Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 6, 2019 | Men of Success - Fall 2019: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - Session 9

Transcript

November 6, 2019 | Men of Success - Fall 2019: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - Session 9 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing this morning?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mark, you got a new heart since last week, is that right?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Mark's got a new heart, or at least uh uh new ticker of some kind in there.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of things happened this last week.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Rodney's out of town.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I asked Paul Carr to join us.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, um this early morning shouldn't be a problem for you.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: How early did you get up when you were working behind the scenes for Mike and Mike in the morning?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I had to be in at three o'clock.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I usually got up at two.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I lived about three minutes away.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you ever saw the program Mike and Mike in the morning?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wasn't that a great program?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was uh I think a little wasn't it after that that you went down to South America and did the World Cup soccer and got well known for being part of Men and Blazers.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that was that was really It was a good time.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a good time.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that line where those two guys would go, Paul Carr blows your mind, or you know.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was funny.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: The first day, so I I was a researcher, so I was in the studio just offset, giving people information, and I knew these guys uh because they'd been at ESPN for a couple years.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So one day at Roger, second day of the tournament, he's like, Paul, come in and give us our best stat and leave.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Okay, I'll do it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And figured that was in the next day.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Paul, do it again.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they had a theme song.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, okay.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: We we got a thing.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was fun.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now are those guys British?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is that they are, yeah.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that I loved their humor though.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh all right.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go to some of the uh action from this last week.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: The Chiefs uh win over the Vikings even without their quarterback with the last second field goal.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Any uh any comments on that game?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think just so I'm a Dolphins fan because my dad's from Miami.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh the point being the Dolphins had Matt Moore for several years as their backup and I always felt pretty good about it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't want to play in 15 games, but if he's gotta play those three or four that your main guy's out, he was good.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like he would he could start for a few teams probably.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I don't know why he was you know coaching high school three months ago before Andy Reid called him back in, but um I think kind of showed that he's not terrible.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did not remember that.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: That isn't that cool if you were a high school kid and your teacher suddenly was on TV every Sunday with uh team that might end up winning the Super Bowl.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Chiefs have another tough game this Sunday.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Titans is uh do you know if Mahomes is gonna be back or do we know that?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's leaning toward yes from what I read yesterday at least.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll see.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: That would be nice.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we had uh the big showdown uh last Saturday, right?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dennis?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you were a big K-State fan.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, that's right.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: You should be, yeah.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, they sure did.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: 38 to 10.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was a little embarrassing for uh KU guys, I guess.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: It reminded me of uh several games during the Bill Snyder era.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I covered K-State and KU for a few years at a radio station in town.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there were several games where it's like, ah, the KU's gonna you know end the streak against them, but they're gonna hang with them, it's gonna be a good one, and then this happens.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite headline of the game, I I missed it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was in Oregon, but um, let's see what was it I saw.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: K-State 38, KU miles to go.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty clever.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty clever.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this weekend, uh, K-State has actually some hope.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: They actually have a better record than Texas.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're going down to play them there.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So having a better record might make uh uh Texas up in arms.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: KU plays Oklahoma State.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember how good Oklahoma State is this year, but it's gonna be a tough game.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Last night, did anybody watch this game?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: 68-66, KU and the Champions Classic.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: We had a board meeting here, so I missed it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a bad scheduling on your part.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Terrible.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: If I'd have known that, I'd have delayed the meeting.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Although later uh when I heard about the 28-28 turnover.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was 28.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: They said it was their most in a game for KU since the 88 NCAA tournament, which of course turned out pretty well.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Good point.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'd say not considering 28 turnovers losing by two is not terrible.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, and Dennis would want us to know that K-State did play and won while KU lost.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: That may not happen often this season that they play on the same night and K-State wins and KU loses.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's a nasty statement.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: But they were playing uh NDSU, which is uh Little Sisters of Mary.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see much of this, but I read a couple things.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like it took K-State a little while to get going, and they're like, all right, let's get on with this.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: A little scary with knowing that they only beat Washburn by 10 points, right?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, let's get into uh 21 irrefutable laws of leadership.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we have two laws, uh 17 and 18.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't I take the first one?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually a law that has uh uh plagued me throughout my uh work life, and it's the law of priorities.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a law that appears in nearly every book that we do.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: We did seven habits of highly effective people last year, and habit number three is uh really the law of priorities, put first things first.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: The book that's influenced me the most of all the books we've done in Men of Success, the four disciplines of execution.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the uh it's the first of the four disciplines, focus on the wildly important, minimize focusing on the whirlwind, the stuff that just keeps things going.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Focus on the wildly important.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: My problem has been throughout the years, I love making lists.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even on my day off on Monday, I make a list of the five or seven or ten things I have to do, but then my well, what I tend to do is I do them by the ones that take the least time to finish.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: I like the sense of accomplishment.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So ones that'll take a half an hour or less, I do first.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the uh, you know, the going out and doing the major job of cutting down a tree and and cutting it in up or something like that, I put to last, and by the time I get around to it, sometimes, you know, there's no time to do it.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So in in in in our book, uh the subtitle of the law of priorities is Leaders Understand That Activity is not necessarily accomplishment.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just hearing that sort of makes me feel guilty.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a verse in Ephesians 5 about making the most of every opportunity, using time well, which maybe fits into this.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um in this, he has uh he restates something we've heard before, the law of priorities, that there's an 80-20 rule that 20 percent of the things on our list are 80 percent of the importance.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we should spend, we should flip it around and spend 80 percent of our time on the 20 percent of the most important activities.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he does say something that I feel is controversial, don't know what to think about it, Paul.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Matt is that we should spend 80 percent of our time with the 20 percent of your most important people.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I'd probably have the same hesitation.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It struck me a little exclusionary at first.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I th I get the point though, especially I think if you're in, we'll say, like a higher leadership thing where he like he is, and you're supposed to kind of it helps you delegate and things along those lines.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you spin it with this row of people and then they can go on and handle trickle around everybody else.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: That makes that makes good sense to me.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but if you have certainly if you have five children, you shouldn't go, okay, yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not sure that applies to family as much.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure it does have to do it.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this actually has a name.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know this.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the Pareto or Pareto principle.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: The secret to success, achieving more with less.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Get 80% of your results from 20 percent of your effort.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: He then moves on, Maxwell does, to talking about the three R's call require, return, and reward.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: What he said is you need to ask yourself, what is required of me in this job?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he said, the problem is sometimes we think we have to do all the things that are actually required of us, figure out if you can delegate any of those.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um then came return.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: What gives you the most return?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: He says 20 percent of your activity gives you 80 percent of your returns, so focus on that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Reward was what gives you the most, at least the way I felt when I was reading it was what gives you the most personal excitement or reward and and focus on that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um he loves John Wooden and repeats his statement never mistake activity for achievement.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the law of priorities.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I need to hear this every day of my life so that I will actually do the things that are most important.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um would you take us into an interesting law, the law 18, law of sacrifice?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So as Jim kind of said, I spent 10 years at ESPN, which is 5,000 people and change, and it's also owned by Disney, so it's a very corporate place uh for better and worse, which is a strange it's strange to merge the corporatess of corporate America with kind of the creativity of media.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I learned a lot.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I went in with pretty much no corporate experience or really idea of what I was getting into from that standpoint.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it was eye-opening in a lot of ways.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the law of sacrifice was something that I know I struggled with a lot.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I was one of the things I was doing was basically leading our stats and info soccer team.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we were responsible for covering World Cups and just all the soccer on ESPN's air.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was tough for me at times to not do things myself because I thought I was the best at them, and maybe I was, maybe I wasn't.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it was hard because I feel like I let someone else do this, and then I've got to go double check in and waste everyone's time, so I'm gonna save it and just do it.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was hard for me.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I would get pressed by senior management a lot to like let others do things.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a challenge.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that was on me just not wanting to let go.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh part of it I think was on management, not really explaining you know, something like this, explaining, you know, here's the reasons you need to relinquish this duty or that duty.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was always a challenge.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I never grasped and I don't think was presented well to me was the set was the second point here the sacrifice is an ongoing process, not a one-time thing.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I would often get pressed, like, you gotta let them do this.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, all right, I'll let them do this, and then we're done with that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: But not realizing, okay, we gotta keep doing this and giving people responsibilities and sharing the burden and all that.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I thought of it a lot more as a one-off thing here and there, and then uh I would get you know the senior bosses off my back, and that was not it.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was a process, and I never really grasped it, and I don't think it was really told to me well.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the point he had from Gerald Brooks in the Maxwell book about when you become a leader, you lose the right to think about yourself was also challenging because again, in corporate this corporate world, we're constantly pushed like you you gotta think about your goals and yourself and things along those lines.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of kind of inherent selfishness built into the system, which goes against the grain of what he's saying here and uh what would kind of play out.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So as an example, so this next slide, this is just a super simple org chart of the department I was in.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Stats and information encompassed these four other groups, and the best boss I had, he hired me into production research here.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So he oversaw production research when I started in 08.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And he had been at ESPN about 15 years or so by then, and he was one of the best researchers that the department had had, and baseball is a specialty.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: So his name was Jeff Bennett.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so he did baseball tonight for I think eight years, and he would have loved to stay on baseball tonight like the rest of his life.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And but he realized that he had to give that up for the betterment of the department, his family, et cetera.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So he you know moved up into management and oversaw production research and was really good at it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at the people that he brought in at the time, uh it was kind of a powerhouse of researchers, and those of us who lasted a while after him could see that the quality of people was changing after he left.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because Jeff moved over and he oversaw the analytics and data group.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was it was a promotion technically, but he had to leave research and he didn't like that either.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: He you we could tell when he kind of said goodbye is a strong way of saying it, but when he left research to move over, you could tell he was just emotionally kind of torn up about it.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: But he did it.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then So I'm not really would you mind explaining to me the difference between those three boxes?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Production, research, analytics, and data group.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's all a bunch of nerds, let me tell you.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, so uh bottom line is literally the bottom, what you see scrolling at the bottom of your screen, the news and information.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a little more of a news editor role.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh data group is responsible for all the feeds.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: So there are feeds coming in from almost every game uh from the press box or the school or the team or whatever.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they're monitoring those feeds, making sure they're being processed correctly and going uh on the output side to dot-com, to automated scoreboards and television, to alerts, to everywhere they need to go.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh analytics is literally the people who are developing the metrics.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you see things like Total QBR or uh football power index, basketball power index, these people are doing the algorithm, algorithms and the coding and all that behind that.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they're literally creating the metrics and they're doing the math.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was in production research, and we were responsible for taking these analytics and turning them into television.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because TV, you don't have 15 minutes to explain the math behind why we think uh Alabama deserves the number one spot in the playoff or whatever.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you gotta be able to say it in 15 seconds, and you gotta be able to get somebody else on TV to say it in 15 seconds.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we're almost translators in a lot of ways of taking the analytics, and then we're also there to uh supply notes, supply context.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you see it's the first time that the Chiefs have whatever scored 40 on a Sunday at a one o'clock kick against an AFC South team.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like those are those are things that we do.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So whenever you see like who thinks of that or who can look that up, yeah, that was me and our group.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we're there to we we say we're there to make the people on air look good, basically.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So first time let's go over that yet.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: First time to score 40 points at a one o'clock kickoff on a Sunday.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: What else is there?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I guess an AFC South team or something.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Not that hard.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have databases that that's pretty easy.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the quick overview.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So research is, I don't know, it's kind of the most glamorous just in the sense that you know we're literally on the set, or you know, I got to go to a World Cup and be in Brazil for six weeks, uh, things like that.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So when Jeff left research to move over to these, you know, a little in some ways less exciting things in the sense in the day-to-day sense, like you're not making television day-to-day in the same way, but he left to oversee those.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't, again, he didn't necessarily want to emotionally, but he did it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then shortly thereafter, uh, the VP of the whole stats and information group, the one guy retired, and then not long after that, his replacement got laid off in one of the rounds of layoffs that you may have heard about.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Jeff got promoted to VP of the whole group, which was a wonderful thing.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So he gave up professionally at all these steps.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't want to leave baseball tonight behind, he didn't want to leave research behind.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and but it was a good thing for him by making these sacrifices, he was able to just kind of keep on moving up and uh using his good influence in a lot of different good ways.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um here's an interesting slide that you came up with.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Would you uh run run through the professional versus personal here?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I don't think Maxwell touched on this much, and I don't think he's touched on kind of the personal side in a lot of these, or the the family side in a lot of these rules, which is you know, it's not the direction he's going with the book, so that's okay.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um But this one led me to think about how it's the work-life balance was the big buzzword, while I was at ESPN.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: There are always work-life balance, how's your work-life balance?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is your work-life balance good?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I you know, I realized especially early in my career, you know, I made personal sacrifices for professional gain.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was the time, you know, I didn't have kids.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so it wasn't the end of the world to wake up at 2 a.m.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: and go to work and have to be in bed by seven.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Or it I mean, it messed up kind of a social life and just normalcy for my wife and me.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked about it like at that time we were willing to do that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: After a couple years of doing Mike and Mike, we were not willing to do that anymore.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was just too much.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we needed normalcy, we needed a life, we needed to be able to whatever have dinner with friends.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that point I went to management.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I can't do Mike and Mike anymore.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just can't.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's trade-offs there.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So then I wasn't working early mornings, but I also was working some weekends more.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the personal sacrifice at the time was worth it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there's just a lot of sacrifice to work at ESPN.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a high, high stress, high achieving environment.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're working weird hours and days, you get to do a lot of great things.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I got to go on a lot of trips, I got a lot of experiences out of it that were amazing.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so at the time it was worth it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2014, we had our first kid.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And as anyone who has kids knows, that changes your perspective and your priorities and the importance of everything.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that shifted a lot for me where all these weird hours and days and whatever was not worth it as much.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's when I really started uh trying to find a way out, or a different path at ESPN.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the ESPN side obviously didn't work out, so I left to a sports analytics company and I work from home, and we were able to move back here.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I have normal days and hours for the first time in my life.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a wonderful thing.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to sacrifice some professionally.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like this was the time of my life to sacrifice professionally, uh, where I'm not, I don't have kind of a glamour.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I tell someone I work at ESPN, I tell me I work at ESPN, like that's cool.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: 12-year-old me is really excited.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about this.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I tell you I work for true media networks, like nobody knows what that is, and nor should they.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I've noticed this even, I've gone to some conferences in the last year or so since I switched jobs, and uh just the reaction is different.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if it's ESPN, they want to talk about something.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: It may not have anything to do with your job at ESPN, but they want to talk about something at ESPN.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas you tell them, I tell them true media, and we gotta, you know, what do you do?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Blah, blah, blah.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Which makes sense, and I get it, I'd be the same way.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but those are some of the professional sacrifices they had to make.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there's an ego side of it that I had to swallow a lot of.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: The I don't know, power is maybe not the best word, but uh there's an aspect of that in kind of the the world.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't sound as powerful and it's it's not, frankly, to work at this other job.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: But at that time in life, it was time to make those sacrifices.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's been a year and a half since I moved back here, or a year and a half since uh I switched jobs, and and I I don't regret it.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And there's things I miss for sure, but at this point, I would say like making that sacrifice was resulted in moving up in life.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was what we hoped, and it it's played out pretty well.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a great example of sacrifice your own personal life.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure glad uh I'm sure glad this worked out for you.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you know, the chapter I did would really lead to the question: what activity gives you the greatest returns?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: What activity you do gives you the greatest rewards?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are you prioritizing that activity?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: The sacrifice question, Paul, I think would be what do you give up?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: What sacrifice do you or are you making uh to get the job done right?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or uh in light of what you were just talking about, uh to uh massage the work-life balance or to leverage the work-life balance in such a way.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or actually, how are you leveraging your job and your sacrifices to improve your work-life balance, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe those would be discussion ideas at your table.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh next week we'll uh finish the book.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Next week's our last week.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: We then move into holiday season.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you the second Wednesday of January.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh been at Barnes and Noble trying to figure out what our next book is, haven't decided yet.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: But but that'll be fun.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And hope to see you next uh next Wednesday for our last uh last um last breakfast uh meeting of the first semester of this year.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the three laws that we'll look at next week is the law of legacy.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul, lead us in prayer, will you?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, thanks for gathering us all together here today.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for these men and the sacrifices they make to be here early in the morning.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I pray that you'll watch over all of us today, uh, this week and entering this crazy holiday season.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh help us to make the time for you, help us to make the time for uh the family and people that are important to us, uh, and just bless, help us to be able to just appreciate the the small things, the time with family, the time with friends, the the enjoyment that we can get out of this holiday and not get overwhelmed uh with everything that comes along with it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so we thank you again for the time and all these men and God bless our conversation.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Paul.