789 Learning to Lead with John Maxwell

This is Five Minute Friday. Let me introduce you to today's guest. He is an incredible human being. His name is John C. Maxwell. He's a number one New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker who has sold more than 25 million books in 50 languages. And in 2014, he was identified as the number one leader in business by by the American Management Association and the most influential leadership expert in the world by Business Insider and Inc. Magazine. He's also been voted the top leadership professional in the world on leadershipgurus.net for six consecutive years. He's trained more than 5 million leaders. In 2015, he reached the milestone of having trained leaders from every country in the world. He is the recipient of the Mother Teresa Prize for Global peace and leadership from the Luminary Leadership Network. And he speaks each year to Fortune 500 companies, presidents of nations, and many of the world's top business leaders. I'm curious. You know, you've had a lot of experience and you've had a lot of lessons. You've met a ton of people. you've probably had to reinvent yourself from teenage years to college and beyond and everything you've done. I'm curious, what was the moment in your life, let's say after 16, that had the most uncertainty for you, where you didn't understand what was happening, maybe there was an extreme adversity where you were confused about and you really had no clue what was in store or why it was happening. I'm curious, what was that uncertainty point for you. And what did you learn about that?

Well, it would have been in my early 20s. Louis, I started all my career as a pastor. Okay.

Yep.

And, and so I was in, in my first church, and I was kind of finishing up my first year, and I just fell out of place. I guess I missed my calling. This isn't, you know, because I, you know, I really didn't want to just go as people all the time. I want to grow something. I want to build something. I want to develop something. And they kind of wanted me to be a shepherd and I felt more like a rancher. And I read a book called Spiritual Leadership by Oswald Sanders. Basically that book said that you could be a person of faith and yet be a great leader. That just lit my fire. I just said, oh my gosh, okay, I'm going to continue pastoring, but I would be a pastor who leads. so I've always been a leader from that point on. Whatever occupation I've been in, I'm a leader. And it was kind of like permission. And I grew up in an organization that didn't have good leaders and had a kind of a scarcity mindset. So I was really kind of lost and kind of just saying, wow, I don't think this is where I should be. And kind of second guessing myself. Read that book, never second guessed myself again. I'm a leader first. What I do is I see people say, what do you do? I lead. Now, I have to, you know, for 25 years, I have to be a pastor. And, you know, now I have five companies. I'm a business person, but I'm a leader. I'm still a leader. That's what I do. I lead. And it just kind of, it gave me my purpose or my why, why I'm here. And so as I got that, then, you know, you still go through adversity, but the difference is when you go through adversity and you don't know your purpose, you then get tossed around a lot. When you go through adversity, you know your purpose. You feel the winds and you can feel the heat, the whole process, but you don't get tossed. You know who you are, you know what you're supposed to do.

Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called the Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.