Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Mindset Matters

Mark Cole:
John Maxwell says, what we focus on expands. I love this quote by John, as I love many quotes. But I love it because what we’re talking about today in today’s podcast is how to develop an abundance mindset. I’m so glad you’ve joined us here on the Maxwell Leadership podcast. Our podcast is committed to adding value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today, as John talks about developing an abundance mindset, I am so excited for you to hear what he has to say, take notes on what he has to say, and begin the process of changing your mindset. Because as John says in the lesson today, what you see becomes reality to you. I want to change your reality today.

Mark Cole:
I want to help you focus. John wants to help you focus on abundance. Now, after John is done teaching, I can’t wait. Because one of the greatest thinkers in the area of abundance positivity is a guy I get to work with day in and day out. His name is Chris Robinson, and Chris is here today. And we’re going to take what John teaches. We’re going to break it down, and we’re going to help you apply it to your life and your leadership. Don’t miss out on the bonus resource or the option to watch this episode on YouTube.

Mark Cole:
You can go to maxwellpodcast.com/abundance to access this and many other resources. Okay, family, get ready. Grab your pen. And whether you’re listening, whether you’re watching, get ready. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
What we focus on expands. So these next few minutes, focus with me on abundance. If you and I are walking down a street and we’re just breathing, okay, we’re just walking, talking, we’re breathing. Not one time do you look at me and say, John, do you think there’s enough air to breathe? Not one time do I look at you and say, wow, we, you know, measure your breaths because, you know, gosh, we could. We could run out air. No, no, no. It never enters our mind because we have grown up in an environment of abundance, that there’s plenty of air for all of us. But let’s just say, for example, we’re scuba diving.

John Maxwell:
And in the scuba diving, all of a sudden, maybe one of the tanks malfunctions. And instead of having two tanks, we got to have one tank to get back up to the surface. And now, all of a sudden, we’re being very careful and we are measuring our breaths, and we are asking each other, do we have enough air in that tank? Now, what I’ve just described is a scarcity mindset. And let me just say this. During adversity, it’s okay for a brief time to go into scarcity. And the reason it’s okay is because just as the scuba diving illustration is, we understand we got a problem. We only have one tank of air. We’ve got to get back to the service.

John Maxwell:
So now we have to measure our breath. Now we are asking the question, is there enough air? And what I want you to know is, during difficulties, during surprises, there’s a tendency for us all to say, oh, what do I have? How much do I have? It’s okay to have a scarcity mindset in emergency. It’s not okay when the emergency is over to stay in that type of thinking. That’s what I don’t want you to miss. And so many times I think we allow what happened behind us or the experiences that we’ve had to begin to cause us to lead differently instead of leading abundantly. Again, we go back to the illustration I’ve given you before. Am I a river or am I a reservoir? A reservoir has a scarcity mindset. Hold the water, you may need it for a, hey, not a rainy day.

John Maxwell:
And the river is just flowing and giving and depositing water wherever it can or wherever it should. So we want to focus in this lesson purely on abundance. There are three very simple statements. They all kind of just go together. Just let me give them to you. Then we’re going to build off of them. We’re going to do some teaching. The first statement is that I see what I’m prepared to see.

John Maxwell:
I don’t see everything, and you don’t see everything either. We don’t see what is. We see what we’re prepared to see. That’s why two people can be in the same meeting and see totally different things. Now, this is important, because if I’m prepared to see scarcity, I will constantly see that there’s not enough. If I’m prepared to see abundance, I will constantly see that there’s more enough. Now, let me give you the second statement. What I see becomes reality to me.

John Maxwell:
It’s real. And so when somebody comes up to me and they have a scarcity mindset, and they say, you know what? I, you know, I just, wow, I think we’re kind of. I don’t think we’re going to be able to make it. I look at them and I say, I think you’re probably right. You won’t be able to make it. Someone else comes up and they say, my gosh, I think this is the. The sky is the limit. Yeah, I think you’re right.

John Maxwell:
The sky’s the. You see, we not only see what we’re prepared to see, but whatever we see, it becomes reality to us. So when a person lives in a scarcity mindset, what they’re saying isn’t wrong. I watch people trying to correct them all the time. No, no, no. What they see is what they see. It’s reality to them. Just as a person in an abundance mindset, what they see, that’s a reality, too.

John Maxwell:
Which brings me to the third statement. And the third statement is how I view things determines how I do things. So all of my behavior comes out of how I see things. That’s why this abundance mindset is absolutely huge. Stephen Covey, in his book, basically what he says is very simple. He said, in a world of scarcity, you constantly miss opportunity, even when abundance is all around you. What’s he saying? You’re not lacking opportunity because opportunity is not there. You’re lacking opportunity because you’re not seeing opportunity.

John Maxwell:
You have a scarcity mindset. You see, scarcity equals the negative, which equals what I would call fearful emotions, where abundance equals belief or faith, which is positive emotions. So we both have it. I have. I have within me. You have within you a scarcity emotion, and you have also an abundance emotion. You’ve got them both in you. There’s no such thing as you are void of one.

John Maxwell:
I have both belief and I have both fear. Okay, that’s not the question. The question is which of the two is the stronger? Because the stronger emotion always wins. Not sometimes wins. Not usually wins. The stronger emotion always wins. So if my scarcity fear emotion is greater than my belief abundance emotion, then to be honest with you, I will recognize that some people are abundant. But I’ll go right back into the fear pattern.

John Maxwell:
And the reverse is also true. The stronger emotion, always not sometimes. The stronger emotion always wins. So how do we control that? We control our emotions by our emotions. The next time you’re really trying to figure this out, just take the word emotion and strike the letter e. Motions create emotions. Motions determine emotions. So I’m gonna give you six very simple motions to just absolutely activate on, and those six motions will give you that abundance that you need as a leader to take your people to the level you really want to take them to.

John Maxwell:
Number one, offer words of appreciation. Offer words of recognition. Let people know how much you value their contribution. The people around you, they want to know all the time that their work matters, that they matter, what you appreciate, appreciates, who you appreciate, appreciates. So constantly get into that compounding, appreciating action activity to continue to have an abundance mindset. Because the more that you appreciate, the more that you see abundance, just like the less you appreciate, the more that your world begins to shrink around you. Number two, though, is a good one. Choose to see opportunity.

John Maxwell:
Now, isn’t this interesting? Choose to see opportunity. Most people are hoping that opportunity finds them. We almost have, like, a four leaf clover mindset about opportunity and possibility, and we just kind of hope that we’re at the right place at the right time with the right people doing the right thing. And all of a sudden, this opportunity appeared before us and we go, oh, my gosh, look what just kind of, like, fell into my lap. I’m not saying that at all. If you want to have an abundance mindset, you don’t wait for opportunity to find you. You choose to find opportunity. You choose to see opportunity.

John Maxwell:
So the next time that you’re faced with an obstacle, the next time you’re faced with some kind of a difficulty, a barrier, a roadblock, a dead end, whatever, the next time you see that, that negative which would cause you to go into a scarcity mindset, flip it. Just flip it and see it as an opportunity. The third thing that I want you to do is remind yourself that there is more than enough. The greatest solver of problems is growth. When people start growing, secondary things truly become secondary things. So I want you not only to repeat after me that there’s plenty for everyone, but I want you to begin saying that not only to yourself, but I want you to begin saying that to your team and say it often enough that you not only say it, but that you, you live it and you, you believe it, and you, and you act it out and you behave it. Okay? You got that? Number four, carefully select the company that you keep. Now, this one’s really personal, okay? Because let me tell you something.

John Maxwell:
Mindsets are contagious. And so if you have a lot of scarcity people around you, can I tell you something? After a while, it’ll wear you down and you’ll start to think scarcity. Just like if you have a bunch of abundance people around you, it’ll lift you up and you’ll begin to see more and begin to do more. Mindsets are contagious, and you got the limit your time with scarcity people. Here’s what I want you to hear. I know this journey. I’ve lived this journey, and I’ve had a lot of success in my life. And I’m gonna tell you one of the reasons I understood very quickly that there were people I could not afford to spend time with, that they were gonna pull me down, they were gonna drag me, they were gonna limit me.

John Maxwell:
And I would say probably the biggest decision I made as a young leader was to pick my friends very carefully. Number five, spend time in grateful reflection, and you need to continually be writing down the things that you are grateful for. This is absolutely huge in having an abundance mindset. I have never met a person with great gratitude that had a scarcity mindset. Gratitude is synonymous to abundance. Grateful people are abundant people. Let me give you the last motion to do, and that is give more of what you want. Now, this sounds very counterintuitive when I say this, but one of the greatest ways to increase your abundance is to be generous.

Mark Cole:
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. When Albert Einstein said that, I think he might have been saying that to an individual, but it’s certainly applicable to leaders as well. I think when John Maxwell talks to us, as he will today, about mindset matters, he’s really telling us that our mindset is important in how we look at problems and we look at opportunities. Hey, we’re back with another episode of Maxwell Leadership podcast. And really, our entire goal here is very simple. We want to add value to you, our listener, you as a leader, so you’ll multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today John really is going to challenge our thinking. He’s going to challenge our attitude.

Mark Cole:
He’s going to challenge how we intentionally move through our life and our leadership, because he’s going to talk about the gap among leaders, the thinking gap. I’m excited for you to hear from John on this topic. I’m excited to sit here with my good friend Chris Goede, our co host today, as we listen and learn and then discuss and give you practical ways to apply this concept to your life and your leadership. Make sure today that you go to maxwellpodcast.com/MindsetMatters. You’ll be able to download a bonus resource for this episode. You’ll also be able to watch us on YouTube. So are you ready to look at your mindset? Are you ready to change your mindset? Are you ready to enhance how you’re thinking? Here we go. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
Mindset matters how I think. How you think determines so much of our success. In fact, I would be very prone to say to you that without any question, the biggest gap between successful and unsuccessful people is the thinking gap. I’ve talked a lot about my father because he’s an amazing man. He was an amazing leader. When he and mom celebrated their 50th anniversary, our whole family went to Hawaii for a week to celebrate with them. And one night, everybody had gone to bed except dad and me. And we were talking and I said, dad, you have such an incredible positive attitude.

John Maxwell:
Your thinking is so unbelievably contagious with people. I said, tell me about your thinking, and how did you get that positive attitude? And my dad surprised me. He said, you know, I’m naturally not a positive person. He says, I’m melancholy. I think I’m naturally a little bit bent toward cynicism and maybe a little bit of negativism. He said, wow, you sure don’t show that. And he said, well, I don’t show that, because he said, well, let me tell you a story. He grew up in Georgetown, Ohio, just a little town in southern Ohio, not too far from Cincinnati.

John Maxwell:
He said, we were all poor in this little town of about 1000 people. He said, there were only three families in the town that had any money. The rest of us were just poor people. And he said, I was a kid that loved to work and I was a hard worker. And he, he said, starting literally in elementary school, by the fifth or 6th grade, I was doing chores for those three families. I would do errands for them. And really throughout school, junior high, high school, he said, every day after school I’d go to work and I’d go to work for these three families. And I kept saying, they’re successful, the rest of us aren’t successful.

John Maxwell:
What’s the difference? He said, I was a junior in high school when I came to this conclusion. The only difference between them and the rest of us is that they thought differently than we did. And he said, john, the moment I realized it was how they thought that was helping them to rise above the rest of us, that I determined to learn how to think in positive ways and to become a success. That evening I went back to my hotel room and never went to bed. What my father said triggered me so much that I started writing all my legal path thoughts and ideas, and it became the formation of the book, how successful people think. You’ve got to have the right thought patterns for you to get the right return. And I’m here to tell you that when it comes to our thinking and our mindset, sometimes I just wish that. I don’t know, I just wish that we could, I don’t know, have a zipper on our head.

John Maxwell:
You could reach in and pull out that mind and kind of scrub it up and wash it up a little bit and just kind of get, you, kind of get your, you know, get your mindset right, because I can promise you, the moment that you begin to think correctly, everything begins to change in your life. And if you’re going to be an intentional person that lives, one of the things you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to be intentional in your thinking. You know, no one ever intentionally lived without thinking first. So thinking precedes intentional living. Attitude will not replace competence. You know, if you’re not a competent person, you may have a positive attitude, but you may lose. Now, the good news is, if you lose your job, you’ll still, I guess you’ll be happy. You say, well, I’ve got some free time now.

John Maxwell:
But attitude isn’t everything. But it’s the main thing. It’s the difference maker, and it’s the difference maker in all things being equal. If you’ve got to choose between two people to hire, all things being equal, experience, education, giftedness. But one has a good attitude and one doesn’t, who you gonna hire? You’re gonna hire the person with a good attitude. Why? Because it has become the difference maker. And one of the attitudes I think that people have that really helps set them apart and helps to make them very, very successful is this. I choose.

John Maxwell:
I choose to believe in myself, and I choose to believe in my purpose. Now, I know people who believe in themselves, but they don’t believe in a purpose. They don’t even have a purpose. I know people who believe in their purpose, but they don’t really believe in themselves. And I just want to help you here that both personal belief, believing in yourself, and purpose belief, believing in what you’re doing, they have to kind of rise together. Let me explain to you what I mean. If I have low personal belief, don’t really believe in myself, and at the same time, I also have low purpose belief. In fact, I probably don’t even have a purpose.

John Maxwell:
What’s the result of that? Low personal belief, low purpose belief, what’s the result? It’s very simple. I won’t get started. Well, let’s say that I have high personal belief in me, but I have very still low purpose belief in what I should be doing. If I have high personal belief in me, I’ll probably get started. But if my purpose is low, I won’t stay in the game. I’ll drop out. Well, what happens if I have very low personal belief, low self esteem, a low sense of self worth? Let’s say my personal belief is low, but my purpose belief is high. Well, what that means is that I’ll never accomplish my dream.

John Maxwell:
And the reason I’ll never accomplish my dream is not because I lack purpose, but I can’t see myself accomplishing the dream because my personal belief is not high enough. You see, I know a lot of people that have great purpose, but because they have a low personal self esteem, they sabotage themselves, and on their way to success, they make sure that they fail so they’ll never have that success. You see, this type of thinking I’m talking about now is I believe in myself, high personal belief, and I believe in my purpose, high purpose belief. Now, when both of those are high, let me tell you what will happen. You will reach your game. And all begins with how we think. The person that really does well is the person that understands that there’s always an answer. That’s what keeps creative people in the game.

John Maxwell:
That’s what keeps me in the game right now. There’s always an answer, and usually there’s more than one answer. The moment I began to think like that, wow. Then I go from asking the question, can I? That question, by the way, just looks for excuses. Well, can I do that? Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure I was born at the right time. I’m not sure I’m in the right organization. Can I? Can I? Can I? You need to switch from can I? In your thinking.

John Maxwell:
You need to go from can I? To how can I? You see, the moment I go from can I? Which looks for an excuse to how can I now? You’ve already said I’m going to do it. I just got to figure out how I’m going to do it. We aren’t even considering excuses. And remember this, the, the best excuse is the worst excuse because you buy into it. It’s all in mindset. Mindset matters.

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Mark Cole:
Welcome back, podcast listeners. Podcast viewers, so glad to have you today. Chris. As we look at this, I love the standout statement that John said, how you think determines so much of your success. And of all the leaders on our leadership team, we have a brilliant, wonderful team. Probably the greatest depender on thinking is you. Now, we’ve taken the genius surveys, we’ve taken all these surveys, but truly, you process, you work through it and then come back, which is a true genius of yours. And so I’m really excited that you’re here today on mindset matters.

Chris Goede:
Well, I appreciate that. I am surprised you invited me here today because you and I worked through some of those things of your thinking too long, like, let’s go. Mark decides at a quicker pace than I do, but we’ve learned, but with.

Mark Cole:
Very little depth, a whole lot of shallow no, no.

Chris Goede:
You got a lot of experience. I love this topic. You and I, obviously, with the relationship with John, he’s an incredible thinker.

Mark Cole:
Amen.

Chris Goede:
And we were listening to this, and it’s almost like we shouldn’t record this podcast. We should have recorded our conversation right before we got started. I agree with that because John said something in this podcast that Jake, you, myself, we’ve never heard before. And so we’re going to unpack that in just a minute because it is gold. And so I’m sure he’s taught on it. You and I were probably asleep or something during that time. But let’s talk about this for just a minute, because Harvard Business Review says 97% of executives that they’ve interviewed said that thinking, strategic thinking, is the number one critical skill to success. And some of what’s in here is backing all of that up.

Chris Goede:
Your ability to be where we’re at and to lead this organization, take us where we’re going to be able to solve problems, to be able to innovate, to inspire others, all of that comes with your ability to learn how to think better. You have to spend more time thinking than you probably ever have, which is hard for you because you probably want to be in it, not on it. Talk a little bit about the power of being able to spend some time thinking not only by yourself, but maybe with John and how that has helped you lead this organization.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, I will. And I’ll reference a story I’ve shared on the podcast. It was profound to John and I both. We were sitting with Ed Bastian, the current CEO of Delta Airlines. And it was about a year, maybe, maybe six months. Six months to a year after he had become the CEO, after he had been for several years, the president. And John, always thinking of great questions, had already thought of this question. He said, ed, what’s the biggest difference between being the president of Delta Airlines and being the CEO of Delta Airlines? And Ed said, the realization that how I think is more important than what I do.

Mark Cole:
In other words, he said, I spent all of my years as president doing the plan, doing, gotta do, gotta have a meeting. He said, now my success rests in how well I am thinking about our future. And he said, that is a different realization and a harder transition than I thought. It’s true, too, for me. I’m now an owner CEO, not just a CEO. And that requirement of me to do the things that only I can do, that whole adage of leadership, leadership is about doing the things that only you can do and empowering others to do what they can do better than you. That’s a true statement. And the thing that I can do, probably better than that, I have to do more than anyone else right now, is think about the future of our business and sustainability and vision.

Mark Cole:
So today, this very day, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity on this podcast, and you gave it to me so quick. I ran 5.2 miles today, which is good for me, because I’ve taken a lot of time off for some health stuff and all that mess. So as I was running, let me say it again, 5.2 miles today, I spent this time thinking, Chris, we’re recording today at the end of the day, and I’ve had a very full day, a very CEO, futuristic part of our business day. And I got to tell you, the day was made not in the meeting. The day was made on the running track across the street from my house as I was running 5.2 miles and unpacking the meeting I was going to do. My whole point in that is, often when you’re busy and you don’t put that pre thought in that intentionality of considering what you’re wanting to accomplish before, we often have less than desirable results because we didn’t do the pre work to get the plan in place that we wanted to accomplish.

Chris Goede:
What I love about that is oftentimes, whether it’s you sitting as the CEO, whether it’s somebody leading a team meeting, whether it’s somebody having a family meeting, whatever it might be, is that if you don’t spend time thinking, then the complexity of any situation is gonna weigh on you. Right? It’s gonna be heavy. But in order to have resilience through that and not be overwhelmed, if you spend some time, just like your example right there, of thinking ahead of time, then you’re gonna be prepared. It doesn’t feel as heavy, even though the complexity of the situation is still the same. Going into a meeting that you had to go into today as a CEO, if you hadn’t spent that time thinking ahead of time on the business, would have felt a lot different. You would have may have been overwhelmed. And I think that’s true for any of us, no matter what part of our life that we have complex situations or things that we need to think about.

Mark Cole:
Well, let me say this. Let’s get practical with it, because I can say all that. But some of you, all of you are the CEO. You’re the chief final decision maker of some area in your life.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Mark Cole:
And many of us are the chief final decision maker of some area in our leadership. Right. Some of us haven’t arrived at that yet, but it’s coming. And so let me tell you this. In the area to where you’re the chief, the buck stops with you. The final responsibility is yours. How much thinking time are you doing? There’s the question. How much thought did you put into the decision where you have the final.

John Maxwell:
Aha.

Mark Cole:
The final veto, the final approval? And so it was so practical for me that today, as I was driving to the office for this meeting, I called Kimberly, my executive partner, mentioned her a lot. She helps me so much. I said, kimberly, the status of the meeting and the importance of the meeting is directly proportionate to how much thinking time you give me before that meeting.

Chris Goede:
Wow.

Mark Cole:
So if you don’t think a meeting’s that important, back me up. Meeting after meeting after meeting. But if you can sense that I have an important meeting coming, it’s on you to give me. I love putting the pressure on her. It’s on you to give me thinking time before I get in there.

Chris Goede:
That’s so good.

Mark Cole:
And I think every leader, so, again, going back, making this practice, that’s good. Every leader that’s carrying something that has the responsibility of the buck stops here. I believe, as a general rule, you should have two minutes of preparation of think time to every minute of that meeting time.

Chris Goede:
That’s good. Which. That goes right back to what John was talking about in his lesson today, which is ironic that you even said this, where he says, hey, listen, an intentional person and how they live their life and their schedule has to be intentional in your thinking. And that’s a practical example of exactly what you were just talking about. Big meetings today. Hey, Kimberly, I need a little bit of help. You got to give me a couple hours, because whatever. And so think about everything that’s going in your day.

Chris Goede:
And what do you need to block out and protect in order to think on so that not only you come in the best mark that you are, but you don’t feel overwhelmed with the heaviness of whatever that is and heavy to each of us in a different situation means different. So I love that you shared that because that’s very practical that anybody, no matter what our roles are, can take that.

Mark Cole:
It’s so practical. I’m going to come out of that, Chris, and you do so. Well, I love having you host, and we get all kind of compliments. In fact, I was just doing a podcast. You wasn’t able to be here. Your schedule didn’t allow it. And somebody thanked you and I and said it was a great podcast, and we used it on a podcast that you weren’t hosting. And I went, that’s keeping his ego in check.

Mark Cole:
For all of you that are watching, we’ve got work hard to keep Chris down to the stature of us shorter people, but you do such a good job. But I’m gonna turn the tables on you. Just a minute. Because of the story you were telling me before we even listened to John, this was before we even listened to the lesson here in the studio about a time recently to where you spent one on one time with John, and we had talked about preparation. Chris, think of some kind of a thing you’re wrestling with and get the goat’s opinion. The leadership goat, get his opinion. And you did that. And John called me right after he said, mark, we’re so prepared.

Mark Cole:
He was so prepared. Not they. He was so prepared. And I’m just telling you, that was brilliant. It was awesome. I want you to walk us through that right there, because you really were wrestling with a big leadership decision you need to make, and you had the right bullet points, the building blocks. John told you that. He gave you great accolades, but, boy, he totally gave you a different way to look at it, to think about it.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, let me back up a little bit, because you prepared me and said, hey, listen, I need you to jump on the plane. I’m still a little frustrated at you because the travel hours, by the way, weren’t very convenient.

Mark Cole:
Now you feel some empathy rather than.

Chris Goede:
Frustration, I was gonna say, but, like, he does that all the time. So I was like, dear lord. Okay, let me back up a little bit. Cause you prepared me and said, hey, you’re gonna have an hour and 20 minutes down, an hour and 20 minutes back. You got 3 hours with John, spend some time getting ready. What does that entail? Thinking on my business.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. Good job.

Chris Goede:
Good, good. And then thinking about, where does my mindset need to be in a place that I know John is going to want to hear, but also, John can then help speak back into anything that you, myself, anybody are doing to be able to steer the ship. So I did that, thought about several buckets that I lead and gave him a report on, on those buckets. But then I have a couple things that I needed to just get some leadership feedback on, and I thought through them and I ranked them. Now, I may have been a little bit optimistic because I think I had five or six on there, John, and I didn’t get past the first one. We never got back the first one, but I ranked them.

Mark Cole:
Another late night trip for you coming out.

Chris Goede:
Whatever. I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I might be sleeping at the airport, but that’s okay. And so I ranked them. And so just real quick, the high level story was, I’ve been working on this for about 60 days, okay? So I’ve been thinking about it on my own time. I’ve been building out the plan. I know when I’m going to roll it out.

Chris Goede:
I felt like I knew how I was going to go about doing it and how it’s going to impact the business as a whole. And so I said, john, I just need to have you help me think through this, make sure I’m in the right place of how I’m going to deliver it, what I’m going to deliver. And so I cast the vision and I see him, and you know him better than anybody, just begin to rock with a little bit of smile. And I was like, can I finish?

Mark Cole:
Are you ready to go?

Chris Goede:
Right? And he gave me, gave me some kudos. Hey, I think that principal’s right. I think that’s principal. I know why you were gonna do that, because that’s a sweet spot of yours, but you can’t do it like that. And that’s how we began to think on the business of some of the things we’re gonna shift around. And as the conversation was unfolding, he was getting more and more excited. I felt like he almost got sitting on my lap for a little bit. But he began to challenge the way that I was thinking, not only challenge it in a way that left me hanging, but he helped me think through why the challenge that how I was going to go about it was a challenge and how to go about it differently.

Chris Goede:
And he completely shaped my mindset and my thinking in certain parts of what I have to deliver. And it’s just brilliant to be able to help me think because I had thought and I was in my own, and I’m on it and I’m in it. And then I get this outside leadership expert to give me that and make me think a little bit differently. And I was driving home in the middle of the night, and I was so grateful because I was like, wow. He completely up leveled my thinking and my mindset going into that meeting, whether maybe I didn’t feel competent enough. Maybe I wasn’t delivering it right. Whatever it was, he allowed me to think completely different.

Mark Cole:
And so here’s what I’ve got to underscore. John does this and blows me away so many times, Chris, I’m blown away with the access and the mentorship of John. You and I both, we’ve been with him a long time and it never gets old. It never gets old and it never gets less. Awesome.

Chris Goede:
Awe, no doubt.

Mark Cole:
And so let me underscore something. You’re still doing the business plan. He didn’t change your mind on the plan?

Chris Goede:
No. Good call.

Mark Cole:
You still had the right building blocks to do it, right. You probably will still do most of the way you were going to do it. But your mindset, before you go into it, will exude a confidence that the people you are leading through a time, through a change, through a transition, whatever you’re leading people through mindset is going to give them confidence that if you hadn’t had the mindset, you could have done all the same ways, you could have done all the same things, you could have said most of the same exact way, but without a mindset shift, you would leave your people hanging rather than giving them something more substantive to do. There are so many times underscoring this, finally, there’s so many times after talking with John like that, and he changed my mindset that rather than going in with what was natural for me, which was a relational, hey, I was gonna be okay. And I went in. I know, I know. And I go in and I say, hey, this is what it is. This is why it is.

Mark Cole:
And people come afterwards that I’ve got enough relational bank, I’ve got enough relational change in my bank that I don’t have to do relational sometimes. And the difference of me not doing it relational and just doing it factual and doing it very matter of fact, and this is where we’re going to, was noticed, appreciated and followed.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, you hit it on the head. And then it made me think. One other thing about that, just to add on to it, was I had thought through this particular situation, cast the vision to John, and he changed my thinking and my mindset, not only on the delivery, but how it was going to be received.

Mark Cole:
So good.

Chris Goede:
So listen, I’m telling you, how do you make this applicable? To listen in today, to Mark and I? There are people in your life that will be a thinking partner for you. And I want to challenge you to gain perspective from other people that maybe have gone before you or maybe are doing life with you. Because I would like to say that I, I put people first. Very.

Mark Cole:
You do.

Chris Goede:
So funny. I was highly relational. John’s giving me the nod. Okay, good. Okay, now let me. And, and he’s like, but let me. If you say it this way, this is how they’re going to think. How.

Chris Goede:
And then he challenged me. He’s like, how do you say it? So that they think a little bit differently. He knew the answer, but he’s walking me through this thinking exercise. And so there’s just so many depths to this that layers that we could unpack today. But we really just wanted to give you a couple of stories and, and I didn’t know you were going to ask me to pull that out. But it is, even in our journey, there are times, and this is going to lead us into the next part of this podcast where we talked about, he shared something that, for Jake, you and I heard the first time, because I want to talk about it. As a leader in John’s organization for a long time, there are times where I don’t necessarily have high personal belief. I know what the purpose is.

Chris Goede:
I’m here for that purpose. And so I struggle on that. And, and then John’s like, no. Later on he talks about, how do you have high personal belief and high purpose belief. And so I kind of felt myself in that moment of going, I’ve always had high purpose belief on why I’m doing what I’m doing in this particular situation. Maybe I didn’t have the highest personal belief, but after thinking and having somebody speak into my thinking and my mindset shift, my personal belief matched the purpose belief on why I’m going to do what I had to do. So you and I were talking, and I want to unpack this a little bit because we had not heard this matrix before that he just laid out for us. And you are a big purpose guy, and I want you to talk a little bit about that and the power of that.

Chris Goede:
But I also want you to talk a little bit about the journey as a leader in John’s world and organization, your growth of your mindset and your thinking as you have gone through cycles. All of us do that. You’ve gone from, oh, yeah, no, I’ve had high personal belief, high purpose belief. There are situations because we all get knocked down, but you’ve been riding shotgun with one of the greatest leaders around and have had to make some shifts to where I would love to hear from you about, give us some, give us some feedback on when you had low personal belief. Still high purpose belief. And how did you work through that and how do you feel those cycles coming? Just unpack that for a few minutes because I know purpose is so important to you, but I think this cycle you have probably lived out riding shotgun to one of the greatest of all time when it comes to leadership more than anybody.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So here’s what’s interesting. Boy, I could go so far because there’s been so many moments that the personal belief and the purpose belief was not synced up. And I too was blown away with John saying this personal belief, believing in yourself, purpose belief, believing in what you’re doing, needing to be in sync. Let me say this though, Chris, and I want to give you a couple. One of them is really quick, but I’m going to give you a couple of examples to where this was true in my life and I hope to relate with all of you and our podcast family on purpose belief. Let me, let me say this. That’s very important to some of you.

Mark Cole:
It was very important to me. I did not know my purpose until I was 33. Now, I know, I know how come it took so long. But for some of you, you’re 63, you’re 73 and you still can’t state that. Why that purpose that you’re here, I don’t care where you are. What I do care is, is that it disturbs you that you can’t articulate, you can’t make decisions on, and you can’t live life according to purpose. You only live life according to yourself and what you’re gonna get out of it. Your life is going to be left unfulfilled until you understand your purpose.

Mark Cole:
And I’m very passionate about this, Chris, because I don’t believe you can have belief, purpose, belief. If you don’t know your purpose, that’s good. Now let me say this. My purpose is to motivate and inspire people to reach their full potential. Do you hear how easy that flows off the tongue? For 33 years I couldn’t tell you my purpose. But I’ll tell you what, getting my purpose at 33 and one day we’ll do a conversation on how I got my purpose, which may inspire some of you to take a similar journey to get your purpose. But that’s not today. Today is just one driving thought.

Mark Cole:
If you can’t articulate the purpose the day you discover why you were born that day, if you can’t describe that, let that create a holy discontent in you that will drive you to do something, to go find it. The day I found my purpose statement at 33, it did three things for me that had never been done before. Number one, it totally made sense of every failure and thing that I celebrated as a success in the first 33 years of my life. It was a light bulb moment. I went, oh, that’s why. That’s why I didn’t like that. That’s why that struggle, that’s why that failure that everybody else thought was a fatal failure was just a setup. Immediately, immediately, I made sense of every failure and every success that I had had for 33 years.

Mark Cole:
The second thing that I did, it made sense why I was fulfilled in certain things that I was doing right then and completely unfulfilled in certain things I was doing right then. It gave me a mirror onto things that I didn’t have an answer for, a fulfillment and discontentment in the present. But here’s the other third great gift it gave me, Chris. It gave me a decision making filter of what I said yes to and no to in the future. Now I make every decision based on, does this move me closer to a more fulfillment of my life purpose, or does it not? So, do I have purpose belief? It’s been a long time, a long time since I’ve struggled with purpose belief, because it is a decision making filter for me. And now, for 20 plus years, 22. For those of you that are adding, 33 plus 22 is 55. For 22 years, I’ve been making all of my decisions from a purpose belief spectrum, and I don’t struggle with purpose, hardly ever.

Mark Cole:
And that is a true statement. I’m so thankful for it because I make decisions off of that.

Chris Goede:
And you make them right. You make them consistently, and it’s not tied to an emotion in the moment.

Mark Cole:
That’s exactly right.

Chris Goede:
And by the way, don’t miss this. In order for Mark to have this mindset, to be able to do that, I’m not going to say he thought for 33 years to get that, but I do know this. When he made the decision to sit down and figure out what that was, he had to spend time thinking. So as this all ties together, he only came up with his purpose belief, what his purpose was in order to get purpose belief, because he spent time thinking on it.

Mark Cole:
And we have a lot of people of faith, different faiths, thank God, but faiths that are in here, and let me just make something. Too many of us mystify God’s will, our faith purpose. Let me tell you something. What knowing my purpose in being placed on this earth has been. Has helped me determine what’s the voice of God and the voice of mark, because I get distracted with his personal ambitions. And then I know when something aligns with what was clearly given to me as a purpose statement, I know and can differentiate that. Now let me give you a couple of quick, practical. I think they’re practical examples.

Mark Cole:
Knowing my purpose statement has allowed me to say yes to things that John asked me to do that I would have went, I don’t believe I can do that. A quick one that I share all the time is speaking. I can remember I’d given up speaking. I spoke earlier in life, but it was a different environment. It was a different outcome. It was with a different emotion. John’s saying, to be on my stage, buddy, you better bring good content. And I’m going, I cannot even say don’t and doesn’t correctly, John.

Mark Cole:
I murder the english language all the time. You’re going to have me carry your microphone stand? That’s a long story. We’ve talked about it a lot, but I can remember the time to where my purse purpose belief of standing on John’s stage was matched with personal belief that I should be on that stage. Chris, I can remember the moment in a suite in the Marriott Orlando World center to where my personal belief began to match my purpose belief. And it was a difference maker. And y’all, y’all get the y’all right there. Just last week, I got paid the most money I’ve ever got paid to speak on somebody else’s stage. The most money that I’ve ever gotten paid for me personally, not John’s, not available.

Mark Cole:
Will you come give us a good word of encouragement? I got paid the most I’ve ever gotten paid as a professional speaker. But let me tell you this. The butterflies I felt being on John’s stage for free, I didn’t feel any of them to being on somebody else’s stage paying me, because personal belief and professional, personal belief and purpose belief match. Let me give you one more quick one. This one’s real time. So this one I’m still learning. Okay, this is not. Let me tell you what happened, y’all.

Mark Cole:
And I got a big deal, y’all. But leading as John’s CEO, I had great professional purpose belief, and personal belief for ten years in that world. Not until recently. I’m talking about in the last six weeks to eight weeks. And some of this is fresh in my run that I did this morning. Have I told you yet? I did a run this morning. Yeah, some of that was even in the meeting this morning. Did I start feeling a personal belief that I can be the CEO of a company I own.

Mark Cole:
I’ve had the second man syndrome and I’m good with that. I’m very happy with that. I’ve got a purpose belief in being the second man, but I don’t have a personal belief in being the man, making decisions for a company that I own. And I have struggled with this for four years, bro, and you know it. You and your family have risked staying with me, dear and me trying to figure that out. And as I’m now feeling just recently, this matching personal belief, matching with purpose belief, I’m walking into meetings now. I’m having pre conversations with you just a few minutes before this podcast that are different because the personal belief is matching the purpose belief.

John Maxwell:
Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And what’s awesome to see is that you don’t just get to a personal belief and just stay there. By the way, Mark has gone through these cycles, we all go through the cycles. I’ve had the opportunity to sit shotgun with Mark and watch them go through that. And it’s awesome to see the way that you communicate and the way that you’re able to connect and the decisiveness. And we were just talking about a recent meeting where you’re like, yeah, no, the personal belief and my purpose belief for what we’re doing here is equally as high right now. And it was. I left the meeting going, meaning this is Mark talking. I left the meeting, like believing myself, like, where did that come from? Just because.

Chris Goede:
But you had direct alignment. Now there are going to be times he’s going to go through things here. I say this, it is a cycle. It is going to. But man, if you’re not spending time getting the right mindset and thinking about that, you’ll never get back to that personal belief. And the only reason I can say that is because I know over the last six, eight weeks, twelve months of some of the things we’ve gone through, the amount of thinking that you’ve had to put into, even alone in a room right off the side of your house until you got the right mindset and then go, I got it right, you come out. So I just want to encourage everybody, what we’re talking about is a deep topic if you really dig into it. And by the way, Jake’s asked us to wrap this podcast up about 20 minutes ago and Mark and I refused to look at him.

Chris Goede:
But this is a big deal and you’re never there. Then we could tie this right into Mark about growth mindset, right? Because it is a continuous growth. Here’s I’m going to throw back to you in closing my last comment. We’re big about impacting people, right? Everybody deserves to be led well. And for us, man, in order to impact people, I just want to challenge those that are listening. You have to leverage thinking, okay? At whatever level in order for it to shape your future as a leader. But more importantly, for us to impact the people that are around you. It could be your sister, it could be your mom, it could be a peer in the business.

Chris Goede:
Doesn’t matter. It could be a team. But unless you leverage thinking, your mindset will never shift, it will never change, and you won’t be able to have the impact on people that we want you to have. Right? Of why you’re listening.

Mark Cole:
Well, mic drop on that, because I agree with you. You’re not going to have a mindset matter moment until you look at the way you’re thinking and until you intentionally begin to adjust the way you’re thinking, which is what John helped you do, which is what has been so poured into me and those two examples that I’ve given. I started this whole podcast 30 minutes ago, by the way. I started this whole podcast with a quote from Albert Einstein today. I want to quote, Al is a podcast family member. He listened to the podcast, effective ways to grow your people. And here’s what he said. He didn’t give us a bunch of accolades about the podcast.

Mark Cole:
We hear those and we love those. But here’s what Al said. He said the most effective way to grow an organization is to grow the people in it. That’s the power. And Al, I agree with you. I’ll tell you this. If we didn’t have podcast listeners, we wouldn’t have a podcast. Number one, I wouldn’t sit here and do this.

Mark Cole:
I would go do something where people are. We’re a people development organization. And so I sit here today, and I not only recognize Al, but I recognize all of you that help us. You give us comments, you give us questions. And so today, what I would love to do is I’d love to give you a digital product for free. It’s yours with a string. We need some feedback from you. We’re working on something here at Maxwell leadership to better ourselves, so that we can better you, so that you will multiply better to others.

Mark Cole:
And we’re doing a survey. And so we would love for you to take the survey. It’s in the show notes. And in exchange for your input to make us better, so that we can make you better, so that you’ll make others better. We want to give you this free digital product. You can see all the details of that in the show notes hey, like Al, go make people better. Bring a powerful, positive change, because everyone deserves to be led well.

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