Episode 170 - Alone in the Corner Office with Rick Lytle
If there’s one topic that makes its way onto this podcast more than anything, it’s the importance of community. Starting your own business can be a lonely journey...but it doesn’t have to be.
Today’s guest is an expert on what it looks like to be lonely at the top—and what it looks like to be surrounded by a support system. Dr. Richard S. Lytle currently serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of CEO Forum, Inc where he is helping business leaders find community.
If you’re tired of going it alone, give this episode a listen. And afterwards, if you’re looking for a place to belong, find your Faith Driven community.
Episode Transcript
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Richard Lytle: There's always this maybe misunderstanding that, oh, wow, they made it to the top and it's been yeah, they had an easy oh I can tell you story after story after story of heartbreak, of rejection, of being shamed in front of their colleagues and being walked out of the room as president of a major brand that you guys would know about as a story of their faith being tested in a story of resilience and bounce back. That I think especially in these covid times, is last year, you guys, I think if you didn't have spiritual grit, you didn't make it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today, we've got a great guest on Rick Leidel is the CEO of the CEO Forum, which is a ministry that ministers to some of the biggest leaders in the marketplace, some of the Fortune 50. They've been doing this for a long time. We're going to take that a little bit. Increasingly, they're doing that with some younger, fast growing leaders as well. We'll talk about that, too. But, Rick, first of all, welcome to the show.
Richard Lytle: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Henry Kaestner: Awesome having you. We want to get into the background and the personal history of all of our guests. And I know enough about some of your history to know that it's really, really relevant. It's a story about the marketplace. It is obviously shaped you in your life and in your ministry. And so let's start there. Who is Rick Leidel? Where have you come from and what's the legacy that you've picked up from your parents that informs your work today?
Richard Lytle: Yeah, thank you, Henry. Thanks, guys. It's great to be here. I was born in Detroit, Michigan, to two extraordinary parents who happened to be deaf. Both of them lost their hearing somewhere around 12 months of age. And so you can imagine go back one hundred years now when they were born and think about how they would get along in society. Back then, they were called deaf and dumb. I experienced that as a child growing up and actually got probably into a couple of fist fights because of my wanting to defend them and just tell people they weren't deaf and dumb. So that's a very unique approach to life that I was confronted with. What's so cool? The quick story here, Henry, is my dad went to the Detroit Day School for the deaf. His dad was a Detroit police officer. And in the seventh grade back then, the classes were not coed. So it was all boys in the seventh grade class. Henry Ford Senior. The machine that changed the world walked into my dad's classroom and with an interpreter talked about Ford Motor Company and talked about business. And he made a promise to the class that if they would graduate from the 11th grade, which was the highest grade that was attainable at that time, that if they came down to the company, he would give them a job. My dad remembered that and I'm on Zoome with you. But as my mom, he would tell me because he's very animated, my parents are very animated and my mom grabbed my ear and we walked down. The Ford Motor Company applied. And as far as we know, my dad was the first ever deaf employee to be hired at Ford Motor Company, was a journeyman in the factory. Once he met my mother, he had another dream. I mean, his dream was always to go to work for Ford. And then once he got the job at Ford, which was unheard of. You guys, it's hard today because of all the emphasis on trying to be friendly to folks who are struggling with disabilities like this was unheard of. Deaf people were pandering the streets. Deaf people were always looking for handouts. They had no opportunities to work anywhere. Nobody knew what to do with them. So this was huge. Well, then he had a dream after he met my mom that he didn't want to be quote on quote a factory worker. He wanted to be a white collar guy. When I talked to my college students, they don't even know what that means. Nobody works. What does that mean? When my dad wanted to work in the office and so what he did was he enrolled in a class in the evenings. It was for to become a draftsman. And he went for four years, you guys, he went for four years at night after he worked his full shift in the factory, no interpreter, no assistance. And he would tell me as I was growing up, all he saw was the back of the teacher's head as he was writing on the chalkboard. Then he would stay after he would learn from the professor, the teacher, as much as he could, even though he was the only deaf guy in the class. Nobody knew how to do anything with him. In his fourth year, he took his final exam and he failed. And he told me he looked at me and he said it's one of the biggest disappointments of his life. He was so embarrassed and he was so frustrated. But his mother again took him by the ear, marched him back down. He did his fourth year again and he graduated with an eighty percent degree. And my favorite picture, my dad. And I have it in my office, he's on the drafting floor, world headquarters, Dearborn, Michigan, Ford Motor Company, and a white shirt and a tie. And he's got his two bosses leaning over him. And he has a white collar guy at Ford Motor Company, the first deaf person ever employed professionally as an exempt employee. And what's so cool about that? It's kind of scary. But my dad told me when he got to his job the first day, his boss came to him and wrote on a sheet of paper, just nobody to talk to deaf people. So he wrote on a sheet of paper, said, Frank, I've heard your story. I'll give you two weeks. If it doesn't work out, we'll send you back to the factory. Back to the journeyman. And I thought, man, in business school today, we do not teach motivation that way, right? We just don't do that. No, but my dad said after his first few days, the bosses came up to him, gave him a thumbs up, physically showing him the sign of a thumbs up. My dad worked forty two and a half years before when he retired, he was supervising twenty six men on the design floor of world headquarters of Ford Motor Company. And when we were boys, my brothers and I would go with my dad down to the auto show in Detroit, Cobo Hall Auto Show, always pretty girls in dresses and all the paint and all the stuff. Dad and Jim and Bill and I are on the floor sliding under the new cars and dads pointing out, you see it open. I designed that open. You know, you see those shock absorbers. And so it was just an amazing story. Yeah. No shift to my mom real quick. And I'll tell you how the Lord kind of put all this together where I got my passion for faith in the marketplace. So mom was born on a farm in Tennessee, Nashville, outside of Nashville, Burns, Tennessee, Dickson County, super poor again, my dad's police officer. So they were middle class. You know, they had money. They had wealth, mom, dirt floor literally during the depression. Or Dad comes up to Detroit up by seventy five to try to find work. He ends up working eventually. Ford Motor Company. He's trying to find education for her. He discovers the Detroit School for the Deaf. He sends my mom to school for the deaf where my dad went. For the for the women that only went up to eighth grade, for the girls, it only went to the eighth grade. My mom is extremely bright and very hardworking. I've got a picture of my favorite picture of my mom. It's of her up on stage. They would take my mom because she was so gifted to Minneapolis, to Chicago, to Detroit to try to convince educators that deaf people were smart and they could contribute to society. Right. So I have a picture of my mom. She's on stage. She's a little girl. She's looking off to the side with her eyes closed. So she's away from her teacher. She has her hand on the throat of her teacher. Next to her teacher is one of her classmates, a boy named Ronald Silow. He has one of those old wooden sticks with a rubber tip, a pointer on it. He's pointing to words on the easel. My mom's teacher is saying the words, my mom's eyes are close with her hand on the teacher's throat. And my mom is saying what the teacher is saying by reading the easel from the words is incredible. And they went all around and BAM graduated valedictorian the eighth grade and eventually met my dad. And I told you the story. But here's what I think is just so cool. Because of the influence that my mom and dad had as individuals who had a faith in Christ and a belief in God, that was very simple, very rudimentary, my dad then would go to all of his deaf friends from the Detroit school and say, you could get a job at Ford, you could get a job at GM, you can do this. And his friends all started doing. And then when my dad got the white collar job, he went back and said, you guys can do this and they went to training school. So when I was growing up, the circle of deaf friends that I hung around with my parents were all these deaf men, mostly some women who by my dad and mom's influence, were able to create a standard of living for themselves and their families. That was unbelievable at the time. But then on top of that, where Jesus comes even more directly is my mom's father, who brought them up from Tennessee, said we need to have a church for the deaf. There were no churches in Detroit for the deaf. So my grandpa, who is uneducated from Tennessee, scoured the country and found how he did this. He found a deaf preacher that was in a Bible school approaching school down in Alabama whose name was Harry Woosley. This guy comes to Detroit at my grandfather's leadership. We start a deaf congregation in the bottom of the church building. And guess what? All those people that my mom and dad had pointed to, Ford and GM and Chrysler and set an example of faith and raising three boys going to church, they went to them and said, we want you to come and come to church with us and learn about Jesus. And so this congregation grew to about 50 or 60 deaf people, which it's not a megachurch. Trust me, guys, but 50 deaf people in Detroit, Michigan, back in the 60s and 70s unheard of and because of pop spiritual leadership. But I go back and I say it was Henry Ford who cast a vision. My dad caught it. My mom caught it all. They had five loaves, two fish and a very simple face. But they've raised three sons. They're all faithful Christians, all business guys, raised Christian families and now grandchildren. We're on the fifth generation now from my grandfather, spiritual leadership and all of us are engaged in the marketplace. And I believe in my heart that that lesson that I learned from my folks and watching them with a simple face. Just to give you an idea of where I started from. I'm five years old. I'm a kindergarten mom, always fix my lunch. But one day I don't know why, because we don't have much money and stuff, but I got to buy my lunch. And so I was going through the line. I was so excited. The biggest thing I was excited about to get dessert. And I remember very distinctly I got to the end of the line and it was a classic older woman with a hairnet on. And I pointed down and I said, Fenelon? And she said, Excuse me. And I said, and I pointed Fenelon. I pointed to the ice cream Fennimore. And she said, Oh, vanilla. I said, Oh, that's how you pronounce it. Wow. Think about a deaf person. How do you know the difference between and and you never heard a sound in your life. Yeah. And so what happened is I was growing up, I was the guy that was calling on the telephone to order me to talk to people, to communicate. There was no captioning on TV. So when President Kennedy was shot, I remember coming home to tell my mom and she was floored. And I so I became kind of a newsman, the anchorman, the information conduit when we went to buy cars because we were in Detroit, which was almost every year my TED, he did have a habit of buying brand new cars. And I would say as I got older, that you waste money on a brand new car. And he'd say, give a man a job that's verbatim, give a man a job. But I could tell as a young boy that used car salesmen sometimes and car salesmen would take advantage of people and I would stand up to them and my parents would tell me that the guy would look at them like, who is this young son of yours? So it's a story of faith. It's simple faith. But I'm telling you, they touched everybody they came in contact with. They were just changed by the presence of my mom and dad. Then I was a benefactor of that. And so I went on to get my Ph.D. in business and I worked at a Christian university as a business school dean and faith in the marketplace. It's just always been just so important to me because most people don't go to church anymore. And so the only vision they may have of Jesus is their boss, their coworker. And I'll stop it at that. Henry, I don't want to keep going.
Henry Kaestner: That's super cool. That's super cool. That's an incredible legacy to through. You come out of this amazing environment with your parents and you find yourself getting a business. You value faith in the marketplace. You're at Abilene Christian and you hear about this thing called the CEO Forum somewhere along the way. Tell us about that a bit. But then especially, of course, tell us about the CEO forum. Tell us about the ministry. It's probably because it's been working with some of the top CEOs of industry. It's not maybe as well known as C12 or an FCC or some of the other workplace ministries are out there. Help us to understand what CEO form is about.
Richard Lytle: Let me tell you the two questions, I think embedded in that, so as a business school Dean, I was always a marketplace guy. I wanted my students not to just have the theory, but I wanted them to be exposed to businesses, to be there, to touch it, feel it, to taste it, and to talk to Christian business leaders who'd gone down the road before him. So I ran across the question. I don't even remember actually how, but I was invited to a luncheon in Dallas of Christian business leaders. And I sat down and one of the newest members of the forum was a guy named John. John at the time was the CEO of Mac Tools. John had just reignited his faith. And I mean, he gave a 10 minute intro that put your hair on fire. He was fired up for Jesus as CEO mocktails. So I just went up to him afterwards. I had never met before. And I just said, do you ever speak on college campuses? And he said, I never have, but I'd love to. That began a relationship with John. John came to Abilene Christian many times and works with me and a thing from the mountain that I do for the college students for twenty three years. But I was always looking for people that were on fire for Jesus, but they were also competent. And I built the car. I tried. We all built it. But to me it was competence because too many times Christian people, in my opinion, I've met a ton of Christian people that think they don't know can slide a little bit in terms of excellence. But I was like, look, Jesus didn't sign on anything. And he was excellent cognitively. And he was smart and so was Paul and so was Peter. But we wanted the character of Christ. So I intersected with Mac and eventually they asked me to join the board and I got to know more and more about the ministry. And basically where it started was twenty six years ago, Mac met with six CEOs, publicly traded companies, Fortune 50, Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies. They all met in Chicago and basically said this is really hard. Now, remember, this is twenty six years ago. The culture is pressing in on us. We're lonely. We feel isolated. We don't tend to relate to our pastors, except possibly they want our money and there's nobody within our church fellowship, so there's great people that really understand our world like we're in different orbits. And so Mack said they had about a three hour breakfast. And by the way, five of those six guys are still in the forum today, which is kind of amazing. And it's grown into we serve about two hundred leaders of at least one hundred million in revenue or more. We do life on life discipleship with them just like Jesus did. We eat with them. We pray with them. We visit with their families. We go see them. Now it's through resume and a variety of technology venues. But we do life on life, discipleship over a lifetime. We don't give business advice. They can pick up the phone to call anybody they want to. We're all about spiritual leadership development and creating what I would call a sacred space for them to enter that's trusted and confidential, to share things that they wouldn't share with anybody else. And our only goal is to just try to help them be closer to Jesus, try to help them come in to encounter Jesus in a new way with a support system that's encouraging them to see what God sees. And one of the passages that really grabs me all the time, and I heard it again today, but in Matthew six twenty two on the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, if your eyes are good or if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are dark, if your eyes are in healthy craters of darkness, it will be within you. And what I've seen in a lot of these leaders is they haven't necessarily made the connection between the secular and the same, their solid Christian people, but they've not seen their platform as a platform of stewardship and leadership for God's kingdom. And so a lot of our people now that are in the forum, they tell me they feel like their pastors now. In other words, their eyes have shifted, their perspective has shifted that, oh, this is my ministry. Oh, this is my calling. Hey, hot dog. I don't have to be embarrassed. I'm a wealthy businessman. I can actually use my gifts and my talents to be a blessing to humanity for human flourishing and create value and to be a light for God. And so that's what we do in the forum. We have also an institute. So we do biblical discipleship. We have curriculum that are designed for CEOs, senior executives. We just launched new female boards and then we've launched the new next generation initiatives. Henry, because I just when I came into the forum, it's awesome organization. It's got a great legacy and it's authentic. There's no chest beating. It's just like we come to the foot of the cross together. We're lonely together. We all experience humanity together. But I just was like, we can't just keep this among ourselves. What's tied down to the thirty five year old? It's show him the way, if you will, from our mistakes and and from what we've learned so that they don't have to wait till they're fifty five to be able to be a part of a ministry like this. So that's the form that's the word of the form specifically, it's to engage, encourage disciples of Christ following CEOs and senior executives and their families to advance God's kingdom. That's our mission.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. Here, thanks for sharing and thanks for sharing the story. Your parents, I can't get one question out of my head. I'm going to jump into the forum. But I've got to ask you, what kind of car do you drive?
Richard Lytle: A Ford F 150. I got a new one.
William Norvell: OK, I didn't know where it was going, but I had to ask. I was hoping for the right answer. I always
Richard Lytle: know my dad somehow, somewhere in heaven, he's looking down to make sure I'm faithful to the legacy
William Norvell: Amen Amen. I think that's the right answer so we can spot you on the road now. So that's exciting. So I do want to talk about the CEO forum. So as Henry mentioned, you know, a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. Some probably I'd say we would likely skew more towards the younger entrepreneur, the younger business leader, as you mentioned, just hate asking questions like this. But I feel like you're probably prepared two or three lessons that you think our audience could learn from your long obedience with CEOs who have sat in that chair. What would you like to pass along to people and just encourage them with that they can take with them today?
Richard Lytle: So I would start here. It's a road full of failure, oftentimes shame, pressure. And eventually what wins for me is what I call spiritual grit. It's not for the week in the 60s. I could just tell you that it's a very even today, especially if you're a publicly traded company, it's a tough row to hoe. The average tenure, as I understand it, for CEO is three to five years. So you've got an opportunity to pop in, to make a difference, to try to be God's person. And probably you're going to be out in just some of it is physically. You just can't do it. You can't endure at that pace. But I think there's always this maybe misunderstanding that, oh, wow, they made it to the top and it's been yeah. They had an easy oh, I can tell you story after story. It's true story of heartbreak, of rejection, of being shamed in front of their colleagues and being walked out of the room as president of a major brand that you guys would know about as a story of their faith being tested and a story of resilience and bounce back. That I think especially in these cold at times, is last year, you guys, I think if you didn't have spiritual grit, you didn't make it and you're not going to make it. That's one thing. The other thing I would say is the loneliness is pervasive. I mentioned it before, but that's probably there's a couple of things that you're probably the most front facing thing that we get to understand as we meet people is they're very lonely and they're very isolated. And we know that if that's your condition, you're pretty easy to be picked off by the enemy. And so, again, that form becomes a place of refuge, a safe haven, where they can talk to Mac, they can talk to me, they can talk to any of our team. But they the ones that I see who flourish, they have accountability groups. They're intentional with that. And it's what sustains them because nobody's pouring into that's part of the reason for the minister who's pouring into the leader. I mean, who's refilling the gas tank and the leader. At that level where they don't sense that coming from the church in terms of understanding their orbit, so they're very lonely and they need it. But the other thing that I would share with you that I've just sort of analyzed in my own mind the last three months, over the years that I've been involved in the forum, I've been in this capacity for five years, but about 10 years on the board and doing some work with the forum. I think the number one prayer requests by all of our CEOs is for clarity. They will constantly beg for prayers, for clarity, for what to do next. Right behind that will be wisdom or maybe tied with that would be wisdom. And those that are serious and they walk with Jesus is for humility because they know the trappings of the job. But relative to clarity, this became clear to me. I went back and started thinking about what God has to say about clarity. And there's not a whole lot of examples in scripture where there's a lot of clarity, there's a lot of conviction by Abraham and Moses and Noah and Esther, but not a lot of clarity about the road ahead. But what it seems that everybody's desiring is just tell me, God, which way to go. And it seems to me that the lesson learned by these great leaders is direction as a matter of conviction, not clarity.
William Norvell: Amen Amen, I had someone, a mentor, tell me one time about the story of Jonah and how, you know, the beginning is go to Nineveh and preach. Right. And that's all he said. There is no outcome. There is no nothing else was attached to it. It was just simply go do my work and I'll fill in the gaps as I see fit. Right. And that's kind of our call. I want to jump into a phrase you mentioned. I want to go one layer deeper on it, if you wouldn't mind. Spiritual grit. I love that my mind goes to a couple of different things. I feel like I kind of know what you're getting at, but I want to give you a chance to go one layer deeper on what you think that phrase means and what our leaders need to be prepared for.
Richard Lytle: So thank you. What allowed Jesus to make to the cross? I mean, how did he he knew where he was headed. He was born to die, but how did he actually get there? That abiding presence that he had with God was amazing, was fundamental right to him. And he would have been wiped out in the wilderness when Satan came after. I mean, he's standing dripping wet the Jordan River. Right. And his first said the Bible says he was led by the Holy Spirit into confrontation with Satan. And he just said yes to God, yes to God, yes to God, yes to God, and I think that's part of the deal. But one of our leaders who if I were to mention the brand and the national publicity over the last two years, I've just been honored to walk with him. And I'll tell you what he told me, and this is to me, kind of foundational. He's a bike rider, and he puts in about 70 miles a day, and after this public tragedy and public hearings before Congress and all this, he was really struggling with God. Why is this happening? I thought you gave me this position to serve your glory and for your kingdom. And it's all dismantled and I'm out. And so he said about three weeks and he's out in Missouri countryside and he said he just kind of heard God say to him so and so that's the last time you thanked me for anything. And he said it just Florida and what he shared with me over the next six months was he believes that his humility and his gratitude for God's goodness, regardless of the situation, led him to his grace and then led him to growth to be able to face the trial that he was not. So with some gratitude to grace, to growth. And his proposition is, if you don't start with gratitude, you'll never grow. And the trial will take you down or keep you at the same level. So these fundamental elements of faith, gratitude, joy, humility and spiritual tenacity are etched in the DNA of these leaders.
Rusty Rueff: Rick. It's amazing the story that you've had. One of the real advantages that William and Henry and I did have by hosting this podcast is, you know, we get the vantage point of listening to somebody's history where they've come from to where they are today. And you know, it just to get to be the fly on the wall. And your story about your parents reminded me. My wife and I watch that current movie that's out right now called The Sound of Metal about the rock drummer who loses his hearing. And he's trying to figure out his acceptance of that. And one of the biggest issues you could tell that he's dealing with is loneliness. And you mentioned, you know, the loneliness of a CEO's job and you're, you know, picking up on that. And as I heard that, what I also heard is, you know, you grew up in a family with parents who had to deal with loneliness. Right. And that, you know, you were equipped during that time to do what you do today, you know, and that's that's God's grace there.
Richard Lytle: No. Yeah, Rusty. You're right. In fact, the spiritual grit of my parents is just popping into my mind was unbelievable. And they would tell me if the one thing that they would tell me over the years is it's hard because we're lonely. They could be sitting in a room, you guys with 500 people and they could be right in the center. And nobody's talking to you because they don't know how to communicate and they're lonely. And so even as hearing sons, we were like, wouldn't that great mom and dad, you're in the middle of it. And they're like, we don't even know what went on, you know? And so they face it all their, you know, just all their lives. But they had the spiritual grit, you know, to push through it.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. So as you work with CEOs, is there a distinction between the issues or maybe even the nuances of the issues that CEOs who are entrepreneurial, that might have their own start up or their own business that they founded and grown versus those that have come up through the inside of an organization? Do you see differences there?
Richard Lytle: I think you do. I think we're entrepreneurism is sort of squashed. Is in the corporate structure, in the corporate culture of an organization, even if the CEO grew up in the organization and is entrepreneurial in his or her approach, I think the biggest hurdle for the big companies is to get past the culture the way we do it at Wal-Mart or the way we do it at Procter and Gamble. Frankly, I see most of the CEOs that I interact with. As very entrepreneurial. They're visionaries, they cast dreams, they have dreams, they work to fund those dreams within the organizational corporate structure or not, they're intentional driven might be another word that we might want to back away from a little bit, because that's where they get caught up and they don't take time to remember who they are before they figure out what they want to do every day. But there is a spark. I frankly Rusty don't rub elbows with very many CEOs at this level that I would categorize as not entrepreneurial. OK, I think that spirit and that spark is part of the DNA to get you to that leadership position, honestly.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So one of the things we try to do on the episode is we want to encourage and equip our entrepreneurs. What are some of the downsides of not being in a group or not having, you know, someone who's walking inside you?
Richard Lytle: Well, I think the biggest thing is it goes back to Matthew six twenty two. Your vision, the Holy Spirit works in you and my way of understanding scripture through his word, through his promptings within you, but also through the company that you keep in the experience of others. And so when you journey together in a group with people at your side, supporting your vision is much healthier than if you get isolated. It's the emperor with no clothes. And it does remind me of one of our leaders who was very driven, very smart, climbing the ladder very quickly, very entrepreneurial. But his head got a little too big. And there's a whole story of how that derailed and how he lost his influence and how he lost his position and his position of influence. And he became known as that kind of person. And there's a redemptive side to that Rusty so much so, because I would want everybody to know that whatever God allows, he can redeem. And this particular individual, actually, by the very CEO that fired him was asked by that CEO. To mentor him, so get the picture, he's being fired and let go because of everything that's happened and how he's kind of gotten off by himself and on the wrong real. The CEO, let's go looks at him and says, I want you to mentor and this particular CEO who is now a very well known CEO, said to me, what was so cool about that humbling experience was in the next 18 months, I baptize that CEO and all five of his sons. Amazing. Amazing. So God can do anything right when we see him as we should there.
Rusty Rueff: One more question for me and then I'll turn it back over to William. Bring us to a close. Is there an advantage or a disadvantage of being yoked with someone of your same industry? I get this question a lot because we have a lot of tech entrepreneurs like they're like, well, should I get in a group or should I be mentored by someone who's in the same industry? Or does it open the aperture for me if it's somebody from another industry and, you know, you'd probably be the best person to give that answer to.
Richard Lytle: Yes, I have an opinion on that. And I think it's like a lot of things in church go to a church. Do you just hang out with people your own age or do you intergenerational? What's the pro and con there? Yes, when you're together in your own industry, it's awesome because I know exactly what if you bring a bunch of higher education guys around me, I'm going to click and we're going to go. But it becomes very narrow. It becomes very limiting. So one of the things we do intentionally in the forum is we cross Polland eyes at the same level, but across industry. So that wisdom is opened. I think your aperture, as you said, is open. So we try to do both. We convene in the same industry or same function as marketing or finance people or technology people. But my purpose in our institute, when we do our deep dove in biblical discipleship, we don't do that. We bring people from all across the country, all different walks of life, all different industries. And it's beautiful. And people are opened up, I think, and become better leaders because of.
William Norvell: Thanks so much, Rick. It's been a gift to have you on. Unfortunately, we do have to come to a close. And as we come to a close, one of the things we just love to do is to see how God's word continues to live and breathe and how it transcends between our guests and our listeners. And so the question I would love to ask you is, if you wouldn't mind sharing with us, we're just going to have you in his scripture today. It could be something you've been meditating on for a while. It could be something that the Lord shared with you this morning. But just invite you to share that with our listeners.
Richard Lytle: Well, thanks, William. I'll be a little vulnerable here. About 14 months ago, I was surprised with a life threatening condition. I was healthy all my life and it knocked the wind out of my sails. And I remember going through that time, it's hard to explain, it's kind of it's one of those things that you hadn't been there. You hear people talk about it. But I was kind of coming to terms with Jesus. I didn't know I was going to be around very long. And the passage that came to my mind that I've clung to had always been my favorite passage on page six out of Romans for. And you guys know it, but it's the passage where. Paul's talking in Romans about Abraham, and he said Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver and unbelief regarding the promises of God, but rather gave glory to God. And here's being fully persuaded that God could do what he said he could do. And I just held on to that promise, Lord, whatever the outcome, I believe that you're the God that brings into existence things that are not which Paul just said to versus before that. But whatever your will be, I believe that your promises are true. And I believe you can do what you said you can do and then I'll be with you forever. And that has stuck with me for these last 14 months.
William Norvell: BAM, thank you so much for sharing that, Rick sticks with me now, and I'm going to see that verse in a new light. I did not remember it when you said it, but thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you. Share with our listeners. Thank you for sharing so much of the story of God's faithfulness throughout your life with us today.
Richard Lytle: Yeah. Oh, it's an honor. Guys.