THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Secrets to Change Your World w/ John Maxwell

Episode Date: April 6, 2021

Anyone anywhere can make a difference and change your world… Whether you are someone who wants to make a difference in the world but has been too afraid to step out of the closet or you are someone who wants to take your life and the lives of others to the next level, you MUST watch/listen to this interview! It is not often that when you meet your heroes, they EXCEED your expectations. But that is exactly what John Maxwell has done! A man I have admired for many years turned close friend is back on The Ed Mylett Show for a 2nd time with even more mind-blowing content! John Maxwell is a MULTIPLE time bestselling author, writing over 100 books. He has trained High-Achieving Leaders in EVERY COUNTRY on earth and has dominated the business leadership industry, selling over 30 MILLION books throughout his lifetime. He had transformed individuals, communities, corporations, and countries all around the world and was named #1 leadership expert in the world by Inc. Magazine. It is my honor to have John back on the show. This interview is overflowing with REAL strategies that will help ANYONE, no matter what your circumstance, to change your world. You’ll learn the foundation to building a dream, influencing people, and becoming a powerful leader. Change is HARD! John offers real-world solutions that don’t ignore reality but rather teach you how to balance the REAL with the hope and OPTIMISM of what is possible. John says, “Most people accept their life instead of lead their life.” This interview will teach you how to find hope even in your darkest hour and how to build a community around you that will walk WITH you through the fire. We’re talking about changing lives! It is time to open your mind and truly transform your world. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈  → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ▶︎ INSTAGRAM ▶︎ FACEBOOK  ▶︎ LINKEDIN ▶︎ TWITTER ▶︎ WEBSITE

This is the Ed Milach Show. Welcome back to Max out everybody. Today's an honor. You know, it's rare in life that when you meet a hero of yours that they personally exceed your expectations of them. In the first time I met one of my heroes named John Maxwell, that happened. It was a conversation that I'll never forget and it developed into a friendship that I'm very grateful for.

John is an icon. I think you could argue that he's the number one selling author in the history of whatever category you want to call it. Leadership, personal development, faith, change your life, stuff. He's the number one all-time. He's an incredible speaker. He's a great leader. He's a good man and he's become a good friend. And I just so grateful I get to share his wisdom with you all today for the second time on the program. So John Maxwell, welcome back. Great to have you here. Thanks, Ed.

You know, I think back of our time together too and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I ever had. You know, sometimes you just get in the zone. Yeah. And that day we got in the zone. You know, they talk about athletes and they get in the zone and they, you know, if they're playing basketball, they can't miss,

you know, if they're hitting, they're, you know, and we just, we got into the, I don't know the Ed John zone something that day. I could not agree with you more and my prayer is that we're stepping right back into that zone again today because it's been a while and I still, we still get messages about that conversation that day because it did what your new book is doing for people to get help change people's World that helped change their life and then I'm so grateful that you've written a book so guys I just You know when we have someone on the show about books. I promote them But then there's books that I really love and so John wrote this one with Rob Hoskins actually co-authored it together Which is unique? It's called change your world I love this. How anyone anywhere can make a difference. And I can't think of a more timely conversation based on where the world is and people's lives are at. And so as we dive into this topic and I have the best in the world for those of you that are listening or watching, I'd

like to change my world. I'd like to change the world. I have the man here to do that. And I just want to start out with one thing He says in the book. Just to set the stage for today. John's books, by the way always say this You highlight most books. You can't do that in John's books because otherwise the whole page is just highlighter You'd be better to highlight with a one or two things in the book that you're not gonna go reread because the whole book is Highlight worthy but he says this guys he says people change when they heard enough they have to. Maybe some of you can relate to that when they see enough that they are inspired to or when they learn enough that they want to. And so I'm hoping that today one of those three categories fits one of you that are listening and that we can help you. So John, let's start. I'm just curious. I think when people hear that they think,

hey, you say in the book, anybody can transform their life. But does that really apply to me? Can anyone actually change their world? And I'd like to ask you that. Yeah, really toxic. And I love the question. And I think that here's where the miss is.

I think that most of the time when we're talking about positive change, we leave it to others because we really don't think that we're probably capable of doing it. And in fact, I called the book Change Your World, not Change the World. Change the world's too big. It's overwhelming. So I'm just asking people to go into the world. I mean, you know, your family, your friends, maybe maybe the a few people that you work with,

but I'm asking them to to go into that world and become a positive influence, positive force with the people around them. And what really excites me about the book and our time together today is that the book has no theory in it. It's all proven work. I'm not throwing out a book and saying, I think maybe if we did this, that we could change our world. I'm not hyping people or pying the sky stuff. We're not going to Disneyland today. It's just stuff that it works. And I know it works because I've been able to see it firsthand. I've been able to lead it.

because I've been able to see it firsthand. I've been able to lead it. And to be able to put a book like this in the hands of any person and have them not have a false promise, but have a true promise that they can really make a difference with someone else is just an incredible feeling. So I can say, I've written 86 books, so that's a few. And by the way, that's no,

and when you think about it, that's no big deal. I mean, you've got to be old. You've got to be old. If you're, if you're not old, you can't write any six books. So I tell people, no, relax, take a pill. It's not that big of a deal. You just have to be old. You do 86 books. But of the 86 books that I've done, this one is the most fulfilling. It's a, it's a timely book. It's very timely, but I'm very excited because what do leaders do? And leaders offer hope in the darkest hour. Yeah. And honestly, when crisis comes, you separate the players

from the pretenders real quick. Mm-hmm. And so we're in a crisis and I'm giving an opportunity for all of us to be players. You know, I noticed, John, I noticed that by the way, on the book, I was going to ask you that it didn't say change the world. It said change your world. That was one of the things I actually wanted to ask you about. And so you, you kind of started out there.

And like most of John's books, guys, it goes right into the granular like here's what you do. And on that hope topic, you've this great term in there called a possible. List. You need to become a possibleist. What is that? Explain. Don't you love that word? I love it. I love it. It took me about a month to learn how to say it. So let's start. I got it out of the way early in the interview. I'm like, I'm going to say this correctly early. Yeah, I could write it before I could say it, but I love it because what this, a posthilist is a person who doesn't deny reality. I mean, they don't have their head in the sand. They don't say they're not just an optimist and everything's good and everything's

going to come out okay without any kind of substantial support to their state. A posibilist sees reality, sees the downside, but also sees the possibility. And by the way, I think that's what a leader is. I think a leader sees reality. And in fact, Max Breese says the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. So we don't do our people of favor when we leave reality. In fact, I think reality is the foundation of building a dream. I watch people try to build a dream without reality. And I want to walk into their life and say, it's not going to happen. You've got to, you've got to, the foundation of reality is what is solid.

Now you can build something off of it. And a possibleist is a person who says, this is very difficult time and this is not going to be easy. And it's not going to be quick. And it's not going to be even sometimes simple, but it can happen. And I'm not only believe it can happen, but I'm going to make it happen. In other words, a possible list gets involved. It's awful easy to be an optimist on the sideline, but when you've got to go in the game, all of a sudden that optimism is going to show anything in your game. You've got to be able to provide the resources and support to make the game a winner for you. So I love the word because it says

we're going to we're not going to deny reality, but we're also going to not deny possibility. Yeah. And you know, some people they go to reality and lose possibility and some people go to possibility and lose reality. A possible is says I take both of them with me. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. I've not heard it said that way because I talk a lot about operating out of your imagination and not your memory or your history. I think a lot of people just keep operating out of their memory and their history. They don't give themselves the gift of being what I call a possibility thinker. And I love possible. It's so beautiful because now what

you've added to that though, that is really valid is you also have to define reality. I think a lot of times these, you know, you got dream big, get out of possibilities, but defining where you are is the place you're going to begin. And what I love about the book actually for me, you know I'm trying to in my life, you know I have different businesses. And so as I was reading the book I'm like this really applies to turning around this one particular part of my life and my business. And I was fast because John Lase Foundations guys, it's steps in this book. And I thought it was interesting that really you start sort of with values

and that that's sort of the foundation of transformation. I think this is valuable because if you've been hurt through what's going on in the economy right now and in the world and you're like, where the heck do I begin to turn my world around? John recommends you start with getting clear again on your value.

So talk about that a little bit, John, it's beautiful. And I don't read that anywhere else. Well, thanks for bringing that up. And you know, if it's okay, I would like to give all of your people a behind the scenes that's not in the book at all. But I'd like to give context.

I'd like to pull back the curtain for a moment because I got to go clear back to 2002. And if you go back there, I mean, if you picked up the Time Magazine in 2002, they summarized that year as the year of distrust because all I got to do is say, Enron, okay? That was the year when corporate scandals were rampant. And what we said, we were, and what we were was not the same thing. And employees got hurt and clients got hurt. And corporations just went belly up

and all kind of bad things happened. I was writing at that time for Time Warner and Larry Kirschbaum, who was the CEO of the Book Division of Time Warner, called me up to New York City. We had a long dinner and he said, John, I want you CEO of the Book Division of Time, called me up to New York City, and we had a long dinner. And he said, John, I want you to write a book on business ethics for us. We just really need this voice in America right now.

And I told him, I said, I can't. And he said, why can't you? I said, because there's no such thing as business ethics. And he looks at me and he said, what do you mean? Look what's happening in the business world. I said, I know, I understand that. But there's still no such thing as business ethics. I said, there's just ethics.

Just ethics. It's not business ethics. It's not home ethics. It's not community ethics. It's not relationships. It's ethics. And either you have them or you don't. And by the way, if you have them, they work in business.

Oh, happy day, okay. We're cooking, you with me? So he gets it real quick and he says, oh my God, he said, well, can you write a book on ethics? And I said, I'm not sure. Okay, you're holding back on me again. Why do you? And I said, how do you write a book?

I mean, ethics is all about doing the right thing for the right reason. Regardless of the situation, I said, how can you write a book on ethics when there's no truth or absolutes? I mean, in a world of relativism, how do you get anything substantial? And I said, you're going to have to give me a little time to see if I can write the book on it. And so I went with ways, my research writing team. We talked about a lot. And we finally came up with an answer. So I wrote the book on ethics. And the answer was very simple. We wrote the book based on the golden rule. Treat other people as you'd like to be treated yourself. And our research team found out that

every religion in the world and every culture in the world has the golden rules So it's not like I'm telling them something they don't already know or probably haven't even embraced So we wrote that book and it was a game Changer I mean I was interviewed by Chicago Tribune Wall Street Journal I went to West Point. I mean I went to places and said, talk to us about, and all of a sudden, the light turned on in my life, and I realized back in 2002, that the goal to rule was,

there's nothing more than a good value. This is a good value. Treat others as you want to be treated. It's a good value. All of a sudden, I thought, good values can make us become good people if we learn them and if we live them. And so I began to, although I trained leadership skills and

everybody knows that, I'd develop leaders, I got that part. I said, I want to do more than help people with leadership skills. I want to help people not only be trained leaders, I want to help them be transformation leaders. Very good. And transformation is an inside job. It's a values issue. And it's one thing. OK, let me give you an example.

Yeah. I'm known for the state that everything rises and falls on leadership. Yep. That's the that's the that's the that's the good and the ugly, the good and the bad of leadership rises or falls. You got a bad leader, falls, good leader, now what makes leadership rise, Ed? Two things, competence, in other words, you have to be a good leader and good values. And you can't divorce them. You're not gonna rise if you have great skills, but you have terrible values. Yeah.

And if you have great values, but you have terrible skills, you can't lead anybody. I mean, the good news is there are friends, but they aren't gonna take you anywhere. And so the falls on leadership is when you have bad values and you have bad bad bad leadership skills. And so all of a sudden I realized that here we've been training people to lead in leadership skills. And we train, we train them on what

to do and they know how to do the right thing, but we haven't trained them to be right. We haven't trained them to be the right person. I felt like John, I didn't even jump in, but I felt like it's one of the revolutionary parts of the book is the part on transformation tables is that you make change in groups. And it made me think a couple of things guys on values as I read the book and I did the values assessment myself. I think one of the reasons all of you they're trying to make change, I think if you want it to be long term, start different this time. Start with your values. That's the foundation that'll be that'll be everlasting. I mean, your values will evolve obviously over time. But the other thing that happens when you take inventory of your

values, I think and it helped me is I've been talking a lot lately about you've got to believe you're worthy of success. You got to give yourself more credit for your intentions. Not enough. I think everyone predicates I could be successful as you said when I'm completely ready or when I've got all the answers. I've got this amazing ability to execute. Well, how about you deserve the one because you're a good human because you intend to make a difference. There's a lot to be said in this world right now for just somebody with great intentions

and not enough good people give themselves credit for having good intentions delivering on their self-confidence because they don't take an inventory of it. And then when you said at these transformation tables he talks about, you'll discuss them, but I think it begins to grow within you. And so I just think there's so many granular things like that in the book. You also talk in the book, John, you have to list them off, you don't want to. But I just think his stuff is so real. There's like eight, like eight streams of influence that you talk about. And why they're necessary for transformation. If you want to go through all eight, you're welcome to,

but if you could at least make some reference to it, I just feel like it'd be so valuable for someone watching this right now or taking notes or maybe they're about to pull over to the side of the road so they can write these down. The reason I love to be on your show is you know how to bring the best out of the person you interview. You're a master at it. You really are at your pro. And I got I'll go to the eight streams, but you know, when you when you just when you

talked about people with good intentions that all of a sudden we give them courage. We you know what? We let people that have had good intentions and a good heart out of the closet. Yeah, yeah. We let them, we say, you can get out the closet. You don't have to stay there anymore. And we're going to give you a simple game plan

that, and you don't have to start big. Do you have five friends? Do you have four friends? Do you have three friends that you'd be willing to get together with and just work through these values? And I just love what you said because I thought to myself, wow, I wish I would have written it as good as you said it as far as we just really helped people who really would like to make a difference, but have never had the courage or the confidence. Yeah. It's always kind of it. Somebody else is going to have to make a difference. I'm just going to hope and pray for it. Right. And in all of a sudden, no, no, no, you can, you're going to walk out of the closet now and you can start doing it.

And so that that that transformation that magic happens there. We may come back to the table a little bit because yes, interaction, interaction, hearing other people discuss their, their difficulties and issues just really helps bring everybody out. Let's stay there for a second, John. I think it's too valuable. So it reminded me almost like, if you go to church, you go to church every Sunday, but then sometimes there's like a small group where you sit around and fellowship and you'll share a scripture and discuss it and then it grows and you come back. I think it's, I think it's, you're right. Let's just finish that for a second. What is a transformation table specifically?

And how do I begin to build one? Oh my gosh. Okay, well, there's a small group of people. I, you know, six, eight, you can get up to 10, but don't, you know, keep it small, keep it small. And it's, but it's a place where everybody roots for everybody. There's no judgment there. We don't need any teachers there. We don't even call them their facilitators. There's one person that may say, okay, you can, you, you share next, but, but it's, it's a, we're in this together. And

all we're wanting to do is improve each other. And so it's one for all, for one, you can call us the six musketeers around the around the transformation table or whatever you want to call it. But here's what's beautiful. Here's why the table works at. There are three questions that people ask that if they can get those answered, it brings life change to them. And they always ask it about somebody that's leading them. Okay. And these are the three. When I spoke at the United Nations, a few years ago, when I did the opening session, the United Nations to all the ambassadors of the world, I spent two hours on these

three questions. But these are these are the three. Every follower asked a leader, basically, these three questions, now they don't ask them personally, but intuitively, they're following for a reason. And the reason is they're looking at that person who it ever is this lead in and they're asking the questions. First of all, do you care for me? Secondly, can you help me? And thirdly, can I trust you? Those are the three questions. In the table, here's what makes the transformation table magic. Those three questions are answered every time. This is life change. And when I'm teaching, those three questions can be asked, but I can't answer them to a crowd. When I'm writing a book, they can pick up the book and they can be reading it,

but those three questions can't be answered at long distance on a page. You can put people around the table and and all of a sudden, the trust factor begins to increase because people begin to be vulnerable. But trust is built out of vulnerability. It's not built out of covering it. You know, authenticity is essential. And all of a sudden, you've got people helping each other and you don't have professionals helping each other. You have friends helping each other. And let me tell you something. The difference between a professional help is they'll tell you what you need to know. A friend help help will say say I'll walk with you.

Wow. Oh, that was so good. So glad I got Aaron in this room to get this content for me. I got my my contact curator in here and it just becomes absolutely life changing fire. And once you know it's it's it's it's like social trust. Social trust. Every country that does well, every community does well and has social trust. And any country that doesn't do well, lacks it. And social trust is, is I trust you.

I trust you to do what you ought to do most of the time. And when there's distrust, I don't trust you to do what you ought to do most of the time. And if you can see, we've got a trust fall in America right now, a major trust fall. No question. And somebody needs to speak about this issue. Now, watch this is huge. We have got a trust fall. And we're looking at each other and we're saying, Oh my gosh. And it's we're divided and it's you and it gets me and we got our issues and the whole and we and we've totally lost our way around the table. That all disappears. You've got people that are friends and they're saying, well, let me tell you how what happened with me in that area and and you've got you've

got support. I mean, it's like a meetings. I mean, there's a reason that they've worked for decades. There's a reason there's, there's a reason that they've worked for decades. There's a reason there's a community at a table that you can get nowhere else. And so what we've watched is as we've done, we've now put, add, two and a half million people through these tables. So we, I mean, it's not like we tried a table

last week and we wrote a book about it. We think it might work. Yeah. And we have story after story of life change. and the life change comes when people just are sitting around that table and they're finding out, yes, you care for me. Yes, you are helping me. And oh, yes, I do trust you. And now there is a safe place for people to have change because change is not easy. You refer to that earlier when you know, people change when they heard up they have to they see enough that they're inspired to you know they learn enough that the change is not easy. But around the table changes

as easy as it's ever going to come. Yeah. Because you're not doing it by yourself. And that's so huge. It's huge. It's huge. You said, by the way, what you established that table is social trust in that community. And guys, listen, we're just getting in here. We've already talked about the fact.

Yes, you can make transformation. Yes, you need to be a possibleist. Yes, it starts with your values. The way you go out and do that is you go out and create one of these transformation tables. These are real applicable things you can do right now that can begin to create the transformation in your world. These are real things.

John, I read the book and there's a group of kind of, you know, influences. I guess you call them that are friends of mine that we've all sort of said, hey, let's get together one-on-one. And I actually took the transformational table concept. And next Friday, I'm doing that with a group of men and women that are in this group. And I said, I want to sit. I want to begin to build my own transformation table. I'm not the leader of it.

I want it to be a community. And I said to them, actually, ironically, that I wanted to build social trust. And I've learned the three keys of leadership from John Maxwell. When you guys hear me talk about those three keys, now you know where I got them. So, you know, I'm coachable to John on these things because I know, by the way, when I think of John, I think of values.

When I think of someone who's sustained a career this long that so many of us that are in this space look to as somebody that we admire that's had sustaining impact and value like John has. It's because of these reasons. These are the reasons why I love John. So he's being humble, but he's lived many of these things for years and years and years, which is why he's who he is. So I interrupted you on the eight streams of influence because the transformation table is so diagram good. But I know that's one of the things after values

that's necessary for transformation. So let's at least give them the gift of that wisdom as well. Yeah, well, and by the way, you just, because you keep saying things that trigger me. It's your fault that we don't get to the mainstream because it's your fault, Ed, because, let me just say something. I have fulfillment in accomplishing things that I can do.

But I have much greater fulfillment, multiplied fulfillment in helping other people accomplish things that they've never done before. And that's why Change Your World is so exciting to me, because I've got this down. I've done transformation tables. I'll keep doing transformation tables. Margaret and I took a cruise about 18 months ago. A Disney cruise, a great Disney cruise with our grandchildren. And every day we went through another value. We finished the Disney cruise.

We go to four different countries. We got Mickey, we got Goofy. We got them all running around. We've got them in the parade. We got them doing everything. I sit down and say, okay, because I always do this at the end of a trip. I always ask my kids, my grandkids, what did you love?

What did you learn? Wow, that's so good. Always because experience isn't the best teacher. You know, it's evaluated experience. The tea, okay. All five of my grandchildren, what did you love? Goofy, Mickey Mouse, parade. Papa, we love sitting around the table with you and Mimi

and learning values and discussing them. I mean, these little kids would get around, I'm talking about all my kids are teenager, they would get around. I remember that I'll never forget the moment when John, my number three grandchild in one of the values was very open and honest about a very difficult time he was going through. And the next thing I knew, his cousins and his sister and his brother were around him

and they had their arms around him. And they were loving on him and they decided to pray for him. Life changing. Life changing. Life changing. It can only happen at the table. Okay. Now. Wow. Wow. It never I. Eight streams of inflows. I knew we would do this again. I knew it. What's magic? Your fault. Ed. Hey, I've had to help interviewers finish their program. Okay. Yeah, I know.

I'm with you. I just sit there and I say, jump in and the flow. As flow will take you wherever you want to go. And you do it so well. But leadership, everything rises and falls on leadership. So in every community in every country, there are eight streams of influence. This is just well documented and we've got it down. Government, business, education, media, arts, family, religion, and health.

Okay, now these are the eight streams of influence. We only go into the country when we get permission from the top of those people. And here's what's key. So the president says, we want you to come in, we say, well, to the president, will you and your cabinet go through transformation tables? You know, when the Supreme Court Justice, I say, now, will you and your Supreme will you start a transformation table? And we go right to the top. And if they won't, we've got countries and we don't go because because they will. Here's what we found. I have I have seven companies, but one of my companies is a is a leadership training company. And and and well, here's what we discovered. This is huge. The major difference between success and failure in a company when we're doing leadership training with them. There's one indicator.

And we can tell it on day one whether they're going to make it or not. There's one indicator of whether it's going to be successful or not. And here it is. When the leaders buy into the program and they go to the program themselves, it's going to be successful. Interesting. If they have the program, pay all the money and resources and send their people, it's not going to go. People do what people see. And so the buy-in

is the fact that in those eight streams, at the very top, they say, yes, and they get involved. Now, what does influence do? Influence just filters down to the whole country and to the whole culture. Very good. And so what so what no matter what stream your listeners are with me on right today, no matter what stream they're in, this really works. And I'm going to give you one example. I can give you 100, but I would give you one. It's the in Guatemala, we've been doing transformation tables, teaching values to the second largest bank in the country. It has 10,000 employees. Okay, so it's a big bank. So the CEO, after they've done this for two years, the CEO asked me to come down.

He said, I have 2,000 of our clients that I'm bringing together. And I want you to talk to them about change your world and transformation tables and values because he said, it's so changed our company. I want, I want to help our clients and so I said, I would. So he introduces me 2000 clients out there. And here's what he says. For two years, we've been doing transformation tables in our business. Three positive outcomes. Number one, our bottom line, the profit, better than it's ever been by for in fact, he said it increased 36% last year. Now, why did the bottom line do so well? We teach values, hard work, industry, honesty, integrity, teamwork, his employees are learning all these values and all of a sudden they start to live them and embrace them. Now, bottom line profit. Number two, he said, we now have a leadership culture in our company. He said, we don't have a

leadership culture here. There you go. And where did they get their leaders in the tables? Because, and if you're not at a table, one week, you'll facilitate that table and you'll take whatever value that comes up. Next week, the person beside you facilitates it and we go we we we pass the leadership baton around and and how do you develop leaders by practicing leaders how do you know you have leaders by watching them practice very good and he said all of a sudden leaders are popping up we said we have more leaders now than we have positions for them now that's a pleasant thing to have no number, number three. And this is what it really got me. So good. He said the families of our employees have beautifully changed. What do they do?

And they're taking those values. They've learned it work. And by the way, every week, 45 minutes, the banks all shut down. We do the tables on bank time. Hey, they go home to their families, say, here's what we're discussing this week. It bleeds right into the families

and all of a sudden the family gets better. It's so good. That's why I love what this work, this is, okay, I wrote a book, but I'm wanting to create a movement. Yeah. And that's what I'm passionate about. And movements don't start with a mask.

They start with a few. You know, mask movements never start with a mask. When Gandhi left prison, started going to the, by the time he got to the sea, he had a million. We'd only had six with him in the beginning. So crazy. Let's, hey, he just had one transformation table in the beginning. By the time he got there, he had a million. And we think we have the possibility through this book to start a positive moment of values learning, living, and embracing, and that's going gonna be fun.

And the way that you do it, John, is worth, see, I think watching what John's doing, not only in the content, but the way in which he's creating the movement. So for me, I know I always just watched the execution, I also watched the person executing, I shouldn't say executioner, but the person doing the executing.

And one of the things you talk about in the book, and I want people to go read the books We'll only cover one or two more things in it, but the truth is you talk about moving from me to we Yeah, and that's I think so many leaders Unknowingly still sort of make what's happening about them and they're not cognizant enough of making it about the we And I don't think any great movement has ever happened without a cause. And I don't know that enough business leaders are aware of turning their business into a cause. And for me, I've done that in business. But when I read the book, I'm like, if I'd done that in my family, I'm the leader of my family. What's the cause

of our family? What's our family's mission? That's why what you just said about the cruise really made an impact on me. So can you just speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I'd be glad to because I think that we, you know, Steven Covey said, begin with the end in mind. And when I wrote Intensal Living, it was the whole deal is most people accept their life instead of lead their life. And so when we talk about this movement and what we're trying to create. First of all, it starts with credibility. A cause without credibility won't go anywhere. I know a lot of people they have really good values

and a really good cause, but they're not credible. They can't say, but we've done it. And if I haven't done it, all I can do is tell. But when I've done it, I can show and tell. And show and tell is about a hundred to one more powerful than just tell. And so, you know, when a lot of times books are tell, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I love what you said about your imagination a while ago. And I think so many people cut themselves short because they don't allow their imagination to take them to where their potential could be. But what I do know is this, that the cause, the cause

has to be a positive cause that adds value to people. Let me just say you can't sustain a movement out of negativity. We've got a lot of negativity in our country right now. You can't sustain negativity. People wear out with neck. There's only so, there's only, I could only curse the darkness so long. Yeah. I mean, until, okay, now I've cursed the darkness and it's really dark and we've cursed a lot and it's, nothing's happened. Hey, hey, this book is a quick cursing the darkness and goes turn on the light. Oh, this is a turn on the light book. This is a turn on the light movement. And then would you got to be for something, the moment that you're for something,

that gets this adds value to the people. This is not a movement that adds value to me. When you talked about me to we a moment ago, Ed, you're so right on, my friend. You're so right on. The vision never is sustaining if it's about me. I mean, if I'm saying, hey, I'd join my team. Hey, come on into my, hey, get into my coaching company. Hey, get, you know, get on my leadership train. Well, how many miles do you need to hear before you sit there and say, boy, you know, I think I, I think I'm John Slave here. I think, you know, no, no, no, It's the first thing that happens to happen

is that you've got to take the vision from me to me. And the vision works when all of a sudden you're not talking about John Maxwell's book. When you go to your friends and you say, let me taste something, this book helped me. Now, it's contagious. It now has legs. It's, it's not like, well, John has a book out here. No, no, they don't care about John Maxwell.

They care about the fact that it's helped you. Now that it's helped you, you, there's a difference between being a vision caster and being a vision carrier. What kind of thing? You can just cast, you know, well, this is good. Throw that out, cast that out. You know, here we go. The moment you're a carrier, you cast the vision by cast who you are. You're so stinking, contagious that everybody catches it. They catch it because you won't let them not catch it. You won't shut up about it. You be in white because it's you. It's changed you. And all of a sudden, it's made a difference in Ed's life, not Maxwell's life, it's not about me.

It's all about you. And when you go to your group Friday night and you go bring that book and you start sharing what it's helping you do, can I do all of a sudden they're in the game, they're in the game. Okay, I guess I'm listening to you. I'm just thinking, you know, you're such a treasure. I don't, you know, and I don't mean to just, I'm just speaking what I feel when I talk with you.

And I'm curious, John. So by the way, what you just said, I have to just add one thing to it. I recently interviewed Martin Luther King III. And we're talking obviously a lot of us. It is dead crate, just this little movement, you know, only one of the greatest movements in the last hundred years probably arguably the greatest movement in the last hundred years. And I was golfing this week with the buddy of mine and he goes, that guy was Martin Luther King was awesome. He was against racism. I said, that's not right. He was for equality. He was for justice. He was for unity. You don't create a movement that lasts this long being against something. There's nothing wrong with having an adversary that you're against, but Jesus Christ's great movement wasn't just against the adversary. It was for our salvation if you're a person of faith. That's what endures.

And so I just wanna second that. But when I look at you, we are gonna talk about John Maxwell for a second. I'm listening to this man who's been at this for more than one decade, put it mildly. And I'm watching him at the top of his game. I've known him a second. I'm listening to this man who's been at this for more than one decade, put it mildly. And I'm watching him at the top of his game. I've known him a while. I've read, I haven't read every one of the 86 books, but I've read a lot of them.

And way before we met, you all heard me singing the praises of John Maxwell. And I'm watching him, like, he's better than he's ever been. Is there something that you could impart to all of us about, you're on the top of your game. How do you do that to sustain that level of what's the, what's the mechanism that drives you you to stay at this level or even keep, keep getting better? I love the questions you ask.

I mean, you go right to my heart every time. First of all, I am getting better. I am at the top of, I'm saying, I turned 74 on Saturday, February 20. So I, I, I turned 74. So okay. Now get this. And I'm in my best days. But my best days today are because when I was in my 20s, I had a mentor share with me that growth was not automatic. That if I was going to personally grow, I was going to have to dig for it and be intentional in it and that getting older is automatic, getting better is not. And so once I understood the difference,

I said, okay, I've got to get a game plan for my personal growth and I did. And my game plan for personal growth over years has been quite simple. It's just, it deals around our EAL, relationships, equipping attitude and leadership. And, and, and if you'll read my books, they almost all my books are either in relationship, equipping attitude or leadership category. And, and I did that because I came

to the conclusion at 27 that if I could teach people how to do those four things really well, they could pretty much be successful in any kind of venture that they have. Because I mean, if you're good with people, relationally, if you know how to equip people and build yourself a team, if you know, if you got an attitude that can handle COVID-19 and adversity, and if you can lead an influence people,

pretty much you're in the game of success. So I said every day I'm going to learn how to relate better, equip better, attitude better, lead better. I'm going to live in this world and I didn't become goal oriented. I became more values oriented. And I think this is a difference. Now I'm not opposed to goal oriented at all. But let me tell you something. If you're growth oriented, you'll hit all your goals. That's right. But if you're, if you're growth oriented, you'll hit all your goals. That's right. But if you're goal oriented and not growth oriented, every time you hit a goal, you know what you do, you go to the game, what's next? Okay, now what do I do? Okay, I just made

this much money. Oh my gosh, I, okay, I got this position. And okay, I bought that house. Now, what do I do? And to take the, what do I do out of your life? Just, we get to grow. Now, stay right with me. What happens because I grow and have done this for about 50 years now on it, I have increased my growth capacity. This is where people miss. My growth capacity is humongous. It's like going to the gym. Hey, you increase physical capacity. It's like reading, you increase mental capacity. Well, I have increased growth capacity.

My growth capacity is much larger than most people. Not because I'm smarter than most people, it's because I've been doing it for 50 years. I've got a long runway. Now, so my growth capacity allows me to grow more faster and compound it more than other people because consistency compounds. Yeah. So at this stage of the game, everything I touch gets bigger and better, but it's because

my capacity has grown. Now, put on top of that, I don't think there's a finish line. So I'm not running a finite game. Now, you know, Simon Sennick wrote a great book called The Infinite Game. It's a phenomenal book. He's a good friend. And it's a great game. And basically Simon, I'm going to write a book.

And I was only going to write it before Simon's. And now I told Simon I'm going to write it and just make it better than his. But I'm going to write a book. I'm kidding. He's a phenomenal writer. I'm going to write a book entitled, is there a finish line? And for, and, and, and for most people, the answer is yes. Most people have what I call a self-imposed finish line. When I get to this age, I'm going to quit. When I make this much money, I'm going to quit. And, and, and so they,

they, they put their lines out there. Now, if I put a finish line out there, you know, I'm 74, I'm going to quit. I'm not going to work it tomorrow. Okay, whatever. What people don't understand is when you cross that self-imposed finish line, guess what? You're finished. You're finished. It's over. But if you live with no finish line, it's never over. What does that do? That keeps me in the game. It keeps me excited about what's happening because I'm never going to finish. I'm going to die. But I'm going to, by the way, when I came into the game, the game was already started. I didn't start the game. And it's not, it's certainly going to not end when I leave it. I mean, you know, I tell people when they think that they're indispensable, I say, die and just find out how good a good get along without you. I mean, oh my gosh, nobody's indispensable. So, so it's okay. So, but what this allows me to do is that it allows me to stay fresh. It

allows me to ask questions. It allows me to stay curious because I understand my growth capacity is great. And I'm playing in a game that never is finished. I got to tell you John in my career doing this. That's one of my favorite answers of all time. Of anything I've ever asked somebody. And for all of you leaders out there, well, not having to finish line. You know, I put a couple in my life on myself, self-imposed finish lines. And as I got closer to them, they just evaporated and I just quit doing it. Now, I've sort of decided to be the way that you are. But the other thing that gives you hope is that as you work on growing yourself, you increase your capacity to grow even more. I've never heard that said before.

I've never heard that said before, but I got more fire because I have experienced that, you know, trying to keep my humility, but I have experienced that in my own life. Like my capacity to grow exponentially is much greater now than it was even 10 years ago, because I've been growing. And I never really thought, I think we think the reverse why I've grown so much, there's just not that much more to go. But that's, it's the reverse. That's brilliant. It's, it's totally the more you grow, the more you have to grow, the more, it's like the more you know, the more you know, you know, the more you know, the more you know, you don't know. That's so true. The only people that, the only people that think

they know something are people who know nothing. The only people that they'll be people that think they know something or people who know nothing. And they'll be so true. They're only people that think that they've all stopped growing up people that never grew. It's so true. Is there something? You're basically a very hard question. Go ahead. Can I ask you a hard question? If you... Well, I may not be able to answer, but you can ask it. What did you, all through all this growth, is there something that you used to believe about leadership

to be true, that you no longer do, that you've evolved out of that belief system? Oh. Is there, you're making your face like there's a lot? We could do an hour. Let me tell you something. If you really are growing, you know, Gandhi talked about a false position and his false position basically was that you try to hold on. If you're growing growth means change, which means you can't hold on to things that you one time thought were true or you believed because you're evolving and you're getting better. 25 I had a lot of certainties at 74 I have very few. Interesting. Yeah, let's because because life has taught me that it's not always black and white. It's not either over. It's not it's many times a combination. And but now here's what's beautiful. I have less. If I had a thousand certainties at 24 at 74 I have 10. Okay. But can I tell you something about those 10?

I'm more certain about those 10 than I ever have been before. They've been tested, and can I tell you something? A certainty that hasn't been tested can't be trusted. And so, and so this whole process of growth means I am not the same. So people that knew me 20 years ago, it's like, it's like the guy who came up to me. I was speaking to the conference and he said, oh my gosh, this was amazing. He said, I wish you, I could have heard you 20 years ago.

And I smiled and I said, no, you know, I said, no, no, no, he said, I wish I could have heard you 20. I said, no, you know, and he says, well, if I would have heard 20 years ago what I heard today, he said it would have changed my life. I said, if you had heard me 20 years ago, you wouldn't have heard what you heard today. That's awesome. That's so good. I'm growing.

I'm growing. I'm evolving. I wasn't, I didn't come out of my mother's womb with a 21-year-old, if you'd want to all some of your years' ship. Right, right. It's a process. Does that make sense?

Totally makes sense. And I think everyone listening this should be gaining hope from this, that if you start on this journey of establishing your values and getting people sitting at the table with you and being a possibleist and committing to be in a grower and getting to that place where people believe you can help them and that they can trust you. And these things are priceless. And for me to hear about the finish line today is something that I needed to evaluate. There's just so many things. Go ahead. Could I tell you a quick story? Yes, please.

Oh, okay. It's about the finish line because you said something about you had a couple finish lines that were kind of self-imposed and they got there and they faded. Let me tell you, because I could tell you, see what I really love, which is what I have time is to talk about all the mistakes, failures, and stupid things that I've done, because I, you know, I've often said, if you want to hear my success, we can do that in a day if you want to hear about my stupidity, this will be a week series. And, and, and, and so I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, let me tell you a real, I had, I had read this story about this guy that was a radio ham operator, and, and he said something about he'd taken the last marble

out of his basket. And the basic story was that he put like five years of marbles for every week and every week he'd go and he'd take a marble out and he was in the countdown. And this morning I took my last marble out of my basket and I thought, oh my gosh, I think because I was wanting to turn the companies over to Mark Cole and I was wanting to pass on a lot of stuff. I said, I'm going to get me a jar and you can see these marbles. And I put in like three and a half years of marbles and I told Mark, I told the whole company, and three and a half years I'm gone. So just understand this, it's over, okay?

And so every week I'd say, Mark, you take a marble out of that. You know, here comes the marble start going smaller and smaller. How stupid, stupid, stupid can you be? And so it was true. Can I tell you how stupid I was? I was losing my marbles. Okay, that's how stupid I was. I was going, that's so good.

I literally get in front of a lot of the people who knew me well. And I had this big jar of marbles up here and they'd heard the marble story. And I said, I just want you to know I was so stupid, I was so wrong. I mean, who wants to live their life like Cape Canaveral in a countdown? You want to say, I mean, who wants to do it? And I picked up that, I'll never forget I took that jar of marbles and I just threw them on the floor. And they just bounced everywhere. And I picked up that, I'll never forget, I took that jar of marbles and I just threw them on the floor. And they just bounced everywhere.

And I told him, I said, I'm never going to do this to me again. I'm not in a countdown. I'm only in a make your life count mode. And people today, there are on the team that say, I'll never forget the day you lost your marbles. And that's wonderful. But there's no finish line. There's no, no, I'm going to live till I die and not get the two confused.

Oh gosh, I'd love you. I wish there was no finish line for this conversation. I don't want there to be. There isn't for you and I, but there will be for the audience. And I just, I just love you. And I just think you're incredible. You make me think, you make me laugh, you make me passionate. You increase my faith.

I want to be more like you. I'm going to ask you a final question. But before I do, I just want to say this again, guys, go get this book, change your world. John Maxwell Maxwell, Rob Hoskins. And you just can see we've touched on. We've scratched the surface of what's in this book. And it will change your world if you do the things in this book. I can't express that enough. What I'd like you to do last John is I know everybody's hearing these things and we've covered a lot of very practical things to do.

But I think lastly people listening to this are saying, you know, I need a little hope. I need, you talk about hope a great deal in the book, by the way. And I heard you saying to begin anybody can change your life, but I want to go back to that lastly, is there some, if I walked into you, I ran into you in a Starbucks and I said, Mr. Maxwell, I've lost my business the last year. I've lost my family. I've lost all my money, I've gained a bunch of weight, I'm a little bit in despair right now. But I'm a good man or I'm a good woman, and I'd like to make a difference in my world and maybe eventually the world. What would you say just lastly parting words to someone who asked you that question? That's a great question. I said it to the first part of the book again. I wrote these words that the people will read

when they pick it up. Hope has two beautiful daughters. Anger, encourage. Anger at the way things are, encourage to make a difference. I would tell people, hope has to have anger. You have to be discontented with where you are. You can't be in no change happens in a comfort zone. In fact, everything, COVID was wonderful. COVID-19 was wonderful in the fact that it got

everybody out of the comfort zone. Everything a person wants or everything a person needs, but they don't have is outside of the comfort zone. If it was in their comfort zone, they don't really have it. And so, so, so this is huge. So, is as you, you've got to have anger, you've got to say, I'm disturbed. I'm not where I want to be. I don't like this position. This is, that's a healthy anger. That's a healthy anger because that's, that stirs you out of the comfort zone. And then you have to have courage to go into new territory where you've never been before and walk. That's why I love the book. I'm taking people on a tour with this book. In other words, if you'll have the courage to change your role, you just

have never changed anything in my life. I hardly changed my bed. Okay. If you're willing to walk in this new virgin territory for you, I will walk with you and I'll make sure that you get to the end. And for the first time, maybe in your life, you'll say, I did something that was really positive that made a difference in someone else's life. And that's where fulfillment comes in. So it takes anger and courage. And you can't, if anger without courage, you curse the darkness. Courage with the anger is you won't pay the price. You got to have them. I love you. Today was a miraculous. And remember, you're still, you're supposed to still

sometime to play golf with me and Jack Nicklaus. Once we get these vaccines all out there, I'm, I cannot express to you how much I'm looking forward to that. I'll hold a place for you next year, but I love you. Hey, thanks for having me again. Hey, let's do it again. We will. I can't, I can't imagine wanting somebody to come back on more than I want you to come

back on a third time. So thank you and everybody today, share this. You know today you want to share this one. So share this with people that you love, that you care about, that you're leading, that inspire you and that you want to inspire. And so God bless you all, max out. This is the Edmila Show.