​Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Vision and Values with Casey Crawford

Mark Cole:           Hey, welcome again to the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast! Thank you for leading, and thank you for leading well. Today, I am joined by my co-host, Jason Brooks, and we are going to take a couple of clips that John Maxwell and Casey Crawford, the founder and CEO of Movement Mortgage, we're going to take a couple of the clips from their recent conversation in the series “Leadership When It Matters Most” where John highlights some leaders that are leading right now when it matters the most. This first clip is talking about focusing on the people and how to put people over profits. Now, if you will go to the link Maxwellpodcast.com/vision you will be able to watch the full Facebook Live video of John, of Casey Crawford, and myself, and about a fifty-five-minute conversation that we had. We also have some notes there for you to follow along. Now, in this first clip, there is a point in the discussion where Casey shares about starting his company, Movement Mortgage, during the 2008 financial crisis. His vision was to create a mortgage company that people could trust, and he has been wildly successful at accomplishing and seeing this vision come true. So, here's our first clip, then Jason and I will come back and offer some thoughts and application.

CLIP 1:

Mark:                    Casey, everything you just described, let's not forget, was in crisis, and I'm sure the crisis paved the way for you to be able to revolutionize the customer experience. So, let's stay in that mindset because Dan's question from Stuart, Florida says, “What is the best piece of advice you would give a business owner in the current world economy?”

Casey Crawford:  Yeah, so I would go back to the time that Movement was first founded, and it was founded in a time of crisis, and because of that time of crisis, it was evident, it was just so abundantly evident, that the world was crying out for a financial services company they could believe in. That had a heart that was going to act in the best long-term best interest of another. We define love like this, we use an operating definition of love, we say, “To love is to act in the long-term best interest of another.” And a high school priest gave that to me, it's worked for me for a long time. Love can mean a lot of things, other languages have multiple words for love. We define it as a verb we say, “To love is to act in the long term best interest of another.” And, in ’07 and ’08 it was abundantly clear to me that in a time of crisis, the world was crying out for that. Now, we had to think about how to do that in a very small, very tangible ways to bring tangible value to customers each and every day by the way we underwrote the loans, by the way we served them in the mortgage process. But we also wanted to have a bigger, more transcendent purpose to those little finite games, right? As Simon would talk about those finite games, how they laddered up into an infinite game. How serving them in their individual mortgage laddered up to an infinite purpose. And, I think at times of crisis, what has been really profoundly gratifying to me and encouraging to me is that when we've gone through this next season of crisis in our nation, the rallying cry back to our purpose, has been much more about that infinite game that we've been playing, and about the finite tactics we use to bring value at any particular season. Because frankly, we did create a movement of change. The regulatory agency in our industry right now has shifted and they said, “Hey, we want lenders to let you know before you owe.”  Man, we were we were doing that before it was cool, before it was necessary, and that's become a standard operating practice and made the biggest banks in America now, they've replicated a lot of elements of our mortgage process. That's what leaders do, and so now, we continue to shift tactics, but our infinite purpose hasn't shifted. So, I would encourage any business leaders out there right now, I love Simon Sinek, I'm so glad you guys had him on! It's like, golly! Between, you know, John, and Simon, those are the two authors and leaders and speakers that really poured into us and then I used to teach Simon's, “Start With Why”, what a great lesson he teaches! You know, “What? How? Why?” And businesses need to start with that, “why”, that purpose, and I think it's all the more true today. I mean, we’re in a time of crisis, you can see our nation's hurting. Our nation's hurting, it's groaning. And in any community you're a part of, they're going to be deep and real needs that you can see that maybe could be met in some way by your organization, that you might have an ice cream shop, you might not have a shop that particularly pours into some specific need, but the purpose of your ice cream shop, man, might be to bring joy and hope to the neighborhood you're part of, right? Now, I'm going to do that by providing amazing ice cream and an incredible experience to, you know, individuals when they come in or families when they're coming in to my shop, and I'm going to think about that how to bring value to these families right now that are hurting and in crisis. And I have a friend who runs a local restaurant here and I've watched him, he throws big outdoor celebrations, everyone's six feet apart, he brings in a DJ, because he knows people are longing for community, and they're longing to get out of their homes, and he's filled hundreds of people in a parking lot, and has just a small restaurant because he brought a mic and a DJ and got masks, he had masks and things and created a community event. Now, that's not his business, but his purpose was to connect families and bring value to families lives, and so, he was doing that a little bit differently, and, man—and we're all getting takeout and carry out from him and he's doing it so respectfully. So, I think in any part of the community, in any part of the country right now, man, this crisis is revealing what your deep purpose needs to be and should be and that's movement. You know, we are, gosh, all the more trying to live into that transcendent purpose that we had ten years ago in the middle of this crisis, because I think it's all the more necessary.

Mark:                    John, best advice that you could give to a leader trying to lead a business in this time?

John Maxwell:      Well, it's what Casey's saying, focus on the people, and Casey, your illustration you just gave of your friend that has a restaurant, and of course, you've got social distancing who’s got a little restaurant when you social distance in a restaurant, you know, if you could hold fifty, now you can hold twenty, and so immediately, you realize, so what's he do? He thinks of the people. They all want to get together, so let's get creative, let's get fun, let's go out to the parking lot, let's go get the PA system out there, let's put the tables out there. Hey, we can serve more people in the parking lot than we can in the restaurant. Here's what happens, as long as I think about me, I lose creativity. The moment that I think about others and how I meet their need where they are, the creativity begins to flow. And so, it's like communication, Mark, when people ask me, “How do you become a great communicator?” Step number one is so very simple, get over yourself! Period. Because when people cannot communicate well, it's because they haven't gotten over themselves. So, when I get up to speak, if I'm not over myself, I'm trying to make a good presentation and I hope you like me, and do I look good? Do I sound good? Am I on target? And do you think I'm interesting? And it's all about me, me, me, me, me. And so, the people are listening to you, but they're not connecting with you. The connection always goes when I leave wherever I am, and I go to where they are. So, what I want all of our viewers to catch in this, because this is a lesson that is so appropriate to where we are, because, Casey, you have done this. This isn't theory, this isn’t, like, “These are some ideas, I think they could work.” You have proven these things work. Again, Casey, I wrote it down because you said it earlier in your talk, I mean, I got my page full of stuff, and I got something I want to repeat for a moment because I didn't get it. I want to make sure our viewers get it. And here it is, you said, “Adversity brings more opportunity, but it only brings more opportunity, if you think of others, and if you get creative and outside of the box.”

DISCUSSION 1:

Mark:                    Hey, welcome back, everyone! I am sitting here just feverishly, jotting notes, because today, as with you, podcast listeners, I'm actually getting to listen and apply, whereas most of the time during these leader series I'm facilitating, I’m thinking of the next question, and I just want to sit in this statement, Jason, and I can't wait to hear your takeaways and your questions. But adversity brings more opportunity when you think of people. And I've thought through some of our pivots, some of the things that we have done through this adversity, and maybe we'll get into that in this podcast, but wow! I just want to be a leader that when I pivot, when I experience adversity, that I do think of people, not think of opportunity. The opportunity comes when you focus on the people, and not the other way around, always. And so anyway, I'm sitting here feverishly taking notes, as I listen in today. Can't wait to get into the conversation with you. Welcome, Jason! Glad you're here, buddy!

Jason Brooks:       Oh, man, I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad that's one of the things that you picked up on, because that's one of the first questions that I wanted to ask. So, I'll reframe it just a little bit in order to challenge you. In crisis, John talks about, you know, being others focus is helpful in terms of turning adversity into opportunity, but he also said that in crisis, selfishness kills creativity. So, talk to me a little bit about that dichotomy. Why is it that some leaders struggle to focus on people and therefore struggle to be creative? Whereas other leaders, man, they look at the people and all of a sudden, ideas, expound. What keeps some leaders from seeing that truth and what helps other leaders live that truth out?

Mark:                    Well, I think it's natural. I think it's the way we humans are built for self-preservation. I mean, when adversity comes in, don't we all think the end of the world is right around the corner? Don't we think that, how are we going to get out of this when I know years and years and years of human behavior and God intervention that people have gotten out of crisis, but this one feels different? And so, when we can quantify or qualify the difference in this particular adverse, the next I believe, natural human emotion or human tendency is to go into self-preservation. And so, I think that the length of time that you stay in self-preservation mode determines whether you're going to come out of adversity selfish, or whether you're going to come out thinking of others. I think it's natural to go into self-preservation mode. I do, but how quickly you resist staying there is going to relate to how much selfishness you show or how much self-others focus that you demonstrate. And so, what John’s saying there, the more selfish that I become, the more that I focus on my benefit, the more we kill creativity, and we focus more on that self-preservation that is all about sustaining, and it's all about surviving, and whereas creativity has got to think of opportunity. It's got to think of what could be, and think of that from an opportunity standpoint, rather than what could be from a detrimental or a pessimistic, the world is going to end, and I sit and I watch John, Jason, you've been a part of this too. I loved Casey's illustration about the restaurant and how the guy just went and said, “You know what? I can't put them inside so let me go set up tents and set up a place for the outside.” And I just went, isn't that such the entrepreneur spirit? Isn't that such the opportunistic? You know, you used to be white cloth dining, and everything really cool and quiet inside, and he went to a DJ on the outside because people were going, “I need some music. I need noise because I'm tired of sitting at home and only hearing my thoughts.” And I thought that was a great example. You know, with our team, Jason, I'm extremely proud of our team. Our team has pivoted in these times, and whereas John, I've used this stat on the podcast before, John in all of 2019 spoke to 1.2 million people with his voice in speaking type environments. Well, we pivoted and started doing this “Leadership When It Matters” series, we did a crisis summit, “Crisis Leadership Summit”, and in a matter of four weeks, we had put John's voice, John in front of 1.6 million, 25% more in four weeks than all of last year. And we just continue to roll out new things, value add things. Here's my point, I believe in this time of crisis, the longer that it goes, if you can't describe, if you can't pinpoint a different approach in your business right now than you had three, four months ago, I fear that you are behind a rebound. I fear that you're behind it. Now, what am I talking about? Creativity. See, creativity is going to cause you to think abundance and opportunity during the crisis, whereas, sustainability type mindset is going to cause you to wait until after the crisis, after all the chaos, after all the dust settles, then we're going to redefine ourselves and I'm afraid that you are missing the rebound by waiting until the dust settles.

Jason:                    That's such a great point, and especially, because in talking to Casey, you know, he founded Movement Mortgage I think in 2008 right when the housing market was, you know, gone, and you can go back and you can get the full video again at Maxwellpodcast.com/vision. But one of the things that Casey said that helped drive him to not be afraid of that economic crisis and to actually do something with Movement Mortgage was the deep purpose that he felt to serve people better. And I want to ask you, you've just mentioned the things that we've done to innovate, you talked about the way some other people might be able to innovate. Why do deep purpose and innovation go so well hand in hand? Why does purpose help leaders get innovative, whether it's in crisis or out of crisis, how does purpose help drive us forward creatively?

Mark:                    I think all of us really want to live in authenticity. I do, I love the quote, don't know who to attribute it to, use it all the time, but [INAUDIBLE] repeating right here that, “Authenticity has no rival, it has no competition”, is the quote. It doesn't, I think we all want to live in that authentic place. I believe when we arrive or we stay in our authentic place, I believe that's when we, as individuals, are at our best in innovating. Now, I don't believe every person is as innovative as the next person. I don't believe that. But I believe when you are at your most authentic, I think you are best at innovation. Now, I'll tell you why, I think that innovation comes from passion, a desire to make something different, a desire to say, “What I have, is meant to be poured out.” I don't think we were created, I don't think that we are natural when we're just we're keeping everything that we're gifted with inside for personal consumption. So, when you are authentic and you are at that place where you were placed on this earth for, when you are there, I believe you are the most passionate, I believe you are the most certain of what you bring to the table, and those certainty and passion coming together I think fuels innovation. So, John was put on this earth to add value to people, because he values people. Now, the result of adding value to people for us is that they will then go and pay that forward, we call it multiplying value to others. When we were squeezed with all of our business lines, every business line that we had was being squeezed in, we went back inside, as I think this restaurant owner did, I think as Casey Crawford and Movement does, we went back inside went, “Whoa! If it all falls completely apart, what do we want to be known for?” Well, for us, that's adding value to people who will then go multiply value to people. So, it became very easy to pivot the more authentic we became, and in that authenticity, we began to innovate the way we could do things. And now, we changed our whole business plans. Not to beat last year's financials, but to beat last year's impact. We changed our whole business plan, because of that passion, to innovate from a place of authenticity.

Jason:                    That's such a great point, and it's a natural segue into this second clip, because in this clip, John and Casey are going to talk about the power and importance of values during a crisis; and as you were just saying that, you know, if authenticity is part of how we breed that innovation, then living, knowing and living our values helps us be rooted in that authenticity. So, let's take a listen to John and Casey and you as y'all discuss this idea of the importance of values during crisis.

CLIP 2:

Mark:                    Guys, I want to go to Greg for our final question. He's in our live audience, and he's from the Philippines. And the reason I wanted to ask you guys this question, because I want to spend the last five minutes or so of this session talking about what you both are doing in the world of transformation, in the world of putting values first, and I love Greg's question to get us going here. How would you communicate values to your colleagues that think only profits matter during the time of adversity?

Casey:                   Wonderful question! Man, I can't wait to hear John's answer to this. But I think first of all, it highlights the importance of living out your values all the time. The crisis isn't the time that you decide to start living out your values. Crisis reveals whether or not you're an organization truly built on values, and if you've been built on values, you've been living them out before this crisis hit, you'll live them out while this crisis, we're in the midst of it, and you'll continue to be living them out once this crisis has passed. I will say that the crisis provides an amazing opportunity for organizations to shift to a more values centric model. And I think it reveals the importance of the need for it. And there are a couple things that we've done, and sometimes, you know, we get stuck in this navel gazing thing, right? I'd be better if I wasn’t on [INAUDIBLE], but just looking at your navel, you look at yourself, you're looking at yourself and you're so self-focused. Man, when I get self-focused, people get depressed, you know? I get discouraged, I get frustrated, I get mad because I'm just worried about my own, “Man, I haven’t been out of this house, I haven't had a haircut, too. I’m on with John Maxwell, [INAUDIBLE], greatest leadership guy in the world, maybe I just don't look—” And, I'm just so worried about everything's going on with me and all the ways I'm facing adversity. Sometimes you need to pick your eyes up and see who you can help and serve during a time of crisis. And we did a call with some of our partners, Las Marias Orphanage in Guatemala, had a lot of our team members on it, I had my two little girls on it with me. I have a teenage daughter and I have a 10-year-old daughter, and like any teenager in America, they go, “I haven't seen my friends and oh, what was me, and the world.” And, everything else, and you know, it was such a wonderful experience for my family to get to sit and listen and hear from a group of young women in Guatemala that are walking through this same COVID crisis, in a nation that is struggling far more than the United States, with a lot more adversity in their life than we have. And we got to fellowship together, we got to hear each other, and we got to speak words of encouragement to one another. And so oftentimes, man, we just need to take the eyes off ourselves during a time of crisis, and in profit a lot of times reflects ourselves, and we get really excited about profit because it's about us. I mean, something I can do for myself or something we can do in an organization and I think it's so important during times like this. You know, we have charter schools and many of our children get two thirds of their meals at our schools. And when all this crisis hit, people are so panicked, “What am I going to do? I'm trying to stock my shelves! I'm buying 47,000 handy wipes and toilet paper and water bottles and all this kind of stuff. Man, that's why I feel so worried. You know, I'm going to have six months’ worth of toilet paper in my house and—" I said, you know, “I just want to let you know that we have a thousand kids who aren't going to get their breakfast or lunch starting tomorrow because schools canceled.” And man, when we let that need be known in our community, oh gosh! The outpouring of support, I just watched people stop focusing on themselves and worrying about it if they're going to have six months of every supply in the world and go, “Hey, we got to make sure that our kids have food.” People stepped up in the most generous ways, man, and when they did, they had joy. All of a sudden, their anxieties came down, if they had anxiety it was, “How am I going to help?” It wasn't about me. And so, I just watched, man, this transformation happen within people, when others focused during a time of crisis, and that makes profit and things fall away because you can see the deep adversities in other people's lives. And man, you experience the joy of pouring your life out into theirs.

John:                     Just one little comment, Mark, and right back to you, and that is during a crisis, what's really beautiful is, you know, I write books and I teach, and I teach all these principles, but during a crisis, I get to practice those principles. And crisis separates the pretenders from the players, and if I lack values, I become a pretender very quickly during difficult times, because I have nothing solid to latch onto, nothing solid to anchor on. But if I had those good values, the values not only work during a crisis, they even work better because they validate all the things that you have believed now that—when you test your belief, your belief becomes a conviction, and that's the difference between belief and conviction. I believe it but when I'm tested, it now becomes a conviction in my life, and that's true with values, no doubt.

DISCUSSION 2:

Jason:                    Man, Mark, John's last point there about how when a belief is tested and proven right, it becomes a conviction. That’s such a powerful statement to come out of that clip with, and it kind of in a way, goes back to, sort of the question that prompted it all about, during times of crisis, people giving up focusing on profit, and focusing instead on values. Why is it that crisis in some way, and I know all businesses need to make money, we're trying to make money every business is trying to stay afloat and do good business, but why is it that crisis can help us shift that selfish, as Casey mentioned it, that selfish focus from profit to that other centered focuses of values? Is it because we're looking to really find the things that matter and are true that we can build our lives on? Why do you think that crisis does such an effective job, for many of us, shifting us out of selfish thinking into others thinking?

Mark:                    Well, I think crisis does several things, I think a couple of them that I'd like to focus on in response to your question is crisis causes us to reprioritize. You know, how many of you listening to the podcast today has done more with your family, has done more as a family unit than perhaps at any other time in your family? I know that's true for us, I know it's true for the Maxwell’s. I'll tell you what I mean by both. Stephanie and I, we've been married for 15 years, we set a Guinness book of Cole records during this crisis. We had dinner thirty-one nights in a row together as a family. Now, the previous record was ten. And the amount of conversation, the amount of deep dive we were able to do, the amount of dad’s worldview leadership view that my family has had during this time has made a difference. I hope it's been a good difference, I guess time will tell, but it's definitely made a difference. I was having dinner with Margaret and John Maxwell, my family, Stephanie and I and our kids, we're having dinner with John and Margaret Maxwell, last week, and she said, “Mark, John and I were together for one hundred and seven days, which has not been true since before our kids were born, over this COVID.” She said, “In fact, it was me, I had a family situation I had to handle, and I was the one that broke our string, our record.” So, I think what we do during crisis is we reprioritize, we come together as a family, as family units. I hope you have done that, I hope you have reprioritized some things. I know in my spending, our family financial budget, we have reprioritized some things and determined what is most important or more important. So, priority, Jason would be one of the things. I think the second thing that happens is when we get into crisis, we realize the significance of community. So, again, you reprioritize, you find out the things that are really important. The second thing that I believe that makes us or gives us the ability to come out of crisis more effective is our re-acquaintance with our community. Again, let me personally illustrate, we've lived in our community now for about 18 months, we moved in, about since we started the podcast, we moved, my travel, when I'm home, I don't want anybody or anything other than my family. And as COVID-19 restrictions and as fears of COVID-19 health crisis began to subside, everybody in our community started coming out of their homes, and we started connecting with each other. I found out in about three to four weeks more about my neighbors than I had found out the whole previous year, and more than I had known anything about the neighbors from my community where I just moved from after 10 years. I know my neighbors better, I know my community. Jason, you and I, Jake, you and I, we have a tighter community because of crisis. I believe one day we'll look back at the culmination of the challenge of race tension in the United States, and one day, we will be appreciative of the fact it came on the heels of COVID-19. Because I believe for the first time in a long time, people that could never hear of the disparity, because our lives were going too fast, our pace was too quick, but we slowed down and realized the importance of community because of COVID, which primed us and prepped us to not only experience the challenge of members of our community, but to empathize and understand that challenge better. And I believe history will be enlightening to us that we made the significant changes that I believe six months, a year, two years, we're going to see in the disparity of how we view race and equality. I believe history is going to enlighten us that we were benefited because of the COVID crisis, because we reprioritized humanity, and we decided that community with all humanity was very important. I don't like it right now. It's impacting my business, it's impacting my life of getting back to “normal”, but I'm going to tell you, we're going to look back and we're going to say, “What made the difference in this most recent human disparities and challenges than the multiple times this happened in our past?” And it's going to be because we reprioritized on commitments and reprioritized on community coming out of COVID-19.

Jason:                    Man, that is such good stuff! And it leads into the second and really, the last question I want to ask, because that focus on others, that focus on community that reprioritizing the humanity of the people around us, Casey shared a story about how he and his young daughters were able to listen in with a partner of theirs that's an orphanage in Guatemala, and how that was able to bring perspective to both he and his daughters that, you know, they were experiencing COVID one way, but they got to listen in and hear how it was affecting these girls in Guatemala. It struck me that conversations like that are what urge us towards the work of transformation that we're doing as both individuals and as a company. How do partnerships like that, or how does the broader appreciation and concern for community give us greater perspective on the need for transformation, whether it's racially, whether it's governmentally, whether it's systemically? And then, this is a very easy lob, where can our podcast listeners go to get involved in some transformational movements? How do we move beyond just going, “Oh, we should be doing this.” To, “Here's this place where I can go get involved.”

Mark:                    You know, I, through this crisis, again, going back to COVID-19, and coming back for me, from Israel and all of you regular community members of our podcast world will know that John and I spent a month in Israel and then got back on the second to the last U.S. flight back out of Israel to the U.S. I mean, it was close it was under the wire. Then we come back, and we're thrust into stay at home orders and a world that will never return. And so, for us, you're looking at the entire, that the balance of 2020 has been the most unpredictable time ever. But going to your question, I've experienced fear during that time. I've experienced insurmountable amounts of uncertainty. I have experienced the frustration of being told what to do in a free society. I've been told what my business could and could not do. Therefore, I have felt an unbelievable amount of lack of control in my life. I think as we come back, Jason, I think, as we begin to envision the future together, I think there is a human—it goes back to last podcast episode with Simon Sinek, I think there's going to be an unbelievable amount of empathy with one another. But that empathy is not going to come from feeling sorry for ourselves or for others; it's going to come from a foundation of valuing each other. There is a statement that will sound very religious to everybody listening to the podcast, and that's okay because we learned it probably in some faith orientation environment. But it is true in every culture, it is true in every religion, and it's this statement, “Do to others as you would want done to you.” It's a statement of value. It's a statement of understanding that no matter the ethnicity, no matter the position of influence of leadership in a work environment, that every person has intrinsic value that should be discovered, celebrated, and expanded. Every person, and if we somehow, as a society, can get better at discovering, celebrating, and expanding the value in each other, then we will come out of this culture valuing, or we will come out of this crisis valuing people. I love what you said, Jason, with Casey referencing Guatemala. We do work in every country of the world through our nonprofits. You asked the question, how can people get more aware of adding value and sharing transformation? Our foundation Johnmaxwellleadershipfoundation.org, jmlf.org, Johnmaxwellleadershipfoundation.org, will get you into an environment that is committed 100% of discovering, celebrating, and expanding the value of human beings around the world. We believe that once an individual is given opportunity to discover in themselves, their values, not just that they are of value, but they have intrinsic values in them, and you can increase the value that you put on yourself when you discover and live out the values that are within you. And we've committed our whole nonprofit, give back significance to our vision and mission, we've committed all of those things to our foundations help around the world. And I'm going to tell you, we're having a difficult time in the United States, we're having a difficult time in my family. You, no doubt listening to this, you're having a difficult time in your family, in your country. I can assure you what my daughter, my 13-year-old daughter told me on our way back from Florida on Saturday, I can assure you that what she says is true, and it was this, “Dad, as difficult as the last four months has been for me, I couldn't finish my eighth grade class with all of my classmates, I couldn't get out of the house. We've made some buying decisions that we stopped doing somethings—" she said, “—as difficult as that is—” she said, “—one of the things that's occurred to me is there's always somebody that in my condition, I can help because they don't have it as good as I do.” And I went, touchdown! Touchdown! Because we can, even in our most difficult times, we can still find somebody else to add value to like Casey and John, were talking about.

Jason:                    You know, Mark, you mentioned the golden rule, and it makes me think about something that Marcus Buckingham hit in his book, Nine Lies About Work, that he talks about, and you can call it the platinum rule, or whatever you want to call it. But he takes like the golden rule to the next level for empathy, which is, “Do unto others as they would want done to them.” And in a time where we're really thinking about other people, and we're really trying to make a difference in the lives of other people, it's okay to start with ourselves as a basis, but we always have to make that extra shift to think about, “Okay, what do they need? What do they want?” And then allow empathy to take us to that level. Man, that is such good stuff, and all of it is applicable for the times that we're living in. And I would love to go longer, but we're right here at time. So, folks, y'all know the drill, if you want to get the fill in the blank notes for this episode, or if you want to watch the full Facebook Live video with John and Casey and Mark, you can go to Maxwellpodcast.com/vision, click the “Bonus Resource” button and you'll have both of those freebies there for your full enjoyment. If you haven't already, please subscribe, we would love to have you as a regular listener of the podcast. As always, feel free to share this with anybody on your team. Our goal is to help make you and the people around you better and if you have a question or comment you can go to Maxwellpodcast.com, and you can leave us a comment on this episode or any other episode. We love hearing from you, we love your thoughts, we love when you challenge us with questions that help up level our thinking so we can help you up level yours. But that's about all the housekeeping. Mark, I’m going to throw it to you and let you close us out this week.

Mark:                    You know, you and I started the comments to this second clip by talking about John’s statement that during crisis, your beliefs become a conviction. And you and Jake and I, before we went live in applying this segment we talked about, really, it's those beliefs that proved true that becomes convictions. And I agree with you, but you know what else? I think I agree with that in the sense that the ones that are meaningful that make legacy impact in our lives are the beliefs that we believe that ended up being true, that become that deep conviction. But you know, people's convictions become scars and wounds from beliefs that are untrue, as well. And they become just as much conviction. I have friends, I have people that I work alongside and they are scrappy, because at eight or nine years old, they were deserted by their parents and they become effective because the conviction is, “I have to fend for myself.” And that, “I've got to fend for myself.” May or may not be a conviction that impedes their ability to have deep relationship, I'm not going there, but that conviction to be scrappy and fight myself out of it came from a belief early on in life, that nobody valued them, nobody cared for them. Here's the reason I bring that up to wrap up this podcast, and I'm not adding more content on you and Jake, but that's what I'm doing. But I want to tell you this right here, gang, we've never seen times like we have now. How many of you have used unprecedented, unparalleled in your vocabulary more in the last six weeks than you have in your entire life? I have. I'm raising my hand in studio today. How many of you have used the words new normal? In other words, we're throwing out the old and we're becoming new, we've overused it, we've overused it, we've overused it, perhaps maybe we hadn't used it enough. But I will tell you, we can come out of convictions, we can come out of crisis like this with convictions that will impede our ability to reach across the aisle and enter into the world's future unified, or we can come out with convictions that will cause us to reach across the aisle and become unified. We get the choice. What is your belief? That this crisis is going to end decades, centuries long of disconnect and devaluing people? Is that your belief? Or, do you have the belief that this time because of this series of crisis's that we are now going to be different for the first time ever. We really are going to value every person and value each other. Not by saying we don't have differences because we do, but by saying we celebrate those differences as beautiful and we become better when we extend the same value, no matter that diversity, we extend the same value in hopes of a brighter future tomorrow. Our belief will shape our conviction. I choose to believe, like I said in this podcast, that our future is better, because history is going to show us these crises that we've been through, we're dominoes that we as people that love each other, that value each other are going to use this to transform ourselves, transform our thinking, transform our communities, and yes, I believe on this issue, transform our world. Now I jumped on a soapbox on you guys to end this deal, but I believe that it is the best way to end this podcast episode, because during this crisis, you're going to have a belief, it's never going to get better, it's going to get worse, we can't fix this. Are you going to have the belief that this is our opportunity and we can see a difference this world has needed for many, many centuries? I'm on that side. Let's lead. Let's change. Let's transform together.