EntreLeadership - #298: A Fireside Chat on Personal Development with Ken Coleman and Daniel Tardy

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

As we all begin to look forward to 2019, we couldn’t think of a better way to close out the year than by answering some questions from our listeners. Tune in as host Ken Coleman and Ramsey Solutions Senior Vice President Daniel Tardy talk about everything from career advancement and idea generation to dealing with failure. Who knows, we might just have the answer you’ve been looking for too. entreleadership.com/podcast The Power of the Other by Dr. Henry Cloud Sometimes You Win—Sometimes You Learn by John C. Maxwell Daniel Tardy's book recommendation: Dare to Lead  Ken Coleman's book recommendation: The Power of Moments EntreLeadership Reading Guide (100 book recommendations!) Personalized Growth Planner from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's what great leaders do. They're always just asking questions. You stay curious, you stay humble. You stay humble. The team respects you. The team respects you. They'll follow you and you're a leader. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre leadership. Now here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. This is a special episode. I don't know how many of you people are actually listening or watching on Christmas Eve, but if you are, wow, are we grateful. But we're more grateful for you, the audience, and your questions and your participation through this program.

We do it for you. And it's exciting to know that it's helping you. And always fun when Daniel Tarty, my good friend and our senior VP of business and leadership joins us. So, Daniel, before we get started, I'm very aware of the fire behind us. Yeah, I don't think I'm getting any actual heat off of that, but it's nice to have a little fake fire, so we have the ambiance. It does. It feels very. I want to tell our listeners, that's a good looking cardigan. It looks really good. You pull that off well. Merry Christmas to all of our listeners. It's been another fantastic year. And of course, we do this podcast to spread hope to business owners and business leaders out there. And we've heard all year these incredible reports of things you guys are doing. You're winning in the marketplace and you're leading and you're taking care of your teams. And I mean, we're just so proud of. you. And it's really cool to be here at the end of a year, Christmas time, where we're thinking

about what really matters in life, family and faith, and certainly work that matters. And so what a cool milestone. Just a moment to stop and say congratulations on a great year to our listeners. Yeah, looking forward to hearing and learning what you're doing to win big in 2019. Can you believe it? Unbelievable. 2019 right around the corner. Okay. So we're going to get to some of your questions. We're going to try to go as quick as we can. We're going to have some fun with this. I love these questions. So here we go. We'll both take turns or we can just both weigh in.

How about that if we got something to add? So the first question is, as a mid-30s, up-and-coming leader, and I like the fact that he or she is saying, I'm up and coming, baby. You know what I mean? I like that. Yeah, that's got a little bit of, okay, I liked it. How can I continue to advance? So it's a little open-ended here.

So let's give some advancing up-the-latter advice. What say, you, Daniel Tarpe? Sure. I'm barely out of my mid-30s, so I'm not sure. I'm a master on this. I would actually change the timeline and go, regardless of your age, there are seasons in leadership

and your early seasons in leadership. You're getting paid a lot for what you do, productivity and getting results. And then after five to seven years of really learning how to master that, having some notches on your belt, having some mantles on the wall, as it were, you go, okay, I can get stuff done.

The next test is, can you get paid for what you know? Not just what you do, but can you know how to, to do things in a way you teach other people to do it. Now you're really leading. And then the third phase, the kind of the mastery phase is getting paid for who you grow. And so a lot of leaders, they start getting their feet wet in the 20s, in the 30s you're getting paid for what you know. But my challenge to a mid-30s, late 30s leader who's wanting to continue to advance and grow

themselves, the really cool thing is you can find people who you're growing and pouring into and mentoring in this season of life. It's weird to be a mentor at 27. Like, no, No one really wants a 27-year-old mentor. You know, there's just something about seasons in life where you go, I want my mentor to be 40-ish, maybe 50, even older. And so you're starting to think in your mid to late 30s about, am I becoming a mentor? And as my energy, more focused on who I'm growing, not just what do I do. I got the trophies. Now I need to help other people get trophies.

I'm stepping off the field and putting the headset on and calling plays to the people out on the field as it were. Yeah. I love that advice. The only thing I would put in there is something I think that it's very easy. easy for all of us to forget. If the goal is to advance, and by advance, meaning move closer and closer to full maximization of your potential, that's what I see advancing as, I come back to something I learned from my chiropractor. When stretching my legs or my lower back, it's resistance. And you have got to put some strategic resistance in your life. And so what I mean by that is there's

a form of stretching where they'll push back for a little bit and then say, now you resist. And as I'm resisting, pushing back, and the chiropractor is pushing in, then he says, relax, and then all of a sudden, I can stretch more. Right. So I'm using this as a loose analogy of if you want to grow, it's all about stretching your capacity to grow. Absolutely. So there's going to get to a point for all of us, even for you and I or anybody that's doing work that they would consider their dream job, and you're not, you and I are both there. I'm still in a place right now where I've got to continually make sure that I expand my capacity because if I fill up and then I'm starting to hit a lid. Yeah. Well, how do I advance when I've hit my lid at each level? Right, we're going to plato.

I got to stretch my capacity. I got to make room. Dude. And you've got to put resistance in the form of challenging growth. Absolutely. And the one thing I'm thinking about as you're saying that is there is this thing, the higher up you go, the harder it is to find. You have to seek out. So we talk about just the metaphor of weightlifting and adding 20-pound weights. If you can bench press 80 pounds right now, stick 20 more pounds on, and over time you can bench press 100, stick more weight on, you can bench 1-20. You can in leadership get up to 200 pounds, and then you go, man, I'm stronger than most people in the gym. And that's where most people stay, because they compare themselves to where they've come from, not what they're capable of. And it does get harder to find 20-pound

plates when you're maxing out higher than anybody around you. So you've got to seek that out. You've got to go, where am I going to, like you said, strategic resistance. Yes. That means you're intentional to seek out mentors in your life, accountability in your life, maybe a coach that's going to push you. It's maybe a counselor. Greater challenges. That's right.

It's no longer just read a book. You got to expose yourself to the heat so that you grow as a leader to that next level. And that's more accessible down in the ranks because there's just more heat. But once you kind of get to the quote unquote top, that's where you see leaders start to get lazy and they fall off because they've lost that resistance, right? That's exactly right. And you've hit a lid. So remember this. If you want to advance, you're going to have to also, not just achieve. I think we see achievement. It's not just that. You're going to actually have to fail strategically. And that's what I mean by stretching your

capacity for you to continue to grow and learn. Because again, remember this. Growing is the result of trying and failing, right? There just is no growth without some type of trying and some type of failure so that we can then go, oh, all right, I put myself out there and I can do this. So there you go. Okay, how to overcome the imposter syndrome. This is an interesting question for me, Daniel. I don't know where I'm going to go with this, because I want you to answer first because I get a little irritated when I hear this question,

and I'll explain why. Okay. Well, what I hear, maybe I'm just projecting this into the question, but I think about the idea of transparency and authenticity as leaders, nobody wants you to fake it. But we have this temptation to know everything, and as leaders we go,

I got to have all the answers or no one's going to give me any more, respect. I have to know what I'm doing. I have to perform. Watch my activity. Watch how well I can lead the meeting. And we kind of start acting a little bit outside of our integrity even. Like we go beyond what we're actually really feeling like we know and we're posturing. And I've done that, man. I've felt that pressure of like the team's not going to follow me if I don't make decisions and come in as the guy that knows what's going on. And the thing that I've learned through a lot of great feedback from people I trust that have been in those meetings that are like, hey, we can tell you're faking it.

They just go, hey, it's okay to say, I don't know. It's okay for you to say, guys, I don't know what to do here. You don't have to give up your leadership card. When you say, I don't know, you can say, look, let's figure this out together. Let's find somebody that's smarter than us and bring them in. A leader's best thing that they can do is create an environment where the right people are in the room having the right conversation, not come in and know all the answers. And so when I hear imposter syndrome, I hear somebody that's stuck in their own head, thinking they have to be smart and that that's what leadership is. Leadership is not being the smartest person. It's being the first one to say, I'm willing to bring us together and say, we're going to

work on this challenge together. And I might not know more than you guys do. I just know we didn't have this discussion and we're going to have it. Yeah, I think that's really good. The only thing I'll say on this is I've heard this and I've heard different contexts for this. And I'm just going to be really, really, really frank right now. You need to stop thinking about being an imposter. the very active thinking, am I an imposter? Are people going to perceive me this way? It's the complete wrong mindset. And I'm going to go as far as to say that the minute you start thinking and worrying about

that, you need to immediately shut it down. I don't think it does you any good to analyze it. I don't think it does you any good to worry about it. I think if you just focus on being you and Daniel really touched on this, which is just be open and honest. And if you're a leader and you don't have the answer, have the guts to call some people on your team and go, here's the deal.

These things are something that we're going to have to deal with. it's on me to make a decision. And right now, I'm unsure about this, this, and this. Curious, what do you think? That type of owning a situation and just being you and being the best that you can be, knowing that if you make the wrong decision, it's not fatal. And so I get a little irritated. And it's like we're bubble wrapping.

And I understand the spirit of the question. But here's my point. I'm trying to free your soul right now to say, hey, stop worrying about something that, quite frankly, you shouldn't be worrying about unless you are intense. Intentionally, intentionally putting yourself out there as a fake or a charlatan. Now, that's different. But I know that that's not where the spirit of this question is coming from. And I also know that that's not where the spirit of the phrase is coming from.

Look, man, if you'll stay curious, if you'll ask 1,000 questions a day, you'll become a leader. You will lead. If you're going, I don't get it. Help me understand. Hey, I heard this over here doesn't seem to reconcile with that. Help me make sense of it. That's what great leaders do. They're always just asking questions.

You stay curious. You stay humble. You stay humble, the team respects you. The team respects you. The team respects you, they'll follow you and you're a leader. That's it. All right, we're going to move on another question. I don't know that I've ever been asked this.

I'm a little excited. How do you handle the stress of your job? Oh, man. Really? On what day? I have gone through a lot of journeys on stress management. I used to be so stressed out and maxed out, and I didn't know anything about where it was coming from

and why it was happening. And I hit the wall after my first child was born and dealt with a season of anxiety and depression and just this spiritual desert, and I had no idea what hit me. And I think that was a result of chronic stress that I wasn't dealing with in a healthy way over time. I internalized it. I felt like I just had to be the hero. And I wasn't talking to people and telling them that, hey, I had a tough day. Actually, it ties back to when I was feeling like I was being an imposter and I was trying too hard. I was trying to please everybody. I was trying to know things that I didn't actually know, trying to impress people with things

I didn't actually understand. And a lot of kind of negative relationships in that season of life that I should have let go of sooner, but they were giving me some artificial sense of significance. And I was letting those things have too much power over me. And so all that cumulative stress, I was flat on my back. And there was about a year of really figuring out who am I, why am I here? What does it look like to live a meaningful, fulfilled life that's not stressful? And so I think if we're getting super philosophical on this one,

stress free living looks like living in your sweet spot. I mean, I want to hear what you say on this, because when you're living in the thing that God made you to do and every day you're doing work that just flows out of you, you really don't get that stress. Now you get stressed like, oh, I got a little too many meetings than I overcommitted, but you can manage that. You can trim stuff back. But if you're stressed in your career all the time, that's not a time management thing. That's an indication that something in your soul is disconnected. You're not integrated fully into what you're here to do. I'm so happy right now. I am so, beyond happy with that answer. Because what you said at the end, I mean, that's what I'm teaching people in the Ken Coleman show. But, you know, not to be glib, he's exactly right, folks.

If you're overwhelmed with the stress of your job, it's one of two things. And it's only one of two things. So let me be overly simplified here. It is either you are not in the right place, meaning you are not doing work that you were uniquely created to do. So that is your talent, what you do best, and what you love to do most. And so you're using the talent to do what you love to do most. So that's either one of the scenarios or the other scenarios your perspective is so out of whack that you've completely lost touch with reality. Now, what I'm not saying, I want to make sure I don't get any hate mail. I'm not saying that anxiety is not real. And I'm not saying that the stress is not real. Both of those things are very, very real. But the source of the stress and the source of the anxiety are not real. Now that's what I am saying. So in that situation, what you have to do is do what I've learned how to do. do. I've got a couple of guys in my life. Daniel's one of them. There's another guy named Jeremy. There's another guy named Bill. And if I'm feeling, let's just call it stress or anxiety or something, I can go to any one of these guys and present it. And every one of them on some level are going to go,

dude, it's not what you think it is. Or it's really not that big a deal. You're fine. And what I have done is I have turned the voice of stress and anxiety and I flipped it on its head. So when that happens to me, I simply try to find the silly in it. Well, what about this? If I'm a lot of this, If I said this to Bill, would he go, dude, get out of your head. You need to rely. You're way over thinking of this. Daniel knows me well. This is very transparent here.

He knows I'm an overanalyzer. We've had multiple talks where I can kind of be vulnerable and I'll say what I'm feeling and I'll say to him, dude, now this, you know my heart here, but this is going to sound immature. I even know that. But it is in the act of throwing something out. And then he processes it and he goes, well, let me tell you how I see it. And every time that that has happened, what that is is you simply. going, that's a little silly. Now, you're not making fun of me, but I have learned to do that to

myself. So you've got to know that the source of anxiety, back to what I said, and the source of stress are lies, and you have to expose them. But you're going to have to get real with yourself and go, I know I'm feeling this and thinking of this, but that's not true. And expose it. You're exactly right. And you're revealing a principle that's been talked about so much on this podcast. You take two things that these people have been on this podcast. You got Henry Cloud and the power of the other, which is exactly what you're outlining there. You've got to have people in your life that when you're stressed, you go to them and they give you perspective. That's all that's happening. They're looking in your blind spot and going, I see something you don't see. That's exactly

right. How you feel better. And then how many countless people have been on this podcast, just listen back through. We've talked about deep work, getting into the flow. What do you have to do? You have to cut out the crap. Always on social media, always on TV, always on all this junk that's in the shallow places of life. On top of a demanding career, of course you're going to be stressed. If you're not creating space to breathe, to journal, to meditate, to pray, whatever your thing is. And it's all filled up with all these just little ding, ding, alert, check me now, text. You're going to be stressed. You're going to be chronically stressed throughout the day. So cut out the noise, take the white noise away, fill that space with some solitude and fill it with some friendships. So you got the power of the other working

for you, and you get people around you, you're not going to feel stressed if you're doing that. Really not. And to what you said, I don't get stressed. I look forward to my work. Totally. I'm always glad it's Friday and Monday. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You leave with an empty tank, but you're looking forward to coming back in if you're doing it right. Here's a question. How do you work on idea generation? I'm excited about your answer. Oh, man. I mean, people are different on this. I'm a Myers-Briggs, ENFP. And what's true of, oh, you are too. That's right. Absolutely. So what's true of us is we like to process verbally. We process with our senses. And so I had a great meeting this morning where ideas are just flowing.

But it was me and the right people with flip charts and whiteboards and we're playing what if. And we can kind of touch it because it's up on the wall and mess with it. And it's very much what I call just clay on the wheel. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect. Let's just throw something on the wheel. And I'll say something and ask a question. And then someone else will start talking and I'll make me think of something. So I'll capture it on the whiteboard.

And it's like jazz. I'm just feeding off a group of people. So that's where I do best. And I only do that well if I've been reading, if I've been watching some content on YouTube about things that are inspiring. I've been to events. I've been to conferences. So you've got to understand, like I'm a consummate learner intake sponge for all this stuff.

I can't walk into a room like that and it be valuable if I'm not charged up. But I come in on full batteries and then a group of people like that who are smart. Oh my gosh. We're printing money. we're making impact, we're clarifying mission statements, we're launching product ideas. Oh, I mean, that's the best. I'm so excited. We did not talk about this ahead of time. I'm going to jump right in where he left off because while you were talking, I was saying,

all right, here's what I'm going to give an analogy. Okay, but let me say this before I give you an analogy. This question is huge. I'm going to tell you point blank, I believe that ideas are the currency of leadership. Oh, totally. Ideas. So the question is, how do you work on idea generation? He touched on it.

I like the analogy of a well. The old school well. You turn the crank, the bucket goes all the way down, you fill it full of water, you crank it and it comes back up. Have you ever used one of those? I have an old school well. I did it one time, and I did the whole thing. And the bucket was empty. It was when I was probably 11 or 12 at a plantation, historic plantation.

But here's what I believe it is, and he touched on it. I don't work on generating ideas. Ideas are like the water that's in the bucket. When I pull it out of the well, I'd go into a meeting like he just talked about, and he's been into me with me with me. Nobody's ever been in an idea of me where I didn't have a bunch of ideas. But I'm not coming up with them there. It is essentially, I pull that bucket out of the well and I dump it out on the table. It flows out of something.

So what you were talking about is how you fill the bucket. So Daniel and I, both of us, ferocious readers, consumers of content. So in the Ken Coleman show world specifically in Entree leadership, I'm always reading and digesting and watching other people who speak on this kind of stuff. I read psychology articles so I can help the callers on the Ken Coleman show because it's getting behind their career question. So I'm learning techniques and things like that all the time. So when I'm sitting in my desk for five minutes and an idea hits me, that idea didn't just bounce from nowhere. It actually bounced from maybe six weeks ago when I read one article and essentially put it in the bucket and then whatever happened in that moment. So back to that simple little analogy, folks, you have got to have a well from which you draw ideas.

You cannot go into a meeting and brainstorm and pull an idea from thin air. It must come from what I like to call the inner well. Absolutely. So that's what I... Well, and you know, and this is probably going to offend some people. Go for it. But here's the thing. I can't wait.

There's no such thing as an original thought. None. Now, there's none. None at all. There's an original way to arrange all the Legos? Yeah, it's like a prism. But all those Legos came from somewhere. You read something, you saw something.

You have a relationship. Somebody told you something. Some of it's in your conscious mind, some of it's in your subconscious mind. And curating those things and putting them into a combination that we call an idea, oh, I have an original idea. Okay, cool. But it's only going to be good if you're doing all the work you're talking about to go into the well all the time so your batteries are charged and it just flows out of you. If you just want to sit down and be smart and be brilliant in the moment, you can't do it.

No, it's not going to happen. And by the way, we've all been around people who you know have no well. Yeah, that's right. I mean, listen. Listen, they're parched. And by the way, you will be exposed. Yeah. Let me just tell you, if you're sitting there right now,

this is a friendly advice, and we'll move on. If you're sitting there right now and you know that you have no well from which you're drawing a bucket up from, it's only a matter of time before you're exposed. But here's the encouragement. You're not because you're listening to this podcast. And now you're probably doing other things like that. So, I mean, I listen to our podcast.

I listen to so many other podcasts. I'm on YouTube all the time, checking out who's saying what. Not like goofy, waste your time videos. Like, there was a lot of, good content on YouTube of smart people. So charging your batteries in 2019 is easier than it has ever been in the history of time. The well is so accessible. It's absolutely exciting. Okay, now I'm going to expand this question. The question as it was submitted was, what's the best book you've read this year?

But I'm going to change it up because I can. Okay. And I'm going to say, if it's not the best book this year, is there a book that you really, maybe you read it a year ago or two years ago, and you go, here is a must read book. Because that's what I really want to know is what book would you most recommend to this audience? I'll tell you my book in a second. But first, I want to tell you something that's more valuable. This is very exciting. The best book you can read is the book you read.

I have had people ask me over and over. What's the best book? What's the best podcast? What's the best diet? The best diet's the one you're going to stick with for the most part. But you've got to figure out how to get above this. I got to find the gym. Yeah, that's right.

And go, am I committed to spending $2,000? $2,000 a year in buying and reading books. That's a more important discussion. And if I'm constantly buying books and I'm constantly reading, you don't have to finish one that's bad, but if you go, I'm going to spend $2,000 a year reading books and it's going to be a lifestyle. And I'm always consuming, just like we're talking about before, some of them are going to be better for you than others. But your best book may not be someone else's favorite book. So that's the pretense. My favorite book right now that's really done a lot for me in just this last few months, is Bray Brown's new book, Daring to Lead.

And she really gets into some practical things leaders can do to live authentically, to be themselves, to show up with courage, to not put on armor to where we posture and we're trying to figure out how to play the game, but to really do it through relationships. We talked earlier about leaders. You start out getting known for getting results, but you really get good when you're getting good

at relationships that are authentic and that are real and it's rich, meaningful. You were just talking about this coming in here. When you have someone that you know they're your friend, whether you're doing business together or not, it changes everything about how you work together. Oh, yeah. I mean, don't get me started on friendship. Be honest with you, we need to have a friendship-themed podcast.

I'm just saying this right now because I don't think the average man or woman who's leading really thinks about deep friendships as much as we ought to. It's life-giving. I agree. Okay, so real quick, I'll roll through this fast because we've got a special offer we want to tell these kind folks about. I think my favorite book this year for this audience, Here's the good news. We had a feature interview with Dan Heath. Chip and Dan Heath have written several bestsellers together.

They've got a book about the power of moments. And I got to tell you something. As a guy who, candidly, you know, I've got to do interviews for this program that enrich you kind folks. You know, I've got to ask questions that hopefully get answers out of our guests that can really help you. You know, having a radio show every day where I'm helping people with career advice, speaking on a stage in front of 6,000 people two months ago. It's beyond the personal benefit. It's how do you strategically create moments for your team members, people that follow you, people that you do life with, friends and family, and then if you have a chance to have an audience,

so this is for those of you who don't speak publicly, but you do have an audience, you have a customer. So how do you create moments? And that whole book is just a treasure trove. So anyway, that's the book I'd recommend. but we can go deeper than this because the Entree leadership team has put together a list of 100 books. Now, this is an ambitious venture. We've got a great list of 100 books that every small business owner needs to read. If you'd like to get the list and why wouldn't you, it's absolutely free and you can do what you want with the list, but I would read every one of them. Text 100 books, that's a phrase. 100 is just the numbers, 100 books.

Text 1-0-0 books to 33-444. That's 33-444. Or you can get the link in this episode's show notes, Entreeleadership.com. It's episode 298. All right, we got time for a couple more questions here. How do you deal with failure and move forward? Oh, that's a juicy one. Yeah. Gosh, man. Have you ever failed? Yeah, fail every day. That's what I'm like, how do you deal with failure? It was like, you mean this morning or at lunch or just before I came in here? Right, right. I think you got to be really comfortable laughing at it and go, I'm going to fall on my face a lot, and that's okay. Because failure is not permanent.

You know, we talk about failure. Like, I think we screw up in school when we talk about classes being past fail because you have to like, you have to start over. But it's really not like that. I mean, think about a, compare the school metaphor, like past fail, the class. to a pilot flying a plane where they have their coordinates, they know where they're going. But at any given moment when the wind's blowing, that plane is not exactly on course.

That's a little failure. If they stayed right there, they would miss their destination by 100 miles. But what do they do? Well, they just correct a little bit. They just pull it back in, pull it back in. So if you know you're heading, you're going to be doing these micro failures all the time.

And it's really okay because it's designed to work that way. But you're making forward progress and you still land at your destination. if you know that you're going to correct. And it's not this, oh my gosh, we've failed. We're going to die. We have to start. That never happens.

And even if your business goes out of business, you learned a way to not do it. It's fine. You're going to be all right if you keep moving forward. Just don't quit. That's the antidote to failure. Yeah, we talked about perspective a little bit earlier in the program. And I think this is about perspective again. I had the privilege of working with John Maxwell closely for years.

He wrote a book called Failing Forward, which takes on this very topic. But years later, he re-released it, added some new content. And I love the new type. Okay. And this is a fun little exercise. I want you to fill in the blank. Okay, not the book title, but the classic phrase. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. He changed the title, change that phrase to the new book title and called it. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. Let that sit for a minute because that's what I'm talking about, about perspective. If you look at failure and loss as those two things, failure and loss, then there's some finality to that. That's right. Right? And I love what you said about the pass or fail court. They ought to turn it to just good or bad. So you move through the course. You're done with the course. But you either got a good or a bad. I finished it, but I didn't do a great job. Because that's leadership, right? Like I had a situation at work today where I wasn't a very good leader. Okay? You're not fired. You're not done with leadership. You are not disqualified universally for the rest of your life because you made a bad leadership decision. No. I. I think John Maxwell nailed it. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. And so there now becomes the entire perspective.

So here's the deal. I just did bad. I didn't fail. I didn't fail. Yeah. Failure's final. That's right. So I did bad a job.

So I'm now going to go fix that, first of all, with those people. I love how you're talking about this. I was terrible today. Well, the thing you're talking about when I'm hiring people can, I just thought of this. But I'm always asking for, in your previous job, where's a big mistake that you made and how did you deal with it? And I'm looking for people that go, oh, let me tell about this mistake. It's about this mistake.

Here's what we did. Because I'm realizing, like, they've learned something. And I want those people on my team who have failed a lot. They're willing to admit it and they can talk about what they learned. When someone's like, oh, you know, I just haven't had a lot of big mistakes. Next, that instant interview's over. I don't want you on my team. If you, one, have failed and you're denying it and you're acting like it's a big problem.

Or two, if you've not been around long enough that you've actually. failed, you know, don't trust a person that doesn't walk with a little bit of a limp. When they've been through something, they're going to walk with you and they're going to know how to get through it when we failed together because we fail every day. And I want people on my team that are comfortable living and failure and doing that dance and getting better as a result. Good stuff. All right. Well, this will make our last question here. This is fun. If you could go back in time and sit down with young Daniel and I could sit with young Ken and, oh boy, would I like to be able to do that. If we could do that, what advice would we give ourselves? I don't know. Probably not

anything different because I think everything happens for a purpose and it would just be where you are. I would probably encourage myself to be a little bit more relational and seek out friendships over trophies. But that's me. That's not everybody. But you know, you got to realize that the story that's being written is not your story. You're not in control of it. You're just in the story. And so it's like watching the middle part of a movie and going, what would I go back to the first part of the movie and tell this actor what they should have done in the first scene? Well, nothing, because the first scene sets up the second scene.

And that builds to the climax and what's going to get resolved if we don't have all those sequences of things happening? So, you know, sometimes we just, we have the shame or I should have done it different, I could have done it different. Be where you are in the story. And be about the business of redeeming your story every day with the things that you're learning. This is one of my favorite questions to answer because it's so it's so visceral for me because it's just learning.

And I wish that I could have sat down with the 22-year-old Kenon and said, now look, perseverance is what gets the glory. But nobody talks about the patience. Yeah, that's good. And I'm going to tell you, we just do this. We glorify stories of perseverance. And yet we gloss over the parts of the story of. perseverance that are just nothing but patience, where it looks as though nothing is happening

and quite frankly, no progress is being made. And yet that person, that man or woman, who we are glorifying for their stick-toitiveness, their grit, their perseverance, all they did for maybe good portions of their life, they just stayed the course. They were patient. They kept chopping wood. You know, they were the 10-year overnight success. And I got to tell you, that would be in my advice to all of you, whether you're 23, 33 or 43,

but certainly if you're in your 20s and 30s, let me just tell you as a 44-year-old, I have finally, finally figured that out, that it is my patience, that is just as important as my perseverance. Perseverance without patience is going to lead to burnout and frustration and bitterness. Perseverance bathed in patience. leads to a journey that is just as fulfilling as the destination. That's right. So I got to ask you this. It took me a while to figure that out. The advice is sound. Here's my question. Would 22-year-old Ken have listened to 44-year-old Ken? He would have listened, but I don't know that he would

have figured it out. Right. Because that's, and I like the, because I wouldn't have if I was that, you know. I would have listened. I've always been the guy who was a sponge. But I think make a good point. There's a certain amount of that that you can listen and you can hear and you could listen, but it takes a little bit of time in life around the Ben a few times to go. A few more gray hairs. Oh, that guy, Daniel, or that old Ken guy was right. Knew what he was talking about. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. So I think we need to hear it. You have to experience it. But you do have to experience it and go, because I think we hear that and we go, well, that may be true for most people, but I'm going to game the system. Yeah, well, you can't microwave success, you know. I mean, we live in an on-demand culture. No one has to go to Blockbuster anymore to rent a movie.

No one has to wait in line for anything. The food gets delivered to you if you have the right app. You know, you can fast forward intentionality, but you can't fast forward experience. So be okay with that and enjoy the season you're in. Yes, absolutely. Good stuff. Daniel Tarty, my dear friend, fun stuff, special episode. Hey, listen, if you want to do this again, and I do not presume to believe that you might,

but if you'd like more of this and you send your questions, I can tell you this, Daniel and I have experienced it on some level, and we're here for you to encourage you and to equip you for you to be living the role that we believe you were created to fulfilled. Well, that was big fun. Maybe my favorite part was answering your questions with fake fire behind us on the screen. Hey, we want to do more of this, and we hope that it is adding value to you. So you've got a question, very simple. Submit it to us. Podcast at entreleadership.com. That's podcast at entreleadership.com. The more specific you are in your email question, the more specific we can be in our answer. So we'd love for you to join the conversation. We're here for you. Email us podcast

at entreleadership.com. Hey, our friends at Infusionsoft have a great tool for you this episode, the personalized growth planner. This is going to specifically help you develop a solid sales and marketing strategy. Their proven framework for capturing leads, increasing sales, and creating lifetime value for many people, it can all be put to work for you, your company, and your customers. They're going to give you three stages of life cycle marketing, attracting your ideal customers, selling your brand by creating an experience for your customers, and wowing your customers by delivering exceptional service. That and so much more in the personalized growth planner. Go to infusionsoft.com slash get my planner. That's infusionsoft.com

slash get my planner. Or you can get the link in the episode show notes. That's It's episode 298 at entreleadership.com. Well, that's going to do it, folks, on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, Merry Christmas! Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work.

If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just, Trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman Show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do, and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter, and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes, or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.

Thank you.