I'm a million dollar a year
earner in network marketing. I've been in the same companies in the industry for about 11 years now.
I've enrolled quite a few people and got them to multiple six figures a year in income. And I feel
like the last few years, I kind of have like a core group of 25 people who've kind of like
been I've identified and kind of like there are leaders. And I feel like I might be like
leading followers, because they haven't been able to kind of duplicate and bring in a new
crop of leaders. And I'm trying to figure out, like, what do I need to do in order to kind of
help us like create like a new, because all the people who are doing well now, like we're doing
well, you know, two years ago, there's like not like a new group of people. And I'm just like,
what am I not doing or enabling or something? Well, Cole, that's great question. First of all,
congratulations that you build a group. Okay, so don't despise the fact you've got 25 people
making six figures, and they're doing very well. And that's attributed to you and your leadership.
What happens is, is when you can develop a team, the team gets very satisfied being the team.
And so you are not changing and lifting the level of expectations on your team.
So you need a new team to what you need to do. And you get a new team one of two ways,
you sit down with your old team. And you say, I need a new team, which means I probably won't use
you anymore. Now watch this. But they have a chance to be a new team. Also, the old team could be the
new team. And you put out the expectations of what it is going to look like to be on the new
team. This is where you get your win. In other words, Colton, I would sit there and I'd say
to be on the new team, you have to every six months bring somebody in the circle
that absolutely you found and you're developing, and they got to 100,000 a year or more. So you
can only stay on the new team by bringing in new people. This is the requirement of being on the
team. No longer do we just have us four and no more, us 25 and no more. So you lay out that
qualification and you look at your old team and say, guess what? I hope all of you on the old
team are on the new team. I want you, hey, but let me tell you something. If you're on the new team,
there's going to be something very different about our new team. Instead of having 25,
we're going to have 50. Because the only way you can be on the new team is to go bring somebody
else. Those upfront expectations are humongous. And say, I'll do my best to help you. But now
you're going to have to produce. The moment that you do that, two things will happen. You'll have
half of your players go out and get more players and they're just going to kick out and do really
well. You'll have half your players who want to hold on, hang on. And basically,
you know, rely on friendships and relationships. You follow me? Most people use relationships in
damaging ways. You know, why should I hang with you? Because I've always hung with you. Honestly,
I know that sounds a little cruel, but are you growing? Are you changing? Are you any better?
Because I'm growing and I'm changing. Is there anything better, worse than somebody that's
growing, hanging around somebody that's not growing? I mean, how many of the same conversations
do you have to have before you say, I don't need another lunch with this person. Nobody's home.
And so you get the new expectations out there for the old team and let the old team become the new
team. But you'll lose some and you'll gain some, but that will, I will promise you in six months,
Colton, you'll tell me great advice. And by the way, by the way, Colton, you go out while they're
getting one, you go get two yourself. Because the one I was like, I was like, I was like my
players and say, excuse me, I don't know if you can do this or not, but I can. So you can watch
me do it if you want to. I always put myself out in front of everyone else. I'm going to do more.
I'm going to be better and it's going to be bigger. And by the way, that's why I'm the
unqualified moral leader of the things I lead. I'm not living off of yesterday. In network
marketing, people get a title or position. There's a certain amount of money and they live off of
yesterday and they're as worthless as can be. Now I know nobody more worthless than network marketing
people that got to be diamond or something. And they sit in a lounge and sip tea and are diamonds
the rest of their life. And you just say, dear God, is that, is this as good as it going to get?
Because it is, let's do the funeral and you can go home. Okay. So you get that expectation level
up there and you meet it as the example. Makes sense. Love that. Thanks so much, John. Yeah.
Good to see you for it. Really, really good. I love that. Uh, Carrie or Carrie, please correct
my pronunciation of your name. You're next. My name is Carrie and it rhymes with Siri.
That helps you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, John. This was like,
it just really hit hard, but it's so good. I think you kind of already answered my question,
but my question was, are they are training our timing and intuition hard? Because they're
about us learning to trust ourselves and then really stick that and walk that out.
Well, I think intuition is hard because we don't trust ourselves. Yes. I, I, I mean, I,
because we don't know, we don't know. So there's a risk there. I call, I, I call it the emotional
risk. There's an emotional risk of saying, I'm going to do something that I'm not even sure that
works, but I just feel it could work. But there's also an emotional loss in not taking the risk.
Because what happens when I don't take the risk, I, every time you don't move and take the risk
or action, you reduce yourself. This is what people miss. You know, we're supposed to leave
our footprints in the sands of time, not our butt prints. And what people don't understand is
when they sit on their ass and they don't move and they don't go and they don't take action,
they make themselves smaller. I know some people that were just beautiful size and now they're
very small. You can't make yourself bigger by not doing what you should do. You just make yourself
smaller. So people think I'll stay the same. No, no, you don't stay there. Nobody gets to stay the
same. You only get to stay when you, when you, when you die, you don't stay the same. So you're,
you're either improving or you're, or you're sliding. And so when you don't take these
intuitive risks, honestly, you're selling yourself short and you're, and you're cutting
off your potential. So once you know that, that is a real incentive to me to take the risk. It's
kind of like, I'm not sure what's going to happen.
Here, here's the way it is. I'm not sure what's going to happen if I take the risk intuitively,
but I do know what's going to happen if I don't take the risk.
Make sense? Yeah, good, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So good.
Popping over to you, Justin Rogers. Hey John, it's a pleasure to be here. Hi Justin.
So one of the notes I took is that you had said seeing before is more important than seeing more.
And so my question is, how do we get more effective at the seeing before part? And
you may have answered some of that through the intuition already.
It's a great question, and the answer is awareness. When I share with you, and you
already caught it because it got on your aware screen. When I said seeing before is more important
than seeing more, you looked at that and thought, oh my gosh, I didn't know that. Right. Now you
know it. I put it on your awareness. You can't improve what you don't know. You got to know
yourself to grow yourself. So one of the things I do as a leader is I put an awareness screen in
front of potential leaders all the time and say, are you aware? Are you aware that before? Now
when I started off, there wasn't even a before. It was just more. You didn't have to be fast. You just
had to show up and know more. That's all changed. So now that you have the awareness, it's like I
tell you, look for the color green today. Well, all day long you're going to see more green
than you've ever seen before. Now you always see that green, but awareness caused you to see it more.
Now I'm saying look for before more than ever. And every time you come to a decision,
think before and say, you know what, if I get 80 yards out in front of the race,
I can beat that. And let me give you a classic example. I just gave this the other day
somewhere. I've been traveling a lot. So I've been in a different city about every day. I think it
was in Salt Lake. Anyway, the other day I was talking to people in the real estate market. And
of course that's a very tough market right now. And so do I get out right now? So many of them
leave, they leave. And I was trying to help them understand that difficult times are just
beautiful times. We just have so many wimpy people. Do you know the greatest way to increase
market share is have a difficult time? Because people quit. It's the most wonderful thing in life.
Tough times make people go home. And when they go home, guess what? You didn't go home.
So here's what happens. That pendulum swings. It swings, always has one. Good times, bad times,
good times, bad times. So when it swings over to bad times, everybody's leaving the ship.
But you stay on the ship. You stay ready, prepared. Why? Because when opportunity comes,
it's too late to prepare. So when it swings back, guess what? You're already on the ship.
Now, what do these people that quit have to do? Oh my gosh, I got to go get my office again. I got
to start all over. While they're scrambling to get started, you've already started. I do not
want this to be said the wrong way, but listen, they'll never catch up with you.
They'll never catch up with you. So I tell people during bad times, stay in the game
and get in a state of preparation and take all the action you can to reduce the bad times less.
But when that pendulum swings back then, you have a 20% market share you didn't even have. I mean,
honestly, when you hang around average people, you don't even need to run the race. If you stand
still, you'll win. I've never seen so many people quit, sabotage themselves, play stupid. I mean,
I just look at life and I just say, how can you not win in life? There are so many stupid people
out there. If you stand still, you won. So understand, see that big picture. But if you
stay in the game, once that game starts to turn, you're already running down the field. And
everybody said, how the heck did that happen? Well, you stayed in the game. So just stay right
there. Makes sense? Makes perfect sense. Thank you. It's funny because I'm actually in the real
estate business. Oh, okay. Bingo. Well, but just stay there. And when that swings back to you,
you're going to smile and say, boy, here I am. I'm playing a game that everybody else now is
going back and getting all the supplies for. I like it. Thank you so much.
Yeah, you're welcome. So good. Well, John, we want to honor your time. Thank you so much. I
know you went a few minutes over. Just really appreciate you. And yeah, man, can I speak to
that? You know, I got out of real estate in 2009. And I
you know, I panicked, the market crashed. Had I had, I figured it out and rolled
up my sleeves and just worked on the rents and everything, I would be worth
probably about $15 million more today. Because all of that real estate bounce
back. And and so just such such good wisdom today, just really, really
appreciate you. And we're all just so, so grateful for you, my man.
It's great to be with you, Ray. Great to be with all of you. Hey, I can hardly
wait till the next time. So let's keep going. Until then, I'll see you. God
bless. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. And if you're on here, and you had a
question that didn't get answered, please, you're not you're not going to
get a john Maxwell answer, but you'll get a Ray Higdon answer. It's about,
you know, 20% on on the dollar value there, maybe. But asking the Voxer group,
and I want to make sure that I can help you out at least with, you know, my
take on it. And I just really appreciate you guys. So just was this awesome or
what? It was so, so good. And so just excited. I'm so grateful you guys are on
this journey with me. I'm learning right alongside you. And we'll rock it out.
You'll see now what you'll see me do is I got
1233. Yeah, 123. I got three pages of notes. So you'll see me convert this into
content. If this kind of content would turn on the type of person you're trying
to attract to you, I would encourage you to do the same. This could be in your
stories or lives or whatever. But I'm telling you one thing I one thing that
attracted a lot of people to me over the years is I always shared when I invested
in myself. And I know that some people are, you know, maybe weird about saying,
Hey, you know, I gave this person money or something like that. I you know, did I
have people see? Oh, he invested in that thing. I'm going to go do that thing. Sure.
But you know, I just never I just don't believe in scarcity. It wasn't that big of
a deal. But a lot of people when they saw me invest in myself, came to me and said,
Hey, what are you learning? Like, how can I work closer with you? And it's the same
thing with you, you made a big bold statement, big decision. And so manage that
decision powerfully and maximize your return on it. And so I appreciate you guys
very much. Hit me up in the Voxel group if there's anything that didn't get covered.
And just love you guys. So awesome. Rock it out. All right. Bye, guys.