Keion Henderson - Faith Leader & Visionary | How Life's Struggles Prepare You for Your Calling

Being the 12-year-old wanting to play basketball on the middle school basketball team, then when I started playing, I started having these massive chest pains. I wanted to find out I have a hole in my heart, the size of a quarter. Keon Henderson is the founder and senior pastor of the Lighthouse Church in Houston, leading a community of over 15,000 members and reaching hundreds of thousands online each week. My mom took me to church six months later. That machine was off me and I was playing basketball. God is the source, but he also leads you as the scripture says to paths. So you still have human responsibility in every shift in your life. You just have to be a resilient person, and then you add faith on it, the size of a mustard seed, and then you can move mountains. Starting his ministry journey at just 14, he's also a best-selling author of the shift in lazy love, and the founder of the L3 conference focused on leadership, learning, and lifestyle. I get that question all the time, people say, yeah, but it's hard. It is hard, and that's why everybody doesn't do it. We all are born in an incredible amount of talent. Beyond the pulpit, he's an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, in humanitarian, recognized by the John Maxwell Institute, and nominated for a CNN Heroes Award. In this episode, we explore Keon's powerful journey of purpose, growth, and leading with faith. Sometimes you have to stop fighting the environment, and you have to succumb to it so that you can find your best. If you're going to be a leader, you have to be a reader. You have to feel your best physically to feel your best mentor. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. Now HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts. They also have great tools for entrepreneurs. Let me tell you a story. I'm sure you've all heard of the Angel City Football Club. 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I've just launched a quick survey to better understand what you guys want from the show. And your feedback is going to directly shape our upcoming content. It's only going to take a few minutes of your time, and I made it super easy to find just head over to scottdclary.com slash survey. And as a thank you for helping me out, I'm giving away a free gift card to one lucky responded chosen at random once we hit 100 responses. So not only will your feedback help make this show even better, you might score something cool just for sharing your thought. I really appreciate your help with this one. In your book, The Shift, you talk about surviving transitions in life. I think this is very, very applicable to everyone right now. It feels like they're, their fundamentals have been uprooted over the past five years, but you grew up in poverty and Gary and Deanna. You didn't know your father who was actually your pastor, and then eventually you became the founding member of, I think these numbers are old, but over 20,000 people in your congregation and your church. So you've gone through all these shifts yourself, massive shifts. And there's a lot I left out we're going to talk about as well. But if you think about your life, what was one of the shifts that you went through that helped you realize that life's seemingly painful transitions could actually be transformational opportunities. Man, I think every one of the shifts did that. Let me think back to the first one. The first shift that I ever remember was being the 12 year old wanting to play basketball on the middle school basketball team. Now remember telling my mom that I finally wanted to play basketball. She supported it. And then when I started playing, I started having these massive chest pains and didn't know what that was all about. We didn't have health insurance. You know, I had never been to a doctor. So what we did in our houses, like you just you tried to figure a way around every sickness. And so it wasn't going to the doctor, wasn't an automatic assumption. So we just tried to figure it out. It kept happening, kept happening. Every time I would play basketball, shortness of breath, this sharp chest pain, go to the doctor. I wanted to find out that I have a hole in my heart, the size of a quarter. And so the doctor told my mother that I would never be a very active kid, that I would never be able to play basketball things of that nature. That was the first shift. And I remember telling my mom, very young, like mom, we need to get a second opinion. But we need somebody else to tell us if we can do this because like I feel like I can do this. I feel like I'm supposed to. I love, love the game. Like I can't tell you how much I loved it. So we were able to get a second opinion. And the doctor put a monitor on me. So I was the kid in school walking around the hallways with this big strap. You know, think the technology wasn't so good. Then this huge strap around my shoulder, like a man purse, right? And it's got this big, huge mechanical device hanging from the side. And every time I felt a chest pain, I had to hit a button. And that was it recording what was happening. And I remember, man, I remember when it first got on, I was pushing that button all the time and I would cry. And I'm never going to play basketball. Long story short, I don't know what happened. My mom took me to church, had people at church pray over me. And six months later, that machine was off me and I was playing basketball. And I was on the beat. I was on the beat team, right? I was on the beat team. I wouldn't get on the on the A team by eventually left college as a starter at a division one school. So that was my first big shit starting out being told I wouldn't be able to play leading out one of the best on my team. And so that was that was a big shit for me. That's huge. That's absolutely huge. Most people, I mean, you've gone through a lot of a lot of difficulty in your life. I think that most people, when they think about these, you know, these types of stressful life situations that that happened to all of us, I think that most people don't look at them as transformation opportunities. They look at them and they run away as far as quick as possible. Or if they can't run away from them, what ends up happening is they let that thing rewrite their story in the worst way possible. Wow. Wow. That's huge. That's huge. Because you do have, you do have two options. Fear can make you forget everything you're on. Right? F-E-A-R. That's what fear can do. It can make you face reality and recognize that this is an opportunity. And that's really, and I know you know this, that's really the only difference between those who are successful and those who are not. Those who won in life went through their circumstance with optimism. And those who didn't went through it with pessimism. That's really the secret. And everybody's trying to read books and find out, well, how did, you know, how did such and such do this? And, you know, they'll look at you and try to figure out how did you get a successful podcast? Well, you just kept going when everybody else quick, right? I'm sure that that were moments where, you know, the numbers were not where you wanted them to go. But you just kept going. 100 percent, dude. Yeah. So you forget everything you run. Are you you face everything and realize that that you can do it? Let's answer sort of the elephant in the room. Obviously, obviously, it's easier said than done to have something negative happen to you and just realize that this could be a blessing, right? It's just it's nice to talk about it on a podcast. But when people come to you and they're going through shifts in their life, what is the thing that they have to, or what did you have to lean on to make it through the most difficult parts of the difficult times? What is the thing that is it? Is it God? Is it self-belief? Is it what is the most important idea? Then we'll unpack that a little bit. Yeah. So obviously, for me, as a man of faith, it's going to be God. But I want to make sure that I could tell that with some flexibility and by that, I mean, God is the source. But he also leads you, as the scripture says, to paths. That's Psalms 23. He leads you through paths of righteousness. So you still have human responsibility in every shifting your life. You see, because I'm going to be talking about it. I've got a minister here in California today. And I'm talking about the four stages of a miracle and every one of them required human responsibility. So whether you're a person of faith, or whether you're agnostic, whether you're an atheist, because there are still ways to scale and make money and and make shifts in life. Without God, I'm not saying that I believe the outcomes are going to be apropos, but there are a lot of people in the world who have tons of money and never read the Bible, right? So when you when you boil it down to what does it take to make it through the physical aspect of life, human responsibility that there is no mystical formula, not even for those of us who believe in God. We don't just lift our heads and say, hey, God, you know, send a million dollars and it just comes out of the sink when we turn the water on. You're still going to have to put the axe to the grind. You still got to work. You still have to believe. You still have to be self-motivated. You still have to be self-driven. You still have to navigate life's transitions. You still have to be resilient. You still have to find purpose. And none of that is either existing or non-existent because I'm a man of faith. So when you ask me the question, what do I tell people? I don't care what you believe in. These are things you're going to have to do. These are things you're going to have to do. There is a, you know, a Christian dollar bill and a Muslim dollar bill. You know what I mean? Good point. You know, there is it. There is an abutist resilience and a agnostic resilience. You just have to be a resilient person. And then you add faith on it, the size of a must-forced, and then you can move mountains. Do you think that some people, this will be a question, I guess, for people that are very religious? Do you think that sometimes you see people using religion as a crutch, as opposed to having all of the other components in navigating hard times? Do you think that there has to be this beautiful balance of both? I think it has to be a beautiful balance. And when I hear you say the word crutch, I would summarize it by saying that I think that there are some folks who use their relationship with God as a way of not having to show up for themselves. Right? So it's like, hey, God, I give an example, there's a miracle in a Bible man that's been laying on the bed for 38 years. There are some who would use their relationship with God to say, hey, God, come and pick me up off of this bed. I've been here for 38 years. But the story says that Jesus tells the man, pick up your bed and walk, human responsibility. So even though God was there, God didn't pick him up nor did he pick up the bed. He told him to pick up the bed because God has to make sure that we have the faith, the drive, the resilience, and the purpose to continue to move even in moments where we cannot feel him. So yes, I think a lot of folks will use their relationship with God to be an end or be all but and I know it'll be a controversial statement, but I can go through, Scott, I can go through every miracle in the Bible and prove that human responsibility was necessary. Okay, let's take the one that everybody knows, Jesus turns water to wine. But what does he tell them? He says, go and bring the water pots to me. Human responsibility. He didn't bring the water pots to the you go bring the water pots to me and then I'll do it. The man who was blind, God tells them, you have to go wash your eyes and the pool. The man who had the hand that was atrophy, God says, you have to stretch your hand. The woman who had the issue of blood, she went 12 years trusting doctors until she got to Jesus and he says to her, hey, do you want to be me? Oh, she says to herself, if I could just touch the him of his garment, see human responsibility. If I could touch the him of his garment, I'll be me. Oh, there is a human component, no matter what your faith is, to all transition, resilience, breakthrough and purpose, there is always a human component that's necessary. I love that. I think that's such an important message too. I think that before we even get further, well, we were even just talking about before we press record. You mentioned that this book, the shift, this is a re-release of a book that you put out, he's a four years ago, and you've written other, I mean, you've written other books since and I thought that was an interesting story. How people will bring you some of the other books you've written or the book signing for one of the other books, but then they'll bring you this book and they'll be like, this changed my life. Like, please sign this, you know, this has been incredible. So I think that it's interesting to touch on sort of the anatomy of what a shift is, why it's so important, why this idea resonates with so many people. I'm sure you have, I'm sure you have a couple thoughts because there's something about the idea of a shift of going through these massive transformative moments in your life that is so powerful that literally out of all the incredible work you do, people are still saying, hey, this was the book that had the most impact on my life. Why do you think that is? Yeah, because I think that the one thing that is inevitable in all of our lives, we want to all be rich, we want to all be poor, we want to all be born black, we want to all be born white, we want to all be affluent, we want to all be struggling, everybody won't be fit, everybody won't be not fit, but we all will go through a transition. I don't care what spectrum you follow. You could live in the heels of Hollywood or you can live on the streets of Gary and Deanna where I came from, you're going to go through a shift. So embracing change as opposed to resisting change is the emphasis that the books put on because change is inevitable, but not only is it inevitable, it's necessary. It's necessary. The tree can't spare C forever, right? The oak tree can't stay in acorn forever. If you stay in the original form of which you were planted, you'll never flourish into what you were meant to be. So in this book, I'm encouraging the readers to lean into the shift rather than to resist it. One of my mentors tells me a story about his brother who when he was younger, he used to ride motorcycles and his wife used to ride motorcycles with him and you probably know this guy is like, when you are on the back of a bike or motorcycle with somebody, you have to lean the same direction as them. You know, my wife and I will go jet skiing and she all really like the water. So I'm going left and she's leaning right. I'm like, no, you got to lean with me this way because if you don't lean with the tur, you'll tip it. It's the same way with life. If you don't lean into the change, if you don't lean into the tur, then you're going to tip the boat and you have to trust that every season has a purpose and you got to lean into it. It makes sense. It's very scary when you're living it. Why do people not lean into it? I love this idea. Get out of your comfort zone. You have to go through these hard periods of your life to get on the other, everything worth doing is on the other side of hard work, hard conversation. All these ideas are so powerful. Yet people still shy away from them their entire life. So these ideas, these ideas, people know them. They know that there's going to be change in shifts in their life. But for some reason, we negotiate with ourselves. We negotiate with ourselves until we die. So there is a huge mental block when somebody stays in a job or a relationship or in a circumstance that does not serve them quite literally until they're no longer on this earth. What is this block? What's what's going on? Yeah, I think there are several blocks. That's a question that I can see a Lego amount of Legos. It could be the block of, you know, imposter syndrome. It could be the block of inadequacy and insecurity. It can be the block of character versus personality. So none of us have the same block, but here's the deal. I get that question all the time. People say, yeah, but it's hard. It was hard for the person who did it. It's it is hard. And that's why everybody doesn't do it. It is hard. And that's why everybody doesn't reach it. It is hard, which is why they are all stars in basketball and people who sit at the end of the bench and have to cheer. We all are born within an incredible amount of talent, right? For those of us. And I'm not talking about people who were born with and God blesses with the severity of a handicap, right? Are something that holds them back. I'm talking about folks who can actually function psychologically in their everyday life without the assistance of, you know, medical attention. Obviously, we understand that there are some folks in life who have been disadvantaged. But if you, and everybody's watches social media now, there are folks who were born disadvantaged, who've gotten the slightest edge on folks who don't have disadvantages. I mean, I can't think of the guy's name. He spoke for me one time. I wish I could think of him. He has no legs. Nick had neck sat in the stomach. Nick spoke for me at a conference. And literally, he's from Florida. I know him. Wow. Incredible. He inspired me so much. Nick, I never, I never met Nick. I just saw him online and had our team to reach out to him. This guy is an itinerant speaker like he's everywhere around the world. He somehow thought it kind enough to come to our church and spoke sat on the edge of a step at our stage with no lyrics, a partial arm and tore the room upside down and is quite honestly making huge amounts of money right now, speaking all over the world, who literally could have said, I have no legs and no arms. And so I'm not going to do anything. That's what I mean by leaning into the ship. He took what he had. He leaned into it and he made something of himself. Folks listening today, I understand it as hard. And I don't think Scott nor I are saying that it is easy. But what we are saying is you can do it. And how we know you can do it is because somebody with the same set of circumstances are the lack thereof that you have. They did it, which means you can too. Fresh books is supporting today's episode. And if you've ever wondered how successful entrepreneurs stand up with their finances while growing their business, the answer is fresh books. The numbers don't lie. 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Transform your business with fresh books today. That's freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now listen up. This matters for your business. In today's digital landscape security isn't optional. It's essential. Without it, deal stall. Sale cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult. Now why? Because investors, customers, and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a startup founder, trying to land that first big client or an established company, scaling your security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across 35 frameworks like SOC 2 ISO 27001 and HIPAA. The exact certifications your prospects are demanding. Here's why you need to pay attention. Vanta gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance. Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work. It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the five times faster and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately. The results speak for themselves. A recent IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve over 535,000 dollars per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra, and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. And don't miss this. For a limited time only, my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanta. That's real money back in your pocket. Visit vanta.com slash Scott right now before the software expires. That is vant.com slash Scott. You started your your story and your book and you spoken about this before confronting your pastor asking if you was your father. That's that's an interesting that's an interesting way to start off your story because that's a massive shift. That's a massive you know, breaking outside your comfort zone. That's a massive difficult conversation. So what did that shift teacher? It taught me that I have to be brave because I was so scared. I was so scared. I thought if he rejects me, I'm going to crumble. If he if he denies it, then he's telling me my mother's a liar because she's the one that told me he was. I had all of the anxiety you could imagine. But I manned up Scott at 12 years old and went up to a fully grown man who I had tremendous amounts of respect and fear for as a pastor. And I looked him in his face and I said, are you my father? And within three seconds that man said yes. And so it taught me courage because I got my first big yes because I wasn't too afraid not to receive a no. Yeah. In fact, I tell folks that you normally have to go through nine nose to get to one yes. So you have to calculate it in your mind that whatever you're seeking, whatever you're seeking to find out, wherever you need the validation from, whether it's for me, it was a father for you may it may be an income level. For somebody else, it may be a million subscribers on YouTube. For somebody else, it may be the corner office. Do I go in interview for the for the next position above me? Whatever it is, you have to be willing to be told no to get to a yes. If the only answer you want is yes, there's stay at home and give them to yourself. But if you step out in that real world, somebody's going to tell you no, but you don't stop at that. You lean into it. You lean into it. And it's like, you know, when I was in the eighth grade, I never were forget I played for an AAU team. And we went to the Rattleson Hotel in Mayorville, Indiana. I couldn't swim. I couldn't swim. So all of the kids was all my brothers on the basketball team. They were in the swimming pool jumping around. It's got I can't swim. So I'm standing back. One key comes and pushes me in. First is me in the deep end of the pool. And I'm just fighting for my life. I'm screaming and I'm getting me out of it. Give me out going up. And it was only about eight feet. So I was able to hit the bottom and then jump up. And I heard one of the lifeguards said, stop fighting. Stop fighting. I didn't realize that he wasn't going to jump into the water while I was fighting because I could have drowned both of us. So knock him out or you pull him down. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know it at the time. He waited until I relaxed. And the moment I relaxed, he had me out of the water in what seemed like five seconds. Sometimes you have to stop fighting the environment and you have to succumb to it so that you can find your bearings. And then when you're brought out, you come out with more knowledge like I'm talking to you about, I didn't learn that in swimming class. I learned it in a drowning incident. So there are some things you learn in the fight that you don't learn on the shore. So you got to lean into it. You got to lean into it. I didn't learn that sitting in the lawn chair. I didn't learn that I can still see the hotel right now. I can still see the seats. I can still see the kidney shape swimming pool. I can still see the waterfall coming down the rocks. I went there for that. I left there with this story. There I went for enjoyment. I left with a testimony. So you have to lean into it. But you have to survive it. So when people have the courage to lean into these shifts and they lean into them again and again and again until they get to the yes or they get to the desired outcome, I always thought that that would be sort of a good proof point that if you lean into the uncomfortable for a long enough period of time, you're going to get to the other side of it. But one thing that you mentioned and I'm curious what you mean by this and I believe that it's probably because two ideas can be true at the same time. So you describe that life is a series of shifts, but you can't build your life on your last shift. And that's interesting because I would have thought the last shift is proof that taking risks and doing the hard uncomfortable things actually can work. But you're saying you can't just rest on that. What do you mean by that? I mean that. So yeah, I'm a sports guy. And it's it comes from a sports background like Coach Bobby Miles, my high school coach, you would always tell us you're no good, no better than your last win. So I was taught. I was taught that like, okay, you won. You won the last game, but you don't show up the next game as a winner. You're not automatically guaranteed to win the next game because you won the last game. You show up as a competitor, the next game, and you have to prove that you're a winner again. And then you get past that and then you show up at the next game and you have to prove that you are a winner again. Every game starts 0-0. So you don't walk in the room with a with a head start because you won the last shift, right? So you embrace change, but you also overcome setbacks. And like you said, they both have to be true at the same time because the mindset that calls the problem that you have is not going to be the same mindset that solves the issue that you have. You know, it's it's the mindset that you have that calls the current problem that you are now facing. You cannot solve the problem you are facing with the same mindset that caused it. So then you have to shift. You have to think about a bigger perspective or collaboration. Who do I need to collaborate with to overcome this? Some people need accountability partners. Who is a person that I will allow in my life to encourage me when I can't encourage myself? Right? Who's whatever you have to life hack yourself. You've got to you've got to figure out who you are. And then you got to put in place what's necessary to not only help you to accomplish the next version of yourself, but not to atrophy and become who you escaped. Right? So I'm looking at you. The last time I spoke to you, this wasn't the background you have for the pocket. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. So this says to me, this is tremendous growth from what I saw last time. And I'm thinking about when you designed that somebody built it, I can tell you exactly what happened and you not mentioned to me. That was a blank wall. They took those shelves. They had to paint them. You had to tell them what you wanted to look like. Your interior designer found all of those individual pieces, placed them. She said, no, the book looks here. I'm gonna put the clock here. All of that was placed. That takes vision and collaboration. Right? So what people are looking at and folks who are watching this right now, I want you to look at that wall behind Scott. I want you to look at it. It took hours to find all of those pieces didn't come out of the same store. The person who designed that over here, over here, over here, over here, over here, and it takes time to do that. You know, and you always want it done quicker than they are finished. And you like, what has taken them so long and I tell folks all the time, never look at somebody else's job and assume how long it's going to take until you've done it yourself, you'll never realize how hard it is. What do you say to people who do achieve and to go through a shift? But they're still hard on themselves. So the idea is you're moving your own goalposts. Too much. So again, two ideas have to be true at the same time. Shifts have to happen. But that person saw us to have grace and celebrate where they came from. Oh my God. So huge. Because I'm a big proponent of self-talk. Like, you have to talk to yourself because this world is so noisy. This is so noisy. It can discourage you. Oh my God. I mean, you can look on social media and and make an assumption about somebody's numbers or somebody's life or somebody's matriculation. And you can be discouraged because you'll look at yourself and like, and I've been at this for so long and I'm not, you know, I'm not scaling. I'm not, I'm not growing. But you have to pause and think, man, I'm not where I want to be, but I am not where I used to be. Right. And I've got to, I've got to celebrate in the middle, at least I didn't quit. At least I didn't completely fail our fall apart. And I read this once before, even if you did fail, the definition of failure, I never will forget it. I was at a barber shop in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And I never will forget. I saw it on a barber shop written in dry erase marker. It said failure is the opportunity to begin again with increased intelligence. I read that as a kid. And it's it's say what you feel like. That's a good quote. That is a good quote. Massive. That's a fire quote has been with me for 30 years in a barbershop reading a dry erase marker board. Because one of the ideas in your book is discussing how like some shifts they require us to acknowledge limitations. But that's empowering to a degree. And I think that's what that's what that quote means to me. Yeah, I absolutely love that. Like acknowledging limitations. It's clarifying because then we know where we have to work. But if we don't lean into the shift, sometimes we're super ignorant of our own shortcomings. And they're only made aware to us when we're doing the uncomfortable stuff. Imagine what you say. Yeah. Imagine what you said about acknowledging limitations. You and I are driving up what's the what's the street Miami that's over above the one. What is Collins? Is that is yeah. Okay. So you and I are driving up Collins. And you are in a Ferrari. I am in a Honda Civic. What business do I have pulling up side of you threatening a race? I have to recognize the abilities of what you have and the limitations of what I have. And what I do is I prevent myself from incurring a loss that is unnecessary by recognizing the equipment that I have and recognizing the equipment that you have. There's no need to even try. And I think that some people think that faith and that hard work and ingenuity means walking around as if reality isn't real. There's some things that just real. I would never recommend a turtle to taunt a cheetah. This would recommend. I don't care how tough you are. There's just something you lead to somebody else and you fight the race. That's the set that's the set before you, right? You you you fight the game that's in your purview and you win that one and guess what? You get better. And then you can challenge on the next level, but you have to win where you are before you can be where you want to go. If the win where you are for you can be where you want to go. When you're going through when you're going through a shift, you speak about the danger of getting stuck in your shift. What does that mean? I got that from my wife and I went to Las Vegas one time and they have these things you can write called slingshots. You know, the three wheel part. Like a like a sand buggy. Yeah. Yeah. We look everywhere we go. We find some sand buggy or ATV something I bought. We love to have a good time. And we were driving up Las Vegas Wheel of Art with these slingshots and she didn't know it because I tried to hide it from her that I didn't know how to drive a stick shift. I've never had I never had. First of all, my mother didn't have a car growing up and then we did it was automatic. So I never drove a shift. My wife, her father told her how to drive a shift and she's just out here just shifting and I'm like, I'm going to keep up with this girl, but I can't do it. So she kept looking back and she looks back at me one time and I had pulled over to the gas station because I had given up. I could not figure out how to get out of first. And that story prompted me to talk about getting stuck in shifts. Like when you when you don't recognize what powers you have and what powers you don't have, when you don't recognize that you have to embrace change and not resist it, when you don't recognize that you have to overcome setbacks and not succumb to them, when you don't recognize that faith and trust in God is the way out of some of these things, then you you're over on the side of the road, stuck in the gear because you either don't believe or haven't sought advice on how to get out of that that gear. So I asked her finally swallowing my pride, how do you get out of this? She said you have to push the I believe if I'm saying it correctly, you have to push the gear that's associated with the shifter and the brake class, the clutch, you have to you have to press those. I did not know I'm doing it with one foot, you know, I got one foot like an like an automatic car. Yeah, I'm almost embarrassed to say I didn't know what to do. I look down there said, what do we have three? I'd never driven a stick in my life. Don't don't be embarrassed. I don't think I don't think many people know how to you know, change a tire, your drive stick. I don't think I don't think it's like a common skill, so don't don't be embarrassed. Had no idea. That lady told me how to drive that stick ship in the matter of two minutes and we drove to the Hoover Dam all the way over there on these slingshots because I yelled for help when I could not shift. I pulled over didn't didn't keep going because I grind it Scott so long and I couldn't catch up with it. Just pulled over. How do you know when how do you know when that right moment is to to ask for help? Not not on like a small trivial idea, like not like a small thing where you should put the work and figure it out but like I don't know relationship switch career start a business marry someone break up with someone these are major shifts right and there's a lot of other ones you know for things that are affecting your life health like maybe you don't have the treatment available to you where you are so you gotta go to a different city different country spend lots of money like do you bring people into these decisions right away you try and navigate it yourself first what do you what do you recommend? I think the the most efficient way we all are going to try to navigate it ourselves I again person as a man of faith I invite God in from the beginning um but this is when you know you need a shift you know you need a shift when it causes you stress time energy and money and when you're when you have copious amounts of stress you're losing time you have no energy that is costing you money then you need a new system and you need to find some folks who can help you to build it because it is difficult to do anything alone right it's difficult to do anything alone and even when you think you're doing it alone you're not doing it alone somebody's about to have to come alongside and help you for instance again with the podcast folks don't know you've got a camera setup they don't know you have a switcher back there they don't know you've got a computer connected to all they can see is the lens and if you have to get up right now to service any of those things you're not on camera if you get up right now to go switch the angle you got so in order to do it from a multi-layer perspective has to be somebody else in the room to do it for you otherwise we have to stay with this angle and I would say that anybody who wants to scale it life from multiple angles diversify your income structures diversify your portfolio you're going to need some collaborative efforts you're going to and you're going to have to do something that you probably struggle to do because of what life is done and let's trust somebody other than you that's tough I you deal with it in business all the time I mean I deal with entrepreneurs who can't delegate don't don't feel comfortable hiring who don't feel comfortable giving people access to the things that they've built but it's not it's not just a visit the business ideas they all translate into into relationships into into mental health into physical health everybody wants to go out of the loan my favorite my favorite idea is that nobody is self-made like like self-made is fake it's it's false it doesn't it doesn't exist not a single person but we all go out we all have ego right you do yeah and ego I read somewhere before said ego it means to edge got out right it's it's it's it's this idea that I can do it alone it's impossible it's impossible nobody and I agree with you and you hear people almost self-made millionaire how did you forget the teacher that taught you arithmetic yeah what about your customers what about your customers right what about your critics because you learned from them too yeah I think that I think that ego this is what I believe I said you know like when you have something on the top of your head and you just keep bringing it up right now that now that I'm speaking to somebody who who works with God on the regular I'm gonna get your opinion on this because I've spoken to a lot of people that do not work with God about this and they generally agree I think that secularism in society and lack of God in society has avoid has been filled with ego and I think that ego and believing that you are the most important thing on this earth is the most damaging to society your own development relationships career success however you want to define it I think that humility and removing ego is a single most important thought that that especially people who do not believe in some version of God have have to start understanding yeah I just brought it up on my on my laptop here the Bible says a second Timothy chapter three verse two it says that when when the end times come one of the ways we will know is that people will become lovers of themselves so that's that's that's one of the tail tail alerts that we're in trouble because people are increasingly becoming lovers of themselves and and Paul says that's how you know you're in the last days and it if you if you look around everybody's going at it alone everybody's going at it alone and and then you go back to the book of Genesis where the scriptures explicitly say that God did not create man to be alone so that's why COVID was so destructive because everybody was alone and and the mental health epidemic that we're in right now and people can ignore all they want the mental health epidemic is as serious as the COVID pandemic yeah I agree yeah it's because an idol mind is the devil's workshop like do you know what is being done to a person who has a idol solitary solitude mindset I can do it I'm it I'm the one um that makes for a hard existence um and it in in ultimately to non-existence a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire well and find the right person but it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business 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hiring right now with indeed and listeners of success story will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash clary terms of conditions do apply just go to indeed.com slash clary a huge thank you to net sweet for supporting today's episode now what does the future hold for business if you ask nine experts you're going to get 10 answers bull market bear market inflation up inflation down honestly at this point you just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing they future proof their businesses their operations with net sweet by oracle which is the number one cloud ERP imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform and here's what makes net sweet it gives you one source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real time data insights forecasting you're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions net sweet helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net sweet dot com slash scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net sweet dot com slash scott clary i just want to take a quick second to thank Habspot for supporting today's episode now success story is one of the many podcasts in the Habspot podcast network which is the audio destination for business professionals if you like success story you're also gonna like billion dollar moves another incredible podcast hosted by Sarah Chen spelling Sarah is an incredible interviewer she asks the hard questions on her show you're gonna learn about the triumphs failures of all her guests the hard lessons of the best and brightest in business so that you two can make billion dollar moves in venture and investing in business and in life i want you to go listen to billion dollar moves wherever you get your podcasts it is one of my favorite Sarah is one of my favorite hosts if you like success story you're gonna love this show and a quick pause if you haven't had a chance yet i'd love your input on our listener survey at scott clary dot com slash survey it takes just a few minutes and one lucky respondent when a gift card once we hit 100 responses your feedback directly impacts what we cover on the show i really appreciate it i think that we don't have community the way that we used to have we don't have we don't we don't feel i mean everybody now is so transactional so when they're dealing with like bringing it back to to this particular idea going through shifts if your whole life you feel like you're alone then you're gonna go through these shifts alone too and your chance to success is is fraction insignificant compared to if you had you know a community a team a family a group of people that actually loved and cared about you behind you and i think that covid just was like nail in the coffin of everyone's isolated and maybe you have a couple close friends but even then during covid it tested those because you couldn't even see them i don't know i i feel like i feel like everyone is there and and i think that i'm speaking from sort of my generation obviously my parents generation they had much closer a friendship because nothing was really built online it was all built in person but now people are building relationships that younger generations building relationships online and i think that it's scary it's amazing you said that i just i just yeah preach that this past sunday 75% of college students say that they are in a long distance relationship online 50% of people in america were in relationships and that's about 28 million people said they they met their spouse online and have some sort of it's actually a thing it's called ldr long distance relationship so there's an acronym for it so that's that's how real it is right now it's like i'm in an ldr so yeah this bringing it back to sort of your story we we spoke about that one early life shift with your father as as your pastor and and sort of getting the courage 12 years old to have that conversation which is not easy you speak about how shifts reveal something so tell me what that revealed something that you wouldn't have seen or you wouldn't have known before you went through that shift so what did that particular shift show you man you you should be on the TV doing this man you get some provocative questions there do you know i didn't learn um the full lesson of that 12 year old oldness until i was 35 so the first thing i want to say to folks is stop expecting every shift to happen every night they don't happen every night and they don't happen overnight some a short term or there's some long term things that come out of these shifts that will change your life i never will forget my daughter was born when i was 30 31 years old and i remember a mentor telling me your heart on your father i mean being hard on him do you know do you know what how much of my life he missed and never came to a basketball game what do you mean hard on everything that i feel about him he deserves so upset with him and this man looked at me and he said when you become a father talk to me okay i will and it wasn't until i became a father that i recognized how difficult of a position my father was in now let me give you the other father's story sky my mother and father conceived me while my father was separated from his wife so his divorce was not finalized i have a younger sister we share both parents so it wasn't just me it was my sister kiana who was born from that union as well long story short my father reconciles his relationship with his wife which now means that he has two children outside of his marriage and he's a pastor that's not easy that is not easy and it wasn't until i became a parent and a pastor and a man and had constituents and members and boards to know that oh my god to come out and say that i was his child meant the possibility of losing his income his life's work and i can hear folks right now listening to me saying so what he you know when you make your bed you have to lie in it true but as difficult as it is for the person who would judge my father's situation as difficult as it is for them to make their shift that was the difficulty that he faced in making that shift and it wasn't until i became a man that i didn't absolve him from it but i understood the difficulty of it and it allowed me to bring more grace to my perspective realizing that that was a very difficult situation to be a very hard situation and i said to myself and i said to him before he passed and he died at 77 years old but i said to him in his sitting room there he had in the house in this lazy boy i looked him in his face and my a minute to late 30s and i said to him i said i forgive me for everything that we've ever been through and i asked for your forgiveness because i couldn't have been a better son i didn't have to be angry all these years i didn't have to ignore your calls i didn't have to scout out his bits i was so angry sometimes i said the hell with it i don't i don't want to hear from me i don't want to hear from i don't want to reconcile i don't i don't want to hear your side of the story i was i was so angry as a child and i woke up one day and realized it was hard and that i had every right to forgive him in spite of folks who wanted me to stay mad at him that was my decision i i had a right to say it's okay because you didn't do it to them you did it to me and i get to say it's okay and i get to say i forgive you and i get to tell everybody my mom and my sisters included stop the anger because where has it gotten us where has all of the anger that we spewed in this house over the last 20 years gotten us we drunk the poison and expected in the die it doesn't work that way i changed my approach to him it was so liberating and i believe with everything in my heart that many of the blessings that i look at and see in my life right now is a result of the forgiveness that i gave to a person who in society's perspective probably didn't deserve it but it wasn't their decision to make it was mine it's interesting how when we go through shifts we become selfish and we expect the shift to benefit us and we forget everyone else that that shift impacts very very i think we default to being self centered and i think that when you go through these shifts you have to realize that you don't operate in a silo and the and the journey that you go on i mean yours is an extreme example but the journey that you go on i think you have to be conscious of all the other pieces that it impacts and affects our card agree with that yeah i'm just thinking of like an example of somebody being so self serving that they go on a shift in their career or what i see often is people want to start a business and they go through a difficult shift and then they're upset when their spouse isn't on board with them working 120 hours a week but they quit their job and they're wondering why they're not happy anymore and i don't think that should dissuade you but i think if possible being a little bit less selfish before you decide to take action and just understanding sort of the butterfly effect of all the of the of the shift and the journey that you're going to go on is important it is not just all positive for you that's not how the world works so i can tell just by listening to you talk the huge amount of self motivation self responsibility that your parents put in you like it's ever did that somebody raised you would say it you pick your stuff up by the bootstraps and you pick the job done and you acknowledge the folks who help you along the way otherwise you're going to be on punishment for the rest of the month and because this is what you're every family i can hear it and it's an amazing quality because are the character that we possess are the things that our parents put on the put in us our personalities are the mask that we purchased to be able to survive in society right and so most folks want to be judged on the personality not recognizing that you will be judged on the character the things that are in you see Brooks says in his book from strength the strength he says that most folks are working on resume virtues when you should be working on eulogy virtues right so so most people want to be known and recognized for the resume stuff i was on time i made it i'm a hard worker i don't know it's the it's the eulogy stuff i was trustworthy i was kindhearted i was there those are the things that we we will be judged upon in our shifts um the eulogy stuff not the not the resume stuff i love that that's that's that's that's that's hard that's hard like what are people going to say about you at you know at your funeral i don't think people think that way i don't think most people go through life thinking that way maybe maybe i'm just maybe i'm just pessimistic i don't know you're right you're right and it's it's a shame that more of us don't but these are the the voice and deficits that make society so vitriolic and here's a deal everybody didn't grow up in a loving household like you and i right date some folks um i'm thinking of a young lady in particular she grew up her mother was addicted to drugs her mother was murdered murdered by a drug dealer her little brother was in the house when the drug dealer murdered her mother and the only way they found out that her mother had died is the baby cried for two to three days straight and the neighbor finally sent someone over for a well well fair check wellness check only to find out that the next door neighbor had been murdered and the young lady that i'm talking about is a good mother is now raising that boy which was her brother but raised him as a son is a a nurse at one of the most successful hospitals in Houston, Texas and she just so happens to be my god sister so you can't tell me what can't happen if you don't just lean into the shift i mean there's somebody whose stories is is equally tragic but life is 10% of what happens to you and it is 90% of how you respond to and we have way more victims in our society than we have victors a very sad story and next the gentleman you're speaking about before with the no legs and and and one arm and the other arm is it's not there um his brother he spoke about this publicly and so i don't mind telling this story but his brother passed away and overdosed because he felt so bad about Nick's condition oh my god isn't that just wow yeah that's when i heard that and then i like i met Nick obviously at a at a much later stage in his life when he was already thriving and he speaks globally now and he i think he's now in china and Dubai and he's in florid every once in a while because he has a house here and i actually spoke at an event that i put on and i was like florid like people and i put on an event uh it was basically a room full of people that it sold companies for between 50 million and 500 million all exuded entrepreneurs everyone was bawling their eyes out everybody was in it everybody like the guy is phenomenal yes i mean two people wildly different outcomes one very sad and tragic but the person you had the actual difficult physical problem and he doesn't even he's so positive he won't ever call it a problem he'll he'll think of some clever way of saying that's the best he's ever happened to him because that's just who he is yeah here on he makes more he makes more money and he can tap into some of the hardest most logical uh successful entrepreneurs in the work that she didn't do it in front of me and and he's just wildly different outcomes i don't even know i can't put his i can't put justice to his story because he's just uh he's such an incredible person um but just goes to show you you can he's an example him and his brother are extreme examples of leaning into shifts into and not and not and anyways absolutely incredible for people that for people that uh i'm sure that you may have spoken about this story before but for you because i think it's always helpful to to hear from personal experience it's a lot better than like theoretical what was the hardest shift that you've gone through in your life and what did you learn from it i think it depends on what stage i was in the hardest would have been my father um and then the second would have been um i had made up my mind that i was going to play basketball for the rest of my life you know i wanted to go overseas my route was i was going to go overseas work real hard get caught up by the NBA and uh my coach does know i never will forget um i was passing a church in college and somehow through his kindness he allowed me to go and leave the church in the morning and then come back and practice right and then go teach it was real close i was in a small town so you know you're talking about a 5 and 10 in the drive and um he looked at me one day and he said you're going to have to make a decision you're going to have to play basketball and you're going to if you're wanting to do this full time and he was honest if you're going to do this full time you got to put more effort in it and he said i'm not going to make that decision for you because if you want to be a pastor it's going to need everything you have but if you're going to do this it's going to need everything you have and so i made a decision um that day i said um against middle Tennessee state in Fort Wayne, Indiana at the uh the gate center i said um yeah i'm going to stop preaching and i'm going to play basketball and that was at four o'clock doing pre-game meal four seven o'clock game at seven o'clock the game starts by eight o'clock that night i was in the locker room on the stretcher on my way to the hospital because i tore every ligament in my left knee that's why i wrote the book the shift because the knee i was depending on the gift is what god was depending on and he shifted the thing that i was depending on to develop the thing that he was depending on and now i am doing what he called me to do because he had a lot of shift in the thing that i wanted to do so and this is the thing this is the thing about life nobody gets through it without some test just i don't care where you start it's going to get difficult even if you get started at the top climbing another mountain is even more difficult it's going to be hard for us all do some people get a leg up absolutely that was the hardest shift recently the hardest shift july 8th 2024 two days after my 43rd birthday my wife and i were enjoying a nice birthday dinner and i get a call from someone at the office that says that the hurricane hit our church and our north location was completely destroyed by hurricane barrel and to see i mean we we purchased it and it was in bad condition when we purchased it so everything good about it we did it together and to see millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of hours and miracles performed and signs and wonders all in that building to see the roof um laying in the middle of the floor was just it's so it's traumatic like i can't i'll get i'll get i'll never get the images out of my head uh and fighting with the insurance company over the last nine months has been um the fight of a like this has been a huge huge huge huge shit um i got so many i got so many but those are the ones that pop into my head but everyone does everyone has so many and and the thing is like in the moment in the moment one thing you do very well like you live what you teach is you do not let it rewrite your story you you when you messed up your knee you could have been down and out and that could have psychologically you could have spiraled and you could have not i mean when when you when when you are saying i'm not going to be a preacher i'm going to go play basketball and then that night you mess up your knee that could push you farther away from god and preaching the never before because now you have hate now you have anger and you're like you know what you know screw screw you i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go towards you i'm not gonna i'm not gonna become the preacher because i don't know what you're trying to do here but uh this is this is this is this is what i actually wanted and you didn't you didn't believe in me like that could be the conversation that you're having it's not but that could have been one of the conversations and i think that that's what we have to be careful of when we go through a shift it does it just because you lean into a shift doesn't mean that the outcome is always gonna be a hundred percent positive and you can't let that rewrite your story and you've never you you know you in particular never let that rewrite your story and i think that that's what people have to take away what i've always not all positive and all things yeah all things work together for my good it don't feel good it doesn't look good but because i believe and when i tell you i believe i'm not playing i believe so since i believe i will accept no outcome that doesn't work for my good so i'm gonna find a good in the back yeah i'm gonna find a good one other i yeah you have to you out even with that what's about what is happening with your church whatever you build will be bigger and better and help more people and that's the way you have because because if you believe it it will happen because we don't believe it it'll also happen and that's my my coach you say success comes in cans not can that's i like that so whatever coaches are the best coaches are the best things all they always do if you believe you can you're right if you believe you can you're right one more idea that i think is important because he's spoken about these huge sort of milestone moments in life but i think it's important to help people recognize shifts every single day like the small little things that can have impact they should lean into because you you mentioned the shifts occur all around you every single day so what is the practice or what is an idea that somebody can internalize so that they can see these shifts and these opportunities five times before lunch so here's what i i have a affirmation that i keep with me all the time okay and and i just recently changed it i used to have these five eggs i used to say you know i control my atmosphere you know i i control my approach right these are the things that i would just say to myself and now i'm i'm saying i have the power to empower myself i have the empowered embrace the situation so i went from five years to five years and it's something simple like i've got this thing and and i believe in it so much let me see if i can find it in my phone this is my daughter my daughter's 12 years old before we go to bed every night this is what i say to my daughter i say repeat after me i am uniquely created and there is no one like me i am deeply loved by my god my parents and myself and she says it after me i tell her my voice matters she says my voice matters i say my mistakes don't define me she says my mistakes don't define me and then no matter what happens i will always be here for you say that no matter what happens you'll always every night now i don't know if she believes it but i know if i keep putting that in her spirit in her mind and in her soul one day she's going to have to draw from that and all of us don't have a father that gives us that all of us don't have a father that gives us that our mother our friend but man you got to you got to borrow me or Scott as a mentor how do you do that go online and just borrow us you don't have to know us to get that information you know you borrow a person's psychology until you meet him i believe that thought attracts that up on which it is directed there's no no mistake that you and i are sitting here talking about our perspectives in lives it can say over and over again you know what i agree with that something about how we believe and think has brought us together right and and that's the same thing folks that you have to do this podcast is actually me in your life this is Scott in your life and and we may not be in your living room but we're in your life and you just let these words echo over and over and over and over again until you can repeat them with belief and then you become for somebody what you didn't have for yourself and i'm going to tell you one of the greatest things you can do for yourself is teach what you learn because when you're teaching you're learning more than the students i'm learning more right now by saying than this than you are by hearing this so so i want you to get in that same position find out who you're going to help as a result of the help you received and then you stay on a lifelong journey of servitude serve as many people as you can and then be grateful gratitude and servitude are the life hacks on how to make it through a shift i serve and i'm grateful i love it i absolutely love it what is what is one very important idea from the book but just around shifts that i didn't ask you about i think that there are you know what we're saying right now is kind of mystical to people right it seems like this unattainable thing i think the thing that we probably should leave the folks with is realizing that although what we say seems mystical but there are actual practical steps that you have to take in order to do this i think that if you're going to be a leader you have to be a reader i don't know of anybody and i'm not saying that it doesn't exist but i don't know of anybody who is a massive leader who isn't also a massive reader that's one thing number two i think that you have to feel your best physically in order to feel your best mentally right and i'm not you know i'm not downgrading anybody but you got it you got a move like you you got to put one foot in front of the other you can't you can't be a couch potato you can't you know you can't be in the dark room all day you can't you can't just binge watch television and expect to be this massive force in the world you got to do something okay you got to move you got to you got to have agility and then last but not least which i think is probably more important than the first two you got to flat out have some courage you have to be brave because you're going to be scared the whole way you're not going to feel like Superman you're going to feel like Clark Kent but you still got to go on the phone booth and you got to come out with that suit on and you got to show up at life like you believe you can leak a tall building in a single bound and you be you be surprised at how life will bow to a person who believes that they can conquer so i think that those are our three steps that we leave folks with and obviously having their courage to believe it all i love it where can people connect with you obviously the book you can get anywhere you can get books i'll put it in the show notes but where else do you want to send people yeah you can go to anywhere books a million christian books.com you can get any you amazon it anywhere a book is so but to connect with me because i often break down our books and i share it in by size content but you got to have the book to know where i where i'm going so follow me on instagram and pass the key on follow me on youtube um scott we just passed over i think oh me i think we're six thousand away from six hundred thousand subscribers on our new channel which is huge for a youtube channel that's typically about faith right so you know we're we're we're pleased with that um you know our website tlhc.org man just type me in my name in google it'll it'll lead you to where we are and i'd be glad to have a friend like you uh walk with me alone in journey