Episode 277 - Setting the Right Goals for the Right Reasons with Jon Acuff, Patrick Lencioni, and Terry Looper
The New Year brings new opportunities to examine our goals, to get focused both personally and professionally.
So how do we do this well? How do we establish goals that actually get done? How do we make sure those goals align with our faith? And most importantly, how do we stop ourselves when we start putting our value in the things we achieve?
In this special edition of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, we’ll highlight conversations Rusty, Henry, and William have had with expert leaders Jon Acuff, Patrick Lencioni, and Terry Looper about what it looks like to set and accomplish the right kinds of goals.
They walk us through how to avoid the pitfalls that try to take away our focus, how to set our minds and hearts on the things that matter most, and how to ensure that we don’t allow our accomplishments to become our identities.
More from these guests
Jon Acuff:
Patrick Lencioni:
https://www.faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/podcast-inventory/2020/4/7/patrick-lencioni
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
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.
Joseph Honescko: Every entrepreneur I've ever met is an avid goal setter. We set up OKRs or KPIs or whatever other acronym you choose to keep ourselves and our companies in check. For many of us, the new Year brings new opportunities to examine these goals to get refocused both personally and professionally. So how do we do this well? How do we establish goals that actually get done? How do we make sure those goals align with our faith? And most importantly, how do we stop ourselves when we start putting our value in the things we achieve? I know none of us struggle with that. I'm Joey Honescko, the producer of the show, and on this special episode will highlight conversations Rusty, Henry and William have had with expert leaders Jon Acuff, Patrick Lencioni and Terry Looper about what it looks like to set and accomplish the right kinds of goals. They walk us through how to avoid pitfalls that take away our focus, how to set our minds and hearts on the things that matter most, and how to ensure that we don't allow our accomplishments to become our identities. You're listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let's get into it.
Jon Acuff: Finish is, it's all about goals. I went to the University of Memphis and commissioned a research study with a Ph.D. there named Mike Peaslee, and we looked at 900 people for six months as they worked on their goals to figure out what does it really take to finish a goal? And entrepreneurs are classic chronic starters and they're inconsistent finishers. So that one I would say, hey, if you're an entrepreneur and you're like, okay, yeah, I start a lot of things, but I don't finish them. I'd recommend to finish. Soundtracks is about how our thoughts impact our actions, which impact our results, and entrepreneurs struggle with that. Like overthinking is, I think, the most expensive thing entrepreneurs invest in without even knowing. It slows down decisions, it steals productivity, it steals creativity. And so we did another big study about, okay, how can you be deliberate about which thoughts you listen to? And what's fascinating is even my most Type-A entrepreneur friends who are like the lay out the clothes the night before and like, measure the grams of protein they're getting. They don't pick their thoughts ahead of time. So very few of them go. I got a big pitch meeting coming up. Here's the three soundtracks I went playing during that meeting. They just show up and have thoughts versus honing them. So many people, even if they're really good at other parts of their life, take their thought life really casually. And I think it causes a lot of challenges that if they got their thoughts in order, the actions, the results would start to open up in a different way.
Rusty Rueff: Bring all this into the context of goal setting, because, you know, right now we're sitting on top of one technology after another that's going to help us set our goals, track our goals. You know, this ......, you know, throughout all of our lives, um, goal setting, overthinking. Or not overthinking?
Jon Acuff: No, I mean, I love goals, like I have goals around Lego sets every part of my life. I love to go, okay, well, how do I do that? Like, I have a goal right now to overlook a fence once a day. Because I caught myself, somebody would ask me to do something and I would act offended. And I was like, that's not the spirit I want. Like, I want to be deliberate about that. Like, why am I reacting this way to people? I want to work on that. So I'm a big believer in goals. My big thing though, is like, why am I doing the goal? What am I expecting the goal to deliver me? How am I going to do it in a measured way? How am I going to be in community about the goal? You know, how do I make sure it's not an act of perfectionism, but it's actually something that's sustainable. So there's it's like anything else in life, there's ways you can go wrong with a goal. But for me, I feel wired for goals. And, you know, I always say like a goal is the fastest path between where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow. And so like for me, I love that and I test them. That's the other thing. You try it for a month. If it doesn't work, you do something else.
Rusty Rueff: There's a lot of people who get stuck at that stage, right? They overthink their ability or their inability to set a goal.
Jon Acuff: Well here's the problem. They go, I want to do a goal. And they brainstorm their goals, which is sometimes really difficult. They come up with 20 things. They don't know which one is the right one. And the problem is we think there's a perfect one and there's not. So you go, I just got to find the right one to work on. I got to find the right. Forget it. Like find three and work on them kind of back and forth. Like it doesn't like you don't have to find a perfect one. So for me, I always tell people like I have one, two, three kind of big life goals going on. I have like 3 to 5 medium things, have like 7 or 10 habits you're trying to track or tweak.
Rusty Rueff: You talk about overthinking is a sneakiest form of fear. Go into that forest. So I don't think that everybody recognizes that paralysis that comes from analysis. You know, it's real.
Jon Acuff: Sneaky, it is sneaky because it pretends it's helping you be prepared. It goes, no, no, no, no, no. This is about being prepared or being prepared for being prepared. But I always say like being prepared leads to action. Overthinking leads to inaction. Like even there's a lot of entrepreneurs right now. Listen to this. According to New York Times, 81% of people, American adults want to write a book. Guess how many do every year? Less than 1%. So 81% say they want to. Less than 1% do. And part of the reason is they almost write a book. They overthink the book. They add pressure to the book. They spin out on the book. And so that's why it's sneaky, because it can pretend like if I say to you like. Are you a workaholic? Most people recognize that's not helpful. Like it doesn't like high performance. One thing. But if I say you're a workaholic one, people recognize that it's bad and two, they don't want to self-identify it. That's the funny thing to me. When we asked 10,000 people, do you struggle with overthinking? 99.5% of people said, yes. So that's why I think it's a sneaky form of fear. It's because it can pretend it's not initially until you start to unpack it and go, wait a second, that's what I'm doing and it's not helpful. Hold on.
Rusty Rueff: So if 99.5% of the population overthink, so they say that they overthink. What's that tell you about what's going on in society?
Jon Acuff: Well, here's the here's the interesting thing. So 2020 was catnip for overthinking. Like we did a study in 2019 before a global pandemic, before like masks, before staying at home, before a possible recession, before the election, before civil unrest. Like all these topics that kind of threw grenades into our thought processes, like people. I read an article the other day, people are afraid of the doorbell now because they're like, we don't know who it is like. And the idea of what that's doing to our faith, to our courage. So, yeah, I mean, I think the world is at a high point on overthinking because, like, we're feeding ourselves social media, you know, we've lost trust in so many of our institutions. And so that's part of why part of why I'm excited about the book is that in the middle of the pandemic, I definitely had a lot of stress like I did, you know, don't hear me say otherwise, but I felt like I had some tools because I'd spent two years learning how to swim, and then the world got covered in water. So, like, if I didn't know how to kind of be deliberate about my thoughts, it would have been a lot harder year. But because I had some tools that I'd spent years figuring out, I could say, oh, I recognize that.
Rusty Rueff: You're addressing this overthinking. Is there an antidote or are there just little things that we all have to do to get past it? I mean, give some advice to the entrepreneur.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. I mean, the big thing is, I don't think you say stop overthinking or like, you'll never overthink again. I just don't think that's possible. And also, I have an amazing thinking brain. Why would I try to turn that off? It would be so much better if I just thought the things that helped me. So my big thing is, if you can worry, you can wonder if you can stand, you can soar. So the big trick there is going, okay, I have all these thoughts that I don't want to have that aren't helping. I'm going to replace them with thoughts that actually move me forward. You know, in a faith sense, I'm going to take these thoughts captive. I'm not going to sweep out this house completely and have it be empty, like I'm going to fill it deliberately. So that's the main trick. As you go. I kind of teach three Rs. I say you retire, you're broken soundtracks. Wow. This thing. Let's make it hyper specific for entrepreneurs. The contract where you got screwed three years ago is still impacting your next contract. The worry about somebody taking advantage of your intellectual capital because somebody did, is still having a voice in the middle of this. And you go, okay, that's a broken soundtrack. I want to retire that. I want to replace it with a new one. I'm going to come up with a new one when I get into contract situations, and I'm going to repeat that one so often it becomes as automatic as the old one. So really like those are three practical things you can do retire, replace and repeat.
Joseph Honescko: John has such a knack for making things practical, but in addition to understanding how are we can set better goals and how we can change our mindsets, we also have to consider our whys and this next segment. New York Times bestselling author Patrick Lencioni reminds us of why we should think about the why behind everything we do. When we set goals, we can ask ourselves, how are these aligned with my larger motives? Here's Pat.
Patrick Lencioni: There are two reasons. Two motives why a person wants to become a leader and the two motives are one. I'm doing it because I'm rewards centered, and we're all susceptible to this because we've all fallen into this. The other motive for being a leader is that you want to serve it's responsibility centered. This is a burden. And when somebody makes you a leader, you get promoted to a position of management or you start a company. It is first and foremost a burden because you are now responsible for stewarding that role for the good of these people, your employees, your customers, partners and everybody else. So the right motive for being a leader is responsibility. It's kind of heavy, and it's really important now, with God's help and pure intentions, that can be a wonderful thing. But if you're doing it for your own personal economic sense. I don't just mean financial economics, but what it does for you. You're going to get really frustrated because I tell you what, leadership is never economically sound. You are going to give far more than you receive, which makes sense if you're a follower of Jesus, because that's why we're here, is to love others. Now we all receive things, but if we think that the economics are going to play in our favor, that's not going to make sense. And that's why it's so important that the world has faith driven entrepreneurs who are willing to give far more than they receive, knowing that their rewards are eternal and even that their rewards here. Now, in this day and age, in this modern time, in the in the church and in the world, being motivated in the right way is so important because to be a faith driven leader, you are going to suffer. It is. It is not a theoretical statement to say that we suffer if we're followers of Jesus. And if people know that we're followers of Jesus, there's a lot who might abandon us, and we have to love them through that even as they turn away from us. And even as we get hurt by that, we can know that our motive is to love on them and to love on the people that stay with us, and to love on the customers that belong with us, and even on the ones that leave us. We can we can do that if our motives are pure. Okay. I want to talk a little bit more about the motive. We talked about the the the idea that we have to be motivated by serving others. And as Christ centered leaders, we know that that's what he showed us. But here's a few good ways to think about this. Because what I've noticed in all the things I teach about leadership and about running an organization, practical day to day things, there's five things that reward centered leaders, self-centered leaders, including myself when I've been there, often abdicate. Now, it depends on who you are and what you like to do. One of the things about being reward centered is that we tend to think, I get to go to work every day and do what I feel like doing. I used to think that was really the reward I wanted, that I could go to my office and do what I felt like. Of course, if you're a responsibility centered leaders, you do what's necessary and what's required. And so here's five different things. And I've had leaders. I love it when they call or they write to me and they say, oh my gosh, Pat, I was 0 for five. I don't do any of these things. And I realize now it's because I'm reward centered, and I'm so glad the humility of them to admit that and say, I'm going to change because this can be changed. So here's the five things you might want to ask yourself, and I'll tell you the ones that I struggle with. The first one is a lot of leaders who are reward centered, not responsibility centered. They abdicate responsibility for having difficult conversations with others. There's this issue, and they can see that it's a problem. And I have to go confront them and have a difficult conversation. Now, as a follower of Jesus, we know it. Iron sharpening iron means, you know, we have to be willing to enter the danger and love somebody enough, even if it's uncomfortable. But if you're reward centered, you're going to go, I don't want to do that. And I've seen leaders abdicate responsibility for that. I remember once I worked with a leader, a very famous guy that you've probably heard of, and one of his direct reports was telling everybody around him that he was going to become the next president and chief operating officer of the company, and this guy was not at all well liked by his peers. Well. Somebody went to the CEO and said, are you going to make that guy the president and CEO? And the CEO said, no, I'm not going to do that. He goes, are you going to tell him to stop telling everybody that? He goes, no, I don't have time and energy for that. And so many leaders don't have the time and energy. You know, it's just calling the guy up and saying, hey, buddy, you're not going to be the next president. You should stop telling everybody that. It's kind of pissing me off and something bad might happen to you if you don't stop, right? Have a great day. We don't have that conversation, even though it's an act of love to say, I want to correct you in that. So if we're reward centered, we go. That's uncomfortable. I really don't like doing that. It's not fun. He could be upset. I'll just let it go because it doesn't bother me that much. But that's not living our responsibility as leader. So the first one is having difficult conversations with people. And I promise that was a true story. And I've had it happen, that kind of thing, so many times in working with leaders. The next one is related to that, but it's different and that's what we have to manage our direct reports. I will tell you, I don't like this one. Managing your direct reports just means I know what they're working on. I'm helping them set goals. I'm available to them to coach them when they need help, and I'm following through with that. Well, I used to justify not doing this. I'm just not a very detail oriented person. And I would say, well, I hire adults and they're good at what their jobs are and I don't need to be on top of them and know what's going on. And a lot of leaders will say, I don't like to micromanage. That's not micromanaging. It's managing, and it's an act of love. And so I used to be kind of lazy about that and think, that's okay. And one day I realized, oh, that's just because I don't feel like doing it. So managing your direct reports and I find that this gets harder the higher people go up in an organization. No line level manager fails to do that. But many leaders, when they get hired, they just think, I don't have to do that anymore. I'm kind of glad I don't. So that's one of the things that people abdicate sometimes if they're giving in to reward center leadership, another one is building a team, doing doing team building sessions. Now, I love doing this. This is what I do for a living. So even as a reward centered leader, I would do that because it was fun. But I know some CEOs who hate that kind of stuff. So they go, I'm just not going to do it, or I'm going to farm it out to somebody else. Well, the truth is, if you're a leader, nobody else can be responsible for building your team, just like having those hard conversations and managing your direct reports. So we have to say, whether I like this or not, I'm going to do it because it's necessary. So building your team and doing the the interpersonal work necessary to do that is critical. Two more one is many leaders I know don't like to repeat themselves. Repeating yourself as a leader is one of the most critical things we have to do. You know, like that old saying, like the woman who says, honey, why don't you ever tell me you love me? And the husband says, well, I told you when we got married. I'll let you know if it changes. Many leaders are like, I don't like to repeat myself. I find it to be redundant. It's a waste of time. People might think I'm stupid or that I think they're stupid. The best leaders in the world are constantly, constantly repeating themselves, even if it's not fun, even if people make fun of them. As a parent, I know this because my kids constantly make fun of me. Dad, if you tell me to, you know, not do that one more time. I'm like, good for them for remembering. But at work we often think, I don't want to have to do that. Great leaders repeat themselves, and the last one is that to be a great leader means this is not sexy or interesting. That we have to run great meetings. All so many leaders I know go, oh, if it weren't for meetings, I really love my job. But the truth of the matter is the meeting is the playing field, the stage, the classroom, the the operating room of business, of leadership, of organizations. A teacher would never say, I hate teaching in the classroom, or a surgeon would ever say, I hate the operating room. A football player would never say I hate the playing field, or an actor would never say I hate the stage. But when a leader says I hate meetings, it really is saying I don't like what I do because that's where we lead. That's where we make difficult decisions. That's where we confront people and and make decisions for our customers. And so if you're reward centered and you don't like running meetings, you will often abdicate it or try to avoid them as much as possible and you won't be doing a good job. Okay, so you're a responsibility centered leader regardless of your personal preferences. You've got to have difficult conversations. You've got to manage your direct reports. You've got to repeat yourself constantly. You've got to build your team and you've got to have good meetings. Those are just the five super common areas that people tend to abdicate when they fall into reward centered leadership. Now, I hope what you can do is look at those and whether you're 0 for 5 or 4 for 5 or 5 for five, that you can constantly say to myself, I need to do this because it's it's necessary, regardless of whether I particularly enjoy it, because being a leader can be a very enjoyable experience. But if that's our first reason to be a leader, then our motive is wrong in the first place.
Joseph Honescko: Our final guest on the show is Terry Looper, the author of the book A Sacred Pace. And he's going to share some pretty radical ideas about goal setting that have been informed by his experience as a heavily driven, successful entrepreneur. In the midst of running a multibillion dollar company, Terry had a breakdown in encounter with God over 30 years ago. That has changed everything since. Today, he continues to use the gifts he and all other entrepreneurs have been given. Things like grit and drive and leadership. He's still built incredible companies and done incredible work. But the path towards those successes has looked different. Now he submits his gifts before God. Entrust him with the outcome. And more than anything, he finds his rest and identity in Christ instead of in his own accomplishments. Here's how he got there.
Terry Looper: I would have probably gone to my deathbed believing I loved my family and my wife and my children more than success. But as they say, you pay more attention to someone's actions and their words. And the truth is, the priority of success was greater than my family. That's just the simple truth. And so everything from their catch up, my jump curbs to get from a feeder to interstate highway to get to the sports event. I mean, whatever, but I've had to look back with the Lord's help and therapy that, uh, success was more important to me. So I'm not saying that's the case with all the people. Obviously it's not. But you need to try to get real honest with yourself. And then from there, you can probably improve.
Rusty Rueff: I'm going to read a quote from your book. So you write, I understand now that at the root of my perpetual discontentment was the perpetual fear that I wasn't good enough, that no one my parents, my business partner, my wife or daughter or anyone else could ever accept me unless I kept achieving and accumulating. I kept achieving and accumulating. Can you talk a little bit about how your relationship with Christ changed this idea that you had to constantly be proving yourself, or achieving, or accumulating or proving to others to be able to earn their love? Because somewhere in there seems like there was an identity shift that you probably didn't want to have happen, but happen to you.
Terry Looper: Yeah, I'm the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, it was a great lie. You know, it's the great lie. My wife loved me and my children. It didn't have anything to do with achievement. It literally didn't. My parents probably had some conditional love around achievement. And that's how I got driven, like I did. But, you know, once Christ entered my life, I mean, everything changed. Everything changed in the burnout with me, driven to get whole with his leading and help. And then I was blessed. Oh, probably about a year into my new identity and on vacation with doors. And he overwhelmed me with his love. Deep in my heart, I could probably cry right now about it. And that was 30 something years ago. He penetrated my soul and my heart of his love, and I content when I talk to a lot of men that most men have never been blessed with, that they know it in their head. But when you get it in your heart, just like a Bible verse, honestly, when you goes from your head to your heart, it changes you. And now I'm more loving and more lovable, and my identity shifts. When I feel his love to the level, I can feel it not near to the level he offers it, but to the level I can grasp it. It has changed me.
William Norvell: So a book, Four Steps to Hearing God and Aligning Yourself to his will. We're going to get to him. Walk us through. What are the four steps from your life's journey that help us hear more from God? Everybody wants to do that. I'm ready.
Terry Looper: Well, I say, well, I laid them out the steps. It's more of a homogeneous process. It's not the only process by any means. Even my best friend has somewhat of a different approach. But the concept is still very, very important, very valid. So in my steps, the first one is consulting your friend Jesus. And I said that because I developed best I could tell a friendship to allow. He ask in John 15:15 to be your friend says he's your friend. So I said, okay, I want to be your friend. And so I would consult him in business deals or consulting on management style management issues. But the process of these four steps, the key is to start praying and start discerning, trying to discern what Christ and the Lord wants for you. And that's what I called consulting my friend Jesus. And he's a great friend. The second one is gathering the facts just like you do due diligence on a project or business deal. That one's pretty definable, with a couple of exceptions, along with you doing pro con list. Another thing I realized is a lot of people think their opinions are a fact. So as you're praying and consulting your friend, he starts revealing the truth to you. Some around your opinions aren't facts. The other thing I had a tendency to do around manipulation or whatever it was when I'd hear a fact that it didn't like that didn't get me what I wanted, I would discount it. And when I hear a fact that really elevated some good news about what I wanted, I would give it more weight. And so through prayer, I started having to start saying, okay, no, I got to give everything weight. I got to seek the truth because the truth will set me free. And those are a couple examples of how to seek the facts other than the ordinary way. The third was watching for circumstances and thereby says, well, what's that mean? I mean, we've got a thousand circumstances. Well, if you're really trying to seek God's. Will, I think Psalm 37 four which says, delight in the Lord. Give you the desires of your heart. I believe if you're going to be trying to do his will, I think that's delighting in the Lord. So I think he'll show you in your heart what circumstances really matter and the timing of it all. And then the fourth step. I got a chapter on each one of these in the book. So obviously we're going fast here. But the fourth step is what I coined way back getting neutral. And it's somewhat similar to obedience surrender, whatever. But for some reason the non-religious term registers a lot better with people of getting neutral, where it really means I want God's will more than my own, and you got to get it from your head to your heart or doesn't work. And, uh, George Mueller, a great missionary back in the 1800s, has six step process of discerning God's will. But he said 90%. And I can attest to this. 90% is when you finally, finally, finally want God's will more than your own. So in that process, when you finally, finally really want, it's convinced you jump off the cliff without knowing what is over the cliff. Then he would reveal to me in my soul and in my heart and in my gut, as I call it, his will. I would get a peace that was beyond understanding. It was very convicting. It was usually scary because he wants me to become more whole, so it's usually not what I want at the moment because I want easy street, I want quick answers, quick success, whatever. But as you remember, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane said to the Lord, I don't want to go to the cross for humankind, but I will do your will. So he stayed neutral. He was always neutral, right? The bigger the decision. The more weeks it takes me to get neutral. So it's a simple process, but it is not easy. It is painful to give up on what you really think you want and what's best.
William Norvell: Um, I believe that I'm hearing that. And I heard this great quote years ago that said, you know, there's no greater job in the world for a workaholic than ministry, because you can always justify more and more, well, somebody is in trouble. I feel like that can really be applied to faith driven entrepreneurship. So many faith driven entrepreneurs feel they've been called feel that God has pushed them on this journey. And a lot, myself, we have signs and partners show up out of nowhere and into my mindset. I mean, how do you think about being neutral to God? Well, how do you separate God's calling and become neutral to, you know, a business that you feel like you have been given to steward and then obviously a family that you've been going to steward and then other responsibilities in the community and your church. And I'm curious how the sacred pace framework helped you think about those roles.
Terry Looper: Well, obviously, prayer, I mean, it's a journey, you know, it's a journey still for me today. But prayer, obviously, whatever boundaries. I put several boundaries in the book to help. And I believe I've been blessed now to believe in my soul that God cares more about my soul than my ministry. If he gets my soul right, my ministry will soar. I tell a lot of ministry leaders that he cares a lot more about my soul, because then he can work in me and through me if my soul is bruised or clogged up. Uh, I have an image of my soul, and heart is like a conduit pipe. And the greater the faith, the wider the diameter. But within there I got dysfunction and I got sin. So the wider the pipe, I can get it with his leading. And then less sin and less dysfunction in my business, I believe truly long term will be actually better. I will make more money. I will be a better leader. I'll be a better manager if it works. I'm telling you, I've got 33 years of proof and it just works with these really tight boundaries about my hours and other convictions.
William Norvell: That's good. could you go into that a little bit? You know, and I know, you know, we're a one size fits one community here. You know, no one's life is identical to someone else's life, but it's always still great to just hear once again, you you ran a $6 billion revenue company. And it's always encouraging to hear somebody say, you know, like, this is how it actually worked. And God still showed up because I'm in the thick of it. I'm the young entrepreneur here, and I'm like, that sounds great. But when did you actually put that into practice? Were you the chairman by then? You know, let's get them out of our mind. Wants to say, but I'm curious.
Terry Looper: Well, I was the founder and principal and I put up all the money, which wasn't that much money in today's terms, but it was, you know, a significant portion of mine, I'll say that. But in doing that, I was absolutely not willing to go back to my old ways. I had succeeded prior to that, but I absolutely was willing to forego success versus a life of a relationship with my Lord and my wife, finally, and my kids finally he had convicted me of that. So in order to start my own company with my own money, and I've never started my own company. He convicted me to start it with a maximum 40 hours a week and a completely trusting. I said, well, I don't know, one entrepreneur that started a business then or since that 40 hours a week. He said, well, in essence, you trust me or you don't. And I jumped off that cliff and I said, all right. I really believe you can make it successful 30 hours a week, 40 I can handle. And no, I can still have time for my family. And the other thing he convinced me of is not to have a false god of metric goals. So we've never had metric goals. And we became the largest private company in Houston based on revenue. I think maybe 15 years into the company, it would never have been any metric goals. You know, Jesus, I don't think had any and I don't think he disciples had any. And, you know, they had some pretty good results.
William Norvell: Okay, I got to go one more there deeper because I'm setting my annual goals right now. Like, you really mean you led this [....] You showed up with the all hands mean. You're like, we're just. We're just going to work our best. Hey, that sounds awesome. I just want to double click on that.
Terry Looper: Yeah. And some of our guys have goals. Metric goals I said. You know, that's okay. But I don't believe in them. I think actually they players if I give them a goal. I think it short changes them in the key players. It doesn't matter you know. So I think they perform better without me overlaying them. My metric goals.
Rusty Rueff: It's fascinating. I'm just kind of blown away that the disciples didn't have KPIs. I thought everybody had KPIs.
Terry Looper: I know you think about it. And they really had some pretty good results, you know, kind of set the world on its ear.
Henry Kaestner: So I'm struck, as I listen to this about the back to the KPIs and the OKRs and you coming out of this experience with a sense that you didn't need to have goals and trying to think about the production and what people like Paul went through, I mean, the shipwrecks and the imprisonments and all those things. And must have been wrestling with John Wooden's teaching and definition of success. You know, he kind of turned the concept, the success on its head a little bit. I'm wondering what that mean for fate driven entrepreneurs and just kind of mash up of all the different things we've been talking about. And I think that one of the truths it's impacting me is that the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom, the knowledge of God, the pursuit of him. When we do that, everything else flows from that. So how do you get a guy like Paul, who's shipwrecked that many times and went through all the different challenges he he had, and be able to have God use him so magnificently, or you at [.....] or any of us, it seems that it all starts from the right view of God. If we have an encounter with the living God. And endeavor to understand or come to understand the depths to which he loves us and what he's done for us. Then that provides us with this nuclear source of energy that transcends any KPIs. It makes a mockery of just what we might otherwise expect from ourselves. And we just do it just naturally, because we've had an encounter with the living God and it's gone from intellectual to this heart level. And with that comes peace. With that clearly comes success in your case. But with it comes peace. But my sense is that for fear of not first listening to this and trying to figure out where some of the things to take away from Terry's story, well, number one is, gosh, Terry seems to really have endeavored to no guide since the age of 36. Am I on the same type of quest? And what is my encounter with the living God? Tell me about pace, my motives. How I manage, how I lead. What is important? What is not. You mentioned before, and I think that you spoke to two of these, which are boundaries, one of which is not to be laboring under these kind of these goals that may be arbitrarily set or not. And you also talked about the 40 hour workweek. Can you just talk about what some of those other boundaries might be?
Terry Looper: Sure. One is, um, this one probably, I tell people, is probably the best tip in the whole blooming book is when somebody asks you to do something, wait till tomorrow to give an answer. When they first ask me. Uh, either have a reaction of pride or people pleasing or being wanted, whatever. And if I'll just wait till tomorrow. The objectivity is incredible of how busy I am. Is it really aligned with my purposes? Hey, maybe what my wife or significant other says, uh, about it. You can actually come up with a objective answer and give a yes or no. That's been a huge blessing to me. And when I deviate, I'm usually sorry that I deviated. Another is I always come up with ideas like, oh, entrepreneurs, it's endless. So when one is going to really impact my employees or my company or pocketbook or the family, I park it for a week and I don't even pray about it. I just try to park it and kind of forget about it. And a week later, I never surveyed it really, but on average, I'd say 80% of them were bad ideas. A week later, one week. And God's answers in his program were always very slow in our eyes. So one week is not going to cause a problem, even if it's God's calling. He will honor the fact that you're just trying to lift it up for one week and come back and see. I'm amazed at how often they're bad ideas and I didn't drive my employees crazy or my wife. That's another huge one. And then when I've had a life changing event of selling the division, we sold several divisions. Over the years, I've learned that I can't trust myself, that my pride gets in the way, and I need to wait one year before I invest any of that money or buy anything. So those are three significant ones that really, really work hard and have been huge blessings to me. And as a sidebar, there was a not necessary boundary, but I saw a video the other day, about 11 minutes long, that I realized what we do here is what they had proven worked in the business world is if you love your employees first, you love your customers second, and you love making money. Third, you will smoke the companies that put making money first. They had a study of S&P companies that were similar competitors, and they did a study over like ten years. And the ones that loved employees first, loved the customer second and put money last, that they had tremendously better results than the ones that put money first. So that's one of my messages.
Joseph Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We've got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There's no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.
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