John Maxwell | “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” – John Maxwell (Legendary Best-selling Leadership Author) + TipTopK9.com Success Story

Audio Transcription

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zilmer. 8 kids co-created by 2 different women. 13 multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We took life, started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to give what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good news As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and Z up on your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re joined by a germaphobe by the name of Matt Klein. Matt Klein is with an organization called Oxifresh, O-X-I-Fresh.com. He’s obsessive about making sure your carpets are clean. He’s the franchise brand developer. He’s so afraid or so concerned about germs, he actually chooses to do today’s broadcast from about six feet away from the camera, maybe even 15 feet away from the camera. Matt Klein, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? I’m doing awesome. Thanks for noticing my unique setup at the moment. How far are you away from the camera? Four feet, five feet. Okay, because it feels like maybe you’re ten feet away, but you know, I like, the further you are away, it gives us a better perspective of what you’re doing today at the Oxifresh headquarters. I wanted to focus on one brief topic today while I have you. It’s kind of a shorter interview today, but I just wanted to focus on one thing. The calendar. We and I didn’t talk about it offline, so this is kind of fun. I wanted to talk about the calendar. What I have found is that successful people have a calendar, and people that are not successful don’t have a calendar. So for anybody who goes to Oxifresh.com and they buy a franchise from you, there’s 500 locations. I can tell you that the successful franchisees, they all know what they’re going to do today. Why? Because they have a calendar and a to-do list, they organize their day, and then they go do it. And the people that are not successful, not that there’s any Oxifreshes that are not successful, but people in general who are not successful, they don’t have a calendar and they don’t have a to-do list and they don’t know what they’re going to do today. Talk to me about the importance of having a calendar and a to-do list. Yeah, so I have my personal calendar that everything goes on personally and my business. It tells me where I can be so I don’t overlap. It’s very important for me to be on calls when they’re scheduled because other calls are coming up behind that. It’s also very important, same way I run my franchise, right? Like a customer thinks we’re gonna be there at nine, we gotta be there at nine so that I can actually manage the schedule more appropriately. That’s also why we don’t do windows at time, we do exact times for our franchise. But yeah, I mean, if you can’t schedule anything, I don’t know how you’re gonna be able to stay organized. If you are a busy person, if you’re a successful person, you’re gonna have multiple meetings and or things you’ll have to do in a day. And if you don’t put those on your schedule, I don’t know how you could possibly be organized enough to be successful. You’ll just drop the ball on so many things. John Maxwell, the best-selling author, we’ve had him on our show before, and we’re gonna feature him on part two of today’s show. He wrote 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. And he has said in many ways, in many different ways, he said, show me a man’s calendar, and I’ll tell you whether he’ll be successful or not. He said, just show me your calendar. This is the top, one of the most best-selling authors in the history of the world for leadership. And he’s just saying, hey, if you want me to tell you if you’re gonna be successful, let me just look at your calendar. Can you talk about that though? Because I mean, when you sit down with somebody who’s really struggling and you help coach them into success, that’s one thing you do with OxyFresh. If somebody’s struggling, you guys coach them into success. You help mentor people that want to be mentored. And a lot of times it comes down to looking at their schedule and where they’re spending their time. Talk about that. Yeah, because, you know, there’s going to be gaps in your schedule and those gaps could be filled with very productive meetings, potentially. They could be filled with things that you could do just to get your business off the ground better. Right? If you have, let’s say you start your day and you have three hours worth of things that you need to do, right? And that’s totally fine. That means you’re gonna have at least four hours or so where you’re doing nothing. Which means that’s gonna be time you’re gonna be spending on social media doing nothing. That’s gonna be time you’re just right in your own fridge doing nothing. That’s gonna be wasted with non-productive tasks that are not going to allow you to be successful, right? And so like, if you have big gaps of windows in your day where you don’t have anything to do, fill them with things that are going to make you better, either personally, like going to the gym, or actually business-wise, like calling on potential customers, or spending time with your employees and making sure you understand the gaps in their learning so you can train them how to be better employees for you. Right? Large amounts of time in your schedule that are filled with nothing will become nothing. This is so important for people to grasp, to marinate on, to think about. I’m going to pull up my calendar real quick so people can throw rocks at my calendar. So let me pull up my calendar, working my way over here to Google, working my way, navigating around here, clicking on the, okay, feeling the flow, working it, clicking it, clicking the calendar, calendar’s pulling up. Here we go. One second, folks. Here we go. There it is. Okay. So my calendar, this is my calendar, and this is what I’m doing today, and this is what I’m doing right now. This is what I’m going to do today. This is my calendar. This is my schedule for tomorrow. This is my schedule for the next day. Matt, I have decided what’s on my calendar, which would then imply that I have to say no to things that are not on my calendar. Can you talk about that? Because that’s why, again, I won’t mention what I’m talking about, but off air I was talking to you about an event coming up in June. It’s February. And the reason why I’m asking you about something potentially four months in advance, is because I know you have a busy schedule. I find that the more successful you are, the more intentional you have to be to say no to grow. Talk about that a little bit. Why do you have to say no to grow? Yeah, because at some point you have to decide what’s important for you. Those important things, like if it’s important to you to take three hour lunches and that’s fine, right? If you want to do that. But you are going to waste potential time that you could spend on growing your business, right? For me, it’s all about growing the business. And I have a lot of people I talk to about just becoming a business owner. And so if you’re not intentional about your schedule, it goes the same thing I just said. I mean, if you are intentional about actually being productive in a 30 minute time slot or an hour long time slot, it will be filled with nothing. It’ll be a void that doesn’t help you grow. I mean, there’s, you know, you should be, as a person that’s busy, you should be excited about a 15 minute window where you can just like take a minute, right? If you’re not excited, you know, and it’s because you’re actually productive. Like when you get done, like there’s physical, like wearing it out physically but at the end of my day I’m truly like excited that I’m a little bit exhausted because I’ve had that’s a productive day and I didn’t do anything physically but I had a lot of calls we got a lot of contracts done I’ve got a lot of reviews on my business by by motivating my employees right all of those things have to be scripted into my day or it will be lost completely every minute that’s not on my schedule is a thing that I’m going to just be like in la la land. I might like get some things done but it’s not going to be productive because I don’t really have a time frame associated to it. Like if I’m trying to get an email finished and it’s a really important email it’s going to take me a little bit, I should put that in my schedule because if I don’t that email might take me three days to complete. Now Matt I’m going to ask this question here. I’m going to pull this up on the screen so you can look at this for a second. I’ll pull it up here. This is just sort of something. Imagine that you at your physical peak, okay, how tall were you at the… You played Division I basketball. How tall were you at the physical peak of basketball? 5’10”, 5’11”, with shoes on, man. How much were you weighing with the most jacked you’ve ever been? The most jacked? 200. 200. So Tim Tebow here he’s 6’3″. How much do you think he weighed do you think? I mean when he was playing for the Broncos what do you think he weighed at that time what do you think? About 250. 250? Do you feel like if you had to I mean if he was like a cage match or a cage fight kind of a thing and you you’re in the ring could you could you could you put him in a kung fu grip and take him you think or no? No, I do not. I have a point. I don’t think anybody ever wants to have that interaction with Tim Tebow. I’m asking this question because you’re in Denver, that’s where Tim Tebow had that legendary season obviously playing for the Broncos, and I think one thing that you’re great at, and I hope everybody out there was learning something from this. You’re a very pragmatic guy. I love talking to you offline and online, because you’re just not going to get in a fight you can’t win. There’s just something about you that understands, and it’s even the way you converse with people. You’re just not going to get into a conversation that’s not… I watch you do it. It’s very… You’re efficient with the time, and I think there’s somebody out there that says, you know, I don’t want to buy an OxyFresh franchise. I don’t want to do that. I want to take over the world and I want to start an app and take over the world and you’re like yeah bro but your last two apps didn’t work and you didn’t take over the world and you know you’re 40 years old and you’re living with your mom and they go yeah but I want to take over the world I don’t have time for something like Oxifresh. I mean I don’t have time to buy a business that’s only 50 grand ish that I can run myself that creates time freedom and financial freedom. I got to take over the world. I see a lot of that. People that want to take over the world and open a chain of coffee shops, because they don’t have time to deal with a realistic franchise. Can you talk about that real quick? I do think that buying an OxyFresh, if we were playing baseball, it’s a lot like hitting a single. It’s a realistic thing. You can get on base. It allows you to earn some money. If we were playing basketball, I think an OxyFresh is a lot like a layup. It’s doable, you can do it, you get on the board. Let me get your thoughts on that. Yeah, I mean, there are people out there that have the mental fortitude and kind of stomach to just put everything, like doesn’t matter, failure, no matter what, like I’m gonna shoot for the stars. That’s a special person, right? I think that’s fine. For most people, they need to have a very pragmatic way of getting from one step to another and then getting to the next step. It’s got to be in a scenario where you’re not putting your entire family at risk. You’re in a scenario where you have very task-driven things that will help your business grow. That’s what we do at Oxyfresh. We’re not here to say you are going to become the best company ever made in America. We’re saying for you and who you are, with the time commitments that you have, here’s a realistic expectation of what you can do if you do these things every single day, right? And that might be getting two or three Google reviews in a day. That could be having a motivational conversation with your employee. That could be taking an hour out of your day and calling potential customers like property managers, building managers, right? Most people fail in small business because they have no idea what to do with their time. Right, so they do all sorts of, I’ve had people like call me and say you know I spent all week standing out door hangers I’m like what do you mean all week they’re like all week I’m like how many reviews did you get they go what do you mean I go we are in it we are doing things backwards at the moment right and so yeah for us we just want to make sure that the owners of these businesses that have never been owners of anything before understand very tangible tasks that they can complete without changing their entire life dynamic. Right, it’s gotta be doable. If you tell someone they’ve gotta get on a plane every single day and drive to a new state and meet new people and get reviewed, like that’s not possible, right? But if you can say, this is what you need to do, two or three reviews, talk to some people, have a conversation with your employees, right, you can actually run a successful business, that like you said, will hit a single today, and then you’ll be on second base tomorrow and then on third the next day and by the end of the week you might be able to get through the through the finish line. Brother I really do appreciate you carving out time for us and should you and Tim Tebow be in the same room in the not so distant future I will not suggest that a cage fight ensues but outside of Tim Tebow I think you can hold your own with most people so keep doing whatever you’re doing there in Colorado sir we’ll talk to you soon. Alright thanks. Take care, bye. What is the biggest mind shift that you had going from running a tip-top canine to franchising? So what was the big switch you had to do to make that switch over to where you’re now running it, doing it every day, but now trying to teach others to do it? Well, so doing my craft is really easy for me. I’ve been doing it for a long time, like 11 years or so now, maybe 12. Very crafty. Yeah, so doing my actual job is a lot easier than sitting down and literally stepping out every single little thing I’m doing and systemizing every single little thing. My wife or Clay would be like, hey, you need to make the system. I’d be like, oh, I want to train this dog. Oh, this one’s aggressive. I want to train this one. This one’s cool or whatever. So the systems weren’t sexy? No, not really. And then also when we first started, Clay just helping me with like the consistency of ads, the consistency of the group interview, he’s like a super consistent man. So just being consistent in every single little thing and systemizing every single little thing, even if it was boring, that was probably the hardest part. The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website, we’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. All right. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to bring up my good friend Ryan Wimpey, my good friend Ryan Wimpey, and his dog, Odin, this dog has the ability to eat me, so I’m sort of concerned. I’ll pass the mic to you, and Odin, you can have your own mic if you want, whatever you want, Odin. Okay, I’m a little bit afraid of Odin. Hi, I’m Ryan Wimpey. And I’m Rachel Wimpey, and the name of our business is Kip Top Canine. Our business is a dog training business. We help people with behavioral issues and teach their dog how to listen. When I was learning to become a dog trainer, we didn’t learn anything about internet marketing or advertising or anything at all. Just dog training. And that’s what’s so great about working with Clay and his team because they do it all for us. So that we can focus on our passion and that’s training dogs. Clay and his team here, they’re so enthusiastic. Their energy is off the charts. Never a dull moment. They’re at thrive. We’ve been working with Clay and his team for the last five months, two of which have been our biggest months ever. One, our biggest gross by 35%. Clay’s helped us make anything from brochures to stickers, new business cards, new logos, scripts for phones, scripts for email, scripts for text messages, scripting for everything. How I would describe the weekly meetings with Clay and his team are awesome. They’re so effective. It’s worth every minute. Things get done, we’ll ask for things like different flyers and they’re done before our hour is up. So it’s just awesome, extremely effective. If you don’t use Clay and his team, you’re probably going to be pulling your hair out, or you’re going to spend half of your time trying to figure out the online marketing game and produce your own flyers and marketing materials, print materials, all the stuff like that. You’re really losing a lot as far as lost productivity and lost time. Not having a professional do it has a real sense of urgency and actually knows what they’re doing when you already have something that’s your core focus that you already know how to do. You would also be missing out with all the time and financial freedom that you would have working with Clay and his team. We would recommend Clay and his team to other business owners because they need to be working on their business, not just trying to figure out the online game, which is complex and changing daily. So no one has a marketing team, too. Most people don’t. They can’t afford one, and their local web guy or local person that they know probably can’t do everything that a whole team and a whole floor of people can do in hours and not just weeks or months. There’s a definite sense of urgency with Clay and his team. I used to have to ride other web people, I mean really ride them to get stuff done, and stuff is done so fast here. There’s a real sense of urgency to get it done. Hey, I’m Ryan Wimpey. I’m originally from Tulsa born and raised here. I’ve definitely learned a lot about life design and making sure the business serves you the linear workflow, the linear workflow for us and getting everything out on paper and documented is really important. We have workflows that are kind of all over the place to the having linear workflow and seeing that mapped out on multiple different boards, it’s pretty awesome. That’s really helpful for me. The atmosphere here is awesome. I definitely just stared at the walls figuring out how to make my facility look like this place. This place rocks. It’s invigorating. The walls are super, it’s just very cool. The atmosphere is cool, the people are nice, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Very good learning atmosphere. I literally want to model it and steal everything that’s here at this facility and basically create it just on our business side. Play is hilarious. I literally laughed so hard that I started having tears yesterday. And we’ve been learning a lot, which, you know, we’ve been sitting here, we’ve been learning a lot, so the humor definitely helps, it breaks it up. But the content is awesome, off the charts, and it’s very interactive. You can raise your hand. It’s not like you’re just listening to the professor speak. The wizard teaches, but the wizard interacts and he takes questions, so that’s awesome. If you’re not attending the conference, you’re missing about three quarters to half of your life. You’re definitely… It’s probably worth a couple thousand dollars. So you’re missing the thought process of someone who’s already started like nine profitable businesses. So not only is it a lot of good information, but just getting in the thought process of Clay Clark or Dr. Zellner or any of the other coaches, getting in the thought process of how they’re starting all these businesses, to me, just that is priceless. That’s money. Well, we’re definitely not getting upsold here. My wife and I have attended conferences where they up, where it was great information, and then they upsold us like half the conference, and I don’t wanna like bang my head into a wall, and she’s like banging her head into the chair in front of her. Like, it’s good information, but we’re like, oh my gosh, I wanna strangle you, shut up, and go with the presentation that we paid for, and that’s not here. There’s no upsells or anything, so that’s awesome. I hate that. Oh, that makes me angry. So, glad that’s not happening. So the cost of this conference is quite a bit cheaper than business college. I went to a small private liberal arts college and got a degree in business. And I didn’t learn anything like they’re teaching here. I didn’t learn linear workflows. I learned stuff that I’m not using and I haven’t been using for the last nine years. So what they’re teaching here is actually way better than what I got at business school and I went what was actually ranked as a very good business school. I would definitely recommend that people would check out the Thrive 15 conference. It’s the information that you’re going to get is just very very beneficial and the mindset that you’re going to get that you’re going to leave with is just absolutely worth the price of a little bit of money and a few days worth of your time. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zillner. Eight kids co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books. She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and T, up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom, now we here We started from the bottom, now we here I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14 and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place we’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year. In October 2016 we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you thankful for thrive and your mentorship And we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now and said the business running us Just thank you. Thank you. Thank you times a thousand Excuse me thrive nation. I have to take this call real quick Hello and thank you for calling clay Clark’s podcast and taxidermy. If you’ll kill it, we will make it look great for a very long time. How can I help you? Hey, Clay, John Maxwell. How are you doing today? Uh, great. I didn’t recognize the number, and so I thought you might have been calling about my other side hustle there. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Now, 4, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Thrive Nation on today’s show, we introduce you once again to Mr. John Maxwell. And John, we have a live studio audience in the background who is fairly excited for you to be on the show. Wow. That’s our office staff here. Hopefully you can hear them on your end. Oh, I can hear them. Wow. They’re wound up. They’re ready to go, aren’t they? Absolutely. Absolutely. They were excited for me to mute my mic and to just let you talk, my friend. Again, we’re so excited to have you on the show. Since we’ve talked to you last, you’ve been working on a new book here. Can you tell us about the new book? Well, I’d be glad to. Thanks, first of all. You do just such a great job on Thrive Time, and so thanks for having me. This is an interesting, I’ve written a lot of books, but this one, the creation of this book was very interesting in how it happened. 25 years ago, well about 28 years ago, I wrote a book called Developing the Leader Within You. And then afterwards, I wrote a book called Developing the Leaders Around You. And my publisher, Harper Collins, came to me and they said, John, we’d like you to, if you would, I mean it’s 25 years old, we’d like you to revise developing the leaders around you. And I said, oh I’d be glad to. So I went back into the book, and I hadn’t of course looked at it for a long time, I’d written it 25 years ago. So I went into the book and I thought, oh my gosh, this isn’t very good, I mean wow. I’ve learned so much more than what I mean. It’s always disappointing to read a book that’s not very good, but it’s extremely disappointing when it’s your book. It’s kind of like, wow, I’m the author. I had just developed and grown so much in the 25 years. So when I started revising Chapter 1, there wasn’t one thing in the original book that I used in this one. And I got to the second chapter, there was a story and a quote I used in that one. The third chapter, again, nothing. And by the fourth chapter, I thought, I’m not revising a book here, I’m writing a new book. And so this is how really the Leader’s Greatest Return really evolved. It was going to be a revised Developing the Elite Around You, like a 2.0. I’ve learned so much and I’ve grown so much. In developing leaders, when I wrote that 25 years ago, I was kind of a young leader and I didn’t have a lot of experience in developing people, but I’ve had an amazing amount of experience in the meantime. I just wanted to write a much better, more mature book on how do you develop leaders because I’m passionate about this. Because when people walk to me and they’re in a leadership position or they’re a leader and they say, Clay, they say to me, John, I really want to become a great leader or a better leader. What do I do? And I tell them that you become a better leader by developing better leaders. and there’s a self-development part of my leadership which is very essential, but and that adds, there’s an addition there. But when you really develop other leaders and you develop better leaders, there’s a multiplying, compounding, ridiculous return from that. So I’m very excited about the book and I’m very excited about the book because there’s a lot of leadership books out, but you won’t find very many leadership books that talk about developing other leaders. Most leaders, Clay, don’t develop other leaders. They just develop themselves and then they have followers. They’ve got a lot of followers and that’s good. Nothing wrong with that. But but there’s no multiplication with followers. There might be some addition, but there’s no compounding. But the moment that you start really working and developing intentionally other leaders, then everything begins to compound. So I’m very excited about the book because of that. One of my clients, Pastor Brian Gibson, is a big fan of yours. He has four campuses. His church is called his church. He has four campuses. And I know he has a ton of leadership questions for you. He has thousands of members. But one question that I would ask on behalf of Brian and all the pastors out there listening and all the business leaders is where do most people get it wrong when it comes to attracting and developing and multiplying leaders as opposed to followers? Well where they miss it is, well there are a couple of things that they miss. First of all Clark, you know there are some leaders that they don’t want other leaders around them. You know there are some leaders that they don’t want other leaders around them. You know, there are some leaders that they don’t want other leaders around them. They’re insecure and they’re maybe a little bit threatened by other people who maybe have a better idea. And so there’s a certain amount of leaders who just want followers. That’s one. We miss it in the fact that developing leaders is not easy. If you yourself are a pretty good leader, attracting followers is very easy. You can do that very quickly. But there’s a difference between attracting followers and developing leaders, because followers, they’re just looking for somebody that has a vision and they wanna get on that leadership train and take the trip. But you start developing leaders. I have often said, you know, leading leaders is like herding cats. I mean, it’s just not an easy thing to do. They don’t fall in line. They don’t get up every day and say, what do you have for me today? They’ve got their own ideas and they’re doing their own thing. And so many, many, many leaders don’t develop leaders because it’s much more difficult. It takes more time, it takes more energy, and you’ve got to be a pretty good leader for another leader to follow you or to be developed by you because they’re not going to do that if you’re not a good leader yourself. Like begets like. The law of magnetism in my book, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, just says we attract who we are, not who we want. So for me to develop other leaders, I have to be one good leader myself and then I have to put up with the uphill issues of developing leaders because it’s not easy. My friend Art Williams who started Prime America, I love it when he would develop his leaders and he built that incredible company. He would tell his leaders, he’d say, I’m not telling you this is going to be easy, but I am telling you it’s going to be worthwhile. There we go. There we go. And that’s what this book is all about, Clay. You know, chapter one of your book, you write about identifying leaders. Find them so you can develop them. What can readers expect to find in this chapter, and where do people get it wrong when it comes to identifying leaders so that they can develop them? Well, it’s in the area of awareness of what a leader looks like, Clay. Because I have people all the time that say, you know what, we’d like to raise up a bunch of leaders in our organization, or we’d like to, we need to recruit some leaders. And the question I always ask them is, well, I love that. I say, do you know what a leader looks like? 90% of the time they want leaders but they have never had a clear picture of what a leader looks like. So in the book I talk about you’ve got to have a clear picture. If you don’t know who you’re looking for, you don’t know if you’re going to find them. And it’s kind of like when I go to the airport and people don’t know who I am so they have some chauffeur to pick me up. So that person is in baggage claim and they’re just standing there by the bags and they’ve got their hand and arm in the air and on the end of their hand they’ve got my name. I get off the plane, get through security, go down to the baggage area, I look for hands in the air and I see my name, I go up and say, ìHey, I’m John Maxwell.î They’ll look at me and this whole time they’ll say, ìOh, I found you! And I want to say, you didn’t find me at all. I found you. All you did was stick my name in the air and hope. I could have walked right by you and you would have never known that you missed me because you didn’t know what I looked like. For all the chauffeurs out there, I just want to put this out here. Just look for a beautiful man. Just look for a beautiful man and you’ll find John Maxwell. Just look for a beautiful man. There he is. Okay, back to you, sir. Look for an old man with a smile and you’ll have him. But Clay, they didn’t find me. They just put my name up there and honestly, they hoped. They hoped I would find them. And I hope it’s not a strategy. But I have other people, they pick me up and they either have a book with my picture in it, and so they know what I look like. So all of a sudden they say, Hey, you’re John Maxwell. Hi, I am. Wow, how’d you know me? Well, I’ve got your picture here. Well, they found me because they knew what I looked like. In Chapter 1, I talk about what does a leader look like, and I talk about awareness and I talk about 6 A’s there that you kind of look for that just helps you know what a leader looks like. Chapter 1 is all about helping the reader know what a leader looks like so they know who to go get. For a guy like Pastor Brian Gibson, and I want to harp on this because his church is exploding. I mean it is growing. His church, they have a campus in Amarillo, one in Owensboro, two other locations. I mean, they are just growing on a very practical level and maybe even on a daily schedule level. I know you’re a big fan of having a calendar and a very intentional agenda. How does a guy like Pastor Brian go about developing leaders? Should he have like a weekly class? Is it a monthly class? Is it a daily thing? How can he develop leaders. He develops a leadership culture. He creates an environment as a leader that is conducive for people to learn leadership, practice leadership. That’s also a kind of a magnet that attracts people who like to lead. And he sets that leadership culture up. A leadership culture, wow, it’s kind of like Chick-fil-A who has done such an incredible, outstanding job developing a leadership culture. A leadership culture is a place where people really can find leadership development conducive. Mark Miller, who’s a key executive at Chick-fil-A, he’s a good friend of mine, he literally says their slogan at Chick-fil-A is, leaders made here. And how does that happen? This is a fast food restaurant, how does that happen? Well, you develop a leadership culture by letting people, I talk about this in chapter three a little bit, about inviting them to the leadership table and allowing them to come and be a part of an environment of leaders. And you develop leaders, and develop a leadership culture by letting them practice leadership. So leadership is, you know, it’s not learned in a classroom, I mean, although you can learn characteristics of a leader, but leaders become leaders because they get to practice leadership. Leadership culture is a place where you take people and give them a chance to lead and say, okay, here’s your responsibility and I just empower you, go for it. You really just help them engage in practicing leadership of which they learn what’s good, what’s not good. Let me give you an example of that. We have a non-profit organization, EQUIP, we have two non-profit organizations, John Maxwell Leadership Foundation and EQUIP, that does transformation of countries. We’re invited by the presidents of countries to come in and teach values to the country to help bring positive change. So we’re in three countries now. We’re getting ready to go into two more countries. We have literally 22 presidents of countries who have sent us letters. They’re on the waiting list. We have a very effective process of knowing how to bring positive change in the community. And we start by getting permission from the top of the eight streams of influence, president or government, and then business, education, media, arts, religion, health, and sports. And we get buy-in from them that they’ll let us come in and do these leadership roundtables. And we have millions of people in these roundtables now. It’s an amazing story, but I don’t want to get sidetracked when we’re talking about how to develop a leadership culture. So one of the things we do is we have a junior high curriculum for kids, three years of curriculum for seventh, eighth, and ninth for on values. And the whole thesis is when a person learns good values and then they begin to live them out, they become more valuable. They become more valuable to themselves, they become more valuable to the family, they become more valuable to their community. Their whole value increases because they’re learning and living out good values. And so we do them in round tables, and so we do them in classrooms, again, round tables of six to eight, but the kids lead and facilitate the round tables, not the teacher. And so what’s happening is these kids in school, and this is not before or after school, this is in the regular curriculum of a class, they’re practicing leadership. And all of a sudden teachers are just seeing kids, some kids are popping up and they’re saying, wow, this child has some leadership potential. Well, how did they discover that? They let them practice leadership. And so when anybody comes and says, I want to have a leadership culture, you’ve got to give them, you’ve got to do two things. You’ve got to let them practice leadership and you have to equip them. Chris Hodges is a very close friend of mine and has Church of the Highlands and has an enormous church. I think it’s the second largest church in America. I think the average is about 55,000 to 60,000. They have many campuses. You were talking about Brian having four. He has maybe 15. What they do is at each campus, it’s another chance for them to put people in leadership positions to practice leadership. He said, John, we found two things. If we let them practice leadership, and then we speak leadership into them as far as we see these things happening to you as a leader, he said, we just find that they’re just raising up and we’re raising up hundreds of leaders. So you’ve got to develop a leadership culture. Leadership culture is where there’s a bias towards leadership, and everybody gets to practice it. When you say practice, would you advise maybe to let somebody lead maybe a youth group service or to lead like a home fellowship group? All of it. Yes, yes, yes. All of it. All of it. All of it. Whatever, see what I tell people, whatever you’re doing has leadership potential. Leadership is the ability to influence people. So let’s look at your job and ask ourselves a simple question, how can you do your job well? And while you’re doing your job well, how can you influence people in a positive way? And one of the ways we do, we help people say, we wanna empower you to make decisions. So you’ve got a receptionist out there, but we say, okay, yes, you have a job of kind of directing traffic in this company and in and out of the lobby, yes, that’s your job, but now let’s talk about how can we help you to lead? Well in this job And what I do is I let them have the job for a few months, then we come around we say okay Talk to me what well, it doesn’t work here. You know what what do you love about you? I mean, what’s not working? You know what frustrates you this front desk here And they’ll tell you what frustrates them and almost everything that frustrates them is because they haven’t been empowered to be a leader. They may say, I’ve got a person waiting in the lobby sometimes for 30 minutes and I’m kind of embarrassed about that. So we say, we’re going to empower you to do some leadership with them. Go over there and serve them. Ask them, can I get you a cup of coffee? And we just empower them to make decisions on the job which positively influence people, which is practicing leadership. And every job has that. And the problem is too many times we look at our job as a job and don’t see beyond the things that we’re required to do. And in fact, in the book, there’s so many practical things I teach is the fact that in our companies, I have seven of them, but in our companies we teach our people, when we give them a job we say, now we want you to do your job with excellence, but we really want you to work yourself out of this job. When we give them a job we say, now we want you to do your job with excellence, but we really want you to work yourself out of this job. When we give them a job, we say, now, we want you to do your job with excellence, but we really want you to work yourself out of this job. So you do excellent, but while you’re doing excellent, go start developing people to do your job and find somebody of that group that you develop that can do this job really good. And when you can develop somebody to do your job, you come and see us, and if we agree with you, we’ll give you another job. And the saying has been, work yourself out of a job and I’ll give you another one, but if you can’t work yourself out of a job, you have to take it away from you. And that just develops a huge leadership culture. Mark Cole, who runs all of my seven companies, has had nine different jobs. He started in the stock room, but he worked himself out a job, worked himself out of a job and practiced leadership, practiced leadership, and he practiced leadership all the way to the top. Now, John, I want to ask you this next question with the subtlety that only a megaphone can provide. You’ve written 84 books. I repeat, you’ve written 84 books, and you own seven companies. How do you create the time needed to write your books? What is your process of writing your books? What is your process of writing your books? I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. I think it’s a great question. How do you create the time needed to write your books? What is your process for writing the books? There are so many business leaders that say, I can’t find the time to do it. I’m just overwhelmed. I can’t find the time to write my book. How do you? How do you find the time to write 84 books while running 7 companies? You’ve written 84 books! Yeah, I have. Wow! Okay, okay, back to you, sir. Which is nothing except it proves you’re old. You can’t write that many books if you’re young. It takes a while. So it just means I’m an old man. But also when you ask how do I do that, I’m very intentional. And every day I do five things. Every day I read. Every day I think. Every day I file. Every day I ask questions. And every day I write. I’m very intentional. And every day I do five things. Every day I read, every day I think, every day I file, every day I ask questions, and every day I write. And the reading, the thinking, the filing, the asking questions are all resources for me to write books. So every day, every day I read and I take what I read that’s good and I file it so that I don’t lose it. And then I think about what I file and I think, okay, how can this help people? Sometimes I immediately know what the answer is and so I put it in somewhere where it’s a potential book somewhere down the road and I ask questions continually because whatever I’m writing on, whatever book I’m writing on, I ask questions on that subject. So when I was writing The Leader’s Greatest Return, when I was with the leader, I’d say, now talk to me how you develop leaders. What do you do? And I just ask questions and I get more answers and get more enlightenment and become more aware. But then the key is every day I write. And somebody says, well, what do you mean by every day you write? What I mean is every day I write. Where do you write and what time of the day do you write? Well I write everywhere because every day I write and I travel. So I write in hotel rooms and I don’t even use a computer, I just use a legal pad and a four color pen. And I prefer, I don’t always get to do this, but my preference is writing in the morning. I’m a morning person, so, oh, four o’clock to five o’clock in the morning sometime there, I’m up. And, oh, four o’clock to five o’clock in the morning sometime there, I’m up. And, oh, four o’clock to five o’clock in the morning sometime there, I’m up. And I get in some good writing. Nobody wants to talk to me at 4.30 in the morning. Oh, yes. Real quick, I love this. I love this, John, because I’ve interviewed so many super successful people, and all of you guys are up before 5 AM. Can you help somebody out there who says, John, I want to be successful. I’m just not a morning person. What would you say to them? Well, I tell them that they can be successful and not be a morning person, but they increase the odds of not doing that well. Because first of all, if you’re a night person, then write between midnight and three in the morning. I don’t care. Nobody wants you at that time either. But you’ve got to ask yourself, what am I? Which I happen to be a morning person, but here’s the key. The fastest person doesn’t win the race. I was with Gail Devers having dinner one night, and of course she was a big Olympic champion, won medals in three different Olympics, and probably a female track star in America, probably the number one athlete in Olympic history. So at the end of the meal I said, Gail, I said, I’ve been thinking about the dinner. I think if you and I ran a hundred yard race, I could win. She said, you’re kidding. I said, no, I’m not kidding. I think I could win. She’s with her husband. She said, did you hear him? Yeah, I heard that. I heard that. Anyway, I got her competitive juices going. She’s about ready to take her high heels off in that restaurant and go take me out in front of it. We’re going to run a block. I mean, she’s ready to let me eat dust. And I got her right to the tibia point. And I said, Gail, listen to me carefully, because I have thought about this. If you and I had a hundred yard race, I said, I think I could win if you gave me an 80 yard headstart. And she started laughing and she said, well, of course, if I gave you an 80 yard headstart, you could win the race. And by the way, Clark, I wanted to say 70 yards, but I wasn’t sure I could win with 70 yards. But hey, at 80 yards, this fat boy could get across the line first. I knew that. And here’s the whole point. This is what I want your listeners to catch today. It’s very simple. The fastest person doesn’t win the race. It’s the one who gets started first, always. Always That’s good. You mentioned that you you write your your books Methodically using a pen and a pad you’re using a pen and a pad is that the technology you’re using to write your books typically Yeah, that’s just a legal pad a four-color pen black blue red and green ink and Each color means something different. And yeah, I just you know when when I finish a book, I’ve got, you know, 240 legal pages written. And that’s how I do it. How many times do you typically edit a book before it’s ready to go? I mean, how many times does it go back between you and an editor before it’s ready to ship? Twice. Twice? Just twice, yeah. Okay. You are blowing my mind. My mind might explode I love this Well it first of all, I’ve done it a long time and and And uh, you know pretty well, you know, I don’t give them a product until it’s already pretty good Yeah, you know done and i’ve got a team i’ve got a i’ve got a team of three people that help me with the book And and I mean we’re all it’s different eyes looking at the book and different input and so it’s not just me and you know if the four of us can’t get a book, a manuscript pretty well done for the publisher that is pretty good then we’re in our own business probably. Well John we have so many of our listeners that love your books and one of your listeners who, one of our listeners who really loves your books. His name is Corey Minter, M-I-N-T-E-R, and he owns a company called Trinity Employment Specialists. These guys do staffing for hospitals, so hospitals needing doctors and really high-level professional staffing. And so, Corey wanted to ask you a few questions on today’s show. So Corey, meet John Maxwell. Mr. Maxwell, it’s great to meet you. I can’t believe I’m talking to you right now, actually. It’s my privilege, Corey. Nice to meet you. I think I’m the one that’s privileged. I want to jump into this real quick because we only have so much time. I love asking really great leaders this one question. What are your limits? And so that’s such a big, deep question, but for this show, how do you set your limits, specifically with your schedule? First of all, Cor, I probably am going to disappoint you. I have a lot of limits. I think the first thing that a leader needs to do is be very aware. I’m very aware of what I do well, and I’m very aware of what I don’t do well. Basically, I do three things really well. I lead well, I create well, and I speak and communicate well. Those are the three things I do well. So I do those three things, Corey. Period. And people say, well what do you mean you just do those three things? What I mean is I just do those three things. Everything else is done by people that are just better than I am. And they come around me. The people around me complete me. The people around me compliment me. The people around me allow me to stay in my strength zone so that I can be productive. And I’m incredibly grateful for those people. My executive assistant, Linda, has been with me for 32 years Mark Cole who runs everything with me He’s been with me for 20 years my Charlie Wetzel the lead guy on my writing team’s been with me for 24 years I you know I They just really make up all the difference and and and so I and I allow them to I don’t Try to control. I I just basically say you do this better than me, so you do this. And then we come together and we just add value to one another. And I just stay in that sweet spot. And so when people ask me, again, how can you write that many books? Well, it’s very simple. I do it every day. Well, why do I do it? How can I do it every day? I don’t have 17 things to do. I do three things, and I do them well and then I bring everybody else around me and they do the rest and then I point to them and I give them the credit because they’re the ones that deserve the credit. Great leaders take the vision or the work from me to we and so I don’t have any me work, I have we work. Everything that you see that I do is a result of a lot of people who care for me and are very competent that just allow me to be good. Really, Corey, it’s that simple. John, I want to ask you this because I’ve heard you say that we all have uphill hopes and downhill habits. What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean for that is that I start to say everybody, most people have hopes for their life and dreams for their life. And all those dreams and hopes, whatever they are, they’re all uphill. It’s not easy. It doesn’t happen fast. If success were easy, everybody would be successful. And so it’s all uphill. All the good stuff, everything worthwhile, it’s uphill. There’s nothing worthwhile. If you have a good marriage, it’s because you worked at it. Marriage is difficult. Building a business is difficult. It’s all difficult. There’s nothing easy about it. I don’t understand anybody thinking, well, it’s easy to make a lot of money. Well, if it is, then everybody would have a lot of money. If it’s easy to have a great marriage, then people would be married, I mean, you know, for 50 years. And it’s not easy. So it’s all a struggle. And by the way, to go uphill, Clark, you have to be intentional. Right. You don’t accidentally, no one ever accidentally climbed a hill. I mean, nobody ever got to the top of the hill and then looked at their friends and said, now, my gosh, how did we get here? It’s intentional. You are very intentional. You’ve worked uphill to write this new book, so The Leader’s Greatest Return. And in chapter two of this book that you worked tirelessly on to create, you talk about attracting leaders and inviting them to the leadership table. What does the process of attracting leaders look like and where do you see people getting it wrong? Well, I think where people get it wrong is that I think leaders stay too isolated. And there’s something beautiful about a table. I mean, I love a table. I could go on for a long time lecturing just on the beauty of a table, whether it’s a table where you sit down and have a meal together with friends or whether it’s a table where you sit down and think of ways to improve people’s lives, have a creative table. But there’s a leadership table, and that’s where you invite people to sit down and talk to other leaders and discuss the subject of leadership and ask questions, and I think it’s a very engaging term. And in this chapter, I talk about everybody needs to create a leadership table, and that’s just a place, literally, where potential leaders, they’re not there yet, but potential leaders can sit close to better leaders. And while they sit there, they can learn from them, they can listen, they can participate, they can ask questions. And so I just think it’s very important in a leadership culture to not exclude anyone. Just, you know, let them sit at the table. Now, once they start practicing leadership, they begin to set themselves apart as far as who are what you might call your A-list leaders and your B-list leaders, maybe even your C-list leaders. But they begin to set themselves apart, but they don’t set themselves apart until they till they Get to practice leadership, and I say the first step of practicing leadership is let them get into a leadership environment where? They hear lead discussions because what happens is people grow into the conversation that you have around them and so if I’m around conversations where leaders are talking about solving problems and creating solutions. After a while, I’m going to think about solving problems and creating solutions. So it’s that environment. I love this second chapter of the book because I’ve never read anybody else talk about it, but it’s just a very simple, practical idea to have a table and you get somebody new on your team, say, hey, you know, sit for a couple of months at our leadership table and let them hear the questions and let them participate and very soon you’ll see the ones who kind of lean in toward leadership and you’ll see the ones who kind of lean back and lean away from it. They’re not anti, it just doesn’t attract them. And so you begin to visually see who your potential leaders are going to be and then that’s when you begin to invest time in those potential leaders to get your return. Well, John, we’ve got a kind of a virtual leadership table here and Corey has another question for you. He’s just a huge fan of yours. And Corey, Corey, just feel free to see if you can paint John Maxwell, the leadership guru into a leadership corner, see if he can fight his way out of it with his ninja leadership skills. I’m going to try. I’m going to try. Thank you, Clay. At this point in your life, John, who do you most want to help do what? Just Cubans or Americans? Who do you think? Well, first of all, kind of my mantra is that I add value to leaders who multiply value to others. So, everything I do has a bias and an intention toward developing leaders. So, Corey, I have a non-profit organization that for 19 years just trained leaders around the world. We were pretty successful. We trained 6 million leaders in every country in the world and became the largest leadership training company in the world. And when we finished that, we went back to the table and said, okay, let’s help these leaders know how to lead now. So they know leadership skills and leadership principles. Let’s help them become transformational and bring positive change into people’s lives, which is beyond just knowing how to lead. So we now are focused on transformation in countries. We started seven years ago in Guatemala as our first country. We only come into the country when the president of the country invites us in. And we’re now in three countries. We’re going to go into two more this year. And we have 22 presidents and prime ministers of countries that have invited us by letter in to come in and do leadership transformation. And so we do that through small groups, through what we call transformation tables, group of six or eight. And over the course of time, they discuss 16 different values. And what we’ve discovered is when people learn good values and they live them, it begins to make them more valuable, makes them more valuable to themselves, makes them more valuable to their family, to their community. And so we’re doing country transformation and then next year I’m going to launch community transformation in America. I have a coaching company that has 30,000 coaches. It’s the largest coaching company in the world in 162 countries. We add, oh my gosh, we add 150 new coaches every week. Wow. And so it’s amazing. If any of your listeners want to know more about it, just tell them to go to johnmaxwell.com and look up the – it’s called the John Maxwell Team. But I’m mobilizing those people. Jack Welch and I had a conversation several years ago in which we were talking about legacy and he and I came to the same agreement that legacy is not in a company or an organization, it’s in people. You continue your legacy through people and so I literally started the John Maxwell team which is our coaching company to literally, literally to develop a legacy of leadership and values. So we’re going to start community transformation next year in America and we’re going to mobilize those coaches to be catalytic in their communities to bring about transformation. We’ve got curriculum of roundtables for adults. We have leadership curriculum for junior high kids. We’ve got over a million and a half kids going through our curriculum in junior high right now and it’s about values. And so that’s my passion, Corey. If there’s one thing I’m putting my time in, it’s transformation of countries, and then I want to bring it back to America because the answer is not going to happen in government or in D.C. It’s going to happen when people take their own communities back and say, I’m going to make a difference right here where I am with people that I already know. And so it’s very exciting, Corey. As much as you read and hear my stuff, you need to become one of my coaches. You need to quit fooling around. I need to get busy, right? No, John, I want to ask you this real quick. You talk a lot about the power of intentional living. I’ve heard you talk about it, write about it, you know, you’ve definitely talked about it. And what happens, I find as a consultant for people, I work with a lot of churches and business owners, is a business owner says, you know what, I’m going to be intentional. The pastor says, you know what, I’m going to be intentional. And then they get to work at, let’s say, 7 a.m., they’re bombarded with 13 hours a week of emails on average. They’re bombarded by got a minute meetings, they’re bombarded by everyone’s got a different opinion. What advice would you have for the pastors out there who have a church of a thousand plus members and they’ve become reactive? They used to be proactive now they’re very reactive. Because you come from the ministry world, what advice would you have specifically for the pastors out there about being intentional about their church after they grow over a thousand members and it can become easy to become reactive by default? Well, that’s a great question, Clark, and the answer is that you have to be intentional in your priorities. Just living an intentional life, I can intentionally go do errands every day and say I know what I’m doing, I’m doing errands intentionally, but there may be no return there. So, this is gonna be very helpful. When I went to San Diego, and for 14 years I pastored a large church. In fact, it was written up as one of the 10 most influential churches in America. I sat down with the search committee before I ever became the lead pastor there, and they asked me questions for three hours. And I answered their questions. And finally, they said, we’re done. Do you have any questions? I said, well, I just have one. I said, you know, we’ve covered most of the stuff. But I said, this is a very important question, and it may take us a while to answer it tonight, but I’ve got to have an answer. I said, if I become the lead pastor of this church, what do I have to do that no one else can do except me. That’s the question. Now this is a huge question. This will change everybody. All of your listeners, I don’t care what business, whatever you’re doing, this question will change your life. And of course in the beginning they gave me a whole bunch of stuff that I had to do and I followed the founding pastor. So if anybody knows anything about a founder, founders do everything. And I knew I couldn’t build, the church had stagnated for a dozen years. I knew the problem of the problem was that they weren’t intentional in their priorities enough. And so it was, that became a two-hour discussion, Clark. And when we finished, when we finished, basically they said I had to be responsible for the health of the church. That’s fair. They said I had to be the primary communicator on the weekends. That’s fair. They said I had to obviously be responsible to live a good life, a good moral life, et cetera. Only I can do that. That’s fair. And then they said I needed to be responsible to develop the staff, and that’s fair. And that’s the only four things I had to do that I couldn’t delegate, equip, empower someone else to do. So now that’s on my list. That’s my list. Maxwell has to do those every day, be intentional with them. Everything else is not on my list. Everything else, I’m going to find people, equip them, develop them as leaders, and they’re going to have it. It’s going to be theirs. And so I spent the first 18 months getting all those other things handled by other people of which I didn’t do any of it, and then I just stayed in my sweet spot of those four things. And I never had to be reactionary because I had everybody. You get reactionary when you don’t have anybody else to carry the load except you, and that’s a leadership issue. Hey, that’s the reason I wrote the book, The Leader’s Greatest Return. You’ve got to develop other leaders to help you carry that load. John, you know, a smartphone can make people dumb. Again, a smartphone can make people dumb. According to Nielsen Media, the average person is now interrupted by, or interacting with their smartphone 11 hours per day, which to me seems just crazy. Eleven hours per day. What would you say to a business owner out there or a leader of some kind who has found themselves surgically attached to the smartphone, which is interrupting them constantly? What would you say to that business owner who’s trying to lead a staff meeting but can’t stop looking at their phone and all the emails coming in, all the interruptions, what would you say to them? I would tell them that they don’t prioritize well and they’re very discourteous to the people that they’re trying to give their attention to. What would you say to that business owner who’s trying to lead a staff meeting but can’t stop looking at their phone and all the emails coming in, all the interruptions, what would you say to them? I would tell them that they don’t prioritize well and they’re very discourteous to the people that they’re trying to give their attention to. What would you say to that business owner who’s trying to lead a staff meeting but can’t stop looking at their phone and all the emails coming in, all the interruptions, what would you say to them? I would tell them that they don’t prioritize well and they’re very discourteous to the people that they’re trying to give their attention to. engine to it. And I mean, this isn’t a complicated question. You know, every distraction keeps a person from having traction. Traction is to pull in for a cause, and distraction is to pull away from the cause. the call. And so I mean I have no idea why people would do that except the fact that they’re discourteous to other people that they’re with. I mean when I see people they’re trying to talk to me and they’re looking at their phone a dozen times after a while I look up and say, maybe we need to shorten the conversation up. Do you want to talk to the phone or you want to talk to me? But let’s make a decision. If you want to talk to the phone, I got other things to go do. That’s powerful. But you know, it’s ridiculous. So, I want to say it’s stupidity, but it’s probably just discourteous. And so, when people have their phone attached to their, I mean, I’ve got an iPhone and I got people wanting me, when you have seven companies, you probably have enough people who’d like to have your attention for something. So you’ve got to say, for the next three hours, I don’t even have my phone with me. It’s not complicated. It’s very easy to do. I always tell people they get distracted because they’ve never gotten enough traction on what they really want to accomplish in life. When you know what you want to accomplish in life, you really don’t care about that other stuff. True. That is powerful. You are just full of knowledge bombs. I want to respect your time and we have a chance here for 90 seconds and two final questions. Corey, you have one more question for John Maxwell. Thanks Clay. This is a Corey show today. Oh man. He’s a huge fan. Hey, and thank you Clay. I really appreciate it. Corey, you need to be a coach. Go to JohnMaxwell.com. I’m going to zoom my internet there as soon as this show is over. Hey, if you were a coach, I’d certify you. You’d get all these questions answered a lot quicker than being on Clark’s show. Go ahead. I’m on there. I’m having fun. I’m having fun. I love it. I love it. You have moved over into the business world, but you’re a man of faith. What is the best advice that you would like to share with other businessmen who are also very strong in their faith, but they work in a secular world? Well, I love that question. I honestly wish I had a narrative to discuss it with you, Corey, because it’s the world that I live in and it’s the world that I love. And I would say three things quickly. One is you unconditionally love people, period. End of story. And so I said, well, what does it mean to unconditionally love somebody? It means that you don’t put any conditions of love on them. You love them, who they are, as they are, where they are, period. Discussion’s over. That’s the first thing. Because you can never be salt and light into a secular community if you’re drawing lines and judging and trying to fix people. I love it. Christians love to fix people. I don’t know. Last time I knew Jesus saved. But anyway, they’re trying to fix people. So unconditionally love people. That’s number one. Number two, become excellent in your field of business. In other words, with fellow believers, the relationship we have through Christ pulls us together. That’s not true in the business community. You don’t get a relationship first, you get respect first, and then you get the relationship. And you get respect for being able to help people and provide and meet needs and being excellent and exceeding expectations. So unconditional love people, get respect through exceeding expectations, and number three, intentionally add value to them every day. And this is what connects you relationally to people when they wake up one day and say, you know, John is just, he’s an asset to me. He just, he’s an asset to me. He’s constantly helping me and making a difference in my life. That’s the relational connection you get. Then hopefully, in the right time and the right place, you have an opportunity to share faith with him. But those three things are essential. John Maxwell, I appreciate you so much for taking time out of your schedule to invest in the lives of our half a million listeners. It’s just been an honor for John Maxwell Part Two. Again, thank you so much. Thank you, Clark. Have a great day and blessings to all your listeners. And if you’re out there today and you’ve learned something, I encourage you to buy The Leader’s Greatest Return. Maybe you need to not buy a regrettable burrito today at your local convenience store. Maybe you need to fast for one day in a row. Save the 20 bucks. Buy the book The Leader’s Greatest Return. I’m not going to say, John, I’m not going to say people out there are being cheap if they don’t buy the book, but I would just say some would suggest I should say that you’re being cheap. If you don’t buy The Leader’s Greatest Return, what an incredible book. Pick it up right now. John, you take care, my friend. Thank you, Clark. Blessings. Happy New Year. Thrive Nation, that was the goat of leadership development, the number one, the greatest of all time in the field of leadership development, John Maxwell. You know, a lot of times people get fired up about what somebody says and then they want to get a tattoo of their favorite Bible verse and their favorite quote. I want to embroider those knowledge bombs on my forehead. The stuff he just taught was awesome. I mean, he talks about how as a leader you’ve got to turn your smartphone off in your staff meetings, or you’re being discourteous, or prioritizing. He talked about turning your phone off in the meetings. He talked about how to develop leaders. He just explained to you that he gets up at four in the morning to write his books. He just explained to you every day he does five things every single day. This show was hot. However, it was Napoleon Hill that once said that action is the real measure of intelligence. Again, action is the real measure of intelligence. So don’t be just a hearer of this show. Because Thomas Edison once said that vision without execution is hallucination. Remember, action is the real measure of intelligence, according to Napoleon Hill, and vision without execution is hallucination, according to Thomas Edison. So let’s not hallucinate. Let’s not be unintelligent. Let’s go out there and implement what we’ve learned. Let’s be both hearers of these words and doers of these words. And I just, I encourage you to take notes today, put it into your calendar. What gets scheduled gets done. You can absolutely live an incredible, epic, super successful life, or you can just be the guy who knows a little bit about everything, but who never actually implements anything. Let’s go out there and be hearers and doers. Share this show with a friend. And now, without any further ado, let’s end this show with a big Thrive Time boom. A big boom. Because boom stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. It’s big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum and now with any further ado here we go three two one Ah yes, before the rooster crows Ah yes, it’s time to rise and grind Ah yes, uh uh I wake up at three to get it all done Got money on my mind and my watch number one Gotta touch the world cause I am a Christian In it for the long game or nothing Get rich quick, nah, I don’t do it But if you got a real good I’ll help you pursue it Like Robbie Snyder I’ll be saying you can do it You can do it, you can do it You have to seize the day and cover deep, I’m sorry You ever wanna make them Benjamin’s? Success requires self-discipline, self-discipline, self-discipline I just said it three times in a row, in a row Cause if you’re looking for a real hero, hero You gotta look into me and my bro Will you be a victim or a victim-o-o I think we’re missing it all, how this all The resources you need aren’t very far You gotta get three jobs like I once did Target Applebee’s and direct TV Which meant I never watched TV Cause I was on my grind like a 2-3 Or like that 12 to the TB Do you feel mad? Like a petting zoo Stick to your goals like glue What you’re waiting for, Santa and an elf? This just in, you could be helping yourself. Say no to the handouts, cause they hurt your pride. Or you could be out working on other guys. What? Or you could be out working on other guys. Who? Or you could be out working on other guys. Yes, ah yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Ah yes, before the rooster crows. Ah yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Ah yes, everybody sing it now. Oh yes, oh yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Oh yes, before the rooster crows. Oh yes, it’s time to rise and grind. Oh yes. Uh, uh, verse two gets short and life is two. We better get started because there’s no redo. 38, 80, great, I’m half dead, dude. I’m half dead, dude. Well, hell’s bells. I’m going to go take a nap. I’m going to go take a nap. Whoa.