​Maxwell Leadership Podcast: Episode 100: A Lesson in Growth and Consistency

Mark Cole:           Welcome to the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast! Get the streamers out, get the party hats, because John Maxwell is here live with me. This is not a Candid Conversation, this is a Wednesday session, but here's the deal, this is the 100th episode of the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast, and so, John agreed to be with me. We came out of home quarantine, we're in Highlands together and John, congratulations! 100 episodes with this podcast!

John Maxwell:      Well, thanks, Mark. You know, what's kind of amusing me when talk about this, is I'm always getting “congratulations” now for I've spoken twelve thousand times or now it’s a hundred podcasts and, you know, and I've written eighty some books or whatever it is, and all of a sudden, I'm hitting this realization awareness that I'm getting all these congratulations, because I'm old. Because all the stuff we can get congratulated on is because we've been doing it a long time, and the only people could do something a long time is somebody that’s been around a long time. So, it's kind of starting to crack me up. I don't know if these are “Congratulations”, or, “Thank God, you're still alive, and we can't believe that you're still doing this.” But it's just starting to really crack me up because I'm thinking, “Oh, my goodness, here we go. I passed another milestone.” But this has been a hundred podcasts. My first thought when you tell me that was, it can't be hundred! So I get totally amazed at how fast time goes and what you can accomplish, really, if you're consistent in a relatively short time, but when you said one hundred, I mean if you had asked me I would’ve thought, “Oh, we maybe have done sixty or seventy.” I'm kind of way behind on where I think we really are on some of this stuff, and so, I first of all, kind of get amazed, and then secondly, I was chuckling saying, “Well, it's because you're old.” But anyway, it's been a hundo! That's good!

Mark Cole:           I'm going to come back to the old comment in just a moment, but so 7.2 million people have been impacted. And again, let me go back to memory lane, July of 2018, first podcast, and here we are, end of May 2020, and now through this vehicle, through this media, you have impacted 7.2 million people. Isn't that astounding?

John Maxwell:      Well, it's not only astounding, it's a real honor and privilege. I mean, when I think of that, honestly, where I go when you say things like that to me, Mark, it's not so much of the milestone of a hundred, it's so much going back to why we do what we do and who we are. We do what we do, because all we really ever wanted to do was to add value to leaders who multiply value to others; it's just so simple, but so true. And so, I look at where we are today and where I feel the most thrill is not that we've done a hundred podcasts, but how many people we've helped, and it always goes back to about the time, anytime somebody is ready to say, “Congratulations on this, John.” I always say to myself, “The thing that really makes me happy is the fact that we have found another vehicle or another way to really help leaders and come into their life and make their life better.” And to me, that has always been why I do what I do, and I think that's why it's never gotten old. It's never gotten old because I never said, I want to write X amount of books or I want to do X amount of podcasts. I've never set goals like that. I just have one very simple desire and that is to add value to leaders who multiply value to others and I think that's why it's always fresh to me, because it's always fresh when you're reaching new people. And you know, when we started off in 2018, we started off with nobody, and now 7.2 million, all that tells me is that we've expanded more than expand our influence, we've expanded our ability to help more people. And so that's a real, that's what really turns my crank.

Mark Cole:           Yeah, and you know, John, in that 7.2, I want to give you a couple of stories then I'm going to give you a personal story. But Qantas Airlines, the head of all HR, sent a message to us and said, “Thank you for this podcast. I use this as my training every week.” Now our prayers and thoughts are with all the airline industry right now, but I'm going to tell you, over the last two years, the number of people that you've added value to that then multiplies value out, it's not 7.2. That's the beautiful thing of working amongst leaders. It's not 7.2 it's millions and millions more than that. In fact, the head of all the health care system and infrastructure for Ohio sent us a message and said, “Hey, your podcast not only impacts me personally, but I get it out to all of my hospital administrators all across my area of responsibility.” And so, it's huge! In fact, I'll finish my little story of impact, my mother, she's ninety-one, your dad's ninety-eight?

John Maxwell:      Yeah, ninety-eight!

Mark Cole:           Ninety-eight! My mother listens to this podcast, and so she critiques me sometimes on some of the stuff that I say, another story. But listen to this—

John Maxwell:      —She’s just being mom!

Mark Cole:           Because of this podcast, John, she's heard you, she reads your books, she's so proud of me working alongside you, but she said, “Mark—" about six months ago, she started reading books, she says, “Mark, when I hear John talk about Melvin and when I hear John say I'm not going to finish, there is no finish line.” She says, “I realized since your dad passed away, I have had a finish line.” And she said, “John's podcast has energized me.” She’s already written a devotional book and had a book signing line, her first ever, ninety years old! And she's now writing a tributary book for my grandfather who started a [INAUDIBLE]. So, you've even impacted the Cole household!

John Maxwell:      Oh, that's so beautiful! That’s so beautiful! Well, hey, one old person impacting another old person? Now, that's a fact. But you know, going back to, I've said it twice already on this podcast, what do we do? We add value to leaders who multiply value to others. So, when you gave us the Ohio health care story, when you gave us the Qantas Airlines story, that's exactly what we do! We get to a leader in Qantas, we get to the leader of the Ohio health care, and they have other leaders that immediately they just dispense it. Another thing I think that has helped us get where we are, is we've never been selfish with our material. We've never put fences around and said, “Okay, write this down, you got that from me. So, we always want to make sure we get the credit and be sure to tell everybody.” We've just basically said, “No. We are a river, and what we know, we just flow down to you, and you take all those tributaries you've got and you just let that water keep on flowing of the good news.” And I think that there is, I just think that there is something to be said about why you do things. And why do we do what we do? You know that, of course, because I started off in ministry, I didn't start off in business, and so I never had the mindset that the first thing I wanted to do was to make a buck. That my mindset was always the first thing I wanted to do is to add value people. Now, God has been great to us and we made a lot of bucks. But it goes back to, again, the old Zig Ziglar statement that everybody knows, “If you'll just help people get what they need, they'll help you get everything that you need.” We've always put adding value first, and we've received much more in return than we could have ever thought or imagined. But that value has never changed, it's the same still today. And again, I think that if you set tangible goals, whether it's making money or hitting numerical goals, I think that gets old. I think that once you have a few wins, and by the way, successful people, they hit their goals. And I think after a while, you begin to say, “Is this all there is to life?” And my answer is no, that's not even close to being life. Once life is adding value to people, let all the goals and all the numbers, let them just fall, let them follow the reason why you really want to help people; and it's so much more rewarding that way because you've always put the people first and we've done it. We haven't changed it. We do it through the John Maxwell Enterprise today. Nothing has changed through the COVID-19, it doesn't matter! That value is who we are and it’s values is what we do. It serves us in good times, it serves in bad times because it always serves people.

Mark Cole:           Yeah, and so, John, again, thank you for listening, all of you on the Maxwell Podcast here, we're commemorating a hundred episodes today and so let me just tell you if you stay to the end, you are going to hear some things that John has challenged us in our team to give away to you for free. So, I promise you and it's great value! So, stay with us. John, there's three [INAUDIBLE]

John Maxwell:      Do I get it? Do I get anything myself?

Mark Cole:           We’ll see what we can do! We’ll see! So, there's three things that I really wanted to cover in this hundredth episode. The first is you talked about the only reason you get 7.2 million downloads is because you got to be old, or the only reason that we've had two years of great episodes, or a hundred episodes is because we’re established. I know a lot of older people that are one trick ponies, you know, was it Debby Boone? “You Light Up My Life.” So, we know one trick ponies that they get old, they don't necessarily get better, your statement. They get old, but they never change their message. There's another reason that 7.2 million people have tuned in, and that's because you're always learning, you're always refreshing yourself and you constantly challenge yourself to learn. And I've got to ask you, we as leaders, how do we keep ourselves relevant as it relates to content, creativity, reinventing ourselves?

John Maxwell:      Well, its growth, its personal growth and development. That is the core answer to being relevant and it's the core answer to reinventing yourself. It goes back to the Gandhi quote, that I love so much, that has kind of been something that stays with me a lot, Mark, and that's where he talks about the false position. He says, “A false position is,” he says, “Growth is what we all should be doing.” Okay? I'm going to paraphrase what Gandhi says. He says, “We all ought to be growing,” and he said, “if you're growing, what you do is, as you develop yourself, you grow out of your old ways.” So what that means is that, perhaps, thoughts that I had twenty years ago, those aren't my thoughts anymore, or perhaps even things that I kind of was certain about twenty years ago, maybe I'm not certain about them today, because growth keeps evolving us, which means we keep changing. And he said, a false position is that when people know you a certain way, maybe fifteen years ago, but you've kept growing but they still want to stereotype you of where you were fifteen, twenty years ago, and then you try to accommodate them by being that person, he said it puts you in a false position. In other words, that's not who you really are, but that's who they think you are, and so, you kind of feel bad about that. So, you just kind of stay there for the sake of those people. Well, I've never done that, I've always felt that I need to grow and not only not have a false position in my life, but give people my true position of who I was and what I was learning. And so therefore, what happens is I shed old skin all the time. You know, and from a Biblical standpoint is getting rid of the old wine skins. And so, what happens is, if I'm always learning and if I'm always growing, I'm always seeing new ways of doing things, and I'm always seeing better ways to do things. Remember the two things we say? We say there's always a better way, and there's always an answer. Well, if you believe that there's always a better way, that means that no matter what I'm doing right now, there's a better way. I mean, hey, a few years ago, I didn't do a podcast. Well, this was an opportunity to come in when you said, “John, we ought to do podcasts.” Well, I had to go figure out what a podcast was. But the whole issue is the moment I believe that there's a better way, I never defend what I did, and sacrifice that instead of going a better way. There's nothing I'm doing in my life that is so important that I need to hold on to it for my own identity or for my own self-worth. My identity is not based on who I was, my identity is based on who I am. And who I am today, I'm a seventy-three-year-old person that is continually learning and continually growing, and have taken this COVID-19 period of my life to make it one of the best growth times I've ever had personally. And I plan on being that way until I die, and that's why there's no finish line. So, the older person with this mindset, it's like wine, it gets better. So, am I getting older? Yep, hey the fact of life, getting older. But what really thrills me is I'm getting better. And I'm getting better because I continually stay in the game of learning and growing and asking questions and wanting to better myself. And to me, when people talk about reinvention and say, “Well, I need to reinvent myself.” I say, “No, you need to grow. Because if you grow, reinvention is really a natural byproduct of personal growth and development.” You don't grow. You don't have a shot of reinventing yourself. It's like people in the area of branding. “Well, I need to get a good brand. Brand me so that people will follow me.” I say, “Why don't you just get good?” When you when you get good, guess what? You can go pick out a brand and hey, I'd call myself oatmeal and people will follow me. It doesn't really matter, because I've already helped people. And so, it goes back to the right motives, passion for growth, and what happens is, you will find your way to getting better, and when you get better, you reinvent yourself and you'll find another answer. So, you'll reinvent yourself. It happens it's a natural process of personal growth and people that missed the personal growth part, anything that they reinvent isn't going to last because it's not who they are. It's who they want people to think who they are. And can I take something? The day that I live my life trying to get you to think I'm something and some kind of a brand way is that day that I'm getting into a false position. I've never tried to do that! I'm who I am. I'm growing, and I just am simple. My name is John, I add value to people. That's what I do.

Mark Cole:           The greatest story in my 20 years of being on your team, the greatest story that illustrates that, is you were known way before I joined your team, you were known for your filing system, you were known for taking quotes, writing them down, indexing. People would come from all over the world to visit your office to watch you explain your filing system and you know where I'm going with this. I heard you this weekend, I was listening to something you did about two and a half years ago, and you were telling the story of throwing all your files out and I relive that and almost started crying again. This work of 40 years, you took it because you felt like it was starting to put a lid on your creativity and you said, “I will not allow even something as powerful as my filing system to stop my passion for creativity and growing.”

John Maxwell:      You know, while you're doing this, I didn't know you're going to bring this up at all, and I just got a text yesterday from Dan Reiland, and he's been with me now most for 40 years, And he said, “John, 39 years later, I'm still learning from you.” And he said, “I just listened to your lesson last Monday.” I think this is the lesson you're talking to, which was our podcast, the last podcast where I talked about the filing deal. And in here, I'm trying to find it real quick because he gave me about 10 paragraphs in here, and he basically said, “I didn't know—what did you do? Your filing system and got rid of all those things that you held on! Your story about having your files thrown out was powerful!” He said, “Never knew you did that.” He said, then he goes on, “But you still file right? Are you putting new stuff I assume? And did you not Linda—"

Mark Cole:           —You stressed him out!

John Maxwell:      Yeah! “Did you not let Linda keep hold of those old lessons and notes? They need to be kept!” stressed him out? And I have no idea where they are and I let them all go, but I let them all go for a reason. The thing that we hold so dear to us that is our security, if we hold on to it beyond its time becomes our detriment. There is nothing in my life, obviously I mean, I got family, I've got friendships, but there's nothing in my life beyond the things that are our inner circle with me, but there's nothing in my life that I'm not willing to let go if it helps me to grow as a person, help other people. And remember, you hear me talk all the time, you don't leave something, you go to something. Let me tell you something, people that aren't personal in their growth and development, they leave things all the time. They don't have anywhere to go. In fact, they're sitting there and saying, “I don't like my life as it is, but I don't know what to do about it.” Well, the reason they don't like their life as it is, and not know what to do about is because they're not growing. If they were growing, they would know what they need to be doing next, and they would be happy. And so, this whole process of when people say, “How can you reinvent yourself? How can you, kind of, leave what you've done behind, and say, ‘Well, that was wonderful! Boom! I really don't care. I'm over here now.’” They asked me how I can do that, it's because I'm always going to something, I'm always growing. And what is in front of me at seventy-three is so much more exciting to me than what's behind me. So, I hope our listeners on the podcast, they really catch this because when people come to me, because they come to me all the time, and say, “I'd like to reinvent myself.” And I look at them and I say “Okay, I never said that.” I never said, “Okay, John, reinvent yourself.” I said, “John, grow.” And as I grew, I found better ways, I met better people, I learned better ways to live my life and that's what took me over there. It wasn't like I tried to reinvent myself I just wanted to grow.

Mark Cole:           It's what Truett Cathy, Founder of Chick-fil-a says, he says, “Too many times…” And you said this on this recent lesson too, you said, “Too many times people want or worried about getting bigger or being known or their brand.” And what Truett says and you've lived this, get better and then when you get better, the market will demand that you get bigger, that you become more known.”

John Maxwell:      Yeah, I'm always surprised, when you give me all these figures of things, 7.2 million, I look at that and think, “How the heck did that happen?” Because I've never set out to even make a name for myself. I have set out to add value to people, and I want to tell something, you go help people, and you make a difference in their life, they will keep you out in front all the time. Because they know where the source is, they know, the person that really cared for them and the person that really took great joy out of their success. And I do think this, and I think most younger people won't understand this, I wouldn't have understood it when I was younger, but let me tell you, today my greatest joy is other people's success. My greater joy is watching you grow and build the company more than it was for me to build a company, and the reason for that is very simple, I've already done that. I've already done that. And once you know what you can accomplish, the bigger picture is, “I wonder what I could do to help people accomplish more?” You know, when I've got myself down, I kind of got myself down. I know how to be successful. I got that down. But do I know how to make you successful? Or, do I know how to help other people be successful? Now all of a sudden, there's a multiple occasion, just a compounding of people being successful and that's what brings the joy to me.

Mark Cole:           You know, I want to talk about Leaders Greatest Return, your most recent book in just a moment, but going down memory lane for just a moment more. We started the podcast July of 2018, and my good friend, mine and your good friend, Richard Chancy, whom we miss terribly. He helped us get this thing started, and you'll remember I didn't want to come to you. You've given so much content and I've told you we're going to repurpose content. So, the first several episodes we just repurposed, and you were just like, “Okay, glad you're doing that podcast thing, Mark, but whatever.” But when we hit our first million, you went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait! Get me in the game and let me start making this thing relevant.” You did the same thing, John, when you were sitting in with a group of pastors, I can't remember the year, you'll remember this and twenty-eight or twenty-nine of them said, “John, this content was so good, you do this with your leadership team all the time, will you start a continuity program called [INAUDIBLE]

John Maxwell:      Oh, my gosh!

Mark Cole:           Remember that?

John Maxwell:      Yeah, but you're talking back in 1984?

Mark Cole:           Yeah, cassette tapes.

John Maxwell:      Yeah, cassette tapes! And I was in Jackson, Mississippi, literally with thirty-one pastors at a Holiday Inn, and teaching them leadership all day, and the bottom line is at the end of it, one of the pastor's raised their hand and said, “When can we hear you next?” I said, “Well, I don't know, I got to get on a plane, go back to San Diego. I pastor a church, you know, hopefully in a year or two, you'll find me somewhere in a conference and come and do it.” And he looked at me said, “That's not what I mean. I got to have more of this.” And it was in that question that he asked me that I looked at him and I finally said, “Well, I guess I could record a lesson with my own staff, and would you guys, if I recorded a lesson every month and send it to you, a cassette to you, would you know, would you want it?” They said, “Well, what would it cost us?” I said, “I have no idea.” I said, “You know, I want to cover my costs.” I think I said five bucks. And so, I passed out a legal pad and there were thirty-one pastors there, thirty of them signed up for what we called back then, the Injoy Life Club. Let me tell you what something that's funny is, that pastor didn't sign up, twenty years later, he came up to me said, “I was the pastor that didn't sign up that day.” He said, “I was the only stupid one in the group.” And he said, “But I want you to know, I signed up for everything you got now. So, it's kind of like I'm a late bloomer, but I got on board.” But anyway, I went back and took a businessperson in my congregation and said, “Let's start a little tape club. And I'd started teaching those lessons, and we just started putting them out. We had no branding, we had no marketing program. I mean, I just, and then other leaders began to tell other leaders about it, and in five years, we realized that we had twenty some thousand subscribers, and a hundred thousand people were listening to them every month. And again, I didn't push it. I just put out something that helped people, and it goes back to the Truett Cathy, if you really help people, they're going to they're going to demand you just get better, they'll get the demand to get bigger.

Mark Cole:           What year was that again? In ’84? So, from ’84, it's 2020, and again, it goes back to the first point we made on this. You've been doing continuity weekly, monthly, since 1984. And to this day, those of you that listen this podcast, I can assure you, come back next week to Episode 101, and John Maxwell will give you new content, new thought, because you keep reinventing yourself. And I think that goes to, and we won't stay here long because I want to get to Leader’s with Greatest Return, but it goes to this book that you wrote recently, being the leader and being a relevant leader, whether it's COVID-19 before, after, during, it goes back to leadershifting, knowing not only what you’re thinking needs to do to shift or your leadership needs to do, but even how you communicate. We are on a podcast today, you starting to enjoy life club, but today, you embraced new technology so you could keep sharing.

John Maxwell:      Well, yeah, I did. And you know, going back to the old tape, the monthly cassette tapes of the Month Club, we'd put them out and then we'd send them out. Now today, if you go follow The Maximum Impact program that we've got in mentoring, MIM if you follow that now, I do that on a phone call.

Mark Cole:           Exactly.

John Maxwell:      And the reason why because I can even be more relevant. I can say “Guess what? Yesterday, I just discovered yesterday—” Or, COVID-19 it really is incredible even like our podcasts, but what I found even now on our MIM deal is that our subscribers love the idea of, they're hearing me, I'm live, I'm just talking to them, and they can go Q&A and ask me questions and to me, when you're really growing every day you have something to add value to people. It's not like, “Wow, I hope I get something that maybe a month or two out.” And I think that there's something about leadership and relevance that really helps people to understand what they can do right now. It really connects better with them.

Mark Cole:           You know, John, in the last 100 episodes, we've had guests like Rachel Hollis, Marcus Buckingham, Trent Shelton, Ed Bastian, Ed Mylett, Don Yaeger, Carly Fiorina, Chris Hogan, Kyle Carpenter, Simon Sinek, Kevin Myers, Chris Hodges, and to a tee, I've been on every one of those with you; to a tee every one of them look at you and say, “John, thank you for being an impact in my life.” You wrote a book recently called, The Leader’s Greatest Return. What is it like when you see these powerful, prominent, global leaders, looking back at you, sitting down with you on these podcasts and every day of your life and saying, “John, thank you for impacting me.” Talk to me about The Leaders Greatest Return. Is that it? Is that the return?

John Maxwell:      Well, yeah, I love this book, The Leader’s Greatest Return, because what it's all about is compounding. You know, I wrote, Developing the Leader Within You, okay? And, Developing the Leader Within You is how do I develop myself as a leader? It's a classic mentoring book. In fact, when people say, “I want to mentor a leader.” Truly, Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 is where I said that, I think it's the book you put in somebody's hand if you really want to mentor a leader and say, “Okay, here are the 10 things we need to go through to learn how to lead really well.” So, I love that. But if I develop myself as a leader, that's still addition; but the moment I pour into you, Mark, and I begin to develop you now, all of a sudden, we're going into multiplication, so The Leader’s Greatest Return is all about how to develop other leaders because as you know, when I turned 40, I asked myself, I did a little midlife crisis question, and I asked myself how I was doing, and I was a little disappointed. And I came to the conclusion after a few days of reflecting that my biggest mistake I'd made in my first 40 years is I hadn’t spent enough time developing leaders and my team. And so, at that point at 40, I'm 73 now, I said, “I'm going to put my number one priority is developing my team.” And developing my team—not to be a team to help me but to be a team of leaders. And then there's a difference about—I've got some people, they're not leaders, but they'll help me be a better leader versus, “No, I develop leaders.” And the moment that I made that decision, everything began to compound and so when people come into my life, and they say, “John, you've been my mentor.” I'm always surprised because I'm humbled, because most of those people that I've mentored they're the ones I looked up to, and they were mentoring me. And what I, again, learned very much so is that when you add value to people, you just never know what people you're adding value to you, and you and I get continually surprised by the people that listen to us, and the people that I have the privilege of mentoring today that, honestly, I didn't even know we were reaching. I mean, when you think of this podcast, when you talk about the hundred podcasts, what I think about are all the people that I maybe didn't even have a voice in their life until that podcast. I mean, again, the person you talked about from Qantas Airlines, I don't know that person personally, I don't know who that person is. The person you talked to me about in the Ohio healthcare, I don't believe I know who that person is. You following what I’m saying? And you know, we’ve gotten pretty diverse. I mean, we've gone from businessman or we got rappers talking. I mean—

Mark Cole:           Jeezy!

John Maxwell:      Yeah, and I'm looking at that and I'm just saying, “Okay, how did I get to you?” And he said, “I listened to your podcast.” He said, “Your podcast, John, is just helping me. I've got some business decisions I need to make and I'm moving ahead now because—" So again, yeah, it's humbling but again, it's simple. We've never left what we were trying to do in the beginning, add value to leaders. Now that is a distinct message, by the way. In fact, I had my publishers when I started writing books, they said, “If you write leadership books, you realize that won't be for everybody. So, you probably won't sell a lot of books because you're niching yourself to leaders.” And, you know, thirty-five million books later, I think they're right! I think, “Hey, well maybe if I had written to followers, maybe I could have had thirty-five!” But here's what I know, when I went to the leaders, when you take care of a leader, and you help him or her really get better, they influence a whole bunch of people. And so that's why I think my books have what they call “legs”. I don't need a lot of marketing for my books. I have people marketing my books, I have people taking my books and putting them in somebody's hand and say, “I'm going to mentor you with this book.” Because they know that stuff works but again, it goes back to we've never changed. I reinvent myself all the time because I grow, but never to change because my value has always been the very same, add value to leaders because that's my calling and let them take care of all the rest of the people.

Mark Cole:           Speaking of adding value when, John, when we talked about the hundredth episode, John as he always does, he said, “Okay, team, we got to make this a value to our team. It's one thing to celebrate. It's another thing to add value and help others celebrate.” And so, we're going to celebrate with you today. In fact, we're going to give away, John, your request, we're going to give away a hundred copies of The Leader’s Greatest Return, we're going to give them away! And so, now shipping and handling, we're going to let you cover the shipping and handling but the first one hundred people that respond to Maxwellpodcast.com/gift, Maxwellpodcast.com/gift, and use the code PODCAST at checkout. We're going to get your shipping information, and we're going to send you a signed copy of John's book The Leader’s Greatest Return, the first one hundred, free book. We've never done that before. You know, you did one more thing, you said that's not enough. So, one more thing, you did a whole digital course. It's about four and a half hours of teaching on The Leader’s Greatest Return. It's over $700 of a retail value. In fact, you'll get an email if you're in our email distribution, you'll get an email in the next few weeks for that to be $349, we're going to give a 50% off. But to anyone listening to the podcast, we've never done this before either, John, anyone listening to the podcast, you go to Maxwellpodcast.com/gift and we're going to let you have that for a limited time for $100 to commemorate the hundredth episode.

John Maxwell:      Hey, come on! Somebody right now they’re listening and saying, “When are you going to have your 200th podcast? I can hardly wait for that giveaway/discount program there!” But you know, that's the right thing to do. Let's get it out there to the people, and if you join us and we get to come into your life, we're kind of like family to many of you right now. But if you don't have The Leader’s Greatest Return, oh my goodness, you know, that's, again, that's the best work I've ever done on how to develop other leaders. And then I love you doing the complimentary digital product for people too, because they really go hand in hand, and you talk about mentoring other people, but take the book and take the digital product, and you've got you a mentoring tool for other people that's off the charts.

Mark Cole:           Yep! So again, Maxwellpodcast.com/gift, a hundred books, a hundred free books to the first one hundred, and then you can get that digital product for $100. Hey, John, first of all, not to you, John, to all of you that have made a hundred episodes possible, John, you're one of the top ranked leadership podcasts in the world. That's you. And that's because of our listeners, that's because people that tune in, they download, they pass it along, like our friends that we've talked about earlier, and they make this possible. So, to those of you that listen to the podcast, we're a hundred episodes in because of you, but, John, you too, thank you! Thanks for being so intentional on impacting others, and we hope to give you a great return for that.

John Maxwell:      Well, you are right now, but I want to say thank you to you, Mark, And I also want to say thank you to Richard, our late friend. Richard was so helpful to us in this process, and we're so grateful for that. So, you know, the two of you were the ones that were catalytic, and said, “John, we need to do some podcasts.” And I just kind of followed your lead and look where we are. So, thank you, Mark. You always are helping me to get to more people.  

Mark Cole:           Hey, well thank you! Thanks, again! We look forward to seeing you on the hundred and first episode next week. John, thank you and we will talk to you soon!

John Maxwell:      Love and blessings!