EntreLeadership - #390: Why Does Your Business Exist? with Jimmy Mellado

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Some days it's not easy to connect the dots between your day-to-day and what drove you to start your business in the first place. But a strong sense of purpose is the very thing that will get you and your team through whatever life throws at you. Jimmy Mellado, President and CEO of Compassion International, draws from his experience leading all sizes and types of organizations to share how a deep connection to purpose is jet fuel for your business.   entreleadership.com/podcast Compassion International website Start with Why by Simon Sinek Good to Great by Jim Collins Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins The Corporate Athlete by Jack Groppel Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Mission Statement Mapper Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   As an Amazon Associate EntreLeadership earns from qualifying purchases.   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

Hey, in business and in leadership, everybody's talking about purpose, vision, mission, goals. You know all that stuff. Sounds fancy, right? Well, we know enough to know we need this stuff, but what the heck is it? Especially purpose. What's this idea of purpose? You know, it can feel kind of philosophical or mystical. I'm going to tell you, though, it's not. Guys, it's the reason you exist. And if you don't have one, you're screwed. 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, Daniel Tardy, and today my guest is Jimmy Milato.

Jimmy's been a part of a successful startup. He's an Olympic athlete, and today he's the CEO of Compassion International. He leads a team of over 3,000 employees and over 35 countries. Talk about a guy who understands why you have to have direction, a goal, passion, fire, a purpose. And for Jimmy, figure out his purpose started at a really young age. There were some real strong themes early, early in life. And I immediately think back of Nicaragua where I was as a little boy. I was born outside the United States, grew up in six different countries.

I'm one generation away from poverty. My mom knows what it's like to keep a dirt floor clean, a daughter of migrant farmers on the Mexico, U.S. border, Mexican and culture. But my dad and her married, and they were adventurers. So they moved 41 times in 62 years of marriage. Wow. And I was in six countries before celebrating my first birthday, grew up in seven, so fascinating. And I love the, you know, my childhood. But in, in 1972, I was living in Nicaragua.

I was in third, fourth grade. And I watched the Berlin Olympics. And something happened. And I said, man, I want to be a part of the Olympic movement. And that started, you know, 16 years of training and working and dedicating myself to getting, you know, just developing the skill, the craft. and all these different events. I was a generalist.

I wasn't a specialist. I just loved all the events. And the decathlon fit me. So that purpose, that, I'd love to be a part of the Olympics, that drove me for, you know, 16 years until seeing that vision realized. And that's just one area. And purpose can emerge in different areas of life.

You have an epiphany. You have a calling. You have a transformative moment or something traumatic happens. And then all of a sudden, this energy inside of you wells up. You want to make a difference. You want to make an impact somewhere. That's the birth of purpose. It could be purpose for life. But everybody's looking for purpose, but it could be purpose for an organization. Every organization's dying to have real purpose.

Do you find that a lot of times purpose, I know in my story, a lot of businesses we work with, it starts out as something closer to survival or just paying the bills? You know, you're not thinking about this big impact you're going to make on the universe. It's almost like, yeah, that's for smart people. I just got to get this thing off the ground. Is it always that way? Or do the big organizations that really make a difference? Do they know from the beginning, like this is why they're going to exist? Well, I mean, I don't know for certain, but from my experience, it's always been that way for me. When you're starting something, it's fragile. It's not defined. It's just got energy. And you don't know where that energy is actually going to go. My first year,

a startup organization, the Willow Creek Association, which is a training, a leadership training organization that was started in 1992. When I was a part of that as a sixth employee, we lost a quarter million dollars that first year, and our very existence was threatened. So our immediate, like right here purpose was survive another year, survive another day, survive another payroll. That's the real visceral reality of startups. and they're all consuming, but that more closer in purpose,

it really does always have to be in the context of a longer, a longer term purpose. And I will say this, it's not always clear. It's not always clear what that longer term purpose is when you're in a startup situation. You got something that created. There was this sense that, hey, we want to help churches thrive. So the Willow Creek Association got created,

but then how does that look? What's the priority? What's the focus? What's the strategy? How are we going to do that? Yeah. And how are we going to do that in a sustainable way? So all those questions, as they get answered, it takes time to answer them.

And in the meantime, you've got to survive. Yes. It seems like you're saying it's not an exercise you do at a retreat. It's more a process that you refine as you're figuring out what you're about and you're experimenting with the marketplace and it's evolving to some degree. Absolutely. No doubt about it. And that actual real life experience is speaking into, Al, that.

that purpose will get crystallized and become clear over time, and it will if you keep pursuing it. You talk about that early startup stage, we call it the treadmill stage, where you're running really hard and you simultaneously don't feel like you're moving forward. You know, you're just make payroll by sometimes backwards. You know, you've worked with thousands of leaders all over the world and have hung out with some of the top thought leaders in this space. What's the relationship between purpose and getting off that treadmill. I think what purpose provides is energy. You can't have progress or survival or thriving without energy.

Energy is the key. You know, Simon Sinek starts, you know, talks about it, starts with the why. You've got to be able to have that compelling why. Purpose speaks to that. So there's got to be some, the clearer you are with purpose, the more focused and intense that energy. is and pay attention to that energy because that energy will guide you toward purpose. It creates commitment.

Purpose creates loyalty, creates sacrifice, and it creates alignment along the way. And it creates efficiency. When you're clear on purpose, you don't have to have tons of strategic alignment weekend retreat conversations. People, when they get purpose, they start to self-lead toward that purpose. That becomes very efficient and effective, of course, because you're all done. driving toward that purpose. And I've lived in the space between living pretty much most of my vocational life in the not-for-profit world, but learning a ton and being educated at business

school and talking to the folks that you mentioned, you know, the Jim Collenges and Patrick Lanchionis of the world and Jack Welch's or late Jack Welch. And when you look at the for-profit side and the not-for-profit side, what's been fascinating for me to see is they're different in their strengths. In the not-for-profit side, boy, are they long on purpose? Really clear. Because they were created for a cause to the social good in some way. So usually those purposes are clear. And there's a lot of energy and commitment around that. But then all of what it takes to be sustainable in the systems and the processes and the strategies and all that typically a bit weak. And on the for-profit side, they're really strong on that side. Kind of the organizational,

side of things. They're stronger on that side. But when you can put both together, and I see that happening on the for-profit side, I see it happening on the not-for-profit side. When those two things come together, the right cause and purpose with the right systems around it, watch out, because you're going to make a lot of difference. And some people think, well, if I'm a for-profit company, I don't have the advantage of the not-for-profit because you're serving the poor. That's clear. I'm making shoes or something. And so we've, you know, there's a sense that the for-profit gets a pass on being clear on purpose. No, you don't. No you don't. No organization gets a pass on purpose. I'm thinking of a food distribution company named Kehey Foods. So Kehey Foods, founded by Jerry Kehey,

they distribute all the product going into sprouts, all the sprouts across the country. Multi-billion dollar company, listen to their founding value. And again, they're a food distribution company. Their founding value, secular company, thank and honor God and all we do. And their purpose is we serve to make life better. That's good. Now, they distribute food, you know. So they have a purpose that's clear. And I'm telling me, if you know this organization, it drives them. Yeah. And then their mission and other things get very specific about food distribution and how they do that and everything. But it's in the context of a bigger, more transcendent reason for why they're working so hard. I love your kind of juxtaposing the nonprofit world and the for-profit

world and how they both kind of experience this conversation around purpose. I really believe we need to be hanging out together more. If you're a nonprofit, hanging out with some business people, and vice versa, because, you know, there's unique strengths that are innate to those structures of organizations. And the purpose idea is diminished sometimes. in the small business world and they forget, no, we're a part of partnering with the nonprofit world. We're a part of fueling and sending resources over there to help advance what they're doing. And also we can teach them things about strategy and business. And then we can also learn from them on how we can bring more meaning to our work for our team and for

the employees that we serve. I couldn't agree more, Daniel. I really couldn't. I'm thinking back to when I first met Jim Collins in the 90s and he had just written the book, Good to Great. I love the book, devoured the book. and I said, man, I got to go talk to him. And his focus, though, was the for-profit world.

And lots of learning that I could take from the for-profit world and take it into the not-for-profit world. And in that conversation that we had it, and then him looking at good to great through the lens of the social sector, he ended up creating a monograph called good to great for the social sector. It's kind of like an addendum to good to great

that applied the principles, the same principles of good to great, but for the social sector. And it highlighted the things that the for-profit world could in fact learn from the not-for-profit world. And you're right. We can learn from each other because we have different strengths. I think one of the strongest things inside of the compassion organization is, in fact, clarity around our mission. I'll never forget a guest that went on a visit to Ethiopia to our program there.

And we do all our program through 8,000 local churches, and that network is growing each year. But this guy went to the church where the program was, and he saw a guy sweeping the floor. And he went up to him and he said, hey, just, you know, what's this all about here? You know, what's this program about? And that person that was sweeping the floor said, oh, man, let me tell you about it. I am releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name. He understood how he connected to the mission. He got it.

He got it. And that's Compassion's mission, releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name. and when someone's sweeping a floor in Ethiopia can repeat that mission, now that's alignment. He knows what he's doing. He'll sacrifice for that. He'll be loyal to that. You know, I love that you're talking about alignment. Oftentimes, the founder of an organization, their life purpose and the purpose of the organization

are so closely aligned because that founder and the mission and what they do and the reason that they went into that space has a lot to do with what is in their heart. but in an organization that transitions, you know, you're not the founder of compassion, yet you're leading it extremely well. What's the significance of our personal purpose in life being aligned with the organization's purpose as, you know, not everybody's going to say, my life calling is exactly the mission statement of this organization, but I still want to be a part of it. But we also know that if they're too far removed, or they're not on mission is what we call it around here. They're not on our mission. They're not on our crusade. We run into problems, don't we?

Yeah, we absolutely do. In fact, I would say that's probably another distinctive. In the not-for-profit world, the word calling is used a lot. I'm called to do this. You don't often hear that. You do at times in the for-profit world, but just not as much as in the not-for-profit world where the calling in life and the calling of the organization are really together. We just went through a recruiting process and are going to be hiring a CIO that came from the for-profit world. And this person, And when I asked them, why are you interested in this compassion position of CIO? And she said, someone asked me a question not that long ago. And they asked if any existing obligations and money were no matter at all.

Just take that out of the picture. What would you want to do with your life? And she said, I'd love to serve children in poverty. So her calling in life and the organization's calling are really wet. And you see a lot of that in the not-for-profit world. It doesn't always have to be the case to be effective. but I do think that your purpose in life is the foundation. And then a subset of that is the purpose of your organization or even beyond that.

Maybe it's the purpose of your department if you're in a bigger organization. But you never want the purpose of your team or your department or your company to be at odds with your life purpose. So how do you translate that to, I mean, let's say you've got a small business owner. He's hiring. He's got blue collar workforce and team of 20 to 30. people. It's not very common he's going to hear in an interview. If he asked that question, what do you want to do with your life? I want to drive a truck on a route. You know, not many people are thinking that in terms of what they want to do with their life. Yet that's

the job. How do you connect? This is the job to, well, it's actually more important than just driving a truck. Yeah. It's not different than the story of the guy sweeping the broom in Ethiopia. it's actually in the same where driving that truck isn't about consuming gas to get something from here to there driving that truck is going to make a contribution to the purpose of that organization to add some kind of value to meet a need that exists in the world and you get to be a part of meeting that need in the world and you get to be a part of the process of meeting that need in this organization That's the other thing that I talk a lot about to our folks in compassion. We have honorable work, serving the poor.

I mean, that's super honorable work for sure. But sometimes in the not-for-profit world, when you have such an honorable, compelling cause, you're tempted to take and cut corners on how you get there. How so? And, well, just like sustainability overwork, not having boundaries of No, I need to invest in myself and my sustainability. I need to understand the rhythms of work and rest and have good balance between that. Because if I don't, I'll end up burning myself out and the mission ends up getting hurt along the way.

So there's a commitment to the mission and my work, whether it's sweeping a floor, driving a truck, coding, doesn't matter. You're a part of realizing that mission. But then the other journey you're on is that in this organization, we want you to become a better person. We want you to become more fully equipped. We want you to realize your life potential in its intersection with the work that you do inside this company. We're not to take on your full life purpose, but in the intersection of the value you're providing in this organization, we want the process and your journey of being a part of this team to help you grow and realize

your potential, whatever that might be. I want you to say more about this idea of becoming a better person because Jimmy, you and I have both been around organizations that are so on purpose that the purpose becomes the God. And we've seen very talented leaders crash, whether it's through burnout, anxiety attack, doing something stupid that disqualifies them from leading going forward. What's going on there where they weren't taking care of themselves? This idea of self-care and not at the expense of the purpose, but so that you can be relevant to the purpose long-term. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it's that commitment that gets a little bit disoriented. Commitment's great. But when commitment to the mission becomes the God in your life,

watch out because it could end up destroying your life. I had a mentor, one of my most significant mentors, you know, said this statement. He didn't, and this was a faith-based context. So he said, I don't ever want to do the work of God in a way that destroys God's work in me. and when you're doing something honorable like serving the poor, well, maybe that's worth, you know, maybe that's such a good God thing. Maybe that's worth destroying God's work in me and letting my soul implode. And no, even the Bible talks about this in 1st Corinthians 13, where it says that, man, you can give away everything you have to the poor.

You can do the most amazing things in the world. But if you're not motivated right, motivated out of love, then it's like nothing. So I often say around compassion that the most important contribution you can make to this mission isn't so much what you do, but the person you're becoming. Because when you're the right person, when you're becoming the right person that you need to become, that you were created to become, of course you'll be dedicated. Of course you'll make a contribution. Of course you'll grow and be mature. So it's like everything you do ought to flow out of the person. you're becoming. And the more quality of person you're becoming, the more quality of the fruit

your life will bring. I love that. You know, often when I'm talking to leaders who have a difficult time turning it off, for all the right reasons, pause for a second and talk about the life of Jesus who, he had a greeting line everywhere he went. I mean, people heard this guy can heal me. You know, he's healing people, he's feeding people, he's taking care of the poor. And all through scripture, you look at it and never says, when Jesus was all caught up and everybody was healed, then he went alone to be with the father. You know, it never says that. I mean, can you imagine, you know, the disciples saying, hey, I'm sorry, sir, you've got leprosy, you've got cancer, you've got to, you're going to be the last one today. And there's thousands of people still

in line. And Jesus is going, I got to go recover. I got to retreat. His purpose wasn't to heal every person on the planet. He had a different purpose. And, you know, I think that's nice to think about like, okay, if Jesus can do it, I can do it. But practically, how do leaders turn it off? What do we need to create that margin in our life? Yeah, man, that's the question of a lifetime. I wish I would have known some of the things I've learned by making mistakes back when I was 30, when I started leading an organization. And that is to, you really do have to understand the rhythms of life, the rhythms of work and rest, work and rest. The Bible calls that Sabbath. There's an order to things. And a lot of times I find that leaders overblame stress in their life for the

bad things going on in their life. And they don't realize, no, stress is not near the problem they think it is. What do you mean by that? They overblame the stress. They overblame the bad stuff in they're like, I got too much stress, you know. And I could describe sometimes as a leader emotionally, I feel like the challenge of leadership is you're on the beach and you're a tsunami is coming and you just got your hands to defend yourself. That's sometimes how leadership feels viscerally. Like, it's just no way to get everything that needs to get done. And I've got so much stress and nobody understands. And you start getting that edge going on the inside, that self-speak, you know, on that front. So as I think about that, I go, no, no, no, no, no, no. I heard from someone a long

time ago, a guy named Jack Grapple, wrote the corporate athlete, the book Corporate Athlete, Jack's become a good friend over the years. And he says, you know what, stress is not the problem we think it is. Stress actually is good to a certain amount because it can use to create growth in us. The problem is our incompetent recovery strategies. We do not know how to recover. We spend more time strategic planning the work side of our life and under planning the recovery side of our life. And I pay as much attention to the recovery side of my life as I do the work side of my life. So I've got, I've got daily rhythms, I got weekly rhythms, I got quarterly and annual rhythms, so that I can stay in the game for the long haul. And the more compelling the purpose, the more you'd love to

stay in it for the long haul, wouldn't you? I'd love to hear about your recovery process, because oftentimes people say, oh yeah, I crash into bed at night, or I take a day and I just veg out. it sounds like you're saying it's more intentional than just that much more intentional in fact a guy by the name of chiksetmiha wrote a book called flow it's it's not a faith-based book secular book flow but what he studied was the the relationship and the dynamic of understanding your capacity to do whatever and the challenge factor in your life and when there's a balance between the challenge factor and the capacity of your life that's the balance between the challenge factor and the capacity of your life that's when flow occurs, when hard work and great contribution seems effortless. It just flows. I love the way the book calls it. But I've taken that principle further, and I've applied some biblical insight into the concept of balancing my capacity and the challenge factor. Because when I have a lot of capacity and low challenge, I get bored. And when I have too much challenge and it's above my capacity, I feel stressed.

And if I live too long in boredom land or too long in stress land, the result is the same. I want to escape. I either want to escape emotionally when I'm too stressed or I want to escape to find adrenaline activities if I'm too bored. And when I'm seeking escape, that's the danger zone. Like red lights ought to be blinking on and off to say, wait, danger zone here because you're about to make a very dumb mistake. you're about to make a very dumb decision that could ruin your life, could ruin your company,

could ruin your whatever, because it's escapism either way, too bored or too stress. The rhythm is in that balance of moving from spending some time in the stress land because that's where you grow and we need to grow. But then coming back over into the rest land where you can recover and then you recover, your muscles grow. And then you come back and you use that muscle again, stress that muscle again. it grows, but then you got to rest. You can't work out every day. There's got to be a rhythm to it. And the scripture is very clear about that. You know, from the very beginning, there was this order of

work and rest, work and rest in doing a Sabbath. And what's interesting about, I get a lot of inspiration from Psalm 23. But look at the first three or four verses of Psalm 23. Says this, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. So for me, that means like God's on the throne of my life. God's it. God's my shepherd. God's my leader. God's my forgiver. So I will, and I give my will over to God. So God's my shepherd, I shall not want. And when Jesus is in my boat, I'm good to go, no matter what the circumstances. But then look at the flow here. Then it says, he makes me lie down in green pastures. He didn't start with, you know, God I'm yours and God says, now go do this, this, this, and that and the other. No, no, no, no. He says, taking that.

lie down in green pastures. He says, and then, you know what, take a still walk with me. Take a walk with me along still waters. And let's think about that. And then the next phrase is, he restores my soul. So there's alignment with God. Then there's rest. Then there's communion.

And then there's restoration of the soul. And then he leads me down the path of righteousness. Then you're ready with a restored soul. Go do a lot of righteousness. stuff leads me down the path of righteousness. And then, yay, though I walk through the valley of shadow you're going to go through hard stuff, but you're good to go. And then you go back to that rhythm, rest, soul restoration, work hard, endure hardship. I think I get the concept. I've experienced what you're talking about. I've talked with a lot of business owners about this oscillating between

rest and recovery and then back to work and applied effort. I get it in my head. And even today, I've been in an intense two and a half day. Our executive team is working on this. We call it a stratop where we've got planning and strategy and we're arguing through stuff. And it's emotion. I mean, it's a lot of work. And then we had this conversation scheduled.

And I had a little bit of a break. And I got out of the office. I have a fishing pole in the back of my car. I thought, I'm going to wet a line here for a second. And for 30 minutes, I stood by some water and I'm fishing. And the whole time, Jimmy, I'm feeling guilty. I'm thinking, I shouldn't be doing this. I should be aware.

I should be in the office. What if someone sees me? What if my team sees me? What if they don't understand that I don't fish all the time? And I'm going to have to justify that I've been working hard enough to deserve. You know, my mind racist sometimes. And I think all leaders can relate to it feels like I'm not being responsible to take that recovery. Yeah.

And you just, honestly, you got to get over that because that's life. That's what's going to give you sustainability. I took three weeks off. Just before this week, I was off three weeks in a row. do that very often at all. I had not taken a day off since January break because of the COVID thing. It's been crazy. The COVID thing hit. I'm doing a global with, you know, we had 3,000 staff in 35 countries and multiple languages. And I've, and this is a global situation. I felt like our staff needed to hear from me every single week with an update, the implications, what's going on,

the effect on our children, our staff, our program, all of that, donors. So, I mean, it was full on. I even donated the one week I have off because I mentioned I have rhythms in these daily, weekly, quarterly, et cetera. I donated my week of PTO to a bank where others could use that needed it more than me. So I even gave that week up. And we're in a crisis situation. But then I said, you know what?

I'm sorry. I'm not going to be able to continue. you the weekly update because I got to take some time off. But we got another capable leader and they're going to provide the weekly update. So I'm taking three weeks off and I'll be back and I'll be energized. So it's something I'm constantly thinking about. And I get yellow flags when I start to know that I'm thin on margin and that, you know, impatience, treating people differently than you know you should. When you don't have margin, the bad side of you is quicker to show its ugly side. You know, you mentioned a key there that I don't want to overstep. And it's that you had another

capable leader. Yeah. And oftentimes, you know, we'll work with leaders who they get to this point where they've been leading through the storm. They've, whatever, the crisis mode, ox is in the dish. Go, go, go, go, go. And they need a tap out to catch their breath. And they turn to their bench and they go, there's no one on the bench. Yeah. And by the time you experience that moment, it's too late to be developing your bench and bringing up leaders that can step in the gap for you when you need to take a break. And, you know, it seems like with 3,000 team members, that has to be a regular part of your

process for developing leaders so that it doesn't all right on your shoulders. No doubt about it. Absolutely. This mission ought to go on and will go on beyond me. It's building the systems, sustainability, the people tied to it and getting alignment such that it ought to be able to carry on without me. And that's one of the things that I think has been a strength of compassion is that their leaders have never been about themselves. I think I'm the six CEO in 68 years. And with every one of them, there was this beautiful transition to the next era of leadership because it was about the cause, the mission, and building people toward that.

and having multiple options of folks that could step into the role when the role gets, you know, passed on from one to the next. And when I think about crisis situations, I think about margin. And the time to think about margin is not when a crisis hits. The time to think about margin is well before the crisis, years before the crisis. Like you said, you can't build bent strength in the moment. You can't build reserves in the moment. You can't fix bad strategy in the moment, you've got to be working on the company so much more as the leader than actually the doing stuff in the company. And that's hard to do, especially in the small organizations.

And again, I remember being part of a startup. And there were just six people and then 15 and then 50 and 100. I remember what it's like to not have departments. I remember when I was a generalist and I'm working on newsletters and I'm working on marketing and I'm working on operations and I was answering calls in the call center. I mean, I was doing it all. And I was, you know, the leader. And you get to the point, though, that if you want to have sustaining impact in that purpose,

you got to build the team and you got to build sustainability along the way and be into divide authority and responsibility and create departments and teams and delegate. And, you know, that's just the normal evolution of an organization if you want it to have lasting and growing impact. I think about the early days. It really is hard to build margin early. But oftentimes, Jimmy, you know, you see this inflection point or that I would say a critical point in a business or organization's growth where they've been getting it off the ground and they finally achieve success and some repeatable processes and momentum. And in the for-profit space, many times a business owner will go, okay, good, I've got the financial margin. I can start taking this home. I can let off the gas a little bit. And then they're fine for a while because there's no. crisis, but then the crisis comes and they're going, oh, I wasn't reinvesting that newfound margin, whether it's in resources, time, systems, working on the business, however, whatever category of margin you want to ascribe that to, it's important, like you said, to do this ahead of time,

but many times you're not feeling the pain or the motive to do that when you first start to have that margin or the luxury of the margin. What is it that you need to be thinking about when you go, Okay, I'm able to increase my lifestyle now, but I'm actually not going to. I'm going to put aside some reserved cash in case, you know, the storm comes. How do you, you know, how do you anticipate that when you haven't actually felt the pain of, you know, the potential crisis coming down the pipe? Well, in my experience, the most significant lessons I've learned have been because of pain. And, you know, I'd like to think that without pain, I'm able to learn these things and act on them. But man, it's usually pain. That's an amazing teacher.

And I'll go back to 2008 when the financial crisis hit. And that was very, very painful. And we did not have the cash reserves that we needed to be able to sustain that valley. And I remember when it started in 2008, getting this impression, I take it as of, you know, from God, because it was, it was very sustaining for me. And it was just this little phrase of this is going to take five years. And I thought, oh boy, here we go. This is not going to be a one-year fix. And the problem was we did not have the margin.

We did not have the reserves to be able to weather that. And so life was very, very difficult. There were times when we were going paycheck to paycheck. And we were a training organization. And when the economy goes down, one of the first places that people cut is training. It's discretionary. Well, yeah. I mean, but if 20, 30 percent of the organizations that we were serving cut training,

well, we're in jeopardy. Yes. And if we don't have the reserves to stand up to that, life's very, very difficult. And I remember the pain and the nod in my stomach wondering whether we're going to hit payroll or not more than once. And I'll tell you, that's a very significant lesson to learn. Well, but you also develop these no matter what never again convictions, right? I mean, you're-

Absolutely. And that's what happened. Come back to, you know, we're talking about purpose earlier. clearly you're learning this hard lesson on a practical, you know, cash and retained earnings, these types of things. But what was the value of purpose for that team to get through that crisis? Wow. We knew what we were about. And people were, because you're clear on purpose, we want to help these churches thrive and invest in these leaders. When you're clear on purpose, that's a form of margin. And that margin comes in the form of commitment, sacrifice.

loyalty, self-pay, donating. People will make sacrifices for something they are transcendently connected to. And purpose does that. Every organization ought to have a very serious conversation to say how much is appropriate for us. You know, you guys at Ramsey, you guys stash away, you know, six months' worth of your expenses and just have it there. That's right. Well, and in business, and we don't have any debt, and we've got the cash. But I love how you talked about purpose, margin. I've never really thought of it that way, but the number of people in this recent, you know, coronavirus disruption, early, I mean, within the first, like when we started realizing, oh, this is getting real and this is going to impact business, the number of people

that came out of the woodworks and started emailing our leadership team and said, hey, if it comes down to it, I'll skip some paychecks. We're good. You know, at home, we have reserves, and we believe in this mission. You know, they weren't doing it because they came. You know, cared about the, you know, Dave and the bottom line and all that stuff in terms of, you know, how's this going to affect our executive team? They cared about the mission because they understand our profits fuel that mission. That's right. Actually, I react when people say, oh, you're in the nonprofit world. I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's a misnomer. We are in the not for profit. Our reason for existence is the social good, not profit. But we want to be very

profitable. We want to be an extremely profitable not-for-profit so we can create social good for a very long time. Why do you think there's a disconnect? You know, there's a stigma around profits, whether it's in the not-for-profit space or especially in business, those greedy business people, you know, all they want to do is get more profit. Yet, you know, when you're connecting it to a mission, social good and serving your customers well with excellence, you know, you and I know the profit is the fuel that accelerates the purpose. Right. But why do we struggle today, and especially in our country with this, you know, the profits are

evil or the profits are, you know, somehow it's anti-missional? Yeah. I think because there are high profile abuse situations, but those abuse situations doesn't negate the fact that profit is something precious and good and something we should strive for because that creates the lifeline for future. Are there examples of not-for-profits that take money from people and they only spend 10% on the cause and pocket the rest themselves? Yeah, there's stories like that.

Abuses and they get overblown and then profit gets a bad name or in the for-profit world. Is there some greed that takes over and creates abuse? Absolutely. But that's about abuse. That's not about profit. When you have profit, you're able to withstand. inflection points and transitions and crisis situations with reserves, but also investments. Oftentimes crisis is the right time to make an investment. And if you don't have the margin to make that

investment in a crisis situation, you will not seize the opportunities that are there. And I've talked a lot inside of compassion about how the word crisis in the Chinese language actually takes two symbols to describe the single English word of crisis. One symbol reflects danger, which is present in every crisis, but the other symbol represents opportunity, which is in every crisis. And if you don't have margin, if you don't have reserves, if you don't have the right strategy, you will not be able to recognize the opportunity, let alone take advantage of the opportunity because you've had no margin. You just allowed the crisis to become your boss. And now you're the servant to the boss called crisis and you've just given up your mission and now you're just trying to survive.

Wow. Versus if you had more margin, if you were prepared and that's the best thing you can do to protect purpose is to have margin of all kind so that when these things hit, the danger or the opportunity, you can thrive through one and you can seize the opportunity as well. Oh, that's so good. I love that word picture. That is just a beautiful. Clearly at this point, we've established the significance of purpose. And I love this idea that purpose really is margin for your business. How do you keep purpose alive?

And I know especially a compassion, you guys have mastered the art of telling the story, the frontline impact that you make. And everyone from your donors to 3,000 team members gets to hear these stories. How do you use story and make sure purpose is alive and make sure it doesn't become a plastic statement that's on the wall that nobody looks at and actually lives in the hearts and minds when they come to the job every day. Oh, that's such a great question because, and you gave the answer, actually, it's story. Story of purpose being accomplished.

Those are so powerful. And that's why we tell stories all the time. Because I know I need to be reminded of the story, but we don't only just tell the story. Every five years, we pay for, every fifth anniversary, we pay for our workforce to go to the field and see poverty on the front lines for themselves. Every fifth anniversary. I mean, I find that to keep my heart soft for the cause, I have to go get up and close and personal

with how that causes being lived out on the front lines. And I say this often, because we serve the poor. These are very painful situations. And I never want to experience, and I never want our employees to experience the pain of those we serve professionally. That's good. does not. Let that pain in your heart. Let that pain in your soul, feel it, and let it come into you because that's what touches you and gets you reconnected to the purpose of why we do

all the work around strategy and information, planning and coding and tech and all that. It's because of this. So pull them back to the purpose, tie them to the purpose. Let that person sweeping the room go and interact with a child they sponsor, you know. I notice. Just in talking about that, you're choked up. Yeah. I mean, it's very real for me with my mom being one generation from poverty, and she kept us involved in the life of the poor growing up. I never knew that my vocation would be around that.

Never did. Didn't think it would, actually. And God brought me full circle to come back and serve children in poverty, in places that are even kilometers or even a half a kilometer from where I used to live in these countries where we serve. life transformation and life saving is happening right now. I mean, I wish I could show you the video of a lady in this COVID situation

because now the kids can't come to the church for the program. We're having to take the program to the kids. And one of the biggest things happening right now is food security because if you're on lockdown and these are day laborers, if you don't work that day, you don't eat that day. And so we've now, in these last few months, we've distributed almost four million food packets. because we're not just serving the children.

We have to provide food for the whole family once we bring food to them. And this lady had just run out of food and just tears rolling down her eyes in. You came just at the right time because I ran out of food and I had no idea how I was going to feed my kids this next day. That's how it gets. And you let that in your soul. You say, all right, I can take a difficult strategic planning meeting and work through and wrestle through that again. because I'm serving that lady. You know, Jimmy, if I'm listening to this right now

and let's see, I'm driving into work, I hear the emotion and I hear the purpose and the mission and what you guys are doing, and I can't help but feel inspired and compelled. And then I realize, I'm running a factory that manufactures metal buildings. How do I take my guys on the line to the front? I mean, I don't know that we're helping with,

We're making metal buildings. You know, help me bring this to maybe someone that would say, well, we don't have a purpose like that. Yeah. About two years ago, hired someone that came from the for-profit world, one of the top marketers in the world. He helped transform Domino's with the Domino's app and was responsible as a young executive of bringing a stuffed crust pizza to the market and very successful. And so he now works for us. But I told him not too long ago, I said, Ken, you've been a minister. whole career. Now, you get to express it here at compassion, but whether it was Pizza Hut or Domino's or

Wendy's or Papa Murphy's, you've been ministering your whole run. And he said, yeah, that's true. And he talked about how there was meaning in the work that he did when he met with an early franchisee and they're struggling and it's a startup and it's hard. But then they turn the corner and they start to see some progress. And now they're getting some more resources. And, and now they're getting some more resources they can invest in their family or the employees themselves. You know, where helping some folks that were underprivileged and they got a job and then they turned their life around. And it's about life change at that point, not selling pizza.

So there is a transcendent purpose in everything we do if you look for it. And for the leaders, it's, I think, our job to do the best we can to find that transcendent purpose that people are willing to tighten that bolt over or do that manual labor. I'm also thinking of my friends at, you know, at Chick-fil-A. Oh, sure. All the time on this conversation, because it's how you serve the chicken. It's not the chicken, right? Absolutely. They happen to be chicken salesman, but here's their purpose to glorify God being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A. Chicken's not mentioned one time. That's what they do, but they're doing is tied to that bigger transcendent purpose.

And they don't have to even be faith-based people to care about that. I want to have a positive influence on everybody that I come in contact to. So if I see a single parent mom struggling, getting her kids in the rain into Chick-fil-A, I'm going to walk out and take an umbrella, and I'm going to help her into this Chick-fil-A store. You know, that's what purpose does. So, Jimmy, let's say I've been listening to this. I've thought, okay, wow, guys, I get it. I got to have a purpose. I've got to have a purpose statement. I'm convinced. You've talked about why it matters. You've talked about what it does. How do I go from, we haven't really been living on purpose to developing it or drawing it out? And, you know,

I know, especially the temptation as a leader you can be, you know, interested in going off and like doing this on your own and announcing it to the team. But really there's this art of getting the whole team to say, what do we do here and why does it matter? Practically, what can I lean into with my team so that we start down this path of really developing our purpose? Yeah, I'd say one word, listen. First, listen to yourself. Listen to what's going on inside your soul.

If you're not fired up about a purpose, it's not going anywhere and it certainly will not be contagious and no team member will buy into it. Because for purpose to have its true power, it's got to be. to be authentic and it's got to come out of your gut. It's got to come out of you. You got to make a, you know, take a look inside, a lot of introspection and say, what do I care about? Why am I here? And if you're the founder, if you're the leader or the organization, then why does this thing exist? From my standpoint, am I fired up? Because if you got that fire in your belly, then that purpose then becomes magnetic. It becomes contagious. But then, you know, you're

You also need to listen to the other team members because they can speak into it as well. What is hot in them? What moves them? Let them help craft and hone that vision. So it's listen to yourself, listen to them. Then it's listen to those you serve, to those that you're adding value to. Let them speak into the purpose that you are fulfilling in their life because that'll help you talk about it better, speak about it better. And it involves them, you know, in the process.

So I just wanted to follow up that. Listen to yourself, listen to others, and listen to those you serve. And then here's what happens over time. You'll get better at choosing better words to describe it. And when you do that, you're able to make it more contagious. Because some people have a lot of passion, but they don't know how to talk about it. They don't know how to talk about it succinctly. They don't know how to describe it in ways that motivate people to, you know,

go from where they are to join you in this cause. and sacrifice for it. So there's a rigor and a discipline to the crafting of purpose process here, but it really does start in your soul. What's deep in there? You know, you're giving people permission to say it's okay if you start raw and passion. You want to be high on passion and fire. Don't worry about making it sophisticated yet. And I think sometimes we feel the pressure to make it sound precise and exactly right. And we're going, we're crafting this beautiful statement that doesn't even get us out of bed in the morning.

Yeah. And that's not what we want. Follow the energy. Yeah. It's all about energy. And you know these days, because the last few decades, they're saying, every organization needs to have a vision statement and a purpose statement and a mission statement. I'm like, holy smokes, you can come up with that, go on a retreat and come up with words.

But the most important thing is energy. What creates energy and is catalytic and attractive to other people? Sometimes that's expressed in a vision statement. sometimes I express in a purpose statement or a mission statement. Don't be forced to have to come up with every one of those because some consultant or some book said it. It's not a form to fill out. Yeah, it's not a form to fill out.

At compassion, we don't have a purpose statement, but we have a mission statement that I mentioned, releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name, every employee could say it are 100,000 workers in these 8,000 churches, they could say it. It's crisp. It's memorable. It's compelling. And so we just, we go with that energy. And so however that energy gets expressed, run with the energy.

Love it. Well, you exude energy, Jimmy, and this has been fantastic. We're inspired by what you guys are doing at Compassion and especially inspired by how you're not just advancing the mission at Compassion, but you've actually been observing what makes all this work and you're sharing it with thousands of business leaders right now as they're hearing your voice all over the country, many of them have had the hardest year of their life. Yeah.

You guys are innovating. You guys are doing incredible things in the midst of this disruption with an organization that has tentacles that reach all over the world. And what you're learning, what would you say to encourage in these final moments that the hearts and minds of these business leaders who are maybe wondering, can I still do this? And how should I go forward? Yeah.

Well, and if I could tie back to a previous question, you said about how the process of developing your purpose, and I said, listen. But in terms of thoughts around, this has been a, I mean, and I would say for compassion, it's been a very hard season. When we do all our programs with kids coming to the church, and now you can't have large gatherings and more than, you know, 10 people in all these countries, well, how do you do a program? Because we only did ours gathering 250 people at a time. So we had to pivot really. fast and care for our staff and engage the danger now that this crisis provided. And that's why those weekly updates needed to happen. We started over-communicating. We already had built up reserves so that we had those in the margin to withstand the storm so that we didn't give up our mission to the crisis. We were able to let our mission stand down the crisis when you have reserves to do that. And so in that, there was a lot of care for our employees, mental health. We had a psychologists give two different talks? What happens when we're in a crisis from a psychological point of view? And what can you do to not just survive the crisis, but thrive in the crisis,

grow in the crisis? So a mental health benefit and reminding people, if you need help, get help. This is really, really stressful. We provided flexibility. We gave Friday afternoons off. We provided great flexibility for people to pivot their strategies, almost on the spot, to be able to continue fulfilling the purpose, but with a team that is also energized. So gave managers great flexibility. Of course, we've been all working from home all this time. And I've got a recording tomorrow for next week's update. And I'm going to talk about how emotionally I'm just settling in my spirit that I'm not

expecting this to change for at least a year. I'm settling into a rhythm where I can sustain this. And we want to care for you. and we want you to raise your hand to say if you need help, get help. Because we don't know. No, we don't know. It's still unknown. So I'm just, I'm not, I've died to the thought of I can't wait for it to go back to the way it was.

It's just an adventure in the future. And with Jesus walking with us, I think we'll be fine. Well, and that's always true. This just happens to be the adventure of the season, right? So, you know, the stuff you shared, I mean, your energy, your passion, your wisdom, I'm grateful. And I'm encouraged to receive this. I know our audience will be exceedingly blessed just by hearing the emotion, the belief that you bring. It's apparent in your voice. And we're really grateful for what you've shared today. And thank you for what you guys do. You're making such a difference in the

world and we're all better off as a result. Well, thanks so much, Daniel, for the privilege and the opportunity to share with the folks that are listening in. And I think I would just summarize my thoughts around and what to do in this season with, you know, I've talked around it, but just to say specifically is care for yourself and care for your people. You care for yourself, you care for your people, your mission will be taken care of. It is that simple. Jimmy Milato, thank you, sir. You're very welcome, Daniel. Blessings to you. You know, guys, we talk about purpose a lot in entree leadership. It's one of the six drivers of a peak performing business, but I've never had a conversation like that. When I'm talking to a leader of an organization that's that big,

So many times, you know, big organizations with big dog CEOs like Jimmy, you know, they're just so buttoned up and professional and sophisticated. But when Jimmy started talking about their purpose, it got emotional. You talk about a guy who's connected in their heart to what they do every day. You know what I heard? I heard, hey, this isn't fake. This isn't rah-rah. This isn't, I'm going to put on my smile and try to impress you because I know I need to do that to advance our critical objectives. This guy's fired up about what they're doing. And if you're not

fired up as the leader, how do you ever expect your team to be fired up? Why are you getting frustrated with your team who's not fired up and they're not following you and they're not doing their job and they're not motivated and can't find good help? Maybe it's because you're not fired up because you forgot your purpose. When you tap into your purpose and you understand the impact you're making in the world, you can't help but be on fire. And when you're on fire, you bring the energy and it's real and it's raw and it's authentic. And your people know it and your customers know it. And that's what it takes to lead an organization of significance. So guys, maybe you've got a purpose statement. Maybe you know what your purpose is. I don't care how recently you've talked

about it with your team. It wasn't recent enough. Brush up on your purpose. What is it? Is it succinct? is it clear, is it communicated, and is it alive, and the hearts and the minds of your team every day? So look, as Jimmy talked about, you've got to know your purpose, and the way you figure out where your purpose is taking you is you turn your purpose into a mission. The mission makes your purpose come alive. The mission is how you communicate your purpose with your team. Keeps it in the front of the mind so that you go, oh yeah, this is the statement that reminds me why we do what we do. So how do you build it practically? All right. tardy, what meeting do I have with my team and what do we put on the whiteboard and how do we figure

this out? Well, glad you asked. Because the Entree leadership team put together a tool that makes it super simple. Now, again, we said it's not a form to fill out. So you can do this exercise and it still doesn't mean anything. But if you're ready, if you have that passion, you have that fire and you go, okay, I just need some help bringing some language to this. That's what this tool is for. You're going to put your passions and purpose on paper and then you're going to arrive at a place where you you write out your company's mission statement. So to get this free tool, the mission statement mapper, text the keyword mission to 33444.

That's mission to 33444 or click the link in the show notes. 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 in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull.

It was edited and mixed by Will Ritter. I'm Daniel Tarty. And on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.