What People Misunderstand About Success (Part 2)

Mark Cole:
I think leaders often overestimate the planning and underestimate reflection. A lesson I learned was better than a dollar I earned. A lesson I learned through reflection gives me a tenfold to what a dollar I earned because I executed the plan flawlessly. Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Chris Goede and I, John Maxwell, we are all equally excited about you joining us today. Our goal today is to add value to you, to arrest something within you so you’ll go multiply value to others. That’s our mission. That’s our purpose.

Mark Cole:
And you’ve joined us today in the middle of a 2-part podcast series called What People Misunderstand About Success. And I’m just going to tell you today, John is going to be talking, and when he’s done, you’re going to go, no, John, continue, continue. But here’s the great news. If you want more today and you haven’t heard last week’s podcast, part 1, you can go back and listen to that. Chris, we’ve had a week to kind of process what John shared with us last week. What was your biggest takeaway on part 1?

Chris Goede:
Yeah, for me, and this is something that is the way that I’m wired, okay, is a challenge for me often. And I just love the statement, which was even before we were listening to the lesson. And as I was preparing, I wrote it down from my own notes on my office where he says, You get perfect, right, by taking action. And I really, my biggest takeaway is that word action, as simple as it is. And we’ve led for a long time.

Chris Goede:
It’s simply profound for me to keep remembering that you’re not gonna be perfect. Just take action and action and action and action. Then I don’t know that it’ll ever lead to perfect, ’cause then you’ll need to take another action. But it’s just that verb in leadership that sometimes, I think we forget about.

Mark Cole:
You know what’s funny is that was a takeaway for me as well. And I don’t think you’re— you don’t come across anywhere near as anal as I am. Got to have it all perfect before you take a step. But I’m certainly that way. I oftentimes find myself paralyzed because it’s not exactly where I want it before I take an action. And I was like, Mark, get rid of all of the perfection and just go take an action. It’s funny you went, hey, just go take an action and then perfect will come. So good takeaway.

Chris Goede:
That’s good.

Mark Cole:
Hey, if you have not listened to the podcast from last week, want to take that in, certainly, if not pausing right now and go and listen to it, certainly right after today’s lesson, go listen to that. John is getting ready to talk to us about part 2, what people misunderstand about success. If you would like to download the bonus resource, we have an option there. We have the ability to watch us on YouTube. We have the ability to ask us questions, to give us some comments on making the podcast better. All of that rests at MaxwellPodcast.com/Misunderstand. So go check that out. Go check out all the links there.

Mark Cole:
We’ll put some more links as the show goes along today for you to be able to take advantage of that. All right, grab that bonus resource, download it, grab a pen. Here is John Maxwell, part 2, What People Misunderstand About Success.

John Maxwell:
And let me give you now my observations about my compounding journey. I want you to write fast because this is the meat. This is the meat. Here we go. Observations about my compounding journey. Here we go. Number 1, your first step is your most important step. Your most important step isn’t your last one.

John Maxwell:
It’s your first one. No one ever won a race that didn’t get in it. You gotta get in the game. Good intentions need to become good actions. Number 2, Your next step will not be obvious until you take the present step. One of the mistakes we make on the journey is we wanna know 5 steps ahead. You don’t need to know 5 steps ahead. We’re already educated way beyond the level of our obedience and action.

John Maxwell:
You just need to do this step really well.

John Maxwell:
This step.

John Maxwell:
Will make the next step obvious. And you don’t get 2 steps ahead until you do this step right. Observation number 3, growth enables you to keep going. It’s the growth, expanding yourself, your personal potential, it’s your inward growth that helps you take those outward steps. The only guarantee that tomorrow is gonna be greater than today is that you’re growing right now. And growth expands your capacity. See, here’s what I want you to understand.

Chris Goede:
Amen.

John Maxwell:
You don’t go up to the top, you grow up to the top. There’s a difference. If you grow up to the top, every step you take is natural. Every step that you take is like, oh, of course, this is the way it works. When I go up to the top, it’s not always natural. When you grow yourself into the next step, when you grow yourself into the next level, It’s as if you were already there when you get there. Don’t miss it. You grow yourself to the top.

John Maxwell:
Next observation, doing well at one step sets you up for success at the next step. It just does. It always has. I was reading just last week, Steve Martin, in an interview, they were asking him to give advice for aspiring actors, and Steve Martin said something very interesting that caught my attention. He said, Nobody wants the advice I give them because they’re wanting me to say, get a good agent. He said, they’re wanting all the shortcuts in acting. He said, and I always say to them, be so good today that people won’t ignore you. You see, the only thing you’ve got to worry about tomorrow is making sure that you make today count.

John Maxwell:
It’s all about now. It isn’t about tomorrow. It isn’t about the next step. It’s about now. If you’re not good today, what makes you think somewhere, sometime, someplace, somehow you’re gonna get good? You see, success— next observation— success is a series of steps, not one giant leap. Don’t miss it. It’s not like a big leap and all of a sudden you were an overnight success. This is so corny, but it will work.

John Maxwell:
wanting to melt an ice cube and you move the temperature from 28 to 29 degrees, nothing happens. 29 to 30, nothing happens. 30 to 31, nothing happens. 31 to 32, oh, oh, oh, something just happened. The ice starts to melt. Your work at 28 and 29 and 30 and 31 degrees, it wasn’t wasted. It was stored. At 32 degrees, it all happens.

John Maxwell:
But it doesn’t happen because it just happened. It happens because I stored the work.

John Maxwell:
Can I say something?

John Maxwell:
You have to have stored work before your work shows up. There’s a whole bunch of people wanna show and tell and they haven’t stored. Let me give you 3 more observations. I had 20 more but I can’t give them all to you. I love this observation. Don’t miss this one. Each step should be your favorite step. Don’t get destination disease, folks.

John Maxwell:
People ask me, they say, when you went to Hillham and you had 3 people the first Sunday in your little country church, were you happy? Can I tell you something? I wasn’t happy. I was thrilled, overjoyed, so excited. I was happy in Hillham. I’m happy now. I’m happy. I’ve never had a step where I said, well, if I can get through this step, I’ll get happy. If you can’t get happy where you are, You can’t get happy where you’re going. Quit having destination disease.

John Maxwell:
The joy of the journey is every step, and I wouldn’t take one of those steps. The adversity, COVID-19, the whole issues that we’re going through, I wouldn’t take anything out. Okay, 2 more quick observations. Each step compounds the results of the previous step. I wish I could talk to you about this layered stepping, this layered action, this compounding, but they all compound. Every time you take another step, it compounds, it compounds. That’s why the last steps seem to be the biggest steps and the best steps. They’re not the biggest and the best.

John Maxwell:
They’re only made available because you took the first steps. And another observation is you don’t step your way to success. Each step well done is success.

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. I told you, I promised you that John would be teaching you. You go, no, no, no, give me some more, give me some more.

Chris Goede:
I love it.

Mark Cole:
We’ll bring you some more in future episodes about success. But Chris, I love this concept that John is talking about about today, these ways to create compounding results to the journey that we’re all taking.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And last week, as you were talking about, he gave us the mindset around this. And what I love about today’s lesson is it’s about the mechanics. And Mark and I, we said this last week, we’ll say it again, he’s so excited to teach this lesson because I think he knows the other side, right? He knows what that other side looks like. And a lot of us are either in that journey or maybe we haven’t taken that step to begin the journey. And so he gets so excited. He’s so excited for it.

Mark Cole:
Well, it’s funny, but before you go on, it’s funny because when I asked you at the beginning of the podcast today, before John’s teaching, I said, hey, what’s your takeaway from part 1? And of course you talked about take action, get going. And then he comes out with this first statement, first bullet point this week, saying almost the same thing.

Chris Goede:
Same thing.

Mark Cole:
Your first step is your most important step. And here’s why. Here’s why. It’s because once you discipline yourself and get over the fear of taking that first step, the second step becomes easier. And the next time you reach something and you do something for the first time, it’ll be easier to take the first step again because you remember doing it last time. That first step has compounding results.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. And we get frozen sometimes too much. So thinking about this, you’ve taken a lot of first steps.

Chris Goede:
Okay?

Chris Goede:
Maybe those steps, looked really, really small back in the moment, but I want you to take us back on a journey of your leadership, and you go, man, these are small steps, but you’re taking action. You’re like, okay, I’m just doing it, and then all of a sudden, you go, well, I am so glad that I did that, because that now plays a huge part, and it’s a massive thing that I’m doing. Are there a couple of things in your leadership journey that you go, yeah, I thought that was really silly, really small, and then they just showed up massively in your leadership?

Mark Cole:
Thing one, I’ve got 2 thoughts that come to mind when you ask that. So thanks for asking for a couple. Let me give you one that is dated. It’s been a long time, but it definitely led me 10 years later to the role of CEO. And it started with a little, just simple observation of the questions John Maxwell asked.

Chris Goede:
Mm-hmm.

Mark Cole:
I’ve told the story on the podcast before, but I would watch John ask these questions and I’d go, hmm, the boss cares about that. My boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss.

Chris Goede:
Okay?

Mark Cole:
But I would watch this and I’d go, wow, John really cares about that. And so I would come back to my office after that experience and I would start getting that number. And daily I would start getting the answers to the questions John would ask. I didn’t see John for another 2 to 3 weeks. 2 to 3 weeks later, I walked into the environment. It’s so good. John asked the question and I went, here’s the answer. I gave the person he was even asking the answers because it wasn’t about me answering.

Mark Cole:
It’s just like, I know what’s important to him.

Chris Goede:
That’s incredible.

Mark Cole:
Every time I was around him, I would pay attention to what was important to him. And I would have the answers to what was important to him this time, the next time I was with him. And I will tell you, I am convinced that that one discipline of every time listening to what was important, going back and getting the answer to what was important, the next time being ready for the answer to that, that was important last time. That discipline, every single time, got me the privilege of being the CEO of this company. Convinced of it. You can’t convince me any different.

Chris Goede:
Let me say this right here. One of our passionate taglines here at Maxwell Leadership is that everyone deserves to be led well. What Mark was talking about there is he was observing, he was watching. It was a small thing, but he was watching how John wanted to be led in those moments. And so you cannot lead your leaders or people, your peers, whatever, the same way you want. Like Mark maybe didn’t even want that information, whatever that information was. John did. And in order to lead John well in that moment, because everyone deserves to be led well the way they need to be led, you had it ready for him.

Mark Cole:
Let me just key off that for just one more second. If I could just simply explain to you that the person who has the power of your future in their hands, What’s important to them is automatically important to you.

Chris Goede:
100%.

Mark Cole:
It’s important to you because they hold your future in their hands. They hold the opportunity to the pathway in your hands. Make what’s important to them the most important thing to you, and it will reap benefit. The second one that I’ll tell you is much more current. I had the incredible privilege of meeting with a brilliant global leader in the last Too much. You were with me. Cath McLay has become a great friend of mine, led— CEO of Walmart International. And Cath was in her office and she said, I want to see your schedule.

Mark Cole:
I want to see your time. And I gave her my schedule, which is quite busy. So I was going to impress her with a lot of hours worked. And she looked at it and she says, wow, you’re not leading your team. And I went, what? She says, you’re not leading your team. Look at your schedule. There’s no automatic rhythm and rigor of when your team has access to you. And if you want to get back into effectively leading your team, give them dependable stated time that they’re going to get access to you because they will organize their problem solving.

Mark Cole:
They’ll organize their opportunities around when they know they have access to you.

Chris Goede:
Mm-hmm.

Mark Cole:
But if they don’t know they have access to you, they’re not worried about the problems that’s coming your way and they’re not worried about the opportunities that you’re missing. I’m just telling you, for the last 50 days, I have put a rhythm and a rigor of accessibility to my team. I’ve always had accessibility to John or given him accessibility to me, but giving that accessible time has been a game changer for problem solving and for opportunity pursuing just because of a rhythm and a rigor in your life. That’s so good. And I went, that is so elementary. I’ve been a CEO for 16 years. I’ve been in this company advancing my leadership influence for 26 years. How did I have to be so reminded of something so elementary?

Chris Goede:
You were always accessible. Give me a call, shoot me a text.

Mark Cole:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
And then she looked at your calendar. And by the way, if you didn’t listen to part 1, Mark’s just given us everything he’s being beat up about right now because he got called out last week and then— The podcast— I didn’t know about the calendar either. And this is amazing.

Mark Cole:
You’ve been therapy for me this last few weeks.

Chris Goede:
Listen, you guys, you’re so welcome. I just, I’m here to help pull this stuff out of him. But hey, you want me to give you one that I thought about for you?

Mark Cole:
Yeah, I would love to, yes.

Chris Goede:
Your annual review life plan. It just, when I asked, I wrote this question down for Mark, ’cause I was thinking about him and his leadership, and the first thing that came to mind was, you probably thought, you know what, this is really small, this is really simple, And now, that is your— I mean, that is your sage on the stage for us, right? Like, that is your personal growth life plan. Talk a little bit, just really quick, about when you first started it and how it was so small and simple, but you stayed with it, and how massive it’s become to your personal leadership journey.

Mark Cole:
I’m so glad you did it, because as I was listening to John, look what I put down.

Chris Goede:
Oh, did you really? That’s awesome.

Mark Cole:
I didn’t see that. And so I’m so glad that— well, I know you did.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, that’s awesome, though.

Mark Cole:
You gave me an opportunity talk about it. And then I talked about those other 2 things, but thanks for letting me have this.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
It’s August right now. I mean, and I’m already thinking about the end of this year. And I’m not thinking about that because what’s the financials are going to be? What is the— what are we going to succeed at? What’s the product launch going to look like? All those are very important. All those are end of the year conversations that I have and that I will have the end of this year. But I’ll tell you why right now currently and why I wrote it down right here. There’s coming in about 4 months, a time to where I will stand before myself and I’ll give an account for this year. I’ll give an account for today.

Mark Cole:
What I have done for today with the contract, the commitment I made to myself 8 months ago in January. And that’s what I call life planning. Now, the reason I made that sound so heavy and so dogmatic is because it is.

Chris Goede:
Amen.

Mark Cole:
Now, it didn’t start that way. It started 25 years ago with being challenged to take half a day with myself and review the previous year and look forward to the next year in about half a day to 3/4 of a day and see if I could build intentionality into my life. And it was so successful that first time. And I go back and think about how simplistic it was that first time and how detailed and intricate it is now. And I go, It’s not the detail of the plan, it’s the discipline of the commitment that makes the difference.

Chris Goede:
That’s so good.

Mark Cole:
I discovered that making an annual commitment to myself of both retreat and review and of aspiration and plan has been a game changer for my life. 26 or 25 years later, it’s absolutely a game changer for me. But the game changer is not how good it was in year 1 or how great it’ll be in 4 months from now. The difference maker is how I realized something that would lead to success. This was the experience that at 33, 23 years ago, at 33, I made a commitment and said, I want to sit at a table where John Maxwell is leading that organization. I made a commitment at that point that I wanted to be leading this movement. And I was an entry-level telesales representative, but I began to make steps every single year to make that happen. And that success that I am experiencing today is not what I did in year 1, but it’s a discipline that I have continued over 23 years.

Chris Goede:
And I want to double-click on something that Mark said that just might’ve seemed very common to us. When I asked the question, small that turned into massive, the thing that he gave us that I wrote down is the discipline of the commitment. Remove life plan, remove whatever it is, and whatever small is that you’re starting every day, it’s the discipline of commitment that Mark has poured into that and many other things that has turned into something massive over time.

Mark Cole:
Yep.

Chris Goede:
So now let me stay here in the same vertical for a little bit. But I want to ask you, were there times when you were just growing, developing, working, and John talked about the ice cube, and you’re storing up knowledge, competence, you’re storing these different things, and you’re like, I don’t know if it’s ever going to pay off, but then all of a sudden, opportunity came knocking and it paid off. Is there an example of your leadership of what it was that you were storing up? And then how it paid off.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So let’s stay with this example of life planning. I was making $38,000 a year the first year that I did this. And I didn’t see any results that next year in my earnings because that next year, I think I made $44,000 or something like that. But I made that $44,000 because I’d struck it big on a couple of events. It wasn’t a direct result of the books that I read, the experiences that I went to, and the people that I asked mentoring me. That year, the income was a raise because I’d worked harder at what I was already doing with or without a life plan. The third year, I can’t really now start saying that I started seeing monetary, but I think that third year is when I said, in 12 years, I want to make 10 times my salary this year.

Mark Cole:
I put a goal, man. I’m going after it. And at 42, I had accomplished that. At 42, which was only 10 years, years later, I had accomplished 10 times my salary. I’d accomplished all the positions and all the personal goals that I’d set. I’d created all of that. That wasn’t even the great return, although that was a return because of a life plan. But let me tell you the great results of starting out with a life plan.

Mark Cole:
Last year, we released a product called How to Get a Life That Matters.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
It was a life plan. I was the instructor. I was the personality driving this, not John, although John’s influenced everything I do. It was me. That last year, that product for our company produced $750,000 because I made—

Chris Goede:
I’ll give you a little fist bump on that.

Mark Cole:
I made a decision 23 years ago to invest in my life. And 23 years later, investing in my life turned into a $750,000 product. The consistency of doing that is what gave me the credibility of an expert in the subject matter, and becoming an expert through consistency generated $750,000.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, and you stored that up over time, and all of a sudden, one of our content teams were like, hey, let’s do this. And you’re like, let’s do it. And he had stored that up over time, and then it ended up paying off. Remember what we’re talking about here. John’s leading us down a way of saying, hey, Like, this is what creates success. A lot of us have a misunderstanding of it. Some of the examples that we’re pulling out of Mark and his leadership are not the misunderstanding, but what really does take, ’cause I think some of us don’t understand, and I know I don’t, at certain areas of all of that that leads up to it. So a leader, an individual’s listening to us or watching us on YouTube right now, and there are some things that they underestimate on what it’s gonna take to be successful.

Chris Goede:
Other than some of the things we’ve talked about already, last week, this week, what’s something that comes to mind that you go, hmm, I see this, I see them underestimating this a lot, and they miss the opportunity to be more successful in their career field?

Mark Cole:
I think leaders often overestimate the planning and underestimate reflection. So we put plans in place as leaders, and we get so rigid to the plans that we miss what flexibility will give us. We miss what opportunity will bring us because we’re going to stay on plan. So we overinflate, we overestimate the power of planning. And I believe in planning. We just talked about it. Life planning, planning, planning, planning.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
But the plan is not The gold. The consistency and having something to guide you to the opportunity is the gold. Oftentimes when I get to the end of the year and I reflect, now back to underestimating the power of reflection. Oftentimes when I get back to the end of the year, my reflection shows me that a lesson I learned was better than a dollar I earned.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
A lesson I learned through reflection gives me a tenfold to what a dollar I earned because I executed the plan flawlessly. And so we underestimate the power of reflection because who wants to look back? It was what it was and it is what it is. And I’m so thankful that it’s all over. Let me get to the next year. And yet there’s gold, 10x gold in what you reflect on.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
And we want to reflect really quick because we want to be forward-facing. And I love forward-facing and I don’t like rear-facing.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
But I also have learned that the 10x opportunities come from reflecting on what I learned, not on what I earned. And so, I think that is one area that came to me, Chris, when you said that. I think the other thing that I would say, people make success a destination and not a stepping stone.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Mark Cole:
And I think often people set a goal, they hit that goal in October, and then they coast in November and December. And John has a quote that he picked up from Tyler Perry a good while ago. When you can afford to quit, you can’t afford to quit. quit too soon when the real multiple of success is in the very next step. And they go, well, but I was successful. I hit the goal. No, you wasn’t successful. You didn’t do what you could have done after hitting the goal.

Mark Cole:
And we stop too soon because we hit what we thought we would when just another step is when the magnitude of success, which we believe is significance, begins to happen.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And that’s where the lack of that growth mindset, it’s they have a goal mindset, they have a finite mindset, as we’ve talked about before. And I think you really need to understand, no matter what your role is, developing yourself is a business strategy. That’s exactly right. It is. What Mark is talking about is, in order to become, quote unquote, successful, it starts with developing yourself. That’s the business strategy to get there, and don’t ever let that stop. And by the way, if you have the privilege to lead a team or an organization someday, it’s never going to outgrow the capability and the capacity of your leaders.

Mark Cole:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
And so it’s the good old law of the lid, which we could start slapping our hand, which we all laugh about. John teaches that, and never forget that whole principle. I also thought a little bit about layered learning, and I wrote that down, and I thought, man, How appropriate for us to be thinking about success, and what it truly takes is that it’s learning upon learning upon learning. And you take action, and you take steps, and you learn more, and you learn more, and it just all comes together. We know that now, but as we wrap up, I wanna throw it back to you, and I want you to think about, you’re talking to your younger self, or maybe let’s go a different route. Maybe you’re talking to A young generational leader out there that’s just eating this podcast up, they’re already growing, all right? So the growth is not there, but what would you emphasize to them about going on this journey from success to significance? And I’m going to throw that in there because—

Chris Goede:
We don’t believe that it just— you’re just not successful. What would you emphasize? What would you drive home? What would you want them— what would you want to leave in them? as your legacy of speaking that over them?

Mark Cole:
So, I want to give you the obvious answers. Life planning, put intentionality in your life. I wish I’d have done that much sooner. When you positioned the question at first of what would I say to my younger self, man, I would start life planning earlier. I would also mention growth. You got to constantly have a growth mindset. Always be looking. When the student’s ready, the teacher appears.

Mark Cole:
Always be the student, always be the student. Those are not just honorable mentions. Those are deep fundamental beliefs of things I want to put into young people as soon as possible. possible. But I want to give you something that may not be quite as a traditional Mark Cole answer. And what struck me with this, Chris, is 2 things. You didn’t know this. One involves you and something you said just a little bit earlier.

Mark Cole:
And the other involves a conversation I had with my daughter over the past week, the last weekend. And they’re both related. When we got done with this podcast and listened to John in studio like we do every time, we don’t come and deliver stuff to you that’s not tied to what John said. And so Chris and I were listening. And as soon as we got done, he said, Mark, as soon as this is over, I’m sending that clip to my kids. Right?

Chris Goede:
Absolutely.

Mark Cole:
Because there’s something in this concept about misunderstanding success that a dad who has 2 brilliant human beings— and if you’re listening, Ryan, Addie, you owe me right there. He has 2 brilliant human beings that he and Sarah has raised. But there was something in this lesson that he said, I’ve got to get this clip to them. I’m going to be interested in what you say in response to this, because as soon as you said that, I went, I’ve got to do this for Macy. My daughter’s getting ready to head back to where your son is coaching.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
Go Dawgs. That’s not where they’re going, but she’s going back and she had a particular struggle that she was going with. And I stopped her this weekend and I went, Macy, what would success look like if this turned out differently than it is? And it stopped her. And she says, I don’t know, Dad. I said, then you can’t be critical of where it is now if you don’t be clear on where it’s supposed to go. You are caught— because I don’t think it was unsuccessful at all. I think she’s in the progress of growing up. It was not— but she had deemed it as failure.

Mark Cole:
And so I stopped her from labeling it as failure, Chris. And I said, tell me what success would look like. And she didn’t have that. Now, going back to stop or to close down 2 weeks of misunderstanding success. My daughter did not know whether to call it success or not. So she labeled it failure without a clear articulation of success. I don’t know why you finished up John’s teaching and said, man, I have got to get this content to my very successful for their age and what they’re doing, their stage. They’re doing it.

Mark Cole:
What is it? And I think it goes back to the question you’re asking me. What would I tell the next generation or what would I tell my younger self? Get really clear on what success looks like for you. Paint a picture. It’s going to change. It’s going to change. It’s going to change.

Mark Cole:
But if you don’t get a clear vision of what success looks like as a young person, you will spend a decade of your life like I did, chasing something that was not even success for you. I have found if I will put intentionality around defining success, success may change, but my journey and my dread of the journey will not be the same because I was chasing something with intention rather than stumbling towards something without intention.

Chris Goede:
Hmm.

Mark Cole:
And that taking the intentionality and putting it in, even though the success may change as you get a life made, as you get certain things, your intentionality around chasing something with Clarity won’t. And that discipline will reap you great benefit the longer you chase something with intentionality.

Chris Goede:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
And I have a lot to say about that. Go, go.

Mark Cole:
Got a minute.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, got a minute. Go.

Mark Cole:
Oh, go.

Chris Goede:
But it goes back to what you talked about early on about your life plan, right? It’s the discipline of the commitment you made yourself in that small thing. You know what I was also really intrigued by your comments there just a minute ago? We went 2 episodes, really mindset of success, the mechanics of how, and we didn’t even talk about intentionality.

Mark Cole:
Yep, until right here.

Chris Goede:
Isn’t that crazy?

Mark Cole:
It is crazy.

Chris Goede:
‘Cause that is the root of everything. And you mentioned it, and I was like, why haven’t we used the word intentionality? And my final comment is, there is, you know, what does success look like? You have to get clear, but also understand, that whether you are 10, 21, or you’re a grandpa like Mark, we’re on a scavenger hunt.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, we are.

Chris Goede:
And so to Macy, to my kids, to your kids out there, to you, success may— you may clearly define it, but what I want you to understand is that if you start, if you take steps and you grow and you increase your capacity, Things are going to compound. But the biggest thing is that don’t deem it a failure, to what Macy was saying. Look at it as it’s a scavenger hunt. And what was I supposed to learn in that moment to take that next step, to take that whatever, and view it as a scavenger hunt to get to where you want to go, to quote unquote, what you might call successful?

Mark Cole:
100% agree. I want you to keep growing. In fact, we’ll put in the show notes, we did a podcast some time ago called Why So Many Leaders Stop Growing. And I want to get that in there because I will tell you a huge part of success is constantly growing, constantly pursuing and stretching yourself. And so I want to add that to you as a value add. And then John’s most noted, to be honest with you, for his book, 21 Laws of Leadership.

Mark Cole:
Great book, brilliant book, 4 million copies of it sold. We’ve created a digital product on it. It’s pretty integrated. It’ll be a good quarter, if not a half a year of study for you. Typically, We sell that for $1,000. We’re giving it right now to our podcast family for $199. And so because we were able to cut some costs there and do some things, I wanted to make that available to you as well. And that’s all because we want to equip you so that you can add value to others and multiply value to others, bring powerful, positive change to the world around you because everyone deserves to be led well.