Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You ever feel like you don't matter all that much, I'm here to tell you, you are 100% wrong. Your life matters so much. You are an influencer. No, I'm not saying you have a YouTube channel. I'm saying you influence. You change lives around you every single day. Today we're going to talk about what that means, what it looks like, and how to own your influence so that you can go through life knowing that you are a world changer. Today on the Chris Stefanik.
Welcome to the Chris Stefanik Show. We are here every week to give you the tools and inspiration you need to live your everyday life with purpose, with joy. Missionaries of Joy, you make this work happen. You're also making our confirmation program core happen. Yep. Because of you, we're changing the world. Click below this video. Become a missionary of joy. Jump on. Get off the sidelines. Sign up for our daily anchor this Advent.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: We're going through my book, Joy to the World. We're giving it to you in the daily anchor. Each day there's a meditation based on a song from a Christmas hymn and applying it to your life to get your heart and mind in the right place to celebrate Christmas. And this episode is sponsored in part by ewtn. You can catch this and so much more on ewtn. Streaming link is below in the show notes. Oh, one last thing I have to throw in there. The perfect Christmas gift. Link below this video. Me and my wife and our pastor are leading a pilgrimage to beauty and on the island of Kauai. We're calling it a pilgrimage to beauty because we're going to discover God in the beauty of creation. Immersing in it. It's not a really big group coming. We're not letting it get too big. And there's only a couple seats remaining, so if you want to hop in, link is below the video.
Let's dive in. Brother Tommy, I love you so much, man. So good to have you back. Your biceps have gotten bigger since we last. I could see it. I can see it through the shirt. It's bulging out, man.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Working out every day.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: At 56, he's still gaining mass.
Yeah. Hallelujah.
The gift of influence.
Thanks for writing that.
Paul wrote from prison. Set your mind on things above, not on things of earth. And dude, there's something about your writing style and especially in that book. I was having a really hard week when I was reading it, preparing for this interview, and it was providential timing because it just made me feel good. I hate to say it in such shallow terms.
I was just struggling.
It kept boosting my heart and mind up, up, up out of myself to things above.
And it was, it was really helpful. So thank you.
Thank you also because that book came out of some of the greatest pains in your life, which is how God brings about the greatest blessings through the greatest pains. I think about the resurrected body of Jesus. He's got holes in his hand, but that's the sign of victory. Now that holes didn't go away. Right. But there's resurrection power shining through it. But you start the book by doing what I don't read other motivational speaker type guys doing.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Put it out there.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Right.
Which is like I was in a place where by all the world's standards and it wasn't even that long ago. I'm not talking my past life where I was in the gutter, man.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: And the. And the book was shaped by how you were lifted out. Share that with us.
It's power.
Thank you for going here too.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah. We all have a story.
You know, I'm 56. When I was 49, I was at rock bottom and the world saw me as great marriage, wonderful children, which is true. Great success story of best selling author.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: And I had coffee with you around that time, Tommy, and from the outside, never would have gotten rock bottom.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: I was filling stadiums, motivating people and selling books and it was the top of my career.
But a perfect storm was kind of happening in my life. One is, my wife was married before me and she had a son and we were raising that child. And Jill's ex husband. I tried my best to have a good, positive relationship with him, but that wasn't happening on his end. And it became pretty bad and pretty abusive and life threatening. And we had to get a lawyer and restraining order. And it was awful, awful time.
I had some business investments of companies I invested in that just didn't really go well.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: You started a sandwich shop, right?
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I started Jersey Mike's, which I love that. My favorite sandwich shop in the world. But I opened one up and I wasn't around to run it and was losing tons of money and couldn't get out of the lease and it was just a bad thing. And then I had a business partner that as I dove deep into her character, didn't have the same values as I did, how she treated people. And I had people call me up and say, I can't participate in your leadership programs because your business partner is this, this, this. So I broke away from that business partnership and she sued me. And so I was.
I only got a speeding ticket my whole life, and I'm dealing with the restraining order, lawyer for my wife's ex husband and lawyer to get out of Jersey, Mike's, and a lawyer to get rid of this business partner to sue me.
And so what was happening all at the same time was I'm writing these books on love and helping people, inspiring people and motivation.
And then I started going into depression because I felt screwed and jaded and hurt that I used to say bad people were doing bad things to me. Now I'm learned it's broken people are doing bad things to me. But I started really going through a tough time just trusting people.
And I felt like a fraud because I was living two lives. This motivational, inspirational, leadership speaker, changing the world, and then going to my little cave and being heartbroken that people were trying to hurt me and hurt my family and do bad things. And I just lost hope.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: And you were financially on the edge, too, despite all the success, paying for.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: All the hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal bills. And it was just bad. I mean, I grew up. My dad was a schoolteacher. My grandparents cut hair for me. I didn't grow up with wealth. And the wealth that I created was getting all washed away because of bad investments and just bad business decisions and people trying to take it.
So I knew I would never kill myself, because I never want to do that to my children.
Even if I thought about it, I made that decision. I'm not going to do that, because I would never want to do that to Anthony Caroline Tate. I just can't do that to them.
But I did a big speech in Houston, Texas. I was 49 years old, got a stand ovation, signed all these books, and I got on the plane. I'm like, oh, I just hate my life.
I hate what's going through with all these lawsuits and these people just doing bad things.
And I'm on the Southwest Airline plane back to Denver, and, you know, the turbulence is sometimes bad when you let the air pockets of Denver. But that plane dropped a couple hundred feet.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Oh, that's scary.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: I've never dropped that much where the oxygen tanks come down. And we were all reaching out. People were praying like that plane was going down.
I fly a few hundred flights a year, times 20 years. I've been on a lot of planes. This one was going down.
Everyone was praying.
And Chris, I was praying with them, but I was praying a different prayer. Mm.
I wanted that plane to go down because that would have been the easiest way out of all the pain I was in and heartache and disappointment and sadness and a plane crash would just solve everything. My wife would get a good insurance check and all these bad things were happening to me would all go away. Well, obviously, the plane landed, I'm here. And as soon as I got off the plane and everyone was crying and walking off the plane, I felt an enormous amount of shame because I was hoping these people would die to get rid of my first world problems.
But I went home that night. I probably drank too much and went to bed. Woke up the next morning and I couldn't get out of bed.
I was in a dark place.
My wife is a saint, Jill. She knew her husband was hurting.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: And she loves you, man.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: She loves me.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: I gotta say this to guys who are watching. One especially applies to men, because the suicide rate among men, it's like 80% of suicides are men.
And this has been something that in difficult moments where I feel overwhelmed, but genuinely overwhelmed by life, that's crossed my mind. Again, not suicidal, but like, huh, if that Mack truck lost a tire and it came through my windshield, the insurance would be good and I get to be done. You know, my life's pretty good. Yeah, but there's an exhaustion factor.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Yeah, exhaustion.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: And in those moments, losing myself in work, it's like they choke me up hearing you say that, because we lose sight of how precious we are.
Just as dad, as husband, as friend, as brother.
You lose sight of how much you matter just by being. Just by being you and not doing and producing and succeeding.
I just wanted to marinate in that just for a second. Yeah, yeah, just go ahead. And your beautiful bride who reminds you.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Who you are, she comes. She comes in in the morning to wake me up.
And she knew her husband was in pain and she knew how to help.
So she opens up the curtains and she had this kind of boombox, this, like, Bluetooth speaker on her shoulder. And she jumps up on the bed and she's, like, jumping on me. Like, I'm standing there, she's jumping on me, dancing with these balloons that said, happy 50th birthday. And she's got the Beatles song, you know, it's your birthday, you know, John Paul.
So she's got, it's your birthday, dad. She's dancing on me. And so I looked and I croaked and said, jill, my birthday's not until August. It's like June. Like, what are you doing? And she was, no, Tommy, today is 50 days before your 50th birthday. And we're gonna start celebrating you right now.
And she hands me a letter from my mother.
I love my mom, but we've had a hard relationship, a real hard one.
And that letter my mom wrote me was the most beautiful letter I've ever gotten from anyone. How proud she was of me, how much she loved me, Changing lives.
And it just made me cry.
And I'm just bawling, crying after reading this letter from my mom. Words that I'd never heard before.
And my wife looks at me, she goes, I got 49 more of these letters, and I'm gonna give you one of these letters every day for the next 49 days.
And she did.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: I want to take a quick moment here to ask you something really important.
What's the best investment you can make with your life?
I believe it's investing in people, investing in their joy, their faith, and their eternal destiny. That's what we do every single day at Real Life Catholic, and I want to invite you to be a part of it. Right now, our Missionaries of Joy, our monthly supporters, are helping change lives.
Because of them, children are coming back to the church, marriages are being strengthened, and the gospel is literally reaching millions.
But we're just getting started, guys. There's so much more to do, and we cannot do it without you. When you become a missionary of Joy, you're not just supporting a ministry. You're stepping into a mission. And you're not just donating. You're actually making this mission possible.
You are helping us bring hope, truth, and joy to a world that desperately needs it. And that's not all. As a missionary, Joy, you get exclusive access to all our video series, including Living Joy, Rise, Renewed, Fearless, and more. You get exclusive early access to new releases.
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All that for the same price as a lunch at Chipotle.
The world needs more people who are willing to say yes to making a difference.
Will you be one of them?
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Every day, she reached out to people.
And, Chris, I got these letters from, like, Russ Jeffries, my H Vac guy. The guy that does the H Vac.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: The heating in your house.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: In the house, Tommy. Do you know how many people call me the H Vac guy? You call me Russ.
And every time I come to your house to fix your heating and plumbing, you offer to make me scrambled eggs. And you hear my story and you know my heart like you make me feel seen.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: How beautiful.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Like friends from all over the world, she'd tweet. And every day I got one of those letters. And after 50 days of reading letters of lives that have changed, people that love me, it just made me realize that these few bad situations in my life were not as bad.
And the Jersey Mike's sandwiches started to taste again, and the lawyer's less nasty. And I got through the lawsuits, and I got through restraining orders, and I.
And I joke with my wife.
I thought I wanted the silver Porsche for my 50th birthday. That's what I wanted.
And my wife got me something much more important than the Porsche.
She got me the gift of influence. And that's why I named it the book the Gift of Influence, because it's a gift.
Dude, she gave those letters to me as a gift.
And now I've decided I'm going to write those letters to other people the rest of my life. And 20 of them a week is my goal. And I just write letters to people. Sometimes I write 20 in a day thanking them for just the influence they've had on my life.
And then it sparked this book that I wrote, the Gift of Influence. Like, influence is the greatest gift we can give other people.
People are never going to remember how you led them. People are never going to say, I love the way he fathered me. He mothered me. He said, this person had a huge influence on my life.
Just think about all the people in your life that had this tremendous influence to help shape who you are.
So I decided, as authors do, to write a book about influence and to study it.
And the first thing I realized was that word got hijacked with the Internet.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Oh, 100% an influencer.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, influencer.
I hate it. It's like, that is the worst thing you can call me because I'm not selling pocketbooks and tequila on the Internet and how many likes I can have. I mean, an influencer is not how much social media hits you have. An influencer is someone that gives their life to Christ and gives their life to serving other people and has a positive influence on making other people better, period.
Nothing to do with the Internet.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Oh, I love it.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: So I want to hijack that word back.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Amen.
Honestly, reading that and hearing you again right now, it's striking me even more deeply. Hearing you in person talk about takes success and influence down to the human level, that this is the genius of all your stuff. It's helps the CEO, but it's not just for the CEO. This is for everybody.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: For everybody.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: This is for everybody to own the power of Their influence. That you matter, that you make a difference.
Just by being. I'm going to switch to Mr. Rogers just by being you.
I think God saved your soul by allowing that failure within your success. Right. He didn't even make it. Totally bottom out.
But when you're getting that successful and traveling in private jets to give talks because that's how you're transported to these conferences, they just. They pay for it. Cool.
That can make you lose, like. Yeah, I'm valued by my family, by my friends, by everybody because of the thing I do.
And the Lord just brought you right back to your raw humanity. You're valued because you're my son, because you're the husband of Jill, because you're the dad of your kids.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: And you are loved.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: And you are loved just because you're you.
And. And you as a. This is. This is where you capture the genius of the influencer.
You're supposed to convey that to other people.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: And nothing else really matters that much when it comes to influence.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Views. Who cares, man?
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Who cares?
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Who cares?
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Tell me about the stadium with 80,000, because I love this image in your book. Dude.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Years ago, I was doing a gig with John Gordon, and John is another speaker who I love. And good.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: The energy bus.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Great Christian guy. Great book. Great Christian guy. Love him. He was just talking. He's got ADHD like me, and he's just buzzing around and talking about influence.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: And I've had a couple conversations with him on the phone, and he, like, after three minutes, I feel like I just had five cups of coffee. He's got that kind of presence without trying to put it on. Yeah, it's so cool.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. We got to get him on your show.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: I would love that. Yeah.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: But he just rattled off that, you know, the average human being influences 80,000 people in their lifetime, and then went on to other things. But as soon as I heard that, it was like, what? The average human being, the average person on this planet influences 80,000 people in their lifetime.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: So I heard that. I'm like, thank you, Jesus. That.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: That is my next book. So I researched the research, and 80,000 is correct. And how they get that is you take 80,000, divide that by 77 years, which is the average life expectancy of a human being on the planet. Divide that by 365 days a year, you get 2.8 people a day.
So this research.
Research how humans navigate through the world, and they believe that we meet as humans. 2.8 new people a day.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: 2 people. I went to a doctor's office today and did blood. Person that gave me blood. I was about to faint this morning. And she was wonderful. And I talked to her and got to know her story. I met her, right? And then I had lunch at Hop and had sushi and had great conversation with the waitress and got new person, right? And then went to the dentist. Today's appointment day. I mean, I meet 10 new people a day, but the average Human being meets 2.8 new people a day.
Take 2.8 people a day times 365 days a year, times 77 years of your life. Hopefully you all live longer, but the average is 77. You get exactly 80,000.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: More than cool. That just blew me away. Like, 80,000 people, we get to influence. But the question is, do we have a positive influence or a negative influence on them?
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Do we even notice it's happening? I mean, your book is like, hey, why don't you own that?
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Own that.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Instead of trying to, quote, influence the world.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: What kind of influence you gonna have? Positive or negative?
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Yeah, the people right there be intentional.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Cause I can tell you my life. Who gave negative influences in my life? My typing teacher told me I was stupid. I would never go to college, right? Like, I could tell you who the negative influences in my life, and I could tell you the positive ones were.
But that 80,000 just hit me, and I started this thinking about, like, okay, what if.
Like, what if at the end of our life, we got to meet all 80,000 people? Like, every person that we've ever met and connected with and had a positive infants or negative infants. Like, from the sandbox to middle school to high school, like, our whole life, every person we've had an interaction with, what if at the end of our life, we got to meet them and say goodbye? Like, how cool that would be.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Or how scary that would be, depending on how you lived your life.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: And then I started thinking, well, where would they fit?
Well, that was an easy question.
80,000 people, they fit a football stadium. There's actually 37 stadiums in the world that have exactly 80,000 seats. Lambeau Field, Green Bay Packers, University of South Carolina, Gamecocks, Notre Dame University. Like a Beijing Olympic park where the Olympics were in Beijing.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: There's not many that big.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: 80,000.
So I started thinking and dreaming, and I just had this dream that at the end of our life, we're on our deathbeds and we're saying goodbye to our loved Ones and that we're just about to be with Jesus.
And right before we die, every person on the planet before we die, we get drifted to the football stadium of your choice.
And you walk into. For me, it's Bronco Stadium. There's 77,800. But we. But you're not gonna stay.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: We're close, but who's counting? You put some on the field.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yes, but I walk on the 50 yard line and you walk on the 50 yard line by yourself and you open your eyes up and there's 80,000 people in the stadium.
Every person you've ever interacted with, talked, uplifted, struck down, like positive, negative. Everyone you've ever met in your life is in that stadium.
And the question that I pose in the book and the question I pose on your show is the question I'm going to talk about the rest of my life is what's the sound of your stadium?
What's the sound of it?
I mean, people just giving you a stand ovation and just clapping and just hitting their things and just going crazy because you had a positive influence on their life. You helped me. You love me. You serve me. You wrote me that letter. You gave me this promotion. You believed in me. Are they just clapping to all these people or are they booing you because you've been an ass your whole life thinking about yourself or worse, Chris.
It's just silent.
It's because you spent your whole life looking at your phone.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Oh, ouch.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: And not looking above your phone to the person in front of you like.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: God has called you to influence in that moment in some little way.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Or we overlook the importance of that little interaction and what a difference it can make.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Right. And in the book I write about all these relationships and interactions I've had with people just looking above my phone to the person in front of me. And my goal is I want to inspire people to want to have a stadium filled with people thanking them for the influence you had in their life.
And how do you fill the stadium with 80,000 people?
Because you got to live a life of influence.
You got to give the gift of influence to others.
And that just sparked a whole waterfall of stories that God put in my life. Mrs. Lynn will probably talk about it.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we will.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Just unbelievable stories.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: No, the story just bolstered my spirit, man.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: It became a huge bestseller. But writing the book changed me, really. It just changed me because it just.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: How?
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Well, I went from this depressed state of sadness and jadedness of people trying to hurt me to realizing they're not bad people. They're just broken people. And praying for them and just not letting the 1% of bad in our life affect the 99% of happiness and joyfulness in our life.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Praise God.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: And I. I think I let the 1% bring me down. I wanted that Southwest flight to go down because of 1%.
And it meant so much to me then. But now I look at it and say, how trivia. So I lose some money in the Jersey Mike's. So my wife, ex husband, hates me, wants me gone. You know, So a business partner is a little shady and I had to go through some legal hoops to get rid of. Like this too. Shall pass.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: I'm gonna focus my life on the 99% of lives that I can change and filling my stadium. And it's just. It's such a gift to write because the stories that came into my heart that I got to share inspire others to live like that.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Oh, man, that's epic.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: So epic.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Sum up.
Sum up. Where people are getting influenced.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Wrong.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: And you actually do something that no motivational speaker type guy is supposed to ever do. You touch the holy grail. Dale Carnegie, right. How to make friends and influence people. He wrote about influence. How did he get it wrong? He got a lot of good advice.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: It's hard to. It's hard to put a hole in Dale Carnegie because he's like the legendary. Had been friends and people. I love that book.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: No. And he did great. There's great things in it, obviously, so many great things. But there's some fundamental.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Look people in the eye, shake hands, speak about other people's interests. He had these 10 things.
Avoid conflict. He gave us these tactics to do to build these relationships. But at the end of the day, what that book was really doing is how do you influence people? People to help you.
How do you influence others for your personal gain?
How do you build relationships with people that'll ultimately come back and serve you?
[00:25:40] Speaker A: He had the right. How? With the wrong. Why?
[00:25:41] Speaker B: I just don't buy into that. And I know Dale Carnegie meant well and I know his book was legendary, but that's not the way I live my life. And that's not the way I want to teach leaders how to live their life is you want to build relationships. You want to influence the lives of others to help others, not yourself.
And what happens is, because if you live a life of influence and helping others, your life becomes prosperous and successful because your life's not about you, it's about others.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: They could both reach the same outcome, which is you're going to be.
You might end up in either case being wealthy and powerful in the eyes of the world. Yeah. Spell out the obvious. Just so we could hear the obvious.
Why is the success this way better than the success that way? The success, that's the when. The why is other people with your influence versus about you.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: You end up in the same house. So why is this one so much better?
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just the joy of changing people's lives.
Like I just think like now that I'm 56, I'm a little bit more grayer and wiser.
I just love when you can make a phone call to help someone get to a door they couldn't get in on their own. Using your context, using your influence, using your power, using your relationships, using your network to help others. Is my first book, the Inheritance Joy. I had this whole chapter called I hate networking. Hate it. Networking is the evil empire. We're in brained. Go to these chamber events and network and meet people to help you. Networking is selfish. You're contact hunting and you're meeting people to help you. So I wrote this whole chapter called don't network but net give.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Ooh, I love that.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Which means meet all these people so you can learn how to help them.
And so I just, I flipped the switch a long time ago. I'm not sure exactly how I flipped the switch, but when I meet people, the first thing I think about is how can I learn their story and what do they need? How can I help them? How can I help them with their story?
And it's a joy. Now I live my life, my employees, my customers, my clients, my friends, my family, my world, my kids, everyone I come across of when I meet them and they share their story, I want to help them fulfill their story.
It's a switch.
And as soon as I made that switch, that's when all that depression.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Oh, I love it.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: That's when I started drinking less.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Praise God.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: That's when I started really thinking about others more.
That's when I really, I really started living the message in my books.
Not just writing, not just writing them, but actually living them. It's a difference, dude. Big difference.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Right now your face is like this deep piece of speaking the words. Yeah, it's that Philippians 2 switch that I just thought of in our other interview. Like that Jesus, though he's divine, didn't deem equality with God something to be leveraged. It's that leveraging that when I learned that translation, which is More accurate. I started to think about it in myself and how many handshakes I thought, how can we leverage even each other to do something cool?
And then just. Just when I see it, just to learn how to say, ew, I don't want to be that guy.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: I don't want to be that guy.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: You know, I just love you because you're in front of me. And let's shake hands. Like, net Net. Not networking.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Net Net giving.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Net giving. Yeah. What a cool. And probably make it more successful. And if it doesn't, it's like, when you talk about the joy in it, it's. It's the game you literally can't lose, because if you don't hit that place in your career, you. You're happy.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: You're happy because that's. You become the kind of guy who's happy, and life's not about him. Yeah, man, that's. That's just. That's gorgeous. Okay. You talk about the three eyes in your book Influence, Investment, and Intent.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: So that you could work on filling your stadium one seat at a time.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Give us a quick overview of those three eyes. So we talked about how do I do it? It's, you know, influence, investment, intent.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: But investment is. How do you invest in people's lives? Like, how do you take a stand? How do you listen to people's stories?
How do you actually help people get to where they're going? And it's little things. I got a friend in Memphis named David, and he's got a daughter that's going through divorce with kids.
And yes, he's a client. Yes, I just spoke to his company. Yes, he sends his leaders to my retreat. He's a business client, but he's a friend. And a friend shared with me that his daughter is going through a divorce. And she came to one of my speeches, and I met the daughter, and she's broken now, man, just going through a terrible divorce.
So I just decided to write that daughter a letter every week.
Just pour into her, say, hey, my wife got divorced. I've learned from her that you get through it.
Praying for you. You just show up.
You just invest.
You think about it every morning. You wake up. I just have this influence audit. You write down the list of all the people you know in your life that are going through a tough time. It's not hard to do. Matt with cancer. Right. That girl with divorce.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: And you reach out to them and just show, I'm here every day.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Every day. A letter, a phone call.
You got to Invest.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Some people don't show up during tragedy because they think I don't know what to say.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, that's exactly right.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: I don't know what to say.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: So you just gotta be there, even if you don't know what to say.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: There's a guy in town here, and it's a public story. And I wrote the story in my book. I have his permission. His name is Scott Wetzel. He was president of a bank here in town in Denver. Very successful business guy, great human being.
His son Teddy had a couple boys.
His son Teddy was a beautiful high school kid.
Was a victim of cyberbullying and killed himself. Jumped off a bridge in Evergreen. Killed himself.
And I wrote this story in the book because when that happened, I just love Scott, and I just couldn't believe losing your son, how painful that was.
So my buddy Steve Auduburn, wrote a lot of books on grieving and losing people and the process, bought those books, mailed him a rosary, prayed for him, called him, text him, dropped off meals. I freaking showed up.
So a couple years later, I'm talking to him at lunch, and I asked his permission to write the story in the book. And he said to me, I know my family and friends felt terrible, but what do you say to the guy that lost his son from jumping off a bridge?
Like, I think people wanted to help, but you don't know how to show up because it's awkward.
Right.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: So then they just didn't show up.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Yeah, they still show up.
And so I'm just challenging people to.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Show up to the ugly stuff, even to say. I don't know what to say. Yeah, I just want you to know I'm here.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: My Anthony, my oldest, my stepson, my. My real son, he struggled with depression in high school. He went through a really dark, tough time.
People showed up for him.
Now he graduated West Point Military Academy marrying this amazing, amazing Christian woman. His life is unbelievable because people showed up for him.
We all have two sides of the story.
I talk about the business card. Everyone has a business card. In the front of the business card is our title, you know, our importance, our address, our contact information, the company work for. It's. It's our identity, right? I guess, you know, it's. It's the front of the business card. Chris, what's on the back of most business cards?
[00:33:35] Speaker A: What's in the back of most business cards?
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Most business cards, now, they're getting a little fancier, but in the back of most business cards, last 200 years is nothing, is Nothing. It's blank.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: And I say that's the most important part of the business card, the blank part. Because that's the story of the person in the front of the business car that you're going to get to know.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Ask what's going on in their lives.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: My son's on drugs, my wife's going through depression, My company's going through bankruptcy. Got to lay off 50 people going through some depression. I'm drinking too much. Like, everyone has a story.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: I love this. And you give a phrase to use, frankly, just ask, what's your story? What's your story to the person you just met? And people are anxious to tell their story. But most people, no one's asking.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: When people share a story, they go, oh, let me tell you my story. Which is like not what you want to say. You said, thank you for sharing the story. And in the back of your mind, I'm like, okay, I'm going to send them this book. I'm going to call them on this day. Like I had this chronological brain. This way my dyslexia, ADHD brain works. Is you tell me your pain, I'm going to show up for that pain.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: How beautiful, bro.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: I was at a leadership retreat with an executive from Comcast. I won't make his name a high level executive. And we're at this leadership retreat and he shared with the group that his daughter had a keg party at his house in Chicago. And there was a lake and after the keg party they went swimming and one of the, one of the kids drowned and died. And it was devastating for them. And that kid was his daughter.
He lost his daughter.
And I said to him, what day was that? He said, May 17th on my phone. I'll show it to you when I walk out. Reoccurring thing on May 17th. This happened nine, ten years ago. I call him every May 17th. You think he has a rough day on May 17th? Of course he does. So when most people tell you they lost a child, people say, I'm so sorry. I say, what day was that? And they go, april, this December, this. And I write my thing, reoccurring. And then I write them a letter. I call them on that day, the rest of their life.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: That's how great leaders are made.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: That's how great leaders are made.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: That's how great Christians are made.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: They show up not just the first anniversary, but every anniversary.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Influence, investment, intent. What's the intent?
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Your heart. It can't be about you.
It's got to be intentional about Others. If you want personal gain, if you're helping people so you can get something, you're manipulative, it's going to backfire. That's the one thing I don't like about the Dale Carnegie stuff. It's a little manipulative. If you do these tactics, this is going to help you.
If you live a life of love and serving hood and you expect things, end result.
My mentor Jerry Middle said, when you donate money, if your name has to be attached to it, if you need credit, then you're just getting a tax deduction.
If you give something a bunny of time, don't tell anybody about it.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Don't let your left hand see your right hand. Jesus said that. Right hand.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Don't let your left hand see your right hand.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: See my mind, drop this in the basket and hide it from your other hand.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: So when we give, we shouldn't be telling people about it, but we want to give because we feel good about it. You know, my wife's father, Ernie, I love him so many different ways, but one of the things that drove me crazy about him and I could talk about Ernie in a beautiful way. Yeah. How you doing, Ernie? Well, I went to the. He was big Catholic. I went to the rectory today and mowed the lawn and then I cleaned the sacred stain and then I fed the father's breakfast and I did the laundry. And like, he was so proud of all the things he did.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: And what he should have said is, I got to spend time together with the Lord, had a great day. But he felt like he had a brag about the things he did. He told me freaking crazy. You know, we do that and see if it's. Guess what?
I do that too. And I catch myself like, oh, I shouldn't have said that.
But you just help and serve people and don't tell. You don't tell people unless you write the story in a book so other people can learn lessons I guess you.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: Tell the world about.
I don't tell people my personal life, but it isn't a bestselling book that you can buy the link below this video.
I love that. No, but it's for our good. It really is.
One of the most moving stories in the book is about a note in Mark's helmet.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: And it just really shows the power of influence. The little things that make a humongous difference.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: You're a storyteller. I follow your stuff. I read your books.
I'm a huge fan of your work.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Thank you, brother. It means a lot.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: And I love what you're doing with the Catholic church. You're teaching us to love Jesus.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Thank you, man.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: And not just love our faith, but to love Jesus.
But I believe stories change us.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: They do.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: You can give PowerPoint presentations, you can give all the data, you can give all the spreadsheets. You'll never remember it. You tell a story, you tell it well.
People never forget it. And I heard a story, a true story about Mrs. Lin, an 8th grade math teacher, algebra teacher. And I heard this story, Chris, and I've told it thousands of times. I wrote it in the Gift of influence. But this story changed my life. It's the most powerful story in my heart.
And my hope is to tell the story to millions of people that they want to become like mistakes.
Mrs. Lin was an 8th grade algebra teacher in the early 1960s. Little small town outside Lincoln, Nebraska.
Beautiful African American woman.
She loved her job teaching and she loved her students and she loved algebra. And one Friday afternoon, she's about to teach 37 students.
And it wasn't just any Friday afternoon, but it was the last period of the day, the last Friday of the day.
And not just the last period and last Friday, but the last period and the last Friday before spring break was about to begin.
You know where I'm going? Oh, yeah. 37 kids are about to walk in this classroom. The windows are up, the sun is shining. These kids are 50 minutes away from spring break. They're bouncing off the walls.
Mrs. Lin was such a seasoned teacher. She knew that she wasn't going to be teaching algebra that day. And she did what every great teacher does. She called an audible.
She goes, hey, kids, we're 50 minutes away from spring break. We're not doing algebra. Everyone take out a piece of paper. And they all took out a piece of paper because they loved Mrs. Lim. And then she went to the chalkboard. And I always tease any listener that doesn't know what chalk is that's under the age of 50.
Chalk is a writing utensil that was.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Used in the 60s, 70s, in the late 1900s.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: So she grabs a piece of chalk and Mrs. Lin writes to the chalkboard all 37 names of all the students.
And she asks all the students to write everyone's name down first and last. And the assignment was to find one kind word, one beautiful word about each and every one of your classmates.
Can you do that for me? And they did.
All 37 students wrote down one kind word about each student.
Bell rang. Kids went to spring Break. And here's what Mrs. Lynn does during her spring break. She gathers all 37 piece of paper. She goes home, and she gets 37 blank pieces of paper, and she writes everyone's first name on each paper, and she transcribes all 36 words about that student and each of the 37 classmates. That took all week.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: That's beautiful.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: So, Chris, you got 36 words about you. And Sally and George got 36 words about. And she just transferred, and she couldn't wait to give this piece of paper back because we've all had eighth graders. You've had four of them. I've had three of them. It's a tough time for our lives, figuring ourselves out, popping zits, getting our period rough. It's rough.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: It's the eighth grade. It's the rough year. Yeah, like Covid years, middle school. If I could just erase those from my memory, I'd be a little happier.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: And she. She's teaching a bunch of, you know, eighth grade kids. She couldn't wait.
Following week, spring break's over, the kids come back in her class. She passes out the piece of paper, and Mrs. Lin tells the story that she loved. The next 10 minutes, she got to watch these students read 36 beautiful words about them.
And she said some students were holding back tears, smiling ear to ear, blushing, full on crying, like it was the best exercise. Anyway, 10 minutes are up. Mrs. Lynn tells them to take out her algebra book. She starts teaching algebra, and she never, ever, ever talks about that piece of paper or brings up that exercise ever again.
That was late. That was early 1960s. Now we're in the mid to late 1960s. Five years later, Mrs. Lynn gets a phone call from the principal down the street of high school. A phone call that no teacher, no principal or no parent ever wants to get that one of her former students, mark, in her 8th grade algebra class, went on to high school, played football, was the quarterback, was the captain, and was drafted in the Vietnam war and was the first fallen soldier from that town outside Lincoln, Nebraska, to be killed in combat.
So the principal was inviting all of Mark's former teachers to the funeral.
And Mrs. Lynn went. And the funeral was beautiful. It was packed because Mark was a quarterback. He was our captain. He was our fallen soldier.
And the priest did such a beautiful job honoring his life.
And after the service was over, some of the teachers were talking in the parking lot, and they were invited to go to Mark's house to attend a celebration of life party. And Ms. Lynn goes, and she's in the kitchen, kind of eating sponge cake, listening to everyone talk about what a beautiful kid Mark was. And this gentleman walks up to her and says, are you Mrs. Lynn? And she goes, I am.
And she says, I'm Mark's father.
There's something that I need to give to you. Can you follow me?
So she follows Mark's father down the hall, the last room on the left. Within seconds, she's standing inside Mark's childhood bedroom.
And she had goose pimples. Shivers. Because she saw the cornhusker duvet on the bed and the football trophies and the pictures of NFL quarterbacks on the wall.
And she couldn't believe that she's actually standing in Mark's childhood bedroom.
But the side of her eyes were looking at this duvet on this bed. And on the duvet, there was this object on the bed. She couldn't keep her eyes off the object. It was almost like Mark's father can read her mind. So he went over to the bed and he picked up this war camouflage helmet, and he brought it over to Mrs. Lin and said, this is what I wanted to give to you.
And she's holding this war helmet. And she doesn't understand why she's standing in Mark's childhood room. And why the heck is Mark's father giving her this war helmet? It was almost like Mark's father can continue hearing her thoughts. So he says to Mrs. Lannan, Turn it upside down.
So she takes that war helmet and she turns it upside down.
And in the. The rubber bands, the elastic bands that hold that helmet to a soldier's head was a piece of paper.
And she pulled it out, and it was a yellow stained, scotch taped piece of paper. And she opened it up, and it was her handwriting at the top that said Mark with 36 beautiful words about him.
And Mark's father looks at her and says, you were more than a math teacher. My son.
My son loved this piece of paper.
You know, every home football game, he put it under his pads.
And when my son was found killed in Vietnam last week, it was found tucked under his helmet.
You've had a huge influence on my son.
You had a huge influence on my son.
So when I first heard that story, it just.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: It's beautiful, man.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: And it's beautiful, Chris, because I know your heart and you know my heart.
It's beautiful because we want to have that kind of influence on the lives of others. Yeah, I want to have that kind of influence on my wife Jill, and my children, my family and my friends and my followers. I want to have that kind of influence. I want to be like Mrs. Lynn. And so that's what the book the Gift of Influence is about, is how do you shift what your profession is to what your purpose is? And your purpose is to have a positive, life changing, life altering, intentional influence on the lives of others.
If we could do that. Well, yes, if we can do that.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Well, that's what it's all about.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: That's when Jesus says, well done, my faithful servant. That's what he really says it. Not well done with all your straight A's, not well done with all your IPOs and success and book sales and money and, you know, mowing your lawn perfectly. And well done, my faithful servant means you showed up for people, you influenced the lives of others. Your stadium is filled with 80,000 screaming people saying thank you for the influence. And how you get there, Chris, you got to sh, you got to change your heart.
Because Adam Grant, who's a great author, there's two types of people. You're either a giver or a taker. You are either a giver or a taker, period.
And there's too many takers in the world, too many self centered people in the world, too many self serving people in the world. And I would argue that most of the world is that way.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: So let's join this movement.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Amen.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: People that want to be heart led leaders, to be servant leaders, to be influencers and not selling pocketbooks and tequila on the Internet. Influencers, Influencers, where you're truly giving your life to Christ and giving your life to serving other people and changing organizations and companies and institutions that, that you run or are working for or working with. And everyone you're in, everyone you're interacting with, your job is leaving a legacy of love in their hearts because of your short or long term relationship that you have with them.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Brother, if there's a danger to what you and me do, me in the religious space, you bring gospel principles into the secular workspace. It's that people could look at like, you know, your messengers and you have a podcast and it reaches X number of people and you know, but me, I have all this stuff locked in my heart and all I, you know, all I can do is like, I don't know, talk to the person in front of me.
And your book is a reminder that it's literally all that matters. Yeah, that's what matters.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: You know, don't think so big that you literally miss what's under your nose. And you, and you read the Gospels, like, Jesus wasn't podcasting to the masses. I mean, in your lifetime, probably in one or two years, with the amount of talks you give.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: And I say this almost to my shame, like, I reach way more people than Jesus in one of his years during his public ministry. Just the numbers, obviously.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Not the impact.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But he didn't miss the impact because he, while thinking of his mission, never overlooked the person who came right under his nose in that moment.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: And this is what matters.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Right under your nose. And so the dangerous thing about doing what we do is we have to actually live what we write about. And sometimes it's hard.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:36] Speaker B: And not just hard for us, but hard for people that are too busy and hard for people that got 100 emails to follow up with and thousand meetings to go to. And how do you stop and influence others? It's intentionality.
I can kind of close with one last story that kind of wraps the bow is my son. Tate is our youngest of three.
[00:49:57] Speaker A: I want to close with a story of my kid after. Your kid? Yeah, we're going to. Let's honor our kids and their influence. Yes, please.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: My kid. Your kid. Okay.
He's now 17, and he attends the top hockey prep school in the world, Shattuck, St. Mary's God bless you. Nathan McKinnon, Sidney Crosby, Jack Johnson.
The top hockey players played for Shadic.
Well, he first went there when he was 14, when he was a freshman high school. Shadic recruits the best players in the world to play for them, and the kid made the team. And that was the easy part. The hard part was to take a bear because he's 14 years old and you're dropping your kid off at school.
Like when we took Anthony to West Point when he was 19, we just slapped him on the ass and said, thanks for serving me at Christmas.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: Because you're fully baked.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:50:47] Speaker B: When we took Caroline de Clemson, I gave her a hug and said, see you at Christmas. Like, she's fully baked. She's 18.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: But when you're 14, you remember you're still a little kid. I still got four more years with that kid. Four more years to develop mold, Love, serve. And now you're dropping him off at prep school.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: And it was. It was. I'm looking at my entire life. That was one of the hardest days of my life, to drop him off at prep school.
And I didn't want to cry because if I cried, Jill would cry. Jill would cry, Tate would cry. We wanted to be strong.
And we dropped him off, and we drove to the airport in Minneapolis.
And I couldn't even speak. We were both just, like, amputated.
Our hearts were just already homesick for him. Cause Anthony is a pretty serious fellow. Caroline's a pretty driven person. Tate is our joy Bug. Like, you know your last book, the Joy?
[00:51:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Living Joy.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: I read that book. I loved it.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. Tate.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: Tate. Tate. My son just lives that book.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: And so he's our joy.
And so we just missed him. So we were just silent. We get to the airport, we had a little lunch, and. And I just looked at Jill, and I said, jill, I'm just.
I just need to get away. I'm just gonna get on the plane. I'll meet you on the plane. I'll get online. So I paid the bill. I'm walking through the Minneapolis airport to get to my United Airlines gate, and it was packed with hundreds of people walking by. And as I'm walking through the terminal towards the gate, there's this little caribou coffee. Caribou coffee's like, oh, yeah.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: It's like the Starbucks of Minnesota.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: It's the Starbucks of Minnesota.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: And there was that here, too. I like it better.
[00:52:24] Speaker B: It's just great coffee.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really good.
[00:52:26] Speaker B: It's rich. It's great.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: That was a free ad.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. So it's a caribou coffee, and there's this young woman sitting at a table, like, right on the edge of the terminal. People are walking by her, and she's writing a letter, And I'm walking by her, and I notice that she is not just crying, but, like, bawling. She's just flowing tears, writing this letter. Now I walk by her, and I get to my gate, and I'm online on the. You know, the one K trying to get on the plane.
And I'm just hearing Jesus Christ. I'm hearing Christ, tap me and literally speak into me. Tommy, one of your 80,000 people are at Caribou Coffee. Turn around, turn around, turn around. I just felt in every scintilla of my body, turn around, turn around. I don't want to turn around. I'm mourning my kid. I'm missing my son Tate. And I just turned around, got out of the line, went straight back to Caribou Coffee. I didn't ask her to sit down.
I didn't shake my hand.
I grabbed the chair and sat right next to her, and I looked at her and said, you having a rough day?
And she looked at me and she's crying and she's like, oh, I'm having an awful day. It took four words to realize she was from England. She had an English accent.
I go, what's your story? What's going on?
She goes, I'm in love with this boy, lives in Minneapolis and I live in London. We're doing this long distance thing and it's just not working.
And I'm writing him a letter and we're breaking up, but I love him and this is hard.
I said, yeah, I've done the long distance thing. It's tough.
And I said, I just dropped my 14 year old kid off prep school and I'm not going to see him for a while. And I'm hurting, so I start crying. She's crying. I gave her a hug. I'm hugging her. My wife walks by, see me hugging some straightforward.
But my wife knows me, Chris. She knows me. She's like, there's my husband filling the stadium.
And I believe when I die, hopefully beyond 77 years, but when I die, I'm gonna have a stadium of 80,000 people, maybe more.
And that young woman who I never got her name, her phone number, I'll never talk to her again, but she'll be in my stadium.
[00:54:52] Speaker A: It's beautiful, man.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: And she'll be the one standing in the way.5006.
You're the one, Tommy. You're the one.
Years ago, when I'm at the Minneapolis airport and there's hundreds of people walking by, everyone walking by, I'm bawling my eyes out. You're the only one that turned around.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: Gave me a hug. I'm in your stadium.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
Oh, praise God.
You know, I thought you were gonna tell the story of Tate influencing the kid who's in, but you're gonna have to buy the book. You're gonna have to buy the book. It's a beautiful story of Tate influencing somebody, who, by the way, he sounds so epic that we can do a prearranged marriage with him and Eloise.
[00:55:29] Speaker B: Yes. You tell your story.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: I'm gonna right now.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: How old's eloise?
[00:55:33] Speaker A: She is 16.
Tate's 17.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: That's a perfect.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: We can make this happen with ease.
But she's a kid who's very passionate about everybody she meets.
Like, she gets right into it. And let's see here. There it is.
She goes to jiu jitsu class. She's a real athletic kid, and she just crushes it. Like, she just started at it. And she's incredible at It. But she leaves the class every week with a really loud God bless you. Like, she's into everybody. God bless you. See you guys. And it falls with, like, this quiet thud because this is not a religious setting at all.
And they're not, like, bad people or super anti.
But I can read a room really well. And I know there's a handful of people who have, like, maybe issues with that, you know, And I. She says it every week. And I was almost gonna say, like, I mean, shame on me as an evangelist. Right? But I was almost gonna say she's.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: Probably tone that down. Relieving the taekwondo.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, el, maybe tone it down a little bit. Like, you know, show, like, play the long game and show them that you love them and you're joyful and let them know inside your. I didn't say it, though. Thank God. I held back.
And, dude, her. Her coach, who's like, he's a. He's a tough dude, you know, but was one of the people who was always quiet when she said that. He texted me, and I don't even. I've never really interacted with him before, but he had my number through the class. He said. A couple weeks ago, Elle was leaving class when we all said bye. She said, bye, everyone. God bless you all.
And it might seem like a tiny thing or something that's 100% normal for her, but it really helped me that night when I needed it.
I started going to church again with my family recently, and for some reason, I've been nervous to tell some people in my life for different reasons.
But after that night, I decided I was gonna face that, and then I'd be more open about my faith journey moving forward. Like I said, it might have been something you didn't notice, but to me, it's helped me greatly over the last two weeks. I think it's pretty awesome that she's so comfortable expressing her faith like that, man. You know, it's like, this is like, my daughter doesn't have a podcast, and she's not getting flown around in private jets to speak to people, you know, but this is what it's about. So this whole show and your whole book is such a great remind.
You matter so much.
Please don't ever watch a podcast and think I don't have one of those. So how much do I matter? We have these false ideals about. We can gauge metrics and numbers. And, you know, I got news for you.
Even within Catholic influencer world, we're comparing ourselves with each other. It's from hell, and it's not how the Lord did things.
The person under your nose matters.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: You.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: You matter so much more than you know.
You're precious to God. And your life matters not because of what you accomplished or how successful you are, how rich you are, just because you are you. And if you just bring you and your presence and your influence, investment and intent, you're gonna change the world. You're gonna fill out the stadium. Thanks for reminding us of what matters, brother.
[00:58:38] Speaker B: Thanks for reminding us of what matters, Chris, so much.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: I love you too, man.
Praise God. Praise God, really. And you don't just write about it, you witness it. So thank you. And I think probably half the time you got up, John was thinking in the studio, he's out of the shot. That's all right. If you're watching when he went out of the shot. We only have the cameras. They work for most people, but occasionally a guest gets too excited and they leave.
But you understand, we'll CGI his face in. I love you, brother. I love you guys. We'll see you next time.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
