Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets with Andy Stanley

Mark Cole: 

Hey, welcome to the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast, Mark Cole here and I am joined today, not only here at Kiawah Island, John, for your Equip, John Maxwell Leadership Foundation benefit, but we’re joined on the phone with Andy Stanley. I’m excited about this, this is going to be an incredible podcast as those of you that listen know. It takes a special person for John to invite on this podcast and today is no exception. Andy Stanley is the founder of North Point Ministries, he’s the author of the recently released book and you do want to pick this up, Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets. 

In this book, Andy talks about five questions to help you determine your next move. John, I know Andy is a chair’s friend, he’s a valued partner of yours, he’s one of the most trusted leadership voices in the world today. I’ve heard you say often, “One of the best communicators in the world is Andy Stanley” but also what few people on this podcast know is for many, many years, he was your pastor, so Andy might need to tell us of some of the counseling that he’s done with you. I want you to welcome Andy today. 

John Maxwell: 

Andy doesn’t have enough time to talk about that, my gosh, but Andy’s on the podcast, he is a beautiful friend, I love him dearly, but he’s on the podcast because he’s an incredible communicator. Whether it’s his books, Andy, whether it’s that or your teaching, I just always, I always, always, always learn from you. I never come away from an Andy Stanley teaching or an Andy Stanley book without underlining it and learning or taking notes. That’s why I’m so excited about you being with our podcast listeners, because one of the things that Mark and I pride ourselves in is if we’re going to have a podcast with a guest, it’s going to be a guest that can really help them and add value to them, and you’re that kind of person. Thanks for joining us and I’m just excited about Mark asking you the questions, and I’m very excited about our listeners learning about decision-making and everybody wants to have fewer regrets, so hello. Let’s let let’s rock and roll and see if we can help them. 

Andy Stanley: 

Hey, well, Mark, you mentioned John attending our church for a while and so I will just share this one bit of information and John knows what I’m going to say. I always knew when John was in church, not because I saw John, but because I saw Margaret’s hat and when I was preaching and saw a hat, I looked to the left or the right, and there was John. He did not blend in well, because there weren’t a lot of hats in church in those days. 

Mark Cole: 

Hey, well, for all of you podcasts listeners, thanks for joining us. As you know, you’ll want to go to maxwellpodcast.com/betterdecisions, click on the Bonus Resource Button, and you’ll be able to get the show notes from the conversation John and Andy and I will have today. John, thanks again for bringing Andy. Andy, thank you for joining us. Here’s really, Andy with your book coming out, I’d love to hear what prompted you to write this book and what do you hope to accomplish with the readers from this book? 

Andy Stanley: 

Yeah, well, early on my dad taught me the important connection between asking good questions and making good decisions and this is one of the oftentimes overlooked connections. This is important in leadership, it’s important with family, but people who ask good questions, generally make better decisions. We all know this from the aftermath of a bad decision. After a bad decision, we generally say to ourselves, or maybe even say out loud, “I should have asked more questions” or, “I should have asked better questions.” The better questions we ask, the better decisions we make. 

That was kind of the idea behind the book and these are five questions I’ve been asking for years. Two of them, I learned from my dad early on, two of them I taught my kids consistently and the fifth question is one that in terms of its current form is somewhat recent, but it’s certainly not a new question. I’m just trying to add five questions to the arsenal everybody has as they make decisions, because we all ask questions when we’re making decisions. Sometimes they aren’t great questions like, “Will I get caught? Will this hurt me? Will anybody know?” But these are five good questions to make sure we live with fewer regrets. 

John Maxwell: 

You know what, Andy, what I love about the book and about what you’re doing here is I teach sometimes that assumptions is the mother of all mess ups for leaders. The reason we have assumptions is because we didn’t ask the questions and how many times have we gone into decision-making just assuming and not realizing that we’re missing big time, because we didn’t dig a little bit and ask the questions. I love the fact that you started really basically off by saying before you get direction and make decisions and do things that are pointing a certain way, you just really need to ask these questions just so you’re not assuming. When you make the decision, it’s not based on, “Well, I kind of thought maybe” but you really have some good, concrete reasons for the decision. 

Andy Stanley: 

You know, John, you bring that up, years ago, I realized that our model, our organizational model was built around some assumptions, many of which we had never unearthed because you’re exactly right, the danger of an assumption is it stays below the surface and you can make decisions based on assumptions that aren’t even true. I had our leadership team, I gave them two weeks. I said, “I want you to write down all the assumptions that are built into our model. What are we assuming about families? What are we assuming about how they live, where they live?” 

We came out with a list of about 110 assumptions that we had never talked about, or we had never even observed or brought out into the light. Bringing many of these assumptions out into the light, they were just flat wrong, but they were fueling and informing our decision. You’re exactly right, this relationship between assumptions and decision-making, it’s huge and asking the right questions, dredges up and brings into the light many of those assumptions, so this is a really important topic for leaders. 

John Maxwell: 

You know, Andy, I know Mark’s got some great questions for you, but one of the things I’ve found about leadership is, and I teach it all the times, you have to find people before you can lead people and the only way that you could find them again, is to get to common ground by asking questions. I think it’s the same truth about decisions, and I love the fact that something that is so important, that’s going to set a pathway for you in the future never really begins until you go through this grid of your five questions. 

To me, the questions you have in the book are foundational for the decisions that a person has to make. It’s kind of like, anybody can ask these five questions, but everybody can get major help if they’ll ask them because their decision-making will automatically get better because no longer are they again, based on assumption. I love the way that you laid out the book, its simplicity, the five questions and removing the assumption process. I just think that this book is helpful to so many as it’s been helpful to Mark and myself as we’ve read it. Mark, why don’t you take off and ask him some questions and let’s… 

Mark Cole: 

What’s interesting is you guys were just talking about assumptions, Andy you write and John, you wrote in your book, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, you both write good questions lead to good decisions. Not only do they remove assumptions, but they lead to good decisions. Can you guys unpack that for us? Andy why don’t you unpack that? 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, as John has spoken on so many times, the most difficult person to lead is the person in the mirror always. Self-leadership is a key to great leadership, so the first question I ask in the book, I call it the integrity question, and the integrity question is, “Am I being honest with myself?” And then you have to pause and say, “Really, am I being honest with myself, really?” Because we all have a little liar on the inside of us and until we fire the liar, we’re going to make bad decisions because we deceive ourselves and as leaders, we are so persuasive and that’s part of leadership, is getting people on board with our ideas, but as persuasive as we can be in our outer life, if we are equally as persuasive in our inner life, and we’re not honest with ourselves, then we’re not doing a good job of leading ourselves well. 

Self-leadership begins with the person in the mirror and the first question to ask is, “Okay, Andy, am I being honest with myself, really?” I know what I’ve said to everybody else, I know I’ve convinced my wife, I know I’ve convinced my kids, I know I’ve convinced my team, but why am I doing this really? Why am I purchasing this really? Why am I starting this really? Why am I leaving, really?” It really begins with that kind of clarity, and that’s the first question, “Am I being honest with myself, really?” 

Again, you’ve got to fire the liar. You don’t lead a liar, if you’ve got somebody in your organization who won’t tell you the truth, you fire the liar. Some of us as leaders, as husbands, as fathers, looking in the mirror, I asked this question out loud in the mirror and in the book I say, “Look, I’m going to give you an out, you don’t have to do anything with your answer, but you at least owe it to yourself to be honest with yourself.” 

John Maxwell: 

Wow, I love the expression fire the liar. You know, Andy, there’s a very fine line between motivation and manipulation, and it’s a very fine line. The reason I love this first question on lying, “Am I lying?” Integrity, this whole issue is that when I don’t lead myself well, and if I don’t answer that question well, I’m going to be manipulating people much more than I’m going to be moving them for their advantage and for their health and for their wellbeing. I just think this question immediately talks about my inner life. We want to be bigger on the inside and better on the inside than we are on the outside and I think it just starts off with the fact that if I can’t ask myself that hard questions, I’m sure they’re not going to lead well, I’m never going to be able to take my people and help them to ask the right questions either. 

Andy Stanley: 

Yeah, and your sharp leaders, they know the difference between sincere motivation and manipulation. They sniff it out and they’re going to leave. You’re going to be surrounded by people who don’t have that gear that allows them to sniff that out and then you’re surrounded by people who aren’t going to help you get your projects and your business at the finish line. There’s no win in lying to ourselves and if that lying to ourself gets telegraphed into, to your point, the way we try to motivate people, it becomes a lose-lose pretty quick. 

Mark Cole: 

Andy, in that question that you gave us, as well as the other four questions, John questions you asked yourself, is this a daily discipline that you have? Are you asking it periodically? Is it at the beginning of a new opportunity? How often are you asking these questions? 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, for this question, again, these questions are within the context of making decisions and primarily, pretty major decisions, not always major, especially some of the other questions. This is not a daily thing, but when I find myself… In this chapter of the book, and this might be helpful, we all have a salesman on the inside of us who has the ability to sell us on terrible ideas, we know that and so I have to shut the salesman up. What I say in the book is this, “When you find yourself selling yourself on anything, when you find yourself selling yourself hard about anything, you should hit the brakes because you rarely have to sell yourself on a good idea.” We spend our time and energy selling ourselves on bad ideas. Good ideas are generally pretty apparent and we just move forward. 

When the internal salesperson goes to work and we know that we’re expending energy, that’s when you stop and look in the mirror and say, “Okay, wait, wait, wait, am I being honest with myself, really?” Why am I doing this, really?” Again, those kind of come to Jesus moments in the mirror, even if a person doesn’t act on it, at least they owe it to themselves to know. 

The other thing I say in this chapter in the book is if you went into a retail store and someone at a retail store used the same sales pitch on you out loud that you use on yourself, you would be offended and you would leave the store. If they said to you, “Oh, I see you already have one, but this one’s newer.” What kind of sales pitch is that? Or, “You know what, if you get home and don’t like it, you can always donate it.” How offensive is that? But these are the kinds of things we tell ourselves all the time, so we’ve got to shut down the salesperson on the inside of us and be honest with ourselves. 

John Maxwell: 

Oh, I love that, and I think that is exactly right on. I’ve often said the moment that I realized that I’ve stopped adding value to others and I’ve started adding value to me more, I’m already out of line, or the moment that I want more from my people than I want for my people, I’m already doing a sales job that isn’t healthy. I just think that the questions are great questions. 

Mark Cole: 

Hey, you’re listening to John Maxwell and Andy Stanley talk about Andy Stanley’s new book, Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets. You can actually pick that book up right now, wherever you buy books, if you’re able to go into a store, wherever you go into a store at this particular time, you’ll be able to pick up Andy’s book. Let me ask you guys this question, what are some of the things that sabotage a leader when not making good decisions? What is it that stops this leader from making a good decision? 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, human nature is I see something or someone that I want and my heart gets wrapped around it and my emotions get wrapped around it but I’m smart enough to know, “Oh, I can’t just make an emotional decision” so my heart sends my brain a message, it says, “Brain, come up with some reasons why this is a good idea” and brains are smart, that’s why we call them brains. The brain does an interesting thing, it shifts us from want to need. The moment I can need something rather than want something, it’s generally game over. 

If we can’t catch ourselves in the process of justifying, which of course, oftentimes it’s justalying, and again, we begin by lying to ourselves. If we can’t stop ourselves midstream, once our heart and our minds get wrapped around things, it’s almost impossible to go back. Of course, we’ve all seen people do this when it comes to relationships, we’ve seen our kids do this. One of your listeners or a listener may be coming out of a bad or a difficult marriage and if they’re super honest, going in, they kind of knew this was not the thing but our hearts get wrapped around something and off we go. 

It comes back to self-leadership and it comes back also, the second part of this, and John has spoken so much on this, I’ll let him run with it, it also has to do with who we surround ourselves with, because if you’re not moving through life with people who are moving in the direction you want to move in, it’s easy to get all kinds of support for really bad decisions. 

John Maxwell: 

Yeah, I agree with that and you know what, Andy, one of the things I just try to work with my inner circle, the people that are closest to me is you just have to give them permission to speak into your life and you have to give them permission, if somebody says they have an open door policy, I have an open hear policy, which basically means you don’t have to wait until the door’s open to come and talk to me. Whenever you have something that you need to share, feel free to share it. 

I think the big thing that leaders need to understand is that permission has to be given by the leader. People are very reticent to speak into a leader’s life, because of a lot of reasons, but I just think that the leader has to continually say to his or her people, “You have permission to come into my life anytime, I trust you and you can ask the questions.” I think that we all need that because when people talk about awareness, I love when somebody tells me they’re self-aware. I look at them and say, “Well, you’re also delusional.” I don’t think any of us are self-aware. I think the self-awareness I have about myself is because somebody came into my life and said, “It’s a blind spot in your life.” There’s a reason we call them blind spots, we don’t see it. 

I think that all of us, all of us have an area in our life where we aren’t very aware and we have to have trusted good friends who care for us and love the vision and mission. They’re not adversarial, but they really are on the team, and I look at Mark and our relationship, there are many things today I’m aware of, but I’m not aware of them because I was self-aware. I’m aware of him because Mark said, “John, let’s talk about this, I think this is an area perhaps you want to look at.” He’s helped me, and so my awareness is not self-awareness as much as it’s the willingness to let people speak into my life, which then helps me to have an awareness in my life. 

Mark Cole: 

That leads me to the next question I want to ask again, I’ll start with you, Andy. Who does a leader turn to for help in evaluating a decision? Both before and after the decision is made, who does a leader turn to, Andy? 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, the temptation, I don’t know if the temptation, the tendency is to first turn to the people who are closest to us in terms of our organization, but you can’t stop there. It’s easy to stop there because they’re the people who are most accessible, but the larger the decision, the bigger the decision, the more information we need and the more time we need. Taking the time, and that’s really the problem, because leaders were busy and once we’ve kind of got our mind made up, or once we’re leaning in a direction, all we need is two or three people close to us in the organization to say, “Yeah, that sounds good.” In most decisions that’s enough, but in really, really big decisions, running that decision through several hoops or different groups of people or kinds of people is so important. 

In our organization, I have three, there’s a staff team, there’s a board like the typical board in an organization and then there’s a stewardship team that only looks at our organization through the lens of finances. For me, any medium-sized to big decision that’s going to impact a lot of people or the organization, I take the information to all three groups. When I get a sign-off on all three groups, I’m good to go. The first group, they work for me, but the other two groups, they do not work for me, but they’re super interested in the success of our organization and their feedback and their questions coming from their professional background and their professional context, they’re going to ask questions to folks who are directly reporting to me, either don’t know to ask or forget to ask. 

In terms of our organization, there are three groups of people that I go to consistently, and I don’t feel like I’m a consensus builder, but I am really, really curious in what smart people think. I love what Jim Collins… I heard him say one time he says, “Aspire to be the dumbest person in the room” and I have aspired to be the dumbest person in the room. I want to be surrounded by people who are smarter than me, because we’re just going to make better decisions. 

That’s how I’ve approached that, but here’s the pushback, it takes time and I get in a hurry like everybody else and every once in a while, I find myself talking myself out of running this by the stewardship team or running this by our board. I’ve just learned, “Andy, don’t shortcut the decision-making process, there’s too much at stake” and the goal in leadership is not to make all the decisions. The goal is to make sure the decisions are right and the way to make sure they’re right is not to rush and to make sure you got all the information you can on the table. 

John Maxwell: 

Two quick thoughts, Andy, on the taking time part, one of the things I had to learn, because I didn’t do it right at all in the beginning was that when I realized that there was something important that was in the horizon, that I needed to deal with, a decision, in my early days, I held that internally for a long time to try to come up with the best answers so that people would say, “Oh my gosh, he’s a good decision maker.” I realized very young that the quicker I know that I have a decision that had to be made, I immediately start going to my people and say, “Look, let’s talk about this” giving it a longer runway. 

I think when you become more secure as a leader, you just basically say, “Hey, let me tell you what I’m thinking about, what I’m looking at, it’s not going to have to be taken care of maybe for a few weeks, but it’s coming, so get in the game with me and get on the runway with me and let’s see what we can do.” It does take time, but I think if you very quickly share that with your people, in your case, your three groups, I think that’s huge. 

The second thing that’s been very helpful to me, it’s more simple than what you do, I have an inner circle and I have an outer circle and they’re totally different. They’re in the circle, but for two totally different reasons. My inner circle, they’re they’re the players on the team and of course they’re the closest to the issue so they’re going to give me some great thoughts, but I also realize those people have something beneficial for themselves many times and so their decision’s going to be made on what’s going to happen to me and my outer circle, there’s no relationship at all to work. They know me well, and they’re good friends of mine and they’re good thinkers but they can give me an answer and walk away and it has no effect on them whatsoever. 

I just found that I wanted to go to both circles to work on the questions with the decision making, because they came at it from two total different perspectives and together it just gave me a better balance. Does that make sense? 

Andy Stanley: 

Yeah, in fact, Mark, if I could, I’d like to tell a quick story that involves John and I was not even thinking about this until I heard you say that John. Many years ago, we were trying to decide how big to build our first church building and I didn’t know, we had big piece of land. John lived in Atlanta and I took him out to lunch, the Canyon Cafe, I remember right where we were sitting, even though the restaurant isn’t there anymore. I had all these questions and the big one was, “John, we don’t know how big should we build?” John had been a pastor, he’d done this way longer than me, this was the first church, I was actually senior pastor of, I said, “How big of a building should we build?” 

I thought John was going to ask me about demographics and all kinds of stuff, about money and all this stuff. This is the power of having the right people in your life, so the question is, “John, how big of a building, or how big of an auditorium should we build? To seat how many?” John looked at me, he said, “How long do you plan to stay?” I’m like, “What? What does that have to do with anything, if anything?” Well, it had everything do with everything, “How long do you plan to stay?” He asked. I’m like, “well, I’m planning to stay here the rest of my life.” He said, “Well, then build it as big as you can build it.” 

I’m like, “Oh, okay” so we did. That was a question that in my circle of employees and in my circle of active pastors, that question would have never, ever come up. But John, he wasn’t a total outsider because he’s done this before, but he was outside the inner circle as he referred to it and he had a better question. I’m telling you, the power of that one question led to a much… Not just a better decision, it led to an easier decision for me. Again, it comes back around to, if you ask good questions, you’re going to make better decisions and I will never forget that day. 

I have told that story a hundred times, “How long do you plan to stay?” “What does that have to do with the size of a building?” “Well, it has to do everything” and John, for your information and your audience’s information, this month, we celebrated our 25th anniversary, so I have stuck around. 

John Maxwell: 

Oh, I love that, I remember the conversation very, very well. I also remember you bought lunch, I remember that too. 

Mark Cole: 

Hey, speaking of October, I didn’t know, 25 years Andy, congratulations to you and your North Point team, but 20 years ago, you guys started an event called Catalyst and a desire to impact the next generation and thank you both for starting that because it gave me my first job in John’s world, 20 years ago of selling Catalyst, which sets this up. 

John Maxwell: 

That’s a fact. 

Mark Cole: 

How do you develop maturity in your decision-making? Now again, remember a lot of our audience is young leaders, a lot of our audience are entrepreneurs, they’re just starting out. Answer this question, how can you develop maturity in your decision-making, Andy? 

Andy Stanley: 

In my personal decision making? 

Mark Cole: 

Yeah, so a young leader starting out, how does he or her, how does he or she developed maturity in decision-making? 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, in the book, I talk about five questions. Actually, the fourth question is, I call it the maturity question. The maturity question is, “What is the wise thing for me to do? In light of my past experience, my current circumstances and my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing for me to do?” I call it the maturity question because the tendency is to make questions on the edge of what’s moral, what’s ethical and what’s legal, but the better realm or the better environment or the safer space or place to make a decision, is it within the realm of wisdom, “What is the wise thing to do in light of past experience, current circumstances, future hopes and dreams?” 

As a leader embraces that question in particular, personally, in other words, because the human nature, both in business, with our money, with our relationships, human nature is to snuggle right up next to the line of illegal, immoral and unethical. I don’t want to be immoral, but I want to miss out on anything. I don’t want to be unethical, but I don’t want to miss out on anything. I don’t want to be illegal, but how do we drive? We drive as fast as the law will allow without having an encounter with the law, this is just human nature. But the problem is it positions us in a place where there’s very little margin for error. 

Here’s what everybody listening knows, when you think about your greatest regret, whether it’s financial, business, professional, moral, relational, whatever it might be, your greatest regret was preceded by a series of unwise decisions. It wasn’t preceded by a series of illegal, immoral, unethical decisions. It might’ve been, but I guarantee you even those decisions were preceded by a series of unwise decisions. 

Maturity says I’m going to live and decide within the context of wisdom, not what can I get by with, and not what is everybody else doing and not within the context of what are everybody else’s hopes and dreams. These are my hopes and dreams, how do I ensure that my decisions today set me up for where I want to be? I think that question is a very centering question, and it’s a question people don’t like to ask because like all five of these questions, it’s a terrifying question because it’s so clarifying. You almost always know immediately, what would the wise thing be for me to do? If you’re asking that question and you take that question to the people around you, oftentimes they’re going to have a pretty quick answer and it’s usually going to be the same answer. 

John Maxwell: 

That’s so good, I define immaturity as person who only can see their point of view and maturity as a person who can see other people’s points of view. I think that in light of what you’ve just shared, I again go back to the maturity as going beyond yourself. I have to have other people talk to me and I’ve got to ask questions and get their perspective, because I think that the best leaders lead with the perspective of others in the forefront of their mind and not just their perspective or not just what they think or what they want. I think that is so lacking, right now I’m looking at our country and I’m just saying, I would like for leaders to, to look beyond themselves and look about what’s the best for the people and see more than others see. 

Mark Cole: 

I want to wrap the podcast today with you said Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets and John, I think I’ll start with you on this question. You’ve talked all of your life about no rearview mirrors, you’ve talked to top CEOs of some of the top largest companies, and they’ve said no regrets. Here’s the question, at the end of the day, what do we need to know to live a life with fewer regrets? And John, we’ll start with you. 

John Maxwell: 

Well, I think that we all live life with regrets. I have regrets in my life, I just think the question is how can we make them less? First of all, the regrets that I have in my life, some of those have been life-changing for me. They were things that caused me to build character and resolve, saying I’m not going back there, I’m not going to do that again. I think with the regrets that we have, hopefully they’ve been character building, but I also think what Andy, your book does so well is it just causes us to not be in the ditch as much. 

That’s what I like about the book, those five questions, if you just ask them, guaranteed, guaranteed, if you just ask those five questions in the appropriate times and for the appropriate reasons and places, you’re going to have less regrets. That’s what I loved about the book. I love the title and I love the simplicity of, if you’ll just follow the five question guideline, you’re going to have less regrets and I think everybody on this podcast would like to have less regrets. 

It’s just simple and it’s doable, Andy. It’s like, “Okay, if you just ask the five questions, it’s going to get better.” Well, who doesn’t want to get better? I think you’ve added value to all of us because of those questions, because they’re all doable. We can all ask them and if we can just follow them, we’re going to just get better, so thank you. 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, I appreciate you saying that, John. 

Mark Cole: 

Andy, would you add anything to that question as well as just any other thoughts on the book here? 

Andy Stanley: 

Yeah, and this relates to that in a general way. The second question, I call it the legacy question, and the question is, “What story do I want to tell? What story do I want to tell?” One of the things I try to remind readers is this, that whatever you’re going through right now, whether it’s in your marriage or your business, financially, with one of your kids, academically, this instant, this moment, this season is one day going to be nothing else than a story that you tell. When you look back on this particular incident, this season of your life, and you’re telling your story to your kids or your grandkids or somebody is telling your story for you to other people, what story do you want told? 

That legacy question, that pull back from the immediate context question, that’s a question that reminds me that even if I have great regret right now, it’s part of my story, but it’s not my whole story. I can put both hands on the steering wheel of my life and my steering wheel is my ability to make decisions and I can write a better chapter next time and a better chapter after that and this season is part of the story, but it’s not the whole story. That’s the power of regret as John illustrated so well, and we can leverage those regrets. They should remind us, they should not define us, but the thing that keeps our regrets from defining us is our willingness to make better decisions into the future. 

I tell my kids, “I want you to decide a good story, and I want you to decide a good life, not live a good life. I want you to decide a good life because that’s how life is. It is the result of our decisions and our responses to decisions other people have made about us, which our responses are also decisions.” We decide our way into the future and regardless of what’s happened in the past, you get to write the next chapter, you get to decide the story that you tell. 

John Maxwell: 

Wow, that’s so good, I loved how you just kept that offhand, it reminds me of a poem I heard a long time ago, “Though you could not go back and make a brand new start my friend, anybody can start from now and make a brand new end.” When you just captured your heart and the essence of your book a moment ago, Andy, I just thought to myself how freeing that is, that we can make it better, we can make it better. We don’t have to stay where we are, but again, the five questions are going to help us make it better and I just think you’ve served all of us. 

I think Andy, I don’t know of any book you’ve ever written that I haven’t read, and if I gave my top 50 books I’ve ever read, at least three of them would be yours. I just want you to know, I think you’ve just added great value again, to myself, to Mark and to all of our listeners by what you’ve shared. We’re all better because of this time together with you and we’re going to be a lot better when we get your book. 

Andy Stanley: 

Well, thank you both very, very much. 

Mark Cole: 

Yeah, thank you, Andy and John to you, thanks for always bringing friends, thanks for always bringing content and this today, gang, I know it’s already added tremendous value to you in this episode, but I am going to challenge you. You need to pick up today Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets by Andy Stanley. Andy again, thank you, John thank you. 

If you don’t already know this, you can go to the maxwellpodcast.com/betterdecisions, we’ll have show notes there for you under the Bonus Resource Button. Thanks for subscribing, thanks for passing this podcast along, we look forward to joining you again next week. Until next time, let’s lead.