Two things, real quick.
Okay, we got a message.
So two things real quick.
I just want to open up in prayer.
So Father, we come to you
through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Holy Spirit, thank you for filling us.
Father, you are our Lord and our light,
our rock, our refuge, our redeemer,
our protector, our provider, our source, our everything.
Thank you for this gift of our lives.
Thank you for this time together.
Thank you for the wisdom that we're gonna gain today.
Thank you for rescuing us.
Thank you for sending your son when we didn't deserve it.
We're so grateful for you,
and you are worthy of our praise, Lord.
Lord, you're so worthy.
And we just ask for strength, wisdom, endurance,
patience, and discernment.
Help us draw closer to you.
Help us bring more glory to you.
And we're just so grateful for you.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Amen.
And the second thing we're gonna do
is we're gonna wish a certain individual happy birthday.
I hear it was your birthday yesterday, John.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you, John.
Happy birthday to you.
Woo!
And that was recorded.
I'll never forget this.
Ray, what you have proven is you're a great leader,
but you are not a great leader of worship and singing.
No, no, I'm not.
But I'll never forget it
because it was so terrible that I'll never forget.
You know what I'm saying?
Some of the most fun things that stick in your mind
is just, oh my gosh, could they really be that bad?
And did they practice being that bad?
Have they been working on this?
And I think you didn't practice at all.
I think it was just very natural.
Which tells me that all of you
don't wanna be on a worship team somewhere,
but you do wanna be a leader
helping people get to another level.
God looks at the heart and our intentions, John, so.
And Ray, it's a good thing.
It's really good.
Because if he doesn't look at the heart,
we are left out in the cold and the door is shut.
No, it was so fun, so thank you very much.
You know, I'm 77, and in the Bible,
seven's the perfect number.
So if ever I should have a good year when I'm a double seven,
it should be a good year.
I was born in 77, so it's very similar.
Rub it in, rub it in, Ray, that's just.
Now listen, that's cruel.
That's just cruel right there.
See, I think your singing and the group
was totally unintended.
I think that was just an accident waiting to happen,
but that was true.
When you tell me you were born in 77, that's just,
I mean, you think I didn't just, that's just stabbed my heart
and now I hope I can mentor the team.
You know what I'm saying?
I hope I'm not crushed so bad
that I'll try to bring it home anyway.
That's awesome.
We appreciate you being here.
Oh, Ray, thank you.
And to each one of you, we're grateful.
Thank you for letting us be a part of this.
And I look so forward to teaching you and mentoring you.
And I'm gonna talk about passion today.
That's gonna be my topic.
Maybe the power of passion.
And the reason-
Can we highlight John?
Can we just make him the, whatever,
the speaker or whatever it is?
Well, Eric, is that, that's really not better.
You got nice, unless you, you know, Andrew says my best,
my best view is from the back.
So I'm surprised we don't get me from the backend.
But anyway, now at least you're going sideways.
You're doing your best, aren't you, Andrew?
Let's talk about passion, the power of passion.
And you know, there are seven questions
I ask at Learning Launches,
and I'm quite certain that I've taught this to you.
So I'm gonna do this in a two-minute run
and I'm gonna do this in a two-minute review
because it sets up what I really wanna do.
But when I have Learning Launches,
which I do monthly to people bigger, better,
faster, smarter than me,
I've done this for over 40 years, okay?
It's, and if you don't do Learning Launches,
you need to start immediately.
I mean, this is something that next week you can begin.
And what I do is I, every month,
I take somebody to lunch with me
and I ask them seven questions.
I've been doing this for over 40 years.
And I can tell you what I have learned
in that mentoring time of Learning Launches
has been totally a difference maker for me.
It'll be a difference maker for you.
You do two or three of them and you'll say,
why haven't I done these all my life?
And it's very simple.
You just set up a lunch, take somebody out to lunch.
I don't even eat.
I just ask the seven questions and take notes
because it's a learning lunch for me.
But there are seven questions I ask.
I'm gonna give them to you.
quickly, because it's really foundational for what I want to teach.
And here, the questions are simple.
Number one is, what's the most important lesson you've ever learned in your life?
And it's just a great question, and that's how I start every time.
What's the most important lesson you've ever learned in your life?
And what I'm going to extract from that is wisdom, okay?
Because wisdom comes out of life experience.
And so, what's the most important lesson you've ever learned in your life?
The second question I ask is, how has failure shaped your life?
Because what I've discovered is, failure shapes our life a lot more than success, and failure
teaches us more lessons than success.
In fact, failure in many ways, this sounds a little odd, is more valuable to us than
success.
And so, how has failure shaped your life?
That's question number two.
Question number three is, what are you passionate about right now?
And by the way, that's the question I'm coming back to.
That's why I'm giving you the seven.
One of those seven is all about passion.
What are you passionate about?
And don't forget those last two words on that question, right now.
That really sets this question up.
What are you passionate about right now?
Question number four, I'll come back to that one.
Question number four, what are you reading?
I love to ask people what they're reading.
And I get, oh, I don't know, 90% of all my books I buy, I get out of conversations like
this.
And when I ask them what they're reading and they tell me, I ask them, why should I read
it?
In other words, help me out.
Was it just something that helps you, or is it something that can help me?
I try to qualify if I get the book from the conversation I have with them.
Question number five, what have you done that I should do?
This is all about experiences.
Experiences is the best teacher, but evaluating that experience is.
And so therefore, I love to hear people talk about what they're doing.
What are you experiencing right now that maybe I need to go experience myself?
And that's been a life-changing question.
I remember the first year that I did a learning lunch.
So this was right at the front end.
I was having a learning lunch with a guy named Lon Woodrum, and he said, I have visited every
presidential library in America.
And he said, you love leadership and you love history, so you ought to do that, too.
And I have.
I've done it all.
In fact, Margaret and I have done that together.
It's been life-changing.
I've been to every presidential library.
Most of them have been to a minimum of three times.
And I spend a day in the library reading, taking notes, pulling away, applying.
I spent a whole day there.
Great leadership, great history.
And then the sixth question is the great networking question, who you know that I should
know?
And of course, that leads you to people that have possibilities, obviously, of changing
your life.
I could spend the next three hours just telling you stories on that question.
And then the last question that I ask, and this is always the last one, is how can I
serve you?
In other words, this person has set aside time to help me and add value to me in this
learning lunge.
And I think that how can I serve you is a way to express gratitude.
I'm big on gratitude.
I think it's the least expressed of all the great virtues.
And yet I think gratitude tells me more about a person, probably, than anything else.
And so how can I serve you is basically, look, you've just given me an hour and a half.
You've just answered seven questions.
I'm learning off you.
I'm growing off you.
What can I do to add value to you?
How can I serve you?
Okay, we're going to question number three.
What are you passionate about right now?
This is a very revealing question.
When I ask this question, what are you passionate about right now, sometimes they'll look at
me and they'll say, well, give me a moment here.
Let me think about that.
If you have to think about it, you don't have the right answer.
You don't have to think about what you're passionate about right now.
If the fire isn't burning that hot, if you don't have within you this incredible desire,
it's not something you reflect on, think about.
It jumps out.
In fact, honestly, it comes out whether you like it or not.
You just open your mouth and if you've got something you're passionate about right now,
very quickly you're telling somebody what you're passionate about right now.
So it's a very revealing question.
When somebody says, well, let me think about it for a moment.
I know that they're not passionate about something right now.
Now why is that important?
It's very, very simple.
It's important.
I'm 77.
John, what are you passionate about right now?
You see, when people get this old, they lose that passion.
All of a sudden, they quit asking questions.
All of a sudden, they stop jumping the fence.
They settle.
Passion doesn't let you settle.
So let me tell you a quick story.
For 25 years, I was a pastor.
My first church was in a farming community.
It was very small, just a handful of people.
When I went there, I loved those people.
They were wonderful, salt-of-the-earth people.
I worked hard.
People started coming to church.
We started growing.
We got up to about 100 in a few months,
which was pretty, I mean, our first Sunday, we had three,
so that's a pretty big jump.
And then, of those three, two of them were Margaret and me,
so two of the three were us,
and then an old lady who lived beside the church.
That's another story.
Okay, anyway.
So I'm a few months in,
and it's time for me to stretch the people.
So I said, you know, on October,
which was a few months out,
on the first Sunday of October, let's have 300 people.
Let's set a goal to get 300 people.
Now, these were farmers, just sweet people.
But when I said 300, I could tell
the number was way too high for what they could think.
This was beyond them.
And after the service, they came up and said,
pastor, we love your passion, but 300's not possible.
Look how small we are.
And in Hillham, where I pastored,
there were only 11 houses, so start doing the math, okay?
This isn't going to be easy.
But they said, we'll help you, and they did help me.
They worked very hard.
And so finally, the Sunday comes,
and the place is packed.
The upstairs is packed, the basement's packed.
We had a house right beside the church that we rented
with like a PA system.
It's packed.
People around the outside, a bunch of people.
More people than these people I've ever seen.
And so my lay leader got up right before I spoke
and said, isn't this great?
And they were all excited.
They were beyond themselves.
He said, we had 299 people this morning.
And as soon as I heard the number 299, I jumped up.
They were all happy.
I mean, clapping, cheering.
It was bigger than anything they ever thought.
And I jumped up and said, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Why are we so happy?
I said, what was our goal?
It was 300.
We have 299.
We're one short.
I'm not preaching until we get 300.
So Betty, you come up and you lead the congregation
in singing.
I'm going to leave now.
I'm going to find one person.
I'm going to bring them to church.
We'll have 300.
And I'm not preaching until we have 300.
Now those people lost their minds.
They were clapping, jumping up.
I mean, they were beyond themselves.
We got 299.
And then they looked at some guy that's filled with passion.
By the way, I'm 23.
Filled with passion.
I said, excuse me, 300, one short, going to go get one.
And I mean, I was walking down that middle aisle.
They were patting me on the back, go get them preacher.
I mean, they were so excited.
And I was all excited until, until I got outside.
And then all of a sudden, I had to ask myself the question.
What am I going to do?
I had no plan.
I hadn't thought it out.
Passion got me outside.
I'm coming back to that thought in a moment.
Don't miss it.
Right across the street was a service station.
And Sandy Burton and Glenn Harris were over there.
Sandy Burton owned the station and had never gone to church.
Kind of an ornery guy.
And Glenn was the town drunk, to be honest with you.
And he never went.
So I walked across the street.
But now they knew.
I mean, right across the street.
They're seeing all the cars.
They're seeing all the people.
And they knew that 300 was on the number.
That was the number.
And when I went over to them, they said, preacher, did you get your 300 today?
And I looked at them and I said, not yet.
I'm one away.
And that's why I'm here.
Got to ask you a question.
Who wants to be the hero for the whole valley today?
Because everybody knows that 300 is our goal and we're one short.
And the guy that walks across with us, he'll be the hero.
Listen, when they're having chicken dinner today in their home,
they're going to be talking about you're the guy that put them over the top.
I said, which one of the two of you wants to be the hero?
I mean, which one of you want to help us break the record?
By the way, I just want to stop here long enough and say,
you got to just ask the question the right way, you know,
you just got to ask the question the right way.
And they looked at each other and they smiled.
They'd never been to church.
And they said, we both want to be the hero.
Sandy took the open sign, turned it over to close.
They walked across the street with me.
When I walked in that door, those people,
Maybe we're singing but they were watching that door and when they saw me come in with two
They threw their hymn books in the air. They jumped up and down
I took Sandy and Glen down to the front row kick two members off set them down right there
Did my lesson?
I've had a lot of great pictures taken with a lot of great events and a lot of great people my favorite all-time picture
After church that day was 301 people in front of a little country church, and I'm proud we hit our goal
That night I couldn't sleep
Well, I was beside myself. I was elated
And that was the night I learned about passion
What I learned about passion I'm going to share with you right now, but I'm here to tell you
It's a life changer
Are you ready number one
Passion is the first achievement
It's the first step to achieve it it's the first step to being successful
When somebody says I really want to be successful I want to do well in life
The first thing I do is I look at the passion indicator within them. And why is that important because passion?
Causes us to take initiative
Passion calls us to take action
Hey, I was
Outside the little country church passion drove me to stand up and look at those people and say what's our goal?
I'm gonna go get somebody I mean passion to hey
There is no success without action and there is no action without passion. You've never known a
passionless person filled with action
Just doesn't happen
It's the first indicator. It's the first it's the first step to achievement number two
It fuels
Conviction
It fills your life and mind up with conviction that makes you
contagious and
Irresistible
That whole congregation that day they felt the conviction. They saw a leader who said wait a minute. Excuse me. I'm so sorry
We're not celebrating. I know 299 is more than we've ever had
It's more than most everybody thought we'd get but but that's not where we're going. We're going to it was it was conviction
You see it goes back to the statement. I think the first time I ever heard that statement was by my good friend in my lab
But I love this statement
You don't have to believe in me
But you have to know that I believe in me
That's huge. You see honestly if you don't believe in me, that's not that's that's not a success stopper
I I've had a lot of people didn't believe in me. I've had a lot of people said he didn't want to make it
I've a lot of people who doubted that that honestly that has nothing to do with me being successful
But me believing in me has everything to do with being successful and that's what passion does
So
When you look at me, you don't have to believe me
You might say I don't think I mean I don't think John can get 300
But but when I stood up and said I'm going to go and I'm not speaking to all go get the other guess guess what?
I was doing. I was showing the congregation that I believed in me
Which in a moment I'm going to build off of because that's huge number three it passion produces energy
It just produces energy
You show me a passionate person. They've got energy you show me a person that doesn't have passion. They don't have energy
We we talked about high energy people low energy people people call me a high energy person. I am
But I'm not a high energy person I'm a high passionate person
It shows up in energy
Because passion translates in the energy, but let me just say this
I'm a high passion person. If you're a high passion person, you're a high energy person
In fact for people my age I tell him
Choose your passion
Not your pension. Come on folks. You can get bigger than this
You can get beyond this quit being so pension conscious
Hey get passion conscious and you won't need to worry about what your pension is
Your life is going to be bigger and greater. You're gonna make a lot more money than a pension would ever give you anyway
Okay, it got a focus on that
People ask me all the time John, you know who motivates you I?
Motivate me
Don't mean this wrong. I
Don't need you to call me up. I don't need you to encourage me
I don't need you to drop me in a little
Affirmation note, you know yesterday was my birthday and I can literally tell you hundreds of people said nice things to me
I'm telling you it was it was an all-day affair, but and I appreciate it. Love it. It's wonderful
But let me explain something to you. I don't need you. I'm very sorry. I don't need you to wake me up
I don't need you to pick me up. I don't
I don't need you to lift me up. I don't need you to encourage me up.
I don't need you. I motivate myself.
Period. End of story. You said, no, there has to be more of the story. No,
there isn't any more of the story. I motivate me.
Period. I'm not waiting on you. Not waiting on somebody else.
I was up at four o'clock this morning, writing.
What got me up at four o'clock writing? Passion.
Not an alarm clock. I don't set the alarm clock.
I just wake up with ideas and I can hardly wait to stick on my robe and slip
into my office. And off I go. Wow.
You know what amazes Ray? Let me tell you what amazes me.
People I'll watch people when they say they are burned out.
And I look at them and to be honest with you, they were never fired up.
And I, and I, I want to raise my hand, say, I'm so sorry.
I assumed when you burned out that you were fired up.
You know, you didn't get burned out. You just never got lit, baby.
You never, I mean, nope. Hello.
This is so crazy. I just, well, I'm all burned out.
I, you, I, that's a surprise.
I never saw any fire in you to be burned out.
Be burned up. You know, passion produces energy.
Number four, passion stimulates creativity.
Oh, I love this one. I think this is a miss on passion. I think a lot,
but, but let me just say,
I'm going to have to say something right here and I think it's a good place on
this. It stimulates creativity.
Don't get excitement and passion confused.
I know a lot of excited people. They're not passionate.
They're just excited. And I'm not, I think excitement's one.
I'm not, I'm not opposed to excitement, but it's not the same.
It's not the same. But when you have passion, it will stimulate creativity.
What do I mean by that? Back to my little simple story.
As soon as I walked outside the church, my first question is,
what do I do? I just told 299 people,
299 people. I was going to go get somebody. There's no plan to get somebody.
I didn't have a, I didn't have a Saturday plan that on Sunday, if we have 299,
here's my plan to go. I didn't have somebody said,
would you just hang around the church? And if I need you,
I'll run over real quick and grab you and bring you in. I know. No,
there was no plan. There's no, I want you. I don't want you to miss this.
There's no plan.
Passion will do for you what planning will never do for you.
Now, should you plan? Of course you should plan. Should you think through?
Of course you should think through. We're not anti any of that stuff.
I'm just telling you that when I got outside the church and asked
myself, not now, what will I do now? Don't miss this.
Guess what? The answer is,
guess what?
The answer was in front of me across the street,
but if passion doesn't push me outside the church,
I don't see opportunity across the street. Don't miss this.
Passion will place you in a position to see
opportunity that without passion, you're not going to get it.
And that's just a fact. It's not luck. It is not luck at all. Somebody said,
well, you were so lucky. Good Lord.
You went outside and just sat and looked across the street and there's two guys
and you walked across the street. You're just a lucky son of a gun. No, no,
no, I'm not. I'm a passionate son of a gun.
See, if I stay inside, I never see what's on outside.
That's why passion is such a plus to planning and it gives you great
creativity. Number five, passion is, it is contagious.
It's contagious.
Have you ever seen a passionate person that didn't talk about it?
They can't shut up. I mean, in fact, sometimes you want to shut them up.
You just kind of want to say, really, you know,
you've told me this story three times now. I kind of got it, you know, but,
but, but, but, but passion, passion, it's, it's, it's, it's,
it's contagious. And let me say something.
It's very difficult to minimize
passion. You, you don't dumb it down. You don't like kind of say, well,
I got to, I got to subdue it. Why? Because when the heart is on fire,
sparks will fly out of the mouth.
They will, you'll be just little sparks of fire.
You're going to, you're just going to, you're going to,
you're going to be a fire lighter, not a firefighter.
You don't want to be a firefighter.
You want to be a firelighter.
So when your heart is on fire, spark's going to fly out.
Number six, number six, passion allows
you to exceed expectations.
It just takes you to a level that you could never
imagine you're going to.
You see, reality and reason seldom influences passion.
Now, I've got to stop here because I
want to say something to you.
You want to have reality.
In fact, it's the first responsibility
of leading to define reality.
You want to reason.
You want to think.
So please don't take what I'm teaching out of context, OK?
But when I stood up and said, how many do we have from 299?
I said, I'm going to go get the 300.
Let me tell you something.
There's a whole bunch of people like to come and say, now,
John, let me talk to you for a moment.
What you're saying is probably not going to happen.
And by the way, you said it in front of 299 people.
Of course, passion never cares.
Passion doesn't look around and weigh the voting and the people
and say, well, I wonder how many people are going to accept that.
Hey, when I said I was going to go get one,
they didn't understand it, but neither did I.
Reality said, don't do it, but I did.
See, passion is the pusher.
Passion causes you to be what other people think
you could never become, to say what people would never
imagine you saying, and to do what no one ever thinks
that you're ever going to do.
And number seven, and this is a biggie,
I've never heard anybody talk about passion stimulates
creativity, and never heard anybody talk about number seven.
Passion gives leadership credibility.
It really does.
You've heard me talk about respect
is earned on difficult ground.
Well, it is.
So now can I talk to you about a 23-year-old kid getting
credibility as a leader and getting respect?
I'm a 23-year-old kid, and I'm already on my way,
not there at all, on my way to moral authority.
Because what did I do?
Listen to me very carefully.
Leadership stands out, first of all.
If you're not standing out, you're in the crowd.
If you're in the crowd, you're not leading.
Leadership stands out.
I stood up that day.
I said, I'm going to go get one.
OK, if you were to ask the people what
the odds are for me to go find someone, bring them back,
and teach, I probably would have been in the minority.
I think most people thought, I think
he'll come back in a couple of minutes with no one else,
and he'll do a little sermonette for Christianettes, OK,
or something.
I don't know what they're going to do.
But anyway, I think that's what they thought.
When I came back with two people,
I didn't need to define leadership to those people.
I didn't need to teach them what a leader looks like.
They saw it.
They knew it.
They went home that day and not only said we have 301.
You know what else they said?
We've got a young kid that's the pastor of this church that
is going to lead us where we've never gone before.
So on our 50th anniversary, Margaret and I
on our 50th anniversary decided to take some small trips
throughout the year.
And one of the places we decided to do
was to go fly into French Lick and the Hillham
where my first church was 50 years ago, 50 years ago,
because that's where I started, and go look
at where we used to live, look at the church,
just spend a couple of hours telling stories, just the two
of us, OK?
So we fly into the French Lick airport.
They open our plane.
And I step off the plane.
And a guy greets me with tears in his eyes.
He said, you don't know me, but I know you.
I got a story to tell you, but can I just hug you first?
He gave me this huge bear hug.
I said, well, thank you.
I said, what's the story?
He said, I was a seven-year-old kid the day you went out
and helped us pass the 300 mark.
He said, I'm a kid.
I watch you stand up and say, I'm going to go get one.
And I watched you go out.
I watched you come back in.
He said, my dad, when we had Sunday lunch that day,
looked at me and said, son, you just
saw what a leader looks like.
He takes people where they've never gone before.
He says things they've never heard before.
He does things they've never done before.
He just takes us on a trip that we can't go on by ourself.
So here's this guy who's 57 now.
He's hugging me.
And he said, you do know that they still tell the story
in the valley about breaking 300.
They still tell the story.
Of course they still tell the story.
It was a story unimaginable to those farmers,
but it was a story that set me up as a young leader.
I mean, I'm a kid, I'm still just 23,
but that's the day I gained respect from that congregation.
That's the day people, hey, guess what?
The next time I cast a vision,
do you think that people will buy into that vision?
What do I teach in the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership?
People buy into the vision before they buy into the leader.
I mean, I'm so sorry.
People buy into the leader before they buy into Jesus.
I wrote the book and I got it already turned around.
Just shows you what happens when you're 77
and you've written 90 books.
You have no clue.
But people, they buy into the leader
and then they buy into the vision.
Guess what?
They didn't buy into me the first time.
Don't miss what I'm about to tell you.
They didn't buy into me the first time when I said 300.
In fact, they all came and they all said,
well, help, we're excited,
but it ain't going to happen, pastor.
You don't understand.
It's not going to happen.
They didn't buy into me the first time, but guess what?
The second time they bought into me.
Let me tell you something.
You have to sell yourself before you can sell your vision.
It's not your vision that makes the difference.
It's you that makes the difference.
The vision had us one person short.
The passion put us one person over.
Don't miss it.
Somebody says, well, you had great vision.
Yeah, I had good vision, but that wasn't,
that didn't get it.
The tipping point wasn't the vision.
The tipping point was the passion.
The tipping point was the ownership.
The tipping point was I am not going to accept what is
when I know what could be.
That was the tipping point.
And that's the power of passion.
So there it is, Ray.
That's my, you know, that's my lesson
and I'm going to stick by it.
It's a good one.
It'll work.
It'll work in your life, gang.
I promise you just, you take those seven things I got you.
Of course you build them out and practice them out
and live them out and demonstrate them out,
do all that stuff.
But I'll tell you, it's a simple lesson,
but the return is pretty amazing.
So thanks for letting me teach it.
I hope it helped you.
So good.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
So Jon Heron, you'd like to ask Jon a question.
Just do the whole digital hand raise thing.
Some of you are quicker than others at that.
So I'm going to get some of your questions answered.
And yeah, how inspiring.
I love the, you know, the seven-year-old,
you know, you just, you don't know
when you're showing up in leadership,
you don't know who's watching, but someone always is.
And just what a wonderful lesson.
So true, Ray.
Real, I know our time is limited with you here.
Very quickly, I'll share a story.
I used to go around to high schools
and just talk about being an entrepreneur, right?
And, you know, I speak at this one high school
and they're like passing notes.
They're not paying attention.
I wasn't captivating.
And I remember being in the parking lot.
I'm like, why am I doing this?
Right?
I'm not getting paid for it.
These aren't my customers or clients.
Like, why am I doing this?
And it was a few months later,
I got a message on Facebook from one of the kids
that was in that class who had never heard anything
about being an entrepreneur,
started a landscaping business and him and his buddy
made thousands of dollars that summer, changed his life.
And then a few years later,
I run into him at a business meeting
and he was in insurance rocking and rolling
and he was just thanking me, you know?
And so you just don't know who's watching.
And it was just really, you know, rewarding.
So I appreciate it.
I loved your story and I love the lessons too.
So thank you so much.
Thank you, Ray.
It's a good, I loved your story right there.
Again, we have no idea who we're touching in influence.
Yeah.
So let's go to, I don't know who has the question here,
but the Harvey's.
Hey, John, Ray.
I appreciate you so much, John, so much wisdom.
I mean, everything's a one-liner that you
could turn into a t-shirt and sell for a lot of money.
My question is, is passion something
that you've seen in your life that you either have
or you don't?
Or can you develop passion through experience or time
or effort?
Yeah, it's a great question, Harvey 1 and Harvey 2.
Good to see both of you.
How are you?
You're doing good?
First of all, I think that there is a birthing.
I think some people are born with passion more than others.
I think it's a temperament issue.
And so I would never bypass the fact
that there are some people that just
seem to have a natural passion more than others.
So I would always start there, just
like I think there are people that are natural leaders, that
are born with leadership giftedness that
allows them to learn leadership quicker than people
that aren't quite born with that.
Or musically, singing, singing.
Remember Happy Birthday?
None of you have that gift.
You follow me?
None of you have the singing gift.
So we've eliminated one thing that you
weren't born with for sure.
So I think I would never say that a person doesn't
have some of that naturally through birthness.
Now that I've said that, there is no question in my mind,
no question, that it's contagious
and that you can learn passion.
And here's how you learn it.
You learn it by putting yourself in, again,
as Mark Cole would say, in the power proximity.
You learn passion by getting around passionate people.
If you get around people that are passionate about something,
guess what?
You will either become passionate about it
or you'll leave.
Because passion really doesn't do well
with passionless people.
There's just not a rhythm.
It's out of sync.
So you get it.
And I can remember so much when I was a young leader how
I would expose myself to better leaders,
go to places that were beyond me, bigger than me.
And I could remember how I would be filled with passion
when I was done.
I would leave an event that I had never seen
or was gifted yet to have.
And I'd leave and I'd say, wow, I
want to be able to do that someday.
Or I would leave a person with great passion.
I'd say, I want to be like her someday.
I want to be like him someday.
So I think that there is a, in fact, one of the things, Ray,
I love about what you're doing, what the Higdon Group is doing
is I think that you are creating a culture for passion.
I mean, I think you that are in his group
are much more passionate than people that aren't in his group.
And I bet every one of you almost
would have a passion story when you got inside
and you saw how to be an entrepreneur
and you began to see the steps of success.
All of a sudden, that passion temperature began to rise.
But it's because you got exposed to Ray and his teachings
and the principles that made you passionate.
So I think the key to developing passion is proximity.
I had a wonderful mentor, and I called him ET.
And I had him when I was very young.
I had him when I was in my 20s.
And by the way, he's still alive.
He's 91.
And he's a beautiful man.
And he taught me the hot poker principle.
And if you've got a fireplace and you've
got a fire in the fire, if you put that poker,
if you put that poker right up next to the fire,
that poker gets hot.
You pull it away, and it gets cold.
And it was very early in my life,
he said, John, you've got to constantly
be around hot people.
You've got to be around hot people.
You've got to be around people that are on fire.
And you'll get on fire.
And if you get too far from them,
even though you were on fire, you'll lose that fire.
So he really taught me the power of proximity.
So it's a great question.
And just stay close to people that are on fire,
and you'll stay on fire.
Get away from them, and the tendency is to lose it.
Can I ask a tiny little?
Sure.
So when it comes to passion, sometimes I
feel it's like almost like so much energy,
I don't know what to do with it.
And so in teaching this to kids or even just,
what would you say complements passion in the best way
to help like diligently direct it?
Another word that starts with P, priorities.
So as soon as you said Harvey number two, I'm sorry.
I have assumed your last name.
I was born in Chiago.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I figured your last name were Harvey. So
yeah, it's, it is Harvey, whatever. It's very obvious. It's Harvey.
Number one. I mean, that was even, how could I be so stupid to call that?
It's obvious that it's obviously married way above himself,
but I understand that he outpunted his coverage. I mean, hello.
Hey, it's better than that. It's better than marrying beneath yourself.
So, I mean, we can, we can get on a conversation there too, but, but when you're,
when you're, when you're, when you're talking about where we're going right now,
uh, shoot, what was I'm 77. What was the question?
What, what compliments passion when there's so much energy, you know?
Oh yes. Oh yeah. You're overloaded. You're overloaded. You're overloaded.
And I said, priorities, priorities are key. What you got to do is you,
now you got to say, okay, I've got this passion.
I have to prioritize it and focus it because let me tell you something.
There's a lot of places where you can waste passion because it doesn't have a
return. So you got to ask yourself, you know, where is,
where do I get the return on the passion that I have for the business that I'm
doing? And so you got to prioritize that. And so therefore it's,
it's like I teach, this is another, I teach the, here's what I teach.
You can't be all day, 100% on,
I mean, it's not sustainable. So,
so what you got to do is you got to ask yourself what times in the day do I need
to be that a hundred percent? You know what? Hey, okay.
I'm meeting with some clients. I got better be a hundred percent.
Let me tell you something. If you're having lunch by yourself,
you don't need to be a hundred percent. You can eat your lunch and be about 30.
You're with me. So, so again, it's prioritizing.
You look at your day and say, these are the four places I better be a hundred
percent. Does that make sense to you? And whatever it is.
And then the rest of it, take a break. I mean, you just, you, you can't,
you can't sustain a hundred percent passion all day.
So you have to prioritize. Hopefully that helps you. I hope.
Very helpful. Thank you so much.
Nice to see both of you.
Let's go to Ruben.
Hi, John. Again, these trainings are perfect timing,
kind of in our journey here.
And what I was hoping to get your insights is a little bit, uh, we,
when you talk about motivation as well as passion. So kind of the 300,
for example, using your example, 300 that you live through was the 300,
or the tenants near church.
Was that also more a reflection of your passion or a motivation? Because,
for example, is it worthwhile? We've set goals, set, you know, uh,
an audacious goal to kind of motivate us for, let's say 90 days.
Was it more for your benefit? Um,
a little bit to kind of build your passion or is it, um, you know,
something that kind of gets you day in and day out. So again,
a little bit between motivation and passion. How do you see the difference?
Cause you may be motivated, but for 90 days, how do you stay motivated that long?
That is a great question. I don't know if I,
I don't know if anybody's ever asked me that ever between motivation and
passion. I, I, I would say motivation usually is extra,
extrinsic it's outside, which would be 300,
a goal you follow me. I think passion is more inside.
I think that's a big difference. Uh,
and what I would say is if you have a goal outside motivation,
if you don't have the passion inside,
you probably will burn out before 90 days or you won't get your goal or whatever.
But I've never, I think it's a good question.
I really need to give it some thought. Just trust me.
I'll do a lesson on it down the road because I take questions like that and then
pull it away and think and, and, and begin to sort it out. And it's a great,
it's a, it's a, it's a, it's really what I need to really work on, but I am,
I am much more of an inside person than an
outside. I set that goal and I've set goals in my life.
I think goal setting is fine. I am not a humongous goal setter.
Uh, I, I, I'm more growth oriented than goal oriented. I, I,
and a reason for that is very simple. If I, if, if you hit your goal,
you're satisfied, but then you ask what's next. But if you're always growing,
you never ask yourself what's next because you have so much more before you that
you don't know. Growth is kind of ongoing.
I think goal setting has a tendency to,
we hit it and kind of ask a few questions and then we kind of go for another
one. Um, so yeah, that would be definitely a goal.
That 300 it was a bit now that you ask an interesting,
you said one of the things that's interesting that I'll let you go back if you
want. I did that for the people.
I didn't do it for me. I never doubted that we could get 300.
First of all, if I truly thought I couldn't get 300,
I would never set that up for the people.
I have never knowingly set people up for.
failure. It doesn't bring any joy to me or anyone else.
And so I always want to set things up that would
motivate them to go to another level.
So I did it for the people.
And what's interesting is if you do it for the people,
you'll get a return on it yourself.
If you do it for yourself, many times you won't get a return on it for the people.
And remember this, leaders always do everything for the people
because that's why we're called a leader.
I tell a leader, once a day, you're a leader.
You see everything from a different perspective.
Your life is not your own.
Now you look at people and say, how do I help?
How do I value? How do I lift?
How do I help them bring change in their life?
It's a it's a mindset switch when you go from being part of the crowd to be a leader.
So I did it for the people.
But I love I love your question on motivation and and passion.
And and that's a good question.
Thank you.
Powerful.
Appreciate it.
Thanks, John.
Yeah, thank you.
I love what you said about growth versus goal.
You know, some there's definitely over the years when I didn't understand my identity,
I was attempting to set it by what I've done or accomplished, but it was never enough.
So even when I hit the goal, it was actually a disappointment of, oh, I don't feel any different.
And so but growing, you can grow through challenges, right?
You can go through tough times.
And so I love what you said.
Yeah, in my book on leadership, I have a whole chapter on the difference between being goal
oriented and being growth oriented.
Yeah, nice, nice.
Eileen.
Morning, John, happy birthday to you.
Hey, Eileen, nice to see you, dear friend.
She's a good buddy from many years ago.
From day one.
Yeah, yeah.
Hey, so Harvey's asked my initial question, which led me to another question, which in
coaching people, I many times can see passion, which I say are their gifts, their true
gifts in them, but they don't see that.
So how do you help someone to identify to encourage them to grab a hold of their gifts
and turn that into a passion for them?
Is there a process that you go through with people and coaching them on how to get them like
believe in them beyond what they believe in themselves to give them that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, I do.
I mean, the first thought I give you is is I don't think there's anything I think when people say
they're self-aware, I think that they're delusional.
I don't think people are naturally self-aware.
I don't I'm not naturally self-aware.
So when you're saying you talk to people, you're mentoring people, you're coaching people and
they have that, you see that as a gift, but they don't see it.
It's not because they're not wanting to see it.
It's because they just don't see it.
So one of the things I think leaders do is leaders create awareness, not only of giftedness,
but I think leaders also create awareness of of weaknesses.
I think they create awareness.
I think one of the greatest things that you can do as a leader is turn the light on, turn the
light on for your people, you know, go in and flip the switch.
They're in darkness and they need and the moment they get light, they can they can start
making moves. But you got it.
So so when you say that, it's I understand that you're you're the you're the light switcher.
OK, you go in and flip that.
So that's step one.
You help them understand that.
There's a difference between them understanding that they perhaps have this gift.
And having how do I say this?
There's a difference between them understanding that that's a gift and for them to
embrace it. And the difference is they have to now, once they understand that this is
kind of passion, it's a gift of mine, they need to practice it and experience the return
of it. That's that's why when people do I'm not like I'm not much into hypey stuff.
Really, they kind of hypey people kind of wear me out.
I just want to buy him a pom pom and a cheerleader thing and tell him to go somewhere.
I don't know where they're going to go, but go somewhere.
Let me explain this to you for a moment, because, see, I could, Aileen, if I'm coaching
you, I can tell you, oh, my, you're amazing.
You're wonderful. You've got this passion.
I can give you just self praise or praise for you continually.
Actually, that doesn't change you at all.
Your self-worth isn't based on what I say, your self-worth is based upon who you see
yourself as and what you've done.
A leader has to help people get wins under their belt.
When I pastored more than any other time, I was a master at this, I knew how to take
people and help them.
succeed and get that confidence build up. Because Eileen, the moment I tell you that's a gift,
then that's just me telling you that's a gift. But the day you experience return, production,
growth off that gift, I don't need to tell you more what's your gift. You have now bought in.
And I think that the secret of leader is to go from showing and showing and saying
to helping them practice and achieve. And the moment that they practice and achieve,
then you can cross that off your list. You don't have to talk about that in their giftedness now,
because they have proven it to themselves. Again, you can't talk people into success.
You could walk them into success, but you can't talk them into success.
And what I mean by walking them into success is what I would do. I would take you Eileen,
and if I thought you had a gift, I would walk you into a setting where you could practice that
gift and not only practice it, but where you could achieve. And once I could let you see you
practice and achieve a little bit, then you're on your own. I mean, when I say you're on,
now you'll take off. And it's more than self-aware. Now you got self-confidence.
That's a big difference between the two. Does that make sense?
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, John.
Oh, you're a great coach. You'll do a super job with that.
Let's go to Justin. Hey, John, how's it going today?
Good, Justin. How are you, my friend? I'm excited. So I used to call myself a
high-energy person, so I'm going to borrow that and start using the word passion.
That's you, Justin. That's what you are. But one of the things I think about all the time
when I think about passion is how does clarity and self-respect, it kind of ties into Eileen's
question. When we're talking about helping people discover their passion,
how do you think clarity and self-respect tie into people discovering their passion?
Well, again, Justin, you're asking a great question. I just haven't been asked that
question, so I got to reflect a little bit. I'll think of it. I'm going to answer you off
the top of my head, which means it's probably a good answer. It's probably not a great answer,
but you don't need a great answer. Sometimes you just need a good answer,
and then you follow that track and make it a great answer. You'll come to that conclusion
yourself, Justin. Let's go back to my story. I had clarity on what I was going to do.
I was going to go out and find one person. Hey, I spoke it. I walked out. People saw it.
I didn't have clarity on how I was going to do it. That is a huge difference. If you are a
rainmaker, you have clarity on the first, not necessarily the second, and the second never
stops you. It doesn't stop me at all. That's good. If you're not a rainmaker, you really like
the second clarity better than the first. That's a, oh my goodness, I'm so glad I said that.
I said that. Aaron, pick that up. Do not miss that. Do not miss that because I can build off
of that thought. I really can. Does that make sense to you, Justin? It does. It reminds me
of faith. We have the end in mind. We have clarity about the end result. We're not so worried about
the how. By the way, again, I am not in any way pushing against clarity on how to do it and the
steps. Please, when I'm teaching, keep it in the context of the lesson that I'm teaching right now.
But I had very much clarity on, I'm going to go get the one. I'm going to go get him.
Watch this. When I went outside, I got clarity on number two. There's two guys across the street.
I didn't know those two guys across the street. I knew they were sitting out there. I didn't know
that they were. You see, I didn't know. I didn't know. And I'm not ashamed to say I don't know
because I don't know. But I tell people, if I act on what I don't know,
it sure beats you not acting on what you do know. Yeah.
That passion got me outside, which then, hey, the answers are in the action. Oh, yeah. That's good.
The answers are always in the action. They are not sitting on your butt around tables.
Just one more time, trying to figure it out. Let me just say this. You're not that smart.
And again, I was greatly influenced by Peter Drucker, who was the great management expert
of the last century. And Peter, I mean, if he's told me once, he told me a dozen times, John,
planning is overrated. He said, planning is good to get started. And once you get started,
then you make the adjustments because it's going to change. So planning is a great initiator.
If you just say I'm doing that. So I just I just like to have one step. Well, my one step was.
I ended up saying, I'm going to go find one. My second step was walk it outside.
And then, Oh, Oh, there's the third step, but I didn't have step three.
You follow me. So hopefully that helps you a little bit.
Just it's great. It's phenomenal. Thank you so much, John.
Good to be with you.
And it's powerful to have those categories, passion, clarity.
And I think a lot of people that lack the passion, they try to fill this,
but that will never fill this right with, with a good enough plan.
Maybe I'll gain enough passion. And I don't think it works that way.
100%. Right. That's, that's a good little teaching right there.
I agree. 100%.
Let's go to our friend, Mary.
Hi, John. Happy birthday.
So for 15 years, more than that,
I've always said I wanted to be the female John Maxwell.
I wanted on the outside, be about leadership and business on the inside.
I really wanted to bring people to Christ.
And so at faith over fear, you ignited something in me and I'm pursuing that.
And, um, you,
I have studied you for years and years and years,
not just your content, but really how you speak, how you do things,
your cadence,
and you are super passionate about sharing your faith with people.
But when you're in the business setting, you're like cool as a cucumber you.
And I had the honor of watching you,
listening to you preach to the Highlands college student body at chapel in
December. And you talked about, yeah, it was amazing.
Talked about being salt and light. And you were sharing some things,
things that you were doing in your business world.
Would you ever consider writing a book or doing a mentorship program,
teaching business people, some of the things you do,
there's an art to have things.
And I just observe it.
And I was the one at faith over fear that asked you to pray over me,
that I would have your leadership anointing that I want to be that in the
business world. Like I can get super zealous,
but I want to be the John Max cool as a cucumber
so that people are drawn to the salt.
First of all, Mary,
recordings either in progress or stopped. I have no clue, but it doesn't matter.
Hey, Mary, I love, love, love, love your heart
and your intention. And God will honor that. He will honor that again.
Remember what I've said? He, the person, she that wins souls is wise.
You're not wise. If you win souls, you're not, he,
some people want the wisdom. And then he said, I'll share my faith. No,
you share your faith and you get the wisdom.
That's what you're in the process of. You're a very good student.
You've been watching me. I can tell. And you understand, you understand me.
I probably won't write a book on sharing your faith because it would blow my
cover. I'm quite covert in, in, in the business world. And I'm very careful.
In fact, in my little work and mentoring with Ray is a beautiful,
a beautiful leader and a beautiful new Christian.
I've tried to temper him a little and temper him,
not because I'm trying to dull him down,
temper him because I want him to, I want him to have the long, I want him,
I want him to have a long run and a long run means you use a lot of wisdom.
So in the beginning, for example, I didn't share my faith for a few years.
I just helped people get successful and got respect from them.
It's kind of like,
you've got to get their respect before you get their relationship and the,
and they have to love you before they love your God.
So I worked very hard on loving people, valuing people and getting respect.
I worked, I worked hard on valuing people and adding value to people.
Those are the two things you want to think of. You value people.
That will give you a heart for them and they'll love you.
They'll love you for that. Adding value to them will get you the respect.
Does that make sense? Yes. So that's what you saw.
So I probably won't write a book, although I have a book coming out, uh,
which is the first quote Christian book I've written for in what?
25 years called Jesus, the high road leader.
And it's coming out. It's coming out in first of May.
It's coming out because we're going to go,
everybody's going to go nuts in this political thing that we're going to have
this year. They're going to go absolutely stupid and crazy. So,
so I want to direct us back to Jesus. Who's the high road leader.
My faith isn't in the Democrats or the Republicans. My faith is in him.
And so, but, but I,
how to share your faith is just probably a little bit beyond what I'm,
I feel released to say or do right now,
because I don't want anybody to think I do bait and switch on him because I
don't. And, and I just, I want to have integrity. Probably.
Of course, Mark's on this call with me.
Probably I could and should sometime.
that are doing a day with business people,
a closed event where they come and I just sit on my stool
and I teach them how to do it
because there's a way to do it.
And I think that maybe it would have,
Mark is here, so he'll remind me of it.
He helps me in so many ways.
I learned so much when I listened to you
at Highlands in December.
I mean, I just took pages and pages of notes
and just your beingness,
but you were addressing people who are going into ministry.
And I thought, this is something I would love
as a business person in the marketplace
because there's a lot of us
and I feel like God's mobilizing people like us
to go get his people, you know?
And Ray has given me so much like inspiration
that there are so many people like Ray
that were successful and had all the accolades
and had a great marriage, but it's still empty.
And so those are the people that I know God's called me
to go reach and get.
And I know I have so much more to learn.
Like, I want to be cool as a cucumber like John Maxwell,
like cool.
And sometimes I'm a little overzealous.
Oh no, stay where you are, girl.
I like you just the way you are.
You've got a great heart.
What I found out, a willing heart becomes an obedient heart
and an obedient heart learns how to do it.
And so you stay, I like where you are.
I like where you are.
And we will, in fact, I can see already,
Aaron's already put the reminder in front of Mark and me.
We may consider a day, I don't know,
just a closed private day and invite people to do that.
I'll think on it, how's that, okay?
Yes, please, thank you.
Oh, thank you, you're wonderful.
If you do it, we'd be happy to promote
and obviously I'd love to be there.
And yeah, I'm obedient.
I pray every day.
What do you want me to cover?
And so he gives me the titles.
Mark, I want to be respectful of your guys' time.
Do we have time for two more?
We need to get John out of here.
Mark, I'm sorry, he asked you that question.
I'll shut up.
You're good.
John, you've got to prepare for another meeting.
Do you have time for two quick ones?
I have time for two quick ones.
If the guy that's answering the questions
can shut up and make a quick answer.
It's not the questions that are messing me up.
It's the guy that's answering him.
And I don't know what to do with him.
I honestly got, it's like some people say,
John, what's your greatest leadership challenge?
Well, that's simple, leading me, dear Lord.
That's much bigger challenge than leading anyone else.
You just tell people what to do and leave the room.
But when you got to lead yourself,
when you leave the room,
you still got to do what you just said.
So yeah, let's try one.
If I get it done quick, we'll do two, okay?
And then, but in five minutes, I got to be out of here.
But we're good.
Thank you so much.
Steve, let's go to you.
Who is it, Steve?
Yes, this is something that has kind of been
on my heart for a while.
I had a vision about God calling my name
and then filling me up and lighten me up
and then starting the duplication process of discipling.
And this, I believe, has been the last piece
in the puzzle for me.
And maybe you could just bring a little clarity to,
like when Jesus was done on this earth
and he was ready for the disciples to take his passion
and go with it, they were negative,
they were doubting, and they weren't sure.
But then when the Holy Spirit dropped on them
and gave them that passion, they went out.
And we're just at this point in our lives
where we have been under your leadership
for 25 years, 28 years, we've studied with you.
This was such a huge gift to us.
We didn't know about you coming to Faith Over Fear.
We met a gal in Mexico that said,
you have to come to this event.
We didn't even know what we were in for, and we came.
And I am just really excited to hear the transformation
from the leader with the passion
to the disciples for the passion
and how that works together.
That's a great quote.
And by the way, Ray's the reason it happened.
Ray was the guy that asked me to come.
Ray was the guy that set this up.
So I want to always make sure that everybody knows
the only reason I'm on this call,
the only reason I got to come down to Faith Over Fear
is because Ray invited me and said,
John, come and let's partner together.
We're loving the partnership, but I greatly respect and love him.
Real quickly. Here we go. Two things changed the disciples,
the resurrection and the power of the Holy spirit.
And you can't separate them. You can't separate them.
The resurrection without the anointing makes you convinced it's right,
but you don't have the power to pull it off.
When you have the power and the anointing to pull it off,
but you have the reality that you saw this resurrection to happen.
You see all those disciples except John all died a martyr's death.
And people said, how could they die a martyr's death? It's very simple.
They saw the resurrection. They saw the resurrection. You,
if you don't see it and experience it, you won't die for it.
So it's not either, or it's both. And, and you ask a great question.
And so what I would share with you is, you know,
the reality of the resurrection and I continually asked the Holy spirit to
fill me continue. I think there is a continual indwelling.
And the key is this,
the key is I ask him to fill me because I'm trying to accomplish things
way beyond my ability. I,
I am not capable of pulling it off,
but God is. And that's why I need his filling. Hope I hopefully answered it.
Let's try the second question.
So good. So good. Let's go to my man, Rod. We'll wrap it up with Rod.
I appreciate that. Thanks Ray. John. Thank you. What a blessing you are.
I want to go backwards a little bit here to where you were talking about the
passion thing. We, you know,
we've lived in that left lane with Charles and everything we've done for 30
years. The thing that I am, and I know if I can keep them,
I've heard Ray say, you got to keep them coming. Don't push them too hard.
Make them feel bad. Keep them at the campfire. But how do we transfer this?
How do we facilitate making it go faster?
That more of our team will pick this up and become passionate to the point of
being willing to go out and go forth and make new disciples themselves.
That's such a great question, Rod. It deserves more time than I'm going to give it,
but I'm going to give it a short moment, but, but, but it's,
it's a really good question. It does deserve a little bit more, more time, but,
but you, you, you, you, you, you pull it off.
By expectations and by following through
on whether they met them or not, how long are you going to carry people?
They're going to talk about what they're going to do, but they don't do it.
So you set the expectations. You got to raise up.
You got to come up to this level to stay by the campfire or stay near me.
You got to, you got to produce, you got to produce. You have to, you have,
and then you have to, if they don't produce, honestly,
you got to go fight because what I found is non-producers are not time
conscious. They want more of your time. My gosh,
we love that last meeting. It was so good to get together.
Could we just get together to get together? Could I'd like to,
could I hold hands and do Kumbaya with you? These people, Hey,
they're not time conscious one bit. They, Hey, they're not time conscious.
They're not result conscious to be honest with you. They're not conscious.
So there comes a time in your leadership where you just say,
let me explain something to you. You don't hang with me unless you go with me.
We're mountain climbers. We're not going to sit in a hammock all day long.
So I think that's, that's a qualifier.
That's how you separate the players from the pretenders and Ray it's to you.
And I've loved every moment of my mentoring time with you and your team today.
Thank you for giving Aaron and Mark and me,
thank you for giving us the opportunity. I mean, again,
if you don't open the door, we're not in, we're outside banging on the door,
but we're not in.
And if you want to get a copy of the recording of the happy birthday,
just to kind of relive the moment, you know, we can,
we can send that over to you guys.
It's unforgettable. Yeah, it's just, it's right. It's just not forgettable.
I, in fact, it's so unforgettable. I don't need the recording.
It is totally in my mind. Honest to God. In fact, I will,
as soon as I'm done,
I'm going straight to therapy and see if I can get it out of my mind.
I'm kidding you guys, you know, we're having fun. We're family and I love you.
It's great to be with you, Mark. How are we doing, buddy? Good.
Thank you. Good. Yes, everyone love it.
Awesome. Yeah. So I'll let, let these guys go.
So appreciative of everyone for being here.
Let, let these guys go. So appreciative of their time. So amazing.
Was this awesome or what?
I do have two, two things that I want to share,
and then I got to jump on a call. One,
one thing to remember when it comes to the disciples, there's a,
there's a verse that people forget and that's Luke 22, 31, 32,
where Jesus says to Peter, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat,
but I've prayed.
for you, and when your faith returns, strengthen your brethren.
And so Satan was really affecting the disciples while he was being crucified, and as strong
as they were, they weren't strong enough, especially without the Holy Spirit.
And then number two is Rod's question, and his answer was just so amazing.
Most people seek attention more than production, and you get to teach them how to treat you.
So if you reward those who seek attention, not production, they will keep seeking attention,
not production.
And so you've got to be aware of that.
This is why it's important to say, hey, go do this, report back in.
Go, go, go make this move, come back, and let's evaluate.
But getting them to do something, not spending more time with them, very important.
And so I love you guys.
If there's anything that you want to comment on, hit us up in Voxer, and I just appreciate
you guys.
All right.
Talk to you guys soon.
Bye, guys.
Thank you.
Later.
Thanks, Ray.