Developing the Entrepreneur Within You: Live with Chris Robinson

Mark Cole:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to you so that you will multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole. And yes, I’m excited again. I’m excited today. And you’re going to understand why in just a moment because we’re in podcast. Two of a four city tour that we’re doing around the United States. Now, to all of you that listen from all around the world, especially those of you in the Philippines, our second most listened to country in the world, we got to come to a city tour in Manila.

Chris Robinson:

Okay.

Mark Cole:

So we got to get there. But we’re in the United States, and today we finally made it home. We are in Houston, Texas.

Chris Robinson:

Hello.

Mark Cole:

There we go. What that means, Chris, we’re sucks to be Atlanta because you were first and you just got shown up and your podcast has not even went live yet. They just responded on their own. Hey, for all of our podcast family, seriously, you are in a live environment with me and a lot of my family. We’ll talk more about the Maxwell Leadership team in just a moment. But another part of our family is here today in Houston because this is a day to learn. This is a day to meet and greet family members. I met somebody that I had not seen, that I met over 13 years ago. Michael is in the audience today. We were in West Palm when all of our Maxwell Leadership team started. There’s others in here that I just met today for the first time. And podcast listeners, I may be meeting some of you for the first time, but today is a day I have been waiting for for a long time. Because with me today is my friend, my co leader, a guy that I respect so much, Chris Robinson. Come on. Chris brought his entire family to be at this event today. Literally his family.

Chris Robinson:

That’s right.

Mark Cole:

Chris is an international speaker, a business coach, and a founding partner of the Maxwell certified team. That’s 47,000 coaches, speakers, trainers in 165 countries around the world. And Chris leads that community day in and day out. But Chris, more than anything, you’re my friend. Man, we’ve cried together. We’ve laughed together. We’ve challenged each other to be better dads. And today we’re going to challenge our podcast community to lead better. Glad to have you.

Chris Robinson:

Hey, man, I’m excited to be here. And I’m excited to be here in Houston. I mean, come on. They are making this too easy right here. They know how to add value to people. That’s right. Building us up here. They’re building us up here. I appreciate that.

Mark Cole:

Hey, before we go much further in the podcast, let me remind you that we’re live on YouTube. And you can go to YouTube, check out Maxwellpodcast.com/Youtube. You can see this good looking group of people in Houston, Texas. And then you can also click on the download button and you’ll be able to have a downloadable attachment where you can fill in the blanks and follow along as Chris and I talk today. So without further ado, Chris, here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to talk today a little bit about leadership, entrepreneurship, and communication.

Chris Robinson:

Okay.

Mark Cole:

You know anything about those three?

Chris Robinson:

A little bit.

Mark Cole:

I agree. So here’s what I want to start with. Why do you lead?

Chris Robinson:

Wow. Why I lead? It really starts off with people. First, I started off my career as a sales manager, or actually on the phone salesperson, worked my way up to a sales manager. But when I was in that role, that’s when I began to find John Maxwell material. And it was when I found the Law of the Lid. And in there, he talked about adding value to others and that we could not go beyond where our lid was. And in that, it really gave me this shift in this transition to not trying to be the star, but be a star creator. And what I found in my role then was I made this fundamental shift, you see, because the world and the culture says, well, I needed to perform, I needed to produce because I needed to get to the next level. But when I made that shift from reading that in the 21 laws, from being a star to a star creator, I found I was more valuable to the organization. So I shifted all of my focus from trying to stop being the top sales manager to could I be the manager that produced the most leaders. Now, what happened was something magical is now I had the top producing team because I was producing leaders. And then that’s when I fell in love with this idea, this concept of developing people. So I began to go out to read more books, watch more videos, attend conferences and events, and then that’s when I fell in love with this idea of what if I can spend 10% of my time doing 100% of what I love, which is helping and developing people? And so why I lead at the core of everything is simple. I love seeing people go from where they are to where they want to go.

Mark Cole:

Yeah, that’s good. You can give them a hand clap. Those of you that are watching and viewing on YouTube, you can give a shout out or a comment there. We’ll take that too. It’s interesting because John and I’m going to parallel this back to leadership, but John Maxwell, podcast listeners, podcast viewers, john Maxwell started out as a reluctant author. Now, that’s kind of funny. After 88 original books, 37 million copies of those books have been in people’s hands. Who’s counting? John Maxwell’s County. And it’s funny that he was a reluctant leader. He said often, I was telling somebody here before the podcast began that John said it was the 7th book before his first book was in. Before the book was any good, I went, man, I bought those first seven. My money back. There’s this concept that I think this is true in leadership, that we start out, some of us, as a reluctant leader. I know, for instance, at one point in my life, I swore off leadership. I’d have had an opportunity to lead. I tried to lead and I failed at a bunch of things. And finally I said, I don’t want to leader anymore. So my second attempt was a reluctant leader. And then John comes after this and says, okay, now that you’re leading leaders see more and say more and feel more than others see. So when did you begin to see more and say more in your own life? And how has that led to where you are today?

Chris Robinson:

Yeah, when it comes to seeing more, I’ll be doing a talk right after this podcast here. And one of those principles in becoming more is that you have to see more, getting that crystal clear vision of what it is that you want. But as I was exposed to a couple of different things, as I was exposed to more books, as I was exposed to more videos, as I was exposed to more events and environments, that’s when I began to really see, hey, there is more. There’s a phrase that I love to say all the time, and it’s simply two words why not? But those words why not are simply me looking at something and going, well, why not? Oftentimes we look at something go, well, why does someone get to do this? Or why can’t I have this? But it opens up my mind and open up my eyes every single time. Doesn’t matter what’s happening, what it is that I want, what it is that I desire, if I can just answer the question why not? That really moves me in that direction. So for me, I’ve always been a visual person of let me see it, sense it, let me get inside the environment and let it become part of my life. And so it’s a principle I believe I picked up very early to become who I am.

Mark Cole:

Well, and I’ll tell you this, getting a chance to work alongside you and work alongside John Maxwell, that you get in environments like we have at Maxwell leadership under John’s shadow, and you can’t help but lead, right? And then, as you know, and you and I have had some side by side leadership opportunities to lead through difficult times and that ability to see more and see before. Podcast family, I was telling our team just right before we started recording today, yesterday I had a really difficult, very challenging leadership environment. You were with me, Chris, and there was a moment in the meeting where I felt like a plan was starting to come together, that the team was starting to galvanize around the plan. And even though I knew over this coming days after that meeting that there were going to be some very tough decisions, tough conversations. The leader in me sit back and started going, wow, this is starting to feel good. Emotionally, it didn’t feel good. From a personal standpoint, it didn’t feel good. But the leader in me, you know why? Because leaders can get above their emotion and see the solution as the plan starts coming together. And that is a ticket that I want to extend to all of you. Going through a difficult times, remember, difficult times reveal you. They don’t make you. You already made, they’re going to reveal you. So how do we respond at that time? And we begin to click that or turn that corner, click that switch to where we can see more and before, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned podcast listeners last week you heard from Valerie Burton in our first city tour. And Atlanta, I love you. It’s just good to live in Atlanta. But I found my new home here in Houston, Texas. Jake, Andrew, we’re moving the studio to Texas. That’s all I can say. But Chris, last week after the podcast, I got to hear you speak. You mentioned you’re going to speak right after this podcast to the incredible people here in Houston. And man, I’ve known you for a while and you were communicating before I really knew you. You joined the Maxwell leadership team. You’d kind of already been doing a little bit of communication. Your communication got better. But man, you are a communicator extraordinaire now.

Chris Robinson:

Thank you.

Mark Cole:

And you can’t clap now because you don’t know. But trust me, in about 2 hours you’re going to wish I would say that again on the podcast and they’re going to give you like this crazy ovation because your communication is incredible. John wrote a book. The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication. So several of you have this podcast. Family, don’t let Houston get ahead of you. You need to pick this book up. We’ll put it in the show notes. What’s your favorite law?

Chris Robinson:

Yeah, for me, this book is huge. As a speaker and as a communicator, this is what I would consider the 21 laws of leadership. As a speaker, when I think about the 21 laws of leadership, I’ve read over 1000 plus books and every leadership book I’ve read, I can always point back to the laws. I believe as a speaker and communicator, this is going to withstand the test of time like the 21 laws with the principles that are inside of this. But to answer the question for my favorite chapter in the book is the law of observation. And what I loved about that chapter is that John identified what he picked up from different speakers throughout his lifetime. And so I wrote down, it really made me think back to, well, who are some of the communicators that had a tremendous impact in my life. And I love this. He gives a quote from Warren Buffett that says this. He says, much of what you become in life depends on whom you choose to admire and copy. Wow, listen to this. Wow, this is huge. Much of what you become in life depends on who you choose to admire and copy. And when I went back to think about the different speakers that had an impact on my life, and it was so awesome the way that he broke it down, what they learned immediately, I was able to go back to each one of these. Now, I’ve got several different speakers here that some are living, some are not living. But I want to give you kind of what I picked up from them. The first one was Keith Harrell. Keith Harrell. Now, Keith Harrell was a motivational speaker, former NBA player, and he spoke on attitude and was crazy. I didn’t even think about this mark, as John has labeled me, the person that represents him best in attitude. I think about that, and it did not hit me until I thought about this, but I found the Keith Harold tape. I was an intern for a financial planning firm, and they gave me this little bitty office. Now, praise the Lord, I had an office, so I thought I was something. But what was better than the little bitty office? My business card, it was good. But in this office, I had to clean up when I got in there because they just had stuff piled up in there. And so I’m fumbling through some of the boxes, and I find this cassette tape that says, attitude is everything. And what I would do is I stuck that tape in the car. Note unprompted. And this guy was just captivating. He talked about attitude, and he talked about overcoming circumstances. And I would play that tape over and over and over again throughout that, and I had no idea the impact that it was having on me. But Keith Harrell was an impact. I think about the second communicator that had a great impact that I was an observer of, which was Pastor David Blunt in St. Peter’s, Missouri. Still to this day, he sent me a leadership podcast the other day that he just did. Still to this day, when I watch him, it’s like, oh, my goodness. Just the master communicator in simplicity and breaking things down. And what I learned from him was simplicity. The next speaker that I learned through Pastor Blunt was John Maxwell. I learned about John Maxwell sitting in the basement of a church watching a VHS. Two TV. You know the combo, right? Yeah, the TV and podcast listeners.

Mark Cole:

He’s not that old. He’s making this up. He don’t even know what VHS stands for.

Chris Robinson:

We’re Houston. This stands for very hot stuff.

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Chris Robinson:

But in that basement, I was introduced to John Maxwell. Well, and it changed my world, because from John, I learned structure. And I learned Timeless principles. And John has done so well because of the principles that he teaches. They’re timeless. And I picked that up from John from the next communicator. It was TD. Jake’s. I went to TD. Jake’s very first MegaFest conference in Atlanta, Georgia with when the Atlanta what was it called? The Georgia Dome was full, and I watched speakers all weekend long. And that’s when I ran into Les Brown for the very first time. And I got a chance to see him speak on stage. And I learned passion from Wes. I learned from Jim Rohn pace. Now, if you’ve ever heard Jim Rohn speak, his pace, his cadence is slowing down of the word, I love him. And then another one that I learned from was Peter Daniels, a billionaire from Australia. His conviction, like, when he speaks, he spoke with so much conviction, so much passion, so much pace. And I had never seen someone come to the boiling point but not tip over. It was absolutely amazing. And of course, Zig Ziggler was just such an encourager. And I had the opportunity to meet Zig Ziggler one time. It was around 2010 or so, and I was at a conference that I was speaking at was one of his very last conferences. And at that time, I had given everything to go to this conference. In fact, I didn’t have the money to go to the conference. A friend of mine says, hey, I’ve got a room. Would you like to sleep on the couch? I got to sleep. I said, yeah, I’ll go. So I go to this conference, and I’m watching all these different speakers, and I leave in the middle of a session to go to the restroom. And Zig Ziggler standing by the bathroom, getting ready to go in. And so I stop the handler and say, hey, I’ll just wait right here. And they go, oh, no, you can go ahead and go in. And so now I’m in the bathroom. It’s me and Zig Ziggler in the bathroom. So I go all the way down.

Mark Cole:

Sounds like an opening line to a joke.

Chris Robinson:

So me and Zig walk into a bathroom. Just want to stand up. So me and Zig are in the bathroom. We’re in here. He’s about four stalls down. And then I’m not saying anything to him because I’m trying to respect this space and I don’t want to be that guy. We get to the sink and we’re washing our hands and Zig turns over to me and he begins to talk to me. He says, oh, my goodness, young man. He says, I don’t know why you’re here today, because but I want you to know something. He goes, When I wrote my book, See You At the Top, I never thought that it would take me around the world speaking and helping people. He says, I don’t know why you’re here today. He goes, but keep doing. And pursuing your dreams, and I’ll see you at the top. Wow. That was it. That was my one and only moment with Zig Ziggler. He died a couple of years later, but to have that moment, oh, how special.

Mark Cole:

Wow.

Chris Robinson:

Those are some communicators that impact your life.

Mark Cole:

You talked about conviction there, and I want to stay on communication just one moment before we go to entrepreneurship. But John teaches the law of conviction. The stronger you believe it, the more people fill it.

Chris Robinson:

Yeah.

Mark Cole:

And you just really modeled this, by the way, with just giving us the Zig Ziggler story, because you’re at the top of your game today doing things that you never thought you’ll share. That later. But how do you ensure you’re convicted by the content you share?

Chris Robinson:

Well, you got to live it. John talks about it in the book is you don’t want to get up and speak about something that you are not living. One of my greatest fears, my greatest fear, if I said that I have a fear, my greatest fear is there being a gap between what you see on stage and what you interact with in person. If I am so far different when I’m off this stage than I am on this stage, that is my greatest fear. For someone to perceive that, to say, well, Chris was this way on stage, but he was something different off stage. That is my greatest fear because I’ve had the privilege of being around a lot of great, incredible authors and speakers, and I’ve met some of the best in the world, and I meet some of them and I go, oh, my goodness, I love their books. I can’t wait to meet them. And then I meet them and say, oh, my goodness, I love their books. There’s a gap. There’s a gap. And so when it comes to speaking with conviction, it’s having that moral authority of not getting up there and speaking about philosophy, but getting up there and speaking about what has worked in your life, what hasn’t worked in your life, being transparent about what works and what doesn’t work, and being vulnerable with people so that you can close that gap. And so I believe that conviction really comes from just simply teaching on what you believe and what you live.

Mark Cole:

Podcast listeners, I started this whole podcast off telling you that you could download the bonus resource sheet by going to Maxwellpodcast.com/Entrepreneur. I do want to take the balance of this. You work with entrepreneurs day in and day out. There’s 47,000 coaches, speakers, trainers that you get to interact with on a consistent basis. So I want to just spend the balance of our time, Chris, talking about what you spend your time doing, and that is serving entrepreneurs now. Podcast listeners, podcast viewers, there’s an entrepreneur spirit in all of us, the desire to want to make a mark on something that you can own, that you can feel. And so in this room, there’s a ton of entrepreneurs listening, viewing Chris. And so I want to talk to them, and I want to ask you a question.

Chris Robinson:

How do you see this?

Mark Cole:

We talked about leadership, sees more and before. How does this seeing more and before principle play out in the careers of coaches that you’ve personally worked with and who’s joined the Maxwell Leadership Certified team?

Chris Robinson:

Yeah, when I think about that, I love what Mark says. That entrepreneur is within all of us. Okay, now, I want to do a little bit of clean up here. This is who I am. This is what I believe. I believe it’s in all of us, but it’s not for all of us because entrepreneurship requires a skill set and a fortitude for you to see more than before. I mean, it really does require for you to see beyond the circumstances of life that happens. Now, again, as entrepreneurs, we can be very great at painting a great lifestyle of, oh, you get to do this, you get to do that. But, boy, there’s some stuff they just leave out, and it’s called work. It’s called consistency. It’s called persistence. It’s called stuff going wrong on a daily basis. And so I don’t like the painting of the picture of entrepreneurship being this easy path that it’s easier. It’s hard. Just like the corporate life can be hard. It’s just a matter of when it comes to entrepreneurship or corporate, you have to choose your hard. Which hard works for you? Are you willing to stand out on your own, risk your investment, risk your things, risk these things? Or could you be an entrepreneur, a person that has an entrepreneur mindset working inside of an organization that truly helps it grow that way and have that mindset inside that place? So you have to understand your place and your fit. And we do that a lot of times by taking disc assessments, strength assessments, to really kind of find out our true placement there. But when it comes to coaches and seeing opportunity out there, there is plenty of opportunity out there. But you have to have clarity in your purpose. Now, that’s the other thing that I think trips people up, is that they begin to look at what other people are doing and identify that as their success. Your success could be something completely from somebody else’s. And so getting clear in your purpose, I think, really drives that vision. So now you can tell an opportunity from a distraction. There’s a big difference because every opportunity isn’t for you. And when you’re clear on that purpose, man, that keeps you in line, that keeps you focused, and you begin to do things and see more opportunities that are where you need to go, not where you think you need to go.

Mark Cole:

Wow. So let’s talk about post pandemic realities. So as an entrepreneur, what are you seeing as some new opportunities that are arising for entrepreneurs, people that are trying to build a coaching, speaking, training business.

Chris Robinson:

Yeah, well, again, I don’t know. I’m wired this way so I see opportunity in everything. I mean, every single thing, I see opportunity and when it comes now we live in a digital age. So for a coach now, you can be a coach in anything. I mean, you could be a coach for a left handed kite flying and you could build a course, you could do something, got a couple of markets going. Yeah, you could do that. There is an opportunity for everything. With so many niche markets out there, we truly now live in a time where as long as you’re solving a problem, you’re helping someone overcome something and you have a solution that can help them do that, there is plenty of opportunity for you. I was taught very early on that you’re paid based upon the problems that you solve. And so it was actually Pastor David Bunny who said, hey, look, the bigger the problems that you solve, the bigger the pay. The smaller the problems that you solve, the smaller the pay, right? And so for those that are out there looking now, it’s really simple. What problem do you want to help people solve? And you’ll see opportunity everywhere in the adverse of that.

Mark Cole:

You touched on this a little bit. What’s the greatest challenge you’re seeing in entrepreneurs right now?

Chris Robinson:

Greatest challenge I see with entrepreneurs is fear. It’s fear. The number one thing that holds an entrepreneur back is fear. I can go down a list of fears. It’s fear of failure, fear of risk of security, fear of what people think, fear of doing because you did something in the past, fear of so many different things is really what holds entrepreneurs back. But when you learn this mantra of learn a little bit and do a little bit and you realize that you don’t have to attach your worth or yourself to the outcomes of what you do now, you can begin to move forward. So just because you did something and you failed doesn’t make you a failure. It just means that that way didn’t work. So we try something different. So I think the entrepreneurs that have the wherewithal to bounce from a perceived failure because oftentimes it’s not even a real failure. It’s a perceived failure that we tell our self a story about over and over again that isn’t even a thing that nobody else is thinking about, talking about, didn’t even have any idea about. But I would say right now the biggest thing to hold people back is fear.

Mark Cole:

Podcast listeners, I love this. Number one, I agree with you that there is an entrepreneur type spirit in all of us. However, there are some people that needs to stay in a safe environment, if.

Chris Robinson:

You know what I mean.

Mark Cole:

It’s not safe out there in the entrepreneur waters. But podcast listeners, I get asked this question a lot. Now, what’s the greatest thing you see as a challenge in leaders life? And I asked you. Chris Entrepreneur I see it as emotional fatigue. There is an incredible amount of emotional fatigue. And so those of you that are entrepreneurs, as coaches speak, as trainers, you’re going to have to slow your intentional path to coaching down. You’re going to have to just be a friend, a shoulder, an arm to link with some of the people that you’re coaching. I was driving here to where we’re meeting in Houston, Texas. I think this is out by Katie, is that right? And so as I was driving from the airport today, I saw a large building that is the company that a new friend of mine runs. And I’ll keep the names Vanilla, but he was telling me I met him within the last year, very large company based here in Texas. And he was saying that for tens of thousands of employees. He said for four and a half months when everybody started coming back from COVID that he was handcuffed in fear of what people would think about a strong leadership decision that he needed to make. And I’m just going to tell you, all of us, you touched on fear. All of us have an emotional fatigue that is going to require us not only to create a social connection better than liking somebody’s post on social media, it’s going to take a little bit more of a relational connection for us to be able to reach out. And that’s especially true in the lonely life of an entrepreneur. Chris, talk to me about entrepreneurs, people that have that entrepreneur spirit, but they’re currently assigned to a corporate team, right? So how do they stay entrepreneur, yet collaborative?

Chris Robinson:

Yeah, well, you’ve got that entrepreneur spirit, but that’s really the testing ground. I mean, for me, when I got this desire to speak coach and train for a living, I was a sales manager inside of an organization. But I knew I didn’t know how to make that jump. I didn’t know how to make that leap or I didn’t know how I didn’t know anybody that was a full time speaker, coach or trainer. But what I did know is that I had a place to develop. And I think a lot of people missed the opportunity to develop and grow right where they are. So what I did was I began to take everything way more seriously inside that role. And what I meant by that is that every single week I had to have a sales meeting. And so what I did was I joined the Toastmasters Club, I was working on my speaking skills, and every single week those salespeople got the seminar of their life. I was practicing on them. And then what was happened was I began to develop other managers inside the organization. I said, hey, we’re going to do a one day event.

Mark Cole:

We’re.

Chris Robinson:

Going to bring all the salespeople through. And I was putting on one day events inside of our organization. I was taking every opportunity that I had outside the organization and inside the organization in order to grow. So if you’re inside of an organization now, you have to look at the opportunities for you to grow exactly where you are. Are you going to get paid for it? Maybe not. I’ve seen some of our coaches actually have roles specifically created for them because they just went in there passionately adding value to people, and the company said, hey, you’ve been doing great at this leadership thing. We want to create a job and a cole for you inside of our organization, only developing people, and so new spaces can be created for you in that space as well, too. But at the end of the day, don’t think, hey, I just got to quit my job and I got to go out and do something to be an entrepreneur. Grow where you are.

Mark Cole:

Man, I love that. And I would add to that there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that still are entrepreneurs. They’re just dying on the vine. In a corporate environment, do not let the environment change you, change them. And number two is very similar. Don’t let the environment silence you. The worst thing that can happen to a company is it gets too big for entrepreneurs because the company, as John says, is just dead. It’s just not official yet, because if you don’t continue reinventing yourself, your voice matters. Entrepreneurs in your company, and I just want to challenge you. Don’t let them change you. Don’t let them silence you, because your contribution will be a difference maker. Chris, I want to kind of got two quick final questions I want to ask you, but the one is it goes a little bit back to this emotional fatigue that we were talking about. What would you say to an entrepreneur that’s burnout and just thinking about giving up? Maybe there’s somebody listening, viewing today, maybe somebody in the room. You’ve been there before a time or two or 20 or 40 or 50, a thousand. What would you say to someone that’s kind of at that place right now?

Chris Robinson:

Yeah. And again, this is as an entrepreneur, it’s what I like to call the bicolor roller coaster of entrepreneurship. One moment you’re on top of the world. The next moment you look in the mirror going, what am I doing with my life? And so you go through that roller coaster, but for those that are going through it, you come to a point to where giving in looks better than digging in. And so when that begins to happen, you have to make a choice and get intentional about why it is that you’re doing what you’re doing. I can tell you the emotional ride that we have been on as an organization and as a team is like every other company. It’s up and down, but every single time I step in a room like this, this becomes up or down. In this room, it’s all the way up.

Mark Cole:

That’s a good answer. That’s a good answer.

Chris Robinson:

It’s all the way up. But just last night, I was on a host today, Zoom. We had 100 plus team members on the call. I didn’t want to go into that call after the day that we had just had, but as soon as I saw the members, as soon as I saw people that were hungry to learn and grow, boom, my anchor was back. And so whatever your anchor is of why you started what you started, you got to keep that at the forefront, because that’s going to be your energy to drive through that emotional fatigue.

Mark Cole:

Did I just catch kind of the consensus of what you just said? Was the meeting with me had you down here? Did anybody else something’s not right. Okay, let’s go to the room. Let’s go to the next question. Let’s go to the next question. Okay. A lot of people viewing. A lot of people listening. We love our podcast family. We do love you. I wish you were all in Houston with us, but what would you say to someone that just doesn’t know where to start, and they sense there’s something new for them. They sense that there’s something they need to do, and they’re ready to give up, to go up, but they don’t know. I mean, how do I do that? What do you say to someone that’s just kind of on that precipice, just kind of nudge them a little bit? Stay out of meetings with me?

Chris Robinson:

I think a lot of people do that, is they got this idea, they got this concept, and what they’re doing is they’re looking too far. They’re trying to see too far down the road, and I would say, bring it back and keep it simple. When I wanted to become a speaker, I had no idea how to become a professional speaker, but I did the one thing that I knew how to do, which was go to Google, and I typed in professional speaker. And then what I did was I found some professional speakers in the area, and I picked up the phone, and I called every single one of them, and I said, Hi, my name is Chris Robinson. I’m wanting to find out more about getting paid to speak. If you have an opportunity for me to serve you at any point in time, I’m your guy. Called every single speaker in St. Louis area, didn’t get one call back. Plan didn’t work out. Well, a couple of days later, one lady calls me back, and she says, well, Chris, my cameraman has canceled. Would you like to be my cameraman? I said, indeed. Now, I had no idea what I was going to do as a cameraman, but I showed up there. I showed up I grabbed her bag, I grabbed her coffee, got set up in the room. It had a tripod back there that took me about 30 minutes to set up. She finally got up on the stage, and I’m jerking the camera back from left to right, giving her the worst footage that she could possibly have.

Mark Cole:

On VHS.

Chris Robinson:

On VHS. But I got in the room. But where it all started was that simple step that I knew of. Not trying to figure everything out, but I also went into it with the attitude of how can I serve versus what can I get? So there’s two ways to attract mentors in your life. It’s seek to serve or pay to play. And so I went about both of those routes. So whatever it is that you want to do, you can either serve your way there or pay your way there. But there’s a person, there’s a group, there’s somebody you can get around to go in the direction that you want to go. So it’s simply taking that next step that you know of.

Mark Cole:

I love that you said you can pay your way there or you can serve your way there. And I’ve watched you do both of those over and over again as we kind of wrap up. And we’re talking about next steps. One of the reasons that we’re in Houston today, one of the reasons that we were in Atlanta last week, we’ll be in Florida in a couple of weeks and then in Chicago. Is that right? And the reason we’re doing that is two things. One is we’re meeting with people that took that step and just said, you know what? I want to get into a community of people that want to challenge each other to get better. We call ourselves the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team. If you’re listening to the podcast, would like more information about that. You can see it in the Show Notes. Another thing that we’re just really passionate about is that next step for many of us is to develop ourselves on the inside. How do we become better on the inside so that we can do bigger things on the outside? And we’re committed to that. John wrote a book several years ago called Developing the Leader Within You. We redid it 20 years leader called Developing the Leader Within You 2.0. And I would just challenge you today as you’re listening, maybe as you’re sitting in the room and you’ve taken that step, but there’s a next step that you need to take. Make a step if that steps to develop yourself. We’ve got some personal growth opportunities for you in the show notes. If it’s to really be a part of something amazing like our team, we want you to be able to be a part of that as well. And Chris, I’ll just close by saying thank you. I don’t know why it took you five years to get on this podcast. You’re slow, man.

Chris Robinson:

You’re entrepreneur. I was in meeting.

Mark Cole:

You was in meeting, yes. I’ll tell you, this podcast family, if he doesn’t now see the need to create the Maxwell Leadership Entrepreneur podcast, we’re going to do something with him. I love to close our podcast with just recognizing one of our podcast family, one of our community. And so I was standing outside and meeting people right before we started recording today, and I met Oliver. And, Oliver, I know you’re going to walk right across the camera, but I want you to come over. Come right over here. Let everybody see you. It’s the walk of glory. It’s the walk of glory. Oliver, Oliver. Oliver was telling me it’s kind of funny. I’ll let him tell the story, but he said, Mark, I listened to the podcast just for you to start it the way you start it every time. And I feel a little like John Maxwell after Oliver was telling me this. So Oliver, come up here. Come right up here, buddy. I’m glad to have you. This is our podcast. You’re not even a Maxwell Leadership team member, are you? Yes. Come on, dude. Do we want him or do we not want? So Oliver is a part of our podcast family. So introduce yourself. Tell us where you’re from. I know it’s Texas, but you can say it again.

Chris Robinson:

I know that.

Oliver Lee:

My name is Oliver Lee. I live in Katie, Texas, and I work right here in Spring Branch. And I call myself a Maxwellite. I’ve been a Maxwell for a little over close to three decades now.

Chris Robinson:

Wow.

Mark Cole:

You started when you were 230 decades. So you was telling me a little bit about the podcast. How long have you been listening to the podcast?

Oliver Lee:

Probably a little bit over a year now.

Mark Cole:

Very good. Have you got anybody else on it?

Oliver Lee:

I had a leadership that took you.

Mark Cole:

Way too long to answer. Way too long. Hey, tell them a little bit about what you said you enjoy about this podcast.

Oliver Lee:

Oh, the biggest thing I enjoyed about this podcast is every single day that I would turn on the podcast, I always wanted to see what Mark Cole was excited about. And I think I almost promise you, if I think if he doesn’t open up talking about how excited he is to introduce this next speaker, I probably will stop listening.

Mark Cole:

If he’s not excited about it, why am I going to listen? I’ve been trained by John Maxwell podcast family. He’s never written a book that wasn’t his favorite book. And he said, if I ever write a book that is not my best book, I’m going to stop writing. So if I ever stop recording podcasts, that’s not my most excited podcast, I’m out. Hey, we do this podcast for you because everyone deserves to be led well.