Maxwell Leadership Podcast: 10 Secrets to Success (Part 1)

Mark Cole:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. My name is Mark Cole, and today, John Maxwell. Chris Goede and I begin a two part series on ten secrets of success. Now, I’ve traveled now with John for 23 years. I’ve watched him in and out of most any environment you can imagine. One thing that I have noticed is John’s commitment to pursue success and produce results. And so today, John’s going to be teaching on ten things, but we’re going to break it up into two parts.

Mark Cole:
We’ll give you five of those things this week, five next week. And then after John’s lesson, my co host, Chris Goede and I will join to discuss the lesson and offer practical ways you can apply to your life and to your leadership. If you would like to watch this episode on YouTube or download our free bonus resource for this episode, just visit MaxwellPodcast.com/Secrets. You will be able to download, you’ll be able to watch, and you will be able to grow. Now, here we go. Here is John Maxwell.

John Maxwell:
I was coming from Los Angeles, and on the plane I saw this paper and called investors business Daily. And it had a lot of good articles in it. It was, in fact, it was a very good newspaper. But the thing that caught my attention in this investor’s business daily was they had a section of the paper called the Ten Secrets to success. And what they basically did is they had these ten secrets to success listed in the paper, of which, when I subscribed to the paper, I found out that these ten secrets of success, they just keep going over these ten, but they’ll do different stories and different illustrations. And basically, here’s what they said. And now I’m quoting, these ten traits, these ten traits can help your dreams become a reality. And what they did is they studied success to such a place that they found that these ten secrets to success never changed.

John Maxwell:
They never changed. And so therefore, they keep this ten secrets always in the paper, but they just tell different stories to reinforce these ten things. And so, because we’re talking about how to reach our dream, dare to dream, and then do it. Let’s talk about the ten secrets to success and what successful people know and do. This is how you get to your dreams right here. Number one, how you think is everything. How you think is everything. Always be positive.

John Maxwell:
Think success, not failure. And beware of a negative environment. Investors business daily realize if you’re going to be successful, you’re going to reach your dream. Probably the first thing you have to do is work on your own thinking how you think. They said, you’re going to have to think positive. You’re going to have to think success, not failure. Now ask yourself, is most of my thinking positive or is it negative? Is most of my thinking success oriented or is it failure oriented? What kind of an environment am I around, not only in the working place, but what kind of environment I’m around when I’m out of the working place? Is it a negative or is it a positive environment? Bob Rotella, who’s a sports psychologist, said, I tell people that if you don’t want to get into positive thinking, that’s okay. Just eliminate Nate all the negative thoughts from your mind, and whatever is left will be fine.

John Maxwell:
So under the ten secrets to success that successful people know and do, number one is how you think is everything. Number two. Number two, decide upon your true dreams and goals and write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them. Tom Hopkins says that goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. Perhaps you’ve read the book live your dreams by Les Brown. In that book, live your dreams, Les suggests four questions that you need to ask yourself to boost your self approval. And the four questions are, what are your gifts? In other words, what do you do? Well, if you have good health, acknowledge it, be thankful. If your family and your friends love you.

John Maxwell:
Okay, what are your gifts? Okay, you do those first. Number two, what are the five things that you like about yourself? Okay, so what you do is you say, I’ll say, okay, here are some things I do that I like about myself. He’s talking about lifting you and boosting your self approval and image. Number three, what people make you feel special when you’re around them, what people will lift you up. And you just know that if you get around them, you’re going to be encouraged, you’re going to be strengthened by them. And the fourth question that Les has in his book, live your dreams, is what moment of personal triumph do you remember? In other words, he said, take some time and think about what are moments of your personal triumph. What were some things that you did that when you did them? You look back and say, boy, that was an important time of my life. Let me give you something that I have found to be helpful to me that might be helpful to you.

John Maxwell:
Let’s at least give it a shot. Okay. Here’s what I would encourage you to do. Sit down with a legal pad and write down, and I think ten is a good number. It’s not a magic number. I just think it’s a good number. Sit down and write down ten things that in your lifetime, when you did these or accomplished these things, you felt real good about yourself. In other words, and some of them may be very significant to you, some of them may be almost frivolous to you, but I would encourage you, go back and pull out of your life.

John Maxwell:
I did this, by the way, I did this as I was preparing this lesson, and I was very amazed at some of the things that I thought about that I hadn’t thought about for a long time. Things that all of a sudden I thought, wow, this is why I today have a good self image. I thought of the fact that when I was a sophomore in high school, I became captain of the basketball team. And I remember thinking, wow, I’m pretty young to be a captain of the team. I thought about the time when I was the fifth grade that I was elected by my classmates. We were studying how the court system worked, and so our fifth grade teacher said that we would elect a judge, and I was elected judge of the fifth grade class. And I remember I thought, wow, I like being judge of this class.

John Maxwell:
I like going out on the playground and being bought off with pretzels. But anyway, what I want to encourage you to do is I want to encourage you to go back. And just ten, I think, is a good number. Go back through your life and say, how did I feel at that moment? Now, here’s what makes that significant. It not only tells you a lot about your self image and your journey, but here’s the question that I would really have you to look at after you list those ten things. How many of those things happened a long time ago? And how many of those things happened recently? What I have found is that if several of these things happened a long time ago, that gave you the foundation for a good self image. But if some of those things happened recently, that has given you a lot of motivational fuel for whatever you’re doing in your life. And it’s not either or.

John Maxwell:
Truthfully, hopefully, you have a balance of both. You have that which is foundational, and you have that which is what I call motivational. But just look at your life and out of that, you kind of decide who you are, how you feel about yourself. What are your dreams? What are your goals? Okay, the third secret to success for those who not only dared to have a dream, but then made that dream become a reality in their own life. Success. Secret number three, take action. Goals are nothing without action. Don’t be afraid to get started.

John Maxwell:
Now just do it. And I have some great quotes. Dreams don’t work unless you do. It is only our deeds that reveal who we are. Chestern said, I don’t believe in fate that falls on men however they act. But I do believe in fate that falls on them unless they act. Paul Bear Bryant, the great coach at Alabama for many, many years, had a sign in his locker room that said, cause something to happen. In other words, he understood the value of action.

John Maxwell:
If you’re going to realize your dream, remember the secret of your dreams is what you do today, not what you do Tomorrow. It’s not where you’re going to go, it’s where you are. Take action. Number four, in realizing your dream and these success principles these successful people know and do in their life. Number four is never stop learning. Never stop learning. You may have to go back to school. You may have to read some books.

John Maxwell:
You got to get some training. You got to go acquire skills, but never stop learning. Shul and Blanchard, in that wonderful book they did together, said, learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven’t learned a thing until you can take action, until you can use it. And there are two ways that you and I learn. We learn either through experience, in other words, learning by our own mistakes, and we’ve done that. Or through wisdom, which is learning through the mistakes of others. And it’s more fun to learn through the mistakes of others, isn’t it? But we do both.

John Maxwell:
And Bruce Springsteen said, a time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be. Number five. The fifth principle of success, to realize your dreams is to be persistent and work hard. We have to realize that success is a marathon, not a sprint, and that we’re never to give up. I love what William Gladstone said. If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock or Dobie Gillis. Only old people remember Dobie Gillis. Show.

John Maxwell:
I won’t do a poll here because it’s going to embarrass me because I remember Dobie Gillis. He said, I don’t have anything against work. I just figure why deprive somebody who really loves it? Now famous people’s 90% sweat Plato wrote the first sentence of his famous republic nine different ways before he was satisfied. Cicero practiced speaking before friends every day for 30 years. To perfect his allocation, Noah Webster labored 36 years writing his dictionary, crossing the Atlantic twice together material. Milton rose at 04:00 a.m. Every day in order to have enough hours for paradise lost. Givens spent 26 years on his decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

John Maxwell:
And Brian rewrote one of his poetic masterpieces 99 times before publication, and it became a classic. These just examples of hard work and persistence. Bob Ireland’s a great example. Bob Ireland crossed the finish line on Thursday, November 6, 1986 in the New York City’s marathon. It was 19,413th. He was the final finisher, the first person to run a marathon with his arms instead of his legs. Bob was a 40 year old Californian whose leg was blown off in Vietnam 17 years before. And in 1986, he recorded the slowest time in marathon’s history, four days, 2 hours and 48 minutes, 17 seconds.

John Maxwell:
When he asked why he ran the race, he gave these three reasons to show he was a born again Christian, to test his conditioning, and to promote physical fitness to others. And then he said, success is not based on where you start, it’s where you finished and I finished. Persistence, hard work I can is more important than IQ.

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

John Maxwell:
So market, come and see us on day to grow. I will promise you this. You come and bring your team. At the end of the day, you’ll come up and shake my hand and say, one of the best days I’ve ever invested in for myself and for my team. I’ll see you there.

Mark Cole:
Hey, welcome back, everybody. If you’re viewing, I am joined here today with Chris Goede, and we love our YouTube viewers. Thank you. By the way, if you’re new to the podcast, try us out on YouTube. Be a part of that community. I’m really excited about this topic today, Chris, both this week, next week, John digging into ten things. And as he’s teaching these, I just like you. We’ve both been with John in and around John for over two decades, almost two and a half decades.

Mark Cole:
If you want to feel old, and I’ll tell you, I can think of a story. I can think of an application for every one of these that I’ve watched John over the years. So I’m looking forward to jumping into this. I’m looking forward to discussing it with somebody I think is successful. I think you’re successful as a parent, as a leader, as a community guy. And, man, let’s talk about some secrets to success.

Chris Goede:
It’s funny, because as we’re getting ready to get started, you and I were like, what do we want to talk about? And Jake said, just remember, we have a time limit. Jake’s keeping us on track. What I love about this list is he starts with thinking. And you and I would both agree, and those that have been around John, his ability to think is on a level that makes me feel like I don’t even think right. And so I’ve watched him do that. I’ve watched you do that over the years. Matter of fact, I often hear in the corporate world, people go, you know that book, how successful people think? I wasn’t going to read that. I didn’t think it was going to be that good.

Chris Goede:
I got into it, and they’re like, that’s one of my favorite books. And so that is right there, a tale of how much we need to think about thinking, if I can say it like that. Matter of fact, one other thing. I do a lot of studying in what’s relevant in corporate America with people growing and learning. And from 2022, one of the top ten things they’re looking for was the ability to think. Really, the ability to think was one of the top three. And so this is, I love. He starts this right here.

Chris Goede:
And you and I were talking about this, and I want you to kind of unpack this because you’ve got to experience this. And then you do this as well. You have what we call an inner circle, and then you have your outer circle. You learned it from John. And I think one of the reasons that John did this back in the day was to create a different way of thinking in order for him to be able to realize his dreams, talk a little bit about that, walking through that journey with him. Why was that? Why do you do it? And how has that helped your thinking to be able to be, you know.

Mark Cole:
Let me say this. I believe there are dreamers, there are thinkers, and then there’s action oriented people. I’d call them actors, but with Hollywood, and that feels like you’re acting like you’re something that you’re not. That’s not what I’m after. I’m talking about action oriented people. And I’ll come back to dreams in just a minute. And for YouTube, I’m going to come back to this book in just a moment. But I love that you talked about and highlighted John’s ability to think.

Mark Cole:
Let me tell you something unique about John. John always says this, and he says it laughing, but he’s dead serious. He says he is a communicator that teaches, not a teacher that communicates. And the reason that he wants to make that distinction is, he says a communicator takes something that’s complex and makes it simple. An educator takes something simple and makes it complex. No offense, educators, but I was in some of your classes, and that’s legitimately true. Some classes I went, and I was more confused after class than I was before class. But what John’s really saying is that to communicate effectively, to lead effectively, to do anything effectively, you’ve got to figure out how to break it down to where it is actionable.

Mark Cole:
The only bridge between a dream and the bigness of a dream unfulfilled and actually seeing the dream come to pass the bridge is thinking, thinking it through, creating action items and putting processed thinking into it. And so, for me, the way I think and the way John has taught me to think is get people around you that will challenge your thoughts, that will make, you know, most people should say, I was, I thought, and here’s the results. Not I’m thinking. They let that thought pass through their brain, and the thought becomes reality rather than sitting with the thought, turning a thought into thinking, and that thinking come out with great revelation.

Chris Goede:
That’s good. Yeah.

Mark Cole:
And so I think what John did with this outer circle that you’re talking about, and this has happened in the last decade, john said, you know what? My thinking is too stale. My files are too old. My way of doing things is too predictable. I’ve got to have some people that disrupts me. And he went out and established an outer circle. And he loves to tell the story about Linda, and he’s very kind to me. But I kind of didn’t like the outer circle either, because I was an inner circle guy. Why do you need an outer circle? He said, because y’all are making me too predictable.

Mark Cole:
I’ve got to extend and expand my thinking. And you do that expanded thinking by getting people that will stimulate new thought in you.

Chris Goede:
So you learned that from John, and now I’ve seen you apply that to your own leadership journey and your own principle. We know why the context is there. Maybe share with our listeners, some of the things that you have learned from that maybe you’ve been challenged with, and what I love about it is that all of that thinking that happens, you’re not going to apply all that, right? You’re going to filter that, but you’re being challenged by somebody else’s perspective that maybe has thought bigger. Or I’ve heard you say all the time, I got to get around people that are thinking bigger than me right where we want to go and the legacy of John. So talk about maybe some things that you have taken away from those that you would say are in your outer circle to challenge your thinking.

Mark Cole:
Yeah. So, you know, I think, again, I’m going to come back to this. I think it all starts with a dream. Put your dream to the test is a book. Those of you that have not read this book, just get the book. It’s ten questions that John challenges us to make sure that our dream is bigger than us, that our dream actually will attract others to that dream, and that our dream really will go from success to significance. That’s what John’s after in this book on put your dream to the test. And by the way, if you have read the book and you really want to do a deep dive in a digital online course, we have at maxwellleadershipcom, we have a digital online course.

Mark Cole:
I think it’s for three, $999 and you can go be a part of that. It’s about three 4 hours of John teaching it and take that and get the book and make it an accompaniment. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. In fact, if you’ll go to our show notes as a podcast listener, you can get that this week for $79 and you can attest your dream. You can arrest your dream and then you can realize your dream. Now, why did I say that right there? When you go and get an outer circle that is more successful, you talked about some of the people that I invited in. I’m talking about ceos of Fortune 50 companies. If you don’t have a dream that is bigger than you, you’re not going to keep those kind of people engaged.

Mark Cole:
Some of us don’t have an outer circle to help us with thinking because our dream is not valid and stimulating. And when you and I, Chris, we’re now carrying this mantle of responsibility of John’s legacy. There’s not many rooms we can’t get in with the number of years we’ve worked alongside John and the number of people that we’ve been exposed to. When I get in with them. I am so thoughtful in the questions I’m going to ask my outer circle that I’ve done more thinking before the meeting about thinking than even during the meeting. I’ll never forget. Several years ago I started doing this. I expanded my outer circle and I came up with seven questions that I was going to spend the entire year trying to answer.

Mark Cole:
You remember this? And we’re at the beginning of the year and maybe this will help some of you. It was seven questions that I said, I am going to be on a quest of answering these very big questions. I’m talking about questions like how do you take a personality founded company like John Maxwell company and turn it into a branded force for the world? And I went and talked to people that were leading big brands and I came up with seven questions and I asked five different leaders seven questions throughout that year. The same seven questions, they expanded my thinking from seeing five different perspectives to seven different questions. And I was able to expand my thinking. Realize the dream, we’re living it now. Because before you turn dreams into thinking and thinking into action, you’ve got to expand your thinking in the middle.

Chris Goede:
And what I remember, even some of the illustrations that you would share with our leadership team, and I’ll make a comment, then we’re going to move on because we could talk about this for the entire podcast, is not only did they expand your thinking, they also got your thinking back on the right track. That’s right, because I can remember you sharing some things about, man, I was in thought and I was thinking going down this path and I was carrying this weight, and they kind of reassured you, hey, take a deep breath. Not that you’re dealing with smaller things than what we’re dealing with, but let me get you back on track. And so not only expand your thinking, but then get your thinking focused. And so that the combination that just popped in my head that I wanted to share to our listeners and our viewers, because it is more than just the thinking and the thought that goes in it. When you get people that will expand your thinking and be able to realize your dreams and be successful, they’re going to help guide you by doing that. And that’s the part of the outer circle.

Mark Cole:
Before you go, I want to build on that. I put it in my notes, several. There was a time in my leadership that I was really thinking bigger. And by the way, when you think big enough, you will come to a conclusion that you’re inadequate. I’ll never be able to. Big thinking generates thinking of inadequacies 100%. So go think big, and you’re going to wrestle with, am I big enough for this? Do I have what it takes? The impostor syndrome. I was going through an impostor syndrome sometime back, and I was working through this scenario.

Mark Cole:
What if this big thing that I’m trying to do, Chris, what if it crashes and burns? And, I mean, the weight of the world was on my shoulder. I was stooped like this. You probably would have even recognized this different pace and different confidence and swagger to my leadership, because I was realizing and facing the feelings of inadequacy. I’ll never forget when I went and talked to a leader, and that leader asked me this question, is your ability to lead and your perception of your leadership tied to the success of this thing that you’re doing? And I said, absolutely. And he said, wrong. You’re a good leader, whether this doesn’t work or not, you are an accomplished, established, recognized leader, whether this particular initiative is a failure or not. The weight that took off of me, podcast family was unbelievable. I would rather dream big and struggle with feelings of inadequacy or dream small and struggle with over competence and cockiness.

Mark Cole:
And I want you to know, I’m going to challenge you that if your thinking is a little bit skewed, and Chris, John talked about this, our perspective is changed by our thinking. My thinking that day to 24 hours later, 24 hours when I went, my leadership ability has nothing to do with the success or the failure of this thing. I have already established that I’m a good leader. So you know what I do now? I challenge some of you to do this. I wake up every morning in January. I’ve woken up and I look in the mirror and I go, I’m a good leader. Mark Cole, you’re a good leader. Some of you are trying something so big, you need to remind yourself, whether it’s a success or a lesson, you’re still a good leader.

Chris Goede:
That’s great. So back to his first point, how you think is everything. And if you didn’t hear that in Mark’s voice and his examples, then rewind and start over again, because you need to hear that. I want to skip over the next one, but before, you know, we talked a lot about dreams, and John talks about number two, of deciding upon your true dreams. I don’t want you to miss this comment that he made at the back end of this point, because I think this hit me when I was listening to it. He said, man, if the things that you write down, he said, write down ten things that were foundational, like they were things that you remember when you were accomplished something, a dream. He used the judge, right, in pretzels on the playground, which both you and I and our team here had a little laugh. I thought this was key.

Chris Goede:
He said, if you think back and you write down this list of ten, if those things that you accomplished, those dreams you accomplished were a long time ago, those are foundational for you. If they are more recent, those should be motivational for you. My challenge for you that are listening is that if you’re not motivated by your dream, you better think about what your dreams are currently and what you want to accomplish in the recent, and not just living off of what was in the foundation. Just wanted to share that with you because it grabbed me when I was listening to it. Now, I want to move us to the point number three, because you talked about actors. You’re really talking about acting on our dreams. And we do need to be doers. We do need to take action.

Chris Goede:
We’ve talked a lot about this at Maxwell leadership recently, where, hey, we have to make decisions and move forward. To your point. I remember you saying to me a couple of months ago, we made a shift and you said, hey, Chris, I need you to go do this. But by the way, it’s a pretty big task. If it doesn’t work, that has no reflection on your leadership. And I was like, what are you talking about? But then listening to you, right, you.

Mark Cole:
Know now where it came from.

Chris Goede:
I now know where it came from, your outer circle, which helped me get a little bit bigger. But here’s what I want our listeners to hear from you, because oftentimes when we have a dream, we think we’ve got to do this by ourselves. You are carrying a large weight on behalf of John’s mantle and the legacy that we all want to see. And you started talking to us about, hey, guys, I had this realization that this is my dream. It is our dream, but I don’t have to do it alone. And I want you to talk a little bit about that because you don’t have to take action alone on your dreams. There are people, there are teams, there are peers, there are family members. Maybe there are founders around you that are going to help do that.

Chris Goede:
What was that shift for you? Again, it was almost kind of tied to number one, where you were carrying this weight and then you’re. No, no. So as we think about success and you have these dreams, we’ve got to take action, but we don’t have to take it. Alone. Talk a little bit about that.

Mark Cole:
For you know, I’ve watched John Maxwell lead for so long as the visionary and I’ve known all of our mean for as long as we’ve thought about what is life beyond John’s current influence. I’ve always known that we will never find another John Maxwell. He’s unique. He defies the law of leadership gravity, right? So I never put that on myself. I never felt the weight of having to be John. What I did though is how he led and how he single handedly could change the direction of a leadership team. With 130 minutes meeting. I put that weight on myself to say if one person can leader like that, then shouldn’t I be able to lead? And the answer is no.

Mark Cole:
The answer is where we’re going and the mass and magnitude with which we’re carrying the future aspirations. It’s much bigger than one person, much bigger than even John. So it was a learning perspective for me. And where it started going back to point number one, it started in my thinking, because nobody knows what goes on right behind the eyes, right? I mean the thoughts, the things we try to wrestle with. And for years and years and years I would try to tell myself I should be able to do that. That’s on me. I had to change the behavior and that began to live itself out in actions. To where now this year I do much less in our company with strategy and finance than I did just twelve months ago.

Mark Cole:
It’s been a full change to me with empowering somebody else that I even report to. I mean, tell me what I can spend and what I can’t spend out of my own company. Because when you find that you need other people, you have to empower them. And as senior leaders, here’s a real big understanding for us. When you empower somebody in something, that means you serve them to be successful. We’ll talk about this another time, Chris, but by now, hopefully many of you have seen the boys in the boat, the movie that came out for Christmas, great movie about one person on a team that loses his focus, that lost focus can impact the entire team. It’s not the effort. The effort was there.

Mark Cole:
He just wasn’t locked in. His mind was elsewhere. We as teams need to understand as a leader, we’re just a boy in the boat, we’re just a girl in the boat. This is not about any one of us. It’s about all of us and all of us rowing the boat in the way that we’re supposed to go.

Chris Goede:
So I 100% agree. And that shifted our thinking as a leadership team to know that, hey, if your dream, if your why is in alignment with the organization that you’re working with, your family, whatever it might be, that take action, but you don’t have to carry that weight alone to be successful. All right, well, let’s move to the last topic that I want to talk a little bit about, and that is the fifth one that John shared with us where he says, man, be persistent and work hard. We talk a lot about Maxwell leadership because John leads us this way. He’s so self deprecating. He’s like, let me tell you about my failures, and failures are going to happen along the way. I read this little statement. I want you to kind of react to this, okay? It says, success and persistence is a self feeding cycle.

Chris Goede:
And I was like, man, that is so true. Right? I’m going to get small wins. That’s why they say, hey, get a small win, you’re going to fail. Get a small win, and then you’re going to want to be persistent. And I think if you clarify your why and you map out what you’re doing, you’ll have a better chance of being persistent. Where does your persistency come from when you wake up every single day? No matter. John says everything’s uphill and it’s going to be hard work. Where does that come from in your.

Mark Cole:
So kind of like when John talks about he hit the parent lottery. You’ve heard him say that. I hope our podcast family has. He just feels like when it comes to parents, he got the parent lottery based on unconditional love and the Maxwell Drive. So he had the best of both worlds from his parents. Be very satisfied and settled where you are, but be very discontent with where you should be. And so John just has this perfect base calls that apparent lottery. I think I had the genetic lottery on this question in this way.

Mark Cole:
Number one, the Montgomery side. My mom’s side does not require much sleep. And so I’m not sitting here trying to get up and get ready every day. I’m just ready. Let’s go. Let’s just, let’s just make it happen. That is a genetic lottery that I don’t get credit for. The second thing that is a genetic lottery, in my opinion, is the passion, the determination, the fire to get something done.

Mark Cole:
And I don’t think you’re a very calm, spirited, settled person. You just bring a calmness to the room. Boy, the fire of competition is in your eyes. You’ve competed at the highest level of sports, so I don’t think it’s a personality thing. That’s drive. But I do think it’s kind of this genetic thing. Some people have it and some people are a sc on the disc pattern, right? So I think genetically, my id in the disc profile helps me. Now, having said that, I believe that a drive is cultivated by purpose and by a sense of accomplishment.

Mark Cole:
So when I lose my drive sometime it’s because of a prolonged sense of defeat or a prolonged sense of what’s the use? I can’t win anyway. What I have done, and some people call it exaggeration or some people call it inflating whatever they want to call. I have learned that when I feel a sense of losing too long, I find a way to change the rules so I can be winning again, get a win, because I’ve got to have a win. I’m a competitor. I’ve got to have a win. I am not a satisfied, habitual loser. So when we’re talking about this persistence, I had to constantly feel in the 1012 years of climbing and influence with John, I had to feel like I had momentum to get there. My greatest challenge, Chris, is when you get to the top of something, when you reach the apex, how do you keep that persistence going? Sure, most people get tired of the journey.

Mark Cole:
I never get tired of the journey. I get tired of the success, the accomplishment. There’s not a new challenge to go. So I think some of that’s genetic. Some of it’s training myself to not stay in a mindset of prolonged losing, and others is just finding a new challenge.

Chris Goede:
Well, and you developed a learned behavior. When that failure is happening and we know it’s going to happen, it happens to all of us. To reset that mindset, to reset your thinking. Coming back to, again, the first one that John talked about. So, as we get ready to wrap up, I want to throw this question to you. So John gave us five things today that can help you be successful and realize your dreams. How you think is everything. Decide upon your future and your true dreams and goals.

Chris Goede:
Take action. Never stop learning. We didn’t even talk about this, and this is one of our core values as an organization. We decided to skip this one because it would be the whole session and then finally be persistent and work hard. At Maxwell leadership, we believe that you can and will be successful. But for us, it’s really moving you from being successful to significant. And what are we doing to drive significance in our community and our family and our lives? In these five, which one of these do you feel like you lean on more than the other that takes you and maybe our listeners or those that are viewing us on YouTube to that level of significance as we kind of wrap up today.

Mark Cole:
Yeah, it’s a good know we define for you new listeners, we say this often. So for many of you, you’ve heard this before, but we say that success is what happens to you, what you acquire, what you accomplish. Significance is what happens through you, what you help other people accomplish and achieve. And so in that frame of reference number one, I’m torn between never stop learning because I just believe that’s a difference maker. But you know what? You can learn and never turn it into action. So I would be, and this is not just because it’s the last one. It’s about being persistent. John says that the scale of impact that he has now is all because of consistency.

Mark Cole:
He says it like this, consistency compounds persistency, consistency. It doesn’t just sound the same, a lot of ways it is the same. And so this idea of persistency, I will tell you, my business acumen does not impress people as much as my persistence. Stay in the course. My business success doesn’t inspire people as much as they know. You started at the entry level and now you get the privilege of being the CEO. It is the persistency of the journey that will inspire more people than the accomplishment of the advancement or the promotion.

Chris Goede:
It’s good.

Mark Cole:
Hey, first let me say this. I’m going to go to a user comment because I just love these. But let me remind you, I’m kind of impressed with this deal that I gave you guys today. $399 for the digital online course at maxwellleadershipcom. But if you’ll go through our podcast portal, go to the show notes, we’ll have a link there for you, and you’ll be able to get this digital online course for $79 instead of 399. Also pick up the book. And Chris, I think we were able to do that. I can’t wait for next week.

Mark Cole:
And five more success ideas or thoughts. We had a great comment this week that came in from Ethel. It’s from the podcast goal oriented to growth oriented. We’ll put that podcast in the show notes, but Ethel says, thanks, mark. Thanks for this episode. I’m Ethel from Ghana, and I’ve listened to your podcast consistently for a year now. Guess what? I’ve introduced John’s book, the 15 invaluable laws of growth to my team, and we spend 15 minutes on each law by each team member presenting one law. And we discuss this in our weekly morning meetings.

Mark Cole:
Ethel, you’re our hero. That’s why we do what we do. Ethel goes on and says, I’m amazed at the enthusiasm and love my team is showing toward this initiative. Today’s episode is so clear on the essentials of growth areas. Hence, our new book is the 16 undeniable laws of communication. I’m holding John to his book on is there a finish line? Once again, stay blessed. Ethel from Ghana. Ethel, we’re so proud to have you in the podcast family.

Mark Cole:
All of you that listen from around the world, we’re proud of you, thankful for you. Here we are. We’re here because everyone deserves to be led well.