Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I sit down today with best selling author Tommy Spalding to talk about how you can own your leadership and make a positive difference wherever you go. Today on the Chris Stefanick Show.
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[00:00:57] Speaker B: No.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: To help start their day in the right direction. 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. Let's dive in, brother. Thank you so much for being here. I just love you, man.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Love you.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: I love your spirit. I'm so excited you're coming in. I love your books. It's incredible, dude.
I want to talk about being a heart led leader, but I want to bounce around from book to book. I'm sorry for doing this because I just read both. So all Tommy Spalding is filling my mind right now because you kick off your book on influence embodying what it means to be a heart led leader and you talk in that book about your experience of being, of experiencing abuse, which I'm really sorry you went through.
But the way that embodies it is the way Jesus did by saying, here, put your hand in my side and leads by saying, I don't have to hide my wounds. It would be, I don't have to be cool, I don't have to be powerful. I don't have to have it all together. And go ahead, look in there. Right?
So to give us all a word of hope because people feel disqualified from leadership when they've been hurt or hurt in a way that's formative. It's like wounding or scarring.
How has that formed the kind of leader of leaders that you are?
How is the experience of pain, pain of trauma made you the guy who would, who would write about being a heart led leader instead of being the guy that retreats from the world and freezes up?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel blessed with all the things that have happened in my life and Growing up, I'm severely dyslexic and really struggled academically. Today we throw these words at adhd, ADD or dyslexic. And. But back then they just threw all kids like me in the resource room.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: And they didn't call it the resource room when I was in high school. They call it the retard room, which I. There's like a few words in the dictionary that should be eradicated, and that's one of them. And I still can't hear that word without shivers. But that's the room where kids with down syndrome and you know, autism and severe dyslexia, that's where I went to school.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: And they're putting you in the same room as kids with severe autism.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: And Gen X was brutal to other kids.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Man, it's awesome.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: We were so mean.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And I did well. Like I was an altar boy. I had friends at the church and I was an Eagle Scout. I had like friends. I got my self confidence outside the classroom. But when I graduated college, My guidance counselor, Mr. Tilton, God bless him, he's like, college really isn't for you. I mean, your grades are terrible, you're SAT's terrible, your class rank's terrible. So I had these learning challenges and I had to overcome a lot.
And I just think that they just made me who I am today and just that tenacity and that grit. But I've always lived my life, Chris, where I just wanted to do good and to change the world and make it better than I found it.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Partly because of this stuff you've been through with all that labeling and the wounds and attacks and all of it.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: And then a lot of people, teachers like Mrs. Singer, football coach Bob Valtiti, people believed in me and then saw something in me.
And just look at my entire life of just who I am today. I had people that plucked me out. Even one is Ken Blanchard. I mean, everyone knows who he is. He's number one business author of all time, a one minute manager, sold 20 million copies. I mean, he's legit. When I was running a non profit, we hired him to do a keynote speech for us. And I kind of fell in love with his heart and driving to the airport and he said to me, you know, last night at the event when you spoke, they were listening to you more than me. I've never seen anyone speak to an audience where they laugh and cry in the same sentence.
Have you ever think about, have you ever thought about writing a book before? I'm driving to the airport.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: I'm like, he's the guy that suggested you write a book.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: I said, ken, I've never read a book, let alone, like, written a book.
He said, no, we got ghostwriters for that. You're a storyteller and you captivates audiences. You should write books. You should.
So I dropped him off. I thought he was being polite. A week later, Ken Blanchard sends me a check in the mail, Federal Express for $25,000.
Like, just send it to me.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Says you're running a non profit. You need to quit that job.
I called my editor and the publisher at Random House.
We're going to get you a book deal and we're gonna get you a book. And I called my ghostwriter, we're gonna get you a book written, and I called my agent to help you speak and we'll get you a first few gigs and you'll be on your own. You wrote the 4? To my first book. It's not just who you know. And it became a New York Times bestseller. And it just started from there, from someone believing in me, seeing something I didn't see in myself. And if it wasn't for Ken Blanchard, I'd be still running a non profit, working with kids, which is a great profession. But now I get to change millions of lives because one person picked me out of obscurity and gave me a platform, praise God. And so I want to do that for other people now. It's epic. Yeah.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Fill in some blanks for me here.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: A lot of blanks.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Because there's a lot of blanks. But like, I mean, you had experiences that you openly share that would beat a lot of people psychologically down to make you think, I can't make anything of myself. And then Ken Blanchard shared, built you up. But here you are sharing a stage with Ken Blanchard. So like, yeah, what? Yeah, what happened? I mean, and you're a guidance counselor. Like, you're not even gonna be able to go to college.
And you know, maybe he was well intentioned, but like, how. How do you. Was it all incremental stories of people just believing in you?
[00:06:44] Speaker B: I think it was. It really was one big experience that led into a thousand others. But when I graduated high school, I didn't go to college is because I couldn't get into a good school. And before there was even gap years in 1987, there weren't gap years. I invented gap years in 1987. I didn't go to college. But this group called up with people.
Chris, you might be A little too young to know who they are, because they were really big in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard about them, and they're great.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: They were a worldwide phenomenon. Up With People was about bringing Jews, Christians, rich, poor, blacks, whites, young people from all over the world. Kind of like a mini United Nations.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: And they traveled all over the world, did community service, live in host families, but they did this two hour musical show called the Up With People Show.
They were legit. They did halftime shows in the Super Bowl.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: I mean, they were big. So they came to my high school and I saw the Up With People show, and it was all colors of skin, all religions, all backgrounds, and they were changing the world and volunteering and building friendships among, you know, different borders. And it was a message of love.
And I'm like, I want to do that.
So after the show, I interviewed. Instead of going to boces or, you know, community college or, you know, a C college, I joined Up With People and traveled all over the world for a year, went to college, and then after college, I went back up with People. I worked my way from, you know, a student to the CEO and President. So I spent really 20 years of my life living in four continents, you know, traveling the 80s countries and giving my life to running this, this. This mission of Up With People. So Up With People taught me at a young age to love people. All people. Now I'm Catholic.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: I'm conservative. I mean, I have my values.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: But I have friends that pray different than me, that look different than me, that believe different than me. And I've learned how to love them. And my life is so rich with beauty because I have friends, relationships all over the world with people that aren't like me. And that's the problem with our world. We're hanging out with people who are just like us. And Jesus calls us to love and serve all people.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Period.
So I've given my life to that. Teaching people from high school kids to CEOs how to build cultures and organizations of love and how to teach high school kids how to change the world through love.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: You're getting choked up right now.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I am.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: What's hitting you up?
[00:09:13] Speaker B: It's the makeup.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Your makeup's running. I'm just shocked how much I enjoyed
[00:09:21] Speaker B: putting on the makeup.
Maybe something's coming out of me or something.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Hey, friend. I want to invite you into something that's changing lives every single day. People all over the world are rediscovering their faith, finding real joy and learning how to share the gospel with confidence. And guess what? These lives are forever being transformed because of our Missionaries of Joy, our incredible monthly supporters, Everything we do, the Chris Stefanick show, life changing video series like Living Joy, Rise, Fearless and Renewed, our live events, it all exists because of them. And I want to invite you to become part of this movement.
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What's pulling the string in your heart as you talk right now?
[00:10:52] Speaker B: I just, sometimes I pinch myself because, you know, I basically failed out of high school and every teacher told me I wasn't going to amount to anything.
And to be able to have a platform now that changed millions of lives, it's such a blessing and such an honor, and it's deeply humbling.
And I pinch myself.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: And the key to your success is love.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: It is.
It is. Tomorrow I fly to Florida. I have 25 CEOs of some of the largest companies in the country coming in to learn. How do you bring this kind of love to my company, to my organization? Now, we don't call it love in the business world. Call it servant leadership, customer service, all those buzzwords, but it's about love.
You lead an organization, you don't love your people, you don't love your customers, you don't love what you do. Showing servant leadership, all that stuff, it's needed.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Okay, this is a quote that you shared in your book. The greatest companies in the world understand that love and results are two sides of the same coin.
Hearing you talk about how love has been the source of your success. Okay. A lot of people are hearing and thinking, okay, nice, ideal.
But, you know, sometimes love just gets you beat down.
What does this actually look like? That to love equals it leads to success.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So it actually started with Random House because the success of my first book, it's not just so you know, which is about building authentic relationships.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's your passion.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: How do you build authentic, genuine, heartfelt relationships? When I went to Random House and I pitched my second book, I told him I want to write about love in the workplace.
They spit me out. I said, I got you New York Times bestseller, my first book. They go, I don't care. No one's writing about love in the workplace because love doesn't belong in the workplace. I said, it doesn't say like love is not applicable 9 to 5 on Monday through Friday.
It belongs in the workplace. So I kept going back to them saying, I want to write about it, I want to write about it. And they said, figure out how to write about it. Where business people actually not just chalk it up as some California woo woo stuff.
So I said, okay, I'm going to talk about companies that have unprecedented results.
Whether it's customer service or employee retention or revenue. I'm going to work for look like non profits and for profits and companies. And I'm going to show companies that have astounding results. And it's linked because they have a culture of love. They have a culture of servant leadership. They have a culture of putting others before themselves. And I just found these companies all over the world that have these extraordinary results. And that's just companies, prisons, schools, that have like unprecedented results. Yeah, because you know, their operating system came from this.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: That's epic.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: And that's what the Heartland Leader was. It was a massive bestseller.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: And people are talking about love in the workplace now.
And you know, I was breaking down, you know, cutting teeth, you know, getting people to talk about it. But now people are starting to see the value of really bringing that kind of culture to their organizations. Wow.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: It's obvious how your Jesus worldview is what shaped that.
I mean before Jesus, people would never ever talk about that if he hadn't changed the world. Right. The Romans got things done. The pagan Romans got things done. It wasn't if you went back 2,000 years ago and like I want to have a meeting with Caesar. You need to embrace servant leadership.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Like dude, come on.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: He didn't just talk about love when he got on his feet and washed his disciples feet.
To me that is the most epic. That is the kind of agape love that we want in the workplace.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: It's also insane.
I mean it takes, it takes what strikes us as the most obvious apparent way to success and turns it upside down. Like when Jesus talked about the Beatitudes I call it the loser list.
You know what I mean? Like, if you're going to go to a high school or college graduation, you're the commencement speaker and you have to be poor and meek and people will be like, what?
That's not the path to. This is so counterintuitive.
How does it work?
Connect those dots for us because I could see how it can make you a saint or a Mother Teresa.
What are some of the stories, and I love that the book goes into all these stories. What are some of the stories that show how this actually, while being a heavy handed power leader, can also lead to success in our world, sadly. But it ruins the world while it helps you get rich.
How does this path actually translate? What's it look like? What's the story of a business turning around because they embrace love as the principle?
[00:15:52] Speaker B: There's this bank in Elberton, Georgia, middle of nowhere, outside of Atlanta. Two, three hours, and the CEO of Pinnacle bank is a guy named Jackson McConnell. And I love this guy. He is a true servant leader, very humble, genuine, and a massive successful bank. They're celebrating their 90th year this year. His granddaddy started it and his Granddaddy worked his 30 years and built it to a hundred million dollar bank.
Then his father took over the bank and put his 30 years in, took it from $100 million bank to a $220 million bank. So double the size of the bank. And then Jackson, who's kind of our age, takes over the bank 29 years ago.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So like 25.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
Jackson takes over the bank from his daddy and takes the $220 million bank. And today they're a $2.6 billion bank, dude. No acquisitions.
There's just pure growth.
So when authors like me and you, when we hear stories like this of unprecedented results, we want to know what's going on, you know, down in Elbazon, Georgia. What's in the water?
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: And so we went down there and we interviewed staff, we interviewed customers, clients, you know, figuring out the Pinnacle. Why did you go from a $220 million bank to a $2.6 billion bank? Fastest growing community bank in the world, let alone the country.
We kept on hearing story after story after story about Jackson McConnell, the kind of humble leader that he was and that he is.
Let me just tell you one story and then we'll move on because it'll just define it. So years ago, 10 years ago, Jackson's CEO is in his office, you know, hot as heck, in Elberton. Georgia in the summertime, over 100 degrees out. He's looking outside of his window, coat and tie. He sees a broken down delivery truck in his parking lot of his bank.
And being a Southern gentleman, he grabs a bottle of water, goes out to the sweltering heat and goes up to the driver and says, sir, why don't you come inside the office and cool off in the air conditioning, have a bottle of water, wait for the tow truck or the repair guy and the guy that's trying to fix the truck. Because the truck lids up and the smoke's going everywhere, trying to fix it. He doesn't know who Jackson is and says, that Jackson, did you read my truck?
And Jackson looks at the truck and it says, seafood delivery truck. Guy's like, I got tens of thousands of haddock, shrimp, clams in the truck, all falling out. The truck generator won't work, car won't start. And there's not a restaurant in town that's going to serve seafood over the next month if I don't get this delivery done. And I'm going to lose my job if it all falls out and spoils.
Oh, man. What does Jackson McConnell do? You the next move, Chris? CEO and president. Yeah, give me five minutes.
Goes out in the Ploy parking lot, gets his old Chevy Suburban, unbuttons his tie, drives it out to delivery truck and unloads the entire truck of seafood, puts it in the back of a Suburban and does all the delivery to the restaurants and, you know, seafood warehouses and delivery centers throughout Elberton County. That's what he does.
I got 100 more of those stories.
That's why they're a $2.6 billion company. Because the guy or the woman at top leads from a place of love. Roll up your sleeves. And if I have to deliver seafood, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to serve.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: That's incredible.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what I do for a living now. I find these stories and I keep telling the world these stories. Cause I want to be like Jackson McConnell and so do you.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: We all do. That gives me chills, man.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: We all do. We're not talking about his mergers and acquisitions and how he had growth and all these forecasts and all these bank talk.
We're talking about a person who knows how to roll up their sleeves and serve others. A person that puts others before himself. You meet his wife. He's got a great wife. He's got a great marriage. You meet his children. Children love him because he constantly puts his wife, his children, his employees, People, he wakes up every morning putting others before himself. And the reality is, and the real data shows that most of us don't do that, Chris. We put ourselves first.
We are more servant, more self serving. That's just how we're built.
And so how do we rewire our heart, how do we rewire our brain to wake up every morning and say, I'm gonna put my wife first, I'm putting my kids first, I'm going to put my husband first, my employees, my customers, my friends, I'm going to put others before myself. And if you commit to living a life that way, you're going to have one hell of a ride.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: The pull to selfishness, it feels like the pull to gravity, right?
Because how do I rewire my heart and my brain? I love that Jesus started his ministry with the word metanoia, which is usually mistranslated as repentance, which I think is a horrible translation because it implies like, stop sinning, which we should. We should stop sinning, right? But the metanoia is change your mind, meta your noia, change your whole thinking.
And when I think of that, it's like, well, 75% of my sins are because I'm thinking wrong, you know, and then Philippians 2 is coming to mind as you're talking, just pouring out of you, you know, have the same mindset as Jesus, who, though in the form of God, didn't deem equality with God something to be leveraged.
Just a better translation, leveraged. Like we're always. We're always leveraging, you know, like every relationship we enter, I want to leverage to. How can I climb here and, you know, how can this be about me?
It just. It's a gravitational pull from the fall, I guess.
So how do you.
What are the things that a guy who ends up being the kind of guy who would be like, yo, I got your truck. I'm going to drive it around and help.
What are their personal daily practices that give them that kind of brain, that give them the kind of mind of Jesus Christ? Actually, what can I do tomorrow morning to be less of a jerk?
[00:21:44] Speaker B: I have this thing, I call it an influence audit. We'll talk more about influence later on in the show.
But when I wake up in the morning and I do my devotional or I pray or the rosary, or however I start my day with, with the Word.
The second thing I do daily, it's my secret sauce, is I get a piece of paper out and I write on the piece of paper all my friends and relationships. I Have in the world that are hurting.
My buddy Matt Lambert has got cancer. He's rh.
It's not good.
He's got chemo. And I call him every day. And I will call him every day.
He's on the list. My best friend from high school, Corey Tor. Wife left him. Single dad, great guy, but just heartbroken of divorce.
I've called him nearly every day since then, told him his best days were ahead of him. Write his name down. Who's got cancer, who's got a kid that's on drugs, who's going through bankruptcy, who's going through divorce, who's going through addiction of pornography. Like, who in your life has shared stuff with you? They're going through pain. And I write their names down.
And I feel like, Chris, we do such good job running towards happiness and success. Christmas cards, birthday cards, wedding anniversaries. When our oldest son, Anthony, graduated West Point, I got so many cards. Congratulations. Your son serving our country. So proud of you. Like, when we reached all the. I just made the Authors hall of Fame, which was, like, a huge honor. Like, got all this, like, cards and congratulations, and I appreciate it all. But when I was going through my depression, who was there for me?
You know, when I'm going through my tough times? Like, who's really there for me?
Count them on my hands. Those are the people I want to run to.
So I've just given my life. I do send Christmas cards, and I do say happy birthday to people. Other than that, I run towards pain every day. I start my day, my day, thinking about all the people in my life that are going through pain, hardship, And I call them up and I write them a note, and I mail them a book, and I show up for them.
I just did a speech in Iowa last year, and Lori was the CEO, brought me in to talk to her company. Here's how she introduced me. Yeah, he's got all these bestselling books, but you all know I had cancer last year, and I had to drive two hours to Des Moines for chemotherapy every Monday for 12 Mondays.
Tommy Spalding called me every Monday and talked me on the way to Des Moines during my chemo treatments.
That's who he is.
He shows up.
And I think we, as Christians, we want to show up for people.
We think about showing up for people, but do we actually do it? It's hard because we're busy.
And I just think we just shift our hearts to serving people that are hurting. It's. It humbles us and it inspires us to be Grateful.
To be thankful, to be joyful, to be appreciative, to be humble.
And it's kind of made me who I am. And I'm addicted to it.
I'm addicted to running towards people's pain and being there for them, showing up for them.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: You just gave me like, honestly, like a new spiritual practice I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: I call the influence audit. Call whatever you want.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: But if we write down 10 names a day and we reach out to those 10 people, not a BS little text, call them up, knock on their door, show up for them, people will remember that forever.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Thank you for that. Seriously, that's. I love you too. That's huge. I'm gonna, I'm seriously gonna. That could change. That could change my life.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: It changed everyone's life.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: That's. That's powerful.
Wow. I mean, because that's about orienting the spirit in a different direction. You want to be a servant leader. Some people might focus on. And this is why you're a best selling author, you know, because people can get lost in particulars that are kind of shallow on the outside, you know, do this in your workplace. You cut to the heart of here's a practice, and that's one what you just said of many that you share, right?
Here's a thing that can transform your spirit and that gets to the heart, frankly. Not just good business leadership, but the gospel metanoia. Here's the stuff you got to do to be a different person.
Success will follow.
Or frankly, if it doesn't follow, you succeeded at who you are, right?
In addition to that pull of gravity, frankly, from concupiscence from the fall of humanity to just make my life about me, right. Or call it spirits, call it evolution. There's a self protective thing built into human beings that are more likely to survive long enough to have babies.
Right? And Jesus is like, no, no, we're gonna break that open in the opposite direction. But another one is fear of our personal pain.
Like if you're a heart led leader and you actually and you lay out specifics in the book of like asking your employees for their story and investing in their heart, investing in their success, which obviously is gonna build a company that has loyalty, right? But when people are living out of a paradigm who aren't the boss, but they're not servant leaders, they are not heart led employees they want to leverage. They're not taking on the mind of Jesus. They have no interest in doing it right.
You lead with your heart open the result's going to be tremendous pain.
Because I've even experienced this in the land of ministry, which is people think they're going to come into ministry world. It's going to be like totally scrubbed clean of humanity. Like, dude, really, have you read the Bible? Right.
But you open your heart and people see a boss doing that and they'll take advantage. They start disrespecting, they start criticizing everything about you. They start seeing how they can leverage the relationship.
And then you get moderately well known. That becomes even more dangerous.
How do you lead as a heart ledger with authority and also protect your heart? Like sometimes you gotta correct someone, sometimes you gotta let someone go.
Or maybe your answer is gonna be, chris, you don't get to protect your heart. If you're gonna be heart lay leader, you just embrace pain in yourself, not just others. Like, how do you respond to that?
[00:28:00] Speaker B: It's interesting. There's a CEO named Cheryl Botchlater. She was the one that turned around Popeyes. I won't tell the whole story, but.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: No, tell it, man.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: And by the way, she's on the board of Chick Fil A. She helped turn around Pier 1.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: I mean, she's small companies.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: I mean, she's what, a top, like heart led leader. She wrote a book called A Dare to Serve. But what I love about her as a leader is a lot of times when people hear about heart led leadership leading with authenticity, humility, love, transparency, generosity, all these things. You know, there's a lot of people like, oh, that's soft stuff. Can you hold people accountable? Can you get results?
Cheryl Botschleiter is a true heart led leader. And she'll easily eat you for freaking lunch. Tough.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Oh, really tough. She's got the heart and she's tough at the same time. These things aren't at odds with each other.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: So this heart led leadership is not just soft, huggy, kissy thing.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: She's about setting expectations and demanding it. And she hit unprecedented results getting Popeyes turned around. But she did it because she rolled up her sleeves and her people followed her because she was the first one through the wall.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Hmm.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
I want to tell a quick story. Cause it's gonna put it all into. It's two words. Tom France.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Tom France.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: He was the guy that changed my Life.
I was 15 in the resource room. Failing out of school, had to go to summer school, sophomore, junior, senior year to get even to the next grade. Struggling academically. I never got picked for anything academic, anything. You know, leadership wise and rotary. This has this Program called Ryla. Rotary Youth Leadership Academy, you might have heard of it.
And they had this thing all over the country. And Tom France was a Rotarian. And I was nominated to go to this Raleigh camp when I was 15. And I went upstate New York, couple hundred high school kids, and I spent the week at this leadership camp.
And no one knew I was dyslexic.
No one knew I had a 1.9 GPA. No one knew I got a 6, 8 in the SAT. No one knew that I graduated at the bottom of my class.
They just knew me as Tommy Spalding from Suffer, New York.
And so I started learning about leadership. And Tom France was the closing keynote speaker. He was an H Vac guy, president of Rotary, and he was like this thin version of Santa Claus, these rosy cheeks, these red socks. He was a beautiful, authentic guy. He was my first keynote speaker. I heard and I just loved him. And at the end of his talk, he said something I'll never forget. It changed my life. He said, there's billions and billions of people on the planet and you are going to be one of three people.
Doesn't matter what color skin you are, what religion you are, how much money you have or don't have, of the billions of people on the planet, you are going to be one of three people.
You're going to be a leader or you're going to be a follower or you're going to be a critic, which you get three. One, two, three. A leader, follower, career. And then he said something that just went. He said, which one are you gonna be? Which one are you gonna be? And he pointed to me, which one are you gonna be? And it was the first time that I realized that leadership is a choice.
My parents were schoolteachers, my grandparents cut hair for a living. We were very middle class, blue collar. Like I used to think leadership was about rich people and positional authority and anyone could be a leader.
And I knew at that point at 15 years old that I wanted to be a leader. And I want to choose to be a leader. And I dedicated, I gave myself right then to leadership, that I was going to dedicate my life to studying it, to researching it, to teaching it, and to sharing the message of what heart led leadership is all about.
And Tom France is right. There's leaders, followers and critics. And if you choose to be a leader, there's a more important question is what type of leader do you want to be? And I believe there's two types of leaders. And it's obvious you're either A servant leader. Will you truly serve others before yourself? Or you're a self serving leader? Will you serve yourself first? There's no gray. You either wake up and serve yourself first or you serve others first. It's black and white.
And we're wired like Freudiant, like we breathe air, food, you know, Maslow's hierarchy needs taking care of ourselves and being self servant leaders. We're wired that way.
So we as humans have to unwire ourselves and start really building a life and our DNA. To wake up every morning and not put yourself first and put others first. And when you start doing that, you have unprecedented results. Let me talk about results. We talked about companies. Let me talk about families.
My parents got divorced. My grandparents on my dad's side got divorced.
My older sister got divorced. My younger sister got divorced. Aunts, uncles, cousins, divorced. I got divorced. All over my family.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: It's a lot of pain.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: All over my family.
I'm not getting divorced.
And my wife and I have been married 20 years. Is it perfect? No. Is it easy?
No.
But when we got married, we said, we're going to do this right and we're going to model a great marriage. And we want to have a relationship with our adult kids.
I love my mother and father and respect them, but I don't really do life with them.
I do obligatory holidays with them and I love them as my parents, but they haven't earned to really do life with them because of this dysfunction.
And I realized if you're a parent listening, your kids have to live with you until they're 18.
It's called the law. Yeah, they have to live with you, but after they turn 18, they don't ever have to live with you or do life with you again. You have to earn that. That's not the law. It's earned.
And so when Jill and I got married, we have this thing in our family. If I ever got a tattoo, I'm not a tattoo person. If I ever did it, be my family. Value. Our Spalding Crest is. If everything's important, then nothing is.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: I'll say that again because people need to hear that. If everything's important.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: If everything's important, then nothing is. You know those parents, this is important. And this is important. And they throw a thousand things over the kids. This is important. This is important. This is important. Brush your teeth. And this and this and this.
No, my kids. There's three things that are important.
Love, Jesus.
Love and value. Family and change the world. Serve others.
Like make a difference in people's Lives, love Jesus, love your family, your siblings, your parents, and live a life of blessing and serving other people. That's it. All three of my kids can just rattle this off. Everything else is not important.
Those three things.
So when Jill and I got married, we wanted to have a marriage where our kids didn't just want to be around us. They want to emulate us. They want to have marriage like us.
And we want to do life with them and we want to grow old with them. We want our kids to live near us and go to a place in Florida together and holidays and vacations and mission trips, and we want.
And guess what? People always say, oh, Tommy Pauli's best selling books. That stuff is bs. I'm so proud of that. All three of my children want to live near us. They call us, they want to do life with us, our adult children. We earned it. We did it.
And that was intentional work.
Instead of going to Disney World, we took them down to Mexico and built Homes for the poor.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: I mean, where'd you go? Where'd you go?
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Homes for Hope.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Homes for Hope.
Really?
I'm literally looking for a vacation service thing that's really hard to find.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: In San Diego. You go across the border, Tijuana. Homes for Hope with ywam started by Shawn Lambert.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: God bless them.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Oh, it is. They've built 10,000 homes down there. We go every year as a family
[00:35:54] Speaker A: and you feel like you're really doing something.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: There's a tent and you meet the family and there's a concrete slab. In two days, you're building in the house.
Life changing. And people meet my kids. I got one kid that went to West Point. One kid, that's the missionary, Caroline's amazing kid at Clemson. And Tate, this incredible hockey player. But humble people meet my kids and say, how'd you do it?
I went to Homes for Hope. I did mission work.
Every Christmas we open presents. And by the way, everyone gets one present. We can afford 1,000 presents. We get them one present.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: And then we have a little line in our kitchen and we make 100 sandwiches and socks and we go out to all the bridges in town and we give Christmas gifts to all the homeless. Like, we've been doing this since the kids were little.
Like birthdays, when kids are a little 13 year olds are around 5 year olds. All these presents before the kids even open them. Jill would say, pick one. Give it away before you even opened it. All right, that's the one we're gonna give away. Like my wife and I, we've just inbrained in our kids. It's not about you.
It's not about you.
Those are like four most important words of leadership. If your viewers can just remember these four words, you'll have the most successful life. It's not about you. It's not about you. And we live in the world where it's all about us. It's all about me.
It's not about you. It's about others.
And that's work. It's a muscle. That giving and that muscle of putting others before yourself. It's not normal because you want to think about ourselves and take care of ourselves.
But I flipped the switch years ago and I had the most blessed life because I wake every morning thinking about, who can I love? Who can I serve? Who needs me? How can I help? How can I jump in? How can I pour into people? How can I love people? How can I serve people?
And that's what I'm all about.
And all this success just comes in because God blesses those that give their lives to others.
Amen.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And again, frankly, if it doesn't make you a CEO, who cares?
[00:38:02] Speaker B: You're happy and you got kids that want to hang out with you.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Totally.
There's status. There's the new status symbol we should be going for, Right?
[00:38:10] Speaker B: They have kids that want to hang
[00:38:11] Speaker A: out with you, right?
[00:38:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Even more than that. Everyone says, like, oh, I want my son to say, I want to grow up just like my dad. Like, I run some father son retreats, and a lot of times the father sons are talking and the sons are like, I want to be like my dad. I want to grow up just like my dad. It gets to me and I go, man, I want to grow up just like my kids.
You meet Anthony and Tate, Caroline. I want to be just like them. Yeah.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: My kids are better than me.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Oh, without a doubt. And you know why? Because you and your wife have rocked it and done a great job.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Praise God. You do a good job. You want to become like your kids.
You do a good job in the office. You want to become like your employees, like your teammates.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: That's success. That's the trophy, brother.
[00:38:54] Speaker B: That's the trophy.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: Thank you. I mean, really, there's something I love about your books and I want to say this to. He's not paying me to say this. You got to buy these books.
Honestly. Heart led leader, the gift of influence. Because it really struck me reading these.
This is for CEOs, but it's not.
It helps everybody embrace, right where they are the gift of their own power, their own authority. Like everybody, whether you're a leader in a company or not, is called to lead.
And you aim right for the heart. And you form people who, whether you're a mom or dad or just a friend or you're a CEO of Popeyes, that you're going to do it right in a way that honors God and honors your own power and influence in the world.
So thanks for doing that, man. Thanks for embodying how to do that as a dad at home and raise kids that way that have a spirit of servant leadership.
Get the book to dive into the million ways to do that. But it's just there's so much comes down to just be intentional about it. If that's not in the radar, if you don't know the three things, then by default, we end up growing up and raising kids who are inherently making it about us. It takes work to fight gravity. Thanks for fighting gravity.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And you just hit the word influence.
And that's my new book, the Gift of Influence.
[00:40:16] Speaker A: That's gonna be the next interview.
It's powerful, man.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Influence. It's everything.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: It's everything.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: It's the word.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: It is. Yeah. Yeah, dude. Let's say prayer. Would you pray for us?
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Embrace the heart of the servant leader, Jesus.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Yeah. First of all, Lord Jesus, thank you for my friend Chris.
He's just given his life to you and started a ministry, quite frankly, where he's inspiring Catholics to have a personal relationship with Jesus, to not just have the Bible out, you know, near the doorway when you walk in and say, I have a Bible in my home, but actually open it up and read it and have a personal relationship with Jesus. Like he's doing that. He's inspiring millions of people to have a personal relationship with you. So thank you for Chris.
Thank you for our wives that make us better men and our children that make us better fathers.
Thank you for everyone that's listening to this incredible show, that they're inspired to want change to get closer to you, Lord, and to become more Christlike.
Lord Jesus, we know that we're supposed to look at you as our spiritual mentor, but what I want people that are listening to this prayer is Jesus should not just be your spiritual mentor, but Jesus should be your leadership role model. We should lead like Jesus.
We need to lead like him and love like him. And Jesus is not just our savior, but he's our role model. How we parent and how we husband and how we're wives and how we're friends and how we're leaders and how we're managers and how we're community leaders.
We want to be like Jesus, Lord. And thank us for giving us him as a gift to show what perfect is like.
We'll never be perfect, but with Christ, we are perfect. In his name we pray. Amen.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you, Jesus. Amen, brother. I love you so much, man. Thank you so much.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: You're the man.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: God bless you. I love you guys. Keep leading right where you are. Be like Jesus. We'll see you next time.
