EntreLeadership - #136: The Most Excellent Way to Lead

Episode Date: February 29, 2016

We are diving deep into the heart of great leadership with Perry Noble, author and founding pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. Perry’s church has grown from a group of 15 people meeting in a living room to more than 30,000 weekly attendees at multiple locations across the state. Perry is a true student of leadership and is sharing his innovative approach. Whether you lead a business, a nonprofit or a ministry, this conversation is for you. Podcast Survey Entre-Defined Webinar InfusionSoft Leads Workbook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are coming to you from the Music City. Hope you're doing well out there. We're so grateful for the download. Fun episode today. Let me give you the quick rundown.

We're going to take a survey. That's right. We always want to know what you think. We ask you all the time to give us feedback through the email, podcast at Entreeleadership. But we've got a survey. First time we've ever done this for our podcast listeners. So I'll tell you about the details.

Super important, super easy to take part in it, and we're going to incentivize you as well. Our feature conversation with Perry Noble, senior pastor of New Spring Church. Now, folks, this is one of the largest churches in America, but don't turn off this podcast. If you are not a fan of church, you don't call yourself a person of faith. Trust me, this is a leadership interview. This is a leadership conversation that, that will absolutely apply to you no matter where you lead. So it's going to be great fun.

He's got a new book out. We'll tell you more about that. And ask the coach. John Falcons comes back in as we talk about family business. Questions around that important topic. What a great month it has been is we've really taken a deep dive into this all-important topic. We've also got some great information coming to you from InfusionSoft and from our Entree leadership team. So let's get right to this.

I mentioned that a survey is coming your way. Now, this is super important because we really actually want to know what you think. We want to serve you better. We're not on autopilot here. So here's what you do. It takes about five minutes. Entreleadership.com slash survey. That's the website, entreeleadership.com slash survey.

As I mentioned, takes less than five minutes. We're going to give you about two weeks to get this done Friday, March 11th, the deadline. And the incentive, if you fill it out, it's a $100 Amazon gift card. one of you is going to win $100 from Amazon. This is fantastic stuff. So that's the incentive. But here's the thing. Let me just make this plea.

If you are somebody who listens to this podcast on a regular basis, that means on some level we're providing you value because you keep coming back. And here's the thing. This is your chance. This is your chance to fill out the survey and say, here's what I think. We care what you think. We're doing this to serve you. This is a free resource.

The audience is growing. We're loving this community. And so we want to take this thing the next level. Please help us out. We'd love for you to do it. And again, giving you the incentive, five minutes to win a $100 Amazon gift card and make this podcast absolutely as good as it can be. That's why we do this. Entreleadership.com slash survey.

Entreleadership.com slash survey. Or you can also get to the website, Entreleadership.com slash podcast. That's the whole podcast area there on the website. you can get to the survey that way as well. So two ways to fill it out. Give us your thoughts and we'll tell you more when we get all the survey results and how we're going to continue to serve you at a whole other level. Our feature conversation in this episode is with Perry Noble.

Now, I've known Perry almost a decade. Perry is one of the best communicators in America. Pastors one of the largest churches in America, New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. Very innovative guy. And this is a guy who is essentially leading a huge church. community in multiple municipalities, all starting from Anderson, South Carolina. Very innovative in their leadership approach. This is a guy who's a student of personal growth, a student of leadership, been a friend of

Dave Ramsey for a long time, comes to a lot of our events and sits there with his senior leadership and takes notes. He has a heart for leaders. And as I said at the top of the episode, don't you tune this out? Because as we try to do all the time on this podcast, we know that there are leaders in business, there are leaders in nonprofit space, leaders in ministry space. We're all leading. We're all trying to take things to the next level to fulfill a vision that we have been given

or had the opportunity to caretake. And so this really matters. He's got a brand new book, The Most Excellent Way to Lead, Discover the Heart of Great Leadership. This is a great conversation. Get out your pens, pencil, something right with, and write on. Let's get right to it. Learn from Perry Noble. Perry, it's great to have you on the podcast, longtime friend of Dave's, and I love the perspective of a pastor,

even though we're talking to primarily business leaders, entrepreneurs. I don't know that there's anything more entrepreneurial than a pastor, specifically those that start a church from scratch. Would you agree with that? Yes, sir. It's so awesome for me to sit back as a regular listener of this podcast and listening to business leaders talk about concepts. and I'm like, hey, that works in church. I mean, I'm going to buy that book or listen to that thing again because that's really awesome. Yeah.

And so this is great because you and I saw each other at one of our events. Your church graciously hosted one of our Chris Hogan retire-inspired events. And we were talking, you've got a brand-new book. We're so excited to talk about this because I love the title. The Most Excellent Way to Lead, the subtitle, Discover the Heart of Great Leadership. So before we unpack some of the stuff in the book, as a pastor of one of the largest churches in America. You get opportunities to write books all the time.

You're writing sermons every week. Why a leadership book? This book actually, I don't know, exploded out of me. It's the book that I just, I had so much fun writing it. And it's because I'm a long time John Maxwell fan, as you are. And John, years ago, I remember I heard him say, at a conference I was at, everything rises and falls on leadership. And I was the 20-something-year-old guy that kind of knew everything.

And I was like, well, I just don't think that's true. And then when I planted our church in 1999, I just became a student of anything that was growing, anything. I didn't care if it was a business. I didn't care if it was a church. I didn't care what denomination they were. I didn't care if they were Presbyterian or Pentecostal or Baptist. I did not care. I just became a student of whatever group.

And the one thing that I've noticed is, you know, John was true. Everything rises and falls on leadership. So I have been on this journey to try to become a better leader. And this book is just me saying, hey, here's some things that I have learned along the way, and I'm currently learning as we go right now. So this is an ambitious title, and it begs the question. So what is the most excellent way to lead? In short, how would you describe that?

So the title comes from a Bible verse. But I want to pause right here and acknowledge that we may have some podcast listeners that maybe they're not a Christian or they're not a Bible person. And I just want to say that's okay. I'm not trying to convert anybody with this podcast. I'm simply saying this is something I learned from the Bible. And even if you don't think the Bible's true, you can still read it because I don't think Harry Potter really happened, but it was a great.

great book. True. And so I just, I don't, I don't want people to, like, turn the podcast off or whatever because it's like, oh, he's quoting the Bible. Yeah, but it's really good stuff in the Bible. And so Paul says at the end of 1st Corinthians chapter 12, and now I will show you a most excellent way. And then he goes into 1st Corinthians 13, and he talks about love.

Now, for years, evangelical Christians have kind of taken that text and used it in their marriage ceremonies. He's like, okay, love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. And if you look at the way that the book of Corinthians is outlined, though, Paul's a leader. He started a church in Corinth.

He's writing a letter to that church addressing some problems. And it's almost like nobody really knew what to do with First Corinthians 13 because First Corinthians 12 is all about leadership. First Corinthians 14 is all about leadership. And it's almost like Paul paused and said, you know what? In about 2,000 years, evangelicals are going to need some verses to get married to. So let me write them something down real quick and let me kind of keep going. Because when the Bible was originally written, there were no chapters, there were no verses.

It was just one, it was like a letter. It was like a document. And so it hit me one day reading through 1st Corinthians 13. If you replace the word love and put the word leadership in there, that really is the most excellent way to lead people. You know, that's fascinating. I think you're spot on here because I think it's important to point out. with a pastor on the line, this is risky. But I think it's important to point out that Paul is never married.

So when he's writing this letter in between two other letters that you assert are about leadership, I don't think that's a leap that you're making. Here's a guy who's never married. He has no idea how to love in a marriage type of way, correct? Right, right. And I tell people, if you had First Corinthians 13 in your wedding vows, that doesn't mean you're not married or you misused or anything. I mean, it's a beautiful passage of scripture describing love.

But at the end of the day, what I believe he's trying to tell the church in Corinth, and this works at the local business or the biggest corporation, how you treat people is ultimately going to determine your leadership legacy. Boy, that's so good. Okay, so we're going to dive deep, but I want to run through the chapters for the listeners here, specifically those of you who aren't big Bible readers. And again, as Perry said, that's okay. It doesn't bother us at all.

but you literally break down 1 Corinthians 13 and those are the chapters of the book, patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, not proud, does not dishonor others, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, does not delight in evil, rejoices with the truth, always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. So that's just a glossary, if you will, of how you break this down for leaders. But let's get right into it here. you hear me run through that list, and I don't think any leader goes, well, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's a bad idea. I don't think anybody says that. But how do you help business leaders practically apply these truths? So the whole thing about love is patient. I'll take you all the way back to, you know, just about everybody you meet has a, I worked there in high school job. Well, I work just about everywhere in high school. I remember working at Little Caesars. And you had to put 24, four pepperoni's on a large pizza.

This stuff just sticks in my mind for some reason. Not 26. 24. Which at the time, Pizza Hut put 48 pepperonies, but we put 24 on ours. A little bit of trivia there. So there was a manager that would legitimately stand behind me and count the pepperonies that I was putting on the pizza. And I remember having a conversation with him one day going, hey man, I got it. Like I can do 24.

Like, I've got it. He was like, well, you know, I just want to make sure you're doing a good job. And I just remember thinking, that dude is severely limited in his leadership because he's counting the number of pepperoni's a teenagers putting on a pizza. And he, like if somebody put something on the pizza that was wrong, this guy would lose his temper. He would throw things. And eventually, I loved the Little Caesar's pizza, but I quit because this guy was a maniac. And I just realized, you know what? He wasn't patient with me, but I should be more patient with other people.

And that's not a Bible thing. I wouldn't even a Christian when I realized that. I was like, I just, I've got to be a patient person because people don't see what I see, think what I think, know what I know. And then there's some things that they see think and know that I don't know. And so that's why that first chapter was the hardest one for me to write about patience because I'm probably the most impatient person in the world. And even in writing this book, learning that patience is a process.

And I think if you ever truly discover how to be a completely patient person, Jesus will probably come back and take us all home because I don't think any of us are going to arrive. I agree with that. And you know Dave well. You know the book, Entree Leadership spawned this podcast, the book, Number One, New York Times bestseller. Dave created the term through a desire to create an internal class to teach leaders. But he didn't want to just teach leadership. He loved entrepreneurship.

And so we have an audience full of entrepreneurs and leaders. And you know, by nature, I think they're just mostly impatient people. Maybe a higher dosage of impatience than most. And so I want to ask you a question that I love to ask of leaders. And I struggle with this. So I'm going to school on Ken Coleman right now. I'm terribly impatient. Yet I know that I've got to persevere.

I got to get up every day and I've got to persist. I've got to persevere. anybody that's ever achieved anything of note has figured that out, yet we're impatient. How do we manage, Perry, the tension that exists between patience and persistence? I got to get up every day and I got to hustle. I got to chop wood. But at the same time, I got to wait. Scripture says, wait upon the Lord.

How have you personally dealt with that tension? How do you deal with it? I really do believe, you know, what Dave says, focused intensity over time multiplied by God equals, you know, just exponential growth. And that's not me trying to be a Dave Ramsey fan. I'm just telling you that formula works. So we first started our church, Ken. I was probably the most impatient person in the world. And in my mind, we were going to go to 500, like, right out of the gate. We had 15 people in the living room. Well, three months into this thing, man, they tell church planners.

One of the things that they tell people that start churches, which are like you said, it's kind of like a business, is you need to plan on losing your entire core group within the first two years of your church plan. Like they'll go somewhere else. But I'm an overachiever kin, and I lost them in two months. It didn't take two years. So two months in, we haven't grown. We're not seeing anything.

And, you know, six months in, we're kind of struggling through. We were struggling to pay people. And I'm impatient because I'm like, I think this is a great idea. I think this is the best. I think we need to go for this. And I'm pressing, I'm pressing. And we grew, but then in 2002, we grew from 500 people to 1,600 people in six weeks. And nobody knows why.

There wasn't a billboard campaign. There wasn't anything on the internet. This back when we used to do dial-up, remember that? So it wasn't an internet thing. There wasn't a billboard. There wasn't a direct. mail piece. It was, but looking back, it was just a group of people that every day they got up and said, you know what, we got to chop that tree down, and we're going to swing till we're tired, and tomorrow

we're going to come back and pick up the axe and swing to we're tired. And I think a lot of times, whether it's in business or in church or marriage or anything in life, when people aren't becoming who we want them to be or they aren't seeing what we want them to see, instead of sitting down and explain it to them, we just allow our impatience to take over. I tell people all the time, you can't hold people accountable for unspoken, unrealistic expectations. Boy, that's true. You know, Perry, one of the things that I think that business leaders can best learn from pastors

is the unique dynamic that you have in your space where you have to rely on volunteer so much. So in the church and nonprofit leaders understand this as well. Just give us a snapshot so people can get what I'm talking about. Best guess, how many volunteers are serving New Spring on all of its campuses all across South Carolina and all across the country on a given weekend? How many volunteers? On a given weekend, the number of volunteers that we have serving at all of our campuses, I would probably say around 5,000. Okay. So that's a lot of people to organize, to ask to serve.

They all have families. They all have jobs, all these things. And pastors and folks in the nonprofit space have to learn how to lead people who don't have to be there. Right. Talk to us about that. Because you've got leaders in business, Perry, that essentially that person has to be there if they want to collect checks. So it's a little bit more of a, well, they're there because there's a little bit more of a tie-in. What can business leaders learn from nonprofit and pastors on how to lead people who don't have to be there?

Here's the deal with people, Ken, and it took me a while to learn this. I think I'm still learning this. Everybody has a story. Like, everybody has a story. And once you know people's story, it becomes a little bit easier to lead that person. So for example, if you're leading volunteers, and let's say I've walked our staff through this, let's say you're having a six o'clock volunteer meeting at the church, right? And you're getting all your volunteers in a room to discuss new policies or cast vision or whatever. And a volunteer walks in at 620. Well, as a staff member, inside a business or inside of organization, when the volunteer shows up late, we're angry. How dare you disrespect us?

How dare you show up late? I can't believe you would have the audacity to walk into a meeting 20 minutes late. Oh, my gosh. But when you look at it through their eyes, they got off at work at 5 o'clock. They got stuck in traffic. They got home. They had to get their kids fed. They had to get the babysitter there.

They had to give instructions. They had to drive to the church. They didn't get any food themselves, so they stopped it to drive through really quick, and they whiffed down some chick-fil-a as they're pulling in the parking light, and they're there. The win is they're there. All we saw was they were there 20 minutes late. What they're seeing is I busted my rear end to get to this meeting.

And so seeing it through their eyes really does change the way we lead people. Boy, that's huge. And so if you're leading people like that, then it's treating the people that have to be there. in the same way of valuing them, it comes down to value. Is that the key takeaway there? Yes, sir. If people feel valued, then they'll show up every day and work hard.

If people feel used, they'll eventually leave her to just go away. Okay, so I love the subtitled, the book, Discover the Heart of Great Leadership. Whenever you start talking about heart issues, you know, it's just tough, we're just human. And so as a leader, really understanding the heart of a leader so that you can then impact the hearts of the people that are following you. It sounds great. And this is a biblical prescription, if you will. But what are the tremendous challenges for leaders, Perry, who they've got to have a healthy heart themselves if they're going to lead through that heart, correct? Oh, my gosh, yes.

The toughest person that I have to lead is the guy I shaved with in the mirror this morning. that guy's an idiot. And I'm talking about myself. Yeah, so you've got to make sure that your heart is right. And then you've got to, listen, you could be a manager of Chick-fil-A or on a gas station or whatever. This stuff just works is if you will take the time to become students of the people that you lead, it will give you an amazing perspective. For example, recently I had some of our top leaders on a staff retreat.

And I shared with them my five biggest pain points in ministry. And I said, hey, guys, in ministry, these are the five toughest things I've ever had to deal with. And Ken, it was real transparent. It was very raw. And at the end of it, I said, I want every one of you to send me an email about your biggest pain point in ministry. And every one of them emailed me back. But some of the stories that I got, like we have a staff member who was engaged to be married to a girl.

And they were at the lake one day and she fell out of the boat and she drowned and he couldn't save her life. I didn't know that story. Like I did not know that story. So first, I emailed him back. I said, number one, I didn't know the story. But you know what that helps me do?

That helps me to be a more sensitive leader to that dude because he's experienced something in his past. And I know that now. I know that. All right, let's step into the tension here for a moment because I think inevitably when you have an audience that's large people are going to be listening to this and some people are going

that's just not me. I've not led from a great heart. I'm not leading maybe with my heart. I'm not considering the heart of those that I am leading. Is it too late, number one, and number two, if it's not too late, how do they switch? How do they make the switch in your opinion? Well, it's not too late, and I'm evidence of that. I don't, man, for about 10 years, the first 10 years of starting this church, you know, we had, 15 people in a living room. 10 years later, we had about four or five campuses. We're running 10 to 15,000 people. And man, I was a bulldog. I really was. I'm going to be the first at the office and the last to leave. And if you leave at 502, then I'm kind of judging you in my mind a little bit. I was a pretty tenacious leader, pretty demanding, pretty controlling, actually.

that I went through a serious bout with like anxiety, worry, fear, even depression. And I got some counseling. And the counselor helped me to see, hey, man, if you will get healthy, your entire church, your entire organization will get healthy. And the reason you guys aren't healthy right now is because you're leading from a place of being tired, being depleted, being angry, and being frustrated. And when those are your four motivations for leading, always going to get, you can get some short-term gains, but long-term, you're going to look back

over your ministry and just see a wake of dead bodies. And so I was like, man, I got to get, I got to get healthy. And once I got healthy, I started stepping to conversations and making some apologies, asking a lot more questions rather than making statements. And it's helped out. It really has. I think I would say the culture of our staff in the past two to three years is 100% better than it was two to three years ago. How important is it to you now with the experience you've had and you've seen tremendous growth? How important is it that as you write a book about this, the most excellent way to lead, discover the heart of great leadership, how important is it early on for leaders that you hire that you know are coming into a leadership role or maybe you develop them internally to a leadership role? How important is it that they have a lot of these attributes early on versus teaching them and modeling it to me?

them. It's which comes first, the chicken or the egg, right? Right. So when we hire, and we're not scared to hire young, like we've hired people right out of high school, but they've got to have a bit of all of these qualities. But here's the cool thing about this book. All of these qualities are coachable. All of these qualities are, because I specifically wrote the book with questions at the end of every chapter that you can ask about yourself, and then you can ask your team. Now, you can only ask your team these questions if you've got some pretty thick skin.

But we're looking to bring somebody in. Like, for example, I spent some time with a guy the other night. He's 24 years old on our staff, and he is absolutely one of the most phenomenal leaders I've ever seen Ken. I mean, this guy is world-class. And just encouraging him, I'm saying, hey man, you're 24 right now. Joseph in the Bible, Old Testament, Joseph, Jesus, and King David didn't really hit their leadership stride until they were 30. All three were 30. I said, so you're 24 years old. You're six years away from even hitting your stride.

Man, keep developing, keep learning, keep growing, keep reading, keep diving in. And I'm convinced that this guy is going to be one of the, I mean, he will far exceed my ability to lead. Wow, that's so great. All right. So final question for you. It's one of my favorite things to ask our guest to do, and I'm really thrilled about this for you. You know our audience well. You listen to this podcast regularly. With this book in mind, the most excellent way to lead, discover the heart of great leadership. If every listener read this book and then you were able to sit down and have a lunch with them and knowing that they had read the book, what would be one thing that you would share with them from your head, from your heart, to encourage these? leaders. Value the process. As leaders, and I know this man, from leading a church, and this doesn't matter if you're leading a church or you're selling sandwiches or you're on a sporting good store. We are focused, hyper-focused on the numbers. Everything's going up and to the right. And listen, I'm a numbers guy. You and I were talking right before the podcast where I'm going to have to delete this stupid app off my phone that tracks my sleep because I'm waking up in the middle of the night just to see what my sleep percentage is. And so I'm a numbers guy. I'm driven. I understand all of that.

But at the end of the day, if the process to get more numbers includes a shortcut and integrity, if it includes running over people, if it includes abusing people or misusing people, you may get to where you think you wanted to go, but the price you have to pay on the backside just isn't worth it. So I would just say fall in love with the process of being developed as a leader. Because David, going back to King David in the Bible, he was anointed as the king of Israel at like 15 or 16 years old. He didn't actually become king until he was 30. There was a process involved. Joseph was 17 years old when he was told, you're going to do great.

things. He was 30, there was a 13 year, pretty much prison sentence for him before he stepped into what he had. And so if you're in the middle of a process and you're not getting the results that you want, and every leader knows that tension, stop and literally ask what am I supposed to be learning right now? Because it's those lessons that you learn in the middle of the process that you will never, ever, ever forget. That is so good. love that. I mean, it hits me right in the chest. I've said this a million times we get so obsessed about the next that we miss what we need in the now and ultimately potentially sacrifice that very next. Yes, sir. That's so good. You know, Joseph, I love that you mentioned Joseph a couple

times. I got to ask you this. I'm extending the conversation because I love a pastor's perspective on this. Outside of Jesus, Joseph is the one person I want to most hunker down with and hang out with because I cannot fathom how that guy made it through 13 years of essential purgatory after being given a promise and he stayed with it. Tell me your perspective on that. I mean, is he not just the ultimate stud when it comes to just enjoying and staying in the moment? Well, think about this. And Ken, it's interesting that you mentioned that because I've got an e-book out that's completely free. I mean, when I say free, I'm not talking free 99, and I wrote it about Joseph.

Because at 17 years old, he has this dream that everybody's going to bow down to him, that he's going to be somebody great, he's going to be somebody awesome. And so he declared the dream to his brothers. And that's the only way that dream is good is if you're the one that everybody's bowing to. So all his brothers get mad at him, right? And so he gets sold into slavery, and he becomes a slave in the house of Potipher. Now, Potipher is a dude in Egypt who leads the Egyptian military. He's a military leader, a political leader in Egypt. Now, think about this. If God were going to prepare you be the second in command of the largest army in the world, where's the best place to teach you how to do that? College or Potipers' house? Potipers' house. So Joseph is a slave in Potipher's house, and then some things get wonky, and he gets thrown into prison. right, but he gets thrown into a political prison. Well, he's about to become the political leader of the largest nation in the world. So where's the best place for God to put Joseph to teach him about

politics and how to be a leader? Political prison, because the conversations he would have been overhearing would have been political conversations. The things that he would have been participating in would have been political in nature. So when he's 30 years old and he steps into his leadership position, he's ready. And he's ready because he's endured 13 years of a difficult process in order to step in and become an amazing leader. Then later on, his brothers do come in, and his brothers do bow down to him.

But when they do, it took 13 years for Joseph to understand leadership's not about me. It's about God using me to do something greater than I ever imagined. And so his dream was true. It just wasn't about him. It was about who God was shaping him to be. folks, that last answer, that was worth the entire podcast, and you can take church off Sunday. I know Perry doesn't agree with me on that, but that was church on the Ontario Leadership

podcast. So great. Hey, let's drive people to the e-book, Perry. How do we do that? You can just go to Perrynoble.com. That's my website, and you'll see a button right there that'll point you straight to it, and it's a free e-book. And the title is what I would say to Leaders Under 30.

And so if you're a Leader Under 30, or if you lead a Leader Under 30, You can go pick it up. And when I say it's free, dude, I'm telling you, it's free. All you got to do is, you know, like put in your email and we'll email it to you. And let me just add another demographic, a giant demographic to that list. If you're just somebody that feels like you're in the process towards that significance that you know you're supposed to be in and you're just a little impatient, it's not happening fast enough, that e-book will set you free. I'm telling you, I'm going to go download it.

Perry, this is great. Perry Noble is the guest. and dear friend of Dave's, good friend of mine, and what a great leader. We're talking about one of the fastest growing churches in America, the new book, The Most Excellent Way to Lead, Discover the Heart of Great Leadership, wherever books are sold, so go check that out. Perry, man, thanks so much for being with us on the podcast. You can't wait to see you in person again very soon.

Thanks, Ken, and thanks, Eric, the producer. Both of you guys are amazing. Okay, this is fun. We love when our guest give you special offers. for the next six months, Perry's team's going to give one copy of his book away every month. So this will end after August. Great way to sign up, perrynoble.com slash giveaway. Very simple, perrynoble.com slash giveaway.

He'll sign the book for you. And this, again, takes just a matter of seconds to sign up. So do it if you want to win the book. And again, the book, the most excellent way to lead. Discover the heart of great leadership is everywhere books are sold. So go check it out. Speaking of great value, you know, we love a lot. our friends at InfusionSoft in this entire month of February, they have been offering you a free

leads workbook, leads as in your lifeline. How do you generate leads? How do you convert leads? How do you keep them long term? This is very simple. It's a download and it's completely free. Infusionsoft.com slash leads. Infusionsoft.com slash leads. I don't know why you wouldn't check it out. Download it. It's Absolutely free, no strings attached, and see how you can get better at turning leads into business that sustains for a very long time. All right along, it's time for another installment of Ask the Coach with John Felkins. Well, head coach means the head coach of all things, All Access, and we've got some great stuff going on. In 30 seconds, tell people if they've never heard about what we're doing with All Access, give us a snapshot. All Access is our coaching program where we help people take Entree.

leadership and implement it successfully in their business so that they can grow their leadership, that they can grow their team, and even their profits. Wow, that's really fantastic. I think you only took about 15 seconds. I'm not sure I don't have a clock in front of you, but that was really impressive. I'm saving it for later, Ken. That's right. Well, here's the deal.

Here's why we have coach John Falcons in, and we like to take your questions, as always. Here's a quick reminder. You can send us your questions, podcast at entreleadership.com. That's the email address, podcast at entreleadership.com. First question from Jenny, what are the most important, principles to consider when preparing for the transition from first to second generation in a small family business. There's really three things.

The principles are this. They need to have intentionality. Everything needs to be thought out and not reactionary. When they put somebody in a new role, when they make a change, when they make a shift, they've got to think about what they're doing and do things on purpose. That's number one. Number two is there needs to be a lot of clarity. They've got to talk about this stuff.

So often we see Ken where people, I don't know, they're scared of the issue, they're worried about how people are going to react. And so they don't talk about it. And then it comes to surprise to people. And that's a recipe for disaster. So it's just better to talk about what's going on with the family dynamics and the transition early and often with people. And then the third thing is, is people have got to know what hat they're wearing. What I mean by that is, is if it's Thanksgiving and you're at the family table, table, you ought to be talking about family stuff and not business stuff. And when you're at work,

you ought to be talking about work stuff and know that you're in the right role at the right time and not get those two things confused. All right, love that. Next question is from Sherry. Many of my team members are freelance and not really employees. How do I reward for performance in that situation over just paying a fair rate? It doesn't really need to be any different with somebody that's a 1099 versus a W2, right, a full-time team member or somebody that you're contracting with. You should still reward people for great performance. Now, do you want something written in the contract? Do you want something formalized?

Maybe not. Maybe not. But if they do a great job, there ought to be line of sight between their performance and their pay. So a $50 handshake, $100 handshake, take everybody to lunch, whatever it is, you should reward people for great performance. The whole idea of, you know, using freelancers versus full-time, it's a great idea, a great way to get ramped up, to use people just part of the time, but you've got to be really,

really intentional about how you work with them, how you vet them, how you get them on the team, and then, of course, how you compensate them for great work. You know, John, there are three really unique aspects, attributes of our all-access program. Great content, the content from Dave, and then through you and the coaches and our speakers at live events, and then through the different multiple platforms of all access, so it's great content. And then we give you great coaching. That's what you and your team of coaches do. It's one-on-one, sometimes one on a small group.

But the best part, I think, for so many people, when you get the great content, you get the coaching, you also get this wonderful community. Sometimes you don't get. And even though they're all around the country, it is a wonderful experience to be able to talk to other people who are experiencing things or have experienced things that you're walking through. So great content, great coaching, great community in All Access. I just wanted to set that up to have you tell folks, how can they begin to dip their toe into maybe some of the different offerings of All Access, find out, hey, is this a great fit for me?

Well, the number one thing people can do, Ken, is they can subscribe to the podcast. And if they're listening to this, they probably have already done that. So you're a wonderful ambassador for our brand. So I just encourage everybody to subscribe and keep listening to the podcast. The other thing that they can do is sign up for the newsletter. We send a newsletter out on a regular basis. It's got all the information about what's going on with Entree leadership. That'll keep them up to date.

A lot of good content on there. And if they even want to dive a little bit deeper every single month, we are doing webinars where we teach Entree leadership for free, and we get thousands of people to register for those things. So if you're interested in really digging into this stuff, make sure you're. sign up for one of our webinars. And all that can be done at ontrae leadership.com. You sign up for the newsletter. You can sign up for webinars. And of course, you can subscribe, get the RSS feed at Entreeleadership.com for this podcast and on iTunes. Now, this is important to point out. All three of those things that John pointed out, how much do they cost, John? Nata. Nothing. Zip-Zilts.

There you go. It's absolutely free. Coach John Falk, it's always good to have you in studio. We'll see you again soon. Thanks again. As you heard, John just mentioned our webinars, March 9th is the next scheduled webinar. It's called Entree Leadership Defined. It's absolutely free. And Entry Leadership Defined is the eight core principles that Dave uses to run Ramsey Solutions. This is, I think, mandatory listening for anybody who likes what we're doing who wants to be a part of this Entree Leadership Tribe. Entree Leadership Defined, free webinar March 9th.

You're going to review the eight core principles that Dave uses to this day, and he hits him over and over and folks, we know them. These core principles are yours absolutely free. All you got to do is sign up, be a part of this webinar. Here's how you do it. You can text the word entree leadership to 33-444. Text the word entree leadership to 33-44. Or, as you know, you can go to the link that's in this episode's show notes on the Entreleadership.com website.

That's Entreleadership.com slash podcast. The link for this webinar for you to sign up and be a part of it. in the show notes. And remember, if you missed the March 9th webinar, no problem. You can absolutely still sign up for all future webinars. So by doing what I just told you, texting the word, Entree Leadership to 33444, or clicking on the link in the episode show notes, you're automatically going to get reminders from our team. Hey, this webinar on this topic is coming up soon. So again, a no-brainer. It won't drive you nuts. It really will keep you kind of abreast of what we are doing next so that you can be a part of this very important.

content and the community that comes with that content. I just saw the calendar before we started recording Eric the producer, and we're getting closer and closer, my friend, to our second summit. This is fun. And this is a brand new event that we just launched last year, and it was such a wild success. The numbers are over what we did last year, heading towards a sellout. You can still get in.

Entreleadership.com slash summit is the location to go to learn everything. Now, if you're just joining us, you're new to the podcast, you haven't heard us talk about Summit. The event is May 22 through 25 in Dallas, Texas. Entreeleadership.com slash summit. So Dave decided to invite, oh, let's see, Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Pat Lynchione, and then of course, Chris Hogan, the number one best-selling author in America, Christy Wright, who is the force behind business boutique, a brand new space that's blowing up as she helps women figure out what they want to do and how to do it in business. It's really, really good stuff. So it's going to be an unbelievable event. And of

we have the big mystery guest, which is funny, Eric, because now so many people have tweeted me, they've gone to the website. By contract, we can't tell you who this big guest is, but I mean, it's top of the food chain. So this is going to be great fun. I've already been working with Dave as kind of fun as we've just had some fun with what would the conversation look like. So one-on-one, Dave's going to go with this guest after some remarks, and it's going to be unique, really unique stuff. I'm going to be sitting hopefully on the front row with a notebook, and it's really going to be fun. So again, if you like, like to know who that mystery guest is, Entreeleadership.com slash summit.

Okay, folks, one more time. Remember, we'd love for you to take our survey. You've got two weeks to do it. We're going to give away $100 Amazon gift card to one person who gets selected out of the hat for filling out the survey. We really want to hear from you. So that's the extra motivation to win $100 from us to Amazon, Entreleadership.com slash survey.

We've got two weeks. We want to hear from you. This was really important stuff. So go take the survey and we'll let you know what we found out at a later date. But we really do want your feedback as we seek to always bring you our best and bring you what you need and what you want. Much thanks to Perry Noble and John Felkins for being with us on this podcast. On behalf of our producer, Eck Anthony and the entire Entree leadership team,

thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.