Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Give Your Best to Your Best

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and for 24 years now, this brand has added value to me. That’s our goal today. To you. We want to make a difference. In fact, before I talk about John Maxwell and what he’s going to teach today, drop us a note in the service that you use to listen to the podcast and let us know how we’re doing. If you’re listening by Spotify, then leave us a comment.

Mark Cole:
If you’re watching on YouTube, let us know. Here’s what we want. John Maxwell has trained myself and my co host today, Traci Morrow, that we want to make sure that we’re adding value to you. In fact, today John is going to teach us on how to raise up good leader by giving our best to the people we lead. After John’s lesson, my co host Traci Morrow and I are. We’re going to discuss the lesson and offer practical ways to apply it to our life and our leadership. I mentioned this earlier, but if you would like to watch us on YouTube or download the free resource, visit MaxwellPodcast.com/giveyourbest. Doesn’t that sound good? All right, here we go.

Mark Cole:
Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
How do you raise up leaders? Give your best to the best. Good people are hard to find. They are harder to keep. When you fail to give your best to the best, two things happen. Now get the picture? Here’s what I’m saying to you. On your team. You’ve got some people that are eights, nines and tens. Isn’t that right? If tens top, you got some eagles.

John Maxwell:
And then you got some that are fours, fives, and sixes. Isn’t that right? And you got some that are ones and twos. You got some eagles, you got some turkeys. Okay, we all have them. Now, this is very simple. You’ve got to give your best to the best. You’ve got to give your time, energy, money, resources, books, tapes. You got to get the people with the potential and you’ve got to pour your life into them.

John Maxwell:
And here’s what happens if you fail to give your best to the best. Two things, both of them negative, happen. Number one is they will leave. The best will leave you. Why will they leave you? No challenge, no respect, no potential. They’re going to exit. If the best don’t leave you, then the second thing they’ll do if they won’t leave is they will loathe. Because when leaders fail to appreciate the difference between mediocre and excellence, performance decreases.

John Maxwell:
Always has, always will. If you’ve ever heard me teach the peretto principle, what I’m about to teach you is truly the gospel of priorities. In your notes, you see a left hand column that talks about people, and you see a right hand column that talks about production. And I’ve divided them in segments of ten. Now, what I want you to notice. Stay right with me. Stay right in your notes now is, let’s say on the left hand side that you have ten people at this point in your organization. Now, you could have 100, and so that the top one would represent ten and the second one represent 20.

John Maxwell:
It doesn’t matter how many you have. It’s a percentage I’m wanting you to see. For now, for teaching purposes, let’s say you have ten people in your organization. Prettos teaches you, he teaches me that if you just spent your time with the top two people, okay, in other words, if you spent 80% of your time with the top 20% of your people, okay, they would give you. If you go to the right hand side, they would give you 80% of the production that you need. They would give you 80% of everything you’re going to need in your life. Now, Preto would also teach us, by the way, he was an italian economist, the bottom 80% of the people can only give you a 20% return. Now, it’s very obvious.

John Maxwell:
It’s very obvious once you look at this and begin to understand how the Pretto priority principle works, that what I’m saying here in developing people is you got to give your best to the best. It just makes sense. Now, let me see if I can maybe explain a little bit more. Okay. Let me give you a description of the bottom 20% in your organization. Let me give you a description of the top 20% and see the differences. The bottom 20% of your organization would be followers. Nothing wrong with followers.

John Maxwell:
Please. I’m not trying to be critical of anybody. I’m trying to teach leadership where the top 20% of the people in your organization would be your leaders. You got your leaders, you got your followers. One of the ways to describe the bottom 20% is availability. They’re available. The best way to describe the top 20% is ability. And there is a difference, if you check lately, the bottom 20%.

John Maxwell:
Another way to describe them is to use the word problems. I do not mean this in a disparaging way, but these people have a lot of problems. The top 20%, one of the ways to describe them is potential. With one group, you deal with problems continually with the other group. You deal with potential. The bottom 20%. One way to describe them is today. They are consumed with, what am I going to do today? They’re just trying to live today and breathe today and get through today.

John Maxwell:
And if they can make it through the day, it’s an accomplishment. The top 20%, they are tomorrow in their thinking. They are tomorrow in their potential. The bottom 20% of word that would describe them is addition. And the top 20%, the word that would describe them, as we’ve already talked about previously, is multiplication. Now, please understand it’s not the fact that one is wrong and one is right, but let’s talk leadership for a moment. What I’m saying to you is that if you’re going to develop people, you don’t want to spend the same amount of time with everybody in your organization. You got to look at your people and say, where are my top 20%? And you got to give your best to your best.

John Maxwell:
Now, I don’t know. Just probably a simple little illustration like this will help us. If you went to the horse races morrow, and you went up to the window to place a $2 bet on a horse, I’m guessing that you would try to figure out who the fastest horse was in the traci. Now, it’s just a guess, but I think I’m close. You’d go up the window, you’d probably talk to somebody, know something about horses. You’d look at the odds. But when you go up there to the window, you know what? If you’re going to throw your money away, which is probably what you’re doing, but that’s another subject entirely. At least you’d like to throw it at a possibility of having some return.

John Maxwell:
Isn’t that true? So you go up and you put your $2 on the horse you think is going away. Can I tell you what you don’t do? You don’t go up to the window and look at the person behind the bars there and say, excuse me, I have the gift of mercy. I like to bet $2 on the horse that doesn’t have a chance. I would like to build the self esteem up. I like to help the horse’s self image, if you don’t mind. Do you know what I’m saying? I just think if you could just let the horse know that somebody believes in that, isn’t it amazing to you that as soon as I give you this simple illustration of betting $2 on horse, and you’re going to pick a fast horse over a slow horse. Every one of us in this room, we see that so quick, we’re liver said, wouldn’t that be a stupid person to put $2 on that slow horse? Can you imagine somebody being that? Can I tell you something? People do it in business every day. It’s like my dad’s favorite joke about the guy who entered his mule into the Kentucky Derby.

John Maxwell:
I said, well, you know, that mule doesn’t have a chance of winning the race. He said, I know, but he said, I thought the association would do him some good. Put your best on the best. Sit down and say, who’s the best? And those are the people you spend the time with. Those are the people that you expose them to. The possibilities, the dreams. You got that? Okay. How do you raise up leaders, one leader at a time? How do you change your world? One leader at a time? So, gang, let’s get with it.

John Maxwell:
They’re out there. Let’s develop them.

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Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back. I am laughing at John and the horse races and the mules, and I’m just going. John went on us today and opened up a side of John that I was not familiar with. Hey, Traci, it is so good to be with you today. Always love doing the podcast with you, and today is going to be no exception. And I’ll tell you why. Not only have I watched John Maxwell give his best year in and year out, Traci. Now, after a decade, I’ve watched you give your best moment in and moment out.

Mark Cole:
And so I’m really excited to discuss this lesson today and challenge our listeners and viewers to give their best as well.

Traci Morrow:
Well, I’m excited for this episode as well, Mark, because I feel like this is such an immediate, practical episode and lesson for all of us where we can immediately hold up where we’re at right now to what John’s talking about, for some of us, I think it might be a difficult one because we might be looking at the way that we’re spending our time and the valuable resource of our time and thinking maybe we haven’t gotten it right. And so I think to kick it right off, the first question I have for you, Mark, would be, how does your calendar currently. I’m going real right off the it. How does your calendar currently reflect the Pareto principle? Like, give us some practical steps in how John has mentored you. Maybe even if you struggle with it or things that you’ve learned through the struggle and have kind of mastered it in areas, it doesn’t have to be perfect because none of us are perfect. But how does your calendar currently reflect the pareto principle?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, let’s talk about how my calendar should reflect it, and then let’s talk about the reality of what it.

Traci Morrow:
Keeping it real.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, exactly. I discovered over the last two to three years, learning and leading in a new arena with new responsibilities, with a new perspective, that I’ve had to learn some very difficult lessons on a lack of intentionality placed on my calendar. I’m going to tell you in just a moment what my calendar should reflect. But I’ll tell you, for the last two years, and specifically last year, others controlled my calendar. Fires challenges what everybody else thought I should focus on. Meetings that were called by other people controlled my calendar. And as the CEO, as the senior leader, as the leader of your life, when someone else is controlling your life, they’re controlling your agenda, they’re controlling your desired outcomes, and they’re controlling your energy. And those four things cannot be given away to anybody.

Mark Cole:
I was recently doing a talk with John to where he called himself. He said, I’m my own best friend. What John’s really saying right there, and it’s a great teaching. You’re going to hear it on the podcast soon because I told him, I want you to share that on the podcast. But here’s really what John’s saying. I control my energy. I control my relational equity, and too often, our energy is directed to where we’re spending our time. And again, for me, in the last couple of years, my time has been driven and consumed by others and not what was important to me.

Mark Cole:
So now that I’ve confessed to you and you all have cut off the podcast and say, I need another podcast with somebody that’s doing it right. Those of you that are stayed the remnant. I’m just so glad you’re still here. Here’s how I have designed and implemented my calendar for years, except the last couple. At the beginning of the year, I determined what is the most important thing in each category or each area of my life. And then myself and Kimberly, my executive partner, we worked through how to design my calendar to serve what I’m trying to accomplish that year. So, for instance, John Maxwell is the greatest contributor to the growth of our organization, to the vision, clarity of our organization. Even to this day, he is the most important person to focus on the business, the vision, and the outcomes of our organization.

Mark Cole:
And yet, the last couple of two or three years, I was not prioritizing him in my calendar. Now, I can tell you this, 80% of my focus is 100% on things that John Maxwell is involved in. I run my calendar on how to engage and work alongside John, because he’s super important. When I am home, I’m not home a lot. I travel a lot. When I get home after a workday, that time is highly intentionally designed around getting results and connection and encouragement into my family. And too often, we allow our calendars to be more reactive rather than proactive. And I would just tell you, 6 hours of your 8 hours, 8 hours of your 10 hours.

Mark Cole:
If you’re a ten hour a day worker, you need to have intentionality around 80% of your calendar if you’re going to be successful. And too oftentimes, we don’t allow our calendar to have flexibility that 20% or we let it have too much, which becomes that 80% of somebody else’s calendar. So control 80% of your calendar and only give away to the unknown or to somebody else’s agenda, 20% of your calendar.

Traci Morrow:
So what you just said, there is a unique action step for people who are in that transition stage or in that unique area where you are second chair or first chair to a founder who is in that transition stage, but not yet transitioned fully to the founder of an organization. And I know a lot of our listeners are in that. Cole, what you just said was 100% of your attention in 80% of your time goes to that founder. So then that leaves you with 20% of your time. The rest of that 20% doesn’t. Then go to your bottom 20, then that would mean 100% of your attention goes in 80% of your time to the founder. And I know that those people who are in your same position are hearing this, then your other 20% of your time, who does that go to then? That must go to your top leaders then. And so then that means you’re not spending time with the bottom 20%, that must mean that the leaders that you are empowering in that 20% of your time are then taking care of that for you.

Traci Morrow:
I think that’s important to note. Can you speak a little bit about that?

Mark Cole:
Yes. Let me say this about John Maxwell, and he listens to the podcast. So, number one. Hey, John.

Traci Morrow:
Hey, John.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, exactly. But let me say this. So I’m very aware that he’s listening to this, but I’ll still say it like this. Don’t look at John in the Persona of what I just said as a person. What I was intending to say is, there are one or two drivers in your organization that produces bottom line activity. There are one or two drivers in your organization that actually give clarity to the future. As the leader, as the senior leader, you need to identify what is the thing that gives you the greatest results and gives you the greatest clarity, and then you need to put 100% of your focus on that, with 80% of your time being proximity to that, and 20% of the time repeating what you heard when you were in proximity to that. So I tied it up to John Maxwell, a Persona.

Mark Cole:
And we all love John. Know John. He’s our friend. After all. He tells us all the time. But I’m not talking about John the Persona. John my boss, John the founder. I’m talking about John the driver of income, the driver of opportunity, the driver of vision.

Mark Cole:
So every one of us, whether you’re second chair, first chair, you have things in your organization that drives the bottom line productivity of the organization and drives the clarity of the future of the organization. Identify that. That gets 100% of your attention. Your time then is in. 80% being in proximate to that, and 20% getting other people closer to that vision and that productivity. So when you talk about the team, yes, by design, I spend 20% of my time on the rest of the organization. So when I step in front of teammates that have a direct report that’s between me and that teammate, I’m constantly asking the leader of that teammate, how can I serve you and your leadership? When I connect with this teammate, whether that’s a public connection of a team meeting that I’m communicating or whether that’s a one on one, I’m constantly asking the question, what can I do to serve you and your leadership with this interaction with a teammate?

Traci Morrow:
Oh, I’m so glad that you defined that, because that then applies to everyone, not just people who are in the transition phase. And so I’m glad that you did that, because then suddenly everyone that clicks into view, like, oh, I get that now. And how that applies to me. So thank you for clarifying that. My brain wants to go to two different questions. So if they turn out that the answer seems out of order, listeners, I apologize for that. But my brain is going two different places. I’m just going to pick one.

Traci Morrow:
So the first thing is, you are a highly relational leader, Mark. And so I am curious if this is a difficult principle for you to grasp and to really apply. You’ve kind of shared how in the last couple of years you struggled with it, whatever. But you are a person. Whoever you are with, you are with them, you are present with them, you love them. You don’t see them as like, oh, you are a bottom 20%. You are somebody who. And so was this difficult, is this currently difficult for you to apply who you should be spending time with because you see the value in every person and you love them.

Traci Morrow:
Is it hard to separate your brain to see the business side of this and decide who actually gets your time? Because every person that you see, you want to hug them, love them, find out about their family, spend time with them, but you only have so many minutes in your day.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. Yes. The real quick answer is, it’s very hard for me. I’ve talked about it on the podcast. Traci, you and I have talked about it one on one. The hardest lesson that I have ever learned from John Maxwell took me 18 months to say, I think I now understand it, and now it’s going to take me a lifetime to implement it. It literally took me 18 months to understand the answer to this question. Mark, when you have to choose, do you want to be loved or do you want to lead? And Traci, when he first asked me that, when John Maxwell first asked me that question, I said, oh, that’s easy.

Mark Cole:
I want to be loved because if I get loved, then I can get people, because I’m a relational leader and I’m a motivator and inspire, and I’m a high. I high d on the disc, and I can inspire anybody that loves me. And so it was a quick answer for me. I want to be loved more than I want to lead, because if I’m loved, then I can lead. And John said, no, that’s not true. You’re never going to get 100% vote when you are the leader because people are not going to like you. People are going to disagree. People are going to think you should have done it a different way.

Mark Cole:
And he said, you’re going to have to make a decision in your leadership trajectory. This was back in 2015 16, and John said you’re going to have to make a decision if you want to be loved or if you want to lead. You’re going to have to make a decision whether you want to be popular or you want to produce, he said. Now, there are many, many times in a leader’s life you can have it all, but then there are those critical, critical crisis times that you can’t have it all. And people’s going to want to know if they’re following you because you’re leading them or they’re going to hang out with you because you love them. And no leader that wants to lead big things at critical times in a very important part of history picks I want to love more than I want to lead. And Traci, it took me 18 months. So now when I look at the calendar, I don’t look at it as people that are in the bottom 20% of the top 80%.

Mark Cole:
I look at it as people that can give me the greatest amount of return for the vision we both are chasing, not the vision I’m chasing, because that becomes manipulation. It’s got to be the dream and the vision that we are chasing. And then I can, with peace, quantify my time based on a return factor. That’s why John says, you don’t have to earn my love. I love everybody. I love everybody unconditionally. But you do have to earn my time, and you have to earn my time based on, and it’s commensurate to the return you can give me on my time, because we all have a certain amount of time, and I believe time is a stewardship issue, not a management issue, believe I have to steward my time. And so if I can spend 1 hour a day focused on somebody that gives a multiplication factor or somebody 1 hour a day that gives an addition factor, I believe at the end of the day, I have to give an account on whether I chose the person that will give me a multiplication return or a person that will give me an additional return.

Mark Cole:
It’s a stewardship issue.

Traci Morrow:
It is. But I think also I just have to add that in addition to saying, do you want to be loved, it’s also you love them. So it’s not just like, do I see Traci standing over there and do I want to be loved by Traci? Ok. Yes, we’ve established that you do want to be loved, but also you love Traci standing over there. So it’s the pull of do I head to my office because I have a meeting or am I pulled because I want to see that team member and I want to have a conversation with them. And so really quickly, because I do have another follow up question that I think is important for our audience. But was there a language that John gave you or that you settled on that once you decided that you wanted to lead, that John gave you around defining the new way with your team so that there was a clear change, so that it wasn’t just blindsided, because John has said if you change too quickly, you blindside your team. So was there a language that prepared them for like, old mark? New mark?

Mark Cole:
Yeah. Traci, I have found that that language has to mature just like leadership has to mature. So when I first adopted this, and again, it took me 18 months to finally click. It’s taken me, I’m still applying it. It’s a lifetime application.

Traci Morrow:
Sure. I agree.

Mark Cole:
I have found, for instance, let me give you an example. John had access to me for ten years as his CEO. He had access to me that when he called, I could be running a meeting. And I would have already said at the beginning of that meeting, guys, I have two phone calls that when they call, I will pause this meeting, let you take a restroom break, and I’ll take the phone call. John Maxwell and my wife Stephanie. So those two phone calls, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you, it’s not that you’re not important to me. It’s not that. It’s that.

Mark Cole:
And by the way, I’m going to be checking my phone because I am available and approximate to John. I then went through a season the last three or four years to where I said, okay, I’ll get with John after I handle this process, because people need to see my focus. They need to know that I’m focused. Well, I’ve just went right back in the last six months, Traci, to where I realized that it was another season of availability and proximity to John, that everything else took second tier to that. So I have found that when you can let people know what to expect from you, that they can feel love even when you pause a conversation and go handle something else. It’s why we practice in every one of my leadership meetings when I’m hiring a leader and when I’m setting up a new meeting rigor, I say, guys, we will have upfront expectations and we will have tough conversations and we will be clear on each other’s priorities. And so I could be talking to you, Traci, and, you know, my calling to John and I can say Traci, hold that thought. Let me go over here and see what John wants and I can come and pick that right back up.

Mark Cole:
You don’t feel less loved or less focused on me because we’ve had upfront expectations. But to somebody that doesn’t know my priorities, when I put them on pause and go talk to somebody else, even if it’s John, they go, well, guess I’m not as important to mark. The key to being able to give people honor, respect and focus is upfront expectations and clarity of focus and priorities. And your teams need to know what those are in your life and in your leadership.

Traci Morrow:
I think that’s so good. And I love what you said. Too many leaders don’t do this. I have been in so many meetings that the leaders don’t do this. They are checking their phones and they make you feel like you are not important. And this is such a modern day issue that I think it’s important for people to hear. Let people know that you are checking your phone ahead of time, what you are checking for, so that they understand that you are with them and they aren’t telling you by checking their phone, you’re less important. I’m looking for something better.

Traci Morrow:
I’m checking my phone for something for John. Please know this is what I’m doing. You do that and I think it’s a settling feeling. It’s not like, okay, you’re checking your phone. What? For it? That’s an important thing. I hope leaders heard. Last question. What do you advise to a leader who is listening to us? This is a two part question and to close us out with, but I think it’s so important, a leader who is hearing us today and they’re realizing, I’ve hired a donkey, hoping that by hanging out with some race horses that by association that they’re going to start acting like a racehorse, that they’ve got some mercy hires and they’re like, uhoh, that struck a chord with them when they heard John’s funny way of teaching that, what do you advise to that leader? And then number two, the second part of that would be, what do you advise to a leader? Because there’s stages of growth as a leader.

Traci Morrow:
I started out my business. It was a very small team and how I interacted with my team was small. And then as the team grew and some leaders developed and the racehorse in them came out and they jumped out to the front, and then the team grew and people defined themselves. And each step from a small group to a medium sized group to a large organization, it shifts and changes as a leader of how you spend time with people and you have to have those conversations. Leaders are, I can only imagine in our audience, are listening, and there are different phases. What are those conversations you have to have with your team as you go from a small organization to a medium sized organization to a large, so they understand each step of the way. Oh, our leader suddenly is getting too big for his britches, or her too big for her britches, that they’re suddenly, hey, we were part of growing this thing, and suddenly they’re only spending time with these leaders. What happened to us? We were part of building this.

Traci Morrow:
And really, it’s because they’re out in front and they’re pouring into the racehorses. Can you talk a little bit about how you grow with your organization and your leaders and the language that you have to have with your team so they understand why you’re suddenly spending time with just a few people instead of everybody like you did when you were small?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, I love this question and I love digging into it. I only wish that we had 15 more minutes, and I’m dead serious about that. I was just with a leader this week at the recording of this podcast. I was with a leader that talks about 13 breakpoints in an entrepreneur in a growing business’s kind of history or in its timeline. And the breakpoint is from zero to 500,000, 500,000 to a million, a million to 3 million, 3 million to 7 million, and on and on and on. And this leader made a profound statement that says the biggest reason by like 80%, the biggest reason businesses can’t get beyond breakpoints is because the leader is not willing to break their past paradigms and become a different leader. So the first thing that I’ll tell you, if you think that at your company size of a million dollars, let’s just use that as an example. If you love how you are at a million dollars so much that you’re not willing to change it radically to become a $5 million business, guess what? Enjoy a million dollar business because you, the leader, are.

Mark Cole:
John Maxwell says it like this, the law of the lid. Every leader has got to understand that if I’m going to be a part of a growing organization, the way that I’m leading today will radically 180, have to change at the next breakpoint. That’s the first thing I can offer to any of you, because too many people feel like, oh, my goodness, my leadership that got me here is the thing that’s going to take me there. And that is the biggest lie in leadership. What got you here will keep you here. It will not get you there. You’ve got to lead differently. So let me give you an example.

Mark Cole:
I love team environment. I’m the best at it. Maxwell’s got magic. Mark’s magic is getting in there and meeting and leading teams at a very individual basis. I can inspire people. Just give me 10, 15, 30 minutes to an hour, one on one, and I will do it. Well, the bigger that we’ve gotten and the more dependent my team has been on me still doing that, the less I’m able to focus on the next level to get us through that breakpoint of the organization. So what have I had to do? I’ve had to train and bring around me leaders that can make people feel that special uniqueness that I bring to the table in a one on one meeting.

Mark Cole:
We’re not there yet, but first, don’t reject that. You have to get there. I cannot meet everybody the way that I used to. I cannot communicate it. The biggest thing that I’m teaching my team right now is leaders are repeaters. So when I finish any meeting with something that is pivotal for our organization to implement, you know what I do? I stop the meeting 15 minutes early and I make the leaders repeat it back to me and I say, put one of your teammates picture on my forehead. Don’t be looking at Mark Cole, the CEO, and trying to inspire me. Think about the person you’re getting ready to go out and talk to and role play with me on how you’re going to tell them what you just heard me say.

Mark Cole:
And I spend active amount of time of very important meetings, Traci, getting my leaders to repeat what they just heard from me because I can’t go and tell it to the entire organization anymore. I’m at a breakpoint, and I got stuck in a breakpoint in 2022, 2023 that I am breaking out of in 2024. So I’m having to identify the things that were stopping me from leading differently. I’m having to train leaders to take those things off my plate, and I’m having to ensure that they’re empowered by letting them try it on me before they try it or go do it with their teammates.

Traci Morrow:
Leaders are repeaters. I love that. I love that.

Mark Cole:
I do wish Traci this. Give your best to your best. I am certainly not describing myself as one of John’s best leaders. John has really given me the opportunities that so many before me could have taken and perhaps ran it at a different level. But as a leader, I can tell you as one that John identified as having high potential to carry his legacy forward for many years to come. I can tell you the patience and the determination and the intentionality that John Maxwell has put on me made me better than what I really am. And I will tell you, leaders, when you find a leader that has potential, train them. Give yourself time to them.

Mark Cole:
Let them see and understand contextually why you make the decision. And I get asked all the time by leaders that says, yeah, but when I do that, I’ve been hurt. I poured all this time into people and they left me. And I said, yeah, that hurts. I agree with you. Now pick your chin up and go do it again. Because the only thing worse than empowering people and pouring into someone and them leaving you is not pouring into them and having them stay. And I’m just going to challenge us as leaders that, yes, there is a risk to invest in another leader that could leader or could get distracted or could come up short with what you’re trying to get her or him to do.

Mark Cole:
But our responsibility is to give our best to our best. And that’s what John’s driving. That’s what I want to drive here. The standout statement for me today is good people are hard to find, but they’re harder to keep. And so just know you are trying something that statistically says you’re going to pour a lot into them and then they’re going to leave you. That’s okay, because you need to still be giving your best to your best. Hey, before we close out today, we had a great listener comment from Gary. Gary listened to the podcast goal oriented to growth oriented, specifically part two.

Mark Cole:
We’ll put part one and part two in the show notes today. But this is what Gary said. He said, thank you for this lesson. I loved the three things that you said. Establish your strength and purpose, share your vulnerability with your inner circle, and then determine and overcome your fears. Gary, that’s exactly right. I’m sitting here remembering that lesson going, wow, I need to go back and drive into that one a little bit based on what Traci asked me today. So, Gary, thanks for your compliment and your conviction.

Mark Cole:
That’s basically what I want to tell you today. Hey, Traci, thank you so much for being on the podcast for all of our podcast listeners, thank you. We’ll see you again. Next time, go do something that brings powerful, positive change to the world around you, because everyone deserves to be led well.