707: Andy Stanley & Sam Kaufman - Problems to Solve, Tensions to Manage, The 3 Questions Behind Every Great Decision, and The 7 Essentials of Enduring Leadership (What Great Leaders Do)

The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk www. LearningLeader.com https://www. LearningLeader.com New Book: The Price of Becoming www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming https://www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My guests: Andy Stanley is the founder of North Point Ministries, which he started in Atlanta in 1995 and has grown into 8 churches across metro Atlanta and a network of more than 225 churches globally, serving over 200,000 people weekly. He's the author of more than 20 books, including Next Generation Leader, Visioneering, and Deep & Wide. His newest is What Great Leaders Do: 7 Essentials for Enduring Impact. He and his wife Sandra have three grown children and live in Atlanta. Sam Kaufman is the Chief Revenue Officer of Insight Global, a $5.3B talent, technical, and AI services firm. He started as an entry-level recruiter in 2004 and rose through the ranks to lead the company's core sales divisions. He's played a central role in Insight Global's transformation into a global talent and technical services organization, helping the company double in size over the past five years, and in 2026, he was named to Staffing Industry Analysts' Staffing 100 North America list, recognizing the most influential leaders in staffing. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Bucknell. Key Learnings Somebody saw it in him before he saw it in himself. Andy and Louie Giglio were the troublemakers in his dad's youth group. One morning after they'd disrupted everything, Mother Mary sat them down and told them they were leaders and needed to lead. Andy's reaction at the time: then I don't want to be a leader. She should have kicked them out, but she didn't. She kept giving them chances they didn't deserve and didn't handle well. She's about to turn 101 years old. She never had children of her own and to this day she calls them her sons. Now Andy does it for others. When he sees someone with a leadership gear, he tries to speak life into it and fan the flame, because that's what was done for him. Leadership is the most wonderful, dangerous gift. Every great thing that's happened in the world had a leader behind it. So did every terrible thing. People followed both for the same reason: the leader brought clarity to a dilemma, made a promise, and people leaned in. Andy thinks leaders are born, not made. His evidence: he's never met a leader who accomplished anything extraordinary who said they weren't a leader, then read two books or went to a conference and became one. Anyone can get better. "But you can make him a better singer and still never hand him a microphone." Problems to solve vs tensions to manage. Work-life balance is a tension. You don't solve it, you manage it. Every industry and every company has its own. "When you solve a tension, you create a problem." You can spot tension by the calendar. If it keeps reappearing on the agenda and somebody keeps saying didn't we just talk about this, you've been trying to solve something that was never a problem. Naming it changes the conversation. Once a team agrees they're looking at a tension, nobody is right and nobody is wrong, and people stop treating each other like enemies. Andy's team asks the question out loud once a month. Sam heard Andy teach this on a podcast and it moved through Insight Global in a week. He listened on the drive in, recognized the pattern live in his CEO's Thursday meeting, and shared it with 40 leaders in the room. It reached a 40,000 person company within days. Sam's read on why: they'd been having the same conversation for years and had never had the language for it. Nobody can promise certainty. You can give clarity. The only way to promise certainty is to know the future in detail. And the greater the uncertainty, the more the need for clarity is heightened. If there were no uncertainty, nobody would need a leader. When COVID made his entire model illegal, Andy redeployed. Rather than doing a half-baked version of the old thing, he pulled everyone together and told them they were hitting pause, building a new plan, and staying busy doing something different. Giving people something to do feels like clarity. You know what to do, you know when you've done it, and the organization keeps moving. Andy pairs it with Jim Collins on navigating fog: put one foot in front of the other and feel your way along. Action absorbs anxiety. Ryan's phrase, and Andy's addition: even when it isn't progress, it usually leads to progress, because there's motion and momentum. Think like a broadcast studio, not a live one. When they knew nobody would be in the room, they didn't film the old service. They rebuilt the auditorium into a television studio and talked to the camera. Sam, watching from home, still can't remember whether he was there in person. They kept the habits. Andy's view is that hitting pause and waiting to reopen the old way would have been an enormous miss. Sam says Insight Global never went back to how they were before and has grown for seven years since. "How long do you plan to stay?" Andy had lunch with John Maxwell carrying demographic research, expecting to be interrogated about how big to build. Andy said he thought this was his life's work. Maxwell said then build it as big as you possibly can. They built 2,700 seats in the middle of nowhere. Three years later they built another one behind it that seated 2,000. That's what intuition looks like. Maxwell knew the answer without knowing how he knew it. Andy would never have connected his own tenure to the size of the building. Andy's three questions for any big decision: What's considered impossible in our industry, but if it could be done would fundamentally change it? From Joel Barker's Future Edge. The point isn't that you'll answer it. It's that if you don't know the question, you won't recognize the paradigm shift when somebody else answers it. What would the next leader do? From Andy Grove at Intel, who asked Gordon Moore what a new team would do if the board threw them out. Moore answered instantly. Grove said then why don't we walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves. What would a great leader do? Not what's expected, not the industry standard. What would a selfless, others-first, high-integrity, world-class leader do here? The second question is terrifying because it produces instant clarity. Andy says it's how he's made the hardest personnel decisions of 31 years. You love the person and they can't keep up, and the next leader would have no emotional attachment and would see immediately what needs to happen. The best leadership decision Andy ever made was going home at 4:00. He'd resigned from his dad's church with two kids in diapers, a pregnant wife, and no insurance. Then he started the church and worked constantly. He asked Sandra what she needed and didn't want her to hold back. She said be home between 4:00 and 4:30, because by then her energy with the kids was gone. So he became the first one to leave the office. When people asked to meet after work, he said before work instead, and ate two breakfasts. He ran that routine for about ten years. "I'm gonna cheat work. I'm not gonna cheat home." The deadline made him better at his job. If you have an hour to do something it takes an hour, and if you have two it takes two. Walking out the door at a fixed time made him dramatically more efficient, and everything still got done. We're supposed to be examples of the rule, not exceptions to it. Andy encouraged his staff to make the same call, and it set the organization's standard from day one. "It's not a sacrifice, it's an investment." What he tells his kids now they're grown with their own families.. Sow and reap, and you only get one shot at it. Parent towards the relationship, not towards compliance. Andy and Sandra had two rules: honor your mother, and don't tell a lie. You can dishonor me, but not her. Lying breaks relationships, and they wanted their relationships intact. Discipline toward reconciliation instead of restriction. When his middle son Garrett was disrespectful to Sandra, Andy made Garrett call his mother, ask her on a date, take her to dinner, and pay for it. By the end of the dinner it was resolved. Don't sweat the small stuff. Andy and Sandra were foster parents for ten years. Their biological kids came over one day and watched a five-year-old foster daughter roller skate across the hardwood floors, and pointed out they'd never even been allowed to run in the house. Andy's regret is that he wasn't that way when his own kids were young. Do the eulogy exercise. From Stephen Covey. Write what you'd want people to say about you at your funeral. Andy spent several mornings on it in his early 30s. Covey's line at the end: you have just discovered your personal definition of success. He reduced it to seven words, and he won't tell anyone what they are. He used to share them until he noticed people writing them down. His view: those are his, and you have to go get your own. The exercise changed what failure means. Once Andy defined success as those values, stepping outside them wasn't just messing up. It was failing, by his own definition. Don't let your identity shift from what you value most to what you're known for. Andy is grateful for the influence, but he didn't want to become the pastor of, or the author of. He says it's especially easy for men to center on what they're known for out in the world rather than who they are at home. "I only have one unique role. That's father to my children." Sandra could get another husband. There will be another pastor and other authors. Nobody else can be the father to his children. "Your ego is not your friend." Jeff Foxworthy's answer when Andy asked what one piece of advice he'd give Andy's son Andrew, a stand-up comedian, so that at 68 he'd end up where Foxworthy is instead of where many people in show business end up. "The people I work with the most would quit before they followed me into something stupid." They'd be on his doorstep if he started doing something dumb, and Sandra wouldn't even have to call them. Foxworthy fired his manager and hired his best friend from fifth grade. Same reason. That friend knew him as a middle schooler, so he's not Jeff Foxworthy the world-famous comedian. He's Jeff the goofball. Andy's champagne moment: celebrating a year after he's gone. Not just that there's a successor, but that the global network of churches is thriving without his direct involvement. That, to him, is professional success. And the second half: that his kids want to be with him and with each other when they no longer have to be. That was the goal of their parenting from the start. You sow and sow and then find out whether you get to reap it. Reflection Questions What's on your agenda every month that you keep trying to solve? Is it actually a problem, or a tension you need to manage? Run your biggest current decision through all three questions. What's considered impossible in your industry? What would the next leader in your seat do? What would a great leader do? Who has permission to show up at your door and ask who you think you are? If you can't name them, that's the first thing to fix. More Learning #687: Jim Collins https://learningleader.com/jimcollins/ - What to Make of a Life #361: John Maxwell https://learningleader.com/episode/361-john-maxwell-the-essential-changes-every-leader-must-embrace/ - The Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace #358: Stephen Covey https://learningleader.com/episode/358-stephen-covey-the-one-thing-that-changes-everything-trust/ - The One Thing That Changes Everything (Trust) Podcast Chapters 00:00 Apply for the Learning Leader Circle 01:16 Meet Andy Stanley 02:50 Mother Mary Saw It First 05:25 The Most Wonderful, Dangerous Gift 07:08 Are Leaders Born or Made? 08:37 Problems to Solve, Tensions to Manage 11:44 When You Can't Offer Certainty, Offer Clarity 15:43 The Messy Middle 20:42 Lunch With John Maxwell 24:16 The Three Questions 28:54 What Would a Great Leader Do? 30:01 AI and the Tornado of Transformation 31:20 Putting Your Values on the Wall 32:11 "I'm Gonna Cheat Work. I'm Not Gonna Cheat Home." 36:55 Parenting Toward the Relationship 41:02 The Eulogy Exercise 45:35 Your Ego Is Not Your Friend 51:58 The Champagne Question 55:07 EOPC

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Hawk?

  You should join a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. That's what James Clear said to me a few years ago at our Learning Leader Growth Summit. Our Learning Leader Growth Summit is the three-day leadership retreat we have for members of our Learning Leader Circle. And applications are now open to be part of our next Learning Leader Circle. If you want to be surrounded by a group of eights and nines and tens who are striving to be better, this group might be for you. If you want to be surrounded by a group of get after it doers, people who are achieving

• 0:41Ryan Hawk?

  big things, making a positive dent in the world, then the Learning Leader Circle might be for you. If that's you, go to learningleaderscircle.com to apply. That's learningleaderscircle.com.

• 0:59Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, onto tonight's featured leader, the great Andy Stanley is the founder of North Point Ministries, which he launched in Atlanta in 1995 and has grown into eight churches across metro Atlanta and a global network of more than 225 churches, serving over 200,000 people a week. He's the author of more than 20 books.

• 1:39Ryan Hawk?

  His latest is called What Great Leaders Do: Seven Essentials for Enduring Impact. And I had a special guest host, my friend, Sam Kaufman, Chief Revenue Officer at Insight Global, joined me on this one because Sam lives in Atlanta and has benefited from seeing Andy's work in person at his church over the years. During our conversation, we discussed the one question John Maxwell asked over lunch that determined how big Andy built this next church. Then, the difference between a problem you solve and a tension you manage and how that

• 2:19Ryan Hawk?

  one distinction spread through all of Insight Global after Sam heard Andy teach it and then he went to work to implement it. Next, leading through uncertainty, what Andy did when COVID forced him to rebuild the entire business model in real time and why clarity and not certainty is what people actually need from a leader. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy our conversation with Andy Stanley.

• 2:50Ryan Hawk?

  I loved reading about Mother Mary and actually the story of the power of a leader believing in somebody else.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58Ryan Hawk?

  Because now you're in the position to believe in somebody, but she's one of the first that believed in you when you were kind of a punk. Can you tell the story of Mother Mary?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Louie Giglio and I grew up together in my dad's church and we were kind of the troublemakers in our little youth group. One morning after we had disrupted everything, everybody had left and she brought us back in and she sat us down. I still remember the room and she said, Andy, you and Louie are leaders and you need to lead. These kids will do what you, you know, she went on and on about our influence. I mean, I think I was in the eighth or ninth grade, just remembering the season. And I remember thinking, well, then I don't want to be a leader. If a leader means you have to behave and do what the adults say. But I still remember that conversation. I mean, nobody ever associated leader with me for many, many, many years after that.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  But she saw something in us and of course Louie has done extraordinary things in the world as a leader and I've had the opportunity to do extraordinary things. And she's 101, she's about to turn 101. So when, on her 100th birthday, we went, Louie and I went over there and had our picture made with her and posted about her. She saw what we did not see. And I mean, for years after that, she gave us opportunity after opportunity that we did not deserve, that we did not handle well, and she just never gave up. And Mary never had children of her own and to this day, she calls us her sons. So talk about vision cast, you know, and to your point, Ryan, because of that, when

• 4:34Speaker 01

  I see people who I think have that kind of potential or a leadership gear, maybe we'll talk about that, I just try to just speak life into that and fan that flame because she did that for both of us and we did, we did not deserve it. Oh my gosh.

• 4:47Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, what do you think she saw?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Well, what she saw is, as we did, everybody else in the youth group did. If we did good, they followed along. If we were disrupting, we kind of set the temperature in the room. It was, and again, this, we're talking about 40 or 50 middle school, high school kids. This was hundreds of people. But she knew if she could get us online with what she was trying to do, her work was done. And if we weren't, it wasn't. And she should have kicked us out. I mean, the easy thing is, you know what? I have all these kids that I'm responsible for. You guys are out. And she never gave up and I do not know why, so.

• 5:24Ryan Hawk?

  Now that you're in the position that she was in, there's so much weight in your words. You have so much power and I think it's really cool when you can use your power for good. How do you try to use all the power you've acquired to pour into people, to help them, to lift them up?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Well, part of it is my job and you know, anybody who has employees in our organization has grown through the years. So you have built-in influence because you know, you're signing their paychecks or you sign the paycheck of the person that signs, you know, you just have automatic influence. And of course, because of how I was raised, influence is a stewardship. And one of the things I talk about in the book is that leadership really is the most wonderful, dangerous gift. I mean, everything that's happened great in the world, there was a point leader. Everything that's happened horrible in the world was a point leader that was a man. So, you know, we can say that. So you think about the big history, the things that are just embarrassing for a nation or embarrassing for the human race, there was somebody leading that.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  And the reason people followed them is not because what they were doing was good. They followed them because they were a leader and they brought clarities as some kind of dilemma. They made a promise, whether they could keep it or not, and people believed and they leaned in. And so leadership, it's the most wonderful, it is the most dangerous gift. And those of us with a leadership gear are responsible, I think, for stewarding it well. And, and to your question, recognizing the people around us who kind of have that gear. And when you invest in a leader, it's a multiplier because leaders are going to lead. I just think they can't help it. They look behind them and people are following along. So again, it's a wonderful, dangerous thing.

• 7:08Ryan Hawk?

  How much of that is born versus developed over the course of your life?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  It's all born. That's not the popular answer, but here's why I say that. In the situation with Mary Gilchrist and me and Louie is a good example. We weren't trying to lead anybody. We were just being ourselves and we, because there were two of us who kind of had this leadership thing, things just happened. And so she noticed it. The other reason I say that is you've interviewed a lot of leaders, so you may say there's an exception to this. I've never met a leader who's accomplished anything extraordinary, who said, you know, I wasn't a leader and then I went to a conference and I became a leader. I wasn't a leader and then I read two leadership books and then suddenly I knew how to lead. Never.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  In fact, the people who do the great things, they just start doing the thing and people follow along. So I do think people are born, you know, there's all kinds of explanations, but at the end of the day, I think you kind of have it or you don't. Now, anybody can become a better leader.

• 8:11Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  But I can become a better singer, you're still never going to give me a microphone, right? So everybody can become a better leader, but we recognize pretty quickly the men and women who just, there's just a thing.

• 8:25Ryan Hawk?

  I think you may be the only person who has ever answered that question that way. I appreciate that.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Well, that means I'm probably wrong, but I'm sticking with it.

• 8:35Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. No, I love it. I want to talk about something and I want Sam to cover this because this is something he has lived within his company and the language has become very sticky at Insight Global. And that's problems and tension or the difference. So problems are something you solve and tension is something that you manage. Sam, can you, can you bring this to life, how you guys actually implemented this?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Andy, our, our CEO has a meeting every Thursday. We have, it's like his big team meeting. And it was probably like a year or a year and a half ago, that was in a podcast that you did. Where you were talking about problems to solve, tensions to manage. And one of my like managing directors in the business had forwarded it to me and she's like, I think this is really interesting. Check this out. And I had listened to it that morning on my way into work and we were literally talking about something. And for years, we've been talking about the same thing. And we always were like, is that a something we could solve? And we didn't have the language. We just did not have the language. And another topic came up in his meeting. Where I was like, oh, wow, it's happening right now. And so for like 40 leaders in the room, I said, hey, guys,

• 9:42Speaker 02

  I just listened to this podcast this morning. It's all around problems to solve versus tensions to manage. I want to give you the example they gave and put some language around it. And Andy, within a week, I mean, truly within a week, it's like a 40,000 person company. This was in our business. Like it, it spread like wildfire. And that's how you just know how much that language was needed in the world and the gift that like you gave us. Because there were so many things we were just trying to solve that were not problems to solve.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  And they keep showing up on the agenda. And it's like, didn't we just talk about this?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And you just couldn't clear it.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. You tried to solve attention. When you, when you solve attention, you create a problem. In our organization, I mean, not every week, but you know, once a month, there's a discussion and somebody says, okay, wait, is this a problem to solve or attention? We just need to live with and manage. And again, to your point, when that gets clarified on the front end, the discussion goes in a much more healthy direction. And we have patience with each other because we realize oftentimes we're on a two different sides of a, of a tension. We're not enemies. Nobody's right. Nobody's wrong. It's like work, life balance, right? You don't solve that. You manage that. And so, once you recognize them in every industry, there are industry specific tensions to manage. There are company specific tensions to manage.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Just kind of getting them front and center saves so much time.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. You nailed that one. I mean, we, that's, that literally changed our business for the better. So when I saw it in the book, I was very excited about it just because it was, it was just such a good revelation for our company. So thank you.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things that I, and this, I appreciate you saying that so much because I wrote this book. I wanted it to be practical, applicable leadership, not cool sayings and principle, general principles. But the do stuff, because you know, great leaders are known before what they do, not what they think, or even what they believe. And so those simple ideas, once they're applied, you know, they just work. And of course, none of them are original with me for sure. So.

• 11:44Ryan Hawk?

  In chapter called Clarify the Win, there's a conversation or some writing about certainty and clarity or certainty versus clarity. And I think that's one of the biggest things that leaders in general are going to deal with, especially over time, is just a lot of uncertainty.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Well, that's why there's the need for leadership. If there was no uncertainty, nobody needs a leader. Everything's figured out already, right?

• 12:10Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. So let's go back to 2020. COVID, there's no playbook, right? What was the real life stuff happening for you when the world's shutting down? And part of what you do is, is getting people together in person. And it looks like, oh, this could be a problem. What, what was going on at that time for you?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Our whole business model, so to speak, is no longer even possible. It's against the law in certain parts of the country to do our business, which is put people in rows and, you know, recirculated air for an hour and 15 minutes and then have their kids in their own rooms with, you know, the whole thing. So again, these are principles and ideas and practices I've lived with for so long. So I knew, of course, during 2020, everybody in the world wanted certainty. Nobody in the world could promise it. Now politicians, to pick on them for a moment, they always promise certainty. That's how you get elected. And then when what was certain doesn't happen, it was somebody else's fault. And they run out and get in front of another parade. And I, I, I love our political system and I

• 13:11Speaker 01

  vote and all that. But unfortunately, you've got to promise certainty. But smart people and honest leaders know you cannot, the only way to promise certainty is to know the future in detail. So the next best thing to certainty is clarity. And in times of uncertainty, the need for clarity is so heightened. This is the opportunity for leaders to step in and to bring clarity to a time of uncertainty. And for us, I knew that basically we couldn't do much of anything we had been doing. So my responsibility, I felt like practically speaking, was to give people something to do. So I got all of our staff together. I said, okay, we are redeploying.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  We're not going to try to do what we've been doing and just kind of do it half baked. We're just going to hit pause on all of that. We're going to redeploy. We're going to come up with a plan. And we're going to be busy, but we're essentially going to redeploy and do something different. And as I would have expected, and as generally happens, when you give people something to do in the midst of uncertainty, it feels like clarity. Because I know what to do. I know when I've done it. And the organization keeps moving. It keeps moving forward. And sometimes I love Jim Collins idea of how you navigate a fog. The way you navigate a fog is you just keep putting one step in front of the other, feel your way along.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  And so during times of uncertainty, give people something to do. That's a measure of clarity. And forward you go. So we, and lots of organizations experience this, not just us for sure. We learned so many new good habits that stayed with us to this day. But those are habits we would not have developed if we just hit pause and said, well, we just have to, we just have to wait till we can open back up and do what we've always been doing, the way we've always done it. That would have been a huge, huge miss. So the goal is people want certainty. There's no way to promise that. We can provide clarity. And the greater the uncertainty, the more important it is to bring clarity. And sometimes it is as simple as giving people something to do.

• 15:19Ryan Hawk?

  I've heard the phrase, action absorbs anxiety. And I think that plays, right? Action absorbs anxiety. Like when in doubt, let's go do something as opposed to sitting here like being scared or waiting or being uncertain.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Well, it feels like progress. And, and in most cases, even if it isn't progress, it leads to progress. Because there's forward motion and momentum. So I love that phrase. That's good.

• 15:43Ryan Hawk?

  Sam and I were talking about before we were recording, he was there in 2020 and watching, I believe, a couple of the messy middle, Sam, and better for it. Can you go into that story?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  You do remember. Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Andy, I was, I was telling Ryan, that was obviously such a time of uncertainty. And you had a lesson that was around, you know, the messy middle. And we, for about 60 weeks, because our company was very much an in-person company. We're a company that believes in culture. We hire entry level employees. We promote from within. We're a very organic story. We like having great relationships with our clients. It was all in person. So we went from all the things we do internally and externally, to not being able to do any of those things, right? In a, in a weekend's time. And so you had given us more language around this messy middle and what we're going to go through. And we actually, like, again, our CEO anchored to that and talked about the messy middle almost all the way through COVID.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  And then better for it was just also just a tremendous way to take something that people were experiencing in a, in an uncertain way and, and brought a lot of clarity to how you could make the best of it. And so there was a lot of great personal and leadership development we took from those lessons that you gave to it.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  That is so encouraging because, and I'll tell you why, because for a year, I did not speak on Sunday morning to a live audience. I just spoke to a camera. So you get no feedback. You get no smiles. No, I didn't know if anybody was laughing at the stuff I thought was funny or going hmm, when I said something I thought was profound. So to hear you be able to refer back to that all those years ago as a communicator. That's so encouraging. And the series that Sam's referring to, I just asked the question, okay, we can't change the reality, but how can we be better for it? So we spent several weeks just trying to answer the question, how can we be better for it? Because there's always a way to be better for it. Instead of just throwing our hands up and waiting for

• 17:41Speaker 01

  things to come back and be normal again. So thank you, Sam. That's a, wow.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Also maybe more, sorry, let's throw more compliments at you. But, uh, but it was so good that actually Ryan was like, wait, were you in person for that? And I was like, it can't be that we were, because it was like, right, it was like, we were not, but it was so good in the way it was produced that I couldn't differentiate in my mind. If that was one of those ones where you might've been on the other side of the church? Or if it was actually just fully remote and I was watching from home. That's how much it like radiated and spoke to me in that moment. So.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  If I can comment on that, I'm sorry, I'm kind of hijacking the conversation. But again, let me tell you why that is such a compliment. Because when we knew that we weren't going to have people in the room, I said, okay, we have to think like a broadcast studio rather than a, an in-person live studio. So let's not do it the way we've done it and just broadcast it. Let's set ourselves up almost like a newsroom where we're talking to the camera. Everybody's on the other end of the lens. So our whole team, again, it was so exciting because they had something specific to do. We rearranged the whole auditorium and turned it into a giant kind of television studio.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Because we knew for the next few months, hey, nobody's going to be in this room. And again, we learned so much and to the point, you can't even remember if you were there live or not. So kudos to our team. All of that was on them. It wasn't my idea. So.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  But to your book's credit, like trusting your gut and asking the right questions. We transformed as a business, like actually, we never really went back to how we were pre-COVID. And we've continued to grow a lot for the last seven years. And so we had to do the same thing. We had to trust our gut. We had to let things go a different way. We had to ask ourselves the right questions. So I just think the practicality that you're, you're searching for in, in your new book is, is really, I mean, it's on full display for me at least.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Goodness.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:39Ryan Hawk?

  By the way.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  What do I owe you for this? This is, this is the most encouragement I've received in quite some time for anything I've written. So thank you.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Good. It's just a, you know, small fee at the end of this. Yeah.

• 19:51Ryan Hawk?

  I'm just curious, six years ago, do you remember every Sunday? Is it right in here? Like, how do you remember this stuff?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't. If you had asked me-

• 20:01Ryan Hawk?

  But you snapped right back. Sam said it, and I saw your eyes. You were right in it, like, immediately. And you remembered it. Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know. I've been creating content every week for 40 years.

• 20:13Ryan Hawk?

  I know.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  I know. It's, I know. But I get confused sometimes. There's a, there's a woman that works with me, Darcy Dickerson. And Darcy, I mean, every week, I'm like, Darcy, where was the message where I talked about the thing and the thing? I can't find it. I need to dump it all into AI and get it all organized. But right now, I just use DD instead of AI, Darcy Dickerson. She's, she's not quite as fast, but she's as accurate. So, but yeah, I don't, it's not as, it's not up here as, maybe as much as you think, but.

• 20:42Ryan Hawk?

  I want to go back to some of the earlier days. You had a lunch with John Maxwell. He's been on here a few times. Love John. I know you do too. And you were looking for some advice. Attendance actually dropped. You were working to build a new place. What happened at that lunch with John Maxwell?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it wasn't related to attendance. What happened is we'd purchased a piece of property, our first piece of property. We didn't have any money. We're beg, borrowing, but we had a piece of property. And we had contracted an architect to design our first building. So the question is, what do you build and how big do you build? So I just met John, asked him to lunch, and my big, my question was, John, how big of an auditorium? Because once a church designs the auditorium, then you create all the other space to go along with it. How much children's space? Because it becomes a ratio of kids to adults, that kind of stuff. So I brought all this demographic information. I had all this, because I thought, oh, he's going to ask me a lot of questions. We sat down. We had not even ordered yet. I tell the story in the book.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  And I'm kind of nervous because it's John Maxwell, and I've been listening to his, hell, it's on his tape, subscriptions, his cassette tapes. I mean, he's like, John Maxwell. So I'm like, John, okay, here's the question I have. We have our property. We've hired an architect. How big should we build? And again, I thought he was going to ask us a question about access, all this stuff. He says, well, Andy, how long do you plan to stay? And I'm like, what does that have to do with how big of a building we build? I'm like, well, I think I'm going to stay here forever. I think this is my life's work. He said, well, then just build it as big as you possibly can. And we hadn't even ordered lunch yet. And I'm like, wait, but here's the point of the story is in the chapter about intuition.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  His intuition was such that he knew the answer without knowing how he knew the answer. It just was so obvious to him. Andy, why are you asking me such a, you know, he didn't say that. But he just had intuition. And so that's what we did. We built an auditorium. When I walked in it, as they were kind of finishing up, there were no chairs in there. I literally was, I was with my wife, Sandra. I said, what have we done? This is too big. But what if people don't come? You know, then I'm second guessing everything. But he knew immediately the answer. So yay, John.

• 23:00Ryan Hawk?

  2,700 seats, is that right?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. In the middle of kind of nowhere. I mean, right now, if you come to Alpharetta, it's like the Silicon Valley of the Southeast, supposedly, is what people say. But back then, I mean, the roads didn't even connect. There was, it was kind of in the middle of nowhere. And then two or three years later, we had to build another auditorium that sat 2,000 people right behind the original one. We just grew very fast. But John, his intuition, he just, he asked the right question. And I would have never considered my tenure had any connection to what to build, so.

• 23:36Ryan Hawk?

  But isn't it easier for him to say, because you're the one who actually has to go out and stand in front of the people? Or not have people there? Isn't that easier for him to say, oh, just make that sucker huge, man? Like, just go for it?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it was easier. But he had enough insight into what he had experienced, where we were in a rental situation before that. And he had enough confidence, I guess, in me. He just thought, if you're going to be there, this is your thing. Like, you're going to spend the rest of your career there, then just go for it. And that was based a bit on his experience as a pastor and his experience with other pastors. So again, he had a lot of knowing without knowing how he knew.

• 24:16Ryan Hawk?

  So leadership is about decision making, and you're always having to make big calls. I read about your framework behind big decisions, and there's these three questions. I'd love for you to kind of expand on them. What's considered impossible to do? What would the next leader do? And what would a great leader do? The three questions. Can you tell me how you got to this framework to ask these questions behind all major decisions?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  These are the three questions that have kind of chased me around. One of them since 1992. Joel Barker wrote a book called Future Edge. I think it's out of print, but they retitled it. And it was about paradigms. And that's where I bumped into the first question is, what in your industry is considered impossible to do, but if it could be done, would fundamentally change your business? You know, what do your peers think in your business or industry, they consider it's impossible to do? But if it could be done, it would fundamentally change your industry. That question has been framed and sitting on someplace in my office ever since then. Because it's a question that forces me outside, and this was the point that he was making, outside my framework or paradigm. What's considered impossible to do? Because somebody's always messing with the rules.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  And the reason it's so important for leaders to keep that question front and center, in my opinion, is not that they are going to answer the question. But if they don't know what the question is, when somebody else begins answering it, they're not going to recognize, hey, we're about to experience a paradigm shift, and we need to be on the front end, not the back end. And what generally happens when something shifts like that in an industry or a business or even a company, the naysayers are immediately critical. They latch on to the current paradigm, the current model, the current everything, and push back against the future. Meanwhile, somebody, again, they're, they're messing with the rules. So I, that question has been front and center for us ever since.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  And I tell a couple of stories in the book about where we felt like we were in on the front end of at least one major paradigm shift as it relates to churches. But we were asking the question, and it was actually a leadership shift. The second one came from Andrew Grove's book, Only the Paranoid Survive, which is the greatest book title for a leadership book. Only the Paranoid Survive. And Andy Grove was the third employee of Intel and the third CEO of Intel. And he tells the story about, you know, they were the number one chip manufacturer in the world. They had, they almost had 100% of the chip manufacturing business in the 70s. And then in the 80s, the Japanese got into that market, and they couldn't keep up because Japanese were funded by the Japanese government

• 26:52Speaker 01

  versus, you know, an American company. So that's what the book is about. Where the question came from, he tells a story about after they tried and tried and tried to keep up with the Japanese, they just couldn't. And so they were trying to figure out what to do, and he turns to the CEO, Gordon Moore. And he says, if the board kicked us out and brought in a new team, what would the new team do? And he said Gordon Moore answered immediately. The new team would get us out of the chip business. And Andrew Grove says, well, then why don't we get up, walk out the door, come back in and do it ourselves? So that's where the question, what would the next leader do?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  And I'm telling you, it's a painful, somewhat terrifying question to ask, because there is almost instant clarity when you ask that question. Because I love our people. I love our model. I love all the things we've created. But as they begin to age and as they begin to get a little tired, there's an emotional attachment, which in business and organizational life is an unhealthy attachment. But the new people coming in, they're like, I don't have any emotional connection to any of this, and it's clear to me what needs to happen. So what would the next leader do? That question has helped me make the most difficult personnel decisions I've had to make in 31 years. Because every once in a while, there's somebody you love, but they're just not keeping up, and they can't keep up.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  But you love them, you appreciate them, you have history with them, there's an emotional connection. But the next person would move that person or move that person out of the organization, because the organization's more important than anybody in the organization, and that's true of all organizations. Then the third question, what would a great leader do? I mean, it's sort of the title of the book. But this is the question that I, again, the two, those first two questions, they are framed in my office and have been for years. What would a great leader do is literally painted on the walls in multiple of our office suites, because I want this in front of our employees at all times. Like, okay, I know what you're expected to do. You know what everybody else would do. You know what industry standards are.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  But before you pull the trigger, if you were a great leader, I mean, world-class, a selfless, others-first, the organization first, extraordinary integrity, what would a, at least pause and ask the question, what would a great leader do? And that question lifts us above the circumstances of our leadership. Because when we're trying to make decisions or consider options, we are laser focused on the options in front of us. But sometimes the best option isn't immediately obvious. So what would a great leader do forces me to address my selfishness, my dishonesty with why are we really doing this? And this may come across as simplistic.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  If a leader does what a great leader would do, they are in fact a great leader. Great is as great does. That's how we know who the great leaders are. So those are the three questions I've kept front and center for many, many years. And if I go there, I do better. When I forget, I pay for it.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Sorry, Ryan, you're speaking to my soul right now, so I just have, I have to interrupt. We're, we're a talent and consulting business. So I don't know if you read the news at all, but there's this thing called AI that's coming around.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  And it's, it's really, uh, it's really changing what people considered possible or impossible.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And so we are in the middle of a tornado of transformation inside of our business and in the market around us. And so that's an amazing framework that I can't wait to give to my leaders.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we just, this morning, we had a leadership lab that we did for all of our partners and our staff all over the city and the country. And we brought in Carrie Newhoff to talk specifically about AI and the implications for the local church. And it was phenomenal because there's implications for everything. So you're exactly right. There was the industrial revolution. There was social media. And in both of those instances, it took a long time for the laws and society to catch up with the negative ramifications for both child labor laws. And now what's happening with children, as you know, the same is going to be true for AI. But to try to get ahead, knowing there are going to be extraordinary positive things and potentially negative things.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And for those of us who are in the people business, we've got to pay attention to that.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the other part that you said that just really resonated was just, we write our values on the wall too, Andy. And so we run our whole business to those values. We don't have, what would a great leader do?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  There's room somewhere on a wall for that.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, there is, there is. But you know, you gotta keep your messages tight, you know, you gotta, ours are everyone matters. We take care of each other. Leadership is here to serve. High character and hard work above all else, and always know where you stand. And so for us, that's our actual explanation of who we want every person in our business to be and the definition of our leadership as well. And you said things like humility. I'm like, oh, God, we don't say it as explicitly. So I think there's an opportunity for us to think about how we, we ask the question, but we want all of our people to, you know, again, in a practical way, think about how they could be the best leader possible every single day.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, love it. So cool.

• 32:11Ryan Hawk?

  Andy, you had a tough decision to make earlier on in your career when you resigned from your dad's church after a decade. And you have kids and diapers. Sandra's pregnant with your third.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:25Ryan Hawk?

  "The most uncertain season of my life," is I believe what you wrote. What made you make that call?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, we didn't have insurance. She's uninsurable because she's pregnant. This is, you know, 30 years ago. I'm uninsurable because the new baby's going on my insurance. So we could get health insurance for our two little ones and Sandra and I were uninsurable. That was the message we kept getting. And we didn't have a job and I had quit the job. So it's all, you know, it's all kind of on me. And then we started the church. And anybody who's started anything knows you're never finished. I mean, it's, it's constant. So when we launched the church, I was working all the time and I had very good work, life balance up until that point. Because that was what was modeled for me with my dad. But, um, it was not going well.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And so I came home one day and I said to Sandra, okay, just don't hold back. By this time, we have three kids, two in diapers, one was almost out, but, and I'm working constantly, you know, and I want to be the last person to leave the office, you know, all the stuff. I said, what do you need from me? Just tell me, I want to fix this. She said, I just need you to be home between four and 4:30. Just, you can leave as early as you want in the morning, but by four o'clock, I am done. My energy, it's gone with the kids. I'm like, okay. So I told our staff, hey, I'm probably going to be the first to leave the office. You know, so people would say, hey, can I meet you at after work? I said, no, before work. So I would have two breakfasts, you know, how you just, because the morning was mine.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  But I needed to be home and stay home, not come home and then go, you know, run off to a meeting or something. So for about 10 years, that was my routine. And I, I don't recommend this, and I talk about this in the book, at the end of the book. I said, I kind of made a deal with God. I don't recommend making a deal with God. I don't think God makes deals. But my thought was, you know, God, I can only give you about 40 hours or 45 hours a week. And I've, I gotta be home. And so whatever you can build with 45 of my hours, I will be content with that. But I'm going to cheat work. I'm not going to cheat home anymore. And so that was a decision, our staff understood that. I encouraged them to make the same decision. I'm like, look, we're for families, we're for what's happening at home.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  We can't be exceptions to the rule. We're supposed to be examples of the rule. And that not only did something for us and our marriage and our family, but it really did set a standard for our organization going forward. And we've been known since day one as we are a family-friendly organization. We work hard, we're extremely busy. But at the end of the day, I want kids to grow up and love the local church. And I want staff members' kids to grow up and love the local church, not resent it. So, um, I call that the best leadership decision I ever made was basically, I'm going to cheat work. I'm not going to cheat home and I will be content with the output and the product as a result.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  And what, the other thing that happened, and I talk about this in the book, you know, everybody knows this. If you have an hour to get something done, it takes an hour. If you have two hours, it takes two. Well, I became very efficient in my work because I had a deadline. I had to walk out the door. I was so much more efficient and everything got done. Not everybody was happy because everybody, you know, I didn't meet with everybody that wanted to meet with me. But I made that decision, I was 37, I was 38, because we, that was 95, 96. I was 38 and now I'm 68 and best leadership decision I ever made.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  And I think it's very applicable to the time too. People now, I mean, so many virtual meetings that are on Zoom calls all day, busy is what people aspire to.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  You don't regret enjoying going home. It's a good thing. So. And now I've got three kids. They're all grown. They're all married. They all have kids and they're all working and they're hard workers. They remember, this comes up in conversation as they're trying to navigate that same complexity with two, you know, everybody's all, six of them have jobs. And they've got kids and I'm like, okay, you know how this goes. There's, it's not a sacrifice, it's an investment. And if you want what we have now as a family, as I say in the book, it's the law of the harvest. You sow, you reap, and then you're 50 and you get one shot at this. So you don't want to miss this one.

• 36:55Ryan Hawk?

  You and Sandra also wrote a parenting book that I know Sam and his wife Jenna have implemented into their household, which was really cool with their four kids to hear how they've done this. Sam, can you, can you?

• 37:05Speaker 01

  I love our parenting book so much.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  I love, I loved it too, Andy. I loved it too. Again, our, our company, our purpose is to develop our people personally, professionally and financially. I think when I think about the, you know, what I've learned from you over the last eight years of knowing who you are, you've helped me personally, you've helped me professionally, and you've helped me religiously. So I just, I think it's just amazing, your range and leadership and how you're able to bring it into all circles. Like there's times where I see you in leadership, talking about personal. And I think there's times where I see you in a church, talking about leadership. And it's just beautiful the way you, you bring it all, all together.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  You know what, Sam, I need you to call me about, maybe every other week and just give me a pep talk.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm happy to. Hey, we're, we're, we're here, Andy. We're right, we're right next door. I, I live in Roswell, so North Point is literally down the street. So what you wrote, you know, you wanted to have a lifelong relationship with your kids. And so I, this is where I actually do want your advice. I have a question for you. I have four children. They're 12, 11, about to be 10 and seven. And so we've had them in like five and a half years. They're, they're all about to enter into that coaching phase that you talk about in your book. Now all of yours are in the friendship phase, right? So I was just wondering if you could go back and tell Andy, when he was approaching that time of his kids' lives, what would you really try to get the most right now?

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Because again, you're, the playbook of getting home and helping out is so big. What else would you do?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  And this is really what the book is about. It really is about parenting toward the relationship as opposed to compliance and just obedience. And that, the section in the book about teaching kids to reconcile and disciplining them toward reconciliation, rather than just taking things away and restriction, you can't do this. I mean, that doesn't teach kids anything. You know, in the book I talk about, we only had two rules, honor your mother and don't tell a lie. You can dishonor me, but you don't dishonor your mother. You know, just said those simple, simple things that lying breaks a relationship. And we want our relationships to be intact. And there's illustrations about how we disciplined our kids back toward reconciling relationships.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  The Sandra's favorite is when I made my middle child Garrett take her on a date because he'd been very disrespectful to her. And, woo, neither one of us can tell that story without getting emotional because of what happened. So instead of taking his truck away and taking this away and how dare you talk to her that way? I said, no, you're going to call your mom, ask her out on a date, take her to dinner and pay for it. And he just looked at me like, I'd rather you take everything away.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  But you know what? At the end of that dinner, it was solved. Anyway, so parenting toward a healthy relationship rather than just compliance and, you know, all the stuff we tend to go to as dads especially because we want our kids to succeed, you know? And if I could do anything over again, I would just not sweat the small stuff. I had a tendency to get all wound up about the dumbest things. We fought were foster parents, active foster parents for 10 years. And we had a sibling group of three girls at one point and the youngest was five. And she would not talk to me. She would whisper to her sisters, but she wouldn't talk to me just what had happened, men and all the stuff. So our kids come over one day, our biological kids, and her name is Michaela.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  She's in her twenties now, so I can say her name. Michaela is roller skating around the living room and around the island in the kitchen on the hardwood floors. And our kids are like, you wouldn't even let us run in the house and you're letting her roller skate. I'm like, hey, you know, don't sweat the small stuff.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  We get tired over time, you know? I would just wear out.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  I wish I was more like that when they were young. I would just get all anyway, but it worked out.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 41:03Ryan Hawk?

  Andy, I feel like you've been in your prime for like 40 years and that is an aspirational goal for me. And when I think of that, I think of like Kobe Bryant practicing dribbling with his left hand at four in the morning. Or I think of a musician practicing their scales every single day, even though they're a master. I'm curious, what do you do to practice your scales or to dribble with your left hand every morning at 4:00 AM? To stay in your prime for 40 plus years is pretty insane to think about. But it's evident just from this conversation and all the other stuff I've seen you do that you are. What do you do to not only stay sharp, but to continually get better?

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Ryan, that, thank you for saying that. That means a lot. I hope it's true. I don't know. I mean, I know what my routines are, but routines are kind of personality driven. So I don't think it's routines. I think ultimately if I pressed hard, it would come back down to values. You know, one of the things I talk about in the book is the exercise I went through from Stephen Covey's book about the doing the funeral exercise and realizing, you know, in my early thirties, what I valued the most and sort of setting those values up as a perimeter around my behavior. And it has really been a force to keep me centered and to keep my identity from shifting from what I value most to what I'm known for.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Because what I'm known for is you're the pastor of, and you author these books and that and that and that. And I'm grateful for my influence, but I just didn't want my sense of identity to shift from what I valued most to what I did. And all three of us know this, as men, it's so easy to get centered around what you're known for out in the world as opposed to who you are at home or with your friends. And having seen how that can go has been motivating to me. But I think it kind of comes back down to that. My, as I say all the time to anytime I can say to anybody, I only have one unique role. That's father to my children. That's it.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Sandra can get another husband and there's going to be another pastor and there's going to be other authors. The only unique thing in my life is nobody else can be the father to my children or Sandra's first husband, as I tell her. And so if that is central and if that sort of keeps the gyroscope going and things, again, it's attention to manage, attention to manage, because there's busy seasons and all that stuff. I would chalk it up to that.

• 43:31Ryan Hawk?

  Did you get really clear on your values and then the behaviors that make those true? Is that, is that what you mean?

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. So once, you know, and again, the eulogy exercise, when you have people standing up, talking about, when you write down what you would like for them to say, it's all about character. It's all about relationships. It's all about generosity. It's all about, he was there for me. It's all about, it's all the stuff we know. Stephen Covey, at the end of that part says, if you have just worked through this exercise, you have just discovered your personal definition of success. When I read that, I'm like, oh, because I spent several mornings working through it. I'm like, this is what success is for me. So when I venture outside the perimeter of these values,

• 44:19Speaker 01

  I'm not just quote sinning, to use a Christian word, or I'm not just messing up, to use a cultural word. I'm failing. I'm failing because I have defined success as these values. That was a defining exercise for me. And I, again, I've just come back to that year after year after year or so.

• 44:41Ryan Hawk?

  What are the values?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  I'm not going to tell you. I never tell people.

• 44:44Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Because, yes, because people need to work through that exercise and ask the question, what would I want a husband, my husband to say about me? My wife, my future husband, my future wife? I didn't even have kids when I did the exercise the first time. What would I want a son to say? A coach, a best friend? And I wrote it out, you know, sentences. And then I found kind of the core to those things and reduced it to seven words. At first it was 12 words, then nine words, then seven words. And I looked at those seven words and I thought, if I am this, that's success. So I don't ever share them. I used to, and I realized people were writing them down. I'm like, no, those, those are mine. You got, you gotta go get your own. So.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  It is very personal. It is very personal.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  But you know what? They're so common. I mean, I think everybody kind of centers in on the same kinds of things. The other thing in the book that is so, I thought was so helpful was when thinking about this whole issue of identity, I took my friend Jeff Foxworthy out and I said, I want to talk to you about this because here's this guy's had massive success as a comedian. He's been everywhere. He has faced every kind of temptation over and over and over and over and over and over. You know, as he's traveled all over the world and done comedy. And yet he is very centered as a husband and father. It's extraordinary. So I said, okay, Jeff, how did you do it? That conversation that we had in the restaurant that day, he's just a great guy. But again, he's somebody who figured this out.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  I'm not going to let who I am known for in the world be my identity. That is my public identity, but that's not who I am. My son, my oldest son Andrew is a stand-up comedian. And I said, if you were going to give Andrew one piece of advice, and Jeff has been very helpful with Andrew. But I said, if you're going to give Andrew one piece of advice so that when he's 68, he's where you are, not where so many people in the show business end up. What would your piece of advice be? And he immediately said, I would tell him, your ego is not your friend. Your ego is not your friend. Or as a friend of mine said, when I quoted that, your ego is not your amigo. And I said, that should be on a shirt.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  That is good. That is good.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  And that's true because my ego is you deserve it. You've earned it. You have a right to, you know, all the yuck. Anyway.

• 47:01Ryan Hawk?

  How have you managed that? Because you've gone from a person who was not famous to someone who is very famous and known and loved. And people put you up on a big pedestal way above them, even though I know you're a humble guy. But how have you managed your ego when all the people around you are, they look at you like a god in some cases and even treat you that way? That, I could see it messing with you and inflating that ego, making it, your head so big, it's hard to walk through the doorway. Like, how have you managed that?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  It messes people up. I have several advantages. Number one, I grew up with a famous dad and I watched it from the sidelines. I learned this dynamic and I talk a lot about this in the book. And that's this, there's always going to be a tendency for there to be the evolution, to use a word from a book I read, the evolution of a court. A group of people who get close to a person, they're on the inside, they clamor for attention. They sue for the leader's attention, the leader's love, you know? That is unavoidable, but it's not their fault. And it is up to the leader. It is up to the leader to decide whether or not they're going to be influenced by that. And if they're going to allow that to shift their identity, it is a hundred percent up to the leader.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  So as I watched my dad navigate all that and at times struggle with all that because he came from nothing. And suddenly he's so famous in every restaurant we go to and everywhere we go, the airport. I mean, everywhere, people, Dr. Stanley stopping him. So having a ringside seat, I am so sensitive to the negative implications of that, even though everybody wants to be special, we all want to be treated special. But it's not healthy. And so the last chapter in the book is about resisting the evolution of a court and leaders have to functionally, you have to resist it. If you don't resist it, the stream is just going to carry you in a healthy place. Then the

• 49:00Speaker 01

  other advantage I have is when we started our organization, I started with four very good friends. In fact, one of them was a college roommate before I even met Sandra. So they were friends before we worked together. And then overnight I became their boss, but they have never been overly impressed with me because they, I mean, if you have a friend from college, there are stories you hope they never tell, right? And so because, and three of those of the, actually, there were five, three of the five are still in our organization. So when you have people that know you at that level, it is so healthy. And to the point I'm making, and I'll shut up, in the book, because this is what Jeff

• 49:45Speaker 01

  and I talked about, Jeff fired his manager and hired his best friend from the fifth grade as his manager for this very reason, because he knew Jeff, the fifth grader and the middle schooler and the high schooler, and they've been friends ever since fifth grade. So consequently, you're bringing somebody in there where there's a relational connection that's not a professional connection, and they're just not overly impressed. He's not Jeff Foxworthy, the world famous comedian. He's the goofball that we went to. That level of relationship is so healthy. It is so healthy. And I've had the advantage of being able to work with some of my friends. They would, they would be on my front doorstep if I

• 50:27Speaker 01

  started doing something stupid. Sandra wouldn't even have to call them. They would just show up and say, who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing? And what a gift. We all need that at some level.

• 50:38Ryan Hawk?

  You wrote that you and Sandra talk about this almost weekly. The line is the trap is avoidable, but the dynamic isn't.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:44Ryan Hawk?

  Meaning it's gonna happen, but it's on us.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:48Ryan Hawk?

  To avoid it, that trap.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, the dynamic of leaders or famous people or people that people appreciate are going to draw people and put you on a pedestal. And when you're in ministry, it's worse in some ways because there's a God factor. You know, God used you in my life. God spoke through you. I mean, that's pretty heady stuff, you know? Now you're, to your point, you're not just, you're not a movie star. You're, you're well known and there's a God factor, which makes the responsibility even bigger and the pressure even greater in some ways. But again, I grew up with a famous pastor father, and so I saw all that play out as well. So the dynamic is unavoidable. It's just going to happen. But we do talk

• 51:34Speaker 01

  about it. And we just talk about resisting the evolution of a court. And I'm grateful for the people around me. The people I work with closest, and I've said this in front of them on multiple occasions, the people I work with the most would quit before they followed me into something stupid. I know they would. They have too much integrity. And what a safeguard for me and for our family. I'm just forever grateful.

• 51:58Ryan Hawk?

  One of the commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence over a really, really long period of time, I think, is that part, Andy, where you've done a great job of surrounding yourself with the right people. I know we got to run, but I have one more question before we go. I'm really curious. This comes from one of my friends named Jason Gainer. It's called the champagne question, but you can substitute whatever you want for that. This is you are surrounded by all of the people you love, right? Your kids, Sandra, everybody that you love. And it's one year from today, exactly one year from today, and you guys are celebrating like crazy. I'm curious, Andy, what are you celebrating?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  A year from today?

• 52:34Ryan Hawk?

  A year from today.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  I don't know if I want to answer that question.

• 52:38Ryan Hawk?

  Oh, I would love for you to.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if it's a year from today.

• 52:42Ryan Hawk?

  Okay.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  I, I think, this sounds strange, but you asked the question. It's a great, it's a great question. I would hope that at some point, we would celebrate when I'm no longer a part of this organization, that I left well, and it continues to grow and to thrive without my direct involvement. To me, other than just the success and the development and the, of my children and, you know, celebrating all that, in terms of professionally, to look back a year after I'm gone, whenever, and to look at our network of churches globally and nationally, and it just be thriving without my direct involvement, I would just love,

• 53:27Speaker 01

  love, love that. That, I mean, to me professionally, that, I mean, that is success, not just a successor, but that the organization continues to thrive. So that would be one thing.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  That is sort of the crown jewel of leadership, right? Like when your stewardship ends, you leave it better than it was before. I mean, that is amazing.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And, and then the second, you know, the second piece of that, or I know we're wrapping up, and this goes back to the parenting book. Our goal in parenting was that our kids would want to be with us and with each other when they no longer had to be, that they would want to be with us and with each other when they no longer had to be, when they were independent. To me, that is the ultimate celebration. And again, you have to sow and sow and sow and sow, and then you find out if you get to reap that. And again, every family's different. There's no perfect families or perfect children. But experiencing that now, I wouldn't trade anything for that. It's just the best.

• 54:27Ryan Hawk?

  So good, man. The book's called What Great Leaders Do: Seven Essentials for Enduring Impact. We share a publisher, Harper Collins. They've been great for me. It's really cool to get connected with you, man. And I would love for us three, Sam and I definitely will, but for us three to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  No, that's great. And thank you both. Sam, that's nice to meet you. Thanks for joining the conversation.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  It's great to meet you. And Andy, if you ever want to come, we would love to have you to Insight Global. I talked to my CEO. He was like, hey, we would love to have you come talk to our leaders, maybe sign a bunch of books.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  You're down the street.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  We're, we're in Dunwoody, so we'd love to have you.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:01Ryan Hawk?

  Love it, man.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Thank you, Bo. Thank you, Ryan.

• 55:07Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with my friend Sam Kaufman and Andy Stanley. A few takeaways from my notes. When you can't offer certainty, offer clarity. Think about where your people are anxious and waiting on answers that you don't have. You cannot promise certainty, but you can give them a clear, meaningful next task. Remember, action absorbs anxiety. Give them something to do. Next, run your next big decision through

• 55:50Ryan Hawk?

  Andy's three questions. Before you commit, ask, what's considered impossible in my industry right now? What would the next leader do in this seat? And what would a great leader do? Consider your answers and then make the call and get to work. And next, guard against the trap of success. Andy stays grounded by keeping a small circle of trusted friends who have permission to hold him accountable. Who are the truth tellers in your life? And if you don't have any, that's probably the first problem to fix. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or

• 56:32Ryan Hawk?

  two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Sam Kaufman and Andy Stanley. I think they will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and you write a thoughtful review, rate it hopefully five stars by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.