Sam Adeyemi - Global Speaker & Strategic Leadership Expert | Have We Lost God?

I was looking for books to read on success, the first book that I read was 12 times never last, but 12 people do. I wrote about Hula. Reverend Sam Ademi is a dynamic teacher, success coach, author, leadership consultant, his life-changing television broadcast, excellent leadership, and success power. Has Sam is also the founder of the Daystar Leadership Academy. The statement that hit me the hardest, the one I struggled with the most in the book, it said attitudes are more important than facts. The quickest way to learn how to sell anything is to be told no 100 times. I was reading a book on sale many years ago, and I saw something there. 80% of sales are made after the football. It was like a light bulb just went up in my head. Because I found that up until that time, I was in hand-led rejection well. Get ready to fail, make failure your friend. One of the quotes you've said in the past, successful people are the failures that refuse to quit, while failures are successful people that quit easily. Leadership happens at all levels, and it actually even starts with the world is in desperate need of good leadership now. And I'm mentioning one word people don't want to say in the leadership space you've got to have. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. They've been supporting the show for over two years now, and when it comes to running an incredible business, HubSpots got your back. Now, if you're an entrepreneur, you know that nothing matters more than generating revenue, but sales people aren't just closing deals, they're tracking down leads, they're forecasting growth, they're whipping up reports, managing contacts, creating content, crunching numbers. The list of tasks goes on and on. With Q4 around the corner, there's a better way to win. It all starts with the new HubSpot sales hub. Now, with the HubSpot sales hub, your data, tools, and teams are fully linked inside a smart and highly customizable platform that feels good to use. It's easy. Turn prospects into pipeline and close your deals all in one place. Plus, sequences and smooth workflows help reps, streamline tasks, and spend more time on what they do best, connecting with customers. With sales hub, closing big deals is simple, try for yourself at hubspot.com slash sales. Thank you very much for having me on your podcast today. Wow. Well, that's an amazing question you just asked because it makes me to tell literally the story of my life. But that critical point was when I graduated from college and I had studied civil engineering. So I trained to be an engineer because my dad is a builder. He owned a construction company. His own dad was a builder. So it was like building was family tradition, right? And then I figured if I did engineering, then I would not have to set for a job. I would just key into my dad's business, right? I struggled with the science courses. You're not supposed to be struggling with mathematics, CPS, an engineering student. I did looking back now, I would have done better, maybe study in business, you know, or the social sciences, but I did the engineering and the bad part to it was by the time I was done with the engineering, the company was not there anymore. My dad's business was not there. Run, something went wrong with the national economy, something went wrong with his business, and our family went through a very difficult time. A difficult time was difficult to get food to eat, difficult for him to pay rent. At some point I went with him to the court, when the landlord took him to court for not paying the rent, I'm so on. It was a difficult period and then I graduated from college. So I had to set for a job. And it took me almost three years to get a job. I almost freaked out, honestly, it almost got me depressed. And these days it's interesting, I read about it and they say young people in their 20s who graduated college, that they usually battle with anxiety and fear and doubts and depression, because life doesn't always point out the way they dream, okay, the dreamt it would. I went through it, right? At some point it was like all the doors were closed against me, right? My future looked bleak, but then I began to ask myself a question, is there a sure way to go about succeeding in this life? Are there principles? Greatfully, I did engineering. So if you don't physics and chemistry, you know about principles, are there principles, you know, that would work for everybody the same? So I began to read books, I was looking for books to read on success. The first book that I read was 12 times never last, but 12 people do, by robot Hula. And the book shifted my brain. And I can still remember the statement that hit me the hardest, the one I struggled with the most in the book, it said, attitudes are more important than facts. That was a brain twist for me. What are you saying? The facts, the realities of my life, attitudes are more important than them. I don't get it. I have to think and think and think, read the whole book again and again, and then eventually I got it. What I'm thinking and how I am feeling, they have greater impact on my life, they determine my outcome, much more than what is happening to me now. Eventually later I would read about the wife of a former US resident, Elino Roosevelt, she said, the things that happen to us are not as important as how we respond to the things that happen to us, something like that, right? I would respond. It's more important than the things that happen to us. So with that, I have with time proven that at least that's in my own life, that the things I can control in this life are inside me, the ones I cannot control outside. When I focus my energy on the things I cannot control, I feel powerless, I experience negative emotions, but then when I focus on the things I can control, I feel empowered. And I found out the things I cannot control outside, like the weather or the climate or what the president is thinking, but then the things I can control are inside me, I can control my thoughts, I can control my emotions. And amazingly, I realize life takes me in the direction that I want to go when I focus my energy on the things I can control. So that for me was a major turning point because from then on, I think I've gotten to understand more that there are principles that have no respect for persons when you apply them anywhere in the world that they help you to achieve your goals. So a lot of people coming out of college especially, and I think even I mean there's been various crises. So this is like the 2008 housing collapse and financial crisis, then there's COVID. And even now I mean post COVID, yeah there's more jobs and people are working, but now you look at cost of living and homes and it seems so overwhelming. And I think that everybody, I think a lot of people want to adopt that mindset that if they focus on the things that they can control will be okay, but like life beats them down, batters them down again and again and again and it turns from a nice idea to absolutely hopeless. So what was the thing that allowed you to start to see the flywheel turning in your own life in your own career that gave you those proof points that this ideology was not just nice to hear and nice to read about, but actually very practical. I think it was stories, other people's stories, starting from that book that Robert Schiller, because he met that statement he said at a conference where he was speaking to farmers in Iowa. They had a bad year, there was drought and almost all the farmers went bankrupt and he was asked to come talk to them. And he said he was just finding it to go to know what to say to them. So when he was introduced, he said he stepped on the stage still looking for that inspiring thing to say to them. So he was pacing up and down the stage, pacing up and down the stage. He said, all the farmers were looking at him and then that line just dropped and he just stopped and said, ladies and gentlemen, I hear you have a bad year in Iowa, but I came here to tell you that tough times never last but tough people do. And there was an applause and all that. So that story and then many other stories that I have read. I'm a student of the Bible and the amazing thing is when I read through the Bible, there's almost no situation a human will go through that is not recorded in the Bible. That's somebody who's not going through. It is amazing how the wisdom, we forget about wisdom, right? In any religion, we forget about wisdom that's already been figured out and passed down. We're trying to figure things out yet. We're going through the same thing. I mean, we need to remind ourselves that it's still the same song that is hanging out there that people saw thousands of years ago. It's still the same moon, right? The earth is still spinning once in 24 hours. So some things actually don't change that life is cyclical, right? So I've read stories like that. I've read I read a lot. I've read a lot of books. I can see you have books behind you. You must be a book lover too. So I've made a lot of stories of people who faced daunting odds and who were able to, you know, overcome those challenges. So I realize that in life, you know, there's this illustration that I give you about the core. That is half four. And some people say it is half four. Some say it is half empty. And I realize then again, it speaks to the issue of attitude because if you focus on the emptiness, then it amplifies your fears and your anxieties. And actually creates a bigger problem. Your imagination finds it difficult to spot opportunities. If you focus on fullness, you know, on the full path, you don't focus on what you don't have. You focus on what you have. You tend to realize that everything doesn't go down at the same time in life. The day that happens, you're out of this world, right? That's the day everything goes down. But before then, yeah, a lot of things may go down. You still have something to be grateful for, right? Maybe your health. If you have your health, you still have a lot, right? And all that. You have the power to breathe. You have relationships and so on. So when I read people's stories, I find out that the people that are highly successful, this is one thing that they have, that they always focus on the fullness. Even now you look at the cup again, let's say it's not half full. Let's say it's even just some drops of water that are there. Now, these people that have lent to focus on the drops of water, instead of focusing on the empty cup, they tend to even try in the midst of chaos. You find out that while everybody runs the way from problems, they run towards problems. Example, the 2008 recession. When I spoke to my rich friends, I found out while people were losing their homes, millions of people lost their homes, they were trying to get whatever they could to buy, right? So people run away from problems, they run so highly successful people actually run towards problems. So the more I read books, read stupid stories, hair, people's stories, discuss with people, the more I find out that actually that attitude plays a very big role. One of the quotes, I think you've said in the past, successful people are the failures that refuse to quit while failures are successful people that quit easily. Is this what we're talking about here? Right. That just speaks to the fact that everybody experiences challenges. Nobody's life is perfect. They say the grass always looks green on the other side. Well, it's because they're doing something to the grass on the other side. That nobody has a problem-free life. So I found out also that this issue of having a positive attitude looking for the positive side to life, it affects our attitude to failure. And because everybody fails, because everybody makes mistakes. Then what makes the difference is how you see failure. So I found out that highly successful people don't see failure as an end. They see it as a process of learning. In fact, they believe that success is not possible without failure. And honestly, when I remember what we used to do at the lab, science lab when I was in high school, I tend to agree with them because whatever it was, we were doing them, they said it was experiments. They said we were experimenting. And whatever we were doing, we did with small quantities of chemicals because they were experiments. And then eventually, so there's practically nothing man has invented that did not start with experiments. And then eventually, they found how it worked. So which means that actually failure moves you closer to success. So you find out the people that try more tend to succeed more. So everybody has the potential to achieve success one way or the other. Success is just achieving goals. But if one has the habit of running away when something doesn't work the first time, then the chances of succeeding are greatly reduced. I was doing a book on selling many years ago. Then I saw something there. 80% of sales are made after the feed call. It was like a light bulb just went up in my head. Because I found out that up until that time, I wasn't handling rejection well. If I you know, I put the prospect and they said no, I moved away to go look for somebody else. But when I saw that principle, 80% of sales are made after the feed call. I said, Oh, wow. Oh, wow. I need to stay with the same person and talk to them at least five times. Then my chances increase. So which means I need to prepare to fail four times. Right. With each person. So if I want to make five sales, it means I need to prepare to hear no like 40 times or so. Right. It's actually it's an interesting. I just want to point something out. Sorry. I didn't interrupt. I think that the quickest way to learn how to sell anything is to be told no a hundred times. You have to get to those hundred knows. And then that's the point when people will actually then when you'll start to close your first sales because it's not only the the fact that you're already always going to get knows. It's like you're refining your message, you're refining your pitch, you're understanding the questions and the rejection. So I love this. It's a very good example. Yes. So yeah. So that's life. Right. And that's success then. Get ready to hear the news. Get ready to fail. Right. Then make failure your friend. In fact, fail faster. Right. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Fail as fast as you can and be okay with that. Talk to me. Talk to me about your journey. Talk to me about, you know, you at one point in your life found God. I don't think from what I understand God was always as prominent in your life. I mean, your father was an engineer. It's not like you came from a family of people that were involved in the church of the degree that you are. So how did you find God? How did you decide to be this person in this life? Right. Thank you. So I was born basically into Christian family. We went to church, but as far as having a personal relationship was concerned about it didn't come in until I went into college. Amazingly, one of my uncles had just become a born again Christian. He was a college student and he was like on fire for God. And the first thing he wanted to do was to lead everybody in the family to Christ, especially as young people. So the day my dad took me to college in order to resume. He came along and then at my hostel he saw all the various groups and clubs in my college. They had put up signs inviting young students to join them. Then he said to me, you see, all those, all those, but don't join them, okay? This one for the Christian union. That's the one you should join, okay? I said, thank you, thank you, uncle. In my mind, I was thinking, you just go away. I already enjoyed my life. Okay, this is the first time I'm having freedom away from home. And I want to do what young people do. But amazingly, somebody came, a preacher came on our campus and this was like two months after three months after I resumed college, did a big crusade, was preaching and then I just decided to have a change of mind interestingly and gave my life to Christ, you know, accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. And it was an interesting change for me because I actually experienced the influence of God in my life. I'll tell you one, signify the compact rate. Whenever I knelt down to pray in school, it would be like somebody pressed play on a video play crusade. Now, I mean, this was a long time ago, like this was like 40 years ago, okay, I was a teacher. So you look, by the way, just a point, you look incredibly good for that being 40 years ago. So whatever you're doing, I want some advice, good for you. Thank you, God. So I would see myself standing before people to speak, you know, and to teach. Now, that was very remarkable for me because I am introverted. I used to be extremely shy, you know, I wanted to go to look into the eyes of just one person. So to even imagine me standing in front of a crowd to speak was completely out of it. And these thoughts only came when I prayed. So that made me know, this had to be the spirit of God influencing my mind. This had to be God's design for me. Okay, so yes, I was studying to be a civil engineer, what it looks like. This is another part of my life. I didn't know it was there. Okay, and three, within a short while, I was elected into positions, you know, in my fellowship in school. That's why the leadership didn't start it. Before I was out of college, I was leading the whole fellowship, you know, in my college. And then when I got out in Nigeria, you have this one year mandatory service to the nation. Every college graduate goes through it, except you are over 30. And it just so happened for each state, the people in the service, they choose someone to head the whole Christian group for a whole state. I was choosing to lead the Christian group for my whole state, which was very surprising for me again, because I was so quiet. I didn't know anybody saw me, right? And once you were elected to do that, you couldn't do anything as that was what you did full time for the one year. So, so that's that's how I got into this line. But beautiful part to it, like I said, is it's been something really, really practical for me because I was able to discover my talents. Okay, I was able to take my attention off myself, because that was what made me struggle at the beginning. Because things were hard, like I said, for my family, I was desperate to succeed. And to succeed meant to have a good job, to have money, to have cash to grab, to have a good house and and all that and be able to travel the world. But you know, somewhere along the line, an elderly person, a minister at our church looked at me and said, I want you to read the book. That's something about you. And he gave me the first book I read on leadership. Christian leadership by Donald S. Altman. Now, for the fact that this was over 30 years ago, and the book was already old then. You can imagine how old the book is. But it was the first book I was reading on leadership. And he learned with the book. So I took a notebook, a small jota, and I wrote down all the major points in the book. I'll tell you again, an inflection point I had read in the book. The author said, those old ideas, that suggests that a few people are born to lead. Everybody else is born to follow. He said those ideas are dead. He said they were pushed by Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. Yep. He said, but if you read your Bible and you see that God created money in his own image and told him to have dominion, you would know therefore that every human being has the capacity to lead. Then he listed, the author listed the qualities of a leader and said, whoever you are, look at the list. You have some of the qualities already. The ones you don't have, you can cultivate. Honestly, he was speaking to me. For the first time, I accepted the fact that I could lead. I began to consciously develop the qualities of a leader and God sees them. Wherever I have been, I've literally just floated to the top. I've been able to develop my capacity to influence people for good. So I came to the conclusion that at the highest level of success, you help other people to succeed. That's also made me big on leadership. Well, I think that it's interesting. There's various types of work that's done that are not in the business sense. I even spoke about this before we started. So spiritual leadership, I think even some sports leaders, some coaches, some military leaders and some military admirals and captains and whatnot. There's so much wisdom in some of the things that people do in a day-to-day that isn't just from running a business that can be so applicable to, if you want, run a business, but also it could be for just being a leader in your own community, in your own life. I think that's what you really tapped into. I think that's actually why your message resonates with so many people. So you built out a day-star Christian center and now I think you serve the millions of individuals and you teach them on spirituality and God and the Bible and all the things that are normally tied to religion, but then I think there's a lot of leadership principles because that's where a lot of your work lies, too. There's a lot of lessons that you teach over that are, yes, they're rooted in biblical lessons and wisdom, but also they pass over leadership lessons to elevate the human and the human spirit. I love that. Thank you. I mean, I don't know maybe it's my background and the sciences, but I just have this passion for giving people information that they can apply to that day to day living. So even in my leading a church, I made up my mind that I was going to teach what was relevant. So one of the things we did that revolutionized our ministry in day-star was that we asked what are people's needs. We actually looked at the demographic of the people living five miles radius of our church. What's the age distribution? What are their needs? Now this was Africa, this was Lagos Nigerian, and poverty came tops. So we said, okay, wait, how have we been addressing the poverty problem? This was three years after our church started. And the only thing we had done was, I mean, we looked at my preaching and all I had been teaching was how people should give to the work of God. I then said, well, wait, we shouldn't be starting from there. People need to have the money before they can give it. Is there anything in the Bible we can teach them that will help them to get the money? I actually prayed about it. And then when searching in the Bible, and I was amazed, I was amazed at how much is in the Bible about finances. And I saw entrepreneurship. In fact, I saw that some of the most prominent figures in the Bible were entrepreneurs. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, even Christ himself was a businessman of the age of 30 when he started his ministry fully. And I thought, what? Most of his disciples Christ got from the business world. The fishermen were business people. And so it was like, I looked at some of the parables of Christ, the parable of talents and so on. Then I just went, I just, I mean, I exploded literally. I was teaching practical things from the Bible. Now, that surprised people a lot. After some time, I zeroed in on entrepreneurship. So by then, because we were meeting practical needs, our church was literally exploded, right? We went from running one service to running four services in 10 months. Because we were just coming, right? 30 minutes into a service, outside was full. There was a long line outside of people wanting to come in for the next service. Eventually, we were running five services on Sunday morning, right? So the first service, I was teaching entrepreneurship. How to start and run a business from the Bible. And then later, I then zeroed in on the leadership issue. So I started a leadership school. We call it the day-start leadership academy. We graduated over 45,000 people from the leadership school now. And we teach what you would get from the average business school. The only difference is we also have biblical stories to support the things we're teaching. But the principles are the same and they're so powerful, right? Just yesterday, somebody sent me a direct message on LinkedIn and said, I would want an opportunity to talk to you. I want to tell you how my wife and I attended the day-start leadership academy, started our business, the big kicks, right? And he said now we have a hundred people on our staff. As you all know, the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network, which has incredible podcasts for entrepreneurs, business leaders. People just wanting to upscale themselves. One of my favorites that you need to go check out is my first million hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Perry. They have incredible guests, Alex Ramosi, Sophia Amaruso, Hassan Minhash, all sharing their secrets, how they made their first million, and how to apply their learnings to capitalize on today's business trends and opportunity. Go listen to my first million wherever you get your podcast. Wow, that's a success story. That's already outside. Yes, that's amazing. So for me, it connects. You know, the major thing spirituality provides the relationship with God and all that comes with it. That personal relationship from each you get peace, you get joy, you get love in spite of circumstances. But more than that, you get powerful values, powerful values that help you to succeed with solid values. With values is the differentiator, not just succeed at all costs. Exactly, with values. I'm very curious because now, I mean, this church was started in Lagos, but now I mean, you're based in the US and you see the environment of the US and not that God is non-existent, and I'm not a very religious person by any means, and this is not meant to be very preachy. So I really hope people understand where I'm coming from, but I feel like, especially in the US, I don't know other countries in the world because I don't live in them and I don't interact with people on day to day, but I feel in the US, there's a lack of God and there's very much a lack of religion and there's a lack of, and people will say, well, it's outdated and, you know, all those things that were taught are from thousands of years ago and they're not applicable now or they're out of touch and I understand when people think that, but I'm very curious about your perspective on, do you feel like there is an epidemic of lack of God, lack of religion? Do you have opinions on what it could do to society? Do you have even maybe a comment for people to say that it's out of touch, out of date? Good question, Scott. Interestingly, when you read the Bible itself, you see people, nations going through a difficult time trying to God and then God steps in the nation prosperous, but then when the nation prosperous, people's needs are met, they did not feel any desperate need for God. Then there's this cycle because once there isn't that need for God, then you don't have the fear of God, the values tend to go down. Now, as someone who came from outside to live in the US, I mean, everybody loves the US and when we try to understand how the US became just so powerful, it's impossible for us to disconnect that from the values, the founding values of the US. We lead the declaration of independence, we see their value for life, we see their equality, we see their, some of the liberties, the rights that the average humans should have, and it is those values that have powered the US. Some time ago, I said, still, I've been listening, for example, keenly, to the debates on gone violence, for example, and because I've not always been here, so I've not deep into it, but for me, what I just want to do is to take it and place it side by side with the founding values of the US, that yes, there was a reason why the amendment was made and people were in power to carry the guns, but at the same time, this was a nation that was built to value life. That value for life powered a bit in the US, honestly, that value for the protection for the human, we had our youngest daughter here in the US, and when she was a little baby, we came on vacation from Nigeria. We were by the swimming pool, the rest of the family was swimming, I was there by the boggy, and somebody came by, you know, and said, wow, congratulations, that's some expensive cargo you got there, right? Speaking about our baby, you think, right? Yeah, yeah. Speaking about the US speaks to me about value for life, on one of my first visits to the US, if I was my first visit, I was visiting a friend in Houston, Texas, we went out on a walk in the neighborhood, and my friend, so a neighbor, one of my friends neighbors was walking her dog. When they got close to us, the dog was sniffing my friend, the lady pulled the dog, they went away, then my friend said to me, you know, it actually would have been good if that lady's dog beat me. I said, what? What kind of a wish is that? He said, you don't understand, that is money, the law protects the individual here in the US. Did you see how she quickly pulled her dog away? With that dog beat me, he said, it's just that I would not enjoy the discomfort, but I will make a lot of money, right? So I say, we used to have Dausha not killed, as part of the commandments that were promoted strongly in the US. So yes, you had the gun, but there was also Dausha not killed, you know, as a value expression of value for human life. So I would say the situation of the US, the lack of a strong need for God, pressure need for God, is understandable, because people are comfortable. This is the wealthiest nation in the world. You come over to Africa, no social welfare, no food stamps, the roots are bad, no mortgage, the average person does not have access to mortgage to buy a house, like you do here easily, and all that. The healthcare system, I think that's the scariest, right? The healthcare system, you have emergency services here, something goes wrong here, you call 911, there's an ambulance there in three, five minutes in Africa, you're on your own, except you are extremely well, even if you're extremely well, you could be stuck in traffic, and the surgeon will be wailing, and you're not able to go anywhere, right? The hospitals are not as equipped as we have them here, with oxygen. So many people are died in Lagos, because there was no oxygen at the hospital, things like that, right? No healthcare system. So it's God. So people feel a desperate need for God. It's actually also in the Bible. So I would say, for us in the US, we just need to be conscious of the fact that life is cyclical, and without strong values, you really don't have value. The US has proven to the world that intangible wealth is more powerful than the tangible one. It's the intangible that controls the tangible, so we must not lose sight of those values. And that value for the invisible world, because this country has built the greatest world for my ideas. So I believe that our development, the technology science itself proves the existence of God, and that for whatever, it is what we need to continue to have that fear of God, right? So that we don't find out someday that what we thought we had was not really that. There's so much destruction going on in the world right now, so much disruption. And we can see other countries wanting to compete with the US, some trying to disconnect their economies from the dollar, not in its permanent. We just must never lose sight of our values. And I think that's what spirituality. I agree with that. I love that. And I think that you see very, very real examples of the non-spiritual parts of the US, so ideas and innovation. And you see people with ideas and innovation trying to build things. Very smart people, albeit some of them end up being criminal, but they're very smart people building things and executing on ideas without values and without ethics and morals. We look at people that have been arrested that were Forbes 30 under 30. So I mean the FTX and SPF and Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and all these other smart entrepreneurs, these are not stupid people, but these are people that try to make wealth and innovate without ethics and morals and values. And then this is what happens. Now I'm not saying that if they were moral, it's just maybe they would still be horrible people. I don't know. But the point is I feel like the default is to be selfish. That's the default setting for most people because we feel like we have to be selfish to keep up. Even though we could afford a house that's $250,000, we want the $5 million house and the $500,000 car. Even though we could get the house for $250,000, whereas in some countries you can't even get a mortgage. So this is the strange world that the US is where it's not just good enough to be able to fulfill Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now we have to compete with all these other people that we see on social media and Instagram that are not even living authentic lives. And we think that if we make $100,000, $200,000 a year well, I mean we're nothing, which is like an incredible salary for some people, but it's nothing compared to what I see on Instagram. So then you just take shortcuts. Amazing points, God. I agree with you absolutely. When they asked Christ, which is the greatest of the commandments, he said, love, love God, love your divorce yourself, love. And that cares those days you're talking about. The selfishness because we humans are inherently self-centered. Somebody said that's why we love to take selfies, right? You're inherently self-centered. Love is others centered, right? So you turn the focus on other people. When love, wellness, innovation, I think that's when it's most most powerful, right? And love helps us to cure greed and love helps us to develop contentment like you're saying, because the question we all have to ask is, so when is enough enough? Really? What is enough? Right? When the basic needs are met, then you focus on all the people. I look at master's hierarchy of needs that you refer to. And I tell executives especially when I do my executive coaching, you got hair by chasing your needs at the first four levels of master's hierarchy of needs, the need for food and drink, the need for shelter and safety, the need for love and belonging, the need for self-esteem and respect. And you've risen to the top of your profession. You guys have money, right? You probably have houses in two countries or three, or three cities and so on and so I say, well, you're still looking for something. After you've gotten all of that, you still feel like there's a need for something and that's level five, must look at its self-actualization. I say, well, don't let let life play a trick on you because what God you hear can get you there. You've got hair with your strong drives, strong passion, chasing goals for yourself. I say, you know the thing about self-actualization, you need to turn around and put the focus on other people. Hair, other people to succeed. So if you continue to just continue to get this for yourself, acquire this get success for yourself, you're not hitting level five. You won't find fulfillment and you will continue to get more money and bigger material than thinking that will feel that void and it will not. Interestingly, I tell people who are just starting their career, don't even wait until you get to the top. You can rise faster if you turn your focus and put it on other people right from that. So, law gives us the foundation for ethics after the crash of 2008, 2009 and we found out it was the products of some of the best business schools that crashed the global economy and then the business schools began to take ethics seriously. So, my encouragement to leaders would be just give some thoughts to God, to your spiritual life and constantly think about your values and focus more on your contribution to this world. Say somebody doesn't have God in their life and they have no interest in being religious, I think that if that person is building something or creating something or driving in modern day society, I think that they default to themselves, like we just mentioned, because it's very hard, it's very hard to focus on the other. Some people are naturally altruistic but I think for most people it's very hard because again, it's always playing keep up. So, if somebody is not religious, what would be your advice to them so that as they grow in their career, they can make sure that they don't lose themselves because there's not going to be a weekly sermon reminding them to be ethical and to be good people. But how did they fix their life so that by the time they start when they're 20, 21, 22, by the time they're 50 years old, they haven't gone too far, they haven't forgotten about focusing on the other for the past 20, 30 years and at that point it's going to be very hard for them to understand that they change their life perspective. Right. So, I think it starts from our beliefs, right. Our values actually sit on our thoughts and beliefs. So, I'll say from scratch, there's a need to shift the belief about leadership, for example. A lot of people believe that you become a leader by occupying a position. A lot of, I find out it's still the prevalent idea in our world right now. Yes. I mean, I've got a doctorate in leadership. I have a doctorate in strategy leadership and the definition of a leadership has changed. You know, it's now down to influence the ability to influence one or more people to achieve goals. So, leadership happens at all levels and it actually even starts with self leadership. So, this is my point that you can, you just got to start by being others centered. The essence of leadership is service. Leadership is others centered. It's not about you becoming more and more powerful. That's fine. That's self leadership. But at the end of the day, you find out the higher you rise, the more influence you have and the more resources you have at your disposal and the more you expand all of those things only on yourself, the more problems you're going to create for yourself. I know, you know, like you were saying, everything just tends to encourage us to be selfish. So, I find out that the higher you rise in your career, the bigger everything becomes. So, you get the bigger title, the bigger salary, the bigger card, the bigger office, the bigger equity. And if you're not careful, I tell leaders, you get a bigger head. So, yeah, yeah, you're not. So, when you read the stories of a lot of successful people, you will also find a lot of failures, people who rose to the top and crashed. And we need to ask why? Leadership and pride don't make a good combination. Success and pride don't make a good combination. We've got to learn humility. So, I would say whether we discuss religion or not. And it's anyone who wants to be successful needs to know it's one thing for you to achieve success. It's another thing entirely for you to remain successful. Too many successful people end up in standards. And you need to find out why? Okay, you need to remain human. You need to stay grounded. And for that to happen, you got to be humble. Being humble means that you have a correct estimation of yourself and you're comparing yourself with who the best version of you not comparing yourself with other people. You don't accept the idea that other people are inferior to you. In fact, where you see any lack of deficiencies in other people's lives, you take it upon yourself to do something about it to help other people to be stronger and more successful. And we call that service between their own needs. So, I would say every leader needs to do that. And to reevaluate their values, their thoughts, and their progress, which respects to some of these powerful, grounding values, as we move on on our journey. One of the things that I find so interesting about your work is the range of people that you've helped. So you've helped when you first started your church in Lagos and Nigeria. You mentioned, I mean, obviously, the people in the local community, some of them are not as well off. And especially comparing to some of the executives that you've coached in U.S. companies, the range and the dichotomy and the gap between the two apparent lifestyles is huge. But I'm very curious if there are similarities or differences, describe me, the conversations, and the problems that you help people through in the most poverish, impoverished situation, as well as some of the most wealthy and rich and quote unquote, financially successful people in the world. Amazing. Yeah, there are huge differences. There are also similarities interestingly. So talking about the differences, like I mentioned earlier, in the developing part of the world, you know, and when I speak to people in Africa and Asia, in South America, it's pretty much the same because most of the countries are developing. So the cultures are similar. So what you find is the disparity in income or the world gap. So you have a small percentage of the people. Maybe 3%, maybe 5% is on places very wealthy. Then you have the mass of the people impoverished. So I tend to start when I speak in those places from the basics, right, from the basics. Just shift in people's mindsets because when somebody's raised in poverty, it colors their mindsets, colors their thinking, colors the way they see the world. So they tend to see scarcity everywhere they look. So even the opportunities that are right there, they cannot recognize. So we have the Pareto principle. So it's 20% of the people, 80% of the world. It's not like that in developing countries. It's 3% controlling 95 or 97% of the world. So I try to populate that or popats, right. So in Nigeria, that's why I started the leadership school. So I was teaching entrepreneurship and particularly like in our church, then you have thousands of people that are in business. And some people who were listening to me 20 years ago, some of them are very wealthy now, right. So what we then did also was then to start the school in our church. We call it the day start business academy. And as a way of giving back, I asked this successful guys to take the classes, teach other people that are coming in how to start and to run successful businesses and mentor them. Now, when I come over to the developed part of the world, it's not exactly the same. Most people have their basic needs met. At least once you can keep a job, right. If you have high school education and you can keep a job, the basic needs are met. It's being well-did, you know, be fair, but the basic needs are met. So in terms of similarities, I find out though that there's still this wide gap, interestingly, that that fact that the basic needs are met also tends to dull people's senses and to get them to be satisfied with little. And then when changes happen, disruptions happen, it's just so easy to let them off, you know, because they're so easy to dispense with. I was surprised when I got the data on the volume of people that play the lottery in the US. It's humongous, right. It's humongous. And the fact that most people don't have money in their savings, right, to take care of your finances. So yeah, basic needs met, you know, where people just go from paying one bill to the other. So I also find the need to still educate people here on how they can put themselves on better food, especially during business, right. But they are very different scenarios. There are things I would say in the US that I would not even bother to say in Africa, because that's not a problem. Here, I need to tell people to be generous because, you know, I actually was, I was going to say I wasn't sure what what the what obviously massive difference is not to be naive, there's massive differences. But I was what you just described was an interesting answer to something that I've always assumed, which was why are immigrants so successful at building businesses and being entrepreneurs. And I think it's because they aren't complacent and they come from a place of having very little and then being transplanted to a place where there's endless opportunity. And that's why that's like the immigrant advantage in entrepreneurship. So it's very interesting that you just basically outlined exactly why that is. That's the answer. Exactly. It's that drive. You for someone to leave their country, you know, and to come thousands of miles, you know, hundreds of miles to leave in another country altogether, you know, that kind of a person is a risk takeout. The person is willing to to pay some price to achieve their goals. So with that drive, they come their eyes are more open to opportunities and they take that. Let's talk about just some some really important last lessons that you that you're focused on teaching over right now. And it could be you pick the group that you want to speak to. I mean, when you listen to this podcast, we probably do have some listeners in Africa, but obviously the majority of the people are in the US and some of them are entrepreneurs and some of them are people that are just starting their business and some of them are people that are trying to, you know, start a side hustle or move up in their career. And you speak on a whole bunch of different leadership topics. So out of all the teachings that you do because you do so many. I mean, like in all seriousness, when I look at some of the stuff you covered in your book and all the different stuff you seen on YouTube, you could talk forever about every single lesson. There's probably really, really useful practical implication for people to learn some of these lessons. But for a very business focused audience, that's generally listening to this show, what are some of the most useful lessons that you've learned yourself and then taught over and helped people on? Thank you. So what I decided to do with time is like I said, I was, I started out actually teaching people how to succeed. In fact, before we started our church, I went on radio in Nigerian 20, 80 years ago and began to teach people how to succeed. It was a non-religious program. Motivation. Motivation. Motivation. Exactly. Yeah, I went on radio. I was in motivation, right? Teaching people how to succeed and then I built the leadership school. And like I said, I just came to the conclusion that at the highest level of success, she helped other people to succeed. That made me to study leadership more. So I went from a master's degree in leadership and then got the doctorate in leadership here in the US. So right now, my passion is leadership because now I'm seeing huge gaps, huge gaps. Look at what the world has come through, you know, because of COVID, now it's supposed to COVID. Look at the disruptions that are going on, the changes that are going on. And the focus of leadership is people, right? Leadership is about people. We've had massive shifts. We have the great resignation in the workplace after COVID. And I'll tell you it's because there were massive shifts in human psychology. There were massive shifts in people's values. All the things we thought we could not do with that when COVID shot us in into the homes before the vaccines came and all we could do was just fight to stay alive. Then we realized there were a lot of those things we thought we could not do without that we could do without. Like my cousin, he and Atlanta, he's a corporate executive. He ordered a pair of shoes, beautiful shoes just before the COVID lockdown. The shoes arrived after lockdown started. So he said he put the shoes on and his living room was working around and his wife was teasing him. So where are you going with the shoes now? Everybody was locked in. So people's values shifted, but I'll tell you something that happened leadership wise. People saw where it does love them and where it does not love them. Where it does love money, more than they love their employees, where they love the car, more than they love their employees, it should because those value systems influenced the decision it happened at the organizational level, it happened at the national level. There are some countries where people have been moving out a mass after the COVID is scenario because people just realized I need to think for myself now. I need to take out my life now, I need to make solid decisions now. So I've decided to push the leadership message. That's why I wrote my book, Dear Leader, your flagship guide to successful leadership, to supply tools to leaders, with which to lead. It's a very rich book. I am starting a conference. I call it The Dear Leader Conference, named after the book this September. I'm starting it in Maryland September 16. And I'm just trying to get everybody's attention both at the high level, those at the low level, those leading in the family, those leading in church in the community, more than ever before, the world is in desperate need of good leadership now. And I'm mentioning one word people don't want to say in the leadership space love. If you're going to lead well, you've got to have empathy, you've got to really love people. I know for you as a leader, you have to set the targets. And every quarter you raise the targets and raise the targets. And I just want to warn you, it's a dead end. There's no limit to it. When will it not be enough? And leaders are finding it difficult to motivate people now in the world space. They find it out. You can give people more money and they still design and move on because people's values have shifted. People now value their health, they value peace of mind, they value joy, they value relationships, COVID shifted these things quite a bit. So my big crusade right now is leadership. The world is in desperate need of good leaders. Leadership is a set of skills and you can lend them. And everyone can lead them. I love that. Very, very good. Is there anything that we didn't go into that you wanted to leave the audience with maybe some last words of wisdom or advice on leadership or any other topic? Well, thank you so much. Just want to know like to add and it is the fact that the essence of leadership really is managing the change process. There's a lot of destruction going on, a lot of changes going on. Leaders need to pivot, leaders need to set goals, but to achieve those goals, there's got to be change. Now managing people through the change process is going to be one of those things that confused leaders the most right now. Because you're trying to fix something at this end, something is unraveling at the other end. I'm seeing that with a lot of leaders now, even presidents of nations. So I just want to say there's a way to manage the change process or take people through it. The starting point is you've got to have a vision, right? Clear vision of where we're going, of how things are supposed to be. Yeah, this world was created and it can be recreated and recreated and those of us here just have to keep walking towards making it a better world. What's your vision? Secondly, you've got to communicate the vision. You've got to put people into know what you're seeing, where you believe we should be going, right? Before they'll go with you. In communicating vision, sometimes it can be tricky. I landed less than many years ago. I made an announcement in church. I thought everybody was supposed to clap and they were just looking at me. When I asked around afterwards, I found out while I was excited, I was declaring this goal about growth. What they were actually thinking was how the growth was going to affect them and they were unsure. So I found this old saying that everybody has an internal radio that is permanently on WIIFN. What's in it for me? So I came back the next week, made the same announcement in a different way. I began to talk about the benefits, what they will get when this change will happen and everybody was happy. So, there later you've got to be able to sell the benefits of the change. Develop a detailed plan, execute, evaluate what's working, what's not working, institutionalize what is working. So, let's manage the change process well. Finally, leadership is not enough now for executive leaders. Track strategic leadership has to come in. In other words, you've got to be able to lead through rapidly changing scenarios. I recommend scenario planning. Instead of just planning scenario planning, don't expect things are going to work perfectly. They likely won't right now. So, play up three possible scenarios or five, stretch everything to the limit. What's the most possible scenario? Then prepare. And then you'll be better prepared to see the challenges that come and the changes as opportunities when they show up. So, leadership is not enough. We need strategic leadership now to walk into the future. I love that. If people want to reach out to you, where should they go? Any of the links that you want to drop in the show, any of the socials, let people know where they can reach you. Thank you. So, my website is sanademy.com, s-a-m-a-d-e-y-e-m-i.com. Among Instagram, it's D-T-H-E, then my name, sanademy. I'm on Twitter, san on the score, a-d-e-y-e-n-i. And I'm on Facebook, sanademy. Perfect. And I ask these questions at the end. So, the first question I want to ask you was, if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would it be? Take the long look. Plan as far ahead as you can. Plan 50, 60, 70 years ahead. It doesn't need to be complicated. Just have some basic ideas where you want to go, because there's something they call the law of time perspective. I think it was a Harvard professor that discovered it at what bands. The longer the time you take into consideration while making your plans and taking action, the higher you rise. So, the person who plans for 10 years always rises higher than the person planning for 10 weeks or 10 months. It's amazing. They say it's a law. So, think ahead to the end of your life. Then come back, start from where you are and take it step by step. I think I was too desperate when I was young. I was almost going to break my health. Don't break your mental health, my young friend. 20 to 30. Explore. We do all the experimenting you want to do. And then at the end of the decade, to review what you've done, you've identified your strengths, your weaknesses, your talents, your opportunities. Then take it to 40. Do more of what is working. Expand it the best way you can. And by the time you've crossed 50, you turn around to mentor other people. I love this. And then last question, I ask everyone. What does success mean to you? That is a profound question. So, I read an dictionary that success is for you to achieve your goals, for you to turn out as expected. And I believe that. And I said, goals, I don't want to leave one single day without any goal, even if it's too slip. But then I was reading a part of the Bible on the 12th and Christ told the story about the man who set goals. It was a farmer set goals. And he turned out that he exceeded his goals. They said he invested a whole lot more than he expected. So he said to himself, what am I going to do now? He said, I'll pull down my storehouses. I will build bigger ones. Then I will store all my crops. Then I will sit to my soul. Take it easy, relax, eat now and be merry. Let's just party. Jesus said, and then God spoke and said, yeah, tonight your soul will be required of you. And then who will own all those things you spent your life building? It confused me at first. It was like, hey, we will. God, you mean you, you hate someone being successful? What's your problem with that? Why did you kill me? But I had to read the passage slowly before eventually I found something. Everything was about himself. There was no mention of God. And I thought, wait, there's a goal. None of us set the goal of being born into this world and existing as a human. I could have been a Lisa, you know, I'm in sec. Somebody designed this life. My life, this life is too special. My potential is too huge for me to just be an accident. So the person who designed my life, he must have had some goals at the back of his mind before sending me here. I think really success is finding out what those goals are and achieving them. And then that gave a whole new meaning to the judgment as it is described in the Bible that someday every human will appear before God. There will be the judgment as, okay, it must be that that will be the day when God will compare what you achieved with what you were sent here to achieve. So success for me. So discover God's goals for my life and to achieve them. You