In this second episode of the Empower You Podcast, host Kenston Henderson (founder & CEO of Live With Life) interviews leadership coach and author Houssam Makki. The conversation introduces the podcast’s mission to inspire self‑leadership and to spotlight self‑published authors. Makki’s book, The Four Laws of True Leaders, is presented as a guide to leading with intentionality, discipline, and responsibility – the three pillars he abbreviates as I‑D‑R. Makki explains that leadership is a life principle, emphasizing the need to think, reflect, and understand one’s message before execution. He shares that procrastination was a major barrier in writing his book and describes how embracing I‑D‑R helps overcome it. The episode concludes with a call‑to‑action directing listeners to purchase the book on Amazon or via Makki’s website (hmackiespeaks.com) and encourages support for self‑published authors throughout the year.
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Empower You Podcast. I'm your host, Kenston Henderson, founder and CEO of Live With Life, where we help groups and organizations get unstuck and equip them to achieve their professional development goals through keynote speaking and corporate professional and youth development training services and coaching, group coaching. And so this podcast was created and designated to ignite, inspire, and equip you to find and operate in your purpose. Whether you are an adult or a youth, this podcast will help you declutter your life to include healthy self-leadership practices. Uh, this first series that we are kicking off here in 2021 will showcase the journey to becoming a self-published author. If you know of any self-published authors, please connect them with me as I would love to have them as a featured, uh, feature them on this podcast series. In today's episode number 2, we have Hussam Mackey. We have as our featured author, my good friend and brother from a different mother, uh, but we are brothers from across the world. Um, Hussam is known as the reborn miracle in Middle East, number one true leadership catalyst and coach. He is a passionate speaker. I He was featured in the Speaker's Magazine and is an inspirational author of several books. His vision is to bring true leadership back to the surface by helping transform leaders into true leaders through his Maki Leadership Principle and other related methods. So Hussam is a World Civility Ambassador, and as a thought leader, he was recognized by I Change Nations with the endorsement of the Golden Rule Standard and the Productive Business Community Game Changer Award recipient. And so Hassan is the author of the book The Four Laws of True Leaders. Let's welcome Hassan. How you doing, my brother?
I'm doing good. Better than good, actually. And thank you so much for this great introduction. Like, it feels good when I hear it from your voice.
Listen, I try to, I try to bring, bring some energy with it because, I mean, I mean, you're an amazing man. And like I said, brother, you know, we're both in, you know, part of JMT and we stay connected after, you know, the event that took place. But I'm just excited to know you. And so, right, right. You know, just kicking this, this, this author podcast series off the ground and you're, you know, you're the second episode of it. You know, can you tell me about a little bit about your book, The Four Laws of True Leaders. What is it about?
All right, um, The Four Laws of True Leaders actually is about how to lead, uh, with intentionality. You see, um, so many people when they look at the term leadership or, or the term leader They misunderstand the term itself and they think of themselves, I mean, it has nothing to do with them. Well, when I wrote the Four Laws of True Leadership, is to tell these people that you are a leader whether you know it or not. Just go through, you know, just look at these four laws and you will understand that you have all that it takes for you to be a leader, and you have to start monitoring yourself because what you're doing is impacting those around you in a way or another. So when you read this book, you are going to somehow be intentional about your leadership. You are going to be disciplined and responsible. Which I call it the credential of doctor, you know, Dr. Every person is a doctor in his field. Yeah. So when you lead with intentionality, you decided to discipline yourself and you decided to be responsible for your actions. So this is what the Dr. stands for. So the whole idea of the book is how to execute with intentionality or how to lead with intentionality through thinking, reflecting, and understanding your message or understanding your teachings or understanding your behavior. Or even if like you are growing a generation, you know, you have to think, reflect, and understand what you are doing So you can affect your message or your treatment or whatever you're doing in a good way. So your leadership is going to be intentional.
That's good, good leadership intentionality. Listen, you know, because, you know, there's a lot of, you know, leaders out here. I know within both of our audiences. And so, but I want to know, like, what inspired you? What was said? I mean, there's hundreds I mean, thousands of leadership books out here, but what inspired you to write your book about leadership?
Great question. Thank you, Kenston Henderson CSP EPIC Experiences, for this question. Um, it all started a few years ago when I, uh, when I was attending seminars and trainings, uh, locally, uh, before I go internationally, like before going to the conference, for instance, uh, the, the John Maxwell Team certification conference. When I was attending these trainings, these sessions, I was watching people coming on stage, delivering something, talking about something out of, like, let me say, it was all scripted, or it was all driven by a technique learning. Yeah, right. So they can appear in a good, in a good way or a good shape or, you know, what have you. So I started asking myself, what should these people do before they execute? What, what should these people, uh, what they should be doing or what should they be going through What's the process before you execute whatever you are executing? As I mentioned, like, it's a message, or, or, or you are leading by example, it's an action, it's something. What's the process that you have to go through so you can execute in a healthy way, so you can impact people in a healthy way? Because whether you know it or not, your action is impacting somebody.
That's good.
And it depends, it depends on the situation of the, of the audience. I mean, there are people who are just, you know, uh, receiving information without digesting. So they should be receiving healthy information so you can help them grow. Otherwise, you are, you are planting weeds in their minds. Well, if you are executing— yeah, if you are executing the way where you're not thinking about your message, you're not spending time reflecting about it, and you don't understand it. And that's when it hit me. You should think and reflect and understand before you execute. And that's how the idea formed itself, you know, the TRUE. The Four Laws of True Leaders. We are all made, uh, we, I mean, we are creatures made to execute, right? We have to execute something. We are, we are creatures who moves on earth, you know, we're moving forward.
Yeah.
Now what, what makes our action unique? What makes our action impactful, uh, in a healthy way? And why do I call leadership as a principle of life? It's because it is a principle. You cannot ignore it. You cannot, you know, overcome it, just, just, just, or overlook it, you know, overlook leadership. It's a principle of life. Whatever action you're doing, it's impacting somebody. So what makes it unique and impactful? You have to be intentional. Intentional about what? Intentional about your thinking, intentional about making some time to reflect on your thinking, on your thoughts, on the ideas that you got, on the message that you think about sharing with the world. And then you have to understand it so you can break it down to whoever you're talking to. As I said, like, you have some audience who are only there to receive information and they don't have the ability to digest or they don't have the ability to break it down. So you should be the person who's breaking down his message so you can make any type of people, yeah, understand what you're talking about.
Wow, wow, that's good. That's, that's real good. That's real good. Tell me, you know, there's some, um, There's some future authors out there that are watching this episode or hearing this episode. And I think we're both in commonality as far as it relates to once we get to a place, we're going to reach back and help somebody along the way that has not been down this journey of writing a book. And so you've wrote several books. And what barriers, what is one or two barriers that you may have faced when trying to complete a book?
Procrastination.
I agree.
No, seriously, it's procrastination. We know, or we, you know, we are creative in having a thought and keep talking about it. We are just, we are creative in this area. We can teach the art of procrastination. Wow. If we, that's why again, again, we'll go back to the book. That's why intentionality is important. That's why you have to be a doctor in your field. You have to be disciplined and you have to have the responsibility. Now, if you put these 3 letters in your mind, the I, the R, and the D, you know, or let me say the I, the D, and the R, you know, intentionality, discipline, responsibility. When you embrace these 3 letters or these these three words, you know, by these— by the letters, the I and D and R, you will know how much you matter to this world, and you will know how to push the button of urgency when you get the idea and start writing, you know. You will no longer be a victim of procrastination. You know, you will be living on an urgency. You will live your day with intentionality. You will be disciplined. You know what you need to do, and you will be responsible about the message. Therefore, you will start reflecting and understanding. So see, they are connected. They're all connected together. Yeah, we cannot overlook one of these words that I have mentioned. Intentionality, discipline, responsibility.
Those, those are some key, key things that's in self-leadership. And like, if we want to lead ourselves effectively in 2021 and beyond, those are keys. Intentionality, discipline, and what was the third one?
Intentionality.
Discipline, responsibility, responsibility. Yes, that's, that's, that's good stuff, people. I hope you are writing that down. Please write that down if you are seeking to, to release that story that's inside you. We need you to release it because somebody needs to hear your story, but it's going to take at least 3 elements: indigeneity, discipline, and responsibility. Like, if you can do those things, you're going to release your story in 2021. And so I encourage you, uh, my brother, before we end this thing, where can people find your book?
All right, uh, my book is on Amazon, and for a shortcut, you can go to my website, www.edgemackie speaks .com. That's www.hmackiespeaks.com. H and then Mackie, M-A-K-K-I, uh, speaks.com.
Awesome, awesome. And I'm gonna put that, that link in our, in our comment section just to make sure everybody, uh, can get it. So make sure you support our self-published authors, uh, so that way they can, uh, continue to grow and continue to release more things into the world. And my brother, it's been a pleasure. It's been a privilege having you on with us. And, you know, I look forward to staying connected, us doing life together, because, you know, my slogan is, if you're doing life alone, you're doing it all wrong.
And so it's stuck. It's stuck in here, man. It's there.
It's there.
I thank you. I thank you so much for sharing this message with us. Actually, it was a powerful one. And as I always express my gratitude for knowing people like you, your message, you know, I took your message from 2020 and I'm taking it with me from, you know, from 2020 onwards. I'm going with it like 2021, 2022 until God remember you. I mean, you know.
Yeah, no, listen, we got to, and there's so many golden nuggets that I'm getting off from your website. You got a whole page full of quotes, and, and I'm going to be using those quotes in the things that I do.
My pleasure, my pleasure, my friend.
Yeah, keep dropping those nuggets. But, um, for folks who are still on, tune in, uh, next week as we will have our third episode. And, uh, please, uh, check in on Anchor, uh, podcast, Spotify. That's where we will be located. And again, support all of these self-published authors. My goal is to have at least 52 weeks of self-published authors featured on this podcast. And again, you weren't meant to just exist, you were meant and created for a purpose. We just got to find our purpose and then operate in it. So take care, and, uh, we will see you later.
