Episode 008 - Michael King: Leading with Soul in Business and Music

Speaker 1: 0:02

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Grow, where God reveals our way. I'm Angelique Gibson, your host, and I can't wait to explore the vast riches of God's word with you. So don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for upcoming episodes packed with biblical teachings, inspirational stories and a fresh perspective on the world around us. Now let's get started on this beautiful journey. May God bless you abundantly. Hello, grow listeners, it's great to be back with you today, and boy do I have a special guest with me.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Many of you know that I have the incredible privilege of being a chief information officer in the marketplace, leading lots of people, and one thing that I have learned in my role in the marketplace is that the marketplace is a hurting hospital who needs a good shepherd, a pastor, to come in and really just help them navigate the pitfalls, the hurts and just the brokenness of humans and who. We are at work. You know we are at work, the summation of the health of our team, and so if we don't have healthy teammates, well, guess what? We're not going to have a healthy organization, and I have the privilege of bringing on an incredible pastor. From the start, transitioned into crazy, awesome entrepreneur, he is a sought after speaker and he is a great shepherd pastor to many in the marketplace, but it's no other than the Michael King. Michael, welcome to the Grow podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Thanks so much, Angela, for having me. It's like, how do we follow it up? I hardly agree with anything you just said, but I'm pretty humbled by it. So thanks for the intro.

Speaker 1: 1:50

No, it's all true and you know, just to kind of get the listeners grounded, and what I what do I mean by you started off as a pastor and you're now this crazy successful, awesome entrepreneur. Like, how does that happen? Where did, where did you start?

Speaker 2: 2:08

Man, I mean, my journey goes, my, my journey goes way back, is that, you know, like grew up in a musician's home and you know it was kind of like looking for love and all the wrong places.

Speaker 2: 2:20

You know, ended up falling in love with the children's pastor's daughter at the local church and she ended up being my girlfriend, for you know, the my only one that I was really chasing down, like during my high school years, and they told me that I could date their daughter as long as I showed up to church on Sunday and I, and then I found out like, oh, uh, the church can actually use my musical gifts and so, um, so I went down that career path, not necessarily knowing it was a calling, but it was.

Speaker 2: 2:47

It was just, I was just trying to find my tribe, trying to find my place, you know, and um, and then, somewhere in the middle of that, I started to really experience the miraculous, not not just my life but also in the people, the lives of the people that we were doing life with. And um, and I love, I love being a musician, uh, I love being um, I love, I love exploring my faith and just, you know, again, growing consistently in in my journey um with Jesus, but um, but. This has always been about people.

Speaker 2: 3:20

And um, you know, I remember one of my one of my mentors early on said to me it's like hey, mike, you know, like if you can do, if you can do anything else in your life besides be a pastor, you probably should.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:34

You know, because I think even at the time, like you know, like the church culture is just so, so interesting in that you, there are people that chase, chase down pastoral roles, Like people that grew up in a church and they, like, they desire to be the next Stephen Furtick or they desire to be the next you know whoever Right. But what he's saying was, just like you know what, like this is a hard job, Like it's hard, a lot of unreasonable expectations being put on pastors. And I think that you know, for me, um, I've always had a, I've always had a just a heart for people and trying to figure out, like how can I help people get to the best versions of themselves? I wasn't expecting the entrepreneurial journey. I've always been a strong, I've always had a strong business acumen, you know, I think from my role in the music industry to being involved in church.

Speaker 2: 4:27

But, yeah, at 2001, after I got done with Bible college and I jumped full-time into pastoral ministry, involved in the Christian music industry. Next thing, you know, it's like you know, I've been able to travel a lot doing music, produced a lot of records they're all on this wall here, you know and written hundreds and hundreds of songs and there's nothing, by the way, like even in leadership and I love leadership but you want to feel something, put the prayers of the church on their lips, you know, like as a songwriter, and to be able to hear like, oh, wow, this is, this is powerful, Something that I've written, that people are saying and singing loudly, that's powerful.

Speaker 1: 5:18

That is incredible. You know, what I love about your story, uh and I know we're going to get more into it is you say I love that. You said there's so many people that wake up and they dream about being the next Stephen Furtick, or you know, fill in the blank, it could be Billy Graham right. I think he's probably had one of the biggest reaches of all evangelicals out there. But we get this idea of what it means to serve the Lord and sometimes the vision of it can get really big.

Speaker 1: 5:50

And you know, I look at your testimony as one that has been faithful to the Lord, where he kept increasing and increasing and increasing. I mean he took you what people traditionally call ministry. I have the viewpoint that ministry is anyone who comes into your house, or if you go to the supermarket and you run into a stranger and you start a good, robust conversation with them and you end up praying over them, or the people you're at work with. So ministry doesn't know walls and it doesn't know a building. The church is God's people together, working together and, yes, there's structure of church. You know where we go and do official community et cetera, but ministry is doing God's work period.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Although I say, god took you, in our worldly view of what ministry is, straight to the top. I mean you were leading a mega church just doing his work and you know sometimes, like you said, pastor, work is the hard work and you can burn both ends of the candlestick and expectations can get a little out of balance, if you will. That journey, because I think it's pivotal, crucial for the listeners who may not know your story to understand where you were at. Where then you pivoted into your entrepreneurial spirit.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Yeah, I was man. If there's one thing I can say, it's, like you know, linking onto these words of of lonely and hard um and compromise like this. You know this, this story has everything. You know, it's kind of one of those things to where you can almost like sum this up into something that could be like a, you know, a made for TV type of movie as far as, like how it affected my family, the decisions that we had made. But yeah, we were. We were executive pastors at one of the fastest growing churches in America and there for close to a decade and moving, and we loved the journey right away.

Speaker 2: 7:58

But we knew that maybe there might not have necessarily been an alignment from day one, because when we moved here we weren't. I don't know necessarily if we were supposed to move here from the very beginning, at least according to our plans. You know we had so all the way back 2005, 2006,. We had just signed a new record deal, the band that I was fronting, and I needed to find a church that was willing to allow me to be like kind of artists in residence, and so, um, so we ended up at this church here in Nebraska and um, and then fast, like as soon as we got here, we were given a lot of authority to change anything that we needed to, because the church wasn't big at the time Like it was. It was maybe 200, 300 people, and so it was kind of a refurbishing type of type of work and, um, and so the worship department grew fast and it wasn't.

Speaker 2: 8:48

It was a lot of a lot of turbulence. Um, we had to make a lot of strategic changes and culture changes and mission, vision, value clarifying, like who are we, why are we doing what we're doing? And so in the middle of all that, guess what I get? You know, god was developing my leadership chops, like you know, and in showing me what I could love about building people and building organizations and all this stuff. So I'm nerding out over all this because the things that we were doing were working. Our church went from 300 to probably 1,500 or 1,600 within a couple of years.

Speaker 2: 9:22

It's amazing, yeah, and so we would end eventually get to close to 3000 during the time that I was there, and when you are in that pressure cooker, but also experiencing that type of thing in the Midwest and we're not talking like Bible belt stuff here you know, like those numbers like are probably a little bit more common if you're in Dallas, texas, but in in the heartland of Nebraska Are you kidding me? No, like, like something significant was going on and I don't want to take the credit away from that and it had nothing. You know, like, I'm thankful that I experienced and I experienced success at the leadership level. At the leadership level, like I had over a thousand people in my leadership pipeline, I had over 300 people in just in my worship department alone.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Like we were making records and writing a lot, lots of songs and I loved it, um, but there was something special there's life transformation happening in the hearts of the people that were going there and um, but in the meantime, like I, you know, we, uh, it got lonely and it got frustrating, it got hard, um and uh, I had a lot of responsibility without not a lot of authority in the structure that I was in, and so, um, the next thing you knew it's like okay, um, I ended up in an unhealthy, unhealthy space, had to make some changes pretty fast to to, to leave and abandon, and I went from having everything to losing pretty much everything.

Speaker 1: 10:48

That is absolutely incredible in the sense not that it felt good to you, but incredible when you think about the amount of loss. Like, not a lot of people can handle that and then get to a place where they can kind of reinvent themselves. And I just want to marinate on this for a little bit, because some things that I've experienced in my own personal walk with Christ is that you know I did I was a person in the congregation who had very high expectations on the leadership in the church and forgetting that the church leadership are human, just like I'm a human, and we start to put people on pedestals and we expect perfection and that's just not sustainable. And so sometimes people in the church won't stop, pause and have hard conversations with leadership. If they're frustrated, they'll just walk out and leave and sweat off their back. And God has really shown me if I have any issue, source of conflict, just like if I'm at work, I would sit down and have a conversation that matters with someone.

Speaker 1: 12:00

I need to do the same thing with the people that I'm doing quote unquote church with including the church leadership, and then on the other side of that coin, there's real hurt and pain that leaders are walking around with that need to be understood especially, you know, if we can't have a heart and compassion for our leadership in church, that means that there could be, you know.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Obviously the opportunity for the enemy gets in there is wreaking havoc, and who's the shepherd to the shepherd right? And so it's important for us as humans to know that we all need shepherding, and I had recently gone through this now twice in the last seven years, where I have seen two senior pastors that I love get to a place where they're in almost a burnout situation based on the expectations that are put on them and the environment really doesn't support success, and so then, all of a sudden, they're making a life change to leave and, like you said, everything's taken away from them. And I just want to like what I experienced with these two people that I love dearly is the friends that were their friends today. It was like a ghost town.

Speaker 1: 13:14

Day two and it was almost like the love and the adoration that you cared for one day was just gone in a second, and I think some people stay away because maybe they don't know what to say or it's awkward for them, but really they don't understand the need of the person who is no longer in the role that they're in. That's the time where they need their community and their church body more and it grieves my heart that you had to walk through that, your family had to walk through that and I'm sorry on behalf of the body of Christ. That's not how we do life together right, and I'm also grateful your story has another side to it that you're walking through now. We're going to get to that, but you know, thank you for your service and leadership in the church and thank you for the grit that you have to kind of walk through that pain that you you experienced.

Speaker 2: 14:18

Oh man, um, no need to apologize, um and and and. Thank you for you know, just for your kindness. You know we don't. I don't even really necessarily know how to say all this, but I would say this is that we want to talk more about how people leave the church rather than talking about why they leave the church, especially when people in ministry and hear me on this, I'm not innocent.

Speaker 2: 14:49

I made some compromising choices, and do I regret them? I regret hurting people along the way. I don't regret my journey at all and you know, like I knew a long time ago that there was a misalignment. I knew like there was something in my gut that was telling me like, hey, god's got a purpose for you, but you're in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. This is not your thing, but the thing was is I didn't leave because I didn't know what else I could do and and because I was so entrenched in everything. And here's the thing. Is that what people don't realize, that when you are a pastor, you kind of have all of your worlds, your sustainable sustenance, all in one singular spot, you know. So you're getting your spiritual needs from one place, you're getting your relational needs. You're getting your finance needs Like everything is connected to like one single your thing, and so, like you take one brick out of that wall, the whole thing falls down.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Wow, you know strong perspective.

Speaker 2: 15:51

Yeah and so, but it's a recipe for disaster. And so it's like, like you said, like who is the pastors to the pastor and and so so within that. But so when somebody does leave, you're right, day two, dude, it's a freaking ghost town like there is. There's nobody around and we're, you know we're living in a town that's not massively huge, you know it's 300,000 people on game day. You know Lincoln, lincoln, nebraska, home of the Cornhuskers, go right, um, but, and so everybody's kind of like one step connected from everybody.

Speaker 2: 16:24

And so like when, when you leave and it's a public thing well, everybody in town kind of knows something went down, and so they want to talk about how you left, but nobody wants to talk about why you left. And so here's like the one thing that I would say this, and if there's one thing about the body of Christ that I would say, cause I even had a like, a complete, I had a discovery call with a pastor that had to leave ministry, this, that earlier this week, and he lost, he's like literally he's lost everything, trying to figure out how to reinvent himself. But when you talk about why people leave ministry, if you're currently serving in leadership in a church and if you see, and if you're a member of a church and you see a member of a church team being treated unfairly, if you see them being verbally, spiritually, emotionally or psychologically abused and you choose to still support that organization, they're not wrong. You are.

Speaker 1: 17:20

Amen.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Choose to not say something, and I think that that was probably one of the things that we had to come to grips with a little bit. Because I mean, like I mean, because, keep in mind, like we, we went from feeling like we had thousands of friends on day one to having nobody on day two, almost lost our marriage, didn't know where our next paycheck was going to come from. You know, I ended up like going and working at a car dealership for, you know, a year and a half while I finished up my master's degrees and started coaching like individual clients on the side, because my ability to dream and see bigger than what I was experiencing was so compressed.

Speaker 2: 17:54

It was like the whole world like just crashing down on me and you know I didn't really necessarily have a lot of people around me to hold my arms up, so um so. But when you kind of like looking back and the things that I've had to process through, it's like I've learned to be a little bit more honest with my story as far as saying, hey, listen, yep, I've owned my crap.

Speaker 2: 18:17

but let's talk about, let's talk about the bigger story here. Um, because it's been, you know, like seven years plus now, so we're in a different place, but but still as you, because we're still here in the area every now and then it's like we bump into people that we used to call ourselves best friends with them and we go. You kind of knew what was going on, but you didn't call.

Speaker 1: 18:40

You know, that's hard.

Speaker 2: 18:42

That's a hard one to swallow.

Speaker 1: 18:46

It is incredibly difficult and what I hope you know I'm certainly taking away, and I hope the listeners are taking away is don't shy away Like conflict, is that we're on this side of heaven, right, and so it doesn't matter. I love, Michael, that you said listen, I didn't get it perfect. I hurt people along the way. It's the one thing I wish I could do over, but I don't take my journey. I wouldn't, you know, take my journey away. We have to be in there together. You know God says it's one of my favorite life verses, john 17, his prayer before he goes to the cross Father, as you are in me and I are in you, let them be in me and I in them, I in them. So the world will believe in the consequences of us not truly living it out in love. And you know, when we're gone on day two, that's certainly not a demonstration of love, that is the consequence People just don't believe us. So here we carry this mantle that Christ is the answer and we can't even be Christ to our own body. And that's just what grieves me so much about your story. And I know you're seven years out of it and yet, like you said, just this week you got a phone call. This is happening to people around the world and so and I think God is shaking a lot right now in this season, so there's going to continuing to be shaking. But even when things are shaking like, god wants his body to support each other. You know, through correction, through repentance, through forgiveness, through it all right, we're to be there to lift the hands up when we can't lift our own arms up.

Speaker 1: 20:30

So thank you for your courage to even share the testimony, because I got to be honest with you. I know a lot of people who have had similar stories and they won't even talk about it. They're almost like, scared to talk about it. So I think it's courageous that you talk about it. You've walked a path of healing and forgiveness. And what was the pivotal point? Because I really want to get to what you're doing now, because it's incredible what you're doing right now what was the pivotal point or season in life where you got you know the aha moment, if you got one to say you know what? There is something even bigger for you. You thought you were achieving big and your world was getting bigger, but God had even more for you. You thought you were achieving big, and your world was getting bigger, but God had even more for you.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Yeah, I mean, I'd spent so much of my even time leading up to being in pastoral ministry of feeling like maybe the Because my dad wasa professional musician.

Speaker 2: 21:26

So therefore I'm like I want to be a professional musician like my dad and all that stuff. But and I love that but I my natural knack when it came to like building teams, inspiring teams and inspiring leaders and coaching leaders. I've just always had this pastoral heart about of like really just making sure that, no matter what, that I'm willing to fight to make sure that somebody ends up being the best version of themselves. I want to see them win. I want to make sure they have the right tools, systems and strategies in their place, and so that's just always been me, no matter what it's like. Even even when I went and I started working at the car dealership, I quickly I quickly ascended into into corporate leadership, like being in charge of their. You know, here I'm like working with a Toyota brand and I'm like working with Toyota leaders to develop a leadership pipeline for one of the region's biggest, you know.

Speaker 2: 22:20

I love that this leadership thing and I was already going back to school and um, but then I started to go, you know, just, you know one thing after another, working with uh, you know, aveda beauty salons and helping them, helping develop a, um, you know, a guest experience certification program. And then the next thing, you know, it's like I'm getting asked to speak at these events and bigger events, working with fortune companies starting to. It's like it was just like this thing snowballed and with this idea of our teams, you know, methodology around our business just kind of started a freight train that we couldn't really necessarily stop and so, um, so I think that that's where, like, sometimes the blinker goes off and it actually forces you to realize that there's a bigger dream. Sometimes the blinker goes off and it actually forces you to realize that there's a bigger dream that you're not willing to look at.

Speaker 1: 23:17

Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2: 23:19

And and that, and that's, for me, is like I've always felt like maybe, like I was built for something different. There's things that I know how to do, that I have no idea why I know how to do them. You know, even even as I end up on stages and speaking, and things like this there's. There's at times, like when it comes to me sharing stories of these ridiculous things that I've been able to be a part of and having no idea how I was able to get there in the first place, but I know that it all makes sense, like it just it just does, and so. So that's kind of where you know. So, between 2017 and today, you know we have coached with some of the biggest organizations in the world. I've worked with leaders that have been with Pfizer, with ADP, with Disney, with even Ducati. I got to meet with some people with them last week, and I think it is again. It's just like the first thing that disappears when you're going through a season of failure is your ability to dream.

Speaker 2: 24:14

The first thing, like you can even think about that as a person, it's like, okay, what's you know? You start going through a rough time. There's no money in the bank, um, people are frustrated with you. You don't know who to call. You're not going to call the ghostbusters, but um, but anyway. So, um, yeah, anyways, um, but anyway, so, um, yeah, anyways. That's so stupid. Um, but your, your ability to dream, is the first thing that goes Um and so. But once you start to see the flicker of hope, hope's an engine, you know, and leaning on those things as far as like, how are you built? Are you in the right space? Are you surrounding yourself with the right people? Like here's the thing that I love is I embrace this too late in my life is that you are the sum average of the five loudest voices in your life.

Speaker 1: 24:58

That's, that's good.

Speaker 2: 25:00

And I thought that I had to accept the hand that was dealt to me.

Speaker 2: 25:02

through my whole life I grew up through abuse as a kid and my mom and my dad weren't really necessarily around that much Um and so, and then getting into like adult life and just going okay, this is mother hand, that I'm dealt, I got to live with it. No, if you want to be a better dad, you surround yourself with better dads. If you want to be a better you know business person, entrepreneur, surround yourself with people that dream bigger than what you think is possible. And that's what I did. And you know, beyond school, you know so I went back to master's degrees in executive coaching and organizational leadership and then I just 100%, irrefutably serve my clients, even like today, like, for example, like I wake up every day and I challenged myself.

Speaker 2: 25:47

I have the same type of text message that I send out to people that are just on a random list and and so it just basically says says this hey, thinking of you today, just wanted to cheer you on, please let me know if there's a way that I can serve you today, love you. And I just send it. And you know, like I get this text message back from this guy that was part of a construction company that I met like four years ago and he was like dude, that text message today. That's how you served me. He goes just you showing up and reminding me that I'm here to bring the best out in my clients means the world to me, so thanks.

Speaker 1: 26:22

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 26:23

It's the simple things right.

Speaker 1: 26:25

Well, you know, what I love about it is, uh, the. What I see you're doing is truly discipling the marketplace. I mean you're coming in and you're giving people and you're see you're doing is truly discipling the marketplace. I mean you're coming in and you're giving people and your company tell us what your it's. Teams Coach. So is it Teams Coach, and I love your tagline, or it's kind of a mission statement too, but will you tell me, is it a mission statement or a tagline?

Speaker 2: 27:00

no-transcript um, we, um, I'm sorry I'm getting getting back from being sick, but um, well, the the story with, with, with teams, that coach was that that wasn't necessarily going to be the name of my company. I mean, we were looking at something of like and my dream is big. My dream has always been big, um of like going okay, like Patrick Lencioni, I would love to hang out with that guy, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 27:27

It's like he's got the table group we got to come up with some sort of like cool, cool branded name to go after. Maybe we'll go after the armchair collective, you know, or something like that. Um, but it really came down to our methodology of coaching, you know. So it was like so, teams is actually an acronym, so team. So the five things that we see that every single successful organization does that are moving things forward. Number one clearly identify targets. You know, they know they're bullseye. If you can't measure it, it doesn't count. Number two engagement. Three different levels of engagement that every single leader thinks about. How am I, how am I leading my myself? Engagement point Number one. Two how am I engaging with my team? Engagement point number number two. Engagement point number three how am I engaging with my audience? Do they know my why and am I creating a feeling that will never let them forget me? So powerful, right?

Speaker 1: 28:20

So powerful.

Speaker 2: 28:21

A action steps, you know, clear action steps. That ties back to our original target that we talked about in the first place. Nobody likes to be sent out on fool's errands Nobody. You know. 83% of people in the workforce claim that they get asked to do things every single day that don't make sense according to the mission, vision and values of their company. 83% that's ridiculous.

Speaker 1: 28:40

Come on, it is.

Speaker 2: 28:48

You know, momentum is the M, you know. So it's not about more we can add to the plate. It's about what can we take away to help us go faster. And then synergy, you know, again, celebrating the wins. What are we doing to make sure that we're we're breeding good collaboration on our teams and empowering leaders in the right spaces and and making sure that people on our team know that we care about them and love them, and so that's the team's methodology.

Speaker 2: 29:11

But on the technology side of it is that we are committed 100% to being the most sought after and the highest level of innovative leader within the coaching space, and so when you get involved in us, we make coaching super stinking cool and super stinking easy. We have integrations that take about 20 minutes. That's going to give you a blueprint of your team to let you know what your reasonable expectations can be and what's the ecosystem and the temperament and the motivations of the people that are on your team. But then we have our coaching app as well that does nudges every single day, based on your goals and based on who you are. Have our coaching app as well that does nudges every single day, based on your goals and based on who you are, and so we wanted to.

Speaker 2: 29:49

We wanted to solve the problem of this is that a lot of times people don't do coaching because it becomes incredibly expensive to do full plan integration for full companies. So we took care of that problem. We figured out ways to be to help technology be our friend on that, but then also to make coaching actionable and simple for C-level leaders who don't have time to feel like they have to invest hours upon hours doing homework. And no, we figured it out, we cracked the code on that. So that's been important to us.

Speaker 1: 30:18

Yeah. So what's really attractive is you can really learn. I have this motto about you can't really lead people you don't know, and so you have frameworks in place that you can learn through who your people are, what they care about, various assessments that people can take that you can have. You know just different nuggets of information about them and you start to formulate a bigger, wider view of who your teammate and team is collectively, and it puts it all in a one-stop shop place to go and you take that information and you can start to create meaningful interactions and then, following your team's framework, it's really the end-to-end package.

Speaker 1: 31:03

What I find is, in coaching in general, you have to go to multiple sources to get various types of coaching, and this is it's almost like you have solved the problem where some coaches work on who I am as a human being and what do I need to do to continue to be the better version of myself as a leader, a contributor on a team, et cetera, and then but it's very much disconnected from the tangible execution of the business when am I going? What are the actions that I need to take? But being inspired and who do I want to be, what's that essence, the imprint that I want to leave behind. I love that on the engagement side, it's just really the 360 view of taking team performance to the next level. So I encourage everyone who's listening. It doesn't matter where you're leading a team. You need to check this out because it truly is a set apart approach to coaching. What else would you add on that, michael?

Speaker 2: 32:15

with some exciting things. I mean, I think the just going back to like, okay, why did? Why do people reach out to coaches in the first place? Um, they're. They're either relationally or, you know, just like culture, wise. Things are either falling apart and it just feels gross and everybody knows um, or they're trying to achieve, um, scalability, or achieve new levels of top line revenue production that, um, that they can't reach on their own.

Speaker 2: 32:39

And and you, and to be honest with you, great leaders have great coaches. This should not be a weird conversation for people If you haven't explored executive coaching. Um, great leaders have great coaches. This should not be a weird conversation for people if you haven't explored executive coaching, because great leaders have great coaches. I promise you. Look at some of the best companies out there. Almost every single person has advisors or coaches. What makes it hard about this is that I will say this the word of warning on this is that do your research and find somebody who is certified and somebody who's actually legitimate post COVID. I tell you what, in an unregulated field, this has been, this has been crazy the level of people that are just they're putting out digital programs that have been created by AI, but because they're really good at sales. They're making a lot of money off of people and kind of bringing some credibility issues to the coaching field. So that's all I'm going to say about that.

Speaker 2: 33:24

But, but the but, the motivation behind why like, like, like. Take, for example, when people reach out to us that are looking to increase their top line revenue. We just signed a new client today of another fortune 500 company. They came on board today, got a text message last night from the CFO and he says how confident are you that you're going to help us increase our top line revenue? I'm like, oh man, what a horrible question to ask in the 11th hour. I don't want to answer that question, you know, like. So I sent it over to one of my team members and the team and she was so brilliant with how she responded. She said here's the stats, just send him these. And so what the text message has said was 89% of 89% of all of our clients report report revenue increases within the first two months of their coaching experience and 93% of our clients report that they've never actually had to pay for their coaching because their top line revenue exceeded what their goals were.

Speaker 1: 34:20

Amen.

Speaker 2: 34:23

So it's like your motivation might be to fix your revenue. I promise you your revenue is not your issue. It's it's structure, it's vision, it's mission, it's value, it's clarity. When you're able to kind of get all the things working in the right direction, it's so fun when you eventually go hey, we're not talking about revenue anymore, Right.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Amen, Amen, Amen. It's hard work too. A lot of things that once you, even if you have a strong mission, vision and mission and you know exactly where you're going, if you don't have healthy people on that team, you're not going far. I mean, what takes a healthy team, you know, a day to do? It could take you a month to do.

Speaker 2: 35:08

And so structure issues.

Speaker 1: 35:09

Yes, and so one thing that I'm I mean I'm in technology, I build software for a living. So one of the things that we always have to be aware of it's not just about the you know what we're putting into production, but it's about, you know, putting into the marketplace to sell. It's about speed, because we have to be highly innovative. Speed is everything, and so we're constantly looking at what's the friction in the organization and how can we go faster. And so everything that you're talking about across that spectrum, that is exactly spot on where healthy companies who are doing what you're talking about. That's why they're exceeding the competitors who aren't doing it.

Speaker 1: 35:52

And as far as coaching goes, I love that you said every good company has coaches. Just look at it. Every good team has coaches. Every good sports team has a coach. Try looking at a. Could you imagine if there was no coaches in basketball? We're in March Madness right now. Could you imagine if there's no coaches, you don't have a team. Um, you don't have coaches in football. There's no Superbowl, like. Just think about everywhere else in the world where it's a team sport, we have coaches, and to think that we don't need them in the marketplace is kind of backwards.

Speaker 2: 36:29

Yeah, and you know so, and I think that even when so I have two coaches myself and you know you shouldn't work with a coach that doesn't have a coach you know it's like one of those weird things, to where it's, you know it's karma, things will always come back, type of thing, but you have to lead by example on this.

Speaker 2: 36:47

But but that's what this is so fun is that when you embrace teachability, when you embrace, um, expanding your, your, your role as the chief visionary officer of an organization or or somebody that's responsible for culture, um, things get incredibly fun when you get addicted to growing and then when you know how to become the chief strategy officer for your organization, that you understand how to.

Speaker 2: 37:13

Okay, let's clarify the vision, but then let's make sure that these three orbs of our system, strategies and structures absolutely make sense and they're in alignment with the thing that we care about the most about, you know. And lastly, I would say this is that EQ will be one of the most important things that we talk about in leadership for the next decade at least. We're having this grand awakening right now within our organizations to where that's why we have all these different agenda type things that are popping up, of going oh man, maybe we should care about diversity, maybe we should care about equality, maybe we should care about empowerment. Well, it's not because we, you know, it's not because those are new ideas. It's because we're being awoken to the idea that maybe we haven't really given those things priority in the past.

Speaker 1: 37:52

Amen, well said, let me ask you a different question what's on the horizon for music?

Speaker 2: 38:00

Um, that's, that's an interesting comment. So our question so, um, so we have some new, some new music coming out later this year, so I'm excited about that. Um, and I think that that's the thing is, you know, my goal right now is to release new singles, probably, you know, once a quarter, uh, for the next year, uh, maybe a year and a half, but just to kind of prime that songwriting engine again. So you know, so every week I'm working with different artists as a producer. I have a have a.

Speaker 2: 38:30

There's a band called names without numbers. You got to check them out. They're brilliant, but just they have a new project coming out that we produced on, and so collaborative spaces and working with the right artists continue to just kind of stretch that muscle as well. That's so good. I'm definitely going to check it out. Names without numbers, did you say? Yeah, they were. They started about 20 years ago and now they had a resurgence, which they're bigger than ever. But that names without numbers you can definitely tell they're kind of like an emo rock band by that name, Talking about sassy names of that number.

Speaker 1: 39:04

I love it.

Speaker 2: 39:04

You remember that back in the nineties and the early two thousands, like there was always a band name that had numbers in it, you know.

Speaker 1: 39:11

Exactly. That's funny. Um, okay, so my last. I have two more questions. My next question is uh, you may be working on a book that we're all going to pray into existence. We're joining you. What is this book?

Speaker 2: 39:28

Yeah, so Dreaming Through Failure is the first one that's coming up, and the follow-up to that is a book called the Unstuck and Unstoppable Team, and so both of these are keynotes right now. So, if you catch me at a leadership conference or if you want me to book me as a speaker, I can send you out the teaser trailers. As far as, like what you get with those keynote packages um, hearing me speak but yeah, I decided to turn, turn both of them into into books. Um, because number one, the dreaming through failure that is my story, you know, and that's, but that's the thing is that that's your story too is that we all get to this place, to where the first thing to go when we're experienced failure, loss, et cetera, is our ability to be able to see bigger, to see a dream, and so my personal journey is even though there's there's some pain in there uh, for me to be able to see bigger than I ever have before, to dream bigger than I ever have before. Right now, um, it's so powerful and good.

Speaker 1: 40:25

It's so incredible and we all need it because, to your point, we all get to the end of ourself and then God is, you know, rebirthing to where he wants us next. So I love that, so definitely praying it in with you, and I can't wait for it to be published. And then I want you to leave us with what is your anchor scripture that you just turned to, and it just gives peace to your heart yeah, so uh, for I'm crucified with christ.

Speaker 2: 40:50

No longer I live, but christ who lives in me. That's my go-to amen.

Speaker 1: 40:55

And that wraps it up. Michael, would you do us the honor of praying us out?

Speaker 2: 40:59

yeah, thanks, uh, jesus, just pray that, um, you take these words, take the heart of this, this podcast, and that it reached the right listeners today. God, more importantly, for those that are listening, god, we pray that you'd remind us that hope is an engine and that you have great things in mind for those who love you, that you've already ordained those steps. It's not things that we need to chase down, but just things that we can open our hearts to. Amen.

Speaker 1: 41:22

Amen. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Grow, where God reveals our way. We hope you found inspiration, wisdom and encouragement as we continue on this faith-filled journey together. We invite you to subscribe to Grow so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more biblical teachings, heartfelt testimonies and insights that will nourish your spirit and deepen your relationship with God. We appreciate your support and participation in this podcast. Until next time, may you grow in faith, love and knowledge of His divine plan. May God bless you abundantly.