OK, so let's talk about three ways in which you can grow your business, and this is a
whole new module.
And you know, what we're after here is in this is the idea that everybody understands
the economics of the business.
And what I've learned is that there really are only three major ways you can grow a business.
And if everybody understands what you're doing, and you don't have to just implement
one of them, but when everyone understands how you make money and how they fit in, that
empowers them to act like owners.
If you keep that kind of information away from your team, what happens?
It's much more difficult to buy in, to share, to lead their own contribution.
So let's talk about, you know, the key thing that is driving the sense of ownership for
a lot of people is feeling like they're part of it, feeling like they belong, even if they
don't quote have shares in the business, they still feel a sense of ownership in the business.
So we're going to talk about you can grow your business by 10%, 100% or 10x.
So I made them all 10s.
Now, obviously, when I mean 10%, I'm talking 10 to 20%.
And the way you get a 10 to 20% lift is process, focus on the process, improve your processes,
cut out steps, outsource things, you know, cut costs.
But that's why you can never cut, you know, cut costs or cut your way or budget your way
to success.
And at some point, you have to have revenue.
And so 10 easy way to get 10x is just to make it better improve your customer service, refine
your sales processes, whatever your different parts of the business are.
There's a 20, 10 to 20% lying there for you.
Pretty easy.
Most cases, that's pretty low hanging fruit for most companies.
The next idea of 100% growth.
So how are you going to double your revenue?
And the key way there is to add a new product or a new service.
So you can't just milk the existing business to get where you need to be.
If it took you 100 transactions to pulling what you're doing, you can improve those transactions
and get your 10 to 20%, you know, process growth.
But if you really want to double the business, you need something new, something fresh.
And it's amazing to me how oftentimes we're chasing new customers when people who are
our raving fans are willing to give us more money.
They love what we do.
They're all in.
They're like, what else have you got?
And we're too busy selling the small ticket item because we're not focused on the bigger
ticket items.
And when we say new product, often, you know, if you think of the pyramid of fandom, and
someone's going to remind me in a second who called it that.
But the pyramid of fandom is you've got your lower ticket items at the bottom, and you're
slowly building up.
And as people are being introduced to your community and slowly becoming up to raving
fans, your big ticket items sit at the top.
And one of the big mistakes we make as a business is we don't start at the top.
We try and start at the bottom and work up.
And so this is one of the easy growth points for us.
You know, the next thing is to look at 10x growth.
And here's where we're going to spend most of our time.
So here's where we need to pivot.
We need to reimagine the business.
We need to step into a new possibility.
And I want to talk about why 10x actually is much kinder to your mind than the other
two.
And it may sound a contradiction.
And if you love this sort of thing, you know, one of the guys that I love to follow is Dan
Sullivan.
He has a great book called 10x is easier than 2x.
And some of the materials there if you want further reference.
But today, I'm just going to focus on the core ideas of 10x.
So yeah, we can process get 10%, we can add new product 500% or we can pivot to look for
that 10x growth.
Now the reason is and why 10x is, you know, when most people hear 10x is like, no, I can't
do that.
And there's a reason you have that response.
Firstly, we go to the first two options, you know, process and adding new product.
But they are for the most part, you know, they're healthy, but they're not that inspiring.
You know, if a new product could be inspiring.
But fixing processes, I don't know about you, but I don't find that particularly inspiring.
And here's why.
Because if you're looking at 2x, let's double our business.
You're thinking along the lines of well, let's go back to it took 100 transactions to pull
this off.
Now you're saying I have to do 200 transactions.
Oh, my goodness, do you have any idea how hard it was to do the 100?
And now you want me to double that?
I'm exhausted right now.
I'm discouraged already, you know, I don't even want to get into that.
And so that because
Here's the reason why, and Dan Sullivan does a great job of explaining the psychology of
why we feel discouraged and exhausted.
It's because 2X makes you look to your past.
Right now I just said I looked to last year and said we did 100 transactions.
Now you're asking me to do 200 transactions.
What's happening here is my past is negotiating with me about my future, and that's why there's
no excitement in this.
It's like I'm trying to say, okay, well, how would I take that 100 and what would I do
to my team?
And so the 2X and the process stuff is largely uninspiring because it feels exhausting.
Because it feels like I'm thinking about the direct correlation, the effort it took me
to produce that 100, those 100 transactions, and now I have to double that effort.
And here's the interesting thing, you don't have to double that effort.
And why 10X inspires us so much is, well, firstly, we're not talking about necessarily
in 12 months, but think for a second.
Just take a minute here.
If you added a zero, you found the missing zero, you 10Xed your business.
Let's start with the easy one, revenue.
If you had 10X the revenue and you knew that you knew that you knew this was going to happen
this year, in the next 12 months, how would you lead?
How would you think?
What kind of customers would you take on?
You see, immediately it becomes exciting, right?
Because it creates energy and it engages our imagination.
We start dreaming again.
Oh my goodness, we could...
And you start to think about your purpose and is this what I want to spend my time doing?
And again, it's not just about the money, but what 10X does for us is it opens up a
new territory.
Why?
Because now our future is presenting us with an entirely new possibility that our past
can't comment on.
You've just freed yourself from your past.
And what you've done is you've also freed your present from the past.
Because there's nothing that you can look back on and say, oh, we can leverage this,
we can tweak that, we can...
You don't have anything.
So you have to re-imagine.
So now suddenly we're re-engaging our dream machine.
And then we start asking our team, what if we could actually do 10X?
We did this exercise in our company last December.
And it was amazing how people stepped into it.
And you would think, well, people would be upset by that.
They're not.
People love the idea that we could actually pull this off.
It really does release energy and creativity.
Look, here's the bottom line.
As a leader, as an executive specifically, but as a leader, and we're talking about being
a team of leaders, so that means this applies to everybody in the team listening to this,
you can only be great at a few things.
Three at best.
So Dan talks about it as your circle of excellence or your circle of competence.
And he says, stay in your circle.
What is your circle of competence?
And then shrink your circle to three things.
Because the more stuff that's in that circle, the more competence dilution that you have.
What does that mean?
It means that you are not as effective as you think you are over a large, broad thing.
So that means you have to find stuff that is actually 2X to you and find team members
who find that as a 10X.
Maybe accounting isn't your thing, but you can do it.
But now you're finding someone, that's their 10X.
That's the thing.
That's in their circle of competence.
That circle, those three things, it fits for them, but not for you.
And then your job is eliminate everything else.
And this sounds like a great talk until you actually start to do this.
So here's, you know, 10X is inspiring, 10X is full of purpose, 2X is just stuff.
So how do we delete stuff?
So finding your 10X, here are a couple of key questions.
You know, ask yourself, what would permanently fascinate and motivate you?
Permanently.
Not once or twice.
Are you intrigued?
Not being intrigued a bit.
But what would captivate you?
What would permanently fascinate and motivate you?
Several of you might be in a transition as a business.
This is a great question, not just to ask as the main leader, but everyone in the organization.
And here's what it is, because there's more to life than simply making money, getting
stuff done.
And the reason is that 10x engages your heart and your mind.
2x generally engages your mind.
And your heart's very good at making space for your mind.
It's where your creativity is, it's where your strategy is, where your imagination is,
where you're thinking at a higher level, at a higher order.
So let's talk about a couple of practical things quickly and land the plane here.
So here are some practical things that I've learned that have really, really helped me.
And so you'd have to decide this competence thing, what is your fight?
Think of it as a fight, right?
You're bringing some contribution to the world.
Let's call that your fight, or your focus if you like, if you don't like the aggressive
nature of the word fight.
But it's helpful to me to think about a fight because having spent time in the military,
you can't fight wars on every single front.
You would just lose.
So you have to decide, where is my fight?
And then as a leader, you have to craft a positive, hopeful narrative about that fight
in that area, in your area of excellence.
So whatever it is you're doing, whatever your business is, you're projecting into your
industry, to your customers, to your clients, to your team, a positive, hopeful narrative
full of future possibilities.
It can't be we just fix problems, we fix this issue.
It has to be something, a narrative of hope.
And so the second thing is, as an individual, you need to decide what does 10x mean, what
does the word x mean?
What are you 10xing?
Could be as simple as you want to 10x your confidence.
You know, you want to 10x the number of customers you're reaching, you want to 10x your revenue,
or 10x your time.
You know, Dan tells a story of a guy who heard all this training, an executive, and he decided
well, he wanted to 10x his time.
So he said, all right, well, that instead of taking, you know, I want to do, I want
to have the same revenue, but for two months in a year.
I want to make exactly the same money, but I want to 10x my time, now I want to do it
in two months.
Now, theoretically, it's not quite 10x, I get the math.
But the concept is clear.
Took him a couple of years, because again, it doesn't actually have to happen in a 12
month period.
But when he hit that 10x, then, you know, they asked him, what do you want to do now?
He says, now I want to do it in three days.
So he's making the same money he was in three days, because for him, 10x meant not just
his time, but to be able to spend time traveling, be with his family, and do the things that
he loves.
You know, and so if you've got a nonprofit passion or something else, that would free
up your time to go and do that idea.
You know, over the years, as we've worked with leaders, there are a couple of things
that I found.
They're so simple.
And I'm not sure why they're not the most obvious things.
And the first one is, if you're going to, if you're going to focus on one thing, you
need to put aside all other fights.
Now, Marcus Aurelius once said, exercise your right not to have an opinion on things you
don't control.
And I love that.
Because what that is saying is we all want opinions about politics and about this and
what's going on there and social issues and this issue and that issue.
And that drains energy.
It's just stuff.
Now, if that's your fight, if that is really your fight, if you're focused on that, then
go and do that.
But honestly, jumping on spending hours on social media and spending time, it's just
stuff.
Look, your 9 to 5 job is not what's holding you back.
It's all the wasted social media focusing on fights, trying to develop an opinion.
Well, I just want to stay informed.
You know, I had to come to that conclusion.
I just want to be a news junkie.
I want to stay informed.
It's not a reason to keep 2X activities alive.
And that's about as practical as I can be for a leader.
Get rid of the stuff.
Well, how do you know it's stuff?
Well, it drains energy.
Someone else can do it better.
And that's even relationships that are going nowhere.
So here's a quick exercise for you.
Why don't you write down 3 stuff things that you need to shed?
What 3 things could you shed straight away?
These are things that drain energy, someone else can do them better, and relationships
that are going nowhere.
So activities that you shouldn't be involved in.
Now here's an interesting exercise.
You can do the opposite, right?
What activates or creates energy in you when you do that thing?
We've talked in previous trainings about this, that when you do the thing, you come alive
because you're energized, you have more energy after the event than before you started.
So what creates movement for you?
What makes you feel you're making progress in your life?
What do you find inspiring?
So in an interesting exercise, my wife, Bridget, and I sat down and we did this exercise together.
Now we've all done previous training about the hats.
You remember about switching hats, right?
So we both took off our husband-wife hats, respectively, and we put on our coach hat.
And so in that hat, remember that that means we're not related, we're not married, we're
not in business together, we're just being the coach.
And then, you know, Bridget shared with me all the 2x stuff that in the next 90 days
I need to shed and one thing I need to 10x.
So we picked three things, you know, bits of stuff that we had to get rid of.
And the rule was you weren't allowed to respond or argue or defend yourself or anything.
You were just allowed to take notes.
And then we switched roles.
And what was really interesting about this is this idea of shedding works best if you
do it in a 90-day cycle.
In other words, every 90 days, shed three things.
Every 90 days, shed three things.
So guess what's going to happen?
A year from now, you're going to have 12 things that are out of your life, 12 bits of stuff
you don't need.
And you would have improved four 10x elements in your life.
So I want to make some just real practical things you may consider shedding.
Negative narratives.
Just stop agreeing with negativity.
Negativity doesn't build anything.
It takes absolutely no talent whatsoever to be negative about something.
To find the problem is not a talent, you know, at all.
Coming up with a possibility to fix the problem, now that takes talent.
Judgments of other businesses or competitors.
And I love the story of, you know, Apple, when Apple launched their iPod, Microsoft
had also introduced Zune.
And I remember one late night comedian saying, you know, he was talking about Apple just
sold a million iPods, and in other news, somebody bought a Zune.
You know, so when you think about that, it was hilarious at the time.
And, you know, I just think that when we, here's the interesting thing.
Apple did not care that their iPod had far less features than Zune.
Zune was a superior product at one point, and it was very obvious because they weren't
looking at that.
They weren't making judgments.
They weren't playing the game against Microsoft.
Apple was playing a game against themselves.
Have you ever listened to their product announcements?
This is the best iPhone we've ever had.
Maybe a terrible iPhone, but it's the best one they've ever had.
In other words, what are they doing is they're using themselves as the reference.
Can we be better?
Can we do it better?
They are themselves.
They're not like, oh, we're going to be number one.
We're going to do...
There is no...
In this structure, it's about you stepping in and 10x-ing yourself.
You know, I really caution, again, unhealthy political engagement, unless, again, that's
your...
You feel that's your thing.
Sure.
Be informed.
Make your decisions.
Vote.
Do your civil duty.
And then focus on your fight.
Focus on your thing.
And, you know, excessive media consumption, just drop the news junkie thing.
I've seen so many people, so I don't have time for that.
But when you look at their tech, they're spending eight to 10 hours a week on nothing.
And so, I wanted to share that with you and, you know, go through the basic thing.
You can do 10x, because 10x frees your present to think about your future.
And I hope you found this inspiring as I did.
Thanks.
Okay.
I had to do that as a separate training.
As you know, we'll post that piece for your team.
Hence, no references to the Lord and so on in there.
But the...
Now we can talk and talk about what does that mean.
So let's weigh in a little bit.
Thoughts, ideas, questions around it.
What gripped you as you were going through this?
You know, what did you feel the Lord, you know, prompt you in your heart and said, that
I want to spend more time thinking about that?
I can speak, Jan, if I can go.
I'm just going to speak on the 10x, the heart and the mind versus the 2x, just the mind
only.
I love it.
Because I feel like that's where I am right now with the Lord and what he's shown me in
this whole business trend thing that I'm doing is forward thinking with him.
You know, he's shown me specific things and it's like, I'm already preparing in it now
before I step into it and forward thinking, you know, as if I'm already there, you know,
so I love that.
I think that's brilliant because it kind of accelerates you, I guess is the word that
comes to me.
Yeah, it does accelerate you.
In fact, we're doing a whole talk at Brilliance 25 on what heart learning is.
And by heart, we're not talking about emotions, we're talking about your spirit, but upstairs
learning.
Here's the fascinating thing.
Upstairs learning automatically includes downstairs learning.
The Bible calls that renewing your mind.
So the mind cannot make space for the heart, but the heart always makes space for the mind.
That's why if you meet very intellectual, heady people, when you listen to all the arguments,
all very beautifully put together, fantastic philosophy, and what you end up at the end
is a very small possibility to live into.
It's like, really, that's it?
That's what you got after all that work?
You know, I spoke to a philosopher recently, Christian philosopher, lecturer, travels
the world, and so on.
Love the guy.
And I said to him, but after all that, what's the invitation?
Jesus always landed on a big invitation.
Same in business.
10X is such a kingdom idea, isn't it?
Because what it's saying is you can't just think about it from the mind.
You have to think about it, it has to engage your heart, your spirit, my purpose, why am
I doing this?
Is it part of our yoke, Lord?
Do we have permission?
And so what it does is, here's what I've learned, upstairs thinking not only creates
downstairs thinking, it renews your mind, heals your heart, that's why you can say,
do not fear, right?
It gets rid of fear, gets rid of doubt, which we talked about earlier, gets rid of all the
negative emotions, and at the same time, it inspires your will.
So upstairs learning, that's what Jesus said, and learn from me.
He didn't just think about stuff about me.
Learn the 10 attributes of God's nature, fine.
But downstairs learning, water doesn't flow uphill.
And I love that.
What a massive kingdom advantage is that, just saying.
Yeah, I love that.
Okay, guys, what else did you guys get out of this?
Jenny.
Yes.
I've heard this before, and you hear it in a fresh and a new way.
I like where you talked about, from Dan Sullivan's training, that you can only be great at a
few things.
And so finding your circle of excellence and staying in your circle.
And that reminds me of what we do here, which is we teach the team to do just in time, not
just in case.
So you're doing things in the time that you need them.
You're not doing everything up front.
You're doing them as you need them, which to me correlates as information.
You're not gathering all of this information that you're not going to use.
You are just in time.
You're using what you need.
You're finding out, you're learning in real time, and you're applying it, which leads
to transformation.
And so that leads into the 10x of what permanently fascinates and motivates me.
And not only the permission that it gives you as a leader, but when you open that up
to your team, the permission that it provides to them, and the creativity, as you said,
and the innovation that's released in that time, but not only that, that it comes into
this trust culture because they feel safe to really explore.
That's what we've heard the feedback from our team, is they feel safe to really explore
and to go and to make mistakes, to learn, and to just really go all out and encouraging
that.
And that leads to that easy and light, Matthew 11, 28, because in the kingdom, it is.
It's easy and light.
And that's to me what 10x translates to as easy and light because I'm in my partnership
with him.
We're abiding as we're exploring this space that's before us.
And everything ties in together in home life, at work, everywhere you go.
So even at home, finding yourself saying, wait a minute, is this a 2x or a 10x solution?
And so it opens that up to a possibility that you hadn't even considered before.
So I really love it.
love this teaching and finding those again, fresh and new this time around is I'm looking
forward to the exploration of that.
How's that Jenny, accelerated innovation in your team?
Holy smokes.
I mean, we've had team members go and create things over a weekend for fun, like a platform.
We've had a team member go and create a platform for fun that actually turned into a new product
for us.
Right now we have a team member that is, as you were talking about this, I was thinking
about going in and organizing our notion board.
You know, that's something that I wanted to do, but, and there's a little bit of bumps
along the way, cause we're sorting it out.
But the fact that she felt the freedom to go in there and create a better workspace,
not just for her, but for the whole team and in turn would serve our customers even
better because we would all be in sync and have the same information and communicating
the same information at all times.
And so the fact that she felt that she could go in and do that was such a permission, a
statement of permission that she's been given.
So that's just a couple of the examples.
And who doesn't want to work in an environment where you get to do new stuff and get to achieve
stuff you never imagined you were capable of?
I love that.
Yeah.
Let's bring Ray in on the conversation there.
Thanks.
That's great, Jenny.
Thank you for sharing that.
Yeah.
Hey, Ray.
Hello again.
So, so yeah, just, you know, several months ago when I, you know, from BESOL, right when
it, I think it was from BESOL.
One of the questions that I heard from either you or Graham, it was, Lord, what are you
creating for me and my business?
And the word I got was freedom.
And at the time I was involved in several projects that, you know, I really wasn't that
excited about.
I wasn't really fired up about and, and, but now you fast forward, you know, several months
and I'm now, I just so love every single minute of what I do and everything that's
up.
Like, I just, I just love it.
And so for example, one area of genius is I know that I'm very good at coaching and,
and so, you know, last night we did a, one of our coaching things and I went from 8 p.m.
to past midnight and my only struggle with that, and I'm an early guy, I'm usually 4
And, and so like past midnight, that's past Ray's bedtime usually.
But my only struggle with last night was I was so fired up from it.
I had to ask the Lord, please help me sleep, you know, thank you for helping me go to sleep
because I was just fired up about all the breakthroughs and all the, you know, all the
things that, that the Lord did in that meeting.
And, and so I know I'm anointed in that, that fires me up.
I can do it all the time.
There is, I don't even know what time it is when I finish and, and I love it.
However, only people that have been behind the paywall know that in me.
And so we actually started a plan today.
I reached out to, you know, some of the people that I coached last night and said, Hey, are
you okay if we lose, use our clip of me coaching you?
And they're like, absolutely.
And so now it's, it's taken that super skill and how do I get it out to people that don't
that space or don't know that side of me and, you know, and, and leveraging that to do more
of what I'm, I feel I'm called to do and what I love to do.
I love that.
So Ray, what is, what does 10X mean as a coach?
You are really coaching, because I've been on coaching calls with you.
So I know, you know, we've done some training stuff together, but what does 10X mean for
you as a coach in terms of your relationship with the Lord, the upstairs portion of that?
Yeah, you know, God put me in an interesting, uncomfortable position a few months ago, in
that I had a former client who's in a, she's an investor in a grass fed beef company.
And and she comes to me and she goes, I want these guys to work with you.
I'm trying to convince them to work with you.
And I'm like, okay, I kind of wasn't sure, you know, like, what I'm, you know, I don't
know, I just wasn't sure if I was, am I gonna be able to add enough value?
And does this make sense?
And, you know, it's not my niche at all.
And, and so I get on with them.
And, and, you know, and I asked, I asked the Lord, like, Lord, should I meet with these
guys?
Yes.
Okay.
And so I meet with them.
And in like, 45 minutes, I give them a completely
different way to do their brand, which I know is accurate, which I know is what
they needed to hear.
And so they offer me equity.
They offer me, um, you know, just to help them build the sales force, the
affiliate force and everything.
And so I think what, what 10 X is, uh, as a coach is just having either different
equity or, or cashflow stream.
That's not just associated with your time.
And, and so I think if, if you're saying, you know, 10 X revenue, now I already
have the 10 X happiness.
Cause I just love it, man.
Like I would, I would do it whether they're paying or not.
Like I would do all of this stuff, whether I was getting paid or not.
Um, and sometimes the Lord does call me to do it for free, you know, like, Hey,
I want you to coach.
He had me coach this marriage guy, a marriage counselor guy for free.
And you know, so whatever he said as I do, but I think 10 X is more, um, as a
coach, let me coach these people that the Lord leads me to and, and help them grow
their, their income.
And I guess some kind of cut or split or equity or something like that.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
I, you know, um, I was speaking to Jim the other day, who is obviously part of
IANA Circle here, and, uh, he made the simple comment that, you know, it's be
fruitful, then multiply.
And I think a lot of times we want to multiply before we figured out how to
make it fruitful.
And I think that's a big, that's a huge jump forward is that the Lord is very
patient and kind.
So when we say 10 X, sometimes it's not 10 X in revenues, 10 X in you and how from
his viewpoint, he's always interested in you going into that new space.
It's like the Lord says, I'm so excited.
I get to take you to be just like me.
And we're focusing on this area.
So there's always a 10 X in you first upstairs before there's a 10 X downstairs.
I love that.
That is freeing.
You know, it's like, I don't have to do it today.
It's not like, you know, I have to add a zero to my revenue.
Sometimes I just have to, you know, add a zero to my, my confidence in God, to my
trust, 10 X, my trust, 10 X.
So another way of looking at that, we could take that as an upstairs idea.
Instead of saying, Hey Lord, what's the upgrade?
Lord, what are you 10 X-ing in me to be more like you, right?
That'd be cool.
Yeah.
Anyway, I, I, I'm excited about that because to me, I, when I first heard 10 X,
it just sounded, you know, kingdom as of, as you know, I've spent my life looking
for kingdom stuff, even if it comes from people who may or may not know the Lord.
It doesn't matter to me, but then when we get it, we need to fix the language a
little bit because the word 10 X doesn't mean that much, but what's interesting
is that we introduced this idea and I see Bridget, you have your hand up on, on
this, uh, I suspect, but, um, the, we introduced this to, to our, uh, community
at the, uh, third act.
So we ran a program in January called the third act for people who've come to that
stage of their empty nested life.
And they were saying, now it's rediscover your purpose.
Leave with a plan was the idea.
And then we, we asked them to jump on a call three weeks later.
So each one got a prophetic word, which is great having Graham and the team, uh,
Bridget, Teresa, um, and Graham, I was involved a bit on that, but then I did
the group coaching and then we did all that stuff.
And three weeks later, we asked them, what has God asking you to 10 X?
You know, it was, there were very few that picked revenue.
Most of them took stuff like intimacy.
I want a 10 X, my worship, I want a 10 X.
And suddenly it just opened up the realm for them because the cool thing about
10 X is it takes it out of the realm of the mind and puts it in the realm of the
heart. That's what I love most about the exercise, you know, takes it upstairs.
And a lot of people, well, you know, I'll just improve my worship and I'll add an
extra five minutes to my, whatever, as opposed to, I want to become a radical
worshiper. What is 10 X?
So now I start dreaming with God.
That's probably a 10 to 20 year journey right there.
Just that one idea.
So the kingdom is a vast place.
Yeah. Yeah.
Also, Bridget, do you want to add something there?
Sure, yeah, I was going to say that two things that I think the reason sometimes
people get stuck in the two X stuff in the day to day thing is that they don't know
their fight. And I think when I'm working with parents or I've worked with empty
nesters, they get stuck in things that have nothing to do with because they don't
know what their fight is. And in the case of empty nesters, I think they end up
becoming their kids, their grandchildren's nanny because they've got nothing else to
do. They don't understand what their purpose is or their fight.
So they just do whatever's there.
But also, I think that helping to get rid of those two X things, having a coach or
somebody that really will be that person to you like you and I did is helpful
because sometimes you just make excuses.
yourself. You're like, well, I can do this because I kind of enjoy it. And it's not worth paying
somebody to do it for me. So you kind of talk yourself out of it. So I think having a coach
that will be really honest with you, knowing what your goal is, it's very helpful. I think
you can't see it in perspective for yourself. And I mean, we don't mind sharing with you guys
some of the conversation we had about that, you know, we'll do me because that's more exposing.
We can do that. And I mean, like one of the things in a bridge that I think you need to
connect your health. And I said, because I happen to be a very naturally healthy person. And I
think, as you said, yeah, you're healthy until you're not. And then, you know, and so in that
situation, I just had to upgrade a whole bunch of things health wise, which has been amazing.
I've been sleeping pretty solidly every night. I've, I've had great sleep, great exercise,
eating well, feel better, more energy. So that was helpful. But one of my pet ones I had to let
go of was I love, you know, it's in our DNA, because as I 49, being a restorer of desolate
inheritance, we like anything to restore, I will watch cars being restored, I'll watch anything
being restored. And I love doing that, you know, because it's in our upstairs DNA. So we get it.
So I know, for anyone who knows, you know, I love to do that for our cars, I keep our cars in,
I buy a car, and it's, you know, you send it to the car wash and get free car, free scratching,
you know, and, and then no, it's hand wash, you mean hand scratching, because they don't do all
the things they're supposed to do. And so understanding the chemistry and all that stuff
and getting the car into absence every few months, I bring it into perfection, you know, I mean,
it's like a mirror that and I love it. I love the restoration process. And I didn't love that my
coach told me it's a 2x thing, it's got to go. And now it goes down the road for free hand
scratching, they put it in a bucket, use the same cloth, gather all that dirt, which turns
into light sandpaper, scratch, you know, the car up. And I said, All right, the deal was once a
year, I'll spend 10 hours and just restore it, get it back to perfection. And so, you know, all that
I picked that as this is a simple but time consuming thing. And as Bridget points out,
I'm always commenting on, you know, I have to do this or put pressure on me. But more importantly,
the deal was that if I do agree to the car going on, no more complaining about what a pathetic job
they did. So there you go. And it wasn't a perfection thing. It was just the sheer delight
of doing the thing. You know, I love restoring furniture, I love restoring cars or whatever, but
I think what was the bother that was not so much the actual cleaning, but it was hanging over you
all week. Every time you get in the car, you thought you're like, Oh, I need to do this.
And then Saturday would come and then you'd be working and feeling bad that you weren't actually
cleaning the car. So it's a subconscious thing that weighs on you that you should be doing it.
So now it's my delight every week or two weeks to go and get it washed. And Dion's not allowed to
complain at the horrible job that they do. But it was kind of a funny thing. But it did take
took something off Dion. And I think, you know, we kind of making up, we making up in some way,
because we kind of had a five year delay in some of our business and ministries. So we are we feel
like we really make every day count now and every year. And so it's a big picture for him to spend
that that mind space worrying about the dirty car and whatever it's really at the end of the day,
I said we may lose a couple of thousand dollars if there's a scratch on this and that. But really in
the big picture, when it comes to business and ministry and impact, having a dirty car or scratched
car really doesn't matter. And so we I think as we've got more specific with our fight and what
our focus is and what the permission the Lord's given us to do, we have been able to actually
really get into the stuff things that Dion said. And some of that is just being much more
intentional about who we spend time with that we we used to spend time with anybody who wanted to
and it was just back to back meetings and hosting and entertaining. And as much fun as it was for
that season, we feel right now, our weekends are time to recover and just rest and refresh for the
week coming up. And so when we do put something on the calendar, it's very intentional to fit into
what the Lord's called us to be building with very intentional purpose for those people.
And so we've had to be very honest with each other. And as I said, it's helpful if you're
not married to actually ask somebody to coach you through that because it's difficult to see
your own situation. Yeah, that's really helpful. I think you get to a point like in our case,
our fight is to make kingdom leadership normal. That's what we're doing.
We're making it normally in families, normally in church, normally in
business, and that's why we lead a movement of Kingdom Activators. We want to teach people
how to activate. It's like getting the $50,000 or $100,000 credit card in the mail, or better,
debit card somebody put $10 million into, gives you the debit card, but you don't phone and
activate it. Introducing most of the Christians I know, not because of their fault, not because
they're lazy, or you know, it's because nobody taught them how to activate. They didn't even
know if they deserve it. Most believers feel they're less than, they're not at the same level,
one day when I'm big, you know, all that stuff. And here's the thing, you're in Christ,
you're already fully qualified. Jesus deserves for you to be blessed. He paid for that, right?
So this idea of teaching people how to activate, what have we been teaching at this inner circle
here for months now, is that rest activates your yoke. Come to me, all you weary and heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. That exchange, we don't stop something to start something. I'm not trying
to have less stress. I'm not trying to stop being stressful. I just exchange it for rest.
Downstairs, you stop and start. Upstairs, you exchange. So we do an exchange for rest. Well,
rest activates my yoke. And we're going to get into that in just a second. But later,
but I think for us, that is, that is, did you did you want to share some more things?
Well, I was going to say, two of the things that I had to focus on was not going to do all the
shopping. I do love being out and doing groceries and seeing people and whatever. But I realized
it also is time consuming. So I've been very bold to do much more deliveries. And then the
second thing was just getting on the phone to talk to people because they wanted to talk on
Zoom calls. But being actually intentional is that building into the small groups or the
which part of the my job description is actually building into. And so it was good to go through
my calendar. So those are the two things that I worked on. Yeah. Very good.
Cool. How are you guys doing? Are we good? How are we doing? Any comments, any thoughts,
anything that you're like, really feel like, man, that's triggered a conversation I want
to have with the Lord about? Glenn? Yeah. So back on that circle of competence,
keying off of what Jenny had shared as well, that triggered a thought that I want to have
a thought that I want to have a conversation with the Lord on. That's the size of the circle.
Because I think in the season I've just come through here, I assume something was in the
circle of competence. But it was the nature. So to make it practical, I'm a technologist. So
one of my things is solving complex business problems with technology. So that's kind of
sort of like a circle. But within that, like I got myself into a world of trouble over the last
few days because I said, oh, you know, I can actually do this, which was building something
using a certain set of tools. I said, I can learn that. That shouldn't be too difficult. And I went
and just got myself stuck into that. And then I found myself having to work insane to meet
deadlines. And I should not have actually done that. That was something I should have handed
off to developers and say, go solve this thing. Go do this. And so it's an interesting conversation
for me. It's sort of within the big circle. But I think there's a degree of specificity
with the Lord about things that I need to have a conversation about. It's like, OK,
it's like the difference. It's like morning by morning awakens my ear to listen like one being
taught. There's something with a higher degree of focus and specificity than what I have actually
been engaging with the Lord on. Yeah. You know, one of the things we can do. Yes,
we love direct learning for sure. But one of the things you can do is there are people in your life
you trust, right? There are friends, there are colleagues, maybe team members. I like to ask
people to give me feedback on a couple of things like I like to ask three questions. What do you
think makes me come alive when you see me in action? What in other words, what contribution
am I making? And you might think you know that, but they will often see it in a like you said,
Glenn, with more resolution, with more nuance than you may be seeing it. And we often tend to think
of our talents and abilities on a more broader sense and not with fine degree revolution,
like a picture a little bit out of focus, basic picture. But when they add in,
it suddenly comes into very sharp focus. The second thing is, what do I need to stop doing?
What do you think is a 2x thing that you think I just need to stop doing? And I think just asking
him even those two questions, there is a third one we've shared before. But even if
If you just go to your team members and ask that question,
now you say, well, it takes a lot, it takes a unique culture
and a business to somebody to tell the CEO that answer, right?
Or to tell their team leader that answer.
And but if you keep inviting it, at some point, they'll believe you.
May not, you know, they have to know there are no consequences,
no negative consequences to that.
The only consequences that you will change in a pre-appreciative for the input.
So I know we do that to each other all the time, right?
Yeah. So solicited or unsolicited.
After 40 years, we don't wait for the invitation.
No, that's right. Exactly.
I know. Yeah.
I think that's great.
Well, guys, we're a much smaller group today, so we can chat a lot more.
I know a lot of people are catching this on the replay,
so they miss out on the nuts and bolts.
I'll give you a second to think.
And then we want I wanted to share something that's been pretty close
to my heart about,
you know, where we are at and how we've learned
how to partner with and contract with God's help.
This has been a you know, it's it started as a BESOL
Brilliant School of Leadership Training.
But when I was thinking of it in an executive sense,
it just opened up a whole lot of elements that are from my own sharing very
personally, if you like, from my own leadership journey.
And so I'd love to I'd love to jump into that next.
But I don't want to cut the conversation short.
Any other any other thoughts?
All righty. Well, let me
get into a couple of things about this and.
So I want to talk, just take a few minutes
and talk about this kingdom executive habit.
You know, we talk about executive training.
And I think this idea, which we started the conversation
with in the beginning, which I really like, is how do you actually
as a kingdom executive contract with God's help?
I mean, you know, how do we understand how he works with us?
What's he like? How is he in our learning?
And, you know, the times we kind of got ahead or made assumptions,
you know, there are some very practical things I want to share with you.
But before I do that, I want to just lock this conversation down
in Isaiah 41.
And I love Isaiah 41 because you see, the Lord says
four things are going to happen in Isaiah 41.
So let's just read verse 10.
He says, Fear not, for I am with you.
I love the way he automatically starts with.
We don't need fear because fear shuts down your thinking.
Fear makes you shrink. It makes you smaller.
And so he knows that you can't just do that by yourself.
Obviously, you need something else.
You need to believe something.
Upstairs, believing and receiving are the two powerful ways
we learn in the heart.
We can believe we can receive.
We can reign. We can relate.
Those are the four big power capabilities of the human heart.
But let's start just on believing.
God gives you something to believe about him
so that downstairs you can fear not.
Right. So he says, do not be dismayed again.
Negative emotion thing for I am your God.
OK, you're my God. I receive that.
But what do you want me to believe?
I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you.
I will uphold you with my righteous hand.
OK, now I've got a place to stand. Right.
God has given us a place to stand and what we believe.
And once your heart knows what it believes,
your mind knows how to think.
Your emotions know what to feel.
I don't need that negative stuff.
And your will knows where to go.
You're inspired. You know what to do.
So the first thing he does is he gives us a place to stand.
What to believe. I am your God.
I will strengthen you.
Lord, I feel weak. I will strengthen you.
I will help you. His help is amazing.
I'll be in yoke with you.
The big bull pulling the load. I will help you.
That doesn't mean he'll sprinkle a little bit of help and favor on top.
It means he's deeply in it with you, pulling a lion's share of the load.
And I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Second thing. So that's presence help.
Second thing is protection help.
And then he says, and for those of you in legal battles
and stuff, and we've been through that,
or you're just up against something big right now,
you need this, protection help.
It will become as nothing, I will help you.
So listen again how he does this.
Behold, all those who are incensed against you
shall be shamed and disgraced.
This shall become as nothing,
or they shall become as nothing.
And those, it doesn't mean he'll destroy them,
it means their complaint, their thing against you,
that will become as nothing.
That was the word God gave me
when we had the lawsuit filed against us.
This is the verse the Lord gave me.
It's the same verse he gave Graham to give us.
This will become as nothing.
This is just intimidation.
It didn't feel like that at all.
But what it did here, look what it caused me to believe.
It says, those who strive with you shall perish.
In other words, their striving will perish.
And you will seek them, you won't find them.
You can't find those who contend against you.
Those who wage war against you shall be as nothing,
as a non-existent thing.
Why?
Okay, so the Lord's telling your mind what to think.
So he's mixing it up a little bit here.
He's telling your mind what to think.
He's renewing your mind.
This is not a real war.
This will become as nothing.
And then he says, for I am the Lord your God.
He always anchors you in himself.
He always gives you something to believe in.
Why?
Because I will hold your right hand, saying to you,
fear not, I will help you.
And even when you're feeling like a worm,
he says, fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel.
I will help you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.
Now he reveals himself as not just your helper,
but your Redeemer.
So this is not restorer.
Restorer is somebody who restores something to what was.
Redeemer is putting it back to where you would have gone
if you were not interrupted.
For those of that, if you have had business failures,
for those of you that have had major setbacks,
this means nothing to the Lord,
in the sense of he easily redeemed that.
Easily, he can redeem that.
In other words, again,
restoration is him just putting back what was.
God isn't interested in restoring you, just.
He's interested in redeeming you.
Where would have you been?
And even if that interruption came from your own stupidity,
from your own mistakes, from your own bad choices,
it doesn't matter what caused you not to be
where you ought to be, he is a Redeemer.
So now he gives you something to believe about him.
Lord, now you're my Redeemer, and you're my protector.
Now that I know that,
I know that all this will become as nothing,
and I don't have to fear because you will help me.
So now I know how to decide.
Okay, so we've gone through presence help, protection help.
Let's talk about possession help.
Taking the territory God is giving you.
So he says, I will do it for you.
Now listen to this verse 15.
Behold, I will make you into a threshing sledge
with sharp teeth.
I'm gonna make you really sharp.
Guess what you can do?
You shall thresh the mountains and beat them small
and make the hills like chaff.
God takes big things and makes them small.
The enemy tries to make small things big, right?
So God does the opposite,
takes big things and he makes them small,
and you shall winnow them.
The wind shall carry them away.
There's an effortlessness to the way these issues disappear.
Another way the scripture says,
the mountains melt like wax in the presence of the Lord.
And then it goes on, he keeps going with this theme.
The whirlwind shall scatter them.
Yeah, you shall rejoice.
Now I know what to do.
You shall rejoice in the glory in the Holy One of Israel.
Now this is fascinating
because what the Lord is saying in the structure
is he's saying, he's again telling us what to believe.
We now believe, I'm not up to me to be a good steward
and somehow manage all my talents and possessions
and all that stuff.
That's a great downstairs teaching.
Upstairs, it's I know you are the one fashioning me
and forming me to be a threshing sledge in your hand.
And with that sledge, Lord,
you can take out a mountain and beat it small.
You can't do that for yourself.
So he's the one who's shaping you into that position.
So now I know I believe that.
And now I know what I get to do.
I get to rejoice.
My emotions don't go from concern and worry.
I go into joy.
I practice my joy.
I rejoice.
And then number four, power provision.
The power provision is the Lord says,
so now you're in this mode with me.
Here's what happens with upstairs learning.
We start pulling together, I'm here to help you, I'm going to protect you and I'm going to shape you into this weapon.
And then he just takes off and does seven things that don't even involve us.
It says, and the poor and the needy shall seek water and there'll be none.
The tongues will fail for thirst and I, the Lord, will hear them.
The God of Israel will not forsake them.
In other words, all the people you're called to serve, your who, who are thirsty, who are dry, who are nowhere.
And he says, and I will, the Lord will, open up rivers in desolate heights, fountains in the midst of the valleys.
I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water.
And I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the acacia tree, the myrtle and the oil tree.
And I will set the desert, the cypress tree and the pine and the box together.
A lot of very detail about all the types of trees and the variety and creativity of what he will do.
And then it all lands on verse 20.
That they may know and see and consider and understand together that the hand of the Lord has done this.
Now, I'm going to tell you that you're going to be included when they see,
because they're going to know who the Lord was working with.
You know, which weapon took out that mountain, but they will know the Lord did it.
But they'll also know that you walked with him in it.
And so it'll be, they will see.
They will see you.
The way the Lord's told me is, I will make it obvious that you are my friend.
And, you know, I love that.
For me, it's a very, very sweet word.
When all this legal stuff happened to us, Graham shared with me the other day that, you know,
when he asked the Lord, you know, how did he see it?
The first thing the Lord said is, this is just intimidation.
It's not a real fight.
There's no substance, so it'll become as nothing.
The second thing he said the Lord said to him is, help him because he is my friend.
He said, Dion is my friend, so help him.
And what happens is the people come to know you are God's friend.
They get to see that.
Now, we also know that when we step into this incredible space, what happens is,
upstairs learning gives us something to believe.
And that place, that's where we stand.
God gives us his incredible promises so we can participate in his divine nature.
That's what the Bible says.
So that means our starting place in learning, in contracting with God,
is what's your promise to me, Lord?
I know that you're going to help me.
You're going to protect me.
You're going to fashion and form me in a powerful weapon.
And then you're going to just step in and do a whole bunch of stuff
just because I initiated the process with you.
God loves the partnership, but he intends to do a whole lot more
than your partnership or you are capable of.
This goes beyond just stewardship stuff.
So when I hear the whole stewardship thing, I go, okay, I mean, it's fine.
You know, I don't want to get too much into it.
But it's not inspiring in the least.
It sounds like a 2X thing to me.
So I'm excited about not perfect performance.
I'm interested in a powerful partnership with the Lord.
So here's what we do is we step into this new place with God
and suddenly everything shifts.
Everything changes.
When we let peace reign, when we go and take God up on his offer,
when we activate the kingdom in us, remember you have a will
and God is looking for you to align your will with his will.
It's not like, well, if you don't do this, God won't bless it.
He's blessed you, favored you.
You're in Christ.
All of heaven is attracted to Jesus and you already have it.
The issue is whether you're aligned for that blessing,
whether you're aligned with that favor.
And so what we're practicing, what we're activating as kingdom executives
is how to activate that favor.
I already have it, right?
I have the credit card.
I'm just learning to activate it.
That's what I'm learning.
I'm learning that, you know, I'm not what activates my yoke is rest.
So I know that downstairs, what's the big bragging thing?
Look how stressed I am.
I'm overworked.
I'm overbooked.
Look at how busy I am.
I'm stressed out of my mind.
Oh, I have such a big job.
It's like a badge of honor.
In the kingdom, your badge of honor is look who I'm with.
I'm so dressed.
I let the peace of God rule in my heart because peace is a ruling power.
It's a ruling power in your business, in your life, in your family,
in your community.
I love that for us.
So, you know, we know that when we're at rest, when we're at peace,
we know from neuroscience that
That's when you're most creative,
you have the clearest thinking, you're most productive,
you're most present in your relationships.
And that's what God wants for you,
most effective in your leadership in that place of rest.
Okay, let's get into a discussion.
I hope that inspired you a little bit around,
you're not alone in this.
Yeah.
Thoughts, questions, what have some of you learned
about how the Lord does this with us?
How do you contract with God's help?
I can speak to that.
And so I love Isaiah 41 and everything you just said
was like to the T of what the Lord has been,
especially the latter when he's with you
and you've gone past that place of fear and things.
But I think that is brilliant because right now
with me partnering with the Lord,
what he's shown me in that forward thinking and the role
that he's setting me up for something huge.
I know, I mean, like you go from faith to knowledge,
it's like, so now I'm just,
I just got a huge bonus and didn't even do anything.
I, you know, it's just things like that.
And I'm like, what am I, what, you know,
and incorporate, you know, they do your reviews
and all of that.
This is a little different than what you guys are doing,
but I've got a review back that exceeds expectations
and I'm like, okay.
And I'm looking for this role that he's showing me.
And I mean, so we just had a huge acquisition too.
They brought on another huge logistics company
and they're setting up this whole team down in Mexico.
So all that to say back to Isaiah 41 is just wonderful.
I absolutely love partnering with him
and everything that he's showing me in this.
So I hope that makes sense, but yeah, thank you for that.
Oh, for sure.
I love it.
Yeah, for sure.
I love that upstairs learning, you know,
starts in God's heart.
He always says something about his heart
and then he gives you a promise about that.
I will protect you.
I'll help you.
He'll say something, which is as Graham would put it,
it's God binding himself to you.
He's giving you his word of honor.
You can take this to the bay.
You can trust me in this.
I will be faithful to you in this.
He's not iffy.
And you say, well, so much is at stake.
You know, my boss, my company, my team that rely on me.
He knows all that.
That's not a thing, you know?
So he wants, but I love when he just starts doing stuff,
step four, he starts doing stuff without you.
Like, hey, you've got a bonus.
I did, why?
Because you're me.
Yeah.
He doesn't do anything.
Like it just shows up.
I'm like, okay, that's funny.
You know, like, because money, the abundance and think,
the abundance, the thinking, it's not money.
It's like thinking from abundance and not from lack.
You know, like I need to get the money to do this.
No, that's not the case in the kingdom.
The provision, well, not provision.
Well, yes, provision.
But what I'm trying to say is that
the resources are already there.
You know, it's really cool.
It's a really neat way to think.
I love that.
Yeah.
Budget's a downstairs thing.
Yeah.
Abundance is an upstairs thing.
Yeah.
And we should do budgets.
This is good.
Because we're abundant, you know,
but we're not doing budgets
because we're trying to be good stewards.
We're doing budgets because we're good partners.
And I'm not against the steward thing.
I just think steward language
is a downstairs servant language.
God wants us to be his friend.
I no longer call you servants.
I call you friends.
Why?
Because the servant doesn't know what his master is doing.
But a friend does.
And then Jesus goes,
no, I'll explain everything the father showed me.
I'll do the same for you.
I'll tell you what's on his heart.
So if you can ask God directly,
if you can't hear him,
Jesus will tell you.
If you can't hear that,
your coach, counselor, therapist,
the genius Holy Spirit will tell you.
You're gonna get to know one way or another.
So it's just a wonderful life.
All right.
Well, thanks, Emily.
I appreciate that.
Hey, I see, Mark,
I see you got your camera on now.
Did you land wherever it is you were going?
Yes, I've been traveling.
So yeah, I finally got to my desk here.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean,
I would probably comment to your question too,
similar to what Emily just said.
For me, it's been just kind of a hanging on.
I'm trying to hang,
the Lord's got the rope out
and I'm just trying to get ahold of it
and try to keep up with him.
it just keeps going. So, yeah, I still feel like I need to, I
keep thinking I need a foundation, Lord, I need a
foundation. And he's like, No, no, no, come on, let's go. Let's
go.
Yeah, I think a lot of times, wouldn't you say, Mark,
sometimes we want to know outcomes and stuff, because if
we were new, the outcomes we maybe we don't have to trust as
much. Yeah, I'll speak for myself. It's something I
noticed in myself, Lord, if I know all the outcomes, then I
don't have to trust you. If you could give me the next five
years per provision and all the resources, then that'd be great.
Then I don't. And the Lord's like, I'm not doing that. I want
this to be a powerful partnership, not perfect
performance. And I think this, the the joy of stepping out of
this downstairs idea and living upstairs down. You're, you're,
you know, a lot of people say we're not look, we're not
against the mind. What we're against is the unrenewed mind
trying to lead. That's what we're against. So did we just
lose somebody? Yep. It looks like we lost Ray. Hey, Jenny.
We're hemorrhaging people. That's great. I know people have
stuff to do. No worries. You're free to go. Jenny, weigh in on
this. You touched in on on what I was thinking about with trust.
But what I love about what you're talking about, and with
the partnership and the friendship and the trust is the
growing up in God. And so there's this being in sync with
him and you're growing up in him and you're growing up in all
things in Christ. And knowing that when you face any
situation, contracting with his help, but your starting place is
knowing that every situation is designed to show you something
about God. So you're starting every situation with a win, and
your outcome is going to be your new starting place. So when
you're contracting with his help, I just I love that whole
just in synchness, I'm going to create new words now in my
partnership that comes with knowing that when you start a
situation, that you're learning something new about him. And as
you're learning something new about him, you're growing up,
and you're seeing yourself in the same way that he sees you,
which affects a huge change in the way that you see yourself,
talk about yourself, and the way that you see him, the way you
talk about him, it impacts mindset, lens and language. And
we've heard that with talking about how Ray giving the
examples of his situations and Glenn and his examples, as well
as Emily, and encompassing in all of that is the favor, the
favor that rests on us, because we are in Christ. So we have
access to everything that he is, and that he has. So every
situation is designed to benefit us. And there's challenges, for
sure. There's challenges, there's hardships, not
minimizing that. And knowing that every situation is designed
for your good, for your good outcome, is just a completely
different way of approaching every situation. And that when
they are challenging, and they're, you know, for instance,
your your situation five years ago, challenging, you get to
practice resting back, and building trust with him in that
specific situation, then informs every future situation from that
point forward. So I really, this is just, I mean, it's core,
it's core to who, you know, who we are.
So yeah, I love the way Graham puts it is he says, when God
grants you something, he expects you to take him for granted.
Right. And what we've been taught in for many people's
world, don't be presumptuous. Don't be. I have never seen a
scripture support that theology. It's a it, there's a higher
theology for us, there's a higher way with the Lord, what
if you had the most extraordinary, generous Father,
who just delights in you, he's like, let's go and do this.
Let's go, let's go, like Mark said, just hang on to the rope,
let's keep going, you know, he's moving at a at a good click, and
he's moving it forward. And so I think that what we're, what
we're learning to do, I think, as as a, you know, here at the
inner circle is how do we as leaders come to rest in
ourselves? Because when we say rest, a lot of leaders say,
well, what do you mean take a nap? You know, I can't tell you
how many times leaders actually
They asked me that and I said you're not serious, right? And I said now we're talking about the inner chaos of your life
Your inner world being calm
settled
Now we have peace with god. Okay, and it's that
That the outer world can't exert more pressure on you than your peace can overwhelm
Yeah
There is no inner pressure that can hit you that your peace in jesus carnival
Why because peace is a ruling power the prince of peace
Lives in you and you're one with him
So when we get to that
It opens up a level of leadership. We're activating peace is activating a level of leadership. We can take on bigger fights
When we can handle more pressure
You know, I think for a lot of people
They get a prophetic word about their territory or their call or their whatever and they just chase after it without becoming someone first
And I think one of the biggest things we've seen at brilliant is that people need to become someone to take something
a lot of people just go and try and take something as they are and you'll get crushed by that because your inner peace doesn't
Can't sustain that pressure
Your inner calm your inner rest
That's you know, we often say brilliant. Well, if we're going to really take on that whole thing
We're going to need a whole new level of rest to do that
Because rest is really the sign. I think that you are
Stepping into a higher place that you're taking more territory
so we first take this upstairs territory of peace and who we are and how we are with the lord house with us and
Settle that upstairs learning
Heart learning and then downstairs
We take territory and it doesn't cause us to implode
Yeah
Okay, it's so key and
And when you're able to do that for yourself, then you're able to lead your team through that process as well
whether you're
Relating it to peace, you know depending upon
what environment you're in, you know, whether you're relating it to peace or
And rest or prince of peace or it's just peace and I remember going
talking to a business owner and she was talking to me about
All of this coaching that she was doing and about and sharing with me the stress that she's under and asked me
Do you know what I mean? And I said actually I don't
I
Need to get a practice not to get stressed. I don't get stressed
Now what she doesn't know from that is is that that was a practice over 10
Years, right? It's become a lifestyle of practice
It didn't happen overnight and there were plenty of situations that challenge your peace so that
You can over you can let peace
Rise up and reign in the situation
And I think that that is such an important piece and you're touching on it here is the practicing
Of it and how we become it over
Time and in each situation is designed to help you practice that
Yeah, well practice makes permanent as you were saying second. I love the implication that it takes time. It's okay if it takes years
This idea that we have to hear a sermon on sunday and have it implemented by monday
I would love that. I would love wouldn't it be amazing. I would love that
Do I have 48 hours?
Someone's trying my piece to me, please
Yeah
Yeah, I go to church every night and uh, I could if I could solve it in 24 hours, it'd be amazing
and and I think I love I love that you're saying that because the
The permission from the lord is he's relaxed. He says we should be addressed because he's addressed
He's not stressed
You know, he knows what he's doing. He knows his kind intentions towards us
He knows what he's you know, he knows the purposes he has for us
And he can also navigate everybody else's stuff
Because here's what we don't often think of we don't think of our journey
From his viewpoint meaning that as a leader you're in the middle of this thing. God gave you permission
You're going down you're building and then the whole thing falls apart could not necessarily be that you missed him
Could also be that other people's wills got involved
So god is working around those wills and he gave them the option
They said no so he works around them and he's so confident in his ability to pull that all off
He gives us a promise all things work together
For the good of them that love god and are called according to his purpose
In other words, his purposes are immovable his intention to get to his purpose is immovable
But the pathway may change because people are involved
And that's the thing
Opens up a whole new conversation as does god learn
So, let's not go there but I think he does I think he says he found fault with the old covenant
and he gave us a new one built on better promises.
He's in it with us, he's not faking,
he's not pretending to be compassionate,
he's fully compassionate, he's fully in it with us.
And I think he binds himself to our environment,
to the structure, so that he can be in it with us.
So it does open up a beautiful,
you know, at the end of the day,
it doesn't really matter what you know,
it only matters who you're becoming.
Upstairs is about who you're becoming,
downstairs is what do you know.
And I think a lot of times,
we try to get to the Lord through the knowledge,
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right?
In the garden, there were two trees,
the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.
It's the tree of life is the absolute,
in Christ is life, you and the way,
the truth and the life, we're in Jesus.
So we learn from him, come and learn from me, Jesus offered.
And so what he's offering us is life.
Downstairs, what do I know?
And so I think a lot of us have the notion
that if we learn more, we'll have more in God.
Not true, you'll just know more stuff.
And I love learning, obviously, I love learning.
I mean, no one can dispute that in my case,
you know, I really do.
I do love the learning, but what I found out
is that when it's heart-led, my mind,
I think your IQ goes up when it's heart-led.
I think when you step into the upstairs learning,
I think your mind is not just renewed,
I think it's inspired, it's triggered, it's creative.
I think your IQ literally goes up
and you get words of knowledge, words of revelation,
words of wisdom, the Holy Spirit throws his genius in there.
And when it all happens and everyone looks at you
and says, that was genius, and the Lord says,
I know you're a genius, but Lord, you did it.
I know you're a genius.
He loves to make us look good.
He loves us to be amazing.
You know, and I think there's this hesitation,
oh, we have to stay humble.
You can be humble, upstairs in your heart,
and let the world know you're amazing.
Because as he is, so are you in this world,
and he's amazing, so guess where your destiny is?
Amazing.
You've got to be amazing.
You've got to be stunning to people.
And so I love where you're going with that, Jenny.
It takes time.
It's okay.
And just as we're learning, we're trusting him,
and he's also trusting us.
Going back to does God learn?
He's trusting us, and he's learning
what we can be trusted with as well.
So, yep, we could talk.
I don't want to monopolize the conversation.
No, it's nice we're a handful so we can chat.
Well, any other thoughts, comments, guys?
So let's do this, since we're a small enough group.
I know we normally have more time.
We normally take a break, but I imagine you guys
prefer to have your time back.
So why don't we do this?
Why don't we take the next 20 minutes, wrap it up?
I'll try and wrap it up an hour early for you,
since we can get there much quicker this way.
I love these sessions.
I gotta tell you, these are my favorite things
to do in the month.
Of all the things we do at Brilliant,
and I love a lot of what we do, this is my favorite,
because we get to speak at a level
that feels very free to me.
So here's what I would love.
Would you like to share,
what are some of your takeaways today?
What are some of the things you want to think through more,
talk to the Lord about, act, implement, whatever it is,
whatever your takeaway was, in whatever format.
Take a second, think about it,
and then we'll give everybody an opportunity.
So, we covered a lot of territory today.
So while you're thinking about that,
I just wanted to say that the watching
and having personal conversations with many of you
on the SOS calls and so on,
and watching how you're starting to live upstairs
in your kingdom leadership has been very encouraging.
And, you know, I had someone say to me the other day,
you know, for us to do the 10X thing,
we're gonna have to go to a new level of rest
so that the yoke,
because the Lord's gonna have to pull most of the load
on this.
And that's exactly what he wants to hear.
All right.
So, Glenn, do you want to go first?
And then, or Emily,
you look like you just unmuted as well.
Let's go Glenn, Emily, Jenny.
Okay.
Yeah, goodness.
I've taken a lot of notes,
lots to process with the Lord here.
This has been super encouraging to me.
Just picking on a few things.
I think just from a pure encouragement point of view,
I love that last comment that you were talking about
where that, yeah, all things work together for good.
Good, and his plans are immutable.
They're not gonna change, but the pathway to them will.
And I think that for me is very much a place
that I'm living in at the moment.
And I think that's a part of it.
I think another sort of key takeaway for me
is just focusing on the things I can shed.
I feel like I've accumulated a lot of stuff
in the last little while that started to become distracting
and reducing, and I needed to start
just getting, shedding a lot of stuff.
So one of my takeaways is to go and sit down
and spend time with the Lord and say,
okay, what are these things?
And just build a plan to shed things.
So that is great encouragement, yeah.
Oh, that's great.
Thank you.
Emily.
I definitely rest in the sense of taking more territory,
not inner territory, but like just going into this space
with this huge company and just in that creative,
I just feel his creativeness and his rest
really filling me today in this conversation.
And also the shedding piece that you shared
in the beginning, the tech, just being distracted
by social media and things like that.
And you just, your time goes by.
I think that's a helpful thing.
It just kind of makes things really nice and sharp
and in focus to get rid of like anything.
I'm always like, I don't want clutter.
I'm always making sure there's no clutter around
just because I don't like clutter, but yeah.
But the rest and the creativeness just today was so great.
And I'm just excited.
So that's my share.
That's great.
Thank you.
Jenny, we'll go to Vanessa and then Mark and then Bridget.
Yes.
So I feel like I kind of shared a lot of my takeaways
in that, but I'll summarize again,
really the circle of excellence and building my circle.
So, and I think it's been happening naturally
over the last several months,
but really building my circle of excellence
and staying in my circle and then shedding.
So shedding, it seems really easy to shed the tasks
that drain your energy.
And so shedding, I think thought processes
that drain my energy, I think is what I would like
to really go and have a conversation
with the Lord about after this.
What thoughts do I need to just,
I love a sentence that you gave.
I heard you say it several, several months ago.
And I really love this sentence because it's a cue for me.
It just really helps me, you know, when you hear something
and you can just let something go
or unlock something in your heart.
So it opens your heart to really receive the bigger thing.
And that sentence is, you're not obligated to that.
So when, so I love that Glenn brought up
the doubt management.
So if a doubt comes up,
Jen, you're not obligated to that.
Oh, so what am I obligated to?
Oh, I'm obligated to your confidence,
your peace, your assurance.
So switching it there, it just really just gives that cue
to switch the way that I'm thinking about something.
So that's what I'm gonna take away.
Oh, that's really good.
Yeah, it's so cool when you just say to people,
what do you think about this?
I don't have an opinion.
We get asked all the time,
what do you think of this ministry?
What do you think of this guy's book?
What do you think of this woman's coaching program?
Whatever, and I go, I have no opinions.
I only want his opinion on what we're doing.
Bless them.
I hope they do well.
Wish them well.
All right, Vanessa.
Then we'll go to Mark and Bridget.
Hey, Vanessa, so nice to have you.
I hope you've enjoyed your first session with us.
I was just going to say,
thank you so much for including me in this.
This has been really eye-opening for me.
It's been a totally different experience
than other mastermind sort of situations
that I've been involved in.
So this is very refreshing and I appreciate it very much.
So thanks.
There were several things that I took out of this.
One was the circle of excellence.
I go back to something often in my talk to myself,
which is just because you can do something
doesn't mean you should do it.
And so that was something that is important
to remind ourselves, I think,
as we're going through life and our business life
is just because we have the capability
of doing something doesn't mean.
that somebody else isn't better equipped to do it.
And the other thing is, when you first brought up
the whole 10x question, my mind sort of,
I mean, my immediate reaction was,
ah, 10x, that seems like so much to think about, right?
And so much to take on.
And I think a lot of people have that reaction
when you talk about 10x-ing something,
it's how could I possibly do more
or add more to my plate than I currently have?
And so then you went into talking about shedding things.
And I thought, okay, if I just flip-flop that
and shed the things that I don't need to do,
now I have the mind space to think about 10x-ing, right?
If I get rid of these other things,
now I can actually think about that
and it's comfortable to think about
instead of that reaction of,
I can't do any more than I am right now.
And so one of the things that I need to shed
that I spend a lot of time on is,
I can't stand, and we're probably a lot like this,
I cannot stand wasting time, it drives me crazy.
When people waste my time,
when I waste my time, it drives me nuts.
But I just realized throughout this conversation,
I'm not even sure what triggered this realization,
that the amount of time I spend
complaining about having my time wasted
is actually doubling the time.
That's so good.
So I'm actually like exacerbating the problem
rather than just dealing with it.
So that's one of the things I'm going to shed
is my reaction to wasting time,
like whether it's me or anybody else.
And then also having permission,
I feel like this conversation has given me permission
to ask the 10x question to all areas of my life
rather than just business.
Right.
Love that.
Thank you.
That was very succinct.
That was really funny.
Wasting more time by complaining about people
wasting your time.
Yeah, I love that.
That's great.
Okay.
Mark, and then Bridget, we'll wrap it up.
Yeah, that was great.
Yeah, I guess for me,
one of the takeaways is what we just originally discussed.
I didn't realize that,
it's funny how the Lord just takes you right to the point
when I was just kind of flippantly responding
to your request before.
It was just like, yeah,
just the whole area of faith for me right now.
And what the Lord is doing and asking me,
and who does he want me to become?
And kind of the other side of that,
and, or who do I need to become
to this next stage of my life?
I mean, well, my life, my business, whatever.
I guess maybe I should disclose a little more
because I've got things going on in the background
that just personal things.
I got engaged on February 14th.
Oh yeah.
Congratulations.
That's going to be big,
not only over in my personal life,
but she has a great business acumen.
So, I mean, we'd love to discuss business.
That's one of the things-
So you married your 10X, that's your plan.
Right, there you go.
There you go.
Very practical of you.
Very smart, if you can't do it yourself,
marry into it, it's all right.
Right.
And then the big question of shedding.
So yeah, I mean, that all comes through
with who I am becoming, you know?
So yeah, those are the things
that I want to spend some more time with the Lord on.
That's fantastic.
Bridget, thanks Mark.
Congratulations again.
Yeah, congratulations Mark, that's exciting.
I loved it today.
I think it's always encouraging.
And I think as much as one has those conversations
about shedding, you can have them over and over again
because you move up and then you realize
you've got other things that the Lord's calling you to.
So it's a good to, not necessarily every month
but just to kind of keep coming back
and checking in on that.
And I think one of my takeaways
is just remember of who you're becoming.
And sometimes we forget the distance we've moved
because we're so focused on where we are
and where we're going,
we forget the distance we've covered
and what you're becoming.
And I think something that Jenny said,
I think sometimes I second guess my decisions.
So it's a little bit of that doubt management
that Glenn was saying,
and I know it bothers Dion whenever we make a decision
and I come back and I'll say, but what about this?
And he's like, didn't we discuss this already?
And I almost think that sometimes the Lord wants us
to just take it for an answer and move on with it.
So I think it is a good reminder for me today.
That's really great. Back to the shedding, several of you brought that up.
So maybe just a closing comment around that.
What was helpful is you don't have to go into this like,
you know, excessive shedding structural thing in your life,
but maybe make it more a part of your lifestyle and maybe do it by quarter,
you know, so that you're you're not just shedding,
but you're trying to step into something in 10x, the two go together.
We shed something to free up the time
and effort so we can focus on what we're 10xing.
And if we're trying to 10x too many things or shed too many things at the same time,
they're unlikely to become permanent lifestyle elements.
We'll just find ourselves slipping back
to the old because we know it takes 90 days to really move something,
30 days to get the initial habits set, but really 90 day for it to become feel
like it's part of who you are, your natural lifestyle now.
So I do like Dan Sullivan's idea of doing this exercise every 90 days.
And I wonder if it's helpful if we could even set that up into the schedule.
Yeah, here in a circle where we go, OK,
reminder this week or this month, you know, whatever.
Do the do the shedding thing and the 10xing thing.
I think the people who grow the fastest are the ones who are the freest.
And so recently the Lord was gave me this
insight that has become very precious to me.
He said, when you find your freedom, you find your purpose.
And when you find your people, you find your focus.
Now, I know it's usually said I've heard it said like when you find
your people, you find your purpose, I think is much more than that.
I think from a kingdom viewpoint, when you find your free, it is for freedom.
Christ set you free.
He didn't set you free for service.
He set you free so that you can be free to fully choose him and he fully choose you.
For him, it's always relational, not transactional.
And I think that when I realized when you
find you have to find your freedom and the more you step into freedom,
the clearer your purpose gets.
So if you're feeling a bit foggy around the purpose area,
it's the freedom that needs the attention, not the purpose itself,
because I think we reason we have the foggy view is because we have some sort
of, you know, spectacles on that's clouded and we can't quite see.
And when we take them off, we take off the restriction.
We'll talk about that on Friday and Saturday at our limitless event.
We're running a what do we have over 8000 people coming to that so far and more.
It's going to be a big event for us.
And so with that, the limitless event, if you don't know about it,
if anybody wants to know about it, maybe, Jenny, I know it's not.
We didn't plan to promote it, but you can actually go to.
I'm sure Jenny can just drop in the chat there.
Yeah, thank you.
What the the limitless event, one of the big drivers we're going to talk about is
every limitation that you have in your relationship with God is learned.
And you learned it downstairs.
Every single one, God can't this, I don't do that, I can't, I'm not.
I'm this. Any of those limitations are all learned
and they all learn from downstairs.
You cannot use downstairs learning to create an upstairs lifestyle,
but you can take an upstairs learning and make a downstairs lifestyle for sure.
So I wanted to just give you this amazing freedom.
You know, even if you don't, even if you're new to the whole
processes that we're talking about here and as new people join all the time,
we kind of go through it again and again.
If you don't know how, you don't know which question to ask the Lord.
We always say questions is a great way
to to relationally engage with the Lord and to start your direct learning.
And if you don't know the questions, you can you can ask for help with that.
Lord, I don't even know what question to ask you.
Could you help me?
What's the question I need most now?
And that will come to you maybe straight
away or maybe a period of a few days or weeks, or you have a conversation.
Yes. I mean, that's the question.
That's the thing I need now.
So he'll even help you ask the question so that he can answer it with you.
And so for many of us, you know, it's a new approach, direct learning.
And so enjoy it because he enjoys your learning so you can enjoy it, too.
Well, let me take a minute. Pray for us.
And we're going to end it an hour early, which I'll give you your time back.
And thank you so much for for joining us today.
This has been a lot of fun for me and I hope helpful to you.
Father, you are amazing.
You're so kind.
So good and we're so comforted by the fact that your purposes are immovable
Thank you for your promise and now we can contract like writing an agreement. We can contract with you for your help
for your protection
Lord for you fashioning us into the weapon. You mean us for the fight you called us to
And then thank you lord that you just step in and do a whole bunch of stuff. Anyway, in addition
Thank you that you're in it with us
Thank you. We get to do it with you and that we don't have to do it for you
Lord, I love that you're setting us free
so I pray lord for everyone here for the people listening to the replay for such a clarity of freedom so that
They can have clarity of purpose
And lord, I I ask you that in this next month
That you would reveal yourself to us in that way for those who are going through the
Shedding process lord. I ask for such a liberty and freedom that comes from that process for those who
Who are focusing on what they're going to 10x with you next?
Maybe it's in their relationship with you even just confidence in hearing your voice
I ask lord that this will be a place of such freedom that will lead them to such clarity of purpose
I pray that in the name of jesus. Amen
Amen. Thank you everybody
Bless you. Bye