What's Really Behind Overnight Success | Live from the Global Leadership Summit

[MUSIC] Hey, it's great to have you back for another episode of the Craig Rochelle Leadership Podcast where our calling is to help you become a leader that people love to follow. If you want to grow in your leadership, go to CGLP.com and subscribe to the Monthly Leader Guide. We've got all sorts of additional information in there for you to help your team as well. And what we're going to do this time is I'm going to show you a talk I did from the Global Leadership Summit. What is the GLS? It's probably the biggest leadership event in the world. And since 2018, I've been honored to give the opening talk as what's called the champion, or kind of like the spokesperson. So this is not a paid ad. This is just something I believe in and I do. The summit takes place on the first week of August, on the first Thursday and Friday. If you want more information, you can go to the leader guide. This year we've got Jim Collins, Arthur Brooks, Ryan Leake, Vanessa Van Edwards, John A. Caffanti Stanley, and more. I'll be doing the opening talk this year on something I'm really passionate about. I'm going to show you last year's talk. I talked about boring. Leadership is often boring, but I'm talking about how do you bore your way to success? Often, greatness is found in doing the same things over and over again. So I pray that this talk speaks to you and encourages you. It's okay to be boring. In fact, it might even be great to be boring. What if I told you that what you think makes a leader great is probably wrong? Probably not the best way to start a leadership conference. Or is it? You see, I've discovered that most people have a glamourized view of what makes a world-class leader. Most people tend to think about great and lasting leadership. They tend to envision an extraordinary combination of courage and charisma and conviction and influence and impact and inspiration. Most people imagine, some version, you probably think of someone standing up giving this great, cosmetic speech that moves audiences to tears. Or you envision these visionary ideas that spark innovation and change. Or bold business startups that disrupt industries. Like me, you probably see yourself, like given this brave heart speech on a mountain with rocky theme music playing in the background. When you realize you're locked down in your email again, it's Monday and you're not doing great. So, if you ever look at others and think, "Well, I'm not that and I could never be great." What I want to do today is I want to tell you the truth. And I want you to hear this. I want you to feel it. I want you to believe it. Deep in your heart. And that is this. Great leadership isn't flashy. It isn't height. Great leadership is actually boring. You look really disappointed. Maybe this wasn't a right talk. I don't know. It could be my hand motions because speakers have to have the right hand motions. And I have a challenge because if you don't know, I actually used to do magic shows, like with bunny rabbits and doves. And so that's why I have magic hands when I talk. It's a problem. I've been to counseling for it. So, I'm going to change my hand motions. I'm going to try to gain great leadership as boring. What I'm going to do is I'm going to teach you something. And all of our sites, can you work with me? Everybody say number one. Hold your favorite number one. Put it to your nose like this. And then once you just washed it away like that, just like that. That sign language for boring. So what we're going to do is we're going to say it together. So on all of our sites, what is great leadership? Say it with me. Great leadership is boring. Now, be careful when you bring your number one toward your nose. If the approach is wrong, it won't be boring. And I do have sincerely good news for you. And that is this. That you don't have to be the best. You don't have to be the smartest. You don't have to be the most talented to be a great leader. You just have to be consistent. And I want to drive that thought into your mind today. And it may be boring. But I want to remind you that boring beats brilliant every time. Let's break it down. If you're ready to say, I'm ready, are you ready? I'm ready. What is great leadership and what is great leadership not? Let's talk about it. Great leadership, first of all, is not charisma. Great leadership is consistency. Great leadership contrary to popular belief is not fame. Great leadership is faithfulness. Great leadership is not immediate results. But great leadership is lasting impact. And I want to talk to you about it. Great leadership is the daily disciplines. The quiet sacrifices, the boring rhythms that lead to lasting impact. Now here is the tension and you know what you feel that you see it all around you. The tension is that so many leaders, especially today, they want the results of great leadership without the routines of great leadership. That they want the highlight reel without the hard work. They want the spotlight without the sacrifices. And so many people tend to forget in this Instagram social influence world we live in that they forget boring isn't the enemy of greatness. Boring is the pathway to greatness. It is a pathway. If you want to be great, you have to be consistent. And it's not what you do occasionally that makes you great. It's the right things that you do consistently. And I'll admit, this is incredibly counterintuitive to everything you're going to see in culture today. You look at a YouTube video and it's going to tell you, go viral! 10X your growth, make it big now! But honestly after over three decades of leading, I found that those fast path tracks to success are few and far between. And I've discovered what I would call like a formula or an equation that I promise you, done with integrity over time, will increase your impact and influence as a leader. I want to give it to you today. I want to talk about it today. I want to drive it into your mind today. And I want God to put a seed in your heart that bears great fruit and years to come. Here is what I want to teach you today. Consistency plus faithfulness multiplied by time equals a lasting impact. Would you say this with me, all of our locations today say it with me. Consistency plus faithfulness multiplied by time equals lasting impact. Now I think I just messed that up because I was saying that you were saying it after me. Let's just say it together. Let's get a flow. Can we flow together? I don't want to be at this flow together. So we're going to say it with me. When I start you start one, two, three, stay with me. You're by do this because you just did great. That was much better. We're flowing now. We're flowing now. Let's unpack it. Let's start with the first thing. We're going to start with consistency. I need honesty at all of our broadcast locations. How many of you have ever had good intentions but didn't follow through? Raise your hand. Raise them up right now. Leave them up. How many of you right now, your hand, is not up in the air but you had good intentions to raise your hand. But you just didn't get around to it. This is all of us at some point, right? We have great intentions. You buy the leather journal. The expensive one. You have one entry in it on January 1st. You decide, for now on out, I'm going to eat healthy and honor God with what I put into my body. The next day at work, someone brings homemade cookies and you think, well, obviously that's a sign from God. We all do it. You're going to have weekly one-on-ones. You're going to invest in your team. Care for your team. Love your team. Weekly one-on-ones. You missed the first one. So now you have quarterly one-on-ones. We all have good intentions, but we fall short. What does consistency do? Consistency closes the gap between good intentions and actions. It closes the gap. In fact, I'm a big fan of Charles DuHig's book, The Power of Habit. And in his book, he talks about what he calls a keystone habit. I want to talk about this type of a habit for a moment. What is a keystone habit? A keystone habit is a small, consistent action that triggers a chain reaction creating impact across every area of your life. It's some small, right, healthy, good, productive habit. [BLANK_AUDIO] that creates this compounding momentum in other areas of your life and leadership. And you kind of know this intuitively because I guarantee you all of you, you have something that you do. It's a behavior, it's a rhythm, it's a habit that when you do that one thing, it triggers other positive compounding helpful habits. And if you neglect that certain behavior, that neglecting that one thing tends to unravel some things and instead of having the healthy right behaviors, you tend to have the unhealthy wrong behaviors. And in the book, The Power of Habit, the author talked about the new CEO of Alcoa Steel. Alcoa Steel doesn't produce steel, which is odd. They actually produce aluminum. Why? They're not called Alcoa aluminum? I don't know, but they produce aluminum. And the new CEO came years ago named Paulo Neal, famous case study. He shocked the board when this struggling company brought on this innovative CEO and he said, "Let me tell you what we're gonna do." He said, "We're not gonna focus on profit. We're not gonna focus on growth." The new CEO came in and said, "We're gonna be the safest place to work in America." The place was unsafe and so everybody thought, "Well, that's not bad, but it's not really good." Now, we could call it now, our keystone habit is going to be focusing on workplace safety. We're gonna have a goal of having zero injuries in what is otherwise a high risk industry. And this one focus, guess what it resulted in. Fewer injuries would be the right answer because they were trying to keep it safe. But surprisingly, a byproduct of this one keystone focus was they started to create better systems to keep it safe and they improved their communication to keep things safe. And when their communication got better, they had more meaningful accountability and then they found themselves having cultural alignment and stronger teamwork and deeper trust and all of a sudden as the accident rate decreased, guess what else mysteriously increased? Profit increased. In fact, under his 12 year term of leadership, General Revenue went from $200 million a year to $1.48 billion over a 12 year period. Why? Because one boring, consistent, focused, triggered positive reactions in so many other areas. So what we wanna do at the summit is we wanna bring you fresh actionable content, not just to inspire you, but to equip you. So let's make it personal. What I wanna do is I wanna ask you personally or even professionally, maybe relationally in your marriage or as a parent, maybe even spiritually for some of you. Ask yourself this very important question and this will be the one application from our talk in the session. Here's a question. What one small habit practiced consistently could transform your life in leadership? What one small habit, maybe in your own life, maybe in your organization, maybe in your marriage, maybe as a parent, what one small habit practiced consistently could transform your life in leadership, a keystone habit. I'll tell you a keystone habit for me that may surprise you, but it's very, very true. If there is a habit for me that triggers other positive habits, the habit for me that does this believe it or not, is flossing. Yes, to the delight of dental hygienists across the world, flossing makes me better. The reason why is because I sincerely hate flossing, does it really work? I don't know, seems like a waste of time, but they tell me every time, "Floss more, floss more, floss more, "floss more, I don't want to floss more, "I don't like doing what I'm told "because we're on a rebellious nature, "but because of me conformed with the image of Christ, "I'm going to go ahead and do what you say, "and I'm going to floss my teeth "and when I floss something happens, "my mind is triggered to think, oh well, "I'm actually a disciplined person, "I do hard things, (audience laughs) "I do things I don't want to do, "and so because I floss before I go to bed, "I actually take out my journal, "yes, I used to start journaling every year and never did. "Now I've journaled for probably nine years in a row, "why because I floss, "instead I'm disciplined, "I might as well write my journal, "and because I wrote it in my journal, "I don't look at Instagram until 12 at night, "I, by down with Amy, "we have a good, meaningful time together, "I go to bed at a reasonable time, "and because I floss, "because I journal, "get a bit of a reasonable time, "I usually get up early, "when I wake up early since I'm a disciplined person, "I eat the right things, "and I do my Bible study every day, "and I feel good, I get to work early, "I'm the first one at work, "and I work really hard, "I'm really productive, "and I come home and I'm in a good mood, "because I'm productive, "and I came home, "and I see Amy and I smile really big, "and she smiles really big, "and that is the very reason "because we have six children today, "because I floss, (audience laughs) "and it creates positive winds." Now, if I didn't floss, and there have been seasons when I didn't, my story could go like this, I don't floss, so therefore I know I'm not disciplined, so I don't journal, so I don't track what God's doing in my life, so I stay up way too late, so I over sleep in the morning, I wake up, I'm not prepared for the day, hey, since I'm in discipline, I eat stuff that's not really healthy, I don't do my Bible times, I get to work late, I don't feel good, I don't have energy, I'm not productive, so I have to stay late, and I'm really, really late, now I'm driving home and I realize I'm late, so I think I better drive faster, so Amy's not mad at me, so I'm not really, really fast, then a police officer tries to pull me over, but I don't want to get a ticket, so I try to outrun the police officer, eventually they catch me, they throw me in jail, why? Because I didn't floss. (audience laughs) Now, obviously I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a ton, because you all know, there are certain rhythms and habits that when they are present in your life and leadership, they create other positive, compounding, healthy and helpful habits, and when they're absent, the lack of those trigger a vortex of negativity that impacts unwinding into places that you didn't want to go, so what do we do organizationally? How does that impact what you do during the week? Well, here's what we know about leading organizations is we don't just hope for a desired outcome, doing. We don't just hope, hope is not a strategy. We have the right habits that bring about the right outcome, so what we're gonna do in leadership is we're gonna create the consistent inputs that drive the desired outcomes. We're gonna bring the right inputs, the right strategies, the right habits that create the opportunity for the right outcomes. We'll play a little game. If you don't know me, I lead a church. It's a little bit of a unique church, it meets in 45 different locations. Now, I'll ask you a question and you can just shout out an answer if you want to. In a church, what do you think we want to see? What would we celebrate? Somebody shout out. Salvation, yes, what else? Disciples, yes, baptism, yes. So essentially in a church, we would celebrate we're a non-profit, so for us, we would celebrate more changed lives. Now, the question comes up, if we wanna impact more lives, make more disciples, see more salvation, see more people be discipled and baptized, tell me what do you think we need to do? And you already know this because all of you tell me all the time what I'm doing wrong. So go ahead and tell me right now. What do we need to do better in the church to reach more people? So what's happening? There's not anything that's unblurry right now. We need to do so many things, we need to pray more and we need to be bolder and we need to be more evangelistic and we need to be more generous and we need to be more involved in the community and we need deeper shrims, but not so deep that you can't understand them. They gotta be deep and funny and fun and powerful and meaningful or you'll go to another church. But we have to be engaged in the community and we have to keep our buildings clean and we better be involved on social media. Now, let's go on and on, so tired. What do we need to do? We need to do a lot of things to reach people. So what are we gonna focus on? And the answer is, I'm not exactly sure, but I hope it's one thing. What are you saying? Pastor, you're confusing. There are many different right things we could do and the problem is so many times in leadership, people focus on seven things. If you can do seven things, you're way smarter than I am. My team is talented, but I never liked them focusing on more than three things. My ideal for them is one. So every time I meet with our 45 campus pastors one to quarter, I will ask them, what's your one thing? What's your one thing? What's the one thing that you're doing that's going to create the opportunity for more impact? What is the right input that you're doing that creates the stage for the Spirit of God to work that changed more lives? I'll give you. One example from a pastor who happens to be here today, Pastor Sam Russo is the pastor of life search, Mansfield, Texas. He has 11 staff members. It's a campus just south of Fort Worth in Texas. And his Keystone habit was this. Pastor Sam, to his 11 staff members, said, "What we want to do is we want to every single week invite three people to serve." So they're in the church, there's people in the lobby, "Hey, are you serving anywhere in the church? Would you like to serve?" And so his 11 staff would invite three people, not everybody would say, "Yes, of course they wouldn't." But after six weeks, guess how many new people decided and committed to serve? The answer is 70. Six new people in six weeks resulting from 11 people with an intentional focus, decided to serve. Pastor Sam said, "This is a very, very good plan." So he took an experiment, created a year-long focus, where every week, every one of the 11 staff members would ask three people to serve, and over a period of one year, they recruited 455 new people to serve. Now, thank you for the golf clap, because that didn't seem like that big of a deal. I mean, like, "Yeah, more people are serving." How does that create more change lives? Well, once you think about this with me, if you will, if someone is serving, what are they doing? They're using their gifts to make a difference for God. They're being engaged in ministry. Does that person care more about the gospel or less? The answer is, more, are they gonna be more generous or less generous? More generous? Are they gonna invite more people or fewer people? More people, when they're using their gifts, their discipleship goes up, their spiritual passion goes up, their buy-in goes up, and therefore more people will be impacted. Let me tell you how this church is done. In only four years, from zero people, from the ground up, in the last year, they grew 15.6% in four years, they grew on from zero to over 3500 people weekly. How? One keystone habit of saying, "Let's help people develop and discern their gifts, use their gifts to make a difference, and you can do the exact same thing." Not serving in the church for you, it might be different. It might be welcoming new people, or it might be returning calls a first-time guest, or it might be inviting three people to church, or in your business, it might be making three sales calls, or whatever it is. If you will find those boring week after week, hey, are you serving some more in the church? Hey, would you like to serve week after week? Same thing, not a different plan, not a fancy plan, a boring plan, week after week, would you like to one consistent, boring, focused triggers a positive chain reaction of change lives. So, let's just talk personally. What kind of leader do you want to be? Like, really, when people talk about you, what do you want them to say? What do you want them to feel? What kind of a leader do you want to be? If you want to be a leader that cares about people, maybe you just start with writing one note of appreciation a day. What does that do? That triggers you. I'm people focused. That one little thing, one note of appreciation, all through the day, you're going to be thinking about, how can I value that person? How can I appreciate that person? How can I communicate appreciation for their devotion? You want to be a leader that's organized. So, what you might do is say, you know what? I'm going to make my bed every day. First thing, nobody really knows, but I know. I'm going to make that bed, I'm going to make it nice. And so, what I'm doing is I'm triggering myself, hey, I'm a disciplined person, and I'm organized. And I start the day, and I do something that probably wouldn't want to do. The triggers me the rest of the day, I'm organized. You want to be a leader that's really, really focused. Because one of the biggest mistakes we make is that we do too many different things. So, you're going to walk in every day, maybe you're going to get a little post-it note, and you're going to write your three top priorities, not 30, not 10, three. And you will not leave your office that day until you've done those three things. You do that alone and watch your productivity, skyrocket. What do you want to do? You determine what kind of input will trigger the right kind of outcome. And here is the great news. That if you consistently focus on the right inputs, the right outcomes will eventually follow. But you say, OK, it's kind of boring, right? I mean, like, Craig, let's just be real. You get to do the fun stuff. You get to do the opening talk of the GLF. That's not boring. That's exciting. And it is. And there's nerve wrecking. It is. I get nervous before I still do. I don't do what I used to do. I used to throw up in a bucket before I taught. [GRUNTS] Throw up in a bucket. I don't do that anymore. I am skilled. I walk in the confidence of the Lord today. I throw up in my mouth. I swallow it. We're good to go. Welcome to GLF's opening talk. Is it exciting? It absolutely is. Exciting. It's humbling to be a part of an event. I pray it does something in your life like it did in mine. First on my came was in the '90s. And it was not in this big building. It was in a smaller building. And I heard the founder of this event tell me a pastor that I could be a leader. I could lead people to Jesus. And I never thought of the church as being something that could-- I thought the church was for church people. I never realized the church could be used to reach people. And he said, you're a leader. And all of a sudden there was something in me that had been dormant my whole life that came to life. And it changed my life. And I came home when I told Amy, I was in my 20s. And I was an associate pastor with church of about 300 people. A Methodist church downtown. Said it wrecked me. I'm different. Like I can lead. I can do something through this. And I'll never be the same. And I said, this is crazy. And I know it doesn't make any sense. And please don't hear this as arrogant. But I just-- I felt like God showed me one day I would speak there at that event. And she looked at me and she said, Craig, get over yourself. You'll never speak at that event. Just keep your head down and do the work before you. Which was actually a really good advice. Because this is exciting. But let me just tell you about my exciting life. It is exciting. If you add up all the talks that I'll do, I'll do sermons on the weekend. I'll do leadership podcasts, talks. I'll do talks like this. I'll do about 100 talks a year. That's a lot of talks. About 100 a year. The average one will be about 30 minutes. And so if you do the math, about 50 hours a year, I'll be doing stuff like high-level, exciting, like thrilling adrenaline rushing and pack-ball for 50 hours a year. And like you, I work harder than the normal person. So 50 hours a week for someone like us is normal. So if you do the math, that means one week out of the year, I'm doing stuff that's visible and exciting. And what I want you to hear me and believe me when I tell you that 51 weeks a year, I'm heads down in prayer, pasturing people, dealing with conflict, solving problems, praying about talks, writing talks, rewriting talks, agonizing about talks, because you can be a tough audience at times. And because I really, really care. 51 weeks a year, it is the normal routine stuff, getting up early, staying late, being disciplined, choosing when I pray, how I treat people, when I'm with people, how I develop people, when I put into my mind, when I put into my body, when I put into my soul, how I conform my mind to the image of Christ, how I stay disciplined and say, no, the temptations of this world and say, faithful to my God and love Amy with everything in me. You don't have a great marriage, I be an accidental, it's purposeful and intentional, and it's the small, consistent things day or day, week over week, month over month, year over year that compounds to a lifetime of impact over time. So please hear me, it's not the flash, it's the faithfulness. What is it? It is consistency plus faithfulness multiplied by time which equals lasting impact. Let's talk about the faithfulness for a minute and attention is this. When it comes to faithfulness, you need to understand, faithfulness isn't fast, it's never fast. And in this culture, that's a problem because so many are tempted to seek the platform and skip the preparation. The bottom line is this, why do we resist boring? Why do we resist boring? We resist boring because we crave quick wins and instant impact, don't we? We live in a world of on-demand, we've got on-demand movies, we've got real-time updates, we've got instant likes and shares, we have same day shipping and shopping. Can I tell you a side note, true story. I ordered brain supplements at 8.30 in the morning. They were at my house by 3 p.m. and then I forgot to take them. (audience laughing) And that's why we're so frustrated when we don't see progress fast enough. And you know your own version of this. You walk on the treadmill three times that week and you don't lose a single pound. You read your U-version Bible app every single day and you still yell at your kids on the way to church. You take your staff to a staff retreat and you do it all. You do icebreaker questions and group skits and you do the ropes course and your staff still hate each other after you do the event. And so what do you do? You wrongly conclude that small good decisions don't matter that much. And that's a dangerous conclusion. On the other hand, you're at work and there's someone who's not doing a very good job and you want to keep the peace and so you avoid the difficult conversation and you don't see any immediate impact. You come to the office a little bit later and you leave a little bit earlier and no one seems to notice. You sneak two doughnuts in the snack room. Not at once. It's a half of one and a half of one and three quarters of one and the hook is to break it up. You sneak two doughnuts in the snack room and you don't gain a single pound. And so again, you wrongly conclude small bad decisions don't matter that much. I came to tell somebody in please here it do not be fooled. Your life and your leadership is the sum total of all the decisions that you make. And every single one of us, every single one of us, we're all vulnerable to inconsistencies that can cost our integrity, our production and even our ministry impact. And this is a part of my story that's not incredibly dramatic but I'm not proud of it. In the early years I told you I came here in the 90s. I served under my pastor, pastor Nick Harris, who's a hero to me and I was blessed with some early success in ministry. I was leading a single adult ministry that grew relatively quickly and I actually stopped some of my daily disciplines. And you know how it goes when you start winning and things start going fast sometimes you actually relax and I stopped flossing. Doesn't sound like a big deal but then what I did is I actually stopped reading the Bible. Now not completely I still would read the Bible to preach, always to preach but I didn't read the Bible for personal devotion. And the time I realized that I was actually in trouble was when I stood up on a Sunday morning to do the pastoral prayer at this church we had a big pulpit about the size of a Honda Accord and I stood up wearing my robe and I went and I did this really bold pastoral prayer and I realized the first time I prayed all week was publicly and never privately. And what God showed me in that moment is that I had become a full time pastor and a part time follower of Christ. And I'll slow it down here for just a moment because there's some of you you might be living in your own version of that. If you're a person of faith you might be right now you're a full time mom you're a good mom but maybe you put your faith on the back burner or you're a full time entrepreneur or a full time student or a full time influence or whatever it is. But if you're a follower of Jesus we're not called to be successful the things of the world we're called to actually be faithful to God and the little things. And so when I stopped doing some of the seemingly unimportant small things the foundation wasn't as strong to support the things that God wanted to do. So what I did is I went back to doing the boring stuff and I was introduced somewhere someone said Craig is the most boring person I've ever met. I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But like if you look at my life like it is indiscriminately boring. I do the same things over and over and over and over again. But when I came back to boring this next time after the flossing tragedy when I came back to boring here's what I discovered. The boring wasn't as boring as it used to be. In fact in the strange way boring started to become meaningful when it was connected to a higher purpose. And I discovered that those things that were once mundane actually became powerful when they strengthened your testimony and your ministry. And then I noticed that doing routine right things with people that you love over and over again isn't boring. It's actually a blast. And so now I'm finally over it. People would ask me all the time like Craig what are you excited about? What new thing are you excited about? And I always felt kind of dumb because of like going I don't know. I'm doing the same thing I did last year. And the year before that the year before that the year before that the year before that kind of was excited about doing it next year. Same thing. And literally same thing like we develop people with pastor people we open new churches and I preach the Bible. People say even some of your leadership talks sound the same. I know. They say your sermons sound the same. Some people after 30 years they can finish my sermons are the same. I'll tell you why. I'm preaching from the same book I started with. It's the same book. It never changes. Every time. No always builds a boat. Spoiler. David always beats Goliath. And Jesus always defeats death, hell and the grave. And that's why I'm not looking for something new. I'm sticking with the same story that still saves to this day. You see that to be fancy. You can be boring in a beautiful way. And someone asks you like based on who you want to become. And based on what you want to accomplish. Not somebody else. Not the pressure you feel from the outside. What's God calling you to do in this moment based on who you're called to be. What one habit. What one thing can you do again and again and again until it's boring. And then one day it's not just boring. It's meaningful and it's effective. It changes who you are. And it changes your culture. And it changes the people around you. So with humility, with faith and with a little bit of passion. I came to talk to somebody directly and tell you embrace the mundane. Show up a little earlier. Stay a little later. Do the right thing. Someone no one's watching. Do the right thing even when it hurts. Treat people well. Love the people. Love the people who serve you. Not because they produce what you want but because of who they are. Lead with integrity. Keep your word over and over and over again. And it may not be exciting at first. And you may not see immediate results. But your hard work. Your discipline. Your sacrifices. Your faithful. Your boring rhythms. They're not being wasted. They're being stored up. It's a little bit like every morning. I ate my oatmeal, my eggs with 12 blueberries. Yes, it's boring. But I get a pot of water and it's room temperature water. And I add a little bit of heat to the water. And the room temperature water goes from 72 to 88. 88 to 97. 97 to 121. 121 to 181. 181 to 202 and 202 to 211. What do you have when you have 211 degree water? The answer is you have hot water. But one day in one moment when it goes from 211 to 212 when your consistent plus faithfulness over time is starched of boil. And other people will look on and they'll say, oh my gosh, your life is boiling. Oh my gosh, your leadership is amazing. Oh my gosh, you do so much fun thing. It's so exciting. And they're going to say, you are an overnight success. And you're going to know you weren't an overnight success. You were consistent. And you were faithful. And you did it for a long period of time. And God bless you with a lasting and meaningful impact. And I want you to think about what they see. They see the results. They don't see what brought the results. It's the things that no one sees that bring about the results to everybody once. Do the things no one sees. Everybody sees the boiling water. No one sees the heat. Bring the heat. Bring the heat. Bring the heat. They're not going to see you showing up early. They're not going to see you stay in late. They're not going to see you praying long. They're not going to see you overcoming yourself doubt and failing and starting again. They're not going to see the grind and the discipline and the risk that you took and the time that you failed and got back up again and the pain that you endured and the private price that you paid that they'll never know about. But God sees it. And God knows about it. And God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. So let us not become weary. in doing good. Come on, GLS, what are your leaders? Because at the proper time, you will reap a harvest. If you do, not give up. Don't let anyone talk you out of boring. What's boring to you is often faithfulness to God. Show up and be faithful. Build the habit. Embrace the mundane. Bring the heat. Don't stop until you stand before God one day. He looks at you and says, "Welcome to the heaven I have prepared for you." Well done, my good and faithful servant. Bring the heat. Well, there you have it. What are you going to be? You're going to be consistent. Plus faithful over a long period of time. I promise you, that will equal lasting impact. Super thankful you joined in this month. Next month, we have John Maxwell. In fact, we did something we've never done before. We did a live recording with a big audience. And I promise you, it's one of the most impactful leadership interviews that I've ever done with a hero to me, John Maxwell. That'll be the first Thursday of next month. Again, keep investing in your leadership. I hope you can join me at GLS at one of the host sites or online. If that fits your schedule, keep growing in your leadership. Keep getting better because we know that everyone wins when the leader gets better. (upbeat music)