Think Ahead with Craig Groeschel

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast where John Maxwell commits to adding value to leaders who will multiply value to others. That’s what we desire. We want to add so much value to you that you feel compelled, driven to go and make a difference for others. My name is Mark Cole, and I’ll be honest with you, I’ve been looking forward to this episode for quite some time. That’s because today I’m joined by John Maxwell’s good friend, and he’s not in the studio. And I get to rub it in. That doesn’t happen very often because of his experiences.

Mark Cole:
But you see, who I’m bringing to you today is a longtime friend of John Maxwell. He’s been a leader I have admired and shared with along the way. His name is Craig Groeschel. Now, I envision clapping everybody, stopping the treadmill. You’re going to find something to write with, because that’s what today is going to be about. Craig hosts what I believe is one of the most amazing podcasts called the Craig Groeschel Leadership podcast. Craig, it doesn’t hurt my feelings during COVID when John called me and said, mark, you got to listen to Craig’s podcast. Mark, you need to tune into this podcast.

Mark Cole:
Mark, I just text Craig and told him about this podcast, and I’m going, John, do you know we have a podcast, too? But the reason John did that, Craig, is because he knows your life as a pastor, your life as an author, your life as a speaker to business leaders and nonprofit leaders. You are making a difference. But what I’m really excited about, and I’m holding it here for all of our YouTube viewers. Craig’s getting ready to release on February the 20th a book called think ahead, seven decisions you can make today for the God honoring life you want tomorrow. So whether you’re a person of faith or whether you’re not, this book has the potential to change your life and your leadership. Greg, I honestly say I learn from you every single month. I wish you did more new podcasts, like maybe every day, because I’m one of those leaders that needs it every day. But welcome.

Mark Cole:
We’re so glad to have you.

Craig Groeschel:
Hey, Mark, thanks so much for having me on. I admire your leadership and what you and John do together. It’s making such a big difference. And I’m one of the hundreds of thousands, one of the millions of people that have benefited from your teaching and of course, John’s for decades. And so it’s an honor to be on with you.

Mark Cole:
Craig is the pastor of the largest church in America. He and his team founded the YouTube version of the Bible that I literally watch a video and read a scripture of the day every single day. Craig, you have done a lot of things, but here we are today talking about leadership. And I’ve watched and heard you and John kind of share your passion for leadership. Whether you’re pastors, you both have been, whether you talk to business leaders, you both do, whether you write books, you both have consistently done. What is this drive that parallels your passion for leadership and John’s passion for leadership?

Craig Groeschel:
Well, to be honest, Mark, I think John was the guy that influenced me first. I’m a person of faith, and as a young pastor, I started pastoring when I was 23 years of age. I never saw myself as a leader. I thought I was just a spiritual pastor. And he helped me to see how leadership is incredibly spiritual. And as he would say, everything rises and falls on leadership. And so in my early twenty s, I started learning from him and he instantly became my number one leadership hero, my number one leadership mentor. And I don’t know how long it was after know, years and years and years.

Craig Groeschel:
One day my cell phone rang and I picked it up, and on the other side, this voice said, is this Craig? This is Don Maxwell. And I immediately, I looked up to him so much. I knew this was one of my friends playing a joke on me, and so I hung up on him. Well, lo and behold, it wasn’t a joke. He was with somebody that knew me. And John always wants to add value, and he knew I was a fan and a student, and so he wanted to reach out and call me and add value. And so I hung up on my hero and mentor the very first time. And thankfully, he had grace for me.

Craig Groeschel:
And after that, I’ve gotten to know him more as a close friend. And I’m thankful to say that he’s easy to admire from a distance and he’s even easier to admire and love up close.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And I love it because I’ve been with John for 23 years and I’ve got to meet people like yourself and other world leaders in 75 countries. And I never lose the awe and the wonder of how through books and speeches and now streaming, that your influence can be so accelerated to that multiplying effect. Talk a little bit about this stage in your life and how you’re seeing leadership multiply and influence around the world.

Craig Groeschel:
Well, what’s fun is when you’re young, you’re full of passion and ideas and so much of what happens in the world does happen through young leaders. You tend to be more innovative. There’s a lot of 20 year old, 30 year olds have bigger breakthrough ideas than someone my age. But when you become my age and you’ve been tested by time, sometimes people will listen with, they’ll lean in a little bit more to someone in their 50s sometimes than they would to someone that’s younger. And so I am enjoying, loving, thrilled, honored, blown away, to be able to learn up close from people like John and then to be able to influence other people. And what’s really, really special is when you start having multiple generations of impact, meaning I might influence someone who’s ten years younger than I am, and they’re influencing people that are ten years younger than them. And so it’s like multigenerational impact. And that’s what John has.

Craig Groeschel:
I’m a disciple of his leadership, and now his influence to me is reaching people beyond that. And now I’m getting to the point where you could almost say, like, I’ve got leadership, grandchildren, right. I’m able to influence some leaders who are influencing others, and it’s just really rich. And to know that no matter what you lead, where you are, business, nonprofit, a family, a softball team, whatever it is, your leadership matters more than you could imagine. And when you focus on some of the basics of leadership, you can make anything better, make everything better. And so that’s what we’re here to know.

Mark Cole:
I watch John and been a part of some huge landmarks. I watch you and I’m watching your landmarks. I mean, the number of downloads, the number of people impacted on a weekly basis. One of the things that I love about kind of this group, it feels like that you guys are John and you and others is there’s this humility, this sense of awe and wonder and this sense of, wow, how did this happen yet? Your book and podcast family. He told me I didn’t have to talk about his book, but I spent all of my holidays reading an advanced copy of the book. So, Craig, we’re talking about the book today because I love it, but we could talk for days about leadership at whole. But you’re talking about this idea of think ahead, and yet we’re pausing for a moment in that last dialogue about, man, I got kids and grandkids in leadership, and I’m looking up to dads and granddads, and you’re kind of in this middle. How much was thinking ahead a part of what you’re sensing and seeing today?

Craig Groeschel:
Well, that’s a great question. So early on. It’s really hard to have a holistic view of life. When I was in my 20s, odly enough, I think I was more confident then than I am now. I think I thought that I knew more at that stage than I do now. I really didn’t understand, like in finances, we talk about compounding interest. I didn’t understand about compounding wisdom or compounding good decisions or compounding leadership. And so I had a mentor, Mark, tell me years ago.

Craig Groeschel:
It’s really impacted me. He said that you’ll generally overestimate what you can do through your leadership in the short run, which was so true. I was 282-930-3537 and wanting to do more, wanting to influence more, wanting to have a bigger, significant leadership impact. And then he said, you’ll generally overestimate what you can do in the short run, but you’ll vastly underestimate what you can do through a lifetime of faithful leadership. And that was so true. I did not understand how someone like John, his impact, his global influence is not the result of four or five or six or seven really big decisions. His global impact is result of tens of thousands of very small, almost invisible, faithful decisions consistently done over time that created who he was. And so often we have really good intentions, but our decision making in the moment is not great.

Craig Groeschel:
And so I kind of, as a nerd both of scripture, I wanted to study as many decisions as I could and then how the mind works and just the science behind how we make decisions. I went and did it kind of a deep dive. And that’s how I came to the idea of thinking ahead. That we make so many decisions, 35,000 or so a day, is what experts estimate we make. So many. And there’s a million reasons why we’re not great decision makers. But if we can think ahead, what are our values? What do we value? What really matters to us? When your values are clear, your decisions become easy. What do we value? If we can determine that, then when we face decisions in the future, we can predecide, pre make many of those decisions that really will influence our leadership.

Craig Groeschel:
And so I’m excited to talk about any of that. You want to how can we think ahead to become more effective leaders? And there’s a lot of ways.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. I do want to dig into a statement you made right at the beginning of the book that I want you to talk to me because I read this book on my process called my year in review. It’s where I make sure that all of the accounts of my life are balanced and in check with one another. We all talk about that. You talk about that on your podcast. We talk about that here. You made a statement that I read as I was looking through what I wanted my family to be about. And you’re living your best life with your family.

Mark Cole:
And this is what your quote said, the quality of our decisions determines the quality of our lives. Can you talk a little bit about that for me?

Craig Groeschel:
Right. So that’s going to be generally true. Now, there’s some external forces that may be outside our decisions that will impact us. But for the most part, that the quality of the life we have today is a reflection, for better or for worse, of the decisions that we made in the past. For the most part, who are you? What are you? What are you doing today? You are a direct result of the decisions that you made. Someone said when you were born, you looked like your mom and dad. When you die, you look like your decisions. Right? That’s the truth.

Craig Groeschel:
And so, knowing that if we recognize we are today because of the decisions we made yesterday, the same will be true. We will become, in the future, a result of the decisions that we make today. We all want to make great decisions, but we don’t. Why do we not make great decisions? Lots of reasons. One is because we make so many that we get tired. In the same way, if you carried boxes around all day long, your body would get tired. If we make decisions all day, we get decision fatigue. We don’t make as good a decisions when we make too many.

Craig Groeschel:
So there’s a whole strategy for eliminating excess decisions, automating decisions, bulking decisions. We can talk about that if you want. We become overly emotional in a moment. Some of us will make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions. That’s a problem. As a leader, if my emotions are not in balance or not in check, if I’m not healthy emotionally, I’ll make emotional, irrational decisions that will hurt people, rob us from profit, rob us from impact and such. Sometimes we’re afraid. We get analysis, paralysis.

Craig Groeschel:
We don’t know what to do. A lot of leaders, we’re afraid of making the wrong decision. So we don’t make a decision. We have to recognize that no decision, that’s a decision. And oftentimes, no decision is really worse than an imperfect decision. And so when we kind of just holistically look at what are the patterns, what are the consistencies, what makes decision making harder, we can eliminate some of that. What makes it easier, we can start enhancing that. And then together, we can kind of create a decision making strategy.

Craig Groeschel:
That we’re going to try to think ahead, make decisions based on our values, make them once in the moment, we already know what we’re going to do. And it’s really helped create better habits for me. It’s helped eliminate sloppy, irrational decisions, and it’s helped our whole organization to think ahead and really be better prepared to be better leaders tomorrow.

John Maxwell:
Hey, John Maxwell here. I’m in the studio. We’ve been recording all day and I was thinking about really one of my very favorite experiences that we have, and that is called day to grow. If you want to grow, you want to grow in every area of your life. I tell people all the time, you don’t want to go to something. You want to grow to something. But if you’re passionate about personal growth, development your team and growing them, you do not want to miss day to grow. I’m going to have some real players with me, Dion Sanders, Jamie Kern, Lima, myself.

John Maxwell:
Oh my gosh. You don’t want to miss it. So market, come and see us on day to grow. I will promise you this. You come and bring your team. At the end of the day, you’ll come up and shake my hand and say, one of the best days I’ve ever invested in for myself and for my team. I’ll see you there.

Mark Cole:
I know, I’ve watched your leadership. I learned from your leadership. I apply your leadership so I know you’re premeditated in leadership decisions and making sure that when it’s go time, you have done your homework. Yet it feels like this book is truly for such a time as this. It feels like that leaders that I talk with, from global leaders to local leaders, that there is this incredible emotional tendency to get off point with decision they made hundreds of times up until some of the more radical things we’ve had to lead through in the last few years. Why this book and why now? Was there predetermined to this? Was the next book in my sequence of books, or is this responding to something you’re seeing in the leadership world?

Craig Groeschel:
No, I think it’s a couple of things. One is it’s responding to what I was seeing as a need in my own life in leadership. And then two, yes, it’s absolutely and completely what we’re seeing in the world. So I think right now it’s more difficult to lead during this season, mark, in my opinion, than it was, at least in any time in my lifetime. And there’s lots of reasons why a few of them. One is we just have more distractions, meaning attention spans are shorter. People are locked to social media. We have access to so much information that we become overwhelmed.

Craig Groeschel:
We read the news all over the world. People are more afraid. Anything that we do now, it appears more permanent, meaning there’s probably a video of it, or if you say something dumb on Twitter, it’s going to come back and get you 15 years later. There’s more temptations, there’s more distractions, there’s more opposition, there’s more division. And so therefore we’re more emotional and we’re more worn out. We’re more vulnerable. Leaders appear to be hurting today more than ever before. So in a time like that, what I have to do is I have to separate myself from emotions.

Craig Groeschel:
I have to separate myself from reacting. And what I want to do is I need to be aware of where I’m vulnerable, aware of why I’m vulnerable. And I have to be way, way more proactive in the complicated times of leading and Covid, which we all had to deal with. If I wasn’t distancing myself from the emotions of he said, she said, they said, I’m getting criticized. I could have let us off the edge of the cliff. And many of my peers, so many of our peers in leadership today, they’re wounded because of those times. They’re not healthy. They’re tentative.

Craig Groeschel:
They’re hesitant. They’re afraid. And this is the time we need to be stronger. We need to be confident. We need to be assured. We need to assemble unity in our leadership teams. And so it’s really hard to follow a tentative leader. It’s hard to follow a wishywashy leader.

Craig Groeschel:
We have to be decisive. We have to be clear. We don’t have to be right all the time, but we do have to be confident in general direction. And so that’s why I think this book can help make more decisive leaders.

Mark Cole:
So you talked about at the very front of the book, 35,000 decisions some say that we make in a given day.

Craig Groeschel:
Yes.

Mark Cole:
And yet you’ve distilled it down to seven that are really important. How did you decide on these seven and how do you know that they are the right ones for us to make specific decisions on so I can.

Craig Groeschel:
Talk about them in the day we live in. And you could pick 2030. There’s a lot of important decisions. As someone who’s been in ministry for 33 years, what I see is I see common problems that we all face. Doesn’t matter if you’re a person of faith or not. We get distracted. We find that we compare, we are insecure. We are indecisive.

Craig Groeschel:
We give into the wrong thing. We make bad decisions during emotional times. So based on 33 years of studying kind of human nature, and then based on seeing where people struggle the most, I chose seven topics that I think are most helpful for people. The first one you just give you, one of them is I will be ready. What I know, and you’re helping lead the John Maxwell global dominant empire. Best leadership producing in the world. What I know is that you’re going to face problems this year, and you know some of what those will be. You’re going to have some growth challenges.

Craig Groeschel:
You might have some financial headwind. If the economy stutters, you’re going to have some employees that maybe were over promoted. You might have some cultural issues, you know, ahead of time what some of those things are going to be. As a leader, if you kind of know what’s coming, you can help your leaders around you predetermine. In times like this, this is what we do. And for me, it’s even like when times get tough, I tell myself to slow down, not to speak as fast in a meeting. I’m going to say I’m not going to speak until I’ve heard seven other people speak. I’m just going to sit back and listen.

Craig Groeschel:
I’ll count them one, because I know myself. And so we need to be ready for what’s coming. We need to be prepared. And so if you know many of the challenges that are coming, let’s predecide what we do when we face those challenges.

Mark Cole:
You’re talking about a subject that so many of our listeners love. It’s the listeners that want the leaders that want everything buttoned up. They want a bureaucracy. They want a hierarchy. And here’s what’s interesting. Team podcast family about Craig. He’s an entrepreneur at heart. I don’t know what you’re starting next, but I wish we had time to hear about it because I guarantee it’s something.

Mark Cole:
Because he’s an entrepreneur at heart, yet he’s built an ecosystem that is built on a system of predictable system outcomes that is unprecedented in the nonprofit world. But now, let me take that. You understand both sides is basically what I’m saying. There’s some that’s listening and say, yes, I can finally get so strong on my predecision that there’s no flexibility, there’s no moving fluidity needed with my team. How does a leader balance between predecisions and unknown obstacles or challenges that come up?

Craig Groeschel:
Great question. So, as a church, not because of me, because the team members I have, we have been able to see some opportunities that have created real impact. People say, how do you know what’s coming next? How did life church, just a local church, open up a Bible app on the very first day that Apple released know, do we have the biggest downloaded bible app? Because we were the best or the know. You could argue we were the first in, right? Well, how did we see that coming? And the answer is, we didn’t see that coming. So how do we think ahead for opportunities? What we do, Mark, is we plan for margin. I’m going to think ahead this year. I want to have money put aside for opportunities I cannot predict. I want to have leadership margin.

Craig Groeschel:
I want to have people margin. So everyone’s going to have a good idea, but very few people can execute on it. So when they say, hey, what’s your five year plan? I don’t have a five year plan. I think that five year plans used to be a good idea. The world changes so quickly, I can barely create a six month plan. So what I want to do, my plan is now to plan ahead, to strategically create excess margin, emotional margin, leadership margin, people margin for opportunities. I cannot predict. What are we starting right now? I don’t know today, but I know that three months from now, four months from now, I’ll have an idea, someone will have an idea.

Craig Groeschel:
And if we don’t have the money for it, we can’t seize it. There’ll be a piece of property that is not for sale today that’s going to be for sale. We’re going to want to buy later on. So I don’t know where it is, what state it’s in, but I know I want to have the money for it when it comes available, I want to have the team available to go seize it, negotiate it, get it done. I don’t want a team so burned out. So what we want to do organizationally is we want to plan for opportunities we cannot predict. We are not going to be necessarily the most innovative, but we want to be the most prepared. If there’s any kind of innovative idea around, we want to be able to execute it unimediately.

Craig Groeschel:
So that’s one way you think ahead. There’s tons of listeners right now, they’re going to have a great idea, but if they don’t have the ability to execute on it, someone else is going to run with that idea.

Mark Cole:
Hey, we’re talking to Craig Rochelle. If you’ve not heard him, he has the Craig Rochelle leadership podcast. You need to go to craigrochelle.com and you need to download it. I’ve got a couple more questions, Craig, before we run out of time. But podcast family, we’re talking about the book that Craig is releasing on February the 20th called think ahead. And these are seven decisions that will absolutely make today a God honoring a very intentional life for your future. Don’t we all wish that? I want to take just a minute, because we’re talking to a lot of leaders that have. Maybe they did think ahead and they made bad decisions.

Mark Cole:
They made decisions that they’re now regretting with. How do they pull themselves out? And how do we kind of help the next generation of leaders to not make some of the mistakes that we see common in leadership these days?

Craig Groeschel:
Well, okay. Great question. We could look at that from a couple of ways. One is we cannot beat ourselves up for bad decisions. In fact, sometimes it’s an imperfect decision that leads to a better decision. For example, our church is in 45 different locations and whatever, 1213 different states. The first time mark that we went out of state and tried to start a new church, it actually failed. And so I went through and kind of dissected the bad decisions I made on that failure, and I counted up 33 very specific contributing factors, bad decisions that led to that failure.

Craig Groeschel:
So am I a horrible leader? Not necessarily. I had a horrible series of decisions, but it was from those failures that we learned how to do the next one better. So we probably would not be at 45 different locations today had we not made 33 mistakes that helped us to do the next one so much better. So when you make a mistake, we have to remind ourselves that a failure is an event. It is not a person. Just because you failed at something doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, and we have to roll with it. I would also say that failure is a big part of success. If you’re afraid to fail, you’re not going to do anything.

Craig Groeschel:
We have to chalk it up to that. A lot of times, we are going to make bad decisions. And truthfully, I’d rather make some small bad decisions than make no decision. I’d rather make aggressive mistakes than passive mistakes all day long in leadership, then there are some decisions that are really difficult to recover from. If we’re in leadership and we lack integrity, if we are abusive to employees, if we cross the line immorally and such, there are some things that are really difficult to recover from. What we need to do as leaders is we have to be really honest about where we’re vulnerable because you’re only as strong as you are honest. And we need to be hyper clear on our values, then what we want to do, Mark, is we want to create standards that help us live up to those values. So if you’re leading a for profit business or a nonprofit, you’ve got financial standards that you decide ahead of time.

Craig Groeschel:
It could be we’re always audited, we’re always transparent. It could be that we never go below a certain amount. We always have six months of cash in hand. We always give 10% of the whatever it is. But financially, we have predecided. Here are some standards we’re going to live by. In my world, I can’t even give the appearance of doing something wrong. So even if I’m not tempted to cross a relational line, I’m not going to travel alone.

Craig Groeschel:
I’ve predecided if I travel somewhere, there’s some other guy with me or my wife, because I’m not going to give the appearance. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to say, what lines do we not want to cross? What boundaries do we always want to keep? And then we’re going to predecide ahead of time. What systems can we put in place? What decisions can we make today that will help us be more successful in the future? And there are a lot of leaders today, tragically, as you know, are not in leadership today because those boundaries were not in place. Now is the best time to put the boundaries in. You don’t want to wait until you’re in a tight situation to make a decision. You want to eliminate that tight situation if possible.

Mark Cole:
So this leads to a question that when I find somebody that has stayed the course and the law of compounding interest in influence really begins to be noted by all. I love to ask this question because, you know, the term influencer is popular on social media. I have a senior, it’s number of likes that she got. It’s can she go viral? Influencer doesn’t always lead a positive connotation like it did back when you heard John the first time say everything rises and falls on leadership, and influence is leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. How are you encouraging people to be influencers? And how different of approach are you taking to this concept of influencer now?

Craig Groeschel:
Well, this will reflect my age a little bit. I’m 56. And so if you go back to when I was a kid, there were not YouTube influencers, there were not Instagram influencers at that time. Your Sunday school teacher could be an influencer. Your coach could be an influencer. Your teacher could be an influencer. Your friends could be an influencer. Your parents could be an influencer.

Craig Groeschel:
And I would just say this, that leadership is influence and you have influence. If you have any type of relationship, you have influence. You’ve got friendships, you’ve got children. We need to understand that as leaders, even if you’re on a team and you’re not ranking high in the organization, you have the ability to lead up. You can lead up with being a voice of encouragement. You can lead up by telling the truth. You can say, hey, we can improve this. We can make this better.

Craig Groeschel:
I always think the best types of influence in that situation is not criticizing what’s wrong, but bringing solutions to what could be better. And I would just say, do not let today’s definition of influence, just because you don’t have a blue check mark doesn’t mean you’re not an influencer. To everyone who’s listening to this podcast right now, you have influence. Leadership is influence. You all have it. You all can make a difference where you are. So predecide that predecide when you go into the office during the day, I’m going to make this place better. I’m going to be a voice of encouragement.

Craig Groeschel:
I’m going to lift others up. John Maxwell, when he comes into our orbit, he talks to everybody, he smiles at everybody, he hugs everybody, he compliments everybody. I’ve got a team back here. They’re nodding right now. If you could see them, because he’s been here with this team, with me right now, made every single one of them feel special, not just because he’s John Maxwell, but because he cares about people. And the bigger he gets, the more he cares. One of the most important things you can do as a leader is steward what influence you have. If you’re faithful with a little influence, you will get more.

Craig Groeschel:
People here don’t just love John because of his content, they love him because of his heart. And then that’s the kind of thing, that’s why his influence continues to grow. It’s not just a tool, it’s a reflection of true value, of caring about people.

Mark Cole:
And Craig, I’ve watched you operate with your team and other teams, including my team, and I would say the same thing about you. And I expect your studio producers to be nodding their head right now. You don’t look, but I guarantee you they’re nodding their head.

Craig Groeschel:
They’re not doing it as much as they did with John.

Mark Cole:
They’re not doing it as much. We’ll have to work on that. Hey, so as we kind of wrap today and I hope we’ll do this again. Craig, I told Craig, for those of you that are a part of our team and follow John and what we do, we will have Craig on a stage sharing leadership with John in the next twelve months. That’s my commitment to you. His schedule is crazy. Our schedule is crazy, but we’re going to look for something. But today’s people is going to finish this podcast and they’re going to say, okay, what do I do? What do I need to accomplish? And so if people that’s listened to the podcast or people that’s read the book that I’m holding up right now, what is it that you hope they’ll do after interfacing with this content?

Craig Groeschel:
Well, I hope once you rethink ahead that you’re going to find that you could make one predecision that can be a game changer. It could be as little as like tomorrow. This sounds crazy, but I automate as many decisions as I can tomorrow. I already know what I’m eating. I eat the same thing for breakfast. At lunch. I’ve got a few meals that are preordered. They’re in the refrigerator, they come out, they’re ready.

Craig Groeschel:
I’ve already predecided that this weekend I’ve already got the outfit I’m wearing picked, put aside for church so I don’t have to wake up on Sunday morning. What am I going to wear today? It’s already predecided. I already know my workout schedule today. I’ve got my budy Sam right over here and at 330 we’re walking out the office, we’re going to the gym. If I did not have that plan today, what would happen? Someone would need something, but I’ve already pre committed to it. I would just suggest after reading this book, if you can take one, maybe two commitments and predecide because of who I want to be, this is what I’m going to do. If you start there, then you start to become a little bit better. As you get decision momentum, you start to see small returns.

Craig Groeschel:
You grow in your leadership confidence, and over time you get compounding interest or compounding influence. And again, like any influence that I have today is not because of a few things, it’s because of many thousands upon thousands of smaller decisions that over time add up. That’s what I learned from John and that’s what I think people can do today. One or two, if you make those positive changes, they’re going to create momentum. And with a little bit of momentum, a lot can change.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. And what I love about this from a leadership application is when you become consistent and you become predictable to your team, they now can run with their strengths that complement you in your consistency. And Craig, that’s why you’ve been able to build something in the secular community, in the nonprofit community. That’s why we need your voice more and more. Two things I want you to do, go to craiggrochelle.com. You can pre order the book we had Craig come on here as a favor from John and let us hear about this book before the world even knows about it. Thank you, Craig. I want you to go pre order that@Craiggroshell.com.

Mark Cole:
I promise you, you will thank me when you download his podcast and hear from him each and every month, every week, get some content from Craig. Craig, I got one final question for you, and then we’ll sign off. Some of our people are brand new to you. They don’t know you yet, but you’ve written some 20 books. It’s debatable on the exact number, but it’s around 20 books. While we’re waiting two more weeks on this book that we can’t wait to read, what should they pick up from you to read first, I’m going to.

Craig Groeschel:
Give you two books. One would be, if you want to talk leadership, I wrote a book called lead like it matters. To be very clear, it is for church leaders, but it’s got bazillion crossover principles, meaning I have learned from business leaders my whole life, and I cross over the principles into ministry. And so lead like it matters would be straight leadership. If you’re looking for just, I think, the most helpful book that I wrote across the board, I think people would say winning the war in your mind. We live in a world where our mind is a massive enemy, people battling for mental health. And so I think that book is helpful to, it’s written from a christian perspective, but it’s very practical. How do we create new neural pathways if you want to change your life, change your thinking? So that would be probably the most helpful book, broadly.

Mark Cole:
Hey, thanks, Craig. It’s because of leaders like you, leaders like John Maxwell, that Maxwell leadership exists. We want to bring powerful, positive change because everyone deserves to be led well. And Craig, I got to thank you. Thanks for leading well.

Craig Groeschel:
Hey, thank you for teaching me to lead well, and thanks for your friendship.