EntreLeadership - #349: Thanksgiving: An Example of Staying the Course with Stephen Mansfield

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

What can the everyday business owner learn from 17th century Pilgrims? According to New York Times bestselling author and leadership expert Stephen Mansfield, a lot. As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, Mansfield gives us an account of the people who were compelled by a vision that changed the world. Better yet, he shares what today’s leaders can learn from their tenacity, faith and willingness to venture into the unknown.   entreleadership.com/podcast Stephen Mansfield's website #344: Mark Miller—Stewarding Your Own Potential Mayflower Compact President Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation A Thanksgiving Meditation Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   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

Have you ever been so focused on accomplishing the urgent that you completely miss the important? Sadly, the holiday that's just around the corner often stands as an example of this. As leaders, if we aren't careful, we can get so caught up in the food, the football, and for leaders closing out Q4, that we completely miss the meaning of Thanksgiving. Now, don't get me wrong, I love food and I love football. And Q4, it's really important for your business. But you and I both know that Thanksgiving is about so much more than that. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership Podcast,

where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Alex Judd, and today our team wanted to create time for you to pause the urgent so you can remember the important. And every great leader knows that Story is the most powerful vehicle for refocuses on the things that matter most. So today's conversation is with one of the great storytellers of our time, Stephen Mansfield. As a speaker, author, and thought leader, Stephen has a gift for bringing history to life and extracting principles that we can all put into action.

Today, he's going to give you a front row seat to the story of endurance, vision, and belief that created what we now call Thanksgiving. It's a fascinating story. story. You know, just around the time of 1600s dawn, you had Elizabeth the first, the famous Elizabeth that we've seen the movies on and so on. And what she did was she did not want her country ripped up by tensions between Catholics and Protestants. So she created the Anglican Church, which was a Via Medea, as it said in Latin, a middle way. Well, there were those who said, of course, it wasn't pure enough. They still have too much Catholicism in it. They, we now know as separatists. They were more,

you might call them right-wing Protestants, so to speak. And they pulled away, but they were very, very persecuted, especially when Queen Elizabeth died and James I was King, that he persecuted those people. He persecuted those who wanted the church to be pure. And this is the famous King James. Famous King James. This is the King James of the King James Bible. But people don't know. I mean, he wanted, he wanted everybody to be Anglican, basically, and he didn't want dissidents. So he persecuted them. Well, they met as a congregation in Scrooby England. I've had students write Scooby-Doo, and that's not right, but Scrooby, England. And finally, they decided they had to leave the country. So there was some degree of religious toleration in what was called at that time Holland,

or we refer to as Holland in the Netherlands area. And this huge chunk of this congregation went to Holland in 1608. Well, it was a pretty horrible time. The work that was available in Holland wasn't the work they'd been doing in England. Their work was very hard. It was physical labor. They were dying early. Holland, like it is today, very libertine, ethically and morally, so the kids were drifting away,

just like they would have, you know, in Holland. But anyway, all that to say, they spent 12 years there from 1608 to 1620. And they spent a lot of time in prayer. And as they were praying, they began to have a real burden, as they called it. This was their words, not mine, for the New World. The New World was known. There had already been some settlements there and so on. And they began to pray.

And we have their actual prayer journals. We know what they were thinking. Wow. They talked about being a stepping stone of the light of Christ. They talked about taking the Prince of Peace to the natives up that land. In fact, they said something funny that I thought was cute. They said, our land is full. The Indians can't come to us.

Well, this is like 168. Our land's full, which tells you how they were thinking. Wouldn't they be shocked about today? But finally, they decided they were going to have to sail that they were called to sail to the New World. It's a stunning thing. Think about this. This is one small congregation. And how small is small?

Well, they are maybe 300 people eventually in Holland because other dissidents joined them. But the number that actually went, maybe 120. So they're never a large congregation. They'd be considered a medium-sized congregation in the U.S. today. These are not necessarily soldiers or anything. These are ordinary people. Absolutely, ordinary people. These are postmasters.

These are farmers. These are shopkeepers who just are defined by their faith and don't want to stay in England and be persecuted. So they spend 12 years in Holland deepening in their faith, growing in a sense of vision for the new world. But having their health worn down, having their kids drift away in some cases, but really becoming a solid congregation. Finally, in 1620, they decide to sail to the new world. And this is the great pilgrim story. We get the word pilgrim, by the way, from them. They called themselves pilgrims. That's what they called themselves. That's where we get the word. So in short, they go back to England

quickly to Southampton. They rent two boats, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. They put about 150 people on these ships. Their old wine barges, really. They're not very fancy things. Did they have any idea what they were getting into as they're getting on these ships. No. No. They, you know, what happened was you, people would sail to the new world and then they'd write these dramatic, you know, kind of travel logs that were about generating investments, getting other investors to pay for their future voyages.

But these things were like, you know, like a lot of PR text. You know, it's pull of a lot of hot air. Oh, it's awesome. And the Indians welcome you. And the voyage was wonderful. And we saw fish and blah, blah, blah. But that's not the way it was at all. Is there a parallel here for the leaders that are listening of what,

people are capable of if they have a vision they believe in? It is absolutely stunning that these people made it to the new world. But the key is that their vision was really incubated during those years of hardship. In Holland? In Holland. They had really prayed it through. They really came together. They really count the cost. We see this in their journals and their sermons. They were counting the cost of what it would take. They knew that many of them would die. They knew that some of them wouldn't make it. I mean, you talk about paying the price for a vision. That's what they're they were doing. It's absolutely amazing. Let me just connect the story so I can tell you the most interesting fact, and that is that they start to set sail, the speed well starts to take water.

So they turn around and go back to Southampton. Many people take this as a sign from God. They aren't supposed to go on. Do you see how the group that actually sails is refined and refined and refined and refined. I was about the boat, the speed well. You never do. I feel like that's a pretty bad omen if you're leaving. Yeah, exactly. Half of your ship starts sinking. Well, I mean, you and I know stout Christians today, but I've got friends probably who would say, ooh, this is a sign from God, I'm not going. And that's what they did. So now you're on the Mayflower.

The Mayflower is about the length of a volleyball court. Oh, my gosh. That's all it is. It's about the length of a volleyball court. And how many people did they have? 104. But here's the thing I wanted to say. One third of them are children. So these people are putting their whole lives,

their future, the next generation, on the line for this vision that they've been carrying for about a decade in Holland. It's stunning. And they weren't stupid, by the way. They really were pondering the cost. of this thing they were willing to lose it all for the cause of Christ. What should we learn from that in terms of conviction and belief and purpose? The thing that touches me the most of the thing

that comes back to me all the time is these people could have been a congregation in exile, a congregation in reaction, a congregation living retreated, but they got together and they began to get a positive, let's go take the land vision. I mean, think about it. They're in hiding, basically, in Holland. But while they're there, this vision arises to, go to the new world, take the gospel to the Indians, be the stepping zone of the light of Christ in a new land. And they begin to turn from a retreating in exile beleaguered people to a people who go forward valiantly. It's very, very powerful. And it's the same thing we're tempted to do today. You know, news is harsh. You fail in business. Whatever happens, you're tempted to live your life in retreat. But in the valley of difficulty, in the valley of suffering, the valley of darkness, valley of death, some call it, the Bible calls it, they turned around and went forward and laid a found.

symbolically, at least, for this country. We just had Mark Miller on the podcast, and he leads leadership development of Chick-fil-A. And he talked about the reasons why people change a lot of the times is the pain of the present, but then also don't diminish the idea of the vision of a positive future. I'd like for you to teach on, I mean, these people had a pain of the present, but they were also remarkable in that they got on offense and they figured out a vision of a positive future. How should leaders go about finding that vision for themselves, but they're also? and also the people that they are responsible for.

Yeah, I think you have to look for the signposts of destiny. What are you made for? What's your passion? What do past significant words and experiences indicate for your life? Their pastor was John Robinson in Layton, and he said, we can't live hiding. There's something we're called to do. We've known this from the beginning. We kept alluding to past experience.

Remember when this happened. Remember when we first came together. Remember the faith that lived in our hearts. So he was pointing out to the congregation, destiny points. Things were called to do. sermons that I preached, what elder so-and-so said, what happened that time we were persecuted. And so all of that kind of accumulated in their hearts and they realized we're not meant to live in retreat and they were in relative comfort in Holland because it was a prosperous country.

We're meant to make a difference for the cause of Christ that's historic. And so my point is that they discerned their own destiny by looking at what I call the destiny points throughout their lives. And they came to the conclusion, we can't just sit here. That's all there is to it. We've got to be doing something. So they started praying about what they were meant to do. That's when a vision for the new world, which was, I have to say, apart from God, was nuts.

It was nuts for this congregation, try to sail to the new world. What would you say to the person that says, well, I own a plumbing company? Or, you know, I'm not going to take some massive exploration that's going to change the course of human history. What would you say to that person about the signposts of destiny? It's the same thing I would say to every person. Don't define yourself in terms of the immediate, the comfortable, and the familiar. You have a plumbing company. Anthony, what does God intend to do with that?

What can you do? These people were like you. These people, I mean, they wouldn't have had plumbing at the time, but they were like plumbers. They were like shoemakers. They were like shopkeepers. I mean, whatever craft you have today, that's what these people were like. To put in modern terms, they were basically blue-collar folks. But they took all of their gifts and they maximized it by harnessing it to a vision.

They felt like God had given them. So that's, I'm thrilled for, I love the crafts. I love skills. I love people who are like plumbers. But then I try to say to them, thank God that you're successful in what you do. And you could live this way the rest of your life. But what beyond just the plumbing, beyond just the mechanics, beyond just the paycheck, beyond just paying the bills, get the kids to college, what are you made to do in this generation that can cause this to go to a whole other level?

And I think that's how you have to think if you're really going to be the leader, the entrepreneur, the change agent you're meant to be. So they get on this boat, 104 on the size of a volleyball board. 104, one-third of them children. Was one of them pregnant? One of them, yes, was pregnant. Can you believe that now? Think about that. I mean, we're hesitant today about putting a pregnant woman on a 757 jet, much less a boat like that.

They sailed for 66 days. Think about that. I mean, I just got off a plane. I was on the plane for 14 hours. I thought I was going to pass out. These people were on this boat for 66 days. Horrible storm is in the North Atlantic. U.S. Navy tells us that the water was so cold, you'd die in three minutes if you fell in.

Oh, my word. You just die in the water so cold. And when you say horrible storms, like— Horrible storms. Picture of a sailboat now. This is a sailboat. And it's being laid over so that the mass dips in the water on one side and then goes back the other way and dips in the water on the other side. People are having to be batten down in the hatches below because they might fall off if they're on deck.

Is there any riding from the ship that tells what the experience is like on the ship? Yes, absolutely. You also have to realize that the crew is not pilgrims. They're not Christians. So one of the crew members kept calling these Christians. Christians who were dissidents, psalms singing puk stockings, because that's the two things they kept doing, singing psalms and upchucking because they were land lovers. They weren't sailors. They were throwing up all the time. We know that, I don't mean to be too graphic here, we know that

every kind of human refuse floated in the boat. Imagine vomit. You have children now. They're going to be children throw up in almost anything. Excrement, all of it, urine. I mean, they can't go up above board and hang off the side. So all of this stuff is starting to float, this flotsam is starting to float in the boat. It's just horrible. People are crying. People are sick. It was terror. And then the sailors are calling them psalms hanging puk stockings. It was a voyage of misery. And there's another leadership lesson, by the way. You know, here we are sitting in this amazing Dave Ramsey facility here recording this. Well, I know Dave, you know, he's a friend of mine, as you know, and I know that it wasn't always happiness. It wasn't always easy. It wasn't, it's not always just pristine and, you know, floating six

inches above the ground. Hard, painful days, dark nights of the soul, tears. And these people, I'm sure, got halfway across that ocean and wondered, have we missed God? Have we messed up here? Because, I mean, it was horrible. It was horrible. I think so often we tend to sometimes mythologize the past of others. And then I look at my current situation or the business owner looks at their current situation and there's like, well, there's no way they, you know, Dave Ramsey went through this. But in reality, what you're saying is the story of hardship and struggling and going through the valley, that is the story of our country. Exactly.

That is exactly the story of our country. And it's the story of anybody who wants to make a difference in the world. I heard somebody yesterday in a lecture that I was listening to say, the past was hell for everyone. And what he was trying to say was, especially in centuries past, people went through hardship. I mean, sickness, disease. You probably know my academic work is in the field of history. So in American history, the lifespans, the number of children of a family would lose. You know, you read it.

They had a family of four and they worked a farm. But sometimes they would have lost 10 children. Disease took the first and the second wife. You know, this kind of, it was hard. It was difficult. And so anybody pursuing a vision was going to face exceptional difficulty beyond just the normal difficulties of life at that time. And I know we're going to get to this more here in just a second, but it seems like

when you reconcile or realize that perspective of the hardship that we've all been through and the story of our nation, it kind of changes the meaning of Thanksgiving a little bit. It does. It absolutely does. Thanksgiving is the shining feast on the other side of sheer hell, and we haven't even gotten to all the hell yet. But, you know, that's a real lesson for our generation, because in our generation, we tend to think that anything hard is bad. Previous generations, they thought hard was refining. They didn't want to go through it, but hard or painful things refined them. It made them better. And I don't think there's any question that that's true. It did it for the pilgrims. It did it for the settlers. It did it for all the great

people I love to write about and talk about Lincoln and whoever at Churchill, obviously. Hardship refines us and makes us better and nothing great is accomplished in our lives without having to go through seasons of hardship. So if we think that hardship somehow is evil and to be retreated from, we'll miss the University of God, so to speak, for our lives. The University of God. That's powerful. So how do you discern you're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean proverbially and this is not going well, right? And to a degree you expected it not to go well. You weren't signing up for a cruise, right? But at the same time, it's not like people are uncomfortable.

People are dying. Yes. How do you make that decision of we're going to keep on and press forward versus this was a really bad idea and it would be stupid to continue? You have to remember what you were doing it for. If you're suffering because of folly, if you're suffering because you were stupid, if you're suffering because you made bad decisions, then it's good for you to reconsider. But these people had been very methodical.

Here's what we're meant to do. There's going to be a price. Some of us will die. We need to be ready for that. People said goodbye to their relatives at the shore, knowing they'd never see them again. I mean, picture the scene. So they were very sober about their evaluation of all this. And so at midpoint in the ocean, and we're talking about a month and a half here pretty much into the whole voyage, they got together and said, look, we knew it was going to be this way.

We're doing the right thing. We're doing what we're called to do. If we end up at the bottom of the ocean, we're still doing what we were made to do. And they kind of, as they said, in their words, renewed their strength. Powerful story. But the reason they could be so confident is that they had counted. the cost, worked a plan, prayed it through for years, warned each other about all things that could go wrong. And so they were ready to go forward. And again, we're talking one-third

children, a pregnant woman, while the crew is persecuting you, not serving you silver trays of appetizers, but persecuting you. So 66 days at sea, and then they see the coast of the new world. Yes. What do they see whenever they get there? Well, first of all, they've messed up in their time. And it also, because of the speedwells, taken a long time. They don't arrive in early fall. They arrive in December. And that was a mistake. And basically, to put it geographically now, they're on Cape Cod.

So they're just outside of Boston. So they miss their target. They miss their target date, absolutely. And by the way, they're 500 miles. They think they're going to Virginia. They didn't know what New England was, really. They think they're going to Virginia, but the storm has blew them off coast. So picture it now.

They're not only 500 miles north. They've arrived in December. And if you've ever been to Cape Cod, it's basically miles. of beach. I mean, it's empty, barren, sandy land. You don't get there and think, hey, I'll build a cottage there. You think we're not going to survive this. There is truly nothing there. There's nothing. Well, they thought there was. I mean, but there were Indians. They're going to discover in a minute. But there's nothing there. I mean, this is really, until you go way interior, this is barren land. Now, interior, there's, you know, what we now know is Massachusetts is

beautiful, but not on Cape Cod. And so they explored for about a month before they finally settled. How many people survived the actual trip over? This is interesting. The only person to die on the Mayflower was the sailor who started calling them psalms singing pukestocking. Yeah. I don't want to build some theology that says God torched him, you know, but he's the only one who died on the voyage. That's true. Oh, my God.

All the settlers, all the moms, all the children, they all survived. They made it. They made it. Okay. So you survive. You make it through, I mean, over two months of sheer torture and you get there and there's nothing. There's nothing.

Like, what does the leader do in that moment? Well, at that moment, the leadership decision has given us one of the great American Christian documents. Because being 500 miles north, they didn't have a charter for where they were. So the leaders said, it was a group of leaders, actually, the elders of the congregation, they said, we've got to bind ourselves together in a covenant. We've got to make a covenant that renews our commitment to our purposes here and also establishes a governing document for where we are. So they signed the Mayflower Compact. and the Mayflower Compact is powerful, not only because they bind themselves together in their old language in a civil body politic, which is the way they would have said it, but they said, we undertook this voyage for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.

And those words are powerful. They not only echoed down to American history because they remind us of the Christian purposes of the founders, which is often lost in our textbooks, but it also is a way of rallying all of those who were on that boat, on that Mayflower, and saying, remember now, this is what we're. about because they're concerned. These people are going to build huts and start to farm their land and forget what they're here for. And so they signed in 1620, the Mayflower Compact, one of the great American Christian documents that said, we sailed for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. Is it fair to say that that in a way is a version of a mission statement, vision, core values? Absolutely. You know, I just just in walking into this building today, Dave being such a guy of motivation and of words, there's scriptures and quotes all over the walls.

Why? To remind everybody who works or everybody who visits of what this is about and how we ought to be living and conducting ourselves, both as employees and as people who just want to live noble lives. Well, that's what they were doing at the time. They're saying we're bound together. We're in a covenant. We're going to live out a civil body politic. We're going to be a people governed by righteousness. Remember now, we came here for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. So it is a vision statement.

It is the leaders rallying them and getting them to agree together. Renewing covenants, renewing commitments to each other. This is one of the great keys of leadership. I mean, it's really like, you know, we're in football season right now as you and I are talking, and I won't even talk about my football teams. It's sad to watch. But any good coach, you get two or three games into the season and they're not doing well. He puts him together. He has a team meeting. He gets them to recommit to their core values, their vision.

He encourages them. He tells them they can win. He inspires them. That's good coaching. That's good leadership. That's exactly what they were doing. They just did it in a way that befit the culture of the early 1600s and a distinctly Christian vision. We always say here leaders are the chief reminding officer. It sounds like in a way, this Mayflower Compact, it's not necessarily a revolutionary document, because it's everything they already decided back in Poland. It's just saying, remember why we set out in the first place. You know, in scripture, every time that God is about to do something new, what does he say, remember. Remember what I did. Remember your fathers. Remember what went wrong. Remember what you don't want to do. Remember. Remember, remember, remember. And so really, one of the great tools of leadership is saying, in the words of the Lion King, remember who you are. Right? That's awesome. That's what they were doing. Remember who you are. And that is leadership. I mean, people, tend to forget. They get busy. They get offended. They get tired. Whatever it is. They get defeated. They

have some lack of success. Somebody's got to come along and go, remember who you are. And that's really what was happening. And by the way, most great leadership in history has been exactly like that. Look at Churchill. Churchill was constantly reminding the British people who they were. And that's what inspired them to victory. This Emerald Isle and all these quotes from Shakespeare and so on. That's how he lit the jets, let the fires of inspiration in their souls. I'm sure there's a lesson that you could teach us on here about what is leadership in the unknown. There's so much ambiguity in terms of what the land is that's in front of them and probably what they're going to do the next day, much less the rest of their lives, because that's where they are now. They made this decision.

What are the fundamentals of leading a group of people through the unknown? You've got to make the unknown a positive. We don't know what's there, but it's pristine. We can build something. We're not going to walk into the middle of a city. We're not going to be handed, something already developed. We're here to shape this thing. This is the great adventure.

This is what God has made us to do. This is an exciting time. We just have to pay the price of suffering to get there. A leader constantly has to frame the experience. If you leave people to their own, then fear, panic, disappointment, pain, hunger, whatever it is, is going to shake them out of any kind of sense of their experience, having meaning. But a leader is constantly, infusing meaning into what people are experiencing.

So the unknown becomes exciting. When they landed, they were so excited because they had been across the ocean. Now the hard part's over. See, that's how the leaders were talking. So now let's find good land and start to build. Everything was infused with meaning. So a leader has to, I've heard leaders described as the chief joy officer and the chief this officer and the chief that officer.

But for me, the leader is the chief, I call it destiny officer. the person constantly framing the experience in light of our purpose. How do you do that? Because I think we've probably all worked for that person before. Maybe some of us have been this person before, and I'm guilty of this, like, you work hard to frame the experience. And in doing so, all the people are looking at you and saying, oh, my gosh, that guy's an idiot. He's completely clueless.

He does know. He's just, I mean, he's just puking positivity. And it's like, in reality, he's just delusional. So how do you avoid becoming the person that is divorced from reality? Well, you have to stay close to who they are. People are making toothbrushes all day. You can't. You don't really want to say, this is going to be the greatest day of your life.

I mean, they're going to go, okay, this is PR speak. This is vision speak. Come on. Get to reality. But you can say, hey, we're not just making toothbrushes here. You know, we're earning the money to invest in a future for our kids. You can frame it that way close to their experience. But that's not false either.

That's not a lie. No, it's not a lie. It's not a lie. You always want to take what's actually happening in reality and just elevate it a bit. Just take it up to its higher meaning, just a bit. There's the big meaning of, hey, we're here to change the world. But that, you know, I'm pretty much involved in changing the world every day. But some mornings when I get up, that's not what I want to hear.

I just want to hear, you know, this next meeting you have can probably be important. That's about as far as I want to go that day. So I just have somebody adding additional meaning. It can be my wife or staff or a friend or just additional meaning to what I'm experiencing. just a few inches above how I'm actually living. That's the beginning of it. And then you build beyond that. I mean, there's the need for the big conference annually

where you bring all the workers together and infuse big vision. But day and day out, if you keep it at that level all the time, people will get ear-weary of it, a heart-weary of it. You just need to help them have a higher sense of purpose for what they're doing day-end out. If they're making toothbrushes, don't try to make that into sitting at the right hand of God,

but do infuse a sense of meaning. At the very least, it's a bit of business. about doing meaningful, honest work and earning a future for your family. At the very least. And highlighting the value of that. Highlighting the value of it. Now, there's a whole lot more to it than that. But that's like the minimal level of vision you want a person to have who works for you.

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you're at this stage where you need to start working smarter and not just harder, Keep is offering a free trial to our podcast listeners. So if you want to take advantage of that free trial with Keep, text the word work smart to 33444. Again, that's the word work smart, no spaces to 33444, and work with Keep to start automating your customer communication. Okay, so they land in what is now Massachusetts in December. Massachusetts in December, I've never been, but I've heard it's kind of cold. Totally cold. Stunningly cold. So what do they do next?

Well, they start to build structures. They start to build buildings. They build, by the way, one of the first things they build is their brew house, and that's not because they were addicted to beer. It's because Europeans didn't trust water. Really? Yeah, this is a big part of British history and Western history. They probably had had experiences with tainted water. They didn't understand microorganisms.

That knowledge wouldn't come around until Louis Pasteur in the 1800s. And so they believed in brewed beer because they knew that it was healthier. It had healthier vitamins in it. They didn't really understand vitamins. They knew their children were healthier when they drank light beer. When I'm calling it light beer, it was a lighter. Lighter alcohol. Lighter alcohol.

And even today in Germany, you have to specify how much alcohol content you want. And children in the teen years drink a very, very light beer because it's considered healthy. So they built that structure. They built homes. But what's interesting is, and this again is the great provision of God, they know that somebody is watching them from the woods. That is terrifying. In this new world, they don't know who's there. Somebody's watching them.

And eventually they can kind of see them and they see that they're natives. And I enjoy this part of the story because I'm Native American. And so eventually a great big Indian strolls out. He's way underdressed for the weather, but he was used to it.

He'd grown up his whole life there. Strolls out. And in perfect English says, this is historically accurate, do you have a beer? No. Are you joking? Actually, he would have said,

do you have beer? He wouldn't have said, A beer. He would have said, do you have beer? That was his first words. That was first words. Is this recorded? We know this?

Absolutely. What? Here's what happened. This is Samo Sett. He would have been about my size. I'm about 6'4, about 280. He was about that size. That particular tribe of Indians was very big.

So they dwarfed the little pilgrims from England. Oh my gosh. Pilgrims would have been 5-5. You know, he was in six-foot range. This guy had been kidnapped by English sea captains in the region up in Canada, had gone to England, had learned English, had developed a taste, obviously, for English. beer had come back to his people. When he returned, they had been pretty much wiped out by disease.

So he was helping another tribe kind of survive, and that's when the pilgrim showed up. So God had an English-speaking, beer drinking Indian right there. And you know what's going to happen. He's got a buddy named Squanto, and Squanto's the famous Indian who helped them learn how to adapt to the new world, how to farm with new techniques. But at that moment, it is a massive, we hardly ever talk about it because it involves beer. We don't talk to our elementary school kids. You don't have, you don't have the Indian in the elementary school play with the, you know, with the Stein. But that Indian walked out and said in perfect English, do you have beer? And that, I mean, that moment changes everything. Changes everything. Because the pilgrims have come, this is an important leadership thing. The pilgrims have come unprepared. They are expecting English forms of farming. They don't know how to harvest the sea. Really, none of these people have really lived in the sea and had to harvest the sea. In short, they didn't know what the heck they were doing.

and it's winter, and they're about to freeze to death. So Samo Set walks out and basically establishes relationships with them, introduces them to Squanto. And Squanto becomes the famous Indian who helps them learn how to harvest the sea, how to plant in that kind of soil, helps them make friends with the local Indians, all these things. They really survive because of him. Is it fair to say if that doesn't happen, they're toast? Unless God uses some other method, they're dead. Yeah, those two Indians make all the difference. In fact, they even said so.

We probably would not have survived that. not been for Squanto. Wow. That doesn't make the winter any easier, though. No, it doesn't. They actually enter into the starving time. You can't get there and plant fast enough to harvest in order to eat, and they had run out of supplies.

So they are about to have a horrible time. They call it the starving time. It's worse than you can imagine. Half of the people die. Oh, my word. Now, think about that. You're now down to 45 people, probably, 45, 50. Some of them are children.

No family goes without a death in the family. They actually get down to the point where you've got some dirty water and they had to actually drank it because they would have died, even though they wouldn't want to drink water. And maybe five kernels of corn. This is a, this is, this is launched a lot of lore and tradition that they only had five kernels of corn per day. Oh my word. Per person each of that's, per person, per person, per day. So they're starving. They're starving. And that's what, that's what their rations are is five perils are. That's what they can, that's what they can keep from the ship and the Indians can afford to share with them. It's horrible, see, and the more you know about this story, you know, the more that you value the Thanksgiving feast that we're about to talk.

about. In fact, let me stop here and say there's a tradition in New England of when the Thanksgiving dinner is set and all the food's ready to be eaten, that they put five kernels of corn on each plate and remember the starving time. Because it's so easy for us just to think about these fat Puritans and pilgrims, you know, with their food and the way that it's painted, you know, in normal Rockwell paintings and so on. But the fact is they were starving and more than half of them died. And it was horrible. And that's what led to the innovations and to the changes and to the vision that was kind of birthed into an American culture that we now remember. Culturally, there's so much talk about our nation becoming an entitled nation.

Yeah. How should we look at stories like this and what should we learn from stories like this to take individual responsibility for crushing entitlement? I believe, and this is one of the reasons I study in Wright history, I believe that history is the antidote to us being spoiled, to us being over. materialistic. It's not a problem that we have a lot. May we all prosper. That's what we want, is to prosper and launch the next generations. But if we understand the price of it, if we understand the price paid in World War II, by the pilgrims, you know, in the Civil War, all the things that we

look back to in our heritage. If we understand the price of what got us here that others have paid, we stay humble, we stay small in our own eyes. We realize that we are the heirs of something magnificent. So my children grew up with five kernels of corn on the plate. And before we actually dived into the food and we'd stop, we'd join hands, we'd remember just a moment of a starving time. They got to the point where they rolled their eyes a little bit at their historian dad requiring. But y'all did that. We did it every time. We still do it. We'll be together for Thanksgiving and we'll, this year reading at a big buffet in D.C., but they will go, my daughter will go and find some corn or ask for some popcorn from the kitchen or something, or she'll put, bring it in her pocket,

and she'll put five kernels of corn on the plate at the restaurant, and we will still do that ritual. We've been doing it for, you know, 30 years. There's something so powerful about that. one of the things I've learned working here is there is power in ritual. Yes. Dave, every Thanksgiving stands up and reads Abraham Lincoln's first Thanksgiving proclamation. And to some people looking from the outside in, it could be like all these really big words that none of us understand anymore that it's like, okay, let's get on with the food.

But for the people in this building, that is, I mean, people will say that's my favorite moment of the year because it binds us around something that's bigger than this place. I know the thing that blocks leaders so often from doing the ritual or doing the five kernels of corn or stepping out and telling their family, like, I want to do this this year, is they are afraid it looks cheesy. How do you counter that? Well, it can be cheesy if you let it, but if it's meaningful to you. And if you don't, the leader, in other words, if the leader really cares about it and if they connect the meaning to the lives of the people. In other words, if Dave just said, this is my favorite thing and I'm going to read it whether you like it or not and just read it. You know, everybody would go, well, fine, we'll put it up with it because it's the boss, but we don't care.

But he pulls them in. He pulls them into his own joy, his own passion. And then he applies it to the meaning of Thanksgiving. Ritual, ritual, think about in your own life what ritual meant. You know, you remember how your family celebrated Thanksgiving or Christmas or what dad always did at the start of hunting season. Whatever it was in your family culture. My father was not a deeply religious man. He was an army colonel.

We went to military chapel. But every Christmas, he'd read the Christmas story from the Bible on Christmas Eve. and it profoundly impacted us because we heard the Bible in our own father's voice. Rituals, when it's put out, who cuts the turkey, you know, all that kind of stuff.

You know, the first, my wife is crazy about this kind of stuff. You know, the first pie of a certain kind of the season kind of thing. You know, like, you think we live on a farm. We live in downtown Nashville and downtown D.C. But she's such a farm girl by background

that we think in terms of seasons and holidays and what food. And she'll come in and say, okay, the strawberries are ripe now. You know, I'm like, I'm going on the safe way. How could I even know that?

But all those rituals make it a big difference. So I keep them going in my own family, even though my kids are in their 30s. All of that is part of leadership. All of it is. Look, I mean, my favorite of a college football team is Notre Dame and the traditions that keep going. You know, you've got a little white leprechaun is the symbol of the team. But these African-American guys will kill for that leprechaun, you know. And they slap a sign when they come out of their locker room, you know, play like a champion today.

And it's epic, you know. They're always the old guys, the old players in the stands. The traditions are huge. They might not even have a winning season, but those traditions are shaping lives. And that's part of leadership. Military does it. Boy Scouts do it. All the great movements in history have done it.

And it's essential. So we go through the starving time. 45, it sounds like. You get down to about 40 people ultimately. What do they do after they get out of that season? And then that kind of leads us into what we now know is this celebration. They get through the winter. That's the starving time.

You come to the spring. Now it's time to plant. The Indians teach them a different way to plant. And they do something very, very significant that's been very significant in American history. And that is that they had been doing communal farming. They had been farming, all of them farming the same plots of land. But the leaders decide that they'll do a better job and they'll have a better yield if they give each family an individual plot of land to farm. So basically, you have symbolically here a move from communally.

communal economy to a free market economy. Each family's turned loose to be creative and innovative with its own plot of land. That's pretty powerful. It's very powerful. And that is, I mean, kind of woven into the fabric of our nation. There's this, like more than maybe any country on earth, we have this focus on individual responsibility. Yes. But this place only works, and maybe this is why it's not working to a degree right now, without a sense of communal identity, how do you, like, teach us on that a little bit, that combination. Well, they didn't lose their sense of purpose. They understood that the free market, so to speak, that the individual plots of land, that the privatization of farming, so to speak, was connected to a larger vision that captured all

their hearts. So you didn't cast everybody off on their own in their own direction. They said, we're still committed to a common purpose. We're still a community under God. We still have a covenant. We're finding new techniques, new ways of farming, new ways of doing our economy so that we can prosper and fulfill that purpose. So the prosperity was not even just about the individual family. It wasn't like one family was going to feast, another family was going to starve. It was about all of them doing well so that they could accomplish their divine purpose. That's how they thought of it. And so as long as you keep a common purpose, you know, you've referenced what's going on today. We've lost a sense in this country of a common purpose. You know, there were

times and seasons when we were about setting people free or we were about ending poverty or we were about fighting the Depression or we were about racial justice. as a country, for the most part, when we lose a common purpose. So the question is today, the question I would ask our leaders is what common purpose are you holding before the American people? We've seen they'll rally to it. Look at 9-11. Look at what happened to this country.

You may not be old enough to remember exactly what happened. But 9-11, the country rallied because we had. The response was insane. We had a common purpose for it. That's what I won't get into politics here. But I would fall to our current generation of leaders because they're too busy squabbling and, you know, being egotistical and not raising of a common purpose. purpose for the country. And people were rally to it. That's good leadership. So then your prosperity,

your innovation, your technology, everything you're developing creatively is in service of that. What is the business owner that is doing their part individually and their business is hopefully prospering and thriving? What is the role of them as a citizen to the larger picture? Yeah. The words from Genesis come to mind, blessed to be a blessing. You want to thrive. You want to have a prosperous business. You want to succeed. You want to produce more than you need. But you want to to do it all while modeling something for others. You want to make your, the way you treat your employees redemptive and elevating. You want to set an example for the broader society. You want to invest into civic affairs. This can be a fantastic means of social transformation. If it's done with a

vision, if it's done with a higher purpose, if it's done, by the way, wisely so that you prosper. And that's the way business should be. It shouldn't be about, you know, let me grab all the market that I can. You know, let me squeeze the worker until he bleeds. You know, that kind of, that kind of robber-bar-bar kind of image of a businessman. Business can be a wonderfully redemptive, transformative thing. And I think there's something to be said. What you just talked about is they got through this winter and immediately got to work, planting and farming.

And that ultimately sets them up for what I assume is a harvest in the following fall. Yes. And by the way, let me emphasize before I go there that they innovated. Notice how much they're willing to change. They are not really farmers. They come basically expecting British-English-style farming. They hadn't really been farmers in. in Holland. So they're, they're neophytes. They learn from strangers. They adapt. They develop new

tools. They trade for new kinds of seed. I mean, huge change. So change, you know, Churchill said the change is to be perfect and to change often is to be successful. You know, that was one adaptation of his quotes. And so the pilgrims really changed and innovated by the fall of 1621. They had a massive harvest. And the governor declared a feast. And they were, now here, they're within months, just six or seven months of having died, the whole compound would have been dotted by graves. Think about that. But now they're in the fall.

They have an abundant harvest so much so that they invite the Indians to come celebrate with them. Wow. And that is what we now know is Thanksgiving. That's Thanksgiving. Yeah. They invited Indians. By the way, in defense of Thanksgiving, it was four days.

There were athletic contests and shooting contests and wrestling with the, you know, they had wrestling matches and everything. At one point, a food fight broke out. Are you serious? I am. They started throwing things at each other, you know, the apple cores and stuff like that. The Indians brought deer. They would have had a lot of seafood.

The big innovation that the Indians taught the colonists was popcorn. It's one of the first time whites didn't really come across popcorn, something the Indians did on our regular basis. Look how big popcorn is in our lives now. So it's pretty stunning. We're not sure that they had turkey. They had fow. We're not sure they had turkey. That's kind of a sad moment for me because I like that thing, but they definitely had pies and all the things that we have now.

But it was wonderful. There's another leader. principle there in the idea that they made it through all of this and they actually pause and it sounds like this celebration this was no small celebration lasted i think uh over a week at times yeah so the value of celebration for the leader but also for the team of people that they lose you have to let the pressure off you have to celebrate you have to raise a glass as some people say you have to have celebrations that set another set a vision at a new level we've succeeded we've come through let's celebrate let's thank god let's tell our story

to our friends. That kind of thing has to happen. It's part of building a culture. And ultimately, it's a culture that leadership is about. Leadership is about building a culture. Culture is just what's encouraged to grow. So here at Ramsey's Solutions, what is encouraged to grow? You're very clear on that because Dave's very intentional about that. But at the plumbing company, at the paper company, at the paper shop, at the shoe repair shop, at whatever it is you're running, what's the culture, what's growing? What do people feed on? And celebrations are a big part of that. I mean, I know a little company. It's got three people. They work in leather. But every Friday, at about four o'clock, they bring out a bottle of wine and they raise a glass and they celebrate. It's nothing fancy,

but you can't believe how thick the culture is, the wives, the children who are able come and join them, they're cookies for the kids, and they just sit there and they tell probably a lot of lies and they have fun and they raise a glass. And I love that. Basically three workers at a company that's existed for a couple of generations, but they do good work and they've built a culture. They give a lot. They model a lot. And when you ask people in that town, you know, what's really the exemplary business in this town? It's not the big Walmart. It's not the big factory on the edge of town. It's that little three-person leather company because they built a culture that ennobles others. And that's what celebration does.

We believe leadership is influence. And the people that listen to this podcast are people that have influence into the lives of the people on their team, their families, their communities. If we're not careful, Thanksgiving can become a day about food and football. Right. What would you say, as your final word of encouragement, to these people of influence for bringing meaning back into this day for the sake of the people they lead? You know, we are learning the power of story again. Literally, brain scientists tell us that the easiest way for the human brain to absorb information is story. But as a historian, I'm already there.

So how about tell a bit of the story? tell a bit of the story to your children. How about to your employees? Just tell a little bit of the story. Send it out on an email. Pull it off the internet. Just tell a little bit of the story and noble Thanksgiving. How about the Five Colonels of Corn?

There's a great poem by Herbert Butterworth called Five Colonels of Corn. It's been read in New England for a couple of centuries or some version of it has. And how about you take some bust open a popcorn bag or put five kernels of corn on a plate and take three minutes. I'll let the food get cold and make everybody mad. But three minutes to say. say, look, I've just been reading a lot about the Pilgrims. I just want to tell this story. Tell it in 90 seconds.

Condense what I've just said into 90 seconds. And then say a prayer before everybody dives in and goes, watch the Dallas Cowboys lose again. You know, that's fine. It's okay. By the way, it's okay as far as I'm concerned for Thanksgiving to be food and football and family, the three-hiffs. But it just shouldn't only be that. Bring those elements in in non-boring ways. Be captured by it yourself and others will be captured by it as well.

Well, Stephen, I heard you give this message to our team three years ago. And as soon as I stepped into this role as host of this podcast, I was biting at the bit for us to share this with our audience. So we're so grateful for your time, for your investment, and for your ability to tell one heck of a story. Oh, thank you. You're very kind. It's a privilege. That entire conversation is such a powerful reminder of how story can reintroduce and reinvigorate the meaning and purpose of the things that matter most. And I love Stephen's action item for all of us. I'm going to take it. I hope you will as well. to tell this story, to share this story with the people that are closest to us. So maybe if you're a business owner, that's your team.

Maybe if you're a manager, it's the people that directly work with you. Or maybe it's all of our families over the Thanksgiving dinner. Regardless of where you do this, I'm going to challenge you tell this story. Now, if you're like me, your immediate thought is you're freaking out because you're like, oh my gosh, it needs to be dramatic. It needs to be inspiring. There should be tears in people's eyes. We've got to make this absolutely perfect.

Maybe get music involved in the mix. No, listen. It doesn't have to be that big of a deal. You don't have to tell it exactly like Stephen did, but it is important that we do share this story. So Stephen was nice enough to give us the written version of the story so you can share it with your team. You can even just read it if you want to. And we wanted to provide that to you. It's called a Thanksgiving meditation.

And he also included some of the actual quotes and lines from the Pilgrim's Journals. This stuff is incredible. So if you want to take advantage of this resource that Stephen was nice enough to provide, you can text the word Thanksgiving to 33444. Again, that's Thanksgiving, just like the holiday, all one word, to 33444, or you can click the link that's in the show notes. And take this seriously, actually tell this story to the people that are closest to you. Hey, I would be remiss as the host of this program not to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the people that make this podcast happen. happen every single week. Senator Tim Hull, Will Rudder, Zach Estes, and the entire Entry leadership team of over

70 people, thank you for your hard work, for your diligence, for your intentionality, and your attention to detail. And also, on behalf of our entire team, we want to thank you, the listener. You are why we do this. Thank you for listening so faithfully every single week. But more than that, thank you for taking these principles that we deeply believe in and putting them into action every single week in your businesses so that others' lives may be positively impacted. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did,

please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire entree leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like 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. 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 wherever you listen to podcast or go to Ken Coleman.com.